Fan Fics and OC Protagonists

[Blackhawk748]

Im currently writing one and im curious what people think of them. Do you hate them, love them, only hate them when they get completely nuts without earning it etc?

[Dragonexx]

I have no issue with OC protaganists and don't really get the complaints other people have about them. Yes, OC's can be poorly written or made into sues, but I've seen the same done to canon characters, so there's no difference. Also, about focusing on them over canon characters... There's plenty of other fanfiction for the same fandom, get over it.

Also, what new things to they bring to the setting? What new perspectives and new interactions do they bring with them? What changes to the setting can they create or cause? That's what I'm wanting if I click on an OC fic.

[Lord Raziere]

Well it depends on well written they are.

The most obvious pitfall is the Mary Sue that fixes everything or makes everything about them when the canon protagonists still have their story to tell. When they get in the way of canon characters and what they are supposed to do and whatnot.

The better, safer OC Protagonist is one that has minimal if any contact with the canon characters, instead telling their own separate story somewhere else in the same world. At most they meet with the canon characters in between adventures and discuss how hard they both had it then go their separate ways on their own separate but parallel journeys. By doing so, you have the opportunity to create a whole bunch of OC's to interact with the one OC and tailor the challenges to your OC to properly write their story rather than trying to shoehorn them into the canon character's story. Much like how Superman and Batman may be in the same universe, but have their own cities to save and rogues gallery to fight.

Another form of OC protagonist that might work is one that brings just as many problems as they do solutions. They may solve problems with canon, but their non-canonical presence brings a whole bunch of different problems in as a consequence. Thus prompting them to work together with canon characters to solve the new problems they face. No free problem solving, every solution has a cost.

However a form of bad OC that might not be obvious is the OC mutator. A canon character who starts canon, but mutates so much from events in the story that they essentially become an OC character-they are completely unrecognizable as the source character, which is an a way even worse than the Mary Sue, because you essentially made a canon character go so out of character that they've stopped being that character and become what you wanted them to become instead of just creating an OC in the first place that you would've liked better from the beginning and could've been written better.

An interesting OC might be a character who is demonstrably weaker than the canon protagonist and stays that way no matter what. Their story is forever smaller than the canon characters and whenever they fight a canon character, they get beaten easily by them. Their story focus is their own and the focus is on the OC, but the canon characters always clearly outshine them.

At the same time, another interesting direction might be a parallel universe where the canon hero has turned evil or failed for whatever reason and its up to the OC character to save the day. This is a set up I don't really see often (or at all), because there is so much potential. By making the canon hero into a villain/fallen hero you can examine what would make them turn evil, what they would be like on the other side of the coin while your OC has to deal with being the one to save the day instead and wonder what the canon hero would've done in their place if they were here/still good or whatever. The closest I ever see is the Ron The Death Eater trope where a character is bashed because the writer doesn't like them. A variant of this is having an OC who is on a different side from the canon protagonist but isn't evil themselves and thus has their own goals they want to work towards that might not mesh with the canon protagonist's goals.

But there is also another bad OC: the pointless one. At least the Mary Sue is a blatant power fantasy that fulfills the base need of wish-fulfillment and having control in a world where many otherwise don't feel like they do. The Pointless OC....is pointless. They don't change anything about the story, they don't seem to have much to offer themselves, they just seem to be along for the ride, not really introducing any new problems or solving anything quicker. They are just there and add nothing.

Now there is one version I'd like to mention: The Support OC. An original character that supports and strengthens the canon character, and empowers them to solve their problems, but takes pains to solve them as little as possible themselves. Basically a mentor or supporter. Now, this can work for a lot of reasons and is a good route to go, but one must be careful- if becomes too clear that the Support OC's support is to masterful in its manipulation and the canon protagonists abilities too clear how easily they solve things because of the OC's help, then you just get a Mary Sue who solves everything indirectly rather than directly, an Indirect Sue, or Stealth Sue to coin a term.

Finally there is the comedy OC. The OC that is there for laughs and doesn't do anything serious. This can also work. This allows the OC to inject their own flavor and personality into the work without overshadowing the canon characters. Sure it means the OC won't ever be as awesome, but neither will they have to deal with what the canon characters have to in their comic relief status.

[Dragonexx]

Also, I feel I should say this: Feel free to write your OC character however you want to. As long as the quality of the story is good, then you shouldn't have to care about people who don't like OCs.

I forgot to post this the first time, this (http://kh13.com/forum/topic/82596-some-things-i-want-to-say-about-kingdom-hearts-0c-s-and-oc-s-generally/) is an interesting read.

[Traab]

Think of OC protagonists as paladins, rogues, or chaotic neutral characters in D&D. They often get a bad rap due to how easy they are to abuse, or how annoying they can be to deal with, but they can be played just fine and be enjoyed by everyone around them. I normally dont read OC stories where the oc is a main character. The best example of this gone right is Yet Again, With A Little Extra Help. This story has an entire family of OCs, they are super strong, and could easily solve every problem ever. But they dont. They help out the actual main character and the rest of the cast and mostly are there for exposition dumps, or to explain why everyone is kicking lots more butt lately. For the most part they stay out of the way and insist the main characters take care of their own mess.

[Kitten Champion]

I would say, with a disclaimer that my knowledge of fanfiction is rather shallow, that the main issue with OCs is when the writer tries to tell the story with their character(s) pushed on top of it rather than writing their story which uses the established canon as a foundation but does so from the perspective of a character of their own design. It's the difference between just rearranging Lego bricks (in possibly wonky directions) and taking a completed design and then taking it apart and inserting Mega Blocks in all of a sudden. One just takes what's there and uses it differently and the other disrupts the cohesion of the whole by including something it wasn't designed to interact with.

