This is an informative and critical essay.

All characters and plotlines here discussed

belong to J.R..
Losing Mary
How to write OFCs in the Tolkienverse and escape the clutches of the Sue
He was a man, take him for all in all/ I shall never look upon his like again.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2
Probably it was Legolas that did it. Or Boromir, for those of us who fancied rugged
Gondorian manliness over Elvish good looks. For some, instead, it was Frodo's forlorn
blue eyes that triggered the idea first. Shall we speak of Eomer then? And some,
eventually, read the book and found they didn't like Arwen much. Definitely, Aragorn
deserved better, they thought. However it happened, it happened for many of us: the
sudden thought that Middle-earth as it was lacked something. That little bit of romance,
of warm beds and intertwining hands. That in that bunch of hot guys there was an
unmarried one too many. And where Tolkien had not cared to fill the gaps, where he had
left a faceless, sometimes nameless girl to conquer the hero's heart, the readers and
viewers decided they would step up to the play. And make up a heroine of their own to
fill that empty space.
The idea was good; the intentions glowing. But an accident happened, while eager fingers
typed or scribbled the protagonist to dominate the scene: and the accident had a name and
a surname. We are talking, of course, of Mary.
'Mary Sue' is a term that scares the living breath out of any would-be writer; mostly
employed in fanfiction, it has recently spread also to the field of original writing. Mary
Sue is everywhere: because, very simply, it is the point we all started from. A husk for us
to slip in when we daydream, the raw prototype of all the wonderful characters we might
create, the initially humorous term has become overtime an insult often hurled at those
whose Original Female Characters (OFCs) we happen not to like. It goes without saying:
flaming is always wrong. It also goes without saying: Mary Sue is not an inescapable
doom.
Not all OFCs are Sues; and every writer, with a few useful tips, can successfully avoid
the cliché and make her protagonist into an all-round, believable, compelling character to
build the plot around. If you are a would-be writer in the Tolkienverse, at your first fic, or
just wishing to check a few points, this essay is written for you: to put down black on
white a few facts, and free you once and for all from the nightmare of the flamers. To
help you bring out in the fandom a whole new generation of interesting, well-written,
absolutely original OFCs.
What this essay is: an easy guide to all you might need to know in the creation of
Tolkien-verse OFCs.
What this essay isn't: a critique, an attack, a pretence at knowing everything. I'll quote
bits of books from Tolkien to support what I'm saying, and occasionally essays from
other writers or directly their words.
Sources: The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and the History of Middle-
earth; within its twelve volumes, notably the essay 'Laws and Customs of the Eldar'.
Also, the experience of years of writing, beta-ing and discussing OFCs.
Follows an index of the contents of this essay, so that you may easily find what you need.
1. The fortunate few: when OFCs are sorely needed
2. Pictures of Mary: who is she and why we loathe her
3. What's in a name: when the callsign is a label already
4. More beautiful than Lùthien: Miss Middle-earth
5. Some like it flawed: perfect Mary
6. Foretold: a girl with a destiny
7. Blood ain't water: OFCs and family trees
8. The Last of the Mohicans: an OFC left all alone
9. Cinderella story: orphaned, mistreated and ill-used
10. Goody two shoes: when Sue gives us diabetes
11. OOC: a character by any other name
12. Whodunnit: when Mary steals the scene
13. Not that kind of girl: sex and the OFCs
14. The social contract: tackling issues in fanfic writing
15. Unhappily ever after: watch the ending, ladies
16. Riddikulus: laughing Mary away
17. Conclusion: good writing, and good luck
1. The fortunate few: when OFCs are sorely needed.

Let's face it: Professor Tolkien was not particularly fond of writing girls. His few female
characters are certainly memorable (Galadriel, Eowyn, Aredhel, Lùthien, Melian, Haleth,
just to quote the most famous) but, when compared to the rich cast of male characters,
they are undeniably fewer and farer between. Endless essays have been written debating
the issue of whether or not Tolkien's works are misogynistic and unfair to women;
methinks not, as those characters that we do have often shine for resourcefulness,
charisma, power and brilliantness of mind and spirit. Without a doubt, Middle-earth is a
medieval kind of world, and the role of women in such an environment is limited by
precise rules and to well-definite areas. Those female characters who do not conform, or
reach peculiar peaks in their field, shine through.
However, that the writer does not portray female characters as often as we'd like him to
does not mean that behind the heroes we so much love there is an affective void that no
self-respective fan should ever dream to fill. As any Silmarillion reader knows, Tolkien
has a well-ingrained habit of saying that some male character has children, or gets
married, without ever spending a word on the wife or mother in question. (For all
Caranthir, Curufin and Maglor fans out there who always wondered about their invisible
brides.)
In the LotR trilogy, probably the best known of Tolkien's works, Merry and Pippin marry
maidens of whom we know only the names; the same does Eomer, and the love life of
well-loved characters such as Boromir and Legolas is an empty space blissfully open to
speculation.
