#mod harmonia

There’s this misconception going around on critique blogs about what makes an OC a Mary Sue. The original definition is an OC who is perfect or defies canon, but some people claim that if your OC is too similar to you, they’re a Mary Sue.

???????????

Honestly, this makes no sense.

The more you have in common with your OC, the easier it is to write their character.

This also overlooks the glaring problem of a lack of diversity. Of course someone might make their OC, for example, nonbinary and biracial--because they want to see more media that represents them and other nonbinary biracial people!

I’ve literally seen people put down OCs for being too similar to their creator dozens of times before, even though it’s a completely invalid reason.

To every other critique blog: can we all agree to stop doing this, please?

If your O.C. is from Xing, then maybe! Xing is based off of China, but some Chinese names also exist as Japanese (for example, Mei). However, if the name doesn’t also exist as Chinese, then it’s best to pick a new name.

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of posts about fanfics of bilingual characters, and they’re written as badly as you would expect.

It’s fine to have a Mary Sue. It’s fine to have an obvious self-insert. It’s fine to have an OC that falls in love with a canon character. It’s fine to have the most overpowered, perfect,,canon-defying OC. Don’t delete those characters if they make you happy!

But always, always have a backup character. It can be the same character with just a few traits removed, or an entirely new one. Because while the Mary Sue characters might make you happy, chances are they won’t be popular in RPs.