So we decided to start over the Castaway RP (or so I'm calling it for now since they do need titles once you start making a collection). Since Day 1 I've been putting a lot of thought and planning into my posts, but you've pretty much had your head in the clouds through most of it, for various reasons (distractions, multi-tasking, being new to this and probably nervous/awkward with what to do at first, etc). Instead of just saying "Oh you failed, you're such a failure" it's better to look at WHY things didn't go so well and how to fix them. I think you deserve a fresh start because my first RP was horrible too. It's okay to be horrible, you can just start over and be like "La la la! None of that happened! 8D" but here's some thoughts I had on exactly what went wrong and how it can be avoided so it doesn't just keep happening. Some stuff you're probably aware of yourself already.



1. Your characters didn't have very strong introductions. When we started on the ship before it sank, I put in some detailed descriptions of what all of mine looked like and what sort of first impression they gave everyone when they boarded, but yours were just there. I didn't even know what Hikaru and Clover looked like because you never described them. When a new character is first brought into the RP, they get a little private spotlight for the first post or two, where you decide what you want their first impression to be. Some people are who they are at first glance, others may appear to be one thing but surprise you later when they turn out to be not what you expected, and some are a mystery that need time to unravel but even they will have a first impression of some sort, and it's completely up to you to decide what that is. Introductions is a fun and exciting part of an RP that you only get to do once. You're only new to the story once.

Hikaru, Clover, Riza and Mustang were all just sort of there like wall flowers, but you did a good job with the dramatic entrance of whoever appeared in the shadows just before we stopped.







2. Moments when something could have happened, but nothing happened:

>> When the ship actually sank, everybody just went straight to shore and sat down like kindergartners sitting in the middle of the floor awaiting instruction. If the ship is going to SINK with people DYING, everyone needs to act like they've just experienced a huge tragedy. Whoever is the most dominant person should take control and be calming everyone down, telling them what to do, helping to save as many as they can, etc. That logically might be Mustang but you actually had him playfully flirting with Riza while people were drowning. I'm all for a cute romance plot but that was a terrible time to be doing it. When somebody isn't much of a leader in real life, sometimes it's hard for them to play a good leader in an RP, so if you need me to then I could have someone of mine be the one to take charge, as long as it makes sense. Tseng is a strong leader but he's just the head of a department within a corporation and Mustang is an actual military officer, so it feels like Mustang carries more weight. To put Tseng in a position where he has to take over, we can have Mustang get hurt, at least at the beginning, maybe even knocked out since I can imagine Mustang with a freaking broken leg and still just sit there yelling at people telling them what to do even when he can't stand, shouting over the doctor's head as he gets bandaged. If Tseng starts out as the one basically taking care of things, people will continue to see him as so even after Mustang gets better later, especially if his decisions improve their situation and such and they come to respect him and trust that he knows what to do and they're in good hands if they continue to listen to him. OR, you can just redo that, and have Mustang be the take-charge military colonel that he is.

We can change how they got to the island so they all came on vacation, but it will change EVERYTHING. First, something needs to be there, like a little village with huts to stay in and beach umbrellas and the sort of thing you visit on vacation. When me and Amanda did this, not everyone arrived on the boat, some characters were already there at the village and worked as like attendants and had souvenir stands and such, so it gave you an alternate option for how to bring people in. This way there's no tragedy, which means your characters don't have to react to a traumatic experience but they also don't get to save each other's lives and be forced to depend on each other, being brought together through circumstances --- but none of that stuff got pulled off in our story, they didn't work together, they didn't help each other, they didn't get depressed or scared about what happened, etc. A shipwreck should never be boring! So we need to either make that more exciting or change things around so it's just a boring vacation trip before interesting things happen later.



>> When Val disappeared before sunrise, nobody noticed, but when the wolves stole the quiet shy barely-noticed outcast introverted Clover, you had somebody ask about her like she was some big important person. That wasn't really fair. I had intended that him suddenly vanishing would at least have some reaction out of people or raise suspicion even if they didn't set off that instant to go find him.

Also, it needs to be decided if Clover is a real doctor or what, because you just put "a surgeon of sorts" which explains nothing. We either have two doctors, or one of them is mostly for this sort of thing (like diseases) and the other is mostly for something else (like injuries) so they both have their uses at different times. They are inconceivably lucky to have TWO doctors stranded on their island with them, but if they're on vacation, it's not that odd because doctors are rich and always go on fancy island vacations. Val was created as a doctor because that was something me and Amanda always needed all the time so finally I was like screw it, here's a doctor character for the next time someone gets sick/hurt/pregnant, but he doesn't feel necessary if Clover is already a doctor. But she won't do much good as a doctor if she's too shy to step in and give orders "Put pressure on this, hard! No, stop, don't move that person, there could be a neck injury!" etc etc. Also if she's a specialist, like a heart surgeon or something, she'll be helpful but not as useful as a general physician like he is and he'd still be their primary doctor, but if something happened that involved her specialty then she'd be the one to go to. If she's a specialist then her shy personality fits, because you go to her by appointment only and she can quietly look over your records and be like "Okay here's what I'm going to do..." with the patient one on one and not need to act like an ambulance attendant in an emergency.



