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In this episode, Lani (@copper_dust) and Jo (@pebblysand) talk about original characters in fanfiction. They discuss how they come up with them, how they name them, the purpose they can serve in fanfiction, and touch upon the somewhat controversial subject of self-inserts and "Mary Sues." They also talk about the differences between fanfiction and original fiction when it comes to writing characters, and about the different techniques writers can use to craft well-rounded protagonists.Resources mentioned in the episode:random name generatorthe sorting hat chats personality "test"Our recommendations for this month are:My Dad Wrote a Porno - for the lolz and how not to write pornBritish Scandal - for bits of British history, great storytelling, and food for the brainYou can find Jo and Lani online at:Lani (@copper-dust): tumblr ; AO3Jo (@pebblysand): tumblr ; AO3If you have any feedback, suggestions, or if you want to be featured on the podcast, please feel free to let us know by PM-ing us, or sending us an ask!
The Fanfic Writers’ Craft is a podcast that discusses all things fanfiction with a focus on the art and science of writing for the enjoyment of fan communities. Every three weeks, Jo and Blayne (otherwise known in fandom as @pebblysand and @nargles15) sit down for a fun, multi-fandom, fanfic-related chat and delve into particular topics such as: the particularities of writing and reading fanfiction, monetisation, how to build a fanfiction plot, etc. Hope you enjoy!
You can find us and contact us at: https://thefanficwriterscraft.tumblr.com/
The Fanfic Writers' Craft is a podcast that discusses all things fan fiction with a focus on the art and science of writing for the enjoyment of fan communities. My name is Jo, aka Pebblysand, and I'll be your host for the next hour or so. My co host, Lani, writes online under the name copper_dust, you'll meet her shortly. In this episode, we talk about original characters in fan fiction, otherwise known as OCs. We discuss how we personally come up with them, how we name them, the purpose they can serve in fan fiction, and touch upon the rather controversial subject of self inserts, also called Mary Sues within the community. We talk about the differences between original fiction and fan fiction in terms of creating characters and about the different techniques writers can use to craft well rounded protagonists for their stories. But for now, buckle-up , get yourself a nice cup of tea, and welcome to the Fanfic Writers' Craft.
Jo:Hello, hello, and welcome to the Fanfic Writers' Craft. This is Jo. I hope you're all doing well. I'm here with Lani, and I'm so happy to be recording today.
Jo:It's been a while and I was away for the last couple of weekends going to Galway and Edinburgh so it's really nice to be back and chat about fanfic. Lani, how are you? What's been up?
Lani:So, I am doing good, although I am a little physically sick with a sore throat. I've also been away over the past week. I've been in Ottawa on a Grade 8 graduation trip, and I just got back yesterday evening. So I haven't been super online in the past week or so because it's been really busy. But I'm glad to get home and have some time to do writing and other things like that.
Jo:Yeah. I feel everyone's sick at the moment. Like, I had COVID last week as well, so it's just that time of the year. Before we start I just wanted to clarify something because we got a - well, *I* got a lot of messages about it.
Jo:So I know my accent sounds weird, so a lot of people are curious about it. I guess like a lot of the times I just keep it on the down low and I keep people guessing but this time I'm gonna explain it. So, I'm originally French but I studied English from a very young age. I was in bilingual school when I was a kid, so I was in English school basically but abroad. So that's where the low key English vibe comes from and then I moved to the US. I was studying in the US for a while and then I've been in Ireland for 6 years now. So it's kind of a blend of everywhere I've ever lived and that's why my accent sounds weird! But, thank you for all your kind comments and everything about it. It's been great to receive them and I thought it was a funny story to share.
Jo:So anyway, apart from that today we're going to talk about OCs, also known as original characters in fanfic. We had this episode idea a while back but we ended up bumping it up because someone on Tumblr suggested the topic and I thought it was a very interesting topic to discuss. So we're gonna dive into creating original characters, what we mean by original characters, what we think are the good and the bad stuff about it, and also any kind of discussion about Marie Sues and stuff. So I think it's gonna be really exciting. What are your initial thoughts about OCs, I suppose?
Lani:I think all characters that get written in a fan fiction are original even if they are 'copyrighted' because once you're starting to control a character and put dialogue in their mouth and control their actions, they don't do that all by themselves. You have to do it. So, I'm not really down with the idea of there being unoriginal characters because, they don't do anything until you make them do it. Even when you have a character that's been, like, pre established by the original author, they're becoming original by you adding life experiences that weren't originally in canon.
Jo:Yeah. I guess that's very true.
Jo:I think the first thing we can do is work to define what we mean by OCs.
Lani:I guess the traditional understanding is that in fan fiction there's two basic types of characters. There are characters who are named and known from canon where, you know, if you Google that name you'd get a 1000000 hits because it's well known from the canon series. And then there's characters that are completely made up by the author of that particular story. Their name is made up. Their back story, everything about them is made up even though they can exist inside the world of the story. For that individual character, if you looked up their name on Google, you would only get hits for that one particular fan fiction. So,that's kind of the traditional understanding, in a strictly denotative not connotative sense. I'm not adding any of the value judgments. But then, if you added what the connotations of OCs are, and what have a lot of people said about them, then I think you would get into the area of OCs oftentimes having a bad reputation, or being something where a person will decide not to read a story if they see OC in the tags. Or if, you know, they're somehow mentioned in the story description. A lot of people will be like, 'Nope. That's not for me.' And I think we can discuss, like, what's going on there. Why is why has that been the case?
Jo:To me, I think there's different, 'stages' of OCs. Either you're looking at complete OCs and that's, like, someone that's just not mentioned in canon at all, does not exist in canon at all, and someone that's just completely an integral part of the fan fiction. But I think there's also characters who are, I would say, 'relative' OCs. In the way that if you're gonna write a fic about Kingsley Shacklebolt in Harry Potter for instance: yes, he is mentioned in canon, and yes he has a few lines. We have a very general understanding of who he is within the series. But he doesn't really have a strong personality. We effectively don't know much about him, in fact, we know almost nothing about him. So if you're gonna write a fanfic about that character you're gonna have to do a lot of work in terms of character development to give the character a bit more flesh. I think that is also something that we can see as writing an OC: people doing that work with very tangential characters who are mentioned in canon, but we don't know that much about them.
