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Okay, this isn't a pick over my character thread. But I am looking for criticism and help playing him.

A few things first.

A) I know Edward sounds like he knows everything. And he does, within his own world. He has alot of worldy experience which has led to his over all knowledge about healing, fighting, magic, ect. This isn't stuff like, "Every 3000 years theres a magical influx in London caused by Serosis the 3rd, the most reclusive vampire of all." that is an expert in vampire lore speaking. Edward would most likely say, "Vampires? skewer them on a stake and wait for daybreak."

Finally, all people will at times act like they know everything.

I'll try to play this down.

*** more will be added as I see any issues arise ***


Okay basic stuff out of the way. Edward is a tough character to play. This isn't the whole voice in my head type of character. Each part of Edward has a unique personality that I try to draw attention to.

Human Edward is more of a thinker, but when he arrives at a decision, he acts upon it immeadiately, and quickly.

Feral Edward (Were-Cat form) is more animalistic, relying more on his senses and instinct to get himself around. He will often act without any apparent forethought, but isn't stupid. Think of a tiger with with reasoning capabilities at his disposal should he decide to use them.

I'll pose questions, and you guys can make suggestions, or criticize and what not.

While I accept all critisizm, I'd prefer that we remain realatively on topic.


*** TIMELINE ***

I've been weaving an intricate plot in my head for Edward. It roughly goes like this.

Edward's other half is awakened (smashes urn in temple)
Edward is sent to Windsor
Edward recieves an chest from his former mentor.
Edward works on opening chest.
Edward communicates with the earth (Elemental Magics Session: Earth) and sees a vision of the past that shakes him up.


That is where we are at so far.

Edward opens the chest and with the help of Jardu'k, deciphers the writings on a scroll in the chest.
At some point Edward meets a mysterious traveler who later unviels part of Edward's fate.

From there continue on.


*** What is Edward ***

Edward is a Bast.

Back in ancient times, as the forest receded from the shores of the northern coast of Africa. The people who stayed suffered from barren landscape. They lamented to their gods about their plight, but only one answered them. Their god of the hunt (also cunning) answered by blessing few people with his essense. Instead of becoming hunters to feed their people, they became teachers. Their purpose was guardians of secrets. Bast would act as teachers, sharing their knowledge, at the same time they would be spies. Prying into the lives of men and beast to in their eternal search for new lore.

It was through their tuteledge that the Africans were able to flourish in such an abysmal desert. But as quickly as they appeared, they started to disappear. Their numbers were few to begin with, but within a few years there was one left. He was last seen boarding a ship that sailed off to the west, and was never heard of.

Life went on, and it seemed as if the Bast were extinct. But the real truth of the matter is, they are waiting. As new secrets are discovered they watch and learn, and when knowledge is called for, they supply it. Their job is to maintain the careful balance of power in the world.

In short, Bast are people who are infused with a part of a divine spark. Because of this they can shift between an animal form, human form, and hybrid. All Bast are very reclusive, often prefering to watch from a distance. All bast have a mental ability to read objects, much like remote viewing, except it traverses time and space. This is important, because Bast can read each other, which immeadiately shares all knowledge of the secrets they have seen between them. While Bast are charged with discovering secrets, they are not greedy. The reason Bast dont read each other very often, is A) its counter productive (the more a secret is known the less it becomes a secret). Generally Bast will only read another if it believes that the other isn't going to be alive in the near future, or is going to go missing. This is only done with the other Bast's permission. More often than not, Bast do partial readings, sharing information to help each other out as it is needed. Most Bast collect odd assortments of spells that most people dont run across.

Bast are ageless, in that they can live nearly forever, but they are not immortal. They are like humans, in that they will die if the proper conditions are met. Bast age normally until they are 30, at which the aging process often only occurs because the Bast doesn't want to draw attention to itself. After 30, Bast can look any age between their real age to 30.

(Like Edward, I'm refining this, this should give a rough idea of what a Bast is.)

*** Definitions & Explinations ***

Divine Essence: In the terms of the history of the Bast, it is only implying the fact that a few humans were elevated to a higher state of being, in which they had several new powers (Shapeshifting, the reading ability). It confers no inate omnipotence, omniprecense, or omnipotence.

