#and Flutterdash is also cute

[quantomeno]

I always feel mildly bemused when I read people post about stuff like systemic sexism in fandoms, particularly things like about how people complain more about female characters but ignore male characters with similar faults, or the fandoms loving gay ships but not making as much fanworks for lesbian ones.

Part of this is just because I like female characters (despite being male, I tend to prefer things with female leads etc) and I'm not that involved in a lot of fandom arguments nor do I read a lot of shipfics, so I only hear about a lot of the sexism when people complain about it. Which is kind of funny to me in the fact it must exist, but I'm just conveniently shielded from it.

The other reason is some of my earliest fandoms I got involved in were female-majority casts, so most people do ship the women. Like, I think Equestria Daily once put out an apology after they posted a Braeburn m/m fic (admittedly, the outrage from the bronies back then in 2012 or whenever was probably out of homophobia, which isn't nice either, but the point still stands that they were no issues with w/w shipfics and to this day they are the vast, vast majority of shipping fics (mostly because once you've shipped Braeburn, Sorin' and Big Mac together there aren't that many other guys left to ship, but nonetheless)). Or like Barbie with its vastly superior chemistry between the joint female leads over the threadbare male love interest they've thrown in. Even when the male leads are good, it's popular to ship the girls.

I don't think I have anything substantial to say. I just don't understand the issues other men (or indeed women) have with female characters (and women and femininity in general) (I mean I do understand I just find it bizarre it when like a friend of mine once said he wasn't really interested in stories with female leads. I don't know, maybe read more books with better female protags? I have a bookshelf's worth if you want suggestions) (also like when people suggest there needs to be more talk about good female characters like, most of my favourites are already females and I will gladly talk about them till the cows come home). But also that's just me.

Also I kind of do like m/m ships a fraction more but that's like 90% because I'm bi and so, you know, I like seeing guys together because I kind of would like to get together with a guy if the opportunity arose. But I mean other than that they're just ships. Like sure there can be a different vibe or flavour to w/w or m/m or straight ships, but I mean if they're good characters why should my interest depend on their genders? I read things to experience the lives of others, I don't want to just see stories that match my experience. And sometimes I empathise most with the female characters so like, you need to approach characters with an open mind. I don't know.

OK I'm rambling now. I think I made my point. I'm not sure what it was anymore but I guess it's that women in fiction are cool and I don't know what everyone else's problem is.

[werebutch]

Sorry guys I’m rarijack + twinkie + flutterdash truther many people don’t know this. Fluttercord may also stay and if that’s the case we all know it’s derpydash’s time to shine

[vomiting-rainbows]

fuck i forgot to post this old canvas that i found with a bunch of old doodles, decided to draw and fill w some new doodles a bit, the designs i made for human!twilight and human!pinkie are my favs they so precious 🥹🥹

[mylittlestims]

Fluttershy x rainbow dash? Can you also somehow make it 'cute' or 'wholesome'? I'm kind of having a bad day

FlutterDash | Fluttershy x Rainbow Dash Stimboard with a cute/wholesome theme for Anon

(X) (X) (X)

(X) (X) (X)

(X) (X) (X)

[ravenclod]

SAW YOUR FLUTTERDASH POST SO DO YOUR TOP 5 FAVORITE MLP SHIPS!!!! （≧∇≦）

OH MY GOD ILY MEL /P THIS IS THE QUESTION EVER

thesee r prolly no particular order after n1 also im gonna specificy Fim and Eg bec THEYRE DIFFERENT OK.

1. FLUTTERDASH - EG and FIM

i shipped them before i knew what shipping was, theyre my comfort ship of all time ever. i just love them. theyre peak to me </3

2. Rarijack - EG mainly but both ♡

TTHEYREUSO OMGOFJSJSJDJD the . the au potentials. they have pEAK dynamic. i dont even jsut. theyre so oh my god.

3. SUNPIE - EG

THEYRE SO ADORABLE THEYRE LIKE KYOMADO MLP FORM I ADORE THEM WITH MT WHOLE HEART OKAY OKAY OKAY

4. StarTrix - FIM but EG too

THEY ARE SO CUTEEEE RAGHHHSSHSHSB SOBS CRYS SCREAMS ONGMDJSMSMSMSN their dynamic and lore esp in fim is everything to me

5. Appledash - fim

i used to be an ANTI but the canonisation PLUS seeing some FIRE arts made me reconsider... i prefer their friendship in equestria girls but ive been persuaded on friendship is magic

6. LITERALLY ALL THE MANE 6 SHIPS POLY OR NOT

THEYRE ALL ADORBS shoutout to twipie

BONUS ; LYRABON THEYRE LITERALLY CANON??? THEYRE MARRIED ??? HOW CUTE??? IS THAT???

