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Post by BloodValkyrie on Mar 28, 2012 10:58:52 GMT -5
Well...remember, I was switching with you during the MIVE arc, so that's partially my fault too...
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Post by SlvrNight on Mar 28, 2012 11:02:01 GMT -5
Krizno beat the shit outta Bastille. That's all I need to know. OH RIGHT!! I totally forgot! He did! He actually beat the living crap out of him. The only reason Krizno had to leave was because that wolfen guy showed up for backup, but Bastille was already down by then. I still remember the song that played for that too. That Guilty Gear song with...the word "flag" in the title...
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Post by deathsentence on Mar 28, 2012 12:14:16 GMT -5
Keep the Flag Flying - Order Sol vs. Ky.
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Post by SlvrNight on Mar 28, 2012 12:35:50 GMT -5
THERE WE GO!
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Post by BloodValkyrie on Mar 28, 2012 12:52:04 GMT -5
I honestly wish I had seen that fight. Sounds pretty interesting. Especially with that music lol.
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Post by SlvrNight on Mar 28, 2012 13:46:57 GMT -5
Oh, I totally forgot about the maids...
Success!!
Minu was a success for me. The maids were created to be NPCs in Suzuki's mansion, with Minu being the unofficial "leader" of the group. Her sexual relationship with Suzuki was a source of a few humorous moments, especially with Efreet later on. I had planned on giving each maid their own mini-arc based upon some sort of issue they had. Minu's would have been her obsession with sex and what caused it. However this was dropped since I viewed it as being too cliche. Once Tok brought Vastion in though, I planned on bringing Minu back after the MIVE arc, with her becoming close to him. Whether or not they went beyond friends depended on what happened. Minu served her purpose as an NPC character rather effectively, but I had no long-term goal with her when she became a full character. Was pretty cool how she fought Paracelcus (pretty sure spelled that wrong) along with the others though, despite her getting seriously injured. She also gradually developed feelings for Azarel, which happened completely by accident. At first she was merely being nice to him, but as the RP went on, I started looking back and I realized was actually subconsciously making her fall for him. Then I just sort of threw her at him, but mean old Azarel rejected our adorable purple maid. His death then drove her insane and she disappeared. Her re-appearance would have depicted her with her mind practically gone, similar to Caska in Berserk. It would have been up to mainly Vastion to restore her.
Izuma was, by far, the biggest success out of the three females. She was a genius and expert medic, which allowed for several small little plotlines and some big ones to happen. Izuma created Carl's new body after his "death" against Krizno. She also periodicaly healed injured heroes (eat your heart out Tael : D). Izuma started out as a fairly cool and collected woman, but gradually began to grow more and more obsessed with her scientific work. Her...relationship...with Jade proved to slow down her plight into insanity, but when she began working as a full-time scientist in Kyril after the timeskip she started losing it again. Then came the MIVE arc, which I will not speak of anymore.
Unsure...
Suna. She was the chef of a mansion that had a magic fridge with infinite food. She also had a massive crush on Noki (who rejected her for Eria...tsk, tsk. Such a loss.) and a messed up psyche protected by a stand-like golem that knocked Azarel out of her mind when he tried looking into it. Her screwed up mind was going to be an arc but I ended up scrapping the idea. Suna was extremely useless besides being hit on by Zelos. The two eventually got into a relationhip (yes, she became involved with a character from a video game stfu) which wasn't too bad. I also remember Zelos hitting on Sapphire when they passed one another on the street. Sapphire went and told Suna and the emerald chef got annoyed with her lover. Lots of make-up sex happened afterwards.
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Post by Shin RyuKen on Mar 28, 2012 13:59:37 GMT -5
Sollius died during the final battle of this arc. Which means it was my fault. I hate my life. that wasn't really your fault though : / plus we were REALLY damn close to defeating Izuma and finishing the arc. people were just too lazy and spontaneously decided that ethona was worth investing all of our time into(we all know what happened to that though)
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Post by SlvrNight on Mar 28, 2012 14:56:21 GMT -5
True. I just feel that if I had somehow made the arc more interesting though then people wouldn't have gotten lazy and bored with it.