I've been toying with an idea for a while, if I'm completely out of place tell me and I'll hold my tongue.

Since Mackenzie is blind, there aren't any major clues for her to connect Edward's human and feral sides. Supposing she were to encounter said beastie. In his altered form his scent and voice would also change no? Perhaps there could be some way to have her interact with nighttime-Edward to allow this side of his character out more. She might connect subconciously, but besides the faint feline smell coming from his pack the first day, (which could just mean he lodged with a crazy-cat-lady over the summer for all she knows) her midnight feline friend and that one guy she met a while ago would be completely seperate entities in her perception of the world.

So, could it work?

Eh, he's not clumsy, just has periods of unluck.

Think of it this way, you are walking down a street, you come to an intersection, glancing down the right you see a gang fight in progress, two the left is an empty street. Opting to avoid the gang fight, you turn left, and a cop car rounds the corner and plows through you, in response to the gang fight.

You were doing something smart and s**t happened. You had no control over the cop car that ran you over, as far as you were concerned, the way was safe. But you still died.

I know it reads like clumsyness in the profile, but the "balance" problem was only temporary. It was a referance to him stepping on a stone, and having it shoot out from underneath him, and he ended up falling down.

More often than not Unluck and Clumsyness are almost indistinguisable.

As for combat, he wasn't blocking blows, he was moving and letting them glance off of him, or moving with the punches. As for the "God Mode Stance" Edward was using his hearing (which was probably augmented at the time due to his dual nature*) to allow him to react.

Due to this wirey/thin build its better for him to avoid a good percentage of a blow (better if it can be avoided completely) than completely block it.

In a contest of strength Edward would probably lose, but in agility or wits, Edward proves much tougher.

^ I'll try to put more emphasis on this in the future.

*animals can sense earthquakes, smell one odor within a garbage heap, and hear a can opener through 4 walls, a door, and across 5 feet of driveway... or so it seems. Basically Edward's feral side bleeds through subtlely as his human side bleeds through his feral side. In human form, he can access slightly augmented sense if he concentrates on it, in his human form, he has reasoning capabilities + spells.


Okay, not trying to chew anybody out, because it is my job to make this apparent in the post...

Now, Wofiso, The idea is nice, but we'd have to hammer out more fine details, just going "Oh its that blind girl!" *Bamf* "Hey, look I'm a cat and you cant tell! Hahahahaha" is rather shallow. We'd need to ask why they're out there, what they are doing.

It would probably have something to do with a antagonist.

Also, I'd like there to be someway we could include other people, not just the visually handycapped. wink

Clumsyness really doesn't apply that much to curses. As most of the time the activation of the curse stems from you stepping on a trigger, opening something, grabbing something, or just being there. The very few times that clumsyness appears in curses, is when you trip into something, or set off something by accidentally opening it or something else along those lines. Edward isn't some god where he never makes mistakes, he can have his clumsy days, and he can come across a box that he feels isn't cursed. His job on the crew was to help open various containers they come across, access doorways, and fit into other tight situations (like clinging to a cliff face to get a rope from point A to point B)



A) Edward Didn't dodge or Avoid any of the blows, nor move out of the way.
B) Edward is smart, so he's not just going to sit there and take a beating if he knows that he can do something to lessen it.






Edward has seen combat, but he doesn't know any formal martial arts moves, no real training with weaponry other than his dagger. This would be the kind of combat style that a person who has had to fight for survival would learn.

And step one of surviving combat is learning how to avoid people's attacks, or at least how to reduce the ammount of force from them.

Edward hasn't spent hours of his life in secluded training, he hasn't perfected, or mastered a weapon. He has, instead, had many people coming after the group he worked for, and has had to fend off people as they attacked (no he wasn't some uber solo defender).

Alot of what is seen as Edward's combat ability, is the fact that he's had other experiences (even if they aren't combat related) that can be used to help him in combat. I explained this in the post about when Edward got wailed on by the teacher.


As for Hanille, Edward doesn't like the idea of beating up on a person who is weaker than he is just for a grade. Out in the world, its a survival thing, but when there are other options Edward would feel better fighting somebody stronger than he is, within reason. And during the whole exercise, Hanille was freaking out, which would make her seem weaker to Edward.




