Unfortunately, all of the stuff from way-back-when is long gone, but I remember it, and I do so fondly, as well as the reactions from the administrators that were looking at me as if I were insane.
The timeline goes about like this: [SI→Seth→a Gemsona→a Ponysona→Alex→Sasha→a god (because Greek mythology is just SO COOL to read about)→Aleksandr (Sasha)→Aleksey (Aleks)], and the dates and stories are pretty fuzzy. A lot of them are either corrupted bits-and-bytes or just flat-out gone for one reason or another, but some remain and some need to be dug out. He hasn't even been multilingual through it all, that only really got started with the «Alex» iteration, und es was die Deutsche sprache, nicht Russer! Du volkes…
I apologize now for butchering the German language as badly as I did. The link is to the phrase in Google Übersetzer because «Translate» is a word in a terrible language. I know because I, unfortunately, speak English.
Anyway, the self-insert was just that: how I saw myself in a world of «normal» people, so there's not much to say about that and Seth comes through very quickly… named suchly because that was originally going to be my middle name when I was born. Seth was just as much of a weirdo as I was, but the key difference was that, where I would only be able to look into fictional worlds through books and TV, Seth's would actually be one of these worlds. He was a weirdo, it can't be established enough, and his storyline was from the 1990s, as I've always loved anything retro, so he was kind of like the me that I wanted to be me. Seth didn't have very many friends, he stood out, and to the teachers, he was a «Love him or hate him» character. To the more creative and out-of-the-box teachers, Seth was exactly what they were looking for. The solution, participant, everything. Seth would give results, and they would reap the benefits and rewards from their patience and willing to break from the standard line of thinking. The others… he was the bane of their existence. You can expect normal results and normal success from the normal people, but the people who are different… they speak color… they grasp with ease what you and I can't begin to fathom… They're not the failures when normal systems fail them, it's the system that's failed their challenge. Those are the people who go onto create, design, invent, change the world. They're not gonna be the ones to take a set of kids at rock-bottom and give up; they're gonna be the ones who wrote the following problem on the board and ended up being the most successful.
Juan has five times as many
girlfriends as Pedro.
Carlos has one girlfriend less than
Pedro.
If the total number of girlfriends between them is
twenty, how many does each gigolo have?
I will admit that Stand & Deliver is one of my favorite movies of all time.
At the time I was writing Seth, writing was more a way for me to explore the power I had, the ability to create a world with my own two hands. Sure, it wasn’t a good one, but, as the saying goes, you can’t run a marathon until you’ve learned to take your first step.
My Gemsona and Ponysona, I didn’t really have too much on them with the exception of (for my Gemsona), I love technology (more then than I do now, but still), so it was funny to have a character called «Blue Kyanite» paired up with Misfit Seth with literal eons of difference between their technology. To anyone who’s ever seen Steven Universe, you’ll know that Peridot is basically a cyborg. Blue Kyanite was a different kind of defective (or off color)- he was kinda «Punky-and-Pissy», though I did try to draw him when I tried to get into drawing; I had a quick finish in my drawing, it just wasn’t for me. I’m a writer and a musician, not an artist. Blue Kyanite was, obviously, blue, and wore the standard «Torn clothes and messy person» look that most people wear when they live in a world of technology. You know the kind of people I’m talking about, the ones that would become one with computers if they could find a way to do it. He wore glasses for an augmented reality display and, coming from the highly technologically advanced Gem Homeworld to 90s America, had very little patience. I remember he would always berate Seth for the «poor» state of technology on Earth. My favorite section involving my Gemsona was, and I quote:
Blue Kyanite sat down to my computer and jiggled the mouse, “Why do you have two communications devices here?” he said, seeing the phone line split between the computer and telephone, “And how many reams of digital storage can you possibly need?”
