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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Why do people criticize fanficiton for characters bang OOC? all fanficiton is inherently non canon and the characters are inherently OOC. That cute fic where Ruby and Weiss fall in love. OOC. That edgy fic where Jaune gives in to his revenge. OOC. Just a normal fic where team RWBY go out in the town. OOC. No one writes characters exactly as they are in the canon because everyone is projecting something they want to see the canon didn't deliver. That's why they wrote fanfiction.

OOC is a pretty broad term at this point but, from my experience, there are three primary uses:

OOC meaning all of the above: the character is, by default, inherently different than their canonical counterpart because they are not written by the original author. Every fic character ever is OOC, making the term itself fundamentally useless. It’s like when we broaden AU too much. Yes, technically every fic ever is an AU, but that doesn’t help us distinguish between something like a minor plot divergence and turning the rom-com into a sci-fi adventure.

OOC used as a catch-all insult for fans to sling at a fic they don’t like, usually for a reason other than the characters being OOC. They don’t like the ship, so this fic is OOC. They don’t like the tropes or themes in it, so it’s OOC. Here, OOC doesn’t actually say anything about whether the characters are IC or not. That’s not the point. The point is to use a negative fandom buzz word as a way to publicly dismiss the fic.

OOC used to say that the characters are not recognizable and this is not an intentional choice on the author’s part. Both things at once. This third definition is the only one that’s a worthwhile criticism (in as much as a free hobby created out of love for a story can have “worthwhile” criticism. I by no means mean to say that there are rules for how you have to write fic, I’m only acknowledging what fans tend to look for). See, the thing about fanfiction is that it is, by definition, built off of a canon, which means that we have a set cast to work from with established personalities. We read fanfiction because we want more of those same characters. If we wanted different characters, we’d simply go consume/create a different story. Which means those characters have to be recognizable. That’s the requirement. You read fic for Character A, so if Character A doesn’t feel like Character A, the reader nopes out.

However, in practice this is obviously pretty complicated to achieve. Fanfiction is also about change, which means that writers are continually balancing that recognition with the inevitable impact that changing the world around the character has. A sort of nature vs. nurture issue. Who is Jaune if Pyrrha never died? Who is Yang if she grew up with Raven? Who is Weiss if she never went to Beacon? Who are any of these characters — characters we already know — if we change the events and relationships that crafted their personalities in the first place? Which is why I have that second “not an intentional choice on the author’s part” requirement for fan displeasure. If it’s clear that a significant change in personality is the entire point of the fic, then readers are on board. They just need a reason for this change. A justification. An explanation. It’s the difference between writing a “Ruby is raised by Salem and thus it 100% makes sense that she’d be a horrible person now” story and writing a “Ruby acts like a horrible person for no established reason, despite that going against her sweet, kindly characterization in canon.” That’s OOC, the combination of a character being unrecognizable and a lack of explanation for that change.

In an ideal world, if/when fans come across OOC writing they would simply exit the fic and that would be that. Not their cup of tea. The problem is that the concept of being “in character” is directly parallel to character interpretation... and as we know from this blog, that can get very heated. Someone might, for example, write a supposedly canon compliant fic where Ozpin is depicted as a callous, manipulative headmaster hell-bent on using his students as disposable tools, to which I would go, “That’s OOC.” The problem then becomes that there’s a major disconnect between how the author has interpreted Ozpin and how I have interpreted him — what the very concept of “OOC” means here — and it is, at the end of the day, a basically unsolvable problem because there is no objective interpretation to dredge up and say, “See, I was right!” Fiction is subjective, with at times not even the Word of God able to penetrate a fan’s interpretation of a text.

Fiction is more than just fiction. We get very emotionally involved in our stories, which means that we — for better or worse — get emotionally involved in telling those stories “correctly.” When it comes to fanfiction’s designed intention to (to a degree) accurately represent canon characters, fans are not going into that fic with the disinterred, disengaged perspective of someone who doesn’t care about the series. Caring is the point. Thus, people get upset. Maybe someone calls the Ruby/Weiss fic OOC because they can’t imagine anything other than a Ruby/Blake relationship. Maybe it feels like the edgy Jaune fic didn’t persuasively take him from soft, awkward friend to revenge obsessed fighter and dammit, Jaune is their favorite. You’ve done him a disservice. Maybe the out of town fic is filled with dialogue that makes you go, “Would Yang ever actually say that?” and it’s so jarring you just don’t see her as Yang anymore. Something isn’t working here and it’s interrupting the reader’s ability to fall into the fic. It’s lacking a core characteristic of fanfiction that most fans come for: telling stories using these characters. Not a “wrong” version of them.

As said, there isn’t actually a wrong way to write fic, but there are absolutely pervasive interpretations of canon that will impact whether people see your writing as IC or not. I can absolutely write a Volume 1 fic where Ruby is crying the whole time, running away from her friends, and curling up in corners rather than engaging with anyone. But if I fail to provide an in-text reason for that change in her personality, my readers are likely to go, “But that’s not... Ruby? Ruby is cheerful, loves spending time with her sister, and bugged Weiss until she became her friend. She’s sad at times, sure, but we can point to numerous places in the canon that contradict this sort of characterization. I’m not reading about Ruby Rose — something I very explicitly came to do — I’m reading about a totally different character with her name. And since you didn’t establish/warn me that her characterization was going to be entirely re-worked, I’m upset about that.”

So at best the fan just shrugs and exits the fic. At worst they take the author to task for “incorrectly” interpreting these characters. Fanfiction is absolutely about projection, wish fulfillment, and change... but it’s also about consistency, at least at a certain base level. Creating something you wanted to see that the canon didn’t deliver on is just writing a new, original story. Doing that and keeping the story recognizable in particular, appealing ways? That’s fic.

#rwby #fic things #mymetas #Anonymous

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