#and as an author i try not to insert myself between reader and interpretation

[sabraeal]

I have a question based on my reread of Seven Suitors: Why did you pick those particular characters (Yuuta, Katashi, Aoi, Kai, Raj, and Makiri as well as Obi) to be Shirayuki's Suitors? A second would be what are the reasons and the particular qualities of Shirayuki's did they choose to court her?

I actually answer everything about my suitor selection here, plus have pictures of the original notes!

[soaps-mohawk]

id love to hear more in depth on how you see reader! i love hearing other perspectives, and hearing the author's herself would be interesting!

Hmm I had to think on this one because the way I portray her in the fic is pretty much how I see her. I've said this before but when I was originally writing the fic it was an OC instead, but I know reader inserts tend to be more popular and inclusive so I went with a reader insert instead. A lot of her personality that I had planned has stayed the same, though it has developed quite a bit from what I planned it to be, but honestly, I'm glad for that.

I base her a lot on myself, more than I intended to because this fic has become very much an extension of my own emotions and struggles, and it's been quite cathartic with everything that's happened this year.

Very timid and unsure and anxious at first, but highly perceptive and a quick learner. That kind of drive for perfectionism almost as a fatal flaw, along with the confliction between logic and emotion in certain situations to the point of freezing and being unsure of how to continue. The hyperawareness to the point of recognizing who's footsteps are who's, but also the ability to get so lost in thought all awareness disappears. The near chronic overthinking and second guessing, yet occasionally impulsive. That need to be accepted, but taking a long time to get comfortable around others. Sassy, unintentionally funny, sharp witted but still hesitant and calculated depending on the situation. Very sweet but can be fierce and relentless when need be.

Yeah. Pretty much how she's depicted in the story 😂 of course it's all up to interpretation, and of course the reader can be anything anyone wants. But that's how I see her and try to portray her.

[my-makeshift-masquerade]

Rebecca Afton is honestly the best Afton sibling OC I have encountered in this fandom, and it floors me that she is a self insert that explores all of your trauma. You are very brave for sharing this content with us, dude. You deserve a LOT more credit from this community, regardless of your productivity. A lot of those creators that are popular get that way because everyone wants to insert THEMSELVES in to simp over someone, but you give us original content. Please don’t give up.

Okay, I appreciate the compliments… It literally made me cry.

What I don’t appreciate is how this seems to imply more popular creators with simp-able or x reader content somehow don’t deserve the attention they get. They absolutely do. I have quite a few friends who are amazing x reader fic writers. I dabble in x reader fics once in a while, and I am well aware they have good reason to get more likes and reblogs than my content ever will. It’s because their content appeals to more people than mine does. As someone with a bachelor’s in advertising, I understand that certain content will appeal to broader audiences and get more popular than other more niche content. That is just a fact.

Also others are just objectively better than me in certain aspects, and can make content enough to keep an audience engaged, and don’t have mental health struggles making them choose between brushing their teeth or writing a paragraph of a new chapter… Every creator is different. Some have an edge of studying or working in the industry and being able to pump out content like machines because we don’t treat artists like humans anymore. That’s not something I can blame anyone else besides myself for not being able to compete with.

My goal in my work is also different from any popular FNAF creators you may be thinking about. I was not trying to attract the same audience they do with their content. Otherwise, I would’ve just made ITB and BTI reader insert fics, and even then, I doubt they’d be any more popular than they are now. The choice to make this character a self/author insert was a risky one, as I still do get anon hate for it. One anon I’ve had to keep deleting asks from calls me cringe and accuses me of repressing some sort of sexual desire for certain characters… Even though I’m asexual. Yeah, they’re projecting, and they’re mad any version of my OC dares to be related in any way to the Afton family.

The Afton family are just the closest thing to fleshed out human characters we have in this up-to-interpretation franchise. There isn’t much else that is concrete to work with, even when considering the Emily family. The reason this OC ended up so closely tied to the Aftons is literally the same reason why Scott retconned Micheal Afton into existence in Sister Location. So much of the story is centered around that family and that family alone. Hell, look at the ever popular Afton Reincarnation Theory for Security Breach. This fandom cannot escape Afton. Is it any wonder this is where my OC ended up?

In summary, I do appreciate the compliment, but please don’t put down other creators. Real talk though… There are other Afton Sibling OCs? Where? I’ve legitimately never seen anyone else do it and I am somewhat interested now.

[kmclaude]

Forgive me Father, I have no awful headcanons for you, only a general question on comic making. How do you do it, writing-wise/how do you decide what points go where, how do you plot it out (or do you have any resources on the writing aspect that you find useful?) Not to get too bogged down in details, but I attended a writer’s workshop and the author in residence suggested I transfer my wordy sci-fi WIP into graphic novel script, as it might work better. (I do draw, but I don’t know if I have it in me to draw a whole comic—characters in motion? Doing things? With backgrounds? How dare, why can’t everyone just stand around looking pretty)

I was interested but it quickly turned into a lot of internal screaming as I tried to figure out how to compress the hell out of it, since novels are free to do a lot more internal monologuing and such compared to a comic format (to say nothing of trying to write a script without seeing how the panels lay out—just for my own sake, I might have to do both concurrently.)

As an aside, to get a feel for graphic novels I was rereading 99RM and was reminded of how great it was—tightly plotted, intriguing, and anything to do with Ashmedai was just beautifully drawn. I need more Monsignor Tiefer and something something there are parallels between Jehan and Daniel in my head and I don’t know if they make sense but it works for me. (As an aside, I liked the emphasis on atonement being more than just the word sorry, but acknowledgment you did wrong and an attempt to remedy it—I don’t know why that spoke to me the way that it did.)

I thought Tumblr had a word count limit for asks but so far it has offered zero resistance, oh well. I don’t have much else to say but on the topic of 99RM, Adam getting under Monsignor’s skin is amazing, 10/10 (about the Pride picture earlier)

wow tumblr got rid of the markdown editor! or at least in asks which means the new editor probably has no markdown....god i hate this site! anyway...

Totally! So first, giant thank you for the compliments! Second, I have a few questions in turn for you before I dive into a sort of answer, since I can give some advice to your questions in general but it also sounds like you have a specific conundrum on your hands.

