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[1st] - Week 257 (Theodoor, Holiday)

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broodboy

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Name: Theodor Holiday
Contact Info: [email protected]
Age: 60​
Physical Stature: Theo was never a very large child in life, although he could never understand why, being an orphan. His father and mother were both out of the picture; he often thought his father was to blame for his height but read that more often than not the mother was the sole genetic factor for creating height. At the time of his death, he was 8 years old, going into the first grade and no larger than other kids. Unlike most children his age, the young man sports azure blue locks that are never really well kempt, partly because of his single status. His pale white skin shines like porcelain against the harsh contrast of his deep blue eyes. Not being much of a person to play sports or go outside his skin is fair, almost too fair for a boy. A young man of his age has more muscle than he does, however, Theo does not, sporting a pair of tiny hands and feet along with several other extremities.

Now a member of the Gotei 13 court guard (an organization he still didn't understand), Theodoor wears the traditional garb, albeit, a bit smaller. He carries a light blue scarf around on his neck during all seasons. His sword is carried on his back like a gun, the length of it almost equaling him in height, making wielding the weapon quite difficult. His first division tattoo is placed on the front of his neck, just below his jaw where his Adam’s apple will develop. More often than not the young boy is seen barefoot through the streets of Seritei, senior members often getting after him for his lack of dress.

Persona: Theodoor is a young boy at heart, while having an unusual grasp on complex situations. Far beyond his years, the young boy’s anti-socialism prevents him from having any sort of connection with children of his age. His blunt nature drastically contradicts his childish heart, often conflicted with the choice to play or just be quite. A strong sense of entitlement emanates from him, having so much taken from his as a youth. Friends are never directly talked to but more indirectly mentioned or appreciated. He is an observer and, as such, tends to stay far away from confrontation, arguments usually leading to him crying or just simply walking away.

Biography: As a baby, Theo’s mother’s single act of kindness was saving him from the life of crime and drugs into which he was born. He would spend several years at the orphanage she ditched him at before entering school. It was here he made his only real friend in the world of the living, Prudence. He was the small glimmer of joy in the Theodoor’s otherwise miserable life. One fated day, just before Theodoor entered the first grade, he was shot in cold blood along with several other children on the orphanage bus.

Not able to pass on, he wandered the world of the living for several years, before crossing paths with a shinigami. She would then help the young boy make the transition from his current world into the spirit world. It was there in Rukongai where his life matched the same pity and resentment filled day’s he experienced before; this drove him to joining the Spirit Academy.

Here he spent the past six years honing is battle skills and sharpening his observations. Being in the top ranks of the class, combined with his odd sense of arrogance, drove him to celebrate his graduation alone. He was detached from the emotional bonds of the others. He would enter the First Divisions squad soon after.

Division/Seat: First Division, Unseated.
Zanpakutou: Theodor’s sword is, unfortunately, as large as he is, stopping just above his head wearing it like a rifle on his back; the blade a foot and a half in length with the handle being another half of a foot. The guard, a perfect square, with a light blue line which that seems to travel down the hilt and is mirrored on the sheath’s white background. A small charm dangles from the hilt, made of solid gold that depicts an hour glass.

Stats:
Reiatsu: 100
Zanjutsu: 10
Hakuda: 15
Hohou: 25
Kidou: 50

For Kidou – 3 Slots:
- Shou - Hadou #1, 8 Kidou
- Beniikazuchi (Crimson Thunder) - Hadou #3, 15 kidou
- Byakurai - Hadou #4, 25 Kidou

General Techs:
- [ Gigaihyou ] - "Righteous Corpse Possession"
- [ Konsou ] - "Soul Burial"


Sample Chapter: Alarms sounded as the bells in the school rang. Theo had been at the academy for years and was in his final testing phase, having just woken up and noticing the familiar smell of dew on the grass, blanketing the morning. The small boy slouched out of bed, his small feet dangling as they hovered over the floor; the soft thud of his feet hitting the floor deafened by the sound of the alarm through the barracks. The day before, his proctors went over the brief, thought, he never really paid attention to what they said, as he had already read everything of importance.

