The stigma of self-inserts is so harmful to the creative process. Relax. Admit it. Everything you make is derivative of yourself, always, no exceptions. You can turn the mirror into tinier and tinier shards or you can make it as big as you want to reflect as much as you want. At the end of the day it's always going to show you inside of it. Pretending otherwise is stupid.
It's not about not using self-inserts.
It's about doing it in a way so that the reader doesn't know.
If I read the book and come to a moment where "oh, this is the author writing about themselves" my interest in the story drops by about 300%. Don't make it obvious and you'll be fine.
Nope. Wrong. Missed the point. It's about using self-inserts. You can make it as obvious as you want. It's perfectly fine. The point is to have fun.
THIS IS ABOUT SELF-INSERTS NOT READER-INSERTS (I misread initially)
Self-inserts! Do them! I won't read em but do em anyways! You're not supposed to appeal to me!!!
Reader-inserts, however. I am not a fan (evil)
"You're not supposed to appeal to me!!! But also if you write reader-inserts I am judging you"
Nope. You're missing the point also. Reader-inserts are also cool and chill. It isn't fucking about appealing to you.
As long as they aren't Mary Sues and clay the best, most coolest person ever who never does anything wrong.
Those characters are lame, let me see then walk into a light pole or get caught acting like a dweeb.
Nope. You're missing the point still. Stop acting like it's acceptable behavior for you to call the earnest creation of art "lame". Power fantasy characters are rad as fuck. Everybody loves seeing John Wick do that shit. You're not just being needlessly rude and harmful to others, you're also just flat out fuckin wrong.
it isn't a trick to do that. that's what the original post was asserting. all creative acts are a form of self-insertion because the self cannot be separated from the act of creation. even actively attempting to avoid self-insertion creates self-insertion, because in attempting to perfectly avoid yourself in your works, even if successful, the vacuum of yourself in the work would be a perfect image of you.
people just kept getting really distracted by semantics.
