Hello, fellow fic-writers! Kudos for watching this video 💖 Don't forget that this is only the beginning. If you want to learn how to understand your blorbo better than ever, you can either find out in two weeks by subscribing, or you could join my Patreon at the Extra Kudos tier and find out today! In addition to early access to my videos, you'll also get these delightful perks: 📑 Exclusive worksheets and bonus video content ✍ The original scripts for all videos published so far (perfect if you love to take notes) ✂ Cut script content and unfinished drafts 🎬 Your name in the credits so everyone knows you're the reason why they get to watch more Cora Maria videos 💖 My endless gratitude for your generosity~! This video is stuffed full of great tips and tricks that you could be using to improve your fanfiction *right now* and it also comes with a Patreon-exclusive worksheet to help you nail your blorbo (not in that way, sorry). If that sounds like an offer you want to jump on, kudos to you! Check out the link below and see if it's right for you 😁 👉 www.patreon.com/coramaria
Having canon characters in name only is one of my biggest pet peeves. If you’re writing an AU, there are naturally going to be some differences, but nothing is actually recognizable as what it was in the source material, you may as well just change the names and call it an original story.
Yeeeep there's this one fic of my NoTP that I really enjoyed anyway but I think a big part of that is that everyone are canon characters in name only. When I did my own modern AU, I did try to have the characters resemble their canon counterparts significantly, except for one who was written to be OOC on purpose. (I feel like his specific personality only makes sense in the context of canon, soooo writing him OOC in this AU made more sense, and I did try to keep compatible traits like his larger-than-life personality and confidence.)
I wanted to mention that I have actually read a fanfic once that was “Character In Name Only” with the same ABC example shown AND it was a High School AU (how ironic). The MC was naturally confident but the fic made her extremely self depricating. The B love interest is hot headed and passionate in canon, but was made a watered down Troy Bolton. And C in canon was the sweetest girl ever and B’s childhood friend, but they made her an Evil Prom Queen w/ no trace of her selfless being
Yes! I generally have a pretty good grasp on dialogue and emotions but sometimes this can happen to me in my drafts. I have to revise my work to be less melodramatic and rely on subtext a little more, and consider how the characters might show vulnerability in their own unique way.
@@CoraMariaYou look great, not that my opinion matters. I do want to share my internal dialogue before realizing you are considerate enough to type up full captions without commentary. "Count every single rhinestone 1...2.... wait what was just said? Focus on the lips. 3...4... Nice phone case. Something about flanderization. Should i get my hair like that? OMG THERE ARE CAPTIONS THIS PERSON IS THE BEST!" Seriously, quality captions are getting really rare, and I was having a hard time focusing on your lips with the stunning look you put on. Thank you for the captions and can you do a closet tour?
@BJGvideos Because it is fun, plot convenience, for some of my AU ideas the canon personalities make no sense and are too restrictive. And I believe if a backstory is changed, a character would develop to be different.
im planning a fic for a character who is from a visual novel and his personality does change depending on the mc's (aka the player's) choices. he does still have core parts of his personality of course, but it's still fun to see how differently he responds to things and how it's all technically canon. and it excuses me writing him a bit "ooc" since my fic is a fantasy au and his backstory is going to be a lot more angsty than the canon (modern setting with a generally happy and safe life)
Another way I try to avoid excessive self projecting is by putting a little bit of myself in *every* character (maybe it's easier for me since my fic is very OC-heavy, though). This I find really helps me avoid protagonist centered morality as well
I do this a ton, especially with oc’s. There’s one canon character from a series I like I’ve found myself projecting onto a lot in particular though, but I make sure to take into account canon characterization, which there isn’t a whole lot of since they’re a relatively minor character, and alter or reframe my projective headcanon’s around those details, using things I project from myself to fill in the blanks without erasing what is shown in canon. I find it interesting to be able to project very heavily while still working with canon differences the character has from me to avoid making a complete self insert, finding ways to use my own experiences and traits to add depth to his character and story while also being able to psychoanalyze myself and introspect in a way that I find therapeutic.
@@aceofspades8474 This is so often me with Zelda. Some self-projection can be really powerful! I find its more comforting to explore parts of myself through fictional characters rather than create self-inserts (though some people might find self-inserts more helpful and that's fine, too)
In some danganronpa fics on THAT side of the fandom, Kokichi either gets woobified or character bashed and it depends on what ship the author is writing
God when I do a video on how to write shipfic, I'm gonna make a point to say that character bashing love rivals just for "getting in the way" of your ship is *never* in good taste.
oh my god YES!!! its all or nothing with them and that really pisses me off, because the entire point of kokichis character is the opposite! he calls himself a liar, and he does lie, but he also tells the truth!! hes a bad person for good reasons, but hes also a good person for bad reasons!! his checkered scarf is even a reference to this, and it just upsets me how badly hes misconstrued 😭
My poor guy gets absolutely torn apart by both sides of the fandom. It's either people despise him to the point of taking every opportunity related or otherwise to bash on him or they completely misinterpret him and treat him like a child. Kokichi is a very interesting character, it's a shame that so few people are willing to look past the surface these days.
but what if the character gets flanderised in canon? I’m in the Ace Attorney fandom and a character called Larry Butz in the first game is a person who is down on his luck in general, especially with romance, thus he has several girlfriends across that game. He’s goofy, and weird, and somewhat obnoxious, but the main character Phoenix literally calls him his ‘best friend’ for a reason - his heart’s in the right place and he does what he can to help his friends. After the first game, however, he is reduced to being a skirt-chaser who literally blackmails one of the girls he’s fallen in love with, and both of his friends always go on about how insufferable he is. Then why have you been friends with him for so long??? Justice for the Butz. He’s even written the way he is in game 3 in fanfiction. Edit: typo.
You’re so real for this comment. Larry deserves better. What I would do is take Larry’s AA1 characterisation and build off of that as a base, to add more depth. I’ve also seen some fics use his skirt chaser tendencies to write him as an anxiously attached person with a pattern of falling into abusive or unhealthy relationships. There’s some evidence in the games that would fit into it.. like the way he cheerfully talks about being slapped by past gfs. Also in AA3 there’s a weird, blink and you’ll miss it line Phoenix says about Larry that “he went through some pretty tough times as a kid”. The seeds are there… it’s your prerogative to cultivate them.
don’t know much ab ace attorney, but I’d say it’s only bad if it’s ooc. if the character gets sht on in canon, then it’s in character for them to be sht on in fanfic, and vice versa if they’re not shtty in canon it’s ooc in fanfic
This is super helpful! I would like to add that this advice works if you genuinely want to avoid mischaracterization. If you want to experiment with characters, for example in an AU or for canon divergence reasons, you're free to do this. If you don't care about your fic getting attention, and you just want to have fun writing, you obviously can still do that. HOWEVER, it certainly wouldn't hurt to acknowledge this in your notes or tags. And of course, be aware of implicit biases when writing certain characters who belong to minority groups.
Yes! In Part 3 of this trilogy, I do also cover some reasons why someone might choose to write OOC on purpose and how that can still make for great writing 😉
I just wanna say that all your videos are really interesting and its super cool to see writing advice that's specifically tailored for fanfiction. It's just fun to see how different fanfic is as a medium compared to other types of writing. Also, your visual aesthetic is awesome. In summary: great vibes, great video!
Thank-you! With how so many people try to legitimise fanfiction by how it is "good practice" for or even as good as/better than published fiction, I think it's important that we break that habit to instead help fanfiction stand as its own medium. I've studied the publishing industry in uni and I've felt that pressure to get paid for writing fiction kill my passion for it, so I'm glad to have found my joy again and to use it to help others 💖
Personally, I really like to tackle skewed priorities on purpose! Like, _the protagonist_ believes their end goal is (almost) always the end-all be-all. Yet either the narrative itself condemns them for it via other characters, or the character themselves realizes that this is kind of a messed up attitude on their part, or both. Oftentimes both - and sometimes the protag will just keep doing the thing regardless, either because the pros ultimately outweigh the cons in their eyes or because they think the end justifies the means. It's just fun for me to try and get into the head of someone who thinks this way.
I've certainly written a fic where a character was 'acting' in a role, because the character isn't as fleshed out in cannon as I was hoping. Also, bashing is a great way to get me to click off a fic.
I do actually cover writing OOC on purpose in Part 3 of this trilogy, so def subscribe if you haven't already! And Part 2 does cover how the less fleshed out a character is in canon, the more freedom you have to interpret them however you like 😊
@@CoraMaria A very useful distinction. You avoided talking about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but many fandoms have characters that evoke interesting vibes, but nothing solid to pin them on. Over half of the student names in HP, for instance. The other interesting thing is when you drag a character so far away from the canon story that they have to adapt, or reveal undefined areas about their backstory. Yup, I like your vids and will watch more, was just commenting on their intersection with my own writing. (Very few, but many words, Writing_Heroics on AO3)
I'm so glad someone's talking about this!!! My biggest turn off for OOC characters is when they use swears in their dialogue that aren't canonically used in their world. This happens way too often in fantasy-centric fics and it seriously pulls you out of the world real quick.
7:45 Funny thing is, that's exactly the thing I'm working with. Canon material: The character is a dad getting the only known cure for his dying kid. When the protag gets him the cure, he decides to just have the cure sent via caravan through a lawless land and sticks with the protag. Meanwhile, I'm rewriting it so that he does think he should stick around the protag out of gratitude (especially since they're also dealing with trying to save their son), but the protag insists he goes and makes sure the cure works, and that he can come back if he wants. A big OOC fanfic issue I have is PJO. Especially Annabeth. She may be slightly possessive of Percy because of trauma, but she's not one of those Yandere like the fanfics make her be. Like, it's seriously insane how people villainize her. Worst she did was be a little competitive towards Rachel, what I recall.
Annabeth is literally my favourite character in PJO how dare they 😠 Also since she's a teen who also has the trauma of losing friends, it's totally understandable that she would have that character trait, regardless of if there's a romantic motivation involved or not. Also I've only read Book 1 of HOO, but weren't she and Rachel friends by then?
Ya, by the end her and Rachel were cool, she did still have that "I won him" joy but she's a teen so that's normal. But in fact (and I'll avoid names to avoid spoilers, unless you already saw), in the final HOO book she high-fives a character who tells Percy they liked them but moved on. She does get a little jealous of another character in the 3rd HOO book, but that's also excusable because her boyfriend's been missing for a while.
the worst case woobifed is from the invader zim fandom zim is written as a sad nerd forget the whole "dark harvest' i have to ament to doing it to it's to hard to write him as like able otherwise but it has to at least be explained
It can be hard to write an unlikeable person as a likeable character but it's definitely possible! At the same time, that threshold is different for everyone and very polarising, but when a writer can make me love a character while still feeling disgust for their misdeeds? 😚👌
its not just ooc i read it was inconsistent characterization. The fic begins with mc being shy and self conscious and chapters later they are sassy and a baddie there was no plot that triggered that the author literally just did an 180 on the whim.
Usually it's in service of the Dramione ship: woobifying the actual Death Eater and making the anti-Death Eater a Death Eater 🙄 (that's not to say I'm against the Dramione ship in general. just how some people go about executing it.)
