Shooting Star(Ready)

[ShootingStar]

Roleplay Type: World of Equestria

Name: Shooting Star

Sex: Male

Age: Stallion

Species: Unicorn

Eye colour: Red

Coat: Black

Mane/Tail: Mane is spiked back and a general blue, tail is also spiked in the same fashion as well as the same blue

Physique: Thin, not very strong at all, almost to a fragile point

Residence: Forest nearby Canterlot

Occupation: Starshard Seller, he collects cores of fallen stars and meteors in the area and sells them off at auction houses in Canterlot, whether they be collectors or museum owners trying to showcase them for their own benefit.

Cutie Mark: A golden shooting star with a same coloured stardust trail. Cutie Mark Event: Shooting Star was off trying to relax in one of the trees in the forest, when a meteor shower that he forgot was going to happen, unfolded before his eyes, he was so amazed by the scene, he almost didn't notice his horn glowing red on its own, which lit up and directed him to the fallen star by making a line for him to follow, which he did. Upon reaching the star, Shooting began to trot closer at a slower pace, until his horn lit up again, and opened a hole to the center of the star, pulling out what he would call starshards later on and sell them off in his hometown of Canterlot, which would be the center of his life in the future: as a Starshard Seller.

History: Shooting Star was born from his parents, who were young at the time still, Blazing Fire and Celsius. He grew up in a society of high class ponies, though he himself was just a regular colt who lived in the lower quarter, and he had next to no magical abilities for a large period of time while going through school, though he was able to have a decent amount of friends who cheered him on, telling him he'd find out what his talent would be soon. Eventually, Shooting grew up and moved out of his parents' home, and moved into the forest, getting an abandoned house for a real cheap price, since no noble in Canterlot would ever want a house near the forest. For now, Shooting Star hopes his starshard business will one day bloom.

Character Summary: Shooting excels at detecting the general location of where fallen shooting stars have landed. He can pinpoint a general location from the one-time signal he gets to find the fallen star, he then takes the core and places it in one of his 0 degree Farenheit jars. On a personal level, Shooting Star can be a tad bit lazy at times, often getting up later than others, mainly due to him being a late-night kind of pony, though when he goes into town, he does take the time to visit any friends he might have in town. When faced with a conflict, he usually tries to run away or slip off, not liking to argue with others, and hoping time will defuse the situation. Although he is far from it, he is hoping to make his business more successful so he can live the high life with the other high class ponies in Canterlot, but through his own hard work and determination, not by inheritance, which was always available to him, but he declined. He likes magic shows, so he always keeps an ear out for any performers coming into the castle town whenever possible. His personal hobbies are cloud watching at day and identifying the constellations at night. He is a rather socially awkward pony at times when it comes to meeting new ponies, but once he gets to know them, he's a very relaxed unicorn who loves to talk, seeing as he is alone most of the time when he's working. His social awkardness is also a fault, however but is essential to overcome to communicate with other ponies, in order to be a successful businesspony. He has trouble looking others in the eyes, but will usually overcome it for the sake of his business, though sometimes he loses his nerve around some of the larger ponies, i.e. stallions taller than him.

EDIT: Oh and on a side note I forgot to mention, his horn glows red when using magic.

EDIT2: Just realized I put high class ponies twice in one sentence, so I fixed that, since I'm a total grammar nazi to myself.

Edited July 5, 2013 by ShootingStar

[Jane]

Hi there Shooting Star! I'm Jane, and I shall be the RPH assisting you with getting your application ready for WoE.

You seem to have a pretty interesting concept for a character here, but there are quite a few changes needing to be made before we'll be able to set you up in the World of Equestria. Essentially, this application is focussed far too much on Shooting Star's magic and not enough on who he is as a pony. The wonderful Bellosh101 wrote a great article on Swordponies and Spellponies that is definitely worth your having a look at.

Secondly, the nature of his magic just seems strange and ambiguous. It's my impression that the Princesses are the only ones who can control the bodies of the sky (sun, moon, stars, etc.). Since you haven't really outlined what it is his magic can do, only that it's related to stars, I'm kind of unsure about the extent of its power. The general consensus is, however, that his magic cannot feed off an external source, as it's pretty much been established canonically that a unicorn's magic "comes from within" (see Twilight Sparkle's rants in both Bridle Gossip and Feeling Pinkie Keen). There are several ways to have your character be interested in the stars and astronomy in general without having his magic depend on them.

