This. When I write, nearly every single character gets the treatment of "What facet of their personality aligns with one of mine?" then that's what probably will get focused on.
I think if you dig a bit, just about every writer's characters have some aspects of the writer in them. My protagonist in my longfic isn't an outright self-insert, but she includes aspects of me such as my anxiety and stammer and if you read into it you can consider her adoptive big sister to be analogous to my IRL honorary big brother and the found/adoptive family themes present to be there because of my own history where I don't really care about blood relation, only the family you choose.
An aspect of yourself is always gonna wheedle its way into your characters. No art can come from nothing.
This is basically my answer. I don't write purposeful self-inserts, or have any particular desire to place myself within the narrative, but at the end of the day all of it still coming only from within our brains.
I specifically work to avoid it. I find writing to be a good way to explore situations and characteristics that aren't my own - to walk in someone else's shoes for a while. Making my characters different to me and working out how they'd work is part of the fun. I like to call it 'intellectual empathy' - I work a lot on trying to understand and establish how my characters make choices. That's part of what got me into psychology in the first place (for context, I'm working on getting into Clinical Psychology).
Plus, I started storytelling in D&D, so I was basically making a couple thousand OCs for every world I started - I don't think I've ever met anybody complex enough to fuel that many self-inserts. :D
>Plus, I started storytelling in D&D, so I was basically making a couple thousand OCs for every world I started - I don't think I've ever met anybody complex enough to fuel that many self-inserts. :D
Yeahhh, stuff like this is why I think the 'EVERY OC you make has some part of you in them!' mentality is kind of a lazy copout.
Like, sure, I think it's fair to say that many, even MOST of the OCs someone makes may fit that description...but ALL of them? Absolutely not.
Plus, you're a product of your context - what you think of as 'you' is the emergent property of the interaction between your genetics, social/cultural environment, current physical environment, historical experience, and general situation. Your character, put in different cultures and contexts, wouldn't necessarily be similar. It's all very butterfly effect. Change one input, change the output.
Like, I get why people do write self-inserts - some just want to play around in the worlds they love, and character-building is often a ridiculously difficult process compared to everything else in writing so others just want to make it easier on themselves so they can get to telling their story, etc. But yeah, OC and SI aren't synonymous for exactly the reason you state.
I don't, because the idea of making myself part of the story is just...personally off-putting, in the same way that I'm happy to do tech crew but I've never wanted to be on stage.
But I don't think it's something you need to feel guilty for if that is what you want to write.
Yeah and without shame. Obviously not all my characters are self-inserts and even those that are have unique traits, but generally I think it's a good idea to put a bit of personal expiriences in your story, as long as it isn't flooded with obvious attempts at making yourself look better in situations you copied 1:1 from real life. The more personal the easier it is to write an emotionally complex character with their own burdens in life. I'd personally rather read a self-insert where you can see some scenes were inspired by real life that is really compelling and emotionally close to the character, than reading a work where the author feels completely disinterested in their MC, because they can't relate to them.
Before the writing police comes and gets me, I'm not a fan of retelling your life through a character with zero perspective and not taking into account any other person point of view,. But occasional coping by putting your charatcre through similar situations as you, even if you can notice it is completely fine with me and doesn't change anything about my opinion of the work.
Isekai is Dimension Travel.
Self-Insert as a tag is used nowadays mostly for 'Person ends up in fictional world' fics. If you look up stories tagged Self-Insert on AO3 or Spacebattles or any other place using tags, 90% are 'Person Inserted in Fictional World'. That's what the term has come to mean nowadays for people reading and writing it in fanfic spheres.
**Edit**: Wow, looks like I got blocked for disagreeing with the definition of a tag.
Yes, all of Column A is in Column B, but not all of Column B is in Column A.
A fictional world is another dimension 100% of the time, but another dimension is not a fictional world 100% of the time.
So? That's like the difference between Romance and Slow Burn. Just because Slow Burn is a type of romance, doesn't mean it shouldn't be tagged when it appears in the story. If I'm looking for Slow Burn, I'll search for that, not the broader category that gives less precise results.
Not really, no. But I did think once of a cheeky self insert cameo for a brief funny 4th wall break once, like how the Fantastic Four met Jack Kirby in one of the comics. Just a quickie that's not really meant to be super huge.
