Six years ago, Tumblr user @the-alligator-queen-blog began an annual tradition called Self Insert Week: a weeklong challenge/jam/etc where participants are encouraged to make fanworks with themselves as the main character.
This year, this storied Tumblr festival will begin on Sunday, May 8th, and last through Saturday, May 14th.
Why participate? Well, in its founder’s own words, it’s “a fun reason to make ourselves into the awesome characters we daydream up while going about our normal lives”.
But it’s also a strike back at the common tendency to see fanwork – and creative work more generally – as such Serious Business that it’s not allowed to be openly self-indulgent. People worry so much, these days, about whether their artistic endeavors are “good enough”, or are a credit to their Brand, or whatever. I think that’s sad. Maybe even a little unhealthy, if we do it all the time. What’s the harm, really, if not everything we write is Serious Literature? Who said it had to be? Why can’t we embrace the cringe every now and again, so long as it sparks joy?
So this event is an excuse – carte blanche and imprimatur – to indulge in all the silly fandom escapism you’ve been holding in. Go smooch that Netflix pirate you like in Photoshop. Tell us about the wacky adventures you got tangled up in when you fell into the Dark World. Go wild! There’s no sign-up to participate, no masterpost, nothing like that. Just write, draw, and post your stuff under #self insert week 2022 so that we can all cheer each other on. :)
I have like three different art series going on this blog right now but it’s Self Insert Week which means I’ve got to start a new one!!!
Self-Insert: Silvertongue Echo
Described In Three Words: Warm, friendly, over-thinker.
Trait They Share Most With Me: Caring a lot about everyone: how they feel, how they see me, whether they’re doing okay
How They’re Different From Me: My default is being at home on the internet, their default is reading a book at a café. Both of us enjoy the other activity, but there’s a shift in what our ‘standard afternoon’ is.
Do They Change The Canon Plot?: Not as far as I’ve gotten in BNHA, at least. They’re just there to be a background support to Toshinori, as far as the plot goes.
Fun Fact: The ‘silvertongue’ Quirk user was originally created as a vigilante high school teacher who was going to be a reader-insert that was shipped with Aizawa. But I put too much of myself into the character and it became a self-insert, and I realized that I shipped myself more with Toshinori, so the reader-insert fanfic never did get finished. Tragic.
here's a thing I wrote a while back, that was originally intended to go after this fic, but the direction of the fic changed so drastically It didn't work anymore, but please enjoy! (for context, Grian has just beat Scar in the final fight of 3rd life)
.
Grian looked up to the sky, “What now?”
< Grian was killed by ⊣⍑𝙹ᓭℸ ̣ ᓭ!¡╎↸ᒷ∷⊣∴ᒷリ>
Grian expected to wake up back on Hermitcraft, or in the weird limbo other hermits had talked about when you die in hardcore and UHCs, but this was even weirder. An infinite, white expanse, not unlike the infinity rooms from Season 6, stretched before him. Soft classical music played, and he spotted another figure sitting on the ground, wearing dark jeans, blue shoes, and a black and white hoodie with pink web designs on the arms.
“H-hello?”
“Hey,” I set my laptop on the ground next to me, and stood up, a couple inches taller than him. ∴ᔑ╎ℸ, リ𝙹, ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ╎ᓭ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎∷↸ !¡ᒷ∷ᓭ𝙹リ ⎓𝙹ᓵ⚍ᓭᒷ↸ 𝙹リ ⊣∷╎ᔑリ, ꖌᒷᒷ!¡ ╎ℸ ̣ ᓵ𝙹リᓭ╎ᓭℸ ̣ ᒷリℸ ̣.
Grian watched as her laptop kept typing away, even though she wasn’t touching it any more.
“I wish my laptop did that in real life,” she sighed, looking at it. Her voice had a slight lisp, similar to Bdubs.
“This isn’t real life?”
“Nope, this is one part of inside my head, the rest isn’t nearly this calm.”
“So none of this is real?”
“Just because it’s happening inside my head doesn’t mean it’s not real,” she grinned, “I’m Gwen. And you’re Grian, or ̇/ᒷꖎᑑ⚍ᔑ.”
“You’re that girl I saw back in the cave!”
“That’s me, I wasn’t being as careful as I should have been with the fourth wall.”
