I know I'm hardly the first person to talk about this, but the vilification of fanfiction writers putting self-insert characters - Mary Sues and Gary Sues - into their work needs to be taken with the understanding that the writers of “legitimate” fiction have been doing that for centuries.

Everybody seems to have their own example of this, so here’s mine:

Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather novel that became the basis for the movie franchise of the same name. He also wrote several other novels, short stories and eventually screenplays, though I confess that most of these works did not come near to the acclaim that The Godfather trilogy earned.

Nevertheless, by whatever means, Puzo was considered one of the most recognized American authors of the twentieth century.

The Last Don was one of Puzo’s final novels. Published in 1996, it discusses how organized crime is immersed in so many institutions of American life. I read it in my youth and thought it was great. Even now, I think it’s a fun read, albeit perhaps that’s my sentimentality talking. It was not one of Puzo’s better-received books by literary critics.

The story includes a character named Ernest Vail. Vail is a celebrated novelist, although by the events of the main story, he seems to have fallen into a perpetual funk. (Something those of us who write know all about.) The character is something of an eccentric; he’s not remotely cruel, but he has a slight narcissistic streak. More than once, another character will comment – and here I paraphrase – ‘How can he write such great books where he understands the character’s emotions so thoroughly and be so clueless and um-empathetic to the actual people around him?’    

So Vail’s works are being adapted by Hollywood and – partially due to his own naivete – he gets screwed over by the studios. The novel uses a lot of business terminology to explain how all of this works, and its very apparent that the writer was in over his head.

Vail’s part of the book is essentially a subplot. Yes, he’s connected with many of the prominent characters, but his overall role is minor. If he was removed from the story entirely (as he was during the average mini-series based on the book) the central plot would not be significantly impacted.

I found my old copy of The Last Don recently after many years, and I recalled this character.

Looking back, I can now confidently say that Ernest Vail was a self-insert character for Mario Puzo. Puzo had – by the point that he wrote the novel – been involved in Hollywood for more than twenty years. The subplot is, in part, a commentary on how poorly writers are treated in that business.

If Mario Puzo can do that, fanfic writers need not worry too much about their own self-inserts.