fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5392 ]

[ SECRET POST #5392 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5392 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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How do you feel about them?

It's fine as long as they're interesting characters and not supremely annoying.

And background, otherwise annoying is the default.

As guest characters in episode of the week type genfics, and as sacrificial lambs to be stuffed into the fridge to motivate MCs in every other type. They should never be promoted to main, or given a costar role, because that means it is really an original fiction piece that is pretending to be fanfic because they author is too needy and insecure to risk writing original fiction. Write your own material, or keep your toys out of the communal box. That goes triple for unironic SI OCs.

The line between "guest character in episode of the week story" and "costar" feels extremely thin

Imagine that you're watching an episode of The Love Boat, a show that ran on guest characters. Now do you see the difference? It is all about the weight and importance they are given.

OK, I think I get the distinction that you're drawing now, but I guess my point of view is, I don't see why it'd be so bad to have a "costar" level OC, assuming the character is well done and interesting, and not a narrative black hole that sucks in all the air. I don't see why the fic has to be tied to the format of the original source.

You remember when Murder She Wrote had the episodes where Jessica was only there for the bookends and one phone call in the middle, so the producers could slam in a backdoor pilot for a show that never made it to air and whose characters we didn't give a rat's ass about? That is the role of OC main or costar.

But if you want to use the Murder, She Wrote example, from what I recall, weren't there a bunch of episodes earlier in the run where a recurring character - Jerry Orbach or whatever - would come in for an episode and help Jessica solve the murder, and then make returns to do the same thing again in later episodes? But with Jessica still as the main character and appearing through the whole episode. I don't see why you couldn't do that.

Because your OC would have to be a recurring canon character.

But why?

Re: OCs in fanfiction

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-11 00:34 (UTC) - Expand

In fic of already established characters I'm not interested and I'll just quietly skip past a fic if an OC has a prominent role in it, BG character OC's are fine though. But people having their own 'canon', if you will, of OC's I might find fun if I like the setting the person has created.

SA.

I just realised you already specified fanfic, so my last point is moot. It is late and I need sleep.

So long as they serve a purpose, make sense within the context of the canon, and don't take over the story I'm fine with them.

Well, for starters, I can't really imagine getting by without ANY OCs whatsoever in a fic of significant length, because the canon characters don't live in a vacuum (well, except when it's set in space :D).

But if I am reading a fanfic and not original fiction, it's probably because I want more of something that I liked about the canon, which means a focus on the canon characters or something about the canon setting. OCs can be useful for that as long as they can be seen as something like NPCs in a video game - they're there to serve a purpose for the canon character, or reveal something about the setting. Maybe to give the canon character a hint as to what they need to do next, even! They may have names and particular attributes, maybe they'll keep popping up as the story progresses, maybe the story is even told from their vantage point - but as long as they are there to enhance or reveal something about the canon characters, rather than take the spotlight away from the canon characters, I am all for using OCs.

(Obviously I am talking about an entirely different type of fanfic than the ones that are intentionally about someone's OC, or a pairing of canon character/OC. Lots of people like those, and that's cool. It's just not what I personally look for in fanfic, and the question is "how do you feel...")

Most shows and movies have a large enough canon cast that there is nearly always a canon character available to use, as long as you keep them canon compliant and don't rewrite the canon character's character to be your OC/SI's character.

That may be the case in most show/movie fandoms, I wouldn't know because I mostly am involved with game fandoms - but it's definitely not true in game fandoms. In game fandoms, there's usually a cast of characters who are all some manner of fighter/healer/mage, but (just as in the games themselves) if the characters are going off on an adventure, sometimes there is the need for a shopkeeper, a villager who knows this new area that the canon characters have just arrived in and can tell them what's going down, a kid who got themselves into a scrape (and the kid's mom who asks the canon characters for help) and needs to be rescued so the characters will go to wherever the kid is and notice something strange, etc.

Sometimes if you're exploring the past of a character, you have to figure out what their childhood was like, and that probably means their parents, and maybe a first love that didn't work out (because IRL, most folks have dated others before they meet their longterm partner). In my main fandom, basically everyone's part of a military faction and has superior officers somewhere who have given them their orders, but we only see a handful of the main character's commanders in a brief meeting, only two of which have names. One of the other characters is terminally ill, and nobility - he would have attending doctors and servants close by. He also has a son, which means he has to have (or have had in the past) a wife or other partner, who is definitely not any of the characters we see in the game.

And so on, and so on. Certain minor roles in stories only exist for reasons of practicality/plausibility, and I wouldn't want to try to shoehorn canon characters into them.

