The following thread will serve a dual purpose, in one part holding all of the old character sheets of mine from previous RPs I've done over the years, and also allowing me to critique and judge my old work. In essence, it will give me access to my old garbage, and allow everyone else to laugh at all of my old failures.
For this purpose, we will first want to set some boundaries: 1. I will not be including characters that were not accepted,though I will include characters that were accepted that I never posted with. This rule basically only cuts out 1 character that I don't want to remember, so feel free to look for it. I can't really delete it. 2. I must make some sort of criticism on each sheet, and point out how it fails in comparison to another. 3. I must also compliment the sheet in some way, which should actually add some challenge to this for me. 4. If relevant, I can discuss IC and OOC posts, but the bulk of the critique must be about the structure of the sheet itself, and not my overall writing. 5. If friends and others have commentary that I find relevant, I will add an extra section to the post with their credited critique. 6. All posts will be linked in addition to being reproduced in full, so that people may dig into my past further if they wish. 7. I will attempt to work in chronological order, starting from my oldest post I could find and working forward. If I find a post that I missed, I will simply tack it onto the end as an addendum. And now for the fun stuff
The Rite/Ryte Counterand theMaxwell Counter: These are the most common last and first name I use, so we're going to count them and see how bad it is.
The Cringe Counter:Every time I experience the physical sensation known as cringing, where I actually wince at the awfulness of my own creation, I'll log it here. I expect this number to reach unreasonable levels.
The New Edge Rating Dynamic: This will be a scale from 1 to 10 which will subjectively rank how "edgy" I think a given character is. I am vaguely defining edge as a character with a try-hard grimness, undeserved tragic element, or brooding personality for the sake of seeming cool or interesting. This score will likely increase with an increase in Cringe.
In here will be a list of every character sheet in this thread. Obviously, it's currently empty. The first character review will be up in a bit.
Character 1: Arkiyel 'ein Roleplay:Academy of the Arcane Artes Upload Date: October 12th, 2014 Drop Date: December 11th, 2014 Drop Reason: RP died. Context: Basically, I saw this one RP and thought it was cool. It was late 2014, so I would've just started my second year of high school, and therefore been in the middle of transitioning between my dumb awkward kid phase and my edgy asshole phase. So, arguably this is the worst time to be me. I had began RPing on a forum where all RPs had to include dragons, so I though dragons were cool, therefore I thought a lot about Draconians, which are like Dragons but are also people. I had full on lore for the race, and AAA seemed like the perfect setting to throw them at. The people from AAA are what kept me around for the following two months, as it's one of my favorite RP casts. I'm still friends with several of the people here, though we were a bit closer in the two or three years right after this died. So, now that I've reminisced about the Oldfucks, lets look at Ark:
Ok, Here's the best image I could find. I somehow found something. Problem is it doesn't have wings and the armor looks stupid, as well as the angle being pretty bad for a character picture. So I guess I will still do a desc. along with this. Ark stands at about 6 feet tall, which is relatively average size for a draconian. His scales are a pristine white, with an *insert wingspan here because I honestly cant bother to think at 2 in the morning, though I may change this later*. The fact that I never actually edited in a wingspan causes me some pain. I had two months to decide, and I just forgot. That's quality content. He usually wears some sort of a cloak and armor (probably some form of the armor in the picture, minus the weapons, things on his arms, and thing on his neck) or a long shirt and pants, varying between red, white, and grey. His eye color is a dull grey, which is actually quite common in light draconians. He keeps his quiver of arrows at his side rather than on his back because, well, we can't have a quiver of arrows preventing his flight, can we?
Grey eyes, though justified here, are a deliberate element of edge. This will be accounted for in the edge score. I overused parentheses on this sheet and I don't know why. It's all pointless, and could easily be written in a different way.
Full Name Arkiyel 'ein
Nickname(s) Ark, as his real name is a bit difficult to say sometimes.
