You are who you write. (Seriously.) · 12:07am Sep 8th, 2017
Something PresentPerfect said in response to my secretly-self-insert story reminded me of an important idea I wanted to share. To explain it, we'll need to visit Princess Luna Celestia.
"Sometimes, I dream I know what in tarnation ever happened to 'em."
I used to lucid dream, as a hobby. It's a complicated hobby that requires a lot of spare time each day to achieve success. It fell by the wayside as I matured and depression took over my life (now I sleep to not dream).
So let's talk about the psychology of dreams.
First off, we should really murder Sigmund Freud. Buck his corpse and launch it off of a cliff and into a dumpster fire. Freud was useful for pioneering a few things, but he did pretty much everything the wrong way. He liked to make up facts out of whole cloth. His dream analysis approach is 100% garbage. People from his home country still publish "articles" about dream analysis which are equally garbage, and today Freud's zombie followers are the sole reason if you try to search for psychology studies dealing with incest trauma, most of the articles that come up have nothing to do with incest at all.
There is a proper way to analyze dreams, however, and this method exists thanks to Carl Jung. Now Carl was full of horse apples, too, but to a lesser extent than Freud. When he was mentored under Freud, he realized he couldn't buy into Freud's self-absorbed bullcrap where the guy arbitrarily decided what symbols meant and what was going on in the unconscious mind. So they parted ways, and Carl invented some crap but also some very useful ideas that persist today.
Jungian dream analysis has a lot of symbolism itself that I don't buy into, but what I do buy into is what it has to say about the nature of intelligent actors appearing in dreams. The trick is this: everything inside your dream comes from your own mind. In the case of physical things like fire or water or falling or helicopters, it might not be clear what it means, and sometimes it's just because you were watching a movie that had those things in it, or something like that. But when your mind has realistic people in it, especially involving dialogue or conflict, that's significant.
The reason this is significant is that making a realistic person takes a lot of unconscious processing power. Your brain can't just invent a second mind out of thin air! Whenever there are intelligent actors in your dreams, those actors come from parts of your mind. Your boyfriend isn't just your boyfriend, he's created by the part of your mind that resembles the qualities you ascribe to him. When intelligent actors do things in your dreams, this reveals useful truths about yourself and the conflicts going on below the conscious level. The neat thing is it's usually easy to identify when it happens. You just have to remember the meaning isn't truly about the actor, but the part of 'you' that the actor represents unconsciously.
Now, the quote from PresentPerfect, emphasis mine:
I honestly like the way you inserted yourself into this. I don't think it's so much through Mercy as through the ways the ponies are portrayed.
He's right. Trick Question comes through in the decisions and actions of the other characters in that story as much as I do through Mercy—even more, in fact, given that collectively I spend more time describing the thoughts and actions of the Mane 6 than fleshing out the actual self-insert character.
Now, here is my thesis:
You are each of the characters* you write.
(* = This only applies if they're detailed and written well.)
To write a character well, you have to be able to put yourself in their horseshoes. You have to be able to think from their point of view, and make decisions through that lens. I actually think this requires a deeper connection than acting does, because with acting you can fake it: you aren't making the decisions for the character you play. With writing, you have to pilot the brain of any detailed character you write. This task is nontrivial.
The realism of a character has to come from somewhere, and that realism arises from within your unconscious mind. If you write a detailed character well, the realism of their thoughts and actions flows directly from a piece of who you truly are, either consciously or unconsciously.
One interesting thing about this is that it helps me to identify my limitations as an author. Everypony knows I write sad and dark stories, but if you look carefully you'll see that I never write complex or detailed characters who want to cause significant harm to other characters—or if I do, I do it very badly (some of my failed stories have that problem, and now I can see why). I can't write those characters well because I can't put myself in that mindset. Believe it or not, I don't think I write dark things at all. My characters are always full of hope and compassion, even in their darkest moments, because too much of me under the surface is like that. I couldn't write convincing dialogue or decisions for a serial killer character if I tried, even though I know exactly how to do it due to my psychology degree and life experiences.