”Listen up," the teacher said, voice booming through the room. "your next exam will be a live combat practical. We will be engaging in real combat against the hollow. While this is a training exercise and sufficient supervision will be administered you will all treat this as a very real combat practical. There is no room for errors; lives will be on the line. It is time to introduce you to the very real world of the shingami battle field." Turning to point to a simple board, the teacher continued.

"Posted up on the board are team leaders picked by the professors of all your classes, it is considered an extreme honor. You are singly responsible for your unit, this is a pass fail practical. If your team fails to destroy the hollow designated to you, the exam must be retaken. When the bell sounds, you are required to appear in the room immediately with your team gathered. You’re dismissed for the day; I expect all of you to pass as your Head Room teacher. Do not disappoint me!”

The ominous silence that had veiled the room was suddenly shredd to pieces, as the students discussions grew to a loud roar. Theodoor sat in his chair, eyes glazed over. He never really had a good relationship with his Head Room teacher, the young man’s sense of entitlement often leading to his own hubris during training. As such, the Lead Proctor was reluctant, more than the other administrators, to place Theo as a team leader. He thought Theo’s sense of judgment was drastically skewed and too inconsistent, because the young man completed missions at the cost of his comrades. Extra measures were taken to monitor the young man’s team, more specifically, to monitor his supportive and tactical capabilities. Theo knew he was being watched, he was always watched, they feared him or, at least that’s how he felt; outside looking in. He didn’t meet with the members of his group; he left the class room and made way for his quarters. The other members of his group staying behind talking about what they could do.


He rubbed his eyes, before tieing a scarf around his neck, and grabbed his overly-sized sword. He moved quickly, hustling his tiny legs toward the classroom. Several other students made their way through the halls as the alarms sounded off. He entered the room as his team assembled before him; he sat on the ground and waited for the rest to gather. Each team leader was in charge of a small squad of twenty men and responsible for taking down two hollow. The gravity of the situation weighed heavily on Theodoor’s shoulders, as he simply sat in silence and waited for the last members of his group to arrive. The rest of the groups already headed out through the gates to their designated hunting zones. His group, however, still remained in the classroom. The group whispered among themselves, wondering about the young man's intentions.

His cold, calculative voice sliced through the apprehension.

”Most of you have never spoken to me or even played the mind games that I enjoy. Having never met any of you, I knew nothing about your scores or expertise. Last night I learned your abilities and strong points but, most importantly, your weak points. We have been dealt a misfit hand." He paused, silently cursing the administrators for giving him the group they did. "Most of us in the group specialize in some form of long range combat, mainly kidou. There are only a handful of you who are close combat users who, unfortunately, will take most of the beating.

"I want to be the fastest team to finish this practical, which means, we will be splitting up our efforts. Seeing as we are mostly an offensive kidou unit, we should be able to effectively take out two of them quickly with minimal effort; close combat units, do not let me down, our easy victory is dependent upon how well you can distract the hollow. I will be our forward observation unit along with the few of you who are well enough equipped at bakudo style kidou. I expect perfection from you all; if I, a child can maintain my composure, surely, you all can, as well.”


Theo folded his arms and began to call out names separating his small unit into specialized type force. They moved through the gate in waves, Theo and a few others were first as the other two groups followed suit. They arrived in a small mountainous area, of which several battles seemed to be on-going. Loud screams of battle echoed through the canyon as the young man’s ears took in all the information; it was a live game of chess. With a quick incantation he activated the kidou Magic Eye, his pupils and cornea glazing over with a bright glowing blue as reiatsu signatures began to linger all over the place; more intense lights signifying a stronger opponent. Instantly several dozen signatures filled his vision, shinigami and hollow alike were easily discernible. His scanned for the weakest ones he could find among the clutter, another squad currently engaging in the few he wanted to take on, he would need to take over.

