OC Slamjam Compendium '16 Comments Alpha EX Special Edition · 8:51pm Jun 1st, 2015
Here they are, my comments on all the rest of the OC Slamjam contestants!
Part one is here.
Part two is here.
Part three is here.
Quick Study
Another character who has a one-note name and cutie mark shtick, and makes a decent character by going ahead and running with it. I do appreciate the effort that went into the personality section. It gives opinions and motivations that have the potential to make her genuinely interesting.
Heather Rose
This character’s entry shows that the author is either a well known ponyficcer, or someone who should open a fucking doc and become one already. That said, she’s far from the best OC in the contest. This character goes to show a couple things: One, that these sheets suffered for lack of established conventions for “how to write a good character sheet,” and two, that speculation is key to using these characters to their fullest. For example, Heather Rose as written by her opponent Proper Prim showed special love for being out surrounded by her flowers, wasn’t a big fan of the train zooming past, and was a bit slow to warm when approached by someone who wasn’t really her type. That kind of thing is missing from most of these character sheets, not just Heather’s.
Gross Product
“Helped the Apples run the farm?” This is the first character who’s too closely connected to canon. Much too close, actually. Aside from that, just being the pony equivalent of a baby boomer doesn’t count as an interesting character trait.
Oddluck
What a random-ass character this is. She has a bit of an emo past, she’s educated, she’s a wanderer, her cutie mark is being lucky, you say that she’s angry and vindictive BEFORE you say what her personality is for the majority of the time… This sheet is a mess. Focus in and sell your character as having a main concept, and work everything else to fit into that.
Luster Lock
Here we have a character whose complicated backstory is—for once—actually has quite a bit of bearing on who she is as a character. Her personality may be a list of words, but at least they’re specific and non-standard words that actually figure into the history and actually provide some nuance. Wish I had read this sheet before reading her stories, because I think I might have mentally mixed Luster up with Melon Rind or something and now I’m wondering if her opponent might have really blown it on her character. It’s a serious stretch to say that Luster would rob someone out of revenge.
Wispy Willow
I’m biased by the fact that this guy’s story was so good. I don’t know if I would have liked him so much otherwise. But come on—a ghost hunter pony? That’s hilarious. That’s a great idea. Best of luck to this guy in the next round.
Love Runner
A pony whose cutie mark talent is breaking up relationships. Who got her cutie mark for breaking up her parents. Author, is everything okay? D:
I do like that the author took such a weird idea and worked it into a coherent character. I don’t fully know if I like the character.
Mango Leaf
Fucking Hoofululu. Good god. This guy is a joke character, straight up. And not the likeable, versatile Evergreen type. I’m torn on whether I like him or not. I mean, I like him, he’s funny, but he’s an awkward one-note joke, not even an in-your-face one like Iron Curtain, and it would be annoying to come up against him.
Whitewash
Like Dawn Gleam, he’s an Idea Bin Escapee but in a good way (and I’ll understand if people disagree with me about Dawn Gleam due to that one raising Mary Sue flags). He is all about his backstory, but his backstory is interesting and it opens Whitewash up to messing with other ponies’ lives in interesting ways. His personality especially manages to take his central idea and turn it into a living character.
Booster Bones
He’s a fucking ghost. I hope he comes up against the ghost hunter pony.
I don’t know whether he’s an infuriatingly railroaded Idea Bin Escapee or a hilariously lovable incompetent joke character. Given the story his author did, he could go either way.
Clue Seeker
Ha ha ha what. Literally right after the incompetent ghost detective comes an actual detective. He’s an extremely one-note “background pony,” but an eminently useable one, and it will be up to him and his opponents to make him fun. But what the fuck is up with specifying that he’s G4? I mean…
Minie Ball
This one officially cannot be separated from how her first couple of stories went. Jesus Christ. That is all.
Loosestrife
Our second ancient warrior from the tribal days, how the hell did this happen? But this one has the decency to be coherent and readable, so that’s fine. The entire character is a terribly predictable “proud warrior from medieval times,” but her author and opponent both showed themselves to be highly competent, so I guess I gotta give this one a thumbs up.
Trinket
Other people will probably think that this one is too close to canon, but I think he’s a perfectly workable “background pony” whose talent is creating pretty things. He does have a personality, his history and profession are useable—nothing inherently Mary Sue about being a friend of Princess Cadance. I went to high school with a future first string Notre Dame lineman and a future Japanese supermodel. These things happen.
Hazel Luck
Again with a “lucky” cutie mark, geez. She’s more or less devoid of an interesting story, though she does have a personality. I worry that she’s a bit generic. A very vague talent for “being lucky” and a personality that’s basically the “outgoing please love me” means she’s going to lean on her opponents in order to make her stories unique.
