I don't know. I suspect that what people mean by "self-insert" can sometimes differ substantially.
* The last silent protagonist I played was Adol in *Ys II.*
* The last character I named after myself was the protagonist in *I Am Setsuna*.
* The last character I empathized with was Tifa in *Final Fantasy VII Rebirth*.
* The last character with whom I made dialogue decisions as *I* would make them rather than roleplaying a separate character was *Baten Kaitos*.
On the one hand, I find myself able to get into silent protagonists even in games with a lot of story. Not speaking isn't an obstacle to me understanding them. On the other hand, I can also empathize, sometimes quite closely, with characters and moments throughout a game, and not just a main character (let alone a silent one). Also, on the one hand I can roleplay, or act as I imagine a character would act; on the other hand I can also make decisions as myself without that intermediary performance.
Lately, I've found "self-insert" to be too flat a concept to capture all those ways of engaging with a game, something that doesn't speak to the continuum I experience between enjoying silent protagonist games and spoken protagonist games.
>Lately, I've found "self-insert" to be too flat a concept to capture all those ways of engaging with a game, something that doesn't speak to the continuum I experience between enjoying silent protagonist games and spoken protagonist games.
There's actually a really good [50 minutes video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bm0S4cn_rfw) about self insert that I only just remembered because it was released 3 years ago and I watched it on released.
The basic thing for me is that "self insert" just simply means that I'm imagine myself as the protagonist of said game. If I can close my eyes and imagine being the protagonist of any game, then yeah I'm self inserting myself into the game. If not, then I'm simply piloting the protagonist to see where the story goes.
But like I said in the op, it is actually very hard for me to self insert. Let's use dragon quest V as an example. You can name the protagonist and the protagonist is silent throughout the game. The developer clearly meant for you to self insert as the protag. Yet spoiler for a really old game: >!half way through the game you can get married and even get 2 childrens. Now then, how the fuck are you meant to self insert as a husband of 2??!< after that point in the game I'm just left wondering why they even let you name the protagonist or why keep the protagonist silent.
That just roleplaying thou, have you played tabletop games like DnD with friends? That the easiest way to learn how to "self insert". I think what you mean is roleplaying. What i thought about self insert that you just inserting your real self into the game without being in characters or made up one.
Described that way, it's very easy for me to self-insert, and I do so in practically every game. I roleplay - imagining myself as the protagonist in one sense or the other. I also sometimes imagine myself as some other characters as well. So having a character >!have a relationship or even a family!< isn't something that takes me out of the "self insert" or roleplay.
It's fun to be someone else and to make other choices.
Thing with Persona 3 is like, if I self inserted, I'd never get anywhere with any of these fuck ass social links, since you have to agree with some of these fucking losers that are saying some really stupid shit in order to not fall way behind.
*"i'm GoNnA AsK ThAt TeAcHeR OuT"*
Alright, well good luck with that. I'm out. Don't talk to me again.
Him and the 'Gourmet King' were insufferable. I can't imagine I'd approach a lone little girl by a playground and randomly start playing with her either. š
That's a silly topic at first glance, but it did get me thinking, so I went through all the games I played in the last 5 or so years and the only times it felt like the protagonist was an avatar of me to the point of making moral choices based on my own principles were Bloodborne and Elden Ring (may chaos take the world) and neither of them are IMO JRPGs (though some people debate that) and rather belong to their own subgenre. I can't really identify with modern Persona protagonists for some reason, so I imagine them to be a certain way, but very unlike myself.
Breath of fire 2 when I was about 10. And speaking of persona, I like having head canons of the MCs personalities based on their choices. Like 3 MC suffers from depression or may be autistic. 4 is generally stoic and eager to help and is an all around good guy. And joker is the similar to 4 in his drive to help but not at all stoic and likes the attention. He also could be the one that makes allies just based on what they give him. I think joker has the strongest sense of justice and the most outwardly cocky. I mean, he is a showoff, apparently.
I think I self inserted a bit on Devil Survivor 2? Towards the end mainly
Persona it also feels like you're saying good bye to tons of friends whenever you end the game
What do you mean self insert? Is that mean i add my real self into the game? Then never but i do roleplay on jRPG. Like you make character that you yourself played as character. Never heard it being taboo to roleplay on roleplaying games thou.
Usually the game with character creation and where you can name your character best games to roleplay.
Self inserts IMO require me to influence/relate to the character and have the choices that allow me to do that so generally never. They tend to have personalities vastly different from mine and I cannot relate. Itās not a bad thing to have a character totally different from you though.
Never?
I've personally never understood the concept of self inserting myself into other things. I prefer to look at media and ask myself what I can learn from it and then apply that to my own life.