He signaled the two squads to move, the bakudo users binding the targets Theodoor had said to. The child jumped down and commanded with an odd sense of maturity. ”We are taking over this hollow; you are not qualified to deal with the number of men you have. My team will take care of the enemy, please retreat to assist the other members of your group.” The hollow was large, easily five meters tall and a few meters wide, its mouth dripping with an unappealing amount of solidified reiatsu. A deafening roar echoed through the valley as his men instantly lost all their confidence. These hollow fed on fear, the blue lights they gave off growing in intensity as the general emotion of the men was filled with a mixture of death and fear.

”Bakudo users, bind his arms. Close combat unit, get in there and keep them off the hadou unit. Focus all of your kidou to one spot, aim for its mask, using your strongest incantation and hit them all at the same time! Now!” The men acted with a slight bit of confidence, the fear still resonating in their bones as they cautiously recited their respective kidou incantations. The hollow fell to the ground, a large thud followed by a dust cloud erupted from the impact as its cries of pain weaved its way into the hearts of the men, their blood pumping with a sense of accomplishment. The sounds over the valley did not sit well with the young death god, his observant eyes scanned the canopy floor for anything out of the ordinary. Two large orbs of bright energy stewed within the corpse of the thought to be dead hollow.

”Run you idiots!” His aggressive condescension laced with a bit of worry if only for the fact that his grade depended on their survival.

A large explosion of light and force erupted from the corpse, pushing all of the shinigami engaged in battle into the mountains, many of them knocked unconscious. The worrisome eyes of the proctors followed his group religiously, one of them jumping next to the blue haired boy, taunting him with a quizzical tone, ”It seems you are out of men Theodoor, could you have possibly overestimated the battle strength of your allies?” The arrogance in the man’s voice was apparent as a small smile appeared on the young boys face.

”Actually no, the only reason I worried was, if they had died, I would not have passed but they are just unconscious. Watch and see what my men are capable of.”

He waived an arm up into the air, motioning it forward to strike, the squad group of the young man’s group stood on the mountains edge. The twin worm-like appendages from the stomach of the first hollow stretched into the air, their mouths spewing forth a massive amount of poison gas. ”Kelly, use Kamaitachi to blow the gas away. Jennifer, Jessy, Kade, use your speed to rescue the unconscious. The rest of you, attack full on!” The young man liked staying far from the actual battle - the farther away he could watch the results the better. The battle progressed almost flawlessly but, he would need to step in.

”I suppose they will need my help,” he said, rolling his eyes

Raising two fingers, he slowly recited the incantation for a spell he had come to love, a lighting based kidou, meant to pierce a foe with incredible precision. A flash of lightning sealed the fate of the poor Hollow, as it fell to the ground, the twin worms overwhelmed by the incoming attacks. ”Good job everyone, return to the academy and wait for further orders.”

The young man let out a sigh, the pressures of the proctors eyes seemed to effortlessly float off of his shoulders and onto the opinions of the Head Room Teacher. Once more, the young man had proven, that regardless of his demeanor toward anyone, his abilities made him an asset. He had passed his practical but the review board would question a few of his methods. However, the discussion among them would take some time before they could actually correct any mistakes he had made.
 
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Hey there dude, I'm Tits and I'll be helping you polish your app so we can get it through to final approval.

I see you don't list any contact information. Here in HD, a lot of out of character interaction is carried out through AIM so I'd highly recommend at least signing up for an account. Popping into chat is a great way to get help and get to know your fellow RPers.

With that out of the way, let's get to your application.

Name: Good, although it is a slightly unusual way to spell Theodore.
Age: It's a number, so that's a yes.
Physical Stature: Alrighty. So the actual content of this section (i.e. how your character actually looks) is fine. When it comes to how you get these features across though, there's still some work that's gotta be done before I pass you through to final review.

