Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-25396609-20180128214516/@comment-25396609-20180220183349

Next up we have Piscean Waterbender with Gladys “Gladius” Olus Okay, this is going to be kind of a tough one for me to grade; but I’ll ATTEMPT to avoid my own personal beliefs get in the way.

1) Basic info: Name checks out on a technical level; at reading the name my first thought was “Wait is this based on Gladio from FFXV?” And if it had I would have given a net zero score right off the bat. That said, though allowable by CNR, that name is just…. Painful. Not sure if you’re trying too hard to allude to GLaDOS or not hard enough to bother being creative with it.

Now, the gender fluid thing…. This bothers me, for a few reasons, but the most relevant is that your logic for it falls flat right out of the gate. Yes, GLaDOS is a machine, and technically genderless, BUT that machine has a mind, uploaded into it from a human woman; Cave Johnson’s assistant Caroline. She identifies as female, and was in fact female before being placed into the GLaDOS supercomputer.

The nickname gladius, on that note, is just…. Flimsy at best.

Basic info score: 4/10

2) Appearance

Basics are fine, hair could use more details.

You describe a muscle cuirass in the weirdest most indirect way possible. You could have just said “silver-white muscle cuirass” and saved an entire sentence worth of description; confusing descriptions are a abd thing.

Wait just a second. For CASUAL WEAR this person wears a freakin’ cuirass? Honest to god body armor for casual outfit? I… have a number of questions, none of which are going to help your score. Oh, and metal greaves. Why? In what version of reality if half plate casual clothing?

And… a tank top, under a polo shirt?

This character is an affront to both fashion and basic logic when it comes to clothing.

Kudos on the jewelry though, it’s a half-decent nod to the personality cores. (with the only issue being that tucking a necklace inside the style of armor would be SUPREMELY uncomfortable.) 10/20

3) Characteristics Background Mkay…. What kind of elementary school did Holly work at that she could be put into a wheelchair by an accident?

Oscar was fighting Beowolves before the Ozpin thing happened. He is a scrawny 15 year old. How can a bunch of adults armed with weapons not fight off a pack?

Nope, not buying it. Grimm don’t stop killing you just because you’re unconcious (Plus our emotions don’t just stop when they fall asleep, nightmares and dreams are HEAVILY influenced by our concious emotional state). They kill you until you die.

Character saved by plot convenience. +1 sin.

And now there’s a rich grandma for some reason. Why were they living in the middle of nowhere before this? Especially after Holly was stuck in a wheelchair?

I’m going to pause reading and scoring the story for a minute; your grammar and sentence flow are atrocious. Attempting to read this character literally triggered the return of migraine I had finally gotten rid of after two and a half months.

At this point I’m probably going to devolve more into complaining about poor formatting (reading on google docs by the way). Your paragraphs are crammed absurdly tightly together, and the sentences just blur together to the point I physically cannot focus on one line long enough to read it. Every time I blink I lose my place. Normally, I prefer to judge a character based on its own merits; but I am struggling to read it so I CAN judge by content.

ANYWAYS, back on topic. Given Pyrrha knew exactly how to unlock Jaune’s aura without a second thought; it is safe to assume that having a teacher (or possibly parent) unlock a student’s aura in combat school is standard procedure. Cases where an individual’s aura is unlocked by practice or extreme stress seem to be the exception, not the rule.

The current commonly accepted timeline for students entering combat school is 13 years old, train until 17 and enroll in one of the four academies. They likely don’t train kids for proper combat prior to their teens, so trying to make Gladys be an exceptional case due to unlocking their aura easily falls apart after thinking about it too hard.

Let me see…. Wait, why did they decide to enter combat school exactly? You just sort of drop them into it out of nowhere and then abandon it at the first opportunity.

Speaking of things popping up out of nowhere; the gender-fluid thing just… suddenly appears with no warning at the end of the second paragraph; no build up, no mention of having identity issues. Just “Nah I’m gonna be a chemist instead of a Huntress. Also I flip-flop between identifying as male and female.”

