"Disembowelled" when the writer meant "disembodied" particularly made me wince, I must say. So close, yet so far.
Oh God, FULLY agreed. The “said is dead” thing pisses me off especially, but the general “you MUST write Like This” attitude is just. No. I’m very much a self-taught writer, and...frankly I’m glad I never saw any of that shitty advice when I was young, because I really think it would’ve made my writing worse.
Also the “never use adverbs” thing. That pisses me off too. Like, overuse of certain words, or of adverbs or whatever? Yeah, that can be an issue! But there’s a world of difference between “try not to overuse x” and “never use x ever.”
I also think there's a difference between this sort of advice given casually over the internet as opposed to formal classes. I do have some issues with formal classes and I do think that they can hold certain kinds of creators back, but there are definitely plenty who have learned their art through formal instruction and who needed that sort of guidance. That's kind of entering a different sort of territory though. The territory of how best do people learn. Formal instruction held me back from poetry and I had to be mostly self-taught to actually gain a grasp on it. I've friends who are poets that do fine work however who needed that formal instruction and who seem to work best within the constraints of more commonly accepted English language forms. Your sonnets and the like. Creation's a weird bitch this way. I really don't think 'Never do x,' is ever terribly helpful though. And even some formal classes do this. Second person is still taught as Never Ever Do This in at least undergraduate English courses, for example. Not sure about the higher level writing ones but at least in things like 1B people are so baffled by the concept that I was asked by my professor to show her an example of how it works to prove it can even be done and I had to explain that second person narrative actually has a history that's a bit longer than one might suspect initially. Unless you're a kid who literally grew up on CYA novels or fanfiction. And now there's Homestuck to add onto the ways in which people first learn that they can write that way, to say nothing of the games that inspired Homestuck's general form. For the adverb thing I'm now incredibly tempted to be a hideous fucking pedant about it and point out that adverbs aren't just a class of words but a class of phrases and functions. And that you're probably using adverbs almost constantly either way. 'He sat down in a chair,' and 'He sat down slowly,' both contain adverbs. The first of place, describing where the action is occurring, and the second of manner, describing how the action is occurring. Slowly there just happens to be an individual word that is capable of being an adverb by itself and thus can form what we call an adverbial phrase, whereas a good chunk of them need to be prepositional phrases which bear the function of adverb. But both are performing the same grammatical function, which is describing the manner, place, time, reason, agency, and so on with which an action in the verb phrase is further described. I know that that isn't what's meant and a lot of people don't even know how to break down English syntax in that fashion because they've no reason to so I don't do this. But man do I feel petty and want to at times.
... So basically, the reader insert is a full-fledged character that just happens to be constantly referred to as "Reader"?
personally I'm wondering what's the point of having a reader self-insert if they're going to give the protagonist all those very specific traits. might as well just make an oc there imo (but I guess they've gone out of style these days?)
i think they've gotten 'reader' mixed up with 'self insert' because those are similar impulses. i feel a kind of avuncular fondness toward young writers who do self-inserts, frankly. as long as they don't pull a stephen king, i say go for it. i mean, i'm currently working on a probably-trilogy where a short, ginger smartass is the greatest shaman who ever lived, and folks who remember 'metanoia' know this isn't the first time a short ginger smartass was the best at something, so i'm really in no position to criticize. follow your bliss, writer child. snog those computer boys. squaresoft made them look like a 90's boy band for that specific reason, i'm p sure. edit: i just dated myself. it hasn't been squaresoft for a decade, has it? square enix sounds like a condition that requires minor surgery.
"i'm afraid you have a square enix. it's not life-threatening but we should get it out of there as soon as possible." god. yeah. i see what you mean. although i mostly hear it shortened to "squeenix," which sounds like a sitcom writer's made-up euphemism for genitalia.
It does sound vaguely like “squeedlyspooch,” and that’s a canon Irken organ, so...headcanon accepted. Irkens have squeenixes. :P
Yeah my misapprehension was like....I can't tell if the writer is autistic or not but the language likr.... "Read has asberger's syndrome but you can still read this" I'm not sure what that means but it just feels wierd
Like if you wanna have a self-insert OC, just make your self insert OC and name them. I like reading other people's SI but am. Not into the 'Reader' trend. Except for the Reader from Pyre.
Are Character/Reader fics still written in second person? Because they overwhelmingly were when I dipped my toes in the last couple times, and that's the only real thing that differentiates them from self-insert fics, imo. I also see them as commissioned/requested a lot more than regular self-inserts are. There's a few writers who fill up the fandom tags on tumblr with Reader prompts that run a whole gamut of personality, body type, gender, and sexuality with the Reader insert, so I'm not entirely sure that qualifies as an authorial self-insert at that point... which is another qualifier for Reader vs Self Insert too, come to think of it. Fandom is so weird and interesting sometimes.
Extremely petty take: those blogs that are like "imagine (character or fandom)" and its like "how would the main characters react to their s/o getting sick on a date" is like reader fic without commitment
YEAH i was gonna mention those, they actually annoy me a lot (in some fandoms) bc they post a ton of shit in the fandom tags, to the point where i tumblr savior imagine blogs whenever possible
Speaking of self-inserts, it's vaguely unsettling when everything a particular writer writes is about the over-powered exploits of a character with the same name as the writer's username, and said writer replaces the name in question when they change their username. Wish-fulfilment is one thing but when it's that blatant it feels like the writer is waving a huge sign saying I AM UNSATISFIED WITH MY REAL LIFE, which may not be actually true but I still get that impression. Trying too hard, man.