Also, I'm reading through Ankaa on the previous forum before this one. The Greed's Pub one. It makes me miss that RP...it was going so well in the beginning. Alen was fighting Hate, Carl and Krizno were confronting Aire, etc. Really makes me sad it's dead now.
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Post by Jisui on Apr 11, 2012 22:36:02 GMT -5
Reading this thread... makes me realize I didn't really touch on any of the true disappointments I had other then Ankaa. I'll bump this and give a fuller list of my characters, just to round them all up. I focused on the successful a lot last time, but I realized... a lot of my characters really do suck ass. Successful: Veran: Despite Veran not getting much screen time other then a short arc in Sollius, the smart-alec genius of a kid became one of my favorite characters to RP with. He arrived before the group assaulted Altair's compound, and basically insulted all of them and ridiculed them for not wanting to accept his help. He also managed to be an excellent foil/rival for Slvr's character Carl, and many fun times were had using Veran to piss him off : D Eventually Carl transformed into one of his forms out of sheer rage of his trolling ability, and the two even had a short fight before it was broken up. Anyway, for the actual assault, Veran ended up helping them take out the defenses of the compound, and even helped in defeating Altair himself, before teleporting away before the group fought Parmesan Cheese. For the entirety of the time I used him, I loved his biting, sarcastic remarks and smart-alec answers, he always seemed to have something snarky to say to the others. He does end up getting his ass kicked by Elesia, but I liked him enough to make a future version of him in the later Sollius (while I was in vacation in Vietnam). This version will be even more bitter then his younger self, on account of his teacher, Elise, seemingly abandoning him. Although it was unfortunate I didn't get to use him, I'd call him successful if only for the reason that I enjoyed using him. Ziel: I had a couple of different incarnations of this guy, but in most, he's lazy, relaxed and brandishes a fan in battle. He's a wind caller/wind mage in every reincarnation he's in, and he usually uses a fan to call these winds down to battle (except one instance where he used a giant crossbow). Ziel was a lazy sunnuvabish who detested guarding Cheese's character, Zane, and had a bitter prejudice against Petra for one reason or another (usually he's supporting the dragoons in his backstories). I'm not really sure why, but I liked Ziel, even though he was fated to die in every RP with Zane. He was fun to use, I liked his concept, and he had a good dynamic with Zane. It was nice, if not short. Unfortunately... that's really all I can think of for successes barring the Jin trio. The other section on the other hand... Disappointments (Pretty much everyone else): Ariosh: God, what the fawk? I made this guy a LONG time a go. bacl when we still RP'd with Somedude, but man, could I have ripped this guy from Castlevania any harder? Let's review: 1: His theme song is from castlevania. 2: He uses a whip called "Vampire Judgement" (Ugh). 3: He has an ability called Holy Cross Shield, which summons a bunch of crosses and damages everyone around it.What makes this a damn shame is that his concept had promise. Back when Tael had his first human victim as a vampire, Ariosh's mom turned out to be the victim. Now he wants some vengeance. It was a simple plot that could have been improved, but the character just made me feel guilty looking at him now that I look at him. Thank god Somedude's inactivity inadvertently killed him off. But wait, there's more... Elena: Ariosh's partner, based on Arcueid from Tsukihime somewhat. She was a little better, since she had her own element and abilities surrounding that element, but it was still pretty obvious... and her optimistic, buoyant personality just made the similarities all too perfect. Forsaken Angels: This includes Dest, Luci and Shizuka. To be honest, it's not like their concepts were bad, it was just so... stocked. Maybe if I had done it better, they would be more interesting characters, but they really aren't that interesting, or even got much screen time. Luci got the most screen time in a duel against Bon, and her personality didn't even come out the way I wanted it to in that fight. Shizuka was just there to get slapped by Dest apparently, and Dest, while everyone liked him, didn't have very much to explain his motives and back story at all (although to be fair, the RP did end before I could expand on it). The whole concept of Dest was undeniably bishonen and kewl, but there was a lot of potential I could have used better. Tsuki: He kinda ended