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alt title(s): Self Insert 
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
"Once upon a time, there was a cute little girl with great FLAAAMING eyebrows!"
As the name implies, a Self Insert Fic is one where the author has made a simulacrum of himself — commonly called an 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 (she who gives the trope its name) was born from a parody of the standard Self Insert Fic. In the most extreme cases — which are 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 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 You Suck 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.
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 anthromorphic 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.
Note that self-insertion isn't automatically bad. After all, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be a hero in your favorite show — provided that you remember to insert your flaws as well as your fantasies. After all, not everybody loves and adores you in real life, so they're not all going to love and adore you in a fanfic, either. Play it this way, and even if somebody does notice that you've just written an Author Avatar, they probably won't mind too much. Self-insertion, complete with flaws and realistic reactions from everyone involved, is just as good a way to make a new OC as any other. What was originally a self-insert can even adapt and evolve into a genuine Original Character.
Even hooking up with your dream character can be acceptable provided they do so realistically. For example, Starscream from just about any Transformers universe is a real creep, as are many other Seekers. Maybe your OC will eventually hook up with him but it's hardly likely to be an instant thing when he won't stop perving your chassis or shut up about how much better than you he is, and it probably won't be genuine lovin' for a while either.
The trouble is that a new writer doesn't think about that. They think only about ways in which their Author Avatar can be perfect, can within minutes hook up with the sexiest character available, cure their faults, force their beliefs on others, and ninja-kick their way to being the hero, rather than working on a realistic way they can enter the plot.
See also Life Embellished, Author Avatar, Her Codename Was Mary Sue.
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Anime & Manga
- 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 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 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 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 invert the Author Avatar trope with John Trussel. He was inserted in the story before he became one of the authors.
- SIs are pretty common in 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. New Perspective Evangelion by Dartz_IRL and I was a Teenage Dummy Plug by Foxboy. The second of these is usually regarded as the best of the subgenre.
- Hybrid Theory by Blade and Epsilon deconstructs and satirizes the self-insert phenomenon while at the same time subverting the Mega Crossover.
- 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.
- Carrotglace has also played with Self Insertion, but usually with a somewhat more comedic take than Metroanime. See his stories The Spirit Within, Insertion, Insertion: Reflux! and 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 Twisted Path. Steffler's work started out rather crude but improved notably 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 Outs to Twisted Path or blatantly set themselves in the 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.
- Another is Ed Becerra's 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 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 Lola Bunny. To top it all off, the real Oscar then mysteriously disappeared, and is now presumed dead. A link to an MST series of some of his work; linking to the actual stories would be NSFW.
- Dr. X of 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).
- 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 — and finds he has to abide by her "rules of behavior". His efforts to find loopholes in those rules, and the repercussions his successes have on the established plot, are what really make this a fun story. Just, please, ignore the utterly cringeworthy prologue describing Jesus getting mad at the author and punishing him with the insert.
- Speaking of Ranma ½, 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".
- 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 this troper has 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
fanfics 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 Planeswalker being the father of the main character... if it weren't for his lax attitudes about incest coming to the forefront of Sailor Moon: American Kitsune... yeah...
- 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.
- A partial subversion: This troper once reed a Pokemon fanfiction (a good one), which had at least 6 OC's. One of them joined the the canon-characters traveling Party. The author stated, that this character was originally planned as a self-insert of herself, but as the Fanfiction progressed, the character's personality started to differ more and more from that of the author and she eventually became somewhat of The Ditz of the fanfiction (with occasional emotional downbreaks), rather than an author-avatar.
- Many of this troper's fanfic protagonists are self-inserts in some way or another. The most prevalent one is a YuGiOh character who is a near-perfect mirror of this troper right down to her psychological disorder, religion, and phobias. This troper and her self-insert's only real difference is wealth. This troper was wary of her character descending into Tsundere Sue territory, but (fortunately) managed to avert it due to the fact that the Tsundere Sue traits exhibited by the character are actually also exhibited by the author.
- Other Self Inserts are sometimes changed to reflect the changes in the author's life. This is inverted here, as this troper's life is actually turning into the character's.
