Welcome to Gaia! ::

@ Ariene.

--Bit of an odd name there. Guess it's okay.
--She usually can't call up thrown away details--so when can she? What kind of circumstances enable her to do it, and what kind make it difficult?
--in this section you have a few issues:

Ji can understand most things almost instantly, if given all the information. She only knows what she’s been told, or read or concluded on her own. She likes to learn new things about technology so she can create gadgets or devices that can help with someone’s problem. If she has the right tools and knowledge needed to make a gadget or device she uses it to the fullest extent. Her ability to adapt to a situation depends on her understanding of it. If she understands everything her ability to assess the situation and either fix it or escape from it usually takes 30 seconds to a minute to go through everything and pick the best course of action. She weighs the possibilities of messing up carefully before she chooses, sharp, technical mind, and computer savvy.

Consider this version, which says the same thing but is cleaned up a bit:

Ji can understand most things almost instantly, if given all the information. However, she only knows what she’s been told, read or concluded on her own. She likes to learn new things about technology so she can create gadgets or devices that can help with various problems. If she has the right tools and knowledge needed to make a gadget or device she uses it to the fullest extent.

Her ability to adapt to a situation depends on her understanding of it. If she understands everything, it usually takes 30 seconds to a minute for her to process the information and pick the best course of action. She weighs the possibilities of messing up carefully before she chooses. She has a sharp, technical mind and is very computer savvy.

--In general you need to reread some of those sentences carefully--a number of them are missing subjects, for example.
--This sounds like an angst pit of sorts:
She has come by information that she can’t fully process. Human emotions. They are way too complicated for her and keep changing. The one she can never truly understand is love. Love for family she does comprehend, but love for another human being she can’t even begin to imagine, since she has never experienced it before. She does have emotions, but she doesn’t understand them or how they work.

When I read that, though it's understandable, I can't picture it leading anywhere but a bunch of emoy harping on love until some guy comes around and steals her heart so she can say 'Now I know what love is' with tears in her eyes. So basically cutting that whole section down to a line or two about how her predictions don't work very well when humans are involved because emotions are too complicated for her to process would be awesome.

--'If there is a face to the voice she can conjure it up and draw it when she hears the voice.' You should make that clearer, since I'm assuming she has to have seen the person speaking to do this little memory thing, rather than being able to randomly know what a person looks like from the sound of their voice alone.
--"...so she is trapped in her dream world, which is mostly blank except for a few nightmares that her head has kept over the years. They play over and over until she wakes up." //hell no. That's just an angst pit waiting to happen. Trapped in a dreamworld perhaps, but get rid of the rest of it.
--There's yet another runon sentence in your appearance section. Edit!
--So you're telling me she wears white tank tops with a gray zip up jacket and blue jeans every single day.
--The quite type? Edit!
--The personality section could also be cleaned up grammatically. You should integrate the bits in parentheses better rather than just sticking them in with parentheses. I'm not completely happy with the personality at this moment, but as of now I'm not sure what to suggest. I'll finish reading it all first, how about? heh...
--Yet more runons in the history section.
--Rather odd choice of words with knocking boys and suitors. Childhood still feels a bit empty. What was her time in elementary school like, for example?
--So her teachers never noticed she was particularly smart? Dense bunch of teachers if so.
--Why'd she go through the trouble of hiding her stuff?
--Why hasn't she heard from them since? That doesn't make sense either. None of the lines about it following that first one much do either.
--And what possessed her to go out and join Team Tomorrow especially, when there are a number of businesses would would pay well for her talents without ever needing to know where she got them? Think, for example, about fleshing out what her time at Galvan school was like.
--More runons in the sample roleplay! Please look those up. Also please avoid using 'you' in that sense; while the intro lines weren't that bad, when you started using 'you' it started sounding awkward. (The same problem repeats in the ending lines.) In general those first few paras contain some good details, but you need to work on the delivery a bit.
--Some tense problems in there. Which means editing!
--'The next morning she started to type out all the things that this curious little gadget could be used for' /vauge plus random timeshift equals not good.
--This is a good line: How long had it been growling like that? It didn’t matter.
--I'm not sure where I would rate the sample overall. Sevenish? And I would like you to fix the grammar in the sample at least, so that I know you can.

