Before I begin, let me say that most of what I'm going to write, if not all of it, is squarely based on opinion. You don't have to like it or agree with it. All I'm asking the reader to do is consider what I'm writing, and to hold off judgments until the end of the rant.

I've written a Gamer story before - "The Confusion and the Clarity". Don't read it. It's not something I'm very proud of, and if I cared enough for the characters and world enough, I would have rewritten it instead of leaving it up for adoption. Some of the issues I'll be taking note of in this piece will be mistakes I made. This is the "Oh Shit, I Messed Up Badly" parts that I prefer didn't exist. Others are elements I've noticed in other stories that really tick me the wrong way.

I'll be referencing a fic called "Naruto: Ramen Days" by Rathanael, which was my gateway fic into the world of Gamer fanfiction. Even after all these years, it still holds up beautifully. Even though I don't like sharing my opinions (well, not enough to not make this piece), I feel morally obligated to recommend it to you. It's different from the cookie-cutter Gamer fic that's a dime a dozen nowadays.

I'll probably be talking about some newer fics, and sharing my like and dislike for them. I'm not interested in hearing how I'm right or wrong in my opinion, or how I've interpreted a fic the wrong way. We all have our own point of view, so I probably won't see the same things in a fic that you will. Many of the fics I talk about will be ones that I enjoyed at first, and occasionally check back on to see if they are still redeemable in my eyes. I'm not trying to cause any beef, I just like to use them as examples.

Let's begin.

SI, OOC, and Mary Sue Protagonists

But that doesn't matter, in the end. A Self-Insert isn't defined by a different language, a different look, or even a different religion. A Self-Insert is marked by how close their decisions are to yours if you were plopped down into the world - if you literally inserted yourself into the world, body or not.

As a result of this, a large portion of the fics consists of reincarnation fics. The main character dies for some arbitrary reason (it never really matters long term) and is sent to a new world because heaven was full, or their life was secretly a video game or any number of arbitrary (again) reasons.

For a large portion of fics, this provides a handy way to a) take someone from the "normal" world a.k.a. our world and put him in a fantasy world and b) give them a solid backstory so that the plot can focus on the Gamer powers. While being annoyingly cliche at this point, it doesn't do any real harm. Remember kids, cliches aren't bad, they're just uninteresting and completely skippable.

For other fics, this means the character that miraculously gains the Gamer power through the value of being "the chosen one" suddenly has a complete personality shift. No, I don't mean "Gamer's Mind", which everybody just ripped off from Han-Jee-Han (from "The Gamer"). I mean that they suddenly start talking shit to everyone the author doesn't like, even if their relationship was completely different from before.

However, what I find most irritating is that nearly every person who becomes a Gamer is a veteran and knows how to exploit the system. The Gamer community knows how EXP works, how levels work, what grinding is, etc. They're immediately able to exploit and cheat the system to their advantage, and rarely make a mistake that costs them a lot farther down the line.

The Gamer's appeal, to me, is simply the structure of the whole thing. I like the panels, stats, abilities, etc. I also like how characters interact with these things for the first time, and how the Game will affect the plot as a whole.

The Gamer getting enough power to bulldoze through anything that doesn't have a canon counterpart is really annoying, because it weakens narrative tension. The character had yet to ever make a mistake or even find a serious obstacle that he hasn't adequately prepared for already. The Gamer is rarely, if ever, out of his depth, because he is always strong enough to figure a way out of his mess.

In the end, the Gamer never has to struggle, because he is too similar to us in that he knows the Game too well, and knows how to exploit it. The Gamer never has to experiment - they somehow instinctively know what grinding and farming are, even though they might have never played a video game in their life.

I'm looking at you, Naruto fans. The boy who never has played a game in his life, considering he has no friends and no consoles invented yet (as far as I know, video games only first came into the picture in the non-canon Crescent Moon Kingdom movie), somehow instantly masters the video game his life is based on and proceeds to kick ass.

Or Harry, who would have never played an RPG in his life. Remember - Dudley can't count to 37.

The characters effectively become the author in terms of in terms of how they play the game, and sometimes act like, or even are, the author.

Why is this bad?

