farla

I've been pondering self-inserts since the topic first showed up over there on Serebii and then later on Silawen's Lj, because while they were in general wrong, I wanted to find a good way of vocalizing the specific flavor of wrong I was getting from their posts. And I think I've figured it out, which is pleasing.

Before we really begin: The Warts and All Argument

...needs to be quietly taken out back and shot. And perhaps staked through the heart for good measure.

What's important to understand is when this argument arises. It's generally not when the author first gets the idea for the story. The "warts and all" model shows up as part of a very common formula across much bad writing.

New Author: Hey read my idea/prologue/finished opus!
Reviewer: You're included (commonly understood to be bad idea) here. Some reasons it's a commonly understood to be a bad idea is A, B, C...
New Author:...but but but! Just because it's a total cliche doesn't mean I shouldn't write it! Just because every other time you've seen it it was bad doesn't mean the idea itself is! If I just do X and Y and Z that will fix it!

If you're so attached to the idea of it being a self-insert that you try to make up excuses for keeping it that way, something is wrong.

Part One: The Straight Self-Insert

Does not work.

Even with all the standard sueishness stripped away, to self-insert is to say "Everyone, look at me!" It's to make a story revolve around the fact it's you in a story, because a self-insert, by definition, cannot be a character that's made to fit the story. In addition, the reasons for self-inserting are that you want it to be you. And, as such, no matter how well done or slow paced or careful the author is, it's still going to end up on a clear trajectory to whatever it is they really want.

There is no way around this, for the simple reason that if the author didn't want to write a story where they personally get what they want, they wouldn't be writing a self-insert.

The absolute best a self-insert can get, in other words, is an unsueish RPG character. And there's a reason mary sue tests tend to have a separate scoring scale for RPG characters: they're not meant to be penalized for spending their time collecting stuff you think is cool at the expense of a more interesting and coherent story for your listeners.

Part Two: The Partial Self-Insert

The thing is, one doesn't accidentally make a self-insert. For example, while one might argue that sharing a name isn't a big deal since, from the outside reader's perspective, it's not possible to realize Bob the character is named after Bob the author unless the author admits to it, this is criminally missing the point.

Your name is yours. Everyone has their own particular one name that stands out amid a sea of otherwise neutral choices. When you read a letter with that name attached to it, you read the letter as being to you. When you hear the name spoken, you look for the person talking to you. You never accidentally name someone else your name, because it's yours.

This holds true for the rest of it. It's a conscious choice to make a developing character resemble you/how you'd like to be seen, and like all conscious choices, it means you had some reason behind it. It wasn't simply coincidence, and it's not a matter of claiming characters named Bob shouldn't be used.

And more, every time you stop and decide to do something because it makes the character more like you, rather than because it furthers the story, you've done something wrong.

(The Mix/Saber/Etc thing was particularly jaw-dropping. The named after defense has never looked so absurd as when it's presented with blatantly worldbreaking names in the bargain. Serebiifail: dedicated to going above and beyond.)

More, your decision to do so is generally indicative of the same trap as the true self-insert listed above.

Part Three: The Johnny Changed Lately

The "started out, but changed" defense is, well, lacking, as poor Silawen had to keep explaining and explaining, just as "the first ten chapters are illegible, but the next ten aren't" isn't much of a defense when someone's saying the first ten chapters are impossible to read.

There's some wiggle room here for intent: the pokemon fandom in general/Serebii in particular is not really a bastion of great advice, and there are times when new authors will emulate bad habits just because it seems like it's what you're supposed to do. At one point I was under the impression that I should try to shoehorn everything I wrote into a shared universe and make references to past stories in my present ones constantly. And the only reason there's no fic staring "Farla" is that, despite being under the impression I should make an OC for every name I thought up, my story petered out in my notebook for plot reasons and I didn't write another human character I could stick with the name until long after I'd forgotten about it.

On occasion, writers will simply think that it's a good writing idea to start off by making a character like them without the usual absorption and badness this involves, and adapt the character as necessary for the story. This is still a bit problematic (the characters tend to be lackluster at best, because it takes a while to realize such adaptation is necessary, and the problem in Part Two of traits that weren't picked to further the story remains an issue) but it's really under the header of "poor character design/planning" as opposed to the particular problems of a self-insert.

