#manis wirth

Full name: Mary Gesine Wirth

Nickname: Manis (derived from a form of Mary borrowed from Slavic Christians, given to her by her dad) She mostly goes by Manis. The only people who would call her Mary would be her parents or very close friends. This feels packed with extraneous details. Do I need to know the origin of Manis? Do I need to know that only the people close to her call her Mary? Can’t you just convey the same thing by saying her name is Mary “Manis” Wirth, and that Manis is a nickname given to her by her father? More does not necessarily equal better.

Age: 38

Ethnicity: American w/ predominantly German Jewish ancestry The main issue I’m having here is that if she has predominantly Jewish ancestry, then why does she have a nickname with Slavic Christian origins? I’m really stuck on this, because German Jewish is pretty far removed from Slavic Christian if I’m thinking correctly.

Hometown: Newark, Delaware, USA A little nitpicky here, but if you’re saying her hometown is Newark, Delaware, I don’t think we need the detail that she’s also from the US. You also specified that she is American, which makes the inclusion of “USA” here even more redundant.

Hair: Naturally blonde but dyes it medium gray; Why? Why does she dye it gray? Who dyes their hair gray? This is such a unique thing (since most people avoid their hair being gray as much as they can) that just telling us that she dyes her hair gray is startling. What reason does she have for dyeing her hair, and why haven’t you expounded on this? she wears it in a straight medium length inverted bob style Too many words to convey the same thing: “straight inverted bob” works pretty well because most inverted bobs are pretty much the same length. If you’re imagining something different (hence the inclusion of “medium length” here) then it might be better to describe it with a different haircut as a frame of reference.

Eyes: Cornflower blue

Skin: Pale porcelain w/ pink undertones (Pantone 75-9 C) Again, this is by far too many details. And upon examining this particular pantone shade, pink undertones doesn’t seem to fit. Certainly warm undertones, but pink undertones tend to veer more toward red than this particular pantone does. But why do I need a pantone color? If you just told me she was pale with pink undertones in her skin, I would probably still be able to picture her just as well. This isn’t a design critique, and you’re not sending a detailed physical description to an artist for a commission; you’re sending in the character for critique on the character. Being this specific with the color really just clutters up the profile (I say as I expound in bold all over the place).

Powers: Super strength and durability

Alignment: Neutral evil Type 1/Chaotic neutral, fights for the good side for her own selfish reasons I wasn’t initially sure what “Type 1″ referred to, but then I found that it’s a TV Tropes thing. So I read into it, and I’m still not sure that you recognize the difference between these two alignments. Neutral Evil (especially what’s written about under Type 1) does not fit with “fights for the good side for her own selfish reasons.” Neutral Evil characters are selfish, yes, but they are often maliciously so. Furthermore, if they do end up fighting for the good side, it is often reluctantly so, even if they do get something out of it. Chaotic Neutral, on the other hand, is basically “I do what I want and nobody can tell me what to do because my personal freedom is the most important thing in the world to me.” A Chaotic Neutral character can and will do just about anything so long as they get something out of it. And from what I’ve read of Manis (and I’ve read this entire profile multiple times), neither of these alignments really seem to suit her.

There’s a good reason why characters typically don’t fit into one alignment or another, because a lot goes into a character’s morality and personality besides their alignment. Alignments were created as a roleplaying aid in Dungeons & Dragons, not for any and all writing and works of fiction. People are complex, and alignments do very little to describe them.

I’ll make a post expounding on this later; I have a lot to say about the matter.

Personality, Role, etc.: Manis, the hot-headed leader of a group of individuals recruited to be heroes, is an athletically built 38-year-old woman who is fueled by her greed for money and desperate need to feel in charge. Okay, so? She actually cares for each of her team members, but she can come off as insensitive and rude. Can you maybe show me an example of such? I just have to take this all at face value. She often doesn’t ask for help and tries to complete tasks alone. Her teammates know how she isn’t used to working on a team and try to help her without getting in her way. Again, you’re not really giving me anything to back this up. Her stubbornness, bossyness, and inability to trust the others damage the synergy of the group. A couple of members feel they would make better leaders and the group would be more successful and effective with her gone, but the company keeps her for her strength. A couple of members? This is actually a pretty big deal, that people within the group think they would be better at her job than she is! So what does she do about it! While promising to actively try to be a better leader, her greed and selfishness get in the way of her goal. In what way? She’s headstrong, organized, passionate and driven, however she is also domineering, intense, materialistic, and distrustful. And here’s a list of things that doesn’t really tell me anything about her. She’s a full-time hero. She tends to take more structured routes and prefers concrete solutions over wishful thinking and reckless, risky behavior. For example?

