What NOT to put in an app

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1. A history that reads as fanfiction.

2. Alt modes listed "Battle Unicorn" or "Flying Mermaid".

3. An obsession with another character, be that barely controlled lust/love or hate/need for revenge. Megatron and Starscream do not need more folk to hate/want to frag them.

4. Being a cannon character's long-lost creator/love/offspring.

5. The phrase 'a loose canon'.

6. Psychopathy because someone they loved died. War, dude.

7. Claiming to be powerful enough to 'hold their own' against Megatron or Optimus.

8. "Organic alt mode".

9. Weapons and mods that make absolutely no sense to the character. ie: A speed racer with long-range artilery and a Vespa alt-mode.

10. The ability to make anyone fall in love/lust with him/her.


Further contributions to The List welcomed

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1a. A history that reads as fanfiction puppeting several canon characters

4a. Unless this is negotiated and agreed upon with the canon character's mun FIRST.

11. Specialty cutting-edge tech weapons with no explanation of how a character got their hands on said tech.

12. "wi-fi" and "headlights" are not a noteworthy thing. Everyone has them.

13. Yes, we really do mean decide on a starting function class that makes sense for the time period the character was brought online during.

14. Standard blasters do not make a character a specialty anything. They make a character an enlisted level canon fodder grunt.

15. Physics still works, even with subspace.

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16. Don't make your character a living arsenal. Their subspace cannot possibly hold six different guns, a baker's dozen of grenades, four pairs of swords, and a nuclear bomb, nor can they carry all those things on their person without being weighed down to the point of immobility. That being said, they really shouldn't even have weapons of mass destruction in the first place.

17. Don't make your character's life a trauma conga-line. A little angst is fine, but a character who has crippling survivor’s guilt and PTSD because they survived a brutal onslaught that killed all their team-mates, then got caught up in Babu-Yar, then got captured and tortured by Decepticons, then lost their bonded, then developed a glitch, then lost their rank, then lost their mind is just overkill.

18. Weakness quantity does not always balance out strength quality. Don't give your character four huge strengths and six small weaknesses and expect it to balance out. Ex: Having near-impenetrable, heat-resistant armor that can stand up against a rail-gun is not balanced out by being a little clumsy and having slight joint-soreness on rainy days.

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Concerning humans

19. An underage human runaway who still finds a job, can buy a gun (despite having no license), knows several forms of martial arts, and is fluent in Japanese for no discernible reason.

20. Human hybrid anything. No, you can't have a half cat, half girl.

21. An infant that needs to be cared for 24/7 and is adopted by an Autobot. (Or a Con.) Pretty sure the Autobots would call the nearest human in charge if they found a baby dumped on their doorstep.

22. The sadistic teen. You know the one: Loves to torture animals, people, and lives for destruction and knows every Evanescence song by heart. Odds are, the Decepticons are going to think they're just as weird and unhinged as everyone else.

23. Half human, half Cybertronian. No logic.

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Oh, good gods, I remember 19 D:

#24. Don't transcript (or worse, copy/paste) a canon character's bio and then pretend like it's your own sparkly OC. Seriously?

#25. Pick a field, for pete's sake - or two that are related. When your character is a medic who's a sniper who's a demolitions expert who's a ninja who's a pirate who's a cowboy, you've gone straight into paddle-faster-I-hear-banjos territory.

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Air Raid sells all unclaimed foundlings on Ebay.

Oh lordy, #25! That one drives me nuts.

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26. Characters who are “younger than Bumblebee” yet “masters” of a skill. Child prodigy or not, skill takes time to develop, and it's a little hard to believe that the equivalent of a sixteen year old would be better at something than a seasoned veteran of the trade.

27. Outrageous physical descriptions. Describing your character as super irresistibly hawt is subjective. So try to avoid saying they have “luminous sapphire/aqua/sky-blue/emerald/magenta/rainbow optics” or that “they are so attractive they can twist most mecha around their little finger.”

28. Grandiose accomplishments too extreme to be believable. Sure, your character might be a great soldier/strategist, but they shouldn't be able to single-handedly takeout a huge enemy base without any casualties on their side, unless everyone inside that base was dying of a Cosmic Rust infection while simultaneously being savaged by scraplets.

29. Insignia-switchers exist. This does not mean your character can be an Autobot turned Decepticon who went back to being an Autobot, or vice versa. Someone with a sense of allegiance that flaky likely wouldn't be accepted back by either side, because history shows they're probably going to switch back the next time the weather changes.