Reviews from an Evil Ferret Lass

[Venril]

Maybe Verand is a ghost!  And maybe he killed Dumbledore by hitting him with Rosebud the Sled on the grassy knoll before dressing up like Norman Bates' mother and shooting JR Ewing!

Hmm.  You do have a valid point about Verand not doing much in the story itself.  I'll have to see what I can do about that....

[Ashira]

Yes, Bell, I know he was reiterating the events from another perspective, but he covered old ground in even that, just as Syc said.  We know he's not confident, we know he's not captainly, and we know Verand is always standing him up.  I did say I'm glad we finally progressed beyond those last few talking points that are what Venril seems to write most of his chapters with. 

I was very, very, very happy when they rushed into battle and Venril actually made a kill.  Progress!  The great thing about Venril's character is that it's much, much, much easier to see the character development in him than in some of the other contestants because he knows he has some serious confidence issues and he's trying to work those out.

I remember the very brief glossing over of the battle for the town (which could have been a giant leap for Venril, but, as I said, glossed!) in which he was happy to survive and now he's made a kill.  I kinda wish he'd spent the beginning of his chapter introspecting.  Sure we know he's not captainly, but I would've expected him to think on what other leaders he's known - heck, the warlord - have done to lead creatures.  I would've expected him to think of examples and have him start following by examples, but he's rather hung up on Verand outdoing him all the time.

[Jarrtail]

What intrests me is that you're not really bringing Venril's former job into the story much. If he used to be a clerk, one would expect him to think like one, or maybe have a flashback or two, but it seems like that aspect of his backstory has been discarded.

[Ashira]

You bring up a good point, Jarrtail, but I think that can be explained by Venril not actually being a clerk anymore.  Writing stuff down and keeping things in order isn't very captainly, so he's trying to space himself away from that old aspect of his life.  But I think flashbacks would flesh out Venril's character a little bit more, definitely.   You have a lot of places to go, Venril, please take advantage of it.  ^^

[Revel]

I'd argue with you, Syc, but I don't think it affected her chapter negatively at all.  I was just curious about the POV switch.  I mean, this is honestly the first time we've encountered a contestant doing it and it sorta threw me off.

Really? I'm special?  :D

I wouldn't call it a POV switch because I stay in third person limited all the time. It's more of a focus switch. If a character is doing action, I like to focus on them for the duration of that action. There was a lot more of this in the first draft. I left some of Birch's focus in because if I had put it the other way, "Revel saw Birch reach for the torch"... it loses impact and you ask yourself, why is Revel just watching this unfold instead of focusing on her own injuries and preparing her next attack? I wasn't thinking about making Revel too scary at all! I'd love to make her as scary as possible in the future while still keeping her sanity intact.

Thank you for the review, Ashira! And thank you for the comments, Sycamore. Follow the pain? Interesting!

:mspacman: ~ Rev

[Venril]

I actually partially addressed the bit about him not doing clerkish things in an earlier post.  In addition to him wanting to prove himself as a captain, there just isn't a lot for him to do around here as a clerk.  MAtukhana's not big on written records, and there aren't really any administrative things to do.

[Sycamore]

Maybe Verand is a ghost!  And maybe he killed Dumbledore by hitting him with Rosebud the Sled on the grassy knoll before dressing up like Norman Bates' mother and shooting JR Ewing!

That is ridiculous. Why would you say such things?

[Damask the Minstrel]

Naw, not Fight Club, guys...

See, Verand and Venril -are- the same body, but two different beasts, so it's possible Liza did see them both. He just drank some HJ7. *makes Revel's head explode from the awesomeness*

(Don't forget that I interacted with Deady, ma'am! We're best buddies an' all! Went to a baseball game an everything!)

[Ashira]

You mean like Dexter!  I haven't watched the show but I heard this ordinary guy turns into a murderer by night, or something like.

Heck, just original Jekyll & Hyde...

[Sparrowhawk]

Dexter is all one personality, I think. I mean, besides the face he puts on for the public. I think his gimmick is more of an "honorable sociopath" deal. :p Jekyll and Hyde is prob a better comparison though.

Anyway I like Verand, not least because he is possibly a Brad Pitt to Venril's Edward Norton! I think I said somewhere else that there's a lot of potential for that jealousy to escalate into some sort of development on Venril's part. Or whatever you want to do, really. I just really do hope you have stuff planned in that direction, cos it would be fun!

[Sycamore]

*edit - I jumped on this post without thinking. I may edit later.

[Damask the Minstrel]

*nods* I was making a Jekyll & Hyde reference, Ashy, yeah. (HJ7 is the experiment that goes bad in the musical version...)

[Ashira]

Ah, posts!    No languishing after a death!  Thankee, thankee, thankee!  I should do something for you guys.  I know!  I'll send each of you one of the six bags of candy that my parents bought!  Just gimme your name and address....

Well, I would send them to you but I don't have them.  Parentals live states away from moi, so you'll just have to make do with reviews and some everlasting gratitude.