up on both lists. I liked him overall, but unfortunately he's marred by the ungodly abomination I made him in Sollius as "Tsuki Tohsatsu". Tsuki found his old heritage as an assassin then, and basically went nuts and attacked everyone in an unbelievably OOC scene, and one that in my opinion, ruined his character somewhat. I thought I would like the way he was going with that direction, but it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Not everyone has to be a murderer or a villain, and being one doesn't add any layers of depths to your characters, which I found out through that experiment. Takai: "Crimson Crown- A mounted crossbow on Takai's arm. It has a deep, ornate red and black design with a viscous looking, nearly jagged string for nocking arrows. It only appears when the red cross on above Takai's hand glows a deep red, symbolizing his sorrow for Jin. The crossbow is extremely powerful, said to launch arrows at a speed of 500 miles per hour... this crushes anyone foolish enough trying to stop it with a metal shield or such. Takai's firing rate with Crimson Crown is said to be 34 arrows per second..."Feel free to laugh at me while reading that. He was too cliche of a concept, although I did make him as my very first character in Sollius, as the generic thief. Takai, many people forget, was in fact a Whitemane however, and I wish I established Tael's relationship with him clearer before Takai's death by the hands of a maverick, Azarel-douchebag mode, and some random guy who could suck life energy.
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Post by Tokrochiru on Jun 27, 2012 22:36:32 GMT -5
Successes
Rean: I never really had much of a unique style before I came up with the Ankaa rendition of Rean. There was Vastion and Tokromar, but those were only two characters, and even then, they never really went anywhere. Rean was a design that quickly became popular amongst all of you because the design was off-the-wall, unexpected, and original. I may be wrong, but I think Rean was one of our first "rebellious urban punk" character designs. Eventually, other designs similar to his came about, including Lucii and Cathan. I like to think that with Rean, I inspired a new kind of character. Not a character with dark powers or any sort of curse. He was simply a talented and ambitious young adult with a lot of skill, and maybe an overpowered weapon. It wasn't until I decided to give him some sort of grand destiny that he became steadily less interesting. Still, I like to think Rean made a heavily positive impact on our RPing as a whole. I'd like to reinvent him someday, maybe in a story, and get some closure with his character design.
Disappointments
Mosharu: Mosharu's development suffered from my own naivety as a writer. I meant him to be some sort of uber crazy badass, but I feel that I got way too caught up in ensuring that everyone knew he was a badass, and didn't focus enough on his actual character. He was his gimmick and nothing more. I've actually designed a more fleshed out spiritual successor to Mosharu named Shirotaro, but I have yet to use him in anything.
The Kyril Grimlocke Corps: This was a failure not for story reasons, but because I simply took too many liberties with them. Despite giving them some of the best writing I've ever written, I still botched them because I assumed that everyone would be okay with everything that I tried to do, and that no one would ever complain about me. My hope is that when and if I ever use the Grimlocke Corps or its general concept again, I'll take into account other players' desires, and not simply put myself first.
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Post by Greed on Jun 27, 2012 23:53:20 GMT -5
Successes
Aire - Throughout almost every single RP, Aire is someone who's be a constant main, trademark character for me, and is someone I use even if no one else agrees with the decision to keep bringing old characters back. In each incarnation past Sollius, there's been something different enough about her to set her apart from her old character. In Sollius, she formed this really... unusual, and really great friendship with Carl, Suzuki, and Zephyr. In Ethona, she ALMOST took down that bastard Jet... which really, that would have made her the best thing ever.But in Ankaa, she became something I had been trying to move towards... she was monster trying to regain whatever scraps of humanity that she could. And now, she's someone who was a human to begin with at the start of the RP, and changed during it, and her personality changed to reflect everything that she'd been through. Aire is, without a doubt, one of my most successful characters in the RP. I'm not going to both going into her failed incarnations, because those were... fairly obvious.
