Earth Pony Bookworm [Ready]

[Senpakuxkira]

Roleplay Type: WoE

Name: Bookworm

Sex: Female

Age: Older Filly

Species: Earth Pony

Eye colour: Blue

Coat: Boysenberry with white freckles on cheeks.

Mane/Tail: Maroon with Blush stripes with smooth curling tips.

Physique: Slightly chubby build while also being a tad bit shorter than fillies her age.

Residence: Trottingham

Occupation: Student(Occasional odd job and on Fridays runs an anonymous advice column in the school newspaper)

Cutie Mark: During school one day a close friend came in looking utterly miserable. Not one to allow a friend to be in such a state she walked over and began to talk to him. He was sad because today one of his friends had to move to a new town and he missed them terrible. She began to talk to him about his feelings and told him, " A friend will always be a friend, no matter the distance. You should try to keep in touch." He smiled feeling much better about himself and about what happened and thanked her for talking. As she turned to leave he pointed out to her

the picture that appeared on her flank. A book with a magnifying glass. When asked what her Cutie Mark meant she responded smiling "I could read you like a book." Since then she has given her words of wisdom to anypony who asks (or who she believe needs it).

History: Bookworm was raised solely by her mother, due to her father being a traveling salesman. While her mother tried very hard to be there for her whenever needed. But, running a business and raising a foal is difficult for anypony. So her mother’s bookstore had to occasionally close when she was unable to find a foalsitter.

As a foal Bookworm was rather blunt when it came to speaking other ponies. This unfortunately lead to her not having many ponies as friends due to her inadvertently hurting their feelings. It's not to say she was without any, but due to this you would reach the amount before you counted to ten. As she grew older she began to feel like she was not assisting her mother enough in her household. So she resolved to get a job to buy things for herself when needed such as books, cooking lessons and the occasional groceries.

Character Summary: Bookworm is very good at reading the body language and subtle tells on ponies.

She absolutely despises tomatoes, but loves cinnamon buns. Being the daughter of a bookstore owner she had many chances to read which she loves to do during her free time. She likes fantasies and adventure novels most. Baking is one of her favorite hobbies. Her favorite thing to bake obviously being cinnamon buns but she is also rather good at baking cakes. She is deathly afraid of slugs and snakes going into hyperventilating panicked state when near them. She also has a fear of heights. Even looking over the edge of tall stairs can send her into a panic.

While great in most other subjects she is terrible at math. She is also not very athletic preferring to sit down with a good book than exercise,

She is also known to tell ponies what they need to hear (no matter how harsh it may be).

While her blunt speaking may come of as rude or spiteful, it is not on purpose. She just has a tendency to not think of how a pony will feel before speaking. This unfortunately has left her rather lacking when it comes to making friends.

She is fiercely loyal to the ponies that she calls friend. She only turns against them if they are proven the guilty party in a situation, even then trying to downplay what they did to get a less harsh punishment.

She is very self-reliant to the point where if she needed help she would likely decline it.

[Senpakuxkira]

I would very much like an opinion on this. Whether it's to detailed, not detailed enough, whatever you have to say would be appreciated.

[Jane]

Hi Senpaxukira! It's really great to see new members looking to get involved in our RP! May I suggest posting a thread in our introductions section so that we can all have a chance to welcome you properly?

I wouldn't typically comment on WIP apps, but since you've asked for feedback, here's my two cents as a fellow roleplayer and not as a staff member:

You've filled out all the required areas with a reasonable amount of detail, but I think the dedicated RP Helpstaff might object to some of the content. It seems to me that the information we've been given is less about who Bookworm is as a character and more about all the things that have happened to her. You've mentioned she was bullied which a) is a bit of an overdone trope and though it's not strictly disallowed (I don't think - staffers can correct me if I'm wrong) (I was wrong) which is discouraged, and b) I'm not entirely clear on why she's being bullied in the first place. Because she's honest? Because she's "of a lower class"? How is she of a lower class? Ponies don't seem to have an established class system, and certainly not one that the schoolfillies & colts would adopt. Because she was raised by a single mother? In my ever-so-humble opinion, I don't really think ponies would pick on somepony for those reasons in particular - I don't think Equestria has the same stigma associated with single parents that we had 20 or 30 years ago (and I honestly don't think there's even much existing stigma tied to it today, especially not in cases where the father is dead).