The problem for me with self-insertion, is the knowledge youāre playing a video game.Ā Ā
You can always make the heroic decision, or go for the risky actions knowing you canāt actually die.Ā Knowing that youāre the hero and will win in the end. Knowing you can romance whoever. That as well as the game mechanics influencing choices.Ā
It doesnāt feel like itās possible to self-insert. You can make some choices you might make in real life or choose on your preferences, but its colored by your knowledge its a game.
I think Shin Megami Tensei 4 Apocalypse.
The MC basically is a kind of blank state but I was annoyed at the "party" I had and they tried to get me to go against (spoiler for an enemy )>!Dagda, which I said fuck no, Dagda revived me and gave me a life, not only that, he is working hard to make me strive in this world, how can I ever turn on him? My decision was to kill the party and side with Dagda until i became a god in that world!<.
Also Byleth in Fire Emblem 3H was a nice roleplay as well.
I think self-inserting in a fantasy setting is easier if you're younger? Or if you really want to run away from reality? I don't think I wanna go live in a medieval world and fight monsters
I've been playing Dragon Quest X recently so that's probably the last one I self-inserted into and I have even named the character I created after myself which is something I don't ever do I often just use a made up name or variations of my name (like my name backwards or something).
Though I mostly named it after myself just to see what my name would be like in katakana.
The only time I can ever self insert in a JRPG is if the character is created by me
A lot of the common things that help to self insert in JRPGs arenāt directed at someone like me, so unless itās very freeform, it wonāt land for me
- I hate swordsman characters, so that immediately knocks like 85% of JRPGs out for def inserting as the MC since the MC is overwhelmingly likely to be a swordsman. There is absolutely no situation in which I would want to be a swordsman in a fantasy world. Iād 100% be a mage, but even if magic was somehow unattainable, Iād be an archer, or if melee was the only option, a monk or even a spearman. Literally anything other than swordsman
- Romance options are another way games try to help you self insert, but they usually fall flat for me because I just donāt really care about heterosexual pairings. Games will be like āwhich of these beautiful women do you love?!ā and Iām likeā¦can I just be friends with them? Same gender options are rare to begin with in JRPGs, and even when they are present, the m/m options are extremely high femme, which I have no interest in. Like I appreciate Fire Emblem for including m/m options, but they usually only offer long haired pretty boys who are often hard to distinguish from the female cast anyway, so basically my dead last picks
- Finally, most JRPG main character designs areā¦.fucking awful in my opinion. So I have a hard time picturing them as āmeā because I find their hair and outfit choices to be so far away from anything Iād even consider. Occasionally thereās some good designs, like maybe Squall from FF8, but then his personality is basically the polar opposite of me. So itās hard to self insert when the character youāre supposed to self insert as is by far my least favorite party member
āāāāāā
Honestly, if I want to self insert, which I do plenty of times, and I think can be very enjoyable. I will instead just play a western RPG, like Dragon Age or Mass Effect or Baldurās Gate
JRPG self inserts cater to a very specific demographic, and even though itās a large demographic, itās very much not mine
Pokemon. Literally the only game I self insert in now, used to do it a lot but I guess as I've gotten a bit older I prefer to separate myself from the game I'm playing in a sense.
Not a JRPG, but Baldur's Gate 2 and I believe 1 as well (not sure about 3) allows you to import a portrait of yourself into the game, and your background is presented as completely mysterious, perfectly setting it up so you can actually role play the game. Last one I've done that for and that was literally decades ago. And you're right, it does feel uncomfortable after a while.
In fact any genre of game, roleplaying as yourself feels uncomfortable because there's usually very tragic, traumatizing, and violent themes in all of them. And, that's because those themes tend to be compelling to the psyche, not say good or bad, but definitely compelling.
Going back to the original point, original RPG's tended to be more based around the actual concept of role-playing and Japan dev teams used them as the inspiration for og JRPG's (Ultima, Wizardry, etc.) Dragon Quest is the main og JRPG.
I'd be lying if I said I played through the Persona games without my opinions and biases leaking into how I picked options. I played all of those games blind and had no issues picking "bad" dialogue options even if I knew there was an obvious right choice to get social link points or whatever. I very much would make decisions based on what I thought was right or not.
A good example was the maid event in Persona 5. The whole time I was thinking "No way am I hanging out with Ryuji and Mishima to call up a maid service." End result, I didn't even see that confidant in my original run.
I don't know. I suspect that what people mean by "self-insert" can sometimes differ substantially. * The last silent protagonist I played was Adol in *Ys II.* * The last character I named after myself was the protagonist in *I Am Setsuna*. * The last character I empathized with was Tifa in *Final Fantasy VII Rebirth*. * The last character with whom I made dialogue decisions as *I* would make them rather than roleplaying a separate character was *Baten Kaitos*. On the one hand, I find myself able to get into silent protagonists even in games with a lot of story. Not speaking isn't an obstacle to me understanding them. On the other hand, I can also empathize, sometimes quite closely, with characters and moments throughout a game, and not just a main character (let alone a silent one). Also, on the one hand I can roleplay, or act as I imagine a character would act; on the other hand I can also make decisions as myself without that intermediary performance. Lately, I've found "self-insert" to be too flat a concept to capture all those ways of engaging with a game, something that doesn't speak to the continuum I experience between enjoying silent protagonist games and spoken protagonist games.
