• Member Since 13th Oct, 2013
  • offline last seen Apr 20th, 2021

Jordan179


I'm a long time science fiction and animation fan who stumbled into My Little Pony fandom and got caught -- I guess I'm a Brony Forever now.

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Aug
7th
2017

Backstories are EASY! · 6:28am Aug 7th, 2017

Some people claim that backstories are hard. I claim that they are easy. Proof below.

"My name is Doomblade Lightningstrike. I was born a red and black Alicorn.

"'Why are you a red and black Alicorn?' the other Ponies asked me.

"'I do not know,' I replied. 'I probably have a really epic destiny.'

"The other Ponies laughed at me and wouldn't let me join in any Pony games. I felt bad about this.

"'Clean your room,' my parents said to me.

"I felt bad about this. I got no respect.

"Luckily, the next moment King Sombtirek, who is totally an original villain and not based on anyone else, attacked my little peaceful town and killed my parents, and also the other Ponies who laughed at me. I was forced to flee to Canterlot.

"There, Princess Celestia totally loved me because I was so red and black. I got special weapons and armor from her and also lots of sweet sweet loving and I returned to KILL King Sombtirek, who is by the way totally original, Do Not Steal!

"'Oh, you have killed evil King Sombtirek!' cried Princess Celestia. 'Here! Have some MORE sweet sweet Alicorn loving from me as a reward! Also gold and weapons and armor."

Hah! And people say backstories are HARD!

Report Jordan179 · 615 views ·
Comments ( 22 )

That's like saying drawing or painting or easy.

4626412

Oh, it's not easy.

Let me amend that. It's easy to make up boring OC's, even with basic backstories that amount to "Well, I grew up on the maize farm and I learned to farm maize and I farmed a lot of maize and someday I'll marry a mare who likes farming maize, which I do too. Did I mention I farm maize?"

But you know, even real farmboys are more interesting than that. Even in cultures a century or so behind us in agricultural technology. Realistically, the farmboy would have at least one hobby or interest beyond farming his crop, and he'd have had one or two interesting things happen in his past, and he'd have friends and rivals and ... you get the point. He'd be an individual.

All I did was write the Bad Angsty Over-Powered Wish-Fulfillment OC. Which is easy, as a joke.

It's easy to come up with a backstory.

Step 1: Don't come up with a backstory beyond the very basics, before you start.
Step 2: If it would be interesting to have a specific thing be part of a character's backstory, add it.
Step 3: Profit!

You forgot the part where Blueblood and/or the nobles of Celestia's court hate his guts as soon as they see him and begin to try to bully him (maybe even demand his death) because it makes total sense to despise and openly antagonise a ridiculously powerful individual who is deeply loved by Celestia without any real effort on his part. He humiliates and hurts them, sometimes even really badly, for being so mean and maybe even snooty when he's around.

Actually the funny thing is that your Maze farmer, if you put in all the the things you mentioned, would have a good backstory just like that. It's odd that if you make a character as a person, the pieces just fall into place. So to make good or decent backstory isn't too hard, provided the author is willing to step back and answer a simple question, who is this person.

And next is Nightmare Chrysalis, the totally original Black Corrupted Bug who totally isn't a mix of two my little pony vIllains. Do not steal! :rainbowlaugh: Seriously, though, you should write a comedy story in this fashion. I bet a lot of laughs would be made. :ajsmug:

Well, I guess I've been doing it wrong this whole time. The only character who even comes close to that brilliance is my joke character Baron Von Bloody McLudicrous VIII, who only appeared twice in my stories as a gag, and who I've never even drawn! Why didn't I make that guy my main OC (and an actual alicorn instead of wearing ridiculous getup) instead of the boring, grumpy little business student Tomato? Pfft, obviously, the latter's more suited to a cheap villain role where he sells out to Sombtirek for monetary gain, even if it makes no sense at all!

Oh, yeah, I don't find making those kind of OCs any fun. They're so samey that it bores me.

4626506 If there's one thing we know about the Canterlot nobles, it's that they definitely don't care about Princess Celestia's opinion or want to suck up to her by being basically decent to anyone at all like she's always telling them to.

4626416 The sad part is, people who make these really boring, angsty OCs usually make them as self-inserts, which means they think their own backstory is really boring.

Every time I hear someone complain about 'generic angsty backgrounds of characters who achieve everything', I am reminded of the real-world life stories of men like Shaka Zulu, Genghis Khan, and Vlad Tepes, just naming the first three off the top of my head. If you wrote any of them as a fictional character, everyone would call you a lazy hack who made up an unbelievable character!

Yeah I know that you're knocking the genuinely lazy attempts at doing bad-guy backstories, but I've been feeling that way for a while. My apologies.

The raging over the 'edgelord' nonsense about the new MLP:FiM villain in the movie (Tempest Shadow) doesn't help.

