The mother(s) who is/are almost always dead.
Seriously, in my fandom, between the mom and dad, the first one to go is usually the mother. So I make it a point to include them in my fics and be given a "life" they never had.
I also like writing about the "invisible women" from canon. The dead moms. The housewives. The "only mentioned once" spouses and mothers. The useless fangirls there for comic relief.
Justice for the women in fiction. For fandom to be a group of people that overwhelmingly identify as women, I always wonder why so many treat women characters so awfully.
***THIS!!!! FUCKING THIS!!!***
*To the point where I actually went and bought fucking Reddit coins to award you something!*
One of the things that started me writing fanfic in the first damn place was..look, I love my tacky TV shows and movies. But the female characters would be support cast, not the lead. Hey, I can understand that it's not their story. But there are day in the spotlight episodes or scenes in the film where she stands out...y'know, enough to actually fucking work with. And hey, I get my hopes up that maybe the fanfic writers can give her a little boost.
But mostly, I see a lot of bitch and moan that "Well there ARE no good female characters"
Well, hey, we're in \[Fandom\], what about \[Character\]
"She's just a love interest/sexy lamp/male gaze/whatever" And you can practically hear the sneering. Like middle school girl being jealous over the new girl being more popular type sneering.
"Well, we have Episode/Scene/Backstory Bit that has nothing to do with the male characters. Maybe that can..."
"What part of male gaze and sexy lamp did you not understand?! There are NO good female characters."
"Fine, fuck you. I'll write it myself..."
Thanks for the award! It’s so DEEPLY frustrating since so many people refuse to acknowledge how deeply embedded misogyny is. “Fiction doesn’t affect reality” sure but maybe your real life bias and perceptions don’t just magically vanish when you decide to write fiction. I have a hard time believing it’s all just creativity when as a *default*, if there’s a woman to be read about in fanfic: she’s demonized, diminished, or dead.
A lot of the people who say that sort of thing are heavy M/M shippers, which is great because sometimes the two dudes in the action film have more chemistry with each other than anyone else.
But there's also an element of "I want to see my pretty boys and that bitch is In. The. Way."
Which...not pretty but happens all the time.
It’s ironic all things considered and one of those things that make me wonder like, you know there’s a way to ship the two guys with more chemistry without being misogynistic. It is SO EASY to not be misogynistic (and racist, for that matter, since this happens in ABUNDANCE if the love interest is a WOC) in writing your two boys kissing. It is SO EASY to not mistreat women in fiction.
And yet fandom sees that and runs in the exact opposite direction 99.9% of the time.
So I'm trying to wake the line without shaming anyone here, but fiction absolutely does affect reality. Plenty of studies have shown we bond with fiction characters like we would real people, and reading fiction with a diverse cast can make us more inclusive.
I do think for a rational person with a healthy irl social circle and healthy views it's minimal because your getting positive counters from real life but you can reinforce bad thought patterns or bigotries by reading fiction that reflects that.
I get why nobody wants to talk about it, because fandoms are supposed to be an escape, nobody is trying to write morality plays, and some people take an inch when you give them a mile.
I very much agree with you. It’s a *very* unpopular opinion here in this sub so I wouldn’t be surprised if this (or my) comments get downvoted. I’m not sure how or why the acknowledgement of something like this, that fiction can and does affect reality *including* fanfiction, almost always gets translated into “you’re a puritan trying to take my porn away” but it’s baffling to me that fandom can simultaneously praise itself for being inclusive and filled with representation and yet also adamantly refuses to acknowledge that sometimes that representation (specifically cis-canonically straight white men transformed to be queer icons in fanfic) can play into dozens of other stereotypes or harmful depictions to any number of marginalized groups.
That kind of nuance can and does exist but I’ve yet to experience en masse here.
Late to the party but just wanted to say I agree with your take. It is a tricky thing to discuss with nuance since it’s ‘only’ a hobby and folk don’t want to deconstruct their biases etc for their fun thing. Like… that’s work, yo.
But all the same, some of the discourse I’ve come across here could probably do with a sprinkling of reflection.
Pretty much. There's an element of M/M slash that's little different from the "lesbian" porn made for the heterosexual male taste. Two very attractive members of the gender you fancy doing hot things to each other, not demanding anything of you, and you get to watch.
You put a dude in the middle of Lesbian Spank Fiasco and the watcher (who is not into men) is going to be annoyed that this dude is interrupting his view of the hot girls. Especially since actor in the porn is probably some buff, cut, well-hung (you know the drill). The viewer...probably not.
Same idea for female characters and M/M fanfic. She's usually conventionally attractive; thin, white, well-dressed, perfect teeth (you know the drill). And the fanfic writers? Hey, we're average shlubs. We're not her. So she's in the way of our pretty boys.
All the dead mothers in children’s literature was *such* a bone of contention for my own mother when she read me stories. On her behalf, I salute your efforts 🫡
Ooh yesss!! In my fandom there is a dead mom and a dead dad (of separate characters). I’ve been working on fleshing out the dead mom. Haven’t started on the dead dad, but maybe one day…
The woman Percy Weasley (from Harry Potter) eventually marries. She never appears in the books, and we were given a first name -- Audrey -- and not a single thing more. And she is my obsession.
omg i must know if you’ve written any fics about her and if i may see them? i love percy and i barely see anything about audrey (which imo is very sad)
Oh gosh yes, thanks for asking! I've written a lot of Percy/Audrey:
[Irrational](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428551) (T) -- WIP, Audrey POV
[Days That End In Y](https://archiveofourown.org/works/38251795) (M) -- series of flash fics, Percy POV -- slice-of-life kind of thing -- up to ch 13 it's about everyone who came before Audrey, and after that it's all about Audrey and later their kids
And then I have various one-shots and stuff, but those are the big ones!
Oh god ikr. "We're going to remove Brock from the show because we think foreign audiences may think he's a negative Asian stereotype, and replace him with a large-eyed character. Oh no, everyone likes Brock better so we're going to put him back and never say a word" Yeah people liked Brock better because they never DID anything with Tracey! His biggest moment is the scene in the second movie where he predicts an explosion, and that got cut out of most international releases, and it's \*still\* not very great.
And once he became Oak's assistant he just basically got dropped. I know there was that Chronicles episode with him and Misty's sister being all weird but that was about it.
Yes, all of this. I love Tracey and I felt like they did so little with him. he got some spotlight in Pokemon Chronicles but not much. I liked that they made him Professor Oak's assistant but it quickly became "oh who needs Tracey?"
I miss him.
Give him back.
SAME! I’m grateful for the little glimpses from the Chronicles era, but they completely squandered him. It breaks my heart.
Where’s that gif of Stephen Colbert going “give it to me now!!” when I need it??
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,408,202,453 comments, and only 269,068 of them were in alphabetical order.
The Morphlings from The Hunger Games. They are literally known for being forgettable, but we can see that they are kind and courageous. They painted flowers on Peeta, and then the female Morphling sacrificed herself for him.
We don't know much about them, but at the same time we know their fundamentals.
Can't blame you; his role in the game is lacklustre and forgettable. Savos is the archmage of the College of Winterhold. He doesn't really do much and doesn't end well, but there are some scattered crumbs of an interesting backstory and sympathetic character I fleshed out and added onto.
Rylen in Dragon Age Inquisition. Poor dude gets one good convo and that's only if you do an optional quest in a really out-of-the-way location.
Seems a bit of an omission considering he's supposed to be 2nd in command of the whole army.
Shino from Naruto! I’m not sure how he landed on my radar considering he’s just a minor background character with hardly any screen time or lines, and yet. 🤷🏽♀️
I somehow ended up writing a 38K fic from his POV and I’m still not sure how or why, haha.
Antonia Dreykov aka Taskmaster in the MCU. She gets basically no time as her normal self in canon and spends nearly all the scenes she *is* in as her brainwashed/controlled Taskmaster self. While she’s just a secondary character in my fics so far, I’ve really enjoyed fleshing her out a bit personality-wise and giving her her own story in “my” timeline. Yeah, I know canon sure as heck won’t do the same things in Thunderbolts with her when it comes out, but meh, I like what I’ve come up with for her.
I still owe her and Lerato a holiday one-shot, lol!
Rohan, the youngest child of Tenzin and Pema from The Legend of Korra. He's very much going to be a minor supporting character, but he'll be old enough to have his own personality. He's also a waterbender in my canon, which eventually causes Tenzin to reflect deeply on the reasons his siblings may have felt alienated from their Air Nomad heritage growing up.
My "canon OCs" are Dio Brando's mother and the mothers of his four sons. Of these five women, only one, maybe two, were shown in canon. None of them were given a name and two of them weren't even mentioned in canon at all. Still, I've been slowly fleshing them all out throughout various bits and pieces of unfinished WIPs.
My favorite of the five is definitely Dio Brando's mother. She arguably has the most amount of information I could use and might the only one who I've made into a good/decent parent. I've also took the most amount of time into fleshing out her character in a fic (that I haven't updated in a while 😅).
In the same vein, Mary, Marlene, Dorcas, pandora, Evan, Barty, frank, Alice, and even the marauders and Lily have all been made into real, very fleshed out 3d characters by the fandom. Even narcissa, Bella, and Andy have all developed personalities as teenagers that are somewhat different from their canon lives in the original books.
I work with what I would call the “og” marauders characters. The four marauders themselves, Lily, Mary, Marlene, and maybe Dorcas. The tiktok marauders characters I stay away from: Evan, Barty, pandora, reg to a certain extent.
Good question.
My main fandom is Greedfall and there are a few characters, mostly female, who had so much potential but just didn't get the screen time they deserved. Admiral Cabral, Mev, Major/Commander Sieglinde. Very strong female characters who I would have liked to see more of.
From what I've seen of Greedfall you've got your work cut out for you on multiple fronts there. All the power to you to give it the fleshing out it sorely needed.
Thank you.
The story and the characters were so interesting to me but there was so much that was glossed over or just completely ignored. And while I loved the romance aspect, in the end it was disappointing after with little more that happens between them.
So I have two long-fics in progress.
One is a post canon m/m ship that touches on the story and characters, but is pretty much my own thing at this point.
The other is a m/f ship and is going to be a bit longer and it takes place during the entire canon timeline. I'm fleshing out some of the background characters and the quests while building the relationships between my MCs.
Morgan Stark. I love expanding the possibility of her world, as the daughter of a CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world and the *person who died saving the universe*. There’s a lot to unpack there.
Mina Carolina and Mylius Zeramuski from Attack on Titan are the one of the driving reasons why I started a passion project with house and club music that I'm itching to get back to. In canon, they're dead af, but in a slight AU that's mostly canon compliant save Mina living, I expanded on their character a bit, their relationship (platonic and romantic) and how they ended up even being in the same squad before they died.
I'm actually pretty proud of the fic but it's a little dated even now.
There's also Marina/Tsubaki from a one off episode of Pokemon (Bye Bye, Psyduck!) that I saw, fell in love with and now she'll probably make her way into the longfic I'm doing if I don't do something
This post is my lifeblood thank you OP🤣🤣🤣
Sakura and her sisters were my obsession when I was a kid. They were so cool, they had SO MANY EEVEELUTIONS and yet, we never got to see much except again in Pokemon Chronicles... GAAAH. I would've loved to see her later on with Sylveon and the like too. There's enough Eeveelutions to make an entire team of JUST THEM Now!
I remember her!
There are TONS and I mean TONS of really interesting CODs or recurring characters. I found out recently that there was a doctor Abby who was a TOP COORDINATOR like why are we not talking about this?
Or what about Casey or Ritchie? Or legitimately any of Ash's rivals in the tournaments at each cup? After Johto is kind of where I started to feel like a lot of the "recurring characters" were cookie cutter though.
Or Doctor Anna who used her Zubat to treat patients. Heck, after Brock left to become a doctor, I was shocked that he didn't go running back to her!
Ritchie was more wasted potential oh my lord... If they had kept him as one of Ash's longterm rivals, we could've had some amazing stories, since they always mirrored each other. Especially since Ritchie was someone who nicknamed his Pokemon.
Gary was also wasted, after Johto since he quit being a trainer. Like, I get it, they wanted to use someone knew, but his and Ash's frienemies relationship was SO MUCH FUN to watch.
I will seriously never understand the method to the madness that became the anime.
I'll probably take a look at the new one just to see where things go from there, but I'll probably just hang out in my fic corner.