FANFIC-CENTRIC WRITING CHANNEL? SOMEONE IS FINALLY EDUCATING THE MASSES? OH BLESS YOU BLESS YOU I have spent so much time learning how to properly write, not just fic but original writing, and have read millions of words of fic. Ohhh my GOD are people like you needed. Subscribing IMMEDIATELY
Oh man. In my fandom, the canon protagonist takes a statement literally that's intended to be figurative ONE TIME. Exactly once. And the fandom seems to have decided he's an idiot as a result. It drives me crazy, because it's ignoring all the rest of the evidence that he's far from stupid.
Ooh! I'm not entirely sure if she'll cover this (I've pretty much only started the video) but I've got a writing dialogue in character tip if anyone wants it!, try and see if you can visualize the character saying it in their own voice, and if you can't hear it in their voice, try editing it some more. (Idk if I've described this well, but it's helped me so I hope it can help someone else 😅)
Reading out loud is part of how I edit. I remember in a oneshot I wrote, Link (who is silent in canon, tbf) ended up sounding too flowery like the OC villain of my longfic, (which is *not* a comparison I wanted to make!) so thank god I picked up on that by reading aloud!
I just searched up fanfic writing and I was NOT expecting to have my foundation rocked like this lol. Amazing video, I'm furiously taking notes as I watch
okay, so I enjoy this one character a lot and sometimes I like to see his heart ripped apart in front of him (as one does), though I have to click off of SO many fics because of it not being "this has hurt me on a deep level" and being more "OwO, I'm jus a lil baby who cries a lot bc everyone hurts meee and EVERYTHING happens to lil ol' me{>~
I may be sleepy and overworked and might not write the comment this video deserves- but I deeply agree with all of these points. ESPECIALLY the flanderization, the wooby and double standarts. I remember a movie I loved that had good jokes. But after reading the fanfics to it, I didn't enjoy the jokes anymore, since the writers used these jokes as the traits of the characters and repeated them till they got stale. I hate it so much how writers bend the whole universe to justify an attractive chracter's actions - even turn sweet protagonists from canon secretly evil and psycho. Also I don’t enjoy when a complex characters with depth and edges becomes a harmony seeking softy.
God, using jokes to flanderise characters is such a common one. For Nora, I should've brought up the example of "We'll break his legs!" because the fandom has used that to characterise her as violent and threatening but like in a "cute" way somehow??? Huh??? I do think jokes can help inform characterisation, such as how Midna calling Link "Mr Important Hero" in canon makes me think that she's terrible with names so she likes to use nicknames for people. I still don't have her say "Mr Important Hero" all the time and try to be very sparing with it. God, bending the universe to justify an attractive or identifiable character's actions. I've actually gotten some hate comments for NOT doing that! (I've deleted them both for my sanity and theirs since I don't want my audience going after them.) Like forgive me for wanting to write heroes who are in the wrong sometimes and have a growth arc! Forgive me for wanting to address the protagonist (or princess/goddess?)-centred morality of my own fandom source material!
This is really great advice! I’ve stopped really writing fanfic because my main creative outlet is drawing now but this was really interesting. How are you this underrated??
The flanderization thing happens in Touhou all the time. All. The. Time. Because Yuyuko was gluttonous a few times & is implied to have tried to eat one character, she became Nikocado the Hutt. Hong slept on the job in a game? Now she’s the laziest slacker in the series. Tenshi wanted people to punish her? She’s a mashochist. An interesting thing ZUN does is to introduce a new character who has the fanon traits of an extant one, to replace that character’s flanderized persona.
In all the fic I’ve seen about him (I haven’t seen a lot), Atsushi (from bsd) is always Flanderizated and people forget the ‘’deeper’’ aspects of his personality, writing him as a cute, shy and weak character who doesn’t know what he wants. The few fanfics where I’ve seen this mistake in made me give up in hoping that I could see a canon representation of him. That’s why I’m planning on writing a more canon fanfic with him. (Sorry if it’s weird, english isn’t my first language)
I’m new to actually writing fanfiction and have been publishing a marvel fanfic on Wattpad for a couple of months. I think I’ve been improving a bit, but I know I can do better with some things and this video was pretty helpful.
to be honest when i first clicked i was terrified that i would have done all these things, tho now im js glad one of my favorite things to do with my characters is to give them flaws lol
2:26 I WANNA THROW A VASE AT THE WALL AT HOW MUCH PEOPLE DO THIS TO KOKICHI FROM DANGANRONPA 😭😭😭 EVEN IN OTHER MEDIUMS THAT AREN'T FANFICS (They actually do quite a few of these tropes with his character and like to character bash his rivals/foes like Maki Harukawa and Kaito Momota or even Kaede Akamatsu when it comes to shipfics. I've even seen character bashing on Shuichi Saihara, which is the character that Kokichi is shipped with the most, all because he told him in one chapter that he'll be alone in the English translation because he was sick of Kokichi's antics at that point and him acting like he didn't care about sending off another character to their death basically... A reasonable thing to say to someone in that moment and people write fanfics about Kokichi crying after that, which is OOC, and basically guilt-tripping Shuichi for saying that... It's ridiculous...)
[in reference to the flanderization and stuff] i usually only notice how ooc a fic is when i stop hyperfixating on it (or like leave the fandom but that hardly ever happens) and then its like all i notice about the fanon/fics 😭
That's pretty normal, I think. When you hyperfixate on something, you just want to inhale as much of it as possible, but as it fades, you find you need a little more quality to keep you engaged.
I think the worst example of "in make only"is the Batman fandom trying to write reverse ribbons. They literally just make Tim another Jason, usually even going so far as to make him the Red Hood, which is the bullest of shit ever.
I don't know if it's still a thing in the fandom, but in the MLP fandom Spike got absolutely wrecked for basically no reason. You can see this phenomenon best in both "Friendship is Witchcraft", where Spike is harmed in various ways for comedic effect, and "Friendship is Manly", where Spike is specifically not invited to Gummy's birthday party. But these OOC tropes also ran absolutely _rampant_ in the CreepyPasta fandom, to the point it still partially effects my versions of the characters (I've tried to turn these into enhancements to add flavour to my fanfics with them). A handful of examples include: Jeff: absolutely woobified in every way imaginable. He was the babygirl, the face of the fandom. Imagine the scene from Hercules where Hercules is swarmed by fangirls, and multiply that by at least 50 to get what happened to poor Jeff. Jane, Jeff's mortal enemy: Her entire personality was reduced to simply hating Jeff, to the point where she was vilified for her justified anger. Simply put, the fandom deemed that if you were in any way positively associated with Jeff, Jane would hate you just as much as she hates him. A very narrow view of things tbh. Toby: Waffles. His handful of mental disorders and disabilities also got him the Pinkie Pie treatment, where no one took him seriously and wrote him mostly as an annoying _QuIrKy_ teenager instead of the deeply traumatized and mentally disabled man he is. Tim: Similar story with Toby, just flipped. He was treated as the stereotypical Boomer man who was constantly annoyed by Toby. Also, Cheesecake, but more maliciously, since it started out as a "joke" that was "poking fun" at his actors weight. Brian: Tim's canonical best friend, and the single worst case of woobification I've seen to this day. The friendly, almost stoic man got turned into an absolute stuttering mess more shy than _episode 1 Fluttershy_ by the fandom. Basically, if "U-UwU s-s-super i-introverted 👉👈" was a person. Absolutely awful to witness. Basically, only name and looks matched canon. There are probably a lot more occurrences of this problem in that specific fandom, but these 5 were the ones I could recall and properly identify off the top of my head.
Celestia also gets quite often bashed or turned into a straight up villain... Like, she's got flaws and made mistakes, but many fics take it to an extreme point :c
@@bonnietelocole6777 It's not always, but it's frequent enough to be noticeable imo. I think it stems from either Luna stans (and I say it as someone who loves Luna as well) that think Celestia was totally in the wrong (which I think is a flaky argument, given that it's been show that Celestia did not want to banish her, and that Nightmare Moon was a dangerous pony), folks who think she manipulated Twilight to do her bidding (which is a fair reading, I guess; but I like to see that like a parent trying to guide their children to their fullest potential rather than Celestia not caring for Twilight), people who think she's incompetent (which again, somewhat fair since she's been defeated by many villains in the show, but I think it's more of a rule of drama kind of thing to set up the villains as very strong so the challenges the Element Bearers face seem even harder; nopony incompetent could keep a prosperous kingdom for 1000 years), or her out of the blue decision to pawn of the entirety of Equestria to Twilight with little to no warning (I blame bad writing for that one lol). What I mean to say is, Celestia is a flawed pony who messes up _a lot_ in terms of her personal relationship, but she's no villain like some fics make her out to be; she's kind and compassionate, trying to find peaceful solutions where possible, with a cheeky sense of humour and a deep care for all of her little ponies; she's no secretly evil witch who rules with an iron hoof; she's instead a pony isolated from the world despite being surrounded by friendly faces, simply due to the pedestal others put her in, so when she has those few close personal relationships she's very prone to majorly mess up.
@@RyebuckCoppercap Exactly what I thought when you said that some people write her as a villain. I don't plan to write her as a villain in a fic I'm planning, I'm just straight up gonna make her disappear. The story will take place after season 3, during episode 1 of season 4, but I change the story to include a character who, to break free from her stone prison, possesses Fluttershy. The _only_ reason I include the Tree of Harmony in this fic is specifically to get Celestia and Luna out of the way so the villain isn't instantly defeated xD I might change this, since it's a work in progress, but I'll see what I can do with this version of the story. If I can't do anything, I'll revise it again and change it's place in the timeline. I only write with the first 3 seasons because I want Princess Twilight _and_ her Oak Library _and_ the Elements of Harmony
@@bonnietelocole6777 Haha yeah, it can be quite the puzzle to write around OP characters who realistically would've fixed the issue in a split second, but that part of the fun imo :3
I'm not sure if it makes me feel better or worse that I ended up rolling my eyes through most of this video. Not because of YOU by the way, you're very articulate and informative, it's just that a lot of what you were saying seems so basic to me it shouldn't even NEED to be said, like "consider NOT justifying Genocide because the Villain is Hot and/or White" Ugh. Anyway, maybe the next 2 parts will be more helpful, I like to think I'm pretty good at writing in character but I'm still somewhat insecure on this in particular and am always looking to improve. Plus you used a RWBY character so that deserved a like on it's own :p
Yeeeess, I cannot stand OOC characters in fanfic (unfortunately, it is very common though). I even make a point of keeping characters I dislike in-character and simply reframing the narrative surrounding them. The cool thing about the advice you gave here is that some of it (like the issue with protagonist-centered morality or self-projection by the author) can absolutely be applied to original characters/stories as well. Great video!
I will never forgive all the fics where Petra from AOT gets character-bashed to the absolute smithereens, like leave my girl alone, she barely even had any screen time in canon
Loved the video! It was funny, when you set up the most woobified character type I actually thought you were going to say serial killers or slashers, but I do think your take on it was the actual correct answer xD I do write for a horror character who isn't a slasher (Brahms Heelshire from The Boy,) and while the hardcore fans seem to know what he's about, there are a lot of people that take "slashers" and kind of cast them in roles and ship them with each other, and my Tumblr searches are always FULL of those people. People often lump the character I write for into that category, which is weird to me, but I think the biggest mischaracterization I tend to see is Pennywise the Clown. I've yet to find a post on Tumblr about him that has any basis in his reality as a projection of children's fear created by a space spider. My favorite headcanon I read ended by saying "but deep down? He cares." I'm just like... No. He does not 😂
Oooof I remember hearing about people woobifying irl serial killers too 🤮 though doing it to fictional serial killers is at least not disrespecting real victims and their families. There is a sorta interesting phenomenon in fandom where a dark canon will often have ✨light and fluffy✨ fan content while a light canon will often have 🔪 dark and gritty 🔪 fan content (see Friendship is Magic). We tend to use fandom to provide what canon does not, after all.
