News

July 17, 2012: Enoby emerges from the blood-soaked shadows of Hogwarts' forbidden corners to officially join in our poking of a certain elephantine preppy man.

October 5, 2011: Spring cleaning.

July 17, 2011: After weeks of inactivity and a pretty epic smackdown, Ryuu takes his forum offline. Oh shucks.

4.1.09

FAQ: Character Sheets

As many posts on this will be about character sheets, I decided to write up another theorized FAQ.

How are character sheets graded?

Character sheets are graded on a 1-10 point scale, 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Ratings are usually whole or half numbers, so don't expect to see wacky decimals.

The rating is partly subjective, but they judge on the following loose guidelines:

  1. Originality
  2. How complete the character feels
  3. Logical flaws versus suspension of disbelief
  4. How well it fits into canon
  5. Brevity versus lack of detail



How do you judge originality?

Generally, with Ryuu, the issue is his habit of taking preexisting character appearances - and occasionally scraps of history - to create an "original" character.

If the character's appearance taken from a canon character, that's unoriginality.

Also, a lack of creativity is considered unoriginal, as with the lack of effort with Navi's character sheet and Domi's character sheet.



How do you judge logical flaws?

The reason I say "versus suspension of disbelief" is because there is a little wiggle-room. Most people wouldn't believe in an animated skeleton, but there's no problem having a skeleton character in a certain universe, like the Zelda universe or a Dungeons and Dragons universe, because there are elements to excuse such creatures.

An example would be Ryuu's golden armor. There isn't enough in the character sheet to make me willingly suspend my rational knowledge that states gold armor is completely illogical and unwise. Therefore, I judge against it.

Another example would be a medieval warrior wearing a sword on his back as opposed to at his waist. Technically, some historians would say that such wearing was not common in Europe. However, with longer swords, of which Europe had plenty, it does tend to make more sense for the care of the weapon and therefore I wouldn't judge against it.



How do you judge how well it fits into canon?

Not all character sheets for a fandom need to tie into major canon events or canon characters. However, the character sheet should help tie the character into the universe without adding too much non-canon information. Adding other kingdoms, given brief mention, would be acceptable within reason, but severely modifying things like core mythology - such as adding new major goddesses or another piece of the triforce as some fangirls seem to do - is a violation.

Likewise, if the character sheet reads as though it has no special connection to the fandom at all (as though it could be an original character for a different universe), then it would be judged against as well.



How do you judge brevity versus lack of detail?

This is probably the most subjective. Essentially, too much detail becomes tedious and sometimes painful to read. It's a character sheet to introduce your character to other role players. It should have essential information without being painful.

See: Character Sheet: Details for more on this.



Will you do Mary Sue tests for all characters?

Certainly not! The Mary Sue tests are for proof that a character is a Mary Sue and will only be done either when the person reviewing the character feels the character is close to being a sue or when the person is almost certain the character IS a sue.

While Ryuu's characters are, on average, irritating enough for us to be trying to critique them all, most of them are clearly not bad enough to be Mary Sues.

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