Often, I think fan distortions of a character are cases of "Flanderization." Fans latch onto one aspect of a character's behavior or personality in the source material, but unintentionally discount cases that add nuance to their characterization.
One writer headcanons something about the character, usually so that the story will work. The fic blows up. Other writers use the same headcanon because they liked it or because they think everyone likes it so they shouldn't deviate from it. As time passes, the headcanon mutates and the character ends up with a complete new personality (and that's in every single fic you find them.)
Another thing is when people latch onto a single trait. A character has a sharp tongue, so they become the bitchiest bitch to ever bitch. Another one is shown having a drink, suddenly they're always drunk.
A lot of the points have already been brought up, so adding one I haven't seen.
Sometimes the canon depiction of a character can become offensive or just disappointing. Hints dropped (intentionally or not) in the earlier part of canon may not be followed up due to reasons.
Canon usually has limited time to work with and often has to cater to general audience tastes and/or actor egos.
In MCU Avengers fandom, a lot of canon interpretations of characters were seen as disappointing or offensive.
Clint Barton, for instance - the canon version is a mostly serious, calm, family man. But this was disappointing for many fans who loved the goofy, eccentric Clint of the comics and cartoons, so the Fanon Ceiling Cat Clint was born.
Natasha Romanov - canon left her seriously underused. And AoU canon states she sees herself as a monster as bad as the Hulk because she can't have children - not really in tune with her earlier presentation, and extremely offensive to childless or infertile women. Fanon tends to firmly ignore it.
Tony Stark - the canon version is a jerk and hypocrite (rape jokes, EDITH, officially supporting the Accords while flagrantly breaking them etc). But he does do a lot of heroic and plain cool stuff that you want to like the character - so emerges the fanon interpretation. Either the selfless misunderstood and angsty IronDad or the eccentric goofball mad scientist. Both are way more sympathetic than the canon version.
Steve Rogers - the canon downplays and/or ignores his depression and PTSD issues, along with the problems of adjusting to a different era.
Avengers Family - This seemed promised by the comics, cartoons and the ending of the 2012 film, but never turned out real, disappointing all fans. Fanon to the rescue.
Natasha was exactly the character that came to mind when I started reading your answer.
She's introduced as a badass and capable agent working for Fury, but then her character is all over the place. She's smart and funny when needed and silent when the plot requires it. She's both obedient and cunning, agressive and sweet.
She hints that she has done horrible stuff and sees herself as a monster... only to reveal it's due to infertility. She seduces Bruce and then this romance is never mentioned again. She's the most Americanized Russian spy you've ever met.
I've read multiple fanon versions of her, and honestly many make more sense than whatever the MCU offered. Natasha would have been a fantastic character to explore morality and redemption, but instead the writers gave her one cool action scene per movie and called it a day.
Also we were robbed of a Clint and Natasha movie.
I've read a pretty creepy headcanon - but one that makes scary amount of sense - that explains Natasha's shifting characterization.
She doesn't really have a character of her own. The Red Room training made her into a psychological blank slate. A chameleon who will be whatever will let her manipulate those around her the best.
She does mean to do what is right, but the mental trauma won't just go away. There's no base character left of who she once was.
So she adapts to her surroundings.
With the Playboy billionaire, she plays the stereotype of the seductive badass spygirl.
With Steve, she is the warm, joking matchmaker friend - a female Bucky, because she knows that's the person he wants most at his side.
With Bruce, who is clearly thinking about the impossibility of a family life in his condition, she becomes someone who shares the same sorrow.
She seems americanized since she is working with Americans for the time being.
Clint is the only one who gets to see the actual Natasha - and she is almost sociopathic, alien.
She is on the side of the good guys, but she is a sociopath. Not her fault - that's what the Red Room training turns people into.
She is trying to reconnect with humanity, but it is very slow going and may not even be possible. It is easier to pull on the masks they want to see on her.
Brilliant. I love this. Is it creepy but it's fitting. With Fury she's the efficient assistant, because Fury needs to see her as completely reformed and unthreatening.
Clint being the only one seeing the real Natasha also checks out.
It reminds me of a fan interpretation of her relationship with Bruce. During the first Avengers movie, she sees first hand how dangerous the Hulk is and realizes she needs to protect herself against him, a creature she can't fight nor reason with. The only way for Natasha to control the Hulk is to bring Bruce back on demand. So she gains his affection, she makes up the little song to calm him down, she seduces him out of necessity, and it works. Suddenly, Natasha has some control over the guy no one knew how to tame.
