as far as i’m concerned, all your faves can. (assuming you’re talking about the male version of mary sue?)

let me clarify: the idea of a ‘mary sue’ is inherently pretty sexist imo because it’s a phrase that gets whipped out whenever a female character does anything at all noteworthy or impressive or genius or fantastic, and does it while looking hot. sure, there are places where the phrase can be legitimately applied (say for instance, fanfic self inserts about characters who are perfect and gorgeous and well loved and have no flaws at all and solve the whole plot and fuck all the best looking characters and do it with a needlessly complicated name, okay) but in general it’s usually just applied to any female character who does, like, anything

whereas you look at say? harry potter or dean winchester or the doctor or sherlock or any of the fan fave characters who do the EXACT SAME STUFF while male and nobody questions the realism or the validity of those characterizations

but you know of the characters i listed above? i like most of them pretty well. i usually like the female characters that get called mary sues too. i like light yagami. and you know why? bc for all their amazing talents and specialness, they have undeniable character flaws.

and light yagami? while yes being gorgeous and a genius and loved by everyone and good at everything, he is kept from being completely dull because he's fucking crazy. there’s your flaw. he’s a murderer. he kills people, does completely unforgivable things and the narrative does not try to justify him or his actions, or paint him as a hero, and i’d even argue that the point was to make him perfect so that they could poke holes in all his perfection