Escapist Character/Playing With

Basic Trope: A(n often highly) Mary-Sueish character that manages to be entertaining rather than irritating by also functioning as the audience's wish-fulfilment fantasy.
 * Straight: Mr/Miss Awesome McCoolname is a sporty, dashing, gracious, extremely good-looking and very competent professional with friends who have coolest possible personalities and a girlfriend/boyfriend everyone dreams of.
 * Exaggerated: Awesome McCoolname is a nigh-unstoppable supersoldier with senses, speed, strength, endurance and agility beyond inhuman, endless arsenal of increasingly deadlier weapons and cooler gadgets and Impossibly Cool Clothes. He is also friends with the most extraordinarily cool people, has ten hot girlfriends, has battled the creepiest Eldritch Abominations and so on... We could keep on with the list forever.
 * Justified: The story is pure entertainment and the whole point is to sit back and enjoy the show while vicariously living through a main character.
 * Inverted:
 * The protagonist is a perfect example of an Anti-Sue; impossibly lame, unlikable, unsympathetic, etc.
 * This Loser Is You
 * Subverted: A character seems like this, although a different side is revealed of them: flawed, human, fallible and perhaps something an audience doesn't like to see in themselves.
 * Double Subverted:
 * This flaw gets resolved either relatively quickly or by the end of the story and the rest of the series is about this character kicking ass like no one ever dared dream of.
 * This is in the backstory, the reason why they became the badass they are in the present.
 * Parodied
 * Deconstructed:
 * Awesome McCoolname, having everything and more as well as standing largely unchallenged by anything, starts getting progressively more bored. He starts to realize his life, despite its superficial gratification, is pretty empty and hollow.
 * He develops a severe superiority complex, starting to look down on people, perhaps even letting them know. Before he knows it, he's become an extremely unlikable egomaniac as a result.
 * Reconstructed:
 * He starts thinking really hard on how to enjoy life again and challenge himself. In the process he turns everyone's lives, including his own, upside down several times over.
 * He is aware of the pitfall and avoids falling into it. Alternatively, he realizes his mistake and aspires to be an inspiration in turn.
 * Zig Zagged
 * Averted: The character, while having some qualities that could make him this in another type of story, isn't someone whom we'd necessarily want to be or to be with, for example, they are a Complete Monster.
 * Lampshaded: Look at him/her! Makes a mere mortal like me to feel so small in comparison. Do you start hoping you could have a life as great and exciting as his, too?
 * Invoked: Awesome McCoolname actively goes out and seeks opportunities to have a crazy adventure.
 * Defied: He's not interested in doing much of anything, so he becomes an Almighty Janitor.
 * Discussed
 * Conversed

Escape back to living vicariously through an Escapist Character!