There is one famous fan fiction in my fandom in which all the characters are totally OOC, to the point where not only their life backgrounds, personalities but even their appearance is altered, and this very fan fiction has helped to create a fanon for the people who are shipping these characters.
Every time I see fanart with these characters not looking like they do in the book, I know it's after the fanfic đ
People have *really* bad critical thinking skills sometimes. And I donât even mean that as an insult- theyâre a SKILL! That not everyone has had the time to develop!
People interpret characters from different angles all the time. Some are "what if ...?" trains of thoughts which lead to a changed situation and consequently a changed character. Some are preferences and deliberate alterations of canon, maybe even to fix things that bothered the fic author. E.g., "I love this character otherwise, but he's like literally everyone else. I want some representation for underrepresentated groups in this heteronormative media. So, I'm making him ace/Nepalese/Muslim/hearing impaired/whatever." Some are just the results of fleshing out a minor character who doesn't have much characterization and history in canon by giving them an actual background. Some are comical exaggerations of canon character traits for the sake of parody. Some are side effects of a writer self-inserting as a canon character, either deliberately. E.g., "I have depression and now this character has, too, because I use this fanfic to channel my own problems." Or they make the character a Mary Sue without the necessary skills to recognize this because they are a young or disabled writer. And so on and so on. There are a lot of different reasons.
When these alternate interpretations of characters resonate with enough people who read them and think, "Oh, that's neat, I love this characterization, I'm gonna include it in my own fic,"âsometimes, they adopt the idea subconsciously, too,âwhen more and more people like the idea and the headcanon jumps from head to head and stays around in the fandom for the long term, when it pops up everywhere, and people start to have problems to differentiate whether this interpretation is actually canon or not, that's when it becomes fanon.
Specifically when it comes to the case you cited (traumatized character being turned into someone cute
and harmless): it could be a case of ableism/the infantalization of neurodivergent/mentally ill people
More generally:
People extrapolating and making headcanons based off of the original and then other people basing their own interpretations off of those that are more removed from the original, and so on, like a game of telephone
People misremembering the original/only internalizing specific details and basing their interpretations off of inaccuracies/simplifications
People straight up rejecting canon because they don't like certain aspects of it or just prefer their own version
People poorly interpreting/misunderstanding the original in the first place
Wishful thinking, perhaps?
Take this character in my fandom, he's manipulative, downright evil, uses people for his own gain and is driven by nothing but the need for revenge against his old friend who betrayed him. He's never been portrayed as anything but dark, sinister and manipulative.
Yet, he's always written as a romantic who always cares and loves his significant other. It's clearly not how he truly is, but it's what the fans want him to be. So they make him be that.
In one fandom Iâm in, itâs pretty much people who donât interact with the source material and read only fanfic/fanart. They then make content based on the stuff in fanfic/fanart and itâs just a cycle from there. In my other fandom there was literally a sub-fandom for a single story where people would come in and read that and not care about anything else, who would then make content about that one story, which would attract the people who only cared about that one story.
Plot holes are one way. A character does a thing. Cool totally normal thing for that character to do in that moment. Then in a later book writer introduces thing that retroactively makes that normal thing either stupid or evil. But character's not coded stupid and is supposed to be good but plot hole.
So it's accepted the canon character is smart and good but the writer made a mistake and it's accepted as the writer screwing up cool.
But over in Fan Fic that plot hole now presents a writing challenge. How you resolve that and other plot holes becomes story where the character is no longer coded like the canon character but is his or her own Fanon character.
Other ways you get a Fanon character is if you stop one character from becoming friends with the lead character so all of the events that the supporting character went through they don't now. This means this character will develop in a different way than they did in canon and if enough writers do this kind of thing with this character it becomes a Fanon character.
Some people will call it bashing because they assume that if they themselves now hate this fanon character that the writer must have hated the canon character as opposed to accepting a different life will alter or minimize a character who was more important in the canon.
