How to Make an OC Interesting: Red and Black Alicorns and You · 3:50pm Jul 11th, 2016
So I'm taking a break from The Season of Spooky for two reasons. First, I've been burnt out on a certain series of stories. Second, I've been planning on writing something about this for a while and after the summer season brought with it the revival of a certain cooking-themed animated series that helped me crystallize my thoughts on the subject. The stars have aligned.
The "Red and Black Alicorn OC" is shorthand for a terrible original character concept in the MLP fandom the way "Mary Sue" is used elsewhere. It's also shorthand, I've found, for a very specific type of terrible fandom OC. While the archetypical "Mary Sue" is cited as being perfect, loved by everyone, etc. etc., the Red and Black Alicorn OC is associated mostly with one thing, and one thing only.
Edge.
Pure, unfiltered edge.
It's HIS WOOORRRLD.
It's easy enough to say that the problem is with the conception of the red and black alicorn OC itself - that the concept is to blame. I disagree. I find that generally the thing that kills red and black alicorn OCs is that authors are very poor at choosing how to frame them. To that end, I've devised a helpful list of tips for creating and implementing original characters within established universes. This list is specifically focused on characters who are intended for high-stakes adventure stories, since that's the general realm most red-and-black alicorn OCs fall into. Feel free to adjust this advice to fit your needs.
1. Avoid defining anyone's "power level" in specific terms unless it is absolutely critical to your story.
This is just a good narrative practice in general any time you're writing a story with lots of action scenes. Do not ever be fooled by Dragon Ball Z - citing someone's relative power level to someone else is generally a really bad idea unless you are specifically doing it to communicate an imbalance in strength between two combatants. Even then, it's best to just show that imbalance in how each character approaches the confrontation, rather than outright breaking the narrative to have two characters on the side discussing how Sturdy Shield is a much better fighter than Gleaming Pauldron, or how Starswirl the Bearded's magical output exceeds Meadowbrook the Mage's.
The exception to this rule is when you are writing third-person limited or first person narration and are writing a character's impressions of an opponent during a confrontation. Just being told that Meadowbrook is a weaker mage than Starswirl by the chorus of exposition is much less engaging than Meadowbrook the Mage realizing she doesn't have Starswirl's raw magical output and being forced to abandon her original plans and modify them on the fly.
2. Pick three things for your character to be good at.
This is just a good exercise in general, and you can flex this number as you build your character and find things that make sense, but I find it to be a good starting point. Think of three specific things your character is good at. Not broad topics like "magic", or "farming", or "sailing airships". Those are all broad disciplines. Think of specifics things in a character's discipline they're good at. Is your magic-using character good at applied telekinesis? How about pyromancy? Evocation? Transmutation? If they're good at all of the above, perhaps they're no good at something else?
For added fun, if your character is The Best at some particular thing, subtract one other thing from your list of things they are good at on this exercise. If they are a Once In a Lifetime Prodigy Never To Be Repeated In the History of the World (OIALPNTBRITHOTW for short), subtract two. If they are bad at three or more things, you may add one thing they are good at.
3. Look at your list of things from part two. Ask if they make sense in relation to each other.
Several people skip this step, but it is critical. When building a character for a story, you need to make sure that you aren't just picking flaws and skills at random. If your character is a god among mares at using their powers of telekinesis but can't understand how to cast an illusion spell to save their life, you need to make sure the universe the story is set in bears that conclusion up. If they're good at unarmed combat, acrobatic flight and raising vegetables you need to make sure that their backstory actually links these three things- that you build a cohesive idea of a person, and not just a list of good and bad traits.
Let's try an example character out here. We'll call her "Angelfish".
I'm planning on writing a story about, let's say, sky pirates in an age before Nightmare Moon's return, during an unstable period in Celestia's rule. I decide that my main character Angelfish is going to be a sky pirate, and her specific skills are going to be marksmanship, code-breaking, and pyromancy. I then re-examine my character in light of this.
Marksmanship makes perfect sense as a skill a sky pirate might pick up and doesn't require any sort of special explanation for its existence, so I leave that be - it fits very well with the kind of story I'm writing and the kind of character I want in the lead. The last two require a little examination. If my character is a skilled pyromancer, what does that mean? Is that her special talent, casting fire magic? If that's the case then by definition she's a unicorn. If she's very good at using pyromancy, would she even need to use a conventional weapon? Wouldn't she be more likely to just cast fireballs at anyone who she dislikes? I scribble a note here. Maybe I'll change this one.
Code-breaking is a bit different than marksmanship - you can be very good at it naturally, but it still requires study and practice. That means my character has to be willing and able to put in those hours of practice, meaning that whatever she was doing before she became a sky pirate had to give her the opportunity to learn about basic codes and how to decipher them. This suggests a backstory - perhaps she's a noble's daughter and learned this as a hobby when she was young. Or perhaps she's former Equestrian Royal Guard, which provides a convenient explanation for her combat skills as well. She might have been a soldier in the Equestrian military tasked with code-breaking or encoding information. Perhaps she was even former Equestrian Intelligence.
You begin to see what's happening? Just by examining the kind of talents I want my character to have, I'm building an entire history for her. I can modify her abilities and history as I like between drafts if I come up with something I like better, but just by deciding on and examining these details, I can create a skeleton of a character.
