#in honor of izaya's birthday i'm going to be controversial

[undeific]

i promise it’s not that deep, or why you’re wrong about self-inserts: an essay by your friendly neighborhood chaotic neutral

So, self-inserts. A hot topic, apparently. In 2020. Perhaps it’s due to a dashboard full of young, possibly underage writers (which is not a bad thing! embrace your creativity!), but this is a discussion I believed we had matured past. Since it has been floating around, though, here is my take, and the take a great deal of circles have embraced in the past 6-7 years or so. 

There’s always been a self-insert problem in the community — not necessarily self-inserts themselves, but rather the response to them. It’s no secret that these characters are commonly regarded with disdain and always have been: they’re viewed as the most self-indulgent form of character, the least creative, and the worst-written, having been made solely for the purpose of connecting with canons and living out one’s own Mary Sue-adjacent fantasies. To some extent, these generalizations make sense and line up with a reality we are all very familiar with; after all, these assumptions must come from somewhere, and there would be few canon-portraying writers among us who could say they’ve absolutely never been met with an uncomfortable situation brought on by an overeager self-insert. In 2013, the worst crime a roleplayer could possibly commit was create a character like this, and would result in what was considered, and many times was, a well-deserved blacklisting from entire fan spaces and writing circles. A self-insert was, after all, created with no integrity and only had bad intentions. 

We all know the self-insert girl — and yes, she is a girl, of course. Her dialogue is clichéd, her plots are threadbare and consist primarily of smut and romance, her backstory is tragic and attention-seeking. She often has the same name as her creator and her faceclaim is self-flattering. She seeks out canons and attractive original characters of the male persuasion, persistent in her attempts to reach out, hoping to begin shipping with her victim — or victims — of choice. She is a being purely of self-gratification and wish-fulfillment. She is, in a word, embarrassing. We do not like her. She is told on the rule pages she does not read that she will be blocked, banned, and ultimately mocked by those who have seen her floating about. She is “politely” insulted and threatened for crimes she has yet to commit, and chased from the platform as quickly, cruelly, and efficiently as possible. Yet she always comes back in one form or another, like a cockroach.  

These characters still exist, of course. They were never a myth. I am familiar with them, as are you, and everyone else who has dipped their toes into the writing pool. But they are an exaggerated breed these days, and often used to perpetuate elitism in spaces where it is entirely unnecessary. The shadow of the stereotypical self-insert’s reputation has been cast over original characters as a whole, specifically female characters, and has created an unwelcoming environment prone to cliques and harassment. A character outside an established canon is suspect. A woman outside an established canon — and sometimes even within — is eyed suspiciously, hypercritically, before being thrown a generous bone by a “lower-tier” roleplayer who will determine whether or not she’s worthy of attention.

If any desire for wish-fulfillment is detected or perceived, she’s dropped quickly, often with no warning. 

There is a strange idea that permeates throughout roleplaying culture that wish-fulfillment writing is done in bad faith. This is flawed logic in many ways. Roleplaying is not a job. It is not an inaccessible artform. If you engage in this form of entertainment, you are getting something out of it. You are stepping outside of yourself and becoming someone else, and you are enjoying it; you are, in other words, engaging in a form of wish-fulfillment, though perhaps not with the sticky connotations you are familiar with when contemplating the term. This very idea goes against the rhetoric that has been built up by the community, however — self-indulgence is taboo, roleplay is serious business, and only those worthy and “quality” shall partake and be given attention. (It has even been taken to the rather sad extent that if one does not keep up with aesthetic-based trends, they are met with passive disinterest if not outright disdain. But that is another essay entirely.) If you seek wish-fulfillment, you are not welcome. If you are a self-insert, you are not welcome. If your character shares too many traits with yourself, you are obviously seeking wish-fulfillment, and probably a self-insert to boot, so you are not welcome. 

There are layers to this. People do not want to associate with these leper characters, and so they create strict rules to be adhered to — and that makes sense, as everyone is entitled to their own pleasurable experience, and their own guidelines. But these rules become meaningless in the shuffle, placed on carefully-crafted Google Documents to do nothing other than promote elitism and limit creativity, whether that is the intention or not. If you like a character, but find out it shares the same name and birthday with its creator despite little else in common, what do you do? If this character does not seem interested in pushing a ship onto you in your interactions, are they still breaking your rules? If a character was created with its writer as the base, though they do not behave in the stereotypical way that makes self-inserts unbearable, why is it so important? What do the origins of a character have to do with its current iteration? Why, if it does not have a negative impact on interactions, does it matter if a character is a self-insert or not? At the risk of sounding like a dusty academic, the bard once wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” What, aside from preconceived ideas, does a character’s self-insert status have to do with anything? 

“Discomfort” is the word primarily used when discussing these characters negatively, and many hoops are jumped through to justify why this discomfort is felt if there is no concrete reason, no offense committed. If one is willing to dissect another’s character, but not one’s own reasons for their own discomfort when confronted with the simple, low-impact reality that this character exists, some self-reflection is warranted. Even more so if this character is, as far as you have seen, well-written, fleshed out, and interesting, with the only “downside” being that it is, in fact, a self-insert. 

To write well, one must understand the character they are working with. Divorcing oneself entirely from the characters they write will only work to their detriment. All creations, all characters, must contain a piece of the writer within them to some degree; that is the only way a piece of fiction will function — but if that is against the rules, we cannot write. We cannot engage in any sort of believable storytelling. Self-inserts are, at their core, only the most exaggerated form of original character. 

This, of course, is capable of leading to problems; one of the greatest issues here is the possibility of the lines between fantasy and reality getting blurred. This has happened to me when dealing with self-inserts, as well as other original characters and even canons. It is distressingly common, one of the most unpleasant situations to arise in roleplay spaces. However, if it is your assumption that the lines of fantasy and reality will be blurred purely because a character has self-insert origins, that likely says much more about your own grasp on reality rather than the self-insert’s. It is and always has been important that proper distinctions and boundaries are maintained, no matter who the writer or character are. During heavy or dark threads, writers will often be found shooting jokes back and forth in the tags to put each other at ease, and people give out their handles on instant messaging platforms to ensure easier, more efficient communication out of character. If this is done efficiently, any issues that arise are handled in a stable, mature way, and the problems that lend themselves to roleplaying become ever rarer. 

Self-inserts are like any other character, they just have a label with nasty connotations and an unfortunate history and stereotype attached. There should be no thorny questions here, only whether or not the character interests you personally. If the very term is a dealbreaker for you, you are taking yourself, and this, too seriously — and missing out on some fascinating storytelling in the process. 

That being said, the character I portray owns a knife and I own a knife, so I am practically a self-insert myself. I guess I’m gonna be blocked! 

#in honor of izaya's birthday i'm going to be controversial #disclaimer: i have no personal stake in this matter; i have not had a self-insert character since i was twelve; #i just hate roleplay culture as a whole. #i have a lot more thoughts on this but the essay had gotten long enough; #if anyone wants to engage in friendly and mature debate #or ask questions #i am open to it! because i am nice and stable and an adult. #this is just a polite and academically-leaning reminder that maybe we don't have to be so hostile. #forgive the sarcasm at the end lmao! #anyway back to writing in character. #✚ OUT OF INFORMATION.