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[[File:SelfInsertFic.png|link=Twilight (novel)|frame|Yeah, that's pretty much it.]]
{{quote|''<small>"Once upon a time, there was [[Little Red Riding Hood|a little girl with an adorable red cape]] and</small> '''[[Large Ham|great FLAAAMING eyebrows]]'''!"''
|[[Eldritch Abomination|Aku]], ''[[Samurai Jack]]''}}
As the name implies, a '''Self-Insert Fic''' is one where the author has made a simulacrum of him- or [[Most Fan Fic Writers Are Female|herself]]—commonly called an ''[[Author Avatar|avatar]]''—in the story's world as a key character. If the author has any sense of subtlety, the resulting character won't share their name or alias, but it's still easy to tell who that "new character" is.
The self-insert is very often a [[Mary Sue]]—in matter of fact, the ''original'' Mary Sue ([[Trope Namer|she who gives that trope its name]]) was born from [[A Trekkie's Tale|a parody]] of the (then-)standard '''Self-Insert Fic'''. In the most extreme cases—which are [[Sturgeon's Law|''usually'' but not always quite bad]]—the insert character gains some degree of godlike power, or retains considerable ([[OOC]]) knowledge of the series in which he's been inserted, or both, and ''uses'' them to [[Fix Fic|adjust things to his or her liking]]. In rare instances, it might work well—especially if the people in the setting—heroes and villains—react accordingly to the new situation and the guy that knows all the stuff he saw in the (anime/game/etc) and the situation changes in ways the character can't anticipate.
However, equally common is the subversion, where the main character applies [[This Loser Is You]] to themselves and ends up as [[The Ditz]], [[The Fool]], or in extreme cases a [[Butt Monkey]]. Care must be taken to not still make themselves more important than anybody else, lest they just end up with an [[Anti-Sue]]. The main rule is to never put the character in a high-ranking story position, although they may be the narrator.
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{{examples}}
== [[Fan Work]] Examples ==
=== Anime
* Interestingly deconstructed, averted, and played ''straight'' in ''[[Dreaming of Sunshine]]'' the [[Author Avatar]] is not godpowered- and, in fact, attempts to change the timeline as little as possible. This is actually justified, as she is attempting to retain her advantage by not rendering her knowledge of future events useless. This is difficult, as she arrived many years before the worst of the shit starts to hit the fan. She has some skills beyond the norm, but those stem from being reborn with her memory intact, not from being an Uberninja.
* Nine times out of ten, a new original senshi in any ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' fanfiction will be a self-insert, replete with godlike powers and totally authority over everyone and everything—the girl is usually related to a canon character as well. Considering the show's target audience was teenaged girls, which then became 5-13 girls when the show hit the US, this is not surprising.
* In the ''[[Bleach]]'' fanfic [
* [[Jared Ornstead|Jared "Skysaber" Ornstead]] is known for his deliberately over-the-top self-insert character Skysaber, an interdimensional superspy-troubleshooter who was actually apotheosized into a literal god during the course of ''[http://web.archive.org/web/20080512012417/http://www.asynjor.com/fanfic/sharp.html The Bet]''.▼
** His current (August 2007) project is a "type two" Self Insert called ''My Gilded Life'', in which he has found himself taking over the life of Gilderoy Lockhart right at the end of ''[[Harry Potter]] and the Philosopher's Stone''; with his knowledge of the books he is deliberately and relentlessly running roughshod over canon. Sadly, he seems to be losing control of the story, and it's running off the rails.▼
* The [[Eyrie Productions, Unlimited|authors]] of ''[[Undocumented Features]]'' started the project in the early 1990s as a self-insert fic for themselves and many of their friends, but as time has gone on, the focus has moved mostly off their avatars and onto other, newer characters.▼
** Many other [[EPU]] projects also involve self-insert avatars, making it one of their signature details. However, even though their series ''[http://www.eyrie-productions.com/NXE/ Neon Exodus Evangelion]'' ''didn't'' include either of the two primary writers as insert characters, critics still accused the story's lead of being one or the other ''in disguise''. (Arguably this protagonist, DJ Croft, ''is'' a [[Marty Stu]]. But he's not an avatar.)▼
** ''NXE'' manages to [[Inverted Trope|invert]] the [[Author Avatar]] trope with John Trussell. He was inserted in the story ''before'' he became one of the authors.▼
* SIs are pretty common in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' fandom. Especially the female body swap kind... either a spare body of one of the show's main characters, or some OC with an even more fucked-up past than the series' own characters. Unfortunately, these are considered the ''good'' ones. ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3322840/1/New_Perspective_Evangelion New Perspective Evangelion]'' by Dartz_IRL and ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1046500/1/ I was a Teenage Dummy Plug]'' by Foxboy. The second of these is usually regarded as the best of the subgenre.
* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20190408115002/http://www.bladeandepsilon.com/hybridtheory.htm Hybrid Theory]'' by Blade and Epsilon [[Deconstruction|deconstructs]] and satirizes the self-insert phenomenon while at the same time subverting the [[Mega Crossover]].
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/u/5209/ Gregg "Metroanime" Sharp] also subverts the self-insert trope with his fictional counterpart "Grey", who becomes a cosmic [[Butt Monkey]] doomed to endless futile struggle in an uncaring multiverse.
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/u/17205/ Contrabardus a.k.a. Carrotglace] has also played with Self Insertion, but usually with a somewhat more comedic take than Metroanime. See his stories ''The Spirit Within, [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/216310/1/Insertion Insertion], Insertion: Reflux!'' and [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/404359/1/ Gaijin] (though this last is anything but comic).
* Possibly the most infamous example of the godlike insert is Darren "Twister" Steffler and his incomplete mid-1990s megaseries ''[http://archives.eyrie.org/anime/Twisted-Path/ Twisted Path]''. Steffler's work started out rather crude but improved noticeably as he continued writing, although it never quite reached better than high average in quality. Nevertheless, ''Twisted Path'' was incredibly influential, prompting a number of other writers to create their own Self-Insert or pseudo-Self-Insert fics, many of which included [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] to ''Twisted Path'' or blatantly set themselves in the [http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/images/crossovers.jpg same multiverse].▼
* One such story was Bert Van Vliet's ''[http://www.bgcrisis.com/zone/index.html The Bubblegum Zone]'', a ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'' self-insert which later had an explicit crossover with ''Twisted Path'' in the latter series' fourth installment.▼
* Another is Ed Becerra's ''[http://www.fanfic.net/pub/Anime/FanFictions/Miscellaneous/Legions-Quest/ Legion's Quest],'' which carefully and skillfully walks the complicated line between playing a godlike Self Insert straight, parodying it, and subverting it. It, too, crosses over explicitly with ''Twisted Path'', in its own ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'' segment.▼
* Possibly the most notorious self-inserter of all was the one known only as "Oscar"; his [[Author Avatar]] was a 13-year-old ''[[Dragonball Z|Super Saiyan]]'' hermaphrodite (no, that is ''not'' a joke) who engaged in a sexual affair with Artemis from ''[[Sailor Moon]]''... in his ''cat'' form. (Again, that is ''not'' a joke, as much as one might wish it so.) In later stories, Oscar became "involved" with Felicia from ''[[Darkstalkers]]'' and [[Looney Tunes|Lola Bunny]]. To top it all off, the real Oscar then mysteriously disappeared, and is now presumed dead. [http://www.nabiki.com/mst/megane67/mst/oscarfic/ A link to an] [[MST]] [http://www.nabiki.com/mst/megane67/mst/oscarfic/ series of some of his work]; linking to the actual ''stories'' would be [[NSFW]].
* Dr. X of ''[http://www.suburbansenshi.com Suburban Senshi]'' is a surprisingly well-done self-insert, even with his gobs of power that mix and match multiple canons. It's all in the writing (and the fun social commentary, upon which the series could stand alone).
* ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/741167/1/Not_A_Dirty_Word Not A Dirty Word]'' by Michael Fetter is a rather... twisted, if witty parody of the usual Type 2 self-insert, in which the male author finds himself stuck in the body of Kasumi Tendo of ''[[Ranma ½
** Speaking of ''Ranma ½'', ''Ranma'' fanfiction written in the mid-90's commonly featured Self-Insert Fic, but with amusing twists due to authors trying to avoid the pitfalls of this trope. The most common twist was usually the author being deposited in the fic wholesale, with no changes from their real self, and the story characters teaming up to reap gallons of pain on the author for the things they've "put them through".
