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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 [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6820157/1/Fanfictional-Fugitive Fanfictional Fugitive], the author directly admits that the main character is [[Author Avatar|based on herself]] as much as possible. Then she starts to pretty much beat the entire shit out of her(self?) by both turning the character based on herself into a [[Wangst|whiny]], [[Minor Injury Overreaction|powerless]], [[It's All About Me|selfish]] and generally [[Dirty Coward|unlikable]] [[Damsel in Distress|damsel in constant distress]] and making [[Author Avatar|Fanfic!Myrthe]] experience an [[Deus Angst Machina|ongoing]] [[Chew Toy|series]] [[Mind Rape|of]] [[Break the Haughty|nasty]] [[Everything Trying to Kill You|events]]. And then lets her character react to these events [[Deconstruction|in a way]] that does [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|not]] [[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids|flatter]] [[Freak-Out|her]] [[Dirty Coward|character]] at all.
* 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).
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* [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 ''[https://
=== Film ===
* <s>Ebony</s> Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, of ''[[My Immortal]]'' infamy, is a thinly-disguised self-insertion [[Black Hole Sue]] in an unrecognizably goth (and poorly written) ''[[Harry Potter]]'' universe. The author, Tara Gliesbie (or Gillespie, her spelling skills are notorious) only saw the movies, and only became aware of the books at around chapter 15 or so ... not that she has any respect for the movies' canon either. The other characters occasionally slip up and call Enoby "Tara" (and at least once she actually typoed Ebony's name as "TaEbony"), thus giving away her nature as a self-insertion.
=== 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.
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=== 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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** 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.
* ''[[
=== Video Games ===
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* 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.
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** ''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 ''[[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 ''[
* 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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=== 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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* 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.
=== Live-Action TV ===
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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]].
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* ''[[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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* 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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