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Cheating Fate and gaining Powers; But it is also a Gamer fanfic!

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by Husenklotze2, Aug 30, 2018.

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  1. Threadmarks: Prologue
    Husenklotze2

    Husenklotze2 Your first time is always over so quickly, isn't it?

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    Why do people love the self inserts so much?
    Okay sure, some just plain despise them and yet still the self insert genre is one of, if not the most popular fanfiction genre out there.

    And if it is a self insert gamer fanfic, then it might as well be the holy grail of all fanfiction.

    There are mainly two reasons.

    First of all: many of them are pure and simple power fantasies.

    Imagine the following fanfiction: a battle shounen, you liked reading the manga, you loved seeing those battles animated. Now you write a fanfic.
    Your character is based on yourself, the power the character is given is a very balanced one. One that could be underwhelming, but would gain excellent potential to rise in power, just as much as the actual MC of the series is rising.
    Now you write your fanfic and you write of your characters battles, struggles and rises as he fights the same battles as the MC should have fought and manages to come on top. It is nothing but the same fucking canon, but with your ugly mug in it.

    Interesting, right? No, no it fucking isn't.
    The worst kinds of self inserts are the ones where the MC is a goody two shoes who is good in everything, takes the place of the MC, gets insane amounts of plot armors and generally reads like the author patting himself on the back for how awesome he would be in those situations.

    This is wrong, this feels like the author tooting his own horn; masturbating right in our fucking faces.

    The solution? Either do not write that genre at all, or go away from canon, fucking take a shit on it and write a straight up powerfantasy where you do whatever the fuck you want.
    Your character is awesome, but we all know he or she is no one I a billion genius like most of the main characters.

    It is after all based on your fat, lazy ass.

    So gift the character bullshit powers and skills. Skip the bullshit, fucking drop it and give the readers what they want; as in a fucking power fantasy.
    Balance it out, whatever. But make him or her the fucking B.O.S.S.

    Make him or her a gamer for all I care. Can never go wrong with a gamer fanfic. It's like a pokemon lure in this Pokemon Go game for the readers.
    Only here the Gamer in the description or the titles lures all dem retards.

    Goota catch them all!

    You are a cunt that is inserting himself into a fictional world; nobody gives a flying fuck for you struggles or your drama. Fucking win that shit.
    You get dem pwoers, you get dem money and you fuck all dem hot bitches of the series.

    As easy as that.

    Or write some angst ridden piece about how actually nightmarish the series in reality would be...

    But nobody will read that emo shit, cunt.

    Then bam: POWERFANTASY!

    With a power fantasy the author is not just tooting his own horn.
    He is tooting his own horn and reaching through the screen for that tiny little sausage of yours to toot the readers horn too!

    Bloody Amazing! Revolutionary! 11/10, would read it again!

    And yet the reason for why we love the self inserts is not just that.

    Another facet of it is the same fantasy one would have with time travel.

    As in you are the cunt that knows the future and your smug ass can use it all to your advantage. Yes, we all know those “I am holier than though let's fix canon faggots.”
    But fuck em!
    You have all that knowledge, so you use it for your own greedy little ambitions!

    Fucking save Kushina instead of that cuck Minato and bang that redheaded milf! Or save Hinata from her bullies and get dem amazing titties 10 years later!
    Go with a harem! You can't go wrong with a harem!

    Unless you suck.

    Then fuck you, you little twat!

    Shit on Ronnald Weasley and take that desperate beautiful little bookworm as you little slut.
    Unless you have read all those bashing fics of Hermoine and hate her by now... Then get yourself that Daphne Greenlawn or whatever. Luna is pretty cute as well..

    And if you are a girl? Then you get all that boy pussy you could ever want!

    The point stands.

    Time travel is in of itself a power fantasy. You know all the shit and will fix all the shit, it is the simplest power fantasy that even 12 year old children have in their day dreams.

    Why? Because of fucking course you will do everything just perfectly if you ever get a second chance. Fucking up your present any day every day, but IF you ever had a second chance?
    You'd fucking own it, you'd be the boss.. Fucking Sure..
    Cunt.

    But I am getting side tracked.

    Is there anything more to Self Inserts? Not really. It's pretty much just it. And if the story is not complete garbage and is not written by an Indian sweat shop worker with only an English dictionary as his only tool?
    If it halfway interesting or goes in a direction previously not explored,?

    Just that much better! Already better than 80% of the self inserts out there.

    It's pretty much 90% power fantasy, 9 % story and 1% quality. Than again., even that 1 percent looks far too much..

