I think it wouldn't be unfair to say that the original definition of "Mary Sue" is a perfect female self-insert who wrecks the canon. Delightfully, Wikipedia currently has the entire text of the 1973 "A Trekkie's Tale" on their Mary Sue article, and (barring that it was a parody) the definition fits.

Since that time (and stars above, Original Mary is in her mid 60s now), various people or communities have focussed in one part or another of the term:

• Fandom as a whole tends to focus on 'perfect'. That's where you get the big lists of traits, with "if your character scores more than X points they're a Mary Sue!".

• Whole swathes of obnoxious men have picked up 'female', and now deride any OFC as a Mary Sue. This is where a lot of the backlash against the term comes from, and is why I prefer "Suvian" in my own writing these days.

• As you note, a lot of people look at the 'self-insert' part, and I think this is what people mean when they say "I know my character's a Mary Sue" or suchlike.

• The PPC nowadays hones in on the 'who wrecks the canon' aspect. We're actually quite unusual in that respect, which is why we define the term at such length on the wiki. It's worth noting that this position has developed over time - we used to have a lot more focus on traits and attributes, but that way lies sexism, and we really don't want that around.

hS

Some OCs are identified as self-inserts by their authors, and some definitely have a recognizable SI vibe, but a lot of the time it's not that easy to tell. It's important to remember we don't actually know anything about the authors, so we can't know how much of themselves they've put into a particular character.

It's also not that important if a character is or isn't a self-insert, because what makes a Mary Sue is how it's written, not any particular trait about it. A lot of agents are explicit self-inserts, after all, and we would certainly hope that doesn't make them Sues!

~Neshomeh

Assuming Acacia is serious, which is rather a big assumption: In a worldview where dumb is worse than evil, what the heck qualifies as good? I don't know.

But I don't take Acacia all that seriously. {= )

TBH, I think the PPC is better defined in terms of Order vs. Chaos than Good vs. Evil. Upstairs is Lawful Neutral: as long as order is maintained in the multiverse, they don't care how it gets done. However, they also don't usually go out of their way to be horrible to the agents (unless they are Legal), but they just don't get what the big deal is a lot of the time, because they are giant plants and the agents by and large are not. They don't stop the agents from organizing themselves to make their lives better, because that furthers the cause. It's just tough to organize in a place where time and space can shift on you without notice.

OCs run the gamut of Good and Evil as far as how they present themselves, but that isn't what matters to the PPC; all that matters is whether or not they fit in with their host universe. The more they act like destructive parasites, warping timelines, minds, physics, etc., the more the PPC objects, regardless of whether they're there to Kiss the Baby or Kick the Dog.

... And I always wander into this metaphor of Suvians (and badfics in general) as disease vectors and the PPC as an immune response, because I think it's a good fit. White blood cells and the aptly named killer-T cells are stab-happy psychos (if you've seen Cells at Work, you know exactly what I mean!), but only when their body is under threat of invasion from harmful foreign cells—usually, anyway. If they start going after neutral foreign bodies (allergens) or good, healthy cells, then you've got a problem. Same with the PPC. It's got a helluva potential to wreak bloody havoc, but it's fine as long as its targeting system functions correctly. Fortunately, the system has improved over time. {= )

Now, whether individual agents are Good or Evil is a whole 'nother question...

~Neshomeh

It would be nice if they came in with a more accurate idea of what we're about, no?

'Course, the last time we made a concerted effort to make TVT's representation of us more broadly accurate, less skewed toward mostly Laburnum's and Tawaki's spin-offs (since they were the most active editors over there for a while), TVT banned the people involved for "whitewashing," so I have no faith that we would be allowed to make improvements even if we tried. This is the main reason my preferred source for trope reference is All the Tropes.

~Neshomeh also likes being able to interlink with it easily from the wiki.