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Yesterday I was looking at someone's DeviantArt gallery and they had some fanart related to an RP they were in. They were playing an OC themselves but others were playing canon characters.
I have never quite understood the desire to roleplay existing canon characters from various book or television fandoms (still less roleplaying their actors, where applicable -- the idea of roleplaying another living person is quite weird to me), except maybe for brief appearances as NPCs. Roleplaying seems to me to be all about the original characters and I find it somewhere between puzzling, awkward, and arrogant to be playing canon ones.
Not that I am against telling alternate stories with canon characters, not at all -- that's fanfic, of course. But OCs, inversely, are one of my fastest turnoffs in fanfic; rarely do I find one that seems to mesh into the existing world. I don't mind them quite so much as just "extras", but mention of an OC in a slash or romance role with a canon character is very, very likely to make me skip to the next item in the feed.
But why should it be such a problem in fic when I have the complete reverse thought about RP, and get annoyed when people don't make up their own characters?
I am not sure whether this pattern of thought is hypocritical, merely inconsistent, or actually perfectly reasonable.
I have never quite understood the desire to roleplay existing canon characters from various book or television fandoms (still less roleplaying their actors, where applicable -- the idea of roleplaying another living person is quite weird to me), except maybe for brief appearances as NPCs. Roleplaying seems to me to be all about the original characters and I find it somewhere between puzzling, awkward, and arrogant to be playing canon ones.
Not that I am against telling alternate stories with canon characters, not at all -- that's fanfic, of course. But OCs, inversely, are one of my fastest turnoffs in fanfic; rarely do I find one that seems to mesh into the existing world. I don't mind them quite so much as just "extras", but mention of an OC in a slash or romance role with a canon character is very, very likely to make me skip to the next item in the feed.
But why should it be such a problem in fic when I have the complete reverse thought about RP, and get annoyed when people don't make up their own characters?
I am not sure whether this pattern of thought is hypocritical, merely inconsistent, or actually perfectly reasonable.