THANK U SM FOR THE ASK MEL SOBS

[draftmlpfim]

rating all mane six ships

just the monogamy ones sry guys </3 feel free to request ones i haven't done if you want in my askbox

twilight x pinkie 6/10 - i like it esp w rarijack and flutterdash, but im a big fan of single twilight idk why. i might be remembering incorrectly but i think i really shipped them when the movie came out bc they had scenes together in that which were cute

twilight x dash 7/10 - ngl kinda interesting, esp w that episode where twilight teaches dash the history of the wonderbolts, but again single twilight is top tier

twilight x aj 8/10 - favorite twilight ship within the mane six. sry guys but her and aj are the most mature imo and they are the moms of the group so this makes sense to me

twilight x rarity 2/10 - eh not interesting to me

twilight x fluttershy 5/10 - kinda neutral, a little interesting but not really

pinkie x dash 3/10 - idk why it was always so important to me but i think they're closer than they are w the rest of the mane six, but i dont think it would ever be romantic. i blame that one tea party playset they came in together (w celestia for some reason) that labeled them as "pony friends forever"

pinkie x aj 0/10 - even if they aren't technically related, they call each other cousin n shit so that's gross

pinkie x rarity 6/10 - only bc rarijack <3 and im a shitty multishipper, but they are very cute and compliment each other in a unique way. wish we had more episodes with them being the focus

pinkie x fluttershy 1/10 - sry this wouldn't work. nine out of ten times pinkie is the one triggering fluttershy's anxiety lol

dash x aj 4/10 - i know they're technically canon and i think butch x butch ships need to happen in media more, but i just never really saw it happening. also multishipper thing and flutterdash rarijack, but i honestly did not see romantic chemistry between them

dash x rarity 8/10 - purely for the plot. this would be really really interesting

dash x fluttershy 100/10 - my personal favorite mlp ship. canon for me, childhood friends to lovers, even funnier that fluttershy's brother is so annoying at dash. also love that they have lunch with fluttershy's parents and i imagine that after that one ep they do it w dash's parents too

aj x rarity 10/10 - im such a sucker for opposites attract so :) also i like the idea that they're the type of couple that's hardly ever together but when they are its so perfect and they make each other so happy :)

aj x fluttershy 7/10 - cottagecore lesbian ship cool

rarity x fluttershy 5/10 - similar to my feelings about pinkiedash, i can only really see them being super close friends sry

other popular ships here

[inanimationhell]

My personal MLP shipping HC are so odd. Cause I love them being in one big polycule, all the different dynamics make it work and are so cute. BUT ALSO I love a good "opposite attract" dynamic which leads too; Flutterdash, Rarijack and TwiPie being my personal faves.

[lucabyte]

Your gender thought type essays have made me curious about what your oc creation/development process is like! It seems to be something you put a lot of thought into and that’s very interesting (especially cause my circles don’t often go into detail in that area)

I'm delighted to hear you're curious!! I'll give as thorough an answer as I can manage, though it'll likely be a bit disorganised. Okay, so... I'm gonna use a couple examples for this, and since you specified gender stuff I'm gonna go for some where gender/sexuality are integral, even if in seemingly counterproducive ways (but that'll be the last few...)

So. The first character that comes to mind here for me in terms of like... A lot of thought going into their gender is Lavender.

So going all the way back... Lavender was made in 2015.

Spreadsheet puts her at the 13th character in the setting, creation-date ways! So she's Been around a while.

Part 1: A Core Idea

Now, why was Lavender made? This is the first step of character creation. Well, she was made to tick a bit of a box. I realised my only girls at the time were all tomboyish so I needed a cute girl. And this was 2015, so she arose in the form of a Waifu Joke. She was intended to be a side-character with no real plot ties, so I just designed a character as cute as possible, named her simply (Lavender Wafeu == literally Colour and Waifu) and was basically done? 7 months later I would make Mafioso to slightly further the joke, in that giving Lavender a girlfriend makes her unpursuable* as a waifu. This also gave me a stark butch/femme pair, and I recall around this era there was a joke going around on tumblr of 'Indestructable Lesbians' as opposed to buried gays. This kinda became their thing. Two lesbians the plot wouldn't touch and they wouldn't be endangered.

.... And then that was kinda it. She was a cute girl who was fun to draw, shy, and reserved in nature. An opposition to Mafioso's brash (but secretly a little nervous) demeanor. I would literally just liken this to flutterdash outright. I was basically just doing flutterdash in terms of their personalities.