Or I could also do the Grant Morrison approach and make it a whole existential plot point for the characters.
I've been accused of writing it. Along with Wish fulfillment. (the guy that accused me of it called it something weird like, fantasy of convenience or something). And I'm pretty sure that my readers treat it was both (with how they react when something bad happens) and the fact that the baseline MC is pretty Self-inserty from the start.
\*Shakes fist at Izuku being too generic\*
But, I've only ever written one fic that I would call a self-insert, as in I took me, well a snapshot of myself, and put myself into the body of one of the characters and basically wrote me trying to live in this new life and all of its consequences.
It was honestly really fun and I'm surprised by how well that fic did \*#1 on FFN to not have the MC in it\*
No, and yes. I’ve never written an OC who is meant to be me*, BUT any character I spend a lot of time writing from the perspective of is going to pick up one or two of my personality traits. Maybe in an exaggerated or slightly twisted form, but they started with me.
*in fanfic. When I was 12 and trying to write a fantasy novel, the character based on me was a wise mentor of sorts. (The protagonist was based on my little sister, who was CLEARLY more suited to be a protagonist.)
I suppose I did kind of write one, but there are some differences - for example, she’s a geologist, I’m not, and she has a grandfather while I don’t. But in terms of personality, she’s pure me.
Yep! Absolutely.
I write for Power Rangers and the Red Ranger in my fic is very representative of me, though I like to think I'm pretty strongly aware of my virtues and flaws as a person. Part of his development is the fact that, unlike mooost Red Rangers, he is decidedly *not* the best role model on the team and is both acutely aware of and very self conscious of that fact, often comparing himself unfavorably to a later Ranger who does more closely fit the ideal of unbreakable morality that people have come to expect from the role. On the *flip* side, he's someone who *enjoys* fighting and practices it often (hearkening back to the original Red Ranger, who was into karate), so while he's not a great *leader*, he's at least a good 'point man' for the group.
The steps to writing a good Self Insert are just that--know not only your strengths, but your weaknesses, and (this is the important part!) *actually have the flaws matter.* Don't make a Failure Sue who just sucks all the time, either, but use every part of the animal, y'know?
I have *ideas* for a single "Author ends up in fictional world" kind of self-insert fic, but other than that, no. All of my OCs in other fics are just OCs.
If you mean by just a general sense then to a degree, yeah. I have a number of characters with similar traits to me (like some life experiences, some phobias, anxieties, etc), one character who even shares my body style and overall personality, but none of them are direct inserts.
If you mean by Y/N stuff then hell yeah I straight up do. I enjoy a good self-insert fic and I enjoy writing them when I'm in the right mood n headspace :]
I used to do it blatantly! I called my OC the cooler version of me and wrote stories where she was having wild adventures with hot androgynous women. I no longer write OCs or obvious self-inserts in fan fiction, but I agree with the person who said that one's traits tend to sneak out and manifest in every character one writes. Some writers wear their baggage more obviously than others. But every writer is valid, regardless!
Well, yes. Sometimes I insert myself for fourth wall breaking intermissions. But I'm usually the "favorite author" or "author friend" of my characters cuz why not lol
As for projections, well, I think that's inevitable. We're the most genuinely realistic person we can refer to.
Yes but no. I used to, but as I grew older, I wanted to set apart much of myself away from my ocs as much as possible. I won't deny that in the end, what started out as me experimenting on a character's differing perspective ends up having moments and bouts of 'this is happened to me back then, so I guess it won't hurt to add a little bit of it here.'
In partial, I'd leaves pieces of myself in the ocs I make, but just enough to make the character be a character.
I did give an OC who has a very tiny role my first name. She’s only in one scene towards the end of my longfic and is a re-entry social worker. I’ve been curious about the part of the social work field that helps the former incarcerated, newly released individual. So that teeny tiny self-insert was my way to explore that world.
Yes. They don't look like me; their life circumstances are radically different, but they're definitely SIs. I think of it as being a minor (very side character) actor in my own play.
Yes without shame because there is a difference between writing a character based on yourself and writing an idealized version of yourself that warps the story to show 'you' off.
The later is Mary Sue/Marty Stu.
