As I have always said, I strive to be told what I can do better and do it. I don't expect all of my characters to work, some of them are rather silly, but I expect them to come off as somewhat based in the reality in the story and to be correctly characterized. I expect to be able to be criticised constructively on how the story needs to change to make more sense, or how I need to re-tool a character. But keeping a character in character, and learning everything I can, is something that I am extremely good at even if I am not too good at the actual writing that can hurt the perception of these traits.

Basicaly... I expect to suck, I expect for people to make comments and tell me exactly what I need to improve, I expect to improve. Rince and repeat. Maybe I should do some one shots about Oliver or Sterling some time...

 

You are doing a bit of a disservice to yourself here. You keep bringing up other universes, and I get what you are trying to say, but different worlds have differing levels of difficulty in inserting a new character. Particularly if said character is going to play a large role in the story.

As others have already stated, Harry Potter has a rather large cast of characters in it filling multiple roles. If you need to use a character for something, there is a good chance that there is a character that already exists that you could use instead. Before you go adding a new character in any universe be it one of your own creation or an established one, you should step back and make sure there isn't someone else that is already around who could fill that role.

In Harry Potter, it is even worse because we have names of people and next to nothing to go on about them so you could just use an established name and make your own personality for it. Why should you add some random new name to the students for a love interest or some connection to a part of the magical world when people already exist who could fill that role? That's way less jarring than having some random transfer student show up.

 

Well, I'm gonna pause you there for a moment. They aren't "allowed" to get better in RWBY (since its one of the fandoms I pay attention to), OCs are just as if not even more horrible in RWBY fics, even if you don't count the times that Jaune is used as a "totally-not-OC".

The difference is that RWBY fanfiction as a whole is absolutely shit-terrible, so they probably don't seem as bad.

That's not to say that HP fanfiction produces better fics more often, but its got a lot of fics and the fandom has been a thing for years, so there are a whole bunch of really good fics out there, conventions in the fandom have been established. Plus there's, you know, this site to encourage higher-quality writing.

As for why OCs are more popular in RWBY than HP and looked at with less scorn, like I said RWBY's fanfiction community is an absolute wasteland, but there's also much, much fewer characters (and they're all pretty terribly characterized) in RWBY and the overall setting is bare-bones to say the least. There's so little actual concrete material that it's not hard to imagine a situation where you need to introduce original secondary characters.

Can't really think of a good reason for having an OC main or primary character. Sure it might be possible to write it well (just as its theoretically possible for the moon to be made of cheese) but its just going to come off as a masturbatory self-insert if the OC has more importance than canon characters.

 

Because I can't use these characters in any meaningful manner when I'm setting stories on unexplored continents and time periods. The stories I'm setting take place next gen, of course I'm going to do something with Scorpius and Albus but they're not going to be the main focus of a story that takes place mostly on other continents. The main charecters have gone through their arks, its not as interesting any more...

 

Most of the time authors don't even do too well in characterizing existing characters in the fandom. I imagine it's harder to do the same when using OCs without the canon to help. Also, there are plenty of "blank-slate" characters for authors to develop enough without using a new name.

 

But almost every story I said anything about, everything I have said anything about, it is supposed to take place after the main characters finish their arks. What do you think is more interesting, Harry Potter dealing with being one of the best Aurors ever or his children, their friends, and the people they meet from around the world? Mainly because I don't want to over-use the next gen as a new main cast, I want to vary it, I want to use the world they live in and put it in a perspective I (as someone who was born two years after the books ended) can at least somewhat understand.

Sure these characters can be silly, one of them is a New Orleans girl possessed by a french dark wizard (don't ask, I plan on playing it straight and I want to really explore it by the end.) But no matter how off-putting they might be, how fantastically droll or even unrealistic they may seem... They are still more interesting than the main cast after the main cast is all in their regular jobs and stuff. Of course, I really should utilize the next gen a little more than I had planned.

---------- Post automerged at 11:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:19 PM ----------

Again you come up across two things. 1 I feel that I personally, and many other people, find it far easier to characterize characters they have full control over. And 2: Their are allot of settings with VERY few characters really explored (the other continents, founders era, Merlin's school days, modern day ect.) While you have some characters with some real characterisation to them, or at least a name and a description off a chocolate frog card, these characters are left almost entirely alone. Many stories could be based around these characters, and be interesting, I just think that it could be just as interesting to explore an average turn of the century muggle-born, actually explore how some witches and wizards liked being burned at the stake because it couldn't hurt them, or explore the ancient lines of wizards from Egypt or Japan.

 

That's certainly ambitious of you. Look, no one here is telling you not to do it if you really really want to, but bear in mind that when you set your your HP ff so far off from canon, fewer people will be inclined to read it because of the prevalent common perception of OCs. But who knows, you could be the next Inverarity.

 

I am certainly going to do my best. I just want to start out in a world I know well, one where I can explore aspects that I feel should be explored, and one where there is a sufficient enough following where they can at least be trusted to tell me what I need to do to fix it. Which probably means I'll never really get anything I write into your library, not at least until I get a real beta who can help. ^-^

 

That is going to be a tall order. The world building alone will take ages, and you'll have to make sure it fits with the current world. That's not even getting into the issue of getting people to actually care about this world and your characters.

 

What I've noticed is that what people most often do is simply use one of the lesser characters within the fandom who may not have a set personality type. So instead of this amazing unknown O/C they just have a normal character who is a hitherto unknown bad-ass/genius/insert generic plot pusher here. Which don't get me wrong can be a decent read, but thats a birdtrack.

Maybe there are a ton of O/C's but instead of creating an actual original character they use a shell character(basically anyone who and build a personality that they want for their story. It saves the trouble of creating a name, and it protects them from the OC haters.

 

I'm kind of conused as to who's side your on...

 

Oh I'm against them as a general rule. It's a rare plot central O/C who isn't a self-insert, wish fulfillment fantasy, or just a cheap plot device. I'm sure some exist somewhere. I was just curious if anyone else agreed on my second point about most O/C's being hidden behind shell characters hence my somewhat meandering second paragraph.

 

Because I seem to be the only person who has seen good of fiction.

---------- Post automerged at 08:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:15 AM ----------

And that, sue to hps early community, is why you having been able to see good of fiction. While one of my characters is clearly b.s., in sure their st lease more interesting then anything you mentioned except maybe a plot device.

 

I'm sorry? This post is totally incomprehensible to me.

 

I'm sorry OC fiction, the thing got changed by auto correct.

 

Sure. Rest of the post is still incomprehensible.

"And that, sue to hps early community, is why you having been able to see good OC fiction. While one of my characters is clearly b.s., in sure their st lease more interesting then anything you mentioned except maybe a plot device."

Again: what?

 

um... Harry potter was the elier of all the Fanfiction communities and thus gained preconceptions that were relevant to it but less so to later ones. I have several stories in mind, and at least one of them the main character is kind of shit, but I think it will still be fun to read.

 

The "elier"? Presuming you mean the "elder", that's still awkward phrasing.

Anyway, your point seems to be that TheDarkMan19 has a wrong image of what OCs are, because of the fandom where the OCs come from.

Seems a strange way to look at it. Bad OCs are entirely the fault of the writer. I think badly written OCs would be as bad in the Naruto fandom, for example, as in HP. I can't think of a reason why the fandom would change anything, except change the ways in which this hypothetical OC is bad.