* [http://www.heavens-feel.com/elmer/evad1.txt Tom. Fucking. Dyron.] is one of the more audacious, unbelievable examples readily available. His 13-chapter fic, ''Evangelion 2: The DELTA Invasion'' ('''EVANGELION 2'''!), is the most ridiculous mess ever seen. Tom, the character, is... look, just read it. MSTed in the link above, ''do not'' attempt to read it raw.
* [[David Gonterman]]'s <s>fanfics</s> ''everything'' feature Gonterman himself (or an obvious [[Author Avatar]]) as the story's ''real'' hero. In the rare cases he isn't, it's because he made an obvious dream heroine, whose boyfriend will be suspiciously similar to him.
** One might consider this blanket statement to be nullified by Gonterman's insert in ''[[Gonter Verse|Planeswalker]]'' being the father of the main character... if it weren't for his lax attitudes about incest coming to the forefront of ''[[So Bad It's Horrible/
* [http://www.mediaminer.org/fanfic/view_ch.php/22756/58253#fic_c Hikaru's Non-Redundant Self-Insertion Nadesico Fanfic], in which a character in the series inserts ''herself'' into a fictionalized account of oh dear I've gone cross-eyed. It's a lot easier to understand than it is to explain. Needless to say, this is [[Affectionate Parody]] of the genre.
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1162566/Crazyeight Crazyeight's] ''Fourth Wall'' series is set in a fanfiction website that is a place in its own right, accessible to authors the way the Digital World of ''[[Digimon]]'' is accessible to the Digidestined, except they only need to log on to visit. The first in the series, ''The Wages of Fans is Fiction'', is about an author who tries to replace the Digimon canon with his own fiction and the resulting revolt, with other authors leading the revolutionaries in person.
* ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4136994/1/The_Mary_Sue_Experiments
* Hundreds, possibly ''thousands'' of these came up over the years in the ''[[Bob and George]]'' forums among the fan authors. It would be impossible to list them all. Needless to say, some were good, some were bad, and some were just plain ugly.
* The ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]'' fic ''[
* The Multi-universal crossover ''[[Sleeping with the Girls]],'' deconstructs the idea of a self-insert ''heavily.'' The idea is that every time the nameless self-insert falls asleep, he is teleported to the bed of one of eight girls from anime. The problems quickly build up, as a) most of these girls are [[Tsundere]] types, and do ''not'' react kindly to him. b) "comical" attacks like a [[Megaton Punch]] ''will'' kill the Self Insert and subject him to the [[Chunky Salsa Rule]]. c) Because he has to wake up as quickly as possible to avoid the aforementioned consequences of death at the hands of crazy girls, by the end of the first volume, he has gone almost a week without sleep, is badly injured from a vast collection of wounds accumulated from a variety of sources, and the healing nanobots he picked up in his first world nearly boil him alive in his own sweat. d) because of his actions, he has ''severely'' damaged the timeline of several worlds, possibly dooming them.▼
=== Film ===
* <s>
=== Literature ===
* The ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' character Will Shakespeare, based loosely on [[Shakespeare|the playwright]], [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/459.html wrote himself] into his ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfic. And later into his novelization of the ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' movies, as [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/874.html Willimir].
* When challenged to write a shameless self-insertion in the Harry Potter fandom, [https://web.archive.org/web/20120308015030/http://sam-storyteller.livejournal.com/ Sam Storyteller] went the 'godlike powers and meta knowledge' route. The end result was a touching [http://sam-storyteller.dreamwidth.org/99272.html guardian angel] style piece which may just have turned the genre on its head.
* The hero of ''The Takers'' is [[Two-Fisted Tales|two-fisted]] action-adventure writer Josh Culhane. The book is written by action-adventure writer Jerry Ahern, who deliberately gives the character some of his own traits.
* Many early ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfictions feature an 'American exchange student' (in a British school), who happens to have a main character fall in love with them and be friends with everyone (even the Slytherins). No reason is ever given behind the exchange, nor do any Hogwarts students ever go over to America
=== Live
* Not surprisingly, a fair amount of ''[[Star Trek]]'' [[Fanfic]] follows this line, including any number of stories where, due to painfully contrived circumstances, Mr. Spock falls passionately in love with a woman who bears an astonishing resemblance to the author. The term "[[Mary Sue]]" actually comes from a parody of these kinds of stories.
** On the other hand, no less a luminary than David Gerrold originally wrote the famous "The Trouble with Tribbles" episode to feature a young ensign that he saw as a self-surrogate, and did something similar in his novel ''The Galactic Whirlpool''.
