Tel Locus

I guess I should bring up a meaning of irritation of mine regarding this OC thing. I have a person who on another chat, has an OC he claims his own. Now this OC is indeed original however the referencing image he used is of another person's OC, one Hekesuh http://batponies.wikia.com/wiki/Hekesuh << this guy. Now I am at a point of trying to decide if I should kick his Oc's back if I can prove he is using other people's arts to reference his OC's, or to accept them and turn a blind eye to what I would consider art thieving. My stance on this is that such behavior is unacceptable and he should find an alternate method of picturing his OC. What do you all think?

Looks like a lot of opinions regarding this subject, seems I should weigh in as well. There is two points in regarding every aspect of an OC: firstly the OC should be original, It's in the title. Secondly the OC should be understandable for the setting they're in. With a few small exceptions in a CS this should bee straight forward. I'm just gonna go through each part and explain to the best of my abilities what I mean, Name: this is pretty easy, if the name is owned and it's obvious to find then be careful not to use it. for example. Trixie Lulamoon; Taken, Dusty Roads; Taken. Taking a name is sometimes okay but only when the name is generic enough for example Mint Leaf. There is like 4 Mint Leafs. As for the character aspect of this make sure the name fits the setting. It can't be stressed enough how many times this is broken for a self insert. Under normal circumstances I.E. some kind of HIE RP or something, But pony names normally consist of 2 words. Be it a common noun, an adjective, or even a conjunction. It's traditionally two words, Now with that in mind one words, are okay but those characters might be harder to Identify going further down the road. Personality/history: I clump these two together because they go hand in hand far too much to ignore. An Original aspect of this is that the OC's history and personality isn't directly similar to another character's, What this means is that R63 would fail this portion in the originality section if they attempted to pass it outside of AU setting ((Best R63 watch Sliders episode double cross)) But it still doesn't count. As far as character wise, there is three things that should be said: 1.) the character's personality should match up with what their history says ((No miserable backstory for a character that is constantly happy, and on the flip side no happy backstory for an edgy character... they don't match)) 2.) The history is believable to the setting. ((Ponies are not traveling to human NYC like it's a piece of cake.)) 3.) The Personality and history match up to the world around them as a whole. (What I mean by this is that in a world where everyone is all honkey Dorey and crime is almost nonexistent I doubt you're going to find a serial killer or a master criminal kingpin) Appearance: This is the holy grail of making or breaking an OC, An original OC description is unique for that character. For an RP with humanoid characters this is a lot easier to accomplish since for the most part you'll be hard pressed to find two people that look exactly alike and not be twins ((I've seen a few doppelgangers before but that's aside the point.)) Humans have a lot of unique features that make them them. Ponies however do not, remove the mane and silhouette them you would not be able to tell with 100% accuracy which pony is which. ((Small exceptions aside)) So things like face-claims are unacceptable. And recolors can be accomplished by using a coloring book. So neither is really acceptable in the original setting. Generators can work but need to be good ones. I'd suggest General Zoi's pony creator V3 since it has the most options, It may look generic but with that you can get your foot in the door at making an OC that is your's. Outside those two you have artists renditions and bases, Both of these require more work but you can make an OC image that looks amazing. For those that don't want images you can describe your character in words. Be warned avoid "Looks like"'s these generally make the reader visualize the pony mentioned so saying the OC looks like Twilight the reader is already imagining Twilight and all your work is just added to her like some kind of Chronenberg monstrosity. Instead try descriptors of their attributes ((Big mac's size, Pinkie's mane, Rarity's eye's.)) this can give the reader a composite to think off of. Kind of sloppy but can work. Last part on descriptions, If you can write details, While there is such thing as too much, It's generally loved for there to be a lot of detail. I think that about covers it. All in all the main point of having an OC is that it's your character and it's unique, just having an OC for the sake of having an OC is a slippery slope that should be avoided since that removes any sense of personalization to the character and just makes them a thing.. Instead an OC should be an extension of yourself. Something you love to play in not some skin suit that you feel obligated to push around in a story because that's how OC's die quickly.

