idk but like my standard is on thE GROUND so. anyone willing to understand me and still love me and give me cuddles and know like the basics abt me and im like gone. and this is gonna get really deep and shi but like honestly do you belive in like true romantic love? because i thought i did but i dont, because divorce and SA rates are at their peak and like yeah. :( thats why i love reading romance and watching romcoms. i can never do angst cuz there's enough angst in life so yk

sorry for the deep talk but idk you seem like a really cool person and it feels easy to talk to you!! but!!! i do believe in platonic love so!!! youre doing great!!!

-🌱

hello my dear 🌱 anon, my full reply under the cut because it's very long 😅 and also because warnings: talks about SA and toxic relationships.

same? because i'm so introverted that i really don't talk to anyone irl. it's just the fact that a person might be remotely interested and i'm just completely infatuated with them. really a terrible way of liking someone... just saying from personal experience...

honestly, i'm not sure if true romantic love exists. i used to think that it did, but now i'm kind of on the fence about it. you see, like you said, there's divorce and the SA rates are sky high, though i do believe that there are a whole bunch of other different factors that lead to those things besides love. eg. right time, wrong person or right person, wrong time. then there's toxic relationships and situations where people mistake love for obsession? and ofc there's that whole thing about lust vs love. like did you love the person because they made you happy physically? or did you love the person in their entirety.

in my opinion love (in general) is just a very complex thing. so on the other hand, when it comes to true romantic love, there might be very rare cases where it does exist. in those cases, to me there's a need to really pinpoint and distinguish what is it about the person that you love. and i do believe that true romantic love comes with selfless/ unconditional love, love that comes with the acceptance that you will need to make certain compromises and sacrifices. there's a need to just accept the other, flaws and all. it's not necessarily about pushing their flaws to one side and disregarding them? rather it's taking that those flaws are part of who they are and addressing them when necessary. that kind of love comes with being vulnerable with each other, revealing the aspects of yourself that you are most uncomfortable with. it shows how deep the trust is. it's also about working through whatever comes your way. idk whether this makes sense haha. but yea, that's my opinion of it.

i get you on liking the romcoms and stuff. i do prefer angst (in fact i'm writing angst right now haha) but yea, sometimes all we need is fluffy love stories to drown out whatever angst there is in real life.

ALSO PLEASE. I LOVE DEEP TALKS. you can talk to me anytime you want. 🤭 i'm literally smiling so much rn thank you for thinking of me. it's really easy to talk to you too! i have so many opinions on love honestly... idk... are you peaking into my drafts because i was looking into the 7 types of greek love for a fic...

side note: i absolutely believe in platonic love as well. i think the greek word for it is philia? yea i had a whole conversation about it with my friend the other day... it's about deep genuine connections and love between friends. people always confuse it with eros and stuff but that's a whole other problem.

anyway. YOU'RE ALSO DOING GREAT MY LOVELY 🌱 ANON! ILY!

ok coming into ur ask box this time so we dont have to be confined to the comment limit LOL and dont apologise for rambling i Wanted to pick your brain abt this!! sdhfgjksdfk i see… misbelief about the world driving the plot forward rather than their own motivation, that actually Is a very common plot device in y/n fic now that i think abt it. whenever i try to make my mcs Intentionally vague, it's usually their appearance, or anything regarding their gender. like now that i think abt it i dont think ive ever even tried writing an mc that is vague as a character itself? bc to me, a vague character, a "blank slate", is still a character, just one that lacks any life to it. like, among the writers i like interacting with on here and typically enjoy reading most, the general consensus seems to be that most dont actually read y/n as themselves and see them as more of a vague oc anyway, even as a reader, as they don't actually have any interest in inserting Themselves into a story in the very self-inserty, projecting way y/n fic is known for, and thats why they prefer a really fleshed-out mc.

personally, as a reader i seem to be the niche in between where i Do like projecting myself into the story as a character, but i Don't like blank slate mcs - because theres nothing to project On. i project onto self-insert characters the same way i project onto fully-fleshed characters in regular media, or hell, the same way i sometimes project onto an idol's image themselves. a reader insert being in second person just kinda helps enable the projection, and of course im gonna feel More seen by projecting onto characters that are More similar to me whether that be in gender/pronouns/appearance/personality/etc, but like... i dont go into it expecting to see the Entirety of Myself, written by someone else. i go into expecting to see someone else, in their wholeness as a character, and have them written compellingly enough that i can slot myself over them because even if i wouldnt do things the same way they would, i can still understand them and get in their head enough to "be" them for a while, in a way? like, even if i dont Personally relate to them, if theyre written well enough i can relate to how theyre feeling. kind of. i dont know if this makes any sense. i guess i just like feeling like a part of the story as a reader rather than Watching a story happen, kind of like playing a story-based video game with a preset ending - i get to play out the story as if im a part of it, and im gonna enjoy it even more if the character im playing as is similar to me, but even if theyre not, it still feels like im them for the duration of that story. and playing as a character that has no lines or backstory just isnt Nearly as compelling as playing as a character with a motive. yk? like with video games a blank protag is more forgiving bc you can create your own, but thats what fic is for. thats intentional. but you dont write fic of fic to fill in the blanks like that, so those blanks needa be filled already, imo.