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** Almost as common is a girl showing up as Matt and Jeff Hardy's long-lost sister. This will not necessarily stop her from sleeping with one or both of them.
* Parodied extensively in the British comedy show ''[[Garth Marenghi's Darkplace]]''. The show is based on the premise that Garth Marenghi wrote and starred in a 80s low-budget hospital-based horror show. Many jokes are based on the idea that Garth Marenghi not only wrote the series, but also plays the central role in the show. As such, his own character—Doctor Rick Dagless, M.D. -- exhibits outrageously unrealistic traits.
* Lampshaded and spoofed in [
{{quote|'''MAGIC VOICE:''' Warning! Unauthorized use of self insertion!
'''JIM:''' Cram it, you talking tin can!
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** A rather large percentage of other fanfics featuring an author-created companion for the Doctor could arguably fit in this trope quite comfortably as well.
** The Foreword to the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' 2009 Specials box set is, in fact, a short story by [[David Tennant]] wherein he goes back in time thirty years to tell his eight-year-old self that he will play the Doctor someday. In other words, it's a ''double-self-insert [[Real Person Fic|RPF]]''. (And yes, it's adorably geeky.)
** Russell T. Davies got his start writing DW fanfic. After learning that, the canon Rose/Doctor ship makes a
* A good chunk of ''[[Supernatural]]'' [[Fanfic]] contains self-inserts that are supposed to be the Winchesters' sister, who is either a long-lost relative or just always been there.
* The ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'' episode "Creative Writing" has the main cast writing self-insert stories. Most of them blatant Mary Sues (complete with superpowers and ninja); one writes a soap opera, and another writes a musical number.
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' doesn't get very many self-inserts for some reason. One of the best of the small bunch is ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2211755/1/Heres_Your_Accordion Here's Your Accordion]'' by Drakensis (incomplete, but with its conclusion [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10521339/1/Continuations-That-May-Never-Be found here]). In it, a twenty-something British man wakes up in Buffy Summers' body on the first day of the series. While not exactly happy with the situation, he'll use what he can remember of the first season to make the best of his situation and maybe make some better choices than the "real" Buffy did. Now if only (s)he can figure out why there's a 10-year-old Dawn hanging around. Oh, and yeah, stop obviously drooling over Willow.
=== Video Games ===
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=== Crossover/Multiple ===
* <s>[[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]]</s> [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Psyweedle]] wrote himself in as [[God Mode Sue|The Webmaster]] in a fic he <s> plagiarized from Dr. Who</s> wrote [[Old Shame|when he was 13.]]
* The [[Anti Cliche and Mary Sue Elimination Society]] is actually made up of (mostly) self-inserts to, ironically, [[Mary Sue Hunter|combat]] [[Mary Sue]]s themselves; however, [[He Who Fights Monsters|the inserts actually work hard not to make themselves into Sues]]. Mostly through [[Lampshade Hanging|liberal usage of lampshades]].
* The character of Peter Chung in [[Star Destroyer Dot Net|Mike Wong's]] ''[http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Fanfic/Conquest/index.html Conquest]''; his academic and ethnic backgrounds are similar to those of the author's, and when analysing Imperial technology, he even brings up some of the same points made on the main part of the site.
▲* [[Jared Ornstead|Jared "Skysaber" Ornstead]] is known for his deliberately over-the-top self-insert character Skysaber, an interdimensional superspy-troubleshooter who was actually apotheosized into a literal god during the course of ''[
▲** His current (August 2007) project is a "type two" Self Insert called ''My Gilded Life'', in which he has found himself taking over the life of Gilderoy Lockhart right at the end of ''[[Harry Potter]] and the Philosopher's Stone''; with his knowledge of the books he is deliberately and relentlessly running roughshod over canon. Sadly, he seems to be losing control of the story, and it's running off the rails.
▲* The [[Eyrie Productions, Unlimited|authors]] of ''[[Undocumented Features]]'' started the project in the early 1990s as a self-insert fic for themselves and many of their friends, but as time has gone on, the focus has moved mostly off their avatars and onto other, newer characters.