What the fuck was I thinking? Arkiyel 'ein doesn't make sense, sounds stupid, and isn't even correctly capitalized. I had this gimmick where I thought it was cool to put apostrophes in random places to make things look and sound more fantasy-esque. Of course, it just makes it a clusterfuck. Arkiyel Ein, while still shit, would at least be tolerable. The worst part is this isn't the last time I use this name. Gender Male
Age 178. This could be equated to about 17-18 in human years. This is adapted from the "dragon characters are always older, but have equivalent ages to humans" gimmick that I remember seeing on my old stomping ground, and even here with dragons and other fantasy races. While it kinda makes sense, I've grown to hate it. It's kind of silly and overplayed. If you're going to play an old character, give them a personality and knowledge that fits with that, or just give them a normal human age so it's easier on everyone.
Year 4th
Birthday August 1st. Though, its less of his actual birthday, and more of the day he was passed through the Dyniel 'Yn degrys (ceremony of the sun) as an egg (the ceremony is essentially how light draconians are born, and why they have a sub-tribe) Okay, I'm just going to complete rewrite the birthday section here: August 1st. Yes, all that other stuff was pointless. I should have held world-building for IC when appropriate. I still have this habit of throwing around tidbits of world-building in random places.
Astrological Sign Leo I don't know why Astrological signs are on the character sheet. I guess it's just a thing that Cynder liked doing. I'm actually sitting muted in a voice chat with her right now as I write this, but I'm also lazy. I'll edit the answer in if I actually ask.
Species Light Draconian. Draconians are half human and half dragon. There are 8 types of Draconian, each of these draconian tribes have scales with a color that correspond to a magical element, which they can control. The most common Draconian tribes are Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, and Lightning. On August 1st, the Draconians hold a ceremony as ancient as the Draconians themselves. During this ceremony, Draconian eggs are offered up to become that of pure light. Though, very few actually become light draconian eggs. The Draconians tend to retain their original elemental powers from their tribe. More pointless worldbuilding. The first half mostly just needs to be updated in style. I could probably talk about the tribal stuff over the ritual thing, if at all. We really don't need a second section talking about how august 1st is really cool for dumb reasons that no one should care about OOC.
Class Draconic Archer- The draconic archer carries a bow like any normal archer, though, given the fact that Draconians can fly and use elemental magic, the draconic archer is able to do so much more. Draconic archers are able to combine their elemental powers with their arrows and flight, allowing them to strike from afar with deadly power and accuracy. Draconic archers are also proficient in using daggers for hand to hand combat, though few can use their magic for much more than lighting arrows on fire.
He's just an archer. You could've just wrote "archer" here, me. Granted, the logic is that he had training by Draconian masters, so he's specifically a Draconian-trained Archer. It's not that bad, I guess? Weapon
Syl' Dayhlijn, or The wrath of day, is an enchanted bow made just for use by a draconic archer. The enchantment on the bow prevents it from breaking easily, as well as preventing the string from wearing out or breaking. The bow is masterfully crafted, which adds to the fact that it looks cool.
I hate my naming conventions with this character. Stop making up bad fantasy names and then translating them, idiot! You can bring it up in IC at some point if it ends up mattering, but otherwise just keep the fantasy name. Oh, and stop with the apostrophes and pointless extra letters. Syl Dahlin would be better, or Sil Dahlyn. Yea, I actually like that more.
He has a few (2-4) of these hidden on his person at any given time. This just feels pointless.
World Lucis
Short Biography Ark was an orphan. His parents died before he was born, even before the ceremony. He was originally from the fire tribe, but he was born as a light draconian. An old friend of his parents had asked if she could raise him, but, due to the fact that he was a light draconian, and not fire, the church would not let her touch him. (around this time the Draconians are extremely religious) Due to his unlucky early life, he grew up mostly on the streets, as most priests or oracles couldn't stand him. At some point he ended up training with an old Archer, who taught Ark everything he knows. His reason for going to the academy is unknown.
