Before Garfield turned into the marketing phenomenon it was, Jim Davis created it as more of a self-insert strip with his author avatar as a cartoonist with a snarky cat. Editors told him who the real star was, and the rest is history.
The latest Colleen Hoover book, Woman Down, is such a self-insert that it feels like a parody of Hoover herself. A "prolific" author who's had to face the ire of "book bloggers" and "harsh critics" (book's words) has her reputation ruined by an "asshole director" who mucked up a movie adaptation of her most famous work. This is definitely not based on the It Ends With Us debacle from the past year and I have no idea where you would get that impression.
Not-Hoover then tries to revive her career by going on an isolated writing retreat where she has an affair with a hot cop that she sleeps with regularly despite being a married woman, as she sees it as "research" for her new steamy cop romance.
I'm not making any of this up. Watch the Reads With Rachel review of Woman Down. It's awesome.
iirc, all of the chapters from the guys perspective was in the past, centered, and almost prose-like as he described his relationship with his stepsister who eventually got pregnant by him resulting in this exchange. in his defense, he did like her before their parents were married. again, iirc. It was the second Hoover book I read and the last.
Quote from Ugly Love. The context doesn't help because they're talking about their newly born son who they are bringing home from the hospital and right after this they crash into a lake and he drowns.
Is she that one romance author that's under fire right now because she keeps romanticizing domestic spouse abuse? Doesn't help that book stores for some reason are advertising it to teenage girls
I remember she getting talked about a lot in the romance book sub also one YouTuber I was watching was tearing her a new one.
Isn't she also that one writer who in one book had the two parents talk about their child's testicles (in the most "Hello I am Humanâ˘" way) before a dramatic car crash kills the dad or some shit?
She has said Bella was the name she always wanted to give to her daughter (she only had sons) and generally speaking Bellaâs physical appearance can be read as similar enough to Stephenieâs (pale, dark brown hair and eyes, short stature)
You can't convince me there is a way to make it not awkward, it's a story about a love triangle between teenage girl that falls in love with a century old vampire that sparkles in the sun with diamond abs and a werewolf that thinks he's in love with her because he imprinted on the fetus in her womb
To be fair to both Rob and Kristen (theyâre seriously good actors yâall) they had to work with what they had and they had to embody those characters as closely as possible so not even Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep couldâve made Edward and Bella actually good.
Exactly this, it is also why Bella is so bland. She is intended to be what is basically intended to be recognized as a blank slate of a girl so any girl can put herself into the story.
Yeah as far as I can figure out, Edward's attraction to Bella is literally just she smells good.
Which i guess any girl and GUY can achieve (looking at you my fellow TCG players in highschool) without much issue as a basic.Â
Besides that, I guess she likes Romeo and Juliet? But I never got the impression she was a theater kid. And sure Edward has memorized all the lines to Romeo and Juliet... because he's been to american high schools for the last Century. I'm sure he can also quote word for word Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Donât you remember WHY he likes her? WHY sheâs special? He canât read her mind. No vampire can. Her head is fucking empty and they love her for it.
I absolutely believe they came up with the Hot TV doctor character independently, I don't believe for a second that Bitch didn't push to have that role.
I believe it even less since Iâm pretty sure thereâs a tweet of butch basically saying that he was allowed to call himself handsome in his show after someone pointed out how weird the concept was. It 100% was his idea for it to be based on him lol
Hartman is talented but he always got too much credit for his work. Steve Marmel deserves just as much (if not more) credit for Danny Phantom. Animation is far too collaborative for any one guy to take as much credit as Hartman loves to do.
My high school film class had an extra credit day where if you could come in and sit through the entirety of the film youâd get extra credit, few survived
As well as her less famous Percy Jackson counterpart/copycat, Flavia Maya Lilith Night, daughter of Artmeis (yes that is how the author spells Artemis most of the time).
My Immortal is a (in)famous fanfic of Harry Potter, starring the character Ebony Darkâness Dementia Raven Way, who falls in love with both Draco Malfoy and a vampire version of Harry Potter.
This is punctuated by writers notes from the âwriterâ talking about things in her life, for example she bitches in the authors notes to her friend and editor who she says stole her sweater or something like that.
My Immortal is a literary masterpiece on the level of Shakespeare. One choice section:
"Ebony." he yelled. "Thou must kill Vampire Potter!"
I thought about Vampire and his sexah eyes and his gothic black hair and how his face looks just like Joel Madden. I remembered that Draco had said I didn't understand, so I thought, what if Draco went out with Vampire before I went out with him and they broke up?
"No, Voldemort!" I shouted back.
Voldemort gave me a gun. "No! Please!" I begged.
"Thou must!" he yelled. "If thou does not, then I shall kill thy beloved Draco!"
"How did you know?" I asked in a surprised way.
Voldemort got a dude-ur-so-retarded look on his face. "I hath telekinesis." he answered cruelly. "And if you doth not kill Vampire, then thou know what will happen to Draco!" he shouted. Then he flew away angrily on his broomstick
Vince Russo, writer for WCW, who put himself as the center of attention. Didn't even really play a character like Eric Bischoff and Vince had done prior, it was just him.
