[OOC] Academy Wars: Rituals and Technology in the Modern World, a Magitech School RP

[Crimmy]

It really has been a bit sketchy yeah.

[VitaVitaAR]

And here we go!

[VitaVitaAR]

@Raineh Daze@Polaris North@banjoanjo@Crimmy@Poke@Renny@RolePlayerRoxas Since the site was having problems when the topic went up, I'll go ahead and drop a mention for everyone who posted a bio.

People who haven't, you absolutely can still make a bio. I'm still accepting and don't see myself stopping unless numbers just get too extreme.

[Crimmy]

Quick question, are the students equivalents to second years or are there also first years too?

[Raineh Daze]

Quick question, are the students equivalents to second years or are there also first years too?

@Crimmy

They're a bit over the place.

Jen's a second year, Kaede's third. I guess it's worth asking in the OOC for reasons to know the other characters if you don't want to start with no friends. XD

[Crimmy]

Matsuoka's age is a 1st year, so I guess this is his first time here for the Tournament.

[VitaVitaAR]

15-16 is first year, 16-17 is second year, 17-18 is third yeah.

[Crimmy]

I hope using first-person is fine.

Trying to convey Matsuoka's general disposition from the inside.

[VitaVitaAR]

I'd... try and avoid first person, um, it's really awkward when we're writing with a lot of characters.

Edit: Also every able-bodied student is selected to participate in the tournament. They all get some level of combat training after all.

[Polaris North]

Is it mandatory for the student OCs to join the tournament?

[VitaVitaAR]

Yes, the entire student body is entered, provided they're able.

[Polaris North]

Alright, got it.

[Crimmy]

I'd... try and avoid first person, um, it's really awkward when we're writing with a lot of characters.

Edit: Also every able-bodied student is selected to participate in the tournament. They all get some level of combat training after all.

@VitaVitaAR

It's not congruent with the use of 3rd person, yeah, but Matsuoka's "character voice" is easier to portray via 1st person, as is his dynamic with Cloacina. He's a guy with a heavy inner narration. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, if it's an issue of perspective. Every character's written from different perspectives, even if it's 1st or 2nd or 3rd person narration.

[Raineh Daze]

Is it mandatory for the student OCs to join the tournament?

@Polaris North

The other way of phrasing this is "is it required that characters not write themselves out of the RP". XD

[Raineh Daze]

<Snipped quote by VitaVitaAR>

It's not congruent with the use of 3rd person, yeah, but Matsuoka's "character voice" is easier to portray via 1st person, as is his dynamic with Cloacina. He's a guy with a heavy inner narration. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, if it's an issue of perspective. Every character's written from different perspectives, even if it's 1st or 2nd or 3rd person narration.

@Crimmy

That was a 'no, don't use first person'. It's more than incongruent, it's unnecessarily hard to follow.

[Renny]

@Raineh Daze@VitaVitaAR I just wanna say that I didn't find it hard at all to read his post. It was actually entertaining. The first person that he uses is clear and concise, not at all a problem in my opinion. Some can't pull it off but I think Crimmy can.

He has a good reason for wanting to go with his first person. In my humble opinion, I feel like he should be allowed to do so.

EDIT: Also got my post up. Yasuo is a bit of depressing character, a bit more than I intended. I might have exaggerated it too. Anyway, I think this would be a good time for some inhumanly chipper character to come around and light a fuse in him to strip away the darkness. Or at least keep him fighting.

[Azereiah]

Applyin'.

Hope you don't mind the lack of a picture - never been very good at finding them.

Jack Emerson

Student

Name: Jack Emerson

Age: 17

Gender: Male

Appearance: 6'0", 200 lbs.

Jack has mid length, wavy blonde hair that reaches his shoulders, and a goatee of the same color. His narrow, steel-grey eyes give an impression of great vitality. He has a thick bone structure, as evidenced by a square face and cheekbones so forceful they appear to be bulletproof.

Years of molding metal and lifting boxes for his family have given him a very heavy muscular structure - not that of a body builder, but that of a worker or a warrior. This, combined with a very heavy skeletal structure, give him a rather imposing look - and it's often joked that he's the lovechild of a garbage truck and a rhino.

Personality: Jack is the epitome of confidence - but he is not brash or aggressive. He knows his strengths and his weaknesses intimately, and has no need to prove himself to anybody but himself. Every day, he challenges himself to improve himself further, and periodically he succeeds. He places little value on idle banter, but is willing to make small talk to meet new people if absolutely necessary. He very much enjoys spending time with others, though - even if he isn't always talking.

