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Aspen Swift


AspenSwift
  • , No, Not Cast Stallion

    A medium sized stallion, he has a light blue body with a darker gray mane and tail. His hair is long, for a stallion, and is very poorly kept, like he doesn't spend a lot of time working on it. He has violet eyes.

    male Earth Pony Multiple trees behind a stream https://buffy.mlpforums.com/56af408de3c9c0f7d70cce42f2f9c374.png

    Very warm, cheerful, and polite. However, he lives by himself and is content with that. Aspen goes into Ponyville often to catch up with his friends, and loves to go to parties. He is a pretty good dancer, but does so sparingly. He sings to himself whenever he works, but not publicly, unless he's out with friends. He is very smart, scoring very high at the advanced school for agriculture he went to.

     

    Aspen has a large collection of books at his house, and loves to read. He tries not to show off, but sometimes he can't help correcting other ponies. He has a great sense of humor, and jokes around all of the time with everypony. He always loves to make other ponies laugh, and loves to laugh himself. He is the type of pony to shield himself with humor, using it as a defensive mechanism. If something bad happens, he will joke about it, but may feel worse about it then he lets on. It's one of his character flaws. He gets very uncomfortable about being open or have intimate conversations about himself, and tries to avoid them at all costs. Aspen doesn't have any problems with helping others, but doesn't feel right about letting other people into his brain. It really started when his Grandfather died; Aspen took the news pretty hard internally. However, his father was devastated by he news as well, and Aspen had to put on a brave face and try to cheer his father up. Ever since then, Aspen has felt that he needs to keep his feelings buried and to try to help other ponies and cheer them up. Sometimes, it works, and Aspen feels better by making others feel better. Often, Aspen will try to help one of his friends, but comes off as being unable to take things seriously. It's hard for him to understand when somepony needs to be cheered up or needs to let off steam on another pony.

     

    He isn't a great sprinter, unlike some other earth ponies, nor is he very strong, but Aspen loves to, and is good at, climbing both trees and cliffs. He is very decisive about what he likes, but isn't very organized. He is prone to losing things, and has trouble keeping up with files and such (which are more important in farming than you'd think). He really looked up to his grandfather, and compares himself to his grandfather constantly. Aspen's inherited house was very big, making it very hard to clean. Because of this, he keeps it pretty messy, only cleaning it when his parents or somepony important is coming over. He would like to think that it's not messy, just organized in a way that makes sense only to him. Aspen has to often make business deals with other companies, something that he actually excels at. He can be very charming when he wants to, and can easily when over companies or businesses.

    Likes: Classical music<br />Math<br />Griffons (Too uppity)<br />The beach<br />Swimming<br />

    Aspen was born in Phillydelphia, and grew up with no brothers or sisters. He was named after his grandfather, Aspen Limb. He did well in the school he was placed in. Growing up, Aspen always had wanted to be a comedian, because he always made his friends laugh at school. However, he went to his grandfather's orchard, which was a couple of miles outside the town of Ponyville, and immediately fell in love. He felt like he had really found his purpose, and received his cutie mark. His cutie mark, the trees behind a stream, is the view from his favorite tree, a gnarled old oak tree beside his grandfather's house. He went back to Phillydelphia to study agriculture (go beavers) and inherited the orchard when his grandfather passed.

     

    Aspen does his best to preserve the orchard, trying to imitate the way that the place was run in previous generations, and his business has really grown. He goes into Ponyville every Saturday for the weekly market to sell his goods. People especially like his pears, which Aspen has bred a new type of called the Sunny Horizon pear. The Sunny Horizon is a soft, incredibly juicy pear, which has really put Aspen into the books as a master agriculturalist. He moved into his grandfather's old house, and tries not to renovate it too much, to keep the authenticity. The house is pretty big, as it's been in the family for generations, and takes a lot of energy to clean.