▲** Many other [[EPU]] projects also involve self-insert avatars, making it one of their signature details. However, even though their series ''[http://www.eyrie-productions.com/NXE/ Neon Exodus Evangelion]'' ''didn't'' include either of the two primary writers as insert characters, critics still accused the story's lead of being one or the other ''in disguise''. (Arguably this protagonist, DJ Croft, ''is'' a [[Marty Stu]]. But he's not an avatar.)
▲** ''NXE'' manages to [[Inverted Trope|invert]] the [[Author Avatar]] trope with John Trussell. He was inserted in the story ''before'' he became one of the authors.
▲* The Multi-universal crossover ''[[Sleeping with the Girls]],'' deconstructs the idea of a self-insert ''heavily.'' The idea is that every time the nameless self-insert falls asleep, he is teleported to the bed of one of eight girls from anime. The problems quickly build up, as a) most of these girls are [[Tsundere]] types, and do ''not'' react kindly to him. b) "comical" attacks like a [[Megaton Punch]] ''will'' kill the Self Insert and subject him to the [[Chunky Salsa Rule]]. c) Because he has to wake up as quickly as possible to avoid the aforementioned consequences of death at the hands of crazy girls, by the end of the first volume, he has gone almost a week without sleep, is badly injured from a vast collection of wounds accumulated from a variety of sources, and the healing nanobots he picked up in his first world nearly boil him alive in his own sweat. d) because of his actions, he has ''severely'' damaged the timeline of several worlds, possibly dooming them.
▲* Possibly the most infamous example of the godlike insert -- the [[Trope Codifier]] for the godlike SI, if not the [[Trope Maker]] -- is Darren "Twister" Steffler and his incomplete mid-1990s megaseries ''[
▲** One such story was Bert Van Vliet's ''[
▲** Another is Ed Becerra's ''[
* The [[Mega Crossover]] shared-world story ''[[My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character]]'' has anywhere from two to five self-insert characters active at a given time in Real Life.
== Canon Examples ==
=== Anime and Manga ===▼
* Singer and [[Nirvana]] frontman Kurt Cobain's widow Courtney Love pretty much admits that ''[[Princess Ai]]'' is a very loose and much more fantastical version of her life. That is, if the fact that the title character works as a singer, falls in love with a "sensitive musician" named Kent, and has a name that means "love" in Japanese or Chinese didn't tip you off.▼
* This is the actual power of ''[[Bleach]]'''s new post-[[Time Skip]] villain Tsukishima. To those not affected, it's ''[[Invasion of the Body Snatchers]]''-level disturbing to see their friends greet him [[Remember the New Guy?|as if they'd known him all their lives]]. {{spoiler|Especially for Ichigo, when he learns that Tsukishima [[Marty Stu]]-ed himself into everything ''he'' has fought and suffered for.}}▼
=== Comic Books ===
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* When Marv Wolfman was writing ''The New Teen Titans'', he gave Wonder Girl an older boyfriend (who was, apparently, one of her college instructors). The new boyfriend, named Terry Long, was breaking up with his wife who looked like an older version of Donna to marry the hotter, younger, super-powered version. He was also an insufferable jackass in his earlier appearances. For some reason, the artist, George Pérez, drew Mr Long to resemble Marv himself. Undeterred by fan [[Squick]], Marv had Donna and Terry marry; afterwards, Terry developed into a nicer, more decent, more tolerable character.
** Once Wolfman had left the book, one later writer had Donna and Terry divorce, and then a [[Wonder Woman]] writer killed off both Terry and the son he'd had with Donna in about one page.
* The most important of the [[THUNDERAgents]] is Leonard Brown, AKA Dynamo, a studly hero who could tear apart tanks and had to deal with the attentions of several beautiful women, including the [[The Baroness|sexy villainess Iron Maiden]]. The name of his original writer? Len Brown. However, Dynamo differs from many self-insert characters in that he has concrete limitations on his powers, as he couldn't use his Thunderbelt for more than thirty minutes at a time. He also had the advantage of being drawn by Wally Wood. (Also, it turns out that the character wasn't named Leonard Brown when Len Brown created him: the editor renamed him for the lulz.)
=== Film ===
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** The wild thing is that he manages to go the [[This Loser Is You]] route as well as the (well-written) Mary Sue route by inventing a fictional twin brother Donald who is everything Charlie is not. He even goes so far as to list Donald Kaufman in the actual credits of the film alongside himself, meaning that he was the first fictional character to be nominated for an Academy Award.