    And if you do not want to write a self insert? Then just add your own version of Naruto or HP into the mix, make an x-over even if the character is completely different from the canon counterpart and do the same shit as previously described!
    Works every time..

    But where was I again?

    Oh yeah. My gamer self insert fanfiction.

    Okay, so it all began with my death.


    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    I just wanted to publish that little piece I had written. xD
    Story is still far from finished to be published anywhere.
     
    Coleray, HeyaUser, GaeGary and 27 others like this.
  2. murklins

    murklins Versed in the lewd.

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    is this a trollfic
     
  3. Warer

    Warer Shadowstep12 Sleep fucking is impoilte

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    Its honest at least.
     
    Navi-Hank and Ergoan like this.
  4. MoreLostThanUsual

    MoreLostThanUsual Not too sore, are you?

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    Its a bit confusing, but I agree with your point (I think its your point at least). Quite a few Most SI fics follow the general points of:
    • Author is inserted into universe X, either by death and rebirth or by act of ROB (if ROB, then there is a higher chance of OCP or "cheat" powers).
    • SI then either angsts about or celebrates being in the setting.
    • SI proceeds to then follow the canon plot, possibly with a few deviations.
    • These deviations from canon are to either save a waifu or to try and "fix" something they didn't like in canon.
    • (Optional, but sadly common) SI acquires "cool" weapons from a different series. (looking at you Mass Effect SI's. "I drew and spun Ebony and Ivory, my twin black and white pistols.) (Kill me)
    • Action scenes tend to read like a checklist. (I effortlessly blocked. I attacked. I win.) (It's hard to create drama when everyone knows that the SI is going to win, because what powerwanking writer kills their literary-self?)
    SI's do tend to act super moral. Like, if I was given epic cosmic powers that put me head and shoulders above any other being in the setting, I supremely doubt I'd waste my time by working as a child soldier (Naruto), go around punching criminals (any super-verse except Worm), do anything besides kill Scion and fuck off (Worm), putting up with anyone's shit in general really. It would be more along the lines of: destroy enemies, then fuck off to the middle of nowhere, fix my personal problems/hangups through super therapy or magitech, and create the ultimate sexbot/clone harem and cuddle the shit out of them.
     
  5. MMMm

    MMMm Know what you're doing yet?

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    But people like angst fanfics! A "realistic" and gritty Naruto fic with an OC that's always 5 seconds away from a nervous breakdown can get nearly as many reviews as a canon hugging gamer fic.

    They have a different audience. Actually, if someone reads a Naruto fanfic, they're already going to have a tolerance for angst. The main series itself was filled with it. People constantly went over their said backstories in an attempt to make the audience feel sorry for them.

    So your guy could be a gamer who laments the fact that he feels nothing 90% of the time because Gamer's Mind erases his emotions, and it's ironic to him that he intellectually feels that he should be concerned about this but Gamer's Mind makes it so he doesn't really care.

    It breaks up the grind and adds some personality to your guy, which besides saving people and getting strong, most people tend to lack any kind of character. Most gamers, Han Jee Han included, get subsumed by the gamer system and exist only to grind their stats and levels.

    And the power fantasy is important, but you really want to have lots of character interaction. That's what people are here to see. They want to see you improve/buff up Naruto or Hinata or whoever else their fan favorites are. They want you to do all the cool shit they wish they could do. To drop all the cool one liners they wish they could say.

    It's like watching One Piece. You have a powerful main character, people doubt your guy can handle the threats in front of him, then he destroys them and everyone acts shocked. That's the formula for most of Naruto Uzumaki's battles, except your guy won't get beat up first.
     
  6. Ergoan

    Ergoan Versed in the lewd.

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    this is the reason i try to find storys that come up with something new
     
    MMMm likes this.
  7. bamba12

    bamba12 Not too sore, are you?

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    Heh, ain't that the truth, it is so incredibly hard to find a fic, especially a si, that isn't plain masturbation.
     
    Warer likes this.
  8. RHJunior

    RHJunior Your first time is always over so quickly, isn't it?

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    The only thing worse than bad fanfic... a condescending twit sneering about how all fanfics suck.
    It will be interesting to see how such an individual fares when he gets inserted into a fictional universe, and it begins tenderizing him...
    (last words? "That's so unoriginal, and such cheesy special effects" as the Kaiju stomps on him.)
     
  9. Ashborn

    Ashborn So bad it's good

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    Note: The following post is high in salt, Read at your own risk.

