Role Play 101

V.i. "Mary Sue"/"Gary Sue" Characters & Term Origins

So far I've used the term Mary Sue/Gary Sue a few times, and maybe you're wondering just what a Mary/Gary Sue is. 

According to Urban Dictionary: 
A female fanfiction character who is so perfect as to be annoying. The male equivlalent is the Marty Stu. Often abbreviated to "Sue". A Mary Sue character is usually written by a beginning author. Often, the Mary Sue is a self-insert with a few "improvements" (ex. better body, more popular, etc). The Mary Sue character is almost always beautiful, smart, etc... In short, she is the "perfect" girl. The Mary Sue usually falls in love with the author's favorite character(s) and winds up upstaging all of the other characters in the book/series/universe.

Source: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mary-Sue

"But wait," you say. "That's talking about books!"
Well, you are right. It is talking about books. So then why does this apply to text-based role play? First let's look at Wikepedia's definition. (Yes, I know, your teachers may have beat into your head that Wikepedia is not very reliable. Well, trust me, this one is accurate.)

According to Wikepedia:
The term "Mary Sue" comes from the name of a character created by Paula Smith in 1973 for her parody story "A Trekkie's Tale" published in her fanzine Menagerie #2. The story starred Lieutenant Mary Sue ("the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet — only fifteen and a half years old"), and satirized unrealistic Star Trek fan fiction. Such characters were generally original female adolescents who had romantic liaisons with established canonical adult characters, or in some cases were the younger relatives or protégées of those characters.

"Mary Sue" today has changed from its original meaning and now carries a generalized, although not universal, connotation of wish-fulfillment and is commonly associated with self-insertion. True self-insertion is a literal and generally undisguised representation of the author; most characters described as "Mary Sues" are not, though they are often called "proxies" for the author. The negative connotation comes from this "wish-fulfillment" implication: the "Mary Sue" is judged a poorly developed character, too perfect and lacking in realism to be interesting

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

So... how does this apply? If your character has fifteen thousand different powers, your character is a Mary Sue/Gary Sue. Mary Sue is just the feminine version of an ideological "perfect being", while "Gary Sue" (and as Urban Dictionary called it: "Marty Stu", there are many different versions of both the female and male version) is the male version. But that doesn't mean you can't make your character excell in a given area, like fighting or casting or whatever have you. If you're making your character for combat, it's actually expected that they excell in that area. 

In a nutshell:

If your character can: shapeshift, cast lightning, teleport, bring the sun to the earth, blow up the universe, breathe fire, earthbend, summon weapons from thin air, and even banish someone to a void with which they cannot escape, you may want to rethink what your character can do, because that, my friends, is a Mary/Gary Sue. 

If your character can: use arcane magic, and anything that is Arcane magic (fire ball, ice, lightning, etc.) but nothing more, then good job! It's not a Mary/Gary Sue so long as you don't suddenly get full mastery of every kind of magic. 

If your character can: Use any weapon with complete mastery even if you've never heard of the weapon, you're a Mary/Gary Sue. 

If your character can: Use a couple different weapons effectively, like a sword, axe, and lance effectively but not any more, you are not a Mary/Gary Sue. 

You get the pattern.
Also, nobody is truly unable to die. Even "immortals" can be killed. (Hint: Immortals cannot remain immortal if their brain is damaged. For example, if the brain is liquified, then that means that the body cannot function, therefore is dead.)