Lani:Yes. I would agree with that and I like the example you gave of Kingsley Shacklebolt because I think he's a great example of someone in a gray area where he does have some dialogue and some action in canon. It's not that we have absolutely zero information about him, but we definitely don't have a well rounded depiction of, like, what is his family life? What is his childhood? What is he like in personal relationships? We don't know those things. We see a very limited aspect of who he is in canon, and he doesn't have a really close relationship with Harry. So we just don't know those things about him. I think there are some other characters where we certainly have a lot more to go on, and yet if you look at that character in a different life stage than what they're shown, then it becomes a little more original. So one example would be a character like Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter is like pretty well developed and we have many scenes where she has dialogue and we do see quite a bit of her personality.
Lani:But at the same time, a lot of the way we see her as like an older experienced authoritative teacher. But if you were to write a story about her from when she's 12 years old, she's not gonna be an authoritative teacher at that age. She's gonna come across a lot differently and there will be sort of an OC feeling because so much of her life, the setting of her life, her responsibilities, her roles, it's gonna be a lot different when you look at her in that way.
Jo:Yeah. I completely agree, and to give an example, I know no one has read that fic because it's a very niche fandom but I wrote a fic last summer about the show 'Spooks.' It's a British TV series that dates back - I think it aired from 2000 to 2010 or something. I would say it's Britain's version of 24, a version of the 2000s spy/terrorism vibe that you see in 24. Anyway, I wrote a fanfic that is part of my ROAR series about one of the kids of the characters in that show. Now, spoiler alert for anyone who's not watched Spooks: but everyone dies in it. Literally every major character dies apart from one. It kind of became a joke for anyone who watched it.
Jo:But anyway, so I wrote a fic from the point of view of one of the kids of the characters who died and I was exploring, you know, what impact would that have had on the child and like their kind of, trajectory in life and all that. And, like, in Spooks, we know the child exists, we've seen him in a couple of episodes, but he doesn't really have personality, he's just there for tragic effect when his parents are involved in dangerous situations, etc. And, to me, that was almost like writing an OC. Because, well, you write a fic about Wes Carter and it's like, okay: we know who his parents were, so that was kind of interesting to get that point of view and we do know his parents pretty well, but obviously we don't know him pretty well. So you're kind of doing that work of building someone out, using the rest of the world as a baseline. Taking inspiration from the rest of the world and the rest of canon, to create this character who exists within the world of canon, but who wasn't really developed in the show itself.
Lani:Yeah. And I think also as we're sort of radiating outward from a strictly canonical character to a really getting to be more original but maybe not a 100%. We have characters like I have a a long, long story that's basically about Hope Lupin who would be Remus's mother and she's not even named in canon. Like, we don't even know her name. I mean, it is referenced that he has parents, but I mean so does everyone.
Lani:I mean, like so everyone had someone who's their parents. But we we only know her name and a little bit about her from Pottermore, which is debatable about whether or not it's canon. But even then, we don't we don't really get to see her day to day or have any dialogue from her. So, that is really was like a lot of development of like who she is as a character who's almost original but not quite. And then radiating outward from that on the original on the sort of originality spectrum would be, like, her family members who I developed who are like completely original.
Lani:Like they're not named, referenced, alluded to, or anything in canon. Like I just made them up based on what would make sense for this character and what I wanted for the narrative. You know, like, any character in any show, it can be inferred that that person had great grandparents because everybody does. But but it's not like I think it's really pushing it to say, well, that's not an original character because that's a great grandparent of an original character, and we know from canon that, like, this person had a mother and father who themselves had a mother and father and so on.
Jo:Yeah. And I mean, I was saying to I was saying this to you before we started recording but I do think that even when you look at like secondary characters who do exist in canon there's like different stages of like how much work you have to do in terms of like character building. Like for me having written for instance I didn't really expect that to be true but when I was writing the 'Faults and False Manufacturing' which is like centred on Seamus, I realized that there's not that much uncanon about Seamus and if I compared it to the work that I did writing the Fleur fic, it was equally as interesting but I found that there was a lot more character building and a lot of like thinking, a lot more thinking that I had to do about like Seamus himself than I did about Fleur and I think they're both secondary characters. I don't think Fleur is like necessarily more mentioned than Seamus in the in the books, but it's just though it seems that she does have are a bit more important and bit more character building rather than Seamus apart from Order of the Phoenix when we do find out quite a bit about him, but apart from that there's not that much in canon.
Jo:So I think it also depends, even when you look at secondary characters, there's different degrees of how much work you have to do in terms of building the character, the characters themselves even even when they are mentioned in canon.
Lani:Yeah. Definitely. I I would agree with that as well. And, I think we also have to give a nod here to people who write AUs and how a character who's incredibly familiar and well developed in canon when once you're putting them into an alternate universe setting and giving them a different sort of backstory and history and sometimes a different relationship to the narrative, then they become a bit of an original character because you've taken away a lot of the defining things about that person that existed within canon. And you have to redefine their backstory and their role in society.
Lani:So for example, I'm writing an AU right now and it's my first sort of real AU rather than like I've worked with characters who are like barely named at all in canon but working in a different universe. You know, some of the relationships between the core characters are different relationships. So characters who canonically were the same age and would have been equals in my story are maybe a few years apart and, literally are not like, they're not equals because there's military rankings and, you know, some have to answer to others because they're of different ranks. Or, you know, I've even changed some core relationships in terms of brother and sister, mother and father where 2 people who were familiarly related in in a certain way in canon will be familiarly related in a different way in this new story. And of course, their back stories are different as well.
Lani:So then it gets into like, what about this person is staying the same as in the original story that maintains that that connection to canon which is important to me that if it's I'm using a named character from canon who's a well developed character in canon, there has to be some similarity or true connection that feels consistent. But then what about them is different? So for me, for example, when I was writing my sort of alternate universe version of Remus Lupin, You know, it's a non magical universe. So, like, he's not gonna be a werewolf. But then what what what does the werewolf thing become?
Lani:And so in this story, it becomes that, you know, he has this side of him which he mostly shows which is very kind and gentle and compassionate and non confrontational, but then he also has this side of him that will come out under situations of extreme duress which is, you know, terrifyingly violent and capable of doing like extraordinarily awful things to other human beings. And, you know, in his usual like it it gives him tremendous, pain and suffering in his sort of ordinary state to know, like, the things that he's done when he's been under terrible duress and committed some really awful, horrible actions. And so that's where the kind of the suffering piece and the guilt and the self loathing come in and also the duality of like what it means to be a werewolf is to be is to be 2 sided. Right? There's a Doctor.