4. Make Everyone Cool
The cardinal rule of action stories is that the less competent any one member of your core cast is, the less fun they are to read. So many new writers make the mistake of believing that the best way to sell their awesome alicorn OC is to have that OC do super-cool things that none of the main cast members can. This is a mistake. What you have just done isn't make your OC look good, it's made everyone connected to them look bad. Even if you weren't running the risk of pissing off fans of the canon characters, you're just subjecting the audience to very dull descriptions of characters failing at being cool. An action-adventure should be tense. There is no tension in watching the dork squad fail spectacularly at every conceivable opportunity, and there is no catharsis in it either.
Not everyone in your cast has to be good at the same things, but everyone should be capable of something. If a character is a bad combatant, make sure to show them doing something else cool - Fluttershy doesn't need to kick seven kinds of changeling ass to be an essential element in your story, but she makes a great character to show accepting newcomers or displaying surprising insight, for instance. Make everyone cool, and people will forgive your OC for being just as cool.
5. Make your character an underdog.
This matters more than just creating flaws or weaknesses, though they're a part of it. Nobody wants to root for a character who starts at the top and stays at the top and never leaves the top (it's possible to make this happen, but very difficult). Make your character an underdog somehow. Make the threat they are facing bigger than they are. Create challenges they can't automatically overcome with their skills, without undermining those same skills. If your character is a very competent sky pirate, force them to deal with things like a leaky ship, limited funds, or a surly crew. If your character is a powerful battlemage, make sure to throw problems at them that they can't deal with by exploding something. If your character is an academic who just stumbled onto a conspiracy, have them thrown into situations they can't easily think their way out of. In other words, find a way to get your characters stuck in a tree by the end of the first act and find some rocks to throw at them during the second act so people will be happy to see them get down by the third.
There are more items I can add to this list, and I will, but hopefully this works as a good starting point. Join me in the future as I make the case for Gilda and Trixie as excellent OCs.
I would say that in the particular case of ponies, the problem with any kind of alicorn character is the very nebulous place they occupy in the universe, at once fundamental and ...well, not. The canon is of two and a half minds about it, and it takes so much digging to produce a consistent canon-compliant concept, that almost nobody ever does. Most widely held fanon interpretations don't handle adding any more alicorns well...
If it weren't for that, the red and black alicorn wouldn't even be such a meme.
Ahem...
Have you read The Immortal Game? Your point about power levels brings me there.
This is a helpful and very methodical analysis! Making characters has always been a struggle for me, but the very practical approach you take here seems like it could be very useful for me. Thank you.
If I didn't already have a lot of respect for your writing blogs, I do now. Thank you for existing. ;_;
While you're not wrong with anything here, I think you're missing core issue at play. Namely, that when a character is a 'Mary Sue' (or B&R Alicorn), the problem isn't the character. The issue is how the character interacts with the story/world. It's a matter of not using Superman to tell the story of a reporter getting in over his head.
4084448
Personally I blame the Edge more than anything else. Hence the "red and black" qualifier. There's a specific mechanic in canon now for Alicorn Ascension that you could probably get to work, it's just really hard to sell a character as meeting that specific condition. It's also just difficult given what alicorns are in canon - their level of magical prowess is subject to the needs of this week's plot, after all.
4084453
I said tension, not black comedy.
4084460
Not as of yet. Why?
4084496
Thank you. ;__;
4084729
I dunno, I'd love to read a story where Clark Kent has to deal with a standard thriller plot just for the comedy potential.
While I agree with what you've said, I think rules four and five form a pretty good argument against that all on their own. If you have to make everyone in your core group cool and you have to make the main character an underdog on some level, that requires you to build opportunities for characters to be cool and challenges for the central character, which funnels you toward the kind of framing your story will need.
4084928
As a comedy? Sure, that would work on the absurdity level alone.
Like I said, nothing was wrong with your rules. They are all valid and useful tips for writers to keep in mind, but they focus on the symptoms rather than the root cause. Superman should be the ultimate Mary Sue, but as long as the writers know what they are doing he won't seem that way. The same applies to Batman, Shadow, Twilight... the story and the challenges he/she face(s) define whether a character appears to be a Mary Sue.
Basically, you start by making any character you want, then figure out how to challenge them... or you do it the other way, figuring out what story you want to tell and crafting a character that will be challenged by it.
4084928
There's much discussion within of power levels. One of the basic plot points established early on is that Alicorn power scales linearly with age, so because of the nature of the Big Bad, Celestia and Luna can't fight it head on. I was just reminded of that by your first point, and was curious if you'd read it because I'm interested to see what you'd think of the way it's handled. If you might be interested in reading it, I can definitely say that rules number 4 and 5 are followed to the letter and I'm not sure I've read more badass fight scenes.
An example of edge done right.
i.imgur.com/aCmIG7k.jpg
4086040 Is that image broken on purpose.
oh my god.
4086147
I wish I was that clever, but I just screwed up the link. Let's pretend I was clever though.
4086040
Nicely articulated! #4 is a must for any adventure story, and too often ignored by amateur writers. I'd just like to say that I think it applies to the villains as well. Beating a carboard dork, no matter how powerful, isn't as satisfying as defeating a competent and clever opponent.
Having attended the OC panel at Bronycon, this was delightful to read as they covered some similar ideas.