With fanfic, it can be easier to guess that a badly written OC who takes center stage and has all the canon characters bowing before her in awe and acting totally OOC may be a wish-fulfillment vehicle.
In a sense, all fiction - fanfic, original fic, published or otherwise - is wish-fulfillment on some level. Or at the very least, some kind of "what if?" fulfillment.
But when "self-insert" is used as part of the term "Mary Sue" it usually means "idealized self-insert, the author as s/he wishes s/he could be." Where things get a bit tricky, and it's more dangerous to just assume that Ginny, or Tonks, are people JKR wishes she was (I've heard people say Tonks is JKR's self-insert too). Maybe JKR really wishes she was everyone in the Potterverse!
She has gone on record as saying that Hermione carries a bit of herself, and Harry too. But Harry's the hero, and it makes more sense to have the hero, the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived blah blah blah, be a "self-insert." Ginny is really a secondary character. We hardly saw her at all in PoA and GoF.
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In a sense, all fiction - fanfic, original fic, published or otherwise - is wish-fulfillment on some level. Or at the very least, some kind of "what if?" fulfillment.
But when "self-insert" is used as part of the term "Mary Sue" it usually means "idealized self-insert, the author as s/he wishes s/he could be." Where things get a bit tricky, and it's more dangerous to just assume that Ginny, or Tonks, are people JKR wishes she was (I've heard people say Tonks is JKR's self-insert too). Maybe JKR really wishes she was everyone in the Potterverse!
She has gone on record as saying that Hermione carries a bit of herself, and Harry too. But Harry's the hero, and it makes more sense to have the hero, the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived blah blah blah, be a "self-insert." Ginny is really a secondary character. We hardly saw her at all in PoA and GoF.