Warning, this is a bad morning, so if I sound terse, apologies in advance.

With respect to any individual tastes, I have to say that I've written both first and second, and frankly? Second person is much easier and allows for a lot of laziness in my work. First person is much more difficult, period.

Why? Because it takes about a bazillion times as much courage than simply playing God in the Machine and moving other peoples' lives around a landscape. In first person - which I write far less frequently, for this very reason - you have to take a leap of faith, and show some genuine courage. It isn't arrogance, it's bravery, period. You have to drape that character around yourself like a second skina nd shed your own, if you're doing it properly. If that character gets hurt? So do you. In second person, you're the big cahuna, the pain or loss or humiliation or sex is going to be at a remove of at least one level. First person? It's you.

So, anyway.

{{{{deb}}}} for the bad morning. But do you mean third person (he said...) instead of second (you said...)? I'm a mite confused.

Huh. I always read 2nd-person POV as a distanced form of 1st-person. Not that there's a controlling narrator dictating what the character does, but rather that the character wants to be distant, possibly disaffected, from the action of the story.

When I write it, it's to put that space between self and characters.

Well written, I like all POVs. First person is something I've done a couple of times, and it's not that much different from, say third person limited. (The show itself went back and forth between TPL and TPO, the most extreme examples of TPL being The Zeppo and much of AYW. AYW fell down for me in a lot of ways because it felt like it was trying to show things from an exagerrated Buffy POV, but kept that POV up even when she was off camera. Had Sam seemed more normal/less perfect when Buffy was off screen, it might not have stunk up the show.)

Cindy, that sort of thing is what I handle doing 3rd person limited with overlapping POV swaps.

It isn't arrogance, it's bravery, period. You have to drape that character around yourself like a second skina nd shed your own, if you're doing it properly. If that character gets hurt? So do you.

Yeah.

That's is right. And I'm aware how weird my continued "I like it" is going to sound in light of that.

Third person, GAH. My brain is really, really disengaged this morning and it's going to be a very long day.

I like it as well, Am. But it has to be done properly. What really makes me crazy, in fic or lit or screenplays or anything at all, is the author putting themself into the story without the courage to tell it. And yes, sorry, Sayers fans, but writing herself in as Peter Wimsey's love interest so she could boink her favourite peer of the realm still makes me cringe. If she'd told Harriet's story first person, I'd have liked it better.

Cindy, that sort of thing is what I handle doing 3rd person limited with overlapping POV swaps.

I don't think I know what that is, or rather, maybe how it's done. Isn't third person the impersonal voice of an observer? How do you overlap PsOV and/or swap PsOV, Plei?

deborah - sorry you're having a bad day.

the author putting themselves into the story without the courage to tell it.

You're right, you know. The first-person Mary-Sue is something I've never met.

Perhaps because she has to be 'the same as all the others, only better'?

Deb, I'll ping you tomorrow as my machine didn't lazarus until yesterday at 2am.

I get as wrapped in character heads 3rd person limited as I do in 1st person, maybe more so. I don't really write third person omniscient because it doesn't let me into the heads as well.

I don't think I know what that is, or rather, maybe how it's done. Isn't third person the impersonal voice of an observer? How do you overlap PsOV and/or swap PsOV, Plei?

Scenes. Almost all, okay, hell, all of my longer stuff had POV swaps. Switching POV when I switch a scene. Occasionally having the events of the scenes overlap.

Argh. Hit post before completely explaining. Hrrm. Not good at explaining. Hrrm.