     

    Aspen grows delicate fruit, like cherries, that need to be plucked, not shaken down. By climbing the trees to get the fruit, Aspen developed a skill for climbing trees and other things, such as rocks. He went on to practice rock climbing as a pastime, and still enjoys it, even going to a few tournaments for rock climbing held in Appleloosa. He made lots of friends when he moved to Ponyville, and has them over for lighthearted poker games weekly. Aspen usually loses, but they don't play for much, so he has a good time. Aspen had a marefriend at the Agricultural School he went to, but had to leave her when he moved. He hasn't been interested in mares since, mostly focusing on expanding his business. His parents don't visit often, which is okay with Aspen. He loves his parents, but is glad to be away from them most of the time. Aspen really loves foals, and will sometimes volunteer at nurseries and preschools. He really wants to have a foal of his own someday.

    When he moved in, Aspen adopted a cat to keep him company. The cat's name is Caboodle, and she keeps Aspen company while he does his daily work.

https://buffy.mlpforums.com/6e404f7633543e4289084523dddc3498.png

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Hi there! A few things-

 

He does not have a mare-friend, but is not opposed to trying a few dates.

As a younger stallion, he went into a few regional rock-wall climbing championships, but never got very far.

 

These lines do not belong in the personality section; that's more of a historical event. Also, this sentence;

 

He likes to drink, but never gets drunk. 

 

must be removed.

 

Your references to Ponyville within your personality field are confusing as they speak of it as if he doesn't live there, despite your history section saying that he does.

 

In general, your personality section is a bit short, and when you bring up points of his personality (e.g. making people laugh) they aren't elaborated on much. An expansion would be recommended, if possible.

 

Your characters backstory, while meeting the requirement technically is still quite short. You should consider adding more about him.

 

That's my initial review of it. I'll look it over again when you've implemented these changes.

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Hi there! A few things-

 

 

These lines do not belong in the personality section; that's more of a historical event. Also, this sentence;

 

 

must be removed.

 

Your references to Ponyville within your personality field are confusing as they speak of it as if he doesn't live there, despite your history section saying that he does.

 

In general, your personality section is a bit short, and when you bring up points of his personality (e.g. making people laugh) they aren't elaborated on much. An expansion would be recommended, if possible.

 

Your characters backstory, while meeting the requirement technically is still quite short. You should consider adding more about him.

 

That's my initial review of it. I'll look it over again when you've implemented these changes.

Thank you for reading over it!  Sorry about the long wait, I didn't realize that someone had looked over it.

I changed everything that needed to be changed, and added a lot more in both the personality and history sections.  Hope that I've edited it well enough! 

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Couple of things here, though it's looking quite good:

  • In the first paragraph of the backstory, you call him an only child. Child is used for humans, not ponies. 
  • Capitalize Aspen Limb, the grandfather's name.
  • The comments about the cat seem like they would be better placed in the "other" section. Moving them around would also mean that you would need to lengthen the second paragraph of the backstory.
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I like the addition of the messy house, but again that would be more in the personality section than the background. The background section is for things that have happened to your character that makes him who he is. Consider adding a paragraph about why he deals with adversity with jokes. It seems like it's a big part of who he is, and integrating that into the backstory will strengthen the character as a whole.

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I haven't written this much about something since my last English paper :)  Thanks for helping me to work on it, I'm really learning a lot about writing characters.

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Hey Aspen :)

 

Your character looks really great, I can tell that a lot of thought and effort went into him. I would say that he is just about ready to go, but I do have one hangup regarding him.

 

The name Aspen Swift, as well as the cutie mark and to some extent the pony's coloring, makes him seem very much like his special talent would be ecology or forestry rather than agriculture. A character doesn't have to be entirely centered around their special talent of course, but right now the character’s name and appearance seems like it could be just a little more fitting with what he does.

 

This can be fixed very easily, if you alter his cutie mark so that the trees are fruit-bearing instead of pine then it should take care of the issue. I did also consider the name though, and whether it could be altered to include the name of a fruit-bearing tree while still sounding as good as the name you have now. After much thought I came up with the name Pyrus Branch, Pyrus being the genus that pear trees belong to (yes I did look up tree genera to name a pony OC, don’t judge me). You don’t have to change the OCs name, but I thought I would offer what I came up with in case it appealed to you.

