Thirty Days - Day Eight

Day 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.

Yes. I have OCs in almost all of the longer storylines in the fandoms I've written in. I also can't stand Mary Sues, so I try very hard to avoid that kind of cliched and annoying writing.

The best way I've found to avoid the Mary Sue trap is to make sure your character really belongs in the story you're trying to tell, and doesn't make the other characters in it act out of character. OOC writing is my number one peeve in fanfiction, and it's the reason I dislike Mary Sues as much as I do. I don't mind OCs with Sue-like traits as long as the story itself doesn't warp itself into something that seems to exist just to glorify the Sue, or insult the canon characters by making them take second place or act unlike themselves.

I strive very hard to keep the characters I write in character, and to keep the general feel of the universe intact. Even if it's more mature, it should still feel like the same canon at heart, and the characters should sound like themselves, even if they're in situations they might not have been in canon. I also think it's important for an OC's personality to add something new to the story and for their role to bring something to it other than the author just wanting to be part of the universe in some way.

This is not to say I've never written a Mary Sue. Oh, I have. Before I was aware of the concept, I knew I did not like certain types of stories or characters, even though that didn't really stop me from doing it myself. Naively and arrogantly, I thought my characters were just cooler than those annoying ones I didn't like. When I learned what a Mary Sue was, I was embarrassed.

The first incarnations of my Thundercats fanfiction (the versions of Revival and Path Into the Darkness that I posted back in 1999) had some pretty awful examples of Mary Sue/Gary Stu in them. In subsequent rewrites, I've refined and toned it down a lot, and now I'm happy with Selene, Psiarik, and Snoelle as they are. They still have some core traits that make them borderline, but I no longer over-emphasize their importance and I've balanced their personalities and given them some flaws that weren't as evident in the narration back then.

By the time I started writing Voltron and Darkwing Duck, I'd been aware of the pitfalls of Mary Sue writing for years, so it's been easier to avoid that trap.