Welcome to Gaia! ::

Yay for the Welsh version of the Black Dog! *Welsh pride* xD

I'm going to start by saying the order of your posts (to me) seems illogical. You've got present information and then a past story and then a guardian and then a Fa'e and THEN the myth and it's just all over the place. Even worse is that the most important parts of your Fa'e quest are basically at the bottom of your thread. You need to bump Tristan's profile, the myth info and his powers up to the top and move all that world and guardian stuff to the bottom. The focus is on your Fa'e, not on the world or the guardian. I'm also going to recommend you divide your info section from your myth, or at least organize it in such a way that you're not just quoting from places and then adding in the death of the black dog.

I'm going to critique in the order you have things here in the hopes that I won't be too confusing. ^^

There's one problem that I see with your back story, and it's not the death, the drugs or the poorness of the family. You've listed the little girl in the story as Tristan's guardian. Let's assume she's ten when Tristan comes along. The way the story is set up, it would make more sense for Tristan to take on one of the parents as his guardian figure, not his older sister. While in any normal case, Alsace would have taken care of Tristan when her parents died, if Tristan had a guardian bond with one of the parents he'd be in trouble. I don't know for sure that you can't have a child to child guardian bond, but it just doesn't make logical sense to me. She'd have to be at least a teenager, if not a young adult for her to take on the role as his guardian. With Fa'e, you can't really have someone step in as a guardian. If you want Alsace to be the guardian then she's either going to have to go through her life with her parents dying and then find him, or some other story where she's old enough to legally be considered his guardian. Am I making any sense? XD;;

Skipping the guardian profile, moving onto the Fa'e profile. His personality confuses the heck out of me. He's selfish and very rebellious, but he's also obedient and doesn't believe he's supposed to be selfish. Uh... what? xD Your personality right now feels like you're trying to beat around the bush and tell me that Tristan's a bad boy, but a good boy too. Sorry, but he can't be both. If he's going to be a "bad, troublesome kid" he has to be that. He can't be a rebellious teenager and an obedient one at the same time. It doesn't work. Take a step back and decide what he's like. This paragraph tells me absolutely nothing about Tristan and doesn't go along with the RP that you wrote earlier. In the scene between him and Alsace he seems like a mellow, obedient teenager who's not rebellious or a "bad boy" but simply one who dislikes his current situation. Pick something to be the core of your personality and stick to it, otherwise you'll be all over the place. I should be able to predict (to a certain extent) how he'll react to my character if they ever were to make contact. At this point, I wouldn't know what to expect because you've set nothing as his core personality.

Aaand, that's all I have to say right now. I'd encourage you to expand a lot more on your concept because right now your thread seems almost bare. ^^

Fixed I hope?

That's the thing I wanted to most avoid. He is sad, but he hides it. He's more apathetic then emo. He seems emo because of perhaps that hidden sadness at the way he dresses but I really don't intend him to be. @.@;;;;; The drug is what makes him happy, it's why he NEEDS it. It allows him to 'SEE'. He desires color. Perhaps I could make him paint pictures, and he could learn to feel, I'm not so sure what to do to improve on it, but I will work on that. @.@ It's hard to do the personality of something you can't RP. What I wanted is for Tristan to despise death (hence his nerve problem).

I don't really understand the second thing you said... I don't have any ideas on what I could give him. ><;;; Maybe a bone? *shot utterly* A motivator like an item?

Yush, Cere hit the nail on the head. ^^ I'm going to give an example, since I just finished doing this with Barthy. xD

Barthy wants (more than anything in the world) to become a person worthy of the jackalope he loved in his past life. He wants to be courageous and strong and well-liked by other people because in his mind, Whiteflower deserved to have a mate like that.

The problem with this? Barthy is a coward. Barthy is so much a coward that he ran and left Whiteflower to die. He will always choose flight over fight and this is something that he has to struggle with in order to get what he wants, in order to BECOME what he wants to be.

This is motivation and conflict. :3 Internal conflict, but conflict nonetheless. What I want you to do is sit down and write down three things that Tristan wants more than anything in the world. Then write down three things that Tristan hates and/or fears most. Now, given the things that he wants, write two reasons why -- because of himself or fault of his own -- he can't get what he wants.

We'll use Cere's example of an artist: (This is all theoretical here)

Let's say Tristan wants to be come the world's greatest artist. He wants to sell lots of paintings, be all over the newspaper and get lots of money so that his guardian can live the nice life that he wants to her live.

But Tristan has a problem. A few problems, actually. Number one: Tristan is blind, so how the heck can he manage to paint something super awesome if he can't even see what he's painting? Number two: His ego is so big he hates being critiqued. He knows that if he submits his art some people won't like it, and he can't stand the fact that people will make fun of his art. That would make him so angry he could... I dunno... binge eat.

