Beware of Godmoding
Godmoding is either trying to control another person's character or making a character who is too perfect or too powerful. Make sure when you roleplay that you describe only your character's actions and responses to other character's actions. Also, don't make a character who knows everything and can do anything. For example, no one but Stryker should know all about Wolverine's past, and even he can't know absolutely everything. Xavier doesn't even know everything there is to know about Wolverine's past, so why should your character know more than him? Also, be careful about your character's abilities. They can be pretty powerful, but there has to be a limit to their power. Even Magneto has his limits. If your character is a teenager, they can have a certain amount of power, but they shouldn't be as powerful as an adult mutant like Storm, and they probably shouldn't have as much control over their power since they're rather young. Skills and abilities should be reasonable as well. Since this is a comic-book-movie reality, your character can have more skills than common sense allows in the real world. However, there are still limits to their skills. For example, your character shouldn't be a genius computer hacker who is a 10th degree black belt in karate and can speak 10 languages fluently. Your character can be a computer hacker. Your character can be a black belt. Your character can speak a few languages fluently. But they cannot do all three. Pick one talent and go with it.
No Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus
A Mary-Sue is basically a character who is too perfect (especially when it comes to appearance) and has little depth. A Gary-Stu is the male equivalent. Often, the profile of a Mary-Sue character focuses on physical appearance and achievements rather than personality and character motivation. It is a form of godmoding, though godmoding tends to focus more on skills, talents, and powers rather than appearance.
Here's an example of a Mary-Sue profile:
Destiny Love is 5'6 and weighs 100 lbs. She has platinum blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. She is a human but she is on the side of the mutants and is good friends with Xavier. She goes to Xavier's school and is captain of their cheerleading squad. She has a crush on Bobby Drake, but he doesn't know it. Right know, she is wearing a pink tank top from Abercrombie and Fitch and a white miniskirt with ruffles. She is wearing purple eyeshadow and red lipstick.
Notice how the person begins by mentioning appearance very specifically. The character is severely underweight, but somehow the person considers that attractive. Despite being a teenaged human, her character somehow managed to not only befriend Xavier but also gain admission to the school despite having no powers at all. She also has a crush on a canon character, and the roleplayer probably intends on having her character date Bobby and fulfill the roleplayer's own fantasy rather than be realistic. She keeps focusing on appearance and unlikely circumstances. The name of her character is very unlikely and too much of a cutesy name. It also has nothing to do with the character herself; it just "sounds pretty." Please avoid all these mistakes. This is not a real profile (I just made it up), but sadly, many people have written profiles very similar to this one.
Names
Try to name your character something reasonable. It doesn't have to have some kind of meaning, though that would help. It doesn't have to be fancy. After all, Jean Grey and Scott Summers are examples of names of characters in X-men, and they're not fancy. The mutant nickname (like Cyclops or Wolverine) should have some meaning, but it's usually not hard to think of a name. There's a difference between their mutant name and their real name. Please don't just give your character a weird name just because it sounds cool. In reality, it usually sounds pretty stupid. I've heard of names like Butterfly Fire and Jade Diamond. Who the hell would name their kids that? You don't have to give your character a really common name, but try not to go overboard on the weirdness.
The Tortured Soul
on certain forums there people whose characters are orphans, abused by their parents, murderers, runaways, and/or have some kind of overblown, overdramatic past. Although it is true that in real life, people have been abused by their parents, not everyone in the world has had some great trauma in their life. There are other ways to make your character interesting than to add melodramatic event to their past.
Post Length
Two or three sentences is simply not enough for a post. I'm not instating a rule about it, but I would appreciate it if you tried to write at least a full paragraph per post. One or two paragraphs should be fine.
Subject: Role-play 101 