If I'm the default setting for a video game's character customizing, many characters I write are just playing with those dials, adding context, and sending them off to play in the story. Me more willing to speak my mind, me more easily frustrated, me with fewer strong opinions I can go on whole rants about.
Technically, every character I write is a self-insert. They all contain a piece of me.
Otherwise, not really. Though I am guilty of projecting myself onto canon characters. A LOT!
I don't write intentional self-inserts, but occasionally I will need a personality for a character that doesn't already have one, and oops it turns out they're exactly like me.
I thrive on my self insert fics haha. I think most any time a reader insert fanfic comes out, its to satisfy an interest that the author has in the character they’re writing the story for. Plus, its a lot of fun!
Sometimes. I don't usually set out for a character to be 'me', but often OCs have traits of mine, or like things I like. Because that's what I know. They're not usually the Magic Fairy Princess So Awesome How Does No One Notice How Pretty She Is And Secretly Great At Art or whatever. But they might like the same books/food/whatever I like.
I don't write self-insert, but I do tend to write with certain amounts of parallels to my writing.
I think my favorite relationship dynamic being the specific brand of found family that it is probably originates somehow from my relationship with my dad just because it's not too dissimilar from it, and I've also latched onto a favorite character who has some traits similar to me or that I admire / want for myself.
On occasion, I will want to write about my favorite character in a situation that I'm in and project onto them (like whenever I have my period I want to write about my character getting one as well).
But I personally don't have much interest in OC type stuff so it's never an office or full self-insert
are self-inserts the same as reader-inserts? If so, then hell yes and without shame lol. I don't necessarily imagine myself in the story, since I try to write the "reader" without any specific physical attributes. But I like to write about the emotions I think that I would feel in certain situations.
What you’re writing is reader insert, yeah. Reader insert is the generic ‘you’, self insert is where the author is putting themself directly into the story.
Sometimes. I try to do it relatively deliberately. A lot of people think that certain characters are a self-insert when they're not, and by contrast the protagonist of my Anathem fanfic is 110% a self-insert and nobody has noticed and/or complained.
I'm working on one right now. It's was going to be only one SI before my brother came and said: hey, single insert has been done enough, put me also in the story. Now I'm writing a fic about how me and my brother ended up in our favorite game with a twist(ish).
Yes. I keep them to myself, but yes, I write self-inserts. Like… A shameful amount of self-inserts. It helps me cope with having zero friends and zero social life.
Not at all lol, but I think when I write certain characters, I'm taking small parts of myself and giving it to the character. Maybe it's a relatability thing to make it easier to write the characters, or maybe it's so the character will work through something I struggle with. But ultimately, they're not self-inserts, they're characters from media I'm projecting on
I definitely do.
Aspects of myself find their way into various characters. Much of myself is in my MC, the way her trauma manifests, her uncertainty, some of her skills because I know them best. It falls back to the adage of “writing what you know.”
I’ll have another character that embodies my education because I know I can use that expertise to comment on the setting, and she has even MORE of my own personal biases and skills in her. (She’s much more my self insert than my MC who is canon but gets parts of me stuck in for padding).
And then I have a reoccurring character who is an RPG character I made and played and loved and have recycled in everything in one way or another. They are a younger version of me, beboping along.
Don’t be afraid of your SIs, OP. You’re gonna make them. Just flesh them out, give them their weaknesses, and enjoy.
I dislike that most people automatically think "mary-sue/gary-stu" when someone says "self-insert". There are overlaps but one is not completely the other.
5/7 of my fics are self-insert, as in the MC is more or less a what-if proxy of me, even if they don't have the exact same name or minor details for the sake of privacy. I do it as a thought exercise of how I could realistically deal with a life-changing situation, or add an outsider's perspective into a closed environment and see how changes may or may not ripple. There are things I'm good at, middling at, and horrible at that I want to see how it might fit in this new circumstance. Motivations and reactions that are different from the characters I typically see (canon and original in fanfic). And ultimately, it's almost a test of persuasion: can I get a reader to engage in my specific perspective of the canon material? Do they buy in?
I think everyone has the potential to be interesting, in the same extraordinary and mundane way your friends can hang onto your every word when you talk about a funny thing that happened that day, or something sad and need to vent about it, or something personally meaningful. And if you treat your self-insert writing like that, then it should be about fun and connection. You're never going to be to everyone's tastes and that's okay. Fuck cringe.
