Post by Sibtain Raza on Nov 4, 2007 1:56:24 GMT 5
Chapter 2
Character Creation or So You Consider Getting A Character Sorted…
Character Creation or So You Consider Getting A Character Sorted…
a) General things
1. Repeat after me: An RPG is not a fanfic. An RPG is not a fanfic. An RPG is not a fanfic.
2. Be realistic (in Harry Potter terms, of course).
3. Repeat after me: When my character is sorted, they are 11 years old. They will be turning 12 during or after their first year.
4. Don't do cross-overs with Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Vampire Chronicles, Kindred, Forever Knight, Angel Sanctuary or anything else that you're a huuuuuge fan of.
5. Don't give your character a Tolkien name. Elvish names are lovely, but… are you sure you're on the correct RPG board?
6. Don't give your character a name of a character in a book. Especially a Harry Potter canon name is a no no. So are names put together from two Harry Potter names. You cannot be Ron Weasley and you also can't be Hermione Potter.
7. Don't do celeb fics cross-overs. No matter how cool you think that your celeb is, you can't be Britney Spears, even if you spell her name Brittnay. And you can't be her daughter or sister or anything else either.
8. Don't name your character after a celebrity. Not even when you change the spelling of the name a tiny bit.
9. Don't give your character more than two middle names.
10. Don't put your middle names in your log-in name. One middle name may be acceptable if your log-in name doesn’t get too long and annoying.
b) Your Character's Background
1. Don't use your current favourite celeb's biography as your character background. That's a celeb-fic cross-over, especially when you already used their name. Get a name change. Now.
2. Don't create a character that's lived on the streets since age 3 and had to work 5 jobs every day for the last 8 years before coming to Hogwarts.
3. Don't make your parents Death Eaters only because you want Slytherin.
4. Speaking of parents… Don't make your family a Malfoy family rip-off. That's boring and dumb.
5. Not every family is filthy rich, pureblood and lives in a manor—although one might get the impression when one reads all the background histories that are floating about.
6. Consider not being a pureblood. There's only so much inbreeding that the wizarding world can take.
7. We need more halfbloods!
8. Don't make your parents teachers at Beauxbatons or Durmstrang. With the amount of people who say their parents work there, every kid in France and Russia must be getting privately tutored…
9. Don't say your parents will disown you if you don't get a certain house. Copycat. There must be an awful lot of disowned children in the United Kingdom these days…
10. You're not a werewolf, veela or giant, unless approved. And that won't happen before you're a second-year.
11. Get the difference between vampires and veelas straight. Veelas: Pretty, may be a witch/wizard. Part-ones are rare but allowed with the permission of the committee for character excellence. Vampires: Not magical. Pale, gaunt, hunted and allergic to garlic. Possibly potion-ingredient.
12. You're not from a post-apocalyptic world.
13. You're not from the middle ages.
14. Your mother wasn't burnt at the stake.
15. Not all the bad things in the world can have happened to you before the sorting already, you drama queen.
c) Appearance
1. Don't give your poor character that's not even a teenager yet piercings or tattoos.
2. Don't have changing eye-colours.
3. Don't have unnatural eye-colours.
4. Don't have two different-coloured eyes, you copycat.
5. 11-year-old kiddywinkles are not sexy. They're just cute.
6. Don't plaster your face with make-up before you're a teen.
7. Don't be 6 feet tall in first-year already… or second-year. Or third.
8. You don't have fangs, wings, a tail, an inflatable third arm or anything else similarly ridiculous.
9. Don't wear tank tops, belts (I have to call them that because those things just don't deserve to be called 'skirt') and high heels—unless you intend to stand at a street corner waiting for a car to pick you up… *cough*
10. Hogwarts has a dress code! *gasp*
d) Attitude
1. Don't have your character moan about having to attend Hogwarts when all those fancy American schools and Beauxbatons and Durmstrang wanted you as well.
2. Don't be goth only because you want Slytherin.
3. Don't be a flirtatious 11-year-old girl. It's sickening to read.
4. If you keep referring to your character as sexy, beautiful and gorgeous (at preteen age, mind you! It's still dumb when done later on, but at that point it's totally braindead), you might as well add brainless to the mix.
5. Don't have no emotions.
6. Neither your fellow ickles nor your peers depend on an 11-year-old's benevolence, so drop the act of getting NPCs that will cower from someone who is half their size. Stuff like that only happens in the mind of someone with a huge minority complex.
7. Being a nasty obnoxious brat isn't an automatic ticket to Slytherin.
8. Hating Muggle-borns isn't an automatic ticket to Slytherin.
9. Being a Draco Malfoy clone isn't an automatic ticket to Slytherin. The Sorting Hat has a sense of humour…
10. You are not a vampire. And behaving like one isn't an automatic ticket to Slytherin either.