Colors of Remnant

1. Are you 18 or older? We want to know if anyone is under 18 years of age. Being under 18 will not bar you from participating in our community. Rather, this will allow us to gauge who is acting inappropriately toward minors.

Yes.


2. Do you have past experience with collaborative writing or roleplay, and if so, roughly how much? You can be brief. This is intended to help us provide useful feedback in your approval.

To start, I've been RPing in tabletop games like pathfinder and D&D (originally AD&D) when I was younger. I've been doing Forum RP for 7 years, most of which has been the RWBY setting. I've RPed in FF14, WoW, and several other games as well, and helped form or foster RP groups.

3. You may include an optional (SHORT!) Roleplay sample for people to read that gives a feel for your character in writing.

One by one names were called out, a first-year student like herself and then the name of one of the upperclassmen, some second-year students, mostly third-year, but there were even a few fourth-years that left the wolf surprised. Were those students going to more dangerous areas, or were they simply students who volunteered for this assignment? It was a question she was too timid to ask in general, and certainly not while Professor Aka was reading off names. There was something about the Mistrali woman that made her uncomfortable. Something that felt off about her, like a malaise to her aura. Terra chalked it up to her own anxiousness for her first assignment and looked around to find anything to distract herself.

The deep red leaves on the trees of the nearby forest, some already turning to brown in the late fall, were unlike anything she'd seen in Mantle. Trees there were either evergreen or long dead. The entire world felt so much more vibrant after getting away from that kingdom. Even the students were more colorful in how they dressed. Her drab grey hoodie and jeans hardly looked the part of a combat outfit like what the others wore, but she'd infused parts of the cloth with dust herself so it wasn't useless. Most of the other students also seemed dressed for colder weather, but they hadn't let that dull the colors. Bright reds and yellows, stunning pinks and blues, left her feeling even more out of place. At least she'd had a chance to splurge a little on her shoulder-length hair and tail, though her hope of a deep violet had become more of a periwinkle within a day or so.

Terra rolled her shoulders to get the pack on her back to sit more comfortably and quietly sighed. Most students had a pack with supplies for a weekend long assignment, but they weren't shifting uncomfortably. It was hard to fight the feelings of inadequacy that were building while everyone else seemed excited or bored. Once she was paired off this would be easier. At least if she was paired with another faunus. The idea of being paired with a human wasn't a pleasant one, but it was a potential she had to accept.

“And Terra Fennel will be paired with Ax L. Rose. You all have your partners and assignment. You have until Sunday evening to complete it.” The wolf half-hopped in surprise when she heard her name and watched as Professor Aka put away the list of names. Wait, had she been one of the last people paired? Maybe it had something to do with enrolling a little late. Golden eyes moved over the different pairs of students looking for one person who wasn't paired up so she could hurry over and maybe find out a little bit more about how this assignment was supposed to work. It was just a standard security node check as far as she knew, but maybe there was more to it than that. More importantly though, what kind of person was her partner Ax?

I love everything about this character. The backstory is wonderfully fleshed out and oozes originality, and the semblance is well balanced with regards to its power level and limitations.

No surprise that my vote is yes. It's great to see another character back from the old site!

I like Terra but there are a few things I have to mention.

1) Dual Trait Faunus, so far, have been relatively common on Colors. Of the Faunus characters here I would suspect more than half of them have two traits. Also, the Faunus race as a whole know what it's like to be disliked for something they are born with, out of their control. Everyone has some amount of contradictory thoughts in them, so I don't think it would be unheard of for some Faunus to take out their anger by hating on another 'freak'. But still, quite on the very unlucky side.

2) You tell of her fighting ability with Dust, making "crystals" from the crystals, like forming those ice barriers. You say that she can do this via her Semblance. However, her Semblance, as currently written, is only really interacting with people's Auras and nothing else. There doesn't seem to be any ground for her using Dust like she's supposed to to stand on. I like the idea of castor characters, but there needs to be a bit more of a connection.

3) Her fighting capabilities do not encourage her being allowed into Beacon. While not every student is a star athlete who wastes their foes like the main charcters of the show, Only having a handgun and using Dust in a very vague way to make attacks I don't think would cut it. I honestly don't know how she even uses her Dust, physically, practically. Say she is somehow able to do what you say she can do, using the Dust in new ways via her Semblance to attack. I have no idea what that looks like. Does she just throw the crystals and things happen? Does she absorb it into her body to then shoot forth the elemental powers? Does she have some sort of device? It is very very unclear. If she does indeed use her Semblance to use the Dust please write that out, including specific types of attacks with types of Dust so we can get a clear image, in her Semblance description.

4) Having a character that isn't that great against humanoid characters is fine, everyone here is here to fight monsters after all. Having Terra not want to use Dust on people, or at least Huntsmen, seems like a Doctor's Oath sorta thing and I think that's a cool restraint to have on your character. I really like that idea. But if she was accepted with this knowledge, there might be shaky grounds on whether she would wash out or not in the future. Sparing with other students, along with the Vytal festival and the future role that Huntsmen have that will inevitably mean you fight against a humanoid opponent, is normal. If she's not able to do that by the end of her years at the school, they may choose not to graduate her. Which really means that she just has room to grow!

I'll echo Bartok's comment on how Terra's Semblance interacts with Dust is not well-defined (or, as it happens, is not defined at all), but I don't think that's problematic enough to warrant a 'No' vote for a Freelance character, given the completeness of the rest of her profile.

