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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 1479386" data-attributes="member: 2">Judgment of Match 1-3: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1473644&postcount=192" target="_blank">Berandor</a> vs. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1474221&postcount=197" target="_blank">Drose25</a>.Maldur:deserts, snakes and scary magics. But I do love Victorian speech so.Drose25 get my vote!Arwink:Berandor – Desert SnakesThere’s a lot going on in this story, but throughout it all I kept searching for some sign of what was *really* going on.  What, at the core of the story, is the driving force that kept the narrator going forward in the dangerous situations?  There were several ideas offered – the need for revenge, a sense of duty or obligation, even the desire to see the world a safer place – but while there were physical challenges presented to the main character the driving force was never really dealt with.  We don’t really know why the narrator is doing what he’s doing, so it’s hard to truly engage with his motivation and hope for his success – we don’t really know what we’re hoping will happen.While Berandor has some really nice metaphor and descriptive passages in here, they also get washed over by the maze of information.  We’re told a lot, but at the same time we aren’t given terribly powerful descriptions of the situation between Hydra and Tricolore. The level of detail is good for a game or a film script – largely because it will then be interacted with by a group of players or rendered visually for the watcher – but within the story inferential description is far more effective than something that gives a lot of detail. By far the most powerful description in the story is that of the emaciated atlas, bereft of a burden, which has far more impact than trying to describe a withered body.There’s a lot of good points to Berandor’s story, but I think it could stand for some judicious editing to cut down on its length and really trim up the language.Drose 25 - The Ziggurat of Ghiyath al-DinA really nice, pulp introduction that brings in some overtones of Indiana Jones and other great adventurers of the 1930’s – as well as some of the expected archetypes that accompany such stories.  It maintains this feel well as they head towards the Ziggurat, building the characters together as a team and getting into the swing of the style and genre.Where Drose lost me was with the change of gears towards a horror story – it happened quickly and without really building the tension inherent in the horror story.  We don’t get the sense of mounting weirdness as you would in an adventure-horror story like the Mummy, and the deaths of the characters is seemingly random in its approach.  Another source of confusion was the lack of resolution – while I don’t demand that everyone survive a story like this, I like there to be some kind of reason for them all to die and some sense that a source of conflict has been resolved some how.  The ending here seems to happen just as things are getting interesting – as though the entire story was really only the first part of a story and we now have two more acts as Parker and Clara struggle to overcome the Bride of the Ziggurat and save the world (etc etc).  Instead, the ending is anti-climactic and leaves us hanging before the story is done.  The pacing here is disappointing, and I think the story needs more time to develop and pass through the various events depicted.The JudgmentThere’s an interesting contrast between the two tales, where I think Berandor’s needs to do less while Drose needs to do more to really bring his story to life.  Both of these stories show some really promising elements, but also have some problems with the nature of their central narrative conflicts and the way things hold together. I give this round to Drose, by the length of about a paragraph and a half, but he was very nearly taken by some very nice description in Berandor’s story.  Piratecat:The beginning of Berandor’s story sets the stage nicely; the discussion of the dead agent and the manipulation used to get the protagonist to volunteer left me with clear images of Martine and the protagonist. The mystery of “how are the agents being killed?” is clearly established, and left me curious on how the White Queen was accomplishing this. Was she a modern-day medusa, a mythological creature come to life in the Tunisian desert? I wanted to know.Unfortunately, I never found out. The careful personality study of the first portion disappears once our hero’s true identity is discovered. We shift into action, but we never shift back out of that action in order to get the promised revelation.  I’m not sure whether Berandor knew the White Queen’s secret himself while he was writing the story and deliberately decided not to explain, or whether she was a throwaway plot device whose methods were never determined. Either way the villain ended up not living up to her true potential as a three dimensional character, and her death was an anti-climax. The mission had been about discovering knowledge and not killing her, but we never get the payoff. All the other nice touches along the way get swept aside by the unfulfilled ending.Picture use was good. No surprises on the use of the snakes (although I liked the vomiting image) or the mosque. The mask picture was disappointing only because we never see what is behind it, but the use of the statue as an oddly murdered man was inspired. Nice job there.Overall, I think that the careful detail and leisurely pace of the story’s first half doesn’t combine well with the frenetic action of the second half. I think with some editing this could be marvelous; as it is, it feels like two different writing styles trying to uncomfortably inhabit one story, each of them elbowing the other to try and claim more room.In Drose25’s story, I feel like I’ve walked into a pulp Call of Cthulhu tale. None of the characters especially break out of their molds, but those molds partially define them within this genre as well. It’s clear from the beginning that it’s a story about an exciting tomb exploration, and not about a character study. We’ve got a good setting, good background, and agreeable protagonists. I was caught off guard when the richly established tomb setting was tossed aside almost immediately. The pacing seemed odd, and the lack of a horrific buildup disappointed me; it was less like Victorian horror with the creeping realization that you’re well and truly in trouble, and more like modern slasher flicks where the villain jumps out of a closet and stabs someone. I noticed a missed opportunity of having the characters discuss the tragedy -- and then realize that something was aboard the zeppelin with them -- which might have provided some amazing dialogue. By moving into an overlong dream sequence, a lot of the immediacy was lost; it doesn’t help that a tentacled water monster has no thematic resonance with the tomb’s dead spirit.  The ending in particular feels unfinished to me. It’s an anticlimax, and one that doesn’t necessarily live up to the wonderful beginning of the tale. It says something that I wondered if the entire story had been posted.For picture use, I liked how richly the ziggurat was developed, making it more than a simple backdrop. I disliked that the statue didn’t bear much resemblance to the dead Max. Good use of the Mask photo, and no surprises on the snake photo.Judgment in this case is quite close, because both stories fall into the category of “good, but could be much stronger with some polishing.”  I’m awarding my judgment to Drose25, on the basis of the rich setup and description in the first half of the tale. It's a near thing, though.FINAL JUDGMENT: 3 out of 3 for Drose25, who will go on to the second round.</blockquote>

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