Mary Sue?

[Kat]

WTF is a “Mary Sue”? I can get from the context that it’s not a compliment, but what’s the exact meaning and where’d it come from?

[samclem]

She’s amazingly intelligent, outrageously beautiful, adored by all around her – and absolutely detested by most reading her adventures. She’s Mary Sue, the most reviled character type in media fan fiction. [1] Basically, she’s a character representing the author of the story, an avatar, the writer’s projection into an interesting world full of interesting people whom she watches weekly and thinks about daily. Sometimes the projections get processed into interesting characters, themselves. Usually, though, they don’t.

from here

I read one site which said it comes from Star Trek. I stopped at that point.

[Protesilaus]

Here are three pages which discuss “Mary Sue” at length, probably much, much more length than you actually wanted.

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: 150 YEARS OF MARY SUE

Self-Insertion and Mary-Sue-ism

Who is this Mary Sue person, and why am I supposed to care about her?