Self-Insert Fic: Difference between revisions

[[File:SelfInsertFic.png|link=Twilight (Literature)|rightframe|Yeah, that's pretty much it.]]

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 parody of the standard [[Self -Insert Fic]]. In the most extreme cases -- which are ''[[SturgeonsSturgeon's Law|''usually]]'' [[Sturgeons Law|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.

The Self -Insert has two primary varieties: the Self as New Character, where the author simply opens the top of the story and drops a copy of himself right in (a new body may be necessary to fit in with anthropomorphic worlds, but it's still you), and the Self as Existing Character, where the author finds himself forced to take over the life (and sometimes the body) of an existing [[Canon]] character -- without necessarily being restrained to staying "in character" for their new role. See [[Possession Sue]] for the latter.