Mary Sues, as I have previously discussed, started out as characters that changed the behavior of the universe and characters around them to fit the whim of the author--usually because they're author inserts in the first place. But since those early days of Star Trek fanfiction, the term Mary Sue has come to represent any character (usually female) who happens to be too perfect, with too few flaws. Really, the term Mary Sue has evolved to mean a confusing number of things, too numerous to pin down--it now means so much that it means nothing.
Ignoring for now the original definition of a Mary Sue, I'm going to fixate on "too perfect" characters--Our Aylas, our Supermans, our Eragons, we know the type; over-powered and under-flawed, these are characters who always know what's best, always do what's right, always win, and never have any substantial problems that need more than a few chapters of angst to fix.
While nothing in writing is inherently bad, these characters are definitely not on the "inherently good" side of the bell curve. They're not harmful, they don't hurt people--but they're boring. They bore you absolutely to death. When your character is overpowered and underflawed, every battle they ever face is going to feel contrived, so nothing is ever going to feel satisfying.
When I was coming up in the (*shudder* Warriors) role playing ranks, waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy back in 2009, we had a specific name for these characters--we called them "God Mods." As in, "This character has been modified to assume a God-like status." Creating or playing a God-Modded character was the act of God-Modding, and made you a God-Modder.
In role play, this was seen as an unfair advantage, and many site homepages had this among their top three on the list of rules, right up there with no Power Playing. It could result in penalties as severe as suspension or even banishment. In writing God-Mods can't get you banned, but they can severely damage the quality of your story.
While a God-Mod can be an author insert, and can be a Mary Sue as originally described, it may only be an author's favorite character (an "author's baby" gone wrong). God-Mods tend to be super smart, super attractive, and super important (for no obvious or even tangible reason), and they also tend to have talents and sometimes literal superpowers far surpassing that of other characters within. Essentially, the God-Mod is the very epitome of in-world perfection. If they have any flaws at all, they're either informed flaws (flaws which the narrator tells us about, but which we never bear witness to) or "cute"/useful flaws--he's so clumsy it's adorable, teehee, or he has a terrible temper, but only when he's talking to bad guys.
Just being amazing isn't enough--amazing characters can be plenty overpowered and still manage to register as non-God-Mods, because fully realized characters, super or not, have flaws and limits of both mind and body. They may be unjustifiably cruel at times, their powers may only work for a small ten-minute window each day, they may not really be able to hear out of their left ear at all, and only have normal (i.e. NOT SUPER) hearing in the right, etc.
Whatever your character's limits and flaws, abilities and disabilities, they need to be meaningful--your character should be truly, honestly challenged in their endeavors. The villain should be strong enough to pose a real threat to your hero, and your hero should be flawed enough to make it conceivable that she might fail. You can't worry about a character if they don't have the capacity to fail, and without worry there's no staying power--no matter how interesting the plot, people won't want to read about how Mister Perfect saved the day as he yawned into his palm just by flicking his perfectly-manicured nails in the villain's general direction.
Don't let the God Mods win, folks; seek them out and wrangle them in, murder them that they may be reborn into a more imperfect form. Only then will they truly shine.
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