The Fault In Our Mary Sues

Introduction

Why?
Just... why?

What happened to the good old days when authors knew the difference between "your" and "you're"?
What happened to the days when authors didn't just make stories for views, and instead did it because they enjoyed it?
What happened to actually Good and Diverse OCs?

I know what happened. I know exactly what happened...

It was the summer of 1973 when a lone woman by the name of Paula Smith pondered on what to write about. She had finally exhausted her mind on new and interesting topics to write about. Suddenly, a brilliant idea popped up in her head. This sudden thought sparked something inside of her, a realization that had never occurred to her before.

"That's it!" she exclaimed, standing up and dramatically toppling over her chair in the process. "Why have I been wasting time creating new topics when I could've just been taking the concept of another story's and adding my own characters into it?!"

Standing her chair back up right, Paula set herself to work on something that she considered to be a masterpiece of a creation. Her ballpoint pen flew across the paper, writing down every idea she thought was pure brilliance.

After a couple years of hard work, she was done. She stared at her finished art with tears in her eyes, realizing that today, in this moment, she had just finished the single best piece of literature ever created on Earth. (Spoiler Alert: She Didn't.)

Critics stomped on her book like they were walking on leaves, crunching them to pieces. Paula didn't understand why her book wasn't successful. Surely, she had everything a great book should have:

A story based off of the great Star Trek
A main protagonist at the ripe age of fifteen, youngest and strongest to graduate
Pairing the protagonist with the big three, Spock, Kirk, and McCoy
A beautiful name for the protagonist, a name no other than Mary Sue

This is how Mary Sue was born. Of course, we use a more generalized version today of the term, but the same general rules apply. Moral of the story, don't be Paula Smith, be Batman. Always be Batman.