30 Days Of Fan Fiction: Day 8

8 – Do you write OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they're not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.

I enjoy writing OCs, and I don't write Mary Sues. It's not actually that hard.

My OCs are either minor characters or they're the only characters as I explore some other part of the universe, and they're fun to write. I think the Mary Sue accusation comes up when an original female character is romantically linked to a canon character, or even is just in the spotlight whether or not she's improbably beautiful and talented.

I was going to introduce a major OFC back when I started writing fanfic (a rebel very much lacking in stunning looks) but when I saw Mary Sue accusations about various fics flying about on a mailing list, I replaced her with a canon character. It actually worked out well because she took the story in an interesting new direction.

All the same, the whole Mary Sue thing annoys me greatly. I've read a fair few real ones, but not all OFCs are MSs by any means even though I've actually seen exactly that accusation made. Recently I heard that someone who wrote an original story about an older woman who was a survivor of a bad marriage got her work on AO3 tagged with "Mary Sue". [Edit] I've been told there may have been a little justification for that one.

Enough already.

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