The time has come!
Fanart Category Judge: Clua
-First Place- Carassaurat!
Carassaurat takes Os, Corvus and Vosges to the sick world of noir gangsters! I actually prefer colored ilustrations but the strong shadows and soft gray highlights got me here. The interpretation of the characters in this universe is totally fun, even if they are set on a serious looking mood. I love the fact also it's presented like a mockup screen of an actual game(I was very tempted to draw everyone on this style!)
Carassaurat displays his skills to take TKOT characters to another level making them look more realistic, more human(You see, they have nose!) Yet, because of the nature of the original designs, they look bizarre! Out of place! I think this is why this entry is my favorite.
-Second Place-Okumis!
This entry....IS TOO CUTE! It's actually the first one I recived and gave me hope to continue the contest :_:
Okumis drew an adorable entry, where Os is a thief and Gervase is the law here, a police
dogman(Dear blog follower, I hope by this time, found Corvus there)
The pallete choose is vibrant and the flats and gradients are placed correctly, so it gave an ilusion of volume. I've actually had a hard time with this entry and the third place winner. I think both have their strong points and weakness. I choose this one as second because Gervase. Even if Os looks a little bit OCC there for me, Gervase is perfectly characterized for being in another dimension.
-Third Place-Merula O!
Merula O drew almost all characters from the game and placed them into a gang. A japanese school gang!
They have interesting clothes! I love particularly the ones choose for Os. She really looks badass there!
My main problem with this entry is how characters are portrayed. I can understand Os being bossy, but
the remaining characters are not expressive enough for me to catch their personalities. Even so, I believe this entry is great because of the amount of work and love put into it.That's why I choose it for the third place.
Fanfic Category Judge: Anarchy
-First Place- Niz!
This entry consists of some strong scenes and characterization choices. The author adheres to canon characterization for the most part, but also extrapolates and builds upon them, adding fun little details, moments, and interactions like Gervase bringing Os a towel, or Vosges snarking at Os's unexpected contributions to the student council, as well as reinterpreting them to great effect, like Lilja still being preoccupied with death but advocating against it, which seemingly helps to trigger Os's decision to start changing.
The structure of this fic is... interesting. We move through four perspectives - Lilja, Gervase, Vosges, and Os, and it progresses chronologically as well, which means that with each shift we're getting more and more information about Os from different perspectives, including information about that character's relationship with Os as well as their thoughts on her issues... but is the story actually progressing? It seems like the classic conflict - climax - resolution structure has been heavily skewed. We start off the story with the exposition, jump straight to the Lilja section with Os being all introspective and questioning herself (and possibly considering death) and then making up her mind to change ("hardening into some sort of resolve"). The rest of the fic is focused on the aftermath of that - Gervase, Vosges, and Os's sections are like a very extended resolution section where Os goes through the steps of starting to change - dismissing Gervase, doing student council work, letting Vosges go, and so on.
Most significantly... there's not much conflict in this entry, making it feel like less of a story and more of a vignette. Os comes to her decision fairly early in the piece, and the rest of it is just carrying it out without anything hindering her, so what we have here is a description of Os starting to change, instead of the story of how she came to that resolution. There's no real conflict or struggle, per se. Reading this is a more sedate affair where the author trickles little details down to you and you meander around the various perspectives to pick them up and put them together to form a complete picture. But even then, because Os's struggle is so under the surface, you don't really feel a sense of accomplishment or climax when you reach the end when we reach Os's perspective and the conclusion she reached earlier on finally becomes explicit - she's going to change. We haven't been following her struggles, we've been following her resolution of those struggles.
I like how for the most part, the story gives you details and expects you to get what's going on without spoon-feeding you exactly what Os is thinking, thanks to the constantly changing perspective, but a side-effect of that is that when you hit the ending, it seems rushed, almost like an afterthought or an answer sheet that infodumps a summary of what this story and Os's emotional arc was all about.
I also enjoyed that this fic was a twist on the TKOT narrative, by having Os reflect and change withoutkilling herself, thanks to Lilja's words. It's a fitting bit of irony that he's the patron of suicidals in the original work. It's a scaled down version of TKOT's narrative, even more scaled down than TBOT, because this is dealing with a schools and the individuals within it, which gives Os more space to develop as a character without having to resort to something as extreme as suicide in order to trigger character development. Too bad we don't actually get to see much development, since the transition from cruel Queen to wanting to change is so... abbreviated.
-Second Place- Camille!
This entry has a very simple yet effective premise, and a relatively fresh one too, compared to the well-worn high school setting. What if you take the narrative of TKOT and transpose it onto the bread-making industry? It's manages to hit a similar tone to the original in terms of the balance between drama and light-heartedness, and adds a cute rivalry-type dynamic to Corvus's and Os's relationship. Despite being the most well-rounded, concise, and polished entry, however, it seemed too much like a step-by-step retread of the original TKOT's dramatic arc, or at least of Corvus's route. The characterization is faithful and well-executed, and it's interesting to see these character dynamics reinterpreted in this very different, realistic setting, but it didn't seem to bring much new to the plate, which is why I chose to put it in second place.
-Third Place- Jasmine_Joy!
The one factor that placed this ahead of Meli's entry was the fact that Jasmine_Joy actually attempted to write a story about the characters of TKOT. Despite Meli's entry being somewhat better written and more polished than Jasmine's, it reads as the author shoehorning the characters of TKOT into a pre-existing story with stock characters. Jasmine_Joy's entry, despite being rougher, had more heart to it, and the characters have personalities that actually echo their canon characterizations.
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Congratulations to all the winners! I thought to give a little reward to everyone who participated and didn't win anyway. So I will contact you soon :D!!
