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After a week's hiatus due to me getting sick as balls, The CaT Gazette is back, baby! Not much else is, because of the aforementioned being sick as balls, but work on my projects will start to pick up again in the near future.

We're currently voting on the future of Support Group. Please make sure to give your vote on this matter.

The third Chain of Gifts has officially begun!

I've started making badge art for pages that are fairly iconic but have art too outdated to be used on badges. This should open up a lot of freedom for pages that can be featured on badges, so be sure to bring up anything that comes to mind, and make sure to check out the list of badges that still need replacing.

Which one will end first

The school year or my life

That is the question

Lesson 5: Self-Insert OCs

This is admittedly more of a problem for stories created when "[Name] 10" series were all the rage, but they still pop up on the wiki from time to time, and there's really quite a bit of misinformation about the subject despite how straightforward it seems.

Generally speaking, a self-insert OC is usually little more than a vehicle for the author's own fantasies and daydreams. While there's nothing wrong with fantasy escapism, relying solely on the idea of escapism to engage your audience, especially when there are a million characters just like yours out there...doesn't work very well, to say the least.

Now, contrary to popular belief, the idea of a self-insert OC isn't exclusively bad and can actually be pulled off well...assuming the author knows how. Considering that the majority of people jump right from using bad self-inserts to hating the idea altogether, these examples are fairly rare, if not necessarily hard to pull off.

When using yourself as a basis for your character, your goal should be to make your character realistic instead of idealized. Idealized self-inserts are boring Mary Sue-ass shits that you might as well toss in your local dumpster fire. Realistic self-inserts will be more interesting because they represent an actual person, and actual people are generally more relatable than idealized cardboard cutouts.

To create a realistic self-insert, you should give your character your flaws as well as your strengths. This can be difficult if you're not one for introspection, but all you really have to do in that scenario is ask around. I'm sure everyone around you will be able to point out plenty of crappy things about your personality.

Of course, there are ways to make self-inserts that are good while still not being realistic persay. A lot of these methods should be examined on a case-by-case basis, but my personal favorite type of unrealistic self-insert is the Self-Parody.

Self-Parodies are characters that take their creator's faults and eccentricities and dial them up to eleven. For examples on this wiki, there's Sol Masquerade, whose entire character motivation is getting some tail, and CaT (Character), who's basically a slightly moronic sociopath who screws with people to entertain himself. These characters get away with not being realistic by being played for comedy, a genre which can blatantly disregard realism for the sake of a joke.

To reiterate, having a self-insert isn't always a bad thing; hell, it can even be downright good as long as you do it correctly.

Unfortunately, most of you cannot do it correctly, and should probably just stick to writing characters unrelated to yourselves.



Art Corner

N/A Movie Designs=

I have made so much art over this past week for the Not Applicable recap movie that trying to tab it all just wouldn't be practical. As such, here's a gallery for it. Divara Redesign
 * -|Divara=

By ChromastoneandTabby

This is like design number four for this character because I just cannot get her appearance down correctly for the life of me. Nova S3 Redesign
 * -|Nova=

By ChromastoneandTabby

The old Season 3 design for Nova had weird proportions, so I went and redid it. Pyros Redesign
 * -|Pyros=

By ChromastoneandTabby

New art for the character Pyros since the old art was shite.

Nothing to report this time around.

Well, that's it for this Sunday, folks. I hope you enjoyed the forty-ninth issue of The CaT Gazette, and I'll see you next week! Feedback and support are appreciated!