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Message: <blockquote data-quote="alsih2o" data-source="post: 2026024" data-attributes="member: 4790">Maldur-MacBeth vs Ruinedclowns, succes, escape and judgement, How different the stories, and stillthe same.MacBeth's is stronger but "borrowed", and ruined's was FUNNY.[sblock]My Vote for Macbeth[/sblock] Alsih2o- First a comment to both authors and the other writers: Please drop the in-post commentary. I appreciate the honesty from Macbeth and the humble intro (and game-time sacrifice J ) from Ruined, but let’s try to keep these things to posts that are not entries. I think we get a better and fairer game with no in-post commentary form the authors )(Macbeths IS an odd case) and if we don’t draw a line somewhere, well, you know the rest. J Macbeth-  I kept thinking all throughout that this sounded just like some folk tale. I was amazed at the classic sense of the story. What do you know? It is. Now, I haven’t read that story and I feel I have dealt with Macbeth enough to trust him that he changed it, but I am still uncomfortable with this. As an artist I know the value of working form the base left by other artists but still… Something about it makes me itch. The pictures are integrated well and I felt this was a hard set to deal with. The writing is strong, despite some typos/misspellings, but I am left wondering how much of that comes form the mood of the original piece. Ruined- Here we have a good solid story with an interesting twist.  The pictures are used well, but not in an outstanding way. The face and the tarry feet are handled pretty well, and the face is OK. The hobgoblins picture was used with a decent creative bent as well, but I would have liked to see at least one of them become more of a focus. Judgement- [sblock] A hard one, two good stories, man I love this competition.Iit is close and I have to go with Ruined for the all-original story.[/sblock] Piratecat- Okay, I’ll start by saying that both the stories deserve to advance.They’re both well-written, fun to read, and awfully impressive. We can onlyadvance one, though, so let’s see how they stack up. . .Macbeth’s The Clown of GodI’m a little uncomfortable having Ceramic DM stories be reinterpretations ofother peoples’ work. That’s not because there’s no art or skill in retellinga classic story – far from it – but because without the original work wehave no way of telling how much of the story is original and how much isn’t.My research into the original Clown of God indicates that Macbethhas, in fact, made the story his own.I’ve batted this back and forth, and I think that ultimately a story has tostand on its own merits. We’re trusting people to not plagiarize and dooriginal writing anyways. That being said, I suspect that works which arenot wholly original will start with a strike against them; be warned!I’ll start off by talking about what I didn’t like. Typos! There’s quite afew punctuation errors, spelling mistakes and simple typing goofs. Thisremains an area where Macbeth needs to tighten up his standards; goodwriting can be scuttled by poor editing. Only one logical error that I couldsee; Rodion’s parents would almost certainly be drinking vodka instead ofSouthern Comfort.There’s a lot more aspects of the story that I did like. I loved the storyitself, and I find it very interesting how well the writing and the picturessupported one another. This is a good example of a story with tightlyintegrated images. None of the illustrations were obviously tossed in justto include it in the tale; the use of the images flowed smoothly out of thetext, and that’s the best way to handle it in Ceramic DM. In fact, the bigfailing is that there is no image of Rodion juggling as one of the mandatoryillustrations! Macbeth couldn’t add that, of course, but the image of thejuggling balls is so powerful that the story seems weaker without it.The writing itself was very strong. Rhythm, tone, and imagery worked welltogether. I half expected Macbeth to go off on a tangent that he studiouslyavoided; it occurred to me that what we had in Dmitry’s theater was aburgeoning superhero team, of all things. Talk about mixing genres. . . butyet, the fact that it didn’t seem absurd to me says something about thestrength of the writing. Instead we went towards the original story’s lessonof religious epiphany and the lesson that you can succeed by doing your bestand pleasing yourself. I’d like to see how this story might have evolved ifMacbeth hadn’t been retelling the original fable.-- o --Ruined’s Working for the WeekendMy first impression when starting this story is that Ruined needs to trusthis subtlety and avoid over-writing. Things are a bit too spelled out; Gavindoesn’t just puff out his chest, he puffs it out in self-importance. When hegoes through and does the classic “remove 10% of the words” editing pass,that’s the sort of thing that should go.  Luckily, this isn’t a trend thatcontinues. I noticed a few typos, incidentally.The concept of this story is a wonderful one. I like the idea of the faerieswanting nothing more than to work. It creates a great framework to writearound, and Ruined carries it off nicely. I think this aspect could havebeen stressed a little more because there’s some nice humor implicit in theidea of Gavin and Tinsdale competing to be the most over-worked, especiallywhen the humans around them don’t necessarily feel this way.Photo use is equally strong. The hobgoblins in parade is one of the bestuses, and the others are good as well. The tar on the feet felt a littledisjointed; more than any other picture, this felt inserted only for thestory. Otherwise, I was pleased with how well the photos fit.Ultimately, Ruined’s story would be better with another editing pass. Ithink that the tighter it becomes, the stronger it would be. I loved theconversation between characters, and would like to see more of that.-- o --Both stories are good for a first round, and it’s a tough decision to make.Macbeth’s seems a little better written to me, but Ruined has a moreoriginal concept. Frankly, both authors should be proud of themselves.[sblock]I give my vote to Macbeth to a hair. Even considering that he isreinterpreting an existing story, the strength of his writing and photointegration combined with a weightier theme to push the balance slightly inhis favor. [/sblock] Decision- [sblock]Macbeth advances by split decision, 2-1[/sblock]</blockquote>

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