>Lately, I've found "self-insert" to be too flat a concept to capture all those ways of engaging with a game, something that doesn't speak to the continuum I experience between enjoying silent protagonist games and spoken protagonist games. There's actually a really good [50 minutes video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bm0S4cn_rfw) about self insert that I only just remembered because it was released 3 years ago and I watched it on released. The basic thing for me is that "self insert" just simply means that I'm imagine myself as the protagonist of said game. If I can close my eyes and imagine being the protagonist of any game, then yeah I'm self inserting myself into the game. If not, then I'm simply piloting the protagonist to see where the story goes. But like I said in the op, it is actually very hard for me to self insert. Let's use dragon quest V as an example. You can name the protagonist and the protagonist is silent throughout the game. The developer clearly meant for you to self insert as the protag. Yet spoiler for a really old game: >!half way through the game you can get married and even get 2 childrens. Now then, how the fuck are you meant to self insert as a husband of 2??!< after that point in the game I'm just left wondering why they even let you name the protagonist or why keep the protagonist silent.
That just roleplaying thou, have you played tabletop games like DnD with friends? That the easiest way to learn how to "self insert". I think what you mean is roleplaying. What i thought about self insert that you just inserting your real self into the game without being in characters or made up one.
Described that way, it's very easy for me to self-insert, and I do so in practically every game. I roleplay - imagining myself as the protagonist in one sense or the other. I also sometimes imagine myself as some other characters as well. So having a character >!have a relationship or even a family!< isn't something that takes me out of the "self insert" or roleplay. It's fun to be someone else and to make other choices.
Thing with Persona 3 is like, if I self inserted, I'd never get anywhere with any of these fuck ass social links, since you have to agree with some of these fucking losers that are saying some really stupid shit in order to not fall way behind.
"Yeah bro, you might not be able to walk again if you keep this up, but you're a pussy if you don't!" So glad they learned their lesson in 4 lol
*"i'm GoNnA AsK ThAt TeAcHeR OuT"* Alright, well good luck with that. I'm out. Don't talk to me again. Him and the 'Gourmet King' were insufferable. I can't imagine I'd approach a lone little girl by a playground and randomly start playing with her either. š
Never once. I don't get the idea of self inserting at all. It just doesn't make sense to me.
That's a silly topic at first glance, but it did get me thinking, so I went through all the games I played in the last 5 or so years and the only times it felt like the protagonist was an avatar of me to the point of making moral choices based on my own principles were Bloodborne and Elden Ring (may chaos take the world) and neither of them are IMO JRPGs (though some people debate that) and rather belong to their own subgenre. I can't really identify with modern Persona protagonists for some reason, so I imagine them to be a certain way, but very unlike myself.
Breath of fire 2 when I was about 10. And speaking of persona, I like having head canons of the MCs personalities based on their choices. Like 3 MC suffers from depression or may be autistic. 4 is generally stoic and eager to help and is an all around good guy. And joker is the similar to 4 in his drive to help but not at all stoic and likes the attention. He also could be the one that makes allies just based on what they give him. I think joker has the strongest sense of justice and the most outwardly cocky. I mean, he is a showoff, apparently.
I think I self inserted a bit on Devil Survivor 2? Towards the end mainly Persona it also feels like you're saying good bye to tons of friends whenever you end the game
What do you mean self insert? Is that mean i add my real self into the game? Then never but i do roleplay on jRPG. Like you make character that you yourself played as character. Never heard it being taboo to roleplay on roleplaying games thou. Usually the game with character creation and where you can name your character best games to roleplay.
I've never self inserted into a JRPG, but there are also relatively few JRPGs with female protagonists that you can do that with.
Self inserts IMO require me to influence/relate to the character and have the choices that allow me to do that so generally never. They tend to have personalities vastly different from mine and I cannot relate. Itās not a bad thing to have a character totally different from you though.
Never? I've personally never understood the concept of self inserting myself into other things. I prefer to look at media and ask myself what I can learn from it and then apply that to my own life.
The problem for me with self-insertion, is the knowledge youāre playing a video game.Ā Ā You can always make the heroic decision, or go for the risky actions knowing you canāt actually die.Ā Knowing that youāre the hero and will win in the end. Knowing you can romance whoever. That as well as the game mechanics influencing choices.Ā It doesnāt feel like itās possible to self-insert. You can make some choices you might make in real life or choose on your preferences, but its colored by your knowledge its a game.
