Kinda In The Middle With This

"I don't mind OOCness...If it's used in the right places."

Why, HitsuForLife, whatever do you mean by the 'right places'?

Well, here's what I mean:

What I'm talking about is when the OOCness, or 'Out Of Character-ness', is used in a manner that lets the reader see the character they are reading do/say things that they may not do in a way that, while not showing the character's 'true' personality, still lets the reader enjoy the content.

A good example of this is when OOCness is used for comedic purposes. Like "Voldemort secretly is a professional male cheerleader," or "Orochimaru actually likes cotton candy," etc.; not meant to be taken seriously, but is simply for trying to get a laugh out of the readers.

Another example is when the character with OOCness is like this for good story purposes; the author wants to use a specific character, but their personality doesn't quite fit the necessary needs to them to be in it, so they change it. Written well, this can pay off extremely great, like with 's doujinshi. Here she makes the nice Momo Hinamori a sassy and witty smart ass. In the story this is used throughout the story (as far as I have read anyway), letting the readers get used to their usually nice character seen differently, eventually warming to it, maybe even liking it better than the original one.

Or, still going with wanting to use a character with the wrong personality, they could explain why they are acting differently in their story. Let's use Sakura Haruno for this one. Let's say, in a story, instead of being rude and mean to Naruto, she's a very nice person, always giving advice on things he needs her help with, being there when he needs someone, and so on. An explanation for this could be that Naruto was there for her when bullies when picking on her and Ino wasn't there. After helping her she wants to become closer to him, and as a result they become closer friends. With this as a part of her background in the story, the readers can better understand why she would be nicer to someone she in actuality finds extremely annoying.

So, OOCness isn't always bad...

...but it's not always good either.

When OOCness is used wrong, it shows very badly. It can make the author who wrote it seem like they either don't know the character well at all or is just a bad writer in general. Which of course isn't necessarily true, but you can never fully blame a person for thinking that way, because that how it comes off.

Bad placed OOCness usually occurs when there just doesn't seem like there's a need for it, like it's there just to be there and it doesn't particularly do anything for the characters. An example of this is in the fanfiction 1000 Years: One Shots. In this story, Toshiro, a character mostly known for his cold and angry personality, cries a lot over many things in many of the chapters. This in turn makes the people who are around him while he's crying - yes, he's usually somehow around at least three people when this happens - insult him in some way; pansy, crybaby, child, weakling, questioning his rank, etc., which, instead of making him realize he should stop, ends up making him cry more. And with this being a series of oneshots, the chapter usually ends with him still sobbing, and the people still making fun of him.

The author explains their writing him this way with that the story revolves around Toshiro being twins with someone on the enemy side of things, and they are complete and total opposites. Here's the problem; the person Toshiro is twins with, Bambietta, is a sadistic, seductive killer, murdering men just because she wants to vent her anger. screaming in joy when she does. With this, she and Toshiro are pretty much already the opposite of the other, so changing Toshiro's cold and calculated personality into one of a sensitive crybaby makes no sense story wise, so it's very distracting.

BUT this wouldn't be that bad; if this is how Toshiro will act throughout the story, then the readers might would grow used to it. But here's another problem with it and other stories; some chapters Toshiro will act like he really would in the situations he's put in. And because of this, the readers never have a chance to get used to the cold character crying, because the author will randomly put the cold character actually being a cold character.

So this is my put on the OOC opinion, as a reader and writer. Try your best to use this as best as you can, if you ever plan on using it for any of your possible future stories



Fell free to use

Hope you enjoy

(Note: The author of the story I used for the Bad Example, they're stories and ideas are pretty interesting. I just used they're story because that particular one just was kinda grinding at my gears cuz of the unexplained OOCness of the characters Go try them out if you ever get the chance )