A Tale Of Two Moons: The Transformation of a Character

Welcome to, A Tale Of Two Moons: The Transformation of a Character.  Whoo, that's a mouthful. We will discuss the continued transformation of Moondancer's character in Adorkable Twilight and Friends.

You may remember last year I made a few posts about how we were going to try and "improve" Moon's character.  In early polling, Moondancer was always ranked last even behind background characters in terms of popularity.  It has been many months of dealing more with her character.  We've developed her in her inner thoughts a bit, we gave her a companion in Pinenut, and people have seen more of her style of humor.  I am personally pretty happy with what has been accomplished, but this isn't about me. ;-)

After the last few episodes we have received messages from people asking about Moondancer and someone even exclaiming to have Moondancer marry them.  Pretty much many people love her character now and some are liking her more than Starlight.  So why the big turn around from no love to lots of love?

It all comes down to what we've said all along.  "Relatability."  Any good firm trying to sell a product or creating a good character spends lots of money and time trying to figure out their audience and how to build characters they will like.  Now I am not patting ourselves on the back, but just stating some fact here.  Originally our Moondancer was a rather one note character.  She came from Canterlot and just mooching her way into the household.  But now we can see she has many talents and a unique personality.  She has traits that people find desirable and others find relatable.  Hence her popularity has grown.  

We spent a good amount of time trying to develop her to something we were happy with.  Of course we won't stop now that she has achieved a higher standard, because as with real people, they develop and grow.  But we do plan to develop other characters.  You've seen us start to develop Soarin' a bit and even Zephyr.  We would love to do it with everyone, but it's a lot harder said than done.

Often times you will see amateur or beginner creators make something called a "character profile."  It's often a picture of the character with varying traits and a quick biography.  Seems easy to make a character, right?  Yeah it is... but it's not easy to make a GOOD character.  You can't just TELL everything about a character on a profile.  It has to be weaved and developed through time.  Show don't tell.  

How would you feel if all these character's you've been reading for years now just had a bio sheet with basic info and you were expected to feel intertwined with these characters!  You wouldn't because you would have never experienced the experiences these character.... experience!  Lol!  THAT is why this is such a long process!  To make characters relatable, you got to build them up over time.  The reader goes through the same experiences as the character when they read them on paper/computer screen.  It's much better then just having a bio sheet with history on it.  

So thanks for being an example for us Moondancer.  We're happy you have overcome our poor original development for you.

I hope I made that clear.  If you don't know this stuff already, now you do and you can use it yourself!  If you have questions or comments, leave them below.