My questions to your specific situation are:

did the author give any reason for recommending a, in your words, "wordy" story be turned into a graphic novel?

is the story you're writing more, like you said, "internal monologuing"? action packed? where do the visuals come from?

do you WANT it to be a comic? furthermore, do you want it to be a comic you then must turn around and draw? or would you be interested in writing for comics as a comic writer to have your words turned into art?

With those questions in mind, let me jump into the questions you posed me!

Let me start with a confession...

I've said this before but let me say it again: Ninety-Nine Righteous Men was not originally a comic — it was a feature-length screenplay! And furthermore, it was written for a class so it got workshopped again and again to tighten the plot by a classroom of other nerds — so as kind as your compliments are, I'm giving credit where credit is due as that was not just a solo ship sailing on the sea. On top of that, it got adapted (by me) into a comic for my thesis, so my advisor also helped me make it translate or "read" well given I was director, actor, set designer, writer, editor, SFX guy, etc. all in one. And it was a huge help to have someone say "there is no way you can go blow by blow from script to comic: you need to make edits!" For instance, two scenes got compressed to simple dialogue overlaid on the splashpage of Ashmedai raping Caleb (with an insert panel of Adam and Daniel talking the next day.) What had been probably at least 5 pages became 1.

Additionally, I don't consider myself a strong plotter. That said, I found learning to write for film made the plotting process finally make some damn sense since the old plot diagram we all got taught in grammar school English never made sense as a reader and definitely made 0 sense as a writer — for me, for some reason, the breakdown of 25-50-25 (approx. 25 pages for act 1, 50 for act 2 split into 2 parts of 25 each, 25 pages for act 3) and the breaking down of the beats (the act turning points, the mid points, the low point) helped give me a structure that just "draw a mountain, rising action, climax is there, figure it out" never did. Maybe the plot diagram is visually too linear when stories have ebb and flow? I don't know. But it never clicked until screenwriting. So that's where I am coming from. YMMV.

I should also state that there's Official Ways To Write Comic Scripts to Be Drawn By An Artist (Especially If You Work For A Real Publisher As a Writer) and there's What Works For You/Your Team. I don't give a rat's ass about the former (and as an artist, I kind of hate panel by panel breakdowns like you see there) so I'm pretty much entirely writing on the latter here. I don't give a good god damn about official ways of doing anything: what works for you to get it done is what matters.

What Goes Where?

Like I said, 99RM was a screenplay so it follows, beat-wise, the 3-act screenplay structure (hell, it's probably more accurate to say it follows the act 1/act 2A/act 2B/act 3 structure.) So there was the story idea or concept that then got applied to those story beats associated with the structure, and from there came the Scene-by-scene Breakdown (or Expanded Scene Breakdown) which basically is an outline of beats broken down into individual scenes in short prose form so you get an overview of what happens, can see pacing, etc. In the resources at the end I put some links that give information on the whole story beat thing.

(As an aside: for all my short comics, I don't bother with all that, frankly. I usually have an image or a concept or a bit of writing — usually dialogue or monologue, sometimes a concrete scene — that I pick at and pick at in a little sketchbook, going back and forth between writing and thumbnail sketches of the page. Or I just go by the seat of my pants and bullshit my way through. Either or. Those in many ways are a bit more like poems, in my mind: they are images, they are snapshots, they are feelings that I'm capturing in a few panels. Think doing mental math rather than writing out geometric proofs, yanno?)

Personally, I tend to lean on dialogue as it comes easier for me (it's probably why I'm so drawn to screenwriting!) so for me, if I were to do another longform GN, I'd probably take my general "uhhhhhh I have an idea and some beats maybe so I guess this should happen this way?" outline and start breaking it down scene by scene (I tend to write down scenes or scene sketches in that "uhhhh?" outline anyway LOL) and then figure out basic dialogue and action beats — in short, I'd kind of do the work of writing a screenplay without necessarily going full screenplay format (though I did find the format gave me an idea of timing/pacing, as 1 page of formatted script is about equal to 1 minute of screentime, and gave me room to sketch thumbnails or make edits on the large margins!) If you're not a monologue/soliloque/dialogue/speech person and more an image and description person, you may lean more into visuals and scenes that cut to each other.

Either way this of course introduces the elephant in the panel: art! How do you choose what to draw?

The answer is, well, it depends! The freedom of comics is if you can imagine it, you can make it happen. You have the freedoms (and audio limitations) of a truly silent film with none of the physical limitations. Your words can move in real time with the images or they can be a narrative related to the scene or they could be nonsequitors entirely! The better question is how do you think? Do you need all the words and action written first before you break down the visuals? Do you need a panel by panel breakdown to be happy, or can you freewheel and translate from word and general outlines to thumbnails? What suits you? I really cannot answer this because I think when it comes to what goes where with regard to art, it's a bit of "how do you process visuals" and also a bit of "who's drawing this?" — effectively, who is the interpreter for the exact thing you are writing? Is it you or someone else? If it's you, would you benefit from a barebones script alongside thumbnailed paneling? Would you be served by a barebones script, then thumbnails, then a new script that includes panel and page breakdowns? What frees you up to do what you need to do to tell your story?

If I'm being honest, I don't necessarily worry about panels or what something will look like necessarily until I'm done writing. I may have an image that I clearly state needs to happen. I may even have a sequence of panels that I want to see and I do indeed sketch that out and make note of it in my script. But exactly how things will be laid out, paneled, situated? That could change up until I've sketched my final pencils in CSP (but I am writer and artist so admittedly I get that luxury.)

How do I compress from novel to comic?

Honest answer? You don't. Not really. You adapt from one to another. It's more a translation. Something that would take forever to write may take 1 page in a comic or may take a whole issue.

I'm going to pick on Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo spent a whole-ass book in Notre-Dame de Paris talking about a bird's eye view of Paris and other medieval architecture boring stuff, with I guess some foreshadowing with Montfaucon. Who cares. Not me. I like story. Anyway. When we translate that book to a movie any of the billion times someone's done that, we don't spend a billion years talking at length about medieval Paris. There's no great monologuing about the gibbet or whatever: you get to have some establishing shots, maybe a musical number, and then you move tf on. Because it's a movie, right? Your visuals are right there. We can see medieval Paris. We can see the cathedral. We can see the gibbet. We don't need a whole book: it's visually right there. Same with a comic: you may need many paragraphs to describe, say, a space station off of Sirius and one panel to show it.