Edward's nervousness is with new situations, coupled with the fact that he is cautious about his condition being exposed (which is a problem at the moment) once he gets used to a situation, he lightens up some. Finally, Edward's condition is having some negative effect on him, in that at times he is more irratble than usual.

Edwards Bio was a rough draft, and I smooth him over as the story progresses. Every now and then I go back to revise the bio to bring it back up to date.


Finally, any problems with my posting will be addressed when I next post IC not through people constantly annoying me via OOC post, or PMs. I know there is a problem, and it is up to ME to fix it, and I will fix it.

I've already set a pattern of insomnia and midnight wandering for Mackenzie and she's made at least one midnight visit to the lake, I could make that another habit, thus placing her where she could encounter him. Cats are supposed to be naturally curious, he could just be investigating an anomaly. We could also spread it out so one or both of them have an awareness of the other but there is no actual contact for however long. Any inspiration on your side?

I like Mendacii's idea, althoughit would seem odd that the staff would wait before making the presence of such an animal public. Maybe sometime after Mackenzie makes contact with the creature there's some sort of altercation and the staff is forced to make some sort of public statement to quell panic and rumors.

Okay, first, I accept criticism. Its the constant hounding on one particular issue that gets me.

You place a cup infront of you. The cup is white, you want it to be red. Now you close your eyes and open them, and the cup is still white. Now rant about how it should be red.

Its the same train of logic.

I haven't gotten around to posting anything new due to the laptop fiasco, so nothing is going to change at them moment.

I ask for suggestions, because Edward as a character is hard to play. I'm not asking for people to completely disect him and then tell me how to play my character. Instead I'm looking for things I miss, and how he looks from other perspectives.

Second, before picking apart the Non-magic defense, read my "entire" post.



As I said before, at no point did I say he blocked, dodged, or stepped out of the way of a blow. Deflecting isn't the same as blocking, because of the physics involved. (IE blocking means you stop an attack with the intent to prevent damage completely, whereas deflecting is lessining the damage dealt by redirecting the force of the blow)

And Edward didn't get out unscathed.

Now I dont know much about teachers, back then, but any lesson that would leave their pupil damaged in a way that hampers performace isn't a good lesson. The teacher of NMSD, wouldn't break legs, fracture collarbones, or cause concussions on the first day of class as she tried to shake the students up. Edward commented to himself on how the teacher hit, and at the end of the post, I made note that he had suffered some damage from the attack.

One of the things I think people have problems with, is they glaze over my writing and dont notice key words, like "realatively," or "attempted," or "varying degrees of success." I dont write out each and every blow. Instead I glaze over the combat scene that way I dont end up puppeting the other person. If there is something of import, I draw attention to it, but other than that I dont want to bog down the reader. I try to let the reader draw conclusions from the fight, from the physical conclusion of the fight, to what the character was doing the whole time.

As for Edward's confidence, at no point has any class done anything that would be considered even mildly advanced. Even if there has been something of the sort, special precautions have been taken to ensure that the new spellcasters would be able to easily acomplish the task at hand. Edward has a wide knowledge, but that knowledge is shallow.

The potion class was different than the others, as I missread what the teacher was expecting of the students. I thought we were making healing draughts, and I chose to foreshadow something about Edward. Meanwhile I was having a severe case of writer's block, coupled with apathy.

Give the classes time, and Edward wont be so confident. As the classes delve deeper into their respective subjects, Edward will normalize.

Finally Edward is a human (at least most of the time) and since we are all humans (I would hope) you would know that we do not always wear our feelings like we would wear clothes. There are times when we are frank about how we feel, and other times we hide our feelings from the outside world. Edward (with any hostile situation) minimizes any signals he sends because people can use that against you. So, during combat he's going to seem confident, even if he's plotting to bolt.

****

wolfiso - If the staff needed to announce that there is an animal in the woods (and when is there not an animal in the woods?) that would mean that Edward would have had to posed a threat to somebody, and the event has to be unique enough to draw attention to the school.

so far the only person he's startled was some kid in the woods, and he didn't do anything to the kid (course the kid could say otherwise).

