From: Tavia Chalcraft tavia@btinternet.com
I agree I have little wish to read other people's wish-fulfilment fantasies, but dooming all original characters because occasionally people choose to publish wish-fulfilment seems a little OTT ?
Surely any piece of fanfic is a wish-fulfilment fantasy of sorts. All my 'serious' stories were precisely that - I was creating the kind of B7 I'd have liked to have seen.
Maybe I've been missing out, but I've never read a non-humorous overt Mary-Sue.
Oh, Tavia, you really have been missing out! I recommend Horizon #2. First you get a post-Gambit Travis story, that starts out as a well written angst piece but rapidly degenerates into a Mary-Sue, and then there's a wonderful wonderful thrilling adventure by Heidi Dennis which features a remarkably capable young lady called Em (if this is too subtle for you try spelling it backwards). This feisty little minx not only outsmarts every single member of the 3rd Season crew (except maybe Avon), but is also the original owner of the Liberator. I'd like to be charitable and think of it as a parody, but I've got this awful deep-down feeling that it isn't.
Mary-Sue comes in strange guises sometimes. Sometimes she takes over Cally or Vila. Occasionally she's an ocf from the series itself (like a Vega story where she goes by the name of Levett). There's even one in a Gambit zine where she takes the form of an alsatian dog helping Avon come to terms with being blind. Original, if nothing else.
Neil