Stuff, Story Fragment of Reality
Feb. 10th, 2005 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaHello once again, my dubiously loyal readers.
I've finally caught up on my email obligations and managed to clean out my inbox…with almost six hundred messages, it was getting a trifle cluttered. Reorganized it all into the proper folders. (Ah, the joys of downloaded email…)
Also fulfilled review obligations for the moment, and am now getting to work on my writing obligations. Yes, that would mean that typing this is procrastination. I'd apologize but I'm obviously not sorry.
So, dear readers, a couple of possibly hypothetical questions for you –
Would you be disturbed by someone plugging your story in another person's reviews?
How about people who praise lavishly your old fanfics, the ones that make you cringe even to think about?
…not that I don't appreciate you all, but at times I wonder these sort of things.
Also, I think I've finally, finally figured out the one sole reason self-inserts suck while writing random fragments of Reality.
See, let's imagine you're the author of your own life. What are you going to make happen?
Good stuff. It's you, after all. History has shown what happens when people are just allowed to decide their own paychecks. Imagine if you could decide anything.
This is the exact same sort of thing that happens with sues, of course, but as far as this is concerned, sues and self-inserts are just two slightly different subspecies.
So anyway, we all know what happens then: the story sucks.
Now, the advice on fixing this is to try not to give your character everything and make them struggle and think about what's going on.
But they're you. How can you struggle against your own created obstacles? How can you think and figure out the stuff you made up to start? And how can you resist the urge to give them things you want?
You can do what I see a lot of self-inserters and sue authors doing and try to consciously tone down your plans – give the character fewer favorite pokemon or stretch the acquisition out over a longer time, make them play dumb for a while about something or try and quickly fail at a battle or such. But in the end it starts to look like a formula. Sometimes I can almost feel the author doing their little balancing act: Okay, I made him lose to a gym leader, so now I can have him kick TR/M/A/Whoever's butt, and I'll have him catch a common pokemon but it'll be a special color with cool abilities… It usually comes off forced and just as sueish in the end, even if the actual sue characteristics are toned down.
What's the alternative?
Well, separation between character and author. Ideally you should be able to kill the character off without a problem, but not caring if they win or lose is a good start.
But then it's not a self-insert. It winds up with me writing Reality about a character who has my basic knowledge about stuff, my pokemon, and a persian with my cat's name and general personality with the basic goal I might very well go after. But I don't identify with her at all.
(I don't really identify with my characters normally, at least, not the way I've heard some authors refer to it. So this may just be me. I wasn't even trying to un-sue my self-insert, it just sort of happened to me.)
So in the end, if I ever did post the story, it'd wind up being a character based on me, but it'd succeed or fail based on the story I wrote, not whether or not I managed to make a good self-insert.
…those of you who desire can feel free to chime in about now about how I'm just seduced by the incredible sueness of my self-insert and am now acting as a standard badfic writer in denying it, of course.
To help you guys (because what's an argument if you haven't even met her?) and to amuse other who've just sat through yet another pointless rambly post by me, here's a scene.
She saw a boy appear at the edge of the forest a little ways off. He must have noticed her too, because he ran towards her.
"Hey!" he said when he up to her. "I thought so. You're like me, aren't you?"
She hadn't been thinking about that, so it took her a moment. She scrutinized him. He looked fourteen or fifteen, with a loud green shirt and duller pants that looked somewhat like jeans but might not have been. He didn't look like anyone she'd seen, she realized. "You're…a pokemon player?" she asked finally. "From before?"
"Yeah. Cool, the only trainers I've seen so far were obvious game ones – bunch of bug catchers and youngsters. I didn't wanna waste time in a boring battle with those guys. Let's fight!"
"Um, what?" She was carrying pokeballs, but she'd been preoccupied by other things. She hadn't thought about having pokemon battles with the people she met. Game canon, she started to think, her thoughts going off on a tangent. It was like that in the games, practically everyone you met outside of cities –
"You don't look like you'll be too strong if you've got a regular pokemon like a persian on your team…but you'll still be more interesting than fighting one of those boring AI trainers, I could've fought them anytime on Stadium without pokemon being real." He tossed a sphere she recognized suddenly as the purplish color of a masterball. "GO, Moltres!" he screamed exuberantly.
A shockwave of searing heat hit her and she dropped flat against the ground, eyes shut. Above her she heard a shrieking cry, and she could feel the wet warmth of the grass steaming under her, while her back baked.
Her eyes opened a crack, and her head was turned so she could see the boy. He had fallen back somewhat so he was sitting on the ground. His face was a pasty white and he looked horrorstruck.
There was a second burst of heat, even worse than before. Her eyes shut again, dry and painful, and she heard the moltres screech again. When she opened them again she saw a blackened circle the size of a large car where the boy had been standing. The meadow was quiet again. Weird, she thought distantly, how she'd only noticed how unnaturally quiet everything was normally after the moltres' angry screams. Cautiously she got up and looked around, seeing the moltres in the sky flying away to the west. There was no sign of the boy who had challenged her.
"I guess I should keep my masterballs shut then," she said thoughtfully, glancing automatically at the straps across her chest from the backpack she carried. She touched them meditatively and considered taking her bag off there and sorting through the pokeballs she carried, but decided against it.
"Come on Teddy," she said to the persian, who was standing up cautiously. "Let's keep going."
Those who can make a good argument on why she's a crappy self-insert get brownies. Also, yes, 'go' is meant to be that way.
