Ok I get that wish fullfillment is fine and I get that its not cool to hate on oc fic but damn am I annoyed at all the character/reader fic
I can't read those fics at all; they send me sprinting to the hills screaming 'NO THAT'S NOT ME' five words in. And that's not including ones involving sex; I know better than to let my sex-repulsed ass even peek at those.
Authors need to just switch to straight up self inserts and get it over with. Though I'm now tempted to try a Reader/Character just to see if I can pull it off with out being cringey.
Yeah straight up self inserts annoy me less- its the pretense that like, this is a service they are doing for the greater community, letting you be the anxious but kind hearted transman who loves detective stories that gets to fuck your favorite character. Ya know. You. ...I could see a character/reader stort working but only in like, a super surreal way. And only in second person. Minimum "[Y/N] I love you so much, with our shared passion for painting and rock climbing!"
Most of my writing boils down to self-inserts, I just filter it through canon characters :P I'm probably biased because I tend towards fandoms with large casts, but I don't think it's that uncommon to run into characters that hit you as '!!! me!!' If you nudge the characterization in the right direction, it's barely different from writing yourself. And just in general, I feel like some of the people who want to scratch this itch really ought to give second person a try. It's a similar immersive flavor of writing to what I think the [Reader] fics are going for. Even if you're rolling around in maximum self-insert indulgence, it forgives a LOT of canon characterization sins if the writing is technically solid. You're not obliged to awkwardly fill in names all over the place. AND it deals with most of the need for epithets. Kill two birds with one stone. I will stan for second person until the end of time
Oh, I meant doing canon characters with second person! It kills me that outside of homestuck, I so rarely run into second person EXCEPT as reader insert fics.I've tried some of the reader stuff, but most of it is just.... no........ (I'm also probably bitter because I keep running into you're-dating-a-giant-space-robot headcanon posts, which aren't fics, but are second person reader-insert, and they're so frustrating. 'Imagine if you smacked megatron's ass---' You can't reach it because he's the size of a house, you break your hand because he's metal, and he's spent millions of years thinking organic beings are worthless unpeople. 'What if you got your period and cyclonus---' You aren't injured or dying, so no, he is not going to being a concerned hovering boyfriend. He found out his ACTUAL future-boyfriend was given three days to live and was so emotionally repressed he didn't react to the guy's face at all. Plus we've got at least one character who straight-up gags over the idea that humans sweat, and this is a species that doesn't biologically reproduce. Can't we just shamelessly self-insert by wearing a fave character as a flesh emotion puppet? Once you're writing as 'you,' it FEELS like you. Or at least can we go back to making shameless self-insert OCs? Kids these days, with their hula hoops and their blu-ray discs--)
Oh yeah. Those are the worst. I've read some really good supergirl fic in second person, though. and it has lesbians in it!
I'm sorry, I just can't stop imagining a reader insert performing a pole vaulting feat to smack Megatron's ass. This could only end badly.
My primary issue with "use a canon character you relate to instead of a self-insert or reader-insert" is that this concept seems to have led to the slew of Darcy/X fics in the Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom, where Darcy more or less is a self-insert. As a snarky young female nerd (who has no superpowers), Darcy more or less represents most of fandom, but the extent to which Darcy has been used as a glorified self-insert has kinda... robbed her of her actual character, to the point where I often filter out Darcy when going through the MCU tag because if I see another Darcy/Bucky or Darcy/Steve (it's nearly always always Darcy and Bucky and/or Steve) soulmate AU fic I'll scream. To be fair, this only is likely to be an issue in fandoms where there exists a character who maps neatly onto your Typical Fan. As for OCs/self-inserts VS reader-inserts... I think the main distinction is that OCs (which may or may not be self-inserts) are supposed to have their own distinct characterizations, and reader-inserts are supposed to be generic? I mean the "Y/N" and other fill-in-the-blanky stuff takes that too far, but in general I think the gist is that with a reader insert, you're supposed to be able to mentally slip yourself into the viewpoint character's place, so now it's not a story about some random person getting banged by your favorite character, but instead it's you getting banged by your favorite character! (Or from the other perspective, using OCs/self-inserts lets you actually flesh out said character(s) and develop them, instead of having them be a super generic Insert Reader Here person.) (Take this with a grain of salt, as the only time I've really gone looking for reader-insert fic was in Undertale fandom, because I wanted to read about banging the sexy robot without having the other person involved in the banging be either a skeleton or someone with fur. Usually neither OC-centric fic nor reader-insert fic catch my interest.)
I think that's the thing though. I've read a couple Reader/Character fics in early Homestuck days that were quite good! But they were actually written from a generic PoV that worked, and not this weird... sort of fill in the blank/choose your own adventure style that seems to be popular. Currently the majority of Reader/Character fic would work better if it was written for a self insert or OC, because it would be more cohesive without interrupting your immersion. It's not a genre that needs to be dropped all together, it's just a tricky one with a lot of pitfalls that takes skill to navigate, and most people currently writing for it... don't really seem to get that?
SECOND PERSON IS LOVE SECOND PERSON IS LIFE Then again I'm probably biased because that's what I mostly write in?
Hey fic if you think that Prompto Argentium is the type of person who gets on other peoples cases about proper grammer I don't know what game you played
I just watched playthroughs and cutscene compilations and I know that's very very wrong. (Edited, ironically, for grammar)
Spoiler: Excerpt Can we plz talk? Shit will b adventure of lifetime Prompto was about to stuff his phone back in his pocket when it buzzed again. U chickn? Maybe I should ask sum1 else? Prompto frowned and began typing back. It would probably take you only 0.5 seconds more to type everything out. “Lazy fool,” murmured Prompto, shoving his phone into his pocket. He says, to Dino, a fucking reporter. Jesus. (While I'm bitching about this fics characterization: Prompto also relentlessly pick up lines at Cindy in a way that is 100% creepy. He's a dingus but he's not a slimeball :/) ...Actually, while I'm talking about XV fic (because I have done nothing but read it for like. Two weeks) Spoiler: Spoilers for the game I am very annoyed at all the fics where Ignis becomes king post game. Like. a) IMO they'd all just go "Nope Noct was the last king" and then instill like a democracy because they have to rebuild the world, they can restructure the government while they're at it b) there are no kings left and literally no survivors of any of the royal families we meet. If we're keeping on this monarchy shit there's going to be a hell of a lot of succession bullshittery, especially now that the divine right of the Caelum line is like. Explicitly gone because Noctis Died For Our Sins c) I am fairly sure Gladio way outranks Ignis on the nobility scale, the Amiticias have been serving the Lucian kings for a while d) the man needs a fucking break let him have a fucking break the three of them retire to a nice cottage somewhere and Gladio and Prompto manage to restrain Ignis's sudden trips to Make Sure Everywhere Isn't On Fire to like. Once a month. Also: STOP ACTING LIKE GLADIO IS BOOKDUMB GDI
Spoiler: gross animal reproductive anatomy I probably shouldn't expect much from Lion King porn, but if someone knows enough about hyenas to know what a pseudopenis is, they really ought to also know that the vagina runs down the middle of it and is not separate, and that in hyena society an erection is a sign of submission, not dominance. EDIT: I'm also pretty certain they don't knot, because they're actually more closely related to cats than dogs, and it would be super anatomically awkward to have a dick lodged inside another dick, especially with female hyenas barely tolerating the presence of males as it is.
