Characters you re-use?

Don't interpret it as arrogant boasting if it bothers you so much to ignore the actual point. I meant I don't think I'm that special or anything which is why most people should able to continue to write without the self insert parts.

Actually, I really do think that even yelling at them would be better than doing nothing. As long as you don't say something along the lines of "you shouldn't write". Because if they get too attached to their characters they may never want to let go of this type of writing and then the chance of convincing them is much lower.

I still think that 10 is earlier than most people on fanfiction.net, so it is only a later age compared to you.

The problem is you think self-inserts or mary-sues are a terrible thing, when they're not. Personally I believe the entire concept of mary-sues is to belittle female characters. Either way - writing is not for you. The person writing is writing for themselves. If you happen to enjoy it, great. If you don't, sucks for you. It's not their problem. If they take it into their hands to fix it, that's cool, but it's not a given that they should care.

There's nothing actually wrong with writing self-inserts or sues for your entire life. Get over it and let people do what they want.

If people post their writing online it generally means they want feedback from a different point of view rather than theirs. And since self-inserts are generally portrayed badly to other people, I would point that out to them, to help them improve their writing for other people to read, which is likely their intention if they post it online.

If people post their writing online, they want to go LOOK WHAT I DID and see if anyone likes it. Not everyone actually wants feedback. It's unfortunate that there aren't many socially-acceptable ways to go 'please don't tell me what you think I'm doing wrong', but then again there are plenty of people who just want you to point out typos or something and think that means they're comfortable with critique.

Regardless, so long as it's obvious they're writing reader inserts and they're not doing this with canon characters (... which is probably what they'd switch to if you yelled at them about writing OC fic ...), why are you complaining about it? You're not required to click it, and if you bring up 'Mary Sue' or 'self-insert' in your response, you're only going to piss someone off rather than actually help someone become a better writer. Point out plotting errors or tacky bits of writing style or something, not what you fundamentally hate about the story. And I would bet money that a hell of a lot of those kids on FFN that you're complaining about have already heard lectures about how you should NOT WRITE MARY SUES EVER and don't understand what about them is actually tacky so they can not do it. Or they've worked out that Mary Sue at least half the time means a female character who exists and Don't Give a Shit, as well they should.

Also, when people are writing their power fantasies (and I'd still count reader-insert/canon character here, though in that sort of fic the reader insert's usually important only because the male lead cares about her, which ... doesn't have much to do with the Most Important OC Ever Who Does Everything) ... any criticism about the main character's liable to be taken as a personal attack on the writer. Here is someone writing about the Most Awesome Person, because awesome characters are fun to read about! And they are trying to make their character SUPER COOL! ... And then comes along someone like you telling them they're terrible for doing this. Why would you do this?


I'd think explaining to them that the rest of the cast seems to exist only to make the main character look good would be more effective. The cast in that sort of thing usually has motivations that mostly turn out to be 'because they're good/evil/shallow' rather than actually having long-term goals. And if the person's writing something with an OC you don't like where the rest of the cast gets developed, what the fuck do you have to complain about?

You don't have tell them to stop writing self-inserts to if you don't want to. I can and will, because I think it benefits them. From experience and observation, I have deduced that mollycoddling is a bad way to educate.

If it's taken as a personal attack, well, I could also say that you have personally attacked me for the above post. People get offended, and I am not going to modify everything I say just because they can't take anything from real life.

Also, calm down.

How much has that actually gotten anyone to become a better writer? Did they just stop posting? Did they not care what you were saying? Did they actually improve? And if telling people to stop writing self-inserts isn't getting them to write different types of fic instead, why are you doing it?

If you're just leaving DON'T WRITE SELF-INSERTS as comments and not checking back to see what the writer does, that's kind of irresponsible. If you keep doing something like that, shouldn't you check to see how well it works?

I think I'm safe in assuming that you can better tell the difference between someone pissed off that you're persisting in being wrong and someone who's throwing personal attacks than the average 10 year old. For one thing, I sure hope you're not significantly emotionally invested in telling people that writing down their fantasies is bad and they shouldn't do it.

Also, don't fucking tell me what to do with my feelings.

Seriously. You guys are taking things too far, and reading into emotions that aren't there.