Not a base, a faceclaim is 100% of the pony, I should have clarified that. So for instance I have a pony that looks like your OC, so I'd take your image and call it a faceclaim and say "He looks kind of like that." I'm gonna use Urban Dictionary's definition: noun. A term used in role play games to describe a person used for the physical description of a character. Said person can be anyone, but is typically an actor or animated character.

I've been thinking and talking with some friends, What makes good OC art? My argument is that Recolor and face-claims are about as original artwork for an OC as a copypaste. Their argument is that people would prefer Recolors and FaceClaims compared to a Generator. Now for those that don't know what a faceclaim is (I'm really sure you all know what a Recolor is.) A face Claim is a thing where a person uses someone else's artwork/OC and tweaks around a few things giving credit to the creator and calls it their own OC. Now the conversation is all down to the basic concept of Generators is to provide those that can't draw the ability to create something original. While this is easily abused some can't draw or get commissions. I'd like to get some more ideas on this from a wider group. what makes a good OC design? Is the OC design not important or does all an OC need is just a name, backstory, and personality, with no real physical appearance?

Gender swapping is a strange idea at this point, I'm hearing that it changes the viewpoint of the audience and I'm curious how? I'm kind of dense when it comes to genders. The idea that gender and race bring such a massive change in opinion of how good or bad it would be is kind of a strange concept. Buck Testa brings up a good point however they have portrayed males in the show a few times almost always demonizing them to a point ((I'm looking at you Blue Blood.)) And not wanting to spoil anything for the 5th season so I'm going to redact that one part regarding a "Possible gender swap?" (Still don't know the spoiler commands for this stuff. pluss it was kind of iffy if it could be counted.) But I digress, the idea of a character changing genders would not affect the dynamic of the show unless they were to drastically change the character's personalities to go against their already established personalities. So an R63 of a character is just the same if they all swapped colors. They would still be the same characters and gender would more likely than not be a pressing issue in the show. I might be wrong but the sound of what you are saying is that the character's gender swapped would affect their base personalities. Like Snips and Snails would be smarter because they are now female. That Rainbow Dash's Tom Boy attitude would be totally different. If you are talking about changing their personalities AND their genders then you are doing more than a simple gender swap. You're taking the personalities and doing a full 180 on them as well. For example a male Rainbow Dash would be a timid and "girly" kind of guy while Fluttershy would be a loud and assertive male much like she was in "putting your hoof down." If that's the case then, yeah. That would be an interesting dynamic. But to my knowledge ((Showing my ignorance with 'internet' here)) all a gender swap is would be to change the genders themselves so a stallion to a mare and vice versa.

Moving away from the clop stuff and onto character development, I can understand The idea of mixing up the interactions. But when playing with a canon character, (I.e. Twilight.) wouldn't just genderswapping be seen in the same sense as a recolor or something else? You say that it changes the interactions subconsciously but how? From what I've seen the interactions would be exactly the same just replacing her with him, or even attempted ships because "Rainbow Dash is a guy now so it's not weird." I don't know, it just sounds like a problematic scenario which needs to be dealt with carefully and cleanly. But the line is too thin to be done right without some crazy zany stuff affecting role play or character development especially when it's supposed to be exactly the same as a canonical character just change stallion to mare. I'm more on the idea of this in a role play sense. But the opinions in general seem to be on the fence, on one side is a distaste for R63 canonical, while others could see it as a chance to "mix things up" a bit. I can somewhat understand both sides to some extent but the idea that a canonical genderswap that brings no new material aside from "Male mane 6" is kind of meh. It feels like it's just lazy and should be slotted with recolors and mane changes.

I think the other question is why? Why is it that people to include myself find R63 characters distasteful? This is built up from a long debate with a person who likes to RP with a character called Prince Dusk Shine (R63 Twilight), I'm not one to hate strange OC's. I got a Ghost, Pegacorn, even a Dragon Pony. Just why is it this character that makes me cringe?

This kind of is a continuation of my previous question of Taboos in site. What is your opinion of R63 OC's and when I say this I don't mean your OC as a R63 What I mean is taking an Canon character and gender swapping it to play around with. For instance Prince Duskshine, Applesnack, etc. I'm really against things like this because I'm at this idea that it's a lazy character like a reskin. I'd like to hear more opinions on this, am I wrong? Or is an R63 just a copypasta by swapping him to her or vice versa?