fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5568 ]

07. https://i.imgur.com/ev2fSKs.jpg

I once saw someone argue that it’s silly to expect gay fanfic to be in-character, because all these straight dudes are already out-of-character by having gay sex. They were laughed at, and I kinda feel like they earned it.

I don't feel like they were completely wrong. I think making the decision right off the top to ignore a character's canonical sexual orientation and canonical love interest(s) does tend to prime a person to be more flexible with canon in other ways as well. I know I tend to hew closer to canon with my canonical het ships, and I think one of the main reasons for that is because I'm starting from a place of canon adherence, whereas with my noncanonical slash ships, I'm starting from a place of rejecting canon and going my own way.

Except very few canons actually explicitly state "This character is exclusively heterosexual" and if there is no canon love interest, its even less written in stone.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 06:17 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 06:22 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 06:40 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 06:30 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 08:35 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 09:47 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 13:05 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-06 23:22 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 07:06 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 08:23 (UTC) - Expand

I honestly don't get why people do this, but 99.9% of the time it falls under "people are just having fun, no harm done." I tend to ignore it unless someone is claiming their headcanon is canon.

I'm sure there are numerous reasons for why people do this, but personally, I think one of the most common reasons is because the author has a major crush on/is horny for one of the characters, and the other character has been selected less for the specifics of their characterization and more because the author finds the character easy to project on.

So the second character is written to be OOC, and usually pretty generic, because the author is mostly just using them as a sort of vague proxy. But the crush-character can also end up being pretty OOC, because the author is mainly focused on them as fantasy fulfillment. It's less about the nuances and specifics of the character, and more about whatever is hottest to the author--some of which will be canonical because there is obviously something that makes the author horny for the character in the first place. But a lot of it will just be whatever hits the author's kinks; the way they wish the character would be with vague, hypothetical them.

None of this is bad. All of it is fine. It's very much not my scene, but I'm also not going to pretend like my interpretation of my OTPs is super duper canonical in every way. I like to keep a lot of the core character traits and dynamics, but there's also plenty of ways that I bend characterization to my liking--making characters more sympathetic, or kinder, or more vulnerable, or more bamfy to suit my liking.

I never got changing someone so drastically that they might as well be an OC. I don't mind exploring possible, different sides of a character, but a complete overhaul? Just write an OC.

This reminds me of one person in the Treasure Planet Fandom who's obsessed with John Silver. They claim to love him, yet they portray him as some sort of Emo teddy bear, instead of the manipulative bastard he was in the film. I mean, the film version is who you "fell" for, right? Isn't it kind of insulting to change your "boyfriend's" entire personality? Seeing what they did to John Silver, I don't even want to know what they might've did to Piccolo and Spock...

Edited 2022-04-05 01:16 (UTC)

Disneyfan01! Blast from the past. Was going to guess Dolphy too though she’s moved on to Jack Frost now.

Yeah - I like exploring different takes on characters, but if someone is basically writing orig-fic only with fandom-character names, I would prefer they just post in the Original Works section.

I don’t quite get it completely myself, but there’s 100% no harm in people doing this. I will absolutely backbutton these types of fics, no question. Sometimes I decide to read a fic where the description kept things tantalizingly simple and leaves open loads of possibilities with something like saying a change changed after something happened to them or they moved and haven’t seen the other characters in a long time. But an unfortunate amount of times that change is the character is suddenly emo/goth and is ridiculously OOC(No joke, one of these fics made this emo OOC change to Double D of Ed, Edd n Eddy, and I cringed so hard at the thought as I immediately hit the back button). It’s especially annoying to me if the character was nice before and is now constantly spouting what the author clearly thinks is witty and scathing sarcasm. When really it’s cringy and lame. These character 180s don’t work for me in this way. And especially in these cases it definitely feels like the author is projecting everything they think is cool and what they want to be into this character. And it seems weird that they even like the actual character at all considering they were nothing like how the author think their ideal version of them would be. And no hate to goths and emos, I like goth fashion even if I don’t ever wear it, and I occasionally like bands/singers or songs that were frequently associated with the subcultures. And these specific fics were much more common and easy to stumble into before I realized the direction they were going in the 2000s, of course. Although they haven’t gone away completely. But AO3 usually makes it easier to avoid these fics than FF.N was, with most authors tagging for these things. And this type of fic was never super common in my LJ/DW experience.