Seriously, Viki I think you're taking this too far. You have no more right to tell someone their opinions are wrong in this than anyone else does.

Yiran has a point, though its gotten a bit messed up. If people want to improve, a lot of the time they need to be told what's wrong in order to move further. No where in this thread did yelling at someone that their character is a 'mary sue' come up. That's you assuming. But a well written review telling why a character is such and how to avoid it/fix it is usually welcomed. If not, well they don't have to listen to you, now do they?

Also you seem to be putting self inserts and mary sues into the same pile. They aren't the same thing. And not all are bad. Some are pretty brilliant, like Masses to Masses, which has over 2k reviews on ff.net.

yiran said:

If people post their writing online it generally means they want feedback from a different point of view rather than theirs. And since self-inserts are generally portrayed badly to other people, I would point that out to them, to help them improve their writing for other people to read, which is likely their intention if they post it online.

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Writing is barely ever about trying to please people; I (and most non-professional writers) write solely for amusement. If somebody likes what I write, that's a plus!

I post stuff online because I want people to check it for errors in characterization (as in "oh you portrayed x canonical character inaccurately" rather than OMG SELF INSERT BAD) or writing (grammar, spelling, length, weird sentence construction, that one time that I used indents rather than double spacing), not because I want people to go OMG YOU'RE A FABULOUS WRITER (I got over that long ago)

I personally think self-inserts are okay so long as they don't get too overpowered (wish-fulfillment, etc) (oooooor phantom's last sentence)

Phantom said:

Seriously. You guys are taking things too far, and reading into emotions that aren't there.

Also you seem to be putting self inserts and mary sues into the same pile. They aren't the same thing. And not all are bad. Some are pretty brilliant, like Masses to Masses, which has over 2k reviews on ff.net.

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Got a link? I'm kinda intrigued.

Sure, I can't use the insert uh, thingy. Damn phone. MtM is a three part (so far) Mass Effect self insert. MTM 3 alone has over 2.2k.

http://m.fanfiction.net/s/7113874/1/

@Viki
Don't tell me what to do with my criticism, then. (Also you seem to have assumed the worst of what I would do. As you can see from how I have behaved in this thread, I tend to not put my caps lock on and just tell them to stop being Mary Sue and leave it as that).

@Flora
Well, myself, for one, posts it for others' entertainment, not just my own. A lot of writers I know also try and listen to everything others' tell them, although I do see that people obsessed with their fantasy may not want that. Still, I think it is better to point it out to them.

I fully acknowledge that self inserts don't have to be bad; in fact, my fanfiction is a self-insert of sorts! It's just that I have never ever seen online where a self-insert was positively mentioned, so I just assumed that we meant "self-insert that is unrealistic and contributes negatively to the story".

Also, reviews are not a very good way to judge story quality. There is a positive correlation between quantity of reviews and quality, although it is only a very general correlation.

What is the self-insert like in that story?

Not to mention that most of H.P. Lovecraft's protagonists were self-inserts.

Prime example that Tropes Are Not Bad.

Viki said:

Also, don't fucking tell me what to do with my feelings.

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A great point, except for the fact you're on a forum where overt hostility is discouraged in the rules, regardless of how justified your feelings are. Not that I think you were that personally hostile in that post, but this idea that if you're sufficiently angry or angry for a sufficiently good reason nobody has the right to think you're being an asshole or reprimand you for it in a space where assholishness is frowned upon really irritates me.

Kids who write Mary-Sue self-inserts aren't terrible people or anything, and no, they're not doing any harm, and no, it's not reviewers' moral duty to tell them to stop writing Sues and self-inserts, but I can't say I'm down with the idea that therefore yiran or Farla or whoever is not allowed to criticize them for it. If you post your work online and accept reviews on it, you are inviting people to say what they think; if you're genuinely writing just for your own pleasure and don't care, you can feel free to ignore them and go on your merry way writing your Mary-Sues, but provided the review isn't just nasty and mean-spirited, I don't think you have the right to get actively mad simply that they told you they didn't like it for reasons x and y. Expecting to be able to control the content of public reviews posted on your work to be all positive regardless of readers' actual opinions on it is just entitled. (If they were, say, personally e-mailing you repeated critiques even after you've told them you don't care, then it's getting into harassment territory, but I don't see any sign yiran is advocating that.)

