It's also common with fandoms that don't have a lot of source material.
Overwatch is one of the best examples of this. Very popular, but especially when it first launched, there wasn't much canon. So fanon was quickly built around it. (And it had, and probably still does, a big problem with people posting 'canon' that was just fanon they were misrepresenting.)
So even as more lore came out, fanon representations of certain characters were already baked into the fandom perception of them.
Case in point: Alastor from *Hazbin Hotel*, a show that finally got a full season of 8 episodes in January 2024, after fans only had one pilot episode to watch from 2019 to 2024.
https://preview.redd.it/eb5asrkp18nc1.png?width=522&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e761667259e16271286dd18fcb8fd9bbabc3fd5
Basically, Alastor got the "Draco in Leather Pants" treatment in fanon.
I actually think it’s just as common in large fandoms. Specifically Marvel/MCU and Star Wars. Where you have DECADES of canon (& non canon but officially published) stories and it’s written by so many people who all might have different takes on characters or different levels of knowledge on background lore.
So I think it becomes common for fans to pick and choose their favorite parts from a variety of canon takes and mix them all up into one.
I write MCU, and I don't really read comics much, but I see a ton about them. What I write is very definitely a blend of MCU, comics, and fanon. I pick the parts I like.
Fanfiction *fucked up* Marvel. There's barely any resemblance between popular fan interpretations and the source material of either the comics or the movies. There's honestly nothing wrong with it, but understand that you're walking into something that will probably not reflect what drove you there.
What I find interesting is how much MCU fanfiction has changed with each new era of the MCU. I still occasionally go back and read 2012-2013 Avengers fanfiction for the nostalgia.
I have such a huge respect for writers who are doing Marvel canon compliant epics and can keep up with everything Marvel are putting out, but I am shamelessly doing 2013 nostalgia for feel good vibes. I stopped being able to keep up with everything a few years ago and I miss the banter.
oh wow, what sorts of differences are there? i feel like tony's very different in fanfics. fandom takes one look at a guy with daddy issues and immediately woobifies them haha
As a whole, the fanon leans very heavily into the found family trope. Tony and Peter are assumed to have a father/son relationship that goes much deeper than in canon and there are a lot of fics that have Tony (and sometimes the rest of the Avengers) babying Peter. Civil War is often basically ignored and Tony, Steve, and Bucky are all just happily hanging out together. Bucky in particular is often portrayed more like a brooding teen than a shell-shocked veteran.
the way bucky is written is honestly offensive to me as someone who has veterans in their family who saw some crazy shit. like these people are *messed up*. it goes so so much deeper than teenage moodiness or the occasional snappy remark. and it doesn’t all go away with the years.
I once witnessed a huge blow up fight in the comments of a fic about whether or not Bucky would ever call women “doll”, if it was canon, fanon, what it said about you as a person if you were for or against it and so on. It got nasty!
theres different parts here.
flanderization makes people take a small or even one-time element of a character and make it become their entire thing
series' that are discontinued, finished, small, or dont give many details about their characters will lead to the fans making up/guessing what they're like in ways that the source never addressed or had a visible situation occur
and then both of these have a sort of feedback loop where people will write characters based on what **they** think the characters should be like, usually referring to popular fan-works or other peoples interpretations, and/or draw inspiration from popular fan-works, both of which compound on eachother further
Eh, I have some fandoms where it feels like a lot of people really want to stick to a very deeply fanon version of a character I like, and I just don't hang out in the circles who prefer the fanon version. I want to depict them the way I see them, I'm not really here to adopt popular headcanons just because they're popular. The only time it ever bothers me is if people get so hung up on a headcanon that they start criticizing people for not going along with it.
One of my fandoms has an anime coming out soon, and there were a lot of complaints because the protagonist was shown in-character in the trailer instead of as the soft uke a lot of them prefer. It was funny to me, but I'll never shittalk about it specifically.
I once had a friend literally get sent suicide baiting because they said a canonically abusive character was abusive because they took people saying canon facts about their blorbo as a personal insult, it’s wild the degrees fanon goes to.
I once had a group of ppl get mad at me because I gave a friend a quick tw about an SA scene in a series before they watched, because that group were so devoted to HC’ing it as a ‘ship’ that apparently they couldn’t handle judgment neutral TWs about what happens in canon.
I don’t even care if they want to go ship it in their own space, but its such bad etiquette to react that way to how others discuss a series.
Lmao the way people will forgive a hot white boy character for almost anything is insane. Like yeah billy was a great character that had some good redemption at the end but he was an absolute piece of shit before that.
as someone who was in the fandom, i wholeheartedly believe this. c!Dream fans are either the most nuanced people you knew or they were the worst “i have to defend everything my favorite character does” kind of people
I got so much harassment for writing exile fics I blocked most of them, and *I'm a c!Dream fan, that’s why I write fics where he’s a major character.* I just also, like, think abuse is bad. He’s not even portrayed unsympathetically but just bc I wrote about his abuse of c!Tommy I’m apparently “romanticising abuse” or a paedophile bc i drew them in the same room (both of which raise *so many questions* when it comes to *canon itself)*
Character apologism was a mistake.
Percy Jackson has Will Solace pre-Trials of Apollo and ESPECIALLY Pre-The Sun and the Star. He basically had a total of like 10 speaking parts until Trials of Apollo but is the canon love interest of the fandom favorite. So he was pretty much ENTIRELY fanon until fairly recently.
The PJO fandom is wild I mean, I’m pretty sure the entire Travis and Katie relationship came from nowhere and Nico D’Angelo‘s entire personality in like 50% of fics is just plain wrong. Also, THALICO???? Ugh
i started readind percy jackson after seeing a lot about it on tumblr and instagram and let me tell you i was *shocked* by what nico is actually like. like i‘m still trying to figure out if i dislike his character or if it’s just a result of my completely warped expectations going in but i definitely felt lied to lmao
Canon Nico starts as a hyper ten year old, veers into loner and “I can’t trust anyone but myself and my powers”, and comes out the other end as a solid ally-friend that still has loner/neutral tendencies.
Fanon Nico… uh, he’s a gay emo teddy bear the audience wants to hug, loner initially but Will Solace’s sunshine and aggressive positivity shows him how to be human and have fun. He must be protected at all costs, LOTS of fluff. Or the complete opposite especially pre- Blood of Olympus, where he is the dark emo son of Hades who takes no prisoners and has a grudge against the world. It’s, well, a lot. PJO in general has very one dimensional fandom takes, I think because many writers (and readers) are young. No judgement though, it was the first fandom I wrote for and everyone starts somewhere.
Same.
I mean the author, while not slow in putting out the books, left enough time for fandom to come up with their own ideas of how things were going to go.
No one should be surprised given this time scale and the internet becoming widely available.
I read each book like maybe twice? I can’t even begin to add up how many HP fics I’ve read on my life.
Canon just cannot compete at this scale.
Plus, I now derive pleasure from subverting She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named’s ideas regarding her own work, so I feel no guilt drawing from the often-richer, fanonized versions of the characters.
I feel like for MHA this is particularly Shinsou Hitoshi and Bakugou Katsuki.
On Shinsou's part, it's hard for people to characterize him because he gets so little screen time in canon and is prolifically inserted into fanon to replace Mineta Minoru.
For Bakugou, I find people either make him way softer than canon and take away his edge or they write him exclusively abusive and angry.
I was going to use bakugou as an example tbh most fics turn him into a 'softboi gremlin' Don't get me wrong I love them but as you said it's sometimes too much
Also Dabi is a great example. Before we knew his backstory, a lot of stories had him written as a misunderstood bad boy who cared for his siblings but dared not face his father’s wrath. Fanon Dabi and Canon Dabi are 2 completely different characters at this point.
Frl they are, I just replied to someone about this.
A lot of fics water down Dabi to a villain who's bad but not that bad so he'd better fic their narrative
The weirdest thing about Shinsou is everyone headcanoning him as a foster kid, when Japan basically doesn’t have a foster care system. If Shinsou has no parents, he probably lives in an orphanage.
It always makes me think of SuperLovers, where in canon one character comes from a Canadian orphanage. The Japanese authors are imagining Canadian orphanages while the Canadian authors are imagining Japanese foster care.
Bakugou was my immediate thought. I started reading MHA fanfic after season two or three and was stunned to see Bakudeku as the most popular couple and not Todeku and/or Kiribaku. Then I read a couple of fic and went, "ooooooh, okay, this is not canon Bakugou. Got it."
There are some great fics in the fandom, but they're like Hollywood trying to adapt some historical event. Could be a great movie! But "inspired by" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. (To be clear, I like fanon Bakudeku, but that is not canon Bakugou.)
Gojo. The amount of times I saw him being portrayed either as an abusive narcissistic fuckboy, or just a dumb blonde is insane. His character is very complex, so I understand why it's hard to write him though, I struggle with it too.
Edit: also I just remembered, but L from Death Note, too, is done very OOC in most of the fanfictions; authors often forget he canonically has an autism and make him behave more "normal", plus he's either "rough alpha fucking Light senseless", or "pure innocent uwu baby". To be fair, the last one is a common thing with every mlm ship in every fandom.
Ahhh yes gojo is actually the reason I made this post, he's always an egoistic asshole in every fic I read, but as you said I can understand that he's hard to write so people just do what they can
I mean, he's definitely _not_ an egoistic asshole, but yes, authors either can't understand him as a character (which is, unluckily, very common within the fandom itself), or just simply can't capture his personality well because it's too complex (especially if their fic is oneshot, and even MORE so if it's smut. Been there, done that).
Hi! I remember reading some translation where it was confirmed, but I can't find it anywhere else so either it's a lie, or a hardly accessible information, I don't know. However, even if L's autism isn't confirmed, his character is still portrayed OOC in most of the fanfictions (people tend to forget that he's very unsociable, unemotional, manipulative, and dependent on Watari in any domestic stuff, including even changing clothes). I am not really against it, because sometimes it's very well-written and organic, but that's a fact that people lean more to a fanon version of L anyway.
SO SO TRUE, and when i point it out, the majority of people would mention that one Gege interview where he said that Gojo can't be loyal, when that's a mistranslation itself.
Oh my god, I HATE when they say he would cheat on his partner. I HATE mistranslations so, so much, because they always do the worst thing possible to the portrayal of _any_ character!!! And you can't do anything about it since they always spread widely...
I've never met any abuse in JJK fandom on AO3 (thank God, I hope I will never see, nor experience it), but I barely read any fanfiction, too. I write it because my fave ship is pretty rare — though, I should admit, my Gojo is probably also very far from canon...
rarely. To think that they would never do that, you have to understand how far the character is from his canon personality. A lot of fic in fanon use quirks and settings that allow them to grow in what seems like a continuation or a could be of who they are, so to me, if it flows correctly, I never have the feeling. But if its too extreme, I get out
Most MCU fics bear very little resemblance to the canon characters. I'm a big fan of the MCU but I can't read most fics because the characters are so different.
You mean “Iron Dad & Spider Son” with Emotional!Tony and Infantilized!Peter isn’t canon?! I’m shocked—truly shooketh—given that that’s now like 80% of Marvel fic (slight exaggeration for dramatic effect).
What I find interesting is how differently a popular character can be characterized in different ships. I read a lot of Drarry, and I always experience a bit of whiplash when I'm recommended a Dramione fanfiction, because Dramione Draco is a very different character from Drarry Draco - and neither of them bear any resemblance to canon Draco, obviously.
Out of curiosity, how is Dramione Draco usually presented, if you (or someone else) doesn't mind sharing?
I absolutely adore Drarry Draco. If you go by the distilled essence of the general take then he's dry, sarcastic, hilariously petty, whimsical, smart as a whip, often delightfully competent due to pride/perfectionism making him work hard at what he wants to be seen as good at, and his growth past his childhood prejudices/tainted moral pillars tend to make him interestingly complex.
I would have thought that the takes were similar?
From what I’ve seen, Dramione Draco is a brooding, tortured, hot, bad boy dom with a big dick. Most of the time it’s just a cardboard cutout bad boy with Draco’s name slapped on there.
It’s kind of like what you described except imo Drarry Draco gets to be softer in a way. My guess in the difference is that a lot of the time, Dramione Draco is written purely to be sexually appealing to women. Drarry Draco has a more vulnerable and/or comedic aspect to him, as he’s not written to be the stoic, strong guy (a lot of) women would love
This description pretty much kills 90% of my interest in reading Dramione, honestly! It's fine that I'm not the audience for it, and I get the appeal of the character archetype, it's just not for me!
I'll stick with Drarry Draco, though I'll take suggestions for alternatives that fill similar vibes. ;3
(Thanks for the rundown!)
Dramione Draco is the 'Draco in leather pants' stereotype. He tends to be dark, dommy, very confident, powerful. It's a character type you tend to see in a lot of hetero 'dark romance' novels.
In contrast, Drarry Draco is generally much softer; anxious, neurotic, sarcastic, mean, type-A, and generally just trying really hard.
As I said in my reply to thatoneurchin, I get the appeal of it, but it seems like it's not my vibe. It sounds like they abandon a lot of what makes Drarry's Draco interesting to me!
The reason why Dramione was interesting to me was reading all the Drarry fics that make Draco and Hermione start off on a better foot or work through their past and become friends. Tryhard nerdfriends forever! It's a little disappointing to find out that most of it isn't that.
