Clement;; NightWing OC

Submitted by ubecakess.

Look guys I'm slowly liberating myself

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Keep in mind that Clement is still a fairly new OC and I'm experimenting with a fairly unique idea for WoF (an idea that I don't think has ever been done before) so I was hoping that you could check out what makes her really unique and see if it's plausible in any way.
Given how late I am in getting to her, is she still new?

BASIC DETAILS;;
------ Name: Clement
Pretty name!

------ Age: Five years
Young gal.

------ Gender: Female
Huh, Clement feels like more of a masculine name to me. Cool.

------ Sexuality: Bisexual
Bismexy gal.

------ Tribe: NightWing
Okay.

------ Abilities: Animus (but not really? This will be explained in her backstory).
Whenever I hear a "not really" power I'm a little on edge.

Her powers actually work in a more unique way. She can still enchant things like all proper animus dragons can, but (if we're talking about her when she's still trying to get used to her powers) she can only enchant three things a day. Enchantments don't take bits of her soul but instead they make her grow more tired with each enchantment, so after the third spell she will be completely exhausted. If she tries to go past her enchantment limit, then she'll just straight-up die. The only way for her to lessen the amount of how much energy she gets taken from her is to strengthen her body.
You've gone into such extensive detail, I have no criticism. It still sounds like she got off lightly, though: she can perform at least one enchantment every day, with no consequence on her soul? That's a lot more than most animi could ask for.

Her enchantments also always have a chance of not working or backfiring in some other way, the most common of which is the item just exploding in her face. She needs to strengthen her mind to lessen the chances of this happening. Not all enchantments happen instantaneously, however. Some enchantments happen at once. For other enchantments, it might take about three or four weeks before the enchantment even starts working.
All right, we're warming up a bit more. Consequences are good.

------ Relationship Status: Single, but not quite ready to mingle
That's perfectly alright.

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PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION;;
------ Scale Color: Clement's scale colors are black but they have the slightest hint of dark blue in them.
Cool cool cool. Blue is actually possible in NightWings (I used to be super pedantic and think it wasn't, oops).

------ Eye Color: Black.
Nice standard NightWing colour.

------ Build: Clement is quite chubby
Naww, she sounds sweet.

------ Height: She's noticeably short for a dragon her age
Pff me too.

------ Other Notable Details: The silver scales below her wings curl into a spiral shape, she has silver oval markings on her cheeks that look like blush stickers (just to underline her personality), and she wears a silver bracelet with sapphires embedded all around it.
Aww, I love the addition. Already a few bits of personality are starting to poke through.

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PERSONALITY;;

------ Strengths:
Polite: Clement usually has pretty solid manners and it's guaranteed that she'll act civil and courteous to you, especially when you first meet her. This might be because she's usually quite timid.

I'm in love.

Optimistic: Clement does get worried and she is rather insecure, but she always believes that there's a brighter side that she'll look forward to and maybe even try to work for if she had to.
Excellent. Worried optimists are fun to read and fun to write; also, a surprising amount of people don't seem to understand that optimism doesn't mean happiness.

Quick Thinker: Even if she does score averagely when it comes to intelligence, she can certainly use what knowledge she has in order to think creatively and quickly. She can analyze dragons, locations, and situations and store the information in her brain for when she needs it, and then when the time comes and she's in danger, then she'll use that collected data to her advantage.
You might be one of the first people I've seen to admit that their OC isn't super intelligent.

Compassionate: She'll help any dragon who needs help. This could make her an easy-to-talk-to and approachable dragon.
She seems very sweet.

------ Flaws:
Timid: Clement isn't very expressive or assertive. She is only like this when she is plopped into a social situation around new dragons, in which case she'll mostly do her best to avoid any social interaction. However, she will loosen up a lot when surrounded by friends, but that's a pretty hard deal for her.
Well, if it only happens around new dragons, I wouldn't go so far as to say she's completely timid. If she is, how is she approachable?