I say love: indeed, this is the context in which almost all of the OFCs that we may
encounter in fanfiction are to be met. While some reviewers relish in telling the authors
just why romance fics are by definition rubbish, I shall sustain to my death by flaming
that this is completely untrue. If you like a character and want to explore the possibility
of his pairing with a heroine of your imagination, taking in the course of your story a
different angle on the canon events, that is a plot as good as any other to start from. Never
let any mean reviewer get you down on the basis that OFCs are bad for the fandom. On
the contrary; sometimes, and in romance rather often, they are fundamental.
How, then, has it come to be that such a reasonable proposition as the creation of original
characters to fill the gaps in canon and, why not, create alternative plots has become a
byword for trashy stories? We go back to the beginning: the guilty party is, of course, our
friend Mary.
2. Pictures of Mary: who is she and why we loathe her
Very probably you have met her in a movie, a book or a TV show. She was the character
you did not like: the perfect one, the beloved one, the one who got everything she
wanted, and immediately, and the one everybody fell in love with for no apparent reason.
She usually is female; her male variation, dubbed 'Gary Stu', is rarer, if, in original
fiction, more evident. (James Bond and Harry Potter are two cases of extremely popular
characters some critics have accused of being Mary Sues.)
In the fanfiction world, where you are familiar with the universe you're reading about,
she's even easier to spot: Mary Sue is the new girl in town who turns the tables, and, very
often, quite inappropriately and quite dramatically. She's the Slayer who's better at it than
Buffy and Faith taken together, the new witch who outshines the Halliwell sisters, the
Hogwarts student brighter than Hermione and braver than Harry. And, in the
Tolkienverse, she's the one who charms the hero, destroys the Ring and saves the day for
the good of everyone.
Why we do not like her is easily explained: being a character who does not fit in with the
rules of the world she inhabits, created to better and best the original characters that drew
us to a fandom in the first place, Mary Sue turns the fictional world we love into
something we cannot recognize. And, in consequence, cannot love.
But I love her, some of you may say. Honest, I like to write about her. I like to read about
her. I have seen Sue fics being reviewed and praised wildly.
To which I reply: ever read anything else? Ever tried something different? Believe me,
we all started from Mary: any long-term fanfiction writer has in her past at least one
cringeworthy character that was deleted in shame when the author realized exactly where
she was going. Sue is not a good character, she is not a different kind among a roll-call of
many: she is the death of the originality of the stories and characters you may weave as a
writer, for the simple reason that every Sue is a clone of the next. There are angsty types
and cheesy types, but they all have one thing in common: they are bi-dimensional and
flat, and they obey the same set of unwritten rules. Tell me what is your Mary, and I will
tell you how your story goes.
This said, all the shame, all the angst, all the flaming that has been going on in every
fandom ever since Mary was first spotted and defined (and we are talking of the Star
Trek fandom, in the '70s) is quite out of place. There's nothing as easy as avoiding Mary,
once you know how to go about it.
3. What's in a name: when the callsign is a label already
A character's name is important. It's the way other characters call her, the way you think
about her. It's only natural that a writer should dedicate some time to choosing it, and that
she should like its sound and its meaning. What is not right, is that the name should
become a shiny presentation box for the character: 'oh, she's called like this because…'
As long-navigated readers of fics well know, the name of an OFC is very often the first
sign of its being a Sue.
Every universe has its naming rules: you see it around you every day in the different
traditions of the various cultures, and the same applies to Middle-earth. When you create
an OFC and choose her race, the age in which she lives, and the place where she is born,
you should do a bit of research to find for her a name that fits her background.
A classic example is that of Elvish OFCs. What happens very often there is that the
author, who does not know a word of Elvish (nothing wrong with it) invents for her a
name that sounds Elvish (a lot wrong with it). To be called Galadrina Tinuviella is not a
good introduction for your character: any Tolkien fan can tell it's a made-up name, and
badly made up at that. If you want an Elvish character, out there there are several
different websites with excellent, long and detailed name lists divided according to the
different languages and kins of the Elves. There you can find true Elvish names, with
beautiful meanings, and thus make both yourself and your readers happy.
The same goes for human OFCs (Middle-earth ones): Numenorean and Gondorian Men
are often named in Elvish, so you may use the same namelists for them. (Or, since Men,
unlike Elves, often repeat names, you can adopt for your character a name previously
used by an Elf. Not Lùthien though. More about this later on.) For the Men of Rohan, you
have to resort instead to Anglo-Saxon names, since we do not know enough of the
language they use, and ancient English was the source Tolkien used for them anyway.
Hobbits have names that are more similar to our own: many of their maidens seem to be
called after flowers or other plants. Here, of course, your work is easier: any Hobbit girl
can be called Lily or Pansy or Violet.
When we get to modern day girls in Middle-earth, a very popular plot, again the
character's name can tell us a lot about the story: when an experienced reader of
fanfiction meets a Miss Crystalia Loveheart, the smell of Mary Sue hits the fan and taints
the air. If your fanfiction purports to be about your average schoolgirl thrown into the
Tolkienverse, you do not need me to tell you that in our world we are far more likely to
meet a Sarah Jones than a Stella Shinyeyes.
