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Advice on how to write canon/oc plus rambling

Hey!

So I’ll start off with this: I do want to be able to work with canon characters again, however my anxiety about this stems from the fact that I am a free spirited writer, and with established characters I don’t have much of a free spirited approach like I do with my humanoid Pokémon characters or even the team grunt characters.

That and some readers do get upset if the characters are OOC because it’s not what was expected. Like if I were to write a fic that involves Paul, you would want to see him being badass and stuff not smiling at puppies, right?

Now that we are on the subject of Paul though, I had this story in mind that he travels to unova to enter the unova league and meets a girl who helps him through the process, however, because of her free spirit personality and that she doesn’t most things seriously, he had no interest in communicating with her. That and because she thought he was a rookie trainer due to him having no unova badges. However after overhearing that this annoying trainer was a battle tower boss from Black City and the leader of her local battle club, he quietly follows her to watch her battles.

My question is how can I make a story with these guys work with A ruining a canon character and two accidenly making my character into a Sue? Any advice or suggestions?

Thanks :)
 

Aduro

Mt.BtlMaster
Two basic things could help:
1. Make sure that if you're using a canon character, you're taking advantage of what makes them interesting to you. Work with their pre-existing strengths and weaknesses. If you want to change that character, make sure those changes are caused by the events of the story.
2. If you want to make sure your character isn't a Mary Sue, then its all about how the characters around them act. They should have more things going on that their relationship than your OC. Your OC doesn't have the solution to all the world's problems. Also your OC should be flawed or weak in some ways. And those flaws should have consequences.

For example if your OC is disregarding Paul because he doesn't have Unova badges, she could come off as ignorant and immature. If those qualities are genuinely a problem in her personality and she suffers for them, that suggests she isn't a Mary Sue. And the reader will forgive those flaws if there are things about this new character that are genuinely endearing or interesting enough.
 
Thanks! I do want to add that I asked the mary sue question because with canon character/oc parings or ship teasing, depeing on the character it seems like they cant like each other without the OC being called as a mary sue. example being a non pokemon example: Sonic the Hedgehog. Most people can't pair their OC with him because with him he doesn't slow down for anyone and a free spirit. There for it would have to change him into something he's not. Same goes with Paul in this example, he has a cold demenor and he is a powerful trainer who likes power. Hell he and Ash arent friends. So for him to be friend someone would mean to change his personality into something he isn't wich is why I asked. It's not something I want to do because I still want to have that power hungy-ish demonor etc you know?
 
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