Kind of a hypothetical question I'd like to ask anyone: Are OC/OC insert stories automatically frowned upon or disliked because people don't understand the OCs or because they mess with show canon (or Fanon in the case of my story Renegades)?

Just curious, the answer has no weight on my ability or will to write stories (I didn't join this site just for the positive feedback, after all). I will still continue to write fanfics, I just seemed to notice this trend occurring.

I don't like insert characters. That kind of wish fulfillment, often what it boils down to, in general is a seedy area. It's something to avoid. For lack of a better statement, it's unhealthy when taken to certain levels. It's a fun world and it should be enough to just write about it. Addressing issues in our universe or in the MLP universe within the MLP universe with a character is very different.

Say, I want to do a crime story with good female characters. Not noble or benevolent, but interesting and not lame, getting in the way of whatever awful things the protagonists cook up. I love the crime genre, but most female characters seem to be put there as speed bumps, just to slow down the fun train. Strong characters are not always good characters. That would be addressing something wrong with a genre. Maybe not the best idea, but I'd like to see it.

MLP:FIM is one of the best examples of a show with strong female characters I've seen in my lifetime. And it's not even forced. It feels natural, and we have some good role models for the intended audience and fun characters for the rest of us.

I think most of us are looking for something creative to enjoy, or possibly explore facets of the world we haven't seen much of. Few are interested in the fantasies of others. I'm not.

But we all have a story we want to tell.

6361300

Kinda?

First of all, OCs are one of those things that particularly appeal to inexperienced writers who may not quite know what they're doing. That has sorta given them a bit of a bad rep, with readers assuming most OCs aren't going to be very well written. Consequently more experienced writers who might be able to pull it off are less likely to use them. So it's a bit of a vicious bicycle of negative reinforcement.

Secondly, OCs are just hard sells, basically. Sort of the whole point of fanfiction is reading stories about characters you've already come to know and like via the original source material, in this case the show. Readers who come here to find fanfics already know who, say, Twilight Sparkle is and that they might like reading about her. That means not only do they immediately know if a story focuses on a character they're interested in, but the author also doesn't have to spend time introducing and characterizing that character.

An OC, on the other hand, is a mystery: You don't know what you're getting going in, and you'll have to get to know the character as you are reading. As a writer you actually have to convince people to care about your OC. Many readers may not be willing to invest the effort to do so even with a relatively well-designed and well-written characters, unless you make an extremely good first impression. Reading fanfics about the Mane Six or whatever is less of a gamble, especially since that's what most people turn to fanfiction for in the first place.

I think you kinda have to be a bit cunning about it. Most OC writers have a tendency to put their character front and center as the main lead, but I don't think that's the best way to go about it in terms of drawing readers in. A trick I've been testing out is to use a canon character as the selling point instead: In the story I've been working on, Scootaloo is actually the main protagonist, my OC is the deuteragonist, and the story focuses on Scootaloo getting to know the OC. (As opposed to the other way around.)

The idea is that A) the readers are probably more interested in reading about Scootaloo than my original character, and B) since Scootaloo knows just as little about the OC as the readers do, both Scootaloo and the readers get to know the OC at the same pace while the story progresses.

The results have been satisfactory, though I'm pretty sure the OC tag still scared some readers away.

6361419 Thank you very much for your feedback. I think you bring up a lot of excellent points that I honestly never thought about when writing my first stories on this site. After reading this, I think I might consider rewriting a couple of my stories more in the fashion that you have. Thank you!

6361886

Glad to be of help. Though, I'm not sure how much I actually recommend retooling a story to that level simply out of concern for making a good yet ultimately superficial impression on the reader. Mainly because stuff like which character you use as your main protagonist is so fundamental to the story itself, it probably needs to be taken into consideration right from the earliest planning stages.

In other words, if your story is legitimately designed to have an OC main character and you've built the plot around that, then changing it so a canon character takes over that role might cause more problems than it's worth. Just a caveat, take it as you wish.

6363530 Ok, I see what you're saying. Don't really have the time to, anyway.