2) Mary-Sues are a black hole of writing - they warp the world and the other characters so the fic is not about the original story, but about the Sue. What I've noticed is that it's the most irritating when it isn't labeled as such. If someone were to come right out and say, "This is a self-insert because I'd like to write a story about how I would exist in that world" then you know it's going to be narcissistic and non-compliant with canon, so your expectations don't get smashed.
It's interesting; I've noticed that a great deal of fanfic drama could be avoided if the author accurately labeled their work so people who wanted to read it could find it and people who didn't like that type could avoid it. So it ends up being less about the writing, but how it is identified.
(and sorry, didn't mean to bash all SI fic, just the ones where it's all about the SI of an idealized version - see below comment. :) )
I don't think a self insert necessarily has to be narcissistic and non-compliant with canon. I have certainly written one story in which the OFC was a self insert - and she was (simply by virtue of being like me) overweight, geeky, middle aged and unimportant. She didn't get the guy (in fact she was horribly intimidated by the guy and wouldn't have dared to think of him like that), and the whole point of the story was to explore the canon from a slightly different perspective. (It was also a modern day woman in Middle-earth fic.)
So I think that the whole black-hole effect is what defines a Sue, because if Sues were *really* self insert characters, complete with real life hangups and inabilities, they could actually be quite interesting.
Mhmm, that's a good point. I guess it is possible for a self-insert to be done well.
(Personally, I would see it less as a "self-insert" fic and more as a "hypothetical" (not the real term, I know) because if it were done right, the focus wouldn't be on the fact that the author inserted themself, and readers would generally not be able to tell unless they knew the author)
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(and sorry, didn't mean to bash all SI fic, just the ones where it's all about the SI of an idealized version - see below comment. :) )
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So I think that the whole black-hole effect is what defines a Sue, because if Sues were *really* self insert characters, complete with real life hangups and inabilities, they could actually be quite interesting.
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(Personally, I would see it less as a "self-insert" fic and more as a "hypothetical" (not the real term, I know) because if it were done right, the focus wouldn't be on the fact that the author inserted themself, and readers would generally not be able to tell unless they knew the author)
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