Lani:Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing. So in that character it's like I've taken away that magic element of being a werewolf but the thing that that really matters is somebody who, you know, has a a really dark and horrible side to them that rarely comes out, but when it comes out it's it's terrifying. Who also, like, suffers terribly in some way connected to that dark side. And so that's, you know, something I I can't give away specifics because it would be spoiling the story, but that was one way that I handled, like, what about this person is the same even as they are fundamentally different at the same time.
Lani:Yeah. And I think, again, it really comes back to what the same time.
Jo:Yeah and I think again it really comes back to what we were discussing in the first episode of like, there was this cliche about how like fan fiction, you know, it's so easy because you don't have to do like a lot of character development and stuff and like that's not very true because if you're writing fan fiction most of the time you're gonna have to do some character work either, even if it's like the most simple story of like you're writing, I don't know, missing scene or whatever. If you want to write it, if you want to write like a good missing scene it's going to have to have like some sort of character element and like actually develop some sort of character evolution or else the missing scene doesn't have like a reason to exist. And so I think it's, you know, it's very interesting that there's this cliche about fan fiction because in my, in my experience, like yes, maybe world building is something that you have to do less at least if you're not writing AU, if you're like staying within canon, but in terms of character, I think you, you do a lot of the same work in fan fiction that you would do writing it original fiction anyway.
Lani:Yeah. I absolutely agree. And I would also point out that, like, there can be terrible fan fictions and there could be terrible pieces of original fiction. Anything can be done well or poorly. So there are some really poorly developed original characters in fan fiction, and there are some really poorly developed original characters in original fiction.
Lani:So I think it doesn't dictate whether the character will be well done or not. The difference is when you're working with a non original character in fan fiction there's certain there's a certain level of sympathy and love that you can expect from the reader towards the character where you don't necessarily have to build that sympathy because the that that character is already loved. So for example, if you show that character suffering, your reader will already hurt because they already have that empathy and care built up. Whereas with an original character, if you kill that character off but you never develop that character in the first place, like your reader's not gonna feel anything because that's like a stranger. Right?
Lani:Whereas you could have a a character in a fan fiction who never even shows up on screen and but their death is mentioned and the reader will feel sad because they do know that character just not from your story.
Jo:A 100%. And so I wonder, if you want to talk to, like, about a little bit how you come up with OCs and like how, like, how you build your characters because I know a lot of writers will have like character portraits or like sheets or whatever and they'll have like all these quirks and like personality questions and stuff And I was wondering if like that's the kind of thing that you do or or not at all or, you know, how do you come up with people like that?
Lani:I definitely don't sit down and, like, design a character. I'm someone who when it comes to original characters, they'll sort of appear in the story as the plot needs them. And very often, like, they develop very organically. I never sit down and, like, make a list of character traits or personality quirks or things like favorite color, favorite food, favorite whatever. That would only ever come up if it comes up in the story.
Lani:But, so like I'll have scenes where
Jo:Mhmm.
Lani:I haven't even decided on the character's name. Like I don't even know what they are aside from what their role contributing in that scene is and then like the last thing I would decide is their name. You know, like if I need a waitress in a scene, then I'll just be like, okay, we're gonna have a waitress and then maybe at some point in the scene that waitress who I thought was gonna be not that important will start getting into a discussion and I'll realize maybe this character is becoming kind of important. And that's when I'll start sort of developing them. But I I I don't like to plan characters in advance because I find that then you have all this stuff that you wanna fit in but doesn't even really fit.
Lani:So mainly, that's not really something that I would do because I find characters will just come to me really sort of spontaneously without planning in a way that like a plot is something that I have to sit down and think about in advance. And I also like the idea of when you first meet somebody, you don't know all these things about them because in real life, everybody when you first meet them is, you know, none of the none of these people are a main character in your life the first time you meet them unless it's like your newborn child. Right? And it's only as you get to know them that you would discover these other things about them anyways. So that's really the way I write.
Lani:It's it's very spontaneous. I know this this might not sound super helpful, but that's one of those areas where, to me, I'm absolutely like hands off in terms of planning. I had a character in one of my stories who I only found out that she was pregnant when she said she wasn't feeling well, and then it just kind of turned out that what she wasn't feeling well because she was pregnant. But, like, I, like, I didn't even know that that was the case. Like, I I I was as surprised as anyone else.
Lani:It's really hard to explain if you if you haven't written how stuff like that can happen. Like, it it it really it really does happen that these characters just kind of, like, create themselves.
Jo:And so I was wondering because you just, like, mentioned it really quickly. How'd you come up
Lani:have a name because they're from canon. Characters some characters don't need a name because they're really only instrumental, like a waitress, a ticket taker at the train station, and so on. Like, if those characters are people that your character wouldn't even learn their name, then they don't need a name. But then for a character who's important enough that they need a name, then I would be looking at things like what year were they born, what social class are they from. Like remember names are chosen by the parents not by the person themself.
Lani:So, you know, what kind of name would this person's parents have chosen? Not like what name would they have chosen for themselves unless they go by a nickname. In which case I'm thinking like what is the back story behind this person's nickname? So, for example I have a character in my story In Search of Mythical Kings who his mother was very uneducated and sort of low class but had sort of these grandiose unrealistic pretensions about it. And so when she was naming her children she gave them all these sort of like ridiculous names of like 10th century kings that are like mid medieval style language because, you know, she probably opened up some book randomly and was like, this this sounds like a really fancy name.
Lani:This is what, like, a rich person's name would be. This is this is like a smart person's name, but she really like has no context or idea of what these names are. And so the name she's chosen for this character is this like horrible, multisyllabic, Anglo unpronounceable name that, you know, he's completely embarrassed of and would never ever go by his first name ever. And usually, like, with his family he'll go by like a shorter nickname. But with everybody else he's met at school, he will just go by his last name because he's like absolutely humiliate humiliated about his first name.
Lani:Like, he'll never he'll never tell anyone his first name unless he's like forced to because he just finds the whole thing humiliating. So for that character's name, there's like a whole backstory behind like why does he have such a ridiculous stupid name, and that's and that leads into like developing him as a person because it is a dumb name, but there's a story behind it. For other characters they just have a name that would be sort of typical of when they were born and the social class that they're from and names that would have been popular at that time. And then for some characters depending on how important they are, you might want to give them a name where the meaning of the name has some significance to who they are. That being said I generally don't do as much of that.