“The fourth-nevermind, why am I here?”
“Because you won.”
“Won what?”
“3rd life.”
“How did you know that?”
“Third life: an SMP in which each player received 3 lives upon joining, the premise being that during their final life, the member becomes hostile and tries to kill other members. The players are also confined within the world border which separates them from the rest of the generated world,” Grian heard in her voice, but she didn’t move her mouth.
“Who said that? I heard it, but not in my head like a Watcher.”
“That was me, sorry. You asked how I knew what 3rd life was, and I guess you got answered.”
“Why am I here? And don’t say because I won, I already know that.”
“Because...I’m here to pass on some information, and give you your prize.”
“What information?”
“Well,” she ran a hand through her dark hair, “I don’t exactly know. All I know is that you will know, when I break the connection.”
“Break the connection?”
“I mean, let you out of my mind. I’m always watching you. Wait, no, that sounds creepy. Uh...I am a regular viewer of your content?”
“You’re a Viewer?”
“Technically, yeah.”
“Technically?”
“I...I watch Grian, but not you, the stuff this guy makes in Minecraft.” A large photo of a man with sandy hair, glasses, and holding a brown spotted cat popped up behind her.
“Who’s that?”
“That’s you-well, it’s actually Charles and Maui, but it’s you in real life, and not in the fanfiction I’m writing.”
“Huh. Does every Hermit have someone like that?”
“Yep!”
More pictures filled the room. Mumbo with no moustache and lighter hair. Scar in a wheelchair, holding Jellie. Who he guessed the Viewers’ real life versions of Stress, False, Scar, Mumbo, and Iskall were, sitting in a semi-circle talking. A short video of Bdubs standing out in the rain, grinning. He caught snippets of phrases floating through the air.
“Greetings, cyberdogs and citizens of the interbubs! This is Ren-diggity-dog coming at ya in another Minecraft episode from the Hermitcraft server!”
“Howdy y'all! Joe Hills here recording as I always do in Nashville, Tennessee.”
“Ooh, hello, my fellow miners and crafters! GoodTimesWithScar here...”
“Hallo ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back…”
“Also, according to YouTube statistics, only a small percentage of my viewers are actually subscribed…”
“I have been ZombieCleo, this has been Hermitcraft, class dissmissed!”
“Once Stanley approached the end of the video, he hit the subscribe button.”
“How many chickens must I kill before you subscribe?”
"Hello, everyone, WelsKnight here..."
Pictures upon pictures filled the room, people he didn’t recognize, pictures of cats, builds he had never seen before, random words and incoherent ideas floating around, until they all vanished.
“Sorry,” Gwen said, “I got a little carried away with that, sometimes my brain goes faster than my...brain. That must have been really overwhelming, sorry.”
“Yeah,” Grian sat down on the floor, “So you’re telling me, I don’t exist?” He asked, looking at his hands.
“Oh, no, you do exist, I just took some aspects of you, and put them in my story. So the part of you I’m talking to exist inside my head, and the head of anyone that’s reading this. They could use this characterization as inspiration for their own story or headcannons, a writer could even write their own story based on this one.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. This kinda got real meta, real fast, sorry about that.”
“No, it’s-it’s fine. Is that all?”
“Well, you can’t tell anyone about this. The only reason I was able to tell you without your brain breaking was because you’re a Watcher, but yeah, that’s all. I’m gonna send you back to Hermitcraft now, your prize will be waiting on the other side. You ready?” She said, offering him a hand up.
“Ye-yeah. See you later?” Grian said as she helped him up,
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Gwen said as she sat back down, picked up her laptop, and began typing away. He peeked over her shoulder to see what she was writing.
...began typing away. He peeked over her shoulder to see what she was writing. Grian felt a strange, tingly sensation, like what dying in a normal survival world should feel like, before he vanished in a flash of light, making the blank room even brighter.
Grian felt a strange, tingly sensation, like what dying in a normal survival world should feel like, before he vanished in a flash of light, making the blank room even brighter.
