#I am still a bit iffy on his fc

[thewolfisawake]

Name: Risteard Gallochbar

Personality:

Risteard can come off as a typical noble from first appearances. However he has an unmatched diligence and tends to put the consideration for the overall good rather than personal gain. Not to say he completely selfless, he doubts any fae is, but he at least can see it's better to share a burden than to shoulder it alone. He tends to be one that likes to tease but knows that because of his position and demeanor...normal folks do not know what to do with him. The generals on the other hand tend to know he is either joking or provoking.

Background:

One of Balmoral's generals and the Vizier to the Crown. He is the voice that speaks to the king's ear...though he feels many times it goes unheard. He keeps an eye on trends of the people and a hand on the pulse of the citadel. But it is said that if Mhoirbheinn is the one that disposes of any physical threats, Risteard is the one that will rid of any other threats.

Risteard feels he had a chip on his shoulder for a very long time. This is because of his inherent risk as an existence. He was the child to a noble house in both the Unseelie and Seelie. It should have been near impossible to happen but this occurred during a stint of 'peace' between the two. And it led to a horribly bloody custody battle that he has never quite made peace with.

He was initially raised in the Seelie as his mother was a Seelie gentry. However in his childhood started a back and forth of stealing away. While this should have been a matter kept between the parents, it eventually escalated to assassinations and forced outside deliberation. It became a risk with the courts due to one side literally breaking into the other court to either attempt to murder the other parent or steal the child. A child, which is a commodity to fae to begin with and even more so to a noble.

And for Risteard...he wanted this end. For him, it was witnessing senseless violence time and time again. He had lost caregivers and friends that had been unlucky to be with him whenever his parents thought it time to 'bring him home.' He had grown discontent and sought a way. This led him to getting his parents to come to a middle ground--the mortal plane--to settle the matter. He would choose the house he would represent. But before he did asked for their promise to accept the outcome. Both parents were confident on him choosing them and thus agreed over a toast.

...only for the parents to have fallen dead within each other's embrace. Yes, Risteard orchestrated their deaths in order to end further bloodshed. He had also painted it as guilt on both of the parents. As for where he ended up, his Seelie parentage did not believe that it was lover's suicide and would not take him. His Unseelie parentage didn't truly believe it either but would not be deprived of an heir regardless. So with that, the ceaseless murder did stop.

But then came the other issue of being a child of two court: the question of his loyalty. There was always the thought of 'what if he's a spy' and Risteard sought to change their perception of him. And thought he could do so by proving himself. But he had done so over and over and over only for that question to plague him still. It made him resentful and hopeless in his situation. The former leading him to his rivalry with Balmoral.

He had been serving in the court when Balmoral had started ingratiating himself to the nobility. He knew that any non-noble would only be looking for boost somewhere. And expected the novelty to wear off but it never did. And then Risteard was worried that upstart like Balmoral was going to cause trouble. So he sought to take him down a peg where he could. So he would bring up something and sometimes it would throw the fae for a loop. However Balmoral would always return better than their last encounter and usually to force Risteard to cede.

How Balmoral convinced Risteard is considered another mystery amongst his generals. Especially since Risteard appears to be contrary to the king in most respects and vice versa. However neither ever considered it much of anything. Risteard was someone that challenged Balmoral constantly and held an understanding of the land and the people that he needed. And Risteard, if allowed to explain it his way, simply didn't want to be on the business end of Balmoral's sword. But if known truly, it was because Risteard had discovered how the kingdom was already in that fae's grasp and Risteard was willing to take the chance on a place where he could be free shackles that came with his name and have earned his place, his loyalty.

Miscellaneous:

Risteard is a master poisoner. He can understand most poisons presented to him. He also provides Solanine with the poisons she uses.

Yes, he and Bal are actually friends despite how it seems. They just act more like vitriolic best buds.

He and Bal actually have tea together where they...mutually have poison within it. It's to help give resistance and it's kinda a morbid joke between them.

He is actually quite disdainful of Mhoirbheinn because he's too unpredictable of a character for Balmoral's reign.