Third, ponies wouldn't ever be bullied for a lack of magical ability as foals and colts. Sweetie Belle has never shown much of any magical ability, nor has she ever been bullied, and it is my understanding that young unicorns simply need to develop their magic as they grow older. We're even shown in "Cutie Mark Chronicles" that Twilight Sparkle, who would later become one of the most magical unicorns in Equestria, had difficulty turning a page telekinetically. Your Unicorn would not have been alone in having "next to no magical abilities for a large period of time while going through school," and this certainly would not have warranted constant bullying, nor made him feel inadequate in his parents' eyes.

Lastly, please don't make any references to other cast characters in your application, not even for comparisons. The references made to Fancy Pants and Trixie will have to go. You can just say "Higher class ponies in Canterlot", and "travelling magic shows" without referencing those two characters and it should be fine.

That should be enough to get you started. Please post here once you've made the requested edits, or if you have any questions, and I will do by best to get back to you as soon as I can.

[ShootingStar]

Okay, I tried to resolve any issues I could with the character. I gave that article a good read, which enlightened me greatly. I replaced Fancy Pants and Trixie's references and made them general references, I tried to give Shooting more personality than magic this time, as well as actually explaining his magical talent and how it revolves around his job(I really tried hard not to make it too similar to Rarity's ability to detect gems, so forgive me on that one.) and I redid the history a bit so the bullying segment was fixed. If there's still more editing to be done Jane, please let me know. Thank you for taking your time to help me out.

[Jane]

Alright, just a few more changes to be made here. I'm sorry if I appear to be nitpicky about your character design, but it is important to us to keep World of Equestria balanced by making sure characters are designed to compliment the roleplay environment it represents: slice-of-life-flavour Friendship is Magic roleplay. Remember this is strictly business, and this has nothing to do with you personally, or with our perception of your creativity.

Cutie Mark: A golden shooting star with a same coloured stardust trail. Cutie Mark Event: Shooting Star was off trying to relax in one of the trees in the forest, when a meteor shower that he forgot was going to happen, unfolded before his eyes, he was so amazed by the scene, he almost didn't notice his horn glowing red on its own, reacting to the falling stars and taking out mysterious stones from the insides of them which circled around him before dissapearing into thin air, making Shooting realize his special talent, his magical abilities, circled around the collection of what he would later call starshards.

This whole scene seems a bit overpowered to me, especially for a young unicorn whose magic hasn't quite reached its full potential. Even when Rarity got a burst of magic when she earned her cutie mark, all it did was lead her to the gems - it was the explosion from the sonic rainboom that caused the rock to break open.

which he then follows by placing the shard in a zero degree jar and sealing it.

What do you mean by a zero-degree jar? absolute zero? Centigrade zero? Farenheiht zero? Absolute zero is impossible even today; it is only a theoretical value. The latter two are more possible, but does he use his magic to make the jars cold?

You can certainly have your pony's magic be related to seeking out fallen stars, but you just need to be careful about keeping this magic well-balanced with the rest of who your OC is as a character. We don't want anyone to be too overpowered (commonly shortened to "OP", not to be confused with "original post" or "original poster"). I appreciate you've come a long way on this since first posting your application, we just need to reel that magic in just a little bit more.

His downfalls however lie in his ability to take criticism, like when his shards get called useless rocks, he tends to get upset but tries his best to hold it back, unless he is pushed to his limit, in which he then lashes out and leaves Canterlot soon after. His one fear is that his business will fail, and thus his purpose in life will dissapear.

Not only is this a bit too dark and angsty for WoE, but this also is implying that all ponies in Canterlot are snobby and stuck up, and would criticize his work needlessly. A select few are, but Fancy Pants was a true gentlecolt, and Twilight Sparkle and her school friends grew up in Canterlot and are not. In WoE, we try to avoid stereotyping ponies who live in or are from a certain area to behave in a certain way. There's enough discrimination and negative stereotyping in the real world, right?

