OC reviews And Tips (Closed)

Tip 4 // Writing My Hero Academia OCs

I am here! Here with tips on writing my hero academia characters that is. If you couldn't tell, this chapter will be a little more light-hearted since I'm not dealing with serious issues like a couple of my previous chapters.

As most, if you know, bnha is one of the biggest anime series out there at the moment, and honestly, can you blame people for liking it? A colourful cast of characters with an engaging and varied plot, what else could you want?

Bnha has probably one of the most moldable universes I've seen in a piece of media, which gives you the chance to come up with a lot of unique and interesting concepts that could potentially add to the universe. Even the creator himself did this with his spinoff series "vigilantes", which follows a completely different cast to the main canon of the show

This is why I'm sick of seeing the same bread and butter characters in this fanbase. Yes, your character getting into U.A would be great for them, but they don't have to. Your character doesn't have to be a hero or even a villain, there's a full universe of possibilities.

Even if you decide that you really want your character to go to U.A, that's fine too, there are plenty of classes at U.A and you can make the character's past interesting and unique (this doesn't necessarily mean tragic).

Whilst I don't really recommend making a character a part of class 1A, I don't have anything against it except that it stops how flexible you can be with your character. This is coming from someone who wrote a 50 chapter oc fanfic where my character was in class 1A; I ended up deleting it because I was incredibly unhappy with it.

For the sake of using an example: I'm a lot happier with my character now, but that's because her arc doesn't revolve around being a hero or being in a relationship with a canon character. It revolves around the science and the bizarre nature of a group of students quirks at a specialised science school. My character doesn't interact with the canon cast at any point in her story (I'm not actually writing her story, I just have it planned), but that doesn't mean that yours doesn't have to.

I'm not going to talk too much about OC x Canon here because I plan to do a chapter on it but I still feel like it's important for me to talk about, considering the universe we're discussing. Shipping is a big thing in bnha, whether it's canon or ocs. You can ship your character with whoever you want, I don't care, as long as it works.

Bending a canon character to fit a character is all too common in this fanbase. If your character doesn't fit with the canon one you like, ship them with someone else or don't ship them at all. Twisting a canon characters personality takes away what we loved about them in the first place, so let's talk about Bakugou.

Ah yes, Katsuki Bakugou, you either love him or you hate him. Personally, I like Bakugou and if you don't then that's fine because that's how opinions work. I've picked Bakugou because he has one of the most distinguished personalities in the series and the one that I see portrayed the least accurately. Bakugou is angry. He's mean, self-centred and strong, aka, he's good on his own. All too often it's written that he falls for the oc at first sight and acts softer with them. That's not how he works. In order for Bakugou to be softer with someone, the character needs to do what Kirishima did, and leach onto him against his will. Or be someone kind of rival turned love interest. A lot of people like to make it so the canon is attracted to their character first, but when dealing with characters like Bakugou, it's going to have to be the other way around to portray it in a believable manner.

I guess a similar relationship can be portrayed with Todoroki or even Tamaki, since they aren't exactly the most social couple of guys. More social characters are easier to write for and you can make more cutesy relationships that way, but the same applies, try to keep their character as accurate to the series as possible because then the impact of the relationship is a lot stronger.

On the topic of character relationships, don't make a character related to canon, please. It limits how creative you can be and often comes across as Marysuish, especially when it's a main character.

So going back to basic characters, let's talk about quirks. Obviously, quirks are a massive part if mha and it is possible to be quirkless. However, unless you're going to do something unique (which means not copying Midoriya's character arc), I don't recommend designing a quirkless character because you have a lot more freedom designing quirks.

When designing a quirk, never use one that already exists in the show. It's unoriginal and gives you an easy way out, which you don't want to do with character writing.

There are some quirks that seem incredibly common in the fanbase, such as, the quirk called dragon where the character just has dragon powers. Or, a quirk to do with seduction.

There are so many possibilities with this universe and everybody seems to want to do the same thing. Whilst mha has set rules, those rules themselves make it possible for so much to happen. You can make your character look however you want and get away with it and give them some kind of really cool power. Yet, it's actually kinda rare.

Anyway, sorry if this is incoherent nonsense, I've had to keep coming back to it because I've been caught up in college work. But, if you're planning in designing a mha character, then I hope this was somewhat useful.

*These tips are things I've thought of after spending nearly five years on this site and been reading nearly my whole life. If you disagree with anything I've said, that is completely fine and you obviously don't have to follow anything I've said*