I therefore vote 'Yes'. Welcome back, Terra!

Terra's an easy yes for me. There are a few things that could be done to improve her profile's presentation, but I think she's in a good spot to start roleplaying.

-Terra's physical appearance section is pretty telling about her self-image. I like that, personally. If you wanted to make her appearance section more brief, you could focus more on what she is and less on what she thinks she is, or how certain things such as her assets compare to others. An example of how this could be improved: Terra is said to have "a small, in her mind, bust". If I don't know what's normal for girls around Terra, I could interpret this to mean any number of things, making this detail unusable for me.

-What I got out of Terra's personality: she's determined, she understands the value of fake confidence, wrestles with self-doubt, and is kind. I'd like to see more quirks of her personality elaborated on.

-"Terra was born a faunus with two traits." "Her nature caused other faunus to shun her family. A freakish child would only be bad luck, or attract even more hate from the humans making everyone’s lives harder." - The style of the backstory presentation is third-person omniscient, so with narration making matter-of-fact statements like this, it comes off as though multiple traits are naturally 'freakish' and that it is normal or commonplace for other faunus to treat having multiple traits as though it was somehow worse than normal traits. Obviously as Bartok pointed out, depending on context, it's not inherently unrealistic for certain people to jump on a chance to ostracize someone for being different. One could, however, argue that people who are accustomed to systematic racism might be more sympathetic to someone's differences.

Ultimately, it sounds like Terra's dual-trait nature might have been a convenient excuse for certain people to be jerks. I'm generally opposed to the idea that more traits is somehow commonly perceived as grounds for additional discrimination unless the nuances and details are further elaborated on. Faunus racism is already extremely handwavy in my opinion, and would already make absolutely no sense to me if not for the fact that Remnant has had historical events including large scale conflicts that lend additional context to why people are racist.

-It's a little unclear how old Terra was when she learned about aura and her semblance. It sounds as though Terra discovered both at an unusually early age. Further, it might help to note her age at a few different times in her backstory. How old we are when certain things happen can really change how prepared we are for different difficulties and struggles.

-I really love the struggle Terra experiences between healing and caring for her fellow faunus vs. being horrified that people were celebrating a man who killed a huntsman - someone most consider a hero. I think it'd be neat to see some mention of Terra's early impressions of huntsmen in her backstory prior to this point. After all, it seems possible to me that the White Fang and desperate people neglected by society in Mantle might not share the rest of civilization's enthusiasm for huntsmen. What makes Terra different?

-I would like to see some more elaboration on Terra's struggles that led her to Beacon, and I'd also like to see how Terra got through the entrance exam despite not only lacking combat capability on par with her peers, but also lacking any sort of formal education.

-Terra's "Strengths" section notes her ability to form new dust crystals from "lesser" ones. I think this could be fine if it's clearly noted in her semblance that she can do this.

-The impression I'm getting is that Terra's semblance can be summarized as allowing a two-way link that can allow her to share her aura with another person, while also allowing her to manipulate the other person's aura. Dust is described as already being inclined to naturally react with aura, but if her semblance allows her to expand upon this further, you may want to note that in the semblance along with details. That said, you could simply say something like "Being connected with another person allows her to control interactions between aura and dust on a significantly more precise level than normal", or "Even when not connected with someone, Terra benefits from a greatly heightened degree of precision when using her aura to dust-cast." I don't think a significant amount of further elaboration than that is necessarily required, because all huntsmen and huntresses can "dust cast" with sufficient aura and training.

I like the empathetic link. I imagine souls and auras intertwining as being pretty intense by default. I also like her feeling invigorated or subconsciously reassured by there being a lot of aura around her.

Long story short, I feel like the intended effects of Terra's semblance come together in a natural way that could be presented in a really nice, interesting and succinct way with a little more work. It already seems good enough where I could approve it. I tend to be wary of broad semblances, but when the bulk of the versatility comes from dust, it tends to not bother me.

-I think the bulk of Bartok's criticism about not being able to visualize how Terra uses dust could be pretty handily fixed simply by noting that Terra's semblance simply operates on preexisting ideas of how Aura and Dust interact, but her semblance grants her improved precision and refined control over dust being manipulated in the raw.

From RWBY Wiki:
"As an energy source, Dust can be triggered by the Aura of Humans and Faunus."

"Dust can be harnessed in a variety of ways, but when used in its raw form, its full potential requires both an Aura and the intelligence to use it, meaning Humans, Faunus, and certain artificial beings, such as Penny Polendina, are the only ones who are able to use it for combat in this state. Furthermore, the effective use of raw Dust requires a certain level of discipline to keep from losing control of it."

-I would like to see further elaboration on Terra's fighting style. The impression given by her weaknesses is that she goes into fights essentially with a pistol and nothing else - she won't use her semblance yet in a fight, nor dust yet, so she's essentially a run-and-gun pistol user with minimalistic combat training. It's impossible to imagine Terra standing toe-to-toe against even basic threats, much less standing up to some of the other student characters being played here, which further begs the question of how she got in.

-Would like to see more strengths and weaknesses - particularly interpersonal ones, or things that say more about her personality. I like that you note her lack of willingness to trust humans, and that she hides her feelings. I also love that she's too expressive to get away with some stuff.

-Would like to see more Dislikes.

Excited to see how she grows and matures!