Why Do Fanfiction Authors Write Himselves Into Stories?

The way 'himselves' pops up in old fantasy novels always feels like a little time machine to me. When I read it, I treat it as a marker of dialect or archaism—authors leaning into regional speech or an older register rather than strict grammar. It's basically a nonstandard reflexive pronoun that authors used to make characters sound gritty, rural, or simply not polished. Sometimes it's meant to mimic how folks actually talked in certain areas or eras, much like authors today might sprinkle in slang to set a voice. I also notice that 'himselves' can serve a practical, stylistic purpose: it blurs gender expectations or enlarges the sense of a group acting as one. If a band of wanderers says something like "they did it himselves," the phrase carries a rough, collective energy that 'themselves' might smooth out. For modern readers, the quickest move is to read it as 'themselves' or 'himself' depending on context and let the texture of the language do its atmospheric work—it's less about grammar and more about flavor, character, and setting.

There's something deliciously rebellious about an editor leaving 'himselves' unedited, and I think it's often a deliberate, crafty move rather than a simple slip. A few years back I got lost in a book where the person who should be invisible stepped into the frame — and it reframed everything for me. Sometimes that unpolished presence is a wink to the reader: the editor becomes a character, a guide, or even a confession booth. It can signal honesty, like the author admitting that the text is a living thing with rough edges. Other times it's a stylistic choice tied to voice. If a novel is playing with unreliable narration or meta-narrative (think of the playful ways 'If on a winter's night a traveler' toys with authorial presence), leaving the editor unedited invites readers to notice the scaffolding. It can also be practical—tight deadlines, battles over copy, or intentional inclusions of marginalia that were meant to stay. For me, when it works, it makes the book feel human and slightly dangerous — like a conversation that kept its footprints.

I get oddly passionate about this topic whenever friends and I start nitpicking movie versions over ramen. Some characters are almost sacred: they travel from page to stage to screen and come out recognizably themselves. Think 'Sherlock Holmes' — the cold logic, the violin, the deductive swagger — even when the setting or accent changes, that core plays through. Likewise, Gandalf in 'The Lord of the Rings' adaptations keeps his mentor, mysterious-wizard energy, even if some scenes are trimmed or moved. Other examples are archetypal heroes who act as vessels for a story more than as mutable personalities: Atticus Finch from 'To Kill a Mockingbird' often remains the moral center, and Darth Vader usually preserves that tragic fall-and-redemption arc across adaptations. These figures stick because their defining beats are what audiences expect. That said, fidelity isn't the same as copy-paste. I love when adaptations respect a character’s essence while reshaping details — it shows creators understand why we care. When an adaptation gets the emotional logic right, I forgive a lot of rearranged scenes or new side plots; it still feels like the same person walking through a different doorway.

I've found a few practical ways to keep spellcheck from nagging about words inside quotes, and the method I pick usually depends on what I'm editing. For web content, I often wrap quoted text in a span and set spellcheck='false' on that span so browsers skip it — it’s delightfully low-effort and works well for user-facing pages. When I'm dealing with a lot of plain text or batch processing, I run a quick pre-processing step: use a regex to replace quoted substrings with placeholders (like __QUOTE1__), run the spellchecker, then restore the originals. That lets me run standard tools without false positives. If I’m in a word processor, I create a character style with the 'do not check spelling or grammar' flag and apply it to quotes. For code or subtitle pipelines I usually parse the input into tokens and instruct the spellchecker to ignore string tokens. Adding odd terms to a personal dictionary (like 'himselves') is a last resort — handy for stubborn edge cases, but it can hide real typos later. I tend to prefer masking or style-based approaches so the original quoted text stays intact and unflagged.

