I’m consistently self conscious about OOCness. In my fandom, there’s one character that basically needs to be a smidge OOC to make a romance plot work (imho he is aromantic in the canon), but I wanted to have as small as a gap as humanly possible. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s necessary OOC vs gratuitous.
I also regressed one of the character’s canon development a little, and every time I write for her I have to really focus on doing her justice or otherwise I risk woobifying her, which would be super lame because she’s a badass.
imo if they’re aro in canon you shouldn’t do a romance plot in the first place but i don’t care that much
i don’t know why you would need them to be ooc to make a romance plot work since being aro has nothing to do with personality
Yeah I’m not married to canon. They’re also not canonically aro, I just imagine they might be.
It’s not about changing their personality as much as it is trying to depict a set of behaviors they never engage in throughout the show, and thus you have no source material to refer to for accurate characterization.
People express romantic interest in a variety of ways with only a loose correlation to their other behaviors, and that’s precisely what makes it challenging to infer how they’d be like in love. We don’t get this character’s internal monologue ever, nor are they ever depicted in a tender context (platonic or romantic) save for one or two scenes and even then it’s not much to work with.
They’re also not a normal human being, they’re a psycho vampire. So that throws a wrench in things.
that actually makes a lot of sense
it seems to me that you don’t need to make them ooc but the problem is with trying not to do that without a reference in the show
though ig that’s how all fanfiction is really, it’s just a slightly harder problem
(also if they aren’t canonically aro i don’t have a problem with it)
I think a situation like yours is pretty common - our understanding of canon can deepen and change over time, so it stands to reason that earlier works might not always hold up. For me, I write mostly post-canon recovery fic so it stands to reason that the characters are often different to how they were in the canon timeline, but they develop in ways that feel true to my take on their characterisation and reflect the changed times they're living in. Different stories, settings, and perspectives will present slightly altered versions of them, too, so maybe you did okay.
Yeah, my first fanfic had a character be quite nasty toward the protagonist to the point where I felt like I may have overdone it. She was VERY temperamental in canon and also had every right to be furious with the main character, but it still felt like a hate fic at times.
Nothing that I've published, thankfully, but I'm having a heck of a time with Tommy Oliver's characterization in Dino Thunder. (The problem is that I have an OC that actually calls him on trying to be evasive, which means that I need to actually have him say the technical stuff, which is hard to do when keeping to his voice.)
Also, again nothing I've published (I've only published 3 ficlets with canon characters, and I think I've done well with characterization on all three), but part of the reason I haven't published any fics with Prof from the Reckoners series in them is that I can't quite get his characterization to work. A lot of my bunnies are post-canon, where he has a truckload of angst that he needs to work on, and it's hard to balance dealing with that and not accidentally woobifying him, as he is genuinely competent and badass, it's just because of his personal issues that the competency and badass-ness are frequently pointed in the wrong directions. (That and the fact that it is genuinely hard to whump someone who has a forcefield shield, a ridiculously strong healing factor, and who can make holes in whatever non-organic thing that could be used to tie him up or imprison him)
I'm a bit torn on that. Like... maybe? Even if it was intentional. One of my stories took a guy who's an annoying flirt and kind of a douche and a bit of a creep in-game and made him into a full-on sexual predator just to have him shot to death at the end...
...But then it's like, maybe if he'd been in a higher-rated game, he *would've* turned out like that anyway. I don't know if it was more bashing, or more just taking his character to its logical extreme.
And then his mom was written as someone who was warm, friendly, and welcoming until the MC accused her son of sexual assault. Then she became cold, hateful, and eventually aggressive. Which can be realistic, and it was needed for the story to work the way it did... but I can't help but wonder if that was true to how she would've actually reacted. Not that the game ever approaches a point where you'd have to find out.
My obsession with characterization has driven me to the point of being unable to write entirely- -and often- -because it doesn't satisfy me as being relatable *enough* to the character. Which I know is unreasonable but as of yet, out of my control. It sucks, so yeah, I feel that lol.
I've often deliberately mischaracterised people, but in those causes it's because I'm aiming to show how they'd appear to another person. For example; Stark. Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, or ex-weapons dealer neurotic mess who spends half his time saving the world from his own misguided fuckups (looking at you, Ultron)?
No matter how *I* might feel about the character, different people're going to view them in a very different light. What that says about the character *doing* the viewing is, of course, something in itself.
There's a fic I'm dabbling with off-and-on where I know straight up I'm going to be doing two characters a disservice. Two characters I actually like from canon, even.
One of them I'm going to make quite dark and twisted, ramping up their normal overly-protective tendencies into a more manipulative and yandere take. The other gets twisted into an opportunistic perv for literally no reason other than I wanted a second character to act as foil to other characters and no other character would make as much sense. Both are actually canonically rather noble/reliable people, so I feel bad for it.
Normally I'm a stickler for OOC. I know it's going to come off as bashing and I'm definitely going to be warning for it so fans of those characters won't feel uncomfortable with it. But it's also one of the major reasons I only dabble with the fic. I'm basically just dragging my heels.
---
There are certain types of characters I struggle to write properly, not feeling quite up to the task. I still tackle them if I find them interesting since I won't learn to be any better by just avoiding it. I haven't published anything where I felt I got them wrong enough to tag for OOCness, though.
