Okay, so, I've been sitting on the idea for this character for a few months (it's a troll).
I've been doodling my school days away, spawning possible symbol and horn designs, along with a few other things, and I'm getting impatient with my slow creativity.
I'll just dump out a bunch of my /jumbled/ ideas for her possible character design.
Her name is COLYME DREMUR.
She is of an INCREDIBLY ROYAL BLOODLINE, second in pink-ness only to the royal...troll lady person herself (yes, she up-stages even Feferi).
Because of her extremely pink blood,she's not exactly biologically designed to be on land much at all, but her profession regularly if not always calls for her to travel on land frequently.
She has a hive above land as well because of this.
Back to her being biologically sea-faring, she's able to stay above water because of some kind of specially made devices that I can't seem to imagine up just yet. Something like gill stimulators and a mouthpiece or something.
She however dooesn't have any eye protection and her vision is impaired, but she's not blind.
Personality wise, I've had trouble defining her.
I've contemplated making her a little irritable with the whole caste-prejudice thing, but that didn't work out.
So far, she's been more supplementary, being calm and somewhat understanding, but somewhat innocently still attached to the caste prejudice.
Her weapon so far is string[or]wire (wire would make more sense), with dangling blades suspended from the wire at specific intervals.
She would fight elegantly yet efficiently.
Back to her profession, she's an assassin for the royal family/queentrollladywhatever, and her marked targets are what frequently keep her above land.
Actually, she's already technically in a sgrub session with a few of my friends, and I've likewise been brainstorming plot devices related to her.
Seeing as my (original) inspiration for the character was the song "Black" on the 4th Homestuck soundtrack, I wanted to keep at least some aspect of her insane/messedup/crazywithpower.
Infact, no matter how cliche this sounds, I was contemplating for her to at one point become the very bane of her sgrub session if we decide to have it fail.
She would have some kind of...straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back kind of personality trait, and it would be what drove her off the deep-end.
Her weapons would change along with her personality transormation maybe, the strings and blades adhering to perhaps the outer edges of her forearms and some other parts I haven't really thought on.
Okay, back to the original plea for help.
I need input on all of this.
I'm having a lot of trouble really visualizing the character and even thinking of a trolltag.
I need someone else to help me define her more clearly. D:
This probably isn't the kind of crit you're looking for, but I think the main problem with your character is that she's currently deep in Mary Sue country.
A Mary Sue, in case you don't know, is a character that is over-idealized to the point she can't be taken seriously as a character (the male equivalent is a Gary Stu). This is probably why you are having trouble building a personality for your character - she's less a character and more a vessel for traits you, personally, find attractive in characters.
This can all be fixed, of course; the main thing is to focus on the traits that are most important to the character and cutting away the rest. This test can give you a good idea where to go with that: http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
If this hasn't been too mean so far, I can give more in-depth crit. As it is, I'm just going to step back for now and let you handle it.
You've told us about her abilities, but not her desires nor her motivations. She's in the Mary Sue territory because you've been focusing on her positives... and outright stating she's above the canon characters is also a giveaway. You also stated that she's intended to become the "bane" of your session, which puts your character above the other characters in the same story.
When you collaborate with others, you gotta share the spotlight, and work together to build something bigger. If you think you can be the best on your own, why bother collaborating? That's what ultimately limits Mary Sues -- they start at the top, so there's nowhere to go, and they never make progress. Meanwhile, the humble Frodo Bagginses and even the Harry Dresdens start out low and rocket past the Mary Sues in popularity even though they're never as "good" at what they do.
(...)
You can still keep the positives... but make them double-edged. Here's some ideas:
- she's exeedingly high on the hemospectrum -- freakishly high, just as Karkat is freakishly low. She is mistaken for a nobleblood, but doesn't dare make claims to a fiefdom or the throne else the scrutiny she'd be under would out her as a mutant to be culled. Her false humility covers her mortal fear of being outed.
- She works as an assassin for nobility, with a patron that gives her assignments. Sometimes this patron makes inconvenient or uncomfortable demands of her service. (don't try for the "lone wolf" character, it's too easy to screw up and isolate your character from everyone else in the story, and then you're not collaborating anymore)
- the trolls still on Alternia are young and immature. Tone down her competencies; make her a novice assassin, who has to use the pretense of FLARPing to get her targets within reach. She insists on using (spiked chain? razorwire garotte? is there a real-world version of the weapon you described?) despite how she's not very good at using it, and has to resort to clumsy accidents or just bludgeoning someone to death. This gives her something to improve over the course of the story.