SO: This is the first step to all my characters. Find a core concept, or more likely, a core joke. Lavender's core joke is a very rough and (frankly unfunny) "your waifu isn't going to fuck you" joke. But you can see how she was built out of it. And we'll get to how that building happened next.

(^ Weird 2015 era lavender with her total lack of emotive range and flat characterisation)

Part 2: Dormancy

Lavender stayed unchanged for quite a while, in this flat state. She picked up a few things, mostly little 'twists' to her character. ie. she could hold her own in a fight, is surprisingly quick to jump to (cartoonish) violence, and likes a good steak. All very basic little things, obvious "oh bet you didn't expect That" contradictions.

She didn't recieve much attention during this time despite me really liking her design still. Mafioso languished even worse in this era, with her mother Omerta picking up most of the development instead. Overall, these two were very, very boring. No amount of little superficial additions could save them from this.

But it... hints at something, right? It hints that maybe there's a facade somewhere, that maybe the perfect-cute-girl thing might actually take a little bit of effort to upkeep...? Hrm...

Part 3: A Fresh Perspective

So, sometime in 2020, I was finally remaking my 2016-era spreadsheet of all my characters from the ground up, since I needed to remove a lot of ms excel specific formatting it had in it.

And while going through, I was being helped by @samhainian, who I had befriended in the years between. And they remarked that I didn't have enough directly trans characters in the cast, to which I agreed. I had a handful of tokens at the time (Adder and Angel spring to mind?) but not many more, so we literally just went down the list with suggestions. And when Sam suggested Lavender, I reacted with confusion. Because... Wait. Is she not trans? But she's so feminine? All of my characters lean extremely gender-neutral in presentation unless they're trying to do gender on purpose...?

And this just, unlocked her whole character like a skeleton key.

I was making her do her gender on purpose. The reason she had those contradictions is because she's putting in the effort to appear like this perfect, girl-next-door, waifu type. Something that doesn't really work if she doesn't have girlhood to prove.

From here, her coy 'maybe she has more to her than cute girl' hints were instantly recontextualised as a thing She was Doing. And instead of being random superficial tidbits, they were Depth. And her cartoonish 'extremely mild-mannered and polite persona' suddenly became a very human facade.

So, she had a new core to build around. And her lack of anything going on before in terms of backstory suddenly felt contextual? She's clearly fresh new to this. She had already had the backstory of being a very young (about 19~21) person who had moved to a new town to live on her own-- Suddenly that makes sense. She's forging a whole new identity. Her polite 'never really talking about herself because she's an object for the audience to desire' quietness becomes intentional evasion. She doesn't have a backstory, because she doesn't want it to be any of your business.

And ironically, this immediately Gave Her the backstory she had been missing. Her wiles and hidden 'smarter than she looks' becomes so relevant as to be real character traits...

I already somewhat went over this (and a number of other gender thoughts, including my thoughts on my myriad 'cis but not' or 'nb in a specific direction') in a thing I wrote, woof, 2 years ago: (LINK) which was a ramble about a lot of my character's genders... In that I summarised Lavender's gender as such:

Part 4: In practice

Okay so it's all well and good that I realised Lavender is Trans Gemder. But that's not where it ends, because she finally became refined and polished to the point of um. Quadrupling her image count on toyhouse. because of Purrgatorio.

See, the other reason I was getting my spreadsheets in order was for Purrgatorio (the original flavour of it, the visual novel) and I needed to just do some general housekeeping.

Lavender, Mafioso and Ess shared a route in VN!Purrgatorio, being that I saw them as a triad of characters. While this characterisation of her basically did nothing interesting, aside from showing her fiery side, this would later become the basis for her being one of the first characters met in actual purrgatorio, where she, being polite and nice, and established back in 2016ish to be one of the few characters Chrome isn't a total asshole to--- She gets to meet Ali.

Now this is where I would say a lot of the real development happened. Right there, in action, in putting her to the test of real writing. All of her characterisation stops being hypothetical, and instead something I have to portray. And I found as I wrote, she grew more deep simply by giving her such an odd situation to be in. And of note, by having Ali be intimidated by talking to cute girls, it gave her the upper hand in the dynamic-- Really allowing me to show off her ability to lead a conversation, and her quiet confidence in herself-- as well as hinting at the thing she isn't quite so confident with.

It's also allowed me to start thinking about her sexuality, too. This is another thing that goes back to her flimsy core concept. The Waifu is generally a sexless being in their own right, having sexuality projected onto them by the narrative or audience. In fact, a lot of shounen girls don't get to be romantically forward-- both because it risks alienating the intended selfshipper-audience, and also because showing too much confidence and autonomy in their sexuality can be too threatening for the chuunibyo audience, who aren't yet comfortable with their own sexuality and-- wait! Look at that! Another part of the core concept I can toy with! Wouldn't it make sense, if she's meant to be a deconstruction of The Waifu Archetype, for her to have that confidence and autonomy? This is what 2015-me was clumsily trying to grasp with the whole lesbian thing... So why not just re-angle that into her being confident and forward. It fits with her new personality, so it works!

