Mary Sue and the Tyranny of Names

Back when I was writing MSTings, we spent a great deal of time "riffing" on fanfics that might be summed up as "Mary Sue" stories... but in the process of that, I started to wonder about the connotations packed into that name. Many people found it easy to proclaim that their characters, characters it was at times just as easy to become infuriated at, "weren't Mary Sues." In tossing out the name, we might have been neglecting to shine a proper light on the casual arrogance, pointless one-upsmanship, uncritical love from the characters who had come before, and general rule-breaking that we were attempting to riff on.

Beyond that, at times I'm convinced that to be a "Mary Sue," a character has to be disliked by some of the audience; what can work in creating a protagonist goes way overboard in building up a character elbowing their way into an existing story. That may tie in with my uneasiness when a character not from a fanfic is proclaimed to be a "canon sue," because I can wonder if many of them are disliked because they're "not cool enough." The excessive fanfic characters I've found most memorable tended to come across as too cool to me.