Mina-san, Ohayou!
I've been thinking about self-insertion. A lot of people hate it,
but still there are always people who do it anyway, and also
always people who encourage them. That fascinated me and I've
been thinking about this for almost a year. The result of those
thoughts is this short essay.
Self-Insertion and Mary-Sue-ism
I have heard time and again that self-insertion is the scourge of
fan fiction and that any tale containing traces of it must be bad
by definition. I used to believe that, too - for almost half a
year.
The thing is that if this were true, virtually all fiction would
be condemned from the start. All characters that we write are
animated by putting little pieces of ourselves into them. There
is no other way to make a character come alive. If we do not
invest a little bit of ourselves into them, they will at best be
forgettable cardboard comparses. The trick is to use different
pieces in differing mixtures, so as to prevent all characters to
become carbon copies of ourselves.
It's easier with fan fiction, since the characters are defined in
their behaviour and relationships already. With new characters it
can be a little more tricky to make them unique, because there is
no model to guide us. This leads to a common prejudice, namely
that any new character introduced in a fanfic must automatically
be a self-insertion of the author.
Freud believed that all literature was in its basis self-insertion
and all plots were wish-fulfillment. The only difference,
according to him, lies in how well the author can mask it and
gloss it over with redeeming social values. As a very broad
generalization that may not be incorrect.
If all characters are in some small way self-insertions, why does
*blatant* self-insertion get such negative reactions? The answer
is "Mary-Sue-ism". The term comes, I believe, from early Star
Trek fiction. To quote Melissa Wilson who wrote the excellent
"Mary Sue Litmus Test":
You already know Mary Sue. Mary Sue is the perky,
bright, helpful sixteen-year-old ensign who beams about
the ship. Everyone on the ship likes Mary Sue, because
Mary Sue is good at everything. Mary Sue is an
engineer, a doctor in training, a good leader, an
excellent cook, and is usually a beautiful singer. Mary
Sue often has mental powers that may manifest themselves
as telepathy, precognition, or magic. If Mary Sue is
very young, she is often the offspring of one or two
already established characters. If she's a little
older, she will probably end up sleeping with the
author's favorite character. Her name is often the
author's name, be it a net.name, a favored nickname, or
the author's middle name (this is seen in the most
famous Mary Sue of all time, Wesley Crusher, who was
named after Trek creator Eugene Wesley Roddenbery). By
the end of the story, Mary Sue will be in bed with the
desired character, will have beamed away amid cheers
from all the regulars, or will be dead, usually
accompanied by heavy mourning from the cast. The
reader, on the other hand, will be celebrating.
The female Mary Sue is perky, everybody's darling, never suffers
from PMS and is an inspiration to those around her. Her male twin
is a brooding, solitary type who has a deep-running disregard for
authority that always gets him into trouble, even though he
virtually always succeeds in whatever rule-breaking stunts he
pulls. In the end he has earned the grudging respect of the
authority figures.
He also tends to have horrible guilt trips about things that were
neither his fault nor in any way under his control. Everybody
around him knows that he doesn't bear any blame, but he insists on
torturing himself with second-guessing, angsting the night away.
This is a cheap trick to gain a reason for angst, soul-searching
and general brooding, without having to commit and let the
character be responsible for doing something actually *wrong*.
It's also often used to allow the character to become anti-social
and do otherwise despicable deeds, because he is so racked with
guilt or hurt. Mary Sues can't do anything remotely bad without
heaps and heaps of explanations and excuses.
Some self-insertion authors think they can avoid the accusation of
Mary-Sue-ism by letting their characters suffer. Tedious
martyrdom, accompanied by slews of self-pity and sympathy from the
other characters is often the result. Readers get turned off by
this just as by the tedious wish-fulfillment because both are one
and the same. The whole "suffering" thing is nothing but the good
old "one day when I'm dead you'll all be sorry you were so mean to
me" fantasy.
