[ SECRET POST #2074 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2074 ⌋

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

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[Sam Winchester, Young Hercules]


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[La Pucelle: Tactics]


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Notes:

Important: I'm really sorry about this, but I accidentally misclicked and deleted the submission post from last week instead of saving it. Managed to save the first page (25) of secrets, but the rest (about 100 or so) are gone.

If you submitted something last week (Aug 26-Sept 1), please resubmit it here.

The submissions post for next week is below as usual.

Secrets Left to Post: ?? pages, ??? secrets from Secret Submission Post #296.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I've never understood the ambivalence/hatred for OCs, since every character in the canon is an OC at the beginning of a given work. Other than "it's officially published so it must be good" bias.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's because so many of them turn out to be love interests for a main canon character, or at the very least centrally important to a canon character's emotional life. After a while, it starts to feel like a kind of H.M.S. Pinafore routine:

"I am the Big Canon Hottie! Whose praise all fandom loudly chants!"

"And we are his sisters and his cousins and his aunts!"

"And they are his sisters and his cousins and his aunts, his wives and his sweethearts and his daughters and his aunts, his sisters and his aunts!!"

Especially since they are all somehow the only person canon character could ever love, his destined soul mate, you know the drill. You can't be surprised that people flinch when they see yet another iteration coming down the road.

[(Anonymous)]

Yet when the exact same thing happens in canon with canon characters, nobody seems to give a shit, even when it plays out just as badly as the average FFN drivel. Again, the only thing I can chalk it up to is an "officially published = good" mentality.

[world_eater]

That you've never seen anyone give a shit about bad characters in published media, that I question highly.

[(Anonymous)]

Not nearly as much as I've seen them give a shit about it in fanfiction. Canon (or even professional fanfiction) is judged to a far lighter standard than amateur fanfiction, and if you don't see that I don't know what to tell you.

[kittybeard]

There's...a lot of problems in this comment, and I'm really struggling with wording it. It's not that they're "only good because they're officially published" (there are plenty of flat-out terrible published characters, lol), is because a large amount of people have been given access to these characters and their stories and are able to talk about them, ship them, etc everyone has some sort of understanding. When you walk into a fandom with your own OC, it's personal to you. It doesn't matter that the original story started from an OC, you're still sort of walking in on something people already love and trying to make them care about a character that they have no investment in.

[(Anonymous)]

And I repeat, when canon does this by introducing new characters later on in the work, nobody seems to care. Nobody screams "MARY SUE" every time canon comes up with a new cast member, strictly because it's canon doing it. It's a bias that I find fucking hilarious/nonsensical is all.

[(Anonymous)]

Most people are just not interested in the characters you create for the sake of your own mental masturbation. Get over it.

[(Anonymous)]

Assuming all OCs are created for "mental masturbation" (whatever the hell that is) is also nonsensical/hilarious. As well as assuming I'm bitter about it. I'm not. I just think it's a funny observation about fandom.

[(Anonymous)]

That's funny. You sound bitter. I will just continue to assume that you are. Now go write another OC fic where you get to fuck your favorite character. I'm sure it will make you feel all better.

[(Anonymous)]

0/10

*yawn*

[(Anonymous)]

Very convincing.

[(Anonymous)]

0/10

[(Anonymous)]

Still not fooling anyone.

[(Anonymous)]

0/10

[(Anonymous)]

I have no idea what canons you're thinking of, but I've seen plenty of instances where people react negatively to new characters when they're introduced. Sometimes people eventually warm up to them if the character is given a good story and background and sometimes they don't. Take Nikki and Paolo from LOST, for example. When they first showed up fandom was pretty much like "WTF? Who are these people and why on earth should we care about them?"

[(Anonymous)]

Star Wars Expanded Universe, for starters (which is technically professional fanfiction, I might add). Farscape. Discworld. Sailor Moon. Every Gundam series ever. Bleach. Dragonball. One Piece. I'd be here all day listing them. These are huge series with shitloads of new characters introduced nearly every season without anyone calling bullshit, except when fans do it. Because fans aren't published, you know.

[(Anonymous)]

Your problem here is your idea of causation. Sometimes people do scream about new characters in canon, but when they don't it's normally for two related reasons: first, you don't assume going in that the new character will be a badly-done self-insert intended as romantic interests for one of the leads (which is a fair assumption in fanfic), and second, there's a level of competence in most (not all, but most) pro work that helps ensure the new character will be interesting and well integrated into the canon. (Where those two things aren't true, there's plenty of howling from fans.)

Take Farscape. There are two big love stories in its overall arc. Both of them run from Season 1 through to the very end. Nobody pops up to be the person who is Aeryn's true soulmate, so much better for her than that human guy. No new character, someone truly worthy of him and so much better than Chiana, arrives to replace her in D'Argo's affections. John's family members are there for solid plot-related reasons, and none of them take any of the focus away from the main cast. The new villains come in at logical points in the story line. So do the new outcasts on Moya. Of course no one complains; there's nothing to complain about.

When OCs are handled this way in fanfic, I've never seen anything but praise for them. The problem isn't that people revile in fic what they love in canon. It's that what shows up in fic so often isn't at all the same thing as what we love in canon. And when what we hate in fic does appear in canon, we hate it there, too.

[(Anonymous)]

first, you don't assume going in that the new character will be a badly-done self-insert intended as romantic interests for one of the leads (which is a fair assumption in fanfic), and second, there's a level of competence in most (not all, but most) pro work that helps ensure the new character will be interesting and well integrated into the canon.

So again, it's the attitude that published equals good.

When OCs are handled this way in fanfic, I've never seen anything but praise for them.

Then we're in different sections of fandom entirely. Because more often than not, I'll see commenters call Mary Sue on even excellent OCs, and it's obvious by the comment they didn't even read the fic they're reviewing; they just saw "OC" in the tags and assumed.

[(Anonymous)]

A large part of it is because people have already come to love the canon, the characters in it, and come to trust the creator of the canon on some level not to put a completely horrible character in the canon [usually, there are exceptions to every rule]. With an OC, you're coming into an established canon, usually forcing your character into it some how [IE: They're X character's brother/sister/sweetheart/etc], and as often as not usually forcing a character on people who don't want anything to do with a character whose being put into the series by someone who isn't the creator.

What you're basically doing here is sort of like demanding why none of the 'reworking' of Shakespeare's plays ever gets as popular as the original [because it's not the story people know and love]. It's not just that most are bad - it's also because even the good ones are being put into a world that people already know and love, and for the most part don't want to put changes implemented by someone most people don't even know who *is*

Also, there are plenty of times when the creator of whatever series/medium can't throw a new character into without pissing fans off, or the character being hated.

[(Anonymous)]

So again, it's only fine if the creator does it because published = good.

Oh fandom. Never change.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt

Put bluntly? Yes. The fact that the work is published makes its characters widely available to everyone who is interested in the canon, and because the characters were put into the canon by the creator of the canon, they are relevant to the story and accepting that they exist and are part of the story is necessary in order to understand and discuss the story with others.

Fan OCs, on the other hand, are not officially published. Like it or not, they are considered personal, and generally don't have much relevance or accessibility outside of the creator and maybe their close fandom circle. Understanding somebody's fan OC and accepting that they exist and are part of the story is not necessary in order to understand and discuss the story with others.

I don't understand the hatred for fan OCs either, but I do understand the indifference and apathy people have towards them, and irritation when people who create them try to force them on other fans or treat them as though they are part of the official canon rather than just the OC creator's headcanon.