Original character fics

I'm making estimations based on my experience with fics. Perhaps I just happen to find all the terrible OC fics in existence, but it seems more likely to me that the vast majority of them are power trips that retread canon while having the OC do the same things the canonical characters did, but "better".

Really, I don't think you're going far enough if you plan to crucify OC fics. There happens to be a wide and delectable variety of shit when it comes to original characters because, as you've no doubt seen, it's not easy to gracefully and believably insert new characters into an established story or setting when there are preestablished and better-liked characters already present.

You've got O Cx Canon shipping fics, which are even more transparent wish-fulfillment than what I mentioned earlier. You've got newcomer fics, where a character goes the extra mile of beating the canons at their own game right in front of their faces, only for said canons to rejoice. You've got your OC villain fics, where the author's angst is channeled and condensed into something the canons will gawk and gasp and cower at. There's a reason we have so very many terms diversifying and deconstructing the concept of a Mary Sue, and original characters doubtlessly bolster the ranks of each and every one of those variants. There's a cornucopia of terrible ideas realized through original characters, and they are as diverse as they are punishing to your respect of the setting and decent writing on a whole.

edited 27th Feb '15 10:06:26 PM by ShengDongJiXi

All she ever wanted was to have her morning tea and watch soap operas.

Well, it's fanfic. Sure there's a lot of bad OC fics, but then there's a lot of bad fics in general. I will agree that it's easier to seriously fuck up an OC fic than other types, but it's also possible to do very well if you can avoid the common pitfalls.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

And that is why I now avoid fics starring OCs like the plague and avoid using them in my own fics.

edited 27th Feb '15 10:08:40 PM by Hyp3rB14d3

The only thing I haven't yet brought up is that I'd rather see original characters in the universe the fan-work is based off of than canon characters being ripped out of context and made into, like, talking cats or something. The ideal is to have both the universe and its constituent characters, but I've gone with what I consider to be the lesser of two evils in terms of my own writing.

All she ever wanted was to have her morning tea and watch soap operas.

This in no way follows from any premise regarding the use of original characters. What the hell are you talking about?

Nous restons ici.

I've seen horrible wish fulfillment OC's, but I've also seen horrible wish fulfillment canon characters, side characters, and everything in-between. If the writer is mindful an OC can fit in a fic abreast or even better than a canon character.

After-all the purpose of fanfiction is to express creativity and trying to impose arbitrary rules on it as a whole like "Only canon pls." seems very short-sighted and rigid to me.

Stoned hippie without the stoned. Or the hippie. My AO3 Page, grab a chair and relax.

I think he was applying that on pre-existing characters, since the poster he was replying to had said he didn't use those characters because of fear to screw them up.

But the second you start writing fanfiction with fear, that's the moment you've already lost the writing game.

edited 28th Feb '15 2:12:40 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

My take on the whole thing. For my examples I will use the Kung Fu Panda Fic Author Luna Goldsun.

She uses plenty of OC's and some of them get paired to Canon Characters. The Main Characters even!

She has two major KFP universes, Memoirs of A Master and the other I will call the Phoenix warrior saga. The first is a whole contained single fic and the other is composed of two stories.

In the Phoenix saga, she kind of sloppily just paired two female OC's with Po and Tai Lung with a third male OC getting Tigress. Hoewever she still had the most focus on the canon characters and didnt have the OC's overtake the story. The second story polished the relationships of the Main and OC characters but sadly had them overtake the more unpopular canon characters. Po, Tai Lung and Tigress still held a firm grip on their importance and screentime but Monkey, Mantis and the rest of the Furious Five werent so lucky.

For me, this is her worst work. Still better than most fanfics out there but still her weakest work.

Then comes Memoirs.

The story is that Shifu has left to see an ill friend and Po plus the Furious Five find a scroll with his Memoirs.

The story follows Shifu and Oogway from his early childhood to the Discovery of the Dragon Warrior. And it has LOADS AND LOADS of OC's. And S Hifu even marries an OC.Yet its still one of the greatest fics EVER made.

How?

She puts Shifu front and center. She never has OC's overtaking the fic.And even though the story isnt about them they have plenty of screentime and have lots of interesting reactions to the story. The OC's arent Mary Sue Wish Fulfilment stand ins. In fact, they go through so much shit that even death starts feeling merciful. And Luna Goldsun makes us care about each OC.

I think Memoirs wins despite having way more OC's. The difference is that they are handled WELL. They dont steal screentime from the OC characters or are shallow Mary Sues.

There's also more recently this Regular Show fic I've just finished reading called, It Runs In The Family.

The very premise and summary will have you running for the hills. Its about, as I like to say, MORDO AND RIGBONE'S OC KEEDS!

But what I got when I actually read it was one of the best portrayals of the Park Crew being a family.

The fic starts with Mordecai and Rigby becoming parents with the birth of their children and after 4 or 5 chapters, the focus shifts on to the kids. But the kids are actually quite likeable and feel like a natural extension of the family. EVERYONE gets focus from fan favorites like Skips (He's AMAZING in this fic), Benson and Pops (They are together and they ARE SO ADORABLE)to more controversial characters like Muscle Man (Who is quite well written while not removing his flaws) so you never feel like "UGH ENOUGH WITH THESE OC'S I WANT TO SEE THE CANON CHARACTERS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!" and even whole chapters to themselves. The kids also get a group of OC friends but they arent seen as often as the canon characters.