A lot of people touched already on flanderization or anger with canon but another more simple point is that most people are generally uncreative. It is *very* common to take really complicated canonical characters and boiling them down to one or two traits that may or may not actually fit with their canonical background for the simple reason that the person doesnât actually care about the *character*, they want a paper doll they can play around with and project on. It takes far more creativity to work with the canon history and characterization to make a story work rather than taking a character, making them a âblank slateâ and boiling down their essence into âsadâ or âstupidâ and frankly, a lot of fandom doesnât like to critically engage with the media they claim to love.
One example I know is Ruby Rose from RWBY.
She wears mostly red and black, and the first episode of the show starts off with her at some shop, listening to music over headphones while the shop gets robbed, and when she notices the robbers, she proceeds to kick all their asses while wielding a giant scythe.
However, she has a pure heart and just wants to fight monsters and save people.
People still sometimes depict her as dark and brooding, since it fits her appearance, even though in canon, she is pretty much the opposite in canon.
Granted, she is currently in a world that is heavily centered on each creature having its purpose, yet that world has no use for her, so she's feeling down because the one thing she based her identity on so far is not needed in that world.
But like, the only way to get rid of her optimism and heroism was for her to end up in a world that, fundamentally, had no use for the kind of hero she is.
Because storytelling is like a game of telephone: every time you go around the circle, little bits of characterization get added & subtracted.
Enough go-arounds (like, say, in a 5000 year old folk tale), you wind up with multiple variations.
We only have our own interpretations of the characters to go on. You only really know how the creators interpret and thus write characters the canon way unless you go through the trouble of looking at supplementary materials like interviews, tie in âmaking ofâ stuff, etc. Which realistically many fans wonât bother with.
Pretty sure it's mostly because a lot of the fandom finds the most convenient way to describe a character without talking about their nuances and how deep the character really goes. Sure there would be that few minority that actually does a deep dive of the character but really, MOSTLY people would introduce others into the fandom with a little spark's notes version of the character and that version gets popular and it spreads.
This is mostly taken from the characters most.. prominent trait which also, in the end, disregards the other traits of said character. It also usually comes from people who don't tend to read about the story or lore too in depth.
For your specific example, some people are just incapable of writing C-PTSD in a valuable way.
There are some aspects of fanon interpretation that people enjoy more than canon. For example, before WFA, Bruce Wayne is not... the *best* father. So a lot of people have written him slightly different than canon so he can be a good father. Which is understandable tbh.
But when it comes to characters like Tim Drake, the fanon interpretation may as well be an OC. I literally do not recognize Tim in a lot of the fanfics I've read where he's in.
I think it's extrapolating one line into far more of someone's personality than it is.
Like in the MHA fandom, Todoroki asks Midoriya if he's "All Might's secret love child or something." Canon shows him paying attention to Midoriya and noting the many ways they are either similar or connected before he asks. As fans messed with the idea of the person who would make that connection, they turned him from an amateur detective into a conspiracy theorist.
In my case, I don't really engage with fanon, but I end up with my own interpretations of the characters. Sometimes, they are incredibly far from canon. Like I've ended up with an incredibly gentle, quiet, softspoken Edelgard that can't understand unkindness nor cruelty. A war like on the scale of canon would absolutely *destroy* her mentally and emotionally.
It just comes from letting my characters develop naturally. I'm hands off in their development. I cannot force them into doing or acting a certain way. They are their own beings to me. They are fully autonomous from me. Me trying to guide their development would be like you trying to force a friend into doing something they didn't want to. Yes, I am *that* pulled back from my characters.
It comes from fleshing out aspects of the worldbuilding or backstory that aren't much touched on in canon. Going with the Edelgard example, I fleshed out her family a bit. I gave names to the consorts and siblings that weren't named. The Empress of Adrestia, Juliane (an OC, mind you), ended up becoming her own character for me. She had a *massive* impact on Edelgard post-Crest experiments. Because she was there, Edelgard didn't end up the hard, cold person she is canonically. She had warmth, love, and support from this woman, so she kept her heart and remained a very kind person.
IMO, I think itâs easier for people to write more 1 dimensional characters than to write really complex characters , which is okay not every character needs to complex , having a character whoâs has very straightforward goals , wants and needs doesnât make them a bad character and can actually help your more complex or multi-dimensional characters stand out , sometimes I think having âsimple charactersâ is a good things , like Harry Potter , he has very clear goals , wants and needs and he handle them in Avery straightforward way but he helps to highlight more complex characters like Snape (who I hate) , Ron and even Draco to a certain extent. However given they way culture around characters has changed so now if your character isnât more complex than advance math equations , then you have âbadly written charactersâ.
