OC thoughts.

[estirise]

So, a discussion on capncosmo's journal got me thinking, oddly enough, about OCs.

I'm going to talk about my current fic for occhallenge first, to avoid spoilers for those avoiding same, and then talk about my OCs in general.


Aya is the newest of my OCs. She's half-Merman (one of the humanoid species on Kamen Rider Kiva). Now, in Kiva, we know from show information that human-humanoid crossbreeding is possible, at least for the Fangire; Wataru is half, after all. And Jiro is pretty confident he can have kids with Yuri, so I'm guessing this is not unknown to happen.

The genesis of the idea of Aya came about while I was writing "Furry Children". Ramon is a teenager, he has teenage hormones, and humans are mostly walking food to him. I speculated that he might not be too concerned with the willingness of his 'mate', which causes some angst with Aya (if slightly removed angst, because she is the result of it, not the victim). Early on in the story, she gets abducted into the "Boxed In" AU universe.

Now, Aya does have some powers. She does need less oxygen and ages slower than most humans (and this is before the Fangire start changing her). She can also sense the location of other Mermen. But I tried to balance that out with her dependence on salt/ocean water, and the fact that the three 'monsters', as well as several facility members are far more powerful than she is. (Aya's name, by the way, doesn't have anything to do with her powers or the ocean; I picked a random name from Japanese stars that were born around 1986. Her surname, Shinoda, is the surname of the actor who played Kuramae Noboru in episodes 5-6. The picture I used when I applied on occhallenge was that of Miyazawa Arisa, who played Nozomi in Kamen Rider Blade, thus the "Holds On" icon when I'm posting Aya fics.)

The challenge in "Apart from the Ocean" is trying to get Aya out of the facility realistically. She's fairly bright, but she's not very powerful, and one of her plans is going to be put on hold when she figures out that the part she'd worked out isn't going to work out, much less the part she hasn't been able to plan for because she hasn't been able to find out what she needs to know. The staff aren't dummies either, and they're not going to let her or any of the others walk out of the facility; the Fangire have been trying to revive the Wolfen, Merman, and Franken for the last thirty years. Plus, they genuinely believe that they are protecting their pilfered specimens, that they're being held for their own good.

Unfortunately for Aya, a lot of what they know about half-Merman like herself is laughingly small, which means that they might think they're doing her a service, but it's kind of dangerous for her to be there. Plus, she doesn't want to become a Merman, which is kind of funny, because she is becoming the Merman that the Fangire want her to become. (I need to revise a bit of 13 and 14, incidentally, as Aya needs to be more ambivalent about her medical treatment.) I've tried to have Kuramae-san's words bring out the fact that a lot of what they're doing is based on myth and legend.

Speaking of Kuramae Noboru and Aya's relationships, this is where I worry about her going into Sue territory. Her father likes her for reasons she can't comprehend (I would say it's because even if she's a half-breed, she is still a Merman). Riki likes her because Riki likes Ramon. Jiro is being reserved, and he won't tell me why. Megumi just is getting along because they're both female, captive, and crossbreeds. (I'm working under the assumption that Megumi is Jiro's kid for the purposes of this fic.) But it means an awful lot of them like her. The staff likes her too because she isn't a troublemaker, especially Noboru, who in a way is in love with her, but they also realize she is there for a reason.

(Incidentally, something that will never come up in conversation, but Noboru found out that Aya was half-Merman completely by accident, and lied when he told her earlier how he found out. He was intending to become sexually active with her, and he didn't want to cause her pain by fathering a non-viable child on her, so he had her tested. He was then told what he had found, and ordered to bring her to the facility. Since she's a Merman by his standards and can't have kids anyway, he will never tell her this.)

I'm hoping to keep Aya realistic, not a Sue, so I'll just have to make sure she doesn't develop any unrealistic skills. She's a regular person for all her powers, and I think a bit selfish (she could care less if her father ever gets out of the facility).



I've written a deliberate sue or two. (And yes, that is a genuine 100% Mary Sue in that link.) I generally try to avoid writing Sues when I do my OCs, though.

Now, I reread "Turns to Dust" recently. It's the most-hit of my fanfiction.net Kamen Rider 555 fics, which is surprising as it features an OC. (Before anybody blinks, this means it has a grand total of 54 hits as of this writing.) Susan, I think, is not in the territory of a Mary Sue, though I'm not sure I get across that she's not quite right in the head. I mean, she's a marvelous character, but she kills people. Repeatedly. She's an Orphenoch that isn't a headache for Smart Brain. I had an interesting time writing her, as she insisted on first person POV, and she gets killed at the end, but in the end, it did work out.

Marie Brown was written for the same Mary Sue challenge as the link in that first paragraph. She insisted on not being a Mary Sue, instead being this quiet, not-getting-involved kind of person. Her original incarnation blew up monsters, the next version (for a dead RP) was pyrokinetic, and it seems like the rewrite of my novel featuring her will have a Marie Brown with added GAD (General/ized Anxiety Disorder) and no powers, unless you count the ability to attract lovers, which being a celibate bisexual, will definitely be interesting.

Speaking of my 2007 NaNo project, I had some of my other OCs in there too. Disa and Keegan, the underused teenagers (not to be mistaken for Teresa and Lucas, who were even more underused, and I'll talk about later), could turn into balls of light. This would have been powerful had the rest of their society have the ability to do the same thing, and Disa's tendency to poke her nose/foot/ circumference into everything made her stories (written way back in the 1980s) kind of interesting.

Come to think of it, I have quite a few characters who are related to canon characters and/or have canon. I have Aya, who I talked about above. Teresa and Lucas were on a Ranger team and their parents had been Rangers (and in Teresa's case, her father was also a Tomorrow Person). Dani Owens, who is also in my NaNo 2007 project, is Eric Myers' great-granddaughter, and her parents, grandparents, and great-grandmother had their own adventures (some of which were distinctively NSFW). Her husband has distinctive green hair. Naoko and Nezumi are the daughters of the King of Spades from Kamen Rider Blade; Nezumi picked up a lot of his attitude, and Naoko rebelled and acts a lot more serious. Rosemary Schultz isn't related to anybody (though the "rose" in my username relates to her), but her daughter Marianne is the result of a liaison with Liam Kincaid of Earth: Final Conflict.

On the other hand, Darla (yes, named after the B:TVS character) Bennington is merely the head of the Resistance in her land, and Greer Lewis is on the weak side for an Immortal. I'm surprised she hasn't lost her head yet. I'm not surprised that I pulled a Deus Ex Machina to make her survive past her first battle, much to my shame. And I do have to write her husband Michael a good fic one of these days.

I think I try to make my characters not the most powerful, etc of their kind. Sometimes, it kind of treads close (Aya is good enough for the Olympics, for example, but that's more part of her background than something that's all sparkly and useful). And I equally try to avoid anti-sues.

I'd go on and on, but my mind has wandered off, so I'll stop it here.