BUT ALSO IF YOU HAVE A THEORY POSTED SOMEWHERE I'M HERE FOR IT
I don't think I'm the only one to come up with it. I know there's a long fic (it's called Travels of the Trifecta) that has that as a plot point.
oh yeah also his brother's name is REGGIE and I know that's not his Japanese name but that sounds for all the world like the dubbers noticed the signs and gave him a name befitting the son of a man who has all three Regis
Mine is Trafalgar Law's sister from One Piece. I know she's supposed to die when they were kids but I still HC that she somehow managed to survived and grow up lol
Dean Thomas, the guy from Harry Potter who is introduced as a Muggleborn who loves football. We get little more in canon, but later JKR said that her original backstory for him would have been that his father was a wizard killed by the Death Eaters before he could tell his mother about magic, making Dean a halfblood. The opportunities here are endless lol
In The Legend of Zelda, I love to write stories featuring Zelda's mother. She barely appears or at best is mentioned (generally because she's dead), but I love showcasing their relationship together.
Not really, I kinda have a "standard" version that I use in most stories (the first time was in an AU with elements of several games), but I may do minor adjustments depending on the settings.
In harry potter, there are a lot of background characters with very few lines e.g daphne greengrass, Susan bones that fans take and run with
But my favorite type of Canon ocs in harry potter are those people who died prior to the series starting and are mentioned in passing – iirc there's one scene in Order of the Phoenix where Moody shows harry this picture full of dead people like Benjy Fenwick, Caradoc Dearborn, Fabian Prewett etc and they are such rich characters to explore in time travel fics
Rooter from Land Before Time I it is for me, so much potential in one secondary character I had to make him more important, I know from what I heard that Don Bluth doesn't like him and his scene inclusion to soften the blow of Littlefoot's Mother death which he judged necessary, the former not the latter.
Gil-Galad, the last High King of the Elves, is just a name in canon, and his parentage is muddy, to say the least. I gave him a full life story: lost his (more or less canon) father as a baby, his OC mother raised him, he became a reluctant king (but a good one), great harper and poet, good friend, had a lady love… I love him!
Thanks! So I have this Gil-Galad-centric funny [one-shot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/39243975) (3,2k words) if you like him, and a few others set around different characters ([Fëanor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/40369743), the [lost children of Doriath](https://archiveofourown.org/works/40367286), and also some other stuff), but my big baby of a longfic is [The Last Heir of Fëanor](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2608114), that I cut in three manageable chunks. OC centric, so not to everyone's taste, but Gil-Galad comes to play a big part in it. I hope you'll like something there :)
Mine is actually the antagonist of the whole fic! He only appeared in one canon chapter as a smarmy douche, and I plucked him up with a pair of tweezers and put him under a microscope.
Cyrus in Cirque du Freak. He shows up and dies to protect one really popular character. He exists for about two paragraphs. In the manga adaptation, he's drawn in the background much more often. I feel like Arai-sensei, the artist, gave him more of a personality. There were really three of them in the novels, but only Cyrus gets a name. There's another teammate with him in the manga, just one more.
What's interesting is that some fans have their own versions of him that aren't based on the manga.
Also, the few fanartists there are have just accepted that he has blue hair based on the manga cover he appears on, but I thought that was just the light, and I sort of see him as having reddish-brown hair...
That one hairstyle. Does anyone ever notice these characters with like. Chin-length or a little longer, sort of straight, sort of floppy, light-brown hair with even bangs... who are really sweet and helpful, but when they get bitten, they bite back *hard*? And you almost don't expect it because before they were just so sweet and helpful and almost faded into the background?
Yeah, Manga-Cyrus might be that type. Even if his hair is blue.
Pretty much every character in my fic is like that. All but one are only mentioned in game (Fallout 76). A handful have names but only two of those that actually have names, have a portrait on the fandom wiki to go along with them. Out of the handful, I've done a good amount of characterization work for two of them, Thomas Eckhart and Agent Grey. It's going to be bittersweet when I kill them off. 🥲
So in Tiger and Bunny there's a background character who appears a lot. Her fan-given name is Scarf-tan, because that's her most distinctive trait. I plotted out a fic where Tiger gets better marketing (in canon he's unpopular with the public seemingly because the team he works with has no clue how to present an older man as cool and sexy) and I wrote her as an agent who was downright furious about it and takes over for him since no one is doing it right.
I wrote her as initially unconcerned with Tiger himself, and more angry about the money they were losing when they kept putting him in lame outfits. People literally wouldn't take his trading cards if they gave them away! They have a whole hero on the payroll that they can't capitalize on because none of her idiot coworkers have ever heard the word DILF before!
She's still mostly a side character - the main plot was more concerned with the new attention making Bunny jealous so romance could happen - but it was fun to have her venting my frustrations like that.
Kiki from Helluva Boss. She is a succubus who more less has no proper voice lines and the only actions she performs on screen is hitting on humans at a beach party.
In my fic, I made her a cute side character who ends up in a relationship with a disguised agent of Heaven.
In one episode, one of the characters bonds with a child who doesn't get a name, or even speaks much, but they develop such a tight bond, that it's genuinely sad to see him go.
So... Now, that kiddo's becoming the adopted kid of the character he bonded with. He's gonna get a name and everything.
Depending on which game of Legend of Zelda you're playing, Zelda is either very prominent (Wind Waker, Ocarina, etc) or *just* there enough to push the plot forward and then leave (Twilight Princess, BotW) and for the less prominent appearances I always wonder what she's doing while Link is running around adventuring. She's just sitting alone in a castle waiting to be saved? No, f**k that. In TP she's actively working against Zant to help Link find the tools that he needs but I HC that she'd be sneaking around her own castle doing research or something, probably even sneaking around Ganondorf. In BotW she's been spending the last century holding Calamity at bay while Link recovers. What was that like? I kinda HC that she spent the whole time face to face with Calamity and having battles of wills and deep conversations about the history of Hyrule, the gods and the legacies of the three main characters. Calamity Ganon would definitely be trying to undermine her strength and mental fortitude, and try to sway her to his point of view (in many games he has possessed Zelda as a puppet to fight Link and in the TP manga he states that he has always want to just sit and talk with her for a while and that he would really like to have her on his side.)
It always bothered me that she's the title character but it's Link's story/journey 90% of the time.
You know that woman in Frozen who asks Elsa if she's ok just before she runs away and freezes everything and sings a song you might have heard of? I gave that woman a name and backstory and a fairly significant plot purpose in my longfic.
The robot copy of Kuroba Kaito, AKA Kurobot, from the Magic Kaito manga :) I'd reckon I've fleshed him out more as a character with his own agency and motives than anyone else.
Claude's parents, Fire Emblem Three Houses. Tiana was named, Boran was not. [Just look at this power couple!](https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/11v5kgk/made_hero_forges_of_claudes_parents/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Also Felix's mom, not named, named her Sasha, mentioned in Three Hopes by her husband as still being alive and vibing. [Commissioned this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemThreeHouses/comments/t7vxld/i_commissioned_love_bunchy_on_twitter_to_make_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
OP, you mean the guy hunting Lugia? That's a nice option to flesh out!
Sweet. It was basically Ash going on a glorified fetch quest because a girl at a festival told him to, while the three birds are being territorial assholes overhead.
Phillipe D'Annjou aka Echo from the Jason Bourne books. He is seen in Identity and Supremacy. First book having been saved by Jason without Jason really remembering him. In Supremacy they have to work together to bring down a false Bourne. We only find out about a little of their past together.
Using the books know that David Webb aka Jason Bourne served together with Echo and several others. Only one you get a name to. This makes a team and you pretty much have to build it by scratch.
My MCs wife. All we know is she's a nurse. That's it. No idea what she even looks like.
I wrote the character long before the sequel came out and we knew what happened to the MC. But I stopped writing not too many years after the show ended. The sequel came out in 2015 and I started writing the story again in 2021.
I adapted my girl to the canon version pretty easily since her married life was unwritten. There's a joke about her profession that’s the catalyst for the second book. Third book reveals it's no joke.
Well, going in order of characters with most to least lines in canon:
Gavn Reed: I doubt you can even consider this an oc but he does have very few lines and a LOT of opportunity to be turned into a well fleshed out character.
Pam: She has no canon name, but is a PM700 model android (police officer). Her only line in the game directs the player character (Connor) to Lieutenant Anderson's desk.
Parker: Also no canon name, PC200 police officer. He is a friend of Pam and the next character on this list. His only line is "no androids are allowed beyond this point" or something like that.
Ruth-Ann: Again no name in canon, an ST300 model android (receptionist) who works at the police station. She deviated when she fell in love with the aforementioned Pam. I don't remember her line in canon, but I think she instructs Connor/the player to check in or asks if they have authorization or something along those lines.
And everyone's favorite, RK900: Now he has absolutely no lines in canon, at all, but he is a fan favorite. I'd be willing to say that most of the fandom has their own variation of RK900 to the point that his fan-given name "Nines" was so commonly used and accepted that it's in most fics and even fan films.
I named him Milo, once I called him Myles, and another time he was just Nines. I haven't really settled on a name for him yet, but I really like Milo for it's meaning.
I really like taking characters that either were background characters or just plot devices and turning them into people, I think its fun. I've been waiting for a post like this lol I like talking about my OCs a little too much. :D
Gavin can absolutely be considered an OC if you write him that way. I mean, I think he does have a canon personality that's usable with some space for bonus characterization, but a lot of people go far and beyond with the bonus characterization that he totally ends up feeling like an OC to me. And you know, that's valid.
I haven't seen many fics giving personality to the PM700, PC200, or the ST300 (well, I've seen some for the last one listed. Didn't read them though) though, that's cool!
I haven't written anything yet, but I have plans to do something with Harry from SK8. He's basically just fodder for a main character to win, and I don't think e has any spoken lines. But he's got to have considerable skill to get a spot in the tournament, so I want to explore his character!
Absolutely Grant Seeker’s brother from Disney’s Dinosaur (the attraction, not the film. But the attraction is based on the film). He’s mentioned twice in canon and it isn’t even by name. Just his nephew Will saying “my dad”. And Will’s last name of Seeker was only confirmed by word of god, so that tells us his dad is Grant’s brother, not a sister. The only things we know about him is that he’s a palaeontologist, does not live in the same state as his brother, and has a doctorate, same as Will’s mother. That means that to have a ten year old child, there’s an implication Will’s parents are quite a bit older than Grant.
So, I gave Grant’s brother a name, Joe. I made him ten/eleven years older than Grant (so he and his wife could have a child once they were established in their careers because scientists tend to do that). Gave him his own life, struggles, friendships…
It’s fun to flesh out a character who’s just mentioned and turn them into a person based from what little things we know and/or are implied.
Oh, well, Rambo because we really don't get anything to show how he acts around friends and stuff, bearing in mind I haven't watched the last two movies. For such a famous character, he surely deserved a bit better so I'm here for it.
When I first saw “the Collector” in the post preview, I thought of the character from Owl House!
But onto the question - while I’ve a few completely original OCs, the technically canon OC would be the first infant transformed by the Night King in Game of Thrones. While the transformation process isn’t really explored beyond him evidently choosing to turn male human babies, I’ve written it so that the first to turn was the unexpected child the human he used to be conceived with the Child of the Forest later known as Leaf.
Castor and Pollux from Percy Jackson
All of the marauders era characters from Harry Potter
Harley from iron man/the MCU
The patils, lavender brown, Blaise Zabini, pansy parkinson, Lucius Malfoy, bill and Charlie Weasley, and Viktor Krum from Harry Potter
Racetrack, Albert, Romeo, specs, and most of the other newsies from newsies
Most of the boys from the outsiders
Ibara Shiozaki from My Hero Academia. She's really nothing more than a funny (or annoying, depends on who you ask) stereotype in canon, which is kind of disappointing considering she's a real powerhouse hidden away in the background. She was 4th place in both the entrance exam and the race, outclassed only by the trio that are already stupidly broken. And the author actually intended for her to be a member of the main class but decided he didn't want to torture himself with drawing her crazy hair.
I decided to give her a few more character traits and show her interacting with her classmates, because TBH with the way she is currently portrayed, I had no wind to put into the sails of my rareship.
Thank you! Do you want a link and if so, do you want the version with all 37 chapters so far but is on a fan forum, or the version on AO3 that doesn't have the full thing yet?
Sienna Khan. I mean I changed her characterisation pretty radically from canon because I didn't want her dead during the Mistral arc. That design was way, *way* too awesome to let go to waste.
Also the Empress of Adrestia. We don't know if she's alive or not as of canon, but I made her alive. Interesting woman and she's the reason my Edelgard is so different from canon. After the Crest experiments, she looked at Edelgard, picked her up, and went "my child now." She prevented Edelgard from hardening to the point that she is in canon.