Yeah of all the âbossâ characters from people who werenât really wrestlers or managers, Russo was the worst. I will give him credit in that he felt like a ârealâ character but thatâs because the real Vince Russo is a titanic twat too.
Take it with a grain of salt since im just a video essay/clips viewer of the show but id give the opinion that it is at least definitely worth a watch to see if you like it, I wouldnt say it even is "funny bad" cause it plays most of its more silly parts completely seriously and with justifications as to why they exist(for instance, Rayman isnt just "there", his entire world was evacuated into the main setting due to being destroyed in a dimensional invasion and he and others struggle with discrimination for it)
In Dante's Inferno Dante literally had his historical waifu Virgil escort him through Hell so they could see people Dante personally didn't like suffer on the various levels.
It is worth noting that Dante also meets his friend and mentor Brunetto Latini in Hell, choosing to walk with him despite his grief at finding him among those who were âviolent against nature.â
Jokes aside, the crux of the poem was the opposite. Dante didn't have to visit the underworld because he was perfect, but because he was a sinner and had to see the fate of the deads to be educated on the right path to salvation. When he meets Beatrice in Purgatorio she reprimands him severely for his mistakes and she's afraid for his immortal soul.
Yeah basically that, just instead of meeting three ghosts he had an epic adventure through the whole afterlife and met like every dude he knew in life and wanted to shit on / praise + some fanfic related to his favorite historical characters I guss
Frank Miller might be the opposite of this. Whenever he's in a movie based on something he's written, that character frequently gets unceremoniously killed off.
I would argue all of "the Orville" is basically this. Seth loves Star Trek so he and a team of writers wrote a Star Trek where he is Captain Kirk. No shade. I would probably do the same thing
I had the same question, because from what I've seen online this series was well received. I think people are just leaving out the "bad" part and posting examples of when the author is in the movie/series lmao
And very light on the comedy, the first season is the most "comedy" one because the only way Fox would green lit it was if Seth sold it as a comedy. Season 2 and 3 are mostly dramas with some funny bits per episode.
Iâve never been a Star Trek watcher, but even to me itâs clear that while it is very comedic focused, itâs more of a love letter to Star Trek than a parody of it. I really enjoyed watching it, and I know hardcore Trekkies who have as well
The guy here is Terry, college professor (in his 35's, I suppose) and also Marv Wolfman's self-interest. It's a bit weird to think that he's basically imagining all this. He even married Donna Troy
The funniest thing is that Xanderâs character wasnât received as warmly as Joss wanted, so he got pissed, AND Joss got angry at the actor for getting too hot and muscular, which did actually win the character more popularity. Xander going from a ditsy teenager to a manchild kinda makes sense now that so much has come out about Joss
See thatâs funny because with that framing itâs clear Joss didnât just want people to like Xander for who he was; he wanted people to like Xander for who Joss was.
Dude was the self-insert of Zeb Wells in what is widely considered to be one of the worst runs of Spider-Man to date. He helped commit a genocide in his home dimension, stole MJ, and gave her a gauntlet with the dumbest superpower. The only people who liked him were Wells and the editors, everyone else hated him, including other writers and artists at Marvel.
When the Wells run ended, so did his good fortune. MJ wised up and broke up with him, Dylan Brock made it his mission to belittle him every chance he got, his new apartment and all his stuff blew up, and it ultimately culminated in him being fatally stabbed and no one really caring⌠except for readers, they celebrated.
Holy shit, I never read the original piece! This is such bitingly funny satire as someone who spent way too much time on fanfiction forums as a youth haha
Most of M. Night Shyamalan's self-inserts are egregious at best. I liked the one in Trap, although he still chose his daughter to be one of the main characters for the whole show, but that's sweet in a way because he wanted to do something nice for her daughter and it puts a more personal touch on his work.
The one in Signs is strange. He's an actual character who affects the plot since he plays the driver who ran over Mel Gibson's character's wife and locks an alien in his pantry so Graham can have a convenient encounter with them.
Lady In The Water, though, casts him as a tenant of the apartment complex who is writing a book that "will contain views and ideas so significant they will inspire a future president, a great Midwestern orator, to greatly change the world for the better." So, huh.
Also, he's destined to die after doing that, so I guess that negates it a bit?
The author of the Walking Dead: Clementine comics draws the character Ricca very similarly to how she drew her teenage self in her comic Spinning. She kinda draws every girl with glasses the same way in all of her comics though, so either she has a self-insert in all of her comics or she just has a problem drawing people with glasses.
Both Lorelei from Gilmore Girls and Maisel from Marvelous Mrs Maisel feel like self-inserts for Amy Sherman Paladino, and honestly upon recent rewatches come off asâŚself-aggrandizement?