It doesn't necessarily have to be, but to keep everything a non-SI has, the author would have to have incredible introspective skills, and the courage to face up to their own faults. More importantly, they would have to write themselves as being able to struggle, which is next to impossible for the incredible wish-fulfillment that is fanfiction. The author effectively becomes the most important person in the story of an SI, and in doing so ruins the narrative tension around them, as the author subconsciously doesn't want their darling avatar to take much hardship.

How does "Naruto: Ramen Days" (my favorite) handle this?

It handles it by having Naruto fail, over and over again, dying at least four times before Chapter 1. This effectively removes the plot armor, especially since (SPOILER ALERT! (I got it right this time!)), Naruto dies a couple more times (SPOILER ENDS HERE!). It also keeps Naruto's stupid character, having him puzzle out the mechanics of the game from day 1, rather than him already instinctively knowing it or being told it in a tutorial.

It handles the Sueness of an SI by simply making the Gamer, in this case, Naruto, fail over and over again. And while the protagonist's failure isn't the solution to success, at least some of is needed for any of the stakes to be believable in-universe.

Of course, like all cliches, the SI Mary Sue protagonist can be exaggerated and parodied for a positive effect. My favorite example of this - and the only parody Gamer fic I'm aware of - is michaelsuave's "The Adventures Of Harry Potter, the Video Game: Exploited". Harry basically goes full-on insane and starts exploiting the hell out of the video game he's living in. He spends what amounts to years simply bunny-hopping around Privet Drive to train stamina, simply because he can and he has all of the time in the world thanks to RPG time.

A concept, I must remind you, is practically non-existent in the Gamer fandom, despite its narrative potential.

The failure of the protagonist can be subtler as well. In Concept 101's "Harry Potter and the Game", Harry, despite following the initial steps to SI Suedom, soon finds himself facing psychological issues as well as antagonists that can fight as smart as he can. Concept 101's still writing, unlike the Ramen Days' permanent hiatus, so I won't spoil it beyond that.

"Son of Gato" by Sir Lucier Morningstar, though, holds this problem in spades, as does "Yami: The Gamer Kage" by I'mjusttryingtofindmyway. I was a fan of these stories until - to put it bluntly - things got too easy. Neither protagonist faced any problem they couldn't solve with a minimal amount of elbow grease, or in the case of "Son of Gato", a few well-placed words. Even with "Son of Gato"'s intelligence in its reverse-intrigue plot and "Yami: The Gamer Kage"'s raw creativity, I still couldn't find it in myself to stick to these stories.

The characters never went through any trials they couldn't succeed at. In "Yami: The Gamer Kage", the main character Yami manages to nearly kill Orochimaru, succeeding only six months later, as well as gain the Sharingan, Mokuton and more bloodline limits (at the age of 12?). In the grimdark "Son of Gato", Junior's growing Empire has yet to face any opposition that can actually do any harm to it, especially with Junior killing off anyone that can be a threat and tricking anyone gullible enough otherwise. After a while, if it isn't your guilty pleasure or anything, any sort of dramatic stakes lower, even with the authors making token efforts to convince the audience otherwise.

The point is, show the protagonist to be fallible, show them struggle, show them be wrong in their theories about the game, anything! Just please don't have them bulldoze everything in their plan with some rad skills and/or sweet plans. It's fun until you realize that the protagonist didn't deserve any of his abilities, at all.

Now we go back to my problems. To clarify, Shichi (in my story) was soon taking on opponent after opponent with ease. Sure, he would run if the opponent was too much for him, but as he got stronger and stronger it slowly started occurring less and less. He was approaching the level of the protagonist and antagonist and would surpass them by miles by the time the climactic showdown came around. I tried to introduce a new villain at the last minute, but the damage was already done.

Given the amount of chronological time between battles in Reborn, a constant source of training would make him miles stronger than anyone in-universe could be rather quickly. It would work in Naruto, perhaps, but not in the universe I was writing.

As some advice, pace the story structure to match that of canon if you are going to stick by canon. Reborn's canon pacing is much slower than that I was writing, so I naturally came into some issues when I had eight more months that I had no idea what to do with, as he was at the level he needed to be to work in the story.

But I digress. While I'd love to blabber on and on about the power scaling in my fic, that's not what I'm focusing on (mostly).