I'm not a helpstaffer, I'm just offering some suggestions as a fellow RPer who has several OCs of her own (including two ponies raised by a single mother). I feel that removing, or at the very least downplaying the prominence of being victimized in this character's history would be a wise move. Try to shine the spotlight less on how others have treated Bookworm and more on how Bookworm gets along with others. Also, her dream of one day becoming a psychologist seems to have been thrown in as an afterthought. I think it might help this app to become stronger if you spent more time expanding on why she wants to become a psychologist. As this is WIP, I do understand that you may already be working on this.

You may also want to expand on and embellish her character summary a little more - don't be afraid to give us more details on her personality. The goal of a character application is to try to give other RPers a sense of how your character might behave in our role play and how she would interact with others.

Sorry if I came across as being overly critical. I do actually think you're off to a great start and this just needs a bit of fine-tuning. When you're ready for a full review from an actual staff member, don't forget to to change the title of your thread from [WIP] to [Ready].

[Senpakuxkira]

Hi Senpaxukira! It's really great to see new members looking to get involved in our RP! May I suggest posting a thread in our introductions section so that we can all have a chance to welcome you properly?

I wouldn't typically comment on WIP apps, but since you've asked for feedback, here's my two cents as a fellow roleplayer and not as a staff member:

You've filled out all the required areas with a reasonable amount of detail, but I think the dedicated RP Helpstaff might object to some of the content. It seems to me that the information we've been given is less about who Bookworm is as a character and more about all the things that have happened to her. You've mentioned she was bullied which a) is a bit of an overdone trope and though it's not strictly disallowed (I don't think - staffers can correct me if I'm wrong) (I was wrong) which is discouraged, and b) I'm not entirely clear on why she's being bullied in the first place. Because she's honest? Because she's "of a lower class"? How is she of a lower class? Ponies don't seem to have an established class system, and certainly not one that the schoolfillies & colts would adopt. Because she was raised by a single mother? In my ever-so-humble opinion, I don't really think ponies would pick on somepony for those reasons in particular - I don't think Equestria has the same stigma associated with single parents that we had 20 or 30 years ago (and I honestly don't think there's even much existing stigma tied to it today, especially not in cases where the father is dead).

I'm not a helpstaffer, I'm just offering some suggestions as a fellow RPer who has several OCs of her own (including two ponies raised by a single mother). I feel that removing, or at the very least downplaying the prominence of being victimized in this character's history would be a wise move. Try to shine the spotlight less on how others have treated Bookworm and more on how Bookworm gets along with others. Also, her dream of one day becoming a psychologist seems to have been thrown in as an afterthought. I think it might help this app to become stronger if you spent more time expanding on why she wants to become a psychologist. As this is WIP, I do understand that you may already be working on this.

You may also want to expand on and embellish her character summary a little more - don't be afraid to give us more details on her personality. The goal of a character application is to try to give other RPers a sense of how your character might behave in our role play and how she would interact with others.

Sorry if I came across as being overly critical. I do actually think you're off to a great start and this just needs a bit of fine-tuning. When you're ready for a full review from an actual staff member, don't forget to to change the title of your thread from [WIP] to [Ready].

I very appreciate the advice very much and thank you for taking the time to give me feedback. I did add some things to it and change the history due to your recommendations. I hope this is better.

[Jane]

I really like this character, and I think she could definitely be a lot of fun to play! - Just a few more things that I feel could be improved up.

For the cutie mark story - I do like this one better than the one you had previously for sure, but I sort of feel it would be better appropriate for WoE if you shied away from the specifics about the situation of her friend. She sees a pony who is distressed because he misses his sister terribly, maybe, and tries to comfort him. I do feel that the line you had earlier about 'reading ponies like they're books' was useful and would help us to draw a connection between the cutie mark received and the story itself - just to clarify the connection between her cutie mark and her special talent.

