I caught a lot of flack in comments for a psychiatric diagnosis and recommended treatment. One dear ESL person asked, "Is it correct that you will never spoken to a mental health professional person?" I thanked her sweetly for her comment.

Two years after the fic was posted, it got a comment last week, advising those commenters, "Actually, the diagnosis was likely correct, given the symptoms. And that course of treatment is often recommended, with far less side effects than formerly, and with significant success."

So, you know, I'm all vindicated.

I've noticed that Brits have "a coffee' and the Americans I grew up around have "some coffee". Which I point out for no real reason except it would be hard to be a spy and have to watch for those little things all the time.

I've pointed out the use of "flat" rather than "apartment" or "place" to an author I really like, but my overall comment was very complimentary (it was a fun story!) and she seemed thankful for the input.

You know what? Just put your AU in Britain and don't explain why. I just bumped into an SPN AU in Croatia for no apparent reason, but it was replete with OCs named Karynne, so I didn't bother. If you do that with enough aplomb you can get away with it.

And the OC thing. I'm not one of those readers who fails a fic based on the existence of an OC, or even /OC, but if you can smell it from the summary, come on. Tag it appropriately, and we can adjust our searches in response. But also frustrating is when you think "If you'd just named her Darcy, you wouldn't have had to give Jane a new intern/breakfast partner--there's no noticeable difference between your OC and a nearby canon character". If whatever part of your ego that OC is stroking is more important than canon, I'll probably bail on the story.

It's handy that the Avengers universe has a ready-made Mary Sue/self-identifiable character in Darcy. She lets authors who want to insert themselves into the story kind of avoid the Dreaded OFC Who's Just Like Them.

Not coincidentally, she's also the character that makes me skip past any story if plot developments involving her are present in the summary.

What are other fandom's Mary Sue shells? Would you make yourself Willow or Fred? Or are they too well defined and A-team?

I didn't read widely in Buffy, but I recall hearing a lot about Willow-Sue.

Willow, definitely. I remember reading quite a few stories back in the day wherein Buffy got pushed out of the way so the story could concentrate on Willow's special snowflake destiny.

I'm thinking Kenzi from Lost Girl is tailor-made for that sort of role too, though I can't say if that's reflected in the fanfic or not.

I'm thinking Kenzi from Lost Girl is tailor-made for that sort of role too

Having a lead character that's ridiculously awful will precipitate that, though.