Another thing to be avoided is a character who has chosen her own name. Unless the
character in question has a need to conceal her identity, in Middle-earth as in our world
it's the parents of the child who choose her name. The Elves have a tradition of giving
nicknames to people (called epessë), but again this is a name assigned by others. We have
in Tolkien an instance of a character who changed his name several times during his life
to escape a curse: but he always chose a name that would fit into the new environment
where he lived. Your character, if this be the case, should do the same.
4. More beautiful than Lùthien: Miss Middle-earth
Imagining a character also concerns imagining how she looks. Here the same rules we
discussed for the naming process apply: while every author could probably give a good
idea of what her character looks like, for a story to work this is not as vital as other
elements. Whether your protagonist is a blonde or a chestnut is ultimately irrelevant to
the result of the readers finding her believable or not.
Many Mary Sues betray the fact that they look just like the author wishes she did: if you
spend long paragraphs describing in detail the hair, eyes, figure, clothes of your
protagonist, especially in the first few pages, the doubt is born in your readers that your
story is ultimately just a showcase for your little personal fantasy. If your story is in the
first person, it is highly unlikely that your character should have any need to describe
herself while narrating her tale. And yes, tricks like writing 'I let my long, carefully
braided wheat-blonde curls slip through my tapering fingers and onto my velvet-covered,
generous bosom' are cheating.
Before you decide whether your OFC has blue eyes or brown ones, there are other, more
important things, like her personality, her background and her role in the story that you
should attend to.
When you decide what your character looks like, you have to respect the rules of
plausibility and the norm of her race and world. Some Elves have natural silver hair; no
young human being will have hair the same colour, unless they have dyed it. Nobody,
just nobody, whether on this earth or in Middle-earth, has purple eyes. Unless your
character is an albino, or a crossover from a manga, white locks at fifteen are out of the
equation. 'Blonde hair, naturally streaked with blue' (and I swear I've found this and
worse) spells 'Mary Sue' a thousand miles far. For your character to be interesting, she
has no need of looking like nobody else in her universe ever could.
Then, the discourse of beauty. All Elves are, says Tolkien, 'fair to look upon'; if your
character's an Elf, she is canonically pretty. No need to hammer this in saying that she's
'more beautiful than Lùthien'; also because nobody, whether in Tolkien canon or
fanfiction, can be more beautiful than her. Daughter of a Maia and an Elf, Lùthien,
whether we like her as a character or not, was unique: Arwen looks like her, but only
because she is her great-granddaughter. No other character can share this with them; and
to say that your own Elf beats them is to take the shortcut to Suedom without a way back.
It's only understandable that, if the hero falls for your heroine, he should find her
attractive. To give us some clues as to what she looks like is all very well. But to make
her into a Middle-earthish Helen of Troy is both unnecessary and damaging to your plot.
5. Some like it flawed: perfect Mary
Besides an unlikely name and shiny looks, the element that most gives away a Sue is a
flawless personality. Mary is good, Mary is nice, Mary is kind, Mary is pure, and Mary is
so boring and unlikely that you drop her story by paragraph three. Nobody's perfect; all
of us have flaws, and by flaws I mean real ones: some are cowardly, some are mean,
some are prone to anger. Flaws are the bits of us which are not really likable, and those
that get us into trouble. When a character is always perfectly adequate to the situation,
save for the little detail that she can't play the piano, Sue has stepped into the story and is
not likely to go away.
Some have tried to overcome this, but keep the character substantially flawless, by
endowing her with the so-called 'spitfire personality': the character has always a sharp
word for everyone, but no one ever takes her up on that, or gets back to her for it. Do I
really need to point out that this is unlikely? We all have bitchy days; but usually people
make us notice we're getting on their nerves. It's natural, it's human, and it's the way
things work. Yes, even in Middle-earth.
None of the heroes your heroine is out to get is perfect: they're sometimes proud,
sometimes inadequate, sometimes seized by despair. Why should they need the perfect
girl to fall in love with? Perfection is boring to read. It smells of falseness, and it's
annoying to your readers, who are granted to be normal human beings. But I want my
readers to like my character, you may say; and I'll reply to you that liking a character has
nothing to do with enjoying reading about her.
What a reader wants is somebody to identify with; and they can't do it with a perfect,
unlikely, exasperatedly flawless girl.
6. Foretold: a girl with a destiny
Destiny and doom are important elements in Tolkien's world; prophecies, curses, and the
like are often found in his tales. While Mankind in Middle-earth ultimately possess
freewill ('the ability to shape their own destiny', as the author puts it), the fates of the
Elves were sung and decided by the Ainur before the creation of the world. If your
character is an Elf, she has a destiny. If your character is a human, she does not.
To make a character the object of a prophecy, a curse, a doom, a peculiar fate, is an
element that derives from the most ancient legends; but to do so in a world like Tolkien's,
where such things come along by the kilo, unless you are very experienced author, is
downright suicidal. All too often, 'girl with a destiny' screams Mary Sue: the one born to
destroy the Ring/save Boromir/keep Fëanor from swearing his Oath.
If your character becomes entangled with the canon ones, automatically she gets caught
in the prophecies, the curses, the dooms Tolkien already thought for them: to endow her
with a series of her own, perhaps even antagonizing the canon ones (all the OFCs I have
known to be fated to rule Gondor instead of Aragorn), is to single her out for special
treatment, and to belittle all the canon characters. (Typical Sue behavior).