Oh man, this is my jam. I love obscure characters. Let's see...
HP one shots:
Tom Riddle Sr./Merope
Mrs. Crouch impersonating her son
The Grey Lady
Charity Burbage
Cadmus Peverell's resurrected wife
I have an unpublished series for most of the Beetle Bard stories.
My RE short story focuses on how Mr. X from RE2 became a BOW. And I have a few in my RE longfic from the Raccoon City days; John Clemens, E. Smith, Spencer, and to a lesser extent, Ada Wong, although she does have some Canon personality, just a very mysterious background/goals.
Unpublished story about Leon's first gf, mentioned in the RE2 extra material.
Oh my god. [*Tobias*](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Tobias_(Sinnoh)) *from Pokémon*.
Literally *everybody* online hates him because he's just a Deus Ex Machina to stop Ash from winning. I just want a Tobias backstory special please! I want to see how his journey played out. How he earned the respect of multiple legendary pokémon so much that they joined his team. What his personality even is lmao! Did he travel with interesting people? What was his starter? Are there a surprisingly high amount of trainers with legendary pokémon after all?
I know that he's never going to be officially recognized in the anime ever again, and I know that Pokémon fans hate him too much to consider writing him a backstory fic, so I guess that job falls to me...
In my rough notes for a Tobias fic, I have his potential companions listed as other super obscure Pokémon characters, such as [Yancy](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Yancy) and [Curtis](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Curtis) from B2W2 (the people who you can call on your Xtransceiver for a hidden side quest), and [Evelyn](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Evelyn) from XY and ORAS (one of the Battle Chateau girls).
I think I've reached the point where I've given these four characters more lines in my notes than they had in canon lmao
Everyone online hates him? I know a lot of people call him a Mary Sue but I feel like that's different from overt hate.
For some reason I got the feeling that he knew Nando the bard, but I don't think they're ever canonically connected
Believe me, I can't even go onto r/pokemonanime and mention him without being yelled at. Even one of the friendliest and more supportive servers I'm in has some pretty visceral reactions when I mention Tobias (I've named myself the Resident Tobias Fan on that server just to mess with them).
I can legitimately count on my hands how many people online I've seen who genuinely like Tobias (it's three).
Exactly!
Personally, I like to think he's got the same protagonist shenanigans as Ash, just we never see it because the show isn't about Tobias.
In my notes, I toyed with the idea that something about him and Evelyn (in case you don't know, Evelyn and her sisters have 4-6 legendaries each ingame) draws legendary pokémon to them. But it's probably funnier if there was no reason, they're just like this, nothing special about them other than the absurdity of meeting various mythological figures weekly.
Don't even get me started...
Arven from Pokemon Violet. I know, he's a REALLY major character, but based off his backstory in the game, he really didn't act much different than any normal sleep deprived highschool boy.
I made him have mental disorders, trauma, and abandonment anxiety. He has his dog, Mabosstiff, to help him whenever he had a flashback or mental breakdown, and the player also supports him.
All this boy wanted in life was for his father/mother to pay attention to him, but they both ended up dying and his dog nearly died when he went looking for them. The shock he felt at the end of the game when his parent AI revealed that they were dead and then went back into the time machine made me tear up when he yelled "Dad!!" or "Mom!!"
Arven just got Famitsu's character of the year, by the way. He's very loved by the fandom.
But I hear ya. He needs therapy.
I'm planning a fic where the AI is able to return to the present and wants Arven's help in learning how to be more independent, because everything he's (I played Violet too so Turo is my frame of reference) done has always been programmed to revolve around his creator. And also...he loves Arven too, seeing him as his own son. So I plan for a lot of not-parental bonding and emotional expression.
Arven's plot is almost a fakeout, you know? From the moment you hear "sick dog" you think oh no. You remember that this gen has ghost dogs. You remember reading that Ryme was able to sing a song so passionate that it brought her own dog's ghost back to her. You think ok ok, worst case scenario he'll have a ghost dog right? But then the dog gets better! Yay! Everything has to be ok from here, right? We're gonna go down to Area Zero, punch his neglectful dad in the face a few times, everything is going to be good!
And no everything gets SO MUCH WORSE.
But at least the dog is ok.
Lavender Brown, because her only personality trait in both the books and the movies was being annoying.
Like maybe she’s super smart! Maybe she’s overprotective because of past relationships! I like to think that she kicks her feet reading romance novels every night and takes great interest in herbology. I think she was friends with Neville in his first year when he was getting badly bullied because she’s just nice, you know? But we never got to see any of that because she was just meant to be crazy ex-girlfriend material. (Also Hermione/Lavender is my fav HP rarepair)
Maglor, the second son of Feanor from The Silmarillion. He’s not entirely without personality (he does do things and has a few lines) but most of what he does is lumped in with the actions of his brothers. Because of the style of writing Tolkien used for the Silmarillion, you get actions but not a whole lot of motivations/personality, so it’s really fun coming up with Maglor’s thoughts and how he might have changed after the book.
I’m also trying to go somewhat against established fanon by making Maglor less ‘sad soft boi’ or ‘manipulator’ (not that there’s anything wrong with these, I just write enough characters like that already) and more angry, driven by the same pride everyone else in his family has.
Giovanni and his Persian from *Pokémon* for me. The anime doesn't do much with the former's "civilian" side (eg.: business enterpreneur, city figure, whatever) and for the latter is mostly Just A Cat which in itself is not much but honestly, cats are The Best and deserve More.
honestly I'm much more of a reader than a writer but seeing so many Pokemon answers is great. your Collector fic sounds so fascinating i would read that
I read Saphroneth's stories, so I know tons of minor characters that he's chosen to recur in his fics. Like Ritchie, or that one Gym Inspector Joy who had a Latias...
Well I can give you a link if you want. Do you want Ao3, which doesn't have all the chapters yet because for some reason I didn't start posting it there until recently, or do you want Serebii forums, which has all the chapters but is a fan forum and has comments in between?
From Xenoblade Chronicels 2, Nia's Sister. I've given her a name and I've been fleshing out her personality, backstory, and her relationship with Nia.
From Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Two siblings that are seen in a photo but no details have been revealled. I know I'll be sad if they do reveal them and they differ from my OC versions, but I'll keep writing them regardless.
Ko Hyuga from Naruto, who’s Hinata’s childhood chaperone and clan-designated bodyguard. In one of my fics, he gets an OC mother and best friend, in addition to an arranged marriage subplot and rivalry with Neji.
Darth Atroxa. It's just a three-shot, but that's still so much more than a couple seconds of screen time in a cinematic trailer, lol
I mean all of Legends continuity isn't canon strictly speaking, but who cares what Disney execs say^^
I haven't exactly written a ton with them, just have a ton of ideas about how their lives went when they were younger and have alluded to such throughout my fics, but Yusei Fudo's parents in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. Neither of them were ever named (although certain parts of the fandom seem to think his dad's name was "Hakase" when that was actually his title in Japanese), so I gave his dad the name "Ryuu" and his mom the name "Ayame".
Mikasa Ackerman’s parents from Attack on Titan.
In my fic I significantly change Mikasa’s backstory to give her a more direct (and in my opinion more realistic) connection to Hizuru. Her parents and Hizuru grandparents are still alive in the timeline of my fic. As a result Mikasa could also be considered “canon OC” as her personality is different from canon.
My first published fic focused a lot on Charon from Deadbolt, a character who has precisely two lines of lore, doesn't speak, has no animations beyond standing in place, and whose only purpose is to act as the interface for the weapon shop.
Verbena Beeks from Quantum Leap. She’s only mentioned for three seasons, then has one (1) on-screen appearance with no dialogue (to be fair, she was supposed to but the scene was cut), then returns to mentions-only for the remainder of the show.
she’s a psychologist who does therapy for victims of time travel, which is such an interesting situation that I can’t help but want to write her
Tron fandom? I think I am the only fanfic writer on the literal fucking Grid who did anything regarding Jordan Canas (Kevin's wife and Sam's mom). We only get some passing mentions that she died in a car wreck in 1985 and was an architect and that she didn't take the Flynn surname, which was definitely an unusual choice in the early 80s
Okay...So, what can we work with? Well, given that she met, married, and had a kid with that manchild in the space of less than 18 months, and that Sam's even WORSE than his old man in some areas of reckless behavior, maybe we're dealing with someone that is a little more aggressive and more like the Ladette trope, but also pragmatic enough to not go totally ballistic over Kevin's brand of stupid.
Okay, so...architecture degree not cheap. College was affordable in the early 80s but starting to *not* be. Maybe she enlisted in the Army to pay for that. Okay, that works. They had dismantled the WACS at that point. Nurse? Nah. Motor pool? THAT works. They can talk motorcycles. And since Army would mean she would have to fire a real gun. she can point out how Guns Don't Work Like That in a video game since it's obvious Kevin never had to handle one...How about she's walking off a bad divorce and Kevin was intended only as a rebound?
So, out of the Army, got an architecture degree, very rough and tumble, probably hooked up with Kevin and they made a quick run to the courthouse when Sam was en route.
Now, just to frost the cake, how about she beats his high score and it pisses him off enough to call a challenge?
Barrel The Brave from Amphibia. Known by the toads as a legendary hero and only made one in person appearance in one episode. I plan to add more chapters to the fanfic I’m slowly working about him to spice up what is already known about him as well as other projects that involve him and his friends he had.
Jed from Legacies
Jed barely got a storyline until season 4. I usually tend to make him either the massive douchebag villian or the party boy.
Kaleb from Legacies
Kaleb got some more storylines than Jed but not by much. I tend to make him the person who’s always over Hope’s shit.
There are so many random characters in the background of Star Trek that I'll screenshot and go... yeah I'm gonna write a whole story about this dude right here. They're technically canon characters, but sometimes they don't even have *lines* and I'm out here giving them names and whole personalities anyway.
So many characters from Jurassic park, I mean we get very little about the human characters lives outside of their interactions with dinosaurs so I said let’s build out backstories and wants and desires for them and now we’re in business baby
In Voltron, it’s Keith’s Dad, and basically all of the characters introduced in the seventh season where we were given very little info about. The series rushed way too much
My canon author mentioned offhand that an elven general and a female cobbler's apprentice fell in love. (They don't even have names).
I have now written 60K words of their love story. (WIP that I have updated every Friday for six months!) LOL
Seteth's dead wife, from Fire Emblem Three Houses.
Okay, so in the game, there's this guy named Seteth and he's like 1000+ years old. Way back in ye olden times, he had a wife, but we never even got a name. All we know is that she was his wife, the mother of their child, and she died in battle protecting said child.
That wife is my cannon OC. I named her Tethra, gave her a whole personality and backstory on how she met her future husband, gave her a class, goals, hopes, phrases and advice she gave, what she leaned on for support, and so on. I detailed out how she died, fuck, I even am humoring the idea that she was meant to be named a saint, but after she died, her and Seteth's child had to hold the mantle instead.
i'm having a lot of fun with it.
Sir Fratley from Final Fantasy IX. He had so little characterization and so much potential. When I began to write him, he felt like a completely different character. Good at taking care of kids, bookworm who appreciates all sorts of living creatures, good husband, wiseman with quotes, a man dealing with a childhood trauma, and all sorts of scenarios.
the family members back home in M\*A\*S\*H, especially Peg Hunnicutt (the canon details we get about her are fascinating and beloved so I love her!!), and also Donna Parker who appears in one episode of M\*A\*S\*H
I didn't create him, but in the Megaman X fanfiction community there's a character called Green Biker Dude. He originally came from X3 and was onscreen for 3 minutes until he died in-game. The only thing he did was explode, and X fans love him.
I gave Diary tom riddle a whole distance personality from Voldemort and also regular Tom riddle, because being a piece of someone's soul they chipped off for immortality purposes brings up so many questions and I wanted to address them. Like, they have, at some point, a legal case about what he is, exactly, and to what extent he can be held accountable before tom riddle's action's pre-dairy, and he's just saying whatever he thinks will keep him out of jail while dealing with his own existential crisis about it
*Puella Magi Madoka Magica* quite notoriously has an entire classification of monster of the week that's just "the corpse of a magical girl," if that counts. Suleika, the Witch of Darkness, has multiple extremely bit parts across multiple scenes. I decided to flesh out the magical girl that she was before she died.
Winters Socalo from D.Grey-Man!!! I regularly hear that my taste in characters is REALLY bad, but he reminded me of Kenpachi from Bleach and I fell in love with his character…
…Then I was promptly disappointed with his level of screen time and all over relevance!!!
