… feel free to look away.

Rabbit Heart had a lot of OCs. Like, a lot of them. Like “I started making a list but then it got too long so I gave up” a lot. And I know it’s a bit… “not done” in fanfic, but I have to confess I kinda, um. Well. I kinda like OCs when they’re used in a certain context.

One of the blessings and curses of writing fanfic is dealing with the audience familiarity. Like, on the one hand, it’s a handy author plot/characterisation shortcut. AU fics do this especially well, with the DAverse’s prime example being (obviously) Coffee, Black. When we read that story, we know the second we see Sebastian, see Seamus, see Hawke’s “Dragon-Lady” landlady, see that his rivals in the barista contest are from a cafe called “Java Shock”… as soon as we see all of these things we know. We know Sebastian is an entitled, indecisive priss who tries to hide his jerkass past behind a jerkass religious facade. We know Seamus is a bit of a wannabe activist wet blanket who otherwise means well but may lead to trouble. We know Hawke will win the showdown against the representative of Java Shock.

So this is how you work the familiarity angle in a fanfic. Characters in fanfic are like comfortable old shoes (or, alternately, that itchy sweater at the back of your cupboard you know not to wear). One of the biggest hurdles in writing original fic is getting your audience to care about your characters. In fanfic, that pressure is largely off, and you can focus your writerly talents on other fun things.

Except… what if you don’t want your canon characters to be familiar? What if you want to show them as alien, strange, dangerous?

This is when it’s time to bring in an OC.

An OC is the audience being exposed to the canon characters the first time. An OC is a segment of the fandom’s prejudices, their perspective. One of the narrative tricks in DA2 fandom is that, as players of the game, we’ve sort of “grown up” into the characters. We’ve seen Hawke as a clueless youth; the way Varric chafes under the yoke of being a young brother; Fenris’ apparent love of cards; the pain underneath Isabela’s grin; Anders’ deep and abiding love of cats; Merril and her dirty jokes; Aveline the awkward romantic. All humanising quirks. So it’s easy to forget just how terrifying and powerful these people actually are. Abominations and maleficarum and living magical weapons are legitimately terrifying. Aveline is captain of the city guard; a position of immense political and military power. Varric is like the bastard love child of Warren Buffet and Blackwater. Isabela a currently-dethroned, seafaring Tony Montana.

Think of how many abominations and blood mages and living weapons and corrupt city officials and crime lords you’ve had to fight as enemies and bosses. And, in DA2, these are your friends. You, Hawke, one-wo/man army and almost-maybe leader of an entire city-state.

Now, think about how that all looks from the outside.

That’s where OCs are fun. It’s also why Rabbit Heart has so many; part of writing a Justice!Anders-focused story is trying to show Anders as someone who is both fragile and good-hearted… but still terrifying and dangerous. He’s a serious ball of Issues, and RH is an untangling fic rather than a knot-cutting fic; learning to manage, not finding a miraculous cure. Hence all the outside POVs. Plus it gives the audience that little sense of I-know-something-you-don’t-know, and I do loves me an unreliable narrator.

But there’s a second point to the OCs in RH, and that’s that the each represent, at least in the case of the major OCs, attitudes in the fandom.

Carling is your standard Team Mages fangirl, ready and on-hand to do whatever it takes to get a pat on the head and a cookie for being a Good Ally to the cause. She’s over-zealous and she’s in over her head and out of her depth, and she screws up repeatedly because of it (with Elias, with Morgan’s crew, with Anders). She thinks Anders is a saint and Justice a hero; any evidence to the contrary is treated with anger or disbelief, then promptly discarded.

Carling is also a legitimately innocent and good-hearted person — moreso than any other RH character, OC or not — and in some senses can afford to be because of her age (it’s not outright stated, but she’s supposed to be about 14, give-or-take). She’s also the explicit self-insert expy of who I suspect are the majority of the fic’s fans, including yours truly. Her family life is a deliberate deconstruction/reversal of the Disney Dead Mothers trope; her mum was a badass and her dad was… well, we have no idea. Not important enough to mention in the story in any capacity whatsoever, apart from the subtle-as-a-fireball implication that he might be Anders. I mean, he’s not… unless you want him to be, I guess. She’s your expy and all.

You know how it is. Allegorical, or whatever.

Then there’s Nerys, the other half of the Team Mages fandom segment. Carling supports the cause as an ally out of an naive belief that the world should be fair. Nerys, on the other hand, has experienced the oppression of the Circles directly. She’s been hurt and, underneath her innocent and innocuous facade, she wants to see her tormentors hurt in return. She wants them to suffer. If Carling is justice, then Nerys is vengeance, and that makes her quite a dark character.