I've finally caught up on my email obligations and managed to clean out my inbox…with almost six hundred messages, it was getting a trifle cluttered. Reorganized it all into the proper folders. (Ah, the joys of downloaded email…)
Also fulfilled review obligations for the moment, and am now getting to work on my writing obligations. Yes, that would mean that typing this is procrastination. I'd apologize but I'm obviously not sorry.
So, dear readers, a couple of possibly hypothetical questions for you –
Would you be disturbed by someone plugging your story in another person's reviews?
How about people who praise lavishly your old fanfics, the ones that make you cringe even to think about?
…not that I don't appreciate you all, but at times I wonder these sort of things.
Also, I think I've finally, finally figured out the one sole reason self-inserts suck while writing random fragments of Reality.
See, let's imagine you're the author of your own life. What are you going to make happen?
Good stuff. It's you, after all. History has shown what happens when people are just allowed to decide their own paychecks. Imagine if you could decide anything.
This is the exact same sort of thing that happens with sues, of course, but as far as this is concerned, sues and self-inserts are just two slightly different subspecies.
So anyway, we all know what happens then: the story sucks.
Now, the advice on fixing this is to try not to give your character everything and make them struggle and think about what's going on.
But they're you. How can you struggle against your own created obstacles? How can you think and figure out the stuff you made up to start? And how can you resist the urge to give them things you want?
You can do what I see a lot of self-inserters and sue authors doing and try to consciously tone down your plans – give the character fewer favorite pokemon or stretch the acquisition out over a longer time, make them play dumb for a while about something or try and quickly fail at a battle or such. But in the end it starts to look like a formula. Sometimes I can almost feel the author doing their little balancing act: Okay, I made him lose to a gym leader, so now I can have him kick TR/M/A/Whoever's butt, and I'll have him catch a common pokemon but it'll be a special color with cool abilities… It usually comes off forced and just as sueish in the end, even if the actual sue characteristics are toned down.
What's the alternative?
Well, separation between character and author. Ideally you should be able to kill the character off without a problem, but not caring if they win or lose is a good start.
But then it's not a self-insert. It winds up with me writing Reality about a character who has my basic knowledge about stuff, my pokemon, and a persian with my cat's name and general personality with the basic goal I might very well go after. But I don't identify with her at all.
(I don't really identify with my characters normally, at least, not the way I've heard some authors refer to it. So this may just be me. I wasn't even trying to un-sue my self-insert, it just sort of happened to me.)
So in the end, if I ever did post the story, it'd wind up being a character based on me, but it'd succeed or fail based on the story I wrote, not whether or not I managed to make a good self-insert.
…those of you who desire can feel free to chime in about now about how I'm just seduced by the incredible sueness of my self-insert and am now acting as a standard badfic writer in denying it, of course.
To help you guys (because what's an argument if you haven't even met her?) and to amuse other who've just sat through yet another pointless rambly post by me, here's a scene.
She saw a boy appear at the edge of the forest a little ways off. He must have noticed her too, because he ran towards her.
"Hey!" he said when he up to her. "I thought so. You're like me, aren't you?"
She hadn't been thinking about that, so it took her a moment. She scrutinized him. He looked fourteen or fifteen, with a loud green shirt and duller pants that looked somewhat like jeans but might not have been. He didn't look like anyone she'd seen, she realized. "You're…a pokemon player?" she asked finally. "From before?"
"Yeah. Cool, the only trainers I've seen so far were obvious game ones – bunch of bug catchers and youngsters. I didn't wanna waste time in a boring battle with those guys. Let's fight!"
"Um, what?" She was carrying pokeballs, but she'd been preoccupied by other things. She hadn't thought about having pokemon battles with the people she met. Game canon, she started to think, her thoughts going off on a tangent. It was like that in the games, practically everyone you met outside of cities –
"You don't look like you'll be too strong if you've got a regular pokemon like a persian on your team…but you'll still be more interesting than fighting one of those boring AI trainers, I could've fought them anytime on Stadium without pokemon being real." He tossed a sphere she recognized suddenly as the purplish color of a masterball. "GO, Moltres!" he screamed exuberantly.
A shockwave of searing heat hit her and she dropped flat against the ground, eyes shut. Above her she heard a shrieking cry, and she could feel the wet warmth of the grass steaming under her, while her back baked.
Her eyes opened a crack, and her head was turned so she could see the boy. He had fallen back somewhat so he was sitting on the ground. His face was a pasty white and he looked horrorstruck.
There was a second burst of heat, even worse than before. Her eyes shut again, dry and painful, and she heard the moltres screech again. When she opened them again she saw a blackened circle the size of a large car where the boy had been standing. The meadow was quiet again. Weird, she thought distantly, how she'd only noticed how unnaturally quiet everything was normally after the moltres' angry screams. Cautiously she got up and looked around, seeing the moltres in the sky flying away to the west. There was no sign of the boy who had challenged her.
"I guess I should keep my masterballs shut then," she said thoughtfully, glancing automatically at the straps across her chest from the backpack she carried. She touched them meditatively and considered taking her bag off there and sorting through the pokeballs she carried, but decided against it.
"Come on Teddy," she said to the persian, who was standing up cautiously. "Let's keep going."
Those who can make a good argument on why she's a crappy self-insert get brownies. Also, yes, 'go' is meant to be that way.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Self-insert
Date: 2005-03-19 04:40 am (UTC)As to running into problems...I don't know. There's definitely going to be some in the general sense, since she can't decide her goal and then immediately accomplish it, but beyond that I'm not really certain. Currently my story-concept of her is more of an observer than anything, watching what happens to the world.
I'm glad you think it sounds interesting. I might end up writing it. Certainly the idea has been gnawing persistently at me for quite a while, so perhaps.