General-You Mary Sue Ficcers? I have a suggestion.

Stop making your characters fall in love at light speed!

Look, we all know your Sue is a gorgeously shinyspeshul bundle of sparkly wub with her tumbling silver tresses, sparkling amethyst orbs whose shining depths betray her inner resolve and determination and hidden pain and whatnot, and curves in all the right places. We all know she's amazingly different and she's going to snag the heart of the canon character of her dreams at some point. There is no need to have it happen in the first five seconds, okay?

( Speed Dating: Mary Sue Stylee! )

Oh, and while I'm here: YOUR SUE IS NOT SEX PERSONIFIED.

Seriously. Just because she's amazingly beautiful, with silver hair et cetera and curves in all the right et cetera, et cetera, that doesn't mean every guy she meets is going to run away with the idea that she's the girl of their dreams.

Yes, she's beautiful, but she's not going to have four very different young men, who've been established in canon as having very different tastes in women, collectively slumping to the floor with uncontrollable nosebleeds the minute they clap eyes on her. She's not going to strike entire classsrooms full of boys dumb simply by walking through the door (and she's not going to attract jealous, hate-filled stares from every single one of the girls present either). Nor is every loose-moraled guy she meets going to want to seduce or rape her.

( Run! It's a Femme-Bot! )

Incidentally, Suethors: it doesn't matter how hot and wonderful your Sue is, it's perfectly possible for her canon character ex to decide he prefers someone else now. If you've decided your OC has been out of the picture for years, he's not immediately going to drop everything - and that includes that canonical love interest you don't happen to like or the guy you had him hook up with because that would be like kewt - just because she's shown up again. There is the possibility that his response to meeting an old flame again would be 'sorry, I want this person now' and that's not unreasonable. And the third party isn't being unreasonable for failing to be immediately thrilled by the thought of their boyfriend's old flame knocking about the place either. That doesn't make them a jealous, evil, unreasonably possessive bitch. It makes them a relatively normal human being.

(The third, non-Sue party won't necessarily be violently abusive, a cheating ho-bag, a vapid, clingy ditz or otherwise Totally Unsuitable in the face of Sue's perfection either. Just a FYI.)

People change. Just because your Sue was the love and light of your favorite Hawt Bishie's life when he was fifteen doesn't mean he's still going to be interested at twenty-two. And if Sue's going to wangst over whether or not her lost love prefers his new partner, the possibility actually has to exist that he'll choose the other girl, guy or small furry creature from Alpha Centuri over Sue in the first place. Otherwise she's just wasting her time and ours.

fanficrants.