Kali - Something about this girl is just clicking, every time I use her. She's unusual, this strange octopus girl roaming the world, even if the majority of people don't really like her race. She doesn't have a tragic, or deep backstory like many other characters; she simply wants to see the world, and now, wants to protect those people she's grown fond of. Its a simple thing, but for her character, it works. Besides, the tentacle jokes are just way too much fun.
Failures
Siphon (Ethona) - Oh boy. I've gone on rants about this one, I'm certain I have. This is a character I wanted to be a badass, so so much, and it just didn't happen... for all the wrong reasons. Ethona's Siphon was a demon warlord who rose through the ranks, and raised a warrior of a daughter, Ethona's version of Marina Sea. It all fell apart when he actually had to contest with anything made by Lost, however. His fight with Taku went nowhere fast because Marina got captured, but even further than that, he was faced with an almost impossible enemy in the form of stick men demon mooks, specifically designed by Lost to combat all of Siphon's strengths. Siphon is eventually left accomplishing nothing while having the entire point of his character ruined in a, in my opinion, utterly bullshit way, and the RP died sometime after he was forced to become princess Luna's bodyguard. And for that reason, among so many others, I do not mourn Ethona's death.
Arlee and Cael Zealan - Easily my least used characters, and for good reason; I simply don't know what to do with them. Arlee's original design came from Soul Calibur 3's CaS mode, as did Cael's. And truthfully, that's all there is to them; a character design. I've never found a backstory or anything for them that I loved, and they just ended up being these really neat designs that never go anywhere. The Aren race sprung up out of these two, and that, as we all know, became something of a mess in the old Kyril. They fail for me, because they failed at having anything resembling having a coherent story in the first place.
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Post by Shin RyuKen on Jul 1, 2012 21:35:14 GMT -5
Mosharu: Mosharu's development suffered from my own naivety as a writer. I meant him to be some sort of uber crazy badass, but I feel that I got way too caught up in ensuring that everyone knew he was a badass, and didn't focus enough on his actual character. He was his gimmick and nothing more. I've actually designed a more fleshed out spiritual successor to Mosharu named Shirotaro, but I have yet to use him in anything. tok...i feel like that was your problem with duster too haha
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Post by Shin RyuKen on Aug 1, 2013 2:01:05 GMT -5
Figured I would bump this with a much needed update.
Successes: Vydunas: When we were all starting out as RPers, I didn't settle on the idea of doing more than I intended. To me, RPs were fun hobby where I could have some lead character go around and enjoy all sorts of little shenanigans with other players. It took me a while to realize that this kind of interaction, especially with someone like Azarel, was no more undeveloped than the early days of Gaia Online. It also took me a while to really settle on the thought that I needed to be able to do more. Other players were developing large-scale storylines and characters with cogent backgrounds. Azarel was sitting there being an unbridled mess of ideas that became less of a character and more of a common problem that clung to big events, thinking its presence was doing good for people. Azarel was the RP's Xavier: Renegade Angel. Nothing about him is unified as a character; he is a symbol of a lower consciousness through the RPer, specifically myself.
When Ankaa came into fruition, I realized that despite RPing being a hobby, I wanted to be taken seriously. I wanted to prove to other people that I was capable of telling a story. I wanted to prove that I could have a consistent character that was relevant to the plot and interacted with other people. Alen was the result. I've already described in a prior post my thoughts on him, but to summarize: He is in many ways an experimentation. He is so much of a different archetype than the type I'm used to conveying that he became overbearing as a character. He is an archetype of a character I didn't want to be.