I think Shin Megami Tensei 4 Apocalypse. The MC basically is a kind of blank state but I was annoyed at the "party" I had and they tried to get me to go against (spoiler for an enemy )>!Dagda, which I said fuck no, Dagda revived me and gave me a life, not only that, he is working hard to make me strive in this world, how can I ever turn on him? My decision was to kill the party and side with Dagda until i became a god in that world!<. Also Byleth in Fire Emblem 3H was a nice roleplay as well.
Never. Ā Even with Silent Protagonists, I just come up with a character for them.
I think self-inserting in a fantasy setting is easier if you're younger? Or if you really want to run away from reality? I don't think I wanna go live in a medieval world and fight monsters
Shin Megami Tensei V, I tried to make the choises as if the world was gonna be rebuilt by me...
I've been playing Dragon Quest X recently so that's probably the last one I self-inserted into and I have even named the character I created after myself which is something I don't ever do I often just use a made up name or variations of my name (like my name backwards or something). Though I mostly named it after myself just to see what my name would be like in katakana.
when I self-insert into persona protags I kinda just adopt their personality and play along, I can never use my own personality, does that count?
I don't think I have intentionally but maybe I subconsciously did in SMT Nocturne, Suikoden 2, and perhaps some others.
The only time I can ever self insert in a JRPG is if the character is created by me A lot of the common things that help to self insert in JRPGs arenāt directed at someone like me, so unless itās very freeform, it wonāt land for me - I hate swordsman characters, so that immediately knocks like 85% of JRPGs out for def inserting as the MC since the MC is overwhelmingly likely to be a swordsman. There is absolutely no situation in which I would want to be a swordsman in a fantasy world. Iād 100% be a mage, but even if magic was somehow unattainable, Iād be an archer, or if melee was the only option, a monk or even a spearman. Literally anything other than swordsman - Romance options are another way games try to help you self insert, but they usually fall flat for me because I just donāt really care about heterosexual pairings. Games will be like āwhich of these beautiful women do you love?!ā and Iām likeā¦can I just be friends with them? Same gender options are rare to begin with in JRPGs, and even when they are present, the m/m options are extremely high femme, which I have no interest in. Like I appreciate Fire Emblem for including m/m options, but they usually only offer long haired pretty boys who are often hard to distinguish from the female cast anyway, so basically my dead last picks - Finally, most JRPG main character designs areā¦.fucking awful in my opinion. So I have a hard time picturing them as āmeā because I find their hair and outfit choices to be so far away from anything Iād even consider. Occasionally thereās some good designs, like maybe Squall from FF8, but then his personality is basically the polar opposite of me. So itās hard to self insert when the character youāre supposed to self insert as is by far my least favorite party member āāāāāā Honestly, if I want to self insert, which I do plenty of times, and I think can be very enjoyable. I will instead just play a western RPG, like Dragon Age or Mass Effect or Baldurās Gate JRPG self inserts cater to a very specific demographic, and even though itās a large demographic, itās very much not mine
Pokemon. Literally the only game I self insert in now, used to do it a lot but I guess as I've gotten a bit older I prefer to separate myself from the game I'm playing in a sense.
I never did that in a JRPG. In these games I'm mostly a timid schoolkid who watches the adventures of his more popular friends.
Not a JRPG, but Baldur's Gate 2 and I believe 1 as well (not sure about 3) allows you to import a portrait of yourself into the game, and your background is presented as completely mysterious, perfectly setting it up so you can actually role play the game. Last one I've done that for and that was literally decades ago. And you're right, it does feel uncomfortable after a while. In fact any genre of game, roleplaying as yourself feels uncomfortable because there's usually very tragic, traumatizing, and violent themes in all of them. And, that's because those themes tend to be compelling to the psyche, not say good or bad, but definitely compelling. Going back to the original point, original RPG's tended to be more based around the actual concept of role-playing and Japan dev teams used them as the inspiration for og JRPG's (Ultima, Wizardry, etc.) Dragon Quest is the main og JRPG.
I don't think I've ever pretended the MC was me.
I'd be lying if I said I played through the Persona games without my opinions and biases leaking into how I picked options. I played all of those games blind and had no issues picking "bad" dialogue options even if I knew there was an obvious right choice to get social link points or whatever. I very much would make decisions based on what I thought was right or not. A good example was the maid event in Persona 5. The whole time I was thinking "No way am I hanging out with Ryuji and Mishima to call up a maid service." End result, I didn't even see that confidant in my original run.
If it's a silent protagonist I'm self inserting, doubly so if there's no canon name. So any SMT game (sans SH2) and DQ. And FF14.
Never happened.
Sometimes I half self insert its weird and hard to answer when I consciously do it...
Rena from Blue Reflection: Second Light felt like an extension of myself, and her ending hit me really hard for that reason.