As I said before, I have the nagging feeling why self-inserts are so prevalent in some stories is that their authors don’t have any experience or interest in anything else. Not that they’re autistic as much as they have little else to say in their tales, which explains why their stories and motifs take on a repetitive tone. They’re oftentimes variations on a few other characters, the only ways to remedy this is to either interact with different kinds of people, do different kinds of things or read up on different kinds of people. It can be applied to interests, places and the like, but it will lead to the same conclusion. The best and most organic way to do something new is to be interested in something new and different, suspicions can help but it’s better to be interested in something challenging and different.
That’s why I feel self-inserts became such a substantial presence in geek fictions, again it’s not a matter whether if they’re autistic or not. But that they have little else to say about anything that has little to do with what they do, sometimes they unintentionally create self-inserts and stereotypes because they don’t have any other experience or interest. Sometimes they’re flat-out ignorant, even of themselves and others. It’s not that they’re this narrow-minded and biased, but it is important for anybody to be exposed to something new if they’re insisting on avoiding self-inserts so badly. The same can be said of stereotypes, which I think is sometimes based on ignorance. In the sense that they don’t know these people are human, deep down inside that’s why they believe black men have big penises or the reverse for East Asian men,
Regardless of what they actually look like, let alone those who don’t fit the stereotypes at all. It’s pure ignorance all the way. I personally feel this is how stereotypes come to be, they’re not only ignorant but also very much someone’s idea of a demographic ought to be. Likewise with self-inserts and stereotypes existing together, they’re almost always an author’s idea of themselves (or their peer group) and everybody else. Still, one can challenge themselves more if they inform themselves more of those who don’t fit stereotypes in any way. They can even challenge themselves to do and learn something new, to the point where they can organically create a new character this way.
To put it this way, if somebody writes more about dogs than about African countries it’s not that they don’t know about Africa at all but still tellingly less than they do with dogs. If you write more about fashion than you do with say movies, the same principle applies and so on with anything else really. Not that they’re autistic, it’s just a matter of fact based on what somebody knows best. At worst, they’re almost always what they experience. Barely, if ever taking others’ experiences and knowledge into account. Even if this leads to much richer writing, in fiction this leads to more believably different characters without making them into stereotypes.
I guess if this were applied to fanfictions and other geek fictions, it would be way too revealing when it comes to the things they indulge in and how they see the world. What they write about reveals what they know best, or sometimes what they know little of. Whatever they care about. That’s the most damning thing about writing and especially self-inserts, they’re almost always based on what the author knows best about and is into. As I said before, the only way to remedy this is to do and learn other things. Encounter different kinds of people, go somewhere else and so on. But it’s always the hard way when it comes to rooting out self-inserts at all.
fynm 