On the flip side, you may take one line, maybe two, to say a character keyed in the special code to activate the holodeck; depending on the visual pacing, that could be a whole page of panels (are we trying to stretch time? slow it down? what are we emphasizing?) A character gives a sigh of relief — one line of text, yeah? That could be a frozen panel while a conversation continues on or that could be two (or more!) panels, similar to the direction [a beat] in screenwriting.

Sorry there's not a super easy answer there to the question of compression: it's a lot more of a tug, a push-pull, that depends on what you're conveying.

So Do I Have It In Me to Write & Draw a GN?

The only way you'll know is by doing. Scary, right? The thing is, you don't necessarily need to be an animation king or God's gift to background artists to draw a comic.

Hell, I hate backgrounds. I still remember sitting across from my friend who said "Claude you really need to draw an establishing exterior of the church at some point" and me being like "why do you hate me specifically" because drawing architecture? Again? I already drew the interior of the church altar ONCE, that should be enough, right? But I did draw an exterior of the church. Sorta. More like the top steeple. Enough to suggest what I needed to suggest to give the audience a better sense of place without me absolutely losing my gourd trying to render something out of my wheelhouse at the time.

And that's kinda the ticket, I think. Not everyone's a master draftsman. Not everyone has all the skills in every area. And regardless, from page one to page one hundred, your skills will improve. That's all part of it — and in the meantime, you should lean into your strengths and cheat where you can.

Do you need to lovingly render a background every single panel? Christ no! Does every little detail need to be drawn out? Sure if you want your hand to fall off. Cheat! Use Sketchup to build models! Use Blender to sculpt forms to paint over! Use CSP Assets for prebuilt models and brushes if you use CSP! Take photographs and manip them! Cheat! Do what you need to do to convey what you need to convey!

For instance, a tip/axiom/"rule" I've seen is one establishing shot per scene minimum and a corollary to that has been include a background once per page minimum as grounding (no we cannot all have eternal floating heads and characters in the void. Unless your comic is set in the void. In which case, you do you.) People ain't out here drawing hyper detailed backgrounds per each tiny panel. The people who DO do that are insane. Or stupid. Or both. Or have no deadline? Either way, someone's gonna have a repetitive stress injury... Save yourself the pain and the headache. Take shortcuts. Save your punches for the big K.O. moments.

Start small. Make an 8-page zine. Tell a beginning, a middle, an end in comic form. Bring a scene to life in a few pages. See what you're comfortable drawing and where you struggle. See where you can lean heavily into your comfort zones. Learn how to lean out of your comfort zone. Learn when it's worth it to do the latter.

Or start large. Technically my first finished comic (that wasn't "a dumb pencil thing I drew in elementary school" or "that 13 volume manga I outlined and only penciled, what, 7 pages of in sixth grade" or "random one page things I draw about my characters on throw up on the interwebz") was 99RM so what do I know. I'm just some guy on the internet.

(That's not self-deprecating, I literally am some guy on the internet talking about my path. A lot of this is gonna come down to you and what vibes with you.)

Resources on writing

Some of these are things that help me and some are things that I crowd-sourced from others. Some of these are going to be screenwriting based, some will be comic based.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud: I think everyone recommends this but I think it is a useful book if you're like "ahh!!! christ!! where do I start!!!???" It very much breaks down the elements of comics and the world they exist in and the principles involved, with the caveat that there are no rules! In fact, I need to re-read it.

Comic Book Design: I picked this up at B&N on a whim and in terms of just getting a bird's eye view of varied ways to tackle layout and paneling? It's such a great resource and reference! I personally recommend it as a way to really get a feel for what can be done.

the screenwriter's bible: this is a book that was used in my class. we also used another book that's escaping me but to be honest, I never read anything in school and that's why I'm so stupid. anyway, I'd say check it out if you want, especially if you start googling screenwriting stuff and it's like 20 billion pieces of advice that make 0 sense -- get the core advice from one place and then go from there.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: many people I know recommended this. I think I have it? It may be in storage. So frankly, I'd already read a bunch of books on comics before grabbing this that it kind of felt like a rehash. Which isn't shade on the authors — I personally was just a sort of "girl, I don't need comics 101!!!"

Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate: this has been recommended so many times to me. I cannot personally speak on it but I can say I do trust those who rec'd it to me so I am passing it along

the story circle: this is pretty much the hero's journey. a useful way to think of journeys! a homie pretty much swears by it

a primer on beats: quick google search got me this that outlines storybeats

save the cat!: what the above refers to, this gives a more genre-specific breakdown. also wants to sell you on the software but you don't need that.

I hope this helps and please feel free to touch base with more info about your specific situation and hopefully I'll have more applicable answers.

[posthumus]

hullo boys, today i’m writing about my thoughts on the Dickie incident in Maurice. (potential content warning for sexual assault and pedophilia — if you’ve read the book, though, it won’t get more graphic than that)

i’ve actually always appreciated the Dickie scene, controversial though it is. i first read the book when i was fifteen — the same age as Dickie himself, iirc (EDIT: I did not, in fact, recall correctly; see here) — and i feel like i got it instantly: to me, it serves to highlight the extremely fucked-up attitudes towards sex society helps to internalize. that said, your mileage may vary on how much discomfort you’re able to withstand, and i think it’s completely fair to feel that the incident makes Maurice — the character and/or the book — irredeemable. i’m able to forgive a lot of the more problematic elements of Maurice because i think they’re adequately criticized in the text (at one point Forster literally calls Clive and Maurice misogynists). however, i don’t blame anyone for feeling uncomfortable with them. mostly, i’m trying to explain why i personally like the function of Dickie within the story, and why i think the whole episode requires a nuanced approach. 

first up: i’ve seen the whole Dickie thing’s presentation interpreted as completely uncritical, which i think is pretty misinformed. i’ll certainly admit that at the start of the chapter, it’s quite ambiguous as to which way the novel will frame Maurice’s feelings. it’s extremely uncomfortable to read, especially in a modern context: there’s an element of suspense as you try to guess whether or not an author of this time period would have endorsed sexual assault. but the catharsis comes at the end of the next chapter, when the horror of the whole situation snaps into sharp focus: “was it conceivable that on sunday last he had nearly assaulted a boy?” for the previous chapter, Maurice had been kidding himself about the whole thing, and it doesn’t seem quite as rapey as it actually is; but then we’re thrown the word assault, and it becomes clear that we are, in fact, meant to understand that this was a horrible thing to even think of doing. 

