First of all, there is the Marty/Gary Stu concept, which is the male version of a Mary Sue. So it’s not like all badly-written male characters are ignored.

Second, feeding into Mary Sues encourages bad writing. Offering helpful critique isn’t tearing someone’s dreams apart, they need to know what to improve on. That’s how we got Bella Swan, a blatant Mary Sue in a published work. Authors need to learn how to make their characters well-rounded and realistic, not self-inserts that everyone bends over backwards for, can never do any wrong, and are overpowered to the billionth degree.

And really? Power fantasy? If they’re posting their work online they’re susceptible to criticism, 12 year old girls included. Once again, constructive criticism is good, otherwise they’ll never grow as writers.

Finally, lay off of Batman. He’s a very realistic character and the audience cam sympathize with him. He’s not infallible, he’s grown as a character, etc. 

This just drove me crazy!

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Snow: They also seem to ignore the fact that Mary Sues are more often than not self inserts for the purpose of wish fulfillment, and have few personal flaws other than being clumsy, or other minor things that other characters find endearing. Also most superheroes have people that consider them Sue-ish. It’s more accurate to analyze the Sue tendencies in the context of the story, their relationship to other characters, and what other people are capable of doing. For example, anyone remember [Mona Lisa Auditore]? Or her sassy counter-Sue [Rosita de Pazzi]? Text book Mary Sues!

There’s not much wrong with writing your own Sue/Stu adventures, but if you want them to be GREAT, you gotta tone it the fuck down and make them more believably flawed in ways.