Gaia name: Merlinic Matrices

Name: Chloe Anne Markson

Age: 19

Alignment: Devia Corporation. It’s a job.

Special abilities: Chloe is continuously aware of any and all efforts at lying, deceiving, and otherwise concealing the truth in her presence. The medium involved is not important; lies will reach her through television, books, movies, and even other languages. Deceptions like illusions and words that are technically true but meant to conceal may also pique her awareness. Her level of perception does vary according to her mood and how much attention she's paying her surroundings; subtle and/or small deceptions may pass under her notice if she is distracted or otherwise ignoring her truthsense. Chloe is not aware of what the truth actually is--only that a lie is taking place. However, she has become very skilled over the years at pinpointing the words least truthful in a general lie.

Her eruption also magnified her own ability to lie; given a few moments for preparation, Chloe could probably deceive even a psychic. Using this ability to its fullest extent, however, requires her to surpress her sense of self to a point that she is not truly comfortable with, as she must fully believe the lie she is telling in order for the act to be convincing. Even after she has reverted to her own belief system and personality, shaking off the vestiges of what she pretended to be is often difficult at best.

The main drawback to Chloe’s power is its near uselessness in protecting herself; though she could lie her way out of many situations given the time, she is as vulnerable as any human when it comes to fireballs and flying shards of metal. She also occasionally gets headaches from her powers, as if she has no chance to take a break from the lies around her a sort of unpleasant residue from them begins to accumulate in her mind.

Codename: Zutra. It’s a mangling of the German verb for “to be true”.

Costume: Chloe has no set costume, as the clothing that best enables her to utilize her powers is different for each individual mission. She does usually have an earpiece or the like hidden somewhere about her person, but she is careful to carry as little potentially incriminating evidence as possible into the field.

Appearance: Chloe is about five foot three with paleish skin, hazel eyes and straight, just-below-chin-length light brown hair that she usually keeps tied back away from her face. Her eyebrows, though no darker than her hair, are heavier than most women’s and tend to give her a rather serious air. Her features are rather pointed beneath the soft roundness the extra fifteen pounds her body carries lends to her face. Her nose is small, and freckles in the summer; her ears stick out just a little bit too much.

Chloe would not describe her body as particularly attractive. Though puberty finally saw fit to give her some semblance of a chest, it didn’t help at all with the way her hips were already quite thick enough to qualify as 'chunky'. She favors loose-fitting shirts, long sweaters and jackets that downplay her body shape; she especially likes turtlenecks for some reason. Chloe is not very in tune with fashion, but she does wear decorative scarves, belts and hats (mostly hats) when the mood strikes her. Gray and blue dominate her wardrobe, occasionally complimented by other neutrals.

Sexual Orientation: Straight, probably. Chloe has issues with relationships no matter what the other person’s gender.

Personality: Chloe, as almost a direct result of her truthsense, is cynical and misanthropic to a degree no one really wants to be. She also suffers from bouts of depression from time to time, though oddly enough she does have moments of being completely and gloriously happy here and there. These moments usually last until she senses another lie.

Chloe is usually taciturn, straightforward, and blunt, perhaps in some kind of compensation for all the lying she senses. When challenged, Chloe tends to get aggressive and ends up in people's faces much more often than she should. She knows her tendency to do this, however, and usually tries to get out of the situation before she’s too pissed off to think straight anymore.

She fidgets when she’s bored. She doesn’t like taking crap from people. She’s not the most patient person, but it depends on what she’s waiting for. For awhile, about half a year ago when she had just moved to Chicago, she was addicted to cigarettes because she liked the feeling they gave her. However, her mom found out not long after she started and griefed most of the urge out of her.