in my opinion, the book in no way endorses Maurice's thoughts — i actually think that, for his time, Forster was taking a pretty noble stance. the introduction to my copy of Maurice, by David Leavitt, includes a quote from Lytton Strachey, who wrote to Forster, “you apparently regard the Dickie incident with grave disapproval. why?” like, pederasty was still celebrated amongst a lot of gay men at the time. the fact that the Dickie thing reads so uncomfortably at all is a testament to Forster's (correct) stance on the issue; i think you're meant to be grossed the fuck out by Maurice's thoughts. (also, not that this exempts him from criticism, but Forster himself was assaulted as a child; i think he very much understood the gravity of what he was suggesting.)

secondly, Maurice is an EXTREMELY flawed character, and it seems ludicrous to suggest that we're expected to sympathize with all of his thoughts and actions. he's an asshole for most of the book. much emphasis is placed on the fact that Maurice is an entirely average man within his time, location, and class; his opinions and actions fall in line with that, which is why i’m personally okay with his misogyny (even though i’d throw hands with him in real life). 

the big misunderstanding with a lot of Maurice’s flaws, i think, is that he isn’t a self-insert character, either for the reader or the author (consider the terminal note: “in Maurice i wanted to create a character who was completely unlike myself”). none of Forster’s characters are blank slates, to my mind — they all have extremely specific personalities; we’re not meant to be following them wholeheartedly the way we would with, say, Harry Potter. i worry some people read the book expecting to be able to back him 100%, but i think we're supposed to be observing Maurice, not putting ourselves in his shoes. (the omniscient narration helps with that, as we're told about elements of his psyche that Maurice himself isn't aware of. also, i’m no expert, so don't quote me here, but i think the concept of a self-insert protagonist is a sort of newer one? i feel like most books pre-mid-twentieth century have characters you're supposed to observe and criticize, and not wholly empathize with — Nick Carraway comes to mind.) 

lastly on his flaws, i think the genre you place the book in influences how angry you are at Maurice. if you see it as a romance novel, which is certainly a fair reading, his sudden moments of insane fucked-up-ness make it much harder to root for him. i’ve come to see it as more of a bildungsroman, so i think the point is Maurice's mistakes; he has to reckon with a lot of his actions, including the Dickie incident. 

the part of the whole Dickie debacle that’s the most fascinating to me is its context within Maurice’s discussion of sexuality. i think the Dickie incident showcases how sexual repression and internalized homophobia can pervert your perspective on all sexual relationships. within the novel, sex in general feels like something criminal (certainly in Maurice’s case this is true for sex between men; however, there are also the diagrams on the beach at the start of the book, and Anne’s complete lack of knowledge about sex when she marries Clive). if you view all sexual relationships as immoral, though, pedophilia and sexual assault become no more unethical than consensual sex. it’s interesting in that light, then, to compare the Dickie incident to the moment with the man on the train two chapters later: one absolutely should be illegal, but they are both interpreted by Maurice as obscene, and both (if acted upon) would have been criminal offenses. i also think it’s interesting that the man on the train is perhaps the closest comparison to Forster himself within the novel, as Forster, in middle age, cruised London’s public spaces in the hopes of finding someone to hook up with. while Maurice loathes the man on the train (David Leavitt’s introduction, again, discusses how Forster wrote a love story that deliberately excludes himself), i don’t think the reader is meant to. 

personally, the Dickie scene resonates with me as someone attracted to women. being told that your own desires are inherently predatory doesn’t dispel those desires, but only makes you ashamed of them, and warps your perception of healthy sexuality. i tend to interpret Maurice’s feelings about Dickie more as intrusive thoughts than actual, tangible want — this kind of obscenity, to his mind, is inevitable for him. i don’t think Maurice would have actually assaulted Dickie. i think he was cracking under the pressures of an openly hostile society, while grappling with his own repression and unmet needs. 

TL;DR — Maurice is a flawed character and Forster is critical of his actions. further, the Dickie incident gives us a striking picture of Edwardian society’s attitude towards all sexual relationships, which still has applications today; the episode also gives us insight into Maurice’s mental state. it’s uncomfortable, but in my opinion necessary to the core message of the book.

[kikizoshi]

My (Rough) Thoughts on Shipping Self-Inserts With Canon Characters

Obviously, if you’ve read some of my newer works, you’ll know that I don’t mind OCs, and I feel similarly towards self-inserts. In fact, I’m in pretty high favour of them (good published authors have used themselves and their experiences as great inspiration many a time, and with much success--Dostoyevsky did so a lot!).

However...

With self-inserts, I find that shipping can be quite... problematic. 

I’d like to start with an experience of my own, a basic one, where I wrote a self-insert ship fic. It was... bad, but bad isn’t always indicative of the self-insert style. I remember the way I imagined it was myself in the story, interacting with the characters just like I would in my head, and how great it was to put it onto paper. I was invigorated, it gave me purpose, and I swore to write a new page every day. It was my first fanfiction, and I still enjoy reading it occasionally (even if no one else would).

But that piece isn’t my current ideal for writing, and there are several things I could’ve done to improve. Like, certain writing conventions served to tear me straight from a story, no matter how I tried to gloss over them in my mind.

Signifiers such as ‘(y/n),’ or ‘(h/c),’ ripped me right out of the screen and back into the room around me. Reading about how, “She looked up with her (e/c) eyes happily,” even if only for half a second, I lost my transfiction, and engagement stuttered as I knew I’d be ripped away again.

Strawmanning was another of these problems. The ‘bully’ characters weren’t anything more than a few cookie-cutter lines (not even stereotypes!), whereas the heroic me had the last word, expertly cutting through their paper-thin insults and winning for myself a glorious victory. Rather than highlight virtuous aspects of my character, however, this win only served to make my writing contrived, which goes with my next point.

Shipping myself with a character was perhaps my downfall. Now, don’t get me wrong, my beloved and I had some awesome dialogue about how we should use the honorific ‘-kun’ to make people think we were dating, but overall, neither of our characters were enhanced by each other. I was still my Holy self, the other character shared in my Light, and everyone else were unworthy heathens below.

So what could I have done differently, and what caused me to take such a self-indulgent turn?