Insecure: Due to years of constantly being in her brother's shadow and being compared to him, she is still quite unsure of her abilities and will look for validation from any source she could.
Excellently-explained. Great elaboration.

Impulsive: Clement often likes to rush into a situation without putting any kind of prior thought into it. This has landed her into trouble a multitude of times.
Huh, this must be interesting when combined with her timidity.

Maybe a bit TOO nice: Her compassion makes her overly trusting and forgiving of other dragons. She will trust anyone at the first meeting and even if a dragon does something to hurt her, she will constantly forgive them over and over.
Once again, clashes a little with the "timid" factor. This is a very good flaw, though (I can personally relate).

Another personality note: This only happens when Clement starts to open up, but she can be really dramatic. She will take the most extreme and extra measures to make a dragon see the True Power of Friendship™ or to make her story seem more exciting than it actually is.
From now on True Power of Friendship™ is the only NightWing power I will be accepting thank you all. I like this quirk, though.

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BACKSTORY;;
Clement is the daughter of Mercywisher (father) and Fateweaver (mother).
Good names, although Mercywisher sounds a bit clunky.

Her older brother (who was three by the time Clement hatched) was named Altruism, and he already set down high standards for her. And Clement was already behind on those standards when she hatched. You see, Clement's egg had been laid at an inconvenient time, so when she hatched, she wasn't born under any moon at all, so she couldn't read minds like her father and brother or see the future like her mother.
Ah, that is a tragedy. When is this set? I'm assuming either far in the past or in the future, since NightWing powers are still pretty uncommon. To have a whole family of empowered dragons is pretty exceptional.

Not to mention that Altruism was an animus as well, so naturally he'd be more popular and famous with the other NightWings than powerless Clement.
Altruism sounds a tad overpowered to me.

This resulted in Clement being ignored by other dragons in favor of her brother, and it was easy to tell that Mercywisher and Fateweaver also preferred their son even tough they did show a lot of love and care toward Clement as well.
Ah yes, the good ol' favouritism. I can genuinely sympathise with her here; it's not a fun situation.

She stood out among the other NightWings which was why she grew up being quite timid and insecure, and she had to work twice as hard if she wanted to catch up with the other NightWings. She also faced a lot of teasing and bullying from other NightWing dragonets.

Teasing and bullying? Why? Surely they're just as ordinary as her.

By the time she was two years old, she had started to give up on on being able to do anything special that anyone would notice.
Clichéd, but not unreasonable.

It was Altruism who brought her out of that mindset. Despite everything, the two still had a very close sibling relationship with each other and Clement barely harbored any resentment toward Altruism.
I've seen this happen with real people before, so I can't point any fingers, although to me this feels unrealistic. It does flow well with her personality, though - forgiving others over and over. I would be more stern, but you've acknowledged that many dragons would feel resentful, which means you have at least considered it.

Her elder brother told her that even if it seems like life has been against her from the start, she still had so much time left to pick herself up and rise even higher. This talk from her brother motivated Clement to work harder than she ever had before.
Why? What's so special about one generic motivational speech?

Even though she did still face conflict with her bullies (specifically Anathema, who was the leader of that group), Clement forced herself to brush off their comments about how she didn't have what it takes to reach her goals, which included somehow being recognized by the queen enough to be offered a spot at her palace.
This development is lovely, but "somehow" isn't enough of an explanation. It isn't that hard to get recognised by royalty; try think of something.

Of course, it was hard to ignore Anathema when Anathema was well-known among the NightWing students. She wasn't well-liked, but she was certainly considered to be promising and it was the general agreement that Anathema had a bright future ahead of her.
Why? What makes her so special? Does she have some sort of power?

Despite both Altruism and Anathema being considered to be on much higher levels than Clement, Clement was determined to prove to everyone (and herself) that she was competent even without any powers and that she wasn't less of a NightWing for it.
Good. I like this resolution, although I didn't really see any of it in her personality.

As she grew up, she started to notice that Altruism had been starting to grow colder, and he only became even crueler as time passed. This was because Altruism had been enchanting too many things for the queen, and was forcing himself to keep using his powers in order to aid his tribe.
Interesting! So the pressure eventually affected her perfect brother, too.

