2026-01-17

Self inserts?

I've often seen this trope online about "self-insert Mary Sues." Basically the idea is that everyone had a self-insert OC who is a huge Mary Sue. And while it's entertaining, I did not have that sort of thing at all. My self-inserts were all punching bags.

Well, I could only think of two self-inserts that I had. The self-insert of the previous paracosm I had back in middle school which I will dub Previous Paracosm, and Qibli from TIR. (I've also randomly decided to italicize every media title mention because I'm not using these pretty Markdown features enough.)

These two self-inserts were essentially the same. Previous Paracosm self-insert was always the one to get hurt in absurd situations. For example, the characters would jump down from a trapdoor in the ceiling, and everyone else would stick the landing but only my self-insert would land flat on her face. And maybe Lightningtail would throw something with her tail, and it would hit my self-insert's stomach.

For Qibli I've made her way more badass and Mary-Sue-y than she started out, but hey, give me a chance at self-indulgence too! But in the beginning, she was literally just Previous Paracosm self-insert ported over. She had magic, sure, but having magic isn't really some envied thing in Bauhinia. And she was the punching bag, the certified chicken, the first one to pee her pants after being dragged into shenanigans by Sparky.

A lot of points where Qibli had actual agency was conceived of a lot later, when I had admittedly gotten a little tired of Sparky. Like in Sparky Turns Into a Dragon, it was Qibli who orchestrated the whole fiasco. And that was a pretty recent story (despite being so early in the plot).

Even when I made Qibli a murder, arms-dealer, and outlaw, her ultimate fate still ended up being strapped to a machine, spending the rest of her life being drained of her blood over and over, with her only mental refuge being Tadlet Kingdom.

(This scene is now outdated, as I decided Sunflower would not continue to exist after all. Sure love it when I void my own artwork!)

So yeah, this is just a funny thing I observed. I mean, I certainly don't have a lack of Mary Sues. Kismet is definitely one, but Sparky the protagonist, and Lightningtail the protagonist of Previous Paracosm, both pretty much count. They're both parames too; I experience the paracosm through their eyes a lot. I just never put the roles of "the Mary Sue through whose eyes I experience the world" and "my self-insert" into the same character. There were other examples of this too, like I had a Wings of Fire OC who was a NightWing, SeaWing, and RainWing hybrid whose scales were lava-lamp-looking, glowing white bubbles against a black background, that I never figured out how to actually draw. She assassinated all the characters I didn't like. Definitely a wish-fulfillment Mary Sue, but I never thought of her as a self-insert. Also I forgot her name. The My Little Pony version of Lightningtail was like that too; still not a self-insert.

My self-insert's role was always the punching bag, getting tortured for laughs. Gee, I wonder what that says about me? I like getting hurt?? If it's getting hit by a campus bus non-lethally then I'm all for it. Or maybe I saw Hergé's statement of "women slipping on a banana peel just isn't as funny as men slipping on a banana peel" and took it personally. Analyzing the meta of my paracosm(s) sure is a quick way to get an identity crisis.