To answer my second question, well, age was definitely a factor. I was ten, I believe, and not highly capable of self-reflection, something which is needed in spades in order to artfully insert oneself. I wanted an easy story, one where I could be with the character I wanted and never be in the wrong, and so that’s what happened, at the expense of both our characters (as I’ll elaborate on further down).

To answer the first, I’ll need to take a slightly deeper dive.

For signifiers, I believe why I used them is the key. There’s a difference between self-inserts and reader-inserts, although the two are often mixed, which makes sense (who’s to be the reader-insert if not oneself, or one’s close friend?).

My story was not a reader-insert, though, nor was it ever in my plans to share it, to make it accessible for a friend. (And not even for the purposes of this discussion will I share it with you now, perish the thought.) The only reason I’d thought to add in signifiers of personal traits, of which I knew very well, was imitation. I noticed that every other person on Quotev wrote their fanfictions that way, and so I followed suit. In hindsight, though, it would have been much better to just describe myself or, if preferred, just leave it vague.

I do believe, by the way, that the distinction between self-inserts and reader-inserts--or where we muddle the line--should be something kept in mind when writing. How do you know what’s in-character if you don’t know which character you’re writing about, after all?

For strawmanning, or making a ‘Mary Sue’ of myself, well, there’s a quick explanation. I loathe being wrong. Don’t you? And yet, it’s a real hinderance if I want to write myself into a story. I can’t stand being wrong, I fear it, but characters with no failings are, frankly, boring to follow.

So if they’re so boring, and I don’t want to be wrong, what can I do? Well, I could not write myself. Or, I could use that as a character flaw, and incorporate it into my writing. Maybe, instead of valiantly slicing through the bullies’ insults, my character could think that’s what they’ve done, while the narrator knows full well they’ve made an arse of themself.

And now... onto my main point as stated in my headline--shipping!

In order to ship myself with a character (let’s say Nikolai), I think, honestly, that a perfect storm is needed. 1) I’d need a deep understanding of Nikolai and 2) an extreme level of self-awareness so that 3) I can know whether or not being with Nikolai would be right for me.

Just because I like a character doesn’t mean that he’d automatically like me.

And in fact, I can say with certainty that, if Nikolai were to come to cross paths with me, he’d think nothing of me and forget me the next day. Such is the sort of realism that’s necessary, I think, if we’re not to mould the characters of our affection into someone entirely different, whom they fundamentally are not. If keeping Nikolai’s full personality is my genuine goal in writing, I cannot, therefore, ship myself with him, and I cannot write a self-insert fic about him loving me with any believability or integrity as a writer.

This isn’t to say that I can’t write a fic with both of us interacting, though. I could, of course, get unexpectedly trapped in a trash can, and there’d be nothing for him to do but generously help me out. The line there, however, is to not try to push him past his limits. If I truly respect him, then I wish for him to stay my truest version of him.

If I do wish to mould his character, however, then all that goes out the window. Suddenly, he’s whatever I want him to be, and we can go have a weekend getaway without complication... but I’d need to be careful. 

There’s a fine line between character interpretation and character butchering. Personally, respect is a massive part of my relationship with my character. If I don’t respect a character, I end up misrepresenting them, putting false words and actions in their mouths, and polluting the fic.

So what should I do if I want to mould them to like me (and I can’t change myself without actually changing myself in real life), but I don’t want to disrespect them?

Well, it’s actually pretty easy within Bungō Stray Dogs. In order to change a character, it’s important, I think, to keep some of their core values, and in BSD characters’ cases, the core themes of their namesakes.

(I’ll have to use Fyodor for this next example, by the way, since I cannot for the life of me come up with a situation that would grant me closeness to Nikolai.)

I’d never, ever make Fyodor choose me over his goals, for example (and in fact, very likely, he wouldn’t let me). However, there are still the quiet moments to think of. Were he perhaps a bit more like Alyosha (character from The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky), more willing to make time for those he cares about, so long as we had known each other a long time prior, even if my intellect didn’t compare to his, loyal companionship and decent conversation over a good cup of tea is enough, I think, for a decent scene. (This takes some, though not all, inspiration from Dostoyevsky’s relationship with his second wife, as well as Alyosha’s relationship with his love interest.)

I believe the change should be in-keeping with his character, something slight, so that he remains the man I love and respect while still being able to be himself.

(Now, I’m also aware that I can’t come from a place of complete sincerity, since I don’t want to be with Fyodor, but the example still, I think, was necessary.)

To recap how I think I could do self-insert fiction better:

-I’d keep engagement in mind.

-I’d try to watch for unintentional perfection.

-If I don’t want to change a character, then I: evaluate if they’re right for me.

-If I do want to change a character, then I: keep them the truest form of themself at their core, and make only necessary in-character changes.

So... yeah, those are my rough thoughts. None of this is intended to be OC harassment, by the way, and the only fic I ever referred to here was my own. The itch just came, since I’ve been thinking about this for years, to flesh out my thoughts a bit. I hope anyone who managed to make it this far got something out of this, and thanks for reading <3

[i-am-my-opheliac]

Phanfic Finder List

Finally managed to complete my list. I was a bit short of time and not in the best mood, so I ended up throwing in a couple of new stories in between my favourites, and all in all I really love every single fic on this list. 

1. Age Difference: hard times, baby by @queerofcups (12k, E)

As soon as I saw this tag I knew I would have to recommend this fic. Admittedly this is more than just age difference, it’s a beautiful combination of time travel and smut and an approach to the 2009x201x trope that I’m just a sucker for. 

 2. Snow in London: fulsome by @queerofcups (500, G)

So maybe I’m just a Dann fan account, but their writing always has that innate quality in it to be so damn deep and I’m amazed that a story so short can pack so much introspection and character growth in it, so many implications of fears and wish to feel free. I especially love that it’s straightforward with no dialogue, the descrption of the first day of snow feels poetic and the way it is, plain back text on white background with no decorations around it just goes so perfectly with it. It’s a small gem in my collection. 

3. Chance Meetings: The One Star Review by @jestbee (20k, M)

This tag was probably the hardest one for me. There are a lot of stories that start with an accidental meeting and develop from there, so many gorgeous AU built on made-up worlds. So I decided to make my life easier and choose one that I already know and love, just so other people can know and love it too. And maybe I’m biased because I did beta read this story, and saw how much thought went into it, but I just love the idea of it, I love picturing Phil in the kitchen and I can totally see the snobby way Dan loves and talks about food. It’s just perfect, and there’s a vibe to this story that reminds me of a rom-com, all autumn colors and the smell of spices. 

