![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoWhen I talk about the experience of writing characters like Nott Sr.—characters who are named in the canon but given precious little other description, maybe a role or a general age range—I tend to favor the term “blank slate.” I like that term because it emphasizes what I’m getting out of these types of characters. But it’s not the only thing I’ve seen them called. One of the major other labels for this is “canon OCs.”
Which gets me thinking—I tend to feel like any canon character, no matter how developed they are in the original, becomes my OC after I’ve written them enough. Tom Riddle is fairly flat but by no means uncharacterized in the main HP series, but my Tom Riddle is a different beast, and I do think of him possessively: my Tom, my OC. (It’s why I don’t use “canon OC”—given how I do fandom, every canon character could become an OC.)
Does anyone else feel this way about the characters they write?
Which gets me thinking—I tend to feel like any canon character, no matter how developed they are in the original, becomes my OC after I’ve written them enough. Tom Riddle is fairly flat but by no means uncharacterized in the main HP series, but my Tom Riddle is a different beast, and I do think of him possessively: my Tom, my OC. (It’s why I don’t use “canon OC”—given how I do fandom, every canon character could become an OC.)
Does anyone else feel this way about the characters they write?
no subject
Date: 2023-07-14 02:39 pm (UTC)See, now I have to wonder whether or not the appeal of canon compliance for Snape was rooted in that investment in his canon development!