So one thing that I notice do is use more apostrophes than you really need to. There's an instance here where "boys" winds up being "boys'" which you would really only use when talking about a group of male children being in possession of something. Sp be sure to check through your work to make sure you're only using them bizarro half quotation mark thingies when need be.

My main concern with your application over all would be some awkward phrasing and grammar use. In other words, while the car's engine works fine, we need to give the ol' wheels a nice rotation before we start setting off down the highway. To give you a bit of a kick start, I'm gonna go through this section sentence by sentence.

Theo was never a very large child in life, although, he could never understand why being an orphan.

Hey so right off the bat, we see that commas are a pain in the ass. You do have the right amount of them in this sentence, just in the wrong places. That comma after the although should instead be after the why, thus creating a smoother sentence that mostly gets what you're trying to say across.

His father and mother were both out of the picture; he often thought his father was to blame for his height but read that more often than not the mother was the sole genetic factor for creating height. No larger than most other kids his age, at the time of his unusual death it would have been eight, just entering his first year as a first grader. Unlike most boys’ his age, the young man sported azure blue locks that were never really well kempt, partly because of his single status. His pale white skin shined like porcelain against the harsh contrast of his deep blue eyes. Not being much of a person to play sports or go outside his skin was fair, almost too fair for a boy. His muscles had been not developed for a young man of his age; his hands tiny along with all of his other extremities.

Verb tense. Since we're describing a character that presumably still looks like the character you're going to be using here, you need to be writing this in the present tense as opposed to verbs indicating past action as that would seem to indicate that he no longer looks this way now. If you're having difficulty with doing so, just let me know and I'll help you out.


Now a member of the Gotei 13 court guard, something he still didn’t’ understand. Theodor wore the traditional garb all be it a bit smaller version of it all.

So this excerpt does not contain a sentence but rather several fragments. Putting them together, however, yields a functional sentence that gets everything across:

"Now a member of the Gotei Thirteen court guard, something he still didn't understand, Theodor wears the traditional garb of his profession, albeit a slightly smaller version of it."

See? As easy as pie.

He carries a light blue scarf around on his neck during all seasons. His sword is carried on his back like a gun, the length of it almost equaling him in height, making wielding the weapon quite difficult. His first division tattoo placed on the front of his neck, just below his jaw where his atoms apple will develop. More often than not the young boy is seen barefoot through the streets of Seritei, senior members often getting after him for his lack of dress.


Spelling errors and simple first draft mistakes aside, this chunk is good which sorta raises the question of why you were using the wrong tense in the first place earlier in the section.

Persona:
So since you already know that I want you to go through your entire app again and work on the aforementioned typos and syntax errors, I'm going to focus on the content of your work for the rest of this review.

So I like the approach you're taking with your character. HD doesn't really have too many child prodigy characters running around but I think that the way you're tackling the character is more than sufficient. That said, I do feel as though, with all the time devoted to describing how world-weary Theodor is, you could have focused a bit more on how he is "still a child at heart," especially since what you've spent several paragraphs telling me about directly contradicts this idea.

But that's neither here nor there as it seems that the content and ideas of your application are the least of your concerns.

Biography:
Woah nelly. This is long. Like really long. While I appreciate the thought and effort you're putting into Theodor's personal history, that's what your chapters are for. What we're looking for in your application is a wider overview of your character's past, meaning how did he die, how did he get to Soul Society, why is he a shinigami, those sorts of things. So, while the whole Prudence thing is cool, you don't really need to devote several hundred words to him here. Write a chapter about their relationship. Hell, write a whole arc. When it comes to showing your character's history to application approvers though, you don't really need to mention him so much.

PS, "bus" is spelled with only one "s".

Division/Seat: It's an open division so yay.

Zanpakuto:
Once again, the content is good but these are fragments rather than sentences.

I'll get to your sample chapter when you put it up. Until then, go ahead and flip through your app once again and do your best to clean it up. Let me know when you're done with that and I'll evaluate your progress.
 
