So.
I was reading through old entries to make sure my tagging habits had not gone astray (namely: does 'writing' mean 'about writing' or 'fiction' or both?) and came across a link which I will repeat here, on the nature of the Mary Sue. I mostly agree with the definition given, with the caveat that a Mary Sue (as I use the term) need not be (recognizably) a self-insert. It frequently is, just as an author's first story's protagonist often greatly resembles themself (usually with some amount of idealization), and for similar reasons. But to dismiss Princess Evangeline Hiroko Astarte Picasso Pluto Valentine (and her rainbow-maned spunicorn), the last of the pink-eyed cat-people raised tragically by magic worms after her planet was blown up, and who gets up to lots of lesbian hijinks in between solving everyone's problems and being picked on for her dark skin, simply because her story was written by a white middle-aged man, seems like a specious argument to me. Likewise the Draco Malfoy (written by a fourteen year old girl) who looks good in leather pants and who could totally sex up anybody and everybody worth mentioning except that he's secretly in love with Virginia Ginevra Weasely (or maybe Hermione) and spends a lot of time pining for her and angsting that he can never reveal his feelings, oh woe! And who eventually dies in Harry's arms, spontaneously turning him gay and giving him the impetus to bypass all that nonsense in book seven and destroy Voldemort utterly with the power of his newfound (long-denied?) love, driven by rage and grief. Those are, of course, extreme examples, in order to better illustrate my point. Still.