Chloe likes being alone; it’s more peaceful. The one exception to this rule seems to be young children--she doesn’t mind spending a Sunday afternoon sitting near a playground watching the littlest ones run around. Chloe likes getting away from the city, too--almost as much as she likes staying holed up in her apartment with something to distract her in the evening.

She’s also a little lacking in the moral department at times. For instance, stealing doesn’t bother her near as much as it should, all things considered.

History: Chloe grew up in the suburbs with her parents and her older sister Natalie, who much to Chloe’s chagrin was better at practically everything. There were plenty of neighborhood kids to play with to get away from Natalie, though, and Chloe often spent her afternoons roughhousing with the Henderson boys four houses up the street or playing tag at the nearby playground. The evenings were then alternately spent playing with Natalie, fighting with Natalie, or being distracted by something new on the television. Her parents kept her in soccer to help get rid of her extra energy during those elementary years, lest she run them out of the house in sheer youthful madness. She often competed with her sister for attention, but as they grew older their interests overlapped less and they had many fewer things to talk about, arguing or not.

Her father opened his own gardening shop when she was five, so as far as Chloe’s concerned her father has ‘always done things with plants.’ Her mother; on the other hand, is a librarian at one of the local high schools; Chloe loved being read to when she was young but gradually lost interest when she had to start doing the reading herself. Both of her parents are unusually young, particularly considering that Chloe is their second daughter.

As a child, Chloe was friendly, talkative, and enthusiastic about soccer, friends and the occasional art project but bored and fidgety in school itself. She had problems keeping up her grades at times, much to the annoyance of her parents; she quickly stopped counting how many times she lost her allowance for getting C’s in math class.

As she grew older, her social skills gradually deteriorated instead of blossoming; it seemed as if the preteen years had thrown her just a little too far off balance to get back on track. She had a few problems with some nasty girls at school, and alternately confessed everything to her mother and wanted nothing to do with the nosy woman.

Chloe lost her interest in soccer and, near the start of middle school, entered her arty phase, during which she made a lot of sketches she didn’t really like and hung out with people she wasn’t quite sure she liked either. They were people to hang out with, though, as all her old elementary school playmate connections were either disintigrating or already long gone by that point. Natalie made little effort to include Chloe in her own high school life, not that the younger girl would have fit in there either. In her free time, Chloe spent more time on the internet, watched a lot of TV, and occasionally went out with her companions to some borderline questionable parties. Her parents were starting to get rather worried about her when Chloe’s eruption made her current circle of friends a moot point.

She was sitting on the steps outside school listening to Jacobin, a rather odd kid with blonde dreadlocks, ramble on about the reading of Edgar Allen Poe he’d gone to when she suddenly realized he was completely and utterly lying about all of it. She didn’t even know how she knew--the knowledge was just there, as if someone had suddenly opened a textbook of the secrets of the universe in the back of her head. The sensation--a little bit of tingling up her spine, a sense that nothing he was saying was just quite right--was too strange for Chloe to fully make sense of at the time, and she hung around the steps contemplating this odd new thing for another ten minutes before she left the group with a terse goodbye. Chloe had heard of Novas, of course, and really that was the first thing that came to mind, but the odds that she might actually be a Nova were so minute that it seemed far more likely that she was just kidding herself into believing it.

Nearly home by that point, Chloe decided that it’d probably be a smart thing to test this strange new ability out before she went and told everyone about it. Natalie, who was talking loudly to their mother as Chloe walked in the door, gave her an easy opportunity.

“I got back my French test today,” her sister was saying, “and I got an A-minus on it. So you don’t have to worry about that anymore.” That strange feeling of uneasiness crept over Chloe once more as the girl spoke.