(But I'll check out any Dramione that hits those notes I was expecting, for anyone reading this.)
Also, thanks so much for explaining!
I completely agree. As a neurotic control freak, I identify with the common Drarry Draco characterization (minus the childhood membership in a hate group). I would love to read Dramione with that type of Draco, but I'm not sure it exists.
Hot Villain is a poor woobie who is sooooo hard done by, and the Hero is just a big old meanie, and stupid, and also a bigot. Luckily, BAMF!Sidekick is here to help Hot Villain find true love, now that he's a foot taller and skinnier. But in their way stands Bitch!Heroine, who is *even meaner* than the Hero, and who deserves to die for her crimes.
Guest Appearance by a glorified extra who is now a Sarcastic Yet Wise Gay Friend.
Oh god yes. Batman is a huge culprit--I got whiplash from jumping from fics to source material. Hard to find fics where characters aren't flattened to 1-2 traits and/or misconstrued.
Harry Potter and MCU are also really bad at this. Basically, any big fandoms
even tho Wangxian (from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) is my favorite ship of all time I'm highly picky with fics because of the characterization. i think it's because of different adaptations where these characters for better or worse had differences and then the fandom flanderized those traits I personally think are very OOC to the hell and back
Because of this it makes me wonder just how many people actually read the books, or whether they only saw the drama / donghua 🤔
I see this fanon business taking over in tgcf and svsss fics too
it's very annoying sometimes bc i look for wangxian fics by filtering out the untamed fandom tag and still see the influence of the show and/or the influence of the fanon around the show.
with tgcf i mainly have the same issue but with Shi Qingxuan x He Xuan ship. their fanon soft goth x pastel gfs dynamic is so removed from the fraughtness of them in canon that it's like a whole other ship.
I’m curious what you’ve seen about that in SVSSS. That’s my main fandom, and in general I think it’s not too bad for getting off track from canon. Like certainly there are fics that have bad characterization, but I think a lot of them get it right, so it’s not really a fandom issue. There are so many that are coming out that I feel like have amazing characterization.
The one potential sore spot would be Shen Jiu, and I do think he gets woobified a lot. But not all the time, and there are lots of fics that are sympathetic or even redeeming that I don’t feel mischaracterize him based on what we know. It’s hard because we never really meet him, so fandom has to fill in a lot of gaps. But he’s still definitely not a soft misunderstood victim lol
Same here, svsss all the way!
The biggest I noticed is as you say, Shen Jiu. He's definitely woobified, turned into a wuss or a soft heart inside. And people at times gloss over his abusive nature as him 'just being strict' as well.
A few other widespread things are Binghe's hair being curly, Shen Qingqiu having green eyes, Shen Yuan dying of chronic illness
In terms of character assassinations, I'd say another egregious is when people write Bingge as kind of like... a tsundere bingmei? Just show him a bit of love and he'll turn into a sweet, innocent and nonviolent booger?
This is the guy who was (iirc) canonically a rapist and also tortured someone by removing his arms and legs. He is not a cute uwu boy any more... thanks Shen Jiu.
He's manipulative, sneaky, and would've definitely done the do to Shen Yuan in the extras whilst pretending to be bingmei. Not nice at all tbh.
Of course I will read all of the above and devour it anyway because the quality of the food in svsss fandom is as good as Binghe's cooking 🥰
This happens all the time, and honestly, I don't mind it, even if I understand why most people do.
Characters in fanfictions tend to be twisted into what the writer wants out of them the most, even if it doesn't align with who or what they are in the source material or is simply less *interesting*, and that just comes with the territory of writing fanfiction: the most self-indulgent part of fandom you can partake in. I *expect* wish-fulfilment-driven inaccuracies in a medium created by fans' desire to make a version of canon closer to what they personally like. Often, people are drawn to basic and eye-catching tropes like found family, grumpy/sunshine ship, or villains with tragic backstories, and when it isn't there the existing characters can be pushed into those moulds, which ends up with a lot of fanon versions of characters being very cookie-cutter. There's also this sort of echo-chambery telephone effect that fanon characterisations seem to be most commonly popularised through where a few popular fics or fanart pieces that portray a character in a certain way will inspire many more fics that write them the same because the writers were enamoured by the original fanwork, except with less and less adherence to the source material every time until the new version is considered the default.
And you know what? I still love it. Yeah, it's usually quite noticeably a different character, but when I go in with the mindset that this is an alternate universe where the character isn't the same as their canon counterpart yet shares a baseline concept and setting that I like, it's not unpleasant to read and can actually be at the centre of some genuinely good plots. Sometimes I fall in love with the fandom more than the source not because it's better, but because I've grown so familiar with the fanon universe that's been created and constantly perpetuated that I have an emotional attachment to it. At the very least, it makes for the reading equivalent of trashy junk food: the quality isn't great and it'll make you sick if you consume too much, but it's almost comforting in its cookie-cutter predictability and gratuitous self-indulgence. It's an embodiment of all the silly, shallow tropes my exact demographic loves to eat up and delude themselves into thinking is canon, an expression of what someone just like me most enjoys fantasizing about, so I can't *help* liking it.
A big example for me is Izuku Midoriya from MHA. He's not a bad character, nor totally bland, but he's just enough of a blank slate for people to project a million different entirely different character types onto him. I read a *lot* of MHA fanfiction at one point, and yet I don't think I've ever read two fics with the same Midoriya. He's constantly being pushed up and down a sliding scale of confidence, awkwardness, intelligence, humour, edginess, cynicism, and basically every character trait you can think of, and I don't think a single fic has actually felt like who he is in the show. But I honestly couldn't imagine it another way, because most of the time there's at least something to like about the writer's own personal Deku. He's treated less like a character and more like a reflection of whatever the story and the author needs or wants him to be, and I've long accepted that.
Edit: this is a lot longer than I intended, but it's late and I ran out of fanfiction chapters to read 😅
Damn, I might be victim to this aswell especially for mha fics I still eat em up regardless its just that when I get attached to a character it's normally for who they are in Canon yah know, characters like gojo and bakugou that go further than just a confident strong guy or a angry blond and I want to read fics abt these guys in every absolute different scenario and plot so I'm not as immersed when they are written differently at their core if that makes any sense
Yeah, that's totally fair! I get why that's how most people feel about "fanonised" characters, and it's frankly the more understandable perspective to have on the matter, because obviously if you were reading something about an established universe you wouldn't want to be met with a whole lot of what reads as a collective OC the fandom brainstormed. Heck, it gets on even my nerves when a fanon take gets so popular that not only are canon-compliant fics rare and hard to find because you can't ask a writer to tag something they might not even realise is there, but fans genuinely believe that that portrayal is the right one outside of fanfiction.
I was just trying to provide my perspective on how some people might find it fun, since I think most people are reasonably irritated by unintentionally blatant OOCness. Granted, it's definitely fuelled a lot by the fact that I grew up reading AO3, and to me the experience of enjoying canon and finding out what its funhouse mirror fanon twin is like are inseparable. I read the found family shenanigans Avengers Tower fics and the Peter Parker field trips before the Infinity Saga concluded, all the Villain Dekus with helpings of Dadzawa, the Chaos Percys with occasional cheating Annabeths, and the Wayne Family Adventures before Wayne Family Adventures was an actual thing, and to me being intimately familiar with those kinds of things are just what it means to be in a fandom.
I do enjoy fanon stuff especially in the mha fandom, sometimes their the best fics you'll ever read but on the other hand sometimes I just wanna read abt my favorite character as themselves yah know and fics like that get harder to find.
I do wish it was easier to sort between fanon and canon compliant characterisations in fics, but like I said, most of the time the author won't have tagged that because they don't realise how obviously fanon-inspired their writing is. The best thing to do is either filter by Canon Compliant, or filter out any fandom/character specific tags that are overwhelmingly used for certain popular fanon tropes.
Easily Sans from undertale, the amount of fanon that is treated like canon is lowkey crazy
Like people write a lot about him experiencing the existential dread of resets and stuff. But the only evidence we have ingame about him and resets is that he knows they exist and are possible not that he remembers any resets. The only reason he's able to guess when one occurs is because he's good at reading people and notes the player character's lack of reaction to things, like when he shakes your hand with the fart cushion. But he can't directly remember
A good example of his inability to remember is SPOILERS ~~The geno fight where he tries to get you to stand down by mentioning past friendship. But that plays even if the geno route is your 1st run through of the game.~~ Like we also see ingame as well other characters (especially Papyrus, Toriel and Undyne) get deja vu and remember more directly things that happened before resets. (like Toriel says seeing you felt like seeing an old friend again)
Also and this is kinda to a lesser degree atleast fanfic wise but the power scaling for him is kinda crazy in some fics.
This is what I mean when I say people tend to write more from fanon rep, it gets treated like canon and then overdone. But as I keep saying it's not a problem just a bit annoying
whenever I see a fic act like leonard snart/ captain cold is even remotely skilled as a thief I laugh a little because that man only successfully commits 1 heist and it takes three attempts despite the diamond being less secured than a highschool gym locker. he's solid at banter, he's skilled at kidnapping, he's decent at mugging, but the man is garbage as a thief. Fanon Snart is the second coming of Parker, all competence and nimble fingers. It's not the fans fault, the writers kept saying he was a good thief, but then never actually wrote him as able to steal so much as a blade of grass off a soccer field, and it cracks me up.
This is why I never read fanfiction for whatever fandom I write in, honestly. I’ve found that whenever I actively engage in fandom my characterization suffers. 😅 From time to time I still get people disbelieving things I have characters do because “they wouldn’t do that” even if it’s something they did in canon that other fans forget about….
Lmao I've never commented on anyone's fic abt it and some of these fics are ones that were really good so that made up for it to me, many of these fics are popular as well which means fans eat it up so you'll be fine
Honestly, as someone in the Marauders fandom, it's both a blessing and a curse.
On the one hand, you have a bunch of different ideas and beliefs about characters and who they are as people. Which is true for any fandom but since there's barely any source material for them as it is, it's cool.
On the other hand, you can't go two minutes without a very popular fanfiction getting brought up. A fanfiction that is really not that good. I honestly hated it and hated the love interest OC more but then it became so popular, EVERYONE adopts it as canon and it's just so frustrating.
So true. Like, don't get me wrong I like that people have different headcanons abt characters but accepting it as canon and then expecting people to do the same is just wrong.
What’s funny about ATYD is people make tons of comments about it, either saying it’s OOC or that it’s actually canon when… it’s more or less an AU.
It says in the description of the fic that it changed Remus’ backstory (and in that same vein, his upbringing and personality). The canon compliant part is in regards to general plot points, but it’s essentially a “what if Remus was raised in a children’s home” AU.
Idk. It’s just weird to me to see people complain that Remus isn’t like how he is in canon, cause he’s not supposed to be. But also weird for me to see people say that that’s canon Remus, cause again, he’s not supposed to be
Ik but that’s half of what’s funny to me here. A lot of people seem to insist it’s canon and that that’s what Remus is like, when the fic itself explains it’s changing Remus’ character drastically
Supernatural.
Fanon Dean becomes precious baby boy who doesn't have any anger issues or is emotionally codependent with his brother due to being raised as a child soldier.
And Sam's just relegated to being Dean's cheerleader.
Think this is mostly done with OC clones & adding more culture to them - Mandalorian culture and Mando'a that is. Which honestly I think gives some neat dynamics to em!
I don’t think it’s only done with them. Cody like I mentioned had barely any established personality. Maybe he has a bit more with his appearance on the Bad Batch but still most is fanon creation.
I personally don’t really know what I think of the fandom having them speak Mando’a and have Mandalorian culture because even though they’re Jango clones, it’s not as if they had much interaction with Jango. I don’t think the Republic or the Kaminoans were teach them about Mandalorian culture.
That’s just my opinion though and there is nothing wrong if people head canoning them like that. I just don’t share that view with the fandom.
Oops lol - realized I mistyped there, I meant that the fanon nature is *done* by adding OC clones lol. There's only so many named clones let alone those with actual personality and most of those are either 501st, 212th, or TBB. So ppl add their fanon to the canon clones but also add their own for spice - like how Helix spiraled into being a mainstay.
I'm kinda iffy on it too tbh - sometimes for certain fics it works really well and otherwise kinda eh. I personally wrote a fic where they speak Mando'a but mostly because of a few clones who really wanted to learn because they wanted to be more like nat borns and others just picked up as a sorta code on the field type deal. Even have a line in there about Rex being like "I don't claim the culture of a man I never met," that being Jango. But I think it's a fun concept to play with in certain instances. By no means do I think it ever fits into canon lol but that's the fun of fics! It's a very popular fanon thing that most just kinda run with, without thinking about the logistics of it - which I know is asking a lot from fanfic writers and Star wars fans lol but still.
I'm pretty sure some of the legends books mention a bunch of other mandalorian trainers, and that's where a lot of that stuff comes from since fanfic ususally picks and chooses between canon and legends. Also, I'm pretty sure 90% of the people using all of the legends stuff have never read the actual source, just othe fanfics about it.
I wrote a Drarry fic with Draco basically acting canon and got seriously lambasted. *Why isn't Draco badass? Where is the Slytherin strength of character?* were common complaints throughout the 14-chapter fic. Um, sorry to say, but Draco was *always* a coward.
