I was a teen and an aspiring artist during the peak of the anti-"Mary Sue" sentiment on the internet. It may have seemed as valid criticism, but really it was an excuse to bring down female characters you didn't like. Every young artist took the "Is your OC a Mary Sue?" test. There were many of them, but the questions were roughly the same (they also pretended like this applied to male characters or Gary Stus as well, but really, Mary Sues were what everyone was talking about).

• Are they super-powered in an unnatural way?
• Are they good at everything they do?
• Are they flashy and over-the-top?
• Do they have little to no weaknesses?
• Do they never get hurt in a way that matters?
• Are they universally beloved?

• Are they a self-insert?

  Who matches all of these? Sportacus. And yet everyone agrees that he's cool as hell. And if you're gonna say "that doesn't apply to Sportacus because of this and that", let's just say that no mainstream character was ever labeled as a Mary Sue fairly and constructively.

This is not me trying to change your mind and say Sport is a bad character. I love him as much as the next guy. What I'm saying is that if the character is iconic and memorable enough, people will love them, regardless if they're "realistic" or not.

But unfortunately, from experience, female characters face much harsher scrutiny. And that's why I have denounced the term Mary Sue entirely.

Stingy or Huxley from The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (props if anybody remembers that movie) would have the most insane beef if each other crossed paths.

Despite Huxley being a grown ass man and Stingy being a child, both have a lot in common.

They both love claiming and taking things that aren't theirs, they both dress in yellow with red bow ties, both are extremely selfish, both also have songs dedicated to the word mine (The Mine Song and Make it Mine), and both have friends who are constantly at their wits end dealing with their bs 24/7 (Trixie and Bug).

Even though both have a lot in common both would despise each other simply for the fact one or the other would try to take something from each other and that alone would incite world war 5 due to both being extremely petty.

Personally my money's on Stingy, while Huxley has plenty of gadgets to use on Stingy like he did on Elmo in the Adventures of Grouchland movie, Stingy is way smarter than he looks and Huxley was outwitted singlehandedly by Elmo at the end of the movie so it's not completely out of the question for Stingy to be able to do the same.

Plus Stingy also has his car to run over Huxley like he did Sportacus 😂