I want to be clear, about something, I'm not criticizing their writing here, the writing is fine, but I want to talk about themelyness in this... So you have a system that tells you when you are attractive. You can have fun being unattractive... You can even throw in unattractive features and still end up being called cute... I know I have.
Anyway, so what I'm getting at is, how themely is it, if everyone who steps through the gates a baka, is a descriptiedly attractive baka. With stunning amber eyes, that stare soulfully reflecting the rooms light. Gentle sloping brows, and perfect ears. A perfect nose, and a mouth that has lips to die for.
It's really, really, really not. Themely that is. When you come into withmore, and especially if you dump a stat enough during character gen enough to get called ugly by the parser, you shouldn't go counter to that adjective... Revel in being ugly. I know characters who do this well.
So now, how do you make a believable ugly character? It's easy, think of the conditions your character grew up in? Right, a lot of us have fucked up histories... Now think of the consequences alright, now research what those consequences do to the body to make it ugly... Alright... So say you're malnourished in your backstory... Describe that properly. Don't just say you're skinny. Say something like,
"She looks harrowed by hunger, her clouded green eyes hollow looking and dead eyed, her bottle blonde hair lacking luster and showing roots, her skin loosely clinging to the flesh on her stomach, even as it bulges gently, with patches of her skin showing darkness. Her legs bow outwards and she stands on the sides of her feet. Her wrists are bulging and her hands look vaguely skeletal coming off of them."
Boom, instantly she looks unhealthy, ugly and a bit sympathetic. And it's also something you can adjust over time. Say you decide to raise your stats related to appearance, start taking care of yourself eating more, filling out, getting your rickets treated, that's all stuff that makes for good personal RP.
How about a dude now who looks average, and not ugly. This ones a bit more fun, because you can start including more positive adjectives, just stay away from pure positives here. Think about Joe Baka here, a Joe Baka has a couple exceptional traits, but nothing amazing and he has a few ugly traits but nothing excessive
"Tall, at 6'4", he's mousey curly brown haired and has small blue eyes, brows raised almost constantly as if he's got a shocked expression on his face. With largish lips that seem to pout just slightly. And ears that seem a bit large for his head, with drooping lobes. He has a bushy beard that looks scratchy and travels down towards his neck, and a pencil thin mustache on his upper lip, that gets longer at the ends."
I'm going through my nakeds tonight, and removing any overly positive adjectives. What do you guys think? Is this something that should be looked at by more of the player base, maybe a small guide included in help description about the stat system applying an appearance score? Or am I just being a pedant?