- This troper ended up throwing in a self-insert late into the development of a story he was writing when he realized there were few male leads that survive the whole time. He has specifically taken steps to avoid marty territory, and the self-insert isn't going to steal the show. He'll be important, but the main character is still the main character.
- Troper here just loves to insert some quirks (mainly personality faults or little neuroses) of herself in some characters, but physical appearance in others. It's just her way to give the world more nerdy/quirky female characters. Of course, she knows it's a really bad habit and needs to stop. Even though people praise her for this, it's just wrong.
- 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.
- This troper thought he averted it in an interesting way 2 years ago when this troper was a horny preteen in a Naruto fic (This troper is very ashamed of it, but still) where this troper's (older) self brought all of the characters into his world, and could control them with a handy-dandy remote, which was frequently used for hilarious situations. There was a plot planned involving integrating with society, but it never took off.
- This fanfic parodies (or maybe the word is deconstructs?) Mary Sue Self Inserts.
- 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.
- Oh! My Brother. An example of the good kind of self-insert fic. Christopher Angel manages to create a very readable and enjoyable series.
Film
- Charlie Kaufman wrote himself into the script of Adaptation, a movie "adapted" from the book The Orchid Thief.
Literature
- The Irregular Webcomic character Will Shakespeare, based loosely on the playwright, wrote himself into his Harry Potter fanfic. And later into his novelization of the Lord Of The Rings movies, as Willimir.
- When challenged to write a shameless self-insertion in the Harry Potter fandom, Sam Storyteller went the 'godlike powers and meta knowledge' route. The end result was a touching guardian angel style piece which may just have turned the genre on its head.
- The hero of The Takers is 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.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- Kingdom Hearts is somewhat notorious for its terrible self-insert fictions, mostly starring young fifteen year olds who somehow get sucked into their television sets and get keyblades. There is one curious example however of this trope done... perhaps not right, but interestingly: as a response to Live Journal's Zombie Apocalypse Day, the Kingdom Hearts fandom held a Heartless Apocalypse day, which became the interactive fiction/roleplaying game World Refugees. The rules were quite strict: you had to write yourself, as you were, with no special powers and no combat skills (unless you could justify them), and no one was allowed to have Keyblades. A large percentage of the participants had so much fun that they decided to continue playing. The game was rebooted earlier this year into World Refugees 2, to represent the shift from the first Kingdom Hearts game to the second. The game has gotten progressively more over the top as time has gone on, with people eventually learning magic — yet at the same time, no one was able to really meet any canon characters until they'd become enough of a big deal to attract their attention.
“There’s sure a lot of people here,” Tsuki tilted her head and bit her lip a bit. “I guess I was under the impression there was… um… only one Keybearer.”
Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? the creepy text said irritably. But in this world, the Keybearers apparently reproduce like little bunnies.
- A writer of Wing Commander fanfic wrote themselves in as being the off-screen love interest of the character Mariko "Spirit" Tanaka, who died in the Heaven's Gate mission series. The odd part (or more so than otherwise) was that the character and said love interest both died, when Spirit crashed into the starbase where her fiance was supposedly held prisoner by the Kilrathi.
Draw your own conclusions.
- Mixed Bag Comics is a Sprite Comic using characters from, well, as many sprite-based games as possible. Some of these characters appear to act as if in their original continuities while others don't and yet more do so only partially, making the position of the self-insert seem less out-of-place than it would be otherwise. The webcomic twists the trope even further in several ways:
- The Author Avatar and the narrator are two distinct characters who both play reality-bending parts in the story.
- Neither the author nor the narrator, despite being reality-benders, are the most powerful characters in the story; there are godlike programmers that are more powerful reality-benders than both the author and the narrator, and both have been trumped several times by regular characters as well.
- The author not a very important character, but he isn't so unimportant that he's just an occasional cameo. The author is pretty much on equal terms with the rest of the cast in terms of importance and shifts out of the focus of the comic as often as any of the other regulars.
- Final Fantasy VII fandom is a breeding place for this type of fanfiction. A good example would be Sephirothslave'sShinra High and its sequel, Shinra SOLDIER. The main character is a blatant self insert. There are few differences between the OC and its creator: it shares her name, appearance (with improvements in the bust area), likes and dislikes, preferences, fears, desires, opinions and some skills. The self insert allows Sephirothslave to enjoy the game universe, twist the characters to her own liking, "earn" a position as Commander of the Shinra Army, Sephiroth's love and the adoration or respect of everybody except a few who hate her (and are thus automatically evil). What few seem to notice however, is that she didn't only insert herself into her fanfictions, but also her real life friends (while not even bothering to change their family names), younger sister and even her band teacher.
