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Borna Coric

Borna Coric

Posts: 3,785 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Glad to see this up and running once more. I can think of few who would do it better service, Xen.

I'll try to write something, but I do not have the luxury of a summer break, so time is sparse. Regardless, take this as a bookmark for future weeks.

21-Jun-2013 14:59:48

Arkkataka

Arkkataka

Posts: 4,327 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Rats scurry about between walls of broken buildings; effortlessly they slip and slither through well-worn tunnels over the dust and dirty that makes the streets. Children scramble after and over each other in a mad chase towards the weasels. At every point a rat gets cut off it finds a new tunnel or makes one through a poorly blocked hole. The process is repeated until one little rat finds a corner he cannot breach and is surrounded by a dozen starving children. In seconds they charge the rat and all use their hands to grab some part it as they rip it apart and eat vigorously. Some spit out the bones and others are too hungry to do even that, although they come to regret it after choking on the bones and are forced to spit them back out. It will be a day or so before they catch another rat.

The ground the kids wrestle through is half covered with their own crap, causing the surrounding area to reek some terrible. The stench is so bad that when the wind blows north, the bank and smith must either close their doors or send everyone to the eastern bank and forge in Varrock. Some even joked that when the city was built they needed to build the eastern half just for the northern people to deal with the smell. Inevitably the wind went east and the people went to the north part of the city once again.

Varrock’s dark alleys have always had a devious reputation, but little do most people know that that is exclusively in the south, between the Black Arm gang and the Phoenix gang. This is where the stories of fabled rogues come and go, and where knifes in the dark find a home. And it is usually where the dead do not cry out in their final hours, as assassins here fear detection.

22-Jun-2013 06:49:54

Arkkataka

Arkkataka

Posts: 4,327 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
The southwestern edges are known to be full of beggars, craven thieves, and witless madmen. There are no happy eyes sent in their direction. To block the view of the western border, the city built a clothes shop and an armory to hide their shame. Despite the western quarter being a home for all the useless runts of Varrock, the runts insist in walking about the city when they can. Buying a sword if they’ve saved enough, only to have it stolen by one of the two gangs; or they might trade gossip at the pub. Most usually attend the service in the Church of Saradomin, to the dismay of many people there. Prominent citizens have even offered to build a temple in the western sector just to keep the beggars there, but were unable to find a willing priest.

The only good thing about the sector is that other citizens find they like to talk a lot. While they are the least informed of the city, almost any bartender at the Blue Moon Inn will tell one in a second that the most talkative people there are also residents of the slums. One particular beggar went on talking so long and so well that members of the rival gangs both offered to pay for his drinks and give him a good bath. That was the last anyone ever heard of him, anyone from the dumps doesn’t do well outside of it. They all return at night, or else they don’t return at all.

When Soran walked through the city for about a day, and then went to the steward to ask for permission to set up a shrine in the western sector, he was met with roaring laughter and granted his request. Soran spent one day talking with as many people as possible, and to the cities dismay so were the dregs also moving about. Many crowded at the temple of Saradomin, and most assumed that they were crying out for them to remove the messenger of the Empty Lord. Those who were listening found out instead that Zamorakians intended to strike at Saradominists now that the pact had been broken.

22-Jun-2013 06:50:21

Arkkataka

Arkkataka

Posts: 4,327 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
One little priest, one little fire, and one little death later sent the city raging. A mob stormed the temple of chaos and burned all inside. After missing the priest and ripping the temple to the ground in an avalanche of bricks, they ran to the palace and found the guards happily willing to turn over their captive to be “interrogated” about who killed the priest.

Even as chaos reigned, the enrage Zamorakian members of the Black Arm and Phoenix gangs united for the first time in decades and set the temple of Saradomin ablaze. The cries of death at the edges of the crowd were no longer silent at the hands of gang members.

All this, and worse to follow was observed silently by the western quarter, and Soran. He understood the worth of the city’s runts. Whoever can command the whispers of the city, can manipulate its mind, and control it entirely.

22-Jun-2013 06:52:03

Xereva

Xereva

Posts: 7,589 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Okay Chuk, here's yours.

I haven't thought about Aubury's for ages and ages, and yet I have so many vivid memories of the place from when I passed through mining Pure Essence for a meagre source of income. It's interesting to see how you describe the same place.

The first thing that struck me about your piece was that it was very direct, no subtlety here. Your narrator is clearly telling the reader about a location, and there's no getting around it. For my part, it's a matter of personal preference when I say I don't think it works quite so well that way. I'm more partial to third-person perspectives, which allow a character to pass through and observe but still feel natural. But despite my bias, you definitely make it work.

I think that the main reason your perspective works so well is that you've got a colloquial tone going, which makes the piece sound like it's being related in real time instead of standing alone as a piece of stilted description. It doesn't completely grab me for reasons I can't entirely explain, and if I were to try I might say that it's slightly the wrong tone for describing something directly to someone else, and I would almost feel more comfortable if you split the piece up with questions and answers, as if this were a fictional exchange between two characters instead of the narrator and the reader. But again, personal preference. I doesn't work perfectly for me, but I think it will for others.

