Character Critique - Silver Sense
Name: Silver Sense (a second picture: an older drawing done by a friend)
General physical description: A pegasus. Though full grown, he is the size of a young teenager (larger than the CMC, but smaller than the average adult mare). His body is adult proportionate. Coat fur is silvery grey, mane a charcoal grey, while his wings have a dulled incandescent blue/green shimmer when hit with light (like the back of a fly, only much duller/subtle).
Personality (how they act, what they like, behaviours, etc.): If in our world, he would be diagnosed with cyclothymia: a milder form of bipolar disorder, generally able to be handled without the need for medication. This means he struggles with depression and mania (mostly the former), is generally impulsive, easily irritable, with very mild tendencies toward symptoms of OCD, ADD and general behavior disorders. He’s kind of oblivious when it comes to social cues. Also, emotions come easily and are generally stronger than normal, which he struggles to control. Yet at the same time he doesn’t always feel sad/angry when others do.
Due to all of this, he is very detached from society (sees life as a “non-fiction play”: pointlessly rule driven, but he knows how to play along until he can get away with breaking the rules) and he very rarely opens up to anyone, though he craves acceptance and a close relationship.
Whenever something makes him feel embarrassed/nervous (praise, irritation, performing for ponies, etc), his wings rustle against his side and there is a lot of avoidance of eye contact. Strong happiness and sadness are blatant in his expressions (unable to be hidden), but when furious, he goes absolutely quiet and silent and seeks escape to solitude, where he can explode without being seen/heard.
While emotional at times, he is otherwise very logical and loves efficiency in everything. He finds joy in dance, martial arts and being able to do difficult, technical movements that most ponies can’t do, or that think he couldn’t do.
Backstory (at least one paragraph; paragraph = 5-10 sentences): Growing up, Silver constantly clashed with his father because neither of them understood the other. The only similarity they seemed to have was their explosive temper. While his mother understood him better, she was constantly tired with dealing with her husband’s explosive emotions and unable to comfort Silver. While not physically abusive, his parents did have loud, verbal fights late at night. Silver ended up spending most of his time away from the house, learning to bottle and control his emotions, swearing he’d be nothing like his own father. At school, he was the “playground vigilante”. He was the one who picked on the bullies. This would get him into trouble at school, which would inevitably turn into trouble at home, so he learned how to mess with bullies and get away with it. This is actually how he earned his cutie mark, a `breath of wind` representing his ability to perceive and use subtlety to accomplish his goals.
Slowly, his parents became closer and stopped fighting. Unfortunately, this had the consequence (early on) of his mother taking his father’s side, which made Silver feel like he lost his last lifeline. Eventually, after one particularly bad fight with his parents around 17, he ran away, joining the Royal Guard. That life, however, clashed with his personality because of how harsh the sergeants were. He never truly broke and was built back up into a soldier; he just learned how to withstand it and give them what they wanted, while fueling fantasies of revenge.
[The following are selective events of the RP for which Silver was created a few years back. Please excuse the fact that it was, basically, “Pony Expendables”. It never clicked as clearly as it did now, now that I’m thinking back on it.]
Because it was obvious to his commanding officers that he wasn’t fit to be in the guard, he was graciously given a way out by serving on a “unofficial team” which was purposed to take care of a threat outside Equestria which “never officially existed”, while the Elements of Harmony and the Princesses were busy with show canon events.
One of the members of the team was an earth pony who, as they found out, was a second cousin to Silver (their father’s fathers were brothers). They became very close, brothers even, the earth pony being one of the only two ponies Silver was able to open up to. While the fighting that took place scarred Silver in some ways, it helped finally break him, allowing his relationship with the earth pony to help him learn to actually deal with some of his problems and become stronger, more mellow for it. During that time, after getting separated from his team, he accidentally wound up falling prey to a cockatrice. The team thought he was dead. It wasn’t until an explorer team found him (and a few other ponies like him), 18 years later, that he was unpetrified. In a world he doesn’t remember, his only connection to his old world is his `brother`, now married with children. It was his `brother` that helped him find a job as a mail-pony.