If, indeed, your OFC can keep Boromir from dying, and she can do so plausibly and
interestingly, kudos: no need to have a solemn stone declaring she would do it a thousand
years before she was born.
7. Blood ain't water: OFCs and family trees
When you think up an original character for the Tolkienverse, an important thing to be
considered is her link to the main characters. While a subject, a friend or a lady-in-
waiting are options always open to any enterprising author, another solution is to make
her a relative of the characters you mean to write about. If you find a gap in the family
tree (and Tolkien has left many, both for Elves and Men, not to mention Hobbits), all is
good and fair: the family trees the Professor drew are often limited only to the main
characters, and secondary branches of the family, even if unmentioned, are certain to
have existed.
What you can't do, however, is giving a canon character with a well-established family
another, close relative: sisters of Aragorn, daughters of Elrond, nieces of Galadriel, etc.
Any such character stops the reader in her tracks with the sheer impossibility of her
existence; and to go past such impossibility is rather hard for a critical-minded reader.
Rivendell is certain to contain more Elven maidens than Elrond's daughter alone; no need
to add another child to his family to put your character in a prime position to meet the
Fellowship.
Also about family links, many OFCs are endowed with unusual, rare genealogies: half-
Elves abound, and some, co-opting traditions from other fandoms, have written of half-
dragons, half-Orcs, and more. The unions between Elves and humans being extremely
rare in the Tolkienverse, for your character to start out with such a peculiar background is
not quite believable; if you are determined to go on with this idea, remember that half-
Elves are not discriminated against by the full-blooded ones. Elrond is an half-Elf: as you
can see, this was no problem for him.
Forget, instead, about the half-dragons: Middle-earth dragons breed on their own and,
even if very powerful and gifted with speech, they remain animals. For the half-Orcs, we
know that Orcs and the other races can interbreed: a theory for the origin of the Uruk-hai
is that of Men procreating with Orcs. As always with such unusual families, however,
beware: Orcish blood will show. A pretty Elven lady hiding an Orc father is just as out of
the rules of the Tolkienverse as a good dragon.
One last note: the Valar do not breed, even if they do lust (see Melkor). A half-Vala, or
full-Vala OFC cannot exist.
8. The Last of the Mohicans: an OFC left all alone
For the joy of those fanfiction writers who desire to give their characters an unusual but
plausible background, Tolkien's pages are full of entire kins of Elves, Men or Hobbits
who detach from the rest, move elsewhere and simply 'are lost'. That is the case for some
of the Elves who did not join in the march to Valinor, or of those of the Men who went
back to the East of Middle-earth and were never heard of again. Many authors make their
protagonist a princess or ruling lady: such lost peoples are their only chance to do so.
Indeed, the uncharted, unmentioned East of Middle-earth past the Sea of Rhûn must be an
interesting place: aside from the above-mentioned Elves and Men, the two Blue Wizards
that had journeyed from Valinor with Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast have also 'been
lost' there. If your OFC comes from there, you have more freedom of inventing her
culture, her family, her powers; still, to make her the last of the faeries who comes to the
Council of Elrond riding a unicorn means bringing the story derailing from chapter 1.
To add new, unmentioned creatures to a land already rich in Elves, Dwarves and Dragons
is superfluous, lazy and redundant. With a bit of research you can make up your Elven
princess, and with some care make her sympathetic to the reader; to make her the last
surviving exemplary of a lost species, come angsting about the future of Middle-earth
with people who never even knew her kind existed, but immediately feel for its loss, is
one of the most dreaded, most indigestible brands of Sueishness.
Which brings us to make the acquaintance of one of the most widely spread Sues: the
angsty type.

9. Cinderella story: orphaned, mistreated and ill-used

Giving a character a tragic personal history is an easy way to grant her the sympathy of
the reader. And indeed, in a world like Middle-earth, most of the canon characters are
orphaned, abandoned or otherwise traumatized during the course of their life. What is,
then, that distinguishes a believable character with an unlucky story from the angsty Sue?
The answer is: the importance that said character, and the canon ones, attribute to such an
event.
We live in a world where, fortunately, being orphaned or losing siblings in their young
age is a rare event, at least for those of us who live in the Western world. Even the
soldiering percentage of our populations is very much reduced, and much less subject to
losses, than it used to be in a Middle Age environment such as Middle-earth. For us it is
inconceivable to think of attributing a quality of normalcy to a tragic background.
However, when we are talking about Middle-earth, things change rather drastically: of
the components of the fellowship alone Aragorn, Frodo, Boromir and, some guess,
Legolas, have lost a parent rather early on. This has of course affected them: but they do
not spend endless pages waxing about it with puffy eyes. A Middle-earth OFC whose
parents have been killed in war will have suffered about it, but she should not make her
angsting about it the main subject of the story for 36 chapters out of 50. Her story is
common, and even trivial in such a violent, brutal world.
The same goes of course for being mistreated by a parent or guardian: Faramir had it
rough with crazed Denethor, and the Sons of Fëanor might have had more than
something to say on the issue of bad parenthood, but they never dreamt of inflicting their
private traumas on the world at large. Middle-earth is a place where people deal with
their problems quietly and on their own. Meaning? If your OFC befriends Boromir and
they eventually share a conversation about what it means to lose your mommy it's fine;
another thing is if the fact has become the favourite Fellowship campfire conversation
subject by paragraph 2.1.