>> Again with Clover, when Tseng found the artifact on the beach, she could have been like "Oh wow, let's see if there's more around!" and they could start digging and searching and find more things, but she did nothing. When he said maybe the island was inhabited, she did nothing. When you're stranded on a deserted island, you jump at any sign of civilization and either hope the people can help you out or worry they might be tribal cannibals that you need to avoid. When he said they should at least tell Mustang so he can be aware other people might be here, she thought it was better to keep it a secret. So nothing at all happened. She just sat there like they were causally on the beach looking at sand dollars. It was an opportunity to have SOMETHING happen, whether look for more stuff, or go look for other people on the island, or warn the others that they may not be alone, etc.

Clover was my favorite mostly especially when she was clinging to her bag in the ocean, and she had papers she was looking at and seemed to care about and it seemed like there was more to her, but whenever she had an opportunity to act, she did nothing.

Also a mistake on my part, I should have had Fenrir be more concerned about finding her when she was lost because of the part where she helped Tseng and he played with her luggage for a while, so you're not the only one who messed up.







3. I do like the wolf plot. It's interesting, feels like something is going to happen, and I like the adventure quest of everyone looking for the missing girls.

Here's the issues:

>> It feels like you didn't have it all planned, and were just making stuff up on a whim to buy time because you didn't want to reveal everything yet/didn't want the girls to be found yet. It got a bit weird when it turned out the wolves went like a hundred miles PLUS did all this trickery with the trail PLUS had freaking drawbridges that didn't go anywhere PLUS laid false trails etc, like you were just making up obstacles so the search party wouldn't find them yet. There's no need for that, just tell me "For secret reasons, I don't want the search party to find them yet" and then I can help you thwart Fenrir. In this case, just use magic and he won't know what to do. Also, the wolves could fly or magically teleport and that won't leave any trail behind at all. Me and Amanda started using the teleport pads in my Allods game, where you just walk up on it and put in your destination and poof, and whoever follows you finds the pad but doesn't know where you went (the pads teleport you to other pads in other locations, not to just anywhere, so you had to go to the pad closest to your destination and then walk from there, so it helped but didn't completely take all challenge out of it, it was very nice if you wanted your characters to live in drastically different areas but yet still be able to visit each other every day) Same thing if you're like "For secret reasons, don't kill any of them" then I can help you make it so Fenrir/Cloud either don't attack or don't succeed in killing them, etc. My characters aren't a video game boss that you have to try and find a cheat code to beat, if you don't want them to do this or that, I'll help you make it so they can't do the this or that in a way that is fair to their characters and might even add more twists to the plot. I can just be liek "Well here is their weakness, so use that for the advantage" and such.

>> The timeline needs to be sorted out. Like say you want them missing for three days, we don't have to stall the RP for 3 literal real life days, just be like "No sign of them was found for three days", "They looked for three days and found nothing", "They waited and worried for three days" etc, no need to keep stalling and so on just to buy time for the bad guys to do whatever they're doing. I can put whatever mine did for the three days and you can put what yours did for the three days and we can get on with the plot.

>> The distance needs to be sorted out. Is it REALLY that stupidly far away or were you just adding in more forests to pass through just so they wouldn't get there yet? Because it's getting a bit silly that the wolves went that far. They may have a crystal ball that lets them know people suddenly appeared a hundred miles away but they must want those girls mighty bad to travel so far to get them. It doesn't have to be a million miles away just to keep them from finding it, but if it IS super far away, they can go on an extended quest to get there, maybe spend days following clues, BUT, they need to have a strong motivation for doing so, need to really care about the people missing, need real solid encouragement that they are going the right way/there is hope if they keep going/etc so they don't just give up and go "Ah, well, she was a fine lass who will always be remembered fondly in our hearts" and go home. For an extended going-a-huge-distance plot, they need a firm solid obvious trail instead of all the guesswork and frustration, like obvious tracks, howling up ahead, etc, "We're going the right way, we can't give upon them now" etc. Or it can actually be fairly close and that's how the wolves noticed they were around, but the others just can't track them because magic or because they swam or because they flew or because they teleported or because they sprayed the trail with Cayenne pepper like criminals do to thwart the hounds the the cops send after them, etc.

