Apropos of nothing.

[nenena]

1. How to avoid turning your original character into a Mary Sue. Specific to W.I.T.C.H. fanfic, but most of the advice therein - especially in the first half of the article - could apply to any fandom.

2. Dictionary of Argentine Slang

3. Temari Matsumoto does Metal Gear Solid:




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Comments

[miss-breeziness.livejournal.com]

"It is extremely unlikely to be an orphan, that is the single survivor of a great tragedy, stands to inherit a great fortune from her dead parents, and later was abused by her new foster parents."

Darn it, J.K. Rowling, you turned Harry Potter into a Mary Sue! :D

(Just kidding, of course.)

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the rub. "Tragic orphan" is a perfectly good set-up for a main character. But if you're writing fanfic and trying to insert your original character in a universe where there's already a tragic orphan main character, it feels super-weird if your OC has the same type of backstory. Not only is it ridiculously unlikely for lightning to strike twice, so to speak, but... Nobody wants to read fanfic about a super-speshul Sue who's so super-speshul that s/he overshadows everything about the main characters in the canon.

[miss-breeziness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have no interest in that kind of fanfic either.

The author of that post makes another interesting point - about characters whose biggest flaw is that they are "too nice and always put others ahead of themselves", and how to actually write that in an interesting way, e.g. someone who would never abandon a person in need, even when doing so is necessary to save both their lives, the team, the whole world, and all the cute fluffy bunnies. Sailor Moon at the end of S season came to my mind with that one!

[ladykleo.livejournal.com]

Now I'm tempted to write something like that for Marty Stu in AMG...