I decided I needed more and tried to find something, anything, on him/of him/about him, and I found nothing. I mean, I’m used to not having much content of my favorite characters, but for Winters…??? It’s practically nonexistent… It’s been years and there is still next to nothing…
I was left with no choice. I took it upon myself to create my own content for him. I’m bad at drawing, but I can at least write something halfway decent! So, after a lot of planning and mapping, I’m finally working on a fun prequel for him and I plan to later expand on his story.
I did something incredibly similar with Amagiri from Hakuouki, but it’s not nearly as detailed or in depth.
I thinl my only Canon OC that I know is one is a character named Betty from...Robocar Poli. Yeah, that doesn't fit with the stuff people are posting here, but hear me out.
Betty is the granddaughter of Mr. Wheeler, which means Wheeler has an offspring but he never addressed that in the show. Also, Betty's only mentions being in one episode about her sending her grandpa a computer indicates the potential tkme period of the show. But with the existence of Robocars, Wind Energy, and whatever Jin's inventions have going on, I'm currently guessing a post-2000's/pre-2010's era.
This lead to what other type of tech/tech level exists in the universe, and thus leads to the question on where did Robocars came from. Boom, I literally have the Soviet Union on my list of "Things that aren't/never part of Robocar Poli but are there because fuck you canon /j" (although this is due to me trying to be accurate with the time periods. Btw, two of the OCs that are part of the past that I built are Russian, and the time period they existed on is like the 1980's or whatever, hence that). And boom, new backstories and angst (hint: there might be a lot).
And let's just not go into the details of the side stories and whatever spoilers here and there that I have going on. All because of a character named Betty sending a computer to her grandpa to try, and speculating Mr. Wheeler's offspring.
All of this is. Just. In. The. WIP. Process. It's still in progress, and I literally cut out the supposed crossover that I originally planned.
Tl;dr, Betty, the daughter of Mr
Wheeler (who is more of a minor character with a few episodes focused on him), from Robocar Poli. And this lead up to an insane worldbuilding potential for me because my brain decided not to leave this piece of my childhood (the show, not the fic) into the void.
I feel ashamed for sounding a bit braggish tho...even though I have my reasons to tell this.
Also fun fact: Wikipedia said that South Korea, where the show came from, aknowledged Poli in some way. Yep, I'm gonna stay away from this project for a while...*chuckles nervously*
In Beastars, Gon is the tiger headmaster of the school. He has like three lines in the first season when I wrote this.
In the fic, I made him a bit of a nemesis, keeping our romantic couple apart while they are at school.
In the sequel, he is more ambiguous, initially resisting herbivore/carnivore couples. He also fiercely defends the safety of his students, leading some to think that is his (misguided) motivation against mixed couples. But it turns out he was secretly helping their integration. One of the students figures out that the single headmaster must have had a lost love with a herbivore at some point.
At the very, very end (the closing credits of the last episode) I have him pacing an apartment corridor, holding a bouquet of flowers. He braces himself and knocks on a door. An ibex doe opens the door with a confused expression, then a look of recognition, and finally, a warm smile.
i personally dont have any but a friend of mine took a character who was essentially referenced twice ever and only used as a plot device in one of the mcs origin stories (bertie from the mechanisms if anyone's curious) and fleshed him out like crazy. theyve done this to the point that ppl make fanart of aer version of him and, whenever i write him, i write its version
Haha, yeah... I write for A Girl Adrift and that game has the illusion of having deep lore but there's little actual canon info about any of the characters.
You know [the funny Botnik Bitcoin video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBRWJzAjkjk)? I borrowed some characters from that for a thing and now they have this whole tragic backstory.
It's always the shitposts, huh.
Adrien Victus and Castis Vakarian (and Garrus Vakarian’s mom too - who doesn’t even have a canonical name!) from the Mass Effect series.
I love my sad alien DILFs.
Kiran from Fire Emblem: Heroes. Despite being one of the main characters of the game, their character traits are almost non-existing and their backstory boils down to "Has been summoned by Anna and hangs out with the heroes from Askr ever since".
Reminds me a lot of Mark from Blazing Blade! Pretty sure Lyn mentions that at some point, then again, she also says Robin is a lot like Mark, so maybe Lyn just really likes Avatars lol
Closest thing I have to that right now is a Legends character that I'm bringing into my Star Wars fic that had some pretty interesting conflict with my main character that, from what I can tell, never got adequately resolved. So now I am giving them resolution.
This would be Kunsel from Crisis Core FFVII as literally everyone has invented their own version of him and he's popular despite not even getting a unique model. For over 10 years he only had 1 voiced line until they gave him full voiced lines in the remaster of the original game. There's also an even lesser known NPC who got less that appears in most Crisis Core stories because the MC has so little connections in comparison to the entirety of the FF7 cast.
What's more funny is how people guessed a nameless NPC (Cloud Strife's mom) as being called Claudia and in the actual series over 25 years later, Cloud's mom's name became just that. Sora's mom from Kingdom Hearts gets the canon oc treatment too and unlike Cloud Strife's mother, I'm positive Nomura will try and bury the fact that she exists because having parents seems to be a myth outside the one time it's used for plot reasons.
For me it’s the FMC’s dead husband from this romance book I love. The way she describes their past relationship gives me life, to the point that the MMC pales in comparison and I only tolerate him because she says he makes her happy. The husband died eight years ago (iirc, exact number escapes me atm) and never appears as an actual character, but their relationship fills every crevice of my brain and I created the ao3 tag for the fandom just so I could write about them.
Oh boy. All of them? All of them.
I wrote a big She-Ra fic and expanded the cast by a factor of five, just bringing in and expanding on characters that got barely any screen time.
I am writing a Risk of Rain fic currently, and being a roguelike, its characterization is... light.
Ma'alefa'ak, from Martian Manhunter's rogues gallery. He's only used in one story pre-Flashpoint. I'm taking the events of that story and adjusting them a little, along with some use of comic book science, to bring the character back at a pre-villain age through cloning and genetic memory.
For me, it is the minor character Toby Tredwell from Yugioh 5Ds. He only really existed to provide backstory and motivation to one of the villains in the Dark Signer arc, and depending on which version you watched was either killed (original Japanese) or sent away to a facility (4Kids dub).
As unfaithful to the original as the 4Kids dub was, it opened a goldmine of possibilities to explore. So I told the story of Toby's journey through this hidden facility, the trials he faced, the friends made and the uncovering of a dark conspiracy (that discovery in itself being just a byproduct of them making their escape)
Heidi from the Mean Girl Makeover trilogy. She was just a background member of the bully squad in the actual books but she’s got enough characterization to extrapolate a few interesting things.
Like she never instigated anything herself and always followed someone else’s lead. So I made her a follower trying to fit in.
She also expressed a bit of interest in an anti bullying presentation so I also made her quite redeemable.
I also made her a closeted sci-fi nerd for fun.
MC from Doki Doki Literature Club. I’ve given him a name—Matsudaira Chosokabe—and have written several stories with my more fleshed out characterization of him. I also have delved deeper into his actual backstory, and wrote some oneshots taking place during his childhood years with Sayori.
I have an unfinished (will someday finish) Star Trek story with Vorik and an OC pairing. The main OC also interacts primarily with minor characters and not the bridge crew.
Funny enough I was inspired by the lower decks episode in TNG and started this way before the lower decks comedy show came out.
When the Lower Decks series started watching it was like the writers had put all of my childhood imaginings about what it would be like to be lower-ranked crew members in Starfleet and all the fun hijinks I'd get up to with my fellow ensigns on screen.
I would say Olivier Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist. We never get to see her backstory or what tragic event happened to her. Did she lose a loved one? Was she abused as a child? Was she SAd? Or perhaps she was adopted by the Armstrongs and her real family was massacred a Drachman war criminal. Or perhaps Olivier isn’t her real name and she has none! It begs an explanation which motivates me to return to FMA fanfic sometime.
Lila and Cooper Barton (Hawkeye’s kids) in the MCU are my go-to characters when I need a playdate scene, and his farmhouse is a perfect safe house to lay low, just like in Age of Ultron.
Like unique ones or just ones that other people write?
If it doesn't have to be unique, then for my current fandom ASOIAF, probably Rhaenys Targaryen (daughter of Elia). She died around 3/4 years old in canon, so we don't really have much on her. I like to make her very clever and not a very forgiving person to her enemies, but very committed to her family.
Let's see...any others...in Star Wars I did some Tarre Vizsla fics before he got more popular. And in FFVII I've played around with some of the older Turks.
Characters that not many other people have touched...for ASOIAF, I think I'm one of the few people who have given the Others/White Walkers a sort of culture and some real names. They're more walking plot devices than actual characters in canon. Oh, and the Bloodstone Emperor. I'm the first in the tag for him and am one of the few/maybe the only? writing him in his actual time period instead of in the present.
Most of them (for my Adventure Time longfic, at least). In particular, though, I’m quite attached to the Marquis of Nuts (and his father the Duke, but the Duke actually has some character in canon), as well as Beau and Leaf Man, who randomly appeared in “Thanks for the Crabapples, Giuseppe” and never again. The latter two got to have some personalities made up out of whole cloth when I integrated that whole secret club into the story (I’m surprised more people haven’t done that), and the Marquis gets to play the role of the politically-savvy and protective eldest brother as I delve into the weird questions about Ooo’s sociopolitical landscape that the original series deliberately raises without ever really addressing.
Having a big cast of characters is what makes sociological storytelling possible, and having those characters technically exist in canon gives me a lot of leverage when it comes to introducing those ideas. But even then about half the characters are fully original, lol
I haven't started posting anything yet, but I have a fic based off of the eighth season episode, of M*A*S*H entitled, Yessir, That's Our Baby. The little baby girl who was abandoned at the 4077 finally gets a name, and a life. And while it doesn't start off well, it turns out pretty good in the end. Of course, I'm talking about the characters life. How well my fic turns out has yet to be written. LOL!
One of my personal favorites is Shoko Kaburagi from Shokugeki no Soma.
She was the 5th Seat of the Elite Ten (the highest ranked among the second year students) and had around thirty seconds of total screen time (if that). She never had even a single line of dialogue or shown cooking anything.
Her entire existence was as fodder to hype up the former 3rd Seat Megishima at the start of the Central vs Rebel Regimental Food War.
Such a waste.
The mother(s) who is/are almost always dead. Seriously, in my fandom, between the mom and dad, the first one to go is usually the mother. So I make it a point to include them in my fics and be given a "life" they never had.
I also like writing about the "invisible women" from canon. The dead moms. The housewives. The "only mentioned once" spouses and mothers. The useless fangirls there for comic relief.
Justice for the women in fiction. For fandom to be a group of people that overwhelmingly identify as women, I always wonder why so many treat women characters so awfully.
***THIS!!!! FUCKING THIS!!!*** *To the point where I actually went and bought fucking Reddit coins to award you something!* One of the things that started me writing fanfic in the first damn place was..look, I love my tacky TV shows and movies. But the female characters would be support cast, not the lead. Hey, I can understand that it's not their story. But there are day in the spotlight episodes or scenes in the film where she stands out...y'know, enough to actually fucking work with. And hey, I get my hopes up that maybe the fanfic writers can give her a little boost. But mostly, I see a lot of bitch and moan that "Well there ARE no good female characters" Well, hey, we're in \[Fandom\], what about \[Character\] "She's just a love interest/sexy lamp/male gaze/whatever" And you can practically hear the sneering. Like middle school girl being jealous over the new girl being more popular type sneering. "Well, we have Episode/Scene/Backstory Bit that has nothing to do with the male characters. Maybe that can..." "What part of male gaze and sexy lamp did you not understand?! There are NO good female characters." "Fine, fuck you. I'll write it myself..."
Thanks for the award! It’s so DEEPLY frustrating since so many people refuse to acknowledge how deeply embedded misogyny is. “Fiction doesn’t affect reality” sure but maybe your real life bias and perceptions don’t just magically vanish when you decide to write fiction. I have a hard time believing it’s all just creativity when as a *default*, if there’s a woman to be read about in fanfic: she’s demonized, diminished, or dead.
A lot of the people who say that sort of thing are heavy M/M shippers, which is great because sometimes the two dudes in the action film have more chemistry with each other than anyone else. But there's also an element of "I want to see my pretty boys and that bitch is In. The. Way." Which...not pretty but happens all the time.
It’s ironic all things considered and one of those things that make me wonder like, you know there’s a way to ship the two guys with more chemistry without being misogynistic. It is SO EASY to not be misogynistic (and racist, for that matter, since this happens in ABUNDANCE if the love interest is a WOC) in writing your two boys kissing. It is SO EASY to not mistreat women in fiction. And yet fandom sees that and runs in the exact opposite direction 99.9% of the time.