Pathos said:

Personally I believe the entire concept of mary-sues is to belittle female characters.

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It may occasionally be used that way (or more than occasionally), but it is a meaningful term referring to legitimately bad writing, and male characters can display those traits every bit as much as female ones (though the female version is often seen to be more common because most fanfiction writers are female and are accordingly more likely to write female power fantasy characters - Stus are comparatively common in something like the Pokémon fandom where there are a lot more guys writing compared to more shipping-centered fandoms). Even if there's a lot of gross abuse of the term, it doesn't suddenly render the concept invalid; the fic that originated it was clearly parodying power fantasy characters with ridiculous piled-on talents and perfection, not just throwing scorn at her for being female, and even despite the abuse, the overwhelming majority of definitions of Mary-Sues, litmus tests, etc. still faithfully explain the concept as being about the power fantasy traits. It's not as if people have widely started to genuinely understand it as just meaning female characters being uppity. Even people who are grossly misapplying the term more often than not support their use of it with a genuine attempt at an argument for the character in question displaying these power fantasy traits; they may be evaluating the character far more harshly than they would evaluate a similar male character, but they still have a sense that to be a Mary-Sue a character has to be badly written in a particular way, if not enough of a perspective on the character to fairly judge them to be so. The only people for whom the term has actually lost all meaning other than being female and doing something noteworthy are the social justice warriors decrying the term themselves.

I can get down with saying the abuse of the term has given it ugly misogynistic connotations and that a more gender-neutral one would be better, sure, but the concept itself being just to belittle female characters? No, definitely not. The concept of Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus is very useful, like so many other shorthand concepts encompassing a lot of others that are far harder to get a grasp on individually than when grouped together. Whatever it's called, it says something meaningful that often pins down the problem with something far more clearly and succinctly than trying to describe it in detail.

yiran said:

You don't have tell them to stop writing self-inserts to if you don't want to. I can and will, because I think it benefits them. From experience and observation, I have deduced that mollycoddling is a bad way to educate.

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Why does it have to be "mollycoddling" and a bad thing to be encouraging to new writers? There's a world of difference between giving a critique to someone who's happy to listen and has the power to not feel too bad about it, and giving critique to a brand new writer who might be nervous and confused, and who was previously really proud and excited to be doing something as cool as writing before someone came along and told them they can't do this!

A lot of people complain that "sugar-coating" is a terrible awful thing, but they're always the same people who write their "critiques" like "this is absolutely dumb and you should cut it out right now and do this instead and then maybe your thing will be a tiny bit less awful." That's not avoiding sugar-coating or mollycoddling, that's just being mean. You don't have to make nice stuff up and spill sugar all over it to give someone a helpful critique, but why shouldn't you try to be as friendly and encouraging as you can be? People need encouragement! It's okay that they do!

There's also definitely a difference between being discouraging and just not trying too hard to be encouraging, and the latter can be okay! If someone's at a point where you can just dryly tell them "hey, this thing is a bad thing in writing" and you know that, then okay! Otherwise, why make the assumption that that's fine for a person and that you're not going to scare them? Why scare someone if you could avoid it?

There's a special feeling new or inexperienced writers (and new to other things, too) can have where they just barely did this really cool thing that's super-important in the world, and they're really proud, and they just want someone else to be excited for them! What's wrong with that? They should be proud! Writing is hard work and they tried their best! It's a tender time, and if someone is just confusingly telling them they it's wrong and being scary, what if they lose the will to write forever? It's not okay to have writing on a golden pedestal and say that if someone's "really" a writer then they'd keep writing despite getting upset. Some people really enjoyed writing and could have kept enjoying writing if they hadn't gotten discouraged! Even if the someone doesn't match up with the (incredibly problematic) golden pedestal standard, why shouldn't it be considered a positive force that they're having fun and building something meaningful?

Critique doesn't have to be negative; "you did this right and I like it" is just as valid a critique as that they did something wrong, and they can grow just as much from it. Doing that with a new writer isn't "mollycoddling", it's encouraging! Who cares if they do something wrong just for a while? If they keep going, they can get to a point where negative critique is easier for them, and they can learn then or while they're working up to that!

