Your Cliché TMNT Fanfiction

Female OCs - Why They Happen So Dammed Much.

If you've read any TMNT fanfictions, or any fanfictions in general, you may notice one thing that a lot of them have. Female OCs. In fact, it's pretty hard to find a fic based around a male OC. Why is this happening?

I see two main reasons why female OC outnumber male OCs - The author's of the fanfiction(s) personal experiences and gender equality in stories. There can be plenty of other reasons (heterosexual love story, a character based off a character from a different franchise, etc.), but I'll really only be focusing on the two first mentioned for the sake of making sure this chapter isn't too long.

The first reason (as mentioned above) is having a character based off the author's personal experiences. And before you assume I mean self-insert characters, no, I'm talking about OCs who are different characters than their author who may just share some experiences. Like, for example, the character Jack from 'My Camouflage is Orange', one of my favorite fanfictions (it's on fanfiction.net if you want to check it out). Jack is an ex-marine who deals with PTSD, just like her author, TheIncredibleDancingBetty. A personal experience that a character can stem from can be anything from a bad relationship to being in the school track team to, well, anything! Even being female!

That's one of the reasons why I have a lot more well-developed female OCs than male - I have more experiences relating to femininity than to masculinity, so it's more natural for me to write from a girl's perspective. This is the case for a lot of authors, not just fanfiction authors, and it makes sense that would be the reason why there are so many female OCs - most fanfiction authors are female. Sure, there are quite a few guys who write fanfiction out there, but the majority of us are female.

The other reason I'd think that there are more female characters than male is gender equality. There are very few named female characters in TMNT. There's April, Karai, Irma, Tang Shen, and Renet. Two of those are basically one shot characters, and another is a robot, so there's only two named, constantly reoccurring female characters. And damn if they're not good ones! But there are tons of male characters. I'd list them, but it would make this chapter too long. I know that the Nickelodeon TMNT is an adaptation and all, but adaptations can add characters as long as the characters added are good! I can think of maybe three female characters within preexisting cannon they could add, and out of them, I only want one. But anyways, this is another reason why there are so many female OCs!

The author of a fanfic wants to add a contrasting character to the mix, and chooses a female character because of how many male characters there are in the show. And sadly, it's become quite ironic to do that. It can even have the opposite of the intended affect.

With so many bad female OCs out there, hell, even just female OCs in general, a fanfiction becomes a little less special by having one. It's stupid, but it's just the way it is. Most shows have more male characters then female ones.

So, this was my reasoning why female OCs are more popular than male ones. Maybe I was right. Maybe I was completely wrong. Whichever one it was, I hope I brought a little more insight to your life.