Also, her character summary looks a little bit too much like a list of different traits. Maybe you could put some of the similar aspects together? You've got her love of books mentioned in a few different places and I feel like it would read better if you grouped those mentions into the same paragraph.

Another thing that might improve this part of her character summary would be to expand on each of the points to fluff them out a bit. What doesn't she like about maths or why does she struggle with this subject more than others? What are some of her favourite sorts of books to read; novels and stories, or informative books? What are her favourite things to bake?

I think you're well on your way to having this character ready to go.

[Senpakuxkira]

I really like this character, and I think she could definitely be a lot of fun to play! - Just a few more things that I feel could be improved up.

For the cutie mark story - I do like this one better than the one you had previously for sure, but I sort of feel it would be better appropriate for WoE if you shied away from the specifics about the situation of her friend. She sees a pony who is distressed because he misses his sister terribly, maybe, and tries to comfort him. I do feel that the line you had earlier about 'reading ponies like they're books' was useful and would help us to draw a connection between the cutie mark received and the story itself - just to clarify the connection between her cutie mark and her special talent.

Also, her character summary looks a little bit too much like a list of different traits. Maybe you could put some of the similar aspects together? You've got her love of books mentioned in a few different places and I feel like it would read better if you grouped those mentions into the same paragraph.

Another thing that might improve this part of her character summary would be to expand on each of the points to fluff them out a bit. What doesn't she like about maths or why does she struggle with this subject more than others? What are some of her favourite sorts of books to read; novels and stories, or informative books? What are her favourite things to bake?

I think you're well on your way to having this character ready to go.

I really do appreciate you assisting me in making this with your feedback and support and have once again edited it by recommendation.

[Jane]

Alrighty, so stuff and such has happened and I guess I'll be taking this character after all. Yay!

You've come a long with Bookworm, and I'm proud of you for that. I was just informed though that you still need to change the cutie mark story juuuuust a little more. The World of Equestria RP is one that tries to remain as close as possible to the canon, feel and themes of the show. I did check with some of the other staff, and they still feel like there is a little bit too much death in this application - think happy ponies!

The concept of the cutie mark story is good - earned because she helped a friend overcome a sadness. Could you maybe try to change the sadness, though? Maybe he didn't do as well as he was hoping to on a test, or one of his best friends had to move to a different town? Both of those would garner the same sort of reaction from Bookworm while still being WoE-friendly.

Bookworm was raised solely by her mother, due to her father’s untimely death while assisting with dealing with a hurricane off the coast. While her mother tried very hard to be there for her whenever needed. But, running a business and raising a foal is difficult for anypony. Her mother’s bookstore sales unfortunately plummeted due to the hardships of juggling the two.

Two things here. Firstly, the bit about her father dying will need to go. One recommendation I was given was that maybe her father just isn't around much because of work - he's a guardspony, or a travelling salespony, or something else. A second option would be to simply remove the line about him getting killed altogether and simply state that Bookworm was raised by a single mother, keeping the details of her father's whereabouts as vague as possible.

Secondly, could you maybe tone down the 'plummeting sales' thing about the bookstore? It sort of sounds like Bookworm NEEDS to be picking up extra work around Trottingham to support her mother, which again isn't very pony - Equestria is sort of Utopic, there isn't much poverty. I think this could be fixed by simply changing some of the wording. Could you try to make it sound like her mother's bookstore is struggling without actually making it sound like there's a crisis?

Also, as RP is based heavily on social interaction, you may want to make her a liiiiittle more of an extrovert so that she won't be avoiding interaction in threads.

As I said earlier, I really like the concept for the character and I would love to see her in WoE very soon! If you could just make the above changes, I'll send this app to the Senior RP Staff to look over and we'll see about getting her stamped and ready for RP!

[Senpakuxkira]

I hope that the changes made will be enough and I really appreciate the assistance.

[Jane]

I hope that the changes made will be enough and I really appreciate the assistance.

It's no trouble at all! All the changes look good to me.

[Armony]

[Jane]

Yay! Congratulations! Please be patient with us a little longer for the administrator to move you into the "RP Certified" usergroup - once that's done, you should be all set to post in WoE.

Welcome to the game!