Other common defenses against accusations of Mary-Sue-ism are,
"This character isn't me - she just looks like me, talks like me,
has my name and does all the things I'd like to do," or "My
character isn't an idealized avatar - he's got tons of character
flaws," or "She isn't *perfect* - there's lots of things she can't
do." Unfortunately the "character flaws" are usually something
like "he cares too deeply about his friends" or "he always tries
to give his best in everything he does, to the point of
overexposure". And the "lots of things she can't do" usually
include the fact that she can't play banjo to save her life and
other skills that are completely irrelevant to the story.
The problem with blatant self-insertion is that in many cases the
author uses it because he or she does simply not have the skill to
do anything else. And an author who does not have the imagination
to create a character other than a copy of themselves (slightly
idealized, of course) will most probably fall into the trap of
Mary-Sue-ism, too. It is not that self-insertion is the *cause*
of bad writing, but that both have a cause in common.
This also means that an author who knows what he or she is doing
can pull off blatant self-insertion without writing a bad story.
I have read several highly enjoyable self-insertion tales that
were as blatant as all get out but managed to avoid the most
annoying Mary-Sue-isms.
The author of a Mary Sue Adventure operates on the simple principle
of wanting to be liked, thus he or she makes their character
likable. All the regular characters want to be friends with her
or him and the author expects the readers to feel the same.
Unfortunately that runs against the readers' fundamental wishes.
The readers don't want a character they can like, they want a
character they can *identify* with. The reason why Mary-Sue-ism
is so annoying to everyone is because nobody enjoys seeing
*someone elses* wishes come true. The most successful stories
are those where the reader can put him- or herself into the role
of the protagonist - but Mary Sues are designed to have nobody in
them but the author, to be watched and admired from "outside" as
it were.
As a side effect, a Mary Sue tends to take the center stage away
from the regular characters. Within seconds of Mary's appearance
everybody around her has joined her supporting cast. The other
characters' lives are shown only in as far as it involves Mary and
no character development takes place without her being connected
to it in some way. The main characters may vanish into the
background completely, except for some of them that the author
took a liking to - those are allowed to become close personal
friends (or lovers) of the Mary Sue. A story like that does not
deserve the term fan fiction any more.
Again, this can work perfectly all right in a self-insertion
story, as long as the author has the integrity of admitting the
fact and allows the regulars to continue living their own lives,
separate from their roles in the self-insertion story. Nobody
wants to read a fanfic to see their heroes play second fiddle to a
Mary Sue - but they might not be so set against extended cameos
that do not diminish the regular characters' status.
In short, self-insertion is not the scourge of fan fiction. It
can be just as entertaining as any other type of story - provided
that the author knows what he or she is doing and knows how to
avoid Mary-Sue-ism in its many forms.
My personal recommendations are this: Be honest. If it is a
character that represents you and gets all your wishes fulfilled -
admit it. Don't waste any energy on covering it up. Instead use
that energy on finding ways to make the tale interesting to
others. Tell it in a way that hasn't been done before. The
readers should be able to identify with the character and slip
inside him or her. That way they will enjoy the wish-fulfillment,
instead of just watching it.
Another part of honesty in self insertion is that if the character
has all his or her wishes fulfilled, they should enjoy it.
Letting them fret or angst over it sounds dishonest and unnatural,
which distances the reader from the character. There may be
downsides to the granted wishes, but nobody real would see them
right away when there are still upsides to them to be dazzled by.
With great power may come great responsibility, but until it
arrives, any normal human being would be going, "Wheee! Great
Power! Wheeee!"
Do not - do *not* - for a second believe that you can afford
Mary-Sue-ism if you just "offset" it with enough drama, character
development or angst. You *cannot* offset Mary-Sue-ism. It only
becomes more obvious and annoying by contrast. Besides, half of
the things that are supposed to counteract the Mary-Sue-ism turn
out to be the same thing in disguise.
In particular don't use the false guilt described above. If you
want your character to have a guilty conscience or a troubled
soul, then have the integrity of letting them do something wrong,
letting them be truly responsible for something bad. If you
cannot bear the thought of letting your character do anything like
that, then don't bother us with false lamentations.
Sebastian