Frankly, if you've got a ton of great ideas for OCs, write your own story. :|
Why you gotta' hate on remixin' and moddin' like that, FD? There innit a meaningful difference between that and fanfiction. Sometimes it can be hard to hear the theme it's being based offa', or the gameplay ends up radically different... but if it's still good, why does that matter? And if it is a juvenile fantasy, power or otherwise... hell, what's wrong with that? So's a great many video games, and that doesn't seem to stop folks from enjoying 'em. Raffi's still good music, and any who say otherwise can put up dere dukes :|
See those admonishments pretty often and it's just not something I grok. Which is why I comment, 'cause I jus' don't understand. Similar to th'hate of "overpowered" stuff. If it's still well written (/aesthetically pleasing/fun to play), then... so what? It's a particular style, with its own merits and issues, but not something t'dismiss out of hand, y'know? If it's fun, it's fun, and there's nothin' wrong with enjoying it, even if it's not... mature, or whatever.
I'unno, I guess I just stopped looking at fanfiction characters as, well, fanfiction characters at some point. Each and every fanfic character is an OC s'far as I'm concerned, regardless as to if they're sharing a description -- even if just a name -- and perhaps mannerisms with a character from another work. It's better that way :I
The issue is that most people who write that sort of thing don't know how to do it well, so it ends up being the OCs shitting all over canon. When I say overpowered, I'm specifically talking about one character (or group of characters) being out of line with the rest of the cast, with nothing to balance that power. Think on the scale of (say) StrikerS-era Nanoha in magicless low fantasy, or the Dai Gurren Brigade in a less-bullshity Gundam series. Basically, stuff where all of the "problems" with canon are effortlessly solved by the author's squad of power-incontinent Sues.
I'm not saying that there are no good fics with central-cast OCs (in fact, I clearly stated the opposite), but they are painfully rare.
Unless FD just hates OCs on principle, in which case I'm with Frumple on that one.
Also, lies Flying Dice. You like A Green Sun Illuminates the Void. That's another one you like with major-character OCs. =P
1. See above.
2. Marisalon isn't exactly an OC. I tend to view characters differently when they, while technically derived from the author's mind, could plausibly have existed in their own canon, as with her case (and in Dauntless, as a matter of fact). Good OCs are the ones which fit effortlessly into the setting that they are supposed to be from.
This, in turn, explains my issue: OCs. Not just characters who, while technically original, are derived from the standards of a given extant fictional world, but characters who are explicitly alien to any and every canon universe from which a fic derives. This includes self-inserts and the steaming piles of Sue like the OCs in
this. It is explicitly the last category which I rail against, because they almost invariably overshadow and trivialize everything from the world that the author is nominally writing about.
tl;dr:
GOOD: OCs designed to mesh with an existing universe, canon characters who are OOC (in the sense that they have different experiences and habits) because of differing events in an AU timeline.
BAD: OCs who are disconnected from everything but the author's imagination who steal the spotlight and solve every problem with minimal trouble (read: Sues), characters who are OOC for no discernible reason beyond "omg gaiz this is so kewl".
I'd say that this is a sub-application of Sturgeon's Revelation; at the very least 90% of OCs and OOC canon characters are of the latter type. Ergo, I tend to distrust the quality of works containing them until they prove to belong to the former. It's not rocket science.
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Topic: Fanfic Recomendations (Read 109959 times)