However, Altruism had a plan. If he got into a situation where he would die in a matter of minutes, he won't use his magic to heal himself. His soul was already in a horrible condition, and he didn't need to make it any worse.
... I actually didn't consider that. The first time I skimmed this, I was going to ask why he didn't just heal himself. You made a valid point.

Altruism came up with this plan at around the same time Clement was born. If he was dying and his soul was already pretty bad, then he'll make sure that Clement was there with him so he could transfer his powers over to her. However, he DID make a few adjustments to the animus powers he would give Clement (these adjustments are mentioned in the abilities section) because even then, he still didn't trust his sister enough to be too careful with animus powers, so he decided to give her a sort of 'beta version' instead.
Huh. Seems to me like Altruism is a little patronising of his sister. 

In the end, Altruism ended up catching a deadly disease. Clement was there with Altruism during his final moments, and she had expected her brother to make a flashy recovery by using his animus powers to heal himself. So she was shocked when he hadn't and instead grabbed her talon, waited for a few moments, and then told her that he had given her her, with his dying breaths, that he had transferred his own animus powers to her... but only kind of.
I'm not sure about Clement here, but if my sibling did that to me and ended on that cliffhanger, I'd start screaming.

So then Clement found herself with powers that she doesn't quite understand as of yet. Fortunately for her, Altruism told her that if he ever died, then she was allowed to take a look into the locked chest in his room, where he kept his most private items. He had told her this a week before (and also informed her of the whereabouts of the key) so after Altruism's death, Clement went into his room, unlocked the chest, and found a scroll that explained the adjustments he made to her powers.
This is a little bit too convenient for me. Did he seriously plan for his death in such extensive detail?

So Clement is still learning to get used to her newfound powers, and she hasn't told anyone about it yet (though she does plan to once she finally gets the hang of her new powers).
I don't really see how one "gets the hang of" animus magic.

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COMMENTS;;
------ The good...
I love love love how you formatted her personality: listing traits, then elaborating on them. It made it easy to get a feel for her character, and then to go into more detail, without feeling overwhelmed. When reading her bio, I found it very easy to empathise with her - she and I are weirdly similar in some instances.
But my favourite has to be the True Power of Friendship™.

------ The bad...
I hate to say it, but giving her animus powers feels a bit unnecessary to me. She was the background younger child, but she learned not to let others invalidate her because of that and fought to prove herself worthy of attention. By granting her powers to make her special, you've effectively undone all that development. The whole point of her story (at least in my eyes) was "You don't need magic to prove yourself!". Then you ended it with, "You now have magic." Which is fine, if that's what you intended. I personally don't like it that much.
I think Altruism's disease was unnecessary - you never mentioned a sickness in the beginning, and it feels a bit weird to bring it in now. Granted, many people are diagnosed with unprecedented terminal illnesses in the real world, but here in the story it feels a bit out of place, as if you've only really put it in as a means to an end. I would consider changing it to something that flows a bit more - perhaps he dies of exhaustion, for example. Or at least explain what the illness is.
I don't like the ploy with the locked chest, either. As I said, it feels a little too convenient for me. Don't be afraid to give her another struggle! Why not have her figure things out the hard way? That would explain why she's "still getting used to her powers", and it would also give her a new conflict (which would sort of compensate for undoing the development from earlier).

------ How you can improve!
I'm not gonna lie, this section was a mistake. In summary, here's what I would do:

- Have Altruism die of exhaustion instead of a deadly disease. Alternatively, explain his sickness a little.
- Get rid of the locked chest - let Clement have a bit of a struggle. There's no such thing as too many struggles if you handle it right.
- Reconsider the timid factor; it clashes in several places with other parts of her personality. I like what it adds to her, though, so don't completely get rid of it.

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OVERALL RATING;; 8/10.
Clement is charming. I loved reading about her!

Y'all I am slowly creeping my way through these reviews.

- Siri Mom.

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