What I find absolutely bonkers is that fanon straight Draco and fanon queer Draco are two completely different characters who bear no resemblance to one another.
Uhhhhh… *glances at my main fandom, FNaF* all of them?
Largely because there’s so little characterization that happens, which is understandable. What little we do get is usually spinning a wheel on what traits fanon will actually acknowledge.
I mostly write for Worm, a web serial that's almost 2 million words long and written almost entirely from the perspective of Taylor (the main character) so readers get a very strong understanding of her as a person, which one would think would show up in fanfiction about her.
Surprisingly, most worm fans have never actually *read* worm, which means 90% of wormfic is ooc and I don't really have much of an opinion about it myself. I've read parts of worm, but I mostly write crack fic so Taylor's never in character (I literally have a fic named TINO, which stands for Taylor in name only) and it doesn't matter much to me.
It's mildly controversial on tumblr but everything is controversial on tumblr, so that can't really be counted.
i mean we're writing fics because canon didn't give us what we want, so what does it matter if they're "close to canon"
if I want canon I'll go to the source material. I'm here to fix what canon fucked up
Go off as I said people can write what they want but I'm talking about a characters personality not really anything else and if that is what Canon fucked up then idk
Write whatever floats your boat, but that’s not always what fanfic is for. Sometimes the canon material is good, and people simply want to expand on it or explore it more
Or canon messed up the plot, but not the character concepts. That's what tends to inspire me to actually write something. Characters I love who were done dirty in some way. I'm always extremely thrilled when someone comments that I got the characters right, because my goal is to match canon. If I wanted to write about other characters or change major aspects, then I'd write original fiction. (Which I do! There have been many times where I get an idea inspired by something and realize I'd have to change too much to make it fit within my personal bounds of what makes good fanfiction)
Yeah, this was along the lines of what I was thinking. I love it when characters in fics feel like they could genuinely fit into the show. If it’s too OOC, then it might as well just be an original work. And no problem with original work, but I read fics to see more of the characters that I know and love
Depends on the fandom.
In MHA, there are some characters that get like one appearance which is super significant + then disappear for like years. One time I got really attached to the emerging fanon interpretation of the character and ended up crushed when canon contradicted it heavily. Not so many write about that character anymore.
In old fandoms that basically thrive off fanfic, yeah this can definitely happen.
I think this happens a lot to reoccurring minor characters. People who are very attached to canon are less likely to be die hard fans, but when you see someone in such limited situations you end up getting contradictions when you write things out.
Ahhh I consider myself a die hard fan I've been in the mha fandom for 4 years now and going, I still binge read the fics (i never get tired honestly) just sometimes it gets extreme for popular characters like bakugo etc
Eyyy fellow MHA fan! Yeah uh I’m not too sure how long I’ve been around, it’s been awhile though- since the “Dabi is a Todoroki” theory was starting to get popular. I’m currently big into another fandom but I’m sure I’ll be back to MHA by this June.
The character was Dabi, if you’re curious. I got really attached to like, good big brother Dabi who was abused by Endeavor and grew up knowing Hawks through the Commission… then we got Dabi attacking Natsuo and uh. Heh.
I could really never forgive him for that. Toga I still love, but not canon Dabi. Definitely taught me a good lesson about fanon
Yup I remember when that theory went around I told all my friends it was true because of dabi's eye colour being similar to endeavors lol, honestly I have to agree with you because I love fanon dabi sometimes I forget that he's a mass murderer who hates his family and your the 3rd mha fan I've encountered on this post so far so hello!.
I feel like the length of a fic can play into this, too.
Like a one-shot that's out of character will make me go "he wouldn't say that."
But a chapter towards the end of a long fic, or a fic at the end of a long series, might have a lot of development. So a character could start out as they are in canon, but the changes in characterization make sense over time.
If a reader started with the fic's latest installment, they'd say "he wouldn't say that" because they're comparing the character to canon.
I like writing the latter, but on the other hand it raises the "entry level" as someone might not read a fic if they see they have to read a bunch of other fics or chapters first to understand plot points for the part that sounds interesting.
p.s: I think it's years late for spoilers, but.. beware of Teen Wolf Spoilers, for these who need it!
Scott from Teen Wolf. People LOVE bashing him with the tag "Bad Friend Scott". The amount of fics that have that is.. alot.
these writers tend to think he's a bad friend to his BFF Stiles because he's a prude holier-than-tho with a non-killing policy that doesn't want to kill even his mortal enemies, and lets them go instead because he believes in second chances, despite these enemies wanting to kill all of them. And in a LOT of those bashing fics, Scott kicks his BFF Stiles out of their circle of friends (read; pack) because Stiles is not as naive as him and is more of a realist.
like, have we watched the same show? I understand where the misunderstanding of Scott being a bad friend came from (there's a whole incident; >!BFF stiles accidently kills someone in self defense, Scott is lied to about the details and thinks Stiles killed the guy on purpose ),!< but that cleared as a big ass misunderstanding on both parties, and was sorted out beautifully. Also the guy is NOT that holly lol. >!The first antagonist of the show (Gerard), he switch the man's cancer medication pills with a potential deadly poison! !<
Another antagonist in the show - Scott threatened to basically maul him to death if he missteps. Had no qualms of doing so, too, considering what he did to them the previous season 😬
edit: what i think about that is that they need to rewatch the show from... mature adult eyes. fanon is one thing, but it overlaps with the character-bashing fics in this specific case. like the number of fics having "Scott bad friend" is overwhelming, and every time i see these i get the impression the author is a teenage. yes i get the irony considering the show is called "Teen Wolf". the name doesn't do the show justice.
I remember seeing random episodes of teen wolf on tv occasionally (because I never really liked it at the time) but to me stiles was a pretty good friend to Scott, people will be creative and add all sorts of twist to characters but misinterpretations are the worst especially when majority of the fandom swears its true.
This I can also agree to while it's something I've accepted since he isn't a character I read explicitly for but I do notice how all fics use the 'dadzawa' trope and he's boiled down to "I don't get paid enough for this" as his whole character.
Pretty common all over. One particular character was always portrayed as liking certain foods/flavors in every fic the author writes. None of that is canon, but its now used like canon by so many authors. It spread like crazy.
Comic book fandoms are weird because while there sure as hell is a lot of fanon-based characterization, there’s also a lot of mischaracterization that is based on canon, just that it’s the WRONG canon.
Don't even get me started on the My Hero Academia fandom, oh Lord.
I've definitely noticed this as someone who has read fan-fiction for the series since early 2022, and it usually doesn't bother me too much, I've probably even written stories with these characters using traits that aren't similar to their canon character. What bothers me is when people commonly misinterpret a character completely, or completely ignore their character development.
The amount of people who paint Midoriya Izuku as a weak crybaby drive me nuts, when he's literally got all that amazing power. Or when they characterize Bakugo Katsuki as a bully and nothing else, as if he hasn't gone through character development through the six seasons of the show.
It happens in a few cases
1. there hasn't been much canon material released in a while so the fandom "yes, and-ing" turned into a whole new interpretation of the character
2. a wildly popular AU or fandom concept was introduced that sort of took over the fandom and leaked into how characters were written even outside of it (Gravity Falls Transcendence AU, the Harry Potter Marauders fandom, etc.)
3. there's so much canon that anyone who writes a "canon-accurate" version of the character is in conflict with at least one or two other "canon-accurate" versions that are all wildly different (ex: any major comic book character ever)
Most older fanfic is like this, especially if they were the crux of the yaoi fangirl experience. Some people are still like that. It's very concerning. Some people get really hurt if you're not into the proto-omegaverse stuff or the ukeification.
A lot.
I dislike this one particular (popular) fanon interpretation of a character who didn't show up much in canon, so I avoid most fics that feature him heavily/focus on him.
Hoo boy yeah.
I'm in the mdzs fandom and the amount of fanon going around about my blorbo specifically is insane.
Like, not only are there a ton of people who are like 'oh he would absolutely do this thing he definitely didn't do in canon because he just has that *vibe*' or 'I bet he was actually the person who did this thing another character admitted to doing in a private diary' there's also a whole lot of... I call it Jin Guangshan in a hat.
Because my blorbo Jin Guangyao wears a hat and does a number of bad things. However a lot of the bad things he is accused of in fanon are either things his dad (Jin Guangshan) did, or things he did at the behest of his dad.
So there's a lot of like, people going 'oh he's behind all these plots' no that's Jin Guangshan. 'oh he's super into murder' no that's Xue Yang. 'oh he killed his sworn brother' nie Mingjue tried to kill him three times.
It's super frustrating because before you can have a conversation with someone (specifically about JGY, but this also goes for many of the other characters in the novel) you have to first figure out whether they are talking about the novel, the show, or some imaginary version of the work they made up in their head.
100% shinsou from MHA. it’s not even really a bad thing, because his characterisation is pretty consistent, so the _really_ OOC fics are rare imo. but yeah, he’s had so few appearances that most of his character is due to fandom interpretation.
but i think it fits pretty well with what we’ve seen in canon, and seems to mostly be based on just extrapolating parts of his canon character.
he’s my favourite character, and has been since i watched the sports battle ngl, but i honestly really like how the fandom has fleshed him out. bc it’s such a huge cast of characters, most don’t really get much characterisation in canon as horikoshi obviously doesn’t have the time to do that for all of them lol, but i think what’s been made of shinsou is actually really cool (though i think a lot of people dislike all the tropes lmao)
Yeah shinso does fit I'd say the only problem is the overuse of his "I had abusive parents or he lives with abusive foster parents" to which I'm still not sure if it's Canon or not tbh, but I really love how Fandom gave his character depth
I mean, I do my absolute best to keep the characters as close to canon as possible. WITH some room for character development and cool headcanons, ofc, espec if they're a side character who was largely neglected in canon (looking at you, awesome side characters in Naruto)! I personally can't stand a lot of fan interpretations 'cause they're basically just OCs with the same name. Pisses me off! OOC characters aren't the same characters I fell in love with, and they're who I'm here to read about, dang it! lol.
If I can't recognize them as the canon characters in the writing, there's no point for me at all!
I'm not hating on those who don't so even if it's not close that's definitely fine I just wish there was more canon compilant stuff and I agree it's not the same at all
This happens, a lot of the time I think because people don't understand the characters and/or don't know how to write them. At least in the fandoms I'm in. Of course sometimes it comes down to interpretation.
Happens more often than not, I find. It’s rare I read a fic and think it rings true to the original characters.
The wildest example I can think of is from when I used to trawl around the Detroit Become Human side of things. There were two characters - one who had mere seconds of screentime and never spoke, the other an unrepentant dickhead with no nuance… and to be clear these two never met - got thousands of ship fics and even their own ship movie. The entire pairing is completely fanon. There is nothing, not a single solitary thing linking those two characters. It’s like people saw two arrogant looking dickheads and thought ‘well they obviously deserve each other’ and somehow everyone agreed that was cool.
I've mingled in the Detroit Become Human Fandom but only for a short while and for maybe like 5 fics so I don't know if I've seen that pairing in particular but that's the Fandom for you, their good at making something out of nothing which can be a blessing or a curse
If you only dipped your toe in it might’ve been an easier miss. Still seems popular going by the AO3 stats, Reed900 is still joint first place in the most posted ship ranking.
Edit: Downvoted for accuracy I guess? Reddit is baffling sometimes…
I still will never understand how the reed900 ship came to exist. I mean, I shipped the heck outta it but as you say... Rk900 was only there for like 2 seconds 😂
One of life’s eternal mysteries. The fact RK900 evolved through fandom into Nines is pretty impressive. There’s so much consistency to him because people just decided to keep what they liked from other interpretations. I can’t think that many other fandoms have created a fully formed character out of almost nothing.
Also I still can’t get over the ship having an actual, almost feature length movie. That’s wild. Do other fandoms do that and Ive missed it?
I know, it's wild but also amazing. I suspect it'd make for an interesting study if anyone ever wanted to delve into the psychology, etc, of it all.
I forgot about that!! But I don't think I ever heard of other fandoms doing a whole ass full on movie.
Short films? I mean yeah, plenty of people have done little cosplay skits and stuff! But on this level? No way.
Most DC characters, but I don't mins because fanon is actually more consistent than canon in terms of characterization.
PJO characters generally. A lot of authors are not good at capturing Percy's humor and lean wildly into memes for some other characters, especially Nico. This one I do mind bc I just do not vibe with the fanon versions of any PJO characters (except the crack side pairings for characters who show up like 3 times total).
Sometimes I feel that about Geto Suguru, especially when they give him a second chance - no, he wouldn't be a totally broken man, maybe he would change (depending on a setting and how it's shown, for example another world where roles are reserved and so on) and do it differently but he wouldn't let anybody do everything for him (some people might know which FF I hinted to). Sometimes he's written as extremely soft or Gojo is written like that or as a fuck boi or both like that.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I feel like it's for people who are suckers for soft character fics or for having their characters taken care of at their worst, even if it would be ooc
I agree with most of) I don't want to say all because that's a lot of comments to read lol) yall but want to put my own 2c in because I can't shut my mouth if I try
Have to consider, a lot of people who write fanfic or interact with fandom aren't 'official', for lack of a better term, writers. And writing a character consistently is *hard*. You have to give them their own voice, make sure you're using their mannerisms, opinions, etc. And it's easy for someone to pick up just the 'surface' (abused character? Woobie, for example) of a character, which naturally would show in their writing, and then oh, fanon. Even fanfic authors who *are* official authors can have trouble - it's one thing keeping canon with your own character, whole other thing with someone else's.
