Ruby and Kaneki Test Posts

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First of all, let me just say you did an outstanding job with both posts. In spite of Ruby and Kaneki being fairly different people, you fully manage to convey their differing personalities and attitudes through your writing. I've always known and have said to the effect that the newcomers here are of a much higher level than I have ever seen before, but these posts in particular truly made for a humbling experience.

That said, in some ways, these posts have made picking a character both easier and harder. The reason is that I feel both are better than the other in different ways. From a purely writing standpoint, I feel your Kaneki post was stronger of the two. The descriptions were more detailed and evocative and I just felt like it had more style. It was definitely the post that showed your potential as a writer the most.

That said, the Ruby one had its own qualities. The diary approach not only seems to fit a character like Ruby quite well, it is also a fairly novel take on the first person perspective. I think it has a lot of potential, since it would enable you to include the character's own reflections on past actions and events. Plus, speaking as someone unfamiliar with either source material, I found your Ruby post to be more friendly towards the uninitiated. I'm not sure if this was by accident or by design and I'm certain the varying complexity of the source materials also played a role, but the Kaneki post was full of terminology and names that confused me. Obviously, nobody can expect you to repeat the character's entire pre-Omniverse history in your posts, but it felt like your Ruby post was the one which you tried to make more approachable to newcomers.

So, with all that in mind, what is my final verdict? Alas, I don't feel like I would be doing either of your posts justice if I just picked one and dismissed the other. So even though this will come off as a non-answer, here is my advice. If you think you can bring the level of quality and detail you showed in your Kaneki post to your Ruby posts, then I think you should go with Ruby, both due to the more novel approach and the fact that the Omniverse could use more (relatively) straight up heroic figures. But if you feel that the Kaneki post was only so good precisely because of the approach and the type of material this specific character gives you access to, then go with Kaneki and don't look back.

Not sure if this was of any use to you, but regardless of which character you choose, thank you for the nice read and I look forward to seeing what direction you will take with them.

On an somewhat related note, if you pick Ruby, here's a small recommendation. I'm not sure if you've ever read "The Diary of a Young Girl/The Diary of Anne Franke", but one interesting habit Anne exhibited was to add supplemental comments to her old entries years after she originally wrote them, showing the perspective of her older (and more wiser) self. I think it would be interesting if you did something similar. As Ruby develops as a character, you could have her reread/revisit some of her old diary entries and have her write down additional comments, reflecting her newer perspective or any new thoughts/revelations she might have had regarding those events since then.