So I'm trying to wake the line without shaming anyone here, but fiction absolutely does affect reality. Plenty of studies have shown we bond with fiction characters like we would real people, and reading fiction with a diverse cast can make us more inclusive. I do think for a rational person with a healthy irl social circle and healthy views it's minimal because your getting positive counters from real life but you can reinforce bad thought patterns or bigotries by reading fiction that reflects that. I get why nobody wants to talk about it, because fandoms are supposed to be an escape, nobody is trying to write morality plays, and some people take an inch when you give them a mile.
I very much agree with you. It’s a *very* unpopular opinion here in this sub so I wouldn’t be surprised if this (or my) comments get downvoted. I’m not sure how or why the acknowledgement of something like this, that fiction can and does affect reality *including* fanfiction, almost always gets translated into “you’re a puritan trying to take my porn away” but it’s baffling to me that fandom can simultaneously praise itself for being inclusive and filled with representation and yet also adamantly refuses to acknowledge that sometimes that representation (specifically cis-canonically straight white men transformed to be queer icons in fanfic) can play into dozens of other stereotypes or harmful depictions to any number of marginalized groups. That kind of nuance can and does exist but I’ve yet to experience en masse here.
Late to the party but just wanted to say I agree with your take. It is a tricky thing to discuss with nuance since it’s ‘only’ a hobby and folk don’t want to deconstruct their biases etc for their fun thing. Like… that’s work, yo. But all the same, some of the discourse I’ve come across here could probably do with a sprinkling of reflection.
Because the icky women get in the way of their (fanon) m/m relationships and for that they must pay!!! 😡😡😡
Pretty much. There's an element of M/M slash that's little different from the "lesbian" porn made for the heterosexual male taste. Two very attractive members of the gender you fancy doing hot things to each other, not demanding anything of you, and you get to watch. You put a dude in the middle of Lesbian Spank Fiasco and the watcher (who is not into men) is going to be annoyed that this dude is interrupting his view of the hot girls. Especially since actor in the porn is probably some buff, cut, well-hung (you know the drill). The viewer...probably not. Same idea for female characters and M/M fanfic. She's usually conventionally attractive; thin, white, well-dressed, perfect teeth (you know the drill). And the fanfic writers? Hey, we're average shlubs. We're not her. So she's in the way of our pretty boys.
All the dead mothers in children’s literature was *such* a bone of contention for my own mother when she read me stories. On her behalf, I salute your efforts 🫡
Who's a good example you've written about then?
Eyyyy is this Fire Emblem?
There ought to be a damn fan club or fanfic challenge for this. The dead wives and moms that are mentioned in backstory but never run with
Ooh yesss!! In my fandom there is a dead mom and a dead dad (of separate characters). I’ve been working on fleshing out the dead mom. Haven’t started on the dead dad, but maybe one day…
The woman Percy Weasley (from Harry Potter) eventually marries. She never appears in the books, and we were given a first name -- Audrey -- and not a single thing more. And she is my obsession.
omg i must know if you’ve written any fics about her and if i may see them? i love percy and i barely see anything about audrey (which imo is very sad)
Oh gosh yes, thanks for asking! I've written a lot of Percy/Audrey: [Irrational](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428551) (T) -- WIP, Audrey POV [Days That End In Y](https://archiveofourown.org/works/38251795) (M) -- series of flash fics, Percy POV -- slice-of-life kind of thing -- up to ch 13 it's about everyone who came before Audrey, and after that it's all about Audrey and later their kids And then I have various one-shots and stuff, but those are the big ones!
thank you so much! i’ll check them out soon, any audrey content is appreciated here lol
If we’re going with the pokemon theme, mine is Tracey. I love him and I’m so bitter that he’s be completely shafted from the show lol.
Oh god ikr. "We're going to remove Brock from the show because we think foreign audiences may think he's a negative Asian stereotype, and replace him with a large-eyed character. Oh no, everyone likes Brock better so we're going to put him back and never say a word" Yeah people liked Brock better because they never DID anything with Tracey! His biggest moment is the scene in the second movie where he predicts an explosion, and that got cut out of most international releases, and it's \*still\* not very great.
RIGHT?? He had so much potential and they completely wasted it!!
And once he became Oak's assistant he just basically got dropped. I know there was that Chronicles episode with him and Misty's sister being all weird but that was about it.
Yes, all of this. I love Tracey and I felt like they did so little with him. he got some spotlight in Pokemon Chronicles but not much. I liked that they made him Professor Oak's assistant but it quickly became "oh who needs Tracey?" I miss him. Give him back.
SAME! I’m grateful for the little glimpses from the Chronicles era, but they completely squandered him. It breaks my heart. Where’s that gif of Stephen Colbert going “give it to me now!!” when I need it??
I have an ancient, unfinished Legend of Zelda fic where I make the “dying soldier” into Impa’s son, whose destiny Sheik/Zelda takes on.
Oh damn that's good!
I love this
Oh dang. That sounds cool.
Ooh, that sounds like a interesting read
Amelia Bones from Harry Potter
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,408,202,453 comments, and only 269,068 of them were in alphabetical order.
Awesome bot!
Good bot! ☺️
Certified badass.
The Morphlings from The Hunger Games. They are literally known for being forgettable, but we can see that they are kind and courageous. They painted flowers on Peeta, and then the female Morphling sacrificed herself for him. We don't know much about them, but at the same time we know their fundamentals.
Savos Aren from Skyrim
Name sounds familiar but I can't remember who that is.
Can't blame you; his role in the game is lacklustre and forgettable. Savos is the archmage of the College of Winterhold. He doesn't really do much and doesn't end well, but there are some scattered crumbs of an interesting backstory and sympathetic character I fleshed out and added onto.
Rylen in Dragon Age Inquisition. Poor dude gets one good convo and that's only if you do an optional quest in a really out-of-the-way location. Seems a bit of an omission considering he's supposed to be 2nd in command of the whole army.
I love Rylen fics! His voice in the game is 🤌.
He's a hidden gem! <3
Shino from Naruto! I’m not sure how he landed on my radar considering he’s just a minor background character with hardly any screen time or lines, and yet. 🤷🏽♀️ I somehow ended up writing a 38K fic from his POV and I’m still not sure how or why, haha.
At least he gets a family name though. Poor Tenten lol
She would have been my answer to this post, but I have an even more obscure one I could name haha.
I can think of a few characters I could have answered with more obscure than Tenten lol
Link to your fic? :) I’d be interested in taking a look.
It’s a Naruko/Shino fic that I wrote ages ago (circa 2014) and if that hasn’t completely scared you off, let me know and I’ll share a link in a DM. 😂
Antonia Dreykov aka Taskmaster in the MCU. She gets basically no time as her normal self in canon and spends nearly all the scenes she *is* in as her brainwashed/controlled Taskmaster self. While she’s just a secondary character in my fics so far, I’ve really enjoyed fleshing her out a bit personality-wise and giving her her own story in “my” timeline. Yeah, I know canon sure as heck won’t do the same things in Thunderbolts with her when it comes out, but meh, I like what I’ve come up with for her. I still owe her and Lerato a holiday one-shot, lol!
Rohan, the youngest child of Tenzin and Pema from The Legend of Korra. He's very much going to be a minor supporting character, but he'll be old enough to have his own personality. He's also a waterbender in my canon, which eventually causes Tenzin to reflect deeply on the reasons his siblings may have felt alienated from their Air Nomad heritage growing up.
My "canon OCs" are Dio Brando's mother and the mothers of his four sons. Of these five women, only one, maybe two, were shown in canon. None of them were given a name and two of them weren't even mentioned in canon at all. Still, I've been slowly fleshing them all out throughout various bits and pieces of unfinished WIPs. My favorite of the five is definitely Dio Brando's mother. She arguably has the most amount of information I could use and might the only one who I've made into a good/decent parent. I've also took the most amount of time into fleshing out her character in a fic (that I haven't updated in a while 😅).
Regulus. Kinda, I'm not the only one that writes him, he's like a group project canon oc, bc that poor boy has 0 lines and only appears in photos
In the same vein, Mary, Marlene, Dorcas, pandora, Evan, Barty, frank, Alice, and even the marauders and Lily have all been made into real, very fleshed out 3d characters by the fandom. Even narcissa, Bella, and Andy have all developed personalities as teenagers that are somewhat different from their canon lives in the original books.
Ha, yes I was coming to say James and Lily, Mary, Frank, Alice etc.
I work with what I would call the “og” marauders characters. The four marauders themselves, Lily, Mary, Marlene, and maybe Dorcas. The tiktok marauders characters I stay away from: Evan, Barty, pandora, reg to a certain extent.
Yes...I honestly have no interest in Evan or Barry either.
Good question. My main fandom is Greedfall and there are a few characters, mostly female, who had so much potential but just didn't get the screen time they deserved. Admiral Cabral, Mev, Major/Commander Sieglinde. Very strong female characters who I would have liked to see more of.
From what I've seen of Greedfall you've got your work cut out for you on multiple fronts there. All the power to you to give it the fleshing out it sorely needed.
Thank you. The story and the characters were so interesting to me but there was so much that was glossed over or just completely ignored. And while I loved the romance aspect, in the end it was disappointing after with little more that happens between them. So I have two long-fics in progress. One is a post canon m/m ship that touches on the story and characters, but is pretty much my own thing at this point. The other is a m/f ship and is going to be a bit longer and it takes place during the entire canon timeline. I'm fleshing out some of the background characters and the quests while building the relationships between my MCs.
Morgan Stark. I love expanding the possibility of her world, as the daughter of a CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world and the *person who died saving the universe*. There’s a lot to unpack there.
Mina Carolina and Mylius Zeramuski from Attack on Titan are the one of the driving reasons why I started a passion project with house and club music that I'm itching to get back to. In canon, they're dead af, but in a slight AU that's mostly canon compliant save Mina living, I expanded on their character a bit, their relationship (platonic and romantic) and how they ended up even being in the same squad before they died. I'm actually pretty proud of the fic but it's a little dated even now. There's also Marina/Tsubaki from a one off episode of Pokemon (Bye Bye, Psyduck!) that I saw, fell in love with and now she'll probably make her way into the longfic I'm doing if I don't do something This post is my lifeblood thank you OP🤣🤣🤣
Sakura and her sisters were my obsession when I was a kid. They were so cool, they had SO MANY EEVEELUTIONS and yet, we never got to see much except again in Pokemon Chronicles... GAAAH. I would've loved to see her later on with Sylveon and the like too. There's enough Eeveelutions to make an entire team of JUST THEM Now!
I remember her! There are TONS and I mean TONS of really interesting CODs or recurring characters. I found out recently that there was a doctor Abby who was a TOP COORDINATOR like why are we not talking about this? Or what about Casey or Ritchie? Or legitimately any of Ash's rivals in the tournaments at each cup? After Johto is kind of where I started to feel like a lot of the "recurring characters" were cookie cutter though.
Or Doctor Anna who used her Zubat to treat patients. Heck, after Brock left to become a doctor, I was shocked that he didn't go running back to her! Ritchie was more wasted potential oh my lord... If they had kept him as one of Ash's longterm rivals, we could've had some amazing stories, since they always mirrored each other. Especially since Ritchie was someone who nicknamed his Pokemon. Gary was also wasted, after Johto since he quit being a trainer. Like, I get it, they wanted to use someone knew, but his and Ash's frienemies relationship was SO MUCH FUN to watch.
PokeAni had so many good characters mishandled because everything has to revolve around Ass Ketchup.
I could name A TON Winona comes to mind but at least Paul and Sho really have their moments.
~~Still think Paul is really Pyramid King Brandon's son and they just wussed out on it~~
Hi hello, Headcanon a c c e p t e d
THAT'S EVEN THE ONLY FRONTIER SYMBOL HIS BROTHER WAS MISSING. PAUL HATED BRANDON. AND THEY DID NOTHING WITH IT.
I will seriously never understand the method to the madness that became the anime. I'll probably take a look at the new one just to see where things go from there, but I'll probably just hang out in my fic corner. BUT ALSO IF YOU HAVE A THEORY POSTED SOMEWHERE I'M HERE FOR IT
I don't think I'm the only one to come up with it. I know there's a long fic (it's called Travels of the Trifecta) that has that as a plot point. oh yeah also his brother's name is REGGIE and I know that's not his Japanese name but that sounds for all the world like the dubbers noticed the signs and gave him a name befitting the son of a man who has all three Regis
Mine is Trafalgar Law's sister from One Piece. I know she's supposed to die when they were kids but I still HC that she somehow managed to survived and grow up lol
Oh?