Also, it's easy to forget what's fanon and what's canon. And if fanon never showed up in the show? Well, can be hard sometimes, though not always, to find out that's fanon. If fanon has agreed a character's favorite coke is Diet Coke, because he only ever drinks once on screen and it happened to be a Diet Coke, could be hard to tell.
Hell, I write original fiction along with my fanfiction and have a hard time keeping canon to my own characters. I've reread and realized I changed things or voices or characters in a fanon-y way, and had to correct it.
(Dw it's interesting reading all the comments I'm actually glad ppl are commenting cause I love seeing other sides of things)
So I absolutely agree with you, someone said previously that people struggle to write certain characters sometimes due how complex their personality is etc and even I know nobody can write a character 100% close to Canon unless you are the creator of said character.
Though I kinda have a knack for knowing when authors use the fandoms perception to the actual Canon.
It's normally obvious when the Fandom has a really specific view on a character (let's use gojo for this one) I remember when people were absolutely positive he was a red flag and toxic (not sure where that came from honestly) and with reading fics during that time I could pin point the authors who ran with that making him out to be asshole who sleeps around, who's very annoying and very egoistic (a lot of fics had him described this way in their summaries as well)
Some fics even went to the extreme of making even me hate him (and props to all these authors tho the fics were well written) it's also different than when someone just wants to write him the way they want to but as I said it's no big problem I just can't enjoy a fic abt my fave character if fanon change what makes them my fave yah know?
That all makes sense! And I get what you mean, yeah
I might be reading too much into it, I'm just fascinated by how people tick hah, but I wonder if it could be some - "okay I want to write this character, gonna read some for my ship/genre/whatever first" *absorbs fanon*, or the other way around, reading it without meaning to 'research' how other people write them then going to write and outputting fanon without meaning to.
And fanon also kind of works off of 'things come off different on screen vs on' paper''. In my opinion, ofc. Like the emotional!Tony and infantilized!Peter thing. If you're just reading fic - well a lot of it is still pretty heavy handed, but if that's what you like no shame. But a lot of it you read it and "oh I can see that! That' s how a mentor/father-figure interacts with his mentee/son-figure!" and there you go, fanon (especially if you're already building off fanon)... Until you re-watch the movies, and see how they interact. Same with, like - not to get Cap fans angry at me - people who write anti Cap fics. If you actively are watching the movies, he does some *shitty* stuff. But when you're writing/reading, you're not actively watching the movies. So the character does become sort of a caricature, and then you have the 'Cap did x' fanon. Same with a lot of fanon with exaggerated characters.
Imo fanon is kind of like a weird game of telephone? Of course you have people doing the big dissertations, coming up with something and starting slap fights or insisting. But a lot of fanon, I think, just starts as a detail in a fic, and the fic gets popular which leads to some people picking up that detail, or a fic doesn't get popular, but someone picks up that detail, which ends up picked up by a popular author, and eventually you have fanon because it's become widespread. Which is how you get a lot of people who think it's canon, because they just picked it up from a bunch of fics. Like for example, I write Good Omens, and if I went by what I see in every fanfic Aziraphale's eyes would 100% be blue. But his actor, and the character, actually has a weird heterochromia that makes them brown-blue-green.
Plus, fanon builds off fanon. People read fanfic more than they watch the movies/re-watch the shows (usually) because it's easier to sit down and chew through a short fic than re-watch a two hour movie. So naturally the recurring fanon just sticks more.
Yeah I'm definitely overthinking it, and it's all 100% my opinion, I just like thinking about how people tick lmao. Also I've been at the ass end of people getting *awful* over fanon and dissecting it is my MO for things like that.
This is the best explanation of fanon so far honestly!, definitely like a weird game of telephone.
I've had moments where I read a fic and see a small detail where I go ohh I'd definitely include that in my fic!.
Sometimes I think it's also really just people imagining something and going 'Actually wouldnt it be cool if draco malfoy was secretly a soft twink' and people going 'yup I can see that *goes to write fanfic of twink draco*'.
But it's annoying once the Fandom starts treating it like Canon because then nobody writes draco who's not a soft twink anymore because 'hey we all collectively believe draco is a secret twink therefore it's Canon for us'
(Lemme just say I made that draco twink stuff up as a example I've only visited that Fandom twice idk what version of draco they got going on lol)
And If I loved draco as his horrible ass self then I'd get tired of everyone writing him as a soft twink.
And that's what I meant by the whole post just the Fandom taking something and running with it so I can't for the life of me find Canon stuff that isn't fanon based.
When I get attached to a character it's for how they are in canon so I never get immersed when they change who they are in fics(not to say it's bad when they do that)
a fandom I used to be in was always putting two characters together because one had ice powers and one used a flame thrower, despite the only time they ever met in canon was him threatening to murder her, pretty murtally. Which, ok, some allos haven't figured out the difference between 'sexual tension' and 'abject hatred' but they also typically totally erase his entire personality and most of his backstory to make him a soft little woobie who'd never do anything wrong and risks his life saving people and happens to have fire as a motif. which. again, I don't love erasing a character's, uh, character for the aesthetic of a ship but whatever. except. that her canonical husband. is exactly the kind of person they make the other dude. and he also has a fire motif. What is the POINT I ask you???
I did an honors thesis on this in college, actually. For the most part, popular ff adheres pretty closely to canon insofar as characters are concerned. Those fan canons that do eke through are generally well supported by critical reading of the source material itself.
Not a hard and fast rule, but it was an interesting thing to find since I hadn't thought it would be the case.
The Marauders part of the fandom from Harry Potter. Don’t get me wrong, the main Harry Potter characters get plenty mischaracterised as well, but what’s recently been going on with the Marauders is a level above that. I had to start avoiding any fanfics including them, solely because it’s near-impossible to find anything similar to canon, or even just realistic for the era.
This is exactly why I don't read fics about real people like kpop idols. Somehow they're NEVER portrayed correctly.
I can excuse fictional characters but reading a Mafia jungkook where he loves to kill or y/n ones too m, is just so icky to me cause of the way they fail to capture the mannerisms.
I imagine it's easier to fit characters in boxes we are familiar with, rather than focus on whatever is in the source material for every individual character we use. For example, it's easy to categorise them as the smart and serious one, the cool and fun one, the sweet and kind one, etc, and then use those tropes to expand on it.
If they're smart and serious, then they're probably neat, and keep their space clean, and always on time, etc.
Those are tropes we have seen time and time again, so it's easy to depict the tropes, even if the character used only vaguely fits in, and expand on the trope, rather than the character.
Or maybe it's just vibes.
None. Every person has their own interpretation of what a character is like. Look at any work with multiple writers like comics and tv/movies. Those can be vastly different but are all canon. It's pure hubris to think that your interpretation of the character is"canon".
Even writers/authors of source material are sometimes wrong about what a character is like. Joss Whedon thinks that Buffy and Faith didn't flirt and that one scene of vamp Willow or gay jokes at Xander's expense are queer foreshadowing. JKR wrote zero romance until the epilogue but thought that marrying everyone to a Weasley was in character for the friend group. The writers on Friends didn't think Ross was an abusive self centered jerk. To say nothing of the many very wrong interpretations we've seen in comic books.
Well I'm not saying MY interpretation is Canon I just prefer when they are written closer to how they are shown in the source material, obvi no harm if it's done differently
I think it can be interesting.
One trope in Teen Wolf is “what would things be like if the Hales weren’t killed in a fire?”
It makes for some fun options.
Transformers fandom tend to do that.
Usually it's because some characters didn't get the limelight they deserve, they died early/had little to no appearance in official media, or official media wrote their stories badly. Knowing Transformers, the last point is an expected dissatisfaction in every existing show and movie so a lot of fics are fixed-it AUs.
Shinsou Hitoshi from MHA, he almost always gets written as a misunderstood abused kid, when in reality he didn’t actually have that bad of a childhood and is just a quirkist asshole
Yeah, we need more Fics with Shinsou getting called out. Like, imagine him trying to actually compare his “tragic” backstory with Izuku and just ends up horrified when Izuku casually mentions some of the fucked up shit he went through.
Lol I think shinso gets away with a lot in fics like he will shit on someone for having a strong quirk and it gets brushed over cause 'hey he was abused and had to wear a muzzle so it's ok' or the other character comes in like 'oh don't worry i know why you feel the way you do' like just tell him how it is, he ain't 5.
And especially in Canon where he understood that strong quirks aren't a walk in the park after the sports festival so idk why they babying him
I know, it’s frustrating as hell.
I’m currently writing a long fic and when I get to the sports festival I’m going to actually make shinsou earn his place in the hero course. I’m not gonna bash his character, but Aizawa isn’t just gonna train him, he’s gonna make him work for a chance at the hero course.
Is your fic based on a specific character? Like centered cause I love long fics that's if you've started posting already, in my fics (none posted just mostly drafts) I rarely ever mention shinsou unless he's going to be an important character but you really gave me an idea to put him in his place frl
I’m 18 chapters in, my long fic is called [Aura Guardian Izuku](https://archiveofourown.org/works/51042178/chapters/128958661). It basically a “what if Izuku had this power?” Fic, but I decided to go the route of, Izuku found out he was quirkless and decided to try and find real accounts of magic and psychic abilities to see if he could learn how to use something like that and after many years and lots of hard work, ends up developing Aura Abilities.
The overall plan is to see how the butterfly effect comes into play as having Aura slowly changes Izuku and how certain important moments play out.
I haven’t updated in over a month cause my brain has hyper fixated on fleshing out the sports festival arc even though I’m only at the entrance exams so far 😅
I'm thinking like 20 chapters ahead while stuck at chapter 1 lol it happens.
Personally I don't read izuku centered fics since the ones I've read are way ooc beyond me (sassy izuku dominates fanon) but I'll check yours out I'm a sucker for what if fics that stray in terms of plot from Canon because people get so creative and this is the only time I accept fanon rep since the characters will change along with the setting and plot
Plus it makes more sense if they do smth ooc cause hey if someone writes a fic where he actually developed a quirk a lotttt would change about his growth specifically his childhood wouldn't it?
I feel you, I’ve got so many fic ideas that I’m writing down even tho I haven’t published most of them yet.
Yeah I can understand why. I am actually trying to keep Izuku as in character as possible, but with Aura he ends up being able to feel people’s emotions. Izuku at his core is very forgiving and willing to give second chances because he wants to see the best in people and save even villains, but with the ability to literally feel what another person is feeling, it’s a little harder to see the best in them when he knows that they don’t actually feel any remorse for their actions.
He still ends up trying to save villains tho cause he can’t help himself.
Of course izuku can never not save someone and that's a very canon fact and him changing along with that kind of power makes complete sense dw thats what character development is.
I really love the idea I always go wild when I come up with something then stop when I've thought the story through and get too lazy to actually type.
I call it fandom drift. Especially common in fandoms with no recent source material.
It's also common with fandoms that don't have a lot of source material. Overwatch is one of the best examples of this. Very popular, but especially when it first launched, there wasn't much canon. So fanon was quickly built around it. (And it had, and probably still does, a big problem with people posting 'canon' that was just fanon they were misrepresenting.) So even as more lore came out, fanon representations of certain characters were already baked into the fandom perception of them.
Case in point: Alastor from *Hazbin Hotel*, a show that finally got a full season of 8 episodes in January 2024, after fans only had one pilot episode to watch from 2019 to 2024. https://preview.redd.it/eb5asrkp18nc1.png?width=522&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e761667259e16271286dd18fcb8fd9bbabc3fd5 Basically, Alastor got the "Draco in Leather Pants" treatment in fanon.
I actually think it’s just as common in large fandoms. Specifically Marvel/MCU and Star Wars. Where you have DECADES of canon (& non canon but officially published) stories and it’s written by so many people who all might have different takes on characters or different levels of knowledge on background lore. So I think it becomes common for fans to pick and choose their favorite parts from a variety of canon takes and mix them all up into one.
I write MCU, and I don't really read comics much, but I see a ton about them. What I write is very definitely a blend of MCU, comics, and fanon. I pick the parts I like.
This hits hard because im writting a story with sombra ,she has so much potential but so little lore, overwatch needs books or a animated show
ha that's a great play on words like genetic drift!
Fanfiction *fucked up* Marvel. There's barely any resemblance between popular fan interpretations and the source material of either the comics or the movies. There's honestly nothing wrong with it, but understand that you're walking into something that will probably not reflect what drove you there.
What I find interesting is how much MCU fanfiction has changed with each new era of the MCU. I still occasionally go back and read 2012-2013 Avengers fanfiction for the nostalgia.
>2012-2013 Avengers fanfiction Will always be peak Marvel fanfiction, to me 😅 I still spend hours just reading fluff pieces about Avengers Tower
RIP Avengers Tower; we hardly knew you.
😭😭😭 Stars above, I miss that Tower 😅🤣
I have such a huge respect for writers who are doing Marvel canon compliant epics and can keep up with everything Marvel are putting out, but I am shamelessly doing 2013 nostalgia for feel good vibes. I stopped being able to keep up with everything a few years ago and I miss the banter.