As for happy, I want something that'll make him REALLY happy. The drugs don't seem (to me) like they make him happy and if they do, it's a bittersweet happiness. What makes you happy? As in, if someone did this for you/gave you this/you did this it would make your week. That kind of happy.

One thing you'll need to correct:

"Tristan is now about sixteen and a half; his seventeenth birthday is fast approaching. He's about to discover what he really is and be taken away from a life on a world he'd always called home. And he's going to drag Alsace along... welcome to the insanity, enjoy your stay."

Fa'e physically age more quickly than others, but they're real-time. The Fa'e thread itself just turned three years old, and for perspective, the Fa'e were originally only going to have a lifespan of a year. There's no way that Tristan could be a full sixteen years old, not and be a Fa'e, though he could (and, for a Lost Child, should) certainly look the part.


One thing to be aware of as well is that his shock ability might get post-empted when Ballentine goes to put down what she wants to reserve for Taima. Taima has a similar ability, and while it is not currently reserved, it's possible that she might choose to when she takes care of the database thing.


Otherwise, no problems. Just clarify/fix the issue with the age, then you can PM me directly about it and I'll see about getting you a nice shiny stamp. :3

Ahaaa... you're going to kill me 'cause I've got some more stuff to talk about. 8D

His personality is much better. The little blurb about him being a youth and then an adult gives me hope that you're not going to have him spiral into darkness and despair. xD The artist thing has a nice touch to it, and I think it works very well with this concept.

You've said that the three things he wants are: to be a bringer of life, to be an artist, and to be more open (in essence, no to have to hide). You've then said that Tristan can't get what he wants because he's blind and because he's sensitive (neurotic disorder sounds a little strange to me. I'd try and word that differently. He's sensitive, he's very empathetic or... he's very aware of people's emotions of the vibes that they give up.) Being sensitive and blind can definitely keep him from being open and from being an artist but not so much being a bringer of life/"breaking from his roots". When you say he wants to break from his past there must be something inside of him that calls him to go back to being a Grim. Think of something that would have amused the Grim. Maybe the Grim thought that weakness was a bad thing. Maybe the Grim liked to exploit weaknesses that he found. Now that Tristan is reborn he somehow finds himself looking for weaknesses in people so he can exploit them. Thus, when he tries to change the image of himself and break from his roots he struggles with that part of himself that still enjoys taking advantage of weak people. Something like that. Right now he struggles with his situation (external conflict) and struggles with his disability and sensitivity (internal conflict). Being blind is something beyond his control (technically speaking, if he hadn't been a reborn character) so you need something else about his personality that's been given to him by his past life. That way there's something about himself that he has to overcome in order to move on into his life knowing that he's completed one of his goals. I TALK TOO MUCH, so I'm just going to move on. xDD

Again, something happy. Just pick something that you think would make him smile/feel happy. Otherwise, if EVERYTHING is bad it gets tiresome. For example: He's in love with textures. He loves to go into fabric stores and touch all the fabric because it feels so cool underneath his fingers. He enjoys going to the park and just lying in the grass and feeling the wind through his fur and it's just so awesome. And then, when Conrad takes him to the Fa'e HQ he gets to sit on this amazingly textured chair and it suddenly makes everything better because the texture is comforting. That's what I'm looking for. The reason I want you to move away from ZOMG SAD is because this is what happened with Yani when he became blind after his teen quest. I think a character who accept their blindness and learns to work with it as opposed to going against it would be more interesting than one who was constantly sad because he was blind. Do you see where I'm coming from with this? You're on the right path with this artsy thing. Give him something that he can do and he's good at despite being blind.

Finally, if you're going to use that personality in the Lost Child contest, Tristan wouldn’t know who he is. None of the Lost Children know that they're reincarnations of anything. Heck, most Fa'e don't even know what they're the reincarnation of until their youth quest, teen quest and the earliest. Teen quest is usually the point where the Fa'e goes "crap, somebody really ******** up... wait, was that ME?" and get all confused and thus the angsting begins. xD Simply because Tristan is a Lost Child, he doesn't know who he is or even that he's a reincarnation of something.

Yay thank you! <33333

And Chibi. I editted again and that's the last time. I swear. xD I'm perfectly happy with Tristan as he is right now and I refuse to change him anymore. If he's not good enough for the LC contest well then that'll be on my head... but he's good enough for me and that's all that matters. ^^; *is very tired and stressed and never wants to edit her baby ever again* Thanks so much for all your advice. I took it all and utilized it to the best of my abilities. I owe you one. <3