I like it. But, honestly, if I had come to this article trying to find out why the PPC killed my wonderful original character calling him a Mary Sue, I would have stopped reading after “We of the PPC are attempting a fairly unique thing in that we're seeking to define "Mary Sue" not in terms of what it does...” For Eru’s sake, I just came from the mission report, where the agents rant about what my OC did to the poor canon. I would never see the sixth paragraph of your chapter “Flat vs. Dynamic”.

Maybe it would help to say, somewhere near the top, where everybody can see it, something like “For most practical purposes of the PPC's agents, Mary Sues and Gary Stus are original characters in fan fiction, who, rather than fitting into the world where their story is assumed to happen, warp this world until it fulfills their needs”, and then give the more detailed explanations.

I seconde what Huinesoron said concerning Primary and Secondary Traits, specifically “What I think we need is a section that specifically debunks the idea that these traits are anything other than common characteristics of Sues.”

Your use of the word “Stus” (already pointed out by doctorlit) stood out to me because you never mentioned that a male “Mary Sue” is sometimes called “Gary Stu”, so readers may not understand what you are talking about.

May speaking about “Sues and Stus” in plural help to avoid the he/she/it-problem?

I spotted a mistake: we're only shown that the she is more powerful than weaklings and fools. “The” shouldn’t be there.

It emphasises the main points of Sue and really hammers out why we see them as anti-feminist, amongst other things. Also, will the final be using the meme drawing I posted months ago? Or shall I draw you something else?

I was thinking instead of saying "characters serve the plot but Sues have the plot serve them" you could potentially say that "Instead of changing and developing to suit the plot, the Sue makes the plot change to suit them". I can see some people getting confused about serving the plot versus plot serving them, so this might... explain it a bit better? And it also shows how Sues like to bend Canon for their own whims a bit better.

I very much like this. I think it's comprehensive enough to alleviate outside readers' concerns about us specifically hating on female characters.

That said, in the sentence: "Other Sues, and Stus in particular, may be described as being unnaturally buff . . ." I think maybe "Stus" should be changed to "male Sues" to match up with the use of "female Sues" in the previous sentence. As it is, it feels a bit contradictory of the earlier statement that the PPC uses "Mary Sue" as a blanket term for all Suvians.

Also, the reference link to "A Trekkie's Tale" is broken. Which is unfortunate, because I totally wanted to read that. (Looks to me like the whole domain got sold.)

First of all, I think it's really, really good. I like all the examples, because they really do the show, not tell. That, I think, is where the "awful lot of words" come from. I don't think it needs to be trimmed, because more explanation helps to cover more complexities.

A few things, though:

It's bugging me to keep seeing "it". I know there's no good gender-neutral pronoun, but well, "it" is dehumanizing. While Mary Sues can be labeled as "it", I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I think of good characters as if they are humans (or whatever living species), not as objects. Maybe "they"? Or, since it's specified at the beginning that female pronouns are used as blanket nouns, maybe use those?

In conclusion, the English language needs a gender-neutral pronoun.

2. About the "I'm expecting this to rule out some enjoyable, well-constructed characters that might have been considered Sues under previous definitions", I think overall this succeeded. I love the sentence "The traits discussed here are symptoms, though, not the disease, and any individual one can be written in a way that works." However, that sentence is on top of primary traits. I'm a bit confused - how can writing characters OOC be done well, except in parody? (And I don't count, for example, a situation where Spock shows his emotions as OOC unless it's badly explained, which it usually is.) Perhaps that sentence should be moved to the top of secondary traits.

Also, I feel like labeling good characters as Sues for superficial traits is something very common, so it might be good to make the sentence more forceful. Something like "It's very important to remember that the traits discussed here are symptoms, not the disease, and any individual one can be written in a way that works." Possibly bolded.

Then again, that could be just me hating that Seven of Nine gets called a Mary Sue because she's hot and has a tragic past (written well).

So yeah, those are my thoughts for now.

It seems like you got the traits of a Sue mainly correct over the course of the article. However, I disagree somewhat with the definition: "an unintentionally flat fictional character."

I think that your usage of "unintentionally" is in order to separate Sues from trollfic characters. If so, my opinion is that that distinction needs to be fleshed out in the article, but not necessarily mentioned in the definition.

Also, since you distinguished between Sues and bits ("It's perfectly fine to intentionally design a one-note character to enter, play their part, and exit, but if the main character—the one who has to engage the readers and carry them through the story—never develops, that's a sign of poor characterization and story-telling.") then maybe your definition should say "an unintentionally flat fictional main character."

However, I have been quite a fan of the formulation that you made quite a while ago: a Sue "A. does not behave like a believable-for-the-context person, B. does not get believable-for-the-context treatment from others, and C. is successful just because the plot says so." So let me suggest this to the Board: perhaps that should be the definition, since I believe we all agree that that is the essence of what a Sue is and does.