Originally published at: https://shanniiwrites.com/2018/12/08/why-i-love-fanfiction-but-hate-ooc/
Fanfiction is a wonderful thing that can help you grow as a writer! OOC fanfiction? Not so much.
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Added a blogs tag!!
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What is OOC? Never heard of that.
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Fanfiction helps me become a better writer, but OOC gets abot annoying when I think “Hey the character would never say/do that!”
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Tell me about it! I also feel like when all the characters are deliberately OOC, people are just trying to piggyback off the fame of those characters without putting the work in
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Yeah, it’s like when people make Inosuke from KNY all cute and shy!! Like what!!! No!!!
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He’s best boy just the way he is! 
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I’m pretty sure it stands for “Out of Character.”
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he a feral baby!
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Wild babbyyyyy
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A good example is mostly Jason Dean from Heather’s being a soft boy 
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My writing started with fan fictions. It’s a really good way to begin. But oh my words, I look back and in like CRINGE! 
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Hey, @Bloggers. This one is all about fanfiction for all of you fanfic lovers out there. How many of you love fanfic but hate OOC like Shani?
Remember that if you really enjoyed this blog, feel free to recommend it (it’s similar to liking it). This will help with it being higher in the results of search engines too.
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So, I’m not a huge fanfic person. This doesn’t mean I hate it, I have nothing about people who write it, I’ve just only ever read one fanfic (@sunflower.flow) but I have to say that it’s amazing.
I honestly never knew OOC fanfiction was a thing, yet I have to agree with Shannii. OOC fanfic sounds extremely lazy. If you wanted to have a story with your own characters… well just write your own story. I get that making an entire universe can seem rather daunting, (not to me as I simply adore worldbuilding), but you can just use the real world as your playground if your story doesn’t need anything crazy for it to work (i.e. fantasy or science-fiction would need a more wondrous element for it to fit into that category).
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Awwww, THANK YOUUUU 
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I’ve never written or read fanfiction so I don’t know much about it. However, from what I learned from this blog post, writing fanfiction really seems like a good idea for people who start writing or who have troubles with giving characters a real personality. I wonder why we never really talked about fanfictions in school. I mean, instead of letting us write a summary of the book that we had to read, why not check if we really understood the story and the characters by making us write fanfictions? Yes, there’d probably need to be a lot of rules to that, but it would be better than just copying a summary from Wikipedia
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I read the blog so I agree with what Shannii said. OOC fanfriction is just, nope. I really ruins the character that the author is trying to portray. The characters will act completely differently from the story, and that may ruin the core of the story and even the message that the author is trying to deliver.
Personally, I love fanfiction, it gives you a better idea on what may possibly happen in the future, espefially when the series is discontinued. Our classical chinese story, The Dream of the Red Mansion managed to be conpletely because someone (as a fan) continued it after the original author died.
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okay i think by now most people know i ADORE fanfic i mean *points at title* y’know
so i was really looking forward to reading this blog, because i knew i was gonna have A LOT of things to say (when do i not tho)
so
brace yourselves
i’m gonna be honest here: Shannii and i have very different perspectives on fanfiction
i’m not saying she’s wrong, of course, the perspectives are simply different, which happens and usually leads to building something bigger, so if anyone here disagrees with what i’m about to say, please do so openly, i’d love to have a conversation about it
Shannii starts this entry talking about how an important thing about fanfiction is staying true to the source material, maybe thinking about how it ties with canon and all that
while i do think it’s important that your fanfic has to do with the source, i don’t believe staying strictly in what the source materials give us is that necessary, which i think is best illustrated by the popularity of canon divergence and alternate universe works there are out there: a fanfic doesn’t have to stick strictly to the canon to be a great fic
in fact, a fan favourite fic in my main fandom is an AU and it’s BRILLIANT, while still being a love letter to the source material in its core, in the characters and values the story has behind, even if the setting and lore and history are completely different
so, if there’s anyone here who wants to write fanfic but is scared their idea doesn’t quite fit with canon: don’t worry about it, canon divergence’s got you, or an entire alternate universe, if you want
i did a quick search for the canon divergence and au tags in AO3, if anyone's curious about how much those can thrive
which leads me to my next point: fanfiction is, by definition of the OTW, a transformative work
if you don’t know what a transformative work is, here’s a definition:
Transformative works are creative works about characters or settings created by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creators. Transformative works include but are not limited to fanfiction, real person fiction, fan vids, and graphics. A transformative use is one that, in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the [source] with new expression, meaning, or message.