Another thing: a beloved theme for many writers is to have their protagonist be saddled
with the scars of having been raped, save solving every trauma by snuggling up to
Legolas or Aragorn. Let's not beat around the bush: this is preposterous. Rape is a trauma
that can kill, that can lead to depression, phobia of contact, and several other unpleasant
things. To pretend that such a thing as 'healing sex' exists is to trivialize the sufferings of
those who have gone through such a terrible experience. Your character was kidnapped
and raped? In a war-ridden world such as Arda, it may well be; but to solve her problem
she'll require much more than a kiss from Merry.
The same goes for eating disorders: anorexia and bulimia are not glamorous traits to
glorify your character. Modern day anorexic girl in Middle-earth, fed back to healthiness
(but still mysteriously rail-thin) by Legolas with amorous spoonfuls of Elvish honey has
MARY SUE branded all over her in characters three foot high. Eating disorders are
mental and physical diseases: they can bring death. To make them into cheap plot devices
is to offend all those still in their throes.
One final brand of angsty Sue is the 'Angel type'. You know, Angel, Buffy's first hot
vampire boyfriend, the one who spent his life brooding about all the terrible things he had
done. If your character is a warrior, if she has unwittingly or voluntarily caused damage,
guilt and remorse may well ensue. But they should not become the main plot point for all
the other characters to sympathize with.
Angst is good. Almost all of Tolkien's tales provide rich and juicy starting points for
some angsting, and most of Tolkien readers like their dose of existential dilemmas and
dramas. But when angst is just the self-referential flavouring of an otherwise impossible
character it only sounds whiny.
10. Goody two shoes: when Sue gives us diabetes
To the other opposite from angsty Sue there is sugary Sue. This one was happy, always
happy, forever happy: everybody loved her, she always loved everybody, nobody was
ever mean to her, and wherever she goes flowers spring and everything becomes better.
At her appearance Frodo forgets the Ring, the Fëanorians throw the Silmarils to the
nettles, and movie!Aragorn suddenly feels the crown is only a step away. Somehow, also,
Legolas feels an irresistible urge to quote Mariah Carey. Wanna puke? Good.
Middle-earth is a harsh place. Scan Tolkien's tales, and do so attentively: can you find a
single story that is happy, sugary and sappy from start to end? No. Can you find a
character whose life never presented them with an antagonist, a difficulty, a bad moment
ranging from sheer misery to naked despair? No again. Nobody gets to grow up in the
middle of Orcish wars and develop the same (non)personality of a rainbow unicorn. The
presence of such a chimeric character would not make the heroes feel better: it would
make them feel like running for their lives.
Your character has a positive attitude to life? Very healthy, I should say. But when things
are grim, they stay grim. Little Miss Sunshine's presence cannot turn the War of the Ring
into a beach picnic. What is enormously puzzling about this character is also the fact that
her undaunted goodiness, purity of heart, flawless perfection&co seem to be the same
towards anyone: confronted with Sauron, Legolas or Sam this Sue stays the same. Sweet,
smiling, tender and understanding. When Sauron will bite her head off, as a self-
respecting Sauron should do, the readers shall cheer; unfortunately, in the presence of
Goody Two Shoes Mary even Sauron usually starts to feel that Mordor would be much
better off with pink wallpaper.
Which brings us to the next point: what happens to canon characters when Mary Sue is
around.
11. OOC: a character by any other name
As we have said since the beginning, one of the most dreadful characteristics of the Sue
is the way she affects the canon characters. She is the rule-breaker par excellence:
consequently, to accommodate her, the universe itself in which she is set must by
necessity shift, bend, and change. And with it, the characters.
Tolkien's favourite way of presenting a love story was a poetic, philosophical, and
appropriately vague description; there would be a mystical setting, a fated meeting, a
discreet gliding over the most physical aspects of attraction, and the consequences for the
lovers' lives. He very rarely indulged in those phases of courtship, first kisses and, Valar
forbid, lovemaking that are the bread and honey for all modern romance readers and
writers. (Eowyn and Faramir's story is perhaps the sappiest he ever wrote, and even there
he remains in the boundaries of a tasteful, quite manly restraint.)
His heroes are not exactly the kind of blokes you'd catch buying chocolates or singing the
Blue to court a lady; in a grim, lightless world, love is a serious thing that comes after
warring, serving and ruling. When it comes, it comes with commitment, an exchange of
promises, and, usually, a black fate hanging over the two cuties. Amidst battles, feuds,
sieges and curses, no wonder that Legolas would have a hard time finding lease and will
to carve his ladylove a bow decorated with hearts and arrows.
For all the abovementioned reasons, even if you have managed to put together a likely,
believable, and all-rounded heroine, when entering the minefield of writing Tolkienverse
romances you have to be careful. OOC, acronym for out-of-character, is the sword of
Damocles that hangs over your head. Are you writing, for instance, an Aragorn/OFC?
