Write away. I think we're all very overly paranoid about writing Mary Sues. A Mary Sue is a very specific creature and unless your character is named something like "Starlight Nebula" and has anything other than normal features and talents (yes talents are allowed--super powers are where you get into trouble) chances are what you have is an Original Character rather than a Sue. I thought it was extremely interesting after JKR's last set of baffling comments no one picked up on the answer in which she discussed her own self insertion into her characters.
As to your Original Character's backstory: Go ahead with it.
You never know what will come of it. My own Original Character turned out to have such a cool, interesting backstory that I'm in the process of taking her out of ficworld and writing her own, original story. I knew I had a story cooking somewhere, I just couldn't find it until I went back into my nearly forgotton fic and re-read a chapter in which she retells something that happened years prior to her being inserted into fanfic. And quite honestly it's more interesting than what happened to her after she arrived in weird-world.
Is she a Sue? Maybe but I don't think so. Self insertion? Maybe a bit but I'll tell you if I met her on the street she'd scare the crap out of me.
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Date: 2004-08-24 09:53 am (UTC)As to your Original Character's backstory:
Go ahead with it.
You never know what will come of it. My own Original Character turned out to have such a cool, interesting backstory that I'm in the process of taking her out of ficworld and writing her own, original story. I knew I had a story cooking somewhere, I just couldn't find it until I went back into my nearly forgotton fic and re-read a chapter in which she retells something that happened years prior to her being inserted into fanfic. And quite honestly it's more interesting than what happened to her after she arrived in weird-world.
Is she a Sue? Maybe but I don't think so. Self insertion? Maybe a bit but I'll tell you if I met her on the street she'd scare the crap out of me.