Section Eight
Oh, Mary, you’re so GREAT!
We wanna be JUST LIKE YOU—and we ARE!!
Fanon Characters
When an author
forges into the world of fanfic, they are very lucky in that the world in which
they are playing is rich, well established, and peopled with a host of colorful
characters. However, one can, at
times, only do so much with what is available, and so it is up to them to
create a few new characters of their own, besides their main creation. This is perfectly legal, even
acceptable, especially if your main character is not always a part of the
action that J.K. has written.
However, Mary
Sue authors even manage to pervert this acceptable device. Since they just LOVE their character,
think she is sooooo cool and the greatest thing since peanut butter and jelly,
they decide to create ten more JUST LIKE HER!!! (Although, of course, none of them will actually surpass
their main character in anything—just everyone else.)
Talk about
pain. This is just too much. So go through the following
questions—it might, at times, even be necessary for you to run a relatively
minor character through the wringer and tally up his/her points—there will be a
special section in scoring devoted to minor characters. One Sue is bad enough. Please don’t torture us with more.
1.
Does your character have any siblings? (+25)
Siblings
aren’t so bad. A lot of folks have
them. They sometimes just kinda
happen. It’s normal. It’s natural. And quite acceptable.
Slightly LESS normal, but still quite feasible, is a family full of one
sex and only one of the other.
Look at Ginny Weasley.
However, this is also a common device used to call attention to—you
guessed it—how unique and special your character is. Be careful.
2.
Does your character have a twin? (+25)
Again. Twins, in our opinion, are cool. They are also, as stated before,
normal, natural, and HAPPEN—although they are not as normal as the regular
kind. But, you may have noticed,
most twins look alike. Not always,
although usually if they don’t, they’re boy/girl. Unfortunately, having a set of twins who don’t look alike is
a double-whammy of startling uniqueness in your character and also an
often-used Mary Sue point. And
having an evil twin is no good, as what you wind up with is usually a cliché,
an Evil Mary Sue, and/or a Scary Sue.
So, if your character IS a person with an evil twin, you are advised to
keep that in mind and take your character’s sibling to Section Nine immediately.
3.
Are your character’s siblings based
on your actual siblings or the sibling that you’ve always wanted? (+1000)
Well, it’s a
Fanon Sue/Stu. No other way to put
it. They’re simply insertions, and
we’ve discussed how bad those are.
As much as we all want to, we cannot play in the HP universe—it’s
fictional.
4.
Do any of your character’s siblings
score above 5000 points if a major character or 1000 points if a minor
character when run through this test? (+100)
This happens a
lot. You write one Sue, you write
another. And, oddly enough, while
Mary Sue invariably gets along just swimmingly with all the canon characters,
she is highly territorial and very rarely gets along with a member of her own
species—meaning, another Sue. You
will almost always wind up with a war in your fic, or if not that, you’ll wind
up with something even worse—a NAUSEATINGLY CLOYING dissertation on “how
wonderful it is to be sisters,” and “how we’re never jealous of each other because
we’re BOTH OH-SO GREAT.” When two
Sues are in the same fic and they don’t fight, it’s disgusting. At least keep it to one, if you must.
5.
If your character’s parents are both
alive, are they very lenient, always telling your character how wonderful
he/she is, overprotective, and/or never yell at your character? (+100)
If your
character’s parents act like this, they are not very good parents. If they’re lenient, it is a convenient
nod for your character to do whatever the hell she wants. That makes her a brat. Also, if they always tell her how
wonderful she is and how she’s so great and just the best child ever, she’s
STILL going to be a brat. When the
parents are overprotective, that lets your character whine and wail about how
they never let her do anything and how they won’t leave her alone blah blah
blah. It gets old. If they never yell at her, that usually
sets us up for your character to be endlessly naïve and become hurt if someone
yells at her, which irritates readers.
People yell all the time, and we’ve discussed that naïve = stupid in the
fanfiction world. Make your
parents realistic—and good parents know when to punish and praise their
children.
6.
Are your character’s parents based
off of your parents or the parents that you’ve always wanted? (+1000)
See Question
#3.
7.
Do your character’s parents score
above 5000 points if a major character, 1000 points if a minor character when
run through this test? (+200)
Urgh. NO ONE wants to read about a whole
FAMILY of Mary Sues. It’s cloying,
bubbly, and ridiculously unrealistic.
Remember—EVERYONE in the fic needs to be realistic. Even the minor characters.
8.
Does your character have a whole
group of friends who are not canon characters? (+25)
There’s
nothing wrong with creating some fanon characters for your character to play
with. Especially not with all this
space that has to be populated. If
you’re not part of the main action of the story (Harry), then you have to make
your own action. And if you are
not comfortable writing the canon characters’ personalities, and you feel you
make them too OOC at the moment, experiment with fanon characters first. Writing complex personalities, such as
Harry or Snape, is hard. It takes
a while to perfect them. However,
don’t cross the line into Sue-dom.
You may wind up creating nothing more than a collection of groupies for
your character. Yes, you can be
friends with people of another house, i.e. Luna Lovegood. We applaud you if it’s a Gryffindor and
Slytherin, in the sense that you are trying to say, “Not all Slytherins are
bad,” because that is a very common Mary Sue stereotype. However, don’t turn it into a sappy,
gooshy love fest, where they all sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya. If anything else, the houses simply do
not mix all at once. An individual
basis can work; all together will NOT.
You have seen Quidditch matches.
And you’ve seen the DA—most students paired with members of their own
House. That rivalry is not gonna
fade any time soon. And you also
may set up your character giving little speeches, horribly sappy speeches,
about how we can all still be friends, and “why can’t we all just get
along.”
And age difference
doesn’t work very often at the ages of the students in Hogwarts. Seventh years do not cavort with first
years. All the classes have their
own problems to deal with. Plus,
how many seventeen year olds hang around with eleven year olds? And we have no idea why a fifth year
would be willing to put aside O.W.L.S. for a twelve year old. It’s nonsensical. Don’t try it if you are a first time
writer. And having fanon characters all slobbering after your character because
she’s so SMART, and WITTY, and POWERFUL, and SPECIAL, and UNIQUE is instant Sue
sign. That’s what YOU think of
your character, so you have inserted yourself into not only the Sue, but the
fanon characters. KEEP YOURSELF
OUT OF THE FIC, OKAY?!!
9.
Are your character’s friends based on
your actual friends or the friends you’ve always wanted? (+1000)
See Question
#3.
10.
Do any of these characters score
above 5000 points if a major character or 1000 points if a minor character when
run through this test? (+100)
Once again, no
one likes a fic TEEMING with Mary Sues.
It’s like stumbling into a colony of leeches.
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