His grades are somewhat lacking, and he simply doesn't care. His test scores are fairly decent (typically hovering between 85 and 95) despite his lack of completion of most homework assignments (as he finds most of it to be a complete waste of time). He dislikes studying.

He is somewhat internally arrogant, and secretly feels that he is superior to many of his peers - and he absolutely hates this part of himself. But try as he might, he cannot get rid of those feelings, and he forces himself to hold his tongue in front of others. Humility is a virtue he was taught of from birth, and despite his efforts, he feels that he has never truly been able to achieve it.

While he shrugs off insults towards himself with ease, if somebody makes one of his friends cry, that person gets a swift fist to the face.

Skills: Blacksmithing. Engineering. Hand to hand combat - a mixture of capoeira, taekwondo, and street fighting. Dancing.

Jack is gifted in creating weaponry and defensive devices. He is very strong and extremely agile, but because of his flat feet and heavy musculoskeletal structure, he isn't suited to running quickly.

Equipment: Mirror Coat - a near totally custom Divine Gear full-body suit of armor loosely based on the myth of the armor of Beowulf. The suit was constructed in a flash of inspiration during a period of meditation on the meaning of divinity, and he came to the realization that mythological artifacts are only divine because of the force of the legends of those who made them and those who wielded them. The armor was constructed as a shrine to both Odin and to his own future.

Visually, the Mirror Coat is a skintight jumpsuit, with a segmented torso piece, elegant (if pointy) boots, a pseudo-medieval style greathelm with modern optics and an air filter, and a pair of enormously thick and heavy gauntlets. The metallic armor is polished to a mirror finish, and the Light Engine is located beneath a thick armor plate between the shoulderblades.

The Mirror Coat is, in Jack's opinion, incomplete - but its power is currently already stretched to the limit by its offensive and defensive effects.

Abilities: The Mirror Coat, due to its source of inspiration, provides a great degree of defense, capable of shrugging off damage that would maim unarmored fighters. The suit's gauntlets and boots provide greater defense even than the main body of the suit, in order to protect the user while striking a target. The Mirror Coat amplifies striking force to a dramatic degree, even being capable of tearing apart rolled steel, with a condition: the user must truly intend to destroy the target when striking, or else it provides no boost.

Brief Backstory: Jack is a westerner. Very much a westerner. Previously, he had been enrolled in an academy in northern California, but boredom caught up to him, and he felt he needed a real challenge. He learned of an academy that, despite its success early-on in each tournament, is defeated every year in the finals: Otsuki Academy, of Japan. A perfect place to better his skills, under threat of failure. Some courses in Japanese later, he boarded a plane crossing the ocean, and enrolled in Otsuki Academy for what would have been his Senior year.

In his earlier childhood, Jack was mystified by the concepts of magic and engineering. His parents, who were involved in medieval reenactment, heavily influenced his views of the world and of the divine, and he decided that when he grew older, he would become an adept Ritual Technology user. He wanted to make his mark on the world as not only a user of Ritual Technology, but also a creator, and so he learned basic metalworking - then advanced metalworking - and eventually made his way up the technology ladder to materials engineering. His earlier childhood was marked by years of martial arts programs after school, as his parents worked long hours and did not leave work until several hours after school let out.

He had a very happy and normal life, free of any sort of notable disasters.

[Raineh Daze]

Two big things come to mind: firstly, he's from the US for no reason other than... being from the US. It's a nonfactor. It's... honestly something to be avoided, particularly with his reason for transferring being so flimsy.
Secondly... that's totally wrong about why the original artefacts that later Divine Gears mimic are important. They were literally made to be supernatural; the wielder isn't a reason for their importance.

More minor points I've observed when reading it: you've called out flat feet and a heavy skeletal structure, and then made his other abilities... the total opposite? Capoeira? Dancing? Highly agile? That's completely contradictory. Why is street-fighting even there when he knows two martial arts and apparently has a happy and normal life? O_o

[Kaithas]

maybe the person just wants to be from the US I mean jeez

Murika XD

Anyway, I'm considering playing this.

...what's this I hear about 1st person?

[Crimmy]

<Snipped quote by Crimmy>

That was a 'no, don't use first person'. It's more than incongruent, it's unnecessarily hard to follow.

@Raineh Daze

I've never personally seen 1st person as unnecessarily hard to follow.

How so? Is it how most posts are written in 3rd person, only for the perspective to flip when reading a new post that's in 1st person? Too much focus on inner thoughts vs physical actions?