Contest entries are pouring in. They're hilarious, people - keep 'em coming!

Link O The Day: The Light the Night Walk for Lukemia and Lymphonoma.

And Bad Banner Week, Day Seven:

TITLE: The Call of Destiny
PERPETRATOR: DragonFire521

SUE-O-METER: (toxic)

FULL NAME: Joyce Maxwell
SPECIES: human/witch
HAIR: black, 'Her hair was dangling elegantly in the nice breeze'
EYES: brown, 'He stared into her eyes they were so sparkling, pure, innocent, and magnificent he was speechless'
MARKINGS: none mentioned
POSESSIONS: a Stu brother named James. If anybody is wondering why 'James Maxwell' sounds familiar, it was the name of a famous mathematician.

ORIGIN: Harry goes to stay with her family instead of at the Dursleys for the summer.
CONNECTIONS TO CANON: Will shag Harry, of course.
SPECIAL ABILITIES: none mentioned

NOTES: I've noticed that stories on this website tend, in general, to have better grammar than those on the Pit of Voles. But of course, there are always exceptions to generalizations. This is a big, fat one.

SAMPLE: ( Holy Sue, Batman. )

Link O The Day: voldy_groove is another RP looking for members.

Bad Banner Week, Day Six:

TITLE: If I'm Gonna Die, I Might as Well Die for You
PERPETRATOR: BB Knight

SUE-O-METER: (awful)

FULL NAME: Viviana Fannon. Heh heh, 'Fannon'.
SPECIES: human/witch
HAIR: not described
EYES: 'not described
MARKINGS: none mentioned
POSESSIONS: three tumors the size of oranges. These are there to give her a reason to mope and to need the healing only twu wuv can offer. Gag me.

ORIGIN: She collapses on the stairs at Hogwarts one day, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and sent to St. Mungo's. Worlds are colliding in very strange ways here.
CONNECTIONS TO CANON: Was adopted by the Weasleys when she was five. Is going to fall for Draco Malfoy in the hospital.
SPECIAL ABILITIES: none mentioned

NOTES: Madam Pomphrey doesn't say as much, but what our Sueoine has appears to be Movie Cancer, also known as Angstonoma - that's the kind of cancer that lets the sufferer stay pretty as she slowly wastes away. In fact, a woman with this disease (men appear to be immune) will often become even more tragically lovely as her skin gets paler and eyes get brighter towards the end.

SAMPLE: ( This Is Just So Out Of Nowhere... )

Link O The Day: Possibly in the effort to prove that we do more than simply sit around crushing the dearest hopes of 14-year-old emo kids, one of the minions is doing a five kilometre walk for breast cancer in October! If you want to support her, you can donate.

In conjunction with this, I feel I should lay down some rules here - I will only Link-O-The-Day requests for money if they are for donations directly to a charity. I will link to the Red Cross' Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund or Locks of Love or the Save the Manatee Club or whatever your pet cause happens to be, but absolutely not to your paypal account. And I will not post 'my cat caught fire - buy me an iPod!' things, because let's face it, we spend enough time on fandom_wank. Thank you.

Oh, and it's August 31 - as of midnight tonight, you can start posting your contest entries! Don't forget to send me the URLs! And since people seem to ask this a lot: write the story however you like. You can use grammar if you want, or neglect it if you're trying to be more realistic. Just stick to the theme is all.

And now, finally, Bad Banner Week, Day Five:

TITLE: A Picture Can Say More Than A Million Words
PERPETRATOR: akai kudamono. I shall be charitable and assume this is her real name, which means this story is only a self-insert, not the work of a squealing otaku wannabe.

SUE-O-METER: (bad)

FULL NAME: Ayumi
SPECIES: human/witch
HAIR: 'chocolate brown'
EYES: 'raven black'.
MARKINGS: none mentioned
POSESSIONS: none mentioned

ORIGIN: Draco has a dream in which he's married to her, and then the next day she shows up at Hogwarts.
CONNECTIONS TO CANON: Destined to shag Draco - in some detail, apparently, as you have to click an "I'm 18 or Older" button before you can read it.
SPECIAL ABILITIES: none mentioned

NOTES: The author's profile page claims she has a story called Marauding Penguins in progress but not posted yet. Damn, I want to read that.

Pansy bashing, check.

Sues from HarryPotterFanfiction.com are awful bland, aren't they?

SAMPLE: ( It's The Sue Of His Dreams! )

Link O The Day: I've had a couple of people now ask me to feature HermionePotter.net as an example of fandom gone horribly, horribly wrong. Personally, I think the whole mess is well past the point where it was funny, but I do like how her graphics resemble a crossover between Harry Potter and The Thing with Two Heads.

Bad Banner Week, Day Four:

TITLE: Collide
PERPETRATOR: tranferwitch14. What is a 'tranfer'?

SUE-O-METER: (bad)

FULL NAME: Janice Robison, whom everybody calls 'Janie', which gets misspelled as 'Jamie' here and there.
SPECIES: human/witch
HAIR: not described
EYES: not described
MARKINGS: none mentioned
POSESSIONS: a lime green 'Volxwagon Beetle', and a pony: 'a bay thoroughbred named Danny'. Also copious cleavage.