Bottomline: OC's can be pretty bad, but they can also be awesome. ANY premise that isnt Chibi Usa's Seventh Birthday can be done well in the hands of a talented writer.

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I've rarely read an OC fic that's held my attention.

I read Naruto and RWBY, which are a breeding ground for those characters since there's a decent enough setting, and in the latter case, not a lot of plot to work together. That said, I don't think I've met the author who was able to resist taking potshots at canon, or using the OC as a voice to criticize other characters. There's just a stigma that comes with inserting an "original character" into a universe that takes caution.

I don't think they're underrated. Believe me, there's more than enough of them on Fanfiction net. For a short time I wondered if OC fics were seeing a new dawn, because it seemed that for a week I would find lists of OC and Self-Insert fics.

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

THIS. A million times, this. I mean, I can't comment on how often that phenomenon happens, but I totally agree with how irritating it is.

The positive of an OC Fic: Possible world building, a different look at the same world with a different viewpoint character, and original flavor.

You gotta start somewhere.

In total agreement with —those are the points I've been stressing.

Well, there's the main pitfall to avoid, then: it may be your character, but it must not be a self-insert author avatar. As long as you can avoid that temptation and make the character alive and distinct from yourself, you're off to a good start.

At least in my personal experience, developing characters for RPs have been invaluable for practicing that.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

I dunno, even an author insert can be okay, just so long as you're willing to let said character not be perfect. If the character suffers, has faults, isn't always loved by all, isn't obviously there just to get together with some canon character you think is hot, then it's fine. The point is to be well-written

Everybody's all "Jerry's old and feeble" till they see him run down a skyscraper and hijack a helicopter mid-flight.

, I've been writing self-insert fanfiction for Kingdom Hearts. There is nothing wrong with self inserts in-concept. Sturgeon's Law after all.

You gotta start somewhere.

True fact: I'm a minor character in Wings To Fly. I get called an idiot several times.

Nous restons ici.

I'm doing editing/pre-reading for a series starring an OC who started off as the author's self-insert. She's evolved enough that I didn't realize she was a self-insert until the author told me.

I regularly steal my friends as minor characters without telling them. It's my perception of them, though, so chances are they'll never notice.

All she ever wanted was to have her morning tea and watch soap operas.

My OC Self-Insert gets beaten and insulted almost regularly. Twenty six chapters in, and he has only just beaten the first dungeon (Zelda universe), and so far he's been pummeled, bludgeoned, electrocuted, poisoned, crushed, drowned, choked, and absolutely no one likes him. Hell, he pissed Midna off so bad that she became the first official boss of the fic, and she won! So far, all of my reviews have been positive about his interactions. They found his sarcastic demeanor blended well with Midna's special brand of condescension.

I do understand the, ahem, reluctance of reading OC stories, but writing the whole genre off as tripe is, in my mind, terribly elitist. "Only Canon characters are good!" "This OC kissed a main character? MARY SUE!" "You're obviously not a good writer if you use OCs."

OCs, when done correctly, challenge the main characters with people who argue, people who disagree, people who have different viewpoints. This is not to say I think my fic is super awesome. My point is that OC fics can be just as good as Canon fics.

edited 4th Mar '15 12:45:04 PM by Debochira

I think that the reason most people dislike OC fics in general stems from a simple fact.

Most original characters are written as masturbatory fantasies, not as genuine characters.

himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimari

I think OCs can work well to enhance canon characters, especially if the OCs are not the protagonist of the fic.

This can definitely happen if the OC is written well.

I think having OCs in supporting roles, or at least in ensemble ones with canon characters, is probably the safest bet.

edited 19th Mar '15 8:55:30 AM by SapphireBlue

That applies just as well to fics with Canon Sue, too. An OC is not automatically a bad character. Well spoken! Heck, you don't need an OC to go about character bashing. Nor to take potshots at canon *cough*MassEffect3*cough*. There are even good ones of those, but yes, high-quality Self-Insert are even rarer than high-quality OC. Heck, you can get that just by posting on an internet forum!

Personally, I just finished writing a 6500 word background for a roleplaying game. Since the world is of the GM's unique devising, that means literally everyone in the world is an OC, but since it's D&D it's still technically fanfic too.

If your fic goes outside any of the established canon bounds, for whatever reason, then you kind of have to create OCs. But no one ever complains that the shop keeper the main character argues with, or the obstructionist guard they have to bribe/pummel/outwit, are OCs.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

I wrote an oc fic, no canon characters at all, for Agents of Shield last year. I was /ticked/ that the "hydra attacked the shield academy" thing was never addressed even in passing, and so I wrote two shorts (4K total) about some of the students. I think it was pretty good, for what it was. I mean, I couldn't put in canon characters, they weren't there and that was the whole /point/

Got a degree in Emotional trauma via fictional characters aka creative writing. hosting S'mores party in Hell for fellow (evil) writers

People sometimes write original character fics mainly to explore how normal people would react to mooks like the Heartless from Kingdom Hearts attack them and/or destroy their world.

Others would rather write a story for a detailed world but has a simple story (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance) in the source material or they simply hate the main cast (Final Fantasy VIII and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn).

Really, it just depends.

You gotta start somewhere.