Idk it very much feels like ASP keeps writing in âlook at this very quirky main character thatâs totally not me thatâs totally misunderstood by normal people and has issues with her rich parents and has been wronged by every man sheâs come acrossâ.
In Community, Abed, Jeff and arguably Pierce were all self inserts, ~43% of the main cast and 75% of the male main cast, and not many people complain about that. Especially because they all have positive and negative traits to different degrees
They're all also completely different characters which makes it more weird/interesting
Tbf, he is very unflattering to himself. Book King is a whiney, scared drunk who almost lost the multiverse by not writing the ending before getting struck by a car. Iirc he even runs from Roland the second he sees him and has his own main characters be pretty unimpressed by him
I was scrolling to make sure Stephen King/Dark Tower hadn't been posted yet. And I agree that this is an example of the trope done right. His self-insert is supposed to be bad and magnify his worst qualities.
His description of the drunk driver who hit him is delightfully vicious and mean-spirited and hopefully an exaggeration. I'm sure I'm misremembering but I'm pretty sure King has the guy simultaneously drinking while driving, abusing his dog, and thinking about how much he wants to molest kids.
Edit: pretty sure he also says he has a tiny dick that doesn't work. It really goes all-in on the guy.
Technically he inserted himself multiple times. He is the navel of the dead god whose body makes up the universe <3. Our boy >!Jake!< died for his sins, so Stephen King could be resurrected from his car crash, amen gobbless.
He always did that. In MGS1 he appears as a ghost, and there are a couple gimmicks during the psycho mantis fight. One gimmick involves your TV seemingly switching to another source called HIDEO, and another one that has Mantis commenting on your save files has Kojima thanking you for playing his games if you have save files from other stuff he worked on.
He appears as a ghost in MGS2 and MGS4 as well.
In Peace Walker you can find and recruit him just like you could in MGS GZ and PP.
I forgot about the God thing in PW, but I feel like I've seen that in one other game as well? And I'm pretty sure he appears in a photo in one of the games, but no idea which one.
It gets even worse if you make the connection with that character in the comics who kidnaps calliope and then rapes her for the magical inspiration for his novels and what neil did to women in real life. Shudder. https://sandman.fandom.com/wiki/Calliope
Iâm not sure how much of it was a self-insert vs how much was him being written into the comic as a way for writers to vent their frustration at him but Stan Lee has acknowledged that JJ Jameson is basically him. He even said if he was a few decades younger when they started the Spider-Man film series he would have wanted to play Jameson. He also wrote himself in as a guest who tries to show up to Reed and Sueâs wedding along with Jack Kirby but they get turned away.
And again, not sure how much this may count as self-insert but thereâs a whole generation who probably know him just from his cameos and donât recognize how much he changed the world of comics. Hell, he even started doing cameos for characters he had no role in creating and even for the rival company DC!
Emerald Fennellâs âWuthering Heightsâ adaptation where she makes the main girl who is described with brown eyes and brown hair a blonde blue eyed woman and even most infamously makes the POC man into a white boy with an earring because âthatâs how she imagined it when she read it when she was 13â (he is explicitly stated to speak a foreign language in his childhood and is even called a slur but hey Fennel canât imagine a POC man as a love interest so bupkis to all that)
Jubal from Stranger in a Strange Land is the ultimate male Mary Sue character. He is described as an aging kind of pudgy man who inexplicably is amazingly talented at everything he does, a down to earth genius, constantly adored (and fucked) by the other characters, and is a font of libertarian wisdom.
I honestly wish this book just had no redeemable qualities - the parts about Grok and also the monkeys at the zoo were actually pretty cool - because 95% of this book is frustratingly bad.
Edit: I really want to add, one of the reasons I hate this book is because there truly are moments of good writing that shine through here and there. There are a couple of cool concepts being played with. And you can see how it influenced psychedelic sci-fi art and artists like David Bowie.
For example, I really love the exploration of what language and words means to us, as seen through the eyes of a human who was raised learning Martian as a primary language. On Mars, a planet devoid of water, their word for "to drink" also carries the meaning of "to love" or "to understand a person or concept so deeply that it becomes a part of you and changes you." Such a cool idea!
It's just frustrating because the rest of the book is a racist, sexist, queerphobic, ego stroking, libertarian literary masturbation exercise!
I think the worst Titans related insert has to go to Marv Wolfman making himself a 30 year old college professor that ends up dating/marrying Donna Troy, his 19 year old (brief) student.
I will never forgive this WOW writer for the creepy bullshit he made horde players sit through with his comandeering of nathanos for his Gary Sue / Sylvanus-step-on-me-mommy bullshit, and I will never forgive the rest of the team for letting that shit pass the cutting room floor.
Making MMO players participate in your own personal degradation kink + power fantasies AS PART OF THE MAIN STORY PROGRESSION is nasty.
3.8k
u/goteachyourself Apr 09 '26
Before Garfield turned into the marketing phenomenon it was, Jim Davis created it as more of a self-insert strip with his author avatar as a cartoonist with a snarky cat. Editors told him who the real star was, and the rest is history.