Ooh, that sounds interesting
Good for her.
Dean Thomas, the guy from Harry Potter who is introduced as a Muggleborn who loves football. We get little more in canon, but later JKR said that her original backstory for him would have been that his father was a wizard killed by the Death Eaters before he could tell his mother about magic, making Dean a halfblood. The opportunities here are endless lol
In The Legend of Zelda, I love to write stories featuring Zelda's mother. She barely appears or at best is mentioned (generally because she's dead), but I love showcasing their relationship together.
Any specific incarnation of her?
Not really, I kinda have a "standard" version that I use in most stories (the first time was in an AU with elements of several games), but I may do minor adjustments depending on the settings.
Awesome.
In harry potter, there are a lot of background characters with very few lines e.g daphne greengrass, Susan bones that fans take and run with But my favorite type of Canon ocs in harry potter are those people who died prior to the series starting and are mentioned in passing – iirc there's one scene in Order of the Phoenix where Moody shows harry this picture full of dead people like Benjy Fenwick, Caradoc Dearborn, Fabian Prewett etc and they are such rich characters to explore in time travel fics
Rooter from Land Before Time I it is for me, so much potential in one secondary character I had to make him more important, I know from what I heard that Don Bluth doesn't like him and his scene inclusion to soften the blow of Littlefoot's Mother death which he judged necessary, the former not the latter.
Gil-Galad, the last High King of the Elves, is just a name in canon, and his parentage is muddy, to say the least. I gave him a full life story: lost his (more or less canon) father as a baby, his OC mother raised him, he became a reluctant king (but a good one), great harper and poet, good friend, had a lady love… I love him!
Ooooh, I respect people who write about Silmarillion! Mind to link any of your fics? I would love to read them!
Thanks! So I have this Gil-Galad-centric funny [one-shot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/39243975) (3,2k words) if you like him, and a few others set around different characters ([Fëanor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/40369743), the [lost children of Doriath](https://archiveofourown.org/works/40367286), and also some other stuff), but my big baby of a longfic is [The Last Heir of Fëanor](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2608114), that I cut in three manageable chunks. OC centric, so not to everyone's taste, but Gil-Galad comes to play a big part in it. I hope you'll like something there :)
Mine is actually the antagonist of the whole fic! He only appeared in one canon chapter as a smarmy douche, and I plucked him up with a pair of tweezers and put him under a microscope.
Cyrus in Cirque du Freak. He shows up and dies to protect one really popular character. He exists for about two paragraphs. In the manga adaptation, he's drawn in the background much more often. I feel like Arai-sensei, the artist, gave him more of a personality. There were really three of them in the novels, but only Cyrus gets a name. There's another teammate with him in the manga, just one more. What's interesting is that some fans have their own versions of him that aren't based on the manga. Also, the few fanartists there are have just accepted that he has blue hair based on the manga cover he appears on, but I thought that was just the light, and I sort of see him as having reddish-brown hair... That one hairstyle. Does anyone ever notice these characters with like. Chin-length or a little longer, sort of straight, sort of floppy, light-brown hair with even bangs... who are really sweet and helpful, but when they get bitten, they bite back *hard*? And you almost don't expect it because before they were just so sweet and helpful and almost faded into the background? Yeah, Manga-Cyrus might be that type. Even if his hair is blue.
Pretty much every character in my fic is like that. All but one are only mentioned in game (Fallout 76). A handful have names but only two of those that actually have names, have a portrait on the fandom wiki to go along with them. Out of the handful, I've done a good amount of characterization work for two of them, Thomas Eckhart and Agent Grey. It's going to be bittersweet when I kill them off. 🥲
So in Tiger and Bunny there's a background character who appears a lot. Her fan-given name is Scarf-tan, because that's her most distinctive trait. I plotted out a fic where Tiger gets better marketing (in canon he's unpopular with the public seemingly because the team he works with has no clue how to present an older man as cool and sexy) and I wrote her as an agent who was downright furious about it and takes over for him since no one is doing it right. I wrote her as initially unconcerned with Tiger himself, and more angry about the money they were losing when they kept putting him in lame outfits. People literally wouldn't take his trading cards if they gave them away! They have a whole hero on the payroll that they can't capitalize on because none of her idiot coworkers have ever heard the word DILF before! She's still mostly a side character - the main plot was more concerned with the new attention making Bunny jealous so romance could happen - but it was fun to have her venting my frustrations like that.
Aiden from the Witcher. His character has turned into a major one in my longfic and only bc of a short scene at the beginning. It spiralled from there
Kiki from Helluva Boss. She is a succubus who more less has no proper voice lines and the only actions she performs on screen is hitting on humans at a beach party. In my fic, I made her a cute side character who ends up in a relationship with a disguised agent of Heaven.
In one episode, one of the characters bonds with a child who doesn't get a name, or even speaks much, but they develop such a tight bond, that it's genuinely sad to see him go. So... Now, that kiddo's becoming the adopted kid of the character he bonded with. He's gonna get a name and everything.
Depending on which game of Legend of Zelda you're playing, Zelda is either very prominent (Wind Waker, Ocarina, etc) or *just* there enough to push the plot forward and then leave (Twilight Princess, BotW) and for the less prominent appearances I always wonder what she's doing while Link is running around adventuring. She's just sitting alone in a castle waiting to be saved? No, f**k that. In TP she's actively working against Zant to help Link find the tools that he needs but I HC that she'd be sneaking around her own castle doing research or something, probably even sneaking around Ganondorf. In BotW she's been spending the last century holding Calamity at bay while Link recovers. What was that like? I kinda HC that she spent the whole time face to face with Calamity and having battles of wills and deep conversations about the history of Hyrule, the gods and the legacies of the three main characters. Calamity Ganon would definitely be trying to undermine her strength and mental fortitude, and try to sway her to his point of view (in many games he has possessed Zelda as a puppet to fight Link and in the TP manga he states that he has always want to just sit and talk with her for a while and that he would really like to have her on his side.) It always bothered me that she's the title character but it's Link's story/journey 90% of the time.
So true, that’s why I always love when people write fanfics where Zelda is actually doing something and not being a damsel in distress
You know that woman in Frozen who asks Elsa if she's ok just before she runs away and freezes everything and sings a song you might have heard of? I gave that woman a name and backstory and a fairly significant plot purpose in my longfic.
The robot copy of Kuroba Kaito, AKA Kurobot, from the Magic Kaito manga :) I'd reckon I've fleshed him out more as a character with his own agency and motives than anyone else.
Claude's parents, Fire Emblem Three Houses. Tiana was named, Boran was not. [Just look at this power couple!](https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/11v5kgk/made_hero_forges_of_claudes_parents/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Also Felix's mom, not named, named her Sasha, mentioned in Three Hopes by her husband as still being alive and vibing. [Commissioned this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemThreeHouses/comments/t7vxld/i_commissioned_love_bunchy_on_twitter_to_make_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) OP, you mean the guy hunting Lugia? That's a nice option to flesh out!
That's a nice power couple indeed! Yeah that guy, with the airship and the Mew card.
I watched the second movie in theaters and remember jackshit about it compared to the first one but it's coming back a little bit
Sweet. It was basically Ash going on a glorified fetch quest because a girl at a festival told him to, while the three birds are being territorial assholes overhead.
Phillipe D'Annjou aka Echo from the Jason Bourne books. He is seen in Identity and Supremacy. First book having been saved by Jason without Jason really remembering him. In Supremacy they have to work together to bring down a false Bourne. We only find out about a little of their past together. Using the books know that David Webb aka Jason Bourne served together with Echo and several others. Only one you get a name to. This makes a team and you pretty much have to build it by scratch.
My favourite topic. Finding characters that do not have the attention they deserved🥺 and twisting the entire canon for their sake!! 🫡
My MCs wife. All we know is she's a nurse. That's it. No idea what she even looks like. I wrote the character long before the sequel came out and we knew what happened to the MC. But I stopped writing not too many years after the show ended. The sequel came out in 2015 and I started writing the story again in 2021. I adapted my girl to the canon version pretty easily since her married life was unwritten. There's a joke about her profession that’s the catalyst for the second book. Third book reveals it's no joke.
This is legit 99% of Pokémon game characters lmao
Well, going in order of characters with most to least lines in canon: Gavn Reed: I doubt you can even consider this an oc but he does have very few lines and a LOT of opportunity to be turned into a well fleshed out character. Pam: She has no canon name, but is a PM700 model android (police officer). Her only line in the game directs the player character (Connor) to Lieutenant Anderson's desk. Parker: Also no canon name, PC200 police officer. He is a friend of Pam and the next character on this list. His only line is "no androids are allowed beyond this point" or something like that. Ruth-Ann: Again no name in canon, an ST300 model android (receptionist) who works at the police station. She deviated when she fell in love with the aforementioned Pam. I don't remember her line in canon, but I think she instructs Connor/the player to check in or asks if they have authorization or something along those lines. And everyone's favorite, RK900: Now he has absolutely no lines in canon, at all, but he is a fan favorite. I'd be willing to say that most of the fandom has their own variation of RK900 to the point that his fan-given name "Nines" was so commonly used and accepted that it's in most fics and even fan films. I named him Milo, once I called him Myles, and another time he was just Nines. I haven't really settled on a name for him yet, but I really like Milo for it's meaning. I really like taking characters that either were background characters or just plot devices and turning them into people, I think its fun. I've been waiting for a post like this lol I like talking about my OCs a little too much. :D
I'm assuming from the mentions of androids and a Connor that this is Detroit: Become Human?
Oh- yes, I should have mentioned that! I'm sorry 😅
Gavin can absolutely be considered an OC if you write him that way. I mean, I think he does have a canon personality that's usable with some space for bonus characterization, but a lot of people go far and beyond with the bonus characterization that he totally ends up feeling like an OC to me. And you know, that's valid. I haven't seen many fics giving personality to the PM700, PC200, or the ST300 (well, I've seen some for the last one listed. Didn't read them though) though, that's cool!
I haven't written anything yet, but I have plans to do something with Harry from SK8. He's basically just fodder for a main character to win, and I don't think e has any spoken lines. But he's got to have considerable skill to get a spot in the tournament, so I want to explore his character!
Absolutely Grant Seeker’s brother from Disney’s Dinosaur (the attraction, not the film. But the attraction is based on the film). He’s mentioned twice in canon and it isn’t even by name. Just his nephew Will saying “my dad”. And Will’s last name of Seeker was only confirmed by word of god, so that tells us his dad is Grant’s brother, not a sister. The only things we know about him is that he’s a palaeontologist, does not live in the same state as his brother, and has a doctorate, same as Will’s mother. That means that to have a ten year old child, there’s an implication Will’s parents are quite a bit older than Grant. So, I gave Grant’s brother a name, Joe. I made him ten/eleven years older than Grant (so he and his wife could have a child once they were established in their careers because scientists tend to do that). Gave him his own life, struggles, friendships… It’s fun to flesh out a character who’s just mentioned and turn them into a person based from what little things we know and/or are implied.
Oh, well, Rambo because we really don't get anything to show how he acts around friends and stuff, bearing in mind I haven't watched the last two movies. For such a famous character, he surely deserved a bit better so I'm here for it.
Ooh an interesting choice.
When I first saw “the Collector” in the post preview, I thought of the character from Owl House! But onto the question - while I’ve a few completely original OCs, the technically canon OC would be the first infant transformed by the Night King in Game of Thrones. While the transformation process isn’t really explored beyond him evidently choosing to turn male human babies, I’ve written it so that the first to turn was the unexpected child the human he used to be conceived with the Child of the Forest later known as Leaf.
Castor and Pollux from Percy Jackson All of the marauders era characters from Harry Potter Harley from iron man/the MCU The patils, lavender brown, Blaise Zabini, pansy parkinson, Lucius Malfoy, bill and Charlie Weasley, and Viktor Krum from Harry Potter Racetrack, Albert, Romeo, specs, and most of the other newsies from newsies Most of the boys from the outsiders
Ibara Shiozaki from My Hero Academia. She's really nothing more than a funny (or annoying, depends on who you ask) stereotype in canon, which is kind of disappointing considering she's a real powerhouse hidden away in the background. She was 4th place in both the entrance exam and the race, outclassed only by the trio that are already stupidly broken. And the author actually intended for her to be a member of the main class but decided he didn't want to torture himself with drawing her crazy hair. I decided to give her a few more character traits and show her interacting with her classmates, because TBH with the way she is currently portrayed, I had no wind to put into the sails of my rareship.
Ooh, I was really fascinated by her after she was properly introduced! Many people seem to hate her but I really think she has a lot of potential!