Very well. Consider now, and attentively, which kind of guy he is; and once you have
him framed, stick by him. Can you envision him throwing all the promises he made to
Arwen to the nettles, bedding a girl behind the trees instead of guarding Frodo,
abandoning Gondor for the sake of a merry life in a meadow in the woods? Not really?
Good. Then you're on the right track. Writing a hero in character is sometimes difficult,
sometimes impossible, and sometimes downright hellish, as, to get out of the fandom for
a moment, all those who have tried to write a Severus Snape in love very well know.
But the canon, in-character heroes are the ones we fell for; and turning Haldir into
somebody that might well be called Harry of Bob, so far he has gone from his true spirit
in the quest for a sugary love story, cannot be right. For sure Middle-earth can be a
happy, even a merry place from time to time; but, at least the way Tolkien saw it (and
when we're talking this particular universe, Tolkien is da Man one must inevitably turn
to) never for too long and always before a catastrophe. The bottom line being:
gallivanting around laughing and lightly kissing is nice. But winter is coming, and the Elf
your heroine is cuddling happens to be a trained warrior/ruthless prince/king with
responsibilities. Sooner or later, something must happen. It's called conflict, and it's the
stuff plots are made of. And no Tolkien hero shirks his duty in favour of braiding daisy
garlands; if he does so, you'll know there's Mary's imprint somewhere.
Quite apart from love, or sometimes closely intertwined with it, is another very common
brand of OOCiness that comes with Sues: that of redemption. Many Sues, while with one
hand fondly tickling the ears of Leggy as he mumbles Coldplay to them, with the other
spank Sauron/Morgoth/other perceived or canonical villains back to the righteous path.
Seriously? No.
Tolkien has been accused of making his baddies monochromatic and unidimensional;
whether you agree or not with this criticism (I, for an instance, don't, but this is not the
place to discuss it) to dig a depth to them by showing your reader how, under the
beneficial influence of your protagonist, the Witch-king shall display an innate fondness
for knitting and petting puppies cannot work. Many, if not all, of Tolkien's villains are
offered many chances for redemption; and they usually kick them in the teeth.
Does this mean the dark side is an inexplorable taboo? Not at all. But only that one must
be courageous, and accept the fact that black and white don't exist: the truth is always
gray. If you can pull off a romance with damned, black heroes such as the Nazgul, or
fallen Maiar, or corrupt, treacherous Men and Elves, kudos to you; your story will surely
stand out. But, as Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights showed the world, that the villains
have a heart does not necessarily make them any the less villainous. And for them to have
depth, and more facets than flat black, one needn't turn them into lost lambs brought back
to the fold by triumphant Mary.
12. Whodunnit: when Mary steals the scene
An issue very close to OOCiness, the stealing of plotlines from the main characters is one
of the characteristics that most surely identify even well-hidden Sues. An heroine may be
original, well-written and nice to read, but if she destroys the Ring in lieu of Frodo,
governs Gondor while Aragorn takes a walk, and slays the Witchking to protect Eowyn,
Sue takes off her mask and smiles radiantly, having baffled us all.
The difficulty of writing OCs in fanfiction is quantifiable in the problem of fitting
something entirely new in a tightly knit, well ordered plot. Tolkien didn't leave much to
the imagination when it came to the things he chose to write; unless you write your whole
story as a gap-filler, inevitably your protagonist will come across what the canon
characters are supposed to do. Changing the plot is, of course, the right choice here:
Alternate Universe is the place where most fanfictions find their place anyway. What is
not right to do is to keep roughly the same plot, simply attributing to your character what
others would be supposed to do.
A classical example of this are Tenth Walker fics (stories about an OFC joining the
Fellowship): when they do not get embroiled with a romance that distracts the heroes
from the quest, the war, all those tiny things that are going on outside Mary's low-cut
neckline, they usually feature the female protagonist saving Frodo from the Orcs, single-
handedly defending Helm's Deep, keeping Denethor from roasting Faramir alive and, last
but not least, managing the undying classic of shoving both Gollum and the Ring down
Mount Doom's volcanic throat on the soundtrack of Sam's cheering.
It goes without saying: once you've thought out the character, the story must come next.
Recycling the original plot minus the changing of one character cannot but be damaging;
for you, for your OFC, and for that little thing that is called good fanfiction writing.
13. Not that kind of girl: sex and the OFCs
Once we have established that OFCs usually turn up for romance fics, it's easy to see that
the S-word is one they shall have to deal with. There are, of course, many genres of
romance stories, and some of them have lovemaking at their core: we may meet erotica
(tasteful smut), porn without plot (exactly what it sounds like), or BDSM, and the label
has already the writer's work cut out. With these stories, you know where you are. With
what we may call general romance, you do not.
Any writer, and any reader, has their preference to what concerns sex in romance: some
like it hot and graphic, some prefer it shaded and vague, and some, especially ever since
the Twilight craze, like to keep it chaste. All of this is, of course, perfectly legit; what is,
then, that sets Mary's own attitude apart from any good character's? It all depends on two
things: numbers, and likeliness.
