OC Spotlight: Lisa/Lisa Garnet/R.W./Lisa Garnet V2 · 7:39am Nov 12th, 2019
Hmm... I wonder what R.W. is short for?
Lisa, just like Zoey, is a classic character of mine that's existed all the way back to when I first started seriously writing. Originally, Lisa was Zoey's younger sister, and really had almost no plot presence whatsoever other than to give Zoey a little sister. Personality-wise, Lisa started off pretty much as a carbon-copy of Zoey, being a sort of "mini-me" to her older sister at the time.
From there, Lisa as a character would remain completely forgotten and unused for several years, until I started work on Pony-Me.
I was thinking of possibly just using Twilight Sparkle all the way through with Pony-Me. Heck, I think early on I was contemplating making it an Equestria Girls fic. Short to say, that certainly didn't happen.
And so, I decided on going off of what the original What If chapter had mentioned - a regular ol' human girl. Problem was, (and still is, honestly,) I'm not good with coming up with names. I ultimately decided against putting much effort into creating a new name and starting from scratch. After all, at the time, Pony-Me was supposed to be at most around five or so chapters. What was the point in taking the time to make an entirely new OC from scratch for a story that short when I could use an existing character?
And so, I looked back to my previous characters, and landed on Lisa. She was a pretty ideal OC to recycle, given how little she was ever mentioned in the first place. Heck, she was practically still a blank slate, for all I cared. I aged her up and dissociated her from Zoey, and initially stuck her into Pony-Me as someone who was probably in their mid-teens. The story, being what it was, Lisa's personality was heavily based off of Twilight's at first. She had a last name now, too: Garnet. No rhyme or reason to it, it's just a word that I BSed out of a random name generator.
And so, Lisa Garnet began to take shape, formed out of the scraps and occasional mentions of the old Lisa OC.
For a while, being a literal personification of Twilight Sparkle seemed to do alright with Lisa. Overanalyzing, worrying about little things, stuff like that-- for a story that was meant to end pretty soon, it was enough to leave her as a renaming of Twilight. But then, I extended the story.
Suddenly, I had to start dealing with a backstory to Lisa. The first part dealt largely with whether or not she wanted to return to Equestria, which in one of the split-off "endings" of the story, she did. However, following the story's canon, she in reality doesn't, and instead begins a quest to dig up her long-buried past to find out more about herself.
More characterization finally begins to come into play here. I decided on carrying over the brown hair she had as the younger sister of Zoey, and to cast her as a pretty average height hovering around 5'5" or so, give or take a few inches. Fun fact, she's part-Asian, though it's never mentioned in the story, nor will I go into specifics on that.
Anyway, continuing on. Lisa as a character continued to grow tremendously as the story progressed and received yet another extension. Her backstory was clearly beginning to take shape now-- her parents had died in a car crash caused by a drunk driver, leaving her and her little brother, Timothy (of whom I named after some kid in my classes that I've known since first grade. Half the time he goes by Todd now), orphaned.
From there, Lisa would be taken in and adopted by Professor Argall, an old friend of her father's. He would claim to be unable to take care of Timothy due to his supposed age, leaving him to be adopted instead by the neighbors, hence the different last name. Timothy's age would drastically shift near the end of the story on account that the age he supposedly was would've meant that he was practically born into the simulations.
But enough on Tim. Let's get back to Lisa.
Following the death of her parents, Lisa would pretty much make a personal vow to make things "right". From there, she would enroll in a special class run by Professor Argall himself dealing with AI and VR, in an attempt to create a "perfect world" of sorts for herself, where she could forget entirely about the life she left behind.
Along the way, she'd pick up a friend-- Samantha Hayes. Just a quick side note, but Samantha is actually one of the rare few OCs I have that didn't trace their roots back to either a reused OC or a random name generator. The name was a bit of a riff on my sister's old obsession with naming in-game characters "Stephanie", combined with a last name I pulled from my school yearbook.
Together, Lisa and Samantha would develop the Pony-Me simulation, and ultimately part ways, leaving way for the story to begin. All this is revealed step-by-step throughout the second and third parts of Pony-Me, though quite a few times there was also unecessary filler inserted to pad the word counts up a bit.
That's about it for the Pony-Me Lisa. Now, what about the mysterious R.W.?
Well, first of all, it's short for Rebecca Waterman. I didn't want to spill the name too early. And holy heck did it take a while to come up with. I was browsing name lists and random name generators for days on end before I came up with what I thought would be a good name for an OC to replace Twilight.
Given the nature of the story's removal of Twilight Sparkle entirely, Lisa's entire character was nearly rewritten from the ground up, saving some things but often times overhauling many others. Rather than her character being based on Rebecca's, this time it is the other way around. Both physically and personality-wise, Rebecca is nearly identical to Lisa. Sure, she could've made a flashy, cool-looking character for the simulation, but for a girl who just wants to live a life she never had? She'd might as well be as close to her real self as possible.
Some differences, however, are that Rebecca has green eyes rather than the brown of Lisa's, and is aged down in the simulations to account for Lisa's wanting to live out an idealized childhood instead. The story begins when Rebecca is in her teens, meaning that for the decade-timeskip between entering and disconnecting, she would've been just about starting school for the first time when Lisa connected. Is it weird to have a teen go back and live as a grade schooler? Yes. Is it an integral part of Lisa MK2's backstory? Also yes.
One interesting aspect is that she and Timothy's counterpart, Caleb, are supposedly hardcoded in, meaning that no matter what happens, there will always be a copy of them running in the simulation.
Also, she actually has a social life! Man, talk about the ideal life, amirite?
Anyway, let's move on to our last variant: Lisa Garnet V2, AKA the Lisa Garnet that was revamped and rewritten for the original fiction.
Much of her backstory is still exactly how it is, though key events such as Samantha eventually joining into the simulations permanently never happens. She as a character is completely dissociated with MLP, and her personality has gotten a few tweaks. She's a bit more moody now, and occasionally has a tendency to ramble off on a tangent either mentally or out loud. In order to fit a timeline of events a little better, she now canonically skipped a couple grades ahead in school, graduating early and going full-steam on the simulation project. It's stated that during her work on it, she basically had a one-track mind. She would finish it, no matter what happened.
She's also somewhat reckless at times too, but that hasn't shown up yet on account of the fact that she is still going through her identity crisis in the chapter I'm working on. However, once she regains her old personality, we'll be seeing a much more upbeat, generally-positive young woman with a fierce drive to do what she thinks is right. Sometimes she doesn't exactly do it all that well though.
And another thing that applies to both Rebecca and Lisa MK2: Food. Yes, they both still have limits on how much they'll eat, but a recurring trait that I've added to them both is that they'll always enjoy some good food if given the chance.
Anyway that's just about all, I think. Catch y'all 'round! 
Jesus, when I saw R.W, I immediately thought it was short-form for Ronald Weasley.
Ok, now your just being unrealistic
And hot coco?
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Hot cocoa is Zoey, but maybe.
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I don't feel like looking up NSFW images of Miss Pommel right now, but they definitely exist and would be funny to link in response.
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And its against site rules to put up NSFW images