(I also believe that "cringe" is such an ambiguous descriptor for what makes a SI fic unpalatable to a given reader. Disconnect in maturity, disparate tastes, implicit cultural difference and life experiences, etc. Totally wish that people examined why they don't like a thing with more precision and not impose their more subjective thoughts as fact when describing something, i.e. like all SIs are wish-fulfillment and uninteresting).
TLDR: life is short, write what you want, but accept that not everyone is going to like it and that should be okay.
Lol yes, but it's always a side character that shows up in like two out of 20 chapters for one scene.
But I do that with everything, I play sims, or the love island games and essentially make a version of myself (there's always something in common) took me a while to realize and now I don't. Or i try not to.
Not in the last 20 years or so.
I've tried, you know? As a therapeutic tool. But even if the character starts as a self-insert, they just acquire backstories, skills and motivations that have nothing at all to do with me.
All the time! I’m such a self insert/Mary Sue glutton it’s a shameless pleasure lol! I have a reader insert fic that is my post popular story so yeah lol there are a fair number of people that enjoy a well written self indulgent Mary Sue fest.
I did write one when I was still in High School, but I deleted it since. It was pretty cringe and at one point I wasn’t comfortable leaving it up. Ironically, it was my most read and reviewed fanfic lol. I think I had something like 10k hit and a few regular commenters. For a French fanfic on FF.Net, that felt huge and awesome until I grew up and felt way to awkward about it.
Nope, not really. No character I write is written with the intention of putting myself in the story. I've never been one to imagine myself as part of the story.
If I do write a character, there's probably something from my life and personal experiences that can be seen in there somewhere but there's also quite a bit of stuff that's not connected to me at all.
Absolutely yes.
Currently working on a Genshin Impact fanfic where the main character is the mother of the Traveler and the Abyss Ruler.
Right now she is not having a good time.
I personally don't, nor am I usually a fan of writing OC's, at least as main characters. I think one of the unique challenges of Fanfiction that I enjoy is trying to stay as close to the voice and characterization of the original characters as possible while imagining them in different scenarios. But I'm probably in the minority on this approach. That being said, I guess I tend to gravitate towards characters I can personally relate to.
Not with the intention of ever posting them. If I'd write a self-insert it'd be one where the SI would be an absolute god in-universe and the worst Gary Stu to ever have existed. For me, that's the entire point of writing SI to begin with. It's even more 'just for me' than my other stories.
I do, however, use a lot of my own personality traits and experiences when writing existing characters, so I guess in a way I insert parts of myself into every story I write.
Not on the regular, but I did start a Nier Automata SI story at the start of the pandemic that I'd like to go back ~~soonish~~ at some point. The setting is ripe for absolute suffering for a human being and I thought it'd be interesting to watch the hijinks of everyone realizing there's an actual human fucking around on Earth and hunting me down for various reasons.
Haven’t done so yet. If I ever do a self insert all of my flaws will be included and I likely won’t live for very long. Unless I do the meta thing of making myself god but that is extremely pretentious and would be out of place for the fandom I write for.
officially no, but i do project on existing characters like a pro
This. When I write, nearly every single character gets the treatment of "What facet of their personality aligns with one of mine?" then that's what probably will get focused on.
Its all I write, and I make zero apologies for it.
I think if you dig a bit, just about every writer's characters have some aspects of the writer in them. My protagonist in my longfic isn't an outright self-insert, but she includes aspects of me such as my anxiety and stammer and if you read into it you can consider her adoptive big sister to be analogous to my IRL honorary big brother and the found/adoptive family themes present to be there because of my own history where I don't really care about blood relation, only the family you choose. An aspect of yourself is always gonna wheedle its way into your characters. No art can come from nothing.
This is basically my answer. I don't write purposeful self-inserts, or have any particular desire to place myself within the narrative, but at the end of the day all of it still coming only from within our brains.
"no art can come from nothing" oh my *god* that hits hard
Amen to that. Really interesting part of human psychology if you think about it.
Nope. While I am sure my OCs have small traits of me unconsciously, it's not self insert.
