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Self-Insert Idea Thread

Here's a fanfic I found:

Infinite Dimensions Chat Group

Summary:
Su Chen woke up and found that he had come to a side of cultivators to watch the parallel world of unscrupulous monsters and monsters. Fortunately, he was fortunate to have a chat group connected with endless dimensions.

Endless dimension, infinite time and space, I am the master!

I am not a slime: "I am not a cute king, I want to be a human body!"

Tony has no money: "My name is Tony Stark, I don't call Tony a big shit!"

Happy wind man: "I am actually not happy."

"Ding, the administrator Su Xiaoge turned on the mute of all staff."

Brother Su: "Ahem! Be quiet at home, it's time for me to speak."

Everyone: "…"
 
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Marisa Kirisame said:
What it says on the tin! We post Self-Insert ideas

Some ROB decides that it'd be a good idea to create a physical copy of Gensokyou on our Earth, but not include all the characters... and slam us SBers into it, making it an SI.

To be more specific, he sends in a bunch of SBers in the bodies of the characters who aren't existing in that Gensokyou. He does it in an instant, though.

Then he inserts a copy of the characters' memories into all the actual character copies' heads...

...but doesn't do it to the SBers. However, he at least includes the language.

Some characters people could use would include Chen, Flandre, Cirno, Wriggle, Marisa, etc. It would be a shared universe series of Self-Inserts, too. It'd have to be well-written, though.
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Can't wait to see how this would effect Lost Word lmao.

ANYWAYS.

You are SI into the year 3500BC, and are given the following powers.
Rinnegan
Sharirinnegan
Powers of the Ten Tails(includes the truth seeker orbs)
True Immortality

Also, Touhou characters exist. Can't remember when Gensokyo was made tho
 
This would be an interesting SI idea for anyone to use. Possibly even a quest, though I argue this idea could potentially be a semi-quest where comments from the readers factor into the story.

The SI in question is a multi-crosser, but will automatically hop to the next world if they or the audience (i.e. the readers/participants of the quest) correctly guess the world they're in. The hints would come in the form of the current events of the plot and the details of the setting almost exclusively as the SI won't be able to come across any of the protagonists/major characters (which would be major dead giveaways) until a few chapters into their stay, having to make do with either minor or even background characters.

This would lead to interesting situations where it tests both the writer's ability to write the story without giving the answer away on the first chapter (which may involve bringing the character to a lesser known locale in the story) and teases the audience's brain as they too try to figure out what world they're in. Of course, this can also lead to interesting situations where the writer can pull from obscure media and challenge the audience that way. Of course, by the fourth chapter, if they hadn't figured it out, that's when the major hints in the form of major characters come into play.
 
Nicholai said:
I've always been amused by the idea of a character (SI or otherwise) landing in a world they think they know only to discover that what they know is wrong.

Take Star Wars for example. In canon Star Wars the Empire is evil, Darth Vader casually murders his subordinates, and the Emperor is having a Death Star constructed so he can cement his rule on the galaxy. Except things are different. In this version the Empire is too big for one ruler to oversee everything. There's a lot of corruption and graft. Because of the Galactic Civil War the systems of the Republic-turned-Empire that should function to keep corruption limited are no longer functional.

For a police procedural example instead of Internal Affairs looking for corrupt cops IA is either ineffective or is busy being corrupt themselves.

The Emperor is trying to keep the Core Worlds intact and knows that the Empire is going to Balkanize badly. He is doing his best to drag the primary military assets - Super Star Destroyers for example - back into the Core Worlds. He's actively trying to prevent people from building Death Stars. Tarkin isn't a close ally of the Emperor. Instead he's one of the people scheming to become a warlord and claim as much of the Empire as he can. Darth Vader isn't evil and he doesn't try to murder his subordinates. Instead he's doing his very best to try and resolve crises to buy his friend and Emperor time to engineer a "soft landing" for the Core Worlds.

Note this doesn't mean that the Rebellion is evil or even wrong. Given the further away from the Emperor you get the more corrupt things are the Rebellion has just as much of a reason to want to tear down the Empire. They're just wrong about the Emperor being the biggest part of the problem. With the rule of law compromised practically everywhere, Moffs causing all kinds of misery among the people they are supposed to govern, and Imperial military officers behaving like warlords instead of honorable soldiers the galaxy could use a little Rebellion..


I used Star Wars as an example of the idea here because it is a common piece of media for people to have seen. I wouldn't particularly want to write or read the example above because of the side effects of what I'm proposing. With widespread corruption from the Imperial government (even if not the Emperor) and an impending Balkanization there would be decades of war just over the horizon. Sectors breaking off, fighting one another, getting conquered, and so on.

