Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.
send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion. (bonus points if you include a topic.) || x || no longer accepting
I love OCs and while I might get a little irritated with them, I don’t mind writing with OCs that could be considered “Mary Sues” and “Gary Stus”, especially if the OC is one of someone’s first. In fact, the terms “Mary Sue” / “Gary Stu” kinda irk me. I understand why they’re a thing, but I think they’re used far too freely.
For instance, I don’t think a person who writes an OC purely for fun should ever be accused of writing a Mary/Gary. Like… who cares? They’re having fun. Let them have fun. Those terms should–if at all–only be applied in criticism of money-making characters that damage a storyline because of their traits.
I know when I was younger, half of my characters could probably fall into that category. But I was young, it was fun, and having characters like that helped me grow creatively. If I hadn’t had those over-powered, overly-perfect, or overly-tragic “Mary”/”Gary”s or if someone had discouraged me from making those characters, I probably wouldn’t be so excited about creating characters today. I would be too worried about screwing up, which would have slowed down or halted my creative growth.
Now that I’m older, have had more experience creating characters, and am mature enough to take criticism of my OCs, I want to know what people like or dislike. I want to know if my character is too much this or too little that. But would I have reached this level of maturity had someone squashed my little nine-year-old artistic dreams? Maybe, maybe not. It certainly wouldn’t have helped.
So! Basically, what I’m saying is, it’s chill to not want to write with an OC or any muse for any reason, but don’t discourage younger or newer creators. Don’t be afraid to give them a chance. Everyone has to start somewhere and that’s not a bad thing!