4. Road Trip:  my heart will howl (till you pull it off the ground) by islet (21k, T)

This is one of those stories that just stay with you the moment you stop reading them, those stories that come back to you in a flash when you least expect it, stories that leave you with a itch to know more of the universe where they’re set. There’s something poetic about it, and I adore the way the road trip is not only a physical trip but also a metaphor for the growth of these characters, both as people and as a couple. It’s beautiful in its pain, you feel every emotion Phil is going through so deeply and the ending leaves you without a breath.I highly recommend this story and the sequel, because there is something about it that just makes it vivid in the mind. 

5. Radio show: The Pianist Everyone Is Talking About... Is My Husband by natigail (25k, T)

Surprisingly enough, there aren’t as many stories that focus on Dan and Phil working at the radio show as I thought they would be, and this one technically isn’t a radio show story per se, but Phil does work at the radio show, and I love the office vibes that just surround the whole story. I love Phil’s reactions and I’m a sucker for Phil being the radio host for a chance. And if it also works into it a somewhat twist of Phil being the “fanboy” rather than Dan, well that’s just a plus. There’s dan and phil and there’s radio setting, I’m not cheating! 

6. Skype sex (2009/2010): read between the lines (i will if you will) by @phanbliss (72k, M) 

There are hundreds of fics on ao3 that explore the sexual relationship building in 2009/2010, and admittedly this story is so much more than that, but I can’t help myself, whenever I think about a story set on Skype in that time, this is the one that comes to mind. It’s not only beautifully written, but the build up is in my opinion so realistic, portraying the insecurities and the desires of two people getting more and more into each other. I love that it focuses on the build up and lets the readers connect the dots with what we know of their history once they met, because we know that story, but it’s how it came to be that is up for interpretation and I love how right this one feels.  

7. Vegas Trip: Roll the Dice and Swear by @ramonaspeaks -  (15k, E)

I think this author and this story in particular needs no presentation, and that’s probably why it’s so vivid in my mind. I love that the premise of it is so simple and seemingly purely sexual and yet there’s a character exploration that feels so real, especially when you think about the age they’re supposed to be in. 

8.Sexuality Crisis: a new blue by @watergator (6k, T)

This is a really lovely take on the build up to Dan meeting Phil, his relationship with his previous girlfriend and what it might have been like questioning his sexuality with the onslaught of confusing feelings. It captures perfectly what it feels like to have a relationship at that age, spanning from high school to university, and questioning if that’s what you really want, who you really are, if it’s just because everyone else is doing it. 

9.Sexual Roleplay: イカ - by @phandomsub  (2.8k, E)

There were so many options for this tag that I almost found myself defeated in trying to choose one, which is why I ended up rereading one of my old time favourites, because why not. And if this is a twist that also involve some really incredible tentacle porn, well, you can’t blame me. I love the dark atmosphere of this piece, it makes you feel tense and trapped with the onslaught of feelings and the revelation at the end is a breath of relief, almost knocked over by the last two sentences. There’s a particular dark nuance that is often found in tentacle play but it’s played so so well. 

10. AU inolving a hospital: grey’s (ph)anatomy by @alittledizzy (1k, T)

Mandy has the ability to really insert Dan and Phil into whatever universe she’s picturing for them and fill it with such specific details that you are left there thinking “oh, of course, of course this is how it go. They were born to be this.” This specific AU is probably one of my favourite, it involves one of my guilty pleasure tv show and it just works. There’s a whole universe described in something relatively so short, and it’s just a scene of their lives and yet it says so much, of who they are, who they’ve been and who they’re going to become. And I wish I had more of it, but it lives perfectly on its own.  

[sparklyjojos]

Trying to figure out how much can we trust Saburou and how he’s connected to other Maijo books

[spoilers for TCD, Tsukumojuku, Closed Rooms and Disco]

(for simplicity’s sake, whenever I use just the name Saburou I mean Natsukawa and not Mitamura or the baby from Closed Rooms)

Now that the recaps are done, the question is what importance does TCD hold for the meta and whether we can even trust the narrator. Several events contradict each other, most obviously:

 the name of the lake, Hashimoto’s cause of death and the identity of his murderer change abruptly between chapters 2 and 3

 arguable changes, like Yurio’s smell being described a lot in chapter 2 as if it’s a detail going somewhere, but then never again being brought up

Saburou claiming that they ate stew after the fight between Jirou and Maruo, while back in Smoke Shirou talked about how he and Saburou had to go to bed hungry that night

These are likely intentional. A big part of the book is spend musing about how the truth can only be told using a lie, so we shouldn’t be surprised by the book itself being a huge lie too. The common theories I’ve seen are:

everything after chapter 2 was made up by Saburou -- in chapter 2 Saburou says that IF he was writing this a novel, he’d make aliens appear, and there’s no aliens to be found, so chapter 2 cannot be his novel. If chapter 2 is true, then the following chapters can’t be true because of all the contradicting details. (Alternative interpretation: what Saburou meant was that if it was a story, then the ‘recipient from above’ would surely notice the truth conveyed by all the characters’ strivings... and that recipient is you, dear reader!)

everything except for chapter 2 was made up -- the thing with Kaede’s father in chapter 1 is hardly believable and seems like a lie made to highlight truth (that is, to show the main theme of the book -- the ‘egoism born from love’ and its harmful effects), same with Araki’s stalking

everything is a lie -- the entire TCD is just Saburou’s book or something that he privately wrote to understand himself and/or for self-harm. This is hinted at when Shirou thinks that the abuse described in Yurio’s suicide note may be fake and she just imagined horrible things happening to her as a form of self-harm (of course this also works with the theories above, as in “everything except x chapters is just an elaborate form of self-harm/self-understanding/coping mechanism”). It also wouldn’t be the only time Saburou explored the topic of writing about horrible things happening to yourself as a coping mechanism -- another Natsukawa story, Komatsuki Makiko (that I haven’t read so take this with a grain of salt) apparently tells us he wrote Tsukumojuku.

both The Childish Darkness AND Smoke, Soil or Sacrifices are fake and written by Saburou -- back in Smoke Saburou says half-jokingly that maybe he should make Shirou a protagonist in his next book, and in TCD he’s shown thinking about writing a novel based on the Nozaki case.

