The Xavier Institute Mod Journal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
astonishing_xmods) wrote2014-08-24 06:54 pm
astonishing_xmods) wrote2014-08-24 06:54 pm
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APPLICATION
BEFORE YOU APP please make certain you have read over the HISTORY, RULES, and FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS to assure you have a complete understanding of the game, its setting, and what is expected of you as a player. Thank you.
PLAYER INFORMATION
CHARACTER INFORMATION
SAMPLES
APPLICATIONS ARE CURRENTLY OPEN
PLAYER INFORMATION
PLAYER: Your name, as in you the player
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: You must be at least 16 to join this game
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: Self-explanatory
CONTACT: Plurk, aim, OOC journal, or just set up for private messaging, the mods need some way to contact you.
CHARACTERS PLAYED: The names and journals of any characters you already play in the game.
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Your character's name
CANON: What your character comes from
CANON REFERENCE: Any info links will be accepted here. If apping an OC, this doesn't really apply to you.
AGE: Your character's age in this AU. If it differs from their canon age, please make note of it here as well.
GENDER: Your character's gender in this AU. If it differs from their canon gender, please make note of it here as well
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: This should match what is on your reserve.
APPEARANCE: This does not need to be a detailed section. A picture and/or short description is all that's really needed. However, if you're apping an OC, we'd like at least a little more thought put into this section. IF THERE ARE ANY MAJOR PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE AU AND THE ORIGINAL, THEY SHOULD BE NOTED HERE.
PERSONALITY: We would like at least four paragraphs here. If you can do more, that's great, but anything less will be given an automatic revision. What we want here are the ins and outs of the character. Their motivations, personal strengths, and weaknesses. What makes them tick, so to speak. This is not a history section. If at all possible, please back up major personality points with canon examples. Site canon whenever possible. If there are some differences in the personality due to the AU nature of the game, please note them here, but remember that your character's personality cannot be too drastically different. The core character should remain the same.
POWERS/ABILITIES: Please give a detailed explanation of your character's mutant powers here. Literal strengths, weaknesses, and the upward limit of their ability. Spare nothing here, as we will be scrutinizing this section heavily. If you need to link wikipedia for scientific explanations and whatnot, you are free to do so. Remember, any multiple powers need to be related in some way to the core ability. The only exception to this rule are physical mutations. For example, Nightcrawler can teleport, but he's also a fuzzy blue devil man who can scale walls. These two are not related, but because his devil nature is a physical mutation, it would be allowed.
AU HISTORY: This is the meat of the AU. We want a detailed history of their character. Their early life, how they came to discover they were a mutant, and what lead them to the institute. If they've been here awhile, we'd like to know what they've done since coming to Xavier. If they're a returning character, we want to fill in the gap between when they were here last and now. Once again, spare no detail. There is no hard limit on how long this needs to be, but if we feel it is too barebones, there will be a revision, so please do what you can. HOWEVER it should be noted that there is such a thing as too much information as well. Please do not make your history overly long or bogged down in ultimately unimportant information. Be kind to the mods reviewing your app.
SAMPLES
NETWORK SAMPLE: You may link from an outside source, either our Test Drive or other places, but they MUST be set in the game. An acceptable linked sample for this prompt must be have at least seven comments from YOUR character in the linked thread.
This is basically to show off character voice in the form of a network post. It can be text, vocal, or video. We want at least some dialog, though in cases of less talkative characters, we are willing to accept character 'voice' in more subtle ways. Make it work!
LOG SAMPLE: You may link from an outside source, either our Test Drive or other places, but they MUST be set in the game. An acceptable linked sample for this prompt must be have at least seven comments from YOUR character in the linked thread.
This is an example of your ability to write the character's introspection. Their thoughts, feelings, and reactions to a given situation. Get inside their head. Remember to show, not tell. These are off network, what would normally go in the log community. You do not necessarily need to write this prose style, and can do a bracket style if you choose. But we still need to see a healthy amount of introspection.
Re: REJECTED
1 - Linking to something about Andellen - this... is actually hard. Of all his race who are named and ever speak, I think Andellen has the second fewest lines in the series - after Samaraan. What we learn about Andellen we learn from small moments here and there that can be easily missed on fast read, and make little to no sense out of context.
And context is precisely why he will not work. Having his original context in my mind was part of why I failed to see him properly in the light of this context.
2 - The powers. These powers are typical of all his race. The grace of movement, the natural mental shields that keep out even the strongest of the mind-readers on their world (unless that one happens to have their name, which they guard more dearly than life itself and which has no ready equivalent in this AU), their eyes, their beauty, it is all what makes them... them. But in hindsight, what balances them, what keeps them from sue/stu territory is that they are a race, and a populous one at that. They balance EACH OTHER. To an human infant, to a toddler, a human adult is sueish. We can theoretically drive, we can walk without falling, we decide what to eat when and can cook it ourselves. We might have this magic thing called money that makes other people bring the food TO US! We have telephones and can turn on the lights and fix broken things and we know santa, and the tooth fairy! But among other adults, none of this is exceptional. So it is with the Barrani. They all look more or less the same, so they have no measure of individual beauty, and they do not covet it or value it. They all have that grace, so while they can improve, really not by much and each other of their kind is likely to be their match. What they value are their games, their lies, their deceptions, the choices they make that make them them. I saw them as individuals within their race, and when I sat to write the powers, I forgot I was writing one... without the many. So I wrote what typified all members of his race, thinking I had picked one of the least powerful of them, and forgetting that without others of his race to clash against, that still left him too blasted strong.