Your descriptions invoke some powerful feelings, despite the problems inherent in making a character describe something that, in his world, is only hard to describe, and in ours does not exist at all. The bits that captured me the most were the hum in the air, the density of magic within the space, and the last paragraph.

23-Jun-2013 00:40:39 - Last edited on 23-Jun-2013 00:48:56 by Xereva

Xereva

Xereva

Posts: 7,589 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
The ending especially just seals the whole thing perfectly for me; I'm especially picky about how things end, I think you nailed it. The addition of some personal details about the narrator makes him feel more genuine, and the very last line is a perfect parting shot.

However, the major complaint that I have is that you actually use /too much/ description, and don't leave enough room for the reader to infer. There's room, yes, and to some degree the reader has to think about what certain feelings might actually feel like to experience, since there's no getting the full feeling into a couple lines. But it feels saturated, like you're trying too hard to pack everything about the place in. This is probably in part due to my overly vague instructions, for which I apologize. But my gut is telling me that you need something to break up these blocks of text, whether it be dialogue, pauses where the character does something in real time, or something else that I'm not able to focus on at present. You'll figure it out, I'm sure.

Something that's hard for me to pin down is the sense that you repeat yourself often in tone and description, even though I can't point to any specific instances. There's no words that you use too often, or phrases, and yet I am overwhelmed by the sense that the piece is the narrator re-stating different things in the same way. He seems to go from one element of the environment to the next, but not transition so much as say "and then this, and then this, and then this"…

It's a bit unfair for me to put it that way, since you do transition far more elegantly than that. But those are the only words I can find to describe what I'm feeling, accurate or not. You can ask me about it later on if you've any more questions.

But regardless of my objections, you have an excellent piece that paints a vivid picture of a very strange place, and I commend you both for submitting an assignment (at long last) and for doing such an excellent job on it.

23-Jun-2013 00:40:54

Xereva

Xereva

Posts: 7,589 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Ark, I haven't seen you around in a while. It's good to get a sample of your writing, since I don't think I've seen stories of yours around for some time, if indeed you wrote.

First, let me mention that whenever I say 'posts' in an assignment, I mean full posts. I revised the assignment description to reflect that. However, you came close, and I wasn't clear, so I'll let you off for it this time. But next time come as close as you can to maxing out the character limit before you call it done—within 100-200, at least.

This piece was a marked departure from Chuk's, and I was surprised at the gritty, brutal intensity of it, as I don't generally think of Varrock as having such a side. I felt very keenly the lurking horrors that you describe, and the anecdote regarding the children and the rat certainly set the scene. I also loved the quote "they needed to build the eastern half just for the northern people to deal with the smell." It adds a great deal to have colloquialisms from the world that don't feel forced but instead are appropriate to the situation at hand, and if you can also reflect a bit on history… well, you've nailed it completely.

I also like the way that you transition between the fast-paced action of the children pursuing the rat and the more omniscient description of the city alleyways as a whole, and then move into the specifics with Soran's place in all these affairs. It adds variety to have so many different ways of telling the same story, and the more angles there are, the more the reader can learn about the location.

However, I wasn't entirely clear on the course of events in Soran's section, and how, if at all, he was involved with setting events in motion. Was the shrine he set up one that was burned, or was it merely pretense to talk with as many as possible? And of what alignment is he, Zamorakian, Saradominist? One or two added words would suffice to clear up the ambiguity.

23-Jun-2013 01:32:56

Xereva

Xereva

Posts: 7,589 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
And then, the larger problem: who struck first and who retaliated in the larger battle? I can tell little. The sequence is events is exactly as compact as it needs to be, but you need to make it more concise for faster, easier understanding. Don't lose too much of the tone, as you have it perfectly crafted at present. Just clean it up to make sure the reader knows what's happening.

But this error brings me to the most irritating thing about your work: numerous and varied grammar, spelling, and sentence construction errors. For instance:

- "…over the dust and dirty…"

- "…causing the surrounding area to reek some terrible…"

- "…where knifes in the dark…"

- "One little priest, one little fire, and one little death later sent the city raging."

- "Whoever can command the whispers of the city, can manipulate its mind, and control it entirely."

In "One little priest" it seems like the sentence is a cross between wanting to say "one little fire later, the city was raging" and "one little death sent the city raging." Technically it is correct, but the impressions of what the sentence is 'supposed to be' conflict a great deal on first read. In the "whoever can command" sentence, there's a couple commas too many. You have moments such as these strewn throughout the entirety of the piece, and were it not for these errors and the confusing final section, there would be little for me to comment on.

You can certainly tighten up the piece more, streamlining the flow between sentences and paragraphs, improving phrasing, and so forth. There are always ways to improve. But this is excellent work. I get a great sense of the environment and its scale even in this small a space, and of the kinds of momentous changes that can take place within it. I look forward to seeing more work from you, and to seeing you improve.

23-Jun-2013 01:33:08 - Last edited on 23-Jun-2013 01:55:03 by Xereva

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