Character’s goals: He enjoys making a race out of his job, trying to “beat his best time”, but he also wants more out of life. Currently, he’s surviving. He doesn’t really have a purpose, so he’s trying to find something (and maybe someone) that will make his life more meaningful.
Author’s goals: To take a look at how my own struggle through Bipolar Disorder could have turned out different, as well as dealing with questions about purpose, finding a career, and what matters in life.
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Include the following preferences:
Introvert or extrovert?: Introvert. Up-front, friendly and polite with strangers, he’s not shy, but rather withdrawn.
Big-picture planner or little details person?: Details mostly, with a touch of `big-picture`. Ultimately, everything is `efficiency, efficiency, efficiency` with him: the best balance of resources spent for what is gained. This requires understanding a bigger-picture, but he otherwise ignores it.
Principle or people first?: People. He doesn’t really have many strong principles that he lives by (apart from his personality) at the moment. It’s more of a a desire to get what he wants, or please specific ponies (not mutually exclusive) that guides his actions. (( I may be misunderstanding what is mean by `principles`. I admit I’m not certain on how to answer this. ))
Schedules or spontaneity?: Spontaneity. He likes having structure, but schedules are a hassle to create, so someone else would have to make them for him. He get’s by without them perfectly fine, and sometimes they’re just obnoxious hindrances.
Five to ten keywords about your character (strong, loud, quiet, etc.): Efficiency, duality, imbalanced, subtle, explosive, emotional, cold, aloof, quicksilver, acrobatic.
Okay, so the first thing I noticed is "WOW that looks like a self-insert." Which he is, to a degree, but the only way self-inserts work is if they don't look like they are. If it is immediately obvious that they are self-inserts, this is going to be a major turn-off for readers, who won't spare a second glance.
The second thing I noticed is you seem to have two different stories here: a pony dealing with cyclothymia, and a pony dealing with the effects of being nearly twenty years temporally displaced. While it is entirely possible that someone with cyclothymia could be turned into a statue for twenty years, it's going to make the story hard to follow and introduces too many elements at once.
The third thing I noticed is you introduce his personality with his disorder. That is unsettling in that it implies an emphasis on the disorder, and not on him. Disorders are not personalities. Think of the character not as "someone with bipolarism, who happens to be impulsive and socially oblivious." Think of them as "Someone who is oblivious and impulsive and also happens to have mild bipolarism." I realize the point of this character is a "what if" question in regards to your own battle with your disorder, but placing the emphasis on the disorder is a detriment to the character himself. The story should focus on the character, first and foremost.
The fourth thing is most objective, and that is that this character has a proclivity for maximum efficiency, and... yet hates the military lifestyle and schedules? This is entirely contradictory. Someone who is about maximum efficiency should love schedules and rigid decorum.
I realize this character is your darling because he encapsulates a lot of yourself in him. Which hey, you can do that. But you still have to disattach yourself from this character and treat him the same as any other character, and look at the logical consequences of certain personality traits and decisions. Real life is chaotic and doesn't have rules; fiction has to work by rules.
Your character's current themes are searching for purpose, but you're going to want to distill this into something simple--both for their sake and yours. Think of a single word to encompass them, much like Merriweather has the theme of "responsibility," Tech has the theme of "humility," and Mumblehush has the theme of "revenge." (Or something like that, he's still ambiguous.)
My final thoughts on this are that you have two characters here: one dealing with his own life who happens to have cyclothymia, the other dealing with temporal displacement. Both are valid, but you're going to need to separate them. And, personally, I would save the one with cyclothymia for a non-fandom related work, which would allow you greater freedom in a work that's obviously going to be very personal for you.
Hope all this helped! Apologies for this taking so long.
