Inspired by a guy doing a series of rants regarding the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom on Fanfiction, I decided to write this little series involving complaints about different aspects of various fandoms.

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Let's start with my biggest MLP pet peeve: poorly done OCs from an (in?)famous fandom known as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. We'll go from ponies with eye-hurting colors to what is ironically my second MLP pet peeve, flames of such OCs.

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Aggravated teenaged autistic fangirl in area.

Do not disturb.

All flames will be sent directly back to the Magma Wastelands.

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Episode I: Alicorns, Rainbows, and Oh My!

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All bronies and pegasisters have seen 'em. From Miss Perfect Alicorns to "I've been treated so poorly boo-hoo!" OCs, we have encountered at least one of them. Heck, there's even a Tumblr blog dedicated to bad Pony OCs, which we'll get to later.

In fact, it's such a big problem that there is actually different classes for them!

Let's look at such an OC, without any flames, of course.



Okay, no. Just no. I actually had to go to the actual site where it was from to make sure it wasn't a joke OC (which no gave indication of such). Though it's pretty bad in my opinion, I believe in constructive criticism. First off, take it easy on the rainbows and black. I don't mind the black in the mane and tail, but please keep it there. Keep the chest plate, crown, and shoes a solid color, AND FOR CRYING OUT LOUD HORNS AND WINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE SAME COLOR AS THE COAT! And I don't think tongues are supposed to be green in MLP. I don't think piercings are canon either, though I may just be not paying enough attention to the details of the characters outside of the Mane Six and the alicorns.

I don't really have a problem with 2edgy4u designs, and same goes for designs that may be too unique for other people as long it isn't like the OC above. Yeah, I'm a bit too tolerate about looks.

Not so much about backstories.

I can't stand OCs with a super mega sad backstory in all fandoms, and especially in MLP. I don't mind some sadness and trauma. I'm even guilty of having an OC whose mother was murdered. However, she wasn't turned into a poor miserable orphan that was constantly being abused by her caregivers and then left in the streets to die. That may work for other fandoms, but not in one originally intended for young girls.

As mentioned before, I despise flames from reviewers that offer no ideas of improvement. Like this Tumblr blog: [you must login to view links]
I mean, they just say "This is awful!" and that's it. No constructive criticism, nothing. Makes me either want to punch the comments themselves virtually or do one of the MLP responses to haters by loving the posters until they barf rainbows (yeah, I even extend this response other MLP fans, though I have never done it). Nobody likes flames!

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That's it for the first episode! I love to hear your opinions on this!

I'll see you next time! Or maybe in responding to a post.

I've seen some pretty bad OCs in EVERYTHING. tbh I'm still okay with like the super sad backgrounds, like IDK their parents were murdered and given crap care and turned evil or something. Almost any background's okay, just as long as it's not a stupid one like: "The character's mom died of cancer, so he's now an evil bloodthirsty monster", because that makes no sense.
"Perfect" OCs are also a problem. I've seen a ton where it's been like:
Lol my OC Shawnya can do EVERYTHING, and she always gets perfect hits, and blah blah blah *Mary Sue description here* OPness is okay, as long as they don't go overboard with like perfect accuracy and stuff, because that just turns into a Mary Sue (or a Gary Stu, if it's a male character). And those are really annoying.
I admit, I DO have one OC that's a bit OP, but even she has weaknesses, and doesn't have perfect accuracy, strength, or perfect anything else.
Oh, and about the piercings, I saw a few background characters with like earrings and stuff, but they weren't that obvious or extreme. But I think the one you posted is kinda' cute. I could be just weird, but that's my opinion on it. xD She's very....colorful.
IDK really what else to add atm, I might add something else later.

Yeah, I can't believe I haven't touched upon powers and abilities. But I don't care if said OC is OP except if it is the point that you described. I mean, look at Twilight. She's really overpowered, even though that's expected from a student of Celestia with an aptitude for magic.