OOC protagonists are abundant in the Gamer genre. Oh sure, it's a 70-30 split, but the point of the matter is that many of the protagonists become radically different shortly after gaining their gamer power. Sometimes this is a contrast that you can't help but notice. Naruto, the stubborn outgoing chatty brat, suddenly not talking to anyone after a couple of days? Harry Potter, the hurt but kind boy, suddenly swearing like a sailor? Jaune suddenly gaining enough conversational ability to be popular with the rest of Beacon barring Cardin (never mind he's only a secondary character in canon) without any Charisma changes? Pardon my disbelief.

It's more a pet peeve than anything, but I think that if you change a character's starting personality in a fanfiction, you should have a damn good reason for it.

Advice

That's my main problem with most Gamer fics nowadays, in a nutshell. While there are other annoyances, in a nutshell, it's mostly the characterization of the protagonist, as well as the characterization of the world. Those are things that tend to irritate me.

However, the reasons above were only part of the reason I abandoned my Gamer fic. There are things I learned while writing my fic that I should do. A lot of that was proper characterization, what I said above. More than that, however, I learned that there were things that I should not have done. I'll be describing some of them here. Maybe you won't have these problems - a lot of these problems were really, really stupid in hindsight.

1.) Match the pace of the growth of the protagonist to the pace of the story if you plan to follow canon.

Let me put it this way. If the protagonist - just some average, normal character - suddenly gets super cool powers left and right while it takes weeks or months for other characters to attain it, you run the risk of the protagonist getting too powerful for the story.

This ties in with the whole SI-Mary Sue thing above. It's okay for your character to have victories, lots of them in fact. A lot of good protagonists have a lot of victories. What isn't okay is when that's the only thing they can have. They can never do anything but win, which (unless you're really creative, which you're probably not) makes it hard for dramatic stakes to actually matter. It also severely limits your choices in the narrative - if the protagonist wins every conflict, you will never see what happens once they lose with the power.

Something like One-Punch Man works as a parody (can't stress this enough). Even when it takes itself somewhat seriously, it almost never focuses on Saitama, rather focusing on the villains or the able-to-lose heroes. There is an exception in the manga, but in that fight, the enemy doesn't go down in one hit so I would say that it's less of a parody there.

But I digress. Point is, if your main character is too strong, your story suffers, hence "too strong". Emphasis on the "too".

In Gamer stories, this can be the result of too many OP Perks and Abilities, but more often than not it's just that the gains that are given by simple EXP growth overwhelm any and everything. This is bad.

Of course, different types of games yield different EXP growth rates. Pokemon X & Y, for instance, allowed you to gain EXP much more easily than the other Pokemon games, allowing for an easier time.

Incorporating this into my advice, I suggest that you match the pace of the EXP growth - how fast the character grows strong - with the overall pace of the story, so instead of the protagonist (which I shall henceforth refer to as P) ruining all and any narrative tension by simply spamming Mizuki 120 Rasengans in the Graduation Exam due to Naruto training his chakra control early, there is always an element of danger and legitimate tension.

In my story, I had made the Game very, very powerful. It would have fit life in the Naruto world very well, perhaps. In the slow-paced world of KHR, however... well, Shichi was at the strength the story needed him to be 8 months too early. That gave 8 months with him doing nothing to gain strength, which in the Gamer world is... hard to pull off. Certainly outside the realm of my abilities. That, or I could have decided to throw out the narrative consequences and have him overpower nearly everybody else in the fic. That would have been worse.

If you want to keep an element of realism, keep in mind the rate at which the story is chugging along so that the strength of P is at the very least comparable to other characters.

Naruto: Ramen Days, which I'm sure you're sick of by now, manages to nip this in the bud within the first chapter. Unlike the MMORPG-esque Gamers that proliferate the community, the EXP growth in it is insanely low. Remember, Naruto died several times before the fic even properly started - no exponential growth here. This allows N: RD to achieve maximum potential, considering that it takes a lot of time before Naruto has even a modicum of strength.

Alternatively, you could speed up the pace of the story and growth of the other characters so they match P's. That tends to be a rare decision, however.

2.) Get rid of Observe and DON'T MICROMANAGE!

I can't stress enough how much trouble I went through in my fic because I micromanaged Shichi's abilities. Make sure the abilities of the Gamer are simple enough to keep track of, so you don't accidentally contradict yourself in later chapters.

When I first started my Gamer fanfic, I was naive and inexperienced. I thought it would be a piece of cake to handle all of the Skills, Stats, Traits (what I called Perks), etc. To compound my arrogance, I decided to make it as realistic as possible - the Game would keep track of everything that happened to Chishi and use it to increase a Skill or Stat.

