Cotton Swab [Ready]

[CtrlAltDeleteMan]

RP Character Sheets

Roleplay Type: World of Equestria

Name: Cotton Swab

Sex: Female

Age: Middle-aged mare

Species: Unicorn

Eye colour: Dark maroon

Coat: Steel grey

Mane/Tail: Sky blue, normally cut down to her shoulders or tied up into a bun. She's also commonly seen with her trademark nurse hat perched atop her head.

Physique: Average thin

Residence: Manehattan

Occupation: Doctor (Retired)

Cutie Mark: A single red, thornless rose encased in a thin layer of clear blue ice. Cotton Swab was the first in her elementary class to receive her cutie mark, but it was nothing like she had expected. Both of her parents had cutie marks in the field of medicine; her mother was a pediatrician and her father was a professor that taught pre-med at the local college. It had been that way for generations, all of the members of Cotton's family traditionally became doctors or nurses. Naturally, she expected to continue that tradition, but destiny had a different plan. One chilly winter day, young Cotton and her father had been trapped inside their home due to a ferocious blizzard that had broken three different world records. With no school work to attend to, her dad finally agreed to teach her a basic medical spell or two while he had time. He brought down a dusy old practice dummy from the attic and set it on the living room floor. The spell was meant to disinfect small cuts and scrapes, similar to how one would use hydrogen peroxide. After much struggling and focusing, she completely botched it. Instead of killing bacteria, Cotton Swab had flash-frozen the dummy in a half-inch layer of ice.

Cotton did not think much of the incident until two days later when most of the city had dug itself out of the snow. She and her friends were outside in Central Park playing, as foals normally did in the wintertime. Cotton found that she was the best in her class when it came to flinging around snowballs, she could pelt any kid that came within range of her with a flurry of them. The game had escalated quickly, and soon it became a small-scale war, with the foals building their own little bases from snow. While the other children had built forts that barely made it past a foot and a half, Cotton had thrown up walls of the stuff that were taller than she was. With her own superior defenses and firepower, Cotton Swab had single-hoofedly won the day against an army of grade-schoolers. She has so much fun that she didn't even notice her cutie mark had appeared during the battle.

She was crestfallen at first. Cotton was the only living soul in her family to have a cutie mark outside of medicine. This hadn't happened since before the banishment of Nightmare Moon. But, as they say, life goes on. If she couldn't use her magic to heal ponies, then she'd use her hooves. While Cotton did not outright abandon her abilities, she never put as much work into developing them as she did getting her medical degree.

History: Cotton Swab was born into a wealthy Manehattan family with a very long history in medical practices. Nearly all of her ancestors dating back to the reign of Discord had been doctors, nurses, and medics. Cotton was the first in five generations to break that streak. She had found out early that her special talent was not medicine, but something entirely the opposite. Her destiny was to wield primal elemental magic, specifically the power of frost, and it held absolutely no place in practical medicine. Though the mark on her flank said that Cotton was destined to become a mage of great power, she did not heed its call. She instead enrolled in the finest medical academy in Manehattan, taking only the non-unicorn courses, and graduated in the top ten percent of her class. Cotton did not want to be a magican, she desired the life of a healer, like her ancestors before her. She couldn't have bared to break the long line of tradition just because of a stupid cutie mark.

She worked years at several of Manehattan's top hospitals as a crack surgeon, she overcame one of the largest obstacles a pony could face and was...disappointed. The life of a doctor didn't fulfill her like she believed it would. In fact, it made her miserable. She grew to hate it. The constant stress of having somepony's life in her hooves took an unbelievable toll on her. Cotton Swab had began to question her own motives. Was this what truly made her happy? Did she really want to be a doctor? Should she have traveled the path of her cutie mark? That was a question she could not answer on her own. She believed that the answers did not lie within the confined streets of Manehattan, but elsewhere in Equestria. So she packed up everything she needed onto a cart and donated the rest of her belongings to charity. Cotton had amassed quite a savings account working a four-figure salary, so she withdrew all of the liquid cash that she could hold and locked it in a chest. Cotton then left the city that she had spent her entire life in and took it on the road. With nowhere to go, she began walking. There were no need for trains or ships or anything, she preferred to see the world at her own slow pace.

Nowadays, she wanders the land on hoof, going from place to place in an aimless adventure, hoping that the Equestrian countryside will hold the answers to all of her questions.

Character Summary: Cotton Swab is quite wise for somepony only in the middle of her life. She is responsible and dependable, traits borne from her years doing a job with no margin for error. The constant pressure to not make any mistakes whatsoever has left her with a terrible fear of failure, sometimes driving her to the point of paranoia. When not under any pressure, Cotton is mild-mannered to all, yet reserved and untrusting toward strangers, and living her life on the road means that she meets many strangers. Cotton Swab could easily be described as Neutral Good, as she seeks to do good, but is most concerned about her own happiness most of the time.

