Does anyone read fics that are centred around OCs at the expense of canon characters? Like a story about an OCxOC pairing where the canon characters are only on the side or background to the core pairing?
I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth posting a story I have an idea for (that won’t get out of my head & demands that I write it next).
Having OCs does not come at the “expense” of canon characters. I read OC stories where there is none of the original cast. I read OC/OC. Do I go out of my way to read them? Depends on the fandom!
You can make a guess on how well your fic will do in a fandom by seeing what works get to be celebrated. Some fandoms all people want are OCs. Some fandoms become toxic hell houses just suggesting having an OC show up for a chapter. But you really, really cannot know how a fandom will react until you post.
My most popular work right now is a 99% OC cast. However the reason I thought the work would be ignored/hated by the fandom wasn’t because of the largely OC focus (it is a very OC friendly fandom). It was because the work is a deconstruction of the fandom’s favourite genres/themes. Escapism, power fantasy, that sort of thing. (So bad to the point that me having blatant warnings of a main character dying and the exact page it was happening so people could avoid it I still got a lot of shocked/angry comments)
For a couple of years, my prediction was mostly correct. Then on the third year my work exploded in readers! Every once and a while I get compliments about my work and in general it makes me sad. “your work is so original!” It’s only original because the atmosphere of the community has made it unfriendly for this kind of work…
I had a chat with another author in the broader Star Trek fandom after reading their OC/OC fic & based on how that got received, I’m not getting my hopes up. I’ll still write it though (& probably post it regardless). And it will have some canon characters as secondary characters (& it’ll be set on the Enterprise) so it won’t be completely unknown to fans.
Love that your 99% OC story got so big! 😁 There’s hope for OC-centric stories yet. Pity about the unfriendly community atmosphere though - like, you don’t like the premise, don’t read it. No need to give grief to the authors about it. 🤷♀️
Glad you have those in your fandom you can refer to. It gives me better comfort when dealing with unreasonable readers. Sadly “don’t like, don’t read” has been a lost art for awhile. I hope one day it will become trendy again.
Sometimes fandoms that used to be unfriendly to OCs will turn around because a couple of fanfic managed to become super popular. The English fandom of Naruto has a few well documented cases of this.