Success when you're expected to fail is much more interesting than success when you're expected to succeed.
>>1185
Gonna add that not being built to go on land isn't compatible with being a land-based assassin. There's more to being a land-dwweller than what you breathe - the average sea critter still has vast physical differences from land-based life.
This is incredibly helpful!
:D
I was hoping to get some really serious feedback here, as I saw a bunch of inconsistencies with the character as I was typing.
To be honest, I really have never seriously made a character before that I could go anywhere with in any rp session, and it's probably because they were most likely Mary Sues.
XD
Being as I'm a total novice at this, I really want to thank the criticism, but I'd also like to say this:
I really posted this on here with the understanding of it's semi-indecency, and I really wanted other people's help to /create/ the character.
Like I think I (might have) said, I have an immense amount of trouble remaining consistent when roleplaying as a character that I myself thought up and defined.
That being so, I was hoping /you people/ could maybe help define it...or something.
If that's okay.
:3
>>1187
Yeah, but the first post says this particular character has problems with it.
>>1188
I'm glad you took the criticism well, but you're going to have to meet us halfway here. She's YOUR character, after all; I'm not sure what else we can do beyond the crit and ideas we've written out here.
>>1190
Gosh, this is so hard.
I don't want to give up, but over the past hour I've been trying and trying to think up better character traits, but I keep catching myself getting carried away with one interesting idea until it's Mary Sue-ish, and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm cut out for this oc roleplaying thing.
I mean, I really, /really/ want to do it, but I'm finding it ridiculously hard to think creatively in this situation.
I mean, I've read the examples, and I see how they'd be fun and interesting to play out.
I'm aware that I can play out a character like that well, but when it comes to coming up with an original trait like that, I can't ever seem to be decisive, and I'm never satisfied...I think (jumbled A.D.D. thoughts are jumbled and hard for me to interpret :c).
>>1191
Alrighty. Since I'm all up and bein' your bro and what not, I'll try to sit down and put together something for you after I get done with what I am doing, alllrighty?
>>1191
I don't think all the stuff you originally had was bad, just far too complex or idealized. You just need to concentrate more heavily on the more important aspects of her character, and less so on the unimportant ones. What traits lead to the character's motives? The fact that she is so high on the hemospectrum? That she's an assassin? That she has trouble going on land?
It could be you're going about this whole thing backwards. It might help to develop a personality first, and then decide what sorts of traits and flaws she has based on that.
If you really are a novice, you would be a lot better off making a character less complicated than an assassin or a chessmaster. Trust me, I know from experience it will save you a lot of pain. You don't have to make a helpless character, but if you make one that's expected to always be pulling strings and masterminding schemes all over the place, you'll be in over your head in ten seconds flat.
Here's an exercise, to try out a character and give it some depth.
1. you have your character's concept/cliche/trope/meme, name, appearance, their chosen career. Doesn't have to be detailed, just broad or vague strokes.
2. Dial it back to childhood. What was she like during childhood? What did she learn growing up? Who was an influence on her life? How did she learn of her eventual career?
3. Jump forward. What was she like when she started her career? What lessons did she learn, what mistakes did she make? What was her first "adventure" as a novice?
4. Dial it forward a bunch more, she's adept at her career now. What do her co-workers think of her? Or her clients? When she tells people about what she does for a living, what would she say (if she were telling the truth)? What does she still hope to achieve before her career is over?
5. Now jump ahead a lot, because now she's old and ready to retire or settle-down. What are the old war-stories she's going to tell? What are her regrets about never getting around to doing? What would she tell novices that are just starting step 2 in their own stories? What does she plan to do with her life now that she's not a [career] anymore?
The character you will use as the "hero" in stories will be step #3 or step #4... but this person wants to reach step #5, so she'll work at improving herself, surviving, and growing so she can get there. Maybe she will, maybe she won't. You're plotting a possible future; when you collaborate with other role-players, you might get a better future than you expect... or at least a more "interesting" one.
No. 1178 
