About Mary Sue Snap:
Mary Sue Snap is a pen and paper game for one or more players. The objective of the game is to match up the Mary Sues with the Fangirl Authors who created them. Players should be aware that this game contains controlled quantities of fangirl stupid, which may cause headdesking in inexperienced players. If this occurs, a short nap in a dark room is suggested. If the urge to beat one's brains out against the nearest flat surface continues, players are advised to seek the aid of a good book by their favorite author. Mary Sue Snap is suitable for players of 8 years old and up.

How to Play:
Match up the names of the Mary Sues with the pen names of their Fangirl Authors. Award yourself one (1) point for every correct answer. If playing the game against a friend, players take it in turns to match up Sues and Authors. The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins.

Fangirl Author:	Mary Sue:
A: Amazon Fyre	01: Sakura, a mysterious beauty with a calming aura and healing powers, who can sprout wings.
B: Morningstar Tempeste	02: Fox Hulee, an amnesiac who's been possessed by a kitsune and is now on the run from evil-doers.
C: DarkDragonGurl1992	03: Kayla Fay, a lovely girl with curves in all the right places who shows up to date a canon male.
D: Cherri~Blossom~Angel	04: Mia, a dizzy 13 year old loli who is inexplicably attractive to all the adult males in the cast.
E: BadKittyIchigo	05: Tempe, an amazing fighter who writes the most beautiful, heartfelt poetry the regulars ever heard.
F: kayla-fay88	06: Hikari, latest member of Team Seven, who wins Sasuke's heart by insulting and humilating Sakura.
G: Victoria GLOOM	07: Kiaru 'Bad Kitty' Hime, a devastatingly sexy kick-ass warrior with cool swords and a tragic past.
H: Mia-chan	08: Raven Way, a hot-tempered, shapeshifting, pyrokinetic Goth girl with 'draconic DNA'.
I: i-luv-sasuke	09: Amazon 'Ama' Blaize, a powerful witch and the saintly, suffering girlfriend of a canon hottie.
J: GoldKitsune	10: Vickie, a self-mutilating emo kid who bonds with, and falls for, an equally self-destructive regular.

Answers: A9, B5, C8, D1, E7, F3, G10, H4, I6, J2.

Though the names of the Sues and the pen names of their respective authors were made up for the purposes of this post they were, however, all based on pre-existing fan-and-fan-character combinations I have actually encountered in my travels. If you think you know who any of these characters or authors were based on, you've... well, you've probably been reading my spork journal.


Oh, Suethors.

Self-insert Suethors all, take a look at that little game of mine. Note that it wasn't hard and that it was in fact depressingly easy, and it was depressingly easy because (general) you possess a brain, can read English and are capable of simple logic. So, that being the case, I've a question I'd like to ask you and that question is this:

Do you think your readers are stupid?

It's an insult to your readers' intelligence to imagine that they're not going to notice the killer similarities between you, going by the pen name Amazon Fyre, and Amazon 'Ama' Blaize, the abused and serially suffering super-Sue. Nobody is going to buy her as a character in her own right rather than a placeholder for you if you have taken your pen name from her name or, even worse, named her after you. That's not a story, it's a daydream regurgitated onto paper. Nobody is going to believe that they are reading an actual work of fiction rather than a self-indulgent fangirl wank fantasy if you the author make no attempt whatsoever to disguise the fact that your neat new central character is you as you wish you were, doing all the things you wish you could - and the wings and the sparkly speshul powers and the supposedly 'cool' putdowns.

You're not the only one who knows a bit of Japanese, by the by. Your readers, especially if they've been round the fanfiction block a few times, are quite capable of working out what your Sue's name means, comparing it with your pen name, and drawing their own conclusions. Your totally-not-a-Sue OC is called Hoshiko; your pen name is 'Star Child' - we can do the math.

Nobody - Suethor - believes it is just a coincidence that your central character shares your pen name. I once saw an author claim this in all seriousness, never mind that there was absolutely no way she could have failed to notice while writing her story that her OC's name and her pen name were TOTALLY GODDAMN IDENTICAL. Don't lie to your audience, please. They don't appreciate being treated like they were too addled to tie their own shoelaces, let alone work out why you and your OC might share a name.

Smart authors do NOT name their OCs after themselves.

They do NOT name themselves after their OCs.

Really. Don't do this. Sharing names is one of the major warning signs of self-insertion, and people don't have to have been into fic very long to start picking up on this. Your readers will notice, and they will care. You might not think it matters, but it does, if only because of what it suggests about your story and your OC. I have, in my time, read an awful lot of fanfiction. I have yet to come across an OC who shares her author's pen name (or major elements of it) who has been anything other than an obnoxiously blatant, and often just plan obnoxious, Mary Sue.

Your OC might be the exception - but, taking precedent into account, who in their right mind is going to take the chance?

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