The second of two works introduced by my previous framing essay. As this one makes reference to my FGO fanfics, let me know if you ever want me to send a link to the stories or something.

Now you, a normie, may be wondering what an “OC” is. 

“OC” stands for “original character”. In the fandom community, an OC is a character not associated with the company that created the series or franchise, but created by the fan themselves as a character that could live in the franchise’s universe. The OC is then used in fan content such as fanfiction, fanart, and roleplays.

Now that we’ve got that settled, let me tell you, I’m an OC making veteran. I’ve been involved in fandom culture since middle school, the cringiest time of our lives. From Sonic, to MLP:FiM, to Undertale, to My Hero Academia and other anime, I’ve seen and made my fair share of OCs. All of which, I made with the intention of not being me. It wasn’t until January of 2020 that I decided to write myself into the franchise I had most recently hyper-fixated on. My choice of poison was Fate Grand Order.

Fate Grand Order is a mobile gacha game based on the Fate Stay Night franchise owned by Type Moon. The first entry of the franchise was a visual novel featuring mages summoning seven heroes from history and myth to battle for the chance to make a wish on the Holy Grail. From there the franchise builds on that. In Fate Grand Order, the player becomes humanity’s last “Master” and must summon these heroes and travel through space and time to save the world. 

Well, the journey is more complicated than that but that’s the gist of it.

What’s important is that it’s ridiculously easy to write in an original character as the Master and in January of 2020, after a bit more than a year playing the game, I wrote myself as the Master and inadvertently began to reflect on how I saw myself.

My OC spawned from a simple question: What would the story of Fate Grand Order be like if  I was the Master?

I named my OC Violet Blackwell. Named so because of internal conflict. Do I attach, or do I distance? Say this character is me or say she is someone separate?

How much of myself did I want to share with the world? How much did I want to hide? My first name would have stood out too much, so the “me” on the Google Doc needed a new one. Violet. She would be Violet, a variant of a name I used whenever I played an rpg. As for her last name, Blackwood was common enough to maintain my anonymity, but seeing my own last name on the page made me feel too exposed, so I changed it. She would be Blackwell. I could remain hidden in my woods while she could stand by the well and greet the audience as they came for a drink.

Of course, Violet Blackwell looks like me. Heavy-set, bespectacled black girl. Looks a bit young for her age. Almost always wearing hoops.

With that settled, I began to write. And as I wrote, I realized I was a multi-faceted human being…..and sometimes that contradicted consistency.

While fictional characters can be written to be quite complex, they don’t quite reach the level of complexity that comes from being a real human being. This, in part because writing a character to the level of complexity of a real person is rather tedious. It would take many, many pages and be at the expense of any and all supporting cast and plot progression. Not very fun for the reader either.

 As a human being, I react differently to different situations, but also, I can react differently to the same situations, simply because of an ever-so-slight shift in my mood. For the sake of cohesion and giving the audience a solid idea of what my OC was all about, she couldn’t be like that. Every little thing  I wrote her doing, saying, or thinking would shape who she was to the audience. Violet was to exist in a universe where all the other characters have already established themselves with the audience. They had profiles, dialogue, and youtube videos that the audience could refer to about them. 

 Violet Blackwell didn’t have that luxury. 

The canon characters already had the audience’s favor (or in some cases, their ire), it was Violet that had to carve out a place for herself in the audience’s heart. 

And by extension…I had to earn a place in their hearts.

I wanted Violet to be lovable because that meant I was lovable. 

Many ideas came to mind on how to make Violet cooler, prettier, more appealing. I contemplated making her able to hold her own against the heroes she summoned, a bonafide badass! Make many(read:all) of the canon characters attracted to her! Make her the smartest person in every scene! Show them how awesome she is!

But no. I couldn’t do it. As a writer I couldn’t do it. My integrity as one wouldn’t allow it. A character like that tends to ruin a story. Dissolves all the tension. Sucks up all the energy the supporting cast has to offer.

As a person I couldn’t do it. It would defeat the purpose of writing myself into the game. Even if I had magic abilities, I would never be powerful enough to defeat my own heroes! I could never make so many people attracted to me! In a universe full of all the geniuses history has to offer, I would never be the smartest person in the room! I wouldn’t be myself at all!

So my hands went back to the keyboard, and I wrote. In the reflection of my computer screen, I looked at myself and tried to show, share myself in a way that could be understood by people who would never meet me, flaws and all. 

Violet tries to be calm and reasonable, however, her youth and inexperience make it difficult for her. She gets embarrassed when she lets her emotions get the best of her. She tries to be friendly, but takes a while to truly let anyone close to her. She is responsible and hates letting other people down. She cares a lot about how others feel about her and because of that cultivates an image to be seen through. She tries to be kind, tries to be moral, and feels it deeply when she fails to be. She’s insecure but tries to hide it. She is timid, but will one day become brave. She is loved, very much so, but has a hard time realizing it.

For a year, I didn’t know whether I had written her “right”. I had made up my mind I would write myself as a character, but… Was I enjoyable to read? (“She cares a lot about how others feel about her and because of that cultivates an image to be seen through.”) A boring or unlikable protagonist can ruin a good story, while an interesting and likable character could bring it to new heights. Was I someone who could carry a story?

My answer came in a story about Violet gathering ingredients and making soup, a mundane tale more slice of life than the fantasy adventure of Fate Grand Order proper. It was about six months after I wrote and posted the story. Someone had read the story, and commented, a rare, wondrous thing. (For every hundred views on a story, you’d be lucky to get even one comment). It was from a user called Oujo_sama.

 “Violet is very endearing”, “I like her character!”

Validation. Sweet, Sweet Validation.

I was doing something right.

Bit by bit, reexamination by reexamination, Violet Blackwell became a main character, the female lead in twenty-three and counting stories. In a way, she is the diary I write in, though I admittedly limit my feelings to the extent of their story relevance.

She is online for the perusal of absolute strangers, the people who will know me, but never know they know me.