Some of the best characters I've ever seen in the RP have reflected traits the RPer would see in themselves. I don't mean the character itself should be an extension of the RPer, but the character in and of itself is a collection of experiences and qualities given written form through the RPer's own characterization. Naturally, the personality traits conveyed through the character should be something the RPer itself is comfortable with. Alen was a strange case in which he had a consistent personality and it saw development and potential, but he also had a personality I realized that I didn't enjoy using much. It didn't seem fitting to have an overcompensating asshole serve as my 'protagonist.'
This long introduction serves to explain where my inspiration for Vydunas came from. His story can be reduced to simple hero's journey conventions, but I wanted to make a character I could actually relate to. I wasn't going for a big philosophical statement or a character satire. I wanted to make a decent goddamn character. A guy who's honestly like any other ordinary human being, with all the potential to be an emerging leader. As Sougenmou progressed, we saw his potential as a leader grow. But we also saw his consistency as a character shine through as well. Even though he was the character to bring the team together to go to Landiel, he's also the cause of the big split as he goes off to pursue his own goals and help himself. He's a character that can easily change a group dynamic while being able to maintain his role in his own story.
Most importantly, Vydunas does more than keep a stable personal story. He's one that can relate it back to other characters and constantly connect it to his current situation. He's reasonable, personable, rational, and he has a character I can see within myself. Vydunas seems to be my most well received character for fairly obvious reasons, and I am by all means willing to accept that. I do more with him than I've done with a lot of RP characters I've ever done with few exceptions like Raziel. Vydunas set a standard I can only improve from as an RPer.
Unsure: Cathan and Denise: Honestly, I feel differently about Cathan and Denise about other characters I was uncertain about in the past. This is inherently because, well, I'm still using Cathan and Denise, so they're not really done as characters. They can only keep going from here. But I don't know if the way I'm using them is something that I'm satisfied by. To backtrack a little bit, when they were first introduced, they were almost like an obligatory RP answer to Team Rocket. In the blue corner, we had Cathan Gautz, a peppy and energetic head agent in Gregor Samsa with an abominable hairdo and a pretty distinct set of emotions he seems to be capable only of: "OHHHHH YEAHHHHHHHH" and "SHEMHAZAI SUCKS" and "SHUT UP DENISE." He fits your goofy teenage surfer bro archetype to the same effect as the likes of Terry Bogard and Zell Dincht, except he likes to shock people instead of burn the shit out of them. Born a Landiel street rat, he turned to the rebellion for a chance at redemption from his life in the slums after his father was mysteriously drafted into the Landiel military. And for those of you who paid attention to the red corner, we have Denise, his edgy and overly self-conscious sidekick who spends half of her time grimacing over how stupid Cathan is, and the other half of it trying to look better than him. Her father, a squadron leader right from the get-go, pushed her to join the Landiel military with him as one of the few female soldiers in the army; naturally, she defected from the military quickly, eventually leading her to join Gregor Samsa to reform the military policy and cause tangible change in the government that would necessitate a less burdensome military presence elsewhere. This marks their next few years of being trained high agents in Gregor Samsa, leading up to the events of Sougenmou.
A little fun fact, but Cathan and Denise were actually inspired off of a story I wrote. I don't know where I put it exactly, but one day in my spare time I had the creative urge to write a short story about characters I've never used before, and challenge myself as a writer to convey different personalities, different perspectives, and possibly even develop existing stories. Naturally, Cathan and Denise came about from this story. It told the story of their misadventures through the underground labyrinth leading to the gentrified innermost region of a kingdom conglomerate revealed to be Landiel. The story was driven primarily by their interaction with each other and their dysfunctional partner dynamic, which revolved around Cathan saying things that Denise tried to nitpick at. It was pretty funny, but there wasn't a whole lot going on up until the very end, when they were surrounded by soldiers and started taking each other more seriously. Denise, however, underwent a lot of changes to fit her Sougenmou incarnation. Her original name was Eiselia, which I figured was a little too dignified for her, and she was a little more exaggerated than her Sougenmou persona, with an ability that was a Scythe Hell spoof that fired a volley of energy blasts everywhere. When she became a Sougenmou character I made her personality flaws more apparent, particularly her need to be more serious and mature than she has to be in order to cover up her subtle immaturity. The dysfunctional duo idea, however, carried over.
