I think for me a lot of it stems from the fact I don't want to get married or have kids myself so dropping my ship in that kind of scenario without any build-up is very jarring. Especially if the characters canonically have never expressed a desire to have kids or get married, be it with each other or different characters. Maybe that's because I don't relate to that possibly parental aspect of a character unless it's really explicitly stated but I don't know, I think it's just one of those things, like in real life, you need to work up to, especially if the couple in question aren't canon and aren't the type of people that scream "I really want kids".
OCs is almost a certain no from me. I get that sometimes it's not about self-inserting and that it's for some other reason but I can never not see it as a self-insert thing. Maybe because I was on FF.net back in the day (I'm talking like 2010 here) and every other fic was captioned "Starlight/equally out there name, sister/daughter of one of the main characters is visiting *insert setting of show* when the conventionally attractive male lead falls in love with her and gives her life ~meaning" and I just can't take that seriously in any way. It's like reading one of those books in the "teen" section of the library where some random shy girl somehow ends up the girlfriend of the ~cool kid or the dark mysterious kid that's actually a vampire/werewolf/whatever the latest craze is.
But saying that, I once wrote a fic for a big bang and I was committed and invested in the plot and had enough words down to not want to throw it away when I realised I needed a minor side character to act as a plot device (the plot device that the whole plot span on basically) and canonically, every side character I could have used at the time had been killed off and I was writing it between seasons airing so they hadn't introduced any new characters I could use so I had to bite the bullet and make one up and I honestly felt like writing in capital letters "She's not a Mary-Sue, it's just everyone else is canonically dead, please don't judge me".
Same sort of thing happened with a kid in one of my fics, now I think about it. It was for a reverse bang and it was a really good plot for a ship I could work with and everything about it was perfect but one of the pieces featured the female character being heavily pregnant and the male character holding a baby and it was just pretty far out from the rest of the plot but I had to make it work so right at the end I sort of had to have this "five years later" thing because the plot was about them meeting and getting together and I couldn't bring myself to have them be, a week later, going "oh btw I'm pregnant, surprise". But I felt like putting in a note going "I know, the random flashforward is cheesy and weird but it's not my idea" at the end.
Sorry, didn't mean to write you an essay there, apparently I have a lot of thoughts about it all :P
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Date: 2015-11-28 12:16 pm (UTC)OCs is almost a certain no from me. I get that sometimes it's not about self-inserting and that it's for some other reason but I can never not see it as a self-insert thing. Maybe because I was on FF.net back in the day (I'm talking like 2010 here) and every other fic was captioned "Starlight/equally out there name, sister/daughter of one of the main characters is visiting *insert setting of show* when the conventionally attractive male lead falls in love with her and gives her life ~meaning" and I just can't take that seriously in any way. It's like reading one of those books in the "teen" section of the library where some random shy girl somehow ends up the girlfriend of the ~cool kid or the dark mysterious kid that's actually a vampire/werewolf/whatever the latest craze is.
But saying that, I once wrote a fic for a big bang and I was committed and invested in the plot and had enough words down to not want to throw it away when I realised I needed a minor side character to act as a plot device (the plot device that the whole plot span on basically) and canonically, every side character I could have used at the time had been killed off and I was writing it between seasons airing so they hadn't introduced any new characters I could use so I had to bite the bullet and make one up and I honestly felt like writing in capital letters "She's not a Mary-Sue, it's just everyone else is canonically dead, please don't judge me".
Same sort of thing happened with a kid in one of my fics, now I think about it. It was for a reverse bang and it was a really good plot for a ship I could work with and everything about it was perfect but one of the pieces featured the female character being heavily pregnant and the male character holding a baby and it was just pretty far out from the rest of the plot but I had to make it work so right at the end I sort of had to have this "five years later" thing because the plot was about them meeting and getting together and I couldn't bring myself to have them be, a week later, going "oh btw I'm pregnant, surprise". But I felt like putting in a note going "I know, the random flashforward is cheesy and weird but it's not my idea" at the end.
Sorry, didn't mean to write you an essay there, apparently I have a lot of thoughts about it all :P