Self-Insert Fic: Difference between revisions

 

 

* 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''.

** 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.)

* 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 ===

* 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 ''[https://archives.eyrie.org/anime/Twisted-Path/ Twisted] [https://puck.nether.net/~sakura/tpath/ 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]]s to ''Twisted Path'' or blatantly set themselves in the [[:File:Crossovers.jpg|same multiverse]].

** 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.

 

== 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.

 

=== Comic Books ===