I'm not sure there is much to say about drabbles, sorry. They're just fics that are exactly 100 words long. I did talk about them briefly in this video though: th-cam.com/video/W2MjMlDUlVc/w-d-xo.html
Even though I'm writing an Alternate Canon type of story, I'm writing it so that the plot is a bit different and the characters sometimes do different things, but I do my best to keep them in character. The biggest trouble I'm having right now is that I don't want to copy the dialogue, but I want to follow the plot in a certain scene. Once I get through that hiccup, I have the next several chapters all set up. I just have seen several fanfics that are popular that copy the game as if playing it, but I don't like most of them because it's like they're rehashing the gameplay. The only time I've liked a fanfic like that was when the character thought she was dreaming of being in Fallout 3 or she might have awakened in the world of Fallout 3. I'm not sure which because last I checked, she hadn't finished the fanfic.
As someone who is in a video game fandom myself and does sometimes adapt scenes from canon (as well as read novelisations), I totally see where you're coming from. I actually cover this scenario in Part 3 with one of my favourite alternate canon fanfics of 'Twilight Princess' and how it inspired my own fanfic.
me seeing you use nora as an example and then say your pet peeve is character-centered morality "hello, fellow person who dropped the show after s4-5♥"
I'm a huge Byler fan and in a lot of fanfics I notice that people do a lot of character bashing on Eleven, which I find strange, yes I ship her boyfriend with his friend, but she's still a good character and very endearing, so I don't really understand the hate just because people want their ship, you can still ship Byler and be a Eleven fan.
Goddddd I hate when shippers do this, even if we ship the same thing! As a Midlink shipper, people would do this to Ilia all the time, though thankfully that trend seems to have died down. I do still see this all the time though: being a "threat" to the (presumed monogamous) ship is treated as unforgivable by the audience. No matter how much the writer might try to flesh out the rival or make you feel their point-of-view, the audience will still hate on them, especially if they're anything less than perfect. Meanwhile the love interest they prefer will have all their flaws and mistakes excused, even if they're just as bad or worse than the love rival's 🙄
I rmbr reading this one heikazu fic (genshin), and it was rlly sweet for the most part.. but then later in the fic they made kokomi, tomo and an oc the villain (and also had a scene described as “evil laughing”) KOKOMI. OF ALL CHARACTERS. like genuinely evil for no reason, she had no beef w heizou or kazuha but was tryna help break them up. her first introduction in it felt sweet and could’ve been a good plot point but the evil part.. eugh. tomo too. I know he only has a few lines, but the entirety of what he did was sacrificing himself for his friends. he was not a bad person. and as someone who also likes kazuhei it hurt me deeply having him become the villain. I genuinely haven’t touched wattpad since. it’s a shame bc I rlly liked the fic before that point but making them villains was just so.. no.
I don't know this fandom at all but I'm so sorry you're having to deal with that in your fandom. Something like this often happened in the old Twilight Princess fandom with Ilia just because she was a "romantic rival" to some more popular ships and apparently people didn't know how to handle so-called love rivals without villainising them urgh Thankfully the current fandom handles her characterisation much better!
it really scares me that woobification often happens to white cis male characters who often are alligned with fascist or nazist imagery (kylo ren, draco malfoy, etc)
Not exactly canon characters, but I've noticed i tend to overnerf my characters. Make it so even though they could win a fight, they just don't because "oh! They had horrible aim, or they were focused on something else, or they just dont have the energy!". It's difficult to handle because im worried that if i change it, i may make the character overpowered or something. And during writing this I forgot why I wrote it, so it's just here now.
This is a fantastic resource! You totally nailed these points. I haven’t been able to articulate why when a fic feels ooc to me but here you’ve laid it out so clearly! I really appreciate the practical examples too, puts your explanations into context🙏 I’m glad that you did not mention the term “Mary Sue” - there’s just too much baggage on that one now that it barely means anything or means too much. “Protagonist-centred morality” is much more neutral and precisely points out the problem I feel that (at least some of) the original “Mary Sue” criticism was targeting. A very useful tool for analysis in general. I also appreciate that you’re not afraid to call out the racist tendencies in fandom (as well as halo effect tendencies around “attractiveness” which can be rooted in racism too let’s be real) - it bothers me so much when I see it😭 Here’s to becoming a more inclusive and aware community!❤️ And YAY CONGRATS ON YOUR PATREON LAUNCH!!! I’ll definitely see you there as soon as can!💕
There's a character in a fandom who is SO OOC in every whump fic of him, that everyone just accepts this is his personality: Grian. I cannot read anymore hurt Grian fics without him being amazingly OOC and it's infuriating, because it ended up with me being driven away from the fandom.
its an old fandom but Merlin from Merlin is the ultimate woobifacation in my opinion. Sometimes when I browes AO3 looking for Merlin fics I just wonder if I am the one confused and merlin isn't actually supposed to be one of the most powerful and dangerous sorcers with a heart of gold, instead he's a crying twink all of the time and I just.... I just don't know how an entire fandom has done that. on another note, I think that these are all great ooc things to stay away from if that's what your going for, but I have also read and deeply enjoyed many fics that fell into these six trapps the face gems are excellent
7:31 - as someone who's read TLI and who is currently reading TSR, this gave me quite the laugh lmao. Gotta love that shameless self promo! Funnily enough, I kind of felt like the official novelization of one of my favorite games made the central protagonists feel OOC. Not massively OOC, but enough that it felt kinda jarring. Maybe it's just that the author of the novelization got a different vibe than I did, but the novelization had the central protagonists become an official couple when I never really got the vibe of them being shipped in the game itself. I still enjoyed the novelization, but the out-of-left-field shipping-the-protagonists aspect kind of lessened that.
Yessss omg there are some future TSR chapters that really go into this and I hope you're ready to feel the angst 😈 It's definitely a tricky balance to strike when the shipping bug strikes. I recently read a popular fic in an anime/manga fandom where I felt like the couple I was already rooting for got consumed by their coupleness to the point where their individual characterisations felt off. Will have to do a video about writing shipfic at some point!
I have a weird relationship with OOC fics because I'm deep into the LOZ fandom. Link doesn't really have an established personality, and one of his few commonly occurring traits across the franchise is being silent, so he is written differently in almost every fic. I've come to enjoy reading LOZ fics with "OOC" in the tags because authors get so creative with how they reinvent Link. It's cool :3
My subconscious character bashing is straight up avoiding the character in the fic 😭 (and if they a main character I ain’t writing the fic) Edit: 11:19 If I set this up; something would happen where Wallflower and queen bee somehow end up in a sapphic relationship 😔 (they either: A) Realize og love interest is not all that B) Find out og love interest is gay) Edit 2: I tend to see Boscha (ToH) OOC; she either looses her b***chiness or is a b***ch to Amity 😔
You bringing up how white villains get woobified while poc characters don't get shit reminds me of how BG3 fandom will make Ascended Astarion act like prince charming when WYLL RAVENGARD IS RIGHT THERE
Shoutout to the Persona 5 fandom - or, more specifically the Shuake/Akeshu side of the fandom - for doing Akechi right more often than not. He's one of those characters I feared the fandom would not treat well, but the majority of fic I have read in this fandom has done him so well, even in AUs! Though I worry if I step out of my little corner over here that I'll find people bashing on him so much that he may as well have died for a third time.
Flanderisation and Character-bashing remind me pretty much of the south park fandon: not only in fics, but basically in everything that is done by the fandom.
I'm a part of the Pokemon Legends Arceus fandom and the number one thing that bounces me off of any given fic is the female protagonist Akari. Canonically, there's nothing inherently wrong with her. However. The fandom woobifies her so, SO badly that it's actually unbearable to read, and it's made me dislike her as a character- Which doesn't even make sense, she's the silent protag. But it's frustrating because so many people project themselves into her and then make a fic with a promising premise secretly all about babying Akari and calling (my favorite character) Ingo her Dad or her Uncle or whatever. It feels extremely dissonant with my experience playing the game- main character felt capable and strong despite the circumstances -that I genuinely can't stand it. Obviously that's pretty normal. She's a main character, of course people are going to project. Some part of me knows it's petty. It's just so, frustrating, seeing it absolutely everywhere. I have seen maybe two takes of her character I actually liked, but most of the time it feels like a character massacre and it's almost always the worst part of a fic for me.
There's a fandom I'm in, a pretty obscure one, for a web series called hfjONE and boy oh boy is there a lot to be said about the characterization across the fandom, especially when it comes to the main antagonist. I'm not entirely sure if woobification is fitting to Airy's case. He's certainly a fascinating antagonist and a lot of that intrigue comes from his complete detachment and ignorance to the harm he's caused. I don't doubt for a second that he doesn't want to hurt anyone. But I think the fandom is a little to willing and a bit to quick to forgive him for having had extremely negative effects on everyone he's interacted with in the past decade with only two exceptions (those being a baby and a man who believed the encounter to be a dream). He's a sympathetic antagonist, but he is an absolutely horrible person. Redeemable, for sure, but it should happen far away from the other characters. ... There's also a lot to be said about how the fandom treats the protagonist, especially in relation to Airy. A lot of people use him as a vehicle for a redemption arc, when the most canon shows is some understanding of Airy's isolation. That understanding doesn't change every other moment of horror and contempt. Again, it's pretty obscure in terms of the larger fandom scape but I LOVE looking into characterization and analyzing this sort of thing, so I hope you enjoyed this largely out of context rambling.
Fandoms as a collective often struggle with nuance, I've noticed. If you feel this way about the antagonist, I definitely recommend reading that Teen Vogue article I put in the description. I think you'll find it very validating of how you feel ❤️🩹
yeah, i notice in fanfics airy is always brought to one end of the extremities- he's either done nothing wrong in his life or out-of-character pure evil. i think a lot of good writing boils down to exploring the grays within those extremities, and it's *hard* to do it well, so you get a lot of instances of woobification in his case.
Having been raised on ffnet and wattpad (especially in the undertale fandom), I'm pretty much invulnerable to OOC fics and can easily look past it if the fic is good enough. However, if the characterization gets so bad, I will click off, so I try to avoid making my fics too OOC as well, so I really enjoyed this video!! :D
in the invader zim fandom, the answer is... all of them. every single one. they all have harsh, big, dramatic personalities that are pretty hard to swallow. most of them cause their own misery and zim especially is prone to double standard writing... if they acknowledge that he did anything bad at all. the deuteragonist dib usually gets the brunt of projection, probably because he Almost has those relatable daddy issues- but almost no reader can relate to how cruel, vicious, and overly dramatic he can be. so they just write him all too normal. i am convinced that the amount of people who actually enjoy the source material for what it is could be counted on one hand
Woobification is probably one of my biggest pet peeves not even just in fanfic but in fandom overall because like. One of my favorite characters ever (who......tbh i do project onto as well lol but i wouldnt let it get out of hand (right?)) Is a cold-blooded murderer. When I say cold, I mean cold. His ability is really messed up (takes peoples bodily autonomy away and then kills them) but people ALMOST ALWAYS ignore this and its so annoying. Just because he may look twinky doesn't mean he's now some innocent baby or some quirky gay stereotype. Maybe I have my standards really high for this character but still man... the characterization...