Let's just say that by the end of the second chapter I was almost ready to call it quits. When writing, I had to keep track of twelve different measures, and that was no exaggeration. Trying to make sure your Game will be affected by everything properly and make sure the effects are accurate, is tiring. It impedes the natural flow of writing and forces your creativity to a halt as you try to figure out whether this action will cause a rise in a Skill or Stat or not, and if it does by how much.

By the end of the second chapter, I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep everything in the Game straight. I decided to revamp the system - hence, the 'update' in Chapter 3. With that, I managed to make it magnitudes easier for myself, enough to handle four more chapters.

With my 'update', I managed to remedy the problem before it started compounding with the other problems in my story. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought to get rid of Observe, and I curse that decision now. I can't really use anymore 'updates' either, as it would seem rather cheap and confusing in-universe.

Observe... is a plague in the Gamer community. Everyone saw how cool in the "The Gamer" manhwa, and thought that "Hey, this is really, really cool! I can use this for a couple of cool plot points, have P figure out who is bad and good and how strong they are with a simple look! It'll be a piece of cake!".

Let me just say this. Observe is one of the more OP abilities in P's repertoire. Depending on how strong it is in-universe, it can be so weak as to only tell HP and MP, or strong enough to tell the observed person's thoughts. Either way, Observe is cool.

However, after you see enough of them, and especially after you start using it in your writing, you get left with a conundrum. How would any person with a modicum of intelligence not abuse this? If Observe ever uses MP, it's a low amount, but more often than not it's a free skill to use. What it returns is almost invaluable.

A lot of people don't really internalize this, but knowledge is power. When you know more than your opponent, you can tweak your strategies and plans to optimize your chances of success. You never get left blindsided, and have the optimal way of going about things.

Observe, as a knowledge gathering tool, is overpowered. Unlike mere telepathy, which restricts you to the receiver's conscious thoughts, Observe will analyze and process any information relevant to P, and present it a clear format.

However, this results in a loss of something in the story. With Observe, the ability to be perplexed or confused is reduced. When you can literally find out anything about anything in front of your eyes, the chances of the protagonist being misled fall incredibly, to the point where the only way they could be tricked is if they simply forget to use Observe.

Along with my micromanaging problem, I found that because of the Observe, I had to reveal several mysteries to Shichi before they could properly develop. His Observe - heck, even seeing Title above Character's heads - drew away from any reveals I could show organically. N: RD didn't have Observe, so people like Kabuto were able to trick Naruto, and the eventual reveal was natural, rather than the reveal Observe would have forced onto Naruto.

A lot of good stories don't have an Observe, or at least have a fallible Observe. In Concept 101's "Harry Potter and the Game" (the one I mentioned above), Observe, while powerful at the beginning, it minimized and marginalized the further on in the story you go, until other characters can block Harry's Observe, ("scrying", in-universe). While that may not have been Concept101's intention, it still worked beautifully, and allowed him to maintain reveals for a later chapter.

3.) Plan to have your protagonist be an asshole if you're an asshole.

This is one of the suggestions that I feel will be more controversial or simply ignored than the others. After all, why plan to have P be an asshole? Weren't you just telling us not to restrict our options and be more open?

Yeah, I agree with that sentiment. However, this is advice, and each one is separate. This piece of advice is assuming you've ignored what I've suggested above and gone on the MMORPG-esque, Observe-laden cliche you see everywhere, with P being the cool loner SI Gamer.

If you do that - as I did - then plan P to be an asshole. Trust me, it'll be a whole lot simpler.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm an ass when I play video games. It's probably the freedom of the experience, but I just can't help but troll NPCs whenever I can and deride the cliches and tropes in the story.

If you plan P to be a nice guy, then I hope you're a nice player of video games. The way you perceive NPCs and the ilk will bleed into how P sees them, most likely whether you like it or not. Shichi was supposed to be a nice guy who was friendly to other people albeit lazy. Five chapters in and he's an absolute asshole with little empathy toward anyone but himself.

If you can't be kind to characters in a video game when you're under little to no pressure, and you get in the head of P, then how do you expect P to naturally be any better?

Suggestions

Up until now, I've been very critical about what I've seen as problems. While you might or might not have gotten a kick out of my rant, I still find myself dissatisfied. Oh sure, we know what the problems are, but what concrete steps can we take to alleviate these problems?