I'm sure you might disagree with me. Maybe you feel you have a character you've written very convincingly, but for whom there is no possible resemblance to any part of who you are beneath the surface. Maybe you think this idea applies to some writers, like me, but not to you.
Are you sure about that? 
I can agree with this to an extent, because I don't think every character I write is me... but some of them have a little piece inside, at the very least, only it's warped in order to make them themselves... and some even diverge entirely.
Interesting topic. I'd think in many cases you're correct, though in others there might be as much horror in being the killer as there is in being the victim.
All right! I'm a Mk XXXII Bolo Combat Unit!
(Or maybe a seapony)
I believe you are quite correct, Trick. I know that a character in my story is very bad. They are difficult to write because, though sometimes I feel I am, I'm not evil. It's very hard to put myself completely in that characters mind because I don't think that way. I didn't realize what the problem was until I read your blog just a bit ago.
Thank you. And I hope you have a good evening!
4661536
shoo be doo
I know I put some of myself into every character I write, some more than others. This definitely offers some food for thought in terms of which ones I'm most and least comfortable writing.
Admittedly, the protagonists of my fics all share certain traits that I too possess, although my interpretation of Vinyl Scratch is the closest to being an author avatar.
And the funny thing is, this can be true even for canon characters in fanfiction. I know I'm not the only one who writes their own anxieties into Twilight or Fluttershy or Rainbow Dash!
And even if you say, "Oh, well, this character is based on so-and-so person I know IRL", I think your thesis holds, because, if nothing else, that character is actually the person seen through your eyes. You're going to leave something of yourself in there.
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This problem happened when I tried to write Flash in the Pan based on my experiences with other people whose headspace is completely alien to me (the crystal bitch and Flash). Neither of the characters made sense or seemed believable because my experience of those people was itself surreal and positively horrendous.
The failure of that fic has been a useful tool in coming to terms with a very bad experience. It isn't something that should be relatable to others.
Wait. So if I write a self insert - which I have - then that means... I am myself?
Oh my gawd.
When I was little, I had nightmares. Lots and lots of nightmares. Having no real solution available to me, as a small child with google having not yet been invented, I figured out how to know when I was dreaming, and then further figured out how to force myself awake. But I came to realize that I no longer needed to wake up, because scary things aren't scary when you know they're not real. Since then most of my dreams have been completely lucid... but since then I have fewer and fewer dreams. Honestly don't even remember the last time I dreamt of anything.
I feel there's a lot of truth to this. Granted, I might hope to develop the skill of overcoming this somewhat for the sake of branching out, but I know I struggle a lot when I try to go too far afield from who I am and the kinds of experiences that I've had. I've recently driven myself to distraction trying to get inside the head of a really twisted character and it makes me want to curl up and cry sometimes.
Interestingly, for some time already it's exactly the thought that pops up in my brain each time that red rectangle near one of your stories catches my eye. To say more, often they are actually quite the opposite of dark.
See, I couldn'tve done that heist Monday night. I got ten people who read about one of my characters being in Manehattan at the same time.
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At first it's an amusing joke on wish fulfillment, and I think about writing a story about a character winning the lottery...
Then I remember all the Gary Stu characters who are figuratively (if not literally) doing exactly that, and realize the content of my stories mean I must want myself to suffer on some level.
Not even a deep level.
Yes and no.
To write a character well, convincingly, you need to be able to understand how their mind works. In that manner, it's difficult to have them do something unimaginable because, well, you can't imagine it. It just won't register. But, just a little feedback from outside can already change things completely. That's something I learned with my own story.
You mentioned acting. I've acted a lot in my time (never professionally though) so I'm familiar with "faking it", but that can be applied to characters as well. Then the question becomes am I writing a character that's like me, or am I just capable of adopting that character's thinking?
Overall, however, your essay leaves me a little worried. I've talked to folks who think you and me are literally brain-damaged because of the fetishy stories we write. They think it undermines the moral fibre of society, poisons the gestalt mind of humanity and being able to write something like TSJ means you secretly want what's in there to happen in real life. I fear this will give people like him more ammunition.