Loam
What terrible mechanics you have, my dear. I can’t say I like that her talent is digging holes which led her to be a gravedigger. And… that personality section… is all. about. motherfucking. holes. The airships bit obviously shows that she’s copy pasted from a roleplaying thread, but then I gotta wonder, who makes a roleplaying character that’s a gravedigger whose talent is digging holes? D:
Ace Artisan
I like this guy quite a bit. He has the kind of backstory that sets him up as a person with a life (he has a family, he’s had struggles, he has a cutie mark story that shows character) but he’s also a pony with an identity centered on his cutie mark.
Lunar Glint
Okay, the fact that he’s marked as Heterosexual sets off more alarms than Summer Heat’s entire profile combined. He’s otherwise painfully generic and has gotta, gotta be a self insert. I don’t really know where to go with ragging on this one, but it would probably turn into ragging on the author if I did. Let’s move on.
Caps Lock
Where the hell did “scar on the left buttcheek” come from? Her appearance section hurts my eyes, but her stories show that her bubbly, sorta ditzy personality and salespony profession are a lot of fun. Another nice example of how the “background pony” type can be good instead of boring.
Haystacks
Holy shit what. Someone had something to prove here.
Streamline
Don’t just compare your color scheme and build to canon characters, what the hell!
He’s a background pony whose shtick is being a heartless corporate suit. That’s actually kind of fun. He’s definitely got the potential for good stories.
Loud Mouth
A cutie-mark-powered motivational speaker who can’t help but feel like her own dreams aren’t coming true—I really like that. I’m not sure exactly how well it works as written here, though, because the fact that she really and truly is insecure (see those last couple lines) doesn’t quite click with me. I can’t imagine that someone whose profession (indeed, whose cutie mark) is all about personal presence and speaking ability would be so overtly under-confident. I’m more feeling that little detail as a secret bit of her, a hidden anxiety that only comes out in private moments. Regardless, a nice character.
Foxglove
And to close it out we have… a very strange one. A freaking thief pony. A very deeply unhappy thief pony who does it all for his little daughter. Whose day job is apparently as a cop or something? His talent is of “being slightly more alert than others?” I don’t know whether to give a thumbs-up for being highly original and detailed and nuanced, or a thumbs down for… being… a gritty, depressing pony whose whole thing is being a thief! He has a very strong flavor and feel to him, he’s got all the pieces for a great story, I just… gah! So many things wrong with it!
Aaaaand that’s all, folks! Since this contest is going to last a long time, I want to keep a running commentary on my blog somehow, but I’m not sure quite how. Maybe I’ll suggest hypothetical pairings, maybe write some bits of them myself, maybe invite other people to do the same? Since there are some pairings that just need, need, need to happen.
One more thing: PresentPerfect has done much the same as me, writing brief comments on all the characters. May I humbly suggest that other people follow in our hoofsteps?
I thought that was the entire point of that entry: that it was out of character for her, and she knew it deep down just as much as Bristle did overtly. At least, that was how I read/interpreted it.
We should make a group for this stuff.
3115981 I do question how Bristle knew it was out of character enough to give sage advice tho. But, if 80s Splinter could do it, so can Bristle.
On the subject of good/bad/questionable characters I understand that the contest is about sticking to the character sheet as much as possible, but I do think it's a mistake to read them as black and white/written-in-stone LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE. As such, I wouldn't write Melon as sociopathic as her author did, nor would I write Mango as a heat-hater, much as how you can use Luster Lock as someone talented with locks that treats that as a job, but not as a definition of the self. Minie I have no clue how you can un-cardboard her character in 2500 words or less and Mizuko is pretty much unsalvageable unless you change everything, but you can write and be creative.
Also, I was going to comment on more, but it's my son's b-day so... later.
3116150 Look, you have to make a choice. Your son, or a child's television show fanfiction website.
The choice is clear.
3116150 You have a son!?
3116271
We also have a fanfic author who took time off because she was pregnant with a baby daughter named Trixie, and a fanfic author who has repeatedly taken time off because he got deployed to Afghanistan. We're a varied group.
3116275 With the lineup of OCs we have in this contest, that comes as no surprise, not that I didn't know it already.
I think Obs mentioned something about buttcheek scars in the initial example for the character sheet.
The link to part three is broken.
3116150
Minie Ball is easy. You just have to not play into the trap. Write a story that doesn't actually centre around her racism. This will allow you to expose other character traits of hers, likely of your own invention, by placing her into a situation that her author never built her for. The racism will still be there, since it's so central to her character, but by allowing the narrative to largely ignore it in favour of some greater external conflict stemming from the environment, her presence avoids becoming overpowering and she's forced to share the spotlight rather than hog it, and the greater level of equal interaction will help to un-cardboard her further.
3116249 MY LITTLE PONY FANFICTION WEBSITE YAY!