---

Meta-wise, I would say that The World is Made out of Closed Rooms is also a false story written by Saburou, maybe one of his Runbaba works. The book doesn’t mesh well with the continuity of Natsukawa Saga (messed up timeline, the Geometric House of the Week seemingly based off of the Natsukawa warehouse...). Baby Saburou from Closed Rooms is often interpreted as Saburou’s self-insert, an embodiment of his wish to have been born in another circumstances, to be saved from his dysfunctional birth family. If so, then Saburou had to be self-aware about why he wrote it like this, seeing as he later had the triplets in Tsukumojuku do the same: create the cute baby versions of themselves that would be loved and defended from harm.  

As for Asura Girl, it revolves around Aiko’s near-death experience, another topic that Saburou expressed interest in exploring back in Smoke. What I find interesting is the fragment about Koyama, the sculptor who would repeatedly create an Asura statue and destroy it, which Aiko believes may be due to his desire to destroy and rebuild himself -- it reminds me a little of TCD. (Aiko understands Koyama, since ”If I could have looked back at myself just then, I would have probably wanted to take an axe to that failed monster called "me."” Just like Saburou took an axe to that failed monster that symbolized himself.)

Disco Wednesdayyy obviously has Mitamura Saburou who (in his universe) is  the author of Tsukumojuku and his version of Closed Rooms. When Disco points out how instead of following his desire to write genuine novels Mitamura sold himself out, this comes kinda out of the blue in the plot, but it’s actually something that Natsukawa Saburou is self-aware of in TCD. The theme of “losing something to gain something” from the end of TCD is highly important in Disco, and the endings of both had the same vibe of hope in a desperate spot.

I can’t really see any important clues in Jorge Joestar, but since it can be seen as a sequel to Tsukumojuku, then we can assume Saburou wrote it too.

---

As much as I love finding connections and trying to construct a neat little model of which book is on what meta layer and what is the ‘truth’, there remains a question:

Can we even say that one of the works is true while another is not?

If we assume that Smoke and TCD are “fake”, does it mean that the unseen mysterious Saburou who made them up is somehow more real to us than the one we observed for hundreds of pages? Is that mysterious someone more real than Mitamura or the triplets? Similarly, is the pain of Tsukumojuku in the Fourth Story not real simply because the next Stories exist? Had Disco ended just before they found Mitamura’s body in the wall, would it mean that Mitamura really escaped alive simply because that’s what the reader believes is true?

And why do we -- the readers, the silent recipients in the sky -- fully know that all the books by Otaro Maijo are fictional, but still desire to seek the truth in them?

Why do we believe in stories?

--are the questions The Childish Darkness and the other books of the author leave for us to answer.

[erin-gilberts]

Okay, I'm interpreting your last post as an opportunity to drop a really random, stupid rant in your DMs. So I'm very pro-selfshipping, right? I am! But does anyone else feel like selfship characters are, 99% of the time, not Mary Sue ENOUGH to be part of the universe the authors place them in? I want to read about someone just as cool and interesting as the canon character they're into!

YEAH ACTUALLY, I think you're onto something here!

I tend to see way more fearless creativity with OCs over reader-insert characters written in the second person. WAY more. I've read very few fics where the reader insert character was as interesting as the canon characters and the universe they inhabit.

I think it's in large part the nature of the genre - when you're writing a "you" insert, a bland, unspecific character with vague indicators is easier for others who read your work to project onto. And to some extent, that's what you want - people will read it and love it if they can successfully project into it. A single offhand remark about the character's physical traits or backstory can break the immersion in reader-insert fics. For some people, this is the entire fun of it, straddling the line between specificity and broad relatability; for me, if the work wasn't just a private thing about me and for me I kept to myself, it was always pandering and hard to write.

It's why I've leaned into having OCs over self-inserts - I personally feel like I have way more liberty to go full feral with their characterization because I'm creating a very specific person, not trying to speak to many different kinds of person.

[thenightling]

The self-insert character (Sandman related)

Let us discuss the self-insert character.  

Many authors are guilty of creating Mary Sue and Gary Stu characters.  One of the most common is the Self-insert.  It is when the author creates a character that they most connect to, physically resemble or can most freely place their own views into.

Self-insert characters can be annoying, shallow, overly-perfect, two dimensional, and perceived as lazy.  They are frowned upon in online role playing games and when done poorly you could end up with things like the famously bad fan fiction “My Immortal.”

Or Bella Swan...

Oscar Wilde created self-insert characters and as a result did not consider himself a real artist, either that or he wanted to distance himself from The Picture of Dorian Gray so the readers would not learn of his sexuality. (“Real artists create beautiful things but put nothing of their own life into them.”)  The statement is either self-deprecating or denial, depending on how you interpret his intention- whether you believe he admitted The Picture of Dorian Gray reflected aspects of his own thoughts and feelings or not.    

Many self-insert characters are terrible but some are now considered the greatest literary characters of all time.

From Watson in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:

To Abraham Van Helsing.  This one was so obvious that he had Bram Stoker’s first name.  Bram is short for Abraham.

In recent fiction there is Harry Dresden in the Dresden Files book series.

Many Stephen King novels have a self-insert hero that either resemble Stephen King or also happen to be a writer reflecting his views on his own career and interests.  You see them in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, It, Mystery, The Shining, ect...

Sometimes they represent the good, sometimes the bad, the author’s own inner demons, doubts, and self-exploration, fears, and growth as a person.   

Sometimes the superficial comparisons between a character and his creator can be amusing.  

For example, here’s Neil Gaiman, side by side with his (probably) most well known character, The Sandman, also known as Morpheus.

Morpheus is probably one of the most successful self-insert characters of all time, reflecting Neil Gaiman’s exploration in concepts like duality, his apparently favorite mythos about religions co-existing and being dependent on the beliefs of mortals, his views on writing, his conflicted views on desire, to maybe his own wish to be a better person and uncertainty about change.  Morpheus is one of those characters who you can watch grow with his author and it feels perfectly real (the psychological development of the character), perfectly organic.   

There are key differences in personality as well, such as Neil Gaiman’s apparent better understanding of the emotions of others, and his far keener paternal instincts and behaviors (as far as I can tell) and over-all I think Neil Gaiman is probably nicer, in general, compared to Morpheus (who needs time to grow empathic and sympathetic).  A self-insert character does not have to precisely match the creator and can have key differences, sometimes darker differences.  

