So, last month I submitted a bunch of characters! What happened with that? Where do stories go after asking for characters?

Let’s see!

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11861966/1/Team-Eeveelutions 3 chapters, last update April 5th. Lucki the flareon, Leck the espeon, Rachel the leafeon. Presumably unaccepted.

This is an interesting one. Despite the fact it did update and she supposedly accepted some characters, the new characters introduced in the third chapter appear to be her own OCs since they’re uncredited. It seems like she realized once she actually got started that she’d much rather make characters the way she wanted.

She then went on to update two other stories instead.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11850106/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-Quest-The-Snowman-SYOC-OPEN 10 chapters, last update May 27th but it’s just an author note chapter. Danny the just made him up. Accepted.

My character appears briefly and is pitted against a mary sue we’re presumably supposed to view as an acceptable bashing target, so as I subverted his request for SJW villains with a GG villain, he appears to have resubverted that into a noble crusader against the female menace. Ah well.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11828788/1/Static-Academy-An-Empty-Facade 1 chapter, published March 7th. Lucki. Presumably unaccepted.

– Their profile updated once but my character wasn’t listed. The story itself never updated.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11862351/1/Guardians-Of-The-Legends 3 chapters, updated May 15th. Houndoom.

– No mention of my OC, presumably unaccepted but no way to tell.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11828312/1/Pokemon-Blue-Ruby-Version 1 chapter + note saying updating was difficult that was posted March 26th. Shesha.

– Really unlikely this will update, it’s your standard OT fic.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11862576/1/Pokemon-OC-Survival 1 chapter then deleted. Katniss the nuzleaf. Accepted.

– 22 reviews, not sure if there were other characters sent by PM. Author requested 30 and may be annoyed it didn’t reach that. Shame, as they seemed pleased with Katniss.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11873169/1/Pokemon-Gijinka-A-Cry-For-Hope 6 chapters, updated May 23. Ciel the torchic morph. Unaccepted.

– Actually is updating! Unfortunately, this is one of the shoddiest, being a standard badge journey only there’s no pokemon.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11868169/1/Unexplained-circumstances 2 chapters, updated April 5th. Yushuv. Accepted.

– Only updated once. Yushuv never appears.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11879055/1/Ranger-Training 1 chapter, published April 4th. Miki. Accepted.

– Another one that appears dead.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11869553/1/Dice-Roll-Torn-Hearts-Melody-of-War 2 chapters, updated April 10. Raven. Presumably unaccepted.

– Similar to the eeveelution story, updated but apparently not including any OCs that chapter. The taken drive list updated after I sent Raven in but didn’t include the one I picked for her, so probably no. While two chapters, the second is listed as 1A and just involves more background, so it never actually manages to move forward.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11873282/1/Vol-Bris%C3%A9es 3 chapters, updated May 11th. Ormarr Shesha. Presumably accepted as the author says she loves all the characters she’s gotten so far.

– There were 6 follows aside from my own but no reviews until begging started. SYOC really doesn’t seem the path to attention it once was. Did manage to start including OCs, with one in the third chapter! A glimpse into OC use can be found there.

The OC is the generically friendly sort. This works fine as a first encounter because the main character is such a mess that she can create drama out all on her own, but what’ll happen with the next OCs? Did people send in ones that can be used otherwise, or will the main character manage to provide different drama with each one by herself? This one also had an enormous character sheet, which would suggest the current OC is meant to stick around despite not offering much of interest so far.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11878122/1/Silver-Scarlet-Academy 4 chapters, updated May 9th. Yuki. Accepted.

– The only one where my OC really appears! Second chapter introduces one helpful OC and they’re pitted against an antagonist of the author’s creation, and then in the third chapter Yuki appears to be trouble. Without her, it’s just people being quietly agreeable at each other. This gets into what I’m curious with the story above – how many characters have any conflict hooks? I’m not sure the author has really processed this problem, though, because the cast is stacked with people who just happen to know Yuki sucks so it looks like any potential villainy out of her will be shut down early and then more one-off author OCs will be needed. Also, I really suspect that the actual battle tactics begin and end at “type advantage” since that’s all Yuki mentions. Deciding to write about battles when you really don’t know what to write isn’t a SYOC-only problem, but it’s definitely worsening things if you ask about it as a component of the character, establish that it’s going to be a big part, but can’t write the same range of suggestions you could get.

Yuki reappears to fail at battling in the fourth chapter, because there is only one way antagonist trainers are written and it’s as oblivious hotheads – though I must admit, what I said about Yuki’s battling style and attitude wasn’t for facing overpowered people who can win without ever allowing you to get off a move, so maybe that’s why she decided to go with a speedy defeat instead. So far the story’s contorted to only allow Yuki’s sigilyph to get any commentary, presumably because only the sigilyph at all fits the narrative of asshole trainer = disinterested pokemon despite how silly it is to use the pokemon she’s had the shortest time as proof of that.