Ironically, they are considered other side of the coin for the other in some respects

Risteard does handle interrogations

He is something of a tutor to some of the generals as he is the technical most learned.

[favesgrave]

Tell me anything about your fan continuity- let loose

oh my god you've opened the floodgates so let's get into stuff BEFORE the autobot and decepticon war

so cybertron. good old cybertron. that's a lie it's not very good at all, basic case of the caste system and functionism and all that jazz. the current leader of cybertron is sentinel... who is also not great. he holds most of the power and even though the senate exists, they mostly are just there to serve out his desires. he has these delusions of being a god, putting himself on the same status as the original thirteen primes and because of this belief his people suffer even MORE

in my fc, megatron didn't willingly enter the gladiator pits. they were running low on contestants, so he was one of the bots they picked to fight. unfortunately, he realized he's good at killing things. fortunately, he also realizes he can use his popularity in the arena to his advantage. he catches the attention of soundwave, an intel agent from the elite guard. but soundwave doesn't actually care about what sentinel wants, not when he's been looking for a way to bring about his downfall. so the two become allies in secret, soundwave passing along any useful information to him

dont think i forgot about orion pax. because i would never. he works as a simple librarian (no iacon hall of records, no shady old man alpha trion) but he knows plenty about how dire cybertron's situation is and that leads to him wanting to meet megatron. ratchet's a little iffy on it, going "you can't just arrange a meeting with the mech actively going against sentinel and the senate. that's suicide" and orion basically says "lol watch this" and meets him in secret anyways. boom, megatron's got another ally

they steadily gain more and more people and become a rebel force. sentinel couldn't have ignored them even if he tried. he doesn't even know he still has people in his forces that are against him, people like shockwave and magnus. shockwave is a senator who fucking hates sentinel's guts. magnus also hates sentinel's guts. he's in the elite guard, but was sort of forced into it because hey, he popped into existence and after gathering his bearings they were like "hey you look like you'd be pretty good at fighting. c'mere. we're gonna train you. you're ours now"

shockwave's disloyalty gets found out. he's taken away to become an empurata victim. he was also going to be a mnemosurgery victim, but magnus blew his own cover to escape with him

anyways this war goes on for a bit, each battle becoming a little worse. and megatron's angry. he's so pissed because sentinel is letting all these people, his own soldiers, die! sentinel has the power to stop this and actually negotiate with them to create a better cybertron, but he doesn't. he doesn't even do any of the fighting himself. so megatron's becoming more and more angry, which does not go unnoticed by orion who's like "haha. you. you okay buddy??" and megs is like "yup!!! i am living the dream! dont worry about me best friend!" he's losing it actually

the war reaches its final battle when they storm the capitol. a pathway gets cleared for megatron, orion, and soundwave to make it to sentinel, who is completely out of tricks to use. before the battle, megs and orion had agreed to take sentinel alive but when megs looks down at sentinel and points his cannon at him, he just sees someone who never granted anyone else mercy. he saw someone who would never change, who would never feel any remorse. he thinks about all his friends who died in the mines, the pits, this war. and as soundwave blocks the door, he fires the killing blow.

this creates a rift between megatron and orion, one that only keeps growing larger. the tension only leads to more conflict, and more conflict leads to the autobot and decepticon war

[theymakehistoryarchived]

So while it isn’t in my rules, I do have “banned” fcs. I say “banned” loosely because I’ll still write with a muse that has an fc I have issues with, I just request my partner not use icons in our threads.

It’s also pretty rare for me to feel someone should be a “banned” fc, but actions such as being a known abuser or openly bigoted will make me a bit uncomfortable with seeing certain faces. I have the fcs’ names blacklisted already for my comfort, and I’d just talk to a partner about them using no icons or perhaps even an alternate fc if they’re open to that.

Examples would be Chr.is Pra.tt, (due to his support of a bigoted church) and Am.ber Hear.d (due to the events with Joh.nny De.pp, who I also feel iffy about since I’m kinda confused about all those events admittedly since I’ve read mixed things)

However I do feel, most of the time, that using someone as an fc doesn’t equate to supporting the actor/actress/model. Not your fault a controversial/problematic person’s face is perfect for how you picture your muse, as long as you don’t defend the person’s actions we’re cool. I just also don’t feel it is fair to cancel everyone who does something problematic, since then all of Hollywood would be out of the game, ya know?