as a writer i like the focus to be on the relationship dynamic the reader has with any of the given love interests, and i don't know how to create a relationship dynamic between two characters when only one character has a defined personality. bc the first question i ask myself is "what are these two characters like together? how do they play off each other/whats their interactions like?" so at this point im like ok x is a snark and y is a sunshine so x teases a lot and y just eats that shit up and gives contrastingly wholesome responses. or something like that. just for a vague idea of what they look like interacting. n then when i start working on the actual Plot, the question is "what made them fall in love with each other?" and This is what i base the entirety of the plot around. i pinpoint the specific traits that theyd like in one another, then i craft the perfect situations for them to experience those traits and fall in love with them. to do that, i need traits for the love interest to fall in love with, and i need a criteria for what the mc will be looking for in the love interest, and such a criteria comes from personality. theyre such closely intertwined concepts to me that i cant separate one from the other, hence why my mc's are all closer to faceless, nameless oc's than a blank slate. the only thing making me hesitate from following melty's lead and straying directly into named oc 2nd person fiction is the fact that i as a reader do like inserting my own name as y/n lmfao on my pc i even have a browser extension that does it for me. but i can use that same extension to change an oc's name in someone elses story so its not a big deal to me as a reader, but i just wonder if there are readers similar to me but that would be thrown off by having a different name instead.

this is really long and rambly unprompted so i apologise SKDFJGSKDFK but ive been itching to get my thoughts out on the matter with all this talk abt how we approach writing mcs. i didn't realise how many longfic writers put so much effort into writing a character so intentionally vague for the purpose of making someone that "could be anybody." but then again, considering im personally alienated from 95% of the fic i read just as a non-woman polyamorous person (among so many other factors), i guess other readers are a lot more used to actually being able to see a perfect carbon copy of themselves in self inserts without having to squint too hard at the lines. huh. wonder what thats like. SKDFGJSDFKGKDF

adding the break as to not horribly flood the dash

i really like what you said about feeling like a part of the story rather than watching it. i’ve been extremely negative all night about this, but at the end of day, i obviously enjoy 2nd person pov. i would hope so, after the shit-ton i’ve read and written, and continue to read and write about it. there is something nice about stepping into the story and experiencing something in such a different way. i enjoy it as a reader, it’s a different kind of experience. it’s really neat.

to be clear, i don’t think i write a total blank-slate. like, to give myself a bit of credit i think all my mc’s have a personality for sure. relationship dynamics with people surrounding them, definitely. they’re usually headstrong and maybe a bit cocky, bc that’s what i like to read and frankly, am generally like LMAO. i by no means take out lines or subject matter bc it could be too much unlike someone reading it. but idk, i feel less inclined to spend as much time as i should creating a completely fleshed out character when i don’t even have an image for them in my head, and majority of readers are going to imagine that it’s themselves anyway (which frankly, as they should, it’s literally called reader-insert). it’s definitely not an everyone problem. like from what you said it definitely seems like reader-insert has helped you develop characters and dive into them, but i just don’t think it works the same way for me.

i’ve been thinking a lot about character building lately. fanfiction itself is one of the most helpful tools and greatest liabilities for character building. on the one-hand, you learn to bring an idea to life. you learn how to really embody a character or person, especially in rpf where you sorta can do whatever you want with no canon, but everyone has a sort of idea or interpretation anyway. but it also relies on the fact that your audience already loves the characters you are using, instead of you having to start from scratch to make them love them.

maybe that’s why my original oc’s feel flat in my personal writings. when people read “y/n” obviously they already care about them bc well, to a lot of people it is them. which is the literal point of reader insert, so i think it would be extremely stupid to discourage that. but for me it feels a bit limiting.

speaking of which, there’s this idea of “y/n” and god… GOD do i hate it.😭not reading wise, bc i understand the appeal and literally throw my name in there and have since i was a pre-teen, but writing wise. i stopped using y/n in my fics as a name holder bc i didn’t like it in there anymore and i couldn’t place why for a while, but i think it’s bc when people call my mc “y/n” it’s just like… in the end that’s all she is. i can put as much planning and shit into this character but she’s not really a character, she feels like a placeholder. at least when we refer to her as mc it’s like, she’s her own thing. she is the main character™️ but when people are like, i love your “y/n”! it’s like she’s compared on this scale of reader-inserts compared to an actual breathing complicated protagonist. it’s hard to explain and i think i’m doing a horrible job, but that’s how i feel about it.

you’re also someone who like, does not do this whatsoever, and comments and discusses the mc as an actual character which i really appreciate. bc you do also write, and i think you share perspective on that even if also inserting yourself into the story. i sorta do both too. you get it. i think this is in a lot of ways a me issue more than a collective issue, which is why it probably sounds a bit messy and maybe just incorrect lmao. but idk, the bottom line of what i’m feeling is if i really want to work on protagonist building and that’s my number one priority that i need to improve upon, why would i do it a genre where a lot of readers (and thus those giving the feedback that i try and use to improve upon) are going to often judge the mc solely on the level of relatability, imagine that it is them and thus view it as such rather than an actual character, i can’t (and shouldn’t) flesh out mannerisms / appearance, and overall just causes an extra level of struggle compared to a third person character that i can fully embody with none of these limits.

especially if i’m starting to realize how much i really like writing in third, it just seems like that is what’s probably the right path for me as a writer. i’m still going to write natgig because i love it and it allows me to do a mixture of all these things, i’m still going to write reader-insert. but if i’m working on individual character building and embodiment revolving around the protagonist, i think a necessary step for me is to redirect a lot of my energy into writing some third-person non reader-insert pov.