“Liar,” Chloe said, before the moment could get away, though in all honesty she had no idea which part of the little story had been false. “French always sucks for you,” she added quickly as the two women, who had been sitting at the counter, turned to give her strange looks at the interruption. Or at least, her mother was giving her a strange look; Natalie’s face was a bit more glare-shaped.

“Chloe has a point,” their mother said, thankfully pulling the conversation’s attention away from Chloe herself. “Make sure you don’t get overconfident. I saw your last test, you know.”

It was several hours of consideration later that Chloe finally slipped into her mom’s reading room to share her news. She’d been debating about just not telling anyone at all, but watching TV and realizing that she coudn’t stand the fact that all the actors were lying their hearts out convinced her that life was going to be mildly difficult if she didn’t.

When Chloe finally managed to mumble out what she had to say, her mother, to Chloe’s surprise, was practically estatic. As she called in Chloe’s father and sister to hear the news, Chloe realized with a rather delayed satisfaction that at least here was one way she could be better than her sister. She was the one who’d gotten the special genes after all.

Her parents didn’t hesitate in contacting the Galvan Corporation about giving their daughter a nova’s education to complement her normal one. Chloe hadn’t really been looking forward to high school in the first place, but she felt more out of control than anything else as her parents packed her up and sent her halfway across the country to Galvan Academy that fall.

Chloe almost made friends at Galvan. As her truthsense grew, however, Chloe found it more and more difficult to like anyone at all--it seemed as if everyone was at least a little bit of a liar, and a few were downright fakes. She ended up hanging out with the quietest people she could find, as at least if they weren’t saying anything they couldn’t manage to lie too often.

When Chloe discovered her own ability to decieve partway through that first year, her world grew even more complicated. Suddenly she could adopt any persona she liked and convince everyone of its sincerity--if only she knew what she wanted to be. Chloe was perhaps at her most honest when she once told an internet friend, “I’m not sure I like living in a world where I can be sure of everyone but no one can ever quite be sure of me.”

Though in all seriousness she should have seen a therapist, Chloe dealt with the bouts of depression her new situation soon led to primarily on her own, with some support from her small cadre of internet acquaintences. Even years later now, Chloe merely manages her depression rather than being truly free of it.

Her time at Galvan was lonely, more than anything else; Chloe’s strongest memories of the time are her mother’s expression at seeing yet another string of C’s and B’s and a few pretty moments when the leaves were turning color in the fall. When she finally graduated, it had been long coming.

It took Chloe surprisingly little effort to get a job at Devia Corporation. Based on some of the jobs Chloe has worked on over the past year and a half, she has few illusions as to why. Though Chloe is currently attending one of the local colleges part time, most of her life centers around Devia. She still visits her family on a relatively regular basis, but she lives alone in an appartment not far from work. Learning to ignore her truthsense when need be has helped Chloe deal with the world, but she still doesn’t like being around people any more than she has to.

Chloe’s currently leading one of the intelligence squads at Devia, but she’s actually rather uncomfortable with her rank. Not only does she feel generally unqualified, but her lack of age makes her feel doubly unworthy of being in charge of her coworkers. Chloe’s abilities allow her to present a supremely confident front, however, and she has gotten rather good at asking her team for advice under the pretense of cooperation while really clinging to every shread of an idea they give her.

Sample Roleplay:
Chloe needed to go to the grocery store. And she really didn’t want to.

Really, she just should’ve just bought that gallon of milk when she’d first thought about it, instead of reflecting on how much she was already carrying and figuring it could wait for tomorrow. But now, since she’d gotten it into her head to make a cake, her little kitchenette was a complete mess of half-mixed bowls and open packages, and she had just realized that she didn’t have any damn milk.

She always had milk! Okay, not always, but damn near it. Tapping her fingers against the counter, Chloe fumed to herself about how she should’ve had juice with breakfast that morning instead. Or how she could’ve just remembered the fact that she’d finished off the last jug before she went and practically emptied her cabinets onto the little plastic counter. Now she had to find her keys and change back out of her pajamas and go down three flights of stairs to her car and then drive all the way over to the store, probably with a bunch of jackasses trying to edge her off the road to boot. And that little list didn’t include putting up with listening to the cashier mumble that she should have a nice day when it didn’t take Chloe’s powers to know the girl could quite easily care less.