Either way, while I simply avoid these types of fics by paying attention to tags or backbuttoning if there wasn’t a warning, I think it’s perfectly fine for theses authors to write what they want. I may not understand the appeal of changing basically everything about a character, but more power to them. There’s probably some things I like in fics that others don’t understand the appeal of as well.

I think of it this way:

Sometimes people want two hot characters to smash their parts together, and yes, certain quirks are found to be more attractive to the writer, so they might alter the character to possess them.

Consider the fact that some fic is really casting the actors who play characters in your romance novel or porn, without making it RPF if you think RPF is a little creepy.

Honestly, I don't give that much of a damn how people have fun with their free fictional offerings. I'll backbutton if characters are too OOC, but I get it, I really do.

I feel like there are a few components to why this happens. One is plain old flanderization. A writer (or writers) get stuck on a particular, often minor, character quirk of their fave and make it their whole personality, and if the fic is popular enough then boom! you get OOC fanon that won't go away.

Tied into that, you end up with a segment of fandom that is more familiar with fanfic than they are the canon, and they end up amplifying and concentrating the flanderization into pure OOC.

Then, of course, there has always been a decent chunk of fandom that writes the same character over and over again and just sticks a different canon character face on it. You know how there is some fan art where the dark-haired woobie could be Sherlock or Loki or Kylo or Snape, or Merlin, or anyone really? Same deal, but with words.

There's an audience for it, and as long as everyone's having fun I try not to be too much of a grump.

"and as long as everyone's having fun I try not to be too much of a grump."

Fair.

DA

This. It may not be to my taste, but it still has a right to exist.

Like... there are some characters who are very flexible where kink is concerned, and some who aren't, especially because few characters have all their kinks laid out in canon, but there's always going to be someone who manages to write them totally OOC...

A lot of times, I'm willing to accept 'what a person is like out of the bedroom isn't always an indicator of what they like in the bedroom', and then my headcanons are either compatible or incompatible with another writer's.

BUT, I have two faves who very much DO have canon regarding their kinks, and in those cases I totally get being upset by OOC depictions. One of those faves is from a pre-internet fandom so no one else writes about him anyway, but the other is from a huge fandom, and the number of times I've seen a character who canonically loves when women throw/slap him around/pin him down and is not shy about it, written as a serious Dom... I can't with that. If you prefer something that goes against canon, and you write the character as vers, to me that's different, but I hate when canon is just ignored.

Which characters are those, if I may ask?

#2... Dean Winchester? Something about getting slapped by a girl in a zorro mask, plus on at least one occasion he enjoyed wearing a girl's pink satin panties.

Not many characters I can think of are as open as Dean-- even if sometimes he's only open to himself.

BUT, I have two faves who very much DO have canon regarding their kinks, and in those cases I totally get being upset by OOC depictions. One of those faves is from a pre-internet fandom so no one else writes about him anyway, but the other is from a huge fandom, and the number of times I've seen a character who canonically loves when women throw/slap him around/pin him down and is not shy about it, written as a serious Dom... I can't with that. If you prefer something that goes against canon, and you write the character as vers, to me that's different, but I hate when canon is just ignored.

Hmmm, whenever I see someone posting something like this, 98% of the time it's coming from someone projecting their own kinks and preferences just as hard as they claim the fans they are so derisive toward are doing. Canon can be interpreted in a variety of ways, especially canon where we aren't actually in the characters heads. "In character" is a spectrum, not an absolute.

This, honestly.