I actually really like them as side characters, especially if it's a fic where the main character is outside of their normal setting (i.e. say a character from a fighting heavy genre/media is "settling down" or trying to have a normal life). I also am fine with a lot of isekai esque/author insert stuff as long as it's not a power fantasy thing.

My immediate NO is when they're named after characters in other media. I LIKE crossovers and I still don't want to see your quirky trio with characters named Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto that otherwise don't share any personality traits/came out of nowhere. It lacks creativity. It's annoying. And it always feels like the creator is like nudging me like "huh? huh? get it?" And it's never a small fandom they're "referencing" either.

Couldn’t agree more! I read a fic like that was full of these “shoutout” OCs that weren’t enough like the referenced characters to fit the lowkey crossover the author claimed it was.

It just felt lazy, like they weren’t original enough to come up with new names for their OCs. But it also felt like they weren’t talented or confident enough to make an actual crossover that would justify these characters just being in the fic.

I still kinda enjoyed it, but it don’t think it was completely unironic enjoyment.

Fine in small roles or the occasional necessary larger one but the more the story becomes about the OCs vs the canon characters the less I care. Also honestly I don't mind if someone wants to write all about their OCs but I hate when the author then complains about how it's so unfair no one wants to read their giant OC-centric fic. Facts are, the majority of fanfic readers are here for the canon cast and that's not exactly a secret. Write that OC epic if you want but don't expect it to get the kind of attention fics featuring the actual cast do.

Oh my god, this!

I just read a fic where the writer inserted an OC out of nowhere in the middle of the fic as a main character that everyone knew and loved all along, even though they were never mentioned before. And then when the fic started getting less engagement, especially comments, the author started complaining. Saying “I’ve gotten more feedback from brick walls”.

Like, I can sympathize a little. But have some self-awareness that maybe people got sick of reading your borderline Mary Sue suddenly stealing the spotlight from the canon characters and plot?

They can be great if they're only supporting characters, but I will nope out if they're the focus, or even if they're like half the focus. Also, when the narrative is compassionate towards its OCs that's a good thing (i.e. if something bad happens to them it matters, because they are people and not just fodder), but if the narrative expects me to care about their love life and their career and their relationship with their family and their dog Mr. Wiggles, then I'm probably going to find that annoying. I'm not here for an OC. I'm here for the canon characters. The canon characters are literally why I'm reading fanfic, period.

I tend to enjoy them, but it depends on the context.

If it's a ship fic (MC x OC), I like it (although whether I actually like the OC depends -- sometimes they're really well written and multi-dimensional characters, other times they're doing too much and not being as cute as they think they are) because I know what I'm expecting.

When it's an outsider perspective OC centered gen fic, i enjoy those too.

Random townspeople OCs are fine.

I think the only ones (and I'm guilty of this partially, lol) that really annoy me are OCs that just pop up in a story and I'm supposed to know who the fuck this is,no intro. Just "and Peter came by yesterday." And they're suddenly somehow integral to the story line (and I'd likely have to read some other fic to know who the fuck this is). The good old "asky permission to use my OCs" lol honey this is fanfiction.

I say I'm partially guilty because I have a fic (I never posted) but it's essentially OFC1 from Story 1 (MCxOFC1) who ends up saving OMC1 (brief exposition) and the audience is introduced to OMC2 who becomes the love interest for OFC1 (meanwhile, we're introduced to OFC2 who will be the new love interest for MC lol)

All of my fandoms are video games where people make their own Player Character which is basically an OC. Especially with how much people will flesh out the backstories for their PCs. So I find it amusing to see people complain so much about Canon Character x OC fics because that's 99.9% of what I read and write. (The griping in these kinds of fandoms is about not using the default PC name in fics, which I think is so boring. There's no default personality so why on earth use the default name?)

Granted the feel of including an OC must be different for fic of TV shows etc., the annoyance toward it just baffles my brain until I remember it's my fandoms that are the odd ones out on this.

To answer the question: since I already read a lot of OC-centric fic I don't think I'd mind it in non-video game fandoms. I like reading about other people's OCs.

I like OCs a lot as side/background characters. I like them even more as outsiders looking into the strange world of the plot. I don't like them very much when they're one half of my OTP but I don't mind if they're giving a character with less exposure some love. I like them when they interact with some new element of the story or setting.

Honestly, as a comic book super hero fan I encounter more OCs in actual canon than in fanfiction and all I have to say is: Don't Be Danny Fucking Chase.

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