I'm a Svsss fan and let me tell you the woobification is so bad. I personally love a morally gray character, i want to see a character have consequences and grow from their actions. Svsss does this by having not just the main pairs by all of the cast being morally gray in some way, BUT the amount of time i see a characters bad traits and actions down played is HORRENDOUS. Shen jiu is a common victim of this along with the love interest Binghe. The character bashing of female characters can get pretty out of hand as well but i feel like that is a pretty wide spread problem in fandom spaces not just in the Svsss fandom.
Can i also mention, bob velseb fanfics are like this. It depends on if theyre doing a minor in the realm of possibilities ooc thing or if theyre completely changing their character
mischaracization is something i struggle with, since i really struggle to grasp characters specific traits while writing. gladly i'd say im a little better at it then the average mischaractizer, since im aware of it and activelly trying to combat it.
in the Sun and moon show fandom (a fan channel into of itself for fnaf security breach) the character Ruin is done dirty in almost all accounts, flanderized, woobified, and character bashed. 1. he's british (flanderized for it) 2. he's seen as a sad boy who was pushed to do bad things by the creator / nexus / anyone who opposed him (woobified) 3.seen as a lit. phycotic monster with little to no reason for doing what he did (character bashed) which also goes along with protagonist centered morality since he's character bashed for killing Solar (brother of the protagonists) and not for like doing the exact same to billions of people..
the thing is OOC is intentionally a crucial part of my fanfic (characters aware that they are in a book and character A is mimicking character B throughout the arc). I tried my best not to stow away from the canon, but I am quite terrified that I might turn off my readers 😢.
I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, characterization can be hard to master. It’s in human nature to generalize and boil down people to their fundamentals, so I’m glad there’s a video out there that helps with it
Wally West definitely tends to get woobified a lot. He’s a confident, brash, and occasionally rude but overall friendly guy in canon, but in fanfiction he has this tendency to be all shy and insecure. He’ll have abusive parents (which depending on the continuity MAY be accurate but not in the way people write it), be really self-depricating (again, sometimes this isn’t inaccurate, but it’s written in a way that makes no sense for him), or he’ll be really passive about wrongs done to him (not even a little bit accurate to him in any universe). This is mainly a problem in Birdflash (Wally West aka Kid Flash or the Flash/Dick Grayson aka Robin or Nightwing) fics, especially ones surrounding the Young Justice cartoon. The issue is that non-Birdflash fics with Wally as a central character are a pain in the ass to track down. I am in never ending pain
Whenever I read Guilty Gear fanfics with Zappa in it there’s a 90% chance half of his thoughts will be him thinking about his mom. The thing is that he mentions his mom like. Twice.
Of all the FFXIV characters I read about, Zenos is one I just can't handle being written wrong. He's the crown prince of the evil empire who feels nothing except when he's "hunting", and all he wants is that penultimate fight. So when I see him expressing more than boredom, annoyance, and the thrill of battle, I have to close the page. I also remember reading this HORRENDOUS Hellsing fic back in highschool, where the writer just mashed all of their favorite shows into it. I knew from the first chapter it was going to be bad when Alucard "whooped" with glee (This was before Hellsing Ultimate Abridged). Not only did they shove every vampire show and anime they knew of into it, there was a subplot where House and Wilson hooked up and ran off to London for unknown reasons, but Snape and Draco showed up at the Hellsing estate and Snape started making out with Seras Victoria! (This was also written right after the 6th Harry Potter book came out). Sometimes I want to see if I can find that trainwreck again and see how it ended, but I value my sanity too much.
I am a perfectionist and my characters have to be as canon as possible. Which is why it’s taking years to write my fanfic. That and I had a baby las these which literally sucked all my creativity away and it’s only now slowly coming back as he’s about to turn 1 year old.
I hate when characters who aren't like this act all "I will defend for myself when sick! I can take it!" like NO half of my characters would sob and be overdramatic to their s/o!!! Not toning it down, sobbing, crying, cursing the Gods for being sick!!! Minor cold? Bedrest. Broken bone? Not moving for twice the period the doctor said. Temporary blidnness/deafness? Clingy as FUCK. Bonus points if it's a character whos learning to be dependent on others after healing from trauma.
I have a Circus AU (human) and the characters of it are literal deities in the game they are from, it is so damn hard to write them having human flaws while keeping them as true to canon, but it is not impossible, and honestly there's nothing more rewarding than making an AU and managing to make the characters IC. I dont mind ooc if its within measure and I wont bash a writer for going ooc but since this video is for this topic here I am lol, making some introspection. One of these Deities is a god of travel and freedom, and in the fandom a lot of the fics write them as a y/n and you can FEEL they are using this character, since the info about them its not easily available in the game and you have to search for it, to just do a self insert with an in game name instead of doing a /Reader or /OC because they know those fanfics dont get as much attention as the ones with canon charas. Depicting them completely the opposite of what they are, saying they are the youngest god when they are one of the oldest, that they are fragile when they have participated in 3 intergalactic wars and one galaxy-wide disaster that wiped out 1/3 of the universe. it brings me headaches because they are my fave and the one I write the most lmao.
one thing that also always makes me click off instantly is when they suddenly make everyone swear constantly or call eachother pet names they never would in canon
Rant// The fandom I’m currently writing for tend to mischaracterise characters A LOT! Why? Ships. Of course it’s because of ships. From a sadistic, mad, selfish villain turned to boyfriend goals or like canon but never condemned for their raging toxicity in any ship including them, the character being shipped with them often turned into the perfect dubiously conventual victim that’s to sweet to not forget them for murdering their entire crew and full of no hate whatsoever🥺 either that or shoved into a relationship they don’t want and them being obviously uncomfortable or scared with and about it but people finding it te whole pitying them at the same time because character A is thirsted over.. Another example is a previous antagonist in the story, while going trough a character growth arc, a grumpy human who has their valid reasons but still opposes the protagonist while their anger issues don’t help, being reduced to a bottom femboy or a sexual object most of the time because of a ship with big tall monster who are parallels to each other, themselves reduced to a pervert at times. I do like the second ship, it’s just sad to see this fandom’s horniness ruin fanon tbh (Rodamrix)
God as an avid shipper myself, I completely agree that so many of these OOC issues happen because of shipping. Like to me, the best ship fics actually do use said ships to study the characters further. Not every ship fic needs to do that, but not slapping canon characters with these fan-ficky stock personalities is the bare minimum I ask for. (That being said, I know it can be the result of being new to writing and take time and skill not to fall into these traps, which is why this whole channel exists lol and why I don't give unsolicited concrit on fics that make these mistakes)
Can I ask what fandom? My favorite show Hunter X Hunter has this so much. I think one of the worst cases of this in my show is a psychopathic manipulative assassin with mind control powers who never learned how to human so dedicated to his family he has and will kill for it, into a oblivious dress wearing femboy with daddy issues. I feel like people often like the idea of a character more than the actual characters themselves.
Prob my disappointment finally finishing Breaking Bad and thinking this show was pretty amazing, and ive read beautiful pieces of fiction before from the silliest pieces and forms of canon! Surely I i will find some masterpieces! (Oh how wrong she was...) It was pretty much all walter × Jesse fics that i could find (ao3) lmaooo.
Yeah, I've noticed that the better the source material is, the worse fanworks tend to be. I've read some really good Miraculous, Ducktales, and Minecraft fanfics, but I struggle to find good ones for Batman, Fallout, or Adventure Time. I think the less enjoyable of an experience the source material is, the more people have to say about it. It happens a lot with live-action and older movies as well I've realized.
And then the canon character(s) doesn't have a lot of personality at all 😅😢(looking at you, Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom). So it's hard to write them with much personality if I have to strictly stick to canon, so basically I have to flanderize or making up some traits (but it has to be as close as possible as my interpretation of canon) 😅😅😅😅
I’m gonna be so honest, I have autism and character bashing (especially if the character is on the receiving end of a spite/darkfic) is so freaking cathartic
I have autism too, and character-bashing makes me very uncomfortable. Oftentimes the character being bashed is targeted for the crime of being "annoying" or daring to not behave in a way that the writer finds palatable, which is a feeling I know too well. It's why I prefer works where it feels like the writer has empathy for even their most deplorable characters.
@@CoraMaria Hi I know this is about 2 months late, but I had a couple change of ideas (like a character arc, lol.) You mentioned on how exploring why I didn't like a character and improving on them, could u explain a bit better on how to do that? You can give some general tips, and I still don't mind character bashing but I want to explore not-character bashing characters I hate
On the point about flanderization, that was always my biggest ick with Pokemon fics. I can’t count the number of times I read a fic where Ash being dense was exaggerated to the point that he didn’t know what a girlfriend is.
Hello, fellow fic-writers! Kudos for watching this video 💖 Don't forget that this is only the beginning. If you want to learn how to understand your blorbo better than ever, you can either find out in two weeks by subscribing, or you could join my Patreon at the Extra Kudos tier and find out today!
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This video is stuffed full of great tips and tricks that you could be using to improve your fanfiction *right now* and it also comes with a Patreon-exclusive worksheet to help you nail your blorbo (not in that way, sorry).
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Having canon characters in name only is one of my biggest pet peeves. If you’re writing an AU, there are naturally going to be some differences, but nothing is actually recognizable as what it was in the source material, you may as well just change the names and call it an original story.
Yeeeep there's this one fic of my NoTP that I really enjoyed anyway but I think a big part of that is that everyone are canon characters in name only. When I did my own modern AU, I did try to have the characters resemble their canon counterparts significantly, except for one who was written to be OOC on purpose. (I feel like his specific personality only makes sense in the context of canon, soooo writing him OOC in this AU made more sense, and I did try to keep compatible traits like his larger-than-life personality and confidence.)
I wanted to mention that I have actually read a fanfic once that was “Character In Name Only” with the same ABC example shown AND it was a High School AU (how ironic). The MC was naturally confident but the fic made her extremely self depricating. The B love interest is hot headed and passionate in canon, but was made a watered down Troy Bolton. And C in canon was the sweetest girl ever and B’s childhood friend, but they made her an Evil Prom Queen w/ no trace of her selfless being
(The fanfic was for Fairy Tail btw: Lucy a “A”, Natsu as “B”, and Lilliana as “C”)
*Lisanna
Agreed!
Character bashing is always hilarious when you have no beef with said character yourself haha
"I'm so sorry, you're just a really convenient plot device to generate conflict 😭"
@@CoraMaria LOL that too, but I also mean as a reader, reading a fic where the writer really hates this random character and you're like alright-
Lmao I remember an old tumblr post legitimately calling out Starlight Glimmer. There was no irony in the post 😭
Lmaoo
One thing I'd like to see more is characters opening up about their feelings without being replaced with a sobbing marshmallow.
