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The line between Escapist character and Sue is a lot blurrier than you two might be making it out to be. I'll use another example from popular fiction:

Bella Swan from Twilight.

The bland, personalityless, main character from Stephanie Meyer's nauseatingly popular Twilight series. She is both a Self-Insert and Escapist character. She shares many appearance traits and personal preferences with the author, and she goes through a dramatic life change similar to something the author went through when she was around the same age (moving from one town to another). Bella is mother definitely Meyer's avatar in the story.

She's also an Escapist character because almost the moment Bella arrives in her new home, she's caught up in a ridiculous 'mystery' about the only hast guy in school which then somehow mutates into a whirl-wind romance (complete with campy frolicking in the sunshine). Blatant escapism if I ever ready any.

To polish off the final point on Bella's tri-force of character un-development. She's also perfect. She has no personality flaws that the author will admit to. The only characteristic about her the author is willing to call a 'flaw' is that she is clumsy. Oh, she had personality flaws. She's incredibly self-centers, shallow, boy-crazy, and has a snobby attitude when it comes to how she views other people. But none of these things are treated as flaws by the author, instead they are used to try and show that Bella is somehow 'better' than the rest of the cardboard cast. In addiction to that, the entire world of vampires somehow ends up spiraling around her with the vampire elite traveling all the way from Italy to Forks so that they can kill her family personally. If that's not a Mary-Sue, then I don't know what is.

So, you see there's always some crossover between Sues and Escapist characters (also, Self-Inserts).

I still maintain that Batman is a Sue. He can ALSO be an Escapist character. But that does not make him any less of a Sue.

Swinging back to what started this whole conversation, the litmus test, you see that its very difficult to come up with a way to empirically test whether or not a character is a Sue or not. Honestly, all of the Great Fandoms Macrocosm is to uptight about them and should just learn to relax.

It's not a crybaby retort. Calling characters a Mary Sue IS indeed a crybaby retort and only haters do that because they weren't able to come up with anything as good as that. cat_talk2hand It's just trying to censor people from writing great and creative characters so that they're eventually forced to write boring and "normal" characters if they want any positive comments on their stories.

You must admit, there ARE OCs so blatantly OP'd and so blandly cliche most people just can't stand.
Sure there's haters, but they sometimes have a point.

Sadly, he's legit. I'd quote the post he made in an ED thread about "if you've won an internet fight" but I don't want to have to log out and find it. /blocked

Basically he says that EVERYTHING he says is always right and if you don't agree you're an idiot and he'll only accept a full apology for your "misguided ways." Dude's a teeny-bopper on a power trip. He blocked me because I think FSoG is abusive and it's bullshit the harassment a woman, who seriously has a blog dedicated to how abusive FSoG is and educational links from men and women in distress, who was educated on the topic received from haters and trolls. They literally threatened her job and personal life, and 9-Volt said she deserved it because, according to him, there's absolutely nothing abusive and misguided in that porn series.

You know what you've done, you troll scum. Don't even TRY to justify your actions. What you said was uncalled for, and how you acted, even more so. You're a disgusting human being.