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mohs-scale · 6 years ago

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Do you do OC reviews often?

[HNK OC Review] Sapphire

Hey there guys, gals and other gendered pals! This account has been rather quiet as of late, wouldn’t you say? A shame indeed, although we received our first public OC review request today. While the user would prefer to be left anonymous on this post, this review is available for you and them to read through. So sit down, relax and let’s do a quick review of this Houseki No Kuni OC!

Part 1 - Biography Analysis

+ some quick words in advance!

What there was to read of Sapphire’s bio was admittedly scarce. The amount of information chalked up to about 1 page and just over 500 words. While shorter character biographies are quicker to read and easier to get through - I’m a firm believer that when it comes to telling your OC’s story and telling us about them, more is always great! I would definitely suggest adding more to this bio and there are several templates for OC bios available on platforms like DeviantART and Amino.

Also, apologies if I’m mistaken, but it looks as if this and the other piece of Sapphire sent to me were created in an avatar/anime dress-up game. I’d advise instead of doing this, perhaps drawing your OC yourself or requesting/commissioning artwork from an artist instead. It just adds something more original and personal to your art and OC, plus there’s more creativity that way!

Name: Sapphire Nicknames: Saphy, the Blue Angel, Jewel

There is already a canon “Sapphire” in the Houseki No Kuni universe. However, this isn’t a huge problem. Perhaps add a colour, shade or type into her name to distinguish her from the canon character. For example, there are various diamonds in Houseki No Kuni: Diamond, Yellow Diamond and Red Diamond. Perhaps you can distinguish your Sapphire from the canon “Sapphire”. Below is a picture of some shades of sapphire and I think “Cornflower” or “Kashmir” might fit your character the best.

Credit: SpiralMuse.org

As for your character’s nicknames, perhaps add some more context, like:

Who refers to Sapphire by these names?

How did she earn these nicknames?

Does she like these nicknames?

I believe doing so would add some more dimension to your character. It would show the reader how she fits into the universe and can even allow them to determine things about their character before even reading through the entire bio. Also, I don’t think that the Gems would know what an “angel” is, given they don’t seem to have much of a grasp on human religion albeit mythological creatures stemming from these religions.

Age: Between 200-250 years old

Species: Sapphire

While I can’t say a straight-up “no” to this being an answer to this question, sapphire wouldn’t qualify as your character’s species. For this category, I’d suggest writing “Gem” or “The Bone”, as those are the most common names for the species’ of the crystalline characters in Houseki No Kuni. My apologies, just a nitpick!

Strength: 9

Sexual Orientation: Straight

Appearance: Sapphire is a blue gem with long flowing hair tied up in a ponytail. Everyone likes Sapphire’s hair because it is very sparkly and shimmers a lot in battle, making them hard to miss when they fight the Lunarians. Sapphire’s eyes are also blue. Sapphire has markings on her face which appear when she’s very angry at the Lunarians, and they don’t go away until Rutile comes to calm her down. Sapphire doesn’t like these markings but Sensei says that they make her special, but it doesn’t make her like them any more though. Sapphire has large wings made out of wax and pieces of silver that were made by Rutile, which she uses to fly and cut through her enemies with.

To begin this, in the two images that I was sent with this biography, there is very little consistency in the design, which I reckon is because the customization options varied between the two used games/apps(?). Nothing hints to this character having a wardrobe of outfits and I believe that more care should’ve gone into at least ensuring the design didn’t change so drastically and like this. Like I said, drawing it yourself or asking for art from another person can make a larger difference than you may think!

Now as for what is stated here in this portion of the bio, it is admittedly very cluttered and rather disorganized. The sentence structures are rather awkward in nature and seem to jump from one topic to the other. (eg. Rutile calming her down and Sensei’s opinion on her markings.) A few pieces of this information could definitely be removed from the “appearance” section and placed into another, like “personality” or “relationships”. Please stay true to the fact that this is an “appearance” description and not a description of everything under the sun.