Yeah, I'm gonna be offtopic and say that Blue's OP because Omnipotence and blahtiplyblah blah blah, But I keep nerfing him to the point of being pretty much just human XD But yeah Twlight is OP, But tbh, Element of Magic and trained by Celestia, It's kinda expected XD

I learned what nerfing meant through context clues. Making characters more realistic to the franchise is always a good thing in my book. XD

Yeah, Twilight's really OP, but hey, even she's not to the point where she's a Mary Sue. That's when things go a bit too far. In fact, for a lot of RPs/co-op fanfics/etc outside of Creed that I've seen, that's a lot of what starts fights and gets people to leave/get kicked from the group. Everyone's put up with those at least once in their life. Heck, my mom was in a writing group at one point and had one of those people.
"Oh Sally* has NEVER done archery before!"
"Okay, then this might be a good time to learn."
"*Sally tries archery for the first time, and does it crap tons better than people who have been doing it for years*"
(*Names were changed. Mostly because I don't remember the characters' names anyway.)
"*Gabriel shoots Sally in the head*"
"OMG YOU CAN'T KEEL MEH! *is immune to everything*"
So I mean, that's just bull.
However, something like:
"Sally has never tried archery before, but she decided to try. On her first try, she managed to get a bullseye. She thought she was doing good, but then the next few missed. She needed more practice." is acceptable.

Hmmm, that might be actually a good rant topic.

But yeah, you see those kind of problems in the Hunger Games. I actually had this happen to me on a Nook RP:

Me: (Sleeps in tree.)
Friendly guy: (Comes up to me to possibly ask about an alliance.)
Butthead: (Kills us both in under thirty seconds. ._.)

Yeah, and then people like those buttheads make everyone want to quit because the RP isn't fun anymore. ._.
And that's usually when they come up with something stupid, like:
"What's the matter guys? No one wants to RP with me anymore, and I don't get why!"
"You're just jealous that my character is better than yours."
or
"Well FINE! I'm sorry that your characters just suck! I'll just go and make my own RP. So there."

The one I see most of the time is option 2, or something very similar to it. And then that leads to things like fights, which usually result in hurt feelings, loss of privileges, or even a complete ban. Sometimes even loss of friends. Best thing to do if you're in with a Mary Sue/Gary Stu is to ban the writer from your group, or leave the group if you don't have that power.

(I wouldn't do what I did to one at one point, but you can try it if you want. Just don't blame me if you get banned or anything. But at one point someone and I were doing a story with someone else, and they had a Gary Stu. So me and the other person made our characters just as OP to combat it.
"Bob killed Suzan and Marley!"
"Suzan and MArley are immune to death! Muahahaha!"

And that went on for a bit before the butthead finally ragequit. But it was pretty hilarious. xD)

I probably won't. XD

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Welcome back, everyone, to the second episode of my little series! The OC last time, though terrible, at least had some thought put into it. However, there are OCs that aren't that creative, and are the exact things I hate in almost every fandom.

What are they?

Those, my friend, are called clones and recolors.

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Aggravated teenaged autistic girl in area.

Do not disturb.

All flames will be used to grill steak.

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Episode II: The Clone Wars, Literally

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I can agree on what clones and recolors are good for.

Making a game more quickly (reusing game sprites): Good.
Making Cursed/Golden/etc. Pokemon: Good.
Making OCs: NO.

I get it if you're planning out a general color scheme of your character, or using a base that doesn't look like it wasn't ripped off a canon character because you're unsure how to draw it correctly (the latter being my case). But copying and pasting an unaltered image of a character and then using Microsoft Paint to recolor it and call it an OC is not original. Nor is an OC that is heavily based on a canon character. That's just pure laziness. You especially see this in the Sonic the Hedgehog (in recolors) and the Happy Tree Friends (with the crud-ton of Flippy-Sues) fandoms.

I mean, we've got people who obviously used the SSBB pose of Sonic, recoloring it in a horrible way, and then they're done.
Nope.
I haven't drawn my OC Night the Fox yet, but I would try to actually draw as opposed to copying and pasting Tails. Otherwise, I'll end up with something as bad as this:


So yeah, don't do it. And keep this opinion of Sonic drawn by Fernandothehedgehog on dA (show him some love!) in mind:


(And I wouldn't try to attempt a Flippy-Sue, if I were you. The PTSD thing among OCs is getting pretty cliched. I like Flippy too, but come on!)