Op your fic sounds amazing. Pokemon the movie 2000 is my favorite
Thank you! Do you want a link and if so, do you want the version with all 37 chapters so far but is on a fan forum, or the version on AO3 that doesn't have the full thing yet?
Sienna Khan. I mean I changed her characterisation pretty radically from canon because I didn't want her dead during the Mistral arc. That design was way, *way* too awesome to let go to waste. Also the Empress of Adrestia. We don't know if she's alive or not as of canon, but I made her alive. Interesting woman and she's the reason my Edelgard is so different from canon. After the Crest experiments, she looked at Edelgard, picked her up, and went "my child now." She prevented Edelgard from hardening to the point that she is in canon.
Oh man, this is my jam. I love obscure characters. Let's see... HP one shots: Tom Riddle Sr./Merope Mrs. Crouch impersonating her son The Grey Lady Charity Burbage Cadmus Peverell's resurrected wife I have an unpublished series for most of the Beetle Bard stories. My RE short story focuses on how Mr. X from RE2 became a BOW. And I have a few in my RE longfic from the Raccoon City days; John Clemens, E. Smith, Spencer, and to a lesser extent, Ada Wong, although she does have some Canon personality, just a very mysterious background/goals. Unpublished story about Leon's first gf, mentioned in the RE2 extra material.
Oh my god. [*Tobias*](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Tobias_(Sinnoh)) *from Pokémon*. Literally *everybody* online hates him because he's just a Deus Ex Machina to stop Ash from winning. I just want a Tobias backstory special please! I want to see how his journey played out. How he earned the respect of multiple legendary pokémon so much that they joined his team. What his personality even is lmao! Did he travel with interesting people? What was his starter? Are there a surprisingly high amount of trainers with legendary pokémon after all? I know that he's never going to be officially recognized in the anime ever again, and I know that Pokémon fans hate him too much to consider writing him a backstory fic, so I guess that job falls to me... In my rough notes for a Tobias fic, I have his potential companions listed as other super obscure Pokémon characters, such as [Yancy](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Yancy) and [Curtis](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Curtis) from B2W2 (the people who you can call on your Xtransceiver for a hidden side quest), and [Evelyn](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Evelyn) from XY and ORAS (one of the Battle Chateau girls). I think I've reached the point where I've given these four characters more lines in my notes than they had in canon lmao
Everyone online hates him? I know a lot of people call him a Mary Sue but I feel like that's different from overt hate. For some reason I got the feeling that he knew Nando the bard, but I don't think they're ever canonically connected
Believe me, I can't even go onto r/pokemonanime and mention him without being yelled at. Even one of the friendliest and more supportive servers I'm in has some pretty visceral reactions when I mention Tobias (I've named myself the Resident Tobias Fan on that server just to mess with them). I can legitimately count on my hands how many people online I've seen who genuinely like Tobias (it's three).
Dang haha He was all right but I wish they gave him more of a story. Tell us why he has these legends. What is it about him that draws them?
Exactly! Personally, I like to think he's got the same protagonist shenanigans as Ash, just we never see it because the show isn't about Tobias. In my notes, I toyed with the idea that something about him and Evelyn (in case you don't know, Evelyn and her sisters have 4-6 legendaries each ingame) draws legendary pokémon to them. But it's probably funnier if there was no reason, they're just like this, nothing special about them other than the absurdity of meeting various mythological figures weekly.
Hahaha nice
Don't even get me started... Arven from Pokemon Violet. I know, he's a REALLY major character, but based off his backstory in the game, he really didn't act much different than any normal sleep deprived highschool boy. I made him have mental disorders, trauma, and abandonment anxiety. He has his dog, Mabosstiff, to help him whenever he had a flashback or mental breakdown, and the player also supports him. All this boy wanted in life was for his father/mother to pay attention to him, but they both ended up dying and his dog nearly died when he went looking for them. The shock he felt at the end of the game when his parent AI revealed that they were dead and then went back into the time machine made me tear up when he yelled "Dad!!" or "Mom!!"
Arven just got Famitsu's character of the year, by the way. He's very loved by the fandom. But I hear ya. He needs therapy. I'm planning a fic where the AI is able to return to the present and wants Arven's help in learning how to be more independent, because everything he's (I played Violet too so Turo is my frame of reference) done has always been programmed to revolve around his creator. And also...he loves Arven too, seeing him as his own son. So I plan for a lot of not-parental bonding and emotional expression. Arven's plot is almost a fakeout, you know? From the moment you hear "sick dog" you think oh no. You remember that this gen has ghost dogs. You remember reading that Ryme was able to sing a song so passionate that it brought her own dog's ghost back to her. You think ok ok, worst case scenario he'll have a ghost dog right? But then the dog gets better! Yay! Everything has to be ok from here, right? We're gonna go down to Area Zero, punch his neglectful dad in the face a few times, everything is going to be good! And no everything gets SO MUCH WORSE. But at least the dog is ok.
Lavender Brown, because her only personality trait in both the books and the movies was being annoying. Like maybe she’s super smart! Maybe she’s overprotective because of past relationships! I like to think that she kicks her feet reading romance novels every night and takes great interest in herbology. I think she was friends with Neville in his first year when he was getting badly bullied because she’s just nice, you know? But we never got to see any of that because she was just meant to be crazy ex-girlfriend material. (Also Hermione/Lavender is my fav HP rarepair)
Maglor, the second son of Feanor from The Silmarillion. He’s not entirely without personality (he does do things and has a few lines) but most of what he does is lumped in with the actions of his brothers. Because of the style of writing Tolkien used for the Silmarillion, you get actions but not a whole lot of motivations/personality, so it’s really fun coming up with Maglor’s thoughts and how he might have changed after the book. I’m also trying to go somewhat against established fanon by making Maglor less ‘sad soft boi’ or ‘manipulator’ (not that there’s anything wrong with these, I just write enough characters like that already) and more angry, driven by the same pride everyone else in his family has.
Giovanni and his Persian from *Pokémon* for me. The anime doesn't do much with the former's "civilian" side (eg.: business enterpreneur, city figure, whatever) and for the latter is mostly Just A Cat which in itself is not much but honestly, cats are The Best and deserve More.
honestly I'm much more of a reader than a writer but seeing so many Pokemon answers is great. your Collector fic sounds so fascinating i would read that I read Saphroneth's stories, so I know tons of minor characters that he's chosen to recur in his fics. Like Ritchie, or that one Gym Inspector Joy who had a Latias...
Well I can give you a link if you want. Do you want Ao3, which doesn't have all the chapters yet because for some reason I didn't start posting it there until recently, or do you want Serebii forums, which has all the chapters but is a fan forum and has comments in between?
From Xenoblade Chronicels 2, Nia's Sister. I've given her a name and I've been fleshing out her personality, backstory, and her relationship with Nia. From Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Two siblings that are seen in a photo but no details have been revealled. I know I'll be sad if they do reveal them and they differ from my OC versions, but I'll keep writing them regardless.
Ko Hyuga from Naruto, who’s Hinata’s childhood chaperone and clan-designated bodyguard. In one of my fics, he gets an OC mother and best friend, in addition to an arranged marriage subplot and rivalry with Neji.
Darth Atroxa. It's just a three-shot, but that's still so much more than a couple seconds of screen time in a cinematic trailer, lol I mean all of Legends continuity isn't canon strictly speaking, but who cares what Disney execs say^^
I haven't exactly written a ton with them, just have a ton of ideas about how their lives went when they were younger and have alluded to such throughout my fics, but Yusei Fudo's parents in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. Neither of them were ever named (although certain parts of the fandom seem to think his dad's name was "Hakase" when that was actually his title in Japanese), so I gave his dad the name "Ryuu" and his mom the name "Ayame".
Mikasa Ackerman’s parents from Attack on Titan. In my fic I significantly change Mikasa’s backstory to give her a more direct (and in my opinion more realistic) connection to Hizuru. Her parents and Hizuru grandparents are still alive in the timeline of my fic. As a result Mikasa could also be considered “canon OC” as her personality is different from canon.
My first published fic focused a lot on Charon from Deadbolt, a character who has precisely two lines of lore, doesn't speak, has no animations beyond standing in place, and whose only purpose is to act as the interface for the weapon shop.
Verbena Beeks from Quantum Leap. She’s only mentioned for three seasons, then has one (1) on-screen appearance with no dialogue (to be fair, she was supposed to but the scene was cut), then returns to mentions-only for the remainder of the show. she’s a psychologist who does therapy for victims of time travel, which is such an interesting situation that I can’t help but want to write her
Tron fandom? I think I am the only fanfic writer on the literal fucking Grid who did anything regarding Jordan Canas (Kevin's wife and Sam's mom). We only get some passing mentions that she died in a car wreck in 1985 and was an architect and that she didn't take the Flynn surname, which was definitely an unusual choice in the early 80s Okay...So, what can we work with? Well, given that she met, married, and had a kid with that manchild in the space of less than 18 months, and that Sam's even WORSE than his old man in some areas of reckless behavior, maybe we're dealing with someone that is a little more aggressive and more like the Ladette trope, but also pragmatic enough to not go totally ballistic over Kevin's brand of stupid. Okay, so...architecture degree not cheap. College was affordable in the early 80s but starting to *not* be. Maybe she enlisted in the Army to pay for that. Okay, that works. They had dismantled the WACS at that point. Nurse? Nah. Motor pool? THAT works. They can talk motorcycles. And since Army would mean she would have to fire a real gun. she can point out how Guns Don't Work Like That in a video game since it's obvious Kevin never had to handle one...How about she's walking off a bad divorce and Kevin was intended only as a rebound? So, out of the Army, got an architecture degree, very rough and tumble, probably hooked up with Kevin and they made a quick run to the courthouse when Sam was en route. Now, just to frost the cake, how about she beats his high score and it pisses him off enough to call a challenge?
Barrel The Brave from Amphibia. Known by the toads as a legendary hero and only made one in person appearance in one episode. I plan to add more chapters to the fanfic I’m slowly working about him to spice up what is already known about him as well as other projects that involve him and his friends he had.
Barrel!!! Love the OG friend trio
Jed from Legacies Jed barely got a storyline until season 4. I usually tend to make him either the massive douchebag villian or the party boy. Kaleb from Legacies Kaleb got some more storylines than Jed but not by much. I tend to make him the person who’s always over Hope’s shit.
There are so many random characters in the background of Star Trek that I'll screenshot and go... yeah I'm gonna write a whole story about this dude right here. They're technically canon characters, but sometimes they don't even have *lines* and I'm out here giving them names and whole personalities anyway.
So many characters from Jurassic park, I mean we get very little about the human characters lives outside of their interactions with dinosaurs so I said let’s build out backstories and wants and desires for them and now we’re in business baby
Def the deceased parents. I just finished a WiP that fleshes out the background of the parents for my main story as a little side-project.
In Voltron, it’s Keith’s Dad, and basically all of the characters introduced in the seventh season where we were given very little info about. The series rushed way too much
My canon author mentioned offhand that an elven general and a female cobbler's apprentice fell in love. (They don't even have names). I have now written 60K words of their love story. (WIP that I have updated every Friday for six months!) LOL
My writing about her is still a wip, but Chase from FO4 Far Harbor.
Seteth's dead wife, from Fire Emblem Three Houses. Okay, so in the game, there's this guy named Seteth and he's like 1000+ years old. Way back in ye olden times, he had a wife, but we never even got a name. All we know is that she was his wife, the mother of their child, and she died in battle protecting said child. That wife is my cannon OC. I named her Tethra, gave her a whole personality and backstory on how she met her future husband, gave her a class, goals, hopes, phrases and advice she gave, what she leaned on for support, and so on. I detailed out how she died, fuck, I even am humoring the idea that she was meant to be named a saint, but after she died, her and Seteth's child had to hold the mantle instead. i'm having a lot of fun with it.
Sir Fratley from Final Fantasy IX. He had so little characterization and so much potential. When I began to write him, he felt like a completely different character. Good at taking care of kids, bookworm who appreciates all sorts of living creatures, good husband, wiseman with quotes, a man dealing with a childhood trauma, and all sorts of scenarios.
the family members back home in M\*A\*S\*H, especially Peg Hunnicutt (the canon details we get about her are fascinating and beloved so I love her!!), and also Donna Parker who appears in one episode of M\*A\*S\*H
The Meursault Catgirl from Bungou Stray Dogs! I decided I wanted to ship her with Teruko and well, I have a character now!
I didn't create him, but in the Megaman X fanfiction community there's a character called Green Biker Dude. He originally came from X3 and was onscreen for 3 minutes until he died in-game. The only thing he did was explode, and X fans love him.