- definition taken from the fanlore wiki, by the OTW
fanfiction not only can deviate from the canon, it AIMS to create something different from the canon
note that different doesn’t mean dissonant
if it weren’t like that, there would be no point to fanfic, y’know?
we, fanfic writers, have the whole Organisation for Transformative Works (owners of AO3) backing us up, and they’ve fought a lot for us to have the right to create our works based on other media (i won’t go in a history of fanfic rant here but just know, there was a lot of controversy on whether fanfic should be allowed to exist or not back in the late 90’s early 2000’s)
so i believe… well it would be a shame if we didn’t take the chance we have been given now
we CAN write fanfic now, which is HUGE
so why should we refrain from things we want to write? even if it strays from canon, even if it’s unlikely
the beauty of fanfic is that it exists out of love and interest in certain media
and i believe we shouldn’t refrain from showing said love
we can always improve and learn as we go, after all
now, on the matter of OOC
not gonna lie, i would have liked it better if Shannii gave a more concise definition as to what she considers OOC, because if fandom has taught me anything, it that there are multiple ways to interpret and understand a character, and many of those are valid all the same
because in fandom, what is not canon is always up to interpretation, and it doesn’t make sense to assume everyone has the same interpretation for anything
like, say, some people hc this character as ace, and write him as such, while some hc him as pan
both interpretations are v good and interesting, and neither is exactly ooc
or, another example: there’s this fic that compared two characters struggles as similar / mirroring each other, i had never considered that interpretation, but after reading it, it hasn’t left my mind because it’s BRILLIANT
that said, there DEFINITELY are some interpretations that… really don’t fit what’s given in canon, and those are really annoying (tho i don’t dwell too much on that, i just click exit and find another fic to read)
but the thing about this is that we can only work with what we’re given
and there are some seriously underdeveloped characters out there
for example, there’s this Pride and Prejudice fic on AO3 (don’t remember the name so i can’t link it, sorry) that explores Anne de Bourgh’s character
is it OOC? to give a character depth that the original writer didn’t give them? to give them your own interpretation and make them more three dimensional with that?
now, this isn’t as much about the blog entry (though Shannii did say one or two lines that could be interpreted to be about this), but about some replies i’ve seen
and i’m pretty sure most of you could see this coming since i tend to rant about this a lot
and well *points at title again*
but i have got to clear up that fanfic is NOT (and never has been) a stepping stone to writing original fiction
despite the term fanfiction being recent, it has existed since forever ago, i have briefly talked about the historical importance and impact that “fanfiction” has had in literature here, quite frankly i find that diminishing it to something lesser than original fiction (or “real literature” as i’ve seen some people call it) is… quite misogynistic, given that nowadays it’s mostly women (and queer people) who predominate in fandom spaces and who write fanfiction
i may write about the impact misogyny has had in how we perceive fandom and fanworks one day, who knows
other than that, not all fanfic writers write fanfic because they wanna be writers, some just write because they love some piece of media and want to explore things about it
on the other hand, as Shannii mentioned, published writers like Mr. Neil Gaiman have written fanfic, and their fanfic has earned them prizes
another example is Molly Ostertag, a cartoonist and writer who began writing LOTR fanfiction last year, after being a well known person in the industry already
fanfic doesn’t have to be followed by original fiction, and it doesn’t have to be considered less or something less professional or well-produced than original fiction
lastly, i need to say: as i’ve mentioned a couple times before, fanfic can be simply a love letter to a piece of media, no other intentions behind it, nothing other than exploring something we love, building upon it, showing how much it means to us
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Fanfiction be like
Canon: REEEEEE where is me ruples wench!!!
Fanon: I’m so hot and tortured, and I long to kiss the anihero’s sexy body. Maybe Y/N could heal my heart?