In which I do several things at once
Sooo... these are all things I meant to post yesterday / day before, but between work and a family pumpkin picking potluck upstate, I just hadn't managed yet.
First!
Trail Hunter!
trail_hunter
It's a new comm for Hunter x Hunter fans a la Hikago's blind_go and Tenipuri's subrosa_tennis. On October 10th began sign-ups for its first round. Fics only have to be 500 words, and it should be a lot of fun, so if you're into HxH please consider joining us!!! ♥
And Second!
blind_go is over! ;_; Which means that I now have to own up to having written Akira no Soccer. I did a concrit of it myself a week after the fact, and it's atrocious, so let's not get into it. XDD
Congrats to readerofasaph for guessing right~! This means I now owe you Ryoma fic (oh dear), so please let me know if there's anything more specific you'd like in it.
Finall, Third!
Speaking of blind_go and concrit (hazardous, or so it seems ^^;; ) I did attempt a concrit of every fic written this round, all of which (including the one for my own *lol*) can be found under the following cut. Because clearly, everyone wants my opinion. (AS IF!) If I haven't said anything positive about a story it's not that I didn't like it, it's just that I think positive remarks miss the crit aspect of concrit. I actually made a conscious decision to pull most of my more positive "I like X" remarks, so be warned that this is a try at crit, not commentary. (It is my intention to go around leaving the positive comments on the fics I had them for. XD We'll see if I manage it. XD) These comments are mainly things that could be fixed or changed, with suggestions for those changes when they weren't completely clear, but I am only human, and I don't doubt that I edge a little too close to commentary in some places. Sorry about that. Please let me know if you'd like to discuss, etc.
Blind Go ConCrit
Painted Lips: The concept was interesting, but the apparent lack of research behind the story ruins it. A quick Google fact check confirmed for me that a Heian noblewoman would be unlikely to leave her house (or take care of her own children, for that matter) and that cutting a boy's (or a man's) hair short wasn't a common practice. The attitudes of the characters also seemed wrong for the period i.e. too modern. A little research can go a long way.
Befitting Legacies: This story was fabulous, and there is almost nothing about it I would change, save that the adjective-noun agreement wasn't always as clean as it could have been ("oxymoronic logic"?).
In Which Fantasy Meets Reality and Does Not Survive: The transitions could maybe use some work. The moments were good, but they didn't always tie and connect as well as they could have.
The Solemn Truth About Go: This fic works because it breaks the mold of stories where Akira doesn't attempt to eat the stones. 2 year old POV is a little painful to read, though, and the fact that it was 2 year old POV could probably have been presented earlier to make it clearer.
Plaza Suite: Kuwabara/Yanghai was a little too obvious because of fandom's portrayal of Kuwabara. It has gotten to the point where an Internet thirteen year old girl almost inevitably is him, which makes that section kind of weak.
Same Time Next Year: I think this may be a case of it's not you, it's me. I felt like that last scene where Sai appeared in Hikaru's dream in the manga was a definitive last moment for the two of them. Making it a yearly thing cheapens it, so I disagree with the premise.
But I Have Promises to Keep: You might consider taking off that last line and separating out "All he has to do is wait." as a separate finishing paragraph. Somehow that feels to me like it would have been the stronger choice. Also, there were one or two places where your grammar was a bit off, like the missed parallelism in that line about Ochi destroying himself and Shindou to give up.
The Day The World Held Its Breath: This fic suffers from a lack of memorability. The title implied a sense of grandeur that the fic, with its disjointed flow, didn't live up to.
Interplanetary: This fic occasionally fell into the trap of telling, not showing. For instance, "she replied, feeling… actually happy" at the end of the first section could have been stronger if instead of stating that she felt happy the fic used a more descriptive route to imply that she was happy. Something simple like smiling, or her shoulders feeling a bit lighter would have been a stronger choice. The format of the story, though - with lots of little moments that let all of characters shine - worked really well.
Good Hands: I had to read this a couple of times through to get all of the sections in the right order in my head. Part of that was just that I personally had issues with reading the Kuwabara/Akari section, so I skimmed rather than read it. Still, I'm a little confused. Was Kuwabara watching the Akari/Mitani bit? Or taping it? Or did he just set it up and then get out of the way?