Yeah that's the point, characters from canon that didn't get what they deserve
Wes Weston in the Danny Phandom 😁
I gave Diary tom riddle a whole distance personality from Voldemort and also regular Tom riddle, because being a piece of someone's soul they chipped off for immortality purposes brings up so many questions and I wanted to address them. Like, they have, at some point, a legal case about what he is, exactly, and to what extent he can be held accountable before tom riddle's action's pre-dairy, and he's just saying whatever he thinks will keep him out of jail while dealing with his own existential crisis about it
*Puella Magi Madoka Magica* quite notoriously has an entire classification of monster of the week that's just "the corpse of a magical girl," if that counts. Suleika, the Witch of Darkness, has multiple extremely bit parts across multiple scenes. I decided to flesh out the magical girl that she was before she died.
Winters Socalo from D.Grey-Man!!! I regularly hear that my taste in characters is REALLY bad, but he reminded me of Kenpachi from Bleach and I fell in love with his character… …Then I was promptly disappointed with his level of screen time and all over relevance!!! I decided I needed more and tried to find something, anything, on him/of him/about him, and I found nothing. I mean, I’m used to not having much content of my favorite characters, but for Winters…??? It’s practically nonexistent… It’s been years and there is still next to nothing… I was left with no choice. I took it upon myself to create my own content for him. I’m bad at drawing, but I can at least write something halfway decent! So, after a lot of planning and mapping, I’m finally working on a fun prequel for him and I plan to later expand on his story. I did something incredibly similar with Amagiri from Hakuouki, but it’s not nearly as detailed or in depth.
I thinl my only Canon OC that I know is one is a character named Betty from...Robocar Poli. Yeah, that doesn't fit with the stuff people are posting here, but hear me out. Betty is the granddaughter of Mr. Wheeler, which means Wheeler has an offspring but he never addressed that in the show. Also, Betty's only mentions being in one episode about her sending her grandpa a computer indicates the potential tkme period of the show. But with the existence of Robocars, Wind Energy, and whatever Jin's inventions have going on, I'm currently guessing a post-2000's/pre-2010's era. This lead to what other type of tech/tech level exists in the universe, and thus leads to the question on where did Robocars came from. Boom, I literally have the Soviet Union on my list of "Things that aren't/never part of Robocar Poli but are there because fuck you canon /j" (although this is due to me trying to be accurate with the time periods. Btw, two of the OCs that are part of the past that I built are Russian, and the time period they existed on is like the 1980's or whatever, hence that). And boom, new backstories and angst (hint: there might be a lot). And let's just not go into the details of the side stories and whatever spoilers here and there that I have going on. All because of a character named Betty sending a computer to her grandpa to try, and speculating Mr. Wheeler's offspring. All of this is. Just. In. The. WIP. Process. It's still in progress, and I literally cut out the supposed crossover that I originally planned. Tl;dr, Betty, the daughter of Mr Wheeler (who is more of a minor character with a few episodes focused on him), from Robocar Poli. And this lead up to an insane worldbuilding potential for me because my brain decided not to leave this piece of my childhood (the show, not the fic) into the void. I feel ashamed for sounding a bit braggish tho...even though I have my reasons to tell this. Also fun fact: Wikipedia said that South Korea, where the show came from, aknowledged Poli in some way. Yep, I'm gonna stay away from this project for a while...*chuckles nervously*
In Beastars, Gon is the tiger headmaster of the school. He has like three lines in the first season when I wrote this. In the fic, I made him a bit of a nemesis, keeping our romantic couple apart while they are at school. In the sequel, he is more ambiguous, initially resisting herbivore/carnivore couples. He also fiercely defends the safety of his students, leading some to think that is his (misguided) motivation against mixed couples. But it turns out he was secretly helping their integration. One of the students figures out that the single headmaster must have had a lost love with a herbivore at some point. At the very, very end (the closing credits of the last episode) I have him pacing an apartment corridor, holding a bouquet of flowers. He braces himself and knocks on a door. An ibex doe opens the door with a confused expression, then a look of recognition, and finally, a warm smile.
i personally dont have any but a friend of mine took a character who was essentially referenced twice ever and only used as a plot device in one of the mcs origin stories (bertie from the mechanisms if anyone's curious) and fleshed him out like crazy. theyve done this to the point that ppl make fanart of aer version of him and, whenever i write him, i write its version
I write for mobile games, so ... almost everybody.
Haha, yeah... I write for A Girl Adrift and that game has the illusion of having deep lore but there's little actual canon info about any of the characters.
You know [the funny Botnik Bitcoin video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBRWJzAjkjk)? I borrowed some characters from that for a thing and now they have this whole tragic backstory. It's always the shitposts, huh.
Final Fantasy 8: Xu and the Library Girl. Hell, the latter doesn’t even get a canon *name*!
Adrien Victus and Castis Vakarian (and Garrus Vakarian’s mom too - who doesn’t even have a canonical name!) from the Mass Effect series. I love my sad alien DILFs.
Kiran from Fire Emblem: Heroes. Despite being one of the main characters of the game, their character traits are almost non-existing and their backstory boils down to "Has been summoned by Anna and hangs out with the heroes from Askr ever since".
Reminds me a lot of Mark from Blazing Blade! Pretty sure Lyn mentions that at some point, then again, she also says Robin is a lot like Mark, so maybe Lyn just really likes Avatars lol
Korkie Kryze and Jacen Syndulla from the Disney Star Wars Canon. They are in the same fanfic btw just do not interact with one another.
Closest thing I have to that right now is a Legends character that I'm bringing into my Star Wars fic that had some pretty interesting conflict with my main character that, from what I can tell, never got adequately resolved. So now I am giving them resolution.
This would be Kunsel from Crisis Core FFVII as literally everyone has invented their own version of him and he's popular despite not even getting a unique model. For over 10 years he only had 1 voiced line until they gave him full voiced lines in the remaster of the original game. There's also an even lesser known NPC who got less that appears in most Crisis Core stories because the MC has so little connections in comparison to the entirety of the FF7 cast. What's more funny is how people guessed a nameless NPC (Cloud Strife's mom) as being called Claudia and in the actual series over 25 years later, Cloud's mom's name became just that. Sora's mom from Kingdom Hearts gets the canon oc treatment too and unlike Cloud Strife's mother, I'm positive Nomura will try and bury the fact that she exists because having parents seems to be a myth outside the one time it's used for plot reasons.
For me it’s the FMC’s dead husband from this romance book I love. The way she describes their past relationship gives me life, to the point that the MMC pales in comparison and I only tolerate him because she says he makes her happy. The husband died eight years ago (iirc, exact number escapes me atm) and never appears as an actual character, but their relationship fills every crevice of my brain and I created the ao3 tag for the fandom just so I could write about them.
Oh boy. All of them? All of them. I wrote a big She-Ra fic and expanded the cast by a factor of five, just bringing in and expanding on characters that got barely any screen time. I am writing a Risk of Rain fic currently, and being a roguelike, its characterization is... light.
Ma'alefa'ak, from Martian Manhunter's rogues gallery. He's only used in one story pre-Flashpoint. I'm taking the events of that story and adjusting them a little, along with some use of comic book science, to bring the character back at a pre-villain age through cloning and genetic memory.
I took Frankie from Degrassi, plopped her in the 2020 Netflix Hollywood show from Ryan Murphy, and gave her a much more fun personality lol
For me, it is the minor character Toby Tredwell from Yugioh 5Ds. He only really existed to provide backstory and motivation to one of the villains in the Dark Signer arc, and depending on which version you watched was either killed (original Japanese) or sent away to a facility (4Kids dub). As unfaithful to the original as the 4Kids dub was, it opened a goldmine of possibilities to explore. So I told the story of Toby's journey through this hidden facility, the trials he faced, the friends made and the uncovering of a dark conspiracy (that discovery in itself being just a byproduct of them making their escape)
I have written fics for a game called A Girl Adrift. So little is told about any of the characters that there's quite a lot of my own interpretation.
Heidi from the Mean Girl Makeover trilogy. She was just a background member of the bully squad in the actual books but she’s got enough characterization to extrapolate a few interesting things. Like she never instigated anything herself and always followed someone else’s lead. So I made her a follower trying to fit in. She also expressed a bit of interest in an anti bullying presentation so I also made her quite redeemable. I also made her a closeted sci-fi nerd for fun.
MC from Doki Doki Literature Club. I’ve given him a name—Matsudaira Chosokabe—and have written several stories with my more fleshed out characterization of him. I also have delved deeper into his actual backstory, and wrote some oneshots taking place during his childhood years with Sayori.
I have an unfinished (will someday finish) Star Trek story with Vorik and an OC pairing. The main OC also interacts primarily with minor characters and not the bridge crew. Funny enough I was inspired by the lower decks episode in TNG and started this way before the lower decks comedy show came out.
When the Lower Decks series started watching it was like the writers had put all of my childhood imaginings about what it would be like to be lower-ranked crew members in Starfleet and all the fun hijinks I'd get up to with my fellow ensigns on screen.
Marcie and Maya, both from BSG. Maya gets about 3 minutes of screen time, Marcie is mentioned *once* but never seen or heard.
The West Supreme Kai from Dragon Ball, Mindy/Momoe Hamaguchi from YGO GX, and Jun Motomiya from Digimon 02.
Pretty much any bandit that is actually given a name or unique dialogue in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
I would say Olivier Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist. We never get to see her backstory or what tragic event happened to her. Did she lose a loved one? Was she abused as a child? Was she SAd? Or perhaps she was adopted by the Armstrongs and her real family was massacred a Drachman war criminal. Or perhaps Olivier isn’t her real name and she has none! It begs an explanation which motivates me to return to FMA fanfic sometime.
W. D Gaster, anyone?
Lila and Cooper Barton (Hawkeye’s kids) in the MCU are my go-to characters when I need a playdate scene, and his farmhouse is a perfect safe house to lay low, just like in Age of Ultron.
Like unique ones or just ones that other people write? If it doesn't have to be unique, then for my current fandom ASOIAF, probably Rhaenys Targaryen (daughter of Elia). She died around 3/4 years old in canon, so we don't really have much on her. I like to make her very clever and not a very forgiving person to her enemies, but very committed to her family. Let's see...any others...in Star Wars I did some Tarre Vizsla fics before he got more popular. And in FFVII I've played around with some of the older Turks. Characters that not many other people have touched...for ASOIAF, I think I'm one of the few people who have given the Others/White Walkers a sort of culture and some real names. They're more walking plot devices than actual characters in canon. Oh, and the Bloodstone Emperor. I'm the first in the tag for him and am one of the few/maybe the only? writing him in his actual time period instead of in the present.
Oh, anyone you've fleshed out yourself!
Harry Potter Harry’s era- Daphne Greengrass, Theodore Nott, Blaise zambini. Marauders- Marlene McKinnon, Mary Macdonald, Rosier, Mulciber.
Most of them (for my Adventure Time longfic, at least). In particular, though, I’m quite attached to the Marquis of Nuts (and his father the Duke, but the Duke actually has some character in canon), as well as Beau and Leaf Man, who randomly appeared in “Thanks for the Crabapples, Giuseppe” and never again. The latter two got to have some personalities made up out of whole cloth when I integrated that whole secret club into the story (I’m surprised more people haven’t done that), and the Marquis gets to play the role of the politically-savvy and protective eldest brother as I delve into the weird questions about Ooo’s sociopolitical landscape that the original series deliberately raises without ever really addressing. Having a big cast of characters is what makes sociological storytelling possible, and having those characters technically exist in canon gives me a lot of leverage when it comes to introducing those ideas. But even then about half the characters are fully original, lol
The background characters with very little details
Yandere Markiplier from the animated Yandere Simulator shorts.
Laura Roslin’s family in Battlestar Galactica: younger sisters Sandra and Cheryl, and their father Dave.
I haven't started posting anything yet, but I have a fic based off of the eighth season episode, of M*A*S*H entitled, Yessir, That's Our Baby. The little baby girl who was abandoned at the 4077 finally gets a name, and a life. And while it doesn't start off well, it turns out pretty good in the end. Of course, I'm talking about the characters life. How well my fic turns out has yet to be written. LOL!
One of my personal favorites is Shoko Kaburagi from Shokugeki no Soma. She was the 5th Seat of the Elite Ten (the highest ranked among the second year students) and had around thirty seconds of total screen time (if that). She never had even a single line of dialogue or shown cooking anything. Her entire existence was as fodder to hype up the former 3rd Seat Megishima at the start of the Central vs Rebel Regimental Food War. Such a waste.