>> What the hell was up with the guy casually acting like he was gonna hand them over after all that effort to throw off the trail lol. And he had some nerve saying "Well as long as you don't harm my master" as if they've done nothing wrong and are totally innocent. They kidnapped their women! You kept mentioning "Well the wolves weren't going to hurt them" etc so you need to make up your mind whether these are villains, or misunderstood allies. The wolves are accumulating a bit of hate because 1) they threatened Tseng by baring their teeth and Fenrir won't forgive that, and Cloud might not either because of the mental trauma has from losing Aerith/Zack/his mom and hometown/etc he has a serious PTSD thing with losing people; 2) they kidnapped women! you don't just carry off girls and then say "Oh we weren't gonna hurt them" those are actual people, not a pair of shoes you liked and just wanted to wear for the day but you'll give them back tomorrow; 3) they didn't allow anyone to stop them from taking the girls, so it's not like "Oh we didn't realize you didn't want us to have them" because they growled and fought back, and 4) they went out of their way to make the trail hard to follow, implying they didn't want to be followed, and innocent people have nothing to hide so they brought suspicion on themselves by acting suspicious.


>> Ways to fix:

If they are NOT villains but want to be accidentally misunderstood as villains, then all that needs to be changed. They need to stand and stare creepily and give you willies, but not actually growl/bare teeth/etc, so they scared you but not intentionally, anyone would be scared by a wolf following them/staring at them/etc especially since you said they were unusually large and such, and especially if they show up in large numbers and intimate you just because you're outnumbered. Then they could SEEM threatening but actually was no real actual sign of aggression.

If they're not villains, they shouldn't be seen drugging helpless girls and carrying them off like rapists. The girls need to either disappear without a trace in the night and no one saw what happened, or have the girls walk off willingly (under a spell or following Will-o-the-Wisps or something) so it's "Hey where did she go? Oh no! She's missing! Ah, wolf tracks! What could have happened!?"

What's gonna have the biggest impact is WHY they were taken. It could even be the girls wandered off and got into trouble, and the wolves actually saved them, but it LOOKS like they were kidnapped by the wolves. Or maybe the girls had some spell on them or some island disease and the wolves came and took them to cure them before it spread or the spell could only be lifted at their lair, etc etc. Anyway it needs to be decided whether they are enemies or misunderstood allies from the very beginning, whether they have to be forgiven for what they did (which they're gonna have to earn, they are not making a positive first impression) or it's a "Oh, we thought blahblah! Our bad. Thanks for your service!" But if they are meant to be bad guys they're doing an excellent job making everyone hate them.



>> I do think this is an interesting plot and I do think the mistakes in it are very easy to fix.







4. How Hikaru turned out:

Excluding the scene we deleted.

I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, this just the kind of character she's turned out to be: She slept with a guy she only knew for about one hour just because he was part fish, and did so out in the open with other people nearby that she knew were present, and on an island where she'd already bumped into Cloud accidentally moments ago and knew other people were out exploring and may find her/see her. She didn't worry about pregnancy or STDs. Demyx tried to talk sense into her but she didn't listen and was quite insistent about it.

This makes her out to be a bit of a slut, but she's a character, so that doesn't have to be bad, maybe that's just the kind of girl she is. "Well it's okay for guys to sleep around so why can't girls have fun?" She could be a bit of a feminist even. But she didn't use any protection, which, even if she did want a baby siren, means she could have gotten fish-AIDS or something. Also, she barely knew Demyx, and she had to be with him in the water where she easily could have drowned or he could have ended up being a rapist/murderer who was just pretending to be sweet to get her in the water where he could eat her, since sirens eat people. That's why Val called her "foolish", so when she flipped out and got sooo offended by his comment, it implied "the truth hurts" and made her look defensive, even a bit ashamed of what she'd done because she knew it was true, she'd been foolish.

All this makes her out to be reckless, rebellious, irresponsible, wild, adventurous, head-strong, stubborn and possibly spiteful. Not saying any of that is good or bad, just saying this is how she was portrayed, whether intentionally or not.

Her reaction to being restrained by Val without explanation made her out to be fiery and brave, since she even admitted that he scared her a bit but yet she fought back quite fiercely wen she thought he was gonna do something to her. The way she yelled at him afterward made her seem like she'd forgotten all about being scared because being offended made her mad enough to no longer be afraid. She even tried to hit him. She shows no real fear of men even when they're bigger and stronger than her with weird magic powers, or when they have her in the water where they have clear advantage over her.