Akira,: The lack of a sense of context made the beginning too slow, but it's letter fic, so I'm not sure how you could have gotten that in earlier. I as a reader wanted to know more about what on earth was going on with the setting in this fic, which wasn't ever fleshed out beyond a generic sort of world war. The world war in Japan thing didn't work on a couple of levels, actually, not least of which is that Japan being an island makes it rather hard to imagine several nations worth of armies all gathered near Hokkaido. The meat of the story - Hikaru's reflections on Akira - worked all right, but there were some problems. For instance, if Hikaru can write to Akira, why wouldn't he write to his parents and grandfather? Why would he need to have Akira talk to them for him, and yet he hears from Ogata on a fairly regular basis? This just wasn't fleshed well enough.
Endgame's Turnabout: We fundamentally disagree about the characterization of Akiko and Ogata. Ogata, in my opinion, would never be half as forward as he was with Kouyo in this fic. He has tremendous respect for Touya-Meijin, and I can't imagine him ever speaking the way he did here. Akiko, I've always thought, is happy in her marriage. Even Kouyo, as you portrayed him, does not fit with my perspective of him.
Blind Desire: This fic was a little too high on the sex and too low on anything that wasn't sex for me to really have an opinion. Not that the smut wasn't well-written smut, but there wasn't anything behind it besides two people out to have a good time, which doesn't make it interesting or problematic. Consider why the characters are together before putting them there.
An Experiment With Chocolate: My instinctive reaction to the title of this fic was that it should have been smut. Moving on! The double capitalization on IIjima was incredibly distracting. Also, the two of them together was kind of random. Again, consider why the characters are there before writing them up.
Excerpt from the Memoirs of Life and Death: The memoir-esque style was a little strange, but it worked to good effect here. I liked the ending, but it left me wanting a part two, which - as they say - is invariably a good thing.
Coalesce: Please be more careful with verb tenses - the way this fic flitted in and out of the present tense bothered me. Also, the analogies and characterization didn't always work. For instance, Waya drying the dishes to finish twice as fast - how does he finish twice as fast if he still has to wait for all of the dishes to be washed before he can dry them? Waya and Le Ping also play with very different styles, one of which Shindou is reasonably familiar with - how does it take him a half game to notice that? That said, the latter half of the fic was much stronger and had far fewer inconsistencies.
The Silence in the Games: The formatting / spacing was the only problem I found in this fic. There were places where the paragraphs looked like they should have been broken, and where the fic wasn't consistent in double spacing between paragraphs or not.
Hotel Starlight: The lack of set-up in this piece bothered me. Why Iijima and Nase? I suppose the same could be asked for any pairing, but unlike the proximity that makes a relationship of convenience between Ogata and Ichikawa plausible, I don't think canon really provided enough to make Iijima/Nase work. Also - first time fic set in a bathtub? Sure, bathtub smut usually works pretty well, but usually first time is more of a bedroom story. The scenario just wasn't plausible enough.
Akira no Soccer: The flow and narrative pacing are really off. The first scene with Ogata and Kuwabara drags badly, and has inconsistent Ogata characterization. The second scene rushes too much, does too much telling about Akira's past with Sai and not nearly enough showing.
Three Teachers in Art: The pacing of this story is really off. The first half rushes toward the second, where it slows down to a crawl. As I read it, the latter half of the story is the story's main focus - the scene between Touya Koyo and Ogata. From the beginning of the story, though, that's very hard to pick up. A more effective way to do this might be to start with Touya Koyo's arrival and have the other parts of Ogata's background be revealed through his thoughts as they play those first games. Too much was given away too quickly.
Lines (for go and manga: It's okay to use the word "said" sometimes, too. Not everything needs to be snorts or counters or stares. Using those too often also takes away their bite, so that when you want it to be a sharp snort, the meaning doesn't follow because he's snorted several times already. The Hikaru's-life and manga metaphor also strained here. Having Akari suggest it and Hikaru consider and reject it makes the part where Hikaru decides about Sai's sound strange because Sai's story is in many ways Hikaru's story, too.
