"Name: Meadow Collins
Age: 15
Gender: Female
Mark: A nearly neon orange fox with a white tail tip, chest, and belly, black paws, and large sparkly golden eyes.
Appearance: Shoulder-length strawberry blond hair, dark brown eyes, and peaches-and-cream colored skin. Wears black, white, and orange.
Personality: As the baby of the family, she was spoiled and usually got her way unless her brother, Phoenix, was involved. Once she was old enough to realize how lucky she was, though, she stopped trying to get her way, at least selfishly. She's kind to others unless they are mean to her or her brother and friends. She could've been popular, but she saw how the popular kids treated everyone else and opted out. She hates bullies and will stand up for those being bullied. Everyone expects her to be shallow, but she surprises them with her smarts.
(I could barely read that last sentence, so if there's any errors, now you know why.)
Strengths: Intelligent, loyal and trustworthy. She is good at fitting into any crowd.
Heeeere we go.
[Name] Plains Collins. Field Collins. Meadow Fields.
[Age] Tenthnager.
[Gender] Feemaileth.
[Mark] Sharpie.
[Appearance] Mmm... peaches and cream... (takes a ten-minute break to think about yogurt)
[Personality] Ooh, she stands up to BULLIES! Such brave. Much heroine. Anyway, good job on adding more to it, I guess. Except that I consider it boring. I mean, it just kinda is. She's kind, smart, and dislikes bullies. That's 'bout it. Also, this just occurred to me: no hobbies or anything?
[Strengths] Sorry, but I think the full list is "intelligent, loyal, trustworthy, caring, kind, brave (sorta I guess), and is good at fitting into any crowd". Which is, you know, DEFINITELY balanced. Uh-huh. No need to give her any real flaws or anything. Sarcasm aside, I hate it when this happens. It's pretty much a universal problem for OC creators. You're quick to name the strengths, which there seem to be many of, but not the flaws. Flaws are just as important as strengths. They make personalities more realistic and more interesting, not to mention that readers can relate to flaws. When a character has no flaws, little to no flaws, or flaws that are very unimportant/don't really exist, it makes them plain boring, or possibly Mary-Sueish. And I'm having a real hard time finding Meadow's flaws. She used to be selfish? Nope, nope, she got un-selfish! Because hey, we can't have her being selfish or anything! She needs to be intelligent, loyal, trustworthy, caring, kind, brave, and good at fitting into any crowd instead! Wait, what about, say, being gullible? Being kind can make you be gullible, as you might believe the words of someone you care about when they're really lies, or be kind/make friends with the wrong person, and so on and so forth. Oh wait, my bad. She's intelligent. She probably won't fall for that. Is she supposed to be a teenager, with all their annoying hormones, stupid decisions, and quick tempers, or a Disney Princess? Oh, and let's not forget how all those strengths make her better than others. Name the strengths of another OC of yours. Like, one of your other characters from the same idea as Meadow. Compare them to hers. See how many overlap or how many she has in comparison. Tell me if it seems balanced. Really, she seems like a self-insert character. And while it's fine for your characters to be like you, it's not fine if they're one-dimensional characters who have barely any flaws. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, don't those tattoos grant people powers or such? What are hers? All those strengths I mentioned don't seem to come from her tattoo. Unless, the moment that fox appeared, she became really smart and fit in better or something. (By the way, kind and smart is a very overused, uninteresting combination to begin with.)
[Final thoughts] Aside from my personal opinion that her personality is lame, she has basically no flaws. If she does, you didn't mention them. Tons of strengths doesn't make her likable or fun. It just makes her boring.
[Rating] I was gonna give her somethin' like a 5, because she was just kinda dull, but... 2/10. Too many strengths, no flaws. Please work on giving your characters flaws. Try to make strengths and flaws close to even in number, it works wonders for making your OCs more interesting, believable, and likable.
[Things I'd change]
- I'd probably try to give her a more interesting personality. Not sure what exactly I'd give her, though.
- Give her flaws, remove a couple strengths. Basically, tone down the Disney Princess/Mary Sue vibes."
Jun 12, 2022
by
Gau