“∴ᒷꖎꖎ, ℸ ̣ ⍑ᔑℸ ̣ ᓭ ↸𝙹リᒷ,” I said, turning back to the blank walls, watching them shatter and letting the cacophony surround me. “リ𝙹∴ ╎ リᒷᒷ↸ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ᔑᓵℸ ̣ ⚍ᔑꖎꖎ|| ∴∷╎ℸ ̣ ᒷ ℸ ̣ ⍑╎ᓭ ᓭℸ ̣ 𝙹∷||.”
(with thanks to @taliadoesrpgs & the rest of my source material’s authors)
──────────•~❉᯽❉~•──────────
In a world like this, where overwater is still king for long-distance commerce, it's a rare port town that can be called "small". But Carrova is certainly smaller than Viacruz, and that suits me just fine. I get to sit in a dinghy just outside the wharfs, like I'm doing now, and eat an empanadilla, and clear my head with the smell of salt and the motion of the waves. I get to duck some of the attention that the folks who never left the vicinity of the old hub cities are continuing to draw. I get more of a chance to... properly integrate into the local community, for what is proving to be much more than a short-term stay.
Not that it hasn't been a challenge anyway. By now, everyone with an ear to the ground has heard of the AWOL: the legion of confused mercenary foreigners who descended, en masse, upon the known world's major trading hubs half a year ago. Some have been preaching Gnomic esoterica as though it was a new revelation. A few (though not few enough) have been throwing around their gods-given supernatural might and making it everyone else's problem. Most - like myself - had simply been looking for work, as an interim plan to survive while trying to find a way back to "Earth", wherever that was.
Thankfully, Graeber's old playbook for situations where coin is not enough still applies to Mundus: be generous and kind, and soon that'll make its own counterargument against the natural distrust people have for a lethal-looking stranger. The Ubast family I'm staying with certainly seems to trust me by now - I’ve been careful to not make it transactional, but their weaving work has certainly benefited from the Dexterity potions, and I've certainly benefited from room and board, and from a cast of friendly faces who'll be understanding when I once again get mixed up about cultural norms in, uh, fantasy renaissance Roman Spain.
And that arrangement has bought me some time to focus on the bigger picture problem. The Mechanists have been finding dummied out substances in the Sargassos - leftovers of abandoned or half-implemented features, for the most part - which've needed analysis by someone who knows the theory of both this world’s alchemy and the logic that hosts it. And somehow I've gotten onto Aozora's short list for that kind of work. I've taken to doing my experimentation on an offshore rock, up the coast from town enough to be out of Sendjewel distance (and thus, apparently, out of whatever the Thirteen-plus-one are considering "local" these days); I've been lucky so far, but if AWO had a bug bad enough to kill Io, then it's only a matter of time before one of these bits of Sargasso flotsam has a busted alchemy script that executes data as code, and then it's off to the fucking races and all bets are off. And especially after everything they've done for me, I want to make sure my town—
Huh. I don't know when I started thinking of it like that. But... it's true. For better or worse, Carrova is my town, and whether it's from glitches or griefers, I'm gonna do what I can to keep these folks out of the blast radius.
...man this empanadilla is good. Who knew you could make a delicious lunch out of tuna? Screw trying to reverse-engineer the formula for a Bird-elemental philosopher's stone; the real recipes I need to get my hands on are for Esmeralda's cooking! 🤣
Self-Insert Week is over for the year but I’m still catching up!!
Self-Insert: Eye Echo
Described In Three Words: Curious, determined, insincere.
Trait They Share Most With Me: If I was in a world where supernatural things happened, you can absolutely guarantee I would have been studying that stuff from day one. And I say that as a person who does paranormal investigations in this world, where there are few tangible examples of the supernatural. So... yeah. The curiosity and studiousness are a shared trait for sure!
How They’re Different From Me: I am, personally, bound to the Spiral, not the Eye. I wonder if my self-inserts also have kin memories? That could be interesting to explore. Anyways, I would also like to think that I would not indirectly cause the death of several people to serve my own curiosity. But this self-insert certainly would (and has).
Do They Change The Canon Plot?: Maybe! I haven’t done a lot of development of this S/I in the canon timeline of The Magnus Archives, I’ve mostly focused on the founding of the Institute. I think that I would definitely be interested in keeping an eye on the new Archivist and I think that Jon would not be opposed to cat company and I think that Jonah would be immensely amused to see his pets “bonding.” They certainly could change some pieces of the plot! I’m just not sure if they’d want to... how much they would be acting separate from Jonah and how much they would simply be an extension of him and vice-versa at that point.
