Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-26397825-20170730125154/@comment-26397825-20170830023032

And finally, SomeoneYouUsedToKnow with Avalon Ennuyeux.

1) Basic Info - 10 points

2) Appearance - 18 points

Does he not wear shoes with his outfit? And no gadgets either, not even a watch to go with his fancy outfit.

3) Characteristics - 24 points

Perhaps a note in the basic info section would have helped with the timeline. Just a “17 (5 years after FoB)” would suffice, and save you having to write a note really far down the line that has the judge (me in this case) scrolling back and forth to try to keep track of things.

How old is Yuki when she joins the White Fang and becomes part of their violent protests? Because Blake was 12, but these kids are 5 years younger than them, making Yuki 7-10 when she joined and subsequently ran away. That’s not really old enough to do anything but train to go on future missions, but she’s apparently a part of it enough to become the aggressor and disappear entirely. The way you write it, she’s participated in violent protests already despite her age.

And that’s another thing, which I didn’t notice until you had Avalon enrol on Sanctum. He was apparently a preteen who fell into depression so bad he stayed in his room for months and months on end - he hasn’t even hit puberty yet. Kids don’t fall into that deep a depression at that age simply because they lost a friend. They mope for a bit, but kids bounce back from things a lot faster than adults and teens do. His ages between 7 and 12 are basically ‘friend starts drifting away, revelation of White Fang ties, boo hoo, Imma sulk in my room for years’. You would have been better off condensing this into the space of a year or two instead of spreading it out across 5 of them.

I feel like half of the personality could be trimmed out due to pure superfluousness.

4) Trivia - 4 points

I feel like I learnt more about the other characters than what Avalon actually thinks of them. You used the part that is supposed to be a description of his interactions with them and what he personally thinks of them to describe their personality, appearances and occupations, and I’m left going ‘okay, so that’s what he has observed, but what does he actually think, which you cover with a small paragraph at the end of the section for each character.

You could have cut everything but the name and his thoughts on theme from the contest entry and kept them in a separate doc for your own personal use. I’m judging Avalon, after all, not these other characters.

Though, I’d read this if it was a feature length fanfic. The ideas for future stuff sounds interesting.

5) Weapon - 15 points

Good weapon, it works well.

6) Semblance - 2 points

...No. For 2 reasons both based on Note 4:
 * 1) Jaune was a newb. Pyrrha specifically asked him why he ‘didn’t activate his aura’ before he had unlocked it, implying that once actually activated (not simply unlocked) it protects from all damage like Miles and Kerry have stated. Jaune is, as I said, a newb. Even after unlocking his aura, he still didn’t know how to subconsciously activate it for the small stuff like Cardin’s fist, or keep it activated to protect him from all damage. Unless Avalon walks around with his aura purposefully deactivated, he’s not going to be damaged.
 * 2) And the Weiss thing; that was in a ‘’trailer’’. They were still working out how aura and stuff worked in the first episode, so while we can take the events as canon, the actual skills and mechanics of stuff has to be taken with a grain of salt. Considering in much more recent times Miles, Kerry and Monty have stated that aura is a shield, stopping all damage but not stopping pain long after the White Trailer was a thing, we can scrap the idea that the Knight damaged her despite her aura and instead go with the alternative; the Knight broke her aura and she played keep away long enough to recover a little bit.

I've seen people try to argue this before, especially in fanfiction, but it simply doesn't fly in the face of what we've been told outright and observed in the show after Volume 1. Even the instance of someone being damaged through Aura in Volume 1 is explained.

Props for trying to tie Excalibur’s scabbard into the character, but it does not pass my judging.

7) Combat Info - 5 points

It all makes sense given the rest of the information.

Total - 78 points

So with that, I can announce the winner.

First place goes to PisceanWaterBender with 86 points.

Second place goes to Arkantos95 with 80 points.

Third place goes to VedranTheII with 79 points.