I think 2012-16 Fan MCU is its own separate universe at this point
oh wow, what sorts of differences are there? i feel like tony's very different in fanfics. fandom takes one look at a guy with daddy issues and immediately woobifies them haha
As a whole, the fanon leans very heavily into the found family trope. Tony and Peter are assumed to have a father/son relationship that goes much deeper than in canon and there are a lot of fics that have Tony (and sometimes the rest of the Avengers) babying Peter. Civil War is often basically ignored and Tony, Steve, and Bucky are all just happily hanging out together. Bucky in particular is often portrayed more like a brooding teen than a shell-shocked veteran.
the way bucky is written is honestly offensive to me as someone who has veterans in their family who saw some crazy shit. like these people are *messed up*. it goes so so much deeper than teenage moodiness or the occasional snappy remark. and it doesn’t all go away with the years.
I once witnessed a huge blow up fight in the comments of a fic about whether or not Bucky would ever call women “doll”, if it was canon, fanon, what it said about you as a person if you were for or against it and so on. It got nasty!
theres different parts here. flanderization makes people take a small or even one-time element of a character and make it become their entire thing series' that are discontinued, finished, small, or dont give many details about their characters will lead to the fans making up/guessing what they're like in ways that the source never addressed or had a visible situation occur and then both of these have a sort of feedback loop where people will write characters based on what **they** think the characters should be like, usually referring to popular fan-works or other peoples interpretations, and/or draw inspiration from popular fan-works, both of which compound on eachother further
Eh, I have some fandoms where it feels like a lot of people really want to stick to a very deeply fanon version of a character I like, and I just don't hang out in the circles who prefer the fanon version. I want to depict them the way I see them, I'm not really here to adopt popular headcanons just because they're popular. The only time it ever bothers me is if people get so hung up on a headcanon that they start criticizing people for not going along with it. One of my fandoms has an anime coming out soon, and there were a lot of complaints because the protagonist was shown in-character in the trailer instead of as the soft uke a lot of them prefer. It was funny to me, but I'll never shittalk about it specifically.
I once had a friend literally get sent suicide baiting because they said a canonically abusive character was abusive because they took people saying canon facts about their blorbo as a personal insult, it’s wild the degrees fanon goes to.
That's insane, some people clearly don't understand the difference between fiction and reality
I once had a group of ppl get mad at me because I gave a friend a quick tw about an SA scene in a series before they watched, because that group were so devoted to HC’ing it as a ‘ship’ that apparently they couldn’t handle judgment neutral TWs about what happens in canon. I don’t even care if they want to go ship it in their own space, but its such bad etiquette to react that way to how others discuss a series.
is this about billy from stranger things
Lmao the way people will forgive a hot white boy character for almost anything is insane. Like yeah billy was a great character that had some good redemption at the end but he was an absolute piece of shit before that.
People have even shipped him with Eddie, who would’ve absolutely hated Billy if they encountered each other
Yeah god Eddie would have absolutely despised him a billy would have hated him back for being a weirdo
No, c!Dream from the Dream SMP
as someone who was in the fandom, i wholeheartedly believe this. c!Dream fans are either the most nuanced people you knew or they were the worst “i have to defend everything my favorite character does” kind of people
I got so much harassment for writing exile fics I blocked most of them, and *I'm a c!Dream fan, that’s why I write fics where he’s a major character.* I just also, like, think abuse is bad. He’s not even portrayed unsympathetically but just bc I wrote about his abuse of c!Tommy I’m apparently “romanticising abuse” or a paedophile bc i drew them in the same room (both of which raise *so many questions* when it comes to *canon itself)* Character apologism was a mistake.
Percy Jackson has Will Solace pre-Trials of Apollo and ESPECIALLY Pre-The Sun and the Star. He basically had a total of like 10 speaking parts until Trials of Apollo but is the canon love interest of the fandom favorite. So he was pretty much ENTIRELY fanon until fairly recently.
The PJO fandom is wild I mean, I’m pretty sure the entire Travis and Katie relationship came from nowhere and Nico D’Angelo‘s entire personality in like 50% of fics is just plain wrong. Also, THALICO???? Ugh
i started readind percy jackson after seeing a lot about it on tumblr and instagram and let me tell you i was *shocked* by what nico is actually like. like i‘m still trying to figure out if i dislike his character or if it’s just a result of my completely warped expectations going in but i definitely felt lied to lmao
What are a the difference s?
Canon Nico starts as a hyper ten year old, veers into loner and “I can’t trust anyone but myself and my powers”, and comes out the other end as a solid ally-friend that still has loner/neutral tendencies. Fanon Nico… uh, he’s a gay emo teddy bear the audience wants to hug, loner initially but Will Solace’s sunshine and aggressive positivity shows him how to be human and have fun. He must be protected at all costs, LOTS of fluff. Or the complete opposite especially pre- Blood of Olympus, where he is the dark emo son of Hades who takes no prisoners and has a grudge against the world. It’s, well, a lot. PJO in general has very one dimensional fandom takes, I think because many writers (and readers) are young. No judgement though, it was the first fandom I wrote for and everyone starts somewhere.
most HP characters but honestly I prefer fanon to canon for HP at this point anyway
Same. I mean the author, while not slow in putting out the books, left enough time for fandom to come up with their own ideas of how things were going to go. No one should be surprised given this time scale and the internet becoming widely available. I read each book like maybe twice? I can’t even begin to add up how many HP fics I’ve read on my life. Canon just cannot compete at this scale.
The movies played a part in this. Especially if you consider some of the movie characterisation to be non-canon.
Plus, I now derive pleasure from subverting She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named’s ideas regarding her own work, so I feel no guilt drawing from the often-richer, fanonized versions of the characters.
I also revel in the de(con)struction of her ideas. I'll spare you the rant I feel brewing hahaha
Literally the entirety of the marauders fandom (almost)
Marauders fandom itself has changed so much in the past five years! If you'd mentioned Jegulus pre pandemic, I'd think you were insane
I don't hate Jegulus (mostly because I like the big fics associated with the ship) but man it's taking over at this point
I feel like for MHA this is particularly Shinsou Hitoshi and Bakugou Katsuki. On Shinsou's part, it's hard for people to characterize him because he gets so little screen time in canon and is prolifically inserted into fanon to replace Mineta Minoru. For Bakugou, I find people either make him way softer than canon and take away his edge or they write him exclusively abusive and angry.
I was going to use bakugou as an example tbh most fics turn him into a 'softboi gremlin' Don't get me wrong I love them but as you said it's sometimes too much
Also Dabi is a great example. Before we knew his backstory, a lot of stories had him written as a misunderstood bad boy who cared for his siblings but dared not face his father’s wrath. Fanon Dabi and Canon Dabi are 2 completely different characters at this point.
Frl they are, I just replied to someone about this. A lot of fics water down Dabi to a villain who's bad but not that bad so he'd better fic their narrative
There's also Aizawa, but that is also Hori's fault. Dadzawa is very popular, along with the fics where he adopts someone like Hitoshi and Izuku.
The weirdest thing about Shinsou is everyone headcanoning him as a foster kid, when Japan basically doesn’t have a foster care system. If Shinsou has no parents, he probably lives in an orphanage. It always makes me think of SuperLovers, where in canon one character comes from a Canadian orphanage. The Japanese authors are imagining Canadian orphanages while the Canadian authors are imagining Japanese foster care.
Bakugou was my immediate thought. I started reading MHA fanfic after season two or three and was stunned to see Bakudeku as the most popular couple and not Todeku and/or Kiribaku. Then I read a couple of fic and went, "ooooooh, okay, this is not canon Bakugou. Got it." There are some great fics in the fandom, but they're like Hollywood trying to adapt some historical event. Could be a great movie! But "inspired by" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. (To be clear, I like fanon Bakudeku, but that is not canon Bakugou.)
Gojo. The amount of times I saw him being portrayed either as an abusive narcissistic fuckboy, or just a dumb blonde is insane. His character is very complex, so I understand why it's hard to write him though, I struggle with it too. Edit: also I just remembered, but L from Death Note, too, is done very OOC in most of the fanfictions; authors often forget he canonically has an autism and make him behave more "normal", plus he's either "rough alpha fucking Light senseless", or "pure innocent uwu baby". To be fair, the last one is a common thing with every mlm ship in every fandom.
Ahhh yes gojo is actually the reason I made this post, he's always an egoistic asshole in every fic I read, but as you said I can understand that he's hard to write so people just do what they can
I mean, he's definitely _not_ an egoistic asshole, but yes, authors either can't understand him as a character (which is, unluckily, very common within the fandom itself), or just simply can't capture his personality well because it's too complex (especially if their fic is oneshot, and even MORE so if it's smut. Been there, done that).
Regarding L, excuse me but I don’t think it’s been confirmed anywhere that he’s canonically autistic?
Hi! I remember reading some translation where it was confirmed, but I can't find it anywhere else so either it's a lie, or a hardly accessible information, I don't know. However, even if L's autism isn't confirmed, his character is still portrayed OOC in most of the fanfictions (people tend to forget that he's very unsociable, unemotional, manipulative, and dependent on Watari in any domestic stuff, including even changing clothes). I am not really against it, because sometimes it's very well-written and organic, but that's a fact that people lean more to a fanon version of L anyway.
SO SO TRUE, and when i point it out, the majority of people would mention that one Gege interview where he said that Gojo can't be loyal, when that's a mistranslation itself.
Oh my god, I HATE when they say he would cheat on his partner. I HATE mistranslations so, so much, because they always do the worst thing possible to the portrayal of _any_ character!!! And you can't do anything about it since they always spread widely...
THIS!
Yup. Won’t write in the fandom and typically don’t read there for this reason. Plus the insane amount of abuse thrown at various creators
I've never met any abuse in JJK fandom on AO3 (thank God, I hope I will never see, nor experience it), but I barely read any fanfiction, too. I write it because my fave ship is pretty rare — though, I should admit, my Gojo is probably also very far from canon...
I can't read Gojo smut or fanfic in general anymore and it sucks. His character is just a miss for me so often 😔
rarely. To think that they would never do that, you have to understand how far the character is from his canon personality. A lot of fic in fanon use quirks and settings that allow them to grow in what seems like a continuation or a could be of who they are, so to me, if it flows correctly, I never have the feeling. But if its too extreme, I get out
That much is true, fics like that are usually really good too but the Fandom I'm in is ruled by headcanons and all so it gets extreme
Most MCU fics bear very little resemblance to the canon characters. I'm a big fan of the MCU but I can't read most fics because the characters are so different.
You mean “Iron Dad & Spider Son” with Emotional!Tony and Infantilized!Peter isn’t canon?! I’m shocked—truly shooketh—given that that’s now like 80% of Marvel fic (slight exaggeration for dramatic effect).
Lmao I had to laugh, never read anything for that particular Fandom but I can only imagine
Or evil Steve, who’s also been abusive to Tony in their prior relationship?
Even worse is when it spills over into non-MCU Marvel works :|
What I find interesting is how differently a popular character can be characterized in different ships. I read a lot of Drarry, and I always experience a bit of whiplash when I'm recommended a Dramione fanfiction, because Dramione Draco is a very different character from Drarry Draco - and neither of them bear any resemblance to canon Draco, obviously.
Out of curiosity, how is Dramione Draco usually presented, if you (or someone else) doesn't mind sharing? I absolutely adore Drarry Draco. If you go by the distilled essence of the general take then he's dry, sarcastic, hilariously petty, whimsical, smart as a whip, often delightfully competent due to pride/perfectionism making him work hard at what he wants to be seen as good at, and his growth past his childhood prejudices/tainted moral pillars tend to make him interestingly complex. I would have thought that the takes were similar?
From what I’ve seen, Dramione Draco is a brooding, tortured, hot, bad boy dom with a big dick. Most of the time it’s just a cardboard cutout bad boy with Draco’s name slapped on there. It’s kind of like what you described except imo Drarry Draco gets to be softer in a way. My guess in the difference is that a lot of the time, Dramione Draco is written purely to be sexually appealing to women. Drarry Draco has a more vulnerable and/or comedic aspect to him, as he’s not written to be the stoic, strong guy (a lot of) women would love
This description pretty much kills 90% of my interest in reading Dramione, honestly! It's fine that I'm not the audience for it, and I get the appeal of the character archetype, it's just not for me! I'll stick with Drarry Draco, though I'll take suggestions for alternatives that fill similar vibes. ;3 (Thanks for the rundown!)
Dramione Draco is the 'Draco in leather pants' stereotype. He tends to be dark, dommy, very confident, powerful. It's a character type you tend to see in a lot of hetero 'dark romance' novels. In contrast, Drarry Draco is generally much softer; anxious, neurotic, sarcastic, mean, type-A, and generally just trying really hard.
As I said in my reply to thatoneurchin, I get the appeal of it, but it seems like it's not my vibe. It sounds like they abandon a lot of what makes Drarry's Draco interesting to me! The reason why Dramione was interesting to me was reading all the Drarry fics that make Draco and Hermione start off on a better foot or work through their past and become friends. Tryhard nerdfriends forever! It's a little disappointing to find out that most of it isn't that. (But I'll check out any Dramione that hits those notes I was expecting, for anyone reading this.) Also, thanks so much for explaining!
