A Question: Are Original Characters ASB?

I would very like to know this, given that the course for my Victory at the Marne TL depends on it. I do plan to introduce some original characters later on (30s-40s era). They won't dominate the TL, except for 1 character in particular (who, I'm not gonna say), but I was just wondering if the very presence of OCs is ASB.

So, are original characters ASB?
 
Not in the slightest. Still, I prefer in general to avoid the John Doe effect in TLs, but there are no reasons other than literary ones to start introducing OCs into a timeline or Alt history work.
 
Not really, especially depending on the POD. If your POD is in WW1 as it seems then it's very reasonable to assume many people would survive who didn't OTL and vice versa. John Doe probably just got shot OTL.

Original characters tend to be required the further you get from POD in any case, butterflies pretty much demand it, especially when you screw around with major wars.
 
I'd say sort of. The reason being that you have negative evidence (that is, less-than-zero evidence) that said persons could exist, whereas ones from our universe are proven to exist. Which means their names could just as likely exists, though in an altered genome and personality, birthdate and so on.
 
I don't consider them ASB at all. They exist because it is alternate history, and history was perverted to include them.

I try to keep my OCs limited to minor characters unless they are born after the PoD. However, I do occasionally break my rule. I once submitted a story to a writing competition where the President of the USA in 1862 is Mark Thompson. If you never heard of him, it is because he didn't exist.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Well, having Jim Johnson become president 3 days after Kennedy's death is ASB. But as stated before, after the PoD many alt. personalities will be born, and many people that already were there will make different career choices and take different decisions how to live their lives.
 
Not ASB in the slightest. The further the timeline goes beyond the POD, the less ASB it becomes, and the more ASB it becomes not to.

I would say:

- The only reason an OC should be involved in the POD is if the POD involves an OTL unknown becoming known for some reason (assassinating someone who wasn't assassinated in OTL, for example).

- If the gender of a child of OTL parents who were already adults at the POD is the same as in OTL, they'll probably have the same name. (I.e.: a TL with a 1916 POD will probably see Joseph Kennedy Sr.'s next-born son named John, even if he isn't born until, say, 1919 rather than 1917 and has a personality radically different from OTL JFK.)

- Beyond that, though... people will die in wars that survived OTL, people will survive wars that died OTL, people will marry different people, people will make different career decisions, etc., etc. - it's not at all a problem to have an OC in 1950 in a reasonably prominent position in a TL whose POD was 1930.
 

Thande

Donor
You need to be clear what you mean.

If you mean original characters years after the POD, then obviously not: it's including characters identical to OTL ones that is ASB.

If you mean including original characters during the POD time (say, inventing the name of a policeman who rushes to help John F. Kennedy recover from a nonfatal graze of a bullet across his shoulder in Dallas) then that is technically not cricket but I think most people consider it a necessary evil, just because it would be impossible to know everything and everyone that was really around at the time.
 
Pretty much agree with Thande

1. If you change history, then as things go along people who died will still be living, and people who were never born will now be born

2. BUT you cannot know who would be the right person in the former of those categories, ie if you are looking for someone to rise from the ranks to do a Hitler for Britain in the 1920s, then you COULD go and look up some guys who were killed, but IMHO it would be MORE weird to use them for this AH role than to simply invent someone.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Thande

Donor
if you are looking for someone to rise from the ranks to do a Hitler for Britain in the 1920s, then you COULD go and look up some guys who were killed, but IMHO it would be MORE weird to use them for this AH role than to simply invent someone.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Yeah, with a real person you could potentially come across someone who knows a lot more about them who would argue they would never do what you're having them do, whereas a fictional character avoids that problem.
 
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