Dance Dance Fail: Touya struggling to play DDR or Touya being very good at DDR because he'd been dragged to arcades before - either would have been believable. The plot consistency falls apart, though, when Akira goes from completely bewildered by the machine for several practice rounds to suddenly remembering during the competition. This also creates characterization issues - if he knew, he wouldn't accepted the practice rounds; if he didn't, he'd never have won.
For Forever: This story is at times a little flat and stereotypical. Isumi thinking that he's taking advantage of someone, person in question telling him he'd better not stop, etc. etc. Actually, it seemed like what would be in any Isumi/Le Ping fic. While the use of Waya makes it slightly different, that's actually more problematic and probably indicative of a characterization problem.
Serious Business: I'm sorry, but the most critical thing I have to say about this is that using S Trading and T Group looked a little lazy in terms of naming things. The sentence structure in this is atrocious throughout, but it's used to good narrative effect, so that's not really a problem here, but in a longer story / novel it might be. The descriptions and imagery are vivid, the characters still work in spite of being AU, so yeah.
Thursday's Child: This story is fabulous - plot, characterization, etc. - but there are a couple of places where it goes just a little too far in telling and that gets in the way of showing your point. For instance, when Akira leaves during the third scene and there's that line about how it's unheard of for Akira to do that before Ogata asks if he's ill. Taking out that line about it being unheard of would strengthen this, because Ogata asking if he's ill is sufficient to imply that Akira is acting unusually. Also, Touya Koyo saying "shan't". I shan't tell you I don't like the word, but it seemed out of place. These weren't a problem on the whole and didn't get in the way very much, but just a little tightening could make it even better than it is.
Madonna: I saw the concrit that Ai did of this already, and really feel like there's nothing useful I could say that hasn't already been said. -_-;;;;
A Familiar Pattern: Semi-colons are great; using them in every other sentence is not. This story was difficult to get into because the beginning makes such heavy use of them. Two thoughts that are somewhat connected can occasionally be separated by a period. Sometimes, for clarity's sake it's better to do it that way.
First!
Trail Hunter!
trail_hunter
It's a new comm for Hunter x Hunter fans a la Hikago's blind_go and Tenipuri's subrosa_tennis. On October 10th began sign-ups for its first round. Fics only have to be 500 words, and it should be a lot of fun, so if you're into HxH please consider joining us!!! ♥
And Second!
blind_go is over! ;_; Which means that I now have to own up to having written Akira no Soccer. I did a concrit of it myself a week after the fact, and it's atrocious, so let's not get into it. XDD
Congrats to readerofasaph for guessing right~! This means I now owe you Ryoma fic (oh dear), so please let me know if there's anything more specific you'd like in it.
Finall, Third!
Speaking of blind_go and concrit (hazardous, or so it seems ^^;; ) I did attempt a concrit of every fic written this round, all of which (including the one for my own *lol*) can be found under the following cut. Because clearly, everyone wants my opinion. (AS IF!) If I haven't said anything positive about a story it's not that I didn't like it, it's just that I think positive remarks miss the crit aspect of concrit. I actually made a conscious decision to pull most of my more positive "I like X" remarks, so be warned that this is a try at crit, not commentary. (It is my intention to go around leaving the positive comments on the fics I had them for. XD We'll see if I manage it. XD) These comments are mainly things that could be fixed or changed, with suggestions for those changes when they weren't completely clear, but I am only human, and I don't doubt that I edge a little too close to commentary in some places. Sorry about that. Please let me know if you'd like to discuss, etc.
Blind Go ConCrit
Painted Lips: The concept was interesting, but the apparent lack of research behind the story ruins it. A quick Google fact check confirmed for me that a Heian noblewoman would be unlikely to leave her house (or take care of her own children, for that matter) and that cutting a boy's (or a man's) hair short wasn't a common practice. The attitudes of the characters also seemed wrong for the period i.e. too modern. A little research can go a long way.
