Thank you Apokalipse, MintBerryCrunch...
I want to reach this level of quality some day:
Your sketches are really good, they seriously do and I hope that you will be able to reach that level.
Now to address some of the things that should be address, anything that is not quoted is actually a point that I agree with (it might bring some contradictions, I hope it wont):
This is what happens when you write a story based around an OC Pony interacting with the Mane Six:
And why would an author willingly want to put up with that bull:censored: unless they are 100% sure they can pull it off well enough to ignore those responses?
Because not everyone can write a Past Sins. Not everyone can write a Dangerous Business. Not everyone can write a Two Beats (and Nick Nack in particular is important, and possibly not quite for the reason that you think I'm saying that, so I will bring him back up when I discuss the rest of your post tomorrow).
And for whatever odd, astoundingly hypocritical reason, this fandom loathes OCs in a way that even the Sonic Fanbase, which holds the prestige of having created the phrase "Original Character, Do Not Steal" to make fun of bad OCs, does not.
But that's the rub: Those aren't OCs. They are, in that the entire characterization for them the fanbase follow are complete fanwank; but they aren't, because the fanbase likes to pretend they aren't. Hence the hypocrisy.
And you run into another problem different from that of "true" OCs: The fandom expects certain things from those characters.
For sure, there are several interpretations for those characters. Derpy is sometimes retarded. Sometimes she is as smart as Twilight, but cannot talk properly. Sometimes she is normal but incredibly clumsy. Sometimes she can't even talk, and has to use sign language. Sometimes she was smart, but had an accident that left her brain damaged. Sometimes she is just faking her actions to put people off-guard.
But you need to write inside one of those interpretations, or you might as well be writing an OC according to the fandom and your story is torn apart all the same. And not everyone can write a Pony Psychology and make a huge backstory that ultimately comes together to slot into one of those interpretations. I actually got into an extensive debate with NinesTempest over one of the stories he wrote because he portrayed Spitfire in a way that I disagreed with, and part of the problem we initially had in the discussion is because he thought I was basing my argument on how the fandom views Spitfire when I was actually basing it on something that I didn't think made logical sense.
That actually belongs to a conversation I had no long ago. Pure OC ponies require background and a bit more deep or character development, the fandoom might loathe this kind of pony, but in the long run is more down to writer skills than fandoom restrains.
Example of this is
Two Beats, what the author did with Astrosurf was crate a character with a subtle background and add details to the character to create the actual depth that the story and the character required, and even so the story had two critical flaws that people still don't grasp, but was well accepted anyway. Similar to what he did with Gilda on
Feathers of Steel, but Gilda already has a rep, and is really difficult to write her because she is already complete and justification for her only relies in the building of a background.
Apart from that, there is the other kind of OC, which is the middle ground between OC and canon characters, these are the background characters(like Ditzy Doo, Vinyl scratch, Octavia, Lyra, Bon Bon, etc...). These characters have some restrictions set by their visual design, but while these restrictions exists, they do not affect significantly the actual identity of the character that the writer wants to give to its character, it just affects some details about the characters, which is different from the inability of creating an original concept with a tinfoil of canon.
How obvious the UST in the episode is is already completely open to interpretation, though. Its just that many tend to think it was there. Not just for Boast Busters, either. Several people, myself included if I'm being completely honest, think Fall Weather Friends is basically "AppleDash: The Episode."
Also keep in mind that Boast Busters was an early episode of the show, before the show exploded on the internet, so I doubt UST was a worry to avoid by the writers because at the time they still thought only little girls and their parents would be watching it anyways; and therefore it had no effect on Trixie's gender. That isn't to say that I think they will do anything to worry about it with Season 2, but it definitely wasn't an issue with Season 1.
You are talking in terms of gender dynamics. In comparison to AJ and Dash, I really don't think it would make any difference for the reasoning that they are both tomboys anyways.
Keep in mind that each encounter on stage represented a character flaw held by each character when compared to someone who had those same flaws. Applejack put her stubborn pride against Trixie's. Dash but her boastfulness against Trixie's (and even literally said as much). Rarity put her vanity up against Trixie's. Twilight ultimately "defeated" Trixie because she lacked any of those three things.
Rarity is more interesting, because Rarity is probably the most "stereotypically" female member of the cast. However, the point of the episode was show the problems with haughtiness. I've said I don't think it did a good job, partially because that's a huge portion of Dash's personality and the cast usually just ignores when Dash does it, but mostly because the episode's events weren't structured in a way that supports that message very well.
And along those lines Rarity is important because of another double standard in gender roles, and in that regard making Trixie a male would have actually helped with the episode's message rather than hurt it: Vanity is (generally) considered a socially acceptable feminine trait, but not a socially acceptable male trait (and this is actually basically what they did with Prince Douche). So, in that regard, making Trixie a male and making him/her be more vain than Rarity would have painted Trixie more thoroughly as being an antagonist.
There are many scenes in that episode that breaks the ambiguity, for example analyse the scene(I will reference directly the episode now) between 5:30 -> 9:00, there you can find that the events do not unfold correctly for a male character.
What you said about the flaws about each character and how these flaw actually helps to the structure of the episode is actually correct, however there are some details that the attitude from Trixie towards Twilight, Twilight don't have any direct contact with Trixie, is Trixie who impulses the contact in some sort of rivalry(5:40) that could not have unfolded correctly with a male character, and is impossible with female characters(at least in my conception), hence the reason of why it would not work with a male character.
Again, I'm not sure what you are saying.
Twilight doesn't have the character to show up Trixie intentionally, no. But she still did it anyways when trying to get the Ursa out of town. And it is the fact that she still didn't set out to do it that doesn't make her out to be the bad person, and I don't think the "Pride/Haughtiness is okay for men to have" double standard would have applied if Trixie was a dude because Twilight still wasn't trying to show Trixie up.
I will say that it might have weakened the episode anyways, because it is possible that the writer's were using that double standard against the viewer to portray Trixie as a bitch, but I don't think so because I still don't think they did a very good job doing that in the first place.
In fact they didn't went as far as portraying her as a bitch, because they needed to give more character that do not resemble Gilda, if she were portrayed as a massive bitch she would have been inevitably portrayed as
"Gilda: the pony version", besides they were restricted by their audience and the character needed to be sustain the message, which as a whole, was more adequate for a female character.
And I think that's it, Gilda's bit was already explained there, as well Trixie's motivations for writing(this was done yesterday) so mentioning that again would be rounding up the same thing. I have read plenty of fics about background ponies and OC ponies to actually find the potential in them, is not easy, but is certainly possible, is just down to unfold the events correctly and develop the character correctly around the events of story, the fandoom will not loathe(that much) such thing as long as is well done.
It wasn't that long after all, I fell asleep in front of the keyboard, then two pages appeared literally out of nowhere.
Apart from that,
what the hell SweetieBelle:
That's it, for now.
I cant believe I was that idiotic back in those days
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