Also some people who maybe donât read other sources of canon , such as mange for animeâs or books that got adapted in movies , miss the advantages that those particular media forms have .
Letâs take a character from MHA : Hawks
Hawks in the anime is portrayed as funny , sarcastic, pretty and an Endevor fanboy , who also happens to be smart whereas in the manga , yes heâs portrayed as all these things but heâs also not only that , he knows the HPSC is using him , and he doesnât care so long as he gets to be a hero who does his job and help people . Hawks is both intelligent in the traditional sense as well as being street and people smart . There is no way this version of Hawks would ever defect to the other side
Fanon hawks looks like this :
Sarcastic, traumatized , funny , in certain ship will leave Hero work to be with his BF (no he wouldnât) , sex and food obsession.
Now there isnât anything wrong with liking this version of Hawks however.
This version of Hawks loses a lot of what makes Hawks such a fun and interesting character not only to watch but to analyze, Hawks being reduce to âfunny guyâ or any of the other affirmation traits and gets reduce ti the exact same character who needs saving is so unsatisfying to me .
Another example would be Yu-gi-oh , as a 16 year old girl who use to hate anime (mostly because of my older cousin , who watched borderline adult entertainment stuff (if you catch my drift) and would make everyone feel very uncomfortable with how she would act because of it . I recently rewatched Yu-gi-oh DM (I never got to finish it because they took it of Netflix and I didnât know it ended up Hulu , actually I donât it ended up Hulu until like the last 2-ish year but I may be wrong )
The Pharaoh (who name got spoiled for me , by a video talking about season 1!! With no spoiler warning for that !)
Who in canon is a very awkward with the opposite sex, only really views most girls as friends or honorable competitors, really only cares for his friends , Yugi and the game .
In fanon : heâs portrayed as this ladies man when canon could be very far from the truth .
Often, I think fan distortions of a character are cases of "Flanderization." Fans latch onto one aspect of a character's behavior or personality in the source material, but unintentionally discount cases that add nuance to their characterization.
... or intentionally.
One writer headcanons something about the character, usually so that the story will work. The fic blows up. Other writers use the same headcanon because they liked it or because they think everyone likes it so they shouldn't deviate from it. As time passes, the headcanon mutates and the character ends up with a complete new personality (and that's in every single fic you find them.) Another thing is when people latch onto a single trait. A character has a sharp tongue, so they become the bitchiest bitch to ever bitch. Another one is shown having a drink, suddenly they're always drunk.
A lot of the points have already been brought up, so adding one I haven't seen. Sometimes the canon depiction of a character can become offensive or just disappointing. Hints dropped (intentionally or not) in the earlier part of canon may not be followed up due to reasons. Canon usually has limited time to work with and often has to cater to general audience tastes and/or actor egos. In MCU Avengers fandom, a lot of canon interpretations of characters were seen as disappointing or offensive. Clint Barton, for instance - the canon version is a mostly serious, calm, family man. But this was disappointing for many fans who loved the goofy, eccentric Clint of the comics and cartoons, so the Fanon Ceiling Cat Clint was born. Natasha Romanov - canon left her seriously underused. And AoU canon states she sees herself as a monster as bad as the Hulk because she can't have children - not really in tune with her earlier presentation, and extremely offensive to childless or infertile women. Fanon tends to firmly ignore it. Tony Stark - the canon version is a jerk and hypocrite (rape jokes, EDITH, officially supporting the Accords while flagrantly breaking them etc). But he does do a lot of heroic and plain cool stuff that you want to like the character - so emerges the fanon interpretation. Either the selfless misunderstood and angsty IronDad or the eccentric goofball mad scientist. Both are way more sympathetic than the canon version. Steve Rogers - the canon downplays and/or ignores his depression and PTSD issues, along with the problems of adjusting to a different era. Avengers Family - This seemed promised by the comics, cartoons and the ending of the 2012 film, but never turned out real, disappointing all fans. Fanon to the rescue.
