#as such my fictional self-insert is a woman bc well if gender's a construct the construct in my fictional world is a lot more fluid

[mothbiite]

Ya girl went to see Barbie and came out questioning gender 😎

[utilitycaster]

sort of an offshoot of that post about video game characters but I think I've mentioned before the third person v. first person split in D&D, namely, do you say "I attack it with my scimitar" or "Drizzt attacks with his scimitar". This is a well-known thing in TTRPGs, I'm sure you can find more intelligent discussion about it, but it's come up for me specifically in that a lot of old-school D&D players skew hard towards third person and often they are less interested in actual play, because they see D&D as a narrative tool. There's no self-inserts; they are narrating the exploits of a guy they made. And so the parasocial elements (which are not necessarily bad, it just depends, and that's another post) have no appeal, and even things like accents don't really.

I don't think third person vs. first person necessarily means "not a self insert vs. self insert." I switch between the two and often use first person. But I don't feel like any D&D character I've played is a self-insert. They have aspects of me, sure, because of course they do, I need to be able to play them and try to think like them, but I think in a game where death and failure are really possible and where you must collaborate and where your options are rather limited - because even in D&D, they are limited by the type of game it is - it's actually vital to separate yourself out from your character.

It comes down to something I've said a lot about so many things in fiction (but yeah, this does bleed into real life): are you able to accept a character who is not like you? Are you able to accept a character who might make wildly different choices than you would? Is your capacity to empathize or see a character as a person limited by them specifically hitting some demographic or philosophical targets you have constructed? Can you, even in a low risk, fictional environment, let yourself be different from how you are.

this seems very silly but I think I may have alluded to Justin McElroy talking about not being able to play fat characters in most games, and so he often just plays characters who do not look a thing like him. He often plays as a woman of color. (I don't recall where this came up? I think it might have been on an ancient polygon video or maybe commentary on one of the TAZ seasons? I'd love to find it again). And I think that's actually really great that this was his instinct. I don't want to diminish the importance of RPGs and TTRPGs for self-discovery; obviously it's been a place for many people to explore gender and sexuality, especially, and I do not want to take away the ability for someone to play as a woman in a game before you feel like you can live as a woman publicly in real life (and notably my issues with the BG3 and Inquisition player characters are not ones of gender/sex/race, ie, I think it is personality and background that might need to be more pre-determined). But yeah, if you cannot connect with characters who aren't like you that's a problem, and it does feel a little frustrating that we know that centering a self-insert OC type makes for a worse story and people still want that.

I've always been intrigued by pre-made sheets in TTRPGs where you are limited in some way, not in a dumb "oh my god you can't play a druid bc I'm a weird vindictive dude mad that your nature magic beats my weaponry" way but just as an exploration of having to walk a mile in other people's shoes and to be a person other than one that you created to exist within your comfort zone. Because a lot of people aren't Justin, and do play themselves or as close to it as they can, regardless of what is happening around them, and I think that is a mistake.