I'll see if I can't brainstorm up an Idea for the meeting.

You are getting very, very defensive.



I don't see at all how you were "hounded". You asked what people thought, and it just so happens that more than one person feels the same way about your character. So, I suppose if you consider "hounding" being when more than one persons agrees that you are misrepresenting your character in the same way, then, yes, you were hounded.

Perhaps, instead, you should consider why everyone brings up that one particular issue. You might realize that it might be because that is an area of Edward that you struggle with.



Do you really think that this condescending metaphor explains your point any better? Or are you just using it as some passive aggressive insult as you feel I don't understand what you are saying?

I, personally, think that you just prefer the white cup. It's the same train of logic.



Perhaps you should have waited to make this "criticism" thread until after you had decided to make a change in his character. And it is not like we all expect you to immediately change Edward. We are just communicating to you what we think needs to change, and you are simply reacting very, very negatively to any comments.



I told you how he looked from my perspective and what I feel you have missed. You just didn't like what I said so you chose instead to dissect and disregard it.

Maybe you should have read my "entire" post a bit more closely before flying off of the handle about it.



I have taken the liberty of bolding words that sent the message to me that this was easy for him.

Also, the entire paragraph about why Edward could sense the air changing before something hit him seemed very god-mode-y. You write it as if he can tell when and where someone is going to punch him by the way they smell. You don't think that is a little power hungry?

Tell me, what -is- he bad at?

Granted, yes, you do include some lines that suggest it wasn't simple for him, but that doesn't change the fact that there is an overwhelming feeling that he did this with no trouble at all.



I never said that you were COMPLETELY out of line in that post. I just felt like you gave him far more skill in that area than your background would suggest that he had.



This is quite obviously a stab at me and my class. I'm not going to have a slapfight with you over this. I didn't ask for my character to be critiqued, but you did so don't piss and moan when you get what you asked for. Also, at no point would I expect a student to be seriously hurt. I never said that either.

My argument is that Edward never ONCE stumbled or fell or wavered in his stance while fighting. That is what I feel doesn't make sense. You didn't need to make him get a bloody nose for your post to be well-thought out.



People don't "glaze" over your writing. They just don't notice the three lines about his problems in the 97 lines about how good he is at the task. You don't emphasize his struggle enough for anyone to realize it.

And the readers did draw a conclusion from the fight. I concluded that Edward seemed more powerful than I feel his background accounts for.



I didn't realize that you were in charge of making decisions as to how tough the curiculum is. And did you decide just to make it a rule that special precautions are going to be taken to ensure that new spellcasters can accomplish all the tasks put before them? I never realized you had that authority to command in every single class, even the ones that you do not teach.



If you had said something like this earlier in the conversation instead of getting aggravated, I would not have reacted with as much negativity as I am now. THIS makes sense, and I understand where you are coming from here. Your metaphors about red and white cups do not.

I was only telling you my opinion because you asked for it. I'm sorry if I did not tell you what you wanted to hear, but I think that you have not handled the criticism at all. You can take the comments that aren't true criticism, but when I come out with a direct point in which I thought you were not true to character, you get mad.

I think Edward is an interesting character. I just think you need to think about how he represents the background you first wrote up and what his weaknesses are.

Jaycee, I only responded with such criticism because of how harshly he responded to my initial post.

And my comment in my first post was in regard for how he spoke to cherry. She is the owner of this guild, the one who started it all, and he spoke very rudely to her. Like you are defending him, I was only defending her.

I know I could have been nicer, but I don't see how he has been kind to me to deserve such treatment. He asked for comments, and he got comments. I was giving him advice on the character. I was trying to help him decide what kind of character Edward was.

Is he very smart? Pretty strong? Is he a powerful mage?

I just wanted him to realize that answering "yes" to all of these might not be a good thing. Obviously, my opinion is not welcome to him so I will refrain from commenting here again.




Squirrel, I was not trying to attack you initially. Yes, I nagged you for being rude to cherry, but it was out of line for you to treat her like that. Then, when you were exceptionally rude to me in the next post, I returned the favor. So, I hope we can put this aside. I will not post again in this thread, even if you chose to respond to my second post. -_-