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So.... Artbook

How are "self-insert" and "no main character" in the same sentence supposed to work?

@Manko-sensei Maybe I'm not doing a bad job explaining this; I'm not talking about "no main character" in the traditional sense. Let's use Re:Zero's manga adaptation as an example. Ch1 starts with a shot of a city street, with Subaru standing there confused. That scene's still there, just with Subaru having been removed. When the apple merchant would have called to him, you still see the merchant, but he doesn't say anything, or he's saying it to someone else, because Subaru doesn't exist. The story is "shot" as if the hero exists, but in what you actually see, he does not.

What doesn't make sense is the first sentence, you're saying "it's A and no A". A story is a narration where at least one character (call it protagonist or the main character) acts in any way that causes a change. What you're describing later it can only be called "documentary".

@Manko-sensei I'm not sure if I agree with that definition of a story. A story is any text with a narrative. (And a narrative is just the set of events that make up a story.) It does not necessitate a protagonist. Plus, documentaries are explicitly nonfiction, so I don't see how what I've described could possibly be a documentary. Even if fiction could be a documentary, a documentary is a type of story, because documentaries have narratives, so even then, to say that what I've described "doesn't make sense" is nonsensical.