In some other stuff, you can get into bad habits that hurt you later; like some people start singing off-key to hit high or low notes and then struggle a lot to fix that later! If they'd known in the beginning that it was a problem, the bad habit wouldn't have been formed! (although yikes be cautious with "critique" of singing, too, because telling someone there's a problem with something about their voice can be pretty sensitive!) But I've never really found that to be an issue in writing; you can always learn a new "bad" thing and then just not write it! Like if you learn not to use the word "suddenly" so much, you have the magic power to look at other words now and control+f for places where you unrealizingly wrote "suddenly" and de-write it. It's not such a big deal! It's just unavoidable to be doing things wrong sometimes when you're writing. But the thing about writing is that doing the wrong things makes you better at writing. Even if someone's told you that something's bad, often you just don't get it until you've done it a bunch of times!

I'm not arguing that there's no place in the world for dry critiques (for lack of a better term); there certainly is! If you like writing critiques without trying to be super-positive and just want to say mistakes, that's not wrong! It's just really tricky giving critique to the kind of writers who are likely to be struggling with "Mary Sue" characters and self-inserts! Try to understand that a lot of these people are at a sensitive point in their writing career and that you're holding the power to do them either a lot of good or a lot of harm with your reviews! Maybe they'll brush it off or try hard to listen, but there's the possibility you could really scare them away! Why would you ever want to do that?

Phantom said:

Seriously. You guys are taking things too far, and reading into emotions that aren't there.

Seriously, Viki I think you're taking this too far. You have no more right to tell someone their opinions are wrong in this than anyone else does.

Yiran has a point, though its gotten a bit messed up. If people want to improve, a lot of the time they need to be told what's wrong in order to move further. No where in this thread did yelling at someone that their character is a 'mary sue' come up. That's you assuming. But a well written review telling why a character is such and how to avoid it/fix it is usually welcomed. If not, well they don't have to listen to you, now do they?

Also you seem to be putting self inserts and mary sues into the same pile. They aren't the same thing. And not all are bad. Some are pretty brilliant, like Masses to Masses, which has over 2k reviews on ff.net.

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Opinions aren't this golden thing that can never be touched. If someone is actively hurting others based on their opinion, then that's a pretty important thing to address!

This isn't about "it's my opinion leave me alone", it's about whether or not this sort of critique is hurting people! That's a thing that's either true or not true, not an opinion.

Well-written reviews are a good idea and can help, you're right! But what if a review just makes someone sad? That's not their fault; they got suprised by it and couldn't help getting sad. It might not be the reviewer's fault, either; maybe they tried their best to help and didn't know it was even possible to understand it in a way so that sadness would happen. But if someone does get sad, the answer can't be to unthinkingly keep your review the same even though now you know it can be a negative force! Don't put negative forces into the world on purpose.

That's why it's important for this kind of thing to be a discussion! People need to know if they could be causing a negative force and how to not do that!

yiran said:

@Viki
Don't tell me what to do with my criticism, then. (Also you seem to have assumed the worst of what I would do. As you can see from how I have behaved in this thread, I tend to not put my caps lock on and just tell them to stop being Mary Sue and leave it as that).

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Critisism can be well-done or not, just like a piece of writing can be well-done or not. If a critisism is ineffective or making people cry, it should get changed.

(I'm not saying you've necessarily been ineffective or made people cry in the past, but it could definitely happen if someone's writing a critique like that in this sort of situation! Are you sure that it hasn't happened?)

I don't think anyone is really trying to say you just say that in all caps and leave! But even a thought-out explanation of what a mary sue is and how to avoid one isn't going to be helpful to a lot of writers! It's really hard to understand what one is even without a million conflicting (and some really bad) definitions, and now they just know that it's this really bad terrible thing and they're a terrible person for doing it and they don't get how to avoid it in other cases and maybe they just give up on trying at all! That's not a good result!

