[ SECRET POST #3183 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3183 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 047 secrets from Secret Submission Post #455.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I totally agree, anon.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with writing a Mary Sue/Self-Insert character, and I have never actually criticized any single individual person for doing so. However, frankly, I find self-insert fics annoying as fuck. In fact, I think they might be my single greatest fanfic pet peeve.

Probably because self-insert is anathema to what fanfic and shipping are about for me. For me, fanfic and shipping are about the characters - their lives and their personalities and their feelings for each other - and my vicarious experience of that. I have no part in their world and their lives whatsoever. Their universe is theirs and it doesn't contain me or the universe I inhabit. When I try to imaging myself so much as bumping into one of the characters in a shop and saying "Oh, sorry," and moving past them, it feels extremely weird and wrong, intrusive and also just impossible.

When someone else self-inserts, I find it nearly as uncomfortable and intrusive feeling as if I were to do it myself. It feels like they're intruding on this world that doesn't contain them, and on these characters lives, which have no place for them. And then they're forcing the story to accommodated them to their satisfaction. When a person turns one of the characters into a self-insert, that bugs me somewhat less, because I find it less overtly disruptive of the integrity of the character's textual universe. And I also tend to be pretty flexible about what fanon interpretations of the characters I'm willing to roll with. But I agree with the anon above that, when the self-insertion becomes obvious enough - it can feel like the character (whom I love) is being hollowed out and then filled up with the fic writer's own alter ego.

What I'm describing is how it feels to me, not some kind of objective truth about self-insert fics. As I said before, there isn't actually anything wrong with writing them. But there isn't anything wrong (or inherently unfeminist) with disliking them either.