Lani:If I'm writing a story that has a more sort of adult audience which is mainly what I do I usually don't choose a name that is like werewolf McWerewolf. Like I usually don't don't do that. I would I would show their personality in other ways. I I I prefer a character whose name is realistic for what sort of name their parents would have chosen. That being said, right now I'm writing a military story and a a lot of guys in the military would go by a nickname and not even use their first name or their last name.
Lani:And so for those nicknames there's usually a story behind the nickname of how they got it. So then when I'm thinking of that nickname I'm thinking firstly like is this nickname short enough that you could yell this person's name really quickly when you need them? Because if you're in combat you're not gonna yell out the sort of nickname that, like, racehorses get which are sometimes a full sentence. So it has to be short enough that you could, like, yell this person's name, in a moment and then it's like, is this a nickname that this character kind of gave himself or is this kind of a nickname that other people gave him that maybe is making fun of him a little bit, which does happen like the social status and the dominance hierarchy. You know, like a character who's nicknamed like Fatso or whatever, he probably didn't choose that nickname for himself.
Lani:Like, he was given that. But some some nicknames are more like, you know, that character definitely wants to think of themself that way. And then another thing with nicknames, and this is especially something that men do. I think it's it's not as much of a thing for women is that a character will have a nickname that means the opposite of what they are. So, like, a really tall character will be called, like, midget or something or a really dumb person would be called genius.
Lani:Like like this is something men do sometimes. Well, they'll give somebody the sort of like opposite nickname to what they are and it's done jokingly And then of course like in a military story a lot of nicknames will relate to like battle and ferociousness and kind of how men want to perceive themselves. So like I have a character whose nickname is gravedigger and, you know, that sort of thing which again, like it sounds cringe, but like if you actually look at the nicknames that have been, like, written on helmets that you'll see in real photos, they they did use nicknames like that.
Jo:Yeah. Yeah, I know I'm sure I, like for me the names kind of, so it kind of depends right? If it's like some very, like someone who's mentioned like a waitress or whatever who actually needs a name for x, for whatever reason, like a very minor character who needs a name. A lot of the times for Harry Potter I'll go, so there's this website, I can I'll link it in the show notes, but there's a website that's like random name generator or whatever and I find it really helpful because it comes with, it comes up with like the weirdest combinations of names and I think that like really fits way well sometimes within the world of Harry Potter because some of the names are like completely out there. And so I really like playing with that website when it's like, you know, some rendo in the oral office or like you know something like that.
Jo:Yeah. I'm kind of like really bad at like thinking of like funny names, so sometimes I'll use the website to kind of get ideas, but in terms of like major OCs, I don't know, the names just kind of come to me and once they come to me, I can't shake them off. Like I remember, so for anyone who's read castles, there's a character in there who's called Julia who's, she's like Harry's mentor in the oral department. She's like assigned to sort of train him and her name was Julia from the very moment I started writing that character and at first, I mean, if you've read 'Castles' and if you read like the ANs that I gave, like that I wrote for 'Castles', you'll know that she ended up being a very major character but she wasn't meant to be a major character at the start. And I, when I wrote, when I first wrote her, I was like, okay, her name is Julia.
Jo:And then I kind of came up with her being more important and her having a back story and her back story was that she was pureblood and she was Slytherin and I wanted her to be from Continental Europe but the more I thought about it the more I'm like, okay I can't really name her Julia because that's a very common name, like she's Italian and it's a very common Italian And I was like, you know, like most pureblood characters in Harry Potter have like these very sort of wizarding names, and so I was like I need to give her a different name and like for a very long time like I named her Hera and I made her Greek instead of Italian and because I wanted her to be from continental Europe but it wasn't like hard set on Italy at that point, and it just didn't work. Like for me it was like at the moment from the moment I had Julia in my head I changed her name a number of times but it just didn't work, and so I realized that the reason why she was Julia to me and like couldn't be anything else is that I was thinking of a particular person whose middle name is Julia in my kind of circle of friends, and I was kind of she's not really based on her, but it was kind of like who I was thinking of when I was writing Julia and also it's, like I kind of see it as like a very strong character name because to me it's related to like Julius Caesar and all that kind of heritage.
Jo:And so I was like, do you know what, I'm just gonna go with it' because I couldn't I couldn't pick something different. I think like for me personally, once a person, once a character has a name, they start acting like someone who has that name and then that's it, like I can't think of anything else. In terms of like coming up with OCs in general, I really do agree with the with what you said about them having a purpose. I think that is one of the major differences in what I think, you know, writing original fiction versus fan fiction is like for me when I write fan fiction, at least when I write OCs, they have a purpose. Now that doesn't mean that, like, I don't build a fully fledged character to fill that purpose and sometimes, like, characters will have like a huge back story that I made up in my head that never even gets mentioned in like in what I'm writing because it just never becomes relevant.
Jo:But like for me I just, yeah, like when I come up with, when I come up with characters, they have a single purpose, like Julia is Harry's mentor. Mia is like his girlfriend for, like, kind of yeah. I'll go with the word girlfriend, although that's debatable.
Lani:You'll be you'll be starting a family, a a fandom fire by by even even saying she's his girlfriend without providing context from your story.
Jo:So like so like I'll provide context. Bang and Jinny have, like, split up temporarily and he's seeing someone else, and so
Lani:So like calm down everyone who loves Ginny.
Jo:Yeah. No. Ginny is coming back. I'll say It's gonna be okay. I've said this before, she's coming back.
Jo:I'm writing it at the moment. I'm writing pass at the moment. She is coming back. But Mia and like people actually have been, have started telling me they like Mia, so I don't know, but anyway she like, so I'm, I'm coming up with like characters to fill that that purpose. Now that doesn't mean that they don't have a personality of their own and that doesn't mean that they don't have a backstory and that they don't have like something, you know, like a lot of personality and stuff, but that personality is there, is also there to, kind of, serve the story.
Jo:It's like they have a point and their personality is the way it is, as an element of plot as well, in terms of like having the main characters, whether it is Harry, whether it is someone else, react to them in that way. So I think that's kind of the way I'm, I'm seeing OCs in fan fiction is for me they have like a particular purpose unless I'm writing something like the Fleur fic or the, or the Seamus fic, in which case, like I'm in the, I'm like, I'm writing in the head within the POV of that character and therefore like, you know, their personality is the main thing about the story, but that's kind of a different a different topic, I think.