Yeah, the Phoenix Wright fandom is like that (was? I've been out of the loop for a while) with saying Franziska was essentially a canon Dom because she literally carries a whip around everywhere and uses it on everyone. But one person I know pointed out that it would be hilarious and make a lot of sense if she wasn't into that in the bedroom at all, because the majority of people don't perform their kinks in public in nonsexual contexts.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 10:35 (UTC) - Expand

Because the character that might actually fit their kink without completely removing their personalities usually aren’t someone the author finds attractive or isn’t their favorite character, if there is someone who fits this kink or character type in the cast at all. And the character they choose to project their kinks onto is someone they do find attractive or is their fave. It’s really that simple.

Let me make a hypothetical. Let’s say I was into BDSM and there was only one character who actually displayed sadistic, masochistic, sadomasochistic, or just generally kinky enough behavior to make them being into BDSM not stray too far from canon. But that character happened to be really unattractive, be gross and creepy to others, or be a mean-spirited walking stereotype of people who are into my kinks. I wouldn’t really want anything to do with them. But there’s a character I really like or think is hot, and I ship them with someone else I like and I think they’d be good together with. I would definitely want to see or write this ship acting out my kinks during some of their smutty scenes. The only way I can imagine wanting to put this unpleasant, creepy, mocking caricature character into my fic is if I was into H/C instead of/as well as BDSM, and I cast them as a villain who hurts one of the members of my ship.

(Silly tidbit about this hypothetical: when I was describing this character I would find too icky or repulsive to want to write fic about, I couldn’t stop thinking about Hisoka from Hunter X Hunter, but whoops he’s actually a fan favorite that’s thirsted after by tons of people. So I guess I’m alone in finding him just awful and gross, oh well, to each their own. I guess Mineta for My Hero Academia would be a better example to have in mind for this eww character considering I’m definitely not alone in not being able to stand him.)

This was legitimately just a hypothetical, and none of what I wrote is something I’m into, or interested in reading in fic. Maybe when I was younger and more into H/C, but I don’t really like making characters I dislike villains unless it feels like there’s an actual possibility in canon, and I don’t like character bashing. But the hypothetical I used is something I do see in a lot of the fics that fall under what you’re describing, with some of the details changed.

I can still see why other people write fics like this, and make their fave characters and ships have the same kinks as them. Especially younger people, and just people in general who are just having fun and being creative, not to mention exploring their sexuality. If it’s not your thing, that’s fine, it’s not mine either. And it seems like it’s not the thing of the rest of the thread either. But I still understand this type of fanfic.

I feel like I do this and it's because... it's fun? Canon won't give me the kinky version of this character because it's a G/PG-rated canon, but it's possible to read hints of that kink in that character (hence why I've chosen this particular character to embody this particular kink). I recognize it's out of character and very much not what they would be like in the show itself but that's why I like going over the top with it in fic where I can do it. I also write more in-character takes on the character so it's not a matter of whether I *can* write the canon version but whether I *want to*.

Mm, but what you're talking about I don't think of as 'out of character' just because we see the PG version-- you mention choosing a character because you can see hints of kink, and to me that's different, that's exploring the on-screen characterization in directions canon can't or won't take, using what we're given as a foundation.

Some people are always going to *call* it OOC because we don't 'know' what the character's sex lives would be like, but you're using the character's personality even if you're making up a lot of how it translates to the bedroom.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-04-05 13:25 (UTC) - Expand

I don't have a hard and fast rule when it comes to this because I think it vastly depends on the writer's skill level. Intentional OOC CAN be enjoyable, while there are perfectly IC fics I find too boring to bother with.

as someone who recently got into fanfic... yeah. so many grown men turned into stammering uke just because they have a friendly personality in canon. so many stoic professional characters turning lovey-dovey holding hands and kissing at work. like i can see that's what the writer is into, but god does it flatten characters into nothing.
you know how there are people who admit they've never looked at canon and only consumed fanworks and still write fanfic, when i see works like that i completely understand how those writers get away with it.