Befitting Legacies: This story was fabulous, and there is almost nothing about it I would change, save that the adjective-noun agreement wasn't always as clean as it could have been ("oxymoronic logic"?).
In Which Fantasy Meets Reality and Does Not Survive: The transitions could maybe use some work. The moments were good, but they didn't always tie and connect as well as they could have.
The Solemn Truth About Go: This fic works because it breaks the mold of stories where Akira doesn't attempt to eat the stones. 2 year old POV is a little painful to read, though, and the fact that it was 2 year old POV could probably have been presented earlier to make it clearer.
Plaza Suite: Kuwabara/Yanghai was a little too obvious because of fandom's portrayal of Kuwabara. It has gotten to the point where an Internet thirteen year old girl almost inevitably is him, which makes that section kind of weak.
Same Time Next Year: I think this may be a case of it's not you, it's me. I felt like that last scene where Sai appeared in Hikaru's dream in the manga was a definitive last moment for the two of them. Making it a yearly thing cheapens it, so I disagree with the premise.
But I Have Promises to Keep: You might consider taking off that last line and separating out "All he has to do is wait." as a separate finishing paragraph. Somehow that feels to me like it would have been the stronger choice. Also, there were one or two places where your grammar was a bit off, like the missed parallelism in that line about Ochi destroying himself and Shindou to give up.
The Day The World Held Its Breath: This fic suffers from a lack of memorability. The title implied a sense of grandeur that the fic, with its disjointed flow, didn't live up to.
Interplanetary: This fic occasionally fell into the trap of telling, not showing. For instance, "she replied, feeling… actually happy" at the end of the first section could have been stronger if instead of stating that she felt happy the fic used a more descriptive route to imply that she was happy. Something simple like smiling, or her shoulders feeling a bit lighter would have been a stronger choice. The format of the story, though - with lots of little moments that let all of characters shine - worked really well.
Good Hands: I had to read this a couple of times through to get all of the sections in the right order in my head. Part of that was just that I personally had issues with reading the Kuwabara/Akari section, so I skimmed rather than read it. Still, I'm a little confused. Was Kuwabara watching the Akari/Mitani bit? Or taping it? Or did he just set it up and then get out of the way?
Akira,: The lack of a sense of context made the beginning too slow, but it's letter fic, so I'm not sure how you could have gotten that in earlier. I as a reader wanted to know more about what on earth was going on with the setting in this fic, which wasn't ever fleshed out beyond a generic sort of world war. The world war in Japan thing didn't work on a couple of levels, actually, not least of which is that Japan being an island makes it rather hard to imagine several nations worth of armies all gathered near Hokkaido. The meat of the story - Hikaru's reflections on Akira - worked all right, but there were some problems. For instance, if Hikaru can write to Akira, why wouldn't he write to his parents and grandfather? Why would he need to have Akira talk to them for him, and yet he hears from Ogata on a fairly regular basis? This just wasn't fleshed well enough.
Endgame's Turnabout: We fundamentally disagree about the characterization of Akiko and Ogata. Ogata, in my opinion, would never be half as forward as he was with Kouyo in this fic. He has tremendous respect for Touya-Meijin, and I can't imagine him ever speaking the way he did here. Akiko, I've always thought, is happy in her marriage. Even Kouyo, as you portrayed him, does not fit with my perspective of him.
Blind Desire: This fic was a little too high on the sex and too low on anything that wasn't sex for me to really have an opinion. Not that the smut wasn't well-written smut, but there wasn't anything behind it besides two people out to have a good time, which doesn't make it interesting or problematic. Consider why the characters are together before putting them there.
An Experiment With Chocolate: My instinctive reaction to the title of this fic was that it should have been smut. Moving on! The double capitalization on IIjima was incredibly distracting. Also, the two of them together was kind of random. Again, consider why the characters are there before writing them up.
Excerpt from the Memoirs of Life and Death: The memoir-esque style was a little strange, but it worked to good effect here. I liked the ending, but it left me wanting a part two, which - as they say - is invariably a good thing.
