"I BASED THE MAIN CHARACTER ON MYSELF."

Also I would be AOK if we abandoned the term "Mary Sue/Gary Stu," since it has gone from a term with a particular meaning to "Thing I Don't Like," much like "hipster" and "SJW."

I thought it was a fanfiction term. So maybe it shouldn't be used outside of fanfiction as it is not really pertinent to original fiction? I don't know.

If we're looking at writing as art, then writing characters that are your personal power fantasies are a bad thing. You're not going to allow for any self-reflection if the entirety of the character is "this is the perfect being," as this character is a projection and won't read as even human, really.

If we're looking at writing as a technical skill, then these types of characters are a bad thing as well, as the characters have no depth or nuance, and they require next to no thought to write. Like, oh, my original character Horsekeeping is surrounded by zombies, so he uses a combination of self-taught karate and a fire axe to take out every one of them in a grotesque fountain of blood and chunks of flesh. Wait, no, let's change that to a sawzall since it's more original.

If we're looking at writing as a sort of therapeutic exercise, then I suppose these characters are okay. It's okay to write whatever you like, and you'll inevitably find other people on the planet that also enjoy your work. That doesn't mean that anything goes if you want your writing to be actually good.

author=Housekeeping
If we're looking at writing as a sort of therapeutic exercise, then I suppose these characters are okay. It's okay to write whatever you like, and you'll inevitably find other people on the planet that also enjoy your work. That doesn't mean that anything goes if you want your writing to be actually good.

And @suzy_cheesedreams, I suppose!

I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree on this one! I think people having fantasies to make themselves feel better is more than okay: I think it can be a wonderful thing. Housekeeping, you said that thing about "you'll find other people enjoy your work" -- consider this: people are not always writing for an audience! Sometimes they are writing purely for themselves and then they cast the thing they wrote off into the ether of the internet. I maintain my position that this isn't a bad thing. People are gonna do what they wanna do with their time, and really, what's the harm in that? If someone is doing something that makes them sincerely happy, then that is the best thing ever in the whole wide world, as far as I'm concerned.

If we're getting into the writing as art thing, then like... idk, man. I've interacted with lots of "art" that's obviously a power fantasy for someone that ends up being critically acclaimed. I don't really wanna derail the discussion going on in here to make it all "BUT IS IT ART" since 1) I am honestly not equipped with enough info to confidently have that discussion and 2) IT'S OFF TOPIC. Regardless: I have seen the power fantasy as "art". I have also seen power fantasies as actual art. (see below)

Suzy_cheesedreams, as for your point: As I said before, I disagree.

I think turning yourself into a planet destroying mecha or a time altering god or a Devourer Of All Things in order to make yourself feel better can be a fine thing to do. Doing self-work is a full time job, and it doesn't have to be all "i am a trash human" 100% of the time! Sometimes you can take a break and pump yourself up, especially if you are of an identity that is constantly frowned upon or squashed under the boot that is society.

(ex: I once played a game that was a power fantasy in which you did indeed turn into a beautiful mech and the end of the game is that THE MECH WAS IN YOU you are great all that love and care was in you the whole time, even without the protective rainbow mech; THAT'S BEAUTIFUL AND THAT'S ART, I THINK)

i'm sorry if this is rambly and all over the place it is late and i am tired

Dante in The Divine Comedy
Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales
Paul Auster's appearance in his New York Trilogy
Robert A. Heinlein in his The Number of the Beast
Victor Hugo in his Les Misérables
John Fowles in his The French Lieutenant's Woman
Kurt Vonnegut in his Breakfast of Champions and Slaughter House Five
Stephen King's rendition of himself in the Dark Tower novels

Are these books now not art somehow? Because I'm pretty sure they still are despite, and in some cases because, of the self-inserts of the authors. It's not a bad thing at all. People just say it is because there's this stigma about putting yourself as bigger and better, talking yourself up and making out that you're something more that you are within society.

It's the same shit that makes people talk bad about fan fiction - as though it's a new thing. (Pro tip - it's been around since forever. Hello, most major 'artistic' works of literature!) Anything that rewrites a story already told with the characters already created is fanfiction. So... any retelling of Romeo and Juliet (which old Billy Shakes took from an older story - as he did with a lot of his plays. Yes, he was a fanfic author) is fanfiction.

Any person who ever rewrote a tale to better fit their idea of what should have or could have happened is a fanfiction writer. There's so much literature that was based on older stories and the characters in them - they are also fanfiction writers.

What's that? You made a game based on Alice in Wonderland, but changed Alice to be a boy and made it horror themed? Fanfic. You rewrote the story of Sleeping Beauty to be from the pov of Malificent? Hey, welcome to the fanfic club! Seriously, it doesn't deserve the hate it gets (is it because the perception is that most fic writers are teen girls so it mustn't be worth looking at as a serious form of writing?)

Seriously, though. You can use any fucking writing tool and all that should matter is the quality of the work - not what the 'trope' is that you used. Hell, a lot of fun can be had using tropes and working with them... and I just came up with a great idea for a game contest.


