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Samulady — RWBY FANDOMISMS 6: Backstory
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Published: 2016-06-24 08:50:02 +0000 UTC; Views: 1041; Favourites: 9; Downloads: 0
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Note: I always advise doing RESEARCH. This series will focus on creativity and originality while not going beyond boundaries set in canon. These are guidelines to make your character original and stand out against the the common fandom.
The Past
Backstory is an important part of one's personality and often affects their choices in later life and we accept Remnant is a dangerous world. There's bound to be a few orphans, faunus are not loved and life isn't easy but please consider that while backstory is important to who your OC is, but it isn't all they are. Not every OC should be controlled by their past.
Ruby has lost her mother. Blake grew up on the picket line, a stigmatized Faunus. Weiss's father was possibly abusive and at least neglectful... and it's not their whole life and whole personality. They're still happy, rounded people and characters.
If you’re planning to use these OC’s for roleplaying or writing, you should also consider keeping the backstories relatively short. The less luggage they have from the past, the more room for growth they have in the present. Of course you can have something significant happen, but there’s no need to go in immense detail.
Fandom
Backstories are 90% of the time the most detailed part of a bio, and often take up as much of a bio too. As I already said during the personality chapter, this focus is not right. I’ve read character bio’s where the backstory is the length of a book. I’m not kidding here. And that is not necessary. First off, if a backstory really is that long, then the character has a past that’s way too busy for a character you’re planning to use in a story or roleplay. Secondly, you went into way too much detail. There’s really no need to describe every breath your character takes. Besides, aren’t the juicy details much more interesting to tell in a story or during a roleplay, rather than spoiling everything since the beginning?
Secondly, the vast majority of the backstories I read are incredibly similar and thus repetitive. Orphans whose parents were murdered (often by the white fang or cinder’s faction) right in front of them, being trained by a master at a certain martial arts that gives them their weapon, or even more often Opzin, being let into Beacon without an entrance exam, and other angsty, depressing stuff. If even one of the traits I summed up is present in one of your character’s backstory, chances are high that your backstory is bad. And chances are high that everyone has or had a character like that.
In addition to that, we're not looking for angsty, wangsty backstories of misery or the chosen one. We’re looking for believable, likable characters.
Unfortunately people seem so attached to this type of backstory that I see it everywhere, not just in RWBY. While I understand that this partially comes from shows and anime, where protagonists also commonly have such a backstory, I’ve really started to wonder if no one’s grown tired of this stereotype yet.
A point that I’d particularly like to apply here is that I know that everyone’s gone through this phase. Hell, I’ve been through this phase too. But the point of this all is to learn from your mistakes, rather than continuing to repeat them. And that’s what I rarely see. People realizing that what they’re doing isn’t very original, standing up and saying: “I will strive for originality. I will set my characters apart from the rest of this fandom. I will make my characters truly mine.”
Let’s face it, if you’d spend an hour googling (RWBY) OC’s, whether it be on the (atrocious) RWBY fanon, deviantart or facebook, it isn’t going to take long to find a bunch of characters that have really similar traits, not only in backstory, but also personality, species, weapon, etc. It’s not going to take long before you come across a character and say ‘hmm… I’ve read this before…”.
And that, is the real problem with this, and many other, fandoms’s OC’s. This is also the reason why I’ve started this series to begin with, in the hopes of one part at a time, to improve the quality of the OC’s.
Unfortunately, unless you’re immensely popular, most people gloss over this type of thing, but I digress.
And the best way to do accomplish a good backstory, is RESEARCH.
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Comments: 25
I think this is kind of neat to read
Is there still any chance of you continuing this series? I'd love to see what you'll write about the last two topics
Also hello... Samu?
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Hello!
I'm glad you enjoyed my series so far. I'm definitely interested in continuing it, however with the way canon evolves it's hard for me to make guidelines for something that is still changing, this particularly applying to semblances. I don't really want to make something I need to update regularly.
With the ending of the last volume I however did get some more ideas to talk about in a bonus chapter.
And hi! Feel free to call me 'Osh' or 'Osha' (based on my old username) if you'd rather do so, I can see the confustion here Nice to meet'cha
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Nah, I think I'll just keep on calling you Samu because I find it funny, unless you do not like that
I've been developing an OC myself, kind of. It all started from the weapon, then redesigning the weapon a couple times, coming up what I thought was the final idea for the weapon, thinking of a possible semblance, then the weapon changed to work better with the semblance, then I took a different way to look at the weapon, the semblance changed alongside it, now I am mostly developing the character and different ways to use the weapon I made, while also trying not to make it all an overcomplicated mess like I tend to do
This is the first time I'm doing anything like this and it's kind of fun
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This whole series has been really enjoyable. Thanks for writing and sharing it with us all. Now let's see about applying it...
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You're quite welcome.