Lani:But I I do like the topic of how characters are named because I think it's not just about naming characters, but when you talk about how you name someone, it also ends up being really about how you create them in general. Like, it feeds back into, you know, some people will spend hours and hours pouring over different names and and looking at the name origin and the name meaning before they choose a name that fits exactly. And for me usually, like, I'll look a list look at a list of names that would have been popular in their place of birth and their birth year and be like, I'm I'm waiting until one sort of seems right and I don't know what it is, but I'll know it when I see it. And then when I see it, I'm like, yeah. I know that's the one and that's kind of it.
Lani:Or if, you know, if it's a nickname then I'll have to sort of put a little more thought because I can't just choose from a list. I have to make it up myself. But I know usually when I say okay that name just fits. I know know I know it's the one. There's usually like a reason for that name that like a series of associations I have with that name that match what I want for that character.
Lani:And I think also like it's okay to when you begin an OC, it's okay to have them start off as sort of a stock character, a flat character, an archetype. And then gradually you develop them into their originality. Because the reality is like when we first meet people, our first impression of them is very 2 dimensional and flat. You know, you have a snap judgment about who a person is. And then as you get to know them, it it it develops.
Lani:But when you first meet them, there is that level of snap judgment where you think you know who they are based on, you know, their appearance and the first three things you learn about them.
Jo:Yeah. I agree. And I think, like, look, if you're writing, like if you're trying to build an OCE because you need 1 or because you want to and making like an entire, you know, like sheet and like answering questions about them. If that is helpful to you then go on and do it, you know, like, but I think it's not essential. Like I've written so, I've like I've read so many books about like or, you know, articles because I don't really read books about writing, but like articles about writing being like oh you need to like know their favourite colour' and stuff and it's like if you're not into it.
Lani:No you don't.
Jo:If you're not into that you don't have to do it. Like because cause a lot of people are like, oh, but like if if you don't do that your characters will not be relatable and like you won't know them very well. I hardly again, like, going back to what we were discussing in episode 2, which is, like, me not being able to, like, see see things in my head. I don't know what most of my characters you if that kind of work doesn't work for you. If it works for you then great like if it helps you come up with personality traits, if it helps you come up with things like that like that's great but it doesn't it's not necessary.
Jo:Okay, so this is Jo from the future now. I wouldn't necessarily do this unless it was like some a point that I really thought was important, but I just want to add to what I just said in the episode itself that I think there's a little bit of confusion between backstory and character building and personality. You don't need a backstory to build personality elements and I think one of the mistakes that I've seen done in fan fiction a lot and something that I forgot to mention in the episode itself is that people get so attached to their characters backstory that they forget how their character's personality is affected by that backstory. Backstory is important but personality is more important. You can have a character who doesn't have that much of a back story but who has a strong personality and I think a lot of beginner authors especially, and I think I was definitely on that board when I was younger, I'm trying to come up with backstory to fill a void because you're trying to find personality traits.
Jo:Traits, but it's not because like your father died when you were young or whatever that that means that that conditions your entire personality. And a 100 people will react to the same event a 100 different ways. And so you need to find, if you're going to find a backstory, if you're going to find like particular events that are gonna relate to your character, you not only need to find out those events but most importantly, what, how your character is going to react to those events and I think that is a very important relationship and something that should not be overlooked. Now we get back to the core of the episode. What I think, has been helpful to me at least and I'll link that in the show notes as well is I don't know if you're familiar with the Sorting Hat Shafts, website, but it's basically a website where, like, a couple of Harry Potter fans have, like, done a really, really detailed breakdown of Griffin, like, of how Hogwarts houses and like in different personality traits and like the way it's organised and like you have like primary houses and secondary houses and things like that and I find reading those or like, you know, empty, like, what is it, MTBI or whatever.
Jo:I found like reading those personality things sometimes helpful to kind of just get my mind thinking about stuff, like I won't really follow anything that's on there and I don't really believe or even, like, if you're into, like, I don't know, astrology or whatever, it's not necessarily that you have to follow that kind of like very, like strict personality types or whatever, but I think it's, it might be helpful in terms of like thinking of character traits or thinking of like aspects of personalities that you want to explore, so it's not necessarily like you have to do like, you have to be like, okay, my character is like, I don't even know these types, but like is ESTB or whatever and it has to have like all these traits, but I find it helpful to kind of get my mind thinking about like certain things or certain character traits that I might want to explore or certain themes that I want to explore as well. So I find those kinds of things helpful and maybe more helpful than just like filling out a sheet with like different questions about my character.
Lani:Yeah. And I would also say that like sometimes the kinds of character sheets that go around will focus on things about characters that are not very much not really important like what is their favorite drink or what is their favorite color or what eye color do they have. When the reality is you could read a whole book and never find out someone's eye color and still have that character be a very interesting character. What what I like to think about often is like what disability does your character have? Like what can't your character do?
Lani:Or what do they do very poorly that most people can do? Or what physical limitations does their body have? So for example, I'm running a story right now where a character is left handed And, like, why does that matter that he's left handed? Well, because when you're when you're learning riflery, that matters. It matters which which eye is your dominant eye and which hand is your dominant hand.
Lani:And, you know, it it it means he has, like, much poorer marksmanship than other people because, you know, like, he's he's been trained to shoot with his right hand, but he's he's left eyed. So, like, it's it's a problem. It doesn't match. And it gives him very poor marksmanship which obviously like impacts his survival and his usefulness in combat. So like that even though like left handedness is not a disability in general, you know, in certain parts of life it will affect your life significantly.
Lani:You know another character, I had no idea that he was going to have a speech impediment until I started writing dialogue for him and it started showing up. And I was like, what's this? And I realized he had a speech impediment, but then him having a speech impediment and having a lisp made me think about this is probably gonna affect his social standing. Like he's probably lower on the social hierarchy. People are gonna make fun of him for it.
Lani:This is not a community of, like, anti bullying and safe space. Right? Like the this is like an ultra masculine competitive racist and so on space. Like nobody is gonna be like respectful or anything. And then like how is that gonna affect his personality in the ways that he has to, like, overcompensate to seem masculine and tough because he has this speech impediment.
Lani:So I would definitely say, like, what what are the limitations on your character's body and and their disabilities? Or it could be like an intellectual or like a personality disorder or a mental illness or whatever. And and how does that how are they compensating for that or how is that affecting their life? You know, when I think about myself like as a real person and I think about the things that I've chosen to do with my life because there are certain things that I know that I can't do or I can't take or I can't do for a sustained period of time, like that's significantly affected my, my career and the choices I've made for my career because a lot of my decisions were about like I know I can't do this and I know I can't do that and I probably can't handle this kind of thing and and what's left for me? Or even things like it can be something really simple.
