Travis,
I think you've got the idea, and are going in the right direction so far. The watermark isn't an issue; I understand your need to protect your work.
Regarding the characters, I don't think those are really what I had in mind, but I know these are the early stages and there's still some additional work to be done. Characters probably won't be necessary or anything, for the banner that is. In place of the characters, I'd prefer a "logo" of some sort that represents me. Just a round face or something that I can use as an avatar or a logo elsewhere too.
As far as the layout, I think that works well, although I'd like to see each individual article posted have some kind of background or enclosure that resembles the rest of the site. Sorry, hard for me to articulate what it is I mean.
I do like how the banner has burning buildings and stuff in the background. I think you're on to something good there. The bad news is that I don't think I'll be sticking with that name. I'm now leaning more toward something like, "Traitor to the Cause". At any rate, it will take me a little bit to finalize everything, but let me tell you my ideas so far.
Traitor to the Cause - Name of the website
Tagline: "Having powerful enemies builds character..."
Subsections
Up Down Left Right: Gaming category
For Great Justice!: Social/news/politics
Unfortunately that's it for now... I'm still in my creative process, and hopefully more of this will come together for me soon. I like the direction it's going in right now. I need feedback from the others who are gonna be involved.
The "categories" will be handled by wordpress, but I'm wondering what you can do to individualize them? For instance, if I write something in "Up Down Left Right", I'd almost like to have it display a different banner on the post (not on the website itself)... anyway, this is stuff we can get to later. Please also keep the site "spacious", I'd like to reserve some space for possible advertisements later.
Thanks for your work so far!
Thanks again and best regards,
Jarred