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An Original Character (or OC) is a character that a Fanfiction author creates for an existing fictional universe.

Summary

Fanfiction writers, when they want to make up a character for something that already exists, call this character an OC (Original Character). These are pretty much everywhere in fanfiction, often because the fanfiction writers might need even just a bit character to advance things along or introduce a new villain because all the existing canon ones are dead, or just plain feel like it.

Or, more often, they exist so that fanfiction writers can structure an entire story around them, focusing on their adventures in the fictional universe, and often they're interactions and ROMANCES with the existing characters. They're the single most common source of Mary Sues on the internet.

Sonic recolours

Sonic recolours are a specific breed of OCs. Unlike normal OCs, sonic recolours have no redeeming features. They're done exclusively in MS Paint, they're boring rehashes of earlier characters and they're universally all Mary Sues. The basic concept behind a Sonic recolour is to take an existing sonic character and draw over the colouring in MS Paint. Nobody knows why it's done.

Origins

OCs are as old as Fanfiction itself. They're also frequently used for role playing.

Current status

OCs are plentiful on deviantart and fanfiction.net in mainly the Sonic, Harry Potter, Dragonball Z and Pokemon fandoms, and now, Homestuck is desperately trying to catch up and get some notice in the OC field too.

Nowadays, commonly accompanied by a message along the lines of "Original Character,do not steal"

Facts

Images

Shadow is soo original! (image by Tyson Hesse)

Related Pages

Chris-chan

Mary Sue

My Immortal

External Links

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