Out of Character

" 6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description." -- Mark Twain, Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

Out of Character, or OOC, means exactly what it sounds like: characters not acting like themselves. Some examples of this are quite patently easy to spot: for instance, if Legolas is a painfully cutesy trainwreck of a child, or Harry Potter is an emotionally four years old transvestite schoolgirl. More concerning are the more subtle changes to characters by the author. To some degree, this is unavoidable: even the best fanfiction writers can't replicate the characters exactly, although its a trap many less experienced writers fall into. What exactly constitutes being out of character is also up to opinion.

More often than not, characters acting contrary to their normal natures is due to a Mary Sue warping the canon. The 'Sue's Lust Object often suffers the worst, losing all of their faults and receiving major boosts to their abilities like some ungodly variation on Chuck Norris though it can happen to everyone. Arwen, for some reason, often becomes obsessed with doing the 'Sue's hair, and Boromir frequently becomes a misogynist or a rapist.

Some fanwriters insist that it is their right to warp characters OOC, on the grounds that it's their story and they can do what they wish with the characters. This is ignoring that what they're writing is fanfiction; it isn't really their story or their characters. There are also some who honestly don't realize that they're making the characters act OOC.