Lani:Like, if your character cannot hold it in, like if your character needs to go to the bathroom very often and they have a poor, poor, you know, bladder control, especially if you have a character who's pregnant, Like how does that impact literally the places that they can go and, you know, then what kind of places are they going where they know they're gonna easily find a bathroom there? Like it could be the simplest thing, but like when it's your life, those little things you have can impact you a lot. And the same thing with small disabilities like color blindness or having no sense of smell or things like that, which is called anosmia or in the case of Joe, like, being unable to visualize anything which probably impacted your performance in math class and, like, geometry.
Jo:100%. You know what? Definitely. And also in arts class because I'm not like, I couldn't I couldn't come up with things. And I think, like going on to that as well, I think when you're writing the good thing about OCs and I think, you know, that is something that is interesting in fan fiction is, you know, a lot of the times if you're writing fan fiction you might be writing fan fiction about a canon that happened, like that was published like 50 50 years ago or even a 100 years ago.
Jo:And obviously having OCs can also be a good way to kind of put a little bit of, I I don't want to say, but a little bit of diversity or a little bit of like open mindedness as well into a canon that's a bit old. Like you can have characters now, like, with writing fan fiction and stuff that's kind of the fun thing is that you can expand on canon, and so I think like for instance, you know, in Harry Potter a lot of people have OCs to kind of have like a bit more diversity in Harry Potter or a little bit of a little bit more of like, and I think that is also an interesting aspect and I think that's why OCs are important is that you can do, they also allow you to sort of expand on canon in the same way that like expanding the universe, expanding the magic, expanding, you're just putting more things and I think one of those things in terms of of like creating OCs and like having more diversity and adding OCs to add diversity to canon is actually a very good and positive thing I think we're going to talk about like OC kind of stigma in a minute, but I think that to me that's how, that's why I also see having OCs in fan fiction as like a positive thing is that I think it allows us to expand on canon on certain stuff that maybe wasn't there in, you know, in the original work or in the original dress.
Lani:Yeah. Definitely. And I think also it doesn't mean you sat down and made a list in advance of like these are all the diversity things you need in your story. It's just that if that's how you think, it will naturally find its way into your story.
Jo:Yeah. And I think, like, if you're Yeah. If you if that's an important thing for you, then it's just naturally coming into your story and it brings, it adds like more, I don't know it, it just adds more to your story and it just adds more spirit and more realism as well to your story, so I think I think that's a really good thing. Now going on to, so the more like spicy conversation of OC stigma,
Lani:okay,
Jo:I guess like, so we got, we got a question by someone on tumblr which I thought was very good about, like, the reason why we're starting like to to talk about OCs today is, you know, the dreaded sort of like Mary Sue and like self insert kind of thing and the sort of bad rep that it gave to OCs and fan fiction. So I was wondering if you wanted to talk about that a little bit.
Lani:Yeah. I mean, I think this is one of those things where I've seen it change over the course of my, like, I don't know. What is it? Like, 19 years in Internet fandom or some obscene number of years where I feel like this was much worse in the early 2000 and it's definitely changed a lot. I mean, a lot of things have changed.
Lani:I mean, one of the big things is kind of the attitude towards diversity and like fan fiction creating diversity instead of viewing fan fiction as like bad because a lot of women write it. Definitely, like, in the early 2000, there was a lot of hate for OCs, but especially female original characters Because there was an assumption that, original characters were like author inserts that basically were a version of the author usually, put into a story to be like a love interest to that person's favorite character. And it is true that, especially in the early 2000s, like, a lot of these characters were just really, like, did not have any depth or interesting like, they were just, like, perfect. They had no flaws. They had nothing about them that was interesting or engaging or relatable.
Lani:And for that reason, people would see original character and they'd go, nope. I'm not reading that because they didn't wanna read about, like, another girl with, like, sparkling green eyes and wavy hair whose, like, only character trait was being clumsy.
Jo:Yeah.
Lani:You know, like the Bella Swan kind of character. And I I think I don't see a whole lot of that anymore. I'm sure it's out there and maybe I'm just not finding it. But definitely, like, any character that lacks personality flaws, that lacks any physical flaws, any character who's perfect, is a boring character and is not interesting. Now obviously, some characters we don't get to know their interiority.
Lani:So if your if your main characters are looking at a woman on the cover of a fashion magazine and she looks perfect and then we never get to know her. Like, that's not really a character, so it's okay that we never got to know her flaws because she's not actually important to the story. I'm talking about main important characters who are a big part of the story. I'm talking about main important characters who are a big part of the story and who don't develop flaws. Like, that's a problem.
Lani:In the same way that a story without conflict is a problem is a sorry, is a problem. I think people have got to get over this idea that every original character is a, like, an author insert or kind of a Mary Sue which is the old fandom name for like a perfect female, really unengaging character. Like, again, it is something that especially I think younger and less experienced writers will do and you will see it. But, I think the majority of original characters exist because the more you push a story outside of the original boundaries and setting of canon, the more it becomes logically necessary that you must populate the world with other individuals besides those that were mentioned in canon.
Jo:I completely agree. I think and I think that's very true. Like, I, I understand the reluctance of certain people and especially back in the day to like read OCs because of what you're saying, but at the same time unless you're writing like a very, very short one shot it's impossible to have a world with just the characters in canon. Like it's, you need other people to populate that world, that world because you're not rewriting, you're not rewriting the same show, you're not rewriting the same books. So from that point on you need other people, even if they're minor, even because your characters are going to evolve in a world that is populated by other people and so you need, you need those people to exist.
Jo:I think so on Tumblr I like follow a number of blogs, of like, that are like fan blogs from Peaky Blinders and I've noticed, I don't know if that exists in Potter. I haven't seen it that much, but in Peaky Blinders this, the genre of whatever, like whatever character with like reader inserts is kind of popular. So like, you know, they're your name kind of thing.
Lani:Oh yeah I've seen that.
Jo:And I think that is a little bit of the Mary Sue thing coming back but like in a different way of like now I haven't really read those so in fairness maybe I'm wrong and I'm sure there's like really good thicks in that genre but like from what I'm seeing at the moment and what's popping up on my dash that kind of looks like the modern sort of Mary Sue concept of like just like reader inserts. Do you know?