* Basically the point of [[The Room]] is Johnny Wiseau telling the viewer how unappreciated he is and how much his life sucks, but in the [[Narm|most unintentionally hilarious way possible]].
=== Literature ===
* [[Older Than Print]]: In ''The [[Divine Comedy]]'', Dante ''is'' the author Dante Alighieri with a heavy dose of [[Wish Fulfillment]]: he gets to see [[Revenge Fic|his real-life enemies burn in Hell]], travel with [[Virgil]], his biggest inspiration, interact with famous people he admires, reunite with his real-life lost love Beatrice who turns out to have loved him so much that she set up this whole journey to save him, and ascend all the way up to Heaven to see God up close. That said, he's not as bad as most examples of this trope because he's not idealized or talked up as a paragon of masculinity, and the books are more about the places he journeys through than his heroic deeds or specialness. Keeping that in mind as you read the poem actually helps a modern reader make sense of it all.▼
* The unnamed protagonist of ''[[The Time Machine]]'' is believed to represent [[H. G. Wells]] himself.
* Richard Marcinko, former Navy SEAL, has written the ''Rogue Warrior'' series, a collection of anti-terrorism action novels with himself as the main protagonist. What is especially interesting is that the ''fictional'' Rogue Warrior books are written as sequels to the ''factual'' first book, entitled ''Rogue Warrior'', which was Marcinko's autobiography. What is even more interesting is that his real life exploits (leader and founding member of both SEAL Team Six and Red Cell, along with being a legitimate [[Jerkass Stu]]) make it almost impossible to draw a line between self-insertion and [[Author Avatar|avatarhood]]. Fans and critics of the series argue over whether Marcinko's characterization in the fictional followup books is [[God Mode Sue|blatantly overpowered]] or whether he is, in fact, just that Badass.
** FBI agent Joseph Pistone, better known as ''[[Donnie Brasco]]'', wrote (or put his name on top of) several fiction novels following him going undercover yet again as Donnie Brasco to infiltrate some evil goings-on or another. These seem to be out of print.
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* Look at a picture of Laurell K. Hamilton and then read a description or look at a picture of the title character of the ''[[Anita Blake]]'' series. Yeah...
* The same goes for [[Twilight (novel)|Stephenie Meyer]].
** [[Canon Sue|Bella]] is never given a physical description in the text, but [[Word of God|SMeyer's description of Bella on her website]] sounds [http://bs3073.k12.sd.us/images/Stephanie%20meyer.jpg suspiciously familiar]{{Dead link}}:
{{quote|"very fair-skinned, with long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her face is heart-shaped -- a wide forehead with a widow's peak, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, and then a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. Her lips are a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jaw line. Her eyebrows are darker than her hair and more straight than they are arched. She's five foot four inches tall, slender but not at all muscular, and weighs about 115 pounds. She has stubby fingernails because she has a nervous habit of biting them."}}
** Even [[Robert Pattinson]], the guy who plays Edward in [[The Film of the Book]] ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'', thinks the book is a Self-Insert Fic.
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** Even when Cussler himself doesn't appear, he inserts himself another way sometimes. One example is Professor Beaty in ''Night Probe!'', who bears a distinct resemblance to Cussler.
** Sometimes, if he doesn't appear, he'll give some extremely minor (as in, only mentioned once) character his name ("the notorious bandit 'Big Foot' Cussler") This isn't a self insert per se, but nothing beats the time Clive Cussler inserted Bruce Springsteen guitarist Nils Lofgren into a novel (not in his guitarist capacity though).
▲* [[Older Than Print]]: In ''The [[Divine Comedy]]'', Dante ''is'' the author Dante Alighieri with a heavy dose of [[Wish Fulfillment]]: he gets to see his real-life enemies burn in Hell, interact with famous people he admires, reunite with his real-life lost love Beatrice who turns out to have loved him so much that she set up this whole journey to save him, and ascend all the way up to Heaven to see God up close. That said, he's not as bad as most examples of this trope because he's not idealized or talked up as a paragon of masculinity and the books are more about the places he journeys through than his heroic deeds or specialness.
* In the ''[[Redwall]]'' Series, Gonff from ''Mossflower'' was supposedly based on the author, Brian Jacques. That the later book ''Doomwyte'' {{spoiler|deals with Gonff's descendants}} probably has something to do with this.