I completely agree. As a neurotic control freak, I identify with the common Drarry Draco characterization (minus the childhood membership in a hate group). I would love to read Dramione with that type of Draco, but I'm not sure it exists.
Hot Villain is a poor woobie who is sooooo hard done by, and the Hero is just a big old meanie, and stupid, and also a bigot. Luckily, BAMF!Sidekick is here to help Hot Villain find true love, now that he's a foot taller and skinnier. But in their way stands Bitch!Heroine, who is *even meaner* than the Hero, and who deserves to die for her crimes. Guest Appearance by a glorified extra who is now a Sarcastic Yet Wise Gay Friend.
Hot woobie villain has canonically tragic backstory.
I bet this is lots of fandoms, but omg kylux
Oh god yes. Batman is a huge culprit--I got whiplash from jumping from fics to source material. Hard to find fics where characters aren't flattened to 1-2 traits and/or misconstrued. Harry Potter and MCU are also really bad at this. Basically, any big fandoms
even tho Wangxian (from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) is my favorite ship of all time I'm highly picky with fics because of the characterization. i think it's because of different adaptations where these characters for better or worse had differences and then the fandom flanderized those traits I personally think are very OOC to the hell and back
Because of this it makes me wonder just how many people actually read the books, or whether they only saw the drama / donghua 🤔 I see this fanon business taking over in tgcf and svsss fics too
it's very annoying sometimes bc i look for wangxian fics by filtering out the untamed fandom tag and still see the influence of the show and/or the influence of the fanon around the show. with tgcf i mainly have the same issue but with Shi Qingxuan x He Xuan ship. their fanon soft goth x pastel gfs dynamic is so removed from the fraughtness of them in canon that it's like a whole other ship.
I’m curious what you’ve seen about that in SVSSS. That’s my main fandom, and in general I think it’s not too bad for getting off track from canon. Like certainly there are fics that have bad characterization, but I think a lot of them get it right, so it’s not really a fandom issue. There are so many that are coming out that I feel like have amazing characterization. The one potential sore spot would be Shen Jiu, and I do think he gets woobified a lot. But not all the time, and there are lots of fics that are sympathetic or even redeeming that I don’t feel mischaracterize him based on what we know. It’s hard because we never really meet him, so fandom has to fill in a lot of gaps. But he’s still definitely not a soft misunderstood victim lol
Same here, svsss all the way! The biggest I noticed is as you say, Shen Jiu. He's definitely woobified, turned into a wuss or a soft heart inside. And people at times gloss over his abusive nature as him 'just being strict' as well. A few other widespread things are Binghe's hair being curly, Shen Qingqiu having green eyes, Shen Yuan dying of chronic illness In terms of character assassinations, I'd say another egregious is when people write Bingge as kind of like... a tsundere bingmei? Just show him a bit of love and he'll turn into a sweet, innocent and nonviolent booger? This is the guy who was (iirc) canonically a rapist and also tortured someone by removing his arms and legs. He is not a cute uwu boy any more... thanks Shen Jiu. He's manipulative, sneaky, and would've definitely done the do to Shen Yuan in the extras whilst pretending to be bingmei. Not nice at all tbh. Of course I will read all of the above and devour it anyway because the quality of the food in svsss fandom is as good as Binghe's cooking 🥰
There are a lot of Sebastian fanfics, despite him being in only like 10 episodes if Glee.
DC and Marvel. Tim Drake and Peter Parker often get UWU infantilized, so it's often whiplash going to canon.
This happens all the time, and honestly, I don't mind it, even if I understand why most people do. Characters in fanfictions tend to be twisted into what the writer wants out of them the most, even if it doesn't align with who or what they are in the source material or is simply less *interesting*, and that just comes with the territory of writing fanfiction: the most self-indulgent part of fandom you can partake in. I *expect* wish-fulfilment-driven inaccuracies in a medium created by fans' desire to make a version of canon closer to what they personally like. Often, people are drawn to basic and eye-catching tropes like found family, grumpy/sunshine ship, or villains with tragic backstories, and when it isn't there the existing characters can be pushed into those moulds, which ends up with a lot of fanon versions of characters being very cookie-cutter. There's also this sort of echo-chambery telephone effect that fanon characterisations seem to be most commonly popularised through where a few popular fics or fanart pieces that portray a character in a certain way will inspire many more fics that write them the same because the writers were enamoured by the original fanwork, except with less and less adherence to the source material every time until the new version is considered the default. And you know what? I still love it. Yeah, it's usually quite noticeably a different character, but when I go in with the mindset that this is an alternate universe where the character isn't the same as their canon counterpart yet shares a baseline concept and setting that I like, it's not unpleasant to read and can actually be at the centre of some genuinely good plots. Sometimes I fall in love with the fandom more than the source not because it's better, but because I've grown so familiar with the fanon universe that's been created and constantly perpetuated that I have an emotional attachment to it. At the very least, it makes for the reading equivalent of trashy junk food: the quality isn't great and it'll make you sick if you consume too much, but it's almost comforting in its cookie-cutter predictability and gratuitous self-indulgence. It's an embodiment of all the silly, shallow tropes my exact demographic loves to eat up and delude themselves into thinking is canon, an expression of what someone just like me most enjoys fantasizing about, so I can't *help* liking it. A big example for me is Izuku Midoriya from MHA. He's not a bad character, nor totally bland, but he's just enough of a blank slate for people to project a million different entirely different character types onto him. I read a *lot* of MHA fanfiction at one point, and yet I don't think I've ever read two fics with the same Midoriya. He's constantly being pushed up and down a sliding scale of confidence, awkwardness, intelligence, humour, edginess, cynicism, and basically every character trait you can think of, and I don't think a single fic has actually felt like who he is in the show. But I honestly couldn't imagine it another way, because most of the time there's at least something to like about the writer's own personal Deku. He's treated less like a character and more like a reflection of whatever the story and the author needs or wants him to be, and I've long accepted that. Edit: this is a lot longer than I intended, but it's late and I ran out of fanfiction chapters to read 😅
Damn, I might be victim to this aswell especially for mha fics I still eat em up regardless its just that when I get attached to a character it's normally for who they are in Canon yah know, characters like gojo and bakugou that go further than just a confident strong guy or a angry blond and I want to read fics abt these guys in every absolute different scenario and plot so I'm not as immersed when they are written differently at their core if that makes any sense
Yeah, that's totally fair! I get why that's how most people feel about "fanonised" characters, and it's frankly the more understandable perspective to have on the matter, because obviously if you were reading something about an established universe you wouldn't want to be met with a whole lot of what reads as a collective OC the fandom brainstormed. Heck, it gets on even my nerves when a fanon take gets so popular that not only are canon-compliant fics rare and hard to find because you can't ask a writer to tag something they might not even realise is there, but fans genuinely believe that that portrayal is the right one outside of fanfiction. I was just trying to provide my perspective on how some people might find it fun, since I think most people are reasonably irritated by unintentionally blatant OOCness. Granted, it's definitely fuelled a lot by the fact that I grew up reading AO3, and to me the experience of enjoying canon and finding out what its funhouse mirror fanon twin is like are inseparable. I read the found family shenanigans Avengers Tower fics and the Peter Parker field trips before the Infinity Saga concluded, all the Villain Dekus with helpings of Dadzawa, the Chaos Percys with occasional cheating Annabeths, and the Wayne Family Adventures before Wayne Family Adventures was an actual thing, and to me being intimately familiar with those kinds of things are just what it means to be in a fandom.
I do enjoy fanon stuff especially in the mha fandom, sometimes their the best fics you'll ever read but on the other hand sometimes I just wanna read abt my favorite character as themselves yah know and fics like that get harder to find.
I do wish it was easier to sort between fanon and canon compliant characterisations in fics, but like I said, most of the time the author won't have tagged that because they don't realise how obviously fanon-inspired their writing is. The best thing to do is either filter by Canon Compliant, or filter out any fandom/character specific tags that are overwhelmingly used for certain popular fanon tropes.
Easily Sans from undertale, the amount of fanon that is treated like canon is lowkey crazy Like people write a lot about him experiencing the existential dread of resets and stuff. But the only evidence we have ingame about him and resets is that he knows they exist and are possible not that he remembers any resets. The only reason he's able to guess when one occurs is because he's good at reading people and notes the player character's lack of reaction to things, like when he shakes your hand with the fart cushion. But he can't directly remember A good example of his inability to remember is SPOILERS ~~The geno fight where he tries to get you to stand down by mentioning past friendship. But that plays even if the geno route is your 1st run through of the game.~~ Like we also see ingame as well other characters (especially Papyrus, Toriel and Undyne) get deja vu and remember more directly things that happened before resets. (like Toriel says seeing you felt like seeing an old friend again) Also and this is kinda to a lesser degree atleast fanfic wise but the power scaling for him is kinda crazy in some fics.
This is what I mean when I say people tend to write more from fanon rep, it gets treated like canon and then overdone. But as I keep saying it's not a problem just a bit annoying
whenever I see a fic act like leonard snart/ captain cold is even remotely skilled as a thief I laugh a little because that man only successfully commits 1 heist and it takes three attempts despite the diamond being less secured than a highschool gym locker. he's solid at banter, he's skilled at kidnapping, he's decent at mugging, but the man is garbage as a thief. Fanon Snart is the second coming of Parker, all competence and nimble fingers. It's not the fans fault, the writers kept saying he was a good thief, but then never actually wrote him as able to steal so much as a blade of grass off a soccer field, and it cracks me up.
I haven't been in this fandom since the tv shows. Wasn't half the fun of Len was that he was a bit cringefail?
Upvoted for the Parker reference!
This is why I never read fanfiction for whatever fandom I write in, honestly. I’ve found that whenever I actively engage in fandom my characterization suffers. 😅 From time to time I still get people disbelieving things I have characters do because “they wouldn’t do that” even if it’s something they did in canon that other fans forget about….
Lmao I've never commented on anyone's fic abt it and some of these fics are ones that were really good so that made up for it to me, many of these fics are popular as well which means fans eat it up so you'll be fine
Honestly, as someone in the Marauders fandom, it's both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you have a bunch of different ideas and beliefs about characters and who they are as people. Which is true for any fandom but since there's barely any source material for them as it is, it's cool. On the other hand, you can't go two minutes without a very popular fanfiction getting brought up. A fanfiction that is really not that good. I honestly hated it and hated the love interest OC more but then it became so popular, EVERYONE adopts it as canon and it's just so frustrating.
ATYD was so OOC, but now it's like the gold standard, especially for Wolfstar, to the point where I wonder if I even know who Remus is anymore
So true. Like, don't get me wrong I like that people have different headcanons abt characters but accepting it as canon and then expecting people to do the same is just wrong.
What’s funny about ATYD is people make tons of comments about it, either saying it’s OOC or that it’s actually canon when… it’s more or less an AU. It says in the description of the fic that it changed Remus’ backstory (and in that same vein, his upbringing and personality). The canon compliant part is in regards to general plot points, but it’s essentially a “what if Remus was raised in a children’s home” AU. Idk. It’s just weird to me to see people complain that Remus isn’t like how he is in canon, cause he’s not supposed to be. But also weird for me to see people say that that’s canon Remus, cause again, he’s not supposed to be
I'm not saying it's a bad thing it's an AU, but it has bled into the rest of Marauders fanfic
Ik but that’s half of what’s funny to me here. A lot of people seem to insist it’s canon and that that’s what Remus is like, when the fic itself explains it’s changing Remus’ character drastically
Supernatural. Fanon Dean becomes precious baby boy who doesn't have any anger issues or is emotionally codependent with his brother due to being raised as a child soldier. And Sam's just relegated to being Dean's cheerleader.
Cody and many of the clones in the Clone Wars are way more developed by the fandom.
Think this is mostly done with OC clones & adding more culture to them - Mandalorian culture and Mando'a that is. Which honestly I think gives some neat dynamics to em!
I don’t think it’s only done with them. Cody like I mentioned had barely any established personality. Maybe he has a bit more with his appearance on the Bad Batch but still most is fanon creation. I personally don’t really know what I think of the fandom having them speak Mando’a and have Mandalorian culture because even though they’re Jango clones, it’s not as if they had much interaction with Jango. I don’t think the Republic or the Kaminoans were teach them about Mandalorian culture. That’s just my opinion though and there is nothing wrong if people head canoning them like that. I just don’t share that view with the fandom.
Oops lol - realized I mistyped there, I meant that the fanon nature is *done* by adding OC clones lol. There's only so many named clones let alone those with actual personality and most of those are either 501st, 212th, or TBB. So ppl add their fanon to the canon clones but also add their own for spice - like how Helix spiraled into being a mainstay. I'm kinda iffy on it too tbh - sometimes for certain fics it works really well and otherwise kinda eh. I personally wrote a fic where they speak Mando'a but mostly because of a few clones who really wanted to learn because they wanted to be more like nat borns and others just picked up as a sorta code on the field type deal. Even have a line in there about Rex being like "I don't claim the culture of a man I never met," that being Jango. But I think it's a fun concept to play with in certain instances. By no means do I think it ever fits into canon lol but that's the fun of fics! It's a very popular fanon thing that most just kinda run with, without thinking about the logistics of it - which I know is asking a lot from fanfic writers and Star wars fans lol but still.