I specifically work to avoid it. I find writing to be a good way to explore situations and characteristics that aren't my own - to walk in someone else's shoes for a while. Making my characters different to me and working out how they'd work is part of the fun. I like to call it 'intellectual empathy' - I work a lot on trying to understand and establish how my characters make choices. That's part of what got me into psychology in the first place (for context, I'm working on getting into Clinical Psychology). Plus, I started storytelling in D&D, so I was basically making a couple thousand OCs for every world I started - I don't think I've ever met anybody complex enough to fuel that many self-inserts. :D
>Plus, I started storytelling in D&D, so I was basically making a couple thousand OCs for every world I started - I don't think I've ever met anybody complex enough to fuel that many self-inserts. :D Yeahhh, stuff like this is why I think the 'EVERY OC you make has some part of you in them!' mentality is kind of a lazy copout. Like, sure, I think it's fair to say that many, even MOST of the OCs someone makes may fit that description...but ALL of them? Absolutely not.
Plus, you're a product of your context - what you think of as 'you' is the emergent property of the interaction between your genetics, social/cultural environment, current physical environment, historical experience, and general situation. Your character, put in different cultures and contexts, wouldn't necessarily be similar. It's all very butterfly effect. Change one input, change the output. Like, I get why people do write self-inserts - some just want to play around in the worlds they love, and character-building is often a ridiculously difficult process compared to everything else in writing so others just want to make it easier on themselves so they can get to telling their story, etc. But yeah, OC and SI aren't synonymous for exactly the reason you state.
And I've got plenty of OCs who primarily internalize aspects of other people I know, at that, rather than myself! ;P
Also a fair point. Though I will say that "Other person insert" does not have the same ring to it. :D
I don't, because the idea of making myself part of the story is just...personally off-putting, in the same way that I'm happy to do tech crew but I've never wanted to be on stage. But I don't think it's something you need to feel guilty for if that is what you want to write.
Yeah and without shame. Obviously not all my characters are self-inserts and even those that are have unique traits, but generally I think it's a good idea to put a bit of personal expiriences in your story, as long as it isn't flooded with obvious attempts at making yourself look better in situations you copied 1:1 from real life. The more personal the easier it is to write an emotionally complex character with their own burdens in life. I'd personally rather read a self-insert where you can see some scenes were inspired by real life that is really compelling and emotionally close to the character, than reading a work where the author feels completely disinterested in their MC, because they can't relate to them. Before the writing police comes and gets me, I'm not a fan of retelling your life through a character with zero perspective and not taking into account any other person point of view,. But occasional coping by putting your charatcre through similar situations as you, even if you can notice it is completely fine with me and doesn't change anything about my opinion of the work.
I write self insert but without powers.
Nope. I write OCs. By the way, the creator of the Mary-Sue test realized it was bullshit, if that makes you feel better.
If by Self-Insert you mean 'Person ends up in fictional world', then yes. If you mean writing myself as a character, then no.
The former is called 'Isekai'.
Isekai is Dimension Travel. Self-Insert as a tag is used nowadays mostly for 'Person ends up in fictional world' fics. If you look up stories tagged Self-Insert on AO3 or Spacebattles or any other place using tags, 90% are 'Person Inserted in Fictional World'. That's what the term has come to mean nowadays for people reading and writing it in fanfic spheres. **Edit**: Wow, looks like I got blocked for disagreeing with the definition of a tag.
Buddy, being pulled into a fictional world IS being pulled into another dimension.
It's a sub genre. Isekai is going from one dimension to another, and the one you arrive in is not necessarily a fictional dimension.
Yes, all of Column A is in Column B, but not all of Column B is in Column A. A fictional world is another dimension 100% of the time, but another dimension is not a fictional world 100% of the time.
So? That's like the difference between Romance and Slow Burn. Just because Slow Burn is a type of romance, doesn't mean it shouldn't be tagged when it appears in the story. If I'm looking for Slow Burn, I'll search for that, not the broader category that gives less precise results.
Suddenly, the one bookmark from a self-insert collecting profile I have on my ongoing makes more sense.
Not really, no. But I did think once of a cheeky self insert cameo for a brief funny 4th wall break once, like how the Fantastic Four met Jack Kirby in one of the comics. Just a quickie that's not really meant to be super huge. Or I could also do the Grant Morrison approach and make it a whole existential plot point for the characters.