Fun Fact: I’ve had this self-insert for forever, I just wasn’t sure if I should post about them or if their story was too ‘messed up’ to share. Then I remembered that it’s for The Magnus Archives and that really messed up backstories is basically a prerequisite for the territory! Also I’m very smug that I get to have an immortal cat body while Jonah has to keep replacing his wrinkly old men. (But I do really miss opposable thumbs. And the ability to communicate.)
I’ve only got two days left of self-insert week 2022 and around six more s/is to go, so we’re going to speed up posting!!!
Self-Insert: Heartbound Echo
Described In Three Words: Traumatized, determined, trying-to-be-optimistic.
Trait They Share Most With Me: This self-insert feels very close to me, but I don’t know if I could attribute that to a single trait. Their defaults are similar to mine, their favourite media is the same as mine, the way they interact with people is similar to me, it’s just... very close to me and my way of being, but stuck in a different universe!
How They’re Different From Me: Because they played Sburb, which has a lot of fighting in it, that’s now part of their brain: they have fighting skills and also the instincts to reach for their blades when they feel threatened. I have specific situations where I go for physical confrontation (thanks to a childhood full of playground fights) but this self-insert is on a different level with all that.
Do They Change The Canon Plot?: Yep, they interfere with the creation of Ultimate Dirk in the Epilogues. So they only change the post-canon plot.
Fun Fact: I’m fictionkin with Dirk, which for me means that I get flashes of memory and thoughts that can be very vivid and disorienting. That’s why this self-insert is ‘soulbonded’ or ‘heartbonded’ to Dirk: it’s a way of writing about my experiences with hearing his thoughts and struggling to define the differences between me and him while being so closely intertwined. So this is a self-ship with a lot of complicated emotions and backstory on the non-self-insert side!
I have like three different art series going on this blog right now but it’s Self Insert Week which means I’ve got to start a new one!!!
Self-Insert: Fangirl Echo
Described In Three Words: Enthusiastic, Opinionated, Out-Of-Touch
Trait They Share Most With Me: They take a lot of pride in their fandom creations, and I do as well. We’re both shameless in our enjoyment of stories and characters and transforming them into new stories according to whatever whims come our way.
How They’re Different From Me: They are WAY more unhinged than I am. They have no boundaries around their engagement with fandom and view real people around them as fodder for fanfiction. They’re also more opinionated, and will get mad if people don’t agree with their ships (a high school trait I grew out of).
Do They Change The Canon Plot?: Only a little bit, at the very end!
Fun Fact: This is the only self-insert I’ve written a fanfiction for! It’s called ‘Hopelessly Devoted’ and the first chapter is here, but I have a couple more chapters to post! I started shipping with Monokuma after the first class trial and I just found out what that means (aka. who’s behind Monokuma) about three days ago and I still think it fits this s/i. I’m keeping the focus on my lil robot bear though!!! Partially to avoid spoilers and also because he’s adorable.
Self-Insert Week is over for the year but I’m still catching up!!
Self-Insert: Star Echo
Described In Three Words: Inhuman, timeless, peaceful
Trait They Share Most With Me: This self-insert is more of a fantasy self than a true self-insert: we don’t share very much. That said, we both understand the world through the people we love: Earth seems small and insignificant, but the people around us are infinite and precious. These facts are held in balance.
How They’re Different From Me: They don’t have my mood-swings! Their emotions move very slowly, and are often much deeper than my little flashes of happiness and sadness. They also need less input, and are genuinely content to just sit and shine quietly, whereas I need constant media input to avoid feeling antsy.
Do They Change The Canon Plot?: A little bit! I usually focus on the pre-canon for Cecil and I, since I feel that his pre-radio years are both intriguing and under-explored, and I wouldn’t change the central points of the show (Cecil and Carlos’s relationship, for example), but I do influence different events, like the discovery of the Desert Otherworld.
Fun Fact: I find a lot of comfort in having non-human self-inserts. Being human is a lot of work, and sometimes it feels unnatural to me, so it’s nice to have fantasies where I can take a break from that whole situation and just curl up on Cecil’s shoulder with no responsibilities.