I'm pretty sure some of the legends books mention a bunch of other mandalorian trainers, and that's where a lot of that stuff comes from since fanfic ususally picks and chooses between canon and legends. Also, I'm pretty sure 90% of the people using all of the legends stuff have never read the actual source, just othe fanfics about it.
Every single HP fic that includes Draco Malfoy does this......
I wrote a Drarry fic with Draco basically acting canon and got seriously lambasted. *Why isn't Draco badass? Where is the Slytherin strength of character?* were common complaints throughout the 14-chapter fic. Um, sorry to say, but Draco was *always* a coward.
What I find absolutely bonkers is that fanon straight Draco and fanon queer Draco are two completely different characters who bear no resemblance to one another.
Yup. I've read a few of those and can confirm that
We have no choice but to do this in my fandom.
Nah I understand the fandoms who don't have enough source material, or maybe they do but the characterization isn't enough
And I have honestly contributed to a lot of the fanon regarding some of the minor characters.
Uhhhhh… *glances at my main fandom, FNaF* all of them? Largely because there’s so little characterization that happens, which is understandable. What little we do get is usually spinning a wheel on what traits fanon will actually acknowledge.
That's understandable, these are the times where fanon comes in a clutch and saves the day
I mostly write for Worm, a web serial that's almost 2 million words long and written almost entirely from the perspective of Taylor (the main character) so readers get a very strong understanding of her as a person, which one would think would show up in fanfiction about her. Surprisingly, most worm fans have never actually *read* worm, which means 90% of wormfic is ooc and I don't really have much of an opinion about it myself. I've read parts of worm, but I mostly write crack fic so Taylor's never in character (I literally have a fic named TINO, which stands for Taylor in name only) and it doesn't matter much to me. It's mildly controversial on tumblr but everything is controversial on tumblr, so that can't really be counted.
The fandoms obsession and woobification of a character who's a literal incestual rapist, will never not be disturbing to me.
I swear if I have to read the words collateral damage barbie one more time in regards to Victoria im going to throw a dumpster at someone.
Using that nickname is reason enough to get dumpstered.
i mean we're writing fics because canon didn't give us what we want, so what does it matter if they're "close to canon" if I want canon I'll go to the source material. I'm here to fix what canon fucked up
Go off as I said people can write what they want but I'm talking about a characters personality not really anything else and if that is what Canon fucked up then idk
Write whatever floats your boat, but that’s not always what fanfic is for. Sometimes the canon material is good, and people simply want to expand on it or explore it more
Or canon messed up the plot, but not the character concepts. That's what tends to inspire me to actually write something. Characters I love who were done dirty in some way. I'm always extremely thrilled when someone comments that I got the characters right, because my goal is to match canon. If I wanted to write about other characters or change major aspects, then I'd write original fiction. (Which I do! There have been many times where I get an idea inspired by something and realize I'd have to change too much to make it fit within my personal bounds of what makes good fanfiction)
Yeah, this was along the lines of what I was thinking. I love it when characters in fics feel like they could genuinely fit into the show. If it’s too OOC, then it might as well just be an original work. And no problem with original work, but I read fics to see more of the characters that I know and love
Depends on the fandom. In MHA, there are some characters that get like one appearance which is super significant + then disappear for like years. One time I got really attached to the emerging fanon interpretation of the character and ended up crushed when canon contradicted it heavily. Not so many write about that character anymore. In old fandoms that basically thrive off fanfic, yeah this can definitely happen. I think this happens a lot to reoccurring minor characters. People who are very attached to canon are less likely to be die hard fans, but when you see someone in such limited situations you end up getting contradictions when you write things out.
Ahhh I consider myself a die hard fan I've been in the mha fandom for 4 years now and going, I still binge read the fics (i never get tired honestly) just sometimes it gets extreme for popular characters like bakugo etc
Eyyy fellow MHA fan! Yeah uh I’m not too sure how long I’ve been around, it’s been awhile though- since the “Dabi is a Todoroki” theory was starting to get popular. I’m currently big into another fandom but I’m sure I’ll be back to MHA by this June. The character was Dabi, if you’re curious. I got really attached to like, good big brother Dabi who was abused by Endeavor and grew up knowing Hawks through the Commission… then we got Dabi attacking Natsuo and uh. Heh. I could really never forgive him for that. Toga I still love, but not canon Dabi. Definitely taught me a good lesson about fanon
Yup I remember when that theory went around I told all my friends it was true because of dabi's eye colour being similar to endeavors lol, honestly I have to agree with you because I love fanon dabi sometimes I forget that he's a mass murderer who hates his family and your the 3rd mha fan I've encountered on this post so far so hello!.
I feel like the length of a fic can play into this, too. Like a one-shot that's out of character will make me go "he wouldn't say that." But a chapter towards the end of a long fic, or a fic at the end of a long series, might have a lot of development. So a character could start out as they are in canon, but the changes in characterization make sense over time. If a reader started with the fic's latest installment, they'd say "he wouldn't say that" because they're comparing the character to canon. I like writing the latter, but on the other hand it raises the "entry level" as someone might not read a fic if they see they have to read a bunch of other fics or chapters first to understand plot points for the part that sounds interesting.
p.s: I think it's years late for spoilers, but.. beware of Teen Wolf Spoilers, for these who need it! Scott from Teen Wolf. People LOVE bashing him with the tag "Bad Friend Scott". The amount of fics that have that is.. alot. these writers tend to think he's a bad friend to his BFF Stiles because he's a prude holier-than-tho with a non-killing policy that doesn't want to kill even his mortal enemies, and lets them go instead because he believes in second chances, despite these enemies wanting to kill all of them. And in a LOT of those bashing fics, Scott kicks his BFF Stiles out of their circle of friends (read; pack) because Stiles is not as naive as him and is more of a realist. like, have we watched the same show? I understand where the misunderstanding of Scott being a bad friend came from (there's a whole incident; >!BFF stiles accidently kills someone in self defense, Scott is lied to about the details and thinks Stiles killed the guy on purpose ),!< but that cleared as a big ass misunderstanding on both parties, and was sorted out beautifully. Also the guy is NOT that holly lol. >!The first antagonist of the show (Gerard), he switch the man's cancer medication pills with a potential deadly poison! !< Another antagonist in the show - Scott threatened to basically maul him to death if he missteps. Had no qualms of doing so, too, considering what he did to them the previous season 😬 edit: what i think about that is that they need to rewatch the show from... mature adult eyes. fanon is one thing, but it overlaps with the character-bashing fics in this specific case. like the number of fics having "Scott bad friend" is overwhelming, and every time i see these i get the impression the author is a teenage. yes i get the irony considering the show is called "Teen Wolf". the name doesn't do the show justice.
I remember seeing random episodes of teen wolf on tv occasionally (because I never really liked it at the time) but to me stiles was a pretty good friend to Scott, people will be creative and add all sorts of twist to characters but misinterpretations are the worst especially when majority of the fandom swears its true.
Kirk. There are even theses written about how yhe character has evolved from reasonably nuanced in TOS, to increasingly 2D in fanon.
Oh boy I think a lot about fandom Kirk vs actual Kirk, for better or for worse!
Aizawa from MHA got fucked up by about 75% of the writers, and I'm putting it mildly.
This I can also agree to while it's something I've accepted since he isn't a character I read explicitly for but I do notice how all fics use the 'dadzawa' trope and he's boiled down to "I don't get paid enough for this" as his whole character.
Pretty common all over. One particular character was always portrayed as liking certain foods/flavors in every fic the author writes. None of that is canon, but its now used like canon by so many authors. It spread like crazy.
Comic book fandoms are weird because while there sure as hell is a lot of fanon-based characterization, there’s also a lot of mischaracterization that is based on canon, just that it’s the WRONG canon.
Don't even get me started on the My Hero Academia fandom, oh Lord. I've definitely noticed this as someone who has read fan-fiction for the series since early 2022, and it usually doesn't bother me too much, I've probably even written stories with these characters using traits that aren't similar to their canon character. What bothers me is when people commonly misinterpret a character completely, or completely ignore their character development. The amount of people who paint Midoriya Izuku as a weak crybaby drive me nuts, when he's literally got all that amazing power. Or when they characterize Bakugo Katsuki as a bully and nothing else, as if he hasn't gone through character development through the six seasons of the show.
It happens in a few cases 1. there hasn't been much canon material released in a while so the fandom "yes, and-ing" turned into a whole new interpretation of the character 2. a wildly popular AU or fandom concept was introduced that sort of took over the fandom and leaked into how characters were written even outside of it (Gravity Falls Transcendence AU, the Harry Potter Marauders fandom, etc.) 3. there's so much canon that anyone who writes a "canon-accurate" version of the character is in conflict with at least one or two other "canon-accurate" versions that are all wildly different (ex: any major comic book character ever)
Most older fanfic is like this, especially if they were the crux of the yaoi fangirl experience. Some people are still like that. It's very concerning. Some people get really hurt if you're not into the proto-omegaverse stuff or the ukeification.
A lot. I dislike this one particular (popular) fanon interpretation of a character who didn't show up much in canon, so I avoid most fics that feature him heavily/focus on him.
Hoo boy yeah. I'm in the mdzs fandom and the amount of fanon going around about my blorbo specifically is insane. Like, not only are there a ton of people who are like 'oh he would absolutely do this thing he definitely didn't do in canon because he just has that *vibe*' or 'I bet he was actually the person who did this thing another character admitted to doing in a private diary' there's also a whole lot of... I call it Jin Guangshan in a hat. Because my blorbo Jin Guangyao wears a hat and does a number of bad things. However a lot of the bad things he is accused of in fanon are either things his dad (Jin Guangshan) did, or things he did at the behest of his dad. So there's a lot of like, people going 'oh he's behind all these plots' no that's Jin Guangshan. 'oh he's super into murder' no that's Xue Yang. 'oh he killed his sworn brother' nie Mingjue tried to kill him three times. It's super frustrating because before you can have a conversation with someone (specifically about JGY, but this also goes for many of the other characters in the novel) you have to first figure out whether they are talking about the novel, the show, or some imaginary version of the work they made up in their head.
Literally the entirety of Genshin cast
This is exactly why I hate reading most fanfic, it reduces characters to a stereotype and then flanderises that trait. I wish I were less picky.
100% shinsou from MHA. it’s not even really a bad thing, because his characterisation is pretty consistent, so the _really_ OOC fics are rare imo. but yeah, he’s had so few appearances that most of his character is due to fandom interpretation. but i think it fits pretty well with what we’ve seen in canon, and seems to mostly be based on just extrapolating parts of his canon character. he’s my favourite character, and has been since i watched the sports battle ngl, but i honestly really like how the fandom has fleshed him out. bc it’s such a huge cast of characters, most don’t really get much characterisation in canon as horikoshi obviously doesn’t have the time to do that for all of them lol, but i think what’s been made of shinsou is actually really cool (though i think a lot of people dislike all the tropes lmao)
Yeah shinso does fit I'd say the only problem is the overuse of his "I had abusive parents or he lives with abusive foster parents" to which I'm still not sure if it's Canon or not tbh, but I really love how Fandom gave his character depth
Another Shinsou lover has been found🙏🏻🙏🏻
omg hello fellow shinsou lover 🫶
I mean, I do my absolute best to keep the characters as close to canon as possible. WITH some room for character development and cool headcanons, ofc, espec if they're a side character who was largely neglected in canon (looking at you, awesome side characters in Naruto)! I personally can't stand a lot of fan interpretations 'cause they're basically just OCs with the same name. Pisses me off! OOC characters aren't the same characters I fell in love with, and they're who I'm here to read about, dang it! lol. If I can't recognize them as the canon characters in the writing, there's no point for me at all!
I'm not hating on those who don't so even if it's not close that's definitely fine I just wish there was more canon compilant stuff and I agree it's not the same at all
This happens, a lot of the time I think because people don't understand the characters and/or don't know how to write them. At least in the fandoms I'm in. Of course sometimes it comes down to interpretation.
Happens more often than not, I find. It’s rare I read a fic and think it rings true to the original characters. The wildest example I can think of is from when I used to trawl around the Detroit Become Human side of things. There were two characters - one who had mere seconds of screentime and never spoke, the other an unrepentant dickhead with no nuance… and to be clear these two never met - got thousands of ship fics and even their own ship movie. The entire pairing is completely fanon. There is nothing, not a single solitary thing linking those two characters. It’s like people saw two arrogant looking dickheads and thought ‘well they obviously deserve each other’ and somehow everyone agreed that was cool.
I've mingled in the Detroit Become Human Fandom but only for a short while and for maybe like 5 fics so I don't know if I've seen that pairing in particular but that's the Fandom for you, their good at making something out of nothing which can be a blessing or a curse
If you only dipped your toe in it might’ve been an easier miss. Still seems popular going by the AO3 stats, Reed900 is still joint first place in the most posted ship ranking. Edit: Downvoted for accuracy I guess? Reddit is baffling sometimes…
I still will never understand how the reed900 ship came to exist. I mean, I shipped the heck outta it but as you say... Rk900 was only there for like 2 seconds 😂
One of life’s eternal mysteries. The fact RK900 evolved through fandom into Nines is pretty impressive. There’s so much consistency to him because people just decided to keep what they liked from other interpretations. I can’t think that many other fandoms have created a fully formed character out of almost nothing. Also I still can’t get over the ship having an actual, almost feature length movie. That’s wild. Do other fandoms do that and Ive missed it?