And of course physiological differences.  I doubt Neil Gaiman is an eons old anthropomoricized aspect of sapient life with black-night eyes.  

Morpheus is a prime example of a well crafted self-insert character as opposed to the ones created in some (not all!) role playing games and bad fan fictions that have made writers wince at the idea of a self-insert character.   Morpheus is proof that you can create a good and well-developed self-insert character. 

___________ 

That is where the original version of this post was supposed to end.  But due to two hateful anonymous messages I received tonight I must continue this post so here is the continuation.   

Of course Neil Gaiman is not literally Morpheus and vice versa.   I did not think this would need to be said but apparently it does.     

Though I occasionally like to joke about the conspiracy theory that Morpheus is living on Earth as the mortal Neil Gaiman, by no means do I want anyone to take this claim seriously, or to act on said claim.   I usually write those sort of posts just as an excuse to entertain myself in regard to the physical similarities between the character and the author.

Yes, I enjoy the idea that Morpheus managed to free himself from the burden of being Dream of The Endless and might be walking among us but the part about him literally being Neil Gaiman is always meant as a joke just so I have an excuse to post the physical similarity images.    (It’s still a novelty for me!  I’m new to the fandom!)

I do not think Neil Gaiman is some sort of retired preternatural being.  That is only a joke based on the amusing fact that Neil Gaiman physically resembles his character...

I had thought that it was understood that the claim that Neil Gaiman is Morpheus in disguise is tongue-firmly-in-cheek based on the fact that Morpheus is a very well created self-insert / self-exploration character.   Any post specifically about the resemblance and the “headcanon” that Morpheus lives on Earth as Neil Gaiman is not to be taken seriously.   

Since the first issue of Sandman was published when I was just turning seven-years-old I had assumed the fandom was old enough... No, mature enough to know where fiction ends and reality begins and also be able to tell when someone is just making light of a comparison.      

I have never had any problems with the Sandman fandom before and I suspect the anonymous hate messages I recently received are actually connected to someone in a slightly different fandom holding a grudge. 

In the five or so months that I’ve been in the Sandman fandom I’ve mostly been embraced with open arms.  I am thankful to those who welcomed me kindly and I apologize in advance that almost half this post is me trying to clarify something that is probably quite obvious to most of you.   

I hate how precise I have to word things in Tumblr because everything is potentially offensive.

Tumblr depresses me... 

[interesting-blog-name]

“The Silkworm” by Robert Galbraith - Review

this book has been in my house for AGES. I think I’ve owned it since 2015,when one of my mom’s friends gifted it to me, and I’ve tried to start reading it at least 5 times in my life (I’m not a good reader, if it wasn’t obvious). I never picked up the habit of reading for fun as a child, and so I’m trying to start now. At least finishing this one is sort of a step in the right direction.

The book is a sequel to The Cuckoo’s Calling, but it also makes sure to be accessible enough to people like me who haven’t read the previous installment.

It follows Cormoran Strike and his secretary/assistant Robin in the investigation of the murder of a gothic writer, further discovered to have been arranged to mimic the fate of the victim’s representation in his last book, a novel based around crude and disgusting representations of almost everyone around him.

One of the strongest parts of this book is its ambience: the rainy streets of London, rustic pubs and aesthetic waiting rooms are really pleasant to wrap your head around, vividly populated by the characters and Strike’s acidic interpretations of their thoughts and manners. The detective himself is not such a stereotypical investigator, he’s cold and unemotional most of the times, frustrated when his job almost consumes him, and can show compassion rarely. Generally, he’s a very logical and calculated personality, which contrasts with his companion, Robin, and her bright, empathetic and motivated attitude. Their struggles throughout the book, with Robin doing everything she can to stand out, fueled purely by her love of the profession for which she sacrificed a psychology graduation, is an effective way to build both characters, especially with her husband’s jealousy; it does come at the cost of having Michael, the husband, be not much more than an unlovable, insubstantial obstacle in whatever he does.

The protagonist’s struggle with identity, rooted in his shitty relationship with his famous rockstar father, and his fresh wounds from a harmful relationship aren’t really deeper than the minimal necessary background for a main character, but I suppose I shouldn’t complain as I don’t know how it’s dealt with in the first book of the series, where I’d expect it’d be much built upon.

As for the supporting characters, most are very human, in that they have varied, colorful personalities, and as an experience author, Rowling is very capable of expressing such differences in text; this ability shines in the context of frequent interrogations of this book. It ranges from the vibrant Nina to the depressive, clueless Leonora, the evasive and awkward Daniel Chard, and the bitter Elizabeth Tassel.

About the crime aspects of the book, however, considering the whole plot is centered around the literary word, the only connection a casual reader like myself could have with said world is through Strike, who seems to be the bridge to this rabbit hole of publishing feuds and envious writers. It is very apparent that Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling), as a writer, enjoys creating the inceptions of literary ambients, because it’s what he lives, and his way of transmitting that whole universe of information about publishing deals, literature styles, company parties, etc., is accessible, and doesn’t come off as too niche, but it does get slightly repetitive after a while.

The investigation is in a weird position throughout the book due to the fact that nobody liked the victim. Whether they were disrespected in his unpublished final book, Bombyx Mori, or they just despised his unfaithful and egotistical personality, the universal hate blurs the line between rationally annoyed acquaintance of the victim, and plausible suspect. This mixed with the cliffhangers Galbraith inserts at the end of chapters, when strike or robin realize something we couldn’t possibly conceive without reading between every single previous line, makes the reader comfortably clueless throughout the last chapters.

The conclusion, however, I wouldn’t say is satisfying. it turns out Tassel, the victim’s associate and publisher, after killing the author, published her own version of his last work to fool everyone into thinking he slandered everyone else, and to stir up enough controversy to sell his work and gain a profit. the revelation i’d say is a little anticlimactic and way too sudden, the build up ends up being killed by the ambiguity of the writing, hiding the revelations from the reader. after all is done, tassel is arrested, relationships are strong, and i leave the book with a slight disappointment in the book’s bright ending, after the gruesome atmosphere i was immersed in.

the writing is great, the story is rather creative, the ending is not the greatest, but it’s nice read.

7.5/10