* An example of a very good Self-Insert Fic is Charlotte Bronte's ''[[Jane Eyre]]''. Like Jane, Charlotte was a governess to the children of Constantine Heger, a married man who she was "lonely" and "homesick for" when apart from him, and "attached to" when she was in his company. No crazy ladies in the attic at the Heger home, though. Jane's strong moral character and love for/ambivalence towards the rules set forth by God were also very much a part of Charlotte's personality. Self-Insert Fic can be cool!
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* The ''villain'' of ''Those Who Trespass'' is suspiciously similar to author [[The O'Reilly Factor|Bill O'Reilly]]. The hero also shares O'Reilly's background and the personality he claims to have in his nonfiction books, but is not as obviously meant to represent O'Reilly himself.
* [http://www.wowpedia.org/Rhonin Rhonin], a character appearing often in [[Warcraft]] novels written by Richard A. Knaak, is highly regarded as an insertion sue. His exploits ranging from saving the red dragon aspect from an orc warlock of greater power to going back in time to help win an ancient war (that had already been won, who knows why he felt the need to put himself in it) to banging [http://www.wowpedia.org/Vereesa_Windrunner Sylvanas' other sister] that never existed until Knaak decided he needed some elf ass.
* Many of [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s works that are set in the future feature characters that are descendants of Lovecraft himself.
▲=== Manga ===
▲* Singer and [[Nirvana]] frontman Kurt Cobain's widow Courtney Love pretty much admits that ''[[Princess Ai]]'' is a very loose and much more fantastical version of her life. That is, if the fact that the title character works as a singer, falls in love with a "sensitive musician" named Kent, and has a name that means "love" in Japanese or Chinese didn't tip you off.
▲* This is the actual power of ''[[Bleach]]'''s new post-[[Time Skip]] villain Tsukishima. To those not affected, it's ''[[Invasion of the Body Snatchers]]''-level disturbing to see their friends greet him as if they'd known him all their lives. {{spoiler|Especially for Ichigo, when he learns that Tsukishima [[Marty Stu]]-ed himself into everything ''he'' has fought and suffered for.}}
▲=== Live Action Television ===
* Margaret Thatcher once wrote a skit for ''[[Yes Minister]],'' in which she played the part of the Prime Minister. The piece is [[Actually Pretty Funny|actually quite amusing,]] and did air on the BBC.
* Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) wrote a fifth season episode of ''[[CSI New York]]'' and turned her character into a forensics [[MacGyver]].
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* In the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' epsiode "Superstar", Johnathan "Short Idiot" Levinson uses demonic powers to alter reality into a painfully-bad Self-Insert Fic, complete with the Scooby Gang following him around like stunned guppies. It even includes a bit of [[Twin Threesome Fantasy]] for good measure.
* On ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'', Sheldon wrote a ''[[Star Trek]]'' fanfic when he was a kid, about how a little kid from Texas is taken away by Mr. Spock to join the crew of the ''Enterprise''.
* This is the basic gimmick of ''[[Secret Girlfriend]]''. The main protagonist is you. He's never referred to by name and never says anything out loud, but all of his friends adore "you." All of the jokes (which you're basically supposed to insert) are hilarious. All of the girls want you and you end up with most of them. You would probably feel awesome if not for your two friends being total idiots and your ex-girlfriend being a [[Yandere]].
=== [[Video Games]] ===
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* Accidentally happened in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', when Shinkawa designed Otacon to look like [[Hideo Kojima]], and Kojima ran with it and based Otacon's personality off his own as well. While Otacon is one of the most heroic characters and ends up [[Relationship Sue|having sex with Naomi, a character Kojima based on his ideal woman,]] the amount of [[The Woobie|abuse Kojima piled on him]] easily overwhelms all this and makes him look kind of pathetic.
* Sakupen in [[Dad Series|Dadgame]] is probably a parody of this played for laughs (his power is ''really'' over the top, plus he runs away screaming when first engaged) which does not stop him from being [[That One Boss|atrociously]] [[God Mode Sue|hard]].
* An RPG [[The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age]]'s story is about a group of people who act like a shadow to the original fellowship of the ring. They go to the same places and witness simillar events in the movie. They even help the original team fight off Balrog and the monster army in Helms Deep.
* The entire plot of ''[[Touhou Pocket Wars Evolution]]'' is that of the player (a [[Otaku|slightly obsessed Touhou fan]]) going to [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink|Gensokyo]].
