genuine oc life hack:
every character in every story is an oc. canon is all oc stories. you can do whatever you want forever because we’re all just telling stories of the little guys in our heads. sometimes we collaborate about it and that’s pretty awesome too
This reminds me of a thought that occurred to me back in the early 2000s when I was first getting into online Star Trek fandom
there was already a lot of disdain for OCs in fanfic. the trope of “Mary Sue” back then referred specifically to self-insert fanfic characters who lived out the author’s fantasies
As I became aware of the tropes common to these “Mary Sue” characters I noticed a pattern
- the character tends to be someone with great power. An alien princess, a mysterious rescued stranger with magical abilities, etc
- the canon characters are fascinated and attracted to the Mary Sue. At least one of them becomes romantically invested
-the Mary Sue performs some great heroic act. Helps save the ship/crew/team/etc
-at the end, the Mary Sue dies, or is otherwise somehow permanently removed from the canon characters’ lives
what do these things all have in common?
Oh yeah. They are the exact same as the tropes for non-recurring characters in freaking CANON
Where do you think writers of self-insert OCs GOT the idea