Time for me to sleep.

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Hey there guys. How are y'all doin' now?

boop I'm more active on here

Gettin' off work soon.

Visit my Tumblr! I may say things. The Bureau Project

Eating breakfast. Contemplating making another OC because I am bored. Bat ponies are not a warning sign of a bad OC are they?

The only races I can think of that set off alarm bells so far are Alicorns and Changelings. I know the main 3 races are safe to use while I have been told that Robot/Mech ponies are safe in non-canon (although according to some promo art from the CCG (used in a promo card mat), the Doctor might have been building and messing with one in his lab).

Not too sure about Crystal Ponies though. They seem to be pretty rarely used for fan characters.

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My Little Shark, My Little Shark~

XP granted for befriending a giant magical spider!

Bat ponies are not a warning sign of a bad OC are they?

I certainly hope not, considering my go-to OC is a Bat Pony. So far as he knows one of only two, they're both Orphans, he's a tortured soul, he's super smart and handsome you guys uuuugh... yeah, no, I'm aware he sets off a lot of Mary Sue alarm bells but I offset it by actually being able to write characters.

Heck, I've even seen decent Alicorn OC's - recessive genes that make him technically able to use all magics without actually being decent at any of them, etc. etc. There's a few changeling OCs out there as well, but given that the majority of the race used literally two models, it's difficult to make one that sticks out to people while staying true to the show's design.

Ultimately what makes a good OC is less how they fit 'the rules', and more how developed of a character are they, and how well they're designed...

Like, let's actually take my whining seriously and look at my Bat Pony OC, Nightingale Smiles. I've used him in a couple of fanfics so far, those being Stories from a Seaside Village and Our Eminence.

In both of these stories, Nightingale, and his brother Meadowlark, are explicitly the guards of Luna seen in the first Nightmare Night episode. So far as they know in both of these stories, they are the only of their kind that exists. In fact, Our Eminence deals with how they're first discovered - Feral in a park in Canterlot. They're taken in by a scientist who educates them and tries to integrate them into society - something they find difficult, as they're just shy of Obligate Carnivores. The story follows them as they try, and eventually fail, to integrate into high society - as they scientist who found them is a member of the Smiles family, the richest family in Canterlot - before being taken in as Luna's Valets.

So, from that alone, Marty Stu points:

Last(ish) of his kind, Tragic Backstory(Abandoned as a child, implicitly) Fabulously wealthy Unnerving and 'unique'(Golden eyes, fangs, predatory body language) Isolated due to the above

Within the story itself, Nightingale proves himself physically potent(Being a predator) and keenly intelligent(Learning Equestrian in less than a year and eventually being invited to study philosophy at the University of Canterlot). He's also got an, at first glance, Sasuke-esque personality, being stoic, vaguely melancholy, and taciturn.

This is expanded upon in Seaside Village, ostensibly a sequel to Our Eminence. Nightingale has become so dour as to be depressed, for reasons that will be explored through the story. He's also become much better read, and occasionally quotes poetry, literature or philosophy that belies the fact he's only been literate for a few years, tops, at the time of the story. He also goes toe-to-toe with several supernatural creatures and comes out quite alive.

All of those together sound like a recipe for a bit of an Edgelord, don't they? Oh he's so dour, so tortured, such a tragic creature, yet so powerful and brave. The thing is, he isn't. Nightingale has several key features that, while not immediately apparent, inform a lot of his character.

First of all, Nightingale is in no way tragic. He doesn't care that he spends most of his time alone, and he certainly doesn't care that he's "different". Yes, he wants someone he can relate to, but he accepts and understands what he is, and he pretty much chooses his isolation. While it's true that many people find him uncomfortable, those who get to know him find him fairly charismatic, in a way that actually borders on Adorkable - because item number 3, Nightingale is kind of a huge dolt.

The thing is, while Meadowlark was socializing, Nightingale was reading. Both of them are obsessive by nature, but Meadowlark's obsession - music - leads him to interact with others on a regular basis, whereas Nightingale's leads him to hole himself up in a library. Before entering the pony world, Meadowlark and Nightingale has a shared language that was primarily onomatopoeia. Anything that wasn't tangible wasn't necessary for them to express. They learned to judge one another's emotions, but they never needed a way to express it verbally. Moreover, they're predators, so have a different set of body language from regular ponies. Nightingale is near-constitutionally unable to read other ponies, and he's even less capable of expressing himself. Nightingale's stoicism is a combination of three features: His thoughtful nature, his inability to express himself, and item number 4:

Nightingale is aggressively, cheerfully, proudly lazy as sin. If he can get away with not doing something, he absolutely will. In the early days of his service to Luna he was frequently admonished for getting random servants to do his work for him, and wandering off to the palace Library to read on his own.