Lastly, I want to add that I have read really good self-insert fanfics before. Just because a lot of something is bad doesn't mean it should be avoided by people. In fact, it is harder to write a good self-insert - and that is why you should fucking do it. Because it's hard to do: it's a challenge and as people who are honing our skills we should challenge ourselves, step outside the comfort of the 'rules' and break them to pieces. My writing teacher once told me something that stuck with me - You need to know the rules to break them; but once you do know them, break the hell out of them and create new ones.

As a writer, that is what you should be doing. Graphic and musical artists push the boundaries of their art all the time. They make pieces that are sometimes questioned and often dismissed but art is pushing and experimenting. A writer, a game creator should do the same. So, you know, if you want to push into self-insertion and make a game or story with it, do it.

Then shove it in the nay-sayers faces and make them swallow their words.

Fucking PUSH.

Oooh, literary studies! I know a bit about that stuff.

Liberty brings up a good point by saying that, in a way, many important works of literature contain self-inserts and often are expanded adaptations (or, in modern terms, "fan fiction") of older stories. This doesn't necessarily mean they are enjoyable to read, but they define our respective artistic cultures to a large degree. At the same time, there are and have always been lots of books that employed the same strategy and are now forgotten or seen as "unimportant" literature. So it is definitely possible to do adaptations/fan fiction right or wrong.

As a consequence, incorporating yourself into the story you write is not automatically a criterion that determines the work's quality. It's all about how it's done.
There are many ways to go about this. If you tell a story that has really happened to you, it's an autobiographical tale, and its quality depends on how convincing your recapturing of the event is.

A story that is influenced by or based on real events the author experienced (semi-autobiographical stories) allows for more freedom and making things appear more interesting or coherent than they really were. Here authors can fail by either trying to make themselves look too good or by going over the top in any way, both of which makes the story hard to believe and thus unconvincing.

What you can also do (and this is what we're usually talking about when discussing self-inserts) is create a character that has all or most of your personality traits, and place them into a situation which you never experienced in reality. If done well, this is not different from any other fictional story with developed characters. But here's the problem: Entirely fictional characters exist only in your head and can be seen in their entirety by you. Real people, including you, are difficult to read and biased in their perspective. Which means creating a convincing fictionalized version of yourself is infinitely more difficult to pull off, even if that sounds like a paradox.

Because it's so hard to translate your own identity into fiction, self-inserts are so often off-putting to readers, because most of the time (I'm not saying always) they result in not well-rounded characters. Not recognizing your own faults and the fact that you are not born better than others will make your self-insertation come across as conceited and attention-seeking. Also, the more of yourself you include in a work of fiction, the greater the distance to your readers tends to become - because fictional characters do not exist outside of their stories, so all there is to know about them is in their stories. Real people do exist outside of stories, and readers often aren't provided the necessary "inside knowledge" to fully understand those stories. As a result, self-inserts can decrease the size of your potential audience.

This is also my reply to emmych: Of course, if someone has the desire to write power fantasies about themselves, go ahead and have fun. But if you write for yourself, write for yourself. Since these kinds of stories were only created to be understood and enjoyed by you (and maybe some people you know personally), don't expect anyone else to be able to grasp the concept. Writings like those belong in your head or your desk drawer, but not on the internet or in a book, where none of your potentional readers has any connection to the content. Don't publish what you wrote purely for yourself, and especially don't expect praise if you do.

Yes, push! But don't push your readers, push yourself.

What I personally like to do is take a few character traits of myself or someone else and twist them into something new by making them more or less extreme and/or coupling them with conflicting traits. That concept has elements of a self-insert, yes. But it doesn't limit me as much and reduces the risk of falling back into ridiculous cliches.

"Billy Shakes" XD

"If the Inferno were about how Dante punched a hole in the ground so he could triple throat chop Satan"

Is it wrong that I would read that? In fact, I'd be more likely to read it (to completion - seriously, I couldn't finish Dante's Inferno. It put me to sleep >.<; ) than the original. XD Power fantasies have their place. If you want a good escape from reality and a light read, they're great. ^.^

If anything, I would want to make an RPG about Dante's Inferno and do the story justice. NOT make a God of War QTE button mashing clone.

Anyway, it's interesting that Dante's Inferno was brought up. While it's not exactly a power fantasy, it IS a self-insert fan fiction.

A little backstory for the uninitiated (hopefully I'm getting this right): The author, Dante, was a huge fan of the Roman poet Virgil. When he wrote The Divine Comedy (Of which the Inferno was only the first out of three parts), he made himself into a weak, pathetic character. He encounters Virgil while escaping from some monsters. Virgil then guides Dante down to hell because, as Virgil puts it, "It is his destiny."

Not exactly a gripping plot. But I think the point of the whole story was to glorify Virgil while making Dante suffer through the whole process of going through the nine circles of hell.

I don't know for sure about the rest. Like Liberty, I fell asleep halfway through. All it was was just Dante seeing scary things and being scared, there wasn't really much going on.


Though the Inferno is an interesting idea: Make a self-insert character who's actually pretty weak and useless. The exact opposite of a power fantasy.