Once again, let me know when you've made these changes, and I'll give the app another look.

[ShootingStar]

Okay, I made some more adjustments, and by the way, I prefer you pick at the details, that severely helps me, so I am grateful for that. So first off, I went into more detail on the jars, they're zero degrees farenheit, which I'm just going to say is enough for now. Also, if allowed, I gave Shooting the ability to cool the inside of the jar and "trap" the temperature in it. Hopefully this doesn't rate him as OP, but if it does, then I can just make the jars precold to avoid this, as Shooting will likely not use the temperature trap spell(which he can only do in a very small area anyway so it's useless otherwise) in any other situation that may arise. Finally, I fixed the angsty fault portion, which I SHOULD have caught, so my bad on that, but I fixed it somewhat with his original fault which is being socially awkward with ponies larger than himself, like Heavyweight(Though I doubt he would ever encounter said pony, since he is in Canterlot). Again, I appreciate the assistance greatly, thank you so much.

[Jane]

Okay, one of the senior staff members on the site has just given me the following feedback. It seems that this application is still too focussed on the technical details of his magic. Saying that he seeks out bits of meteorite and saying that he's picking up bits of the sky or pieces of stars to sell would is fine, it's cute and clever and I think it would work well in the magical world of Equestria. There's just really no need to go into details about the process behind this, to the point that we're now describing the science behind this. These are the sort of details that you might bring up in a roleplay setting, but they don't really need to be in the character's biography.

Essentially, at this point, everything else is great. It's just this paragraph that needs to be reworked:

Shooting excels at detecting the general location of where fallen shooting stars have landed. However, he still has to play a guessing game so to speak as he cannot determine a star's exact location once it has fallen, he only knows the general area, and only receives the signal once from his horn. Once he gets to the fallen star/meteorite, he can use his magic to extract "starshards" from the very core of the star before it cools down too much and destroys the shard, which he then follows by placing the shard in a zero degree Fahrenheit jar which is the product of his temperature capturing spell, and sealing it.

Also, just for readability and formatting purposes, this can be in a separate paragraph to the rest of the information about the personality. Formatting is your friend.

[ShootingStar]

Okay, so essentially what I need to do is basically go back and simplify it, like: "He excels at finding fallen stars and extracting their cores, puts them in zero degree farenheit jars with his magic, then sells them off in Canterlot." Is that about right? And my apologies for going way too into detail to the point where it gets scientific, I was under the assumption that it was required for me to explain that much on his magic while trying to keep it balanced with the personality(which I guess I failed at).

[Jane]

Er, essentially yes. I'm really sorry about the mixed messages you've been getting. It's just that when the app was initially posted, it wasn't terribly clear what his magic did, only that it was powered by the stars and that he could somehow control or move them. I wanted you to explain what that meant and what it did, as it seemed a lot like Luna's magic. When you modified or clarified what his magic does, it then became a little bit too clear. The technical explanation sort of distracts from everything else. Does that make sense?

Also, you certainly haven't failed at anything. Like I said, this character has come a very long way from where you were when you initially posted this app to the point where we're just being nitpicky to iron out the details.

Magic is hard to write about in apps because sometimes we feel that a unicorn's magic is going to be really important, but it actually isn't. I did the same thing when I was planning out my own Unicorn OC - I spent way too much time thinking about and asking about what his magic would be, when really that's of very little consequence when it comes to playing him. Think about how many times we've seen Rarity use her gem-finding spell. Yes it's there and it's great for us to understand how it works, but it's not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Rarity because a unicorn's magic doesn't necessarily define him/her. Yes, it is huge for Twilight Sparkle, but not so much for the other unicorns we know.

[ShootingStar]

Alrighty! I went and simplified the explanation of his magic severely, so the science in explaining it got minimized, however, if I still need to make more adjustments, I'd be happy to make them. And this has been quite the experience for me if I do say so, for I think I have a better grasp on making OCs not just for MLP, but other genres as well. I'd like to, again, thank you for that.

[Jane]

I sincerely apologize for my absence this week. RL kinda got away from me. Everything looks okay to me now - I'm going to pass this right along. Again, very very sorry for the delay.

[ShootingStar]

That's okay, I'm just glad that this is ready

[Armony]