That said I hope people can come up with their own examples from media they enjoy.
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A lot of SI's (and Peggy Sues etc) do this thing where foreknowledge excuses awful behavior to eliminate a problem before it can become an issue.
At best this is done by basically providing a better (in multiple senses) option, at worst by taking revenge for something they haven't even done yet.
At best it involves accounting for the butterfly effect in that their continued presence and actions will render their foreknowledge increasingly inaccurate...

Having the foreknowledge, presumptions/assumptions and etc bite them in the ass because they didn't bother doing independent verification - and even having done some verification, then assuming because some parts of their foreknowledge appears accurate, all their foreknowledge is unbiased and perfectly accurate and will remain so until their continued presence changing stuff would render it inaccurate, despite the fact that there is no guarantee any one of an uncountable number of essentially random outcomes would remain the same...

The approach I prefer is to assume that - while an infinite multiverse presupposes that there is some universe where things happened exactly like on screen/in the book, the likelihood is that any version of the universe you're actually dealing with is at best closer to something that might be interpreted - by one or more authors and edited by one or more editors, with input from several others and multiple revisions to make a better story or be more marketable - into what was shown on screen/in the book. Broad strokes, biased accounts and "based on a true story", rather than an accurate accounting.
 
One thing I've rarely seen Self-Inserts do is play with how the lasting impressions we have of characters are usually of them after their character arc or at a dramatic midpoint of it. If you treat Zuko from before his character arc like someone who is inherently as trustworthy and kindhearted and willing to go against his family as end-of-series Zuko, to pull from Avatar, then you're going to end up like Katara in Ba Sing Se - betrayed, angry, and disappointed. He needs to grow into that, and the SI would need to either wait for him to do so or help him do so, not bank on that being who he is deep down and assume it will go that way (at best putting more external pressure on him in the process if he's a friend of yours). Or assuming Naruto's Sasuke will inevitably do the Orochimaru joining and murder spree and treating him like tainted goods even before he's been pushed to a place where he's willing to do it could easily make his defection permanent, unsalvageable. There's a lot of room with stuff like that to make mistakes.
 
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Jonen C said:
A lot of SI's (and Peggy Sues etc) do this thing where foreknowledge excuses awful behavior to eliminate a problem before it can become an issue.
At best this is done by basically providing a better (in multiple senses) option, at worst by taking revenge for something they haven't even done yet.
At best it involves accounting for the butterfly effect in that their continued presence and actions will render their foreknowledge increasingly inaccurate...

Having the foreknowledge, presumptions/assumptions and etc bite them in the ass because they didn't bother doing independent verification - and even having done some verification, then assuming because some parts of their foreknowledge appears accurate, all their foreknowledge is unbiased and perfectly accurate and will remain so until their continued presence changing stuff would render it inaccurate, despite the fact that there is no guarantee any one of an uncountable number of essentially random outcomes would remain the same...

The approach I prefer is to assume that - while an infinite multiverse presupposes that there is some universe where things happened exactly like on screen/in the book, the likelihood is that any version of the universe you're actually dealing with is at best closer to something that might be interpreted - by one or more authors and edited by one or more editors, with input from several others and multiple revisions to make a better story or be more marketable - into what was shown on screen/in the book. Broad strokes, biased accounts and "based on a true story", rather than an accurate accounting.
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RoboRenee said:
One thing I've rarely seen Self-Inserts do is play with how the lasting impressions we have of characters are usually of them after their character arc or at a dramatic midpoint of it. If you treat Zuko from before his character arc like someone who is inherently as trustworthy and kindhearted and willing to go against his family as end-of-series Zuko, to pull from Avatar, then you're going to end up like Katara in Ba Sing Se - betrayed, angry, and disappointed. He needs to grow into that, and the SI would need to either wait for him to do so or help him do so, not bank on that being who he is deep down and assume it will go that way (at best putting more external pressure on him in the process if he's a friend of yours). Or assuming Naruto's Sasuke will inevitably do the Orochimary joining and murder spree and treating him like tainted goods even before he's been pushed to a place where he's willing to do it could easily make his defection permanent, unsalvageable. There's a lot of room with stuff like that to make mistakes.
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One idea I've toyed with in this vein is having someone show up in MHA. They think they know how things are going to go and they've arrived before the UA school year starts so they decide to go against every SI ever and actually share information. They go to Sir Nighteye's agency at the crack of dawn and wait around. When people start coming to work they just say they need to talk to Sir Nighteye and are willing to wait. Since they know what they're going to say is going to be "unbelievable at best" they ask for "Toshinori" to be informed since this is about him, surrender their gear, and ask about Tsukauchi - the police officer whose Quirk isto know when people try to lie to him.