- My Inner Life has the blatant self insert Mary Sue of Jenna Silverblade. Hilariously, the author actually freely admits that Jenna is "herself" (or rather an alternate version of herself who lives in Hyrule when she sleeps) and gives a huge disclaimer at the beginning that because of this she believes the fanfiction to be true to some degree.
Web Original
Western Animation
- This troper would like to think he did this in a somewhat innovative manner: one, in a small cameo, the heroes consider him a sadist for putting them through the plot of his previous fic they starred in, and in another, the self-insert has to help a character that's stuck in the real world from being claimed as intellectual property by Disney.
- Neo's Happy Funtime Land by Neo The Saiyan Angel is an excellent parody of a Self Insert, in which the author rewrites an episode of Kim Possible and secretly tricks the animators and voice actors into producing it. The author describes herself as an "absolutely gorgeous person..." for a paragraph or two. Neo goes so far as to change a character's hair with the snap of her fingers, saying that she liked it better blond.
- Donteatacowman's brief fic The Strange Self Insert sees the author dropped into Kim Possible to gush over Ron (but she preferred him evil) and tell Kim she's one-dimensional. Unsurprisingly, they decide to send her home as quickly as possible.
- In the Animaniacs fanfic A Horrible World of Plot Holes and Spelling Errors, the author inserted herself into the fic. Dot immediately recognized her as "that bitch who had me strangled to death by a drug addict on Christmas Eve". Since the fic was a parody of current fics, the Warners encountered no less than three Mary Sues (two of which were hopelessly in love with Yakko), spelling errors galore, and a crazed fan of Dot. The Warners go to the author to see what was going on. She explained that it was a parody of Mary Sues and the role they play. Dot nearly gets raped by said crazed fan, who was a parody of pedophilic fanfics. The Warners again go to the author, who didn't write Dot's rape scene. This is then followed by a Big Lipped Alligator Moment.
Crossover
- ZeldaTheSwordsman, this troper, inserted himself into his Collided Worlds crossover. He rises to the level of Badass Normal and eventually to a top rank in the military, but still acts subordinate to the other protagonist main characters (most of whom have the same rank or one of equal power). Who have occasionally been helped by him, although he has also been helped by them as is realistic(given the war). His sense of humor as well as his dedication make him somewhat popular with his fellow pilots in the military. He is not automatically super-knowledgeable. He is not automatically liked by all of his fellow main characters and has to earn their respect. The story forces him to things the real person probably never would, such as kill, and he is not infallible. In fact, he gets the least limelight time and fewer Heroic Victories than the others.
-
Linkara Psyweedle wrote himself in as The Webmaster in a fic he plagiarized from Dr. Who wrote when he was 13.
- The Anti-Cliche and Mary-Sue Elimination Society is actually made up of (mostly) self-inserts to, ironically, combat Mary Sues themselves; however, the inserts actually work hard not to make themselves into Sues.
Canon Examples
Comic Books
- 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.
Film
- One of the (two) screenwriters for the B Movie Soultaker (which is best known for being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000) also played the lead female in the movie. The plot? A rich girl and her ex-boyfriend get into a car accident and must outwit an angel of death, who was in love with her in a past life. Hmm...
Literature
- 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 avatarhood. Fans and critics of the series argue over whether Marcinko's characterization in the fictional followup books is 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.
- A rather blatant example, the post-apocalyptic novel Warday, by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, follows the authors as they travel the country five years after a nuclear war, making a study of postwar America. The characters only differ from the authors in that the characters have been through a nuclear war.
- It has been argued that Left Behind by Tim La Haye and Jerry B. Jenkins, is biblical Fan Fic where the two intrepid, studly, and irreproachable leads (Rayford Steele and Buck Williams) are transparent MartyStus for the authors and their personal ideologies.
