Post by Evangeline Malfoy on Dec 18, 2006 22:14:27 GMT -5
Forum Rules[/i]
These rules may be changed and added to whenever the staff feel it is necessary. Please check in here often and see whether there are any new additions. New additions will be in red.
- Every post must exceed 250 words. There's a nifty little word check in Microsoft Word that comes in handy. Another thing: Paragraphs here are a nessesity. Each post must have at least two paragraphs. A paragraph is about as much as the size of the message box or, if you want to make us all really think well of you, the size of the expanded message box.
- Do not harrass/fight with other players in OOC. This is a friendly environment, and people here should always feel welcome. If I see a person being treated unfairly or badly, someone will get punished.
- No sexist, racist, or religionists comments in OOC. If your character is sexist/racist/religionist/etc., then feel free to post comments about that in IC, just nothing too vulgar. We can be mature, can't we?
- Use proper grammar in your posts. I do NOT want to see any chatspeak whatsoever, unless you're in OOC, and even so please try to keep it readable. There's a spell check right on here that you can use, it takes up about thirty seconds of a person's time and it makes posts look much cleaner. Also, please use "quotations" for speech and italics for thoughts. You are allowed to bold speech ALONG with quotes, but it is not a nessesity.
- Please do not randomly kill a canon charrie. If you don't want to play a canon charrie anymore, please PM me saying you are resigning as that character, or if you really think it would be a good idea to kill them, as a part of a plot or something, tell me WHY. I have the right to say no.
- To join Tilted Mirrors, you must be over 13 years of age. If you are under 13, please get parental permission. It is an official Proboards rule that you are either 13+ or have your parental permission when you join a Proboards site, so please respect the wishes of many and trust this rule.
- Respect staff at TM! We work very hard to maintain efficiency and activity, so don't argue with us, and if we ask you to do something, do it and don't get upset. Do not try to turn us against each other...it won't work. The most you can do is get us angry at you, and you will be banned. 'Nuff said.
- Everyone must have a proper profile name. Please change your name as soon as you join to the name of your character, first and last, capitalizing the first letter of each. Add a middle initial/name if you wish.
- We keep a strict rule here about spamming...there will be NONE. Do not post randomly to gather a post count, or for any other reason. This also means no advertising on ANY boards! PM me if you want to be affliated with us.
- I am allowing swearing/fighting/sexuality, but please keep it within reason. If there is a particularly explicit post, either regarding blood and gore or profanity or sex or whatever (anything above a PG-13 level), please mark it with an X.
- NO asking other players for account information. This means, don't ask for someone's password, or try to log on to an account that doesn't belong to you without that person's direct permission. If you guess a password wrong more than five or so times, proboards will actually automatically ban you from the site for the day.
- Post your bio as soon as you join, or ASAP. If you don't post a bio within a week, I will e-mail you. If another week has passed and you have not replied, I will delete your account.
- Do not post unfinished bios! This really pisses me off, I'm sorry. Most people say they'll 'finish later', but then they never come back. So just don't do it. Save the bio in Word if you need to get off the computer for a while...don't just half-finish something!
- Wait for an admin to accept your bio before you begin RPing. I can't stress this enough. Wait for me or another staff member to give the okay before you jump into RPs! Wait for us to see whether you're up to TM standard!
- You may not expand the board with the size of your sig pic. It's just really annoying and it makes things look messy. If you need a picture done, please PM me or one of our talented graphic designers and someone will be happy to make one for you. Also, do not post any nude pictures in your signature, or any porn. It puts Tilted Mirrors in danger of deletion, so please keep the site clean, okay?
- Do not use copyrighted material. This is just common sense, right? But it still happens. This rule refers to plagarism, using celebrity names as your character's name, copying cartoon/manga characters, or someone else's rp-charrie. The only material we do accept here that isn't yours are your signature pictures (but you must have credits!) and your character if you are playing a canon.
- No one has an automatic relationship with a canon charrie. However, if you wish to be related to a character already on the board or a canon character, you may ask that person POLITELY for their permission. If they say no, I don't want any whining or spamming or tormenting or ANYTHING. If the canon character you want to be related to is not currently being RPed by anyone, come to me or another staff member about it.
- No godmoding. This is a big no-no at TM. For those of you that don't know, godmoding means to control another person's character, or acting as 'God' in a sense. It is rather annoying when your character dies just because your RP partner says he did, or said something he wouldn't normally say because people you're RPing with says they did.
- No powerplaying. This is another of my big no-no's. Though it may seem similar to godmoding, it's different. It's making your character all powerful. There is no way a character can be in a duel and dodge everything, nor is there a way a character is automatically stronger than another. You can't be unstoppable, it's completely unfair to everyone else. I NEVER want to hear anyone complaining about someone doing this.
- Every character must have a model, and you must know their name so we can put him/her on the Face Claim list. No images from myspace or xanga, okay? Please try to post in the Face Claim as soon as you put up an avatar/signature that has your model in it.
- No Mary-Sues or Gary-Stus. I hope the following quote, from a lovely site called 'The Sweetest Nightmare', explains to you in full who Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus are.Welcome to our section on Mary Sue and Gary Stu. This section is not a mandatory read, but is simply here for reference for those who are unsure of what a Sue/Stu is, or who want a nice little giggle, because remember, there’s no humour like sarcastic humour.