I actually should've finished this ages ago, however I'm honestly quite stumped on the semblance part. As new volumes come out we discover more and more about semblances and aura and something I thought was rediculous at the end of volume 2 seems doable at this point. There's no real standard to put to say what's overpowered, what's overly rediculous and so on, and I feel like that is something I should talk about during this chapter.
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My understanding was that it was a manifestation of the user's "self", not in terms of their character but rather something innate and unique to them. Of course I'm not sure of that anymore since some of the abilities don't always seem to reflect that, and there are even hereditary ones like Wiess'. Blake mentioned once that her clones were just another example of how she always runs away, but then you have Ruby's speed that could represent any number of traits regarding her personality, though it probably has something to do with her energetic nature. Then there is Pyrrah's polarity which could be represented wholly in her last kiss with Jaune: pulling him close and wanting to stay with him but then pushing him away to protect him and everyone else by fighting Cinder alone. So I guess it goes back to there character itself, representing not just who they are, were, or want to be, but an idea that is directly connected to the root of their being. If that makes sense.
As for coming up with one for an OC I'd say it is just as much a balancing act as it is with their other abilities. Maybe the character is strong in some areas, but their semblance is very situational or not useful for combat. Maybe they themselves are a lousy fighter but have a semblance that somehow makes up the difference. Maybe they can't control their semblance and because of that it is active constantly, for better or worse.
Glynda and Qrow are good examples of extremes as it seems Glynda relies almost completely on her semblance in combat while Qrow's is a danger to everyone around him, even himself.
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I think that we can all agree on that, that's not exactly the problem.
My problem is mainly that this chapter is very likely to become outdated very quickly when it comes to what makes a balanced semblance.
Before Emerald's semblance was revealed I thought illusion semblances were incredibly overpowered. there's also Qrow's semblance, who confirms there are passively active semblances, although rare.
My point is, I very much doubt that I'll be able to correctly tell someone what makes a good semblance until the end of the show, as more things are revealed that change everything.
I can easily what the fandom does and shouldn't do, but I can't clearly tell what a person shouldn't do because who know, the next season their idea could've been totally possible and viable.
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Actually...that's pretty awesome when you think about it. It's pretty much a free pass to do whatever you think is cool and makes sense for your character. Guess that doesn't help you with writing your fandomisms chapter though.
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You're welcome, I'm always glad to hear this guide is appreciated!
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I have a few OCs running, but this constant voice of "perfection" keeps ringing. And looking at some guides like this really shuts it up.
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Ah, yeah, I get what you mean. It can both point out if things are wrong, but also make you feel better to hear when you're doing something right.
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"If you’re planning to use these OC’s for roleplaying or writing,..." line 24
How does roleplaying in that context work?
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Well when you roleplay, you're kinda just writing a story with another person, right? Well, in such stories there are going to be times where character development takes place (especially if you just roleplay and don't do both roleplaying and writing) but if there character already went through a lot of development in his backstory, then there's simply no room for them to evolve in the present.
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Ok, I understand. Thank you.
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Wow...I mean just wow... you really nailed it all. I didn't even connect some of the dots, but now that you point it out I can't believe I didn't notice it until now. Although I have to ask about something; I wanted to write a fanfic based on Hati and skoll from Norse Mythology and I went with two wolf Faunus brothers, one light and one dark, but know it seems kind of overdone. Any advice?
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(Late reply is late)
While I'd love to take full credit for this series, I can't. The basis is always taken from a guide I've learned a lot from myself, actually.
Though I'm really glad that this guide helped you in a way that's going to improve OC's. It's the main reason I wanted to get this out there.
And, while difficult, it's not impossible to create a good wolf faunus. Though, out of all wolf faunus I've seen, there's only one that I genuinly admit to liking thanks to the fact that it doesn't follow the stereotypes. Honestly I would discourage bringing more wolf faunus in the world, but I can't force you to, naturally. So if you do decide to go through with the idea, I'm going to leave some advice on how to best seperate them from the other wolf faunus out there.
-Go further into detail when it comes to species. There are a ton of different wolves out there, and by picking a specific species you'll be able to seperate them from the general wolf concept. It's also best to avoid the grey wolf, because it's the species that the 'general wolf' is based on most.
-The inspirations could work, they're interesting and I don't see a lot of norse mythology being used (or at least that side of it)
-I'd try to draw the concept of opposites a bit further than just 'light and dark'. They're wolves that chase the sun and the moon, so why not have them represent that part as well. On that note, it may be best not to use the colors black and white to represent them, because those are also most commonly used in combination with wolf faunus.
-Other than that just avoid the general stereotypical things mentioned in this series and you should be able to avoid all pitfalls of making really bad wolf OC's.
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Thank you for making this series. I've come to learn that making a character for RWBY is quite the challenge, and I think this will help me out a lot.
I can't wit for the semblance part. I'm having the most trouble with that.
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Semblances are rather difficult, I agree. (It's also the reason I haven't finished that part )
They're really up in the air right, so it's difficult to say where to draw the line exactly. I'll try to finish it soon though, now with my contest out.
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