Tavia wrote: <The whole anti-Mary-Sue feeling has (IMO) done more to stultify B7 fanfic than anything else. I'd rather put up with a whole host of blatant Mary-Sues in the hope that people felt freer to invent new characters and new situations.>

But do Mary Sues (the real thing) represent or encourage anything of the sort? Not in my reading experience - quite the opposite. She's even more strictly defined that a badly-written comp tech <g> and - what is much much worse - has an appalling effect on the writing of the characters that I already know and like.

In my experience, the average MS story doesn't just shriek "isn't this creation of mine wonderful?" but also "wouldn't Avon/Vila/Tarrant be so much better off with Wonderful Creation who understands and appreciates him properly and who he can confide in and trust than that these stupid insensitive Nearthandal types he has to put up with on the screen?" *That's* the thing I most hate about them - not that they're Wonderful, but the way that said wonderfulness ladled on at the expense of the regulars.

(And to be perfectly honest, the OFCs (Original Female Characters) I've seen in other fandoms were often rather off-putting as well - not that I'm claiming that as a general rule, since I haven't read a lot outside B7, but enough to note that the Little-Ms-Aren't-I-So-Much-More-Wonderful-Than-Your-Heroes* type is rather widespread).

There is also the Shiny Happy aspect of both the May Sue and the (mentioned by Kathryn) James Bond types (which annoy me every bit as much in B7 fiction, BTW). They're irritating enough in Shinier Happier universes - in this bleak, somewhere between black-and-blacker one, peopled by bad-tempered, pig-headed, quarrelsome, suspicious, self-centred, temperamental types (and that's just the Good Guys), they stick out like a Rainbow Princess Doll in a Svankmayer film.

I like original characters within reason (i e , not hogging the pages, that's My Darling's job) and I *don't* think it's the anti-MS feelings that's as responsible for the lack of original characters as you think, just that a lot of us - readers and writers alike - *are* pretty satisfied with the range within the series itself, not just the regulars but some of guests like Anna, Avalon, the Clone, Carnell ... Jarriere ...

I'm going to mention the dreaded s-word here :-), not to start an argument but to make a point: Sarah Thompson compiles lists of pairings, and at last count (last year) there were just under Avon/OCF-*or*/OMF on it. There were over 500 A/B stories. That's a lot of versions of just one relationship (and believe me, it's *all* over the emotional shop, the answer to 'how many ways can you write it appears to be *a lot*), and doesn't include the several hundred A-B gen stories Jenny and I went through to make out list. These weren't all written because people were afraid of being labelled MSues (in a lot of the gen, especially, there *were* original characters, they just took a back seat to My Darlings) they were written because the unusual richness and drama of the onscreen characters and their relationship (IMO-only, Neil ... :-) was still interesting to them, no matter how many others had tried it before.

And after all, even a bad portrayal of Avon or Vila has the added weight of the reader's own interpretation and understanding of the character; when I'm reading it, I'm bringing in what I know (and think I know :-)) about them. Whereas even a good OC simply can't have that extra layer. So B7 fiction that concentrates on a whole new set of characters within the B7 framework is simply unlikely to interest me (unless absolutely *brilliant* in itself) to the point of buying it.

And <deeply offended sniff> *I like* onboard stories (probably that business of wanting to peek into their private lives again).

Sally

*With, of course, the exception of the Author's Favourite, who is so misunderstood and unappreciated by everyone *except* Wonderful Creation.

_________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.