Late-night edits on my phone have taught me one truth: typos sneak in when you’re tired, but you can catch most of them with a ritual. I usually do three passes. First I read for structure and plot — does the scene flow? Then I switch fonts and read aloud using my phone’s text-to-speech to catch weird phrasing and missing words. Hearing it out loud exposes homophones and dropped verbs like nothing else. After that I run a spell-and-grammar tool (I’ve bounced between the built-in browser checker, a desktop helper, and a free grammar extension). Those tools catch repeated words, inconsistent tense, and punctuation oddities, but they miss context-specific stuff — you still need to eyeball names and world-specific terms. For that I use a custom find-and-replace list: character names, place names, and common typos I make. If a chapter is long I print a cheap copy or export to PDF and annotate with a pen; physical edits feel slower but somehow more accurate. Finally, I get a beta reader or swap edits with a friend for a fresh perspective. No single trick fixes everything, but mixing automated checks, read-alouds, and human eyes gets my chapters tidy enough for posting, and I usually leave a quick changelog so readers know what was corrected.

I get a little giddy when I see crossover fan art because it’s where artists get to play stylistic dress-up with characters I already love. On my sketchbook nights I’ve tried this myself: taking the confident swagger of someone from 'One Piece' and giving them the sharp, saturated colors and city lights vibe of 'Persona 5'. What fascinates me is the mash of visual languages—line weight from one show, color palette from another, and a new attitude that suddenly makes the character sing in a different genre. Beyond style swaps, I notice how crossovers let creators explore identity. They’ll genderbend, age-shift, or drop a character into a different world’s rules (imagine a ninja learning quirks in 'My Hero Academia'). Sometimes it’s playful — a chibi fusion or a punny costume swap — and sometimes it’s surprisingly deep, like showing how a hero adapts morally in another universe. I often pin these to my inspiration board and try to steal tiny ideas for my own pieces; they make me rethink silhouette, expression, and the little props that tell a whole backstory.

There’s something almost magical about hearing a familiar voice play themselves — it's like the person behind the mic steps out of the booth and sits on your living room couch. When voice actors perform as themselves in audio dramas, they blend honest personality with dramatic craft. They don’t just 'talk like themselves'; they dial in recognizable vocal habits (a laugh, a cadence, a catchphrase) and then use acting tools—pace, emphasis, silence—to shape scenes. I often notice small choices: a slight drag on a vowel to show tiredness, or an exaggerated brightness to sell a joke. Those choices feel personal but are deliberate. In practice, the actor prepares like any other role. They study the script, mark emotional beats, and discuss boundaries with the director: how much improvisation is okay, which parts are candid, which are fictionalized. Recording sessions can be intimate—headphones, a tiny mic, a cup of cold coffee—so the performance leans into natural speech. Sometimes they record solo monologues and sometimes they bounce off other actors or even clips from real interviews to keep it authentic. What I love most is when an audio drama plays with 'self'—mixing real anecdotes with invented situations so you’re never sure where persona ends and character begins. It can be charming, messy, and utterly human, and it’s why I’ll always rewind the parts where they laugh like themselves and then pull you into a scene as if it’s all unfolding for the first time.

Sometimes I find myself thinking about voice like a costume: you can wear someone else’s shoes, but putting on your own makes the walk feel different. I choose the first-person memoir voice when the emotional truth hinges on my perspective — when the small tectonic plates of memory (smells, the way a streetlight cut across a kitchen table) are the story's engine. I do this when intimacy matters more than omniscient facts. That might mean writing about family fracture, youthful recklessness, or an unlikely hobby that reveals larger cultural things. The voice becomes a lens: not just what happened, but how I felt it. I lean into scene-making, reconstructing dialogue and sensory detail, and I’m honest about the gaps. Sometimes I even call attention to my own memory lapses — which paradoxically builds trust. Practical stuff: present tense and active verbs give urgency; past tense gives reflection and distance. I also think about ethics — changing names, blurring faces, or asking permission when a real person will be recognizable. And yes, I borrow lessons from 'The Glass Castle' and 'Educated' on balancing rawness with craft. The memoir voice isn’t confession for confession’s sake; it’s a deliberate tool to make readers live inside a moment with you, and I find that’s when it’s worth using.