I've heard the term "Mary Sue" thrown around a lot, and it seems to mean different things to different people, but is always something negative about the way the character is written, not necessarily about the character itself, usually involving the phrase "overly idealized". Is there any common definition that most people follow that can be properly qualified?
Answer
A Mary Sue is a character who passively warps the fabric of the story to their own benefit by virtue of mere existence, and acts only within that context. That's really what most of the extant and often inconsistent definitions boil down to.
The key defining characteristic of this is a sort of reversed narrative causality: The character is unique; therefore they were born with an unusual eye color. The character succeeds; therefore they learned the necessary skills somewhere. The character is popular; therefore other characters like them, regardless of behavior or motivation. The character is dark and angsty; therefore they had a tragic past. There's often no rhyme or reason to the implied backstory except in the context of setting the character up to act in the current situation. Most descriptions of a Mary Sue are essentially lists of character traits commonly used to prop up a Mary Sue in this manner.
A consequence of the reversed causality is that justification of the character's traits or development of their personality is treated as inessential. Other characters will interact with the Mary Sue in whatever way they're Supposed To, their motivations for doing so contrived as needed or just having their personal agency overridden outright by force of narrative.
Self-inserts are frequently written as Sues for obvious reasons, but any character favored by the author can get the same treatment, up to and including distorted interpretations of canon characters in fanfic.
The term originates from fanfiction, where the artificiality of the character and the effects of their presence are most clearly visible against an established backdrop. A setting with multiple authors can be similar--writers using a shared setting, role-playing groups, &c.--if one author tries to make their character(s) more important by fiat or contrived situations.
For a single author with a new story in an independent setting with original characters the term is harder to use in a meaningful way, which is not to say that accusations aren't made. A main character who is too perfect, too competent, too successful, and all around too much isn't a Mary Sue if showcasing their larger-than-life exploits is the intended purpose of the story. A secondary character being oh-so-special and interesting and important isn't a Mary Sue if the entire cast is similarly over the top and the narrative doesn't consistently favor any one character. A female character doing something unexpectedly interesting is not automatically a Mary Sue, for crying out loud.
In short, there is no "archetype" here, though some archetypes are more susceptible than others. A character being a Mary Sue is first and foremost a property of their role in the story.
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