It's regular for people who keep writing to figure out on their own that things like over-powered characters aren't usually a good idea. In the meantime with their inexperienced writing, they're growing. Why is it so bad to let someone grow and get used to writing and sharing it a little bit before trying to conquer huge problems with their stories? No one is going to understand the depths of the weird idea of "Mary Sue" all at once.

yiran said:

@Flora
Well, myself, for one, posts it for others' entertainment, not just my own. A lot of writers I know also try and listen to everything others' tell them, although I do see that people obsessed with their fantasy may not want that. Still, I think it is better to point it out to them.

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If someone honestly didn't know about the trouble with characters like that and you can tell them and have them perfectly understand and happily do a better job and fix everything and they're happy with the new fixed stuff, then okay, you could say that that's a good thing! It's not bad for someone to improve, and it's not bad to want to help someone improve; no one said so!

But what happened so that you think that that's the sort of result you're getting every single time? Lots of people get this kind of critique and just cry and don't get it! If you don't want to hurt or discourage people, don't you think it's better to take a different approach? You're being told that there are definitely people who have a wholly negative reaction! Surely it's a good idea for everyone involved, including you, to think really hard about what you're giving people as a critique and make sure as best you can that it'll help instead of hurting!

Butterfree said:

Kids who write Mary-Sue self-inserts aren't terrible people or anything, and no, they're not doing any harm, and no, it's not reviewers' moral duty to tell them to stop writing Sues and self-inserts, but I can't say I'm down with the idea that therefore yiran or Farla or whoever is not allowed to criticize them for it. If you post your work online and accept reviews on it, you are inviting people to say what they think; if you're genuinely writing just for your own pleasure and don't care, you can feel free to ignore them and go on your merry way writing your Mary-Sues, but provided the review isn't just nasty and mean-spirited, I don't think you have the right to get actively mad simply that they told you they didn't like it for reasons x and y. Expecting to be able to control the content of public reviews posted on your work to be all positive regardless of readers' actual opinions on it is just entitled. (If they were, say, personally e-mailing you repeated critiques even after you've told them you don't care, then it's getting into harassment territory, but I don't see any sign yiran is advocating that.)

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People do need to expect that anything could get posted in a review and learn to be prepared! But, the trouble is people don't always know that and aren't always prepared. Someone who just barely started putting things online doesn't necessarily realize that something mean could get posted, and might not be able to just "go on [their] merry way"!

Reviewing to say you didn't like x and y is definitely not inherently bad if it's not mean-spirited. It's really often an honest mistake if the writer gets upset; the reviewer didn't know that would happen and they were just trying to help and share their thoughts!

But if it's the case that the kind of review someone is doing often hurts (or isn't effective), surely it's good for them to think about it more and try out something else! An idea like "well, they shouldn't have put it online if a critique was going to upset them!" isn't helpful and doesn't excuse writing problematic reviews (whether the review is kind of bashing or whether it's genuinely trying to be as helpful as possible and just made a mistake).

It seems like the ideal would be that writers never got upset from reviews and always understood the critiques they were getting and were excited to understand and do better! Having someone get upset once in a while is probably inevitable even if you're trying your very best, but that doesn't mean don't stop trying to give helpful and encouraging reviews, or don't stop discussing what makes one helpful and encouraging!

I haven't said I want to discourage the new writers. And that's not just a quote to feign innocence, either; I actually don't want to discourage new writers. And also, there is not a single person that has complained to me about my reviews being too harsh, although I acknowledge the fact that some people may have felt uncomfortable but didn't tell me anything about it.

In any case, I don't feel responsible if people get offended. For instance, by posting "I enjoy Minecraft" on the Internet, certain sensitive people (although admittedly only a tiny portion) may get offended. Not very realistic example, but the point is that I am not going to alter my words just in case people get offended when they force themselves to interpret things as offensive.

(Also, I tend to only review works that I find good, which means they generally don't mention self-inserts and other examples of novice mistakes; hypocritical of me to advocate reviewing bad works with constructive criticism, I guess, but from a logical point of view I still think it would be better to tell the novice writers rather than ignore them.)

Okay... I'mma gonna say this again.

A self insert and a Mary Sue are NOT THE SAME THING.

A self insert-is a literary device in which a character who is the real author of a work of fiction appears as a character within that fiction, either overtly or in disguise.

A Mary Sue - in literary criticism and particularly in fan fiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. It is generally accepted as a character whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-dimensional.

-- taken from wiki.