20 credit hour semesters are not good for the speed of active progress on personal projects, but I've got that One Meta Thing I Have Yet to Name rotating in my mind for a bit, and I have Thoughts.

Anyways. It's weirdly hard to accurately get across what I mean when I talk about this thing, but I think the difference between canon and fanon Benrey HLVRAI really encapsulates it by virtue of being such a stark contrast. I'd be hard pressed to find a better example of how fandoms change characters to slot more cleanly into that common perception. Benrey's in such a unique position; he's an inhuman villain canonically "lusting over" the protagonist the whole time, he has a lot of interactions with other characters, a blank slate for a backstory, a lot of very memorable and dramatic moments. It would be difficult to deliberately create a character better fit to becoming the fandom's favorite. Also, by design he is completely fucking nonsensical and absurd. He is tied so, so tightly to Scorpy's sense of humor. iirc Holly talked during an interview for a podcast about how Benrey makes a more terrifying (and hilarious) villain because of that complete sense of like... you absolutely cannot understand him, you absolutely cannot reason with him, he is talking about how "SONY CEO JACK TRETTON HIRED... a Nintendo CEO Reggie and they built a big... BOMB" and he is going to kill you.

Everybody rewrites Benrey. I'd argue that you kind of HAVE TO, if you want to write anything remotely serious with a character like that. It's very commonly noticeable with the other characters too; HLVRAI has a story, but moment-to-moment, commitment to the bit and "what would be the funniest thing to say or do here" takes priority over developing a character that works in more serious contexts. (Side note and clarification, this isn't a criticism of HLVRAI, it's a lot of fun, it's just another way that the source material and fandom find themselves at serious odds, and if I had the time and energy I would be writing out another long post about the tone side of how fandom changes things.) Some characters hew more closely to canon characterization in fanfiction- Gordon as the straight man translates easily, and Dr. Coomer plays ball with tone shifts very well- and the author's own balance of interest in the source material vs the fandom plays a big role as well. But I have never, ever seen a Benrey I could mistake for the canonical Benrey. (Not that the canonical Benrey could really WORK in a text medium, imo. Live improv in GMod is his natural environment and specialized niche.)

Which brings me back to my own project, where the characters are the fanon versions of a nonexistent children's cartoon being eventually exposed to the nature of their reality. Fanon interpretations are obviously something I'm thinking a lot about as I'm developing characters, both in terms of general inspiration and as research for making them really click as something you would see scrolling through your dashboard. But as wonderful of an example Benrey is, that very same extreme absurdism makes him difficult as a model for the changes people make to make unique characters fit a mold, because that would imply a world where something like THIS

could be the main villain's speech from a children's cartoon.

actually that fucking rules