So, there it is: Yes, Nightingale is mildly tragic, fabulously rich, and very intelligent and powerful, but it's balanced out by his character flaws - his laziness, his trouble expressing himself, and his sheer apathy at his situation.

Characters aren't a sum-measure of race and design, they're a totalling of personality and charisma. A good character is well-written before they're well-designed.

Birthright: an original web novel about Dragons, the Burdens of Leadership, and Mangoes.

Short version: You can load up a character with positive or unique traits so much as: 1. said traits are used to inform their character rather than as an excuse for them to be awesome all the time and 2. they're balanced out with difficult or negative characteristics.

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3. They're not alicorns

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae

I've even seen alicorns done well, honestly.

Birthright: an original web novel about Dragons, the Burdens of Leadership, and Mangoes.

My most popular OC is an alicorn

Readers will accept alicorns if you're making a legitimate effort to expand the cosmology of the MLP universe, not just slapping wings and a horn on your OC because they're cool.

Oh yeah, that's true. It wasn't an alicorn, but I got away with a divine character by setting up a situation in which the readers either expected it, or had no idea how the logic worked without.

Basically within the story there was a huge political hubbub because Equestria believed a neighbouring Country had kidnapped Blueblood(Technically true but it wasn't an official mission so much as an Ambassador taking it upon himself). Said neighbouring Kingdom was getting up in arms about the accusations, and a lot of readers were wondering ho they were planning on standing up to the Goddess of the Sun - and the answer was with the God of the Oceans.

Granted it's more for the purpose of fanfic and comics than just pure characters, but readers will accept a lot as long as the internal logic is sound.

Which... in any context beyond fanfic just means 'you didn't fuck up the basic necessity of writing", so I suppose that makes sense, really.

Birthright: an original web novel about Dragons, the Burdens of Leadership, and Mangoes.

Just to nitpick, I'm pretty sure that on the power spectrum Sun > Oceans.

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That's true. The thing about Mary Sues is that they're based on contrivences and the plot bending around them. If a pony is an alicorn because it fits with the metaphysics of your story, that's fine. If they're an alicorn to be cool, that's a bad sign.

And it's like that for everything. A character needs to fit in the world.

Not always. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Apollo isn't higher up on the Olympian heirarchy than Poseidon, for example.

edited 4th Nov '15 6:24:16 AM by KylerThatch

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

That's true. Posiedon is tied for second in the Olympic pantheon

So the jist of this conversation is that you can make any type of pony OC good if you really try hard enough and put effort into it, correct?

Well, yeah, but we're not talking about the Greek Pantheon. I'm just saying that the amount of power required to manage a sun is probably a bit more than would be needed to handle the oceans of a single planet.

That said I'm just being facetious and I know perfectly well that it depends on what cosmology is being used.

Pretty much.

edited 4th Nov '15 6:28:17 AM by JapaneseTeeth

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Or you could be a three-legged hell crow with the power to shoot mini-suns.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Maybe now I can freely ship Twilight with my super mega awesome OC Clash Trenty.

If you want to see some funny fanart, check out Bob-The-Dalek's stuff on derpibooru or deviantart. His art style is simple, but it works and his little comics/pictures are really funny.

edited 4th Nov '15 6:41:29 AM by marston

@Marston: Pretty much. The real defining trait of Mary Sues is that they warp the plot to fit them rather than fitting in themselves. They're bad because of their poor effort rather than their ... say... power. eg. A pegasus that's faster than Rainbow would be a Sue because that defies the setting, but one that is better than her in other ways despite being slower overall fits.

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Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

So, Chrysalis then?

There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only... Hooty.

(comes in manor, throws a bloody head on the floor) Hello children. Just got back from Hell...not that anyone cared.

I think a pegasus who's faster than Rainbow Dash could work, but in a very specific context: a story exploring how Rainbow deals with losing. Of course, that would mean focusing on Rainbow herself, not the OC. So, not much opportunity for "Look how cool my OC is!" there.