On the 'original story-fication' of fanfiction.
I've been thinking a lot again recently about that post I've reblogged a couple times at this point about sanding the original names off and just turning a fanfic into an original story, and how sometimes, something can be lost in the process, eg. a meet cute story just having a big hairy guy who shows up sometimes for no reason, because he was originally Chewbacca in the Star Wars fanfic this original story started out as. Seeing as how I myself am working on an original story where many of the characters just so happened to have started out as AU/fanfic characters, I felt like putting in my two cents on this process, because I do definitely feel like there are pros and cons that come with the process of OC-ifying your AU/fanfic characters.
I will state for the record, though, that I understand that my case might be a little different, as for one thing, my OCs in my original story, Oasis To Oakwood Creek, were actually based off multiple characters from several different AUs--AHIT, FNAF, and BATIM, and I've decided to at least keep the first two around (Grace, if you end up reading this post, thanks again for inspiring me. You're incredibly awesome :) ). However long I actually end up keeping the original AUs around and roleplaying them, making art for them, etc. I don't actually know, but if nothing else, it will give me something to do when I'm not working on my books, so I've made up my mind that I'm not quitting any time soon :P
Now then, that being said, seeing as how my original story is basically a multicrossover fanfic with how many of the characters started out as my versions of characters from my various AUs, this does allow me to do things, and have them interact in, ways that I couldn't before, due to the nature of my specific AUs. 'Mustache Girl' and 'Bow Kid' are now sisters, due to having both been adopted by the same person (who is 'Sammy Lawrence' from my BATIM AU). 'Bendy' and 'Hat Kid' can explore a science fantasy world while looking for the former's kid sister, who was also the ghost kid possessing Foxy in my FNAF AU once upon a time.
And many of them are now also directly or indirectly related to my old webcomic OCs. Because why not? :P
However, there are also things from my original AU that I feel can't work in my original story--not because I doubt my ability as a writer, but because I feel like they probably wouldn't work within the context of the story, at least not without a LOT of tweaking.
I'm VERY proud of myself for the ideas I came up with for my versions of Hat Kid and Snatcher in my AHIT AU--i.e. having the former's species adapt to whatever environment they grew up in, and as such having Hatty herself adapt to Subcon Forest, and develop spooky, somewhat vampiric features from living there, and having the latter go from just being a 'normal' ghost to a big furry noodle as he got more and more corrupted. I LOVE these ideas that I came up with to fit the characters in my version of the story.
However, I just don't feel like things like that could plausibly fit into my original story. I do have ideas for the OCs I based off those two, but I'm not going to act like I'm not a little sad that I can't use the ideas I came up with for their original AU counterparts in OTOC, at least not without retooling them, and even then, it likely wouldn't feel the same.
TBH, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this whole thing, like I said, I guess I just wanted to put in my own two cents when it comes to ascended fanfiction.