Welcome to Gaia! ::

Here are my characters:
Teachers:
Erin Rachel

Students:
Juliet Arianne
Caroline Andrews

Hey Madelina!

As we mentioned in the main thread, this is also a time for Crew to go through and re-evaluate characters that were approved early on and don't really meet the current standards.

I'm going to need to ask you to make some minor adjustments to your characters due to this reason. Early on, when the guild was just formed, a lot of the crew was really new to the idea of approving characters, so many characters were approved right away when, really, they didn't quite meet the standards we were shooting for. I hope you understand!


Julianne's Changes:

- currently she only has one flaw that we consider valid. Not having the powers normal for her people because she's a half breed is not really a flaw so much as a power limitation. And not being able to clean isn't a valid flaw because even though you've put this on the list as something to remember her being bad at, there are no opportunities in the RP for her to ever demonstrate this flaw.

I'll need to ask you to please consider what are two more valid flaws that fit with the character and list them up in the place of not having strong powers or being able to clean. It's fine to keep those as part of her extra information though.


- her powers are super strong and super vague. A lot of earlier characters got away with this and you definitely haven't abused this at all but for the sake of consistency, I will need you to go ahead and detail her powers a little more, adding in limitations. For instance, what can her telekinesis do? Move objects? How big? What type of things can she heal? what are the draw backs to doing this? And since we don't allow any characters to have total control over an element, you'll need to explain exactly what her control of water consists of.

Especially since it seems you want her to use them more, we're going to need a lot of details on what exactly she can do.



Erin Rachel:

- I haven't really seen any of her flaws appear in the RP aside from her being maybe a little strict. So you'll need to focus more on that. But the main issue is that you just haven't posted for her enough. Because she's a teacher, this is a major issue. The mythology class is frequently left without anything to do, or we have to call a substitute character in.

The thing is that not posting a lot is fine as long as you don't have a teacher character. I am honestly going to strongly recommend that you retire Erin unless you feel you're going to start posting enough that she will be present for class most of the time. No one is here all the time but if your schedule doesn't allow you to post in time for class (like getting in one post just as everyone else is going to bed for that day) or if you can't ensure you'll be online enough to have her show up to teach, you really need to step aside and let someone else take over the class.

One of the requirements for teachers was that the person had to be able to have good attendance in the RP. It's fine if your students don't post much but it gets really awkward when it's a teacher. So if you really think you'll be able to start posting more, it's fine to keep her. But if you don't think you can, please consider turning the class over to someone else.

We've had several people in the past who had to do this and we will all understand completely if you do! If you choose to keep her, but she ends up continuing to have poor attendance, we will remove her from the RP though.

Caroline Andrews:

I didn't see anything that needed to be changed about her.

Please be sure you let us know when you've made adjustments!

No worries--I know everyone gets busy sometimes. WE can wait on making a decision about Erin.

For Juliet...well, a person is still kind of a large object to be able to move. I think if you allow her to be able to lift people, you need to give the ability a drawback or negative consequence when she uses it for something like that. All strong powers should have a balance of a negative drawback to using it. I would recommend avoiding "she gets tired" since really, getting tired is kind of a natural consequence of doing any kind of work and is kind of a given. It needs to be more significant than that.


As I said before, not having wings because she's a halfbreed is not a valid flaw. Unfortunately, I can't really accept "lies at times" because lets face it, everyone does that. There's not a person alive who doesn't lie or bend the truth occasionally. That's a flaw, yes, but it's kind of a normal thing that everyone does and we're looking for notable flaws--flaws that stand out from the other characters. Clumsy is not a flaw we accept at all so unfortunately you can't use that one.

But remember flaws are pervasive issues. They aren't things that happen 'sometimes" or "in some ways" --they are things that are all the time and are ingrained into the person's being and personality. If you check the resource subforum, we have a great thread on character flaws. I highly recommending giving it at look as it can be really useful for coming up with good flaws for your characters! ^_^

The flaws are fine. But getting tired is not a valid draw back to using her power. I understand that this is very commonly used (though that's one of the problems) but if you think about it, getting tired is a very natural consequence of exerting yourself.

Do you consider it a real limitation that you get tired when you run? Or get tired when you look at a computer for too long? or get tired just from being awake? Not really, right?

For that reason, unless the tiredness includes brain embolisms or something, it's not really abnormal. When I say a power should have a drawback, I mean something that makes her not over-use it. Tiredness just isn't a good enough draw people. Too many times, people have their character go above and beyond what they should be able to do and it's only after the action is over that they're suddenly super-tired. it just kind of gets abused. D= So consider a more reasonable drawback--like brain crushing migraines or something that is more measurable than 'almost fainting' tiredness. =3

(Sorry to be so picky on this but we're trying to get everyone at the same level of consistency with the restrictions on their powers and I'm trying to steer everyone away from using tiredness as a limitation). ^^