1. Cat/fox/monkey/cow/anything else -demons. Uh-uh. I don't see why so many people were/are fascinated with a dude that has a tail growing out of his rear. While some people will certainly think differently, I don't see the huge deal about it. Why cross a human with a fox, what's the point?

It depends on what you're doing and how.  Free reign to anything that's well written.  Where would manga and anime be without those kooky hybrids? 

2. Insanely big weapons. Why do people think swords that are taller than them are cool? And, how come almost all the people I talk to about this are willing to defend it vehemently, saying it's just really big, and we could use them in real life if we had them?

Having fought with these kinds of weapons myself a few times, I can tell you that the idea of pixies wielding flaming greatswords wouldn't fly in world that has physical laws that even vaguely resemble our own.  Most of what gets passed of a greatswords in video games and such also wouldn't work in the real world.  Myself, I prefer a mace or war hammer, shield, and heavy armor.  I'm strong enough to bull rush you and have taken several people off their feet, winning my bout in the first few second of contact. 

Even if I don't, I have a shield to block your blows, particularly from the fancy-schmancy 2 handed weapons while I continue to pound on you with considerable force using my blunt solid object.  It doesn't take me long to begin to put dents in things.  Now, since we fight for fun and bragging rights, we tend to avoid blows to the head and such.  The moral of the story here is that while you can't really hit me, thanks to my shield.  I can shove you all over the tournament field and wail on you basically at will. There's a good reason that in the old tapestries you don't see gigantic fancy swords.  When you live and die by your weaponry and your ability to use it, you don't have time to dink around with showboat pieces.  You use what works and what keeps you alive until the next battle. 

Secondly, steel weighs .283 pounds per cubic inch and steel plate weighs in 1/4" thick = 10.2 pounds per square foot.  Steel is *heavy*.  To give you a real world example, we'll look at the Scottish claymore, one of the larger swords that was ever in common usage.  The "William Wallace" claymore is a whopping 54" long from sword tip to pommel.  14" of that is the hilt and the other 40" (for you math impaired) are blade and it weighs in at a whopping 6 pounds.  Now, six pounds doesn't sound like a lot until you try to start swinging it around for hours on end.  That's the real world example. 

The "fantasy" example I'll use is a rather misguided in-duh-vidual I know who owns an "Excalibur Replica".  This thing is a full 6 feet (72") long and weighs in about 20 pounds.  I'm strong and know what I'm doing and I can't barely get the tip of that monster off the table top.  Making the dangerous assumption that you could wield it, it's far too long for me to manage effectively and I'm not exactly a runt.  It's far to long to manage effectively in anything approaching a confined space - like a room where it would get stuck in the ceiling while you're trying to slash and jab.  It's completely retarded and created for people who know nothing about weapons and think that, like the male member, swords that are bigger are some how better. 

My question to you is, do you use these items/characters in your stories? And, please try to persuade me with better reasons than 'it is cool'. I'd love to be persuaded, really. I just don't see the point behind it all.

I have one character that carries a gigantic sword around, but she almost never uses it for anything at all.  It's ceremonial and something of a penance for her to have to carry it with her everywhere she goes. 

2 cents,

RecentCoin

I do the same thing but I do it on my laptop.  I have a whole folder full of what I call "snippets".  Some are outlines, some are a few paragraphs, some are a few pages.  They sit there off to the side patiently waiting until I can pick one of them up and start working on it.  I tend to avoid fanfics for this reason.  I have X days on Planet Earth.  If I spend 3 days writing a fanfic, that means I now have X-3 days to finish things that I *can* publish.  That doesn't meant that I discard those ideas, but I will sit them off to the side to see if I can do something with them later that is *not* a fanfic. 

2 cents,

RecentCoin

Mary Sue is a standard term for using the main character as your alter ego to insert the real world you into a bit of fiction - be it a fanfic or  something else.  Only you - the author - knows how much truth there is in that.  And even then it might not matter.  Anne Rice books = textbook Mary Sues but I'm betting that you've all read at least one of them and liked it.  Jack Ryan = Tom Clancy's Gary Stu and again I'm betting that most everyone here as read at least one and liked it.  It's all in the skill of the author.  Most fandoms hold these quizzes out as the holy grail of what not to be because there is so much utter and total drivel (and I'm being polite because I can't call it what I would normally call it here) that gets written any given fandom.  Most of it revolves around taking the author, making them, in the infamous words of Cartman, "Hella-cool", and then reshaping an entire plane of existence to enhance their "Hella-cool-ness". 

If you want to write a total Mary Sue - I'd say go for it.  What else do you know better than yourself?  Who have you spent more time with?  Just do us all a favor, and do it well if you do it.  Forget being "Hella-cool" and actually write the *real* you into something.  That might actually be kinda interesting.

2 cents....

RecentCoin 

As the aforementioned co-author, I can tell you that I have always been verbose.  It takes a lot of words to create an accurate mental picture for someone else, so I spend a lot of words creating mood and giving descriptions.  I think that this is especially important in a fantasy setting, since there are no preconceived notions.  If I say "grocery store", you get an immediate mental image of aisles, shopping carts, produce section, the smell of coffee from the coffee aisle, the horrid fluorescent lighting, etc.  There isn't a lot of description required for you to understand "grocery store".  But I say, "Drow campsite" and you don't necessarily know what a drow is, do you have any idea of what that looks likes?  smells like?  what the "vibe" is like?  No, you do not and in order to make a reader understand that, you have to explain that to them. 

One of my central characters is a tiefling.  He's an escaped slave who's grandfather was a very powerful demon.  I go to a fair amount of trouble to show his strengths, his weaknesses, and his trials with his own very real "inner demon".  I think that's more important to explaining to the unfamiliar what a tiefling is than waving a drawing at them and saying "demon".  Now, the question becomes how to do this in a few words and the short answer is that you can't.  It takes words on the paper.  If you leave too many blanks, you don't really tell the whole story.  My problem is that character creation comes easily to me.  Even my background characters have elaborate back stories.  One of my background characters is a housekeeper.  Her back story is almost as elaborate as the main PC's even though I've not written it down.