There is a strong emphasis on Sapphire’s beauty and strength in this portion, which is alright, although it comes off as just slightly conceited. (Though I think I’m alone on that stance, nor was mentioning that opinion truly important lmao.) I have a slight problem with her two most apparent traits, I will confess. Sapphire’s facial markings and wings.

What struck me as odd about the facial markings is that such things have never been seen in the canonverse, it just seems so alien and frankly unnecessary. The markings are cited as only showing up when she is angry and sound as though they serve no sense or purpose other than displaying this single fact. While there is a potential for some interesting OC lore, I would personally suggest removing this feature unless you have a logical way of explaining their presence on her face/body.

The gems also wear thick coats of powder across their bodies, remember? If these markings were anywhere, I imagine they’d exist within/on Sapphire’s crystalline body and would struggle to show up through this powder… This concept is just very confusing and I can’t think of any logical reasons/examples to give you that would make them work.

Now for the wings, it’s obvious that this was inspired by the Greek tale of Icarus. I personally think that your concept is interesting but it brings up many questions, both for the sake of character-building and well, science.

Why would Rutile create Sapphire a set of wings? How come none of the other Gems get their own wings? Did it take Sapphire time to learn how to use their new wings? In Houseki No Kuni, the laws of physics are constantly defied, but seeing a character flying with wings made from a metal that is 655 lb per cubic foot seems like science the creators wouldn’t push against… Ahem, anyways, I believe these are questions you should explore if you plan on keeping the implemented features there.

Personality: Sapphire is an emotionless character who is very strong and works alone whenever she can. She thinks that she is too dangerous to work alongside other Gems because she could hurt them when she gets angry or made in battle. This is why Sapphire asks to work alone. Sapphire also wants to protect her friends very much and that’s why she’s always so angry at the Lunarians for taking away the other Gems. Sapphire also competes a lot with Phos because they’re both strong Gems only Sapphire is more loyal and useful to Sensei more than Phos was. Sapphire also doesn’t like Padparashadda very much because Padparashada isn’t helpful to Sensei either when he’s asleep all the time, and because he makes Rutile really upset which Sapphire doesn’t like.

Emotionless, hm? Given the fact that she supposedly have markings that trigger as a result of an emotion (anger), I would hardly go to say she’s emotionless. In this paragraph, she’s listed as: angry, protective, competitive, loyal and passionate - all of which are emotions.

Just like in the “appearances section”, there is information in this paragraph that would fit better elsewhere, like her relationships with the listed characters, whose affinity and history with are never explained in this bio.

I think that there are definitely more traits you could add to Sapphire’s personality. She is rather simplistic and I believe there is a lot of potential for her to be much more. Perhaps read about sapphires and find out what they symbolize for some inspiration or even randomly generate personality traits/attributes in online generators! Spice things up a little, make this OC more personal, make them feel more real.

Likes: Sensei, killing Lunarians, blue roses, King, her wings, being strong, the night time Dislikes: Phos, Padparashadda, when the lunarians get away, seeing broken gems, getting very angry

Powers: She has wings that let her fly and attack the Lunarians in order to make sure they cannot return back to the moon. Sapphire is stronger than Phos

Another useless piece of info, but you’ve spelt Padparadscha wrong a number of times. It’s not so hard to do a quick spellcheck! I probably sound like a broken record, but the wings continue not to make much sense to me, and I think you need to revisit the concept a little more. Given how you explained them, they sound very very powerful, seemingly strong without consequence. Also, the fact that Sapphire is stronger than Phos would be more believable and intriguing if Sapphire had clearer motifs and a more developed personality.

Her likes and dislikes are rather generic, which admittedly broke my interest a little. I’d suggest adding some likes and dislikes that reflect Sapphire’s character a little better than her love for murdering the Moon People.

