original character

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English[edit]

Noun[edit]

original character (plural original characters)

  1. (fandom slang) A fictional character created by an author or artist, usually one from a fanwork that is not present in the official canon.
    • 2013, Peter Berg, "Hobbyhorsing", in Anne Jamison, Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World, BenBella Books (2013), →ISBN, unnumbered pages:
      I currently have a document of My Little Pony story ideas that is, at the time of this writing, over 250 pages in length. It consists of over 400 premises for stories categorized with more than thirty-five different color-coded tags, a timelime of events spanning over 400,000 years and fourteen pages, over 49,000 words of headcanon, and forty-one original characters.
    • 2014, Karen Hellekson, “Fan fiction”, in Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson, Benjamin J. Robertson, editors, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, The Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 189:
      The genre of the Mary Sue similarly deals with subjectivity: in this often-derided genre, an impossibly beautiful original character, an avatar of the author herself, inserts herself into the narrative and saves the day.
    • 2014, Constance Penley, “Future Men”, in Karen Hellekson, Kristina Busse, editors, The Fan Fiction Studies Reader, University of Iowa Press, →ISBN, page 178:
      What must be remembered also is the K/Sers' penchant for "making do": when asked why they do not create original characters who could be women as well as men, they most often respond that they are just "working with what's out there."
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see original,‎ character.

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