Lani:Yeah. I've seen a few of those come up on my dashboard and it seems like the main difference between the sort of a story told in 2nd person where the main character is a u rather than an I, just for people who are wondering what we're talking about. A lot of those stories will be like one person asks for a specific request to a writer and then the writer will fulfill that request Yeah. Which is different from the early 2000s where the person who wanted it will be the person who wrote it. That's true.
Lani:And it was no it wasn't like one person responding to another person's request.
Jo:Yeah.
Lani:But but otherwise and then the other thing was, like, in in these stories, they're kind of for everyone in the sense that they don't describe the main character because it just says you, and then the reader is allowed to fill it in with whoever they are. Whereas, like
Jo:It's like sometimes they're quite they're quite specific as well because, like, sometimes it's like you have long hair and blue eyes or whatever and it's like that's not really like and I think again like you're kind of surfacing the line of like having a full a fully fledged character there because if you give them, like, specific traits and specific, like, personalities and stuff, at that point, you're just doing a narrate like, a you narrator.
Lani:I think when I think about that type of writing, the whole, like, POV, you and so and so are doing this. I think it comes a little bit from like video games, like, where a video game will have, like, a sort of predeveloped storyline that the, company will have made up and yet you, the purchaser, get to sort of design your character with various stats and a different appearance and you would get to name your character. And yet regardless, they're they're still gonna end up falling into the story line that the, like, game developers have planned. So I I think it's a little bit video game ish in that sense. Like, it's it seems less inspired by, like, the way books read than the way, like, online games or video games are or like a choose your own adventure story, especially because people are requesting these from the writer and specifying what they want, which again gets into the kind of choose your own ending thing.
Lani:I agree that they definitely, like I don't read these because I don't think they would appeal to me. Yeah. And it does seem like many of them are maybe not aiming for any, like, an artistic, like a feeling of like artistic accomplishment rather than a sort of like being gratifying in other ways which are fine and I don't judge but I don't think they would appeal to me. I
Jo:feel. I was wondering as well, because I think that was, that was a point that was brought up by the person who messaged us on Tumblr incalculable power who said that like even, even if it is a self insert, like even if you are writing about a character that is very much like you, That is very common in literature in general, like that is, you know, that is something and it doesn't seem to be frowned upon as much as it is in fan fiction. And I think, like, a good example that, like, she's, she said it's not, but I don't know if you've read, if anyone listening has read Sally Rooney's latest book Beautiful World Where Are You? But there is, there is a character in there who is like a very successful world famous Irish author who is overwhelmed by her own fame and like she has like a lot of like she has a lot of similarities with the author herself and like obviously Sally Rooney has said that it's not a self insert but.
Lani:It is. There is
Jo:an argument to be made that it is or at least that it's, I think the way I saw it at least was like a self critique more than a self insert of like her own, her own critique of her own relationship to fate, to fame and like her own views on herself. So I thought that was kind of, it's kind of meta in a way. But I think, you know, that's still a published book that got a lot of success and, like, a lot of people have commented on it but, you know, it is still something that people read and that's still and it's not necessarily as frowned upon as it would be in fan fiction. Do you have thoughts about that?
Lani:Yeah. So definitely plenty of authors write thinly veiled versions of themselves. I mean, that's what a romane clef is. It's a story that is thinly veiled version of the the life of the real person. I mean and I I've made this point online before.
Lani:But again, like, Harper Lee in writing To Kill A Mockingbird, that is a very thinly veiled version of her own life. And her own father was a lawyer, raising his 2 daughters in the deep south and so on. So the issue with a character based on yourself is not that you shouldn't have a character based on yourself. It's that if you are committing to doing that, you need to be able to honestly look at your own flaws and defects and be willing to be self critical in the narrative by showing your flaws. And that if you're not ready to do that, you shouldn't write yourself in as a as a character.
Lani:So that's what I would say to anyone who's thinking of inserting themselves into a story. I would say go ahead. But if you are feeling like too much shame to represent yourself in a way that includes your defects. And if you're, you know, unwilling to write, like, characters who dislike you or think you're annoying or whatever, maybe you're not ready to be writing yourself into a story.
Jo:Yeah. I agree. I also think though I will say the opposite is also true. So you can't go into it doing entirely self bashing as well because, so that would be the main criticism that I actually had against Sally Rooney's book is that I felt like she was just bashing herself the entire time and she was just being like oh famous people are so annoying they're complaining about fame' and there was like, I mean I've talked about it on Tumblr and like some people disagree with me and that's fine, like we all have different opinions, but the way I read that character in her book was like literally everything that she hates about herself was in that character and it felt like that character didn't really have like any good sides. It was just literally just a negative version of herself and I think that's the problem with, like, a lot of, like, the criticism that we had about Marie Susan stuff is that it needs it just needs to be a real person.
Jo:It just needs to be like a real balanced individual with like good and bad sides, and I think if you're only writing someone who's ideal and pretty and like great and like their only flaw is like clumsiness or whatever, that's not going to be that's not going to make people happy and that's not going to make people read your stuff because they're going to think that's annoying and that's an annoying self insert. But the opposite is also true of like if you have a character who's like very much like you and you're just like hammering on its flaws all the time without having anything to say of it or redeem it then that's also gonna impact your audience and your readership and stuff and that's also gonna be negative. So I think you just need if you're gonna write a character about yourself, you just need to like take a step back and make it into a fully fledged individual whatever way you wanna look at it.
Lani:I I agree with that. And I would also say I would probably never directly write myself into a story unless it was nonfiction and and, like, actually about me in my real life. That having said, there's always elements of me in my main characters because, you know, I I have to have something in them that I can relate to. So I can say what would make sense to do in this situation or how would you feel if this happened to you. There there's, like, a spectrum of how similar character is to you, but, I mean, every every character has something of the author in them, and and it's okay to say that.
Jo:Yeah. And I think, like, you know, you need exactly what you're saying about, like, you need something to relate to because for me, for instance, like, looking back at, like, for for, for example 'suntonkodigayu' which is the Fleur thing, me and Fleur are very different people, like we're very different people, but one thing I could relate to and one thing I wanted to write about, and one thing I thought was interesting to write about her is her experience as like a French person living in an English speaking country and particularly in England for her, in Ireland for me. That's an that's an experience that I've had and that I can relate to and that I can like, kind of build upon and that would that would have been my relationship with that fic. Now our personalities and the way we deal with it are completely different, but that is a shared experience. And so I think it's like, you know, you're always gonna put something or you're always going to be drawn even to stories that are interesting to you either because of personality traits or because of experience that you want to write about.
