@The-luna-fan  
There’s so many people with Lightning Bolt as their avatar that I often confuse them for the mod before checking their names.

@whpS0nn  
hehe…

@Hguheyaughtnger  
It’s a rather nice name IMO. I didn’t realize what it means until this comment.
 
@The-luna-fan  
About the flair.

@The-luna-fan  
Reasons.  
And you better change your flair, before it’s too late.

@Hguheyaughtnger  
Why do you have the oc of LightningBolt in your profile image?

So, name origins?
 
Golden Folly is named the way he is, because of a very ill-conceived magical experiment/project by a unicorn mage Golden Star. In a literal way, he’s the result of Golden Star’s folly.

My oc named Éling Chang, because I’m not creative. At all.

@Raktor  
I really like his design. But then again, I’m a sucker for characters that have purple and pink in their color scheme so I guess I have a bit of bias in that regard.

Oh well, I guess I can explain my oc’s creation a bit? :D
 
I created Nothern Flame (or Northy) as my second oc. I used my first oc a lot for a certain roleplay with my friends, but because it was my very first oc, it was not very good. He was dark blue with green hair, because those are my favorite colors, had a bunch of stars for cutie mark, his talent was star gazing and was named Evening Sky. Basically a very generic oc which I grew unhappy with over time. After the rp ended, I knew I want a new oc for me. My personality also actually changed quite a lot since I created Evening Sky and he was no longer as close to me as he used to be.
 
So I sat one day and got on with it. I was sketching all sorts of simple mane styles (I wanted a rather simple yet appealing mane and tail style) until I found one that seemed nice. For color, I wanted something close to pink (partly because it’s very far from blue and green and partly because Pinkie is my favorite pony) and in the end settled with pink-ish purple for coat. I tried several shades of blue, green and purple for mane until I found one I liked. Then I mused in head all sorts of names and possible talents until a traveler came to mind, which would allow me to have all sorts of rps anywhere in Equestria and beyond. The “Northern” part of the name came out of this traveling, the “Flame”…. well, I just like fire, ok? :D The cutie mark was created as a visual representation of the name and voilá, oc was created and I love him.
 
(At first I drew him as a standart stallion but over the time I started drawing more feminine features on him because he seemed much cuter that way and it reflected his - as well as mine - personality well, until I just made him a femboy. I am very happy with the result.)
 
This got a bit longer than I expected…

@DanielTepesKraus  
Ah, so he’s the same name as your username. That makes sense.
 
@TexasUberAlles  
Yep, that’s the one. I didn’t know you drew him already (which is odd since I faved that picture before a while back). I guess I didn’t know you drew it.
 
@Dusk Raven  
Oh that’s a shame that it didn’t really go anywhere. But if you enjoy roleplaying, you should go for it.

@mjangelvortex  
Speaking of the forums and RPing… I tried to join an RP there once, but despite much preparation it never got started. A shame - it was basically a “Civilization simulator” style of game, where we each controlled a different race and played out their development… or, well, we would have…
 
I should RP more. The main problem is keeping me posting…

@mjangelvortex  
There’s also a G1 stallion named Tex. His cutie mark is a cactus.  
On it!  
 
He’s also Actually Ironic™, since there ain’t no saguaro in Texas.

@mjangelvortex  
take a wild guess. i’m thinking of watching this video to get some inspiration for a better name though.

@DanielTepesKraus  
You have an OC?

@DanielTepesKraus  
What’s the name of your OC?

@Keith Mowz  
i’ve been informed i need a much better name for my oc but…
 

@Salamenace  
Ah. That makes sense. I’m assuming that now that the forums exist, you guys RP there now?
 
@Dusk Raven  
That’s happened to me too a few times. I’d make an OC as a self-insert but when I started using them, they became less like me over time and eventually grew into their own characters.
 
@TexasUberAlles  
There’s also a G1 stallion named Tex. His cutie mark is a cactus. But it being a common pony name sounds like a pretty good headcanon.
 