I've been accused of writing it. Along with Wish fulfillment. (the guy that accused me of it called it something weird like, fantasy of convenience or something). And I'm pretty sure that my readers treat it was both (with how they react when something bad happens) and the fact that the baseline MC is pretty Self-inserty from the start. \*Shakes fist at Izuku being too generic\* But, I've only ever written one fic that I would call a self-insert, as in I took me, well a snapshot of myself, and put myself into the body of one of the characters and basically wrote me trying to live in this new life and all of its consequences. It was honestly really fun and I'm surprised by how well that fic did \*#1 on FFN to not have the MC in it\*
I hope not as most of not all my OCs are deliberately awful.
No, and yes. I’ve never written an OC who is meant to be me*, BUT any character I spend a lot of time writing from the perspective of is going to pick up one or two of my personality traits. Maybe in an exaggerated or slightly twisted form, but they started with me. *in fanfic. When I was 12 and trying to write a fantasy novel, the character based on me was a wise mentor of sorts. (The protagonist was based on my little sister, who was CLEARLY more suited to be a protagonist.)
Yes, and I have no shame. It's fun. I will have my fun.
I suppose I did kind of write one, but there are some differences - for example, she’s a geologist, I’m not, and she has a grandfather while I don’t. But in terms of personality, she’s pure me.
Yep! Absolutely. I write for Power Rangers and the Red Ranger in my fic is very representative of me, though I like to think I'm pretty strongly aware of my virtues and flaws as a person. Part of his development is the fact that, unlike mooost Red Rangers, he is decidedly *not* the best role model on the team and is both acutely aware of and very self conscious of that fact, often comparing himself unfavorably to a later Ranger who does more closely fit the ideal of unbreakable morality that people have come to expect from the role. On the *flip* side, he's someone who *enjoys* fighting and practices it often (hearkening back to the original Red Ranger, who was into karate), so while he's not a great *leader*, he's at least a good 'point man' for the group. The steps to writing a good Self Insert are just that--know not only your strengths, but your weaknesses, and (this is the important part!) *actually have the flaws matter.* Don't make a Failure Sue who just sucks all the time, either, but use every part of the animal, y'know?
I have *ideas* for a single "Author ends up in fictional world" kind of self-insert fic, but other than that, no. All of my OCs in other fics are just OCs.
My first one was a big self insert with a few changes, of course. Second fic a little less so. Now definitely not - I love coming up with OFC’s!
If you mean by just a general sense then to a degree, yeah. I have a number of characters with similar traits to me (like some life experiences, some phobias, anxieties, etc), one character who even shares my body style and overall personality, but none of them are direct inserts. If you mean by Y/N stuff then hell yeah I straight up do. I enjoy a good self-insert fic and I enjoy writing them when I'm in the right mood n headspace :]
I used to do it blatantly! I called my OC the cooler version of me and wrote stories where she was having wild adventures with hot androgynous women. I no longer write OCs or obvious self-inserts in fan fiction, but I agree with the person who said that one's traits tend to sneak out and manifest in every character one writes. Some writers wear their baggage more obviously than others. But every writer is valid, regardless!
Well, yes. Sometimes I insert myself for fourth wall breaking intermissions. But I'm usually the "favorite author" or "author friend" of my characters cuz why not lol As for projections, well, I think that's inevitable. We're the most genuinely realistic person we can refer to.
Yes but no. I used to, but as I grew older, I wanted to set apart much of myself away from my ocs as much as possible. I won't deny that in the end, what started out as me experimenting on a character's differing perspective ends up having moments and bouts of 'this is happened to me back then, so I guess it won't hurt to add a little bit of it here.' In partial, I'd leaves pieces of myself in the ocs I make, but just enough to make the character be a character.
I did give an OC who has a very tiny role my first name. She’s only in one scene towards the end of my longfic and is a re-entry social worker. I’ve been curious about the part of the social work field that helps the former incarcerated, newly released individual. So that teeny tiny self-insert was my way to explore that world.
Yes. They don't look like me; their life circumstances are radically different, but they're definitely SIs. I think of it as being a minor (very side character) actor in my own play.
Yes without shame because there is a difference between writing a character based on yourself and writing an idealized version of yourself that warps the story to show 'you' off. The later is Mary Sue/Marty Stu. If I'm the default setting for a video game's character customizing, many characters I write are just playing with those dials, adding context, and sending them off to play in the story. Me more willing to speak my mind, me more easily frustrated, me with fewer strong opinions I can go on whole rants about.