I like them because they are, just as they started, exercises in character portrayal in RPs. Cathan is my attempt at doing a more off-the-wall teenage character, and Denise is more of an attempt to portray a female in an RP, because I basically never do that. I'm concerned for them because their angle is starting to change. Up to this point in Sougenmou, they pretty much functioned as two sides of the same coin, a dysfunctional pair that couldn't really fend off one another even if they wanted to. However, it's been a while and we've gotten no perspective on their backstory, and they're reaching a breaking point where the events of Sougenmou past this will change them as characters, particularly because of the recent development that got Denise rendered unconscious and Cathan forced to take responsibility and keep his comrade safe. The ambition is surpassing the perspective and vision of the characters and unfamiliar situations are thrown at them before we are given more insight into their personal stories. I really wanted to do more with them and I hope the RP will give me that opportunity, because I certainly enjoy using them despite how insignificant they seem in the greater scope of the RP storyline.
Disappointments:
Batman Arkadi: I have a love-hate relationship with Arkadi. He's probably my favorite bio and character design ever made, and popular reception of him seems to reflect this. However, I also did virtually nothing with him. The way his story played out in Marble was that he was going to pursue an education and slowly eke out of what his father expected of his future, while simultaneously investigating the identity of Herr Judge, the entity that conferred the Judge-Kaiser armor upon him. It was a premise that had a lot of room for growth, with his personality as a normal person kind of softspoken in the beginning, separated from his Judge-Kaiser self at night, which was courageous and heroic. The way it was supposed to play out in Marble was that his normal personality would begin to overlap with his Judge-Kaiser persona, such that his personal strength would come more from himself, and less from his secret identity, which is where he would come to discover what Herr Judge really was. He was, in many ways, an interesting contrast to Kyle Matua, his roommate, who had personal strength but feared it, as opposed to Arkadi himself, who was afraid because he lacked personal strength of his own.
So he was a pretty cool character, and his whole premise was just really unique and had plenty of leeway to develop. So what happened? To put it simply, Marble Labyrinth collapsed in on itself as an RP. It wasn't that Arkadi failed as a character, virtually everyone sort of failed because the RP itself did not move on past the first night of plot. Perhaps I'm exaggerating in that sense by saying that everyone took the fall, but I took it pretty personally, because I really liked Arkadi as a character concept, and it felt that he was wasted on an RP that died as quickly as Marble did. His concept satisfied me, but I wanted to go much further with it, and the death of the RP prevented that. Maybe he will see a relapse of some sort in another RP setting, but it wouldn't be the same as how he was implemented in Marble.
Alfonso (Sougenmou) - Okay, what the hell. Alfonso is on TWO lists? To be fair though, the Alfonso I'm specifically talking about here is the Sougenmou version, as opposed to the Kyril version. Unlike most of my characters following the beginning of the Sougenmou era, Alfonso breaks little new ground. This is because Alfonso is pretty much a cameo appearance. He was already in Kyril, and little has changed about him; he's an overly aggressive and loud business mogul who inherited his family's riches and pretty much always has something to say about filing his taxes. Alfonso is a caricature in and of himself based around a real kind of personality, and a real kind of person. Unlike other RP character who portray eccentric personas with conventional personalities, Alfonso portrays a conventional persona with an eccentric personality. The fire and Hulk powers have nothing to do with it.
