i was curious about your opinion of writing characters like,,, with a different character arc? like, a sort of canon divergence where certain characters end up developing different opinions than they do in canon? like, just an example: someone writing quinn realizing the severe downfalls of the empire (you know, mass propaganda, fascism, slavery, etc.) and moving away from that? or lana being more rigid in their opinions than just following an ls!outlander without question?
i am 100% supportive of writing characters with growth arcs (both towards and away from the ideals of the player and or player character) and of writing them with different outcomes than we have in canon - to use the example of lana you mentioned, she and outlander!eirn butt heads much more in my writing than they do ingame, because eirn is an ls/disillusioned sith who wants nothing further to do with the empire, and lana is... well, lana.
personally, i try to write characters as true to themselves, or at least, my conception and understanding of them, which means inevitably my depiction will be different to canon because bioware a. have limited resources with which to do their exposition (see also: much of my frustration with lana being an exposition bot at the cost of her characterisation) and b. caters expressly to a player power fantasy (chuck has said as much on livestreams), so major npcs are unlikely to complain much about their actions (and those that do are frequently murderable, as of kotfetet - see: senya, koth, indo, atrius, etc...)
(similarly, i tend to hc and write lana as being more manipulative and controlling than a lot of fandom write/hc her as, which has caught me flak from lana fans in the past but to me,feels truer to her personality, especially as it is shown in sor, than the characterisation she gets in some parts of being completely benevolent and selfless)
this isn’t to say i feel that characters should be static or stagnant - sometimes people don’t change, this much is true, and going through a period of trial and doubling down on one’s previous beliefs is both an incredibly human trait and a completely valid character arc. but even that is a growth of a kind, because the character in question has had their beliefs or stances challenged and come away with more conviction in them.
but i am also okay with and (try to write) character growth and change from npcs even in directions that are canon divergent, but... within that framework of ‘doesn’t fundamentally contradict or betray the characterisation’. i will admit that it is something i struggle with, in part because longfic and i are hated nemeses and in part just because i focus far more on my ocs. at the very least, i try to work out where a character would (imo) reasonably have come to, given the events and circumstances that they have been through and the people they have been around.
so for a concise example: under the right circumstances, i could buy quinn having an arc where he comes to the conclusion that there are things about the empire that need changing. however, there is not a circumstance on this green earth where i could buy quinn not just leaving the empire but fighting against it for the republic.
similarly, i could buy an arc where (for example) kira carsen comes to the conclusion that the jedi are not For Her and she leaves to find her own path. however, given her personality and her history, i don’t see any reasonable path to her rejoining the empire and or the sith, never mind fighting against the republic and or jedi.
so like. ultimately, i don’t have a problem with canon divergence when it comes to people writing npcs, not least because.. i do it myself [shrug emoji]
my only sticking point is when people paste ‘improved’ or noncanon traits onto characters - quinn is a great example - without actually showing them developing those traits or behaviours, and defending this as ‘character growth’. if you don’t show the character growing (or having grown), it’s not growth, it’s a whitewash. there’s quinn fic all over the place which has him being Best Pals with vette or mysteriously anti-slavery (in all its forms, not just his ‘these people have no standards’ from rishi) etc without bothering to show how he got from the canon starting point to the divergent fic characterisation, or to show him dealing with more insidious internalised prejudices and beliefs - he just gets dubbed ‘non problematic’ at some point and thereafter is a Good Bean who says and does Nothing Bad.
(and then there are people who just straight up ‘nah i’m just going to remove all his Problematic traits or rewrite his Problematic decisions to be justifiable because i’m an adult and i do what i want’, which... okay, but at that point, he basically turns into an oc with a canon character’s name, so [shrug emoji] all people show when they do that is that they don’t like anything about the actual character or dynamics, just the aesthetics)
(these aren’t problems unique to quinn, ofc, but quinn fandom’s whitewashing of him and his less than stellar attributes is something i’ve butted heads with people over in the past)
but like. fundamentally, people will always write whatever they want, and as a random asshole on the internet, i neither have nor want much control over that. i find people who turn lana into the sort of person who moons over LSV jedi knights or who rewrite pierce into a cuddly supportive big brother to be exasperating but ultimately i can’t stop them from doing so, so [shrug emoji]
...anyway wow this got long sorry D: i rambled