Yes! I generally have a pretty good grasp on dialogue and emotions but sometimes this can happen to me in my drafts. I have to revise my work to be less melodramatic and rely on subtext a little more, and consider how the characters might show vulnerability in their own unique way.
Man, this is off-topic, but your aesthetic scratches the good part in my brain
You've heard of retention editing: now get ready for retention aesthetic! There's so many details to focus on with a neurospicy brain!
@@CoraMariaYou look great, not that my opinion matters. I do want to share my internal dialogue before realizing you are considerate enough to type up full captions without commentary. "Count every single rhinestone 1...2.... wait what was just said? Focus on the lips. 3...4... Nice phone case. Something about flanderization. Should i get my hair like that? OMG THERE ARE CAPTIONS THIS PERSON IS THE BEST!"
Seriously, quality captions are getting really rare, and I was having a hard time focusing on your lips with the stunning look you put on. Thank you for the captions and can you do a closet tour?
YESSS
And then there is me who intentionally writes OOC.
Oh you are going to love Part 3 of this trilogy! Stay tuned 💖
@@CoraMaria Will be, Cora! Your videos are great.
If I may, why?
@BJGvideos Because it is fun, plot convenience, for some of my AU ideas the canon personalities make no sense and are too restrictive.
And I believe if a backstory is changed, a character would develop to be different.
im planning a fic for a character who is from a visual novel and his personality does change depending on the mc's (aka the player's) choices. he does still have core parts of his personality of course, but it's still fun to see how differently he responds to things and how it's all technically canon. and it excuses me writing him a bit "ooc" since my fic is a fantasy au and his backstory is going to be a lot more angsty than the canon (modern setting with a generally happy and safe life)
Another way I try to avoid excessive self projecting is by putting a little bit of myself in *every* character (maybe it's easier for me since my fic is very OC-heavy, though). This I find really helps me avoid protagonist centered morality as well
I do this a ton, especially with oc’s. There’s one canon character from a series I like I’ve found myself projecting onto a lot in particular though, but I make sure to take into account canon characterization, which there isn’t a whole lot of since they’re a relatively minor character, and alter or reframe my projective headcanon’s around those details, using things I project from myself to fill in the blanks without erasing what is shown in canon. I find it interesting to be able to project very heavily while still working with canon differences the character has from me to avoid making a complete self insert, finding ways to use my own experiences and traits to add depth to his character and story while also being able to psychoanalyze myself and introspect in a way that I find therapeutic.
Yes! That's so it! I do that too and it's a great way to ensure that you empathise with everyone and thus don't fall into a lot of these traps 💖
@@aceofspades8474 This is so often me with Zelda. Some self-projection can be really powerful! I find its more comforting to explore parts of myself through fictional characters rather than create self-inserts (though some people might find self-inserts more helpful and that's fine, too)
Same!
In some danganronpa fics on THAT side of the fandom, Kokichi either gets woobified or character bashed and it depends on what ship the author is writing
God when I do a video on how to write shipfic, I'm gonna make a point to say that character bashing love rivals just for "getting in the way" of your ship is *never* in good taste.
oh my god YES!!! its all or nothing with them and that really pisses me off, because the entire point of kokichis character is the opposite! he calls himself a liar, and he does lie, but he also tells the truth!! hes a bad person for good reasons, but hes also a good person for bad reasons!! his checkered scarf is even a reference to this, and it just upsets me how badly hes misconstrued 😭
My poor guy gets absolutely torn apart by both sides of the fandom. It's either people despise him to the point of taking every opportunity related or otherwise to bash on him or they completely misinterpret him and treat him like a child. Kokichi is a very interesting character, it's a shame that so few people are willing to look past the surface these days.
but what if the character gets flanderised in canon? I’m in the Ace Attorney fandom and a character called Larry Butz in the first game is a person who is down on his luck in general, especially with romance, thus he has several girlfriends across that game. He’s goofy, and weird, and somewhat obnoxious, but the main character Phoenix literally calls him his ‘best friend’ for a reason - his heart’s in the right place and he does what he can to help his friends.
After the first game, however, he is reduced to being a skirt-chaser who literally blackmails one of the girls he’s fallen in love with, and both of his friends always go on about how insufferable he is. Then why have you been friends with him for so long???
Justice for the Butz. He’s even written the way he is in game 3 in fanfiction.
Edit: typo.
You’re so real for this comment. Larry deserves better.
What I would do is take Larry’s AA1 characterisation and build off of that as a base, to add more depth. I’ve also seen some fics use his skirt chaser tendencies to write him as an anxiously attached person with a pattern of falling into abusive or unhealthy relationships. There’s some evidence in the games that would fit into it.. like the way he cheerfully talks about being slapped by past gfs. Also in AA3 there’s a weird, blink and you’ll miss it line Phoenix says about Larry that “he went through some pretty tough times as a kid”. The seeds are there… it’s your prerogative to cultivate them.
Oh nooo:( That sucks when it happens! I feel you!
realest comment of all time justice for larry
don’t know much ab ace attorney, but I’d say it’s only bad if it’s ooc. if the character gets sht on in canon, then it’s in character for them to be sht on in fanfic, and vice versa if they’re not shtty in canon it’s ooc in fanfic
This is super helpful! I would like to add that this advice works if you genuinely want to avoid mischaracterization. If you want to experiment with characters, for example in an AU or for canon divergence reasons, you're free to do this. If you don't care about your fic getting attention, and you just want to have fun writing, you obviously can still do that.
HOWEVER, it certainly wouldn't hurt to acknowledge this in your notes or tags. And of course, be aware of implicit biases when writing certain characters who belong to minority groups.
Yes! In Part 3 of this trilogy, I do also cover some reasons why someone might choose to write OOC on purpose and how that can still make for great writing 😉
I just wanna say that all your videos are really interesting and its super cool to see writing advice that's specifically tailored for fanfiction. It's just fun to see how different fanfic is as a medium compared to other types of writing. Also, your visual aesthetic is awesome. In summary: great vibes, great video!
Thank-you! With how so many people try to legitimise fanfiction by how it is "good practice" for or even as good as/better than published fiction, I think it's important that we break that habit to instead help fanfiction stand as its own medium. I've studied the publishing industry in uni and I've felt that pressure to get paid for writing fiction kill my passion for it, so I'm glad to have found my joy again and to use it to help others 💖
Personally, I really like to tackle skewed priorities on purpose! Like, _the protagonist_ believes their end goal is (almost) always the end-all be-all. Yet either the narrative itself condemns them for it via other characters, or the character themselves realizes that this is kind of a messed up attitude on their part, or both. Oftentimes both - and sometimes the protag will just keep doing the thing regardless, either because the pros ultimately outweigh the cons in their eyes or because they think the end justifies the means. It's just fun for me to try and get into the head of someone who thinks this way.
I've certainly written a fic where a character was 'acting' in a role, because the character isn't as fleshed out in cannon as I was hoping. Also, bashing is a great way to get me to click off a fic.
I do actually cover writing OOC on purpose in Part 3 of this trilogy, so def subscribe if you haven't already! And Part 2 does cover how the less fleshed out a character is in canon, the more freedom you have to interpret them however you like 😊
@@CoraMaria A very useful distinction. You avoided talking about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but many fandoms have characters that evoke interesting vibes, but nothing solid to pin them on. Over half of the student names in HP, for instance. The other interesting thing is when you drag a character so far away from the canon story that they have to adapt, or reveal undefined areas about their backstory. Yup, I like your vids and will watch more, was just commenting on their intersection with my own writing. (Very few, but many words, Writing_Heroics on AO3)
So… who wants to send this video to Thomas Astruc for his own show?
I don’t write fan fiction but commenting to boost for those who do. Good luck out there writers!
I'm so glad someone's talking about this!!! My biggest turn off for OOC characters is when they use swears in their dialogue that aren't canonically used in their world. This happens way too often in fantasy-centric fics and it seriously pulls you out of the world real quick.
7:45 Funny thing is, that's exactly the thing I'm working with.
Canon material: The character is a dad getting the only known cure for his dying kid. When the protag gets him the cure, he decides to just have the cure sent via caravan through a lawless land and sticks with the protag.
Meanwhile, I'm rewriting it so that he does think he should stick around the protag out of gratitude (especially since they're also dealing with trying to save their son), but the protag insists he goes and makes sure the cure works, and that he can come back if he wants.
A big OOC fanfic issue I have is PJO. Especially Annabeth. She may be slightly possessive of Percy because of trauma, but she's not one of those Yandere like the fanfics make her be. Like, it's seriously insane how people villainize her. Worst she did was be a little competitive towards Rachel, what I recall.
Annabeth is literally my favourite character in PJO how dare they 😠
Also since she's a teen who also has the trauma of losing friends, it's totally understandable that she would have that character trait, regardless of if there's a romantic motivation involved or not. Also I've only read Book 1 of HOO, but weren't she and Rachel friends by then?
Ya, by the end her and Rachel were cool, she did still have that "I won him" joy but she's a teen so that's normal.
But in fact (and I'll avoid names to avoid spoilers, unless you already saw), in the final HOO book she high-fives a character who tells Percy they liked them but moved on. She does get a little jealous of another character in the 3rd HOO book, but that's also excusable because her boyfriend's been missing for a while.
the worst case woobifed is from the invader zim fandom zim is written as a sad nerd forget the whole "dark harvest'
i have to ament to doing it to it's to hard to write him as like able otherwise but it has to at least be explained
It can be hard to write an unlikeable person as a likeable character but it's definitely possible! At the same time, that threshold is different for everyone and very polarising, but when a writer can make me love a character while still feeling disgust for their misdeeds? 😚👌
its not just ooc i read it was inconsistent characterization. The fic begins with mc being shy and self conscious and chapters later they are sassy and a baddie there was no plot that triggered that the author literally just did an 180 on the whim.
I used to be a big harry potter fan but today was the first time I've heard of "death eater ron".... not a fan
in all seriousness, this was a really helpful video!
Usually it's in service of the Dramione ship: woobifying the actual Death Eater and making the anti-Death Eater a Death Eater 🙄
(that's not to say I'm against the Dramione ship in general. just how some people go about executing it.)
FANFIC-CENTRIC WRITING CHANNEL? SOMEONE IS FINALLY EDUCATING THE MASSES? OH BLESS YOU BLESS YOU
I have spent so much time learning how to properly write, not just fic but original writing, and have read millions of words of fic. Ohhh my GOD are people like you needed.
Subscribing IMMEDIATELY
I find that I don’t really mind OOCness in other’s works but I really try not to do it in my own works
That's fair. There are some standards I hold my own work to that I don't necessarily expect of others
Oh man. In my fandom, the canon protagonist takes a statement literally that's intended to be figurative ONE TIME. Exactly once. And the fandom seems to have decided he's an idiot as a result. It drives me crazy, because it's ignoring all the rest of the evidence that he's far from stupid.
Ooh! I'm not entirely sure if she'll cover this (I've pretty much only started the video) but I've got a writing dialogue in character tip if anyone wants it!, try and see if you can visualize the character saying it in their own voice, and if you can't hear it in their voice, try editing it some more. (Idk if I've described this well, but it's helped me so I hope it can help someone else 😅)
Reading out loud is part of how I edit. I remember in a oneshot I wrote, Link (who is silent in canon, tbf) ended up sounding too flowery like the OC villain of my longfic, (which is *not* a comparison I wanted to make!) so thank god I picked up on that by reading aloud!
