Subject: Personally...
Author:
Posted on: 2012-07-19 22:09:00 UTC
I much prefer making the characters up myself. Others have different opinions, and certainly a lot of people have a lot of fun the other way, but I find I'm most comfortable with characters made entirely from scratch.
And if their fictionalized backstory is a badfic, that's perfectly legal as well! And can add some fun characterization, too.
Is it considered bad form to create a Sue/Stu from an imaginary badfic to serve as an agent's background? Normally I'd follow the "If you need to ask if it's bad, it probably is" rule, but I really can't tell for this. Please help me.
As long as they're not a completely overblown Sue/Stu, I don't see an issue with it. Several written agents come from that background - among them Jill Greenleaf, Kelvin Talathion and Dafydd Illian. Just don't give your new agent ridiculous superpowers - or if their origins demand it, slap some strict limitations or disadvantages on them to balance things out. It's no fun if they can wander through the fic busting everything with a wave of their hand; they should still have to struggle/ get stressed/run into actual difficulty.
I was intending to take your advice even before you gave it, but I didn't know if they came from real fics or not. If I need to find a Stu to make my character work, I might just have to scream. I have an idea for an agent that, admittedly, took a while to dream up, but the cost/benefit of having to sift through such great masses of badfic before I even have permissions to make it worthwhile is... daunting.
I much prefer making the characters up myself. Others have different opinions, and certainly a lot of people have a lot of fun the other way, but I find I'm most comfortable with characters made entirely from scratch.
And if their fictionalized backstory is a badfic, that's perfectly legal as well! And can add some fun characterization, too.