Also people who have apologized for problematic actions/words and have appeared to genuinely have changed their ways are in the clear with me. Like I personally am fine writing opposite He.nry Cav.ill, who apologized and hasn’t said anything else stupid, even though I don’t use him myself anymore for the comfort of some of my partners. 

[jacktherph]

Hi, Jack! We are a new murder mystery roleplay inspired by A Series of Unfortunate Events with new plot twists and characters. We would love some feedback. May we please have an opinion? Please, feel free to take as much time as you need. Thank you so much! We really appreciate it!

hi there @unfortunate-rp​! i’m happy to give you an opinion. since you didn’t specify private, i will post this on my blog. feel free to ask me to take it down if that was a mistake.

NOTE: all opinions expressed here are mine, jack’s, belonging to jack. i make no claims to knowing what is best for every group – i only offer advice based on my experiences, what i’ve seen in the community, and my personal knowledge. no one person knows what is best for you or any group other than yourself; because you were the one who put all of this together in the first place. so take everything i say as a suggestion, and remember that you have accomplished so much!!

and if you have any questions, want feedback on something specific, or want elaborations on anything said in this opinion, don’t hesitate to message me!!

this isn’t just an opinion, it’s a shoutout and a rec!! any fans of the asoue book series &/or recent netflix adaptation will adore this rpg. it perfectly captures everything snicket was about from beginning to end and the skeletons are frankly fucking amazing. what a creative admin team!! 

start: 2.30 | pause: none | end: 2.58TOTAL: HERE 28 minutes to read all pages (please don’t take this as a measure of anything, I simply time myself and am a speed reader)

*spelling error on /uptown: Mureau Cinema -- Christmas

So the first thing I’m going to say before I go into the full details of each page and contents and such is that I have one big recommendation: finding a way to adjust your line height in your code. The common theme I ran into while reading all of your pages is that after a while my eyes would gloss over certain sentences because I thought I was reading each line but they were too bunched together. Because you have such beautiful pages with so much information to give to your members, this is super important. If you’d like me to see if I can find that part of your code for you, feel free to IM me at any time and I’ll be happy to help.

My first impression of everything is a big fat fucking WOW. From the pages to the graphics to even the way you word things I feel like I’ve been transported back to that dreadfully delightful macabre world Snicket created for me as a child. I don’t know if you’ve been given proper praise for that yet but if you haven’t you certainly deserve it. You have a functional and helpful theme that works for what you need from it and your design of everything is both simple and artistic at the same time. When you have a new acceptance posted the dual ember gifs make it feel like there’s a lot going on but it’s not consistent, with too many repeated or flashing gifs, and so there’s not anything you need to do to change that in my opinion. It just tends to happen with graphics that use the same images. Really though, please feel extremely accomplished about the tone and theme you set on your main. I’ve never gotten more of an impression of what an rpg is about by one glance than I do here.

Your Plot is astounding. Disregarding the fact that you wrote it just like Snicket, I think this is one of the most original fandom concepts I’ve seen in some time. This was the perfect story to be able to take away from the canon and still keep it within the realm of possibility. I’m actually really glad you did this so well because this way people can still have all of the fun of the storyline and plots and not have to worry about the possibility of “playing a canon character wrong” or trying to fit it into the canon of the books/show.

I’ll sort of go into all of your lore pages as a whole rather than go through every single page? Because the love and dedication you’ve taken to ensure potential members and your members have everything they need in order to work within the worldbuilding of your group. I can seriously appreciate that as an admin of a group with a ton of lore, myself. That you go into so much detail on the locations pages and everything about VFD, you make it so your main is the one-stop shop for information rather than asking people to go elsewhere like a wikia page and I’m gonna shout my praises to you for that!