Backstory: Ever since she was in elementary school, Mary’s parents and teachers knew her immunity to injury and bullheaded behavior would cause her trouble later in life. So why didn’t they send her to see a shrink? Her strength and invulnerability were apparent from a young age, but her power seemed to skyrocket in her teen years due to her developing a shorter fuse and more explosive, violent fits of anger. Shorter fuse is typical of becoming a teen, but violent fits of anger? That’s typically a sign of severe mental illness. Violence in teenagers is a serious cause for alarm, so why hasn’t anyone done anything besides be like “oh yeah, she’ll have trouble later in life.” One night when she was about 14, she went for one of her usual night walks to clear her mind, as advised by her counselor. She has a counselor, good. But a counselor alone is not going to be enough in a situation where you have a 14-year-old girl who is apparently prone to violence. Why has the counselor not recommended she go see a child psychiatrist? Counselors can’t offer in-depth therapy the way that actual therapists can, not to mention the clear warning signs that anyone should have noticed that this girl needs serious psychological help. She was especially rageful and left the house fuming after she found out her father planned to leave the country without her or her mother knowing. She violently took her anger out on a drunk man and realized that she’d become more powerful since the last time she’d fought someone. She also realized how it was a lot harder to stop jabbing and punching. Every blow she landed made her feel indescribably euphoric. The man was nearly dead when a squad car careened around the corner, taking her by surprise. She snapped out of her mindlessly brutal state and saw the man bleeding profusely on the concrete. She was taken into police custody and her father was alerted. The drunk man was hospitalized with a concussion, severe facial trauma, several broken bones in his face, and many other injuries. You’ve listed out several different kinds of injuries, and then just kind of throw all the rest together into “many other injuries.” Not to mention the fact that you’re being redundant again. Severe facial trauma and several broken bones in his face is repetitive; all you would really have to do is mention the severe facial trauma and it can be gathered that it includes broken bones. After leaving juvenile detention, her life from then on had been ruined by her temper and violent tendencies. So she went to juvie, but still no one bothered to actually try to pursue a diagnosis here? This 14-year-old girl just beat a man half to death, and even juvie doesn’t recognize that there is something going on here? She never went to college and made most of her money from amateur mma fighting. After seriously injuring (and nearly killing) an opponent, she was banned for life. You don’t specify how long she’s an amateur MMA fighter, but what’s getting to me here is the fact that she is, at this point, definitely an adult, and yet she still has almost no control over her powers. Marvel’s Jessica Jones has super strength, too, which emerged when she was at least 10 years old, and she has almost no trouble keeping her powers under control when she doesn’t need to use them. In fact, like most superheroes, Jessica really only has trouble controlling her powers when she’s very emotional. And this all brings me to this point: why is Manis still having so much trouble controlling her powers? Hasn’t she had them her whole life? Why has no one noticed that she seriously needs to see a therapist about this? At age 29, she was recruited to be a hero. She was reluctant at first, but soon realized her new job satisfied both her financial needs and her love of fighting. She accepted the “hero” title hesitantly but without objection. These last two sentences? One of them is obsolete.

During an assignment, she experiences her first (temporary) power blackout in which she loses her strength and durability for an indefinite length of time. Whoa, what?? Power blackouts are a thing? Why am I only hearing about this in the last paragraph of the submission? During this blackout, her body reacts as if she’s going through drug withdrawal. Keep in mind that drug withdrawals happen because of the ways drugs affect the chemical makeup of our bodies. You haven’t really provided an explanation for superpowers here, but this kind of thing would really only happen if her chemical makeup was changing. Now, she could believably undergo psychological withdrawal; I’m not saying that withdrawals are completely out of the question. I’m saying that if her body reacts as if to a drug withdrawal, that implies that powers come from the chemical makeup of people’s bodies. She knows she isn’t very intelligent or talented. Really, the only thing she can do is fight. She’s been banned from amateur competitions for life, so if she loses her powers permanently she’ll have no way to make money. Her temper prevents her from getting a job that involves her being nice and patient with people. Before she was recruited to be a hero she was pretty much an unqualified wastrel. Again, this is probably just me being nitpicky here, but because I had to look up the definition of wastrel (a wasteful person) it probably isn’t the best word to use here. I mean... Really the entire sentence is pretty obsolete. She became obsessed with her powers when she realized they earned her a paycheck and made her feel powerful and useful. Now she’s become so dependent on her powers she wouldn’t know how to function as a normal human being if she were to lose them permanently. So has she had more than one power blackout? How often do they happen, and how long do they last? This is some of the most important stuff in this profile, and you’ve skimped out on it.

Final Thoughts:

As I said multiple times throughout, my primary concern here is that Manis never received help for her violent outbursts. I mean, this is a child here, and her being violent is not a secret. So why does no one send her to an actual qualified psychiatrist?

Another thing that has really stood out to me is that the backstory told me more about Manis than pretty much the entire rest of the profile. Those two paragraphs had more depth of character for her than everything preceding them. In fact, just about everything up to that point is just trivial information presented with nothing to back it up. Up to the backstory, everything in this profile is just a glorified list of traits. Just because it’s in paragraph format doesn’t mean it’s not a list.

There’s a lot of potential here, and some good content too. But I shouldn’t have to weed through redundancies and lists to get to it.