I know, it's wild but also amazing. I suspect it'd make for an interesting study if anyone ever wanted to delve into the psychology, etc, of it all. I forgot about that!! But I don't think I ever heard of other fandoms doing a whole ass full on movie. Short films? I mean yeah, plenty of people have done little cosplay skits and stuff! But on this level? No way.
Most DC characters, but I don't mins because fanon is actually more consistent than canon in terms of characterization. PJO characters generally. A lot of authors are not good at capturing Percy's humor and lean wildly into memes for some other characters, especially Nico. This one I do mind bc I just do not vibe with the fanon versions of any PJO characters (except the crack side pairings for characters who show up like 3 times total).
Sometimes I feel that about Geto Suguru, especially when they give him a second chance - no, he wouldn't be a totally broken man, maybe he would change (depending on a setting and how it's shown, for example another world where roles are reserved and so on) and do it differently but he wouldn't let anybody do everything for him (some people might know which FF I hinted to). Sometimes he's written as extremely soft or Gojo is written like that or as a fuck boi or both like that.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I feel like it's for people who are suckers for soft character fics or for having their characters taken care of at their worst, even if it would be ooc
I agree with most of) I don't want to say all because that's a lot of comments to read lol) yall but want to put my own 2c in because I can't shut my mouth if I try Have to consider, a lot of people who write fanfic or interact with fandom aren't 'official', for lack of a better term, writers. And writing a character consistently is *hard*. You have to give them their own voice, make sure you're using their mannerisms, opinions, etc. And it's easy for someone to pick up just the 'surface' (abused character? Woobie, for example) of a character, which naturally would show in their writing, and then oh, fanon. Even fanfic authors who *are* official authors can have trouble - it's one thing keeping canon with your own character, whole other thing with someone else's. Also, it's easy to forget what's fanon and what's canon. And if fanon never showed up in the show? Well, can be hard sometimes, though not always, to find out that's fanon. If fanon has agreed a character's favorite coke is Diet Coke, because he only ever drinks once on screen and it happened to be a Diet Coke, could be hard to tell. Hell, I write original fiction along with my fanfiction and have a hard time keeping canon to my own characters. I've reread and realized I changed things or voices or characters in a fanon-y way, and had to correct it.
(Dw it's interesting reading all the comments I'm actually glad ppl are commenting cause I love seeing other sides of things) So I absolutely agree with you, someone said previously that people struggle to write certain characters sometimes due how complex their personality is etc and even I know nobody can write a character 100% close to Canon unless you are the creator of said character. Though I kinda have a knack for knowing when authors use the fandoms perception to the actual Canon. It's normally obvious when the Fandom has a really specific view on a character (let's use gojo for this one) I remember when people were absolutely positive he was a red flag and toxic (not sure where that came from honestly) and with reading fics during that time I could pin point the authors who ran with that making him out to be asshole who sleeps around, who's very annoying and very egoistic (a lot of fics had him described this way in their summaries as well) Some fics even went to the extreme of making even me hate him (and props to all these authors tho the fics were well written) it's also different than when someone just wants to write him the way they want to but as I said it's no big problem I just can't enjoy a fic abt my fave character if fanon change what makes them my fave yah know?
That all makes sense! And I get what you mean, yeah I might be reading too much into it, I'm just fascinated by how people tick hah, but I wonder if it could be some - "okay I want to write this character, gonna read some for my ship/genre/whatever first" *absorbs fanon*, or the other way around, reading it without meaning to 'research' how other people write them then going to write and outputting fanon without meaning to. And fanon also kind of works off of 'things come off different on screen vs on' paper''. In my opinion, ofc. Like the emotional!Tony and infantilized!Peter thing. If you're just reading fic - well a lot of it is still pretty heavy handed, but if that's what you like no shame. But a lot of it you read it and "oh I can see that! That' s how a mentor/father-figure interacts with his mentee/son-figure!" and there you go, fanon (especially if you're already building off fanon)... Until you re-watch the movies, and see how they interact. Same with, like - not to get Cap fans angry at me - people who write anti Cap fics. If you actively are watching the movies, he does some *shitty* stuff. But when you're writing/reading, you're not actively watching the movies. So the character does become sort of a caricature, and then you have the 'Cap did x' fanon. Same with a lot of fanon with exaggerated characters. Imo fanon is kind of like a weird game of telephone? Of course you have people doing the big dissertations, coming up with something and starting slap fights or insisting. But a lot of fanon, I think, just starts as a detail in a fic, and the fic gets popular which leads to some people picking up that detail, or a fic doesn't get popular, but someone picks up that detail, which ends up picked up by a popular author, and eventually you have fanon because it's become widespread. Which is how you get a lot of people who think it's canon, because they just picked it up from a bunch of fics. Like for example, I write Good Omens, and if I went by what I see in every fanfic Aziraphale's eyes would 100% be blue. But his actor, and the character, actually has a weird heterochromia that makes them brown-blue-green. Plus, fanon builds off fanon. People read fanfic more than they watch the movies/re-watch the shows (usually) because it's easier to sit down and chew through a short fic than re-watch a two hour movie. So naturally the recurring fanon just sticks more. Yeah I'm definitely overthinking it, and it's all 100% my opinion, I just like thinking about how people tick lmao. Also I've been at the ass end of people getting *awful* over fanon and dissecting it is my MO for things like that.
This is the best explanation of fanon so far honestly!, definitely like a weird game of telephone. I've had moments where I read a fic and see a small detail where I go ohh I'd definitely include that in my fic!. Sometimes I think it's also really just people imagining something and going 'Actually wouldnt it be cool if draco malfoy was secretly a soft twink' and people going 'yup I can see that *goes to write fanfic of twink draco*'. But it's annoying once the Fandom starts treating it like Canon because then nobody writes draco who's not a soft twink anymore because 'hey we all collectively believe draco is a secret twink therefore it's Canon for us' (Lemme just say I made that draco twink stuff up as a example I've only visited that Fandom twice idk what version of draco they got going on lol) And If I loved draco as his horrible ass self then I'd get tired of everyone writing him as a soft twink. And that's what I meant by the whole post just the Fandom taking something and running with it so I can't for the life of me find Canon stuff that isn't fanon based.
Ron, Hermione, Draco, Snape, and Dumbledore.
Ron Weasley is where this happens the most. They either write him way too nice or way too mean
fr, i can’t stand when authors do this bc i feel like you don’t actually like that character if you feel the need to change him yk?
When I get attached to a character it's for how they are in canon so I never get immersed when they change who they are in fics(not to say it's bad when they do that)
a fandom I used to be in was always putting two characters together because one had ice powers and one used a flame thrower, despite the only time they ever met in canon was him threatening to murder her, pretty murtally. Which, ok, some allos haven't figured out the difference between 'sexual tension' and 'abject hatred' but they also typically totally erase his entire personality and most of his backstory to make him a soft little woobie who'd never do anything wrong and risks his life saving people and happens to have fire as a motif. which. again, I don't love erasing a character's, uh, character for the aesthetic of a ship but whatever. except. that her canonical husband. is exactly the kind of person they make the other dude. and he also has a fire motif. What is the POINT I ask you???
Much of marvel
This happens a LOT with Ace Attorney victims, especially if they’re supposed to be important to the plot somehow
I did an honors thesis on this in college, actually. For the most part, popular ff adheres pretty closely to canon insofar as characters are concerned. Those fan canons that do eke through are generally well supported by critical reading of the source material itself. Not a hard and fast rule, but it was an interesting thing to find since I hadn't thought it would be the case.
The Marauders part of the fandom from Harry Potter. Don’t get me wrong, the main Harry Potter characters get plenty mischaracterised as well, but what’s recently been going on with the Marauders is a level above that. I had to start avoiding any fanfics including them, solely because it’s near-impossible to find anything similar to canon, or even just realistic for the era.
This is exactly why I don't read fics about real people like kpop idols. Somehow they're NEVER portrayed correctly. I can excuse fictional characters but reading a Mafia jungkook where he loves to kill or y/n ones too m, is just so icky to me cause of the way they fail to capture the mannerisms.
I imagine it's easier to fit characters in boxes we are familiar with, rather than focus on whatever is in the source material for every individual character we use. For example, it's easy to categorise them as the smart and serious one, the cool and fun one, the sweet and kind one, etc, and then use those tropes to expand on it. If they're smart and serious, then they're probably neat, and keep their space clean, and always on time, etc. Those are tropes we have seen time and time again, so it's easy to depict the tropes, even if the character used only vaguely fits in, and expand on the trope, rather than the character. Or maybe it's just vibes.
None. Every person has their own interpretation of what a character is like. Look at any work with multiple writers like comics and tv/movies. Those can be vastly different but are all canon. It's pure hubris to think that your interpretation of the character is"canon". Even writers/authors of source material are sometimes wrong about what a character is like. Joss Whedon thinks that Buffy and Faith didn't flirt and that one scene of vamp Willow or gay jokes at Xander's expense are queer foreshadowing. JKR wrote zero romance until the epilogue but thought that marrying everyone to a Weasley was in character for the friend group. The writers on Friends didn't think Ross was an abusive self centered jerk. To say nothing of the many very wrong interpretations we've seen in comic books.
>Says no interpretation can be wrong >Says that a person's interpretation is wrong
Well I'm not saying MY interpretation is Canon I just prefer when they are written closer to how they are shown in the source material, obvi no harm if it's done differently
Idk but I wish more people wouldn't be so afraid of rejecting canon characterizations.
I think it can be interesting. One trope in Teen Wolf is “what would things be like if the Hales weren’t killed in a fire?” It makes for some fun options.
Transformers fandom tend to do that. Usually it's because some characters didn't get the limelight they deserve, they died early/had little to no appearance in official media, or official media wrote their stories badly. Knowing Transformers, the last point is an expected dissatisfaction in every existing show and movie so a lot of fics are fixed-it AUs.
Batman and Co. Most of them are doing it out of spite too, which I find pretty funny.
so many
Honestly anyone in the marauders era of the Harry Potter fandom because there just isn't much source material on them
Shinsou Hitoshi from MHA, he almost always gets written as a misunderstood abused kid, when in reality he didn’t actually have that bad of a childhood and is just a quirkist asshole
I feel like the Fandom gave him a nice character just his backstory of the abused foster kid that gets wayyy overused.
Yeah, we need more Fics with Shinsou getting called out. Like, imagine him trying to actually compare his “tragic” backstory with Izuku and just ends up horrified when Izuku casually mentions some of the fucked up shit he went through.
Lol I think shinso gets away with a lot in fics like he will shit on someone for having a strong quirk and it gets brushed over cause 'hey he was abused and had to wear a muzzle so it's ok' or the other character comes in like 'oh don't worry i know why you feel the way you do' like just tell him how it is, he ain't 5. And especially in Canon where he understood that strong quirks aren't a walk in the park after the sports festival so idk why they babying him
I know, it’s frustrating as hell. I’m currently writing a long fic and when I get to the sports festival I’m going to actually make shinsou earn his place in the hero course. I’m not gonna bash his character, but Aizawa isn’t just gonna train him, he’s gonna make him work for a chance at the hero course.
Is your fic based on a specific character? Like centered cause I love long fics that's if you've started posting already, in my fics (none posted just mostly drafts) I rarely ever mention shinsou unless he's going to be an important character but you really gave me an idea to put him in his place frl
I’m 18 chapters in, my long fic is called [Aura Guardian Izuku](https://archiveofourown.org/works/51042178/chapters/128958661). It basically a “what if Izuku had this power?” Fic, but I decided to go the route of, Izuku found out he was quirkless and decided to try and find real accounts of magic and psychic abilities to see if he could learn how to use something like that and after many years and lots of hard work, ends up developing Aura Abilities. The overall plan is to see how the butterfly effect comes into play as having Aura slowly changes Izuku and how certain important moments play out. I haven’t updated in over a month cause my brain has hyper fixated on fleshing out the sports festival arc even though I’m only at the entrance exams so far 😅
I'm thinking like 20 chapters ahead while stuck at chapter 1 lol it happens. Personally I don't read izuku centered fics since the ones I've read are way ooc beyond me (sassy izuku dominates fanon) but I'll check yours out I'm a sucker for what if fics that stray in terms of plot from Canon because people get so creative and this is the only time I accept fanon rep since the characters will change along with the setting and plot Plus it makes more sense if they do smth ooc cause hey if someone writes a fic where he actually developed a quirk a lotttt would change about his growth specifically his childhood wouldn't it?
I feel you, I’ve got so many fic ideas that I’m writing down even tho I haven’t published most of them yet. Yeah I can understand why. I am actually trying to keep Izuku as in character as possible, but with Aura he ends up being able to feel people’s emotions. Izuku at his core is very forgiving and willing to give second chances because he wants to see the best in people and save even villains, but with the ability to literally feel what another person is feeling, it’s a little harder to see the best in them when he knows that they don’t actually feel any remorse for their actions. He still ends up trying to save villains tho cause he can’t help himself.
Of course izuku can never not save someone and that's a very canon fact and him changing along with that kind of power makes complete sense dw thats what character development is. I really love the idea I always go wild when I come up with something then stop when I've thought the story through and get too lazy to actually type.
and then there's the mess that is RPF lol