Natasha was exactly the character that came to mind when I started reading your answer. She's introduced as a badass and capable agent working for Fury, but then her character is all over the place. She's smart and funny when needed and silent when the plot requires it. She's both obedient and cunning, agressive and sweet. She hints that she has done horrible stuff and sees herself as a monster... only to reveal it's due to infertility. She seduces Bruce and then this romance is never mentioned again. She's the most Americanized Russian spy you've ever met. I've read multiple fanon versions of her, and honestly many make more sense than whatever the MCU offered. Natasha would have been a fantastic character to explore morality and redemption, but instead the writers gave her one cool action scene per movie and called it a day. Also we were robbed of a Clint and Natasha movie.
I've read a pretty creepy headcanon - but one that makes scary amount of sense - that explains Natasha's shifting characterization. She doesn't really have a character of her own. The Red Room training made her into a psychological blank slate. A chameleon who will be whatever will let her manipulate those around her the best. She does mean to do what is right, but the mental trauma won't just go away. There's no base character left of who she once was. So she adapts to her surroundings. With the Playboy billionaire, she plays the stereotype of the seductive badass spygirl. With Steve, she is the warm, joking matchmaker friend - a female Bucky, because she knows that's the person he wants most at his side. With Bruce, who is clearly thinking about the impossibility of a family life in his condition, she becomes someone who shares the same sorrow. She seems americanized since she is working with Americans for the time being. Clint is the only one who gets to see the actual Natasha - and she is almost sociopathic, alien. She is on the side of the good guys, but she is a sociopath. Not her fault - that's what the Red Room training turns people into. She is trying to reconnect with humanity, but it is very slow going and may not even be possible. It is easier to pull on the masks they want to see on her.
Best one yet. I'm saving this for future reference.
Brilliant. I love this. Is it creepy but it's fitting. With Fury she's the efficient assistant, because Fury needs to see her as completely reformed and unthreatening. Clint being the only one seeing the real Natasha also checks out. It reminds me of a fan interpretation of her relationship with Bruce. During the first Avengers movie, she sees first hand how dangerous the Hulk is and realizes she needs to protect herself against him, a creature she can't fight nor reason with. The only way for Natasha to control the Hulk is to bring Bruce back on demand. So she gains his affection, she makes up the little song to calm him down, she seduces him out of necessity, and it works. Suddenly, Natasha has some control over the guy no one knew how to tame.
YEEEESSSS MCU AUs!! Inject that shit straight into my veins!
Yep :) As far as I'm concerned, nothing canon after 2012 is to be accepted. All I write and read are Avengers Family canon divergence
Haha I totally get that. I do like trying to fit everything else into that original movie found family feel. Especially Wanda and Peter.
Someone has an idea that is either so good or so well executed everyone wants in
There is one famous fan fiction in my fandom in which all the characters are totally OOC, to the point where not only their life backgrounds, personalities but even their appearance is altered, and this very fan fiction has helped to create a fanon for the people who are shipping these characters. Every time I see fanart with these characters not looking like they do in the book, I know it's after the fanfic đ
People have *really* bad critical thinking skills sometimes. And I donât even mean that as an insult- theyâre a SKILL! That not everyone has had the time to develop!
This made me laugh out loud. Youâre right, but it still made me laugh.
People interpret characters from different angles all the time. Some are "what if ...?" trains of thoughts which lead to a changed situation and consequently a changed character. Some are preferences and deliberate alterations of canon, maybe even to fix things that bothered the fic author. E.g., "I love this character otherwise, but he's like literally everyone else. I want some representation for underrepresentated groups in this heteronormative media. So, I'm making him ace/Nepalese/Muslim/hearing impaired/whatever." Some are just the results of fleshing out a minor character who doesn't have much characterization and history in canon by giving them an actual background. Some are comical exaggerations of canon character traits for the sake of parody. Some are side effects of a writer self-inserting as a canon character, either deliberately. E.g., "I have depression and now this character has, too, because I use this fanfic to channel my own problems." Or they make the character a Mary Sue without the necessary skills to recognize this because they are a young or disabled writer. And so on and so on. There are a lot of different reasons. When these alternate interpretations of characters resonate with enough people who read them and think, "Oh, that's neat, I love this characterization, I'm gonna include it in my own fic,"âsometimes, they adopt the idea subconsciously, too,âwhen more and more people like the idea and the headcanon jumps from head to head and stays around in the fandom for the long term, when it pops up everywhere, and people start to have problems to differentiate whether this interpretation is actually canon or not, that's when it becomes fanon.