What company? How do you stumble across a what is apparently some sort of secret military research base? Why are you blatantly ripping off Aperture instead of trying to integrate small details one piece at a time into a unique setup? This is supposed to be an allusion, not a port; it’s a thin line and you’re falling on the wrong side of it.

Christ… you’re just throwing details in with no explanation or buildup at this point you keep skipping context and going straight to the end result with maybe half a sentence of setup.

(Note, this is the point where I had to give up on reviewing this character for the day because trying to puzzle it all out made my head feel like it was going to explode)

Okay, back to it. So; major plot hole, you say Chelley’s LATE husband was a Huntsman, and then a few sentences later she’s gotten a divorce. No mention of remarrying anywhere.

Wait wait wait, if Gladius got run through by their own weapon after the explosion and revolt in the lab, how did the escaping subjects not kill the scientists who were likely also trying to keep them from leaving? At the very least they’d be locked up somewhere by the escaping subjects and Gladius would bleed out before they were released (if not death due to organ failure and internal trauma.)

And after this the backstory just devolves into a nigh-unreadable mess.

Personality The personality itself is not inherently flawed, but it does not mesh well with the backstory. There’s no real implications of Gladys being passive-aggressive or overly sarcastic in the backstory. You don’t provide enough meaningful character interaction to give any sense of what they are actually like; so the personality comes off as overcompensating for the lack of information in the backstory (rather than expanding upon established traits)

5/30.

4) Trivia

The trivia section should be in personality, and half of personality should be in backstory.

As for relationships; the details of Gladys’ relationship to their parents should definitely be in backstory. Ditto for grandmother and boss. The way I look at the relationships section is that it should be used to provide a summary of their relationship as detailed in background.

Okay, so, as for the allusion; this was a problem in the last contest I hosted as well. Oversaturation of tie-ins to the allusion is BAD. Very bad. In the case of Gladys the oversaturation reaches such an extreme point that it causes any attempts at creating an effective RWBY-friendly backstory futile.

I mentioned at the beginning why picking gender fluid for this character was a poor choice, but I’ll make an additional note here; anyone can adjust their voice to be higher or lower pitched. Male or female, as long as you can speak, you are capable of a degree of voice modulation (in fact this often happens automatically with specific emotions.) Glados being able to do so is no different from a human doing it, she’s just better because whatever machine she uses to produce her voice doesn’t have the same biological constraints as our own vocal chords.

1/5

I)Weapon

A gladius is usually between 2 and 3 feet long, with a 2 inch wide blade. So, where exactly are you putting those two automatic rifle barrels? More importantly, where are the magazines for the 5.56X24mm NATO rounds? (It literally takes 30 seconds to google M-16 and find out what kind of bullets it uses, I am both annoyed and disappointed that you elected not to do so.)

0/15

II) Semblance

Half a freakin’ mile radius, in which Gladys can telepathically control any machine or computer, even without being able to directly see it? That’s utterly ridiculous. The work with/interest in machines developed YEARS after their Aura was unlocked, prior to that it was combat training and chemistry.

So, why? Other than for another over-saturaded Glados reference, would this character have a Semblance which allows them to manipulate technology? When did they find time to practice while presumably incredibly busy running tests?

Your personality tie in does not work with what you established in the backstory. You establish Gladys as being a chemist, and having an interest in chemistry; not as an engineer. I don’t think you mention engineering in any meaningful way until it becomes convenient for them to be able to manipulate the testing facility at will.

You are trying WAY too hard, in the entire entry, to tie it in to the source.

5/15

III) Combat info

Combat information doesn’t tell me anything useful.

0/5

I) Day to Day Life

Expanded civilian information doesn’t tell me anything not covered in the backstory. No point recovery.

Final score: 25/100

Thought this score is remarkably low, I should point out a major penalty was applied because trying to read the cluttered mess of a backstory triggered a migraine that put me out of commission for the rest of the night.