@Keith Mowz  
I thought you named him Keith because your name was Keith (or because you knew someone named Keith and you named him after the other person). I like the name Wesley a lot too.
 
@Dusk Raven  
That’s actually a pretty interesting way to create a name for your OC. I think I might do that with one of my nameless ones.

Huh, I realized I didn’t actually explain why Night Rain is named the way he is. Well… it’s basically a subtle reference to Princess Luna and Rainbow Dash, my two favorite ponies (not in that order). Of course, he (and I) like both nighttime and the rain.
 
Really, most of my pony names are desperate attempts to find things that fit them. The only one I’m actually proud of is Wandering Eye, my traveling archaeologist/detective/PG-rated Cthulhu Mythos investigator.
 
Even my own username is just me jamming together two things I like - Dusk (short for Duskmon from Digimon) and Raven (which if I had a spirit animal, it would totally be a crow or a raven).

My horse is named Tex because half the colts in Tejas forty-odd years ago were named Tex.
 
It’s like the way anyone who went to school in the ’80s knew a whooooole lotta Jennifers and Jessicas and Christophers and Matthews.

Oooh. Name origins time?
 
Wesley came about because I’ve always been garbage at names. Back in the early 2000’s with Brood War and Warcraft 3, I was on Battle.net as TOTALANNIHILATION because I was like 12 or some shit, but after my nameless phoenix character (Have a modern attempt at me drawing what I remember of him, whee) gradually metamorphised into a fox (well, kitsune, because again, tweenager) I came up with the extremely creative name… Redd Foxx. And no, I didn’t know about the musician or comedian or whatever it was the guy with that actual name was when I named him that, I was just that uncreative.
 
Then after some teenage roleplaying angsty drama bullshit on the USEast servers, a friend gave me the cover name Wes to go by while we waited for the bullshit storm to settle on USWest. I really liked it, and even after all that shitty garbage of hilariously awful internet slapfight roleplaying and relationship drama and uuuuugh I still loved the name. It reminded me of Princess Bride. So I’ve been Wesley Foxx on the internet for something around 15 years now, literally more than half my life.
 
Keith was a nameless mouse character I’d drawn for kinky stuff (Unwilling preds that gradually come to enjoy vore.) who I eventually named Keith. Because it rhymed with sheath. When I was trying to decide on a pony name (because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to blatantly link my furry identity to my pony one yet and Keith was easier to ponify than Wes b/c he had a cutie mark idea) then that name became Keith Mowz (again, so creative) because around that time I’d also been doing a couple forum adventure things on the old Homestuck forums (RIP) one of which was some surrealist thing that only roughly used people’s commands without specifying which ones to advance the plot, called -mouz= (because previously I’d done all my computer art on a laptop with a touchpad and was learning to do it with a mouse instead.) and also because I’m a fan of Paper Mario TTYD (which has Ms Mowz) so I unconsciously spelled it the same way when trying to remember how I’d misspelled it in the adventure title.

@mjangelvortex  
I’ve got a lot of stories to tell about the creation of my characters… for instance, I have a line of OCs who started as ponysonas, but then they took on lives of their own and became distinct characters. They all still have aspects of my personality - I think that’s part of why they ended up as developed as they did - but they’re different enough to be distinct individuals.

@CyanLightning  
@TheAnonShy  
I didn’t even notice. That’s pretty clever.
 
@mjangelvortex
 
To add what I last said, My OC’s origins stem from the days when RP in the comment section was prevalent on Derpi between Season 2 and 3. It wasn’t until the IRC, where some users did their rp, that his background and character got fleshed out.

@TheAnonShy  
I just kinda went “huh,” and went back to drinking my metaphorical coffee.
 
_{Maybe if I drank actual coffee I would’ve had more of a reaction}

@Background Pony #8A60
 
 
_{^{And this isn’t even the first time that we mess with people’s mind.}}

@CyanLightning  
Yeah, I always like hearing about how characters are made and developed. And that includes OCs. It’s just really fascinating.
 
And you’ve been messing with my mind with those pictures. I can definitely tell you that much.