#self-agrandizing

[clivvy]

Been a while since I was pleased enough with a question to show it off, but I got some great laughs out of this one.

[invidlord]

TL:DR - Night Flurry is best Pony

I think I broke my art-i-ness last night by not following my instinct to just draw Night Flurry.  I just hate to flood the interwebs with another OC which 90% of people don't care about, even if I adore him now.

Speaking of which, when did that happen?  Here is where I break down how this character evolved for my own personal analyzing of what went right/wrong in the process of creating a living breathing character.  Some may remember, I was on the verge of scrapping him and creating a new OC because I thought Night was just too plain.

I had a couple characterizations tied to him initially (there's a fic I wrote to try to nail down his character, which is COMPLETELY wrong now XD ).  Night was a bit of a flirt, easy-going pony who worked the night shift, bit of a misfit, liked to make others laugh.  I wrote him modeled loosely after myself from when I was working late shift in Retail, with the intent being this pony was going to be a direct representation of myself for the purpose of... I don't even remember really, I just remember wanting to design a Ponysona for some reason.  Maybe just to do an ask blog, because they were all the craze and seemed like a lot of fun.

I drew him a couple times, the design got refined a bit as I did so, but there was a time I was considering ditching the name as too ordinary, the pegasus weather pony job as too common (although I'd at least like to think that having him work a night shift is fairly unique).  I felt he was just... not good.  But on advice from some of the others in the Artist Training Grounds IRC channel, I let him live for awhile to give him room to grow a bit, outside of being what was essentially just my ponysona, into his own character. 

Oh that's right, we're finally at the point where I have someone else to blame! BrokenHero of http://askmahoganypony.tumblr.com/fame, asked to use Night Flurry for an image on his tumblr, because he needed Weather ponies.  The result was http://askmahoganypony.tumblr.com/post/16467627956/ which is amazing.  That image more than anything led me to stay my hand in Night's untimely demise. 

After he had some time to breath, at some point we busted out the craziness in the ATG-IRC channel, spending a night of completely random RP action, which resulted in the creation of a RP channel for our wacky antics.  I'd RP'ed before, but it was for Star Wars and D&D, where the role play tends to have a purpose behind it, which is to say, it is oriented around "Who do we go to kill next?".  This chat RP was running pretty free-form with no real idea of what I was doing, and with some random crazy sauce and other such unique touches from the channel, I really couldn't decide how Night would react to anything going on, which resulted in my characterization of his stammer, Throwing in a lot of "um..."s out while talking.  It was literally just me trying to convey my own confusion through the character.  But the others began to interpret it as a nervousness, and due to shenanigans at the time, nearly every other character in the scenario was a mare, or, gender-swapped to a mare (naturally) because the whole thing was bananas and again, shenanigans.  But the nervousness around mares, especially ones he has just met, or one's he has a crush on, stuck.

The other half of Night's primary characterization came about because of a conversation regarding Twilight Sparkle (who is best pony) and my willingness to defend her from those who would say that other ponies were best pony (a clear fabrication). At some point the command went through saying "NightFlurry will defend Twilight Sparkle's Honor", which sparked the idea that would define his character more than anything for me.  His white knight attitude.  This, combined with his nervousness around the mares, I felt was a beautiful set-up for a character.

I forget who started the whole Night x Dusky shipping, but I'm probably going to blame BrokenHero again.  But that completed the characterization for me for the most part, as it gave him a clear goal.  It's only gotten refined since then, but the core of his character feels pretty solid to me, and built upon a lot of opposing strengths and weaknesses. Night possesses a desire to be strong and brave, but a deep fear that he isn't.  His heart is out in the open for all to see, leaving no doubt to his sincerity, but also leaving him vulnerable.  He is very smart, but also impulsive, and naive, rarely taking the time to think before acting.  I wonder... I should take the pony personality quiz as Night Flurry just to see where he falls.