have you thought about your ocs for your favorite games and anime completely changing the canon narrative because of the "butterfly effect?"
like… the idea that if a time traveler does a single insignificant thing, but it snowballs into a complete change of history because of it, what would an oc do? a time traveler is a brief moment, a non-canon character is a constant in that world, a whole person that can have different says in every canon scenario. it would not make sense for a whole person to have less influence than whatever a time traveler does in a whim sounds silly, no?
but it's clearly a risky choice, so i can see why people tend to seperate oc story from the main plot—so that they won't be perceived as cringe. BUT LIKE LOGICALLY?? NARRATIVELY EVEN—!?!?
one can say "remove [character] from the story and it would not change a thing" as criticism, BUT IF IT'S OC, IT'S SUDDENLY 50/50?? okay i should give the benefit of the doubt so i dont accuse anyone since i haven't consumed that much oc media for a long time, so i might be wrong entirely about this… (what do the general people think about ocs anyways??)
sigh, im yapping again, sorry. CRK and HSR oc had completely became brain worms. i feel like im going crazy by how much those oc could narratively change the story oh my god… this is such a mess…
I'm SO glad you brought this up because I think about this SO MUCH whenever I write stuff for my ocs.
When I was making my jjk oc insert fic, I ran into a huge issue that my oc would basically change the entire plot because I accidentally made her too op just because I wanted to try writing a power I've never done before.
I managed to balance her better in other fandoms where I nerfed her so that the story would still have stakes.
Though, I have seen a few people who say that they believe oc fics should at least have a different plot compared to canon because otherwise, they'd just watch or read the source material - which I do think makes sense since you want to see how the character can change the universe around them, whether it's a big change or a small one.
As for the whole "cringe" aspect, it may be cliche to say but learning to write for yourself and prioritising your own satisfaction really is the key. The type of people who would cringe at something like an oc centric story likely wouldn't be reading one in the first place unless they had nothing better to do.
It's difficult and it took me years to achieve but it's really worth it.