    Angsty Gamer fics can either be Really Good (note: this is rare as the chances of one of your friends having a hot mom. Yes, even at your age) or really, really, terribly bad (like, so bad its terri-bad).
    Now, the former is a gosh-darned miracle, and as such I have no fuckin' Clue how to replicate it, but for the latter, here are a couple things you should definitely avoid for any Gamer fic, but especially angsty bitch-chan ones. They are:
    -1: Fucking up the stats.
    No, seriously, you'd be surprised how many people screw this up. They either don't realise that the basic gamer fic is a numbers game, and then scratch their ass in lieu of a brain case while they wonder why people get pissed when their protagonists hard won power progression up and disappears without explanation, or they do something completely asinine like introducing charisma as a stat, or having dex replaced with agil, or even worse, listing the two stats together on the same damn sheet. Now, it's gotta be said, this is stupid. Like, mouth breathing, red-neck for six generations, your family tree resembles a stick, stupid.

    To put it plainly, this happens for one of three reasons.

    The 1st of these, is that it's only somewhat a Gamer fic, and the system is based on something else, like Dark Souls stats or something, which is fine but remember to put an authors note or something that hints at what we're in for.
    The 2nd of these, the one that is somewhat acceptable, is that the character itself is deficient and as such the representation of their gamer stats reflect this, and either later change or have by that point become mentally ingrained to the point they are no longer questioned.
    The 3rd reason however, is dumb, and it comes about when the author is to stupid to understand the difference between base and derived statistics. We have strength and dexterity, two attributes that are examples of how the now-conceptual existence that is the Gamer interacts with the world. The Gamer is proven to be a conceptual existence, and their stats to be conceptual attributes, because of their ability to say, punch a mountain in half without spontaneously becoming a mountain of muscle, ala the the hulk. Agility on the other hand, is a measure of how one applies ones Strength and Dexterity in unison in order to navigate the world. It is a derived statistic, the same with Charisma, which is derived from applying Intelligence and Wisdom toward social situations, multiplied by relevant skills that affect such things, said skills often being instinctive, like how people tend to case a room on entering in order to read the emotional atmosphere and not make an ass of themselves. So Charisma = (INT+WIS) x Relevant Passives. Easy, in fact it's impossible to fail at, unless your one of those fucking morons.
    -2: Presenting Gamer's Mind as some sort of Mental Free Will Suppressant.
    Now, I'm sure some of you are now thinking, 'Isn't that what it does?' And I'm sorry to be the one to inform you of this, but you've either been grievously misled by your fellow fic writers, or your just stupid. This is a good news/bad news moment, as while I can enlighten you on where you were led wrong, I am sadly yet to find a cure for stupid. For those of you not beyond my help, it goes like this.

    Gamer's Mind does not Cull, dampen, nor eliminate one's emotional capacity or their ability to care about others or anything in general. Instead, it acts as a mental circuit breaker, activating if you are pushed into the state of being mental incoherent. When this happens, the Gamer's Mind kicks in and does a soft reset on the Gamer's mental state, in order to get them to stop being such whiny little bitches. This does nothing to their capacity to feel emotions in general, nor their ability to process things such as grief or heartbreak. What it does do is refill ones mental stamina, replenishing their mental fortitude and ability to confront whatever is distressing them, thus allowing them to rolf-stomp the issue with little trouble (similar to the scene in the Dresden Files where Harry forces himself to man up and confront the metaphysical imprint of the Naagloshi seared into his mind but with less the trauma), at the cost of depriving them of a measure of the revelations they'd achieve if they'd stepped into the emotional equivalent of flavour territory, but with the benefit of not accruing mental maluses such as ptsd in the process, in addition to its role in protecting the Gamer against the consequences of witnessing things which man was not meant to know, and against other people trying to mindfuck you in general.

    The problem with this, as far as angsty bitch-chans are concerned, is that your character now has no excuse to 'weep for a thousand years as the mountains that you rest amidst are rent to ashes by your grief.' As such, being the angst-whores that they are, they tell the concept of Gamer's Mind to 'bend over', then proceed to rape it's supple and unwilling flesh until they give their Gamer Angst Cancer, that terminally incurable condition of the mind/body/soul/emotions/inner-speciul-rainbow that is developed when ones author decides to magically transmute the reality of your existence into shit. The sad thing is, that in a good fic, there'd be no need for this, as it's an almost tailor made situation to show an example of mind over machine, where the Gamer casts aside the mask to face the world as their raw, unfettered, self. It doesn't matter whether this is to breakdown in tears without interference, or if it's a side effect of being enraged beyond all logic and reason, or anything in between, what matters in this case is that any of these responses are preferable to having your character's reality marble equivalent corn-holed to the point it gives them cancer of the puppy.
     