As to blocking out an Omega level telepath, that comes in part from his races' relationship to the mind readers of his world, but also to my experience of massive RPs in other venues. Mostly when I have played in PBeMs or message board Rps with more than a half dozen people, the power that is always always nerfed, above all others, is mind reading/mind control. I learned that the hard way playing a vampire in a Star Trek Rp who was posing as being a quarter Betazoid. I was allowed the character without complaint, but the first time I had her read someone's surface thoughts, I was read the riot act. After that, I watched, and noticed that mind reading when mentioned, was almost never used, except between someone's own characters. After that I only ever played mind readers in large settings when they were the type who never used the powers, or if I had someone for them to play off of. So even in a world set with Jean Grey and Charles Xavier, I had just worked under the presumption that mind reading was nerfed, and for that, I apologize.
I could not, and would not, rp him, or any other of his race without the mental shields, as their secrets are the whole of who they are. It is hard to play someone who defines his self worth by his ability to deceive, when deception can be undone in seconds, by someone who has the power, and the inclination, to remove deception. Honestly, the secrets and the plotting, the challenge of making someone firmly on Xavier's side that no one could quite trust... that no one could read or figure out... that was what appealed to me about playing Lord Andellen here. As I said, in hindsight, I agree with the rejection, he would not work.
What I do not understand, however, is the comment about color-changing eyes having a connection to suish/stuishness. IRL, I learned in High School that I can in fact change the size of my pupils and the color of my irises. I always thought it was a fun little thing that I could do, though the one too much effort, and the second too much pain, to be much worth it. As I am about as far from a sue myself as you can get (no Sue would ever spend so much time home sick as I do, or get injured so easily from doing so little x.x) I just sat and stared at that part of the comments, completely confused. So if you do happen to be reading this, and are willing to explain to me why color changing eyes are a mark of a Stu, I would honestly really love to know, because I would give it to a character as quirk without a second thought (though to date, I have not), and would love to understand that landmine before I decide if it is worth tossing myself over it or not.
3 - The history section - Yeah.... this was the first application I was working on (somehow missed the part where you could only submit 2 at a cycle, and I was trying to do all five at once), and I was nervous and frantic, and you may be able to tell by now... I tend to ramble and I am never QUITE sure what is and is not relevant. (I had an English teacher tell my parents once that if he gave me an assignment to write a short story about ketchup, I'd give in a novella about a day in the life of a tomato. The sad thing is, when they came back from parent teacher night and told me that... I wanted to WRITE that story x.x)
4 - Samples - I did look, some, at the others, but was afraid to do too much of that lest I a) spend too much time reading them and not actually finish writing any, and b) let them influence mine TOO much, and leave me writing their voices, not his. Hopefully I did better in this section with Tiamaris, who I did after.
Presuming Tiamaris gets in, I intend to apply at least 2 characters next cycle as well, because I love playing multi, and because I keep thnking of AUs and originals that would be fun in this sort of a world set. I will do my best to keep all of the Andellen and Tiamaris feedback in mind when I write/rework the sheets for next time, and also what I learn while playing Tiamaris in this RP, so that I app people more likely to fit well, and work well, and to be accepted.
Thank you for your time and patience, and I look forward to rping with you all soon!
Re: REJECTED
1.) We've had a few people who, seeing as there was no decent outside source of information on their character, write up some canon information themselves. In this case, what we'd mostly like to see is something that gives us context for the character you're apping--what brief bits of history you do know, what their role in the story is, etc. Part of the issue we had is that, while you can play multiple characters from the same canon here, you can't play characters that are closely related, and we had no way to determine how much involvement, if any, Tiamaris and Andellen had.
2.) Whether or not the abilities you gave him are canon isn't important for this discussion. The fact remains that this is an AU game, meaning things need to be altered and reworked to fit the setting. For example, I personally have considered applying for a character who, in canon, has enhanced strength, electricity generation, and animal communication as powers; if I were ever to go through with this, I would have to drop at least one of those powers, because they're not all related and therefore that power set isn't appropriate for the game.
If you felt that the mental shields are that important to Andellen's character, you should have focused on the mental shields as a base, possibly tweaking them into an ability that could mimic or approximate one or two of the other ones, or even just something that, while not exactly canon, kept the right "feel" for the character. We didn't object to the mental shields themselves--we objected to the strength of them.
Additionally, while "Sue/Stuishness" is not how I personally would have addressed the point myself, the fact remains that the way certain canon factors are presented in your app can be a red flag to mods and other players. I understand that things like the extreme attractiveness, the mood ring eyes, etc, are found in the character in their canon--but this isn't the character's canon. I apologize if I am being presumptuous with my assumption, but I'm under the impression that you're less familiar with how panfandom RP operates--since, well, you're new to DWRP, and most other roleplaying formats are not panfandom.
If you play a character that is the hero of their canon, you shouldn't bring them into a game expecting other people to treat them like the hero of the game. Similarly, if you're bringing in a minor character that it somehow exceptional in their own canon--like Andellen seems to be--you shouldn't bring them into a panfandom game expecting them to be the smartest, or prettiest, or whatever they were remarkable for in canon. Things like the color-changing eyes and the way the appearance section describes him made the mods question your grasp of this principle--especially when this is an AU game, meaning things can freely be toned down or dropped.
3.) Just keep in mind that we aren't only processing your app. I copy-and-pasted the history section into a word processing document, and altogether, it was 10 pages long and almost 7000 words. We had some other apps that came close to this, but that's really above and beyond what we're willing to comb through when we also have to read through personality, abilities, and samples in addition, on top of however many other apps we're processing. In the future, we would like to see a history section that hits the major points in as straightforward a manner as possible.
4.) The game will be here next month! I know you said you were rushing to get your apps done, but I really recommend taking the time to better acquaint yourself with our expectations before making another attempt.
Thank you for applying; we'll be looking over Tiamaris's revisions soon.