[dkellis]

Originally Posted by Kha

Oh HELL no.

It's just me and a few others who try every means to dodge, bribe, kill just can't resist the draw of it. Don't let our likings put you off, just shoot. We all want the OC thread to be as varied as ever, otherwise it would either be a sentai Metal Hero or a Mobilesuit creation thread.

Lingo for one is the best example of a non-mecha OCer. See why he's policing things here? And there's Tk, our dear (gruff) Sergeant Major bent on instilling discipline in our cadres, and Aaron doing his part on holding the fort. All of them aren't that mechy, so feel free to post urs. We might not get the refs, but it'll still be fun to read.

Besides, the less we get the refs, the more it'll look original and stand out, ne?

As for me, I just ripoff so much its my sad trademark now...

So bottomline: JUST SHOOT IT!

To add on to this, I've mentioned before (early on in the thread's life; I think it's among my first posts in here, actually) that it would be best if the references are kept as independent as possible from the action. In other words, don't assume that your readers know what the reference is.

Spoiler for Warning: incoming rant.:

For a lot of the OCs and scenarios introduced in this thread, I have the odd and probably unenviable position of Not Getting It. The characters have some strangely-named super moves which they shout out and seems to be kind of flashy, and the thread goes wild with how "hot-blooded" or "awesome" it is, and I'm just sitting here completely confused by all the reactions. This may be aggravated by the large fonts sometimes used, which I always associate in my head as someone screaming right in my face, with the result that I'm feeling like I've been shouted at continuously for a significant period of time, and my ears are ringing despite not actually having heard anything as such.

Now, this is not saying that references are Bad. Off the top of my head, I have stuff from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (possibly the most recognizable for people in this thread, since it's the one I've pushed the most), Lucky Star, the Marathon series of games, the System Shock games, Slayers, Ranma 1/2, Revolutionary Girl Utena, the Discworld books, the new World of Darkness systems (primarily Mage: The Awakening and Changeling: The Lost), ReBoot, the City of Heroes MMORPG...

An advantage I've had with all this is that apart from maybe The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Lucky Star, I'm assuming that nobody else will have heard of whatever I'm drawing inspiration from, and so I try to make it my own as much as possible, such that the reader does not have to have seen whatever it is that special move came from in order to appreciate why it is special.

Therefore, I can make the characters like someone else from an established series, but with their own quirks and flair. Ivey is like Konata from Lucky Star, but she isn't Konata with a name change. Reiz is like Mikuru from MoHS, but she has her own personality that diverges from Mikuru's. (For one thing, Reiz has a spine, and has been known to lose her temper.)

References are fun, but they should not be important enough to take over a significant plot point. A throwaway line or two is fine, but if you turn it into a major aspect of the story, please provide enough context for the rest of us to understand.

tl;dr: References should be references. Crossovers should be crossovers. Neither are bad, but the two are not the same thing.

As for the mecha-references thing, I'm not a mecha anime fan, and in fact I don't really like mecha anime. My favourite mecha anime would probably be Magic Knight Rayearth, and that's about it.