Act scenes out with dialogue! It helps hugely!
I just searched up fanfic writing and I was NOT expecting to have my foundation rocked like this lol. Amazing video, I'm furiously taking notes as I watch
Oh I plan to rock even more foundations with upcoming videos, so look out for that 😉
okay, so I enjoy this one character a lot and sometimes I like to see his heart ripped apart in front of him (as one does), though I have to click off of SO many fics because of it not being "this has hurt me on a deep level" and being more "OwO, I'm jus a lil baby who cries a lot bc everyone hurts meee and EVERYTHING happens to lil ol' me{>~
I may be sleepy and overworked and might not write the comment this video deserves- but I deeply agree with all of these points.
ESPECIALLY the flanderization, the wooby and double standarts.
I remember a movie I loved that had good jokes.
But after reading the fanfics to it, I didn't enjoy the jokes anymore, since the writers used these jokes as the traits of the characters and repeated them till they got stale.
I hate it so much how writers bend the whole universe to justify an attractive chracter's actions - even turn sweet protagonists from canon secretly evil and psycho.
Also I don’t enjoy when a complex characters with depth and edges becomes a harmony seeking softy.
God, using jokes to flanderise characters is such a common one. For Nora, I should've brought up the example of "We'll break his legs!" because the fandom has used that to characterise her as violent and threatening but like in a "cute" way somehow??? Huh???
I do think jokes can help inform characterisation, such as how Midna calling Link "Mr Important Hero" in canon makes me think that she's terrible with names so she likes to use nicknames for people. I still don't have her say "Mr Important Hero" all the time and try to be very sparing with it.
God, bending the universe to justify an attractive or identifiable character's actions. I've actually gotten some hate comments for NOT doing that! (I've deleted them both for my sanity and theirs since I don't want my audience going after them.) Like forgive me for wanting to write heroes who are in the wrong sometimes and have a growth arc! Forgive me for wanting to address the protagonist (or princess/goddess?)-centred morality of my own fandom source material!
YES
@@CoraMariaWHAT U GOT HATE COMMENTS FOR WHAT
WHAT WORLD DO WE LIVE IN?!
This is really great advice! I’ve stopped really writing fanfic because my main creative outlet is drawing now but this was really interesting. How are you this underrated??
P.S. I love your aesthetic it’s really creatively inspiring
The flanderization thing happens in Touhou all the time. All. The. Time.
Because Yuyuko was gluttonous a few times & is implied to have tried to eat one character, she became Nikocado the Hutt. Hong slept on the job in a game? Now she’s the laziest slacker in the series. Tenshi wanted people to punish her? She’s a mashochist.
An interesting thing ZUN does is to introduce a new character who has the fanon traits of an extant one, to replace that character’s flanderized persona.
In all the fic I’ve seen about him (I haven’t seen a lot), Atsushi (from bsd) is always Flanderizated and people forget the ‘’deeper’’ aspects of his personality, writing him as a cute, shy and weak character who doesn’t know what he wants. The few fanfics where I’ve seen this mistake in made me give up in hoping that I could see a canon representation of him. That’s why I’m planning on writing a more canon fanfic with him. (Sorry if it’s weird, english isn’t my first language)
I’m new to actually writing fanfiction and have been publishing a marvel fanfic on Wattpad for a couple of months. I think I’ve been improving a bit, but I know I can do better with some things and this video was pretty helpful.
THE FACT THAT I WAS JUST HAVING THIS PROBLEM AND FOUND YOUR ENTIRE CHANNEL I AM SO GRATEFUL FOR THIS THANK YOUUUUUU😭😭😭😭😭❤❤❤❤❤❤
Happy to help! I think you'll enjoy Part 2 ;)
@@CoraMaria I'll be binging your playlists until then!! ❤️ you just got yourself a new subscriber 🤪
Love the fits
to be honest when i first clicked i was terrified that i would have done all these things, tho now im js glad one of my favorite things to do with my characters is to give them flaws lol
2:26 I WANNA THROW A VASE AT THE WALL AT HOW MUCH PEOPLE DO THIS TO KOKICHI FROM DANGANRONPA 😭😭😭 EVEN IN OTHER MEDIUMS THAT AREN'T FANFICS
(They actually do quite a few of these tropes with his character and like to character bash his rivals/foes like Maki Harukawa and Kaito Momota or even Kaede Akamatsu when it comes to shipfics. I've even seen character bashing on Shuichi Saihara, which is the character that Kokichi is shipped with the most, all because he told him in one chapter that he'll be alone in the English translation because he was sick of Kokichi's antics at that point and him acting like he didn't care about sending off another character to their death basically... A reasonable thing to say to someone in that moment and people write fanfics about Kokichi crying after that, which is OOC, and basically guilt-tripping Shuichi for saying that... It's ridiculous...)
[in reference to the flanderization and stuff] i usually only notice how ooc a fic is when i stop hyperfixating on it (or like leave the fandom but that hardly ever happens) and then its like all i notice about the fanon/fics 😭
That's pretty normal, I think. When you hyperfixate on something, you just want to inhale as much of it as possible, but as it fades, you find you need a little more quality to keep you engaged.
This channel is an absolute gold mine holy shiit
I think the worst example of "in make only"is the Batman fandom trying to write reverse ribbons. They literally just make Tim another Jason, usually even going so far as to make him the Red Hood, which is the bullest of shit ever.
Its kinda funny that in og media you can sometimes find these mistakes
this is a great video! im loving your vibe
I don't know if it's still a thing in the fandom, but in the MLP fandom Spike got absolutely wrecked for basically no reason. You can see this phenomenon best in both "Friendship is Witchcraft", where Spike is harmed in various ways for comedic effect, and "Friendship is Manly", where Spike is specifically not invited to Gummy's birthday party.
But these OOC tropes also ran absolutely _rampant_ in the CreepyPasta fandom, to the point it still partially effects my versions of the characters (I've tried to turn these into enhancements to add flavour to my fanfics with them). A handful of examples include:
Jeff: absolutely woobified in every way imaginable. He was the babygirl, the face of the fandom. Imagine the scene from Hercules where Hercules is swarmed by fangirls, and multiply that by at least 50 to get what happened to poor Jeff.
Jane, Jeff's mortal enemy: Her entire personality was reduced to simply hating Jeff, to the point where she was vilified for her justified anger. Simply put, the fandom deemed that if you were in any way positively associated with Jeff, Jane would hate you just as much as she hates him. A very narrow view of things tbh.
Toby: Waffles. His handful of mental disorders and disabilities also got him the Pinkie Pie treatment, where no one took him seriously and wrote him mostly as an annoying _QuIrKy_ teenager instead of the deeply traumatized and mentally disabled man he is.
Tim: Similar story with Toby, just flipped. He was treated as the stereotypical Boomer man who was constantly annoyed by Toby. Also, Cheesecake, but more maliciously, since it started out as a "joke" that was "poking fun" at his actors weight.
Brian: Tim's canonical best friend, and the single worst case of woobification I've seen to this day. The friendly, almost stoic man got turned into an absolute stuttering mess more shy than _episode 1 Fluttershy_ by the fandom. Basically, if "U-UwU s-s-super i-introverted 👉👈" was a person. Absolutely awful to witness. Basically, only name and looks matched canon.
There are probably a lot more occurrences of this problem in that specific fandom, but these 5 were the ones I could recall and properly identify off the top of my head.
Celestia also gets quite often bashed or turned into a straight up villain... Like, she's got flaws and made mistakes, but many fics take it to an extreme point :c
@@RyebuckCoppercap I haven't seen that too often, but I do remember it happening in an Infection AU, where Celestia caused the apocalypse herself.
@@bonnietelocole6777 It's not always, but it's frequent enough to be noticeable imo. I think it stems from either Luna stans (and I say it as someone who loves Luna as well) that think Celestia was totally in the wrong (which I think is a flaky argument, given that it's been show that Celestia did not want to banish her, and that Nightmare Moon was a dangerous pony), folks who think she manipulated Twilight to do her bidding (which is a fair reading, I guess; but I like to see that like a parent trying to guide their children to their fullest potential rather than Celestia not caring for Twilight), people who think she's incompetent (which again, somewhat fair since she's been defeated by many villains in the show, but I think it's more of a rule of drama kind of thing to set up the villains as very strong so the challenges the Element Bearers face seem even harder; nopony incompetent could keep a prosperous kingdom for 1000 years), or her out of the blue decision to pawn of the entirety of Equestria to Twilight with little to no warning (I blame bad writing for that one lol).
What I mean to say is, Celestia is a flawed pony who messes up _a lot_ in terms of her personal relationship, but she's no villain like some fics make her out to be; she's kind and compassionate, trying to find peaceful solutions where possible, with a cheeky sense of humour and a deep care for all of her little ponies; she's no secretly evil witch who rules with an iron hoof; she's instead a pony isolated from the world despite being surrounded by friendly faces, simply due to the pedestal others put her in, so when she has those few close personal relationships she's very prone to majorly mess up.
@@RyebuckCoppercap Exactly what I thought when you said that some people write her as a villain.
I don't plan to write her as a villain in a fic I'm planning, I'm just straight up gonna make her disappear.
The story will take place after season 3, during episode 1 of season 4, but I change the story to include a character who, to break free from her stone prison, possesses Fluttershy. The _only_ reason I include the Tree of Harmony in this fic is specifically to get Celestia and Luna out of the way so the villain isn't instantly defeated xD
I might change this, since it's a work in progress, but I'll see what I can do with this version of the story. If I can't do anything, I'll revise it again and change it's place in the timeline. I only write with the first 3 seasons because I want Princess Twilight _and_ her Oak Library _and_ the Elements of Harmony
@@bonnietelocole6777 Haha yeah, it can be quite the puzzle to write around OP characters who realistically would've fixed the issue in a split second, but that part of the fun imo :3
I'm not sure if it makes me feel better or worse that I ended up rolling my eyes through most of this video. Not because of YOU by the way, you're very articulate and informative, it's just that a lot of what you were saying seems so basic to me it shouldn't even NEED to be said, like "consider NOT justifying Genocide because the Villain is Hot and/or White" Ugh.
Anyway, maybe the next 2 parts will be more helpful, I like to think I'm pretty good at writing in character but I'm still somewhat insecure on this in particular and am always looking to improve.
Plus you used a RWBY character so that deserved a like on it's own :p
OMG THANK YOU!! I CAME ACROSS THIS VIDEO AT THE RIGHT TIME OMGOMGOGMGOMG
Yeeeess, I cannot stand OOC characters in fanfic (unfortunately, it is very common though). I even make a point of keeping characters I dislike in-character and simply reframing the narrative surrounding them.
The cool thing about the advice you gave here is that some of it (like the issue with protagonist-centered morality or self-projection by the author) can absolutely be applied to original characters/stories as well. Great video!
Great video! I love ur style btw, the sticker gems r so cute!!