*oh hey there's that asterisk. I also realised she had chemistry with Ali! Given the way she is level-headed and rather logical deep down, her curiosity drives this. She's not going to pass up a chance to know a literal Alien... But it also further illustrates how badly Mafioso has been left in the dust by her. (She's been quietly tinkered with behind the scenes ready for her reintrodcution, but for a while, I was really struggling!! Like, considering overhauling her character levels of struggling!! But, we managed, I think. She's yet to be introduced and put into practice yet, but it's upcoming.) To the point where I've broken them up! At least for now. Mafioso needs to prove herself I think, since now she can't rely on Lavender being waifish and easily won over.

TO SUMMARISE THE MAJOR POINTS THERE:

Any joke/idea can be a suitable core, even if flimsy, you just need to find which parts are interesting to either double down on or deconstruct

It's okay for characters to take a long time to form! If you don't feel connected to a character they might need a shake up, but also YOU might need a shake up. Lavender needed a new perspective from someone with a different approach to gender as me, and for I myself to become more comfortable with Real Sexuality (ive literally just aged nearly 10 years itll happen) before she could really shine.

Following on from the above you basically never need to throw a character out completely. You should try and find what it is you like about them, or consider core, and perhaps try and reframe or refract those elements. A character might get demoted to non-main status sometimes, but why throw away that depth? They can hang out on the sidelines if that's better for them.

Sometimes a character won't feel done until you write them! You can do this with RP if you have the ability, but I wrote Purrgatorio instead, which is intentionally low-stakes and non-canon so I don't get too freaked out about writing it. It's a playground for testing characterisaton, and putting characters in weird pairings they otherwise wouldn't to see if something interesting arises.

SOME OTHER EXAMPLES FROM MY BACK CATALOGUE:

Lavender is a bit of a daunting pick, given that she's spent nearly 10 years slowly rotating in my brain, only to finally become realised in the last 3-4 or so. But I do have some more recent quick examples, as well as another giant thing you can read if you want to.

GIANT THING TO READ IF YOU WANT IT: I've posted abt this before way ages ago but I wrote up a whole gigantic thing on my probably 2 most in depth characters. It can be found here (LINK) and also has a longass diatribe about their genders, sexualities, and the core thing they were originally riffing on. (Which was like. a specific type of anime boy ship i was a sucker for, that I eventually realised I was making way more interesting than most anime i was into was bothered to do)

It's a very thorough look into my thought process, including ANOTHER diatribe on purrgatorio granting me some good boons of character.

OTHER EXAMPLE 1: ALI

Okay Ali is too complicated to get into thoroughly here, but they're another good example of a core idea spiralling out.

Core idea: Blank slate visual novel protagonist, so gender neutral and a bit of a flimsy everyman. No real name, only a default name if you left the entry blank. (Ali, a shortening of the canon surname). #FFFFFF skin to keep the jokey ambiguity and pink hair to reference Dante's silly red hat.

Twists: Canon assigned surname of Alighieri, implying them to be some descendent of The Real Dante. And they're in a VN so there's a spooky easter egg where you can roll a death screen that shows them as an ominous demonic Thing instead of a regular human.

The, VN!Purrgatorio got shelved, and because they were human instead of a furry they got shuffled into other projects. A furry version of them showed up in a different project riffing on the demon thing, making them a child-friendly antichrist with 2 siblings based on the tragicomedy masks. Then that furry version's stuff got shoved onto the human version who was just a half-demon kid in Creature Feature. THEN we decided they'd be half-succubus to keep the ability to shift between the sexes (referencing the blank slate gender ambiguity of the VN). THEN that became 'nerd who is freaked out by being a sex demon and doesn't like the ethical implications of their existance but is still kinda miffed that they arent Getting Any' who STILL HAD the antichrist stuff from the furry version....

(^ technically a completely seperate ali ive not done anything with in years lol)

Like you get it. It's a giant katamari of STUFF from all different settings. This is what I mean by 'you never really need to scrap a character'. Because after all this shoving them around into different projects and them accruing things (the 'guy who is really concerned with informed consent is a succubus/incubus' angle really informed them here, as well as deciding that they're apathetic about the magic sex characteristic changes.) we threw them right back into the original setting of Purrgatorio and it went WAY BETTER once they actually had some character traits!