With a sigh, Chloe finally gave up on the fact that staring at the kitchen was not going to make one third a cup of milk suddenly appear within it. She really hadn’t wanted to go back out this evening, she thought again, grimacing to herself as she shuffled through the TV room. Just a damn bottle of milk...





Feel free to share if you see anything, other peoples, as I was a lazy writer and only read it over once after I finished.

Hi. I'm not an official reviewer, so you don't have to do what I say or anything, but I thought I'd give a few comments on the profiles on this page that I read, so that way Merlinic can get some feedback too. XD

@Ariene: You should get a reward for rehashing your character so many times! I admire your dedication! *gives her a cookie*

A few comments though- I think you should add back into the power description somewhere that the reason she has excellent photographic memory, is tech savvy and really analytical is because her power allows her to utilize more of her brain (the 50-60% thing you were talking about). Mentioning that might help connect all of these different mind abilities she has. Also, considering that she has little/no physical combat abilities, you may want to make her not get so severe of headaches, but that's just me. Overall, your special ability description may need more adjustment just to make the writing flow smoother.

I prefer the codename Techie. XD

You don't have to make her more like yourself, but that's up to you.

In your history, I think the first phrase sounds a bit funny. I would probably say something more like... "She was born in Houston, TX but her family didn't stay there very long." But this is more of nitpicky thing.

I don't have much else to say, otherwise. ^^;; Good work.

@Merlinic: Looks pretty good to me. Seeing as you're a GM person in this, I'm sure your character will stay realistic type depressed and not the so-called 'emo-worty' type, when she is feeling down. XD

There were a couple of sentences that looked a bit funny to me... Let's see.... The one mentioning that her father had always worked with plants I had to reread cause I was switching tenses in my head, so I think it's alright, actually. And... The sentence "She had a few problems with some nasty girls at school, and alternately confessed everything to her mother and wanted nothing to do with the nosy woman." I'm not too sure if you would use 'and' or 'or' to separate her two different actions towards her mom. The 'and' looked funny to me at first.

Also, I'm not too sure if she would immediately suspect that she was a nova right away after detecting a lie. Maybe just mention that she contemplated the idea in her ten minutes of thinking about what just happened, so we don't just jump into the sentence 'Chloe had heard of Novas...'

So other than me picking out nitpicky things, I think it looks alright. Do you get to approve yourself? XD

@knotbox: Looking good. ^_^ I like the rp sample for this one better than the previous ones, though why there are blackholes in sidewalk cracks I do not know. XD I just got a few comments about her powers. I know you tuned them down from what they were before. I'm just a bit concerned about how they could be used.

First of all, when you say 'density' do you mean she could move like... a bajillion tons of air into the alternate dimension, seeing as all air is less dense than her? Or do you mean things that weigh less than her/have less volume than her? I think that would be a bit safer, so she isn't removing the atmosphere from earth or something. XD So I'd write that she can warp stuff that is approximately her size/weigh or less, give or take a few pounds or something. I'd also say that the larger an object is, the more effort it takes for her to warp it (aka she gets more exhausted). And if she reforms something, she also gets more worn out, especially if the original object is of a complex shape/composition, and if she's reshaping it into something complex. I'd also be careful with this reforming power, because if she reformed a human in there... that'd be pretty nasty. And if she just dumped a human into the void.... well, that would suck. That's why you should put those size constraints on there so it's less likely she'd be tempted to dump random people in there.

What does this alternate dimension look like from the outside? Just a black hole that remains open while she dealing with it? Or are there neat purple lights or something? XD

Is it implied that in the future she would be able to find things she put in there?