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What do you think about clones and recolors? I love to hear your thoughts!

I'll see you next episode! Or maybe when replying to other people.

Well the main appearance I use for Blue is a Recolour of Roy from Sealed swords:
[you must login to view images] [you must login to view images] But yeah, when OCs are just a MS Paint recolour of a canon character, It's just lazy. I mean, I at least tried to give Blue a consistant appearance or something but in the end, The Roy Recolour is kinda the main thing I use because of 2 factors
1. I can't actually sprite myself
2. I actually put my ass into the recolour.

Yeah, and I think sprites are fine, but doing that kind of thing for cartoons and artwork without actually putting much thought into it is usually discouraged.

Yeah, That kinda crap is just lazy. ._.

Oh God. The recolors. ._. They're just awful, and so farking annoying. (Totally share that opinion with the second image. xD)
What's even stupider is that a lot of these morons take a canon character from anything, recolor them, and then say something like:
"This is AStupidCharacter, my OC. It's TOTALLY ORIGINAL! DO NOT STEAL! D:<"
^THAT is what REALLY ticks me off.
Like dude, you're a hypocrite. You literally just ripped off [insert franchise here] by taking a [sprite, picture, etc] of [insert character here], recolored it, and changed the name to [insert name here]. So you can sthu. Thief.
It's a bit different when the actual franchise makes 'recolors'. I mean, look at the background characters of MLP. There's a lot that look very similar, but are different.
I'm not saying that people can't have OCs, or even same species-type OCs, but don't rip people off. :L (Like for example, how many hedgehog characters are in the Sonic series? Like a thousand? xD [Exaggeration.] So if you wanted to, you could still make an OC that was a hedgehog, but geeze, don't take one of the existing ones and recolor them to make your OC. ._. Get some actual original material.)

And then there's the crap, ESPECIALLY in the StH franchise, where if two characters look similar, are a similar color, OR are the same species, people automatically start harping on them as 'stupid unoriginal recolors'. I kid you not, I saw on a Sonic fanpage where a few of the admins were discussing Sonic Adventure 2, these idiots come waltzing in and comment that is was a stupid game, because Shadow. ._. And want to know why Shadow? Because according to these nutjobs, he's a 'recolor of Sonic'. :L And there's a lot of morons out there like them. In fact, on a site (that actually had nothing to do with Sonic, and neither did the post), a few people were arguing about it. And one of the idiots basically in a nutshell said that every hedgehog character that was NOT Sonic was a recolor. :L THAT crap ticks me off, too.
And if they're not recolors, then they're copies. (But then there's Metal Sonic, but that's a whole nother story that has nothing to do with recolors.)
Why can't people just appreciate new characters, whether they're the same species or not? ._. It's childish.

So that's about my opinion on recolors.
Just gonna leave this here:
[you must login to view images]

Yeah. If you ACTUALLY look at Shadow's quills, they stand up straighter than Sonic's. That's going to be my argument against people who say Shadow is just a recolor.

And the people who claimed that all canon hedgehog characters aside from Sonic are just dum-dums. I mean, have they even looked at Silver?

They also call him a 'pot head', so what do they know? :L
Here's a few examples. Compare them to each other. Some are similar, but they still have major differences (Not counting robotic hedgehogs for this one xD): [soz for sizes!]
Sonic:
Shadow:
Silver:
Manic (SUg):
Sonia (SUg):
Amy:

So how the crap are they all recolors!? Even like quill shape/etc look nothing similar to one another!
(Even despite the last two being female, but some moron actually claimed that Sonia was recolored R34 Sonic at one point. ._. And the R34 crap makes me want to barf anyway. In case you don't know, R34 and R64 are genderbent characters. Don't look it up.)
Although Shadow and Sonic look somewhat similar in Super form, they're still not recolors of each other.

The quills are still differently shaped. xD^

IDK really what else to add atm.