I will never forgive all the fics where Petra from AOT gets character-bashed to the absolute smithereens, like leave my girl alone, she barely even had any screen time in canon
Watched this just to acknowledge that I’m doing all of that to myself
Loved the video! It was funny, when you set up the most woobified character type I actually thought you were going to say serial killers or slashers, but I do think your take on it was the actual correct answer xD
I do write for a horror character who isn't a slasher (Brahms Heelshire from The Boy,) and while the hardcore fans seem to know what he's about, there are a lot of people that take "slashers" and kind of cast them in roles and ship them with each other, and my Tumblr searches are always FULL of those people. People often lump the character I write for into that category, which is weird to me, but I think the biggest mischaracterization I tend to see is Pennywise the Clown. I've yet to find a post on Tumblr about him that has any basis in his reality as a projection of children's fear created by a space spider. My favorite headcanon I read ended by saying "but deep down? He cares." I'm just like... No. He does not 😂
Oooof I remember hearing about people woobifying irl serial killers too 🤮 though doing it to fictional serial killers is at least not disrespecting real victims and their families.
There is a sorta interesting phenomenon in fandom where a dark canon will often have ✨light and fluffy✨ fan content while a light canon will often have 🔪 dark and gritty 🔪 fan content (see Friendship is Magic). We tend to use fandom to provide what canon does not, after all.
@@CoraMaria that's very true!
Love your videos and wish u made a deep dive about drabble.
I'm not sure there is much to say about drabbles, sorry. They're just fics that are exactly 100 words long. I did talk about them briefly in this video though: th-cam.com/video/W2MjMlDUlVc/w-d-xo.html
As one of my biggest fears about writing fanfiction is making the canon characters come off as OOC, this video is so helpful!! Thank you
Even though I'm writing an Alternate Canon type of story, I'm writing it so that the plot is a bit different and the characters sometimes do different things, but I do my best to keep them in character. The biggest trouble I'm having right now is that I don't want to copy the dialogue, but I want to follow the plot in a certain scene. Once I get through that hiccup, I have the next several chapters all set up. I just have seen several fanfics that are popular that copy the game as if playing it, but I don't like most of them because it's like they're rehashing the gameplay. The only time I've liked a fanfic like that was when the character thought she was dreaming of being in Fallout 3 or she might have awakened in the world of Fallout 3. I'm not sure which because last I checked, she hadn't finished the fanfic.
As someone who is in a video game fandom myself and does sometimes adapt scenes from canon (as well as read novelisations), I totally see where you're coming from. I actually cover this scenario in Part 3 with one of my favourite alternate canon fanfics of 'Twilight Princess' and how it inspired my own fanfic.
@@CoraMaria I will look for that video. Thank you! :)
I don’t even write fanfiction but I do have my own characters (also I like your style so much)
AAHHHH I LOVE YOUR AESTHETIC
THANK-YOU! Happy colours make a happy Cora 🌈
Loved his video
me seeing you use nora as an example and then say your pet peeve is character-centered morality "hello, fellow person who dropped the show after s4-5♥"
I'm a huge Byler fan and in a lot of fanfics I notice that people do a lot of character bashing on Eleven, which I find strange, yes I ship her boyfriend with his friend, but she's still a good character and very endearing, so I don't really understand the hate just because people want their ship, you can still ship Byler and be a Eleven fan.
Goddddd I hate when shippers do this, even if we ship the same thing! As a Midlink shipper, people would do this to Ilia all the time, though thankfully that trend seems to have died down.
I do still see this all the time though: being a "threat" to the (presumed monogamous) ship is treated as unforgivable by the audience. No matter how much the writer might try to flesh out the rival or make you feel their point-of-view, the audience will still hate on them, especially if they're anything less than perfect. Meanwhile the love interest they prefer will have all their flaws and mistakes excused, even if they're just as bad or worse than the love rival's 🙄
Oh Cora this video is so timely. I'm in the middle of making most of the above mistakes in the fic that I'm currently writing.😢😢😢
In this age I fear people only live in most famous headcanon ooc behaviour :(
I rmbr reading this one heikazu fic (genshin), and it was rlly sweet for the most part.. but then later in the fic they made kokomi, tomo and an oc the villain (and also had a scene described as “evil laughing”)
KOKOMI. OF ALL CHARACTERS. like genuinely evil for no reason, she had no beef w heizou or kazuha but was tryna help break them up. her first introduction in it felt sweet and could’ve been a good plot point but the evil part.. eugh.
tomo too. I know he only has a few lines, but the entirety of what he did was sacrificing himself for his friends. he was not a bad person.
and as someone who also likes kazuhei it hurt me deeply having him become the villain.
I genuinely haven’t touched wattpad since. it’s a shame bc I rlly liked the fic before that point but making them villains was just so.. no.
I don't know this fandom at all but I'm so sorry you're having to deal with that in your fandom. Something like this often happened in the old Twilight Princess fandom with Ilia just because she was a "romantic rival" to some more popular ships and apparently people didn't know how to handle so-called love rivals without villainising them urgh
Thankfully the current fandom handles her characterisation much better!
it really scares me that woobification often happens to white cis male characters who often are alligned with fascist or nazist imagery (kylo ren, draco malfoy, etc)
Not exactly canon characters, but I've noticed i tend to overnerf my characters. Make it so even though they could win a fight, they just don't because "oh! They had horrible aim, or they were focused on something else, or they just dont have the energy!". It's difficult to handle because im worried that if i change it, i may make the character overpowered or something.
And during writing this I forgot why I wrote it, so it's just here now.
Yo this is a great video, I loved it :)
This is a fantastic resource! You totally nailed these points. I haven’t been able to articulate why when a fic feels ooc to me but here you’ve laid it out so clearly! I really appreciate the practical examples too, puts your explanations into context🙏
I’m glad that you did not mention the term “Mary Sue” - there’s just too much baggage on that one now that it barely means anything or means too much. “Protagonist-centred morality” is much more neutral and precisely points out the problem I feel that (at least some of) the original “Mary Sue” criticism was targeting. A very useful tool for analysis in general.
I also appreciate that you’re not afraid to call out the racist tendencies in fandom (as well as halo effect tendencies around “attractiveness” which can be rooted in racism too let’s be real) - it bothers me so much when I see it😭 Here’s to becoming a more inclusive and aware community!❤️
And YAY CONGRATS ON YOUR PATREON LAUNCH!!! I’ll definitely see you there as soon as can!💕
There's a character in a fandom who is SO OOC in every whump fic of him, that everyone just accepts this is his personality: Grian. I cannot read anymore hurt Grian fics without him being amazingly OOC and it's infuriating, because it ended up with me being driven away from the fandom.
its an old fandom but Merlin from Merlin is the ultimate woobifacation in my opinion. Sometimes when I browes AO3 looking for Merlin fics I just wonder if I am the one confused and merlin isn't actually supposed to be one of the most powerful and dangerous sorcers with a heart of gold, instead he's a crying twink all of the time and I just.... I just don't know how an entire fandom has done that.
on another note, I think that these are all great ooc things to stay away from if that's what your going for, but I have also read and deeply enjoyed many fics that fell into these six trapps
the face gems are excellent
7:31 - as someone who's read TLI and who is currently reading TSR, this gave me quite the laugh lmao. Gotta love that shameless self promo!
Funnily enough, I kind of felt like the official novelization of one of my favorite games made the central protagonists feel OOC. Not massively OOC, but enough that it felt kinda jarring. Maybe it's just that the author of the novelization got a different vibe than I did, but the novelization had the central protagonists become an official couple when I never really got the vibe of them being shipped in the game itself. I still enjoyed the novelization, but the out-of-left-field shipping-the-protagonists aspect kind of lessened that.
Yessss omg there are some future TSR chapters that really go into this and I hope you're ready to feel the angst 😈
It's definitely a tricky balance to strike when the shipping bug strikes. I recently read a popular fic in an anime/manga fandom where I felt like the couple I was already rooting for got consumed by their coupleness to the point where their individual characterisations felt off. Will have to do a video about writing shipfic at some point!
i just write shared universe fanfics to avoid having to worry about characters i might not fully understand
I have a weird relationship with OOC fics because I'm deep into the LOZ fandom. Link doesn't really have an established personality, and one of his few commonly occurring traits across the franchise is being silent, so he is written differently in almost every fic. I've come to enjoy reading LOZ fics with "OOC" in the tags because authors get so creative with how they reinvent Link. It's cool :3
My subconscious character bashing is straight up avoiding the character in the fic 😭 (and if they a main character I ain’t writing the fic)
Edit:
11:19 If I set this up; something would happen where Wallflower and queen bee somehow end up in a sapphic relationship 😔 (they either:
A) Realize og love interest is not all that
B) Find out og love interest is gay)
Edit 2:
I tend to see Boscha (ToH) OOC; she either looses her b***chiness or is a b***ch to Amity 😔
You bringing up how white villains get woobified while poc characters don't get shit reminds me of how BG3 fandom will make Ascended Astarion act like prince charming when WYLL RAVENGARD IS RIGHT THERE
Shoutout to the Persona 5 fandom - or, more specifically the Shuake/Akeshu side of the fandom - for doing Akechi right more often than not. He's one of those characters I feared the fandom would not treat well, but the majority of fic I have read in this fandom has done him so well, even in AUs! Though I worry if I step out of my little corner over here that I'll find people bashing on him so much that he may as well have died for a third time.
Flanderisation and Character-bashing remind me pretty much of the south park fandon: not only in fics, but basically in everything that is done by the fandom.
I'm a part of the Pokemon Legends Arceus fandom and the number one thing that bounces me off of any given fic is the female protagonist Akari. Canonically, there's nothing inherently wrong with her. However. The fandom woobifies her so, SO badly that it's actually unbearable to read, and it's made me dislike her as a character- Which doesn't even make sense, she's the silent protag. But it's frustrating because so many people project themselves into her and then make a fic with a promising premise secretly all about babying Akari and calling (my favorite character) Ingo her Dad or her Uncle or whatever. It feels extremely dissonant with my experience playing the game- main character felt capable and strong despite the circumstances -that I genuinely can't stand it.
Obviously that's pretty normal. She's a main character, of course people are going to project. Some part of me knows it's petty. It's just so, frustrating, seeing it absolutely everywhere. I have seen maybe two takes of her character I actually liked, but most of the time it feels like a character massacre and it's almost always the worst part of a fic for me.
There's a fandom I'm in, a pretty obscure one, for a web series called hfjONE and boy oh boy is there a lot to be said about the characterization across the fandom, especially when it comes to the main antagonist. I'm not entirely sure if woobification is fitting to Airy's case. He's certainly a fascinating antagonist and a lot of that intrigue comes from his complete detachment and ignorance to the harm he's caused. I don't doubt for a second that he doesn't want to hurt anyone. But I think the fandom is a little to willing and a bit to quick to forgive him for having had extremely negative effects on everyone he's interacted with in the past decade with only two exceptions (those being a baby and a man who believed the encounter to be a dream). He's a sympathetic antagonist, but he is an absolutely horrible person. Redeemable, for sure, but it should happen far away from the other characters.
... There's also a lot to be said about how the fandom treats the protagonist, especially in relation to Airy. A lot of people use him as a vehicle for a redemption arc, when the most canon shows is some understanding of Airy's isolation. That understanding doesn't change every other moment of horror and contempt.
Again, it's pretty obscure in terms of the larger fandom scape but I LOVE looking into characterization and analyzing this sort of thing, so I hope you enjoyed this largely out of context rambling.