Although Yuki is one of my more standard characters, you can also see here how even slight differences in how the world work can cause trouble. In the chapter she first appears, another character is gushed over for how much the baby pokemon raised from an egg loves her. This is also true of Yuki’s egg-raised pokemon – how could it not be? And of course, if you want to do a straightforward thing where people who treat their pokemon well out of love win without any twists or examination at all, Yuki’s entire character won’t work. I hadn’t realized that’d be trouble.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11882997/1/Platinum-Heart 2 chapters but both posted on the same day, April 6th. Shesha.

– Although this one updated, it was just to add that first chapter on. It’s probably not going to continue.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11889923/1/A-Yearning-for-the-Mud 5 chapters, updated April 28th. Kit. Presumably accepted as I’ve been asked to answer additional questions twice.

– This is the only extensive form one I’ve seen that appears to understand you can use submitted OCs as side characters, which is definitely an improvement. Not sure if it’ll avoid the rest of the pitfalls when/if it manages to reach the part that’s an academy.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11900846/1/The-PokeGamer 3 chapters, updated April 25th. Shesha.

– This one’s updating but mostly just with lists of numbers. No idea where, if anywhere, it’s going.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11898457/1/Cavalry-Academia 2 chapters, updated April 15th. Harry. Was told “I’ll see what I can do. Keep an eye out for Harry in future chapters, he might pop up”.

– Updated but as far as I can tell, no OCs featured yet. This is kind of disappointing because it’s based on a shitty sexist male power fantasy anime and yet apparently that wasn’t good enough and this time the male character has to be even more overpoweredly awesome while treating the female characters even worse. Harry fit so much better than I could ever have guessed.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11898560/1/His-Return 1 chapter then deleted, submitted all pokemon movesets I made up for the previous character submissions.

– An attempt at attention whoring by someone who thought the fandom had people who really wanted to see a particular pokemon in battle.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11901955/1/Pokemon-Academy-Nexus 1 chapter, published April 17th. Kazekami, presumably accepted.

– This author claims they’ll use all OCs. Perhaps they aren’t updating because they regret such rashness.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11903940/1/Exploring-the-Alpha-Region-SYOC 2 chapters, updated May 11th. Houndoom.

– Updating because there is no god. The new character clumsily shoved in at the start of the second chapter isn’t credited to anyone or a character submitted in the reviews, so this may be another example of authors preferring to do their own thing to other people’s ideas.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11911720/1/Pokemon-Bonds 4 chapters, updated May 7th. Holly. Unaccepted.

– Holly is rejected because there’s another character who doesn’t like Team Rocket already, and he has the much better backstory of watching his little sister get raped to death to motivate him onto his highly successful crusade of badassery. While my attitude going into this was to let the chips fall where they may…kind of glad Holly avoided getting dragged into that.

This is a rare one where the author actually does manage to introduce the submitted characters, but unfortunately, no sign of them interacting with each other or the plot yet. So far it’s just been jumping between each one’s backstory.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11914105/1/PMD-Free-Rescue 1 chapter, published April 25th. Maka. Accepted.

– My background for her is rather at odds with the setting information given – it’s grimdark miseryland and there’s a tribal/civilized pokemon divide with the implication the tribal ones are just barbarians launching occasional raids, but Maka makes most sense as a tribal pokemon (since civilized ones apparently found Jesus and also are all at each other’s throats these days) so I say there’s a friendly isolated tribe in the middle of nowhere for her to be from.

This gets into the delicate balance that SYOC goes against. A halfway decent setting should have exceptions like Maka without it crumbling, but you don’t want most of them going against the grain or it obscures the setting, and you definitely don’t want them going against the grain in the same way because now that’s the real setting. It’s pretty hard to handle that sort of balance through submissions.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11916912/1/Glade-Academy-Shattering-the-Dream 1 chapter, published April 26th. Maia. No idea.

– This one’s a reboot of an existing fic, so I don’t expect it to go anywhere.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11922499/1/XD002 1 chapter, published April 30th.  Tad. No idea.

– It’s unclear what this one even wants. Author says this is redoing their old fanfic just with a bunch of changes like the entire world it takes place in.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11928128/1/StoneSide-Academy 2 chapters, updated May 7th, was mysteriously deleted then reuploaded. Lucki. Accepted.

– Second chapter contains OCs but not Lucki.

For the most part, this is the standard thing where the characters bump into each other then stay together despite really having nothing to say or do, save for one pair who discover they both like music and immediately sing an entire actual song from our world about guns in America, oil spills, and Kurt Cobain.  As clumsy as it is, at least it gives them some reason to interact further, if not a particularly interesting one.

 

 

So! What can we take from this? Well, mostly that these tend to just die without being entertaining, and at very best appear to be laborious for the authors to update. We can also see that there’s a repeated trend of asking for other people’s OCs and then using your own instead, presumably because that’s way easier, and struggles getting the characters to interact interestingly. I’d been thinking that the blame for characters being so bland lay wholly at the feet of the submitters, but after Yuki’s disappointing performance, maybe part of it’s SYOC fans have learned that authors handle people aligned to the main character better.