Story Time · 5:31am Aug 30th, 2014
Today's blog is going to be one of my more personal ones, so if you really don't care you're free to go. There are going to be some minor updates, but not until the end.
I get asked a lot, not really on here but usually in steam games, about my avatar. I figured I'd tell the story behind it today, since really I'm just procrastinating and... well I like telling stories. Part of the reason I write them, I suppose.
My avatar is pretty clearly my OC and was made through an OC generator a long time ago now. More than three years, actually. It was during the first six month of me being a brony when I still wouldn't tell anyone about it. Actually, come to think of it, the day I made Neon was the day my step mother found out about pony... huh...
Anyway, when I say I made her, I really mean I was present when she was being made. My brother, whom introduced me to pony, decided I needed to create an OC for... some unknown reason. I never did figure out why he was so insistent on it. It was decided from square one it had to be a mare, also for a reason I never understood. So we sat down at his computer and pulled up one of the original OC generators and started messing with the settings to find a design I liked. The name was inspired by the hair, with the neon red streaks through it. How we got that is actually a glitch in the program; when the mane was set to a specific colour pattern, the coat colour would be used instead of the secondary mane colour they used for the details, only the colour would ignore the brightness levels and just go full on neon. It had to be a blueish grey mane, which I actually liked in contrast to the dull red coat and neon highlights.
Thus Neon Lightning was born. For a couple months after that, I never used her for anything, and forgot she existed. To be perfectly honest I didn't even want to make her in the first place. But then I got steam, and needed an avatar. What better avatar, I thought, than the pony OC I'd created, as at that time I was quite comfortable in the brony community. Unfortunately, I didn't have her saved on my computer, so I had to re-create her, which was difficult considering I couldn't find the right generator to get the neon highlights glitch. So I made a base the best I could remember, and did the neon streaks manually in MS Paint. To this day if you look closely at my avatar you can see the terrible job I did on them. I'm no artist when it comes to drawing. I redrew the cutie mark manually and put it onto the flank, redrawing the wing covering half the image (which I did decently well) and Neon Lightning became both my steam avatar and my steam user name.
I get asked a lot why I still use her, as OC generator ponies are most commonly associated with the younger bronies and especially the newer bronies, and foten times annoying and immature ones. While I am in fact the youngest brony I've ever met personally, a lot of people tend to assume I'm older and question my avatar.
So why don't I change my avatar to something else, and why do I keep the name Neon Lightning instead of using my normal screen name Kodeake? Well, to be honest I don't really know. I'm Kodeake on here because, oddly enough, Neon Lightning was actually taken by time I changed my name to it, so I had to go with Kodeake. My avatar, however, stayed Neon. I tell people who ask that it's just a relic from a couple years ago that I'm just too lazy to change.
This isn't true, but it's easier than explaining what is.
I used her for so long that I grew to identify as Neon Lightning online instead of Kodeake like I used to. People called me Neon when talking to me, and it just became who I was. Maybe I could change out the avatar and keep the name, but it just wouldn't feel right to be called Neon but not have a picture of her up. And since I can't draw worth a damn, I have to keep the OC generator version with the terribly done mane highlights and obviously edited cutie mark. Maybe one day I'll end up commissioning someone to draw me a better avatar with details and such, but for now I have what the generators could give me.
In the end, if you called me Neon in real life I'd respond to it, so Neon Lightning stuck and became my name on any brony sites I went to. I still use Kodeake for the mundane internet things, like Email and such, but if I'm going to be active on it it's usually Neon. This site's an exception because Neon Lightning was taken. The bastard. If you who is named Neon Lightning is reading this, I want my name back!
Okay no, not really. Still, I was a tad bit disappointed when Neon was taken. But now Kodeake is a fairly known name among Twidash shippers, and I'm okay with that.
So, the promised story updates! Missing Dreams is... smooth sailing, actually. I've been focusing on it, and it broke through 2K words today, and I haven't even started the allotted two hours of writing tonight. It was done on my spare time. I found out what I need to get into writing a story though; a particular scene I want to write. If there's a scene I really want to write at some point in the fic, then I will smash through mountains to get there. It's how Cheated Dreams got done so fast (I really wanted to write the scene when Dash retried her entrance exam to the Wonderbolts.) and it's how Twilight's Rainbow was even finished. I really wanted to write the bit with the trick at the end. It's how Missing Dreams is going to be written, because I really want to write the scene where the main antagonist is revealed.
So, if you all don't mind, I'm going to go write that. I'm almost done the first scene of the chapter. Oh, before I go, I should let you all know that I had a look at Cheated Dreams and decided to change the tags a bit. It's now rated teen (Because of the cage scenes... which I think is self explanatory) and it lost the SoL tag in favour of the dark tag (also for the cage scenes) and the second fic will follow this trend. It'll have of course the romance tag, and the dark tag, but also the adventure tag and possibly the sad tag if I write it the way I'm planning to. Of course it will also be rated teen. Just to let you guys know if you were wondering.
Now then, I have to finish the Twidash fluff scene, then write the most evil cliff hanger ever.... mwahahaha.... oh it's gonna be fun to get the reactions on that one.
Until next time,
Kodeake out
Never noticed how "bad" you have edited your avatar...I always thought it is just an ordinary pony generator pony.
I also have an oc but her story is a bit different. I created her by accident. I just drew a random pony and started to like her after some time. I gave her then first a cutie mark and about half a year later a name...and I might even give her a good mane someday....
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The scale of the image on here is to the point where you can barely tell. It really only bugs me because I know what it looks like full size. Though even at its original size it's hard to tell where I redrew the wing, so I'm actually rather proud of that particular edit. The highlights in the mane though... ugh. I don't even look at the full size image any more because of it.
It took me a while to get used to even having an OC, but once I did she kinda stuck. Her name went through a couple iterations before landing on what it is today, and at some point I made a full back story for her intended to be used in one of my stories, which never got finished (Don't Give Up... oddly enough she was the antagonist in that too....).