But that core idea still stands a little. Not in them being an everyman, but in prompting them to become an altersex character when fleshed out, and in the way that they're distinctly still tied to that second-person-narration that VNs have, and the eventual 4th wall break they got in the VN informed their powerset as 'narrative manipulator'.

also as a note here: DON'T BE AFRAID TO PLAY WHILE YOUR SETTING ISN'T DONE!

VN!Purrgatorio got shelved because I redid a bunch of MYMK's setting when I was finishing it up. But It was worth it even unfinished.

Ali themselves when in Current!Purrgatorio has spent, up until very recently, their whole time with their home setting (Creature Feature) in a state of being deeply unfinished and in need of a reshake. It's finally getting that now, but it was still fine for me to reference what I knew likely wouldn't be changing! They were able to function just fine without their home setting being solid for upwards of 2-3 years. Obviously this shouldn't be done for *finished* works, but when you're just playing, like I am with Purrgatorio, it's okay to keep things fluid and effectively quietly retcon things later.

OTHER EXAMPLE 2: PEACH TRACY

Peach tracy is an actually recent character, and is under @samhainian's purview, as with the rest of Moraine. Now, she was made with a very distinct gender/sexuality in mind, unlike a lot of my characters who stumble ass-backwards into one.

Peach is the 'token girl' of her group (the other two being Red, a closeted and unaware transfem, and Toyon a he/him butch.) and well, her gender is basically "tik tok girlie", as is her core concept. She only works if she's a pampered cisgender straight girl from a rich background. She's nice! But she's privileged.

Her twist however, is that she is wracked by the guilt of her and her group letting a friend take the fall for an Illegal Youtube Prank to save their own skin, and as such her entire character unravels from there.

Because she has all this guilt, it stands that her Girliepop Persona must be somewhat constructed. She's leaning in to the femininity as a shield and a deflector. She's, y'know, a white girl.

So her gender ends up being overperformed, and she's petrified of expressing her sexuality due to it being tied up in this image of purity. She's the exact type of person to psyche herself out into believing those 'having a crush on your friend is problematic' tumblr posts.

But none of this would really work if she did not start as a (white) girl, able to use that shield. If she were a dude or nonwhite-coded she would not have the ability to react to her situation that way. Ergo, she is actually built out of her identity this way.

(As for her sexuality, she is unhealthily self-flagellating about it, so it ends up just being unpleasant. This was a genuine surprise to myself and @samhainian when we were discussing it. We hadn't thought about it prior to starting some lighthearted riffing about assigning characters kinks literally bc we were bored when we had the horrifying realisation that Peach would not be safe about this shit AT ALL due to a lack of self preservation and way more ambient suicidality than we realised she had until we dug here. We quickly resurfaced from the joke conversation into an actual deconstruction of how she's internalised a lot of blame and decided to go distinctly carceral with it for herself. so there's another tip: Even if you aren't making nsfw content, poking around a character's sexuality will sometimes reveal raw truths that come from sexuality being very vulnerable by default.)

Peach is overall an interesting contrast to Lavender, since they're both Girls Being Feminine On Purpose, but one is transfem and one is. Well god idk what peach will end up but she'll need to unpack it.

(I note that peach is white also, since while I rarely intentionally racially code my characters, sometimes i SUPER do.)

OTHER EXAMPLE 3: VIRGIL MALACODA

Okay because I've talked about a number of girls so far lets be brief about a fuckin Dude.

Virgil is like, some real toxic masculinity shit. He would probably be fucked up in some different way if he were born a girl, but he's distinctly falling into a lot of traps due to his upbringing as "A dude who was promised he'd get power when he grew up".

His dude-ness is a very flat fact to me in that way, and he's similar to Tabitha in that regard since it's one of the ways they're meant to reflect each other. Dudes who's place as patriarch-to-be saved them from being pawned off as a wife, but is still responsible for a lot of their misery. Certainly the better of the two options, but could still be better!

Virgil's themes of masculinity being a simultaneous shield and blinder is a simple one but I go back to it a lot because it can be true a lot of the time in antiquated social situations like, say, the upper class. So, being a villain, he does end up being a condemnation of the structures that disincentivise healthy masculinity. He's necessarily amab because he is the result of how particularly regressive views of masculinity can shape a child into a repressed and miserable adult.

Whether or not virgil stays a dude or not if he ever figures out his way of viewing power structures was Fucked Up and Bad is anybody's guess. It's not really Masculinity that was hurting him, so much as a rich asshole's narrow view of it. So there's no real reason for him to reject a healthier version of it outright, it's just whether he'll ever get there...