No, seriously. How do we fix these problems in the story?

Let's go through some fandoms one-by-one. I'll cover the two most popular ones that are turned into Gamer stories.

Naruto

Hoo boy, what a mess. Naruto is easily the most popular Gamer story. I don't know that exact proportions, but a lot of Gamer stories are made with Naruto.

I'll be splitting this into two main routes - the reincarnated Gamer, and the Naruto gamer.

For the reincarnated Gamer, an easy way to drag yourself away from it being an SI would be to make it someone you can't easily relate to. If you're very kind-hearted and your P would be similarly kind to the characters, I would suggest trying to make your P cold instead, with a largely different background than yours. This conflicts with Advice #3, I know, but Advice #3 only lasts as long as you have the P be an SI.

Essentially, make it so that it's hard for you to personally relate to your P - then it won't get as personal.

Please, for the love of God, don't give them Kekkei Genkai (if you don't know what that means you haven't been on the Naruto fandom long enough to write a story yet). Yes, it's cool and all, but the Game itself is enough of a power boost itself. You don't need to add onto that if you don't need to. I'm calling you out, I'mjusttryingtofindmyway. Seriously, you don't need Kekkei Genkai to be powerful in Naruto - take the Sandaime, Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Sasori, Kakuzu, Zabuza, Minato etc. They were all incredibly powerful without some super powerful Kekkei Genkai - you already have an easy route to power in The Gamer, anything else is overkill!

If you make your Gamer a Jinchuuriki (if you don't know what that means you haven't been on the Naruto fandom long enough to write a story yet), make sure the negative effects are more pronounced than the social isolation they will already probably be experiencing due to the virtue of being an antagonist. Have it be something like Gaara's insanity due to Shukaku - something that will actually have an effect in the story, rather than Naruto's isolation (which slowly disappeared as the story went along). Something crippling, something that makes the Gamer power 'not worth it'.

If you are writing a Naruto Gamer - essentially, a P who already exists within the canon world - make sure that something will offset their Gamer abilities. N: RD has the Guide in the game actively working against Naruto. Make it so that the Game isn't Omnipotent - actually, I should have written that up there, but whatever. Have Naruto's inexperience, the Kyuubi, anything, work against the Game to weaken its abilities.

Get rid of the Perk system. It gives P too much power. It works in Fallout because experience gain in the game is incredibly slow, so it's more of a balancer than anything. It tips the scale too much in something like the overpowered Naruto.

Rock Lee, Tenten, and Choji. Seriously, these are underused, underdeveloped Gamers. Even if fans complain about how they never get any screen time or development, they don't actually try to do that themselves, simply because they aren't very popular. Use them! Rock Lee's moxie fits the Gamer ability to a T, Choji's family's values will make a much different experience than the typical INT-WIS loaded Gamer, and Tenten... seriously, we need something for her, other than just someone Naruto can have sex in an M-rated fic, after Tayuya.

And that's just some members of the Konoha 11 with the Gamer ability. Think about how many characters there are in Naruto, pick a random one, give them a Gamer ability, and see what unfolds. We've drowned in Naruto-is-the-Gamer fics - give me a Jirobo Gamer, now!

Harry Potter

The advice for Harry Potter is somewhat similar to the one for Naruto, albeit some key differences. Harry Potter doesn't have Kekkei Genkai or anything resembling it, so you won't have to worry about it.

With Harry Potter, what you should be doing is, again, using characters that have been left alone for the most part. Most of the Gamers in the Harry Potter fandom are Harry, Ron, of Hermione - and I'm tired of it. Seriously, we have the entire cast of Harry Potter to become a Gamer, and it's always one of those three. Neville the Gamer, Luna the Gamer, Ginny the Gamer (especially with possession, now that would be interesting) Fred and George the Gamers (oh god what have I imagined), and those are just the Gryffindors Harry knows. What about Villains, Anti-Heroes (like Dumbledore), and the completely ignored Lily Moon (no, that's not an OC, she actually exists - she was called on by the Sorting Hat in Year 1). Seriously - branch out a little bit!

For the most part, keep the protagonist's personality, and you'll be golden.

Oh, and can someone make a Kirby Gamer story? Please? I want to see that absolute insanity.

Thank you for reading, and don't be afraid to write a review.