Tag Archives: Bleach

Fanfiction Rant 3 – OC’s in Series with a Large Cast

This is more of a mini-rant/gathering of thoughts than anything. Usually when I write these, I’m addressing something I’ve seen prevalent in a single series so I have a case study, today it’s more of a general note with examples mentioned as I go through. I’m also going to lean mostly towards said Original Characters being involved in romantic relationships with the main cast – oh and here’s the full title of today’s subject:

Using Original Characters That Have a Prominent Role for Series that Already Support a Large Cast

I’m going to start by disclaiming that I’m not referring to plot device characters. For example, if you’re writing a fanfic for Star Trek and they go to a new world – a cast of original characters for them to interact with would be natural. What would not be natural would be a new crewman showing up on the ship or relatives showing up out of nowhere with no basis.

This may sound like a rant against “Mary-Sues” and the like, but that’s not quite what it is. If a show has a full cast of 4-6 people that show up regularly, than yeah – there’s not a lot of options for romance or having them interact with different people. An original character playing the part of  a main role could be forgiven in this context.

I have a much harder time forgiving this in series that have insanely large casts. For example – Bleach. There’s no need for an original character in this show. The cast has literally over 50 or so characters already available for use. You want a mousey girl? Try Squad 12’s Vice-Captain Nemu or Squad Five’s Hinamori. The outgoing girl? There’s about six of those. But to make the point short – you’ve got your choice of just about every personality and type already represented at one point or another.

Pick one.

In the sense of romantic relationships, a random meeting of two characters who have probably never met is just as likely to work as a random original character showing up.  Use someone who’s already there and create a new pairing. Make it work and you’ll get more readers. So – I guess my point is that you’re more likely to get new readers by making an odd, unheard of paring work well than if you create an original character.

Another example would be Transformers. Yet another series with hundreds of characters in its cast to abuse and bend to your will. And yet you still see original characters show up and steal the show. Though, this is one case where I’ve seen it done well and badly.

In a particular fic, they used a squad of police transformers (all original characters) that worked very well. They were designed well, intereacted naturally and felt like they fell into the universe. I stopped reading, however, when in the sequel one of them had kids with a main character of the transformers cast. (A decepticon if you’re curious) This is where the original character lost its value as a plot device and supporting role and fell into the land of lost interest.

It’s a fine line, really, and I think I just don’t see the point of creating love interests for series that already provide so much material to work with.

Bad Mood

I hate Windows.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

If you read my previous post, you know that today I was in a great mood. Woke up early, had breakfast with the folks. Went to a convention with my brother and raked in the goodies like Salty Dog V & IV and a Gin figurine.

The day continued to get better (the stuff that happened after that post) when I came home from the con and watched Red vs Blue: Reconstruction with my brother. Which was amazing. It made me laugh and finally bite the bullet and order the Red vs Blue Box Set for the first 5 seasons of DVDs. I was on top of the world in giddiness from seeing new footage of my one true love Sarge (Red Team FTW). My only disappointment was that Donut didn’t make an apperance – but since it looks like Reconsruction will be getting another season I have hope.

At this point, I rewatched House Season 5, Episode 4 for the tenth or so time. (Wilson takes House to his father’s funeral in case you forgot.) And the good mood just kept on going up.

It was at this point that things settled down and I opened Photoshop to draw tomorrow’s WAM while my brother hooked up his XBOX360 to the internet to log-in to his live account. (He couldn’t before b/c 1) I didn’t have internet in my room where the unit is and 2) Xbox suffered red ring of doom before he could set up his account on the machine.) He filled in his gamertag and got all ready to log-on.

Only it wouldn’t accept his e-mail or password.

This caused me a bit of ‘huh?’ because I clealry remember registering him earlier in the summer. Long story short, I spent a little over an hour trying every e-mail/password combination under the sun between both of our accounts to figure out what account was using his gamertag. None of them worked. And it wouldn’t even recognize his e-mail as having an account (which I know it did) so we couldn’t even have our password e-mailed to us. Maybe I’m crazy and didn’t actually register it. But that’s impossible b/c I can see the gamercard with the gamertag I registered in the summer and *breathes*

Needless to say, I’m in a bad mood and ranting about it on the computer seems to be helping. However, facts are facts and we had to reregister at Windows/XBOX/Whatever Live and he now has a new gamertag.

So now I’m trying to draw WAM and hopefully have come up with something acceptable. Because quite franky, I nearly said ‘screw it’ and posted nothing b/c I was so angry. I’ve calmed down a little bit since then and decided that it wasn’t fair to my readers to take out the frustration on them. I’m making them read this post instead. So there.

In conclusion: I hate you XBOX Live. Thank-you.

At least Izuru’s finally happy to have his Captain back.

Gin and Kira

Squad 3 Rules.

Blue Sucks.

*draws WAM to brother playing Halo in background*

Convention Haul

Just got back from a convention and I am happy. Why? Because I managed to not break the bank but come out with some choice items, such as:

Salty Dog V *drool*

Salty Dog IV *more drool*

An Ichimaru Gin figurine (to match my Kira Izuru figure. :D)

and, *rolls drums*

A Gungrave OD (Overdose) poster. Seriously. We found a Gungrave OD poster. *squeals* That’s almost as good as finally getting my hands on Salty Dog. XD

Now…to browse and pet my goods. *skips off happily*