It’s because I’m a huge nerd. Duh. Well, enough about me.

(Except that if anyone cares, I'm not writing any fan-fiction at present, just real-life stuff. Real life is making itself VERY intersting these days.)

RANT THAT WILL PROBABLY HAVE TO STAY UP FOR ALL TIME: How many times do I have to tell you kids – ALL females that join the Fellowship and ALL girls (even the very occasional guy) that travel from modern-earth to Middle-Earth ARE Mary-Sues! End of story!

And don’t tell me that your characters aren’t self-insert-Sues because they’re “not perfect” or “not like me at all”, the mere fact that they’re in one of those over-used plotlines is enough to make them Sues! All such stories are written because their authors want to either hang out with the Fellowship or go to Middle-Earth, all such characters live out such author’s fantasies, and therefore all such characters ARE Mary-Sues. Period.

And if you think you can de-Sue a character in such a story by trying to making her an “interesting” or “original” person you're dead wrong. Huge mistake! Don’t even try! First, if you were able to write characters anywhere near as interesting as Prof. Tolkien’s immortal creations, you wouldn’t here, you'd be published. Second, as it takes a lot of story-time to establish an OC’s personality know that even *trying* to make your character interesting or original will inevitably make your Sue guilty of Upstaging The Fellowship; if you make the attempt you won't be able to avoid neglecting the Canon characters your readers love and want to read about.

So if you have an "interesting" or "original" OC put her in an interesting or original plot! For of such is GOOD fan-fiction made.

Besides, both plots have been absolutely, completely Done To Death and the corpses have beaten into the ground besides. Have some creative pride, don't post the 10,000th damn version of the same damn story.