Pairing Do's and Don'ts

Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar...(sigh)

Character/OC Don'ts

Again, I was educating the class.

"Alright. Listen up you bunch of loud mouths. We are here on OC and characters. After this chapter, I'm going to educate you on character behaviors. But let's discuss Mary Sues and Gary Stus.

"A Mary Sue is basically a character who has had a difficult past with anguish and is a multi-bender. She also makes characters go a little OOC. Trust me, almost everyone has created a Mary Sue at one point in their life, admit it or not. I've done so, but the way to fix it is to find it and take the story down, correcting it. Here's how you know you've created a Mary Sue." I instructed.

"1) She/he has unnaturally colored eyes (purple, red, orange, yellow, etc.) or they change colors with mood.
2) She/he has parents from different nations without proper explanation.
3) She/he bends more than one NATURAL element.
4) She/he mastered their element before being AT LEAST Toph or Aang's age.
5) She/he has a past of anguish.
6) She/he is a self insert.
7) She/he has flawless qualities/qualities that should be admired.
8) Her/his hair is not protaining to the normal nation's.
9) She/he is an airbender in the present day world.
10) She/he can defeat anyone at any given time.
11) She/he is one tempermental person.
12) They are extremely beautiful/handsome and the characters just fall in love immediately.
13) They are related to any main character." The class read.

"Let's go into detail. The unnatural eyes. Those of the Fire Nation have gold, amber, or brown eyes. The end. Those of the Water Tribe have blue eyes, varying shades. From the Earth Kingdom, the eyes are brown or shades of green. Air Nomads have the stormy grey eyes. Number 2; do not just make the person have a father from the Fire Nation and a mother from the Earth Kingdom without going into detail. Explain something. At least say that the mother was raped by a lowly soldier," I explained, cringing at my own words. "Or he was like Jeong Jeong. EXPLAIN! Depending on how rock solid your story is, is how much people will buy it.

"Rule 3; there are four elements; fire, earth, water, and air. Only one person can bend all four. They are the Avatar. REMEMBER THIS! There is no icebending, snowbending, shadowbending, darknessbending, windbending, lovebending, lightbending, or anything else. Now, the elements stretch out to a certain limit. Firebenders can control lightning, earth the sand, and water the water INSIDE plants and snow. I'm done elaborating. If you don't understand this concept, don't write a fic." I barked and moved on.

"Rule 4; they do not master elements at the age of six. Sorry, get over it. Next, pasts of anguish are boring. Her mother didn't love her, his father abused him, blah, blah, crap. End it now.

"Rule 6; self inserts aren't fun. We don't like those. If you're a Sokka/Zuko fangirl, suck it up and stop putting yourself in there. Zuko is not going to see you on Kyoshi Island and go 'Mira! Is that you?' and go all mushy gushy and hug you and hold your hand and stuff. Tough luck." I noticed a few girls had drawn their names with Zuko or Sokka's and put hearts all around, so I directed it at them.

"Number 7; no one is perfect. Especially made up characters. Flaws are nice. USE THEM! For the hair colors, Fire Nation has the dark brown and black hair, Water Tribes have dark brown, Air Nomad females have dark brown hair as the males often shave their head, and Earth Kingdom citizens have dark brown or black hair. No red, blond, blue, green, pink, purple. Don't like it? Not my problem.

"Number 9; there are no airbenders in present day and time for the Avatar world. They can be descendants, but they don't airbend. If it's a past fic like over 100 years ago, before Aang was in the iceberg, go for it. But that's it. Number 10 is just silly. Your OC must not defeat Ozai/Iroh/Azula/Zhao/Aang or anyone else. Okie dokie?" A few more moans came.

"How about this girl? Her name is Marietta and she has brown hair with blonde highlights and blue eyes and she can bend water most of the time, but earth when she wants to and she falls in love with Zuko and they get married." The girl sighed happily.

"Isn't your name Marie? Whatever, highlights aren't existant. Suck it up. Next! Keep your person in a constant pattern. Give them a temper, fine. But don't make them one PMS girl who's all 'I love ice cream' and then two seconds later 'SCREW YOU, ZUKO!' Number 12 is not even worth much attention. Zuko/Sokka/Aang or Katara/Toph/Suki/Azula or whoever else you can think of is not going to spot someone and go 'I LOVE THEM!'" I cut her off.

"Finally, being related to any of the main characters is crazy. Zuko doesn't have a secret brother or Sokka and Katara don't have a baby sister in the South Pole. Aang does not have twin sisters who fell in the iceberg with him. Bringing us to the conclusion of this lesson. Next lesson is on Aang character development, followed by a short Q and A session." I told them.

Me: Okay...hope you liked my little edition on Mary Sues/Gary Stus.