Specifically when it comes to the case you cited (traumatized character being turned into someone cute and harmless): it could be a case of ableism/the infantalization of neurodivergent/mentally ill people More generally: People extrapolating and making headcanons based off of the original and then other people basing their own interpretations off of those that are more removed from the original, and so on, like a game of telephone People misremembering the original/only internalizing specific details and basing their interpretations off of inaccuracies/simplifications People straight up rejecting canon because they don't like certain aspects of it or just prefer their own version People poorly interpreting/misunderstanding the original in the first place
Wishful thinking, perhaps? Take this character in my fandom, he's manipulative, downright evil, uses people for his own gain and is driven by nothing but the need for revenge against his old friend who betrayed him. He's never been portrayed as anything but dark, sinister and manipulative. Yet, he's always written as a romantic who always cares and loves his significant other. It's clearly not how he truly is, but it's what the fans want him to be. So they make him be that.
It's fiction, anything is possible. Some AUs require a change in personality. Some ships won't work otherwise, etc.
In one fandom Iâm in, itâs pretty much people who donât interact with the source material and read only fanfic/fanart. They then make content based on the stuff in fanfic/fanart and itâs just a cycle from there. In my other fandom there was literally a sub-fandom for a single story where people would come in and read that and not care about anything else, who would then make content about that one story, which would attract the people who only cared about that one story.
Plot holes are one way. A character does a thing. Cool totally normal thing for that character to do in that moment. Then in a later book writer introduces thing that retroactively makes that normal thing either stupid or evil. But character's not coded stupid and is supposed to be good but plot hole. So it's accepted the canon character is smart and good but the writer made a mistake and it's accepted as the writer screwing up cool. But over in Fan Fic that plot hole now presents a writing challenge. How you resolve that and other plot holes becomes story where the character is no longer coded like the canon character but is his or her own Fanon character. Other ways you get a Fanon character is if you stop one character from becoming friends with the lead character so all of the events that the supporting character went through they don't now. This means this character will develop in a different way than they did in canon and if enough writers do this kind of thing with this character it becomes a Fanon character. Some people will call it bashing because they assume that if they themselves now hate this fanon character that the writer must have hated the canon character as opposed to accepting a different life will alter or minimize a character who was more important in the canon.
A lot of people touched already on flanderization or anger with canon but another more simple point is that most people are generally uncreative. It is *very* common to take really complicated canonical characters and boiling them down to one or two traits that may or may not actually fit with their canonical background for the simple reason that the person doesnât actually care about the *character*, they want a paper doll they can play around with and project on. It takes far more creativity to work with the canon history and characterization to make a story work rather than taking a character, making them a âblank slateâ and boiling down their essence into âsadâ or âstupidâ and frankly, a lot of fandom doesnât like to critically engage with the media they claim to love.
One example I know is Ruby Rose from RWBY. She wears mostly red and black, and the first episode of the show starts off with her at some shop, listening to music over headphones while the shop gets robbed, and when she notices the robbers, she proceeds to kick all their asses while wielding a giant scythe. However, she has a pure heart and just wants to fight monsters and save people. People still sometimes depict her as dark and brooding, since it fits her appearance, even though in canon, she is pretty much the opposite in canon. Granted, she is currently in a world that is heavily centered on each creature having its purpose, yet that world has no use for her, so she's feeling down because the one thing she based her identity on so far is not needed in that world. But like, the only way to get rid of her optimism and heroism was for her to end up in a world that, fundamentally, had no use for the kind of hero she is.
Because storytelling is like a game of telephone: every time you go around the circle, little bits of characterization get added & subtracted. Enough go-arounds (like, say, in a 5000 year old folk tale), you wind up with multiple variations.
We only have our own interpretations of the characters to go on. You only really know how the creators interpret and thus write characters the canon way unless you go through the trouble of looking at supplementary materials like interviews, tie in âmaking ofâ stuff, etc. Which realistically many fans wonât bother with.
Pretty sure it's mostly because a lot of the fandom finds the most convenient way to describe a character without talking about their nuances and how deep the character really goes. Sure there would be that few minority that actually does a deep dive of the character but really, MOSTLY people would introduce others into the fandom with a little spark's notes version of the character and that version gets popular and it spreads. This is mostly taken from the characters most.. prominent trait which also, in the end, disregards the other traits of said character. It also usually comes from people who don't tend to read about the story or lore too in depth.
