Does expanding a background character considered an OC?
Asked by
yaujj48 (
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September 26th, 2023
You know in fanfiction an OC, original character is a character you created on your own. But what about background character, character who are just there fill in the scene or setting, someone you usually imagine in a book or see in a TV show or an insignificant NPC.
If you give them a story, would that technically consider an OC? I like to know your guys view.
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8 Answers
OC just means something original. It doesn’t matter what/who it is, or what it does, nor how major a character it is. Though, if it’s not memorable, it may be OC, but it may not amount to much.
So yes, if you write your own original character a story, you’ve created original content, or an original character, which “counts” as “OC”.
If your background character is based on a character that was originally a character somewhere else than no, it is not original, in my opinion.
In thinking of it as you described…expanding on a background character and making them into an OC, I think that’s fine and people in the movie industry do it all of the time. Where else would spinoffs come from?
So if there’s a franchise with an existing background character and you’ve decided to expend on that character to fully flesh them out, you’re wondering if that could be considered an original character? I think a debate about labels are usually kind of pointless to be honest, but sometimes there may be legal reasons why something like that could be relevant. I’d imagine it goes back to just how well-defined the original background character was in the original work. If it’s “Thug with blue shirt #2” with one line of dialogue like “look out boss, he has a gun!” in the screenplay, then there’s not much of a character there. These things exist on a spectrum.
That said, a word of caution, because the original franchise doesn’t have any obligation to respect your work so Marvel may start a new series based on “Thug with blue shirt #2” give him the ability to talk to insects and now your stuff diverges from their timeline. I have no idea if that would be a problem for you, or if you’d care, but it’s worth being mindful about.
@smudges But the spin-off makers have the rights to those characters and stories. Look, it’s done all the time. I don’t know if the OP is talking about legal rights or just terminology. Perhaps they can specify.
@janbb This is mostly for terminology fun. Nothing serious.
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