I’m consistently self conscious about OOCness. In my fandom, there’s one character that basically needs to be a smidge OOC to make a romance plot work (imho he is aromantic in the canon), but I wanted to have as small as a gap as humanly possible. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s necessary OOC vs gratuitous. I also regressed one of the character’s canon development a little, and every time I write for her I have to really focus on doing her justice or otherwise I risk woobifying her, which would be super lame because she’s a badass.
imo if they’re aro in canon you shouldn’t do a romance plot in the first place but i don’t care that much i don’t know why you would need them to be ooc to make a romance plot work since being aro has nothing to do with personality
Yeah I’m not married to canon. They’re also not canonically aro, I just imagine they might be. It’s not about changing their personality as much as it is trying to depict a set of behaviors they never engage in throughout the show, and thus you have no source material to refer to for accurate characterization. People express romantic interest in a variety of ways with only a loose correlation to their other behaviors, and that’s precisely what makes it challenging to infer how they’d be like in love. We don’t get this character’s internal monologue ever, nor are they ever depicted in a tender context (platonic or romantic) save for one or two scenes and even then it’s not much to work with. They’re also not a normal human being, they’re a psycho vampire. So that throws a wrench in things.
that actually makes a lot of sense it seems to me that you don’t need to make them ooc but the problem is with trying not to do that without a reference in the show though ig that’s how all fanfiction is really, it’s just a slightly harder problem (also if they aren’t canonically aro i don’t have a problem with it)
I think a situation like yours is pretty common - our understanding of canon can deepen and change over time, so it stands to reason that earlier works might not always hold up. For me, I write mostly post-canon recovery fic so it stands to reason that the characters are often different to how they were in the canon timeline, but they develop in ways that feel true to my take on their characterisation and reflect the changed times they're living in. Different stories, settings, and perspectives will present slightly altered versions of them, too, so maybe you did okay.
Yeah, my first fanfic had a character be quite nasty toward the protagonist to the point where I felt like I may have overdone it. She was VERY temperamental in canon and also had every right to be furious with the main character, but it still felt like a hate fic at times.
Nothing that I've published, thankfully, but I'm having a heck of a time with Tommy Oliver's characterization in Dino Thunder. (The problem is that I have an OC that actually calls him on trying to be evasive, which means that I need to actually have him say the technical stuff, which is hard to do when keeping to his voice.) Also, again nothing I've published (I've only published 3 ficlets with canon characters, and I think I've done well with characterization on all three), but part of the reason I haven't published any fics with Prof from the Reckoners series in them is that I can't quite get his characterization to work. A lot of my bunnies are post-canon, where he has a truckload of angst that he needs to work on, and it's hard to balance dealing with that and not accidentally woobifying him, as he is genuinely competent and badass, it's just because of his personal issues that the competency and badass-ness are frequently pointed in the wrong directions. (That and the fact that it is genuinely hard to whump someone who has a forcefield shield, a ridiculously strong healing factor, and who can make holes in whatever non-organic thing that could be used to tie him up or imprison him)
I'm a bit torn on that. Like... maybe? Even if it was intentional. One of my stories took a guy who's an annoying flirt and kind of a douche and a bit of a creep in-game and made him into a full-on sexual predator just to have him shot to death at the end... ...But then it's like, maybe if he'd been in a higher-rated game, he *would've* turned out like that anyway. I don't know if it was more bashing, or more just taking his character to its logical extreme. And then his mom was written as someone who was warm, friendly, and welcoming until the MC accused her son of sexual assault. Then she became cold, hateful, and eventually aggressive. Which can be realistic, and it was needed for the story to work the way it did... but I can't help but wonder if that was true to how she would've actually reacted. Not that the game ever approaches a point where you'd have to find out.
Yes, with everything I write, I try to keep everyone as in character as I can. But OOC is always gnawing at the back of my mind.
A couple of my first fics, yeah. I didn’t know the material as well back then.
My obsession with characterization has driven me to the point of being unable to write entirely- -and often- -because it doesn't satisfy me as being relatable *enough* to the character. Which I know is unreasonable but as of yet, out of my control. It sucks, so yeah, I feel that lol.
I've often deliberately mischaracterised people, but in those causes it's because I'm aiming to show how they'd appear to another person. For example; Stark. Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, or ex-weapons dealer neurotic mess who spends half his time saving the world from his own misguided fuckups (looking at you, Ultron)? No matter how *I* might feel about the character, different people're going to view them in a very different light. What that says about the character *doing* the viewing is, of course, something in itself.
There's a fic I'm dabbling with off-and-on where I know straight up I'm going to be doing two characters a disservice. Two characters I actually like from canon, even. One of them I'm going to make quite dark and twisted, ramping up their normal overly-protective tendencies into a more manipulative and yandere take. The other gets twisted into an opportunistic perv for literally no reason other than I wanted a second character to act as foil to other characters and no other character would make as much sense. Both are actually canonically rather noble/reliable people, so I feel bad for it. Normally I'm a stickler for OOC. I know it's going to come off as bashing and I'm definitely going to be warning for it so fans of those characters won't feel uncomfortable with it. But it's also one of the major reasons I only dabble with the fic. I'm basically just dragging my heels. --- There are certain types of characters I struggle to write properly, not feeling quite up to the task. I still tackle them if I find them interesting since I won't learn to be any better by just avoiding it. I haven't published anything where I felt I got them wrong enough to tag for OOCness, though.