CLOSING REMARKS:

Okay writing in the tumblr post editor is starting to scare me with errors so I should probably close this out. But yeah this is a little bit of a run down of where my head is usually at when making characters. A lot of it is just batting jokes back and forth until they become something more solid, which I don't know that I really got across here.

Like, a lot a lot of my characters are built around a core joke. Usually what-ifs like.

"What if a shounen-type card game anime protagonist was just as brash and head-full-of-air as the rest of the, but a girl"

"What if Ed Sheeran had a cheating scandal with two tboys and it made the radio fucking horrible to listen to"

"What if a wrestler was really, really wide and also clearly into rubber"

"What if somebody took the 'blonde anime boy who barely shows emotion' trope seriously because that kind of repression can't be good"

"What if a guy was specifically interested in becoming a Soil Scientist from like, age 4, and never gave up that dream"

^ If you can figure out who's who then you win a prize (a kiss)

But yeah. Jokes upon jokes upon jokes. Assign them classpects and pokemon and put them into speed/power/fly formation and just joke for as long as you possibly can until you hit on something. And if a joke feels really right, or completely off the mark, try and dig in and find why.

Like. I joke about the sexuality thing but it does help since it's so disarming and immediately a bit childishly funny often. Sometimes you'll end up with say, something as serious as "Despite being friends with The Fence, Selene probably shouldn't be left unsupurvised in kink spaces because she ABSOLUTELY does not have the ability to restrain herself and not take her anger issues out on strangers" and sometimes its as silly as "even outside of being asexual, ess is never jackin that shit because if he got caught in any kind of mildly embarrasing scenario it'd ruin his whole year so the cost/benefit analysis of that really doesn't work out"

Because like. both tell you about the characters, and you can also read them more broadly now. Selene ruins relationships by letting anger at unrelated things get in the way, Ess keeps himself from doing even utterly harmless things out of deep social anxiety.

Like yeah, i got to them via goofing about sex but it's still character analysis at the end of the day so long as you put The Reading first*

*DISCLAIMER: im asexual im only ever doing stuff for the read lol . it might be more difficult if youre allosexual . or maybe itll be easier. i dont know just dont get too lost in the sauce. think with ur brain not ur other parts

ALSO gender and sexualty often end up linked so it makes sense to end up at one from the other a lot of the time. It happens.

And as an addendum if you wonder where i tend to literally Design characters? Like visually? It's usually at some point between the first few jokes and before naming them. Though sometimes names come first.

OVERALL: A character should have a core concept to them to start with. This core concept CAN SUCK and be flimsy, or a joke, or even a joke you no longer find funny. But you can always refer back to it when building a character up. If you want to capture the concept, work toward it, if you want to deconstruct or mock the concept, then do that instead. If you sour on a joke, maybe find a way to satirise or deconstruct what you're no longer finding funny.

Sometimes this core concept is steeped in a specific cultural thing, be it race, gender, sexuality, ect, and those necessitate thinking about. Sometimes it's not and those things can practically be an afterthought, but once you lock it in it's likely to begin informing the later choices as it becomes part of the scaffolding.

(To hop back to why you even asked this Q: I so thoroughly read Siffrin as amab BECAUSE they had so many themes about Not Having Changed and clinging to what they knew, and so working backwards from that it only made sense to me that they mustn't've done a big overhaul YET or made any big decisions about that YET by the time we see them in game, because that's what gels best with their themes of being Too Afraid To Change and being a contrast to Isa who has changed a bunch, and a comfort to Mira who hasn't changed at all in their gender. Then it was a case of looking through the game for more evidence either for or against this reading, and I found a lot of evidence for it, in my opinion. But I did so Because I noticed that the themes were Stronger if read this way, and because I conceptualise characters as themes and concepts FIRST it made sense to try and work back to those themes.)

But yeah. TL;DR:

Ground yourself with a Hook for the character, sometimes making it sillier makes it easier to think about.

Try and think about how they would be formed by the world around them, or what their behaviour says about how they must've been formed

Don't worry about things taking a long time. Sometimes a character needs someone else to make a suggestion, or for you to grow and change a little before they click

Putting it into action helps a lot, even if its just roleplay or short snippets. If you can't 'feel out' what a character would do in a situation, that's when it's time to think about their goals for how they want to be seen as a person (including, if they don't want to be seen at all...!) and what hard boundaries they have say, morally.