The way she suddenly apologized for everything super quickly made her look a bit schizo. She only had about 5 minutes to calm down and then acted like she'd spent hours or even days thinking it over and came to realize she'd been in the wrong, and had zero pride at admitting her mistake when she'd been so vehemently adamant about do NOT touch me and so on, only to just instantly change her mind. It makes her look like she has a mood disorder, flipping a switch from rage to puzzlement to guilt all in a very short length of time. Even if she'd been shocked like "Oh gosh he did have a reason, I'm such an a**..." a realistic person might have quietly felt bad over it, and maybe later come to apologize to the person but apologizing for something you did wrong is pretty tough to do after you threw such a giant fit, she has a big chunk of pride to swallow.

Not saying any of this is good or bad, this just how she turned out from the reader's point of view so you can compare if she turned out as she was supposed to, or if that isn't what you wanted and maybe took some notes to do differently next time.



As for Clover, she seemed cute and shy but that was the only character traits she had because she never did anything else. She seemed lonely, weak, indecisive, and not very independent. I am wondering what her papers were that she had with her but that's really all she brought to the table. She hasn't done enough yet really to have much impression of her yet. Not saying that's good or bad, just saying that's how she felt for me as a reader.







In conclusion, things that could use touchups:

1. Intros and first impressions for your characters.

2. Either a more logical reaction to being stranded or we should change how they ended up on the island if you don't want it to be so tense, but less tension means less motivation to be a close group because there's no need to depend on each other to survive, and I don't think shy people like Clover and Cloud and grumps like Mustang are gonna friendly up with everyone so easily if they're just on vay-cay.

3. For the stranded plot, we should eliminate the NPCs so everyone is a small tight group and naturally come to know each other because they don't just "go help the others", if they're doing something, they're helping each other, not faceless nobodies. If Clover is tending a random injured person, that injured person is Tseng or Hikaru or someone important. If Mustang sends some random people out to find food/water, he sends out Cloud and Riza or someone important. No one sneaks off unnoticed, if someone is missing, the group feels smaller and you catch on that somebody left or that some girls got stolen. This part is not all your fault alone either, the background fodder ruined some of my plots also.

4. I want Val to stay with the group. We need to redo that so he feels safe with them. He's more likely to stay with a small group who needs him and is willing to accept him because they need his help, rather than a large group of NPCs who are likely to go all Lord of the Flies on him or something. Even if he's not the only doctor, they need his strength, senses, wings and experience, and his ******** horse omg the next time they go on a huge long quest walk, Tseng won't have to stay behind or be carried or limp along behind slowing them down.

5. I'm thinking of adding Demyx to the main group rather than being off by himself, he could even rescue some of them when the ship wrecks (could be how he meets HIkaru is she's sinking and he comes and saves her, so his first impression would be sort of a magical hero for her if you want her to really have affection for him and not seem so whorish). I had intended for them to make a sort of alliance with him where he helped get fish for them and things, but it didn't work out that way, they ended up leaving and he was just up there alone. If it's a small group without faceless NPCs, you don't gotta worry about what other people will think/do/etc, they just all agree not to stew him if he helps them and the story goes on.



It sounds like a lot but really it is not that much that went wrong, it's really not. This is a whole boat load of text but it's really only a few simple things need fixed, mostly that your characters didn't respond realistically to some situations or that they did nothing at all when they had a chance to do something, or that they did act unnecessarily when they didn't need to do anything --- and I think all that can be blamed on lack of focus and being distracted cuz I think you just didn't stop to think about it before you typed. If it's too difficult to keep up with 2 groups in 2 places (it really is challenging when your mind is on Group A but you have to bother with posts for Group B too), we'll keep everyone together from now on. That way everyone can know everyone, cuz the way we did it, Tseng knew Clover but Cloud didn't, Demyx knew Hikaru but Tseng didn't, etc.

I do think you improved as we went on. Mustang really started to be more of a leader in the later posts than he was originally. I want to finish the wolfy plot and see what happens and it only needs a few tweaks to work (and no spoilers necessary for me to help you make my characters do what you want).

We had 176 posts on 12 pages and that is pretty good for a brand new RP. It was just a test to feel each other out and get used to each other and I think it went very well.

One thing I'm not happy about with my own posts is I wanted to show that Fenrir is a harmless lovable puppy until threatened and I think I was a little over-anxious to have an example of both sides of his personality, so he ended up overreacting when he probably didn't really need to be aggressive. He will come to accept the whole group as his "hive" if he gets to know them but they need to stay together, as long as they are wandering off by themselves separate he'll never bond with anyone but his parents so eliminating the faceless nobodies will help a lot of things, I think.