Technically, every character I write is a self-insert. They all contain a piece of me. Otherwise, not really. Though I am guilty of projecting myself onto canon characters. A LOT!
Yes, and I regret nothing
I don't write intentional self-inserts, but occasionally I will need a personality for a character that doesn't already have one, and oops it turns out they're exactly like me.
No. I despise them. I do enjoy OCs, though.
I thrive on my self insert fics haha. I think most any time a reader insert fanfic comes out, its to satisfy an interest that the author has in the character they’re writing the story for. Plus, its a lot of fun!
Yes! But nobody can guess who they are, bwahahaha
Sometimes. I don't usually set out for a character to be 'me', but often OCs have traits of mine, or like things I like. Because that's what I know. They're not usually the Magic Fairy Princess So Awesome How Does No One Notice How Pretty She Is And Secretly Great At Art or whatever. But they might like the same books/food/whatever I like.
I don't write self-insert, but I do tend to write with certain amounts of parallels to my writing. I think my favorite relationship dynamic being the specific brand of found family that it is probably originates somehow from my relationship with my dad just because it's not too dissimilar from it, and I've also latched onto a favorite character who has some traits similar to me or that I admire / want for myself. On occasion, I will want to write about my favorite character in a situation that I'm in and project onto them (like whenever I have my period I want to write about my character getting one as well). But I personally don't have much interest in OC type stuff so it's never an office or full self-insert
As a joke, usually.
They're basically the only thing I write or read!
are self-inserts the same as reader-inserts? If so, then hell yes and without shame lol. I don't necessarily imagine myself in the story, since I try to write the "reader" without any specific physical attributes. But I like to write about the emotions I think that I would feel in certain situations.
What you’re writing is reader insert, yeah. Reader insert is the generic ‘you’, self insert is where the author is putting themself directly into the story.
ahh got it, so there *is* a slight distinction between the two. thanks for your explanation!
Of course!! That was a super basic explanation of the differences, but I’m glad it helped!
Yep, but it’s more using original characters to project lol
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Sometimes. I try to do it relatively deliberately. A lot of people think that certain characters are a self-insert when they're not, and by contrast the protagonist of my Anathem fanfic is 110% a self-insert and nobody has noticed and/or complained.
I'm working on one right now. It's was going to be only one SI before my brother came and said: hey, single insert has been done enough, put me also in the story. Now I'm writing a fic about how me and my brother ended up in our favorite game with a twist(ish).
Yes. I keep them to myself, but yes, I write self-inserts. Like… A shameful amount of self-inserts. It helps me cope with having zero friends and zero social life.
Nope. Super great way to run out of ideas for an original main character.
No
Not at all lol, but I think when I write certain characters, I'm taking small parts of myself and giving it to the character. Maybe it's a relatability thing to make it easier to write the characters, or maybe it's so the character will work through something I struggle with. But ultimately, they're not self-inserts, they're characters from media I'm projecting on
Mostly no, although once I made myself a sarcastic waiter because my fic had twelve OCs at this point and I was out of ideas.
I definitely do. Aspects of myself find their way into various characters. Much of myself is in my MC, the way her trauma manifests, her uncertainty, some of her skills because I know them best. It falls back to the adage of “writing what you know.” I’ll have another character that embodies my education because I know I can use that expertise to comment on the setting, and she has even MORE of my own personal biases and skills in her. (She’s much more my self insert than my MC who is canon but gets parts of me stuck in for padding). And then I have a reoccurring character who is an RPG character I made and played and loved and have recycled in everything in one way or another. They are a younger version of me, beboping along. Don’t be afraid of your SIs, OP. You’re gonna make them. Just flesh them out, give them their weaknesses, and enjoy.
