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i love ocs. and this includes self-insert-adjacent ocs. wholeheartedly and unironically. if they are 100% an original sploinky doinky from your brain, that’s great, i love the creativity - but also i genuinely find it delightful when someone looks at a work of fiction and is like, “ok this is great, but you know what would make it better? someone like ME!” imo, they are correct more often than one might think.
and sometimes people really benefit from a power fantasy… i started writing my first potc fic, with an protagonist that was essentially a self-insert, when i was a lonely, bullied, insecure 13yo. to my great surprise, the type of praise i got the most was about how much people liked the protagonist, that she was funny and endearing. that was a boost i needed when i was surrounded by people irl who made me feel like a repulsive little creature that imposed on them by existing.
and then few years ago i wrote a fic for another fandom where the protagonist was a multiply disabled and nonbinary oc, and numerous people thanked me bc they’d never read something with a character like that! if you don’t write a character like yourself, nobody else will, y’know?
also it’s just like. fun. it’s harmless fun. i don’t believe in mary sues anymore, i truly don’t. i used to be so paranoid about that, i’d run all the characters i made through the “mary sue litmus test” and was careful to make sure they weren’t too cool or beloved by canon characters….that’s so silly. down with that mindset. who cares if a character is extremely powerful and cool and a bunch of other characters are obsessed with them? that also describes, like, batman. who cares if it’s self indulgent literally all fanfic is self indulgent to some extent that’s the POINT.
tl;dr ocs good
and sometimes people really benefit from a power fantasy… i started writing my first potc fic, with an protagonist that was essentially a self-insert, when i was a lonely, bullied, insecure 13yo. to my great surprise, the type of praise i got the most was about how much people liked the protagonist, that she was funny and endearing. that was a boost i needed when i was surrounded by people irl who made me feel like a repulsive little creature that imposed on them by existing.
and then few years ago i wrote a fic for another fandom where the protagonist was a multiply disabled and nonbinary oc, and numerous people thanked me bc they’d never read something with a character like that! if you don’t write a character like yourself, nobody else will, y’know?
also it’s just like. fun. it’s harmless fun. i don’t believe in mary sues anymore, i truly don’t. i used to be so paranoid about that, i’d run all the characters i made through the “mary sue litmus test” and was careful to make sure they weren’t too cool or beloved by canon characters….that’s so silly. down with that mindset. who cares if a character is extremely powerful and cool and a bunch of other characters are obsessed with them? that also describes, like, batman. who cares if it’s self indulgent literally all fanfic is self indulgent to some extent that’s the POINT.
tl;dr ocs good