I don't think you would need to list what her ultimate abilities would be, as long as you keep in mind that she shouldn't be able to dump lots of things way bigger than her in there. I assume that she would be able to reshape things quicker, dump more things in at once and not get as tired, and possibly find things? But if you had more powerful things in mind, run them by Pansa/Merlinic to make sure you don't get surprised when they tell you later on that she can't do that. Heh.

Sorry for skipping yours when I was going over some, EKA. sweatdrop So if you don't mind an amateur review....

An interesting power, is what I think. I can't wait to see how you use it in action. XD Do you intend for her to try and slink through places like cats can? Cause cats bones are more flexible than humans, so they can kinda squeeze together and such. I think. So if you wanted to add that to her power, I wouldn't mind (I dun know about Pansa/Merlinic though). I'd also think it'd be cool if she could dislocate/relocate joints without having to pull/push on them. Like how snakes unhook their jaws and such. That'd be neat too, but again, that's just me. ^^;;

I'd try to include some of her likes/dislikes in her personality, like what food she likes, what she likes to do (does she like cooking, for instance?), what she does in her spare time, what food she hates, what kind of people/behaviors irritate her, etc. You don't have to include all of those, but it wouldn't hurt to mention a few, or a few that I didn't list.

It'd be helpful if her history explained a bit more about Sam and his powers so the reader doesn't need to go read Sam's profile to not be confused. It'd be better to read each profile separately and still get a cohesive story from each one, instead of referring the reader to one or the other. Just add mention to what his powers were at first, and then a little more about exactly how violent his eruption was when she's thinking about it. I'd also add more about her childhood in the start of the history, before jumping right into her eruption. Just mention where she lives, with who, and how normal/not normal her childhood was, plus any other basic facts about her and her family.

Other than that I think it looks swell. ^_^ I like the rp sample. I wish my mom would cook me lots of breakfast. XD

Much Panpear love.

I'lll work on said sentences--yeah, I'm not sure if I can approve myself, but Pansa informally okayed it, so assuming Krome does the same, I think I'm good. Comma whoa in my sentence there.

So EKA is the first. Hokay.

--first off, you really need to get rid of the no longer necessary snarky comments.
--has 'holes' in strange places--typo. And not knowing the brother thing beforehand, it does sound like you're referencing an old lover of hers of something... Which then makes it slightly odd to go 'oh, wait, that's the brother, isn't it...'. Anyway. /ramble
--spelling of species. Though I'm not sure my spelling's the right one either XD (I kind of hate that word actually... too many vowels... /ramble again)
--if she's been on assignments for TT and has likely seen the worst in people more than once, how is she still that incredibly naive? I think it's the word naive that's bugging me most in there... not sure... In general though, I do like the 'everyone's sidekick' idea you've got going.
--Panpear's suggestion of adding some detail on Sam so that this profile could stand alone is a very good idea, by the way. Oh, and if you want to make her able to pop her joints out without having to pull on them, I think I would be okay with it... Pop them back in without having to push, maybe.
--When she was learning, what exactly did her losing control of her ability entail?
--Just to clarify, she enrolled at college (full time?), works as a waitress (part time?) and works for TT how, exactly? Like, would they contact her about some problem or another and expect her to run out of class/work at any time to help out? Thinking logistics and all.

Overall, we're mostly smoothing out details. You'll prolly be done soon ^^

I'm sorry...I vaguely remember editing those comments out like a week ago...just shows how my memory works sweatdrop I've decided that she should have to push bones back in because (scientifically) the only way I could have her not have to would be to have opposing muscle groups that are opposite, and something tells me in the end with so many muscles in strange places she wouldn't look human at all...and it'll be interesting to have a strong limit and it kind of contributes to her personality too.

Is the college, TT, and work situation fixed or do you have suggestions? cause I'm fully open to them...

I've got a little time coming up, and since I haven't been watching this topic much I've got no idea who to start with, so some help please. =) Then I'll start.