But the fact that he served as this kind of caricature is exactly why he fails as a character in Sougenmou. In Kyril, he was pretty much there to be a comic relief character. The way we told our RPs was different, as it hailed from a time where we didn't know how to spread our characters out, so we had clumps of anywhere from six to ten people at once. As a result, even Alfonso could find a way into the main cast, and we forgave his story inconsistencies for the comic relief he offers. Things have changed since then. Unlike in Kyril, Alfonso's comic relief role is reprised for a portrayal that tries to integrate him into the story and be more serious. His inherently comedic role prevents him from doing anything big aside from serving as a pitstop to give Vydunas information. I failed in giving him purpose and giving his company a more relevant role in the story, but from the way things in Sougenmou played, there's no way that'll work out. There's no reason it should, for that matter. Alfonso is a grand example of me getting too ahead of myself by reimposing an old character I used to enjoy using in an RP that demonstrated my growth as an RPer. His existence in Sougenmou is counterproductive. He may be funny, but he doesn't warrant a bio, or anything more than an NPC cameo.
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Post by Greed on Aug 1, 2013 2:41:45 GMT -5
I suppose a minor update wouldn't hurt...
Success
Isolde (Post Sougenmou Revival) - I feel like I've done this one a favor with SRK's past advice. Isolde was an odd character to begin with, working off a plot that Chaos was going to do... and promptly abandoned, as is par for the course with him. As such, she went through radical changes, and I was completely half-assing my posts with her for quite a while as a result. So why is she in the success category now?
I feel like I achieved something finally concrete with her, now. Since the revival of Sougenmou, she's kept a consistent tone and character, and I felt I've taken her a long way towards actually being likable in a relatively short time. While its not much at this point, there's a drastic feeling of improvement to her as far as I'm concerned.
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Post by Tokrochiru on Aug 1, 2013 3:52:32 GMT -5
Sure, I'll join in
SUCCESS
Grant Kattler: I admit, when I first thought up Grant Kattler, I wasn't really aiming to tread any new ground. Grant was essentially created from recycled bits of various characters I never got to use much if at all, including both my Kyril and Ethona versions of Walter Graceland, the Ark Ethos version of Duster, and Xerxes from Ankaa. I really didn't treat him seriously at first, probably because I didn't treat Sougenmou seriously. I had serious doubts that Sougenmou was going to stick around due to its lack of structure. However, not long after participating in Sougen, I found motivation to put more effort into his character developement.
It turned out that recycling all those character elements contributed positively to his character rather than negatively. Because I matured since the creation of Grant's predecessors, I realized what pieces were worth keeping and which ones were garbage. For example, I thought I really had something with Kyril Walter's more adult motivations and personality. Up until I conceptualized him, I only made characters that could only really function in the realm of a shounen manga. On the other hand, I also hated how my protagonist characters never bore any personal responsibility for their own actions, and they were justified in everything they did.
The end result was a mature character that was, without a doubt, flawed. He still suffered from the whole cliche "traumatic backstory" concept that we were having trouble breaking away from, but unlike most of our characters who followed that trend, Grant wasn't a victim of someone else's actions. On the contrary, almost all the suffering he's gone through is either debatably or certainly his own fault. He screwed up, plain and simple. He realizes this, and wants to make up for it. Unfortunately, because he's so desperate to rectify his own mistakes, he can lose sight of what's important and end up doing more harm than good. I like to think his battle with Cathan and Denise is evidence of this.
Grant is also one of the few successful characters I've created that is shrouded in mystery. There's a lot that hasn't been revealed about him yet. You guys are pretty much always excited to hear anything new about Grant, which pleases me. The fact that Grant is simultaneously (according to you guys) flawed, sympathetic, intelligent, and intriguing to learn about makes me think that Grant might be one of the best characters I've ever made.
FAILURE
Kyle Matua: Literally flawed for all the exact same reasons that SRK pointed out for Arkadi. Not really worth elaborating on because of that. I will say that it's slightly different because I bare more responsibility for Kyle's failure than SRK does for Arkadi's failure, since I was running Marble Labyrinth. While as a whole, I don't view Marble Labyrinth as a complete failure (it was a worthwhile experiment that taught me many things), I'm still pretty disappointed that Kyle ended up not being developed further. Just like Chad Yasutora from Bleach.
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