Mary Sue:
Mary can be either male or female, in the most painful of cases she has blonde curly hair, radiating blue eyes, skin that shines like porcelain with plump red lips perfect for kissing. Her figure is curvy and womanly, but she’s also a perfect ballerina (don’t ask how, just continue with the image). She is innocent, yet intelligent. She’s coy and flirtatious, yet virtuous in every sense. She appears out of nowhere and claims to be Harry Potter’s girlfriend, the person Hermione Granger goes to for study tips, and the girl who’s secretly training Ron Weasley how to play wizard’s chess. And all before midnight so she can get her eight hours of beauty sleep! She has a magical power to sing and call animals to her with her faerie-like twinkling voice. Her ringing laughter, like bells on the hill, summons her unicorn steed in a flash of rainbows and pixie dust.
Like I said, that was the most painful case. But you can see where I’m coming from. Mary Sue is a character who somehow manages to be perfect in every sense. It’s not that a character can’t be good at many things, hell, if you’re making an Auror character it’s hard not to give them many skills, which is understandable, however, the best way to avoid becoming a Sue is to make sure that you give your character some faults to go along with it. Think of you, yourself as a human being, no here, in fact I’ll use me. If I created a character of myself she would probably come across as a Sue. I act, I sing, I dance, I play guitar, I cook really well, I’m definitely not a hag, I read a fair amount, I would consider myself very intelligent, I write (fiction and poetry, as well as my own songs), I used to play soccer, etc. But I’m also dry and sarcastic (in case you haven’t picked that up yet), prone to bouts of depression, insecure about some things (who isn’t?), have a habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, lack a certain amount of human compassion, make a whole whack of bad decisions (especially romantically), and have a very unreasonable fear of stairs. Yes, stairs. Don’t ask.
Just take yourself into account when making a character and if everything balances out in the end, she’s not a Sue.
If you think your character might be a Sue, answer these questions, if you say yes to any of them, you may be in danger (unless your character is a canon and the answer was in the books or was discussed with the character involved before you applied):
- Has your character dated any of the following: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy/Ron Weasley/Fred Weasley/George Weasley/Bill Weasley/Charlie Weasley/Ginny Weasley/Remus Lupin/Sirius Black/Hermione Granger/Orlando Bloom?
- Does your character’s name involve any of the following words: Rainbow/Butterfly/Princess/Faery (or any of its variant spellings)/Moon/Star/Angel/Madonna?
- Are your characters eyes purple? Or, excuse me, violet?
- Does your character somehow have the answer to everything, in every situation?
- Does it state in your character’s bio, somewhere, that everyone finds her attractive or that everyone likes her?
- Can your character read minds?
- Does your character have your name? Or a name that you really, really wish you had?
- Is your character a metamorphmagus and an animagus, and a gifted Seer, and an Elementalist, and a Star Quidditch player, and Teen Wizard’s most eligible bachelor-ette?
- Does your character have a pet unicorn/dragon/giant hummingbird?
- Does your character wear leather regularly?
I hope that helps!
Gary Stu:
Gary is Mary’s evil brother, though he can be male or female. He is very angry and lonely; he constantly wants to kill himself or other people. He is usually plotting how to kill Mary. His posts always involve blood, his or someone else’s. He carries a knife around in his pocket. He wears nothing but black. He hates sunshine, people, noises, himself, the world. He has no reason for living other than his overwhelming sense of hatred that fills his core and radiates out from him like an aura of doom. Gary Stu is the son of Satan incarnate, but without any lust for power, any desire to take over. Only the will to die, or to kill, because hatred and self-pity are all that he knows. Angst, my friends, extreme angst.
Again, this is the most extreme case, but you understand what I mean. If your character is wallowing in depression, with no sign of recovering, or getting worse, but simply satisfied with the idea of being down all the time, then there may be a slight problem. Gary Stu is the exact opposite of Mary Sue. I don’t think you need any questions to help you with this one, but since they’re fun to write… If you answer yes to any of the following questions, rethink your character a tad:
- Does your character have black hair, black fingernails, an entirely black wardrobe, their own black-handled 10” dagger that they know how to throw, and black combat boots?
- Are your character’s eyes black?
- Does your character’s name involve any of the following words: Evil/Death/Black/Devil/Demon?
- Is your character plotting to kill their entire family, simply because they’re happy people who don’t “understand”?
- Is your character an orphan/has your character been abused as a child?
- Has your character already killed more than one person, and enjoyed it?
- Does your character carry a sword or staff instead of a wand?
- Can your character make things explode, set things on fire, or open a Portal of Doom through mere thought-power?
- Will your character abandon all his evil ways once a pretty girl sees through it all and loves him in spite of his evil-ness?
- Can your character read minds?
- Does your character have a pet demon?
- Does your character wear leather regularly? (In case you haven’t caught on, leather is just a bad idea.)
Well there you have it, the brother-sister team of doom. Stay away from them and you will have a long and happy career in the RP world! Good luck!
***
Writing Format
I know that some people have a certain writing style that they're used to, but at Tilted Mirrors it is nessesary for everyone to write in third person limited, past-tense. No, not the third person where everyone is your character, and you're the god of all. That's called omniscient (all knowing). The third person where you specifically follow your own character and can hear their thoughts and all that. You know what I mean.
First Person||Wrong - I took a seat at my house table and drank some pumpkin juice.
Second Person||Wrong - You took a seat at your house table and drank some pumpkin juice.
Fragmented Third Person Limited||Wrong - *takes a seat at her house table and drinks some pumpkin juice*
Third Person Omniscient||Wrong - She took a seat at her house table and drank some pumpkin juice. Next to her, a girl was wondering what class she had next.
Present Tense||Wrong - She takes a seat at her house table and drinks some pumpkin juice.
Right - She took a seat at her house table and drank some pumpkin juice.[/color][/blockquote][/size]