Crawling in my skin, these wounds they will not heal. Welcome to the edge point zone, boys and girls! He's an orphan who's parents died before was born, who wasn't allowed to go to his home tribe, and was kicked out by the church or something, so he does nothing but train with an old master. I'd been watching anime for two years at this point, so I'll blame it on that. Oh, more awful parentheses too. At least I kept his reason for going to the academy secret, unlike all my other character bits. I bet that's because I didn't actually know, and left it for future Vari. I'm going to say that his reason was that he had the old man for lunch, and ran away to avoid being caught.
Personality Ark is the serious "Get it done, then leave me alone" type of guy, at least, that is how he acts around most people. He doesn't like messing around, and just wants to get things done, and so, he acts pretty grumpy most of the time. I will probably have him mellow out over the course of the RP. Can you say Edge? Yea, I'm cringing here. This is exactly what I had in mind with the edge scale: he's a brooding loner who's only here to do as much as he has too. The mellow out note is pointless, what are you doing, young Vari? Character development is implied, you idiot. Partner N/A as of current
wait this RP had a partnering gimmick? I completely forgot about this. All I can remember is that Ark's first interaction with another character was losing control in flight and falling directly onto a snake girl, and accidentally grabbing her breasts. Yes, this actually happened. Ark later fights Dagny, a Dragon from Earth who can take human form, over the snake girl. Ark gets absolutely fucking wrecked, but all three are punished for the destruction of Academy property and are forced to room together. It was a great set-up from what I recall, but then the player of snake girl, who was the entire motivation for the Ark-Dagny rivalry, went silent.
Fear(s)/Weakness(es)/Limit(s) Ark has a fear of Ice, and is actually weakened by it. He doesn't like water that much, though, he kinda had to get over that. Ark hates darkness, and never sleeps in the dark because of it. He despises dark magic, evil, and especially vampires. Ark is bad at using fire magic for more than lighting things on fire (AKA, no fireballs). His light magic is limited to adding a blinding effect to his arrows, or changing the light levels in small areas. I guess I could've phrased these better. I probably should'e separated these into different lines to make it clearer. I guess the darkness stuff is a bit edgy, but it makes a bit of sense based on what I established? The vampire stuff makes less sense. I think I just actually hated vampires, or something?
Strange Attributes/Abilities/Traits Ark has an ability that allows him to sort of "Zoom in/out" his vision. This ability is a take on clairvoyance, which allows the user to see beyond their line of sight. I'm not actually entirely sure what this ability does? I think it's supposed to be really good eyesight, so he can see distant objects with better clarity and precision than the average human, but I phrased it more like he could actually change how is eyesight functions.
Themesong I guess I should end this by looking at all the music I liked when I made this sheet, which is basically the only metric for something being a character theme for me at this time. Theme 1: I'm on an Ark What is this doing here? I actually don't know. You immature brat, don't use joke songs as themes for serious characters. Theme 2: Wheelzes I loved this video, that's why this is here. It makes no sense as an Ark theme. Theme tree: Ark's seen better dayz, brohs quirky joke replacing 3 with tree. Cringe acquired from that and the use of "dayz" and "brohs." This song is fine, but it also makes no sense as an Ark theme. He's supposed to be a serious, brooding character, but he's got this quirky song that most people associate with a sitcom I never watched. I don't think I've listened to this since creating Ark. Other Currently N/A
Finally, it's over. Here's the score for everyone who cares: RC:0 MC:0 CC:3 NERD:7/10 While this deserved a high NERD score, I've decided to leave room for future entries to outdo it, because oh boy, I know they will.
Syl' Dayhlijn, or The wrath of day, is an enchanted bow made just for use by a draconic archer. The enchantment on the bow prevents it from breaking easily, as well as preventing the string from wearing out or breaking. The bow is masterfully crafted, which adds to the fact that it looks cool.
He has a few (2-4) of these hidden on his person at any given time.