Regarding Equestria Daily + Sue rant

First of all, I've sent Once More, With Feeling into a second round of moderation. I enlisted an editor and with his help, made a rather large grammatical sweep of the fic to make it more correct. He also helped me fix an (understandably) Out Of Character moment for Sweetie Belle in the fic, so cheers Solar Powered for that. Hopefully there aren't a stack of things we mysteriously missed on our edit sweep and EqD find it in their hearts to pass it.

The world needs more RariTavia!

Also regarding Equestria Daily, I have a suggestion for their Editor's Omnibus (the big Google Docs file with a massive list of handy hints for writers) more specifically on their section about Mary Sues/Gary Stus. They seem to imply that a character can be classed as a Mary Sue merely by possessing a list of specific traits, which just simply isn't the case. A character is only a Sue if the universe in which the character exists, bends to meet the needs of that one character. Being incredibly attractive and loved is a "Sue Trait", but plenty of people like that exist even in our universe. However, if the main character's attractiveness causes established canon characters to act OOC just to suit the main character's needs (quick example, Rarity willingly dragging herself through a muddy field just because the main character happens to be on the other side) then you have a Sue.

Having a character blue/green/pink/purple natural hair is considered a "Sue Trait" (almost everywhere except MLP and anime that is. The Omnibus makes the distinction of Multi-hued/gradient style colouring as being the abnormal variations in this instance) because it makes them special/is pretty much impossible to have happen normally. However, if your universe has blue hair etc being normal, then it ceases to be a "Sue Trait". These kinds of distinction are the ones that aren't made in the Editor's Omnibus.

A Sue can only be a Sue when you take the Universe they exist in into consideration.

If you took a Maka from Soul Eater (for all accounts, a badass amongst badasses, but still pretty much just a regular human) and put her in the a totally innocuous Universe like the one in Spice & Wolf, she'd be a total Sue because of how awesome and powerful she is. In her own Universe though, she isn't the strongest or overpowerful, she's just kinda normal. That was probably a really bad example, but it's the best I've got right now xD