So Starlight is crap. She's a crap character, crap design, crap everything. Literally absolute garbage. I just hold on to her for nostalgia's sake because that character had a reputation with my group of friends back on Ponysquare (shouts out to Nebula Gaze, Phoenix Genevieve, my wife Strobe). Shitty cringy RP mixed in with toxic personalities and a lot of free time meant that we had so much fun that it was criminal. Almost literally, I was banned for 'trolling'.
In the end, Starlight was a representation of who I was when I gave no shits. I wanted her to be a reflection of who I was and who I aspired to be. But who gives a fuck about that boring ass shit right? Who cares about character integrity when there's ERP to be had!?
The beginning:
First of all, fuck you - this design is amazing.
This is where I started in the pony RP business. I ran across this picture, and really liked it. I'm a fan of EVE Online, and I really liked the art. So naturally, as any moral internet denizen would act, I stole the picture and used it to start a character on Ponysquare. I started in the chatrooms (RIP chatrooms, you're my favourite), and met a couple really awesome people who I became good friends with like A.D.
Starlight, in her first manifestation, was named Caldari Hooves. I know. It's lame. Calm down, its the best thing my brain could come up with. She was an extremely shy, extremely insular, skittish piece of garbage that made RP'ing her hard because I like talking and interacting with people. How do you play a quiet character when you just never want to shut up? It's hard.
I plugged the colours into General Zoi's - and got this monstrosity.
Fuck that's ugly. Caldari hooves stayed like this for an unreasonable amount of time. Easily enough time for me to download Photoshop and start the recolour train though.
I am so dissapointed in myself.
Anyways, as time went on it got really hard to RP when your character's personality revolves around not interacting with people. I couldn't go really far with the Caldari aspect - because it's a reference to a video game. What do I do with a pony that has a faction's logo on her butt? At the time - couldn't come up with much. So I decided to remove the cutie mark and start anew.
In my infinite wisdom, I decided that she should be a Rainbow Dash recolour. Except I was so shit at Photoshop I couldn't figure out how to remove the stripe in her mane that got filled in when I tried to change the colours. So I ended up with this shit:
Also that cutie mark was comissioned by me to another user on Ponysquare. Still don't remember who it was. Fun fact I actually have a custom tee shirt somewhere in my apartment that has that cutie mark on it, with a picture of Starlight.
Oh yeah. I almost forgot. This is when I abandoned the other name and picked "Starlight Sparkle". I picked it by trying to think of the shittiest most girly thing that an 8 year old could think of. Got that. Ran with it. Was continually annoyed by stupid people asking "Ohhhhh are u rleated to Twilight Sparkle?" to which I would reply, "You're stupid, get the fuck out you pleb canon character RP'er."
So I ran with this for quite a while. Someone around this time told me that I was getting popular or something - and I was building a reputation. I then told them to stop talking to me, and they're not worthy of my time. I was popular - need I remind you. I needed to act like it.
So anyways, that happened for a while. Then I decided that I needed a new cutie mark.
Starlight was now a writer - because I was best friends with a guy in school who was really into the fanfiction writing thing - and I wanted to as well. I wrote a whole bunch of fanfiction during this time across several accounts. Including clopfics. Don't judge me, that was a weird time for me.
Which ends us basically where I stopped actively RP'ing with Starlight, and went to different accounts where I RP'd more legitimately. I made a bunch - experimented with a bunch of different things and characters. A couple of them took off and I still really like the characters. Others died in a fire, where they deserve.
Thats the story of the Rainbow Dash recolour that did nothing interesting in particular. Shameless plug for my OC rating thread where I sarcastically tell you what parts of your OC are shit:
https://canterlotavenue.com/forum/thread/45/spackles-oc-rating-thread/