4627300

I agree with you regarding genuinely traumatic backgrounds. My parody was of the absurdly trivial traumatic background ("The other kids wouldn't make friends with me and my parents made me clean my room") that we often encounter in bad fanfiction -- generally written by teenagers who have lived soft and untroubled lives, but imagine that they have had it rough.

Most people don't actually have especially complex back stories. As by way of example, Bugfuck Crazy Marxist Whackjob Pony has the simple back story of being as dumb as crap, being the embodiment of the Dunning-Krueger effect and just plain giving up after one little setback.

4627495
Not only are they are as dumb as stumps, most of what they write can be best described as a tidal wave of rancid mucilage.

4627805

I give her a more complex backstory, though. Mine boils down to her being a mild sociopath who was unable to connect with other ponies and who never really understood that it was her own failings to blame, so she instead blamed society and decided to radically change it. The incident with Sunburst was just the tip of the iceberg. Starlight Glimmer became very good at manipulating other Ponies, especially ones who were emotionally damaged and needy in some way.

The irony of this is that I came up with all this long before "Second Prances," and I was also well aware of the similarities between Starlight and my version of Trixie. My version of Trixie is also a mild sociopath, though more so by Pony standards than by Human (the Ponies are a more empathetic species than are we), whose signature emotional problem is that she is such a perfectionist that she wishes that she were the absolutely perfect heroine of a fantasy story (something I derived from her patter all the way back in "Boast Busters"). It consequently makes perfect sense that Starlight and Trixie might become friends, and rather good ones. They are, at a level below even their conscious ideologies and moralities, Kindred Spirits.

It's interesting that the show seems to be taking the route that Trixie is more amoral than Starlight. I would judge it almost the opposite way: Trixie is a mostly harmless braggart with the seeds of a heroine in her nature, while Starlight is an (imperfectly) tamed supervillain with the seeds of a communist dictator in her nature. If Starlight turns back towards evil, Trixie stands in considerable danger of being sucked along in her emotional wake.

For all I know the Writers may see this too, but be deliberately holding off on this for some future revelation.

4626439

That can work, but you then have to be very careful not to make the total backstory as developed over time contradictory or otherwise absurd. 1970's TV series often failed to follow this principle, to the point that when you added all the backstory elements together, long-established characters often had way too many long-lost relatives, ex-girlfriends, and the like popping up out of nowhere.

4626506

Oh yes, of course. Because any established authority figures (save for the ones who totally fall in love with or otherwise unconditionally support the protagonist, like Celestia in my example) are bad and cruel because they might be more important than the protagonist lack his ... his heart. And, of course, no one honestly supports or even likes these authority figures, because they're meanies just like my high school principal corrupt and self-serving, so when they are humiliated by Gary Stu the Alicorn, everypony cheers.

4626511

Applejack and her immediate family are seemingly-simple farmers, who have all sorts of backstory and depths of character.

4626667

Exactly. A character with well-thought-out background, personality, abilities and disabilities is far more interesting than a stereotype with the most exaggerated powers and weaknesses ("I can smash mountains, but chocolate radiation turns me to stone!") For that matter, even a dramatically-extreme character such as Batman or Superman works because the personality and background mesh, rather than because of their power sets.

4628006
They haven't learned much that I've noticed. Example: Jethro "Super Kill Guy" Gibbs from NCIS has such a convoluted backstory that he might as well open up a branch gruff authority figure who can never be pleased.

4627868
The reason for this is that we're looking at the two of them through Twilight's eyes. When Twi thinks of that wanna-be commissar she hangs out with, she doesn't see a dormant threat, she sees a friend because Starlight knows what ass to kiss and when to kiss it. When she looks at that daydreaming blow-hard Trixie, she sees a Bad Influence because Third Person Pony isn't super friendly or (more importantly) inclined to grovel pathetically for forgiveness.

Also, it's why we're never going to learn the real name of a certain pony with a visible deformity: the protagonist has never bothered learning it.

4628115

That's interesting, and possibly spot-on theory. And yes, I have noticed that Starlight Glimmer sucks up to Twilight Sparkle, and this corresponds with her realization that Twilight Sparkle is necessary to Destiny. In my storyverse terms, she realizes that Twilight has synchronized with something Cosmic.

It's true that Starlight Glimmer seems to be treating her new group of misfits better than the last one she formed, and that is the main reason why I think that Starlight is undergoing true character development. But I think she is still manipulating them through their weaknesses into a subordinate position to herself. And that goes most of all for her oldest friend, who has now become her combined general advisor, magical researcher, political contact and lover: Sunburst.

4628012
That sounds like entirely too many "evil" villains I've seen in recent fantasy tabletop RPG adventures and books. They're evil because, simply put, they won't let the heroic main character do Whatever He Wants, and parents are mean.

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