I am by no means a like. Expert on any of this. I'm fumbling through it all just as much as the next guy (AND... I'M ACTUALLY SOMEWHAT OF A HYPOCRITE. I THINK CHARACTERS ARE BEST SEEN AS 'NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTS' RATHER THAN 'PEOPLE', SO ALL THIS ADVICE BEING SO CHARACTER FOCUSED RATHER THAN NARRATIVE FOCUSED IS MISSING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES LOL....) but apparently people do Like my characters? So, what do I know i suppose LMAO

[hypotheticalobjectshow]

to kyra specifically (since she doesnt produce the comic unlike saracha and bee), do you have any hcs or ships for hos? tbh im not much of a shipper so all i have is compass x tire (ship name pending), safetyhoney and sciencequiet (the ship name i came up w for baguette x snailshell)

also crackship that i found funny dumpling and butter toast. call that averagejoes/j

ohhh i LOVE safetyhoney. i never really thought about sciencequiet but that’s cute!!! to be honest, even i dont know the direction of the comic yet (i think ill ask for more details much later when people start making more and more theories) but i think safety x honey is my absolute fav so far. again idk everything about their characters just quite yet but it reminds me of flutterdash. even though im a appledash truther. lil mlp for my hozz. he y.

(saracha here to say that kyra got grounded and parents deleted tumblr </3 i can convey messages to them though)

[equestriaqueerz2025]

TwiSet

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

I’m going to assume your talking about Princess Twilight.

It’s cute! I prefer SciSet more, but I can get the appeal of the OG Sunlight. They’re both close friends and former students of Celestia. I’ve also seen a lot of fanworks and scenarios where Sunset does eventually go back to Equestria and gets with Twilight. They also look aesthetically good together.

StarTrix

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

It’s cute enough for me to ship it, but it’s not one of my favorite ships.

AriShy

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

If it wasn’t for Sonaria (I don’t see them as sisters) and FlutterDash, these two would be my main ship probably. Good thing I’m a multi shipper 😉

[stella-so-sly93]

Found this My Pony Life poster at Dollar Tree. Pretty cool find for sure. I actually really liked My Pony Life a lot and I'm disappointed that Hulu doesn't have it anymore.

Of course, I gotta highlight the cute lowkey TwiPie vibes on this poster. To be fair, there are also some cute FlutterDash vibes in this too with how they're both rocking out or something. Haha.

Such a fun poster though.

[ariariari-png]

Random list of my mlp ships :3

Fluttercord, flutterdash, flutterpie, fluttertwi, rarishy, Appleshy, tree hugger x fluttershy, twipie, tempest x twilight, sunset x twilight. Starlight x twilight, derpy x twilight, trixie x twilight, twiluna(not in a weird way), raritwi, raripie, rarijack, pinkiedash, appledash, moondancer x twilight, lyrabon, derpy x pinkie pie, djpon3 x Octavia melody, derpy x dr. Whooves, mintypie, cheesepie, all of the canon ships, startrix, hitch x zipp, sunny x izzy, zipp x misty, izzy x misty, pinkie pie x princess sky star, rainbow dash x princess sky star, gildadash in a one sided way (Gilda likes dashie), yona x sandbar, silverstream x Gallus, flufflepuff x chrysalis (even tho flufflepuff ain’t canon) also a reformed chrysalis in a polycule with shining and cadence would b cute, autumn blaze x applejack. Probably 1000 more I can’t think of

[canonically47]

Who do you ship in mlp?

thank you for asking :D !!

i am definitely all here for anything and everything rarijack. i like them both in the pony and human world, although you can smell the gay on them better in the human world (looks at ROF)

besides that i also very much like scisetpie & twisetpie and all combinations (twipie/scipie, sunpie and twiset/sciset). pinkie and sunset are especially dear to me, SBP was super cute <3

after watching ROF i also started to see the flutterdash vision more! im not completely convinced but i do like them :3 for fluttershy my favorite ship is fluttercord though, i adore them

[sir-sillybunny]

anyway here's how i view every mane 6 ship (excluding poly ones cuz that would be a very long list lol)

twilight x rarity: rarity dreams of marrying a prince in the show but in this ship she's gets with a princess instead. very cute yuri thing going on there

twidash: jock x nerd ship. very cute. feel like they'd spend a lot of time fangirling over that one book series together. also it's so autism x adhd

twishy/flutterlight(?): both are weird introverts. they would spend hours together just sitting quietly with eachother and just enjoy eachothers company.

twijack: stuck up city girl/royal princess x farm girl. would have a cute cliché romance movie thing for sure.

twipie: fan favorite. introvert x extrovert. also autism x adhd like twidash. pinkie was technically the first one she ran into !! their personalities compliment eachother very well. twilight is smart and tries to be calm and collected while pinkie is a little bit silly and super energetic. they balance eachother out.