- Subverted by Geoffrey Chaucer when he includes himself as a character in The Canterbury Tales. He tells a tale so lame that he gets rudely interrupted by the host (who also makes fun of his nerdy appearance). You know what this means ...
- 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 fact that one character based on her husband suffers from Character Derailment after the two divorced and the series started to turn into badly written porn doesn't help matters either.
- The same goes for Stephenie Meyer. Bella is never given a physical description in the text, but SMeyer's description of Bella on her website sounds suspiciously familiar◊:
"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, thinks the book is a Self Insert Fic. [1] [2]
- However, in the books, Bella is given so little physical description (or depth of character) that she is in many ways the ultimate in self-insert Mary Sues, because any girl reading it can slide herself into Bella's place (assuming she's not just reading it for the lulz).
- Well known among Mary Sue sporking communities is the infamous and (sadly) unfinished NaNoWriMo entry BeanSidhe's Wail. What's interesting about it is it's not a simple case of Wish Fulfillment. The author is an Otherkin and shares almost all of her "life story" with the (incredibly unlikable) main character, Wynne. (Including the bit about
Catherine Kathryn Howard.)
- Halfway between fanfic and literature, in the Beekeeper's Apprentice we are introduced to Mary Russell. It is unrevealed whether her middle name is Sue, but Mary is a Sherlock Holmes fan who runs into the aging detective in Sussex (at a point after where the Conan Doyle stories end). Mary eventually gets a degree in theology and marries Holmes. She is of course written by an author who is a Sherlock Holmes fan with a degree in theology. However, the series is written by a professional author and you can buy it in bookstores.
- Clive Cussler writes himself into every one of his later Dirk Pitt novels, either overtly (with him stating his full name to Pitt at some point) or slightly more subtly (His initials, for example). He generally appears for the sole purpose of assisting the main characters in their adventures, who never manage to remember him, though they do find him familiar on occasion.
- 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).
- Dante from The Divine Comedy 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 his most recent book deals with Gonff's descendants probably has something to do with this.
- An example of a very good (in this troper's opinion) 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!
- The Inheritance Cycle. Eragon is, simply, Christopher Paolini in a fantasy world, minus a few flaws.
- How has nobody mentioned Stephen King and The Dark Tower Series yet?
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.
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 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 Mac Gyver.
Video Games
- 50 Cent: Bulletproof and its sequel 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. According to The Other Wiki, when asked to do the voice for the main character of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, 50 Cent replied that he would only voice himself in a video game. So these little self-insert adventures were developed for him.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- There was an example in The Simpsons. It involved Marge practically inserting herself into her own novel, but she didn't stop there, she more or less inserted the entire residency of Springfield into the story. Initially she writes Homer's character as a noble, loving husband, but when the real Homer commits a brazen display of Jerk Ass-edness, Marge angrily rewrites his character to match. The real conflict comes when Marge has her protagonist fall for Ned Flanders' character, making everyone in Springfield suspect that Marge had fallen for Flanders. When Homer actually got around to reading it, he went after Flanders...not to kill him (unlike the novel), but to ask him for advice on how to be a better husband. As for the novel, it got terrible reviews.
- Brainiac 5 of Legion Of Super Heroes places himself into one of these where he dies in Superman's arms after saving his life.
- 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 (WITH GREAT FLAMING EYEBROWS!) and every antagonist into Jack.
Meta Examples
Fan Fic
- 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, Ma Vie Et Roses by Scott Johnson and Scott Jamison subverts and plays with Self Insertion in this Revolutionary Girl Utena fic, in which 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.
- 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 incomplete ending.
- The Wild Horse Thesis has Ranma Saotome inserted via magic spell into the shoes of Shinji Ikari of Neon Genesis Evangelion in the hopes of getting rid of him. Unfortunately for the caster, it turns out Evangelion is Ranma's favorite anime series, and Ranma proceeds to wreak havoc on Gendo's plans for instrumentality. One of the better examples on this page, it was good enough to earn a place on the Fan Fic Recommendations listing.
Real Life
- Historical example: Given the state of the facts, Martha Jane Canary-Burke, aka Calamity Jane herself, may be the world's first fangirl to create Self Insert Fic — her claims of relationship to Wild Bill Hickok and serving under Custer are largely unverifiable or false by history.
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