Fandoms as a collective often struggle with nuance, I've noticed. If you feel this way about the antagonist, I definitely recommend reading that Teen Vogue article I put in the description. I think you'll find it very validating of how you feel ❤️🩹
* gasp * *OSC FAN SPOTTED*
yeah, i notice in fanfics airy is always brought to one end of the extremities- he's either done nothing wrong in his life or out-of-character pure evil. i think a lot of good writing boils down to exploring the grays within those extremities, and it's *hard* to do it well, so you get a lot of instances of woobification in his case.
I'm writing oc x villain and it's so difficult seeing how they could actually open up to someone HELP.
Having been raised on ffnet and wattpad (especially in the undertale fandom), I'm pretty much invulnerable to OOC fics and can easily look past it if the fic is good enough. However, if the characterization gets so bad, I will click off, so I try to avoid making my fics too OOC as well, so I really enjoyed this video!! :D
in the invader zim fandom, the answer is... all of them. every single one. they all have harsh, big, dramatic personalities that are pretty hard to swallow. most of them cause their own misery and zim especially is prone to double standard writing... if they acknowledge that he did anything bad at all. the deuteragonist dib usually gets the brunt of projection, probably because he Almost has those relatable daddy issues- but almost no reader can relate to how cruel, vicious, and overly dramatic he can be. so they just write him all too normal. i am convinced that the amount of people who actually enjoy the source material for what it is could be counted on one hand
Woobification is probably one of my biggest pet peeves not even just in fanfic but in fandom overall because like. One of my favorite characters ever (who......tbh i do project onto as well lol but i wouldnt let it get out of hand (right?)) Is a cold-blooded murderer. When I say cold, I mean cold. His ability is really messed up (takes peoples bodily autonomy away and then kills them) but people ALMOST ALWAYS ignore this and its so annoying. Just because he may look twinky doesn't mean he's now some innocent baby or some quirky gay stereotype.
Maybe I have my standards really high for this character but still man... the characterization...
I'm a Svsss fan and let me tell you the woobification is so bad. I personally love a morally gray character, i want to see a character have consequences and grow from their actions. Svsss does this by having not just the main pairs by all of the cast being morally gray in some way, BUT the amount of time i see a characters bad traits and actions down played is HORRENDOUS. Shen jiu is a common victim of this along with the love interest Binghe.
The character bashing of female characters can get pretty out of hand as well but i feel like that is a pretty wide spread problem in fandom spaces not just in the Svsss fandom.
[deep sigh] I wish everyone could realise that fandom is actually *more* fun when you're able to see and discuss nuances 😔
Can i also mention, bob velseb fanfics are like this. It depends on if theyre doing a minor in the realm of possibilities ooc thing or if theyre completely changing their character
mischaracization is something i struggle with, since i really struggle to grasp characters specific traits while writing. gladly i'd say im a little better at it then the average mischaractizer, since im aware of it and activelly trying to combat it.
in the Sun and moon show fandom (a fan channel into of itself for fnaf security breach) the character Ruin is done dirty in almost all accounts, flanderized, woobified, and character bashed.
1. he's british (flanderized for it)
2. he's seen as a sad boy who was pushed to do bad things by the creator / nexus / anyone who opposed him (woobified)
3.seen as a lit. phycotic monster with little to no reason for doing what he did (character bashed)
which also goes along with protagonist centered morality since he's character bashed for killing Solar (brother of the protagonists) and not for like doing the exact same to billions of people..
I think Velma is a very good example of Mistake 6.
the thing is OOC is intentionally a crucial part of my fanfic (characters aware that they are in a book and character A is mimicking character B throughout the arc).
I tried my best not to stow away from the canon, but I am quite terrified that I might turn off my readers 😢.
There are some ways that writing OOC can actually enhance your fanfiction, and I plan to cover them in Part 3 of this trilogy!
I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, characterization can be hard to master. It’s in human nature to generalize and boil down people to their fundamentals, so I’m glad there’s a video out there that helps with it
Wally West definitely tends to get woobified a lot. He’s a confident, brash, and occasionally rude but overall friendly guy in canon, but in fanfiction he has this tendency to be all shy and insecure. He’ll have abusive parents (which depending on the continuity MAY be accurate but not in the way people write it), be really self-depricating (again, sometimes this isn’t inaccurate, but it’s written in a way that makes no sense for him), or he’ll be really passive about wrongs done to him (not even a little bit accurate to him in any universe). This is mainly a problem in Birdflash (Wally West aka Kid Flash or the Flash/Dick Grayson aka Robin or Nightwing) fics, especially ones surrounding the Young Justice cartoon. The issue is that non-Birdflash fics with Wally as a central character are a pain in the ass to track down. I am in never ending pain
Whenever I read Guilty Gear fanfics with Zappa in it there’s a 90% chance half of his thoughts will be him thinking about his mom. The thing is that he mentions his mom like. Twice.
Step 2: Unironically write Mrs Zappa a Boy Mum
Of all the FFXIV characters I read about, Zenos is one I just can't handle being written wrong. He's the crown prince of the evil empire who feels nothing except when he's "hunting", and all he wants is that penultimate fight. So when I see him expressing more than boredom, annoyance, and the thrill of battle, I have to close the page.
I also remember reading this HORRENDOUS Hellsing fic back in highschool, where the writer just mashed all of their favorite shows into it. I knew from the first chapter it was going to be bad when Alucard "whooped" with glee (This was before Hellsing Ultimate Abridged). Not only did they shove every vampire show and anime they knew of into it, there was a subplot where House and Wilson hooked up and ran off to London for unknown reasons, but Snape and Draco showed up at the Hellsing estate and Snape started making out with Seras Victoria! (This was also written right after the 6th Harry Potter book came out). Sometimes I want to see if I can find that trainwreck again and see how it ended, but I value my sanity too much.
I am a perfectionist and my characters have to be as canon as possible. Which is why it’s taking years to write my fanfic. That and I had a baby las these which literally sucked all my creativity away and it’s only now slowly coming back as he’s about to turn 1 year old.
I hate when characters who aren't like this act all "I will defend for myself when sick! I can take it!" like NO half of my characters would sob and be overdramatic to their s/o!!! Not toning it down, sobbing, crying, cursing the Gods for being sick!!! Minor cold? Bedrest. Broken bone? Not moving for twice the period the doctor said. Temporary blidnness/deafness? Clingy as FUCK. Bonus points if it's a character whos learning to be dependent on others after healing from trauma.
I have a Circus AU (human) and the characters of it are literal deities in the game they are from, it is so damn hard to write them having human flaws while keeping them as true to canon, but it is not impossible, and honestly there's nothing more rewarding than making an AU and managing to make the characters IC. I dont mind ooc if its within measure and I wont bash a writer for going ooc but since this video is for this topic here I am lol, making some introspection.
One of these Deities is a god of travel and freedom, and in the fandom a lot of the fics write them as a y/n and you can FEEL they are using this character, since the info about them its not easily available in the game and you have to search for it, to just do a self insert with an in game name instead of doing a /Reader or /OC because they know those fanfics dont get as much attention as the ones with canon charas. Depicting them completely the opposite of what they are, saying they are the youngest god when they are one of the oldest, that they are fragile when they have participated in 3 intergalactic wars and one galaxy-wide disaster that wiped out 1/3 of the universe. it brings me headaches because they are my fave and the one I write the most lmao.
one thing that also always makes me click off instantly is when they suddenly make everyone swear constantly or call eachother pet names they never would in canon
Rant//
The fandom I’m currently writing for tend to mischaracterise characters A LOT! Why? Ships. Of course it’s because of ships.
From a sadistic, mad, selfish villain turned to boyfriend goals or like canon but never condemned for their raging toxicity in any ship including them, the character being shipped with them often turned into the perfect dubiously conventual victim that’s to sweet to not forget them for murdering their entire crew and full of no hate whatsoever🥺 either that or shoved into a relationship they don’t want and them being obviously uncomfortable or scared with and about it but people finding it te whole pitying them at the same time because character A is thirsted over..
Another example is a previous antagonist in the story, while going trough a character growth arc, a grumpy human who has their valid reasons but still opposes the protagonist while their anger issues don’t help, being reduced to a bottom femboy or a sexual object most of the time because of a ship with big tall monster who are parallels to each other, themselves reduced to a pervert at times.
I do like the second ship, it’s just sad to see this fandom’s horniness ruin fanon tbh
(Rodamrix)
God as an avid shipper myself, I completely agree that so many of these OOC issues happen because of shipping. Like to me, the best ship fics actually do use said ships to study the characters further. Not every ship fic needs to do that, but not slapping canon characters with these fan-ficky stock personalities is the bare minimum I ask for. (That being said, I know it can be the result of being new to writing and take time and skill not to fall into these traps, which is why this whole channel exists lol and why I don't give unsolicited concrit on fics that make these mistakes)
Can I ask what fandom? My favorite show Hunter X Hunter has this so much. I think one of the worst cases of this in my show is a psychopathic manipulative assassin with mind control powers who never learned how to human so dedicated to his family he has and will kill for it, into a oblivious dress wearing femboy with daddy issues. I feel like people often like the idea of a character more than the actual characters themselves.
Prob my disappointment finally finishing Breaking Bad and thinking this show was pretty amazing, and ive read beautiful pieces of fiction before from the silliest pieces and forms of canon! Surely I i will find some masterpieces! (Oh how wrong she was...) It was pretty much all walter × Jesse fics that i could find (ao3) lmaooo.
Yeah, I've noticed that the better the source material is, the worse fanworks tend to be. I've read some really good Miraculous, Ducktales, and Minecraft fanfics, but I struggle to find good ones for Batman, Fallout, or Adventure Time. I think the less enjoyable of an experience the source material is, the more people have to say about it. It happens a lot with live-action and older movies as well I've realized.
And then the canon character(s) doesn't have a lot of personality at all 😅😢(looking at you, Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom). So it's hard to write them with much personality if I have to strictly stick to canon, so basically I have to flanderize or making up some traits (but it has to be as close as possible as my interpretation of canon) 😅😅😅😅
I think you'll enjoy Chapter 2 of next video ;)
@@CoraMaria Can’t wait!
clicked for the fanfic advice, stayed for the pansexual zelda wall
Point #6 always annoys me when i'm looking for fanfic to read. I end up clicking away after a few paragraphs.
I’m gonna be so honest, I have autism and character bashing (especially if the character is on the receiving end of a spite/darkfic) is so freaking cathartic
I have autism too, and character-bashing makes me very uncomfortable. Oftentimes the character being bashed is targeted for the crime of being "annoying" or daring to not behave in a way that the writer finds palatable, which is a feeling I know too well. It's why I prefer works where it feels like the writer has empathy for even their most deplorable characters.
@@CoraMaria Hi I know this is about 2 months late, but I had a couple change of ideas (like a character arc, lol.) You mentioned on how exploring why I didn't like a character and improving on them, could u explain a bit better on how to do that? You can give some general tips, and I still don't mind character bashing but I want to explore not-character bashing characters I hate
On the point about flanderization, that was always my biggest ick with Pokemon fics. I can’t count the number of times I read a fic where Ash being dense was exaggerated to the point that he didn’t know what a girlfriend is.
5:15 or because you identify with the very character you hate...