“That’s so I can see if someone’s on the phone or not- if they are, I have to ask them to get off so I can get online. The plastic squares are called ‘floppy disks’, and they’re for various things,” I said, grabbing one that said Journal №5 and a CD, “It would take several hundred floppies just to hold my favorite album,” I connected my computer to the internet and, as soon as beeps-and-boops ended and I was online, I went to the university’s website and started downloading blueprints, “Mom and Dad won’t be home until tomorrow night, so this should be mostly downloaded by then. Also… don’t pick up the phone, I’ll have to start all over.”
The alien’s breathing got heavier before he threw the computer in a fit of rage and started screaming at me or it.
“It’s just the telephone lines.”
“Get out! I can build something better when I don’t even have a physical form!” he screamed, going into the rec room with the remains of my computer and slamming the door.
“That was… okay… alright,” I muttered, having no words.
Blue Kyanite is a very fun character to write, and I still do occasionally, just for fun.
My ponysona, I remember giving him the name «Midnight Fang» and spelling it «Midnaiȝt Feiŋ», was what I later learned was called a «vampony» by the brony fandom (a portmanteau of «vampire» and «pony»). He is the reason Aleksey is a bat-winged horse and not a tiger. Midnight Fang was what I pictured my sanity (or lack thereof) would be like when mixed into Magical Pastel Ponyland. His coat was brown and stained with blood, he had hungry, red eyes concealed by thick, dark blue glasses, and a messy mane and tail that was black and midnight-blue. He is over eight thousand years old and is… I’ll put it this way: if you see that particular horse coming to you, my advice is to be ready to die because he has the personality of the god Hades or (for my fellow weebs) the character Alucard and will let your screams and pleas fall onto deaf ears as he turns you into his next meal, but that can’t be all to a character, especially a main one. I didn’t write too much focusing on him in the pony fandom, so most of the character’s development was of an eight-thousand-year-old vampire using the name «Midnight Fang» and society just… accepting it because I’ve always perceived society: If you give people a reason, 2+2 will equal 5, even if it doesn’t. Midnight Fang, complete with the archaic letters and odd spelling, was accepted as «normal» because he looked «normal» and the many, many murders that he so obviously committed (a detective, in one story, didn’t question dismembered body parts and several pools of blood that were very poorly hidden) remained a mystery because of very stupid reasons. Midnight Fang doesn’t really bring anything to mind as far as scenes or prose, but I do have some pictures of him from various sources to show him off with.
Alex! Here’s where we’re getting good with! Alex was, for those of you who are that pedantic about it, the step after Seth. I can see the sonas being and not being a part of the character evolution, but I lean to the side that they are because I didn’t start from scratch to make them. Alex was written as an anthropomorphic horse and lived in an apartment in Alpines City, Delmarva. Originally of German descent, Alex learned German and preferred to speak with a somewhat-Germanic vocabulary (Not full-blown German or Anglish, just enough to be different). This is when I really started to get him to do things that made him stand out… not like Seth did (Seth stood out by being weird). Alex, however, stood out by his odd choices. He’s a computer genius, but he drives a beat-up Yugo that never runs right and was mechanically different from story to story. He also drove a blue Wartburg 353T, red Polski Fiat 126p, and a black Škoda Rapid. Why did I say all of that? To further the point. The most computerized thing in any of those cars would’ve been the radio, the air conditioner, or the ignition. When he’d need something done urgently, the Yugo would usually fail and the Wartburg would eat more gas than my Paw Paw’s station wagon. The other two were from when I was trying to play with his personality a bit (or at least put the Yugo to rest… I had no willpower). Anyway, enough about communist garbage cars and back to Alex- his personality was designed to be insufferable to those that needed it and cool to those that earned it. He was also insanely smart and the first time I’d tried to make a character autistic (nothing major, just about where I fall on the spectrum), but I didn’t really like it because of how it showed what I call the sad-and-ugly (the average age of people I consider my friend is, with few exceptions, twice mine; I didn’t want my writing to remind me of that aspect of my life), so he became one of the weird recluses that befriends demons, vampires, aliens… anything otherworldly, more or less. Alex went through a few changes and some experimentation, but most of the stories I had for him were either snippets or just ideas that I had jotted down. In all respects, I do believe that Alex was the closest I ever came to actually being one of my own characters. Alex beats out Seth on the basis that Seth was an idealized version of me while Alex tried to portray those aspects in a more realistic light. Alex was more analytical and could view things more based on practicality rather than flashy. He didn’t mind having a ten-year-old laptop (a Lenovo ThinkPad X201 was what I was using at the time), a WiFi Cantenna for (stealing) internet access, tapping into the cable feed or screwing with an indoor TV antenna, and just using what most people wouldn’t hesitate to call all-around garbage whereas Seth had (while not luxury) nicer things: new computer, decent internet access, premium cable, and would probably be driving a Volkswagen Jetta.