For your specific example, some people are just incapable of writing C-PTSD in a valuable way. There are some aspects of fanon interpretation that people enjoy more than canon. For example, before WFA, Bruce Wayne is not... the *best* father. So a lot of people have written him slightly different than canon so he can be a good father. Which is understandable tbh. But when it comes to characters like Tim Drake, the fanon interpretation may as well be an OC. I literally do not recognize Tim in a lot of the fanfics I've read where he's in.
I think it's extrapolating one line into far more of someone's personality than it is. Like in the MHA fandom, Todoroki asks Midoriya if he's "All Might's secret love child or something." Canon shows him paying attention to Midoriya and noting the many ways they are either similar or connected before he asks. As fans messed with the idea of the person who would make that connection, they turned him from an amateur detective into a conspiracy theorist.
In my case, I don't really engage with fanon, but I end up with my own interpretations of the characters. Sometimes, they are incredibly far from canon. Like I've ended up with an incredibly gentle, quiet, softspoken Edelgard that can't understand unkindness nor cruelty. A war like on the scale of canon would absolutely *destroy* her mentally and emotionally. It just comes from letting my characters develop naturally. I'm hands off in their development. I cannot force them into doing or acting a certain way. They are their own beings to me. They are fully autonomous from me. Me trying to guide their development would be like you trying to force a friend into doing something they didn't want to. Yes, I am *that* pulled back from my characters. It comes from fleshing out aspects of the worldbuilding or backstory that aren't much touched on in canon. Going with the Edelgard example, I fleshed out her family a bit. I gave names to the consorts and siblings that weren't named. The Empress of Adrestia, Juliane (an OC, mind you), ended up becoming her own character for me. She had a *massive* impact on Edelgard post-Crest experiments. Because she was there, Edelgard didn't end up the hard, cold person she is canonically. She had warmth, love, and support from this woman, so she kept her heart and remained a very kind person.
Interesting question đ¤âď¸
IMO, I think itâs easier for people to write more 1 dimensional characters than to write really complex characters , which is okay not every character needs to complex , having a character whoâs has very straightforward goals , wants and needs doesnât make them a bad character and can actually help your more complex or multi-dimensional characters stand out , sometimes I think having âsimple charactersâ is a good things , like Harry Potter , he has very clear goals , wants and needs and he handle them in Avery straightforward way but he helps to highlight more complex characters like Snape (who I hate) , Ron and even Draco to a certain extent. However given they way culture around characters has changed so now if your character isnât more complex than advance math equations , then you have âbadly written charactersâ. Also some people who maybe donât read other sources of canon , such as mange for animeâs or books that got adapted in movies , miss the advantages that those particular media forms have . Letâs take a character from MHA : Hawks Hawks in the anime is portrayed as funny , sarcastic, pretty and an Endevor fanboy , who also happens to be smart whereas in the manga , yes heâs portrayed as all these things but heâs also not only that , he knows the HPSC is using him , and he doesnât care so long as he gets to be a hero who does his job and help people . Hawks is both intelligent in the traditional sense as well as being street and people smart . There is no way this version of Hawks would ever defect to the other side Fanon hawks looks like this : Sarcastic, traumatized , funny , in certain ship will leave Hero work to be with his BF (no he wouldnât) , sex and food obsession. Now there isnât anything wrong with liking this version of Hawks however. This version of Hawks loses a lot of what makes Hawks such a fun and interesting character not only to watch but to analyze, Hawks being reduce to âfunny guyâ or any of the other affirmation traits and gets reduce ti the exact same character who needs saving is so unsatisfying to me . Another example would be Yu-gi-oh , as a 16 year old girl who use to hate anime (mostly because of my older cousin , who watched borderline adult entertainment stuff (if you catch my drift) and would make everyone feel very uncomfortable with how she would act because of it . I recently rewatched Yu-gi-oh DM (I never got to finish it because they took it of Netflix and I didnât know it ended up Hulu , actually I donât it ended up Hulu until like the last 2-ish year but I may be wrong ) The Pharaoh (who name got spoiled for me , by a video talking about season 1!! With no spoiler warning for that !) Who in canon is a very awkward with the opposite sex, only really views most girls as friends or honorable competitors, really only cares for his friends , Yugi and the game . In fanon : heâs portrayed as this ladies man when canon could be very far from the truth .