So your Guidelines are something I’m a little iffy on -- and I’m gonna say this is honestly the only thing I really find debatable about your rpg. The very nature of the ASOUE series was about children being involved in all of the gruesome stuff that comes with being an adult; so in that I can see why you allow writers of any age. But you also have content warnings such as smut, violence, drugs, and etc. and state that the roleplay itself will have mature themes and contents. So that being said, I have two moral issues: allowing members under 18 and the playing of characters who are minors. Generally I’m against playing characters who are minors of any kind. That results in using FCs who are minors and yes, while they are celebrities, it gives the potential for undue associations with the child star. Have you considered possibly keeping children out of the RPG except for in the case of mentioned NPCs? Regarding the “members under 18” bit, honestly that one isn’t as much of a big deal so long as your members are tagging and using read-mores where and when needed, but i’ll include that it will deter a certain number of people from joining your group. I’m not telling you to change anything -- but these are things I think you should maybe think about and consider adding changes to?

Your Skeletons and Faceclaims are so widely wonderful and diverse. You have such a wide range of trans characters and I always look for that in RPGs. But you’re also extremely body positive and age positive as well. This is what the faceclaim page of every rpg should look like, so applause for you. I only looked at a few of your skeletons to get a feel for them, but from what I did look at each one is unique in their own way and you have done an impressive job weaving them in with not only one another but the story. Each one has an important role to play and none feel like they’re just there for any sort of token points. You must have put a lot of work into this and you admin/s need to recognize that this immense amount of creativity is brilliantly impressive.

Personally, I think all you need to do is link to your skeleton page with the filters, rather than having a whole page with links that bring people to the tags the filters divide by, but that is more of a suggestion and if you find what you have works for you then there’s nothing more to be said. As for the images on the skeleton page: you obviously make them fit better with the psd/texture, which I like, but some of them still stick out in their brightness. Maybe go back and look at them and dim some of them individually or try to get them with a matching color hue to make them seem a little more uniform?? But the distinction between npcs and skeletons with the monochrome is great.

Overall your graphics match very well!! Your character template is perfect for the vibe and the psd you have on your images ensures they all look very uniform and put-together. The sidebar gif on the homepage feels a little left out compared to the rest, though? I don’t know if you have a lot of history working with gif editing but either changing the size, adding the psd, or adding a little SOMETHING to it might make it seem a little less “floating on it’s own in a void” in your sidebar.

Your Applications, both of them, are very well thought out and you definitely ask for everything that I can see being necessary in this group. Some in the community are against fully fleshed out apps like this but those who see your group and see the effort in your applications should feel inspired with everything that they answer!! You even provide links for them in helping find occupations and such, and that’s going above and beyond. My one thing is…. Why are both applications on bright white backgrounds and not set as pages of your main? It’s just confusing to me, nothing big. And the white sort of startles me after looking at your darker-colored pages for such a long time.

My FAVORITE THING about your rpg: the complete-ness of it all. I genuinely cannot think of one thing I would like to see here, information or rpg-wise, that would help me as a potential member understand your rpg better. You obviously put so much work into everything here and I could not be more thrilled. As the story goes on you might add more pages or such but for an rpg that hasn’t opened yet (at the time I’m writing this) there is NOTHING that needs adding, in my opinion.

My LEAST FAVORITE THING about your rpg: I’m… struggling to find something, but I guess if I had to pick it would be the layout of your applications -- how they exist on a white page rather than within a page on your main. It’s just slightly jarring to go from all that darkness to a bright white page. Think about putting them as pages on your theme and honestly you’re good to go??

OVERALL this is probably one of the best examples of a put-together skeleton and bio rpg I’ve ever seen. Like, I don’t even know anything about the series beyond the show and I had to stop myself from joining while writing this opinion. Even if someone knows nothing about the fandom they could be coaxed to join after just taking a few minutes to look at everything you’ve put together and provided for people. You didn’t leave anything I could think of out and included more than I would have thought if I were the one putting this rpg together. The fact that you may have done this solo stuns me even more. This is an rpg everyone should check out because it has everything people are looking for: diversity, depth, a well-formed plot, and the potential to last for some time with the right cast and crew behind it.

Well fucking done.

Sincerely,Jack