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I wanna make a character named Steven, the 6 foot tall treehopper who is afraid of heights
If you want to work with a predetermined race, all final decisions come down to the creator of said race (In this case, TouchyGrunt). Keep in mind this is especially true if your character is going to contradict any specifications already decided upon for any given race. (For example, the maximum height a "Tree Hopper" can grow to is roughly five feet.)
I just find it ironic that Touchy is more concerned about something as mundane as height issue compared to the fact that I made a character who is afraid of heights and does not live in trees therefore lacking the defining feature of the entire species.
I found this group because one of my friends who is not in good standing with Touchy was making fun of it. While I do not condone such, they mentioned that this group is uptight. I understand the writing requires a balance of imagination and rules. I think it's self explanatory why imagination is important to a story, but rules are what give the story a sense of realism. Rules allow the reader to draw parallels to the world the story takes place in and become emotionally invested in it. Without any rules, stories become mindless dicking around incapable of inspiring any emotion. But no matter how important rules are to story writing, you have to treat rules like one of many spices. Adding too much drowns out creativity and all you're left with is bland mush equally incapable inspiring emotion.
Bottom line, assuming i can make a 10 foot tall human character with my imagination, why can't I use my imagination to make a 6 foot tall tree hopper
I found this group because one of my friends who is not in good standing with Touchy was making fun of it. While I do not condone such, they mentioned that this group is uptight. I understand the writing requires a balance of imagination and rules. I think it's self explanatory why imagination is important to a story, but rules are what give the story a sense of realism. Rules allow the reader to draw parallels to the world the story takes place in and become emotionally invested in it. Without any rules, stories become mindless dicking around incapable of inspiring any emotion. But no matter how important rules are to story writing, you have to treat rules like one of many spices. Adding too much drowns out creativity and all you're left with is bland mush equally incapable inspiring emotion.
Bottom line, assuming i can make a 10 foot tall human character with my imagination, why can't I use my imagination to make a 6 foot tall tree hopper
What you need to remember is that this ultimately is a group project. As stated in the announcement prompt, races fall under the rule set of "First come, first serve". This isn't a matter of smothering out creativity with a plethora of rules, nor is this a case of "Shut down anything that doesn't conform". Nothing's stopping you from proposing a 10 foot tall human, and no one is trying to constrict your creativity, but you have to remember that as part of a group project you need to be willing to work alongside others, even when you don't necessarily agree with one another. Perhaps the most important thing to realize when working with others is that you won't always get everything that your way, and may not get anything you want whatsoever if you aren't willing to compromise.
Take myself for example. When working with fantasy, I'm most comfortable working with humans. In the early stages of chatting with the others working on this project however it was decided almost unanimously that the world's focus should be on the non-humans that had been created as part of the world building. As a result, everyone was completely comfortable just leaving humans out of the world altogether. Naturally, this made me somewhat anxious, however through only a paragraph or so of talking it through the group able to agree on humans existing in this world, albeit on another continent. This allowed me to continue work on my planned human character, while maintaining the focus the group had decided upon.
What you need to take away from this is that teamwork will sometimes require compromise and sacrifice, and you can't take it personally and cry foul every time you get out voted. I'm the figurehead of this project, and one of the final decision makers, yet even I must yield to the decision of the mass. My advice? Try to talk things over with TouchyGrunt if need be, or begin work on an alternative. Bounce ideas around for a new race if need be, whatever it takes. So long as you are willing to follow the guidelines (Which, let's be honest here, are both few and reasonable) and work with others, you should be fine.
Take myself for example. When working with fantasy, I'm most comfortable working with humans. In the early stages of chatting with the others working on this project however it was decided almost unanimously that the world's focus should be on the non-humans that had been created as part of the world building. As a result, everyone was completely comfortable just leaving humans out of the world altogether. Naturally, this made me somewhat anxious, however through only a paragraph or so of talking it through the group able to agree on humans existing in this world, albeit on another continent. This allowed me to continue work on my planned human character, while maintaining the focus the group had decided upon.
What you need to take away from this is that teamwork will sometimes require compromise and sacrifice, and you can't take it personally and cry foul every time you get out voted. I'm the figurehead of this project, and one of the final decision makers, yet even I must yield to the decision of the mass. My advice? Try to talk things over with TouchyGrunt if need be, or begin work on an alternative. Bounce ideas around for a new race if need be, whatever it takes. So long as you are willing to follow the guidelines (Which, let's be honest here, are both few and reasonable) and work with others, you should be fine.
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Jeezers, sorry it took so long to get the group up! Turns out it experienced a conversion error in the application process, so while it's been accepted for days now, it was only fixed just today.