▲=== Webcomics ===
* Possibly a parody, ''[[Least I Could Do]]'' has Rayne Summers write a book, [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20081229 apparently with him as the protagonist], if the visual representation is supposed to be contextual. As a possible subversion to the standard [[Mary Sue]] tendencies of such a thing, the text of the book says "Though he began with the best of intentions, ultimate power did what is always had. It corrupts" [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20090106 in reference to his character] as a joke to how he hates Apple Inc. Also, he apparently [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20090108 tries to conquer the world in it].
* An ''[[Xkcd]]'' story arc has a thinly veiled [[Author Avatar]] of Randall Munroe meeting and chilling with the cast of ''[[Firefly]]''.
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* [[Andrew Hussie]] is playing an ever-increasingly more important role in ''[[Homestuck]]'', though in the end his extent of influence is restricted to just [[Arc Words|one yard]].
* Chris-chan plays as one of the most important characters in ''[[Sonichu]]''.
=== Web Original ===
* ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' has had a fair number of self-inserts over the course of four versions. Usually they're not frowned upon, as long as they're treated realistically and don't stretch the [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]]. And other times [[Write Who You Know|characters based off of people the handler knows]] show up too.
* Since the day the ''[[Draw Your Own Story]]'' comics began on the CivFanatics forums, most of the [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] were more or less [[Mary Sue|Sue]]-ish self-inserts (often represented by the user's avatar.)
* [[SCP Foundation|SCP]]-[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-423 423] is literally named "Self-Inserting Character," a piece of paper who can add a minor character named "Fred" into the story. Normally the character plays a background role, never very important or changes the story. However, it was noted that when placed inside
=== [[Western Animation]] ===
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* An episode of ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' had Aku tell fairy tales to the children of earth in hope of showing them his side of things and making them more obedient minions when they grow up. This eventually ended up with him turning every protagonist into himself ('''''[[Large Ham|WITH GREAT FLAMING EYEBROWS!]]''''') and every antagonist into Jack.
* In the ''[[Futurama]]'' episode ''"Where No Fan Has Gone Before"'', the entity known as Melllvar has written a script for an episode of ''[[Star Trek]]'', where he saves the crew of the Enterprise, and has Uhura tell him how attractive he is. He then holds ''The Original Series'' cast prisoner, and forces them to act it out.
== Meta Examples ==
=== Fan
* The fic ''Martian Manhunter'' turns the concept of the Self-Insert Fic on its ear, along with the [[Fusion Fic]]. [[Veronica Mars]] finds herself, along with her supporting cast and backstory, shoehorned into her favorite TV show, ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. It plays out as a self-insert fic, and yet it isn't. Much [[Better Than It Sounds]] here.
* Similarly, ''[http://archives.eyrie.org/anime/Shoujo-Kakumei-Utena/utena.ma-vie-et-roses.gz Ma Vie Et Roses]'' by Scott Johnson and Scott Jamison subverts and plays with Self Insertion. In this ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'' fic, an anime fan finds himself shoved into a show he's barely even heard of. One of the authors, who was genuinely unfamiliar with the series at the time, wrote the actions of the pseudo-[[Author Avatar]] Skyler Sands, while the other wrote the rest of the fic around him. Acting out of true ignorance, Skyler manages to thread his way through the main action while still ranging far afield (such as ending up joining the Shadow Girls' avante-garde theatre group). Skyler is very [[Genre Savvy]], which helps (but not enough), and eventually ends up speculating on the existence and motives of the "meta-Skyler" who put him in the story.
* ''[http://indiemadnesse.sandwich.net/extract/extract.html Self-Extraction]:'' a "charming little tale of the people who write themselves in, and the people who shoot them back out", written round-robin by a half-dozen or so authors. Initially played for laughs but gets more serious toward the [[Dead Fic|incomplete]] ending.
* In the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' fanfic ''[[Project Gethinator]]'', it's mentioned that {{spoiler|Admiral Daro'Xen}}, who is [[Yandere]] for Shepard in a big way, has written quite a few Self-Insert Fic [[Real Person Fic]]s involving herself and Shepard. According to those who know of them, they're quite sick and depraved, second only to [[Noodle Incident|what Prazza did in]] ''[[Noodle Incident|Fornax]]''[[Noodle Incident|'s Forbidden Issue]], and illustrate quite nicely how completely fucked up {{spoiler|Admiral Xen}} is.
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