Nerys represents microaggressions, and how they build and build over time. She’s a little older than Carling, somewhere around 17 or 18, and her innocence — and self-esteem — has long died the death of a thousand cuts. To her, Anders is a martyr and Vengeance a weapon to wield against those she loathes. She’s your expy, too. The one you don’t necessarily want to admit to having.

Elias is the expy of Team Grey Wardens. Comfortable in the status quo, and not quite comprehending about why the mages can’t just settle down and stop killing people all the damn time. It’s not coincidental that he’s also the youngest, at around 12. Elias wants to be The Hero and he wants his hero-story to be simple; fight the bad guys, get the love interest. He’s the expy of the segment of fandom who prefers DA:O, who doesn’t like the way DA2’s narrative doesn’t play directly into old-fashioned male power fantasies (though that’s not the way he’d express it, of course). Elias thinks Anders, no matter what skin he’s in, is a monster and a betrayer and a murderer and can’t understand why anyone would think otherwise. He’s a good kid, but he’s angry. One day, he might even work out what he’s angry at, exactly.

So Elias will probably grow up, especially with more time spent with Carling and Nerys, but he’ll never grow out of wanting to be a Warden. Of wanting to fit life into simple litle boxes of heroes and villains, no matter the evidence that things are more complicated that that. Mostly he’s just stuck in the wrong genre.

Finally, Penrod is from the well-intentioned faction of Team Templar. He doesn’t hate mages and he’s not a theocratic zealot. But he doesn’t understand magic and that makes him afraid of it, and the only way he knows how to express that fear is through control. He’s the Ser Cullen — while Cullen himself is busy off in the background — and he’s both of the Ser Carvers. He thinks he’s fair, that he’s even-handed, but he’s never been the victim of his own brand of oppression-with-a-smile, either. The perpetrator of well-intentioned microaggressions, he’s the sworn enemy of The Nerys. Penrod wants Anders to be a Good Boy, a good Healer, and wishes Justice would just go away and that mages would stop being so angry all the time. The Circle’s not so bad. I mean, he lives there too, right? He doesn’t like to admit to the dark side of his own chosen world-view, even when it’s hurting the one he loves. Penrod is an audience expy as well, though probably not for anyone who’s particularly fond of RH…

So there you have it; the four main POV OC’s in Rabbit Heart, and the “point” of all of them. There are a lot of other ones: Poppy and Urien have a high-school-bully-and-victim thing going on. Poppy isn’t a bad girl, just a product of a bad environment, and she’s already starting to grow out of it (mostly off-page, since this isn’t Rabbit Heart High). Tansy is just there to get confused with Poppy for my own petty lulz (hah!). Gethin is the father figure for Carling, and a sort of majordomo to Hawke; he handles a lot of day-to-day Pit business when Hawke’s busy off having Melodrama. Mistress Ena is the Wynne expy, a walking mouthpiece for internalised oppression. Delyth is to Fenris as Nerys is to Anders; she’ll be a hellion, one day. Blustery Moustache Man who — despite having shown up twice, still doesn’t have a name — is the more aggressive version of Mistress Ena, another mage on Team Templar. Abelard and Morgan are more templars in the Cullen mould, well-meaning and honourable, but still part of the problem; their inaction leading to the deaths during Ser Lander’s ill-fated escape attempt. Tobias is the victim trapped inside; his entire existence at the mercy of the whim of his oppressor, unable to even articulate why that might be a problem. Galla and the people of Pliska are the pragmatic proletariat, more interested in actions than ideologies, and fickle in political allegiance. Kale and Sabas are the couple who trusted a corrupt authority figure and paid for it in blood. Verina and Aelia more good-hearted members of a privilege class, blissfully unaware of the blood at their door until it’s far too late.

Then the villains of the piece. So far we’ve had two-and-a-bit, and the main theme of both of them has been hypocrisy and power: Mother Eulogia, who punished an entire town for her own sins. Knight-Commander Renard, who’s willing to delve into the deepest atrocities for what he sees as the greatest good of all. Both are heavy on the religious zealotry; part of that is the setting… but a lot of it is my own bias, too. (Ah, the conceits of being an author!) Harva was a more straightforward threat; a heartless mercenary, ironically more Elias’ kind of villain. She would’ve worked for Hawke just as easily as Renard.

The story still has one Big Bad to go; they were set-up very, very early on, but I suspect most people won’t remember where. And no, it’s not more of the Chantry (shock!).

… but that’s a topic for another day.