Thread: Fandoms and OC vs Canon

While new to this site, I have RP'd in this fashion for sixteen years. I have done canon and original, but the canon that I've done always comes with a caveat. I use established histories as a starting point, and then I make the characters my own, with a nod toward their history. My canon characters range from pretty spot on to divergences that I obviously feel are an acceptable growth of the character. This has caused disagreements in the past, as there are those that feel a canon character should only be done in a certain way. Sometimes, we can agree to disagree and still RP together. Sometimes we can't. When the latter happens, I hold no grudges to each his or her own. I have also written many original characters, and I find a Mary Sue is not fun to write. It's the flaws and weaknesses of a character that make it interesting and exciting to play, and that gives other writers an opportunity to leverage into exciting roleplay. For a totally new character, I can agonize for days or more to find the right references and examples to inspire the character. And I usually find out within three posts that the character is not at all what I thought they were. My characters take over and write themselves quite often, and I am left wondering where the ideas, the chemistry with other characters, and sometimes even the concept came from. And I love it! Which is better? It depends. I believe that if I am sufficiently motivated, I can always come up with a decent original character. This doesn't mean my partners always like them, or that they are a good fit for the story, and when that happens, the character is put aside to be used later, either in full cloth or as fodder for other ideas. I have also found that, if there is a story that I like, I can take canon characters that I have no interest in and come up with a way to write them that I enjoy, and so far, my partners have as well. I don't think there is a way to judge whether OCs are better than CCs, or vice-versa. It comes down to the writing styles and desires of the writers and the ability to learn how to compromise without losing interest. My only hard and fast rule is that I won't be pigeon-holed. You want me to write Riddler? Fine. I can do that. Riddler was a character that I had never dreamed of writing, that I had zero interest in writing, but a partner had an almost fetishized love of the character, so I took up the gauntlet. Five years later, Riddler is probably the character that I've written the most. And I enjoy writing him. Immensely. But, it isn't a canon Riddler anymore, if it ever was. It's my Riddler, and five years later, he's grown away from the established character in so very many ways. But if you want me to write bronze-age Batman, I'll have some difficulties. Granted, this is the Batman I grew up on, along with the syndicated 1960's Batman television series, but Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman changed the world of comic books forever with The Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, respectively. Comics as a whole became far grittier after those anthologies, and for me, there's no going back. I can write Batman, but I have to be free to write the Batman I have come to know and love and to allow him more latitude in what constitutes not only interrogation, but training as well. And, yes, that would be very relevant to a sexual roleplay. Words. I know how to use them. Sometimes, though, I don't know how to quit using them.