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  • I edited everything but my Bio
  • I am not good from subtracting from things, so... would it be okay to just keep the BIO that way? I mean it still conveys everything that I need right? I am not trying to argue just... its difficult for me ha
 
I'm going to sign off on the whole having a longer biography thing for now but don't be surprised if you're asked to change it later on in the process. I'm away from my computer until Friday so these reviews may not be as in-depth as they usually are.

Looking over your application as a whole, I notice you have issues with pronouns, namely replacing "he" with "it". "It" refers to a sexless object and is usually not used with people so "he" is going to be what you're looking for.

You still have some problems with your tenses. Since your character is existing in present time, you'll want to use present tense (has/is/does) when referring to his characteristics. Once you take care of these things, I'll start discussing your Chapter with you
 
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  • Okay, for starters I found several of the tense errors hiding within the Persona and Physical description.
  • I couldn't really find the "he" "it" but, maybe I fixed a few of them in my secret findings of the tense's ha.
  • I'll save reservations about the Sample Chapter and Bio ha. Please take another look! <3
 
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Ok Broody, after some lengthy aim chats and numerous edits, you are APPROVED FOR FINAL DRAFTS! Post the link to this application in the final drafts thread and Finny will tell you where to go from there!
 
Note that he does not have a first division tattoo yet. That will be given anon.

Also, you shouldn't need to rely on having different colors for speakers. It feels a bit gimmicky, especially when used for everyday mundane stuff all the time. Make different colors for that special impact. That and using so many italics and color tags lead to some style mistakes where you had parts colorized that weren't intended to be.

For dialogue, certain things could use a new paragraph. Such as

He signaled the two squads to move, the bakudo users binding the targets Theodoor had said to. The child jumped down and commanded with an odd sense of maturity. ”We are taking over this hollow; you are not qualified to deal with the number of men you have. My team will take care of the enemy, please retreat to assist the other members of your group.”

The hollow was large, easily five meters tall and a few meters wide, its mouth dripping with an unappealing amount of solidified reiatsu. A deafening roar echoed through the valley as his men instantly lost all their confidence. These hollow fed on fear, the blue lights they gave off growing in intensity as the general emotion of the men was filled with a mixture of death and fear.

And

”Bakudo users, bind his arms. Close combat unit, get in there and keep them off the hadou unit. Focus all of your kidou to one spot, aim for its mask, using your strongest incantation and hit them all at the same time! Now!”

The men acted with a slight bit of confidence, the fear still resonating in their bones as they cautiously recited their respective kidou incantations. The hollow fell to the ground, a large thud followed by a dust cloud erupted from the impact as its cries of pain weaved its way into the hearts of the men, their blood pumping with a sense of accomplishment. The sounds over the valley did not sit well with the young death god, his observant eyes scanned the canopy floor for anything out of the ordinary. Two large orbs of bright energy stewed within the corpse of the thought to be dead hollow.

The sentences directly following dialogue should be by the same speaker and in relation to how he/she/it has spoken or the actions they performed while speaking.

For the majority, the app was good so your application is APPROVED

First off,

1) Request to join the HD Permission group. On the top of the forums, there is a Settings. Then on the side, go down to My Settings, My Account, Permission Groups. Once there, request to join Halcyon Days.

Once that is done,

2) Post your application as your profile in the Registry of the Shinigami.

3) Post your stats in the current week's thread in the Personnel Stat Records. Follow the other people's formatting if you're unsure how it should look.

4) Post your writing sample in the Writing section of Halcyon Days. You probably want to be posting this week due to super division bonus. List of other bonuses you might be interested in is (here). Newb bonus starts when you post your first writing (within two weeks of being accepted otherwise the bonus is forfeited). Remember to keep all chapter writing to a single thread for each week.

Follow this format when titling your threads: [1st] Week <257>: Insert Title Here

Each writing week ends at 11:59pm EST (-5 GMT) Saturday night.
 
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