The characters she likes and dislikes also may leave the reader curious. Though you went into slight detail about why Sapphire and Phosphophyllite aren’t besties, seeing more info on relationship with Sensei, Padpa and the aforementioned Rutile would be great.

Backstory: Sapphire was born on the Cord Shore and taken to the school by Sensei. Sapphire liked to cling to Sensei because she saw him as a father and always wanted to please him. When Sapphire was growing up, Sensei could tell that she was powerful when he saw Sapphire’s markings, which showed up when she got mad after seeing some gems return to the building broken by the Lunarians. Sensei let Sapphire fight earlier because he knew she could protect the gems with her hardness and her ability. One day, Sapphire was in battle but the Lunarians escaped too quickly, making her very angry. Rutile gave Sapphire a gift which was a set of wings made out of wax and silver so that the Lunarians could never escape her again. Sapphire’s wings were so powerful she didn’t have to use a sword anymore and could take down even more Lunarians every day with only her wings.

*inhales*

Oh boy.

Ok, uh, I feel as though Sapphire’s backstory makes her seem like a very very special snowflake - something you should never strive for with a character. Sensei and Rutile both seem to be out of character, as both seem to feed Sapphire what she wants with a silver spoon… She seems like a bratty chosen one and I can’t say this backstory will sit well with everyone.

There’s so little here that it makes me question a lot, and it frustrates me that’s there isn’t more to justify the choices and thoughts of Sensei and Rutile. Why did Sensei see such potential in Sapphire? Why would Rutile craft wings for Sapphire? Why did Sapphire get away with working alone?

There’s just so much left unanswered and unexplained… Please, if you ever decide to work on this, please add more and fill in these enormous holes. Adding a timeline would help with the pacing because when all of this is happening and at what ages Sapphire was when these events happened isn’t specified, adding to the confusion.

Fun Fact

Sapphire has never gotten broken before but she is curious about what it feels like.

Sapphire wraps herself in her wings when she sleeps.

Haha that first piece of trivia is rather cute. It reminds me of being young, seeing a friend with a cast and wondering what it feels like to break an arm or a leg. I think that’s really cute! The second - well, you already know my stance on the wings ^^’

Notes + Summary

If there is one thing that always sucks about fandom OCs, it’s that the fandoms always impose restrictions on creativity. In the case of Sapphire, I feel that a lot of the creative choices would definitely work to her benefit, but in the world of Houseki No Kuni, several aspects of her character feel unnatural and vague.

Anyways, here’s a reiteration of my main points from this review.

Please add more to this bio! There wasn’t a whole lot of information in this bio, certainly not enough for Sapphire to be considered a fleshed out OC. As a result of how short this bio is, there are a lot of holes and a lot left unexplained. There is a lot of potential for this OC to be bettered by filling in those holes wisely! You can look online for a template to find section headings you’re missing, like: relationships, statistics, etc.

Getting your own images would be pretty great! Artists are always better than doll maker games!

Altering her name just a little by a colour prefix (eg. “Cornflower Sapphire”, “Kashmir Sapphire”, etc.) would differentiate her from the canon blue Sapphire.

The removal or better explaining of the facial markings and wings would definitely be beneficial if you want to make her fit better into the series.

Sapphire is written like a special snowflake, she’s practically written like a protagonist and seems to directly challenge Phos. Perhaps tone down the amount of special features she has, there’s nothing wrong with being just average. Sometimes, looking and behaving like a wallflower can make an OC better?

Explaining Sapphire’s connections with her peers in greater detail would be beneficial, considering they seem to baby her a fair bit.

Overall, I’d give Sapphire an overall rating of 3.5/10. There just wasn’t a whole lot to work off of from this bio and what’s there is admittedly not superb. I hope this doesn’t discourage you from creating OCs and encourages you to make some changes to Sapphire. As I said, I see a lot of potential in her, as long as you fill in those holes in her bio and correct what is flawed in a way that makes sense and seems natural.

That’s all for this review, Ciao!

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