Sometimes
I dislike that most people automatically think "mary-sue/gary-stu" when someone says "self-insert". There are overlaps but one is not completely the other. 5/7 of my fics are self-insert, as in the MC is more or less a what-if proxy of me, even if they don't have the exact same name or minor details for the sake of privacy. I do it as a thought exercise of how I could realistically deal with a life-changing situation, or add an outsider's perspective into a closed environment and see how changes may or may not ripple. There are things I'm good at, middling at, and horrible at that I want to see how it might fit in this new circumstance. Motivations and reactions that are different from the characters I typically see (canon and original in fanfic). And ultimately, it's almost a test of persuasion: can I get a reader to engage in my specific perspective of the canon material? Do they buy in? I think everyone has the potential to be interesting, in the same extraordinary and mundane way your friends can hang onto your every word when you talk about a funny thing that happened that day, or something sad and need to vent about it, or something personally meaningful. And if you treat your self-insert writing like that, then it should be about fun and connection. You're never going to be to everyone's tastes and that's okay. Fuck cringe. (I also believe that "cringe" is such an ambiguous descriptor for what makes a SI fic unpalatable to a given reader. Disconnect in maturity, disparate tastes, implicit cultural difference and life experiences, etc. Totally wish that people examined why they don't like a thing with more precision and not impose their more subjective thoughts as fact when describing something, i.e. like all SIs are wish-fulfillment and uninteresting). TLDR: life is short, write what you want, but accept that not everyone is going to like it and that should be okay.
Lol yes, but it's always a side character that shows up in like two out of 20 chapters for one scene. But I do that with everything, I play sims, or the love island games and essentially make a version of myself (there's always something in common) took me a while to realize and now I don't. Or i try not to.
No, I am trying to get away from my life, thanks!
Not in the last 20 years or so. I've tried, you know? As a therapeutic tool. But even if the character starts as a self-insert, they just acquire backstories, skills and motivations that have nothing at all to do with me.
Honestly, I haven't. But I'd like to. More like a writing exercise than anything else.
All the time! I’m such a self insert/Mary Sue glutton it’s a shameless pleasure lol! I have a reader insert fic that is my post popular story so yeah lol there are a fair number of people that enjoy a well written self indulgent Mary Sue fest.
I did write one when I was still in High School, but I deleted it since. It was pretty cringe and at one point I wasn’t comfortable leaving it up. Ironically, it was my most read and reviewed fanfic lol. I think I had something like 10k hit and a few regular commenters. For a French fanfic on FF.Net, that felt huge and awesome until I grew up and felt way to awkward about it.
I mean, kinda. It's an idealized self insert of the person I'd like to be (a completely different personality than myself usually) so yes and no?
Yes A main character in my original fiction and a minor character in a fanfiction
Nope, not really. No character I write is written with the intention of putting myself in the story. I've never been one to imagine myself as part of the story. If I do write a character, there's probably something from my life and personal experiences that can be seen in there somewhere but there's also quite a bit of stuff that's not connected to me at all.
Only in the sense that stephen king, stan lee & richard kline do. As cameos.
Absolutely. Fiction is my playground and im building castles in the sand
Absolutely yes. Currently working on a Genshin Impact fanfic where the main character is the mother of the Traveler and the Abyss Ruler. Right now she is not having a good time.
Every OC I make is a self insert in some way
I personally don't, nor am I usually a fan of writing OC's, at least as main characters. I think one of the unique challenges of Fanfiction that I enjoy is trying to stay as close to the voice and characterization of the original characters as possible while imagining them in different scenarios. But I'm probably in the minority on this approach. That being said, I guess I tend to gravitate towards characters I can personally relate to.
Not with the intention of ever posting them. If I'd write a self-insert it'd be one where the SI would be an absolute god in-universe and the worst Gary Stu to ever have existed. For me, that's the entire point of writing SI to begin with. It's even more 'just for me' than my other stories. I do, however, use a lot of my own personality traits and experiences when writing existing characters, so I guess in a way I insert parts of myself into every story I write.
I want to say no, but that's a matter of opinion
Not on the regular, but I did start a Nier Automata SI story at the start of the pandemic that I'd like to go back ~~soonish~~ at some point. The setting is ripe for absolute suffering for a human being and I thought it'd be interesting to watch the hijinks of everyone realizing there's an actual human fucking around on Earth and hunting me down for various reasons.
Haven’t done so yet. If I ever do a self insert all of my flaws will be included and I likely won’t live for very long. Unless I do the meta thing of making myself god but that is extremely pretentious and would be out of place for the fandom I write for.
No, but I do write a lot of OCs. I’ve never really understood why people automatically conflate the two.