User blog comment:SelenaZephyr/An Open Letter to the Community/@comment-10380701-20140120113503

I honestly don't see the staff as "strict", and I've had a bunch of my OCs rejected several times before. (Maracas gun....)

As RWBY fans, we should follow Monty's example. He himself bounded the creativity limit of RWBY by removing the concept of magic and replacing it with Dust, which follows the concept of science. Semblance is the closest we have to magic, except there's a high chance it's powered by the Aura, which is essentially Chi. It looks like magic, but it's not.

Even if he could've taken the easy way, he decided not to.

Rules exist to guide us, not bind us. Creativity isn't shattered because of a few rules. In fact, it's far more creative if you manage to create something following the rules that are established.

Why do you think OCs have a hard time being accepted? I chalk it up to lack of inspiration from the other users. A portion of the users in the fanon go in, thinking it'll be a walk in the park to create a character. Bam, some get accepted easily. A lot... are not.

There are countless mediums out there to take inspiration from. Take note, inspiration is different from stealing ideas. As an example, Team RWBY is inspired by fairy tales. Look around, don't just make an OC and call it a day. Look around in literature, anime, movies, games. Hell, even real life has some inspiration.

Also, this is an advice I can suggest for those who tend to get screwed over by Semblance. Take it out for now. We know almost nothing about Semblance, so there's no need to experiment with it yet.

Lastly, this is something everyone should take into heart: Never give up. Get rejected once, get back to work and fix it up. Rejected again? Rinse and repeat and you'll begin to know the pitfalls that you should avoid in the future. And finally, once you've ironed out every flaws, and got it accepted...

Welcome to the RWBY fanon.