original character

Noun

original character (plural original characters)

1. (slang) A fictional character created by an author or artist, usually one from a fanwork that is not present in the official canon.
   • I currently have a document of My Little Pony story ideas that is, at the time of this writing, over 250 pages in length. It consists of over 400 premises for stories categorized with more than thirty-five different color-coded tags, a timelime of events spanning over 400,000 years and fourteen...2013, Peter Berg, "Hobbyhorsing", in Anne Jamison, Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World, BenBella Books (2013), unnumbered pages
   • The genre of the Mary Sue similarly deals with subjectivity: in this often-derided genre, an impossibly beautiful original character, an avatar of the author herself, inserts herself into the narrative and saves the day.2014, Karen Hellekson, “Fan fiction”, in Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson, Benjamin J. Robertson, editors, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, The Johns Hopkins University Press, →ISBN, page 189

   Synonyms:

   OC

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see original, character.