ORIGIN: She lives with her mom and her sister. The appear to have more money than they know what to do with, though she insists that her life sucks for reasons that she never actually explains. And then she falls off her horse one day and wakes up in Potterland.
CONNECTIONS TO CANON: Bestest friends with the trio.
SPECIAL ABILITIES: none mentioned

NOTES: An observation... a lot of people write fics in which their character gets in a car accident and wakes up in the Potterverse, or gets sucked into their TV, or falls asleep and dreams about it, or what have you. And then when they get there, the reaction is always, "oooh, mysterious girl fell from the sky! Let's Sort her, get her a wand, and encourage her to shag the hero!" This is, as Mr. Spock would say, highly illogical, captain.

So ocasionally, you get fics like this, in which the main character finds herself in the Potterverse, surrounded by people who apparently think she's always been there. Now, if the author wants her character to be immediately accepted by the canon characters so that she can get on with whatever excuse she has for a plot, this is actually a rather more logical way to go about the 'enter another universe' thing.

Have you ever noticed that in published stories, the new arrival to the universe is not trusted unless they were expected? The people of Gaia, for example, are leery of Hitomi until they get to know her, and those in the know discourage her from talking about the fact that she's from the Mystic Moon. The Pevensies are welcome in Narnia only because everybody knows about the prophecy concerning the human kids who will arrive to save the kingdom. If your Sue was not 'called' into the universe and there was no prophecy to encourage people to expect her (not that I'm championing the misuse of prophecy that goes on in this fandom), then if you want to tell a good story it's probably wisest to go through a stage where the canon characters have to reassure themselves that this strange new arrival is trustworthy.

But as noted above, Sue Authors often don't want to do that. They want to get on with things and have their Sue Save The World (TM). So really... why don't more Sue Authors do what this story does, and have their Sue apparently inhabit the body of an alternate universe version of herself? Is it just a concept they don't think of, or is there something else at work here?

Discuss.

SAMPLE: ( My Life Sucks! I Bet You Want To Ride My Pony, Don't You? )

Link O The Day: This has nothing to do with Harry Potter, but is, regardless, very nifty.

Bad Banner Week, Day Three:

TITLE: The Cool September Winds
PERPETRATOR: Penny Lane

SUE-O-METER: (toxic)

FULL NAME: Owen. Owen? Now, admittedly we live in a day and age where unfortunate little girls get burdened with boyish names like 'Jordan' and 'Taylor' and 'Madison', but Owen? Who the hell looks at their bundle of pink-swaddled joy in the hospital room and goes, "let's call her Owen!"?
SPECIES: human/witch
HAIR: 'dark, wavy hair'
EYES: 'deep blue eyes'
MARKINGS: none mentioned
POSESSIONS: a promise ring Remus Lupin gave her: ' The ring was adorned with two delicately carved hands and a small heart. If the two hands and the heart were facing upwards, it meant your heart was free; if the two hands and the heart were facing downwards, towards your own heart, it meant that your love had already been given to someone else.'

ORIGIN: I think she congealed out of pure angst.
CONNECTIONS TO CANON: Was going to marry Lupin, but he rejected her because he didn't think she could handle the fact that he's gay a werewolf. And now she's carrying Sirius' child. Little tramp.
SPECIAL ABILITIES: none mentioned

NOTES: It's a you-Sue.

SAMPLE: ( My God, Girl, Snap The Hell OUT Of It! )

Link O The Day: An icon I tend to think of as "The Eye of Sueron". I have no idea if it's stealable.

I think I will call this week Bad Banner Week. Bad Banner Week, Day Two:

TITLE: Say, what?
PERPETRATOR: prosgal

SUE-O-METER: (bad)

FULL NAME: Paige Springer and Amy Davidson
SPECIES: human/witches
HAIR: Paige: 'I had recently cut my long light brown hair after years of complaining about it and now it was above my shoulders with a bit of a flip out'. Amy has 'dark long hair with hits of purple'
EYES: Paige has brown eyes. Amy's are hazel.
MARKINGS: Amy has 'numerous piercing, three in one ear, two in the other and of course the one in her eyebrow'. Paige is 'covered in freckles'.
POSESSIONS: none mentioned

ORIGIN: Just a couple of Sues.
CONNECTIONS TO CANON: Amy has a giant crush on Lupin, who doesn't seem to know she exists. Sirius has a giant crush on Paige, who ignores him because she thinks he's an overrated jerk. Gosh, I wonder what will happen?
SPECIAL ABILITIES: none mentioned

NOTES: Best opening line of any Suefic ever.

Another one that's just kind of dull. We really aren't given any reason to care about these people or their love lives. Points for not making them Lily's best friends.

SAMPLE: ( I Really Do Love That Opening Line, Though. )

Song... in... head... won't... go... away!! GAAAH!

Link O The Day: seraphtrevs is curious if anybody would be interested in a Mary-Sue Sorting community.

I may make this week harrypotterfanfiction.com week.

TITLE: Agape
PERPETRATOR: ameyer

SUE-O-METER: (bad)

FULL NAME: Skye Sarri. *sneeeeeeeerk*
SPECIES: human/witch
HAIR: 'brown hair'
EYES: 'blue eyes'
MARKINGS: none mentioned
POSESSIONS: lots of melodrama

ORIGIN: Is sent to Hogwarts as part of a foreign exchange program.
CONNECTIONS TO CANON: Falls in love with Harry at first sight.
SPECIAL ABILITIES: none mentioned

NOTES: Apparently, the Sue talks 'as if she has too much spit in her mouth'. Which is... different, anyway. I'm sure it will end up being part of some super-special secret about her.

Other than that, this one's just bland.

SAMPLE: ( Chapter Three )