rarishy: personal favorite of mine. like twipie they just compliment eachother really well. flutters is more calm and quiet while rarity is more dramatic and confident. but they're def not an opposites attract kind of thing, at least not me. they both have a clear interest in fashion and pretty things. i could see them having a super elegant extremely planned out wedding and then move in together in a sort or brick Victorian style mansion covered in vines and moss and they'd have a huge garden in the back where'd they sit together and have picnics at regularly :) (they'd always dress up real fancy for them too)

raridash: another fan favorite. prep x jock or prep x loser lol. also fem x butch depending on ur headcanon. very cute. in my main personal version of the mlp universe they canonically have a child together. sometimes. my universe is a little inconsistent lol. i feel like their relationship would be a little messy and rocky sometimes but they're happy with eachother despite it all. i see it a a short fling thar accidently turned into something serious. also they're both celebrities in my world. rarity is a famous fashion designer/model and actress. and rainbow is an athlete! i could see fans going crazy about them skdjf

rarijack: yet another fan favorite. very similar to raridash. fem x butch depending on headcanons. preppy city girl (in spirit) x farm girl. they'd take forever to get together cuz they'd be completely oblivious to eachothers feelings for a while but they'd get there eventually lol

raripie: don't see this one too often but i think it's cute!! they both love socializing and going to parties. they'd be that one couple constantly hosting parties and get togethers for everyone. also i could see pinkie being a comedian of some sort and rarity being an actress and they could do movies together :)

flutterdash/rainbowshy: fan favorite kind of + one of my personal favorites. they were the only one of the mane 6 to have known eachother as kids. jock x shy girl. or loser x loser depending on ur headcanon lol. this ship just makes sense. theyve known eachother the longest and r just clearly best friends. also they're so adhd x adhd to me. and t4t (I regularly hc them both as trans masc in some way lol)

flutterjack/appleshy: ALL TIME FAV. not too popular though. which is so tragic becuz like flutterdash they just make so much sense !!!!! out of all the mane 6 I'd say they have the most similar life goals and interests. they both love being outside and working with plants and animals. total cottagecote x farmcore thing. in my canon they get married and flutters moves onto the farm with aj. flutters loves helping with all the work on the farm. especially the work with the animals of course. in my canon they have 2 kids together :)

flutterpie: very very cute. i usually see them as friends but the romantic ship is very cute too !!! pinkie would be making flutters laugh all the time and pinkie would think flutters smile is the cutest most prettiest thing in the world. they'd make eachother so incredibly happy. pure wholesomeness and joy with this ship. they're also my favorite of the mane 6 so naturally their ship fills me with great joy.

rainbowpie/pinkiedash: amazing ship that surprisingly isn't as popular as i feel like it should be !!! they're both very silly and goofy and canonically love hanging out and playing pranks on people together. theyd spend so much time just having fun and being stupid. they're best friends to me so i just feel like theyd really understand eachother and just be really happy together. also adhd x adhd

appledash/rainbowjack: literally canon lol. probably the most popular ship in the fandom next to rarijack. very butch4butch. dont have much to say for them as I feel they are pretty self explanatory for why they're cute together since they're literally canon (heavily implied to be anyway)

applepie: some newer fans/fans that focus a lot on the show its self are very against this ship becuz of that episode where they are possibly cousins but like. 1. since the shows beginning the characters have always been treated just sort of like dolls or playthings to its fans. most people don't care much for the canon and just like to have fun and make whatever stuff they want for the characters. kind of in the same way people do whatever they want with the vocaloids. and also 2. they're not even canonically cousins. in one episode they have a moment where they realize they might possibly be cousins. and they go on a big road trip to some family elder who is unable to determine whether they're related or not. and it's a children's lesson about how friends can be important to you even if they're not family. and then way later in the show there's in episode where they are absolutely 100% not canon unless you want to believe they put incest into the show. in this episode applejack and pinkie pies seperate families get together for christmas. and applejacks brother and pinkie pies sister show interest in eachother. like they're shown sitting together and blushing and shit and later in the show pinkies sister is shown being distraught over aj's brother ending up with someone else. so yeah. anyway besides all that i think they'd be cute together! they both like food and baking and definitely both seem like they'd want a big family. pretty similar to flutterjack in how i imagine pinkie would move onto the farm and pinkie would help out with some farm stuff. id imagine pinkie would start making lots of candy and sweets with the apples on the farm :)

genuinely i love every mane 6 mlp ship so much. like i can understand all of them and every time i see fanart of any of them it makes me so happy. they were all born to be girlfriends of eachother

[eatingsomegreeneggos]

Some Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash redesigns!

[peaceandlove26]

rainbow dash and fluttershy r t4t nonbinary power couple... rbd is transmasc and flutters is transfem and they are very very in love

i dont personally love transmasc rd but still!!! cute