  10. Stormbringer117

    Stormbringer117 Soulless

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    Jokes on you, I don't have a sausage, because I identify as an attack helicopter!
     
  11. MMMm

    MMMm Know what you're doing yet?

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    What does any of this mean? Do you have some example fics?
     
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  12. Ashborn

    Ashborn So bad it's good

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    Specifically, it's referring to those times when your reading a Gamer fic and suddenly, often for no discernible reason, said Gamer degenerates into bitching, moaning and weeping about how they no longer possess emotions or free will, since Gamer's Mind is 'obviously' fucking with their heads, often sending the entire fic into a spiral of craptitude, the shitty quality of which cannot be sufficiently emphasised, from which said fic never recovers, leaving the author to put it down like the disease ridden filth that it is. It's usage thus is doubly pathetic, as in addition to tanking the entire story in the pursuit of falsely promised 'edge', it is also vastly inconsistent, as said whining bitch-chans still possess the emotion to whine about an apparent lack of said emotions.

    It's that bit, when some stupid twat, decides that The Gamer simply doesn't have enough on their plate and warps Gamer's Mind into some eldritch soul warping cancer of the mind that slowly eats away at said Gamer's faculties, including but not always limited to: their capacity to feel emotion, their psychological attachment to their friends and loved ones, their capacity to distinguish and/or care for the concepts of good and evil, rather than doing things solely 'for the loot'. Basically, the Gamer has been blessed with an awesome ability, so this author takes it upon themselves to make sure said Gamer is instead blessed with suck.


    Note: I'd totally put fic links as examples f what I mean here, but I am happy to announce that I've either forgotten the specific titles or the ones I searched for have been taken down, and in either case I'm not too keen on reading the literary equivalent of raw sewerage in order to press my point. This is especially true when I can just explain what I mean in more detail and you'll all either know what I'm on about or you'll be one of those poor sods who come across an example of what I mean and go 'huh, now I get it', before promptly reaching for the bleach to cleanse your eyes of the shitty 'writing' you just read.

    If you have any examples of such shitty, shitty Gamer fics, add them to the list or post below.
     
    HeyaUser, Warer, Ergoan and 1 other person like this.
  13. gustyeagle

    gustyeagle Know what you're doing yet?

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  14. Ergoan

    Ergoan Versed in the lewd.

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  15. gustyeagle

    gustyeagle Know what you're doing yet?

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    Have a cookie.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  16. Ashborn

    Ashborn So bad it's good

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    Fic's like this come about as a result of the author going through growing pains in terms of writing. Whether said pains end up being terminal is something left up to fate or chance, but if they persist, then most of them end up evolving into someone at least half-way decent in terms of fic writing. Those who fail go on to become Badfic writers, the real one's, not the people who call themselves that from a lack of confidence in their works, and those who stop writing due to the knowledge the'd become such a writer, however briefly? They've done the fichunter's a service, that they never have to gaze upon the masticated, rotting corpses they'd call their fanfics.

    But seriously, Gustyeagle's being kind. The things I've seen and read....

    Not as horrible as some I've read, but still bad enough that it feels like someone threw up in my brain-case. The decision to use fallout mechanics is kinda bad, but at least it's an established system, but the fact the character then proceeds to tank their charisma and then promptly start bitching and whining about it? While it is consistent with what you'd expect for an SI with 1 Charisma in Fallout stats, it also makes for a horrible read when the author proceeds to drag it out like that. It's more the kind of thing you'd show an example of, then leave readers to assume such crap is happening consistently as a background process during your fic, instead of making them read every damn instance. Beyond that I couldn't say, as I began with an attempt to read it, then shifted to skimming in an attempt to preserve my brain cells, then eventually trailed off, my ability to focus on the words faltering and dying from disgust at it's craptitude.
     
    HeyaUser likes this.
  17. Ashenerden

    Ashenerden Not too sore, are you?

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    Starting the story with an author rant. Very bold. If you were an established writer I like reading and/or your story was one that proved itself, only then this could be an acceptable chapter. You wrote a good critique of the genre, but now the readers are waiting for a better SI, a better story. After all this relatively pointless rant, you better make sure to write something different, something better. Tentatively watched.
     
    HeyaUser, kabs, RandomLurker and 4 others like this.
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