Whether they travel fast through all the bases of a romance or deny themselves as
adamantly as Richardson's Clarissa did, a sure sign of Mary Sues is the sheer number of
canon characters falling for them. We all know love triangles happen in real life; but
when Mary is around tetragons, pentagons and various other multi-angled geometrical
love stories spring as easily as if Euclides were rewriting his mathematical principles.
Mary shall smooch Legolas, flirt with Aragorn, bed Boromir and give Pippin his first
kiss; or, on the other hand, be courted by Frodo, refuse Legolas and eventually keep
Eomer's appetites at bay until the wedding day. Ridiculous? A tad. Or rather, a lot. In a
fandom as packed with hot guys as the Tolkienverse, it's only natural for a fangirl to
nurture more than one love; most will have several favourites, evenly scattered
throughout the ages. But when you're writing, keep the numbers low: two heroes falling
for your heroine is the highest, and there already you have to be careful. Unless, of
course, you're interested in writing a very crowded PNP scene; but that, by definition, is a
boundless land.
Likeliness comes into play with the race, temperament, and background of your heroine.
Many OFCs are high ranking Elven or human ladies; are you sure they would be likely to
cash in their V card with the first handsome warrior that comes along? Virginity, for a
princess, is a political commodity; just like, if your character is a modern day girl in
Middle-earth, losing it should be more than a plot device.
Usually, 'modern day girl'-kind OFCs follow a well established path: they somehow
stumble into Middle-earth, join the Fellowship, and lose their innocence, to put it in an
old-fashioned way, to the author's favourite hero. Just as usually, they are likely to be in
their teens; and while it's fair to argue that in a medieval of world like ME girls will
marry young, often to older men, and that a middle-aged warrior would have no qualms
in fancying a sixteen-year old given the cultural context, if you asked your average tenth-
grader what they think of having as their first bedmate a forty years old they would
probably shriek out a sonorous no.
With all this, Boromir and Aragorn (whom, by the way, is 86) remain hot property; but a
realistically depicted seventeen years old heroine would probably think it out before
ripping apart their mailshirt behind a bush. (Why it is that middle-aged, sexually active,
emotionally mature women that would be able to make a rational decision about hopping
in the sack or not so rarely end up in the Tolkienverse is a mystery as yet to be resolved. I
thank the Valar for the existence of Pink Siamese's Dawn of Many Colors series, and
keep investigating.)
While we're at it, I'll say it once more: raped heroines abound in romance stories, and to
have them utterly traumatized about it is very life-like; to have them shed all their
complexes (and their clothes) by chapter 3, just in time for that candlelit rendezvous with
Leggy, is not.
14. The social contract: tackling issues in fanfic writing
Tolkien's works are the writings of a man born and raised several decades ago, who had a
severe religious education, and morals that by our standards are about as liberal as an iron
corset. To the modern reader his stories usually present a range of perplexities,
prejudices, and fair questions that have found many, and different, form of expressions.
Tolkien's treatment of people with coloured skin, of one in-universe race rather than
another, of women have all raised questions that essayists, aficionados and fanfiction
writers have all found different ways to cope with. Let us be very clear: tackling the
darker, objectionable side of Middle-earth is a worthy, difficult subject. There are great
fics about such things out there; but exactly because this is a delicate matter, it is not a
good idea to entrust its exploration to Mary Sue.
Xena-Sues, wonderwomen OFCs who go into Middle-earth to show the canon characters
what girls are capable of, usually take control of the plot with high-tech gadgets they
conveniently happened to bring along, dazzle Gandalf into silence with their
encyclopedic knowledge of Middle-earth, toss away the Ring 'cause an empowered gal
would never be tempted by such a clearly chauvinistic device (get that, Galadriel?) and
use the time they saved by such a swift resolution of the plot to beat gender-awareness
into the canonical heroes. Did I exaggerate? Not by much. Any long-term fanfiction
reader will have happened across the 'spitfire' Sue who bests Boromir (always identified,
for reasons unknown, as the emblem of patriarchal society and all its evils), refuses
scornfully Aragorn because she is nobody's wife and shows it by seducing any Elf that
happens along the path.
I am as enraged as the next girl that all that book!Arwen actively contributes to the plot is
a frigging banner she embroidered in an incredibly long time; but supplanting her with
Xena, warrior princess, is not the way of solving the issue. There are incredible female
characters in Tolkien to explore; strong girls like Haleth, who told Lord Caranthir she
could cope on her own, thankyouverymuch; great leaders like Galadriel; beautiful but
resourceful characters like Lùthien. Take inspiration from them, lose Lùthien's looks, and
we're on the road to OFCs who are believable, but still would make the suffragettes
proud.
15. Unhappily ever after: watch the ending, ladies
It happens rather often: a book, or movie, or TV series we loved from head to toe,
characterization, plot, style, loses it as the end approaches and eventually tosses it all
away in a cheap, cliché-y, highly unsatisfactory epilogue. There are countless stories,
both filmed and written, which have ended up spoiled this way; and the fanfictions that
have thus fallen from grace are even more. Any tale's ending should be carefully thought
out by an author, as coherent, meaningful, neither too hurried nor too drawn-out. And
when we're talking OFCs, the ending is the place where Mary deals her final blow: an
apotheosis when she has dominated the previous fifty thousand words, or an unexpected,
treacherous tailstroke when the author had successfully managed to keep her out until
then.