Coalesce: Please be more careful with verb tenses - the way this fic flitted in and out of the present tense bothered me. Also, the analogies and characterization didn't always work. For instance, Waya drying the dishes to finish twice as fast - how does he finish twice as fast if he still has to wait for all of the dishes to be washed before he can dry them? Waya and Le Ping also play with very different styles, one of which Shindou is reasonably familiar with - how does it take him a half game to notice that? That said, the latter half of the fic was much stronger and had far fewer inconsistencies.
The Silence in the Games: The formatting / spacing was the only problem I found in this fic. There were places where the paragraphs looked like they should have been broken, and where the fic wasn't consistent in double spacing between paragraphs or not.
Hotel Starlight: The lack of set-up in this piece bothered me. Why Iijima and Nase? I suppose the same could be asked for any pairing, but unlike the proximity that makes a relationship of convenience between Ogata and Ichikawa plausible, I don't think canon really provided enough to make Iijima/Nase work. Also - first time fic set in a bathtub? Sure, bathtub smut usually works pretty well, but usually first time is more of a bedroom story. The scenario just wasn't plausible enough.
Akira no Soccer: The flow and narrative pacing are really off. The first scene with Ogata and Kuwabara drags badly, and has inconsistent Ogata characterization. The second scene rushes too much, does too much telling about Akira's past with Sai and not nearly enough showing.
Three Teachers in Art: The pacing of this story is really off. The first half rushes toward the second, where it slows down to a crawl. As I read it, the latter half of the story is the story's main focus - the scene between Touya Koyo and Ogata. From the beginning of the story, though, that's very hard to pick up. A more effective way to do this might be to start with Touya Koyo's arrival and have the other parts of Ogata's background be revealed through his thoughts as they play those first games. Too much was given away too quickly.
Lines (for go and manga: It's okay to use the word "said" sometimes, too. Not everything needs to be snorts or counters or stares. Using those too often also takes away their bite, so that when you want it to be a sharp snort, the meaning doesn't follow because he's snorted several times already. The Hikaru's-life and manga metaphor also strained here. Having Akari suggest it and Hikaru consider and reject it makes the part where Hikaru decides about Sai's sound strange because Sai's story is in many ways Hikaru's story, too.
Dance Dance Fail: Touya struggling to play DDR or Touya being very good at DDR because he'd been dragged to arcades before - either would have been believable. The plot consistency falls apart, though, when Akira goes from completely bewildered by the machine for several practice rounds to suddenly remembering during the competition. This also creates characterization issues - if he knew, he wouldn't accepted the practice rounds; if he didn't, he'd never have won.
For Forever: This story is at times a little flat and stereotypical. Isumi thinking that he's taking advantage of someone, person in question telling him he'd better not stop, etc. etc. Actually, it seemed like what would be in any Isumi/Le Ping fic. While the use of Waya makes it slightly different, that's actually more problematic and probably indicative of a characterization problem.
Serious Business: I'm sorry, but the most critical thing I have to say about this is that using S Trading and T Group looked a little lazy in terms of naming things. The sentence structure in this is atrocious throughout, but it's used to good narrative effect, so that's not really a problem here, but in a longer story / novel it might be. The descriptions and imagery are vivid, the characters still work in spite of being AU, so yeah.
Thursday's Child: This story is fabulous - plot, characterization, etc. - but there are a couple of places where it goes just a little too far in telling and that gets in the way of showing your point. For instance, when Akira leaves during the third scene and there's that line about how it's unheard of for Akira to do that before Ogata asks if he's ill. Taking out that line about it being unheard of would strengthen this, because Ogata asking if he's ill is sufficient to imply that Akira is acting unusually. Also, Touya Koyo saying "shan't". I shan't tell you I don't like the word, but it seemed out of place. These weren't a problem on the whole and didn't get in the way very much, but just a little tightening could make it even better than it is.
Madonna: I saw the concrit that Ai did of this already, and really feel like there's nothing useful I could say that hasn't already been said. -_-;;;;
A Familiar Pattern: Semi-colons are great; using them in every other sentence is not. This story was difficult to get into because the beginning makes such heavy use of them. Two thoughts that are somewhat connected can occasionally be separated by a period. Sometimes, for clarity's sake it's better to do it that way.