While she is an excellent doctor, Cotton has always been better with Cryokenesis, whether it be so trivial as cooling any beverage to the perfect drinking tempature, or as spectacular as turning a pool of water into a life-sized statue of hereself. She particularly loved the winter storms when she lived in Manehattan, she made it a tradition to build the foals in Central Park a garden of different snowmares in all shapes and sizes every year... when she's not too caught up in her work, that is.

While Cotton got used to living in Manehattan, she never liked it. It's why she left. The day that she left the city on her soul-searching journey, she felt as if her eyes had been opened for the first time. It took her most of her life to learn how much she loved nature. A jungle of concrete and steel could not compare to one of plants and trees, in her opinion. All she knew of nature as a filly was a the oak trees in the park and the occasional squirrel on her window sill. To be amongst the grassy rolling hills and fields of wildflowers was...breathtaking. More than that, Cotton liked freedom. She always felt entrapped in the tight corners of the city. Claustrophobic, even. She couldn't have looked in any direction without seeing high rises and crowded streets. Outside, she could see the countryside for miles and miles without so much as a taxi carriage in sight. There was no agenda to follow either, she could have just picked a direction and started walking until she needed to stop at a town for supplies. In Manehattan, she couldn't have been away from the hospital for more than two or three days before she needed to get back to work.

[Pretzelparty]

Salutations, Mister Ctrlaltdeleteman! I'm Zoebel12 and I shall be reviewing your application tonight! I'm actually a little new to this app reviewing process so I'm sure this will be a valuable learning experience for the both of us!

Anyway! Let's get to it. I honestly think you've a decent character concept here, Elemental magic users aren't uncommon in WoE but... as this is a more slice of life oriented setting your descriptions of Her ice magic being purely destructive is a bit much. There's no problem with Cotton swab being a bit downtrodden due to not living up to her family's tradition but the constant references for elemental magic being destined to join in the ranks of battle is not really appropriate as (baring the occasional invasion of changeling, chaos entities, temporarily crazy princesses etc) Equestria is a heavily peaceful society and even the royal guard are just guards who serve a defensive purpose. Also this line in particular...

Elemental destruction magic was a rare talent to have in those peaceful days, those with the trait often became powerful warriors that defended the land of Equestria from its enemies. Ponies like that were recruited to the most prestigious ranks of the Royal Gaurd, sometimes becoming the Princesses' personal bodygaurds.

... is considered as creating lore for the forum which we have a specialized team for, as a result that has to be omitted as well. Another thing about this part would be that you are dictating what other characters (namely the princesses) would have done which is also against the rules.

Other things that couls use work would be her summary. This is a vital part of your app! it really shouldn't be one paragraph long IN order to bulk it up I suggest you read though Rarity's Fabulous application form, it has many useful tidbits and poses some questions you can answer and include in your summary! Please post in this thread once more when you have made the changes and I shall read it again! Happy writing!

[CtrlAltDeleteMan]

I've taken all that into to account and edited the post accordingly. Try this one on for size.

[Bellosh]

Okie dokie, had a look over this app. All in all, the concept for this OC is pretty solid. Just a few adjustments are needed before I can stamp:

• Everything you've got in the Cutie Mark Story so far is good material, save for the very end. Since the show dictates that CMs are earned during a moment of great positivity, it seems highly unlikely that Cotton Swab could get that ice-encased rose until she embraces her natural talent. If you change your CM Story and History so that she grows to be comfortable being a girl with frosty instead of healing magic, that'd do quite nicely.
  
• While I'm here, remove the reference to elemental magic as destructive. Such magic in WoE can be used in positive ways, and we want to nourish an environment in our RP where ponies don't really consider their magic to be harmful, just like on the show.
  
• If your OC is not currently employed, how does she support herself while living as a transient? How is she able to walk from settlement to settlement without any established ability as an outdoorsmare? Why does she trot everywhere instead of taking the train? I see the attraction of using a character who isn't tied down to any one location, but even so, we need to make sure that it makes sense for Cotton Swab to be able to wander Equestria as she pleases.
  

That should just about do it. ^_^

[Armony]

Would you like to keep this application open? Please let us know soon.

[CtrlAltDeleteMan]

Would you like to keep this application open? let us know soon.

Ah, yes, keep Iit open. I still haven't made my second edit yet. Sorry, I totally forgot about this application.

[CtrlAltDeleteMan]

There, that should adress all of Bello's issues.

[Bellosh]

Right, that oughta' do it!

[CtrlAltDeleteMan]

Groovy.