Eliza:

You are probably one of the few contestants that has a constant quality to their posts and you're doing a great job of keeping your character apart from everyone else.  I always enjoy reading your posts and I'm not surprised at all that she's starting to take advantage of Venril for his position, no matter his incompetency.  I have a feeling Venril will end up benefiting in the end by having to stand up against Verand and some point.

(I guess that also clears up the matter of Verand being a hallucination.  Darn!  You had to burst that bubble.) =p

About the only thing I wonder about here is: did Eliza upset the cave creatures by being so mean to them?   Or, heck, did she offend them by not even sampling a part of their feast?  Usually that's pretty standard in some cultures, but I'm curious as to what the rest of you do with it.

Deadtail:

Deadtail, I regretted to inform you in my last review that your last post was...incredibly lackluster.  And not just the last post either.  Just about every post you've made since the contest began has, unfortunately, lacked the excitement of everyone else's.

Now, though, you have surprised with, not only coherency, but even a little bit of passion in Deadtail.  It was difficult to say in his desertion whether he actually liked peace or not and more just liked staying alive, but the fact that he's about the only beast enjoying the company of the cave-dwellers tells a lot about him.  Also, his conversation with Bell was very nicely done.   Finally Deadtail appears to actually care about something rather than being a zombie of apathy.  Thank you for that chapter.  It was refreshing!

[Eliza Lacrimosa]

(I guess that also clears up the matter of Verand being a hallucination.  Darn!  You had to burst that bubble.) =p

Thank you for the compliments, Ashira! And... er... *shuffles toes in the dirt*

I'm sorry...

[Ashira]

I'm going to be quick with these.

Bell:
Your post was pretty good and at the very least readable, although I found her hystericism and irrationalism to be very out of character.  Maybe it was the extremity of the situation that caused her to go ballistic for a little bit there, but meh.

What really got me was what happened to Sailpaw.  I seriously thought you made him turn into a zombie.

1) Whatever sickness he was crippled with came on awful fast.

2) Damask remarks, "My what red-dyes you have, Captain."

3) Then Sailpaw actually attacks Bell like some rabid dog.  

Maybe it was rabies, but the first two points for me made it feel like some sorta zombie apocalypse started.  You have to be a little clearer what happened to Sailpaw, because I honestly don't know.  Why is he suddenly such an isolated incident?  Where is everyone else, starting to drool and foam at the mouth?

Venril:
Your post was also readable and maybe of a little higher quality and, you also for once, managed to have Venril do something with very, very, very little mention of Verand.  Thank you.

But this new obsession with excessive detail of this new culture is getting on my nerves.  Okay, so Venril's hung out with these beasts for all of perhaps three hours and he's already starting to decipher their language?  I spent 11 weeks in Germany and my basic conversation still sucks!

Revel:
Oddly enough or not, your post was probably my least favorite.  It was sooooo boring.  It could not keep my attention.  You walked and walked and walked a little more and after lots of interactions with the people of the new civilization you go to sleep and have the absolute weirdest dream I've ever read.

If I was sick of the civilization in Venril's post, I'm definitely sick of it now.  Revel also seemed to share the same problem with Venril in this whole hyper-learning new languages, although it was a little less clearer to understand if Revel actually knew what she was saying or if it was all just gibberish.  I'm leaning a bit more toward gibberish, but the fact that the other creatures seemed to follow her with very little problem doesn't help this cause.

Aha, I just remembered another criticism I had for you that you should likely work on if you want to stay alive.  You really don't seem to be on the same level as the rest of the contestants.  It's them and you.  The last couple of posts, including this one, you have limited Revel's conversation strictly to NPCs.  You did pull a couple of contestants in rather briefly in this latest post, but you discarded them almost immediately in favor of more conversation with these...other creatures.

The rather outcast position she's starting to get in might work against her.  

Damask:
Oh thank you so much for not including any of this new language into your post!  This one seemed to touch more on the style of the beginning of the competition and it was very refreshing and awesomely amusing to hear Damask's own mind twist everything so that it's against Venril.  How delightfully fun.

Everyone:
Unfortunately for the characters in this story, if it can loosely be called that, you need a cohesive plot-line pronto.  I had to force myself to read the latest batch of posts.  I am just losing my interest and all you seem to do is throw random crap into your posts in this vein hope that it might entertain us, but I can't help but feel that the story is just meandering around like a drunkard finally stumbling out of the bar.

I'd almost prefer a war over the oasis over this.  At least it's easy to follow and the goals are clearly stated, but this is just...random events.  

Also, I'm targeting this a little less at Damask than everyone else because 1) he got a low-point in the story where not much was supposed to be happening anyway - but he did a wonderful job of entertaining me nonetheless - and 2) he has also kept to the old alliances of teaming up against vermin to an extent.  Not that Bell hasn't, which is obvious from her post if a little extreme, his post in particular seemed to hold this flavor of old-fashioned Redwall.  

Normally I don't mind this mish-mash.  I usually like it very much, but the fact that everyone started out hating each other with the old alliances and suddenly it seems like no one has any problems with one another.  Huh?