When you take Alex and Russify him, you get a Sasha. Sasha and Alex are very similar, but Alex is more sociable (going to hang out at the coffee shop a block from his apartment, for instance) whereas Sasha (now of Russian descent and speaking Russian over German) is just an asshole. He’s brilliant, but he’s an asshole. Picture that however you can, you’re probably not wrong. Sasha is driven by knowledge and information to the point that being human all-but falls by the wayside and generally has no hope of ever getting resurrected… at least not for a very long time. Sasha has a very me-first attitude to the world and doesn’t hesitate to flex that muscle. As part of being Russified, his driving style also matches and his alcohol intake was adjusted, both to Soviet Stereotype Levels… and before anything is said it’s for a joke that started with Seth’s eccentricity. Sasha has his crap together, but too much of it. He buries himself in tasks to the point that what’s actually important doesn’t even register on his radar, masking everything with the purpose of «learning», which usually falls flat on his face. Alex’s diminishing verbal filter became, with Sasha, borderline-nonexistent, leading him to “say whatever the hell is on his damn mind and not apologize for someone being hurt over it”. This paved the way for him to become the God of Knowledge, Uvram (again, Greek Mythology), though this never earned very much pagetime for several reasons, though it did lead to Aleksandr (Sasha) being created, and he’s fully Russian.
Aleksandr (Sasha) was the first iteration of Aleksandr. Put simply, he’s got no potential for shock and his story wasn’t the most liked, even by me. He was just an unrelatable character, and that’s coming from someone who watches Rick & Morty… take that as you will. Anyway, indecisiveness and screwyness plagued Aleksandr’s «Sasha» portrayal to the point of basically ruining the character to write. Nothing seemed to faze, jar, or just affect him in any real way, basically giving him a zero-personality. It went for a while before adjusting his personality again (and renaming him) to Aleksey.
When Aleksey was written, he changed from Sasha in so many ways, but ended up with the pain-in-the-ass personality that I like. Aleksey no longer colors his hair, no longer wears colored glasses, he drives a 1983 Plymouth Reliant station wagon, and rents a house that moreso resembles an apartment. He goes by Aleks and is half-Russian/half-Mongol. He’s still insanely smart, but it’s more rounded out, even though his specialty still lies with technology and data processing. Aleks doesn’t hesitate to share his thoughts, occasionally doing so in order to antagonize someone, though he refuses to accept that anything done by emotion is rational. Aleks, while very far removed from the original self-insert, represents truly reaping what is sowed. Of course, he’s a pain in the ass. Of course, he makes so much of his hidden wealth by counting cards in Vegas. Of course, he doesn’t resemble the character that I had in 2013… ten years ago- wow. But Aleks has his own clique, his own life, and his own accomplishments. Being labeled as a failure when he was younger, simply because he was bored and not stimulated enough didn’t prove he was a failure, it proved that he was being held back from his true potential. Aleks may not get along well with people and he may act like a condescending asshole, but his existence ultimately shows that where things don’t add up, you don’t put a red mark on them, say “I’m right and you’re an idiot.”, and move on. Aleks’s existence reinforces the fact that where things don’t add up, you take a closer look and go back over information. When you have a student in a sixth-grade math class sitting in the back seat learning a third language and doing calculus, yet their grade is barely 40%, you don’t berate them; you look at things, and you look at things good.
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