This is really the only thing I found, otherwise this character looks great :)

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Thanks for responding!  I've thought about his cutie mark as well, and how the trees don't have fruit on them despite it being an orchard farm.  As the character is written right now, Aspen received his cutie mark after he climbed the oak tree in the backyard and looked out over the orchard, realizing that this is what he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing.  I may be over-thinking this, but from that sort of distance, he probably could see the trees behind the stream, but not actually the fruit on the trees.  It's true that the trees look like pine trees, but I believe that cutie marks are not supposed to be incredibly detailed, but more representative.  The mark is busily designed as it is, and putting too many details into specific things, like cherries or something, would make it too confusing to look at.  I do really like the name you came up with, Pyrus Branch, and I would totally change it, except for one detail: the picture already has Aspen Swift written on it, and it might be confusing for my profile picture to say Aspen Swift while the OC's name is Pyrus Branch.  Anyway, thanks so much for the input, I may still make some changes that you suggested!

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I understand what you're saying about the cutie mark. It would perhaps make things a little too busy to have fruit on the trees. It might help if they looked more like fruit-bearing trees in shape though, if they were poofy instead of pointed. You could also perhaps cut the name out of the image if you were inclined to change it. These are still just suggestions though, personally I would say that your character is ready for approval :)

 

I'd also like to mention that I actually like that your cutie mark is not the standard piece of fruit. It's very unique :)

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I think I will change the cutie mark, thanks for the suggestion!  I am a little too partial to the name to change it, though, but again, thanks for reviewing!  :)

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Hello again. After talking to the mods about your character we found one more little thing in your application to fix up. You mention the use of pesticides in your backstory, but from what we've seen Equestrians don't seem even slightly inclined to invent such things. Thinking back to the episode that most dealt with pests (Bats), even Applejack never suggested that the creatures she hated should be killed.

 

It would be alright to mention harmless deterrents used in farming (fences, mothballs, etc), but mentioning pesticides suggests things about Equestria that don't seem in line with what we've seen on the show.

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Once again, thanks for the help!  I agree that pesticides probably aren't used in the Equestrian world, because, even though there are both insects and the ability to create a pesticide (Applebloom practices chemistry in "Twilight Time," suggesting that chemistry is canon), I would like to believe that ponies and insects probably get along (like Rainbow considering a wasp in "Find a Pet").  So, I've again made changes, and thanks for helping me out so much!  I really appreciate you talking to the mods, I'm really excited for the opportunity to maybe start some roleplaying.  

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I'm excited for you! I'm happy to help, and I'm glad that you were so nice in taking into account everything I had to say. I'll let the mods know that you've fixed what needed fixing, and that should get Aspen through the approval process :)

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Wow, this character is so much better than when you submitted him. Bravo!

 

There's a couple of minor things that need to be fixed:

In the line below - 

He isn't a great sprinter, unlike other earth ponies, nor is he very strong, but Aspen loves to, and is good at, climbing both trees and cliffs. 

That implies a lot about other earth ponies, and completely removing it would do harm to the sentence itself. I don't remember anything from the show about earth ponies being particularly fast, and tend to be stronger rather than quicker. I could be wrong about that, but I'd feel more comfortable without that line.

 

The other is this sentence:

Aspen really loves kids, and...

Kid refers to either humans of goats. It needs to be either foal or colts and fillies. 

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I changed the line to "unlike some earth ponies." I think that a lot, if not most, of all earth ponies are fast. Applejack could keep up with Rainbow in "Fall Weather Friends," and since earth ponies are strong (assuming leg strength), the stronger your leg muscles are, the harder they can run. Like how Applejack uses her hind leg strength to buck apples, she could uses those same muscles to run. An exception to all earth ponies being strong is Pinkie, who doesn't seem to posess any outstanding feats of strength :).

The other line was just a quick fix, thanks for pointing that out.

Again, I've said it before, but I really appreciate you and Eloquence helping me out. I've really enjoyed doing this, and I'm glad that I have somepony to help introduce me to roleplaying.

 

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Rainbow Dash is known for her flying speed, not her running. And Applejack kicks trees for a living. >.>

 

Anyways, here is not the place to debate that. Moving to second approval.

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