There are Sues who die. Killing off your heroine may sound like the perfect way of
silencing the haters (she didn't get the happily ever after, hence she is original), but if
your character dies the noblest of deaths, a couple of canonical heroes commit suicide
upon the news, another swears off dating for all the ages of Arda, and a flower blooms,
fragile and beautiful, on her tomb every year on the anniversary of her death, dying for
her has been the equivalent of the Roman elevation of emperors into gods: she used to be
a simple Sue, but now she's attained the rank of Saint patron of all Marys.
The character dies? Fair game. Some will be sad, some will be desperate, some will not
care. Just like in real life. And just like in real life, the Sun will keep rising and setting,
and the Earth, Middle- or real one, will keep spinning quite happily, and indifferently.
Keep it real, and it'll be good. Reality can be wreathed in poetry and good writing, and
still be itself.
But there are Sues, of course, who do get the happy ending. Who marry the hero in pure,
unadulterated sappiness, have a couple of kids, raise them and, if their beloved is an Elf
and they happened to be human, somehow get to immortality without a way back.
Unlikely? A lot.
Here we may take a leaf out of Tolkien's own book: the best endings, the most realistic
ones, are bittersweet. At the end of any tale, good or bad tend to balance each other out,
especially in a moral world like Middle-earth. Some characters are defeated, some others
triumph; not all evil is punished and not all evil is spared. No black, no white. Just gray.
And when we're there, as Sam Gamgee once put it, we're home. Where Sue is only a
distant remembrance, and a very faded one at that.
16. Riddikulus: laughing Mary away
Mary Sues are much like Potterverse Boggarts: they are our worst fears as fanfiction
writers, but a laugh is enough to banish them. The flaming, the hating, the insulting that
has been going on in this fandom, like in any other, originated of writers and reviewers
that took it all too seriously. In writing, as in many things, practice makes perfect; and
beginners are likely to make errors. Friendly advice was needed; but hammer-strokes
rained down. A sober self-criticism should have occurred to digest the thoughts of those
who sincerely wished to counsel; but self-esteem got hurt.
We're out to have fun; and learn how to be better story-tellers in the process. Authors,
any of them, put a bit of themselves in any character they write; with OFCs, when we're
girls at our first try, we sometimes tend to get a tad overboard. There, in that shadowy
place where daydreaming hasn't bloomed into fully fledged imagination yet, Mary Sue is
born: but if we manage to detach ourselves from her a bit, she dies just as quickly. The
best way to do it, if you ask me? By reading parodies.
Parody is the place where we make fun of the fandom, and of ourselves; and if parody if
well made, you're going to learn a lot from it, aside from the having a good laugh. Here I
will list a few works that I have happened across through the years, and which I found
useful, but also, and most importantly, incredibly funny; I am sure that out there there are
a lot more I simply did not know of.
The Game of the Gods, by Limyaael; where the Valar, Tolkienverse equivalent of gods,
play chess with Sues as pawns. The dark Vala Morgoth puts them down, the white Valie
Varda beats them with logic. And a fantastic tale of epic proportions, and equal
amusement, is sprinkled all over it.
Fair Wanderer, Thou Makest Me Sick, by Araloth the Random; Mary wanted Leggy, and
Mary was right strange. And Araloth got her all right. This fantastic oneshot was
developed in the equally funny multi-chaptered sequel Fair Wanderer, Thou Makest Me
Sicker.
Debbie Does the Fellowship, by Gypsie Rose; remember the Sue that got all the heroes?
Right. Elevate her to the power of ten. And laugh your head off.
The Official Fanfiction University of Middle-earth, by Camilla Sandman; this work
initiated a whole tradition of 'Official Fanfiction Universities' in other fandoms. What
would happen, asks Camilla, if Tolkienverse characters could teach fanfiction writers
how things actually are? The answer is: readers will be rolling on the floor. Followed by
Once More Into the Urple Depths of OFUM.
Plain Jane in Thirteen Chapters, by Larry1710; albeit unfinished, this is the fic that for
me brought metafanfiction to a whole new level (AND Boromir was in-character. In a
romance.).
The LOTR Mary – Sue Litmus Test, by Gil Shalos: inspired from the legendary 'Mary Sue
Universal Litmus Test', good fun, and an helpful device for a last-hour check.
17. Conclusion: good writing, and good luck
What I tried to do here was not Sue-bashing, or hating, or flaming. I don't hold with
flamers. I don't hold with lecturers, either. If you have felt offended, or lectured to, I
apologize; it was not my intention. What I tried to do was simply putting a long story of
writing, beta'ing and discussing OFCs at the service of others, providing them with the
answers I would have needed back then, when I started writing and half my characters
had violet irises and a tendency to snatch all the hotties from the scene. I have grown, I
have learnt; but I am not perfect. Nor, everywhere in writing this essay, have I assumed I
am.
Mary Sues exist. But good OFCs do, too, and that's why OFC writers go on on their long,
difficult road. One that, if sometimes it gets lost in the brambles of Sueishness, can also
climb to unsuspected heights. It takes some time; but it is worth it. Good writing, and
good luck.