...because, while I don't fanfic in the classical sense, I do RP in settings designed by other people (or at least designed with tools others have provided) using characters of my own design frequently and find it generally entertaining and worthwhile. However, were I to play in the - let's say - Star Wars universe, I'd find it reeeeeeally cringy to have my character run around with Luke and company or... something like joining Drizzt's party in Faerun. My character would inevitably become either disruptive or superfluous confronted with such significant canon figures.

[DeadpanSal]

Ditto to what's being mentioned about being a separate entity. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Fan Fiction, or even creating a new storyline within an existing canon, or taking a nuke to the established story and warping it into something new. I don't like the idea of an "OC" because I consider it a worthless term. But if you're doing something new with someone else's content, that's really respectable and an excellent exercise for any writer no matter their progress within their craft. My personal advice is to figure out what you're doing and go for it.

Want to make a Mary Sue and just feel good for a treatment? Do it. Have all the characters fawn over you. Then write something else.

Want to utterly respect canon and tell a story about someone who will never interact with the existing cast? Go ahead. Really push it. Then write something else.

Want to put a twist in your story and do something radical? The sky's the limit. Kill everyone and change the universe. Shock people. Find out what arc works for you. Then write something else.

The more you write and the more you feel comfortable, the more you will or will not reach for established universes. There's nothing shameful about fan fiction. And if you want an excellent example of how to do it . . . Tales from The Borderlands is the perfect example of all three of these things.

Enter Rhys, a new character that falls into place within Borderlands without being so prominent that every Vault Hunter knows his name. He's the most nonathletic protagonist in the canon and just kind of embarrassing. But he's also important enough that he's the only person who can see Handsome Jack. And Jack chooses him to guide personally (more or less). And by the fifth episode, he's totally shattered the status quo left from Borderlands 2. It's a huge departure. Figure out your comfort zone, then push it as much as you want. I think the more you write, the less you need to ask this question of permission from anyone. You'll know your strengths and what makes you happy. Above all write for yourself. Write something that's wholly you, and go as far as you want. Write something amazing. Then write something else.

[DiscipleofBob]

I almost exclusively read fanfics that are purely OC with minimal interactions or relationships with any canon characters, instead focusing on someone else's story within the same setting. Written well, you could almost see these stories as canon themselves.

[DomaDoma]

I used to have a profound aversion to OC protagonists, but I found later that there was a secondary factor making OCs repulsive: too much involvement with the story we've already heard.

An OC who goes to Hogwarts at the same time as Harry and the gang, and manages to have a big impact on the plot as we know it (whether canonical or alternate) is pretty much bound to be indigestible. Still more the OC in Death Note fic who stumbles onto the Kira case - even putting aside the fact that writing Death Note-level scheming is a very tall order, that series has an extremely closed cast list and a delicately-balanced social dynamic therein. If anyone has ever managed to write a decent AU from this premise, I haven't seen it yet, and if it follows canon... well, then, a good example just can't be done.

The best place to write OCs is ground where OCs would naturally spring up. If you write about the Healer at St. Mungo's who just got a missive from Minister Thicknesse, or the Los Angeles cop trying desperately not to come untethered while Kira's killing half the defendants and meanwhile all the organized crime seems to have consolidated somewhere out in the desert... I don't think anyone could complain about that.

And, of course, an Elder Scrolls protagonist as the main character of a fanfic is, of necessity, an OC. By far the biggest way to screw up Elder Scrolls fic is hew too closely to the game script. If the character is only allowed realistic internal monologue on deciding their course and reacting to events, then already you don't have a bad fic on your hands; if they find plausible ways to do quests better, more realistically or more dramatically than the game mechanics allowed, then your fic is good.

Related rule: Canon is flexible. Lore is sacred.

[DoctorFaust]

I've got nothing against OCs in principle, but I've found they generally work better when they're used to tell an original story within the universe rather than when they're inserted into the story of the work the fic is of. Otherwise you have the problem of a less-established character...overshadowing, sort of, the characters people already know and care about. To try and explain myself a little further, it's the difference between writing a Mass Effect fic about a squad of C-Sec officers/Spectres/N7 Agents and one that makes up a new squadmate for Commander Shepard that replaces...Garrus, or someone.

[DeadpanSal]

Related rule: Canon is flexible. Lore is sacred.

That. If you deviate from the story, follow that rule. If it bends its good; if it breaks its not. You can have something with different characters, different stakes and different events, but if you change the basic chemistry of the universe then you're no longer in the same world. Another good exercise for writers dealing with established content is to find the core of the story, the emotional throughline that makes the structure work. For instance, Star Wars is about the battle of good and evil in space in a light science fiction setting through the lens of 60s serials. The recurring themes are characters within ragtag ensembles struggling with internal balance while fighting large scale battles. Hence, A New Hope, Attack of the Clones, The Force Awakens, and Rebels all follow that format. Your writing should naturally fall within that same story. If it doesn't, it's probably not Star Wars.

Trying to write a new episode of a TV show or following someone else's format is always a great thing to do. And if you can do it in a 30 page spec script, it's a career.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I prefer to see works that remix the original content in new ways, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with OCs, especially since fanfic itself exists for the benefit of the author, moreso than any other type of fiction.