More often, they are bullshitting. Case in point: Fucking Eragon. He's not a self-insert, because although he starts out being like the author, he immediately gets all sorts of cool stuff the author only wishes he had. Eragon: outdoing Serebii since 2002. Most times authors refer to changes, they mean making the character more like they wish they were, having them experience things they'd like to experience, getting stuff they'd like to get, and so forth. This is because they are idiots and don't realize they're confirming the charge with their attempt at defense.

Part Four: Sidelined Self-Inserts

The next logical step is to make the self insert a minor or side character, with the logic that
1)It's not a sue if it's in the background
2)Making it a minor character avoids author temptation to make them a sue
3)Making them minor players in the story makes them not a sue

All this ultimately serves to beg the question of why they're in the story if you have to spend more effort on how unimportant they are to the story than on them actually being in the story. And what does it mean when you're putting something in a story even though it's not needed?

Yeah, you're right back at the pit trap beneath Part Two, only this time you avoided the character having any redeeming justification for existing in the first place.

Self inserts aren't bad because they're generally sues. They're bad because they simply don't work properly, and gutting them of their sueness still leaves you with the deformed carcass of a bad character concept lying around that simply doesn't belong in the story.

Part Five: And Because It Must Be Mentioned Since It Generally Isn't, Worldbuilding

A particular note here just because it's something that never seems to be brought up: unless the story begins in the real world at the present day, you cannot use a self-insert even if you found a situation where all the issues above wouldn't apply.

Listening to the bleating about ten year olds and how unbelievable it was made me realize that a significant chunk of my general problem with how poorly all characters in fanfic are portrayed is that authors never seem to realize that people probably won't have exactly their attitude and opinions. It's not even something as mistaken as "everyone who has different beliefs is obviously really dumb and those beliefs are really dumb", it's not even realizing this is possible.

It's impossible for anyone to have exactly the opinions of an American dumbass 2000-era thirteen year old if they're not living there, at that age, at that time. If you attempt to transplant that kind of thing into another universe, with significantly different history and setup, taking place god-knows-when in terms of time, with bizarrities of tech and, let's face it, nature, and which in addition has a culture lacking in basic tenets we take for granted here (Pokemon-verse does not appear to have an army or organized religion. I submit that the European founders of modern America would spontaneously implode at the very concept.)...well, it's simply not going to work.

This will apply to any attempt at a self insert you try.

Because I know someone will make the argument, yes, sure, you could make a self-insert and then modify them. But people have trouble unraveling their own thought processes enough to portray a straight self insert even halfway decently. No one is going to be able to dissect their entire personality for how they'd be growing up in a different culture, raised by parents whose personalities would need a similar dissect and reboot (whose own parents would need... etc, etc). No one's even going to do a quarterway decent job of that. By the time you're done you'd have pretty much expunged anything resembling you, and the resultant OC would probably be a patchwork mess that's barely or not at all workable.

In conclusion:

I've tried this, I've poked it a lot, and I'm still loathe to say anything should absolutely never be used...

But that's how it's shaping up, and I'm only more convinced with each new iteration I run into. The arguments people raise in their favor just end up raising new ways self-inserts go wrong I hadn't even thought of.

The three versions I've got running myself support the conclusions I get from seeing other people. Alison is easily the weakest of the three, and this when she's a technical failure (I'm writing me, except years younger, severely detached and reacting as dreaming, which is to say, not particularly me.). Kimi, meanwhile, is great – she's a created self-insert who's made to work with the story. Throw in Alison or even Adalia and the story would have veered off the rails and become unworkable within the first few chapters. Adalia, where I draw details from my life to fill in gaps is the only version that seems to work at all, and it's only applicable to real-world stories. In fact, she's little different than Kimi in many ways, as the character itself in both is entirely invented for the story and Kimi also draws from "real life" to the degree her references are by necessity limited to games and information I'm aware of.

The basic self insert model is completely unusable unless the author can make it so they start off in a similar real world situation, which rules out their general inclusion in Pokemonfic or pretty much any other fantasy world. The contortions required to manage a starts off in the real world, bamfs to fanficverse are not something to pull out to justify anything – they can't be used as anything short of your entire plotline and should be what you're contorting everything else for instead, due to how intrusive they are.

And even if you're already doing that, creating a new character to fit your intended storyline simply works so much better that there's vanishingly little excuse for it to be a self-insert.

There may be a thin space left for self-insert types as a writing exercise/open ended story where there's no intended story and the author's good at character-driven writing, as well as in a setup that's forgiving of going off in all sorts of unintended directions (and where the bamf part is not such a huge investment of plot), but the more I try to find ways to use them the more I see they simply aren't usable.