Jo:So it's like, even if you don't have the same personality as that character, it could be just an experience of like, oh, I have experienced this, but I would like to write it from like a different point of view than mine, for instance.
Lani:Mhmm. And I think the more the setting of the story is alien to you in the sense that the setting is very different from whatever the world of your personal experience is, the more you need something that tethers the story to something very relatable to you so so that you have a place to start. And also if you're writing a character who lives in a very different world than your reader does, you need to give them something to hold on to so that they can begin to relate. So, for example, like, for my, war story, like, I knew that, you know, the modern reader who's probably someone around my age reading this story is going to initially be very disturbed and uncomfortable with the amount of, like, just openly racist and everythingist language, misogynistic language, sexist language that would have been realistically present in any sort of military unit during the Vietnam War. Like, they're they're immediately gonna be sort of off put and not feeling a whole lot of sympathy for these characters because of the way they talk and the way they act.
Lani:And so in order to kind of realistically give my readers some space to get into these characters who are doing things that you are immediately gonna find off putting is my my main character is somebody who comes from, you know, like, a much more upper class and educated and a little bit like champagne socialist of a background. So that even though it's true that he grew he grew up in the 19 fifties sixties and certainly didn't get the same kind of education that like a millennial would have, he's somebody who, you know, upon coming to Vietnam, his immediate sense is these people are so tasteless and vulgar. I can't believe they talk this way. They're, you know, they're so tacky. Like, they're they're I hate these people.
Lani:They're tasteless. They they have no idea how stupid they sound. And so his initial reaction to these other characters is probably pretty similar to what you as a modern reader would would feel hearing them throw these racial slurs around like all the time. You would feel that sort of revulsion and like I don't like these people and then sort of gradually he gets to know them and and comes to develop more empathy for them roughly at the same time as like the reader would, but I wanted to provide a bit of a softer landing pad for the reader who is walking into a story where a modern reader who's like my age or younger is immediately going to be sort of revolted and go like, I hate these people. I can't stand them.
Lani:I can't I can't relate to them. And for that reason, I had this character who like comes from a very different, much more spoiled, upper class, highly educated sort of New York City liberal background, so that when he first gets there, he's like, these people make my skin crawl. I hate them, and then gradually, you know. So it it creates a little bit more of a softer landing pad for the reader. And also because I think it's more relatable to the reader who is going to encounter things like very hard physical labor and very brutal circumstances and go, I can't take this.
Lani:I would die. Like, I can't, I can't live this way. This would kill me. I can't get up at this time in the morning. I can't sleep in a hole in the ground.
Lani:And of course, this character being very wealthy and having never worked a manual labor job for a day in his life is is also his first reaction is like, this is gonna kill me. I can't get through even one day of this, which I think is what most most people my age would read this and go, like, I would die. I can't even do this for one day. And then, of course, gradually, he acclimates a little bit more at sort of the pace of the reader. Because if I, because if I told a story from the perspective of maybe a not very highly educated, like, working class kid from, like, rural America in the sixties, he's gonna get to Vietnam and go, these attitudes are pretty realistic.
Lani:I, I hate these people too. They're all communists. They're scum. The work, you know, it's hard work, but, like, that's what the army is and, like, I don't know. I I didn't find boot camp that hard.
Lani:Like
Jo:Yeah.
Lani:I heard interviews with veterans who said, yeah, I mean, they yelled at you a lot in boot camp, but it wasn't that hard. Like I worked on a farm my whole life, so like basic training wasn't that hard. But I know that like the modern reader is gonna hear about basic training and go, that's the hardest thing. I can't do that. I would rather die.
Lani:So it's it's just not gonna be something where they can make it relatable if they're Introductory character is someone who goes like, oh, this isn't as bad as I thought.
Jo:Yeah. No. Definitely. Okay well this is a very interesting discussion I hope you guys have learned something about like writing OC's and developing characters. So to wrap up, do you have any recommendations this week to give us?
Lani:I'm sort of still reading books that I had started a little bit earlier, so I probably don't have any new, reading recommendations. And, I'm I'm kind of I'm gonna be starting straight the next season of Stranger Things, but I've I really haven't done a ton of, like, media consumption this week, so maybe not for me.
Jo:Okay. One thing I want to recommend, so 2 things, but they're kind of related. And I don't know, are you familiar with the podcast my Dad Wrote A Porno'? No. So it's a very, it's a very funny podcast so if anyone is like in the mood for laughs this, so it's a British podcast this guy it's like exactly what it says on the tin.
Jo:So this guy's father wrote a pornographic novel, but it's just really really bad like it's like bad erotica fan fiction. Yeah. It is just so bad that it is hilarious and so he and his friends are kind of reading along and making comments as they go along and it's just it is one of the funniest podcasts I have ever listened to. But I do think it teaches you a lot about what not to do in fiction. So I think I think it's a good lesson for anyone who's kind of looking for both a laugh but also like kind of something of like you know what what not to do and and kind of an analysis of what not to do when you're writing it when you're writing a a story.
Jo:And kind of on a related thing, one of the hosts of that podcast, Alice Levine, has a different podcast that is called British scandal, which I will also link. And basically it's like a retelling of some of the most like wildest scandals in British history, and it's just really well done and the way they tell the stories it's kind of scripted, but also acted. It's kind of a hybrid between different things and at the end of the season, they interview 1 of the people who was involved in the scandal or like a journalist who covered it or something and it's very well done and I have learned a lot and I think also narratively, it's interesting to see how they do it and how they tell these stories, which are real, but also, you know, they're kind of making it up as they go along and making dialogue and they're kind of acting out certain things. And I thought, it's a very, it's a very interesting one. I'm currently listening to the one on the Sex Pistols and it's a very good it's a very very good show so I would definitely recommend it.
Jo:So that's it for me. Lanny, where can we find you online?
Lani:So on a 3 you can find me at copper_dust and on Tumblr you can find me at copper hyphendust.tumbler.com.
Jo:Great. And I'm Jo AKA pebblesand on Tumblr and a03 and you can find the podcast at the fanficwriterscraft.tumbler.com. If you have any feedback or any suggestions for topics for episodes as I said this was suggested by someone who listens to us so if you have any suggestions or feedback our Ask Box is open for that. Bye.