The goal of the SI is to prove that they "know things," are willing to extend trust, and let the heroes find someone to verify the truth.

(Behind the scenes this causes an absolute panic in Sir Nighteye's agency - basically how not to make a good first impression.)

So the SI ends up in an interrogation with Sir Nighteye, Gran Torino, Tsukauchi, and All Might in attendance. The SI shares information like how All For One isn't dead, who Shigaraki is, and so on. Everything looks like it is going well from the SI's perspective. The heroes are taking this seriously, they're taking notes, they're going to verify what the SI is saying. Then the SI mentions Midoriya.

Cue blank looks from the heroes.

It turns out that in this particular universe All Might didn't choose Izuku as his successor. For whatever reason All Might and Izuku never met.. and the SI just managed to torpedo their own credibility. If they're that wrong about something that critical, what are the odds they're right about anything else?

For bonus points this is before Gran Torino and Sir Nighteye got their canon character development. They're both "significantly unamused" by this whole fiasco and are determined to make sure the SI doesn't share even partially-correct information about All Might or One For All with anyone.. even if it involves trumped up charges or getting the SI thrown in an insane asylum.
 
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One idea I've been having bouncing in my head is a simple one: Instead of giving the SI a single power, or going through a CYOA, or even just giving them nothing, you fill out a GURPS character sheet for them and only have a certain amount of points to prepare them with.

I remember Hail Hydra? MCU Villain SI starting out with that, and another fic that I found interesting had a usual "The Gamer" system going on except the system was GURPS, with the SI having a character sheet they could invest their points into that affected them.
 
I had a thought of someone SI'd into MHA, acing the exam for UA, all seems to be going fine...

Then they turn up in Class 1-A and realise Izuku isn't there. Turns out, their presence rejigged the class distribution and now Izuku is in Class 1-B, meaning canon will now be derailed to an increasing degree as Izuku has different experiences and lessons to deal with - and may not be in the right place at the right time for some events.
 
drakensis said:
I had a thought of someone SI'd into MHA, acing the exam for UA, all seems to be going fine...

Then they turn up in Class 1-A and realise Izuku isn't there. Turns out, their presence rejigged the class distribution and now Izuku is in Class 1-B, meaning canon will now be derailed to an increasing degree as Izuku has different experiences and lessons to deal with - and may not be in the right place at the right time for some events.
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That's an interesting idea, and does demonstrate that subverting-expectations thing people talked about earlier quite well, but on a personal level I hate the fact that Izuku would do less well in the test than freaking Mineta.:mad:
 
SpiritualSlacker said:
That's an interesting idea, and does demonstrate that subverting-expectations thing people talked about earlier quite well, but on a personal level I hate the fact that Izuku would do less well in the test than freaking Mineta.:mad:
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That's a common misconception: Japanese class numbers have no rank. 1-A is not inherently better than 1-B, both classes have two recommended students and the top ten on the practical exam was spread across both classes. The numbers designate years (1-A is a first year, 3-A is third year) letter denotes room/group. Year 1, Group A is 1-A. Year 1, Group B is 1-B. In the US, it'd be like if someone's homeroom was class 104 and another was 106. Also in Japan, teachers move from class to class where in the US the students move from class to class.
 
Potates said:
That's a common misconception: Japanese class numbers have no rank. 1-A is not inherently better than 1-B, both classes have two recommended students and the top ten on the practical exam was spread across both classes. The numbers designate years (1-A is a first year, 3-A is third year) letter denotes room/group. Year 1, Group A is 1-A. Year 1, Group B is 1-B. In the US, it'd be like if someone's homeroom was class 104 and another was 106. Also in Japan, teachers move from class to class where in the US the students move from class to class.
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There's probably a thread just for MHA-things where we really should be discussing this, but as far as I remember the entrance exam in UA actually does work by rank, since 1A goes to the Hero course, and 1B is general education.

Nice bit of trivia though, I don't personally actually know that much about the Japanese scool system.
 
No, classes A and B are hero track, C D and E are general education, F G and H are support and finally I J and K are management.

Which class students are sent to depends on applications and how they do on the entrance exam (I gather someone can apply for hero track and only be offered general, for example) but there's no particular precedence between classes in the same track. Of the top 10 results on the practical test, six went into 1 A and four into 1 B.
 
Okay, I just looked it up, and apparently you are right, which freaks me out. I specifically remember, when reading the Sports Festival Arc, thinking that the reason Neito was so mad at the 1A guys was because they got on the Hero Track and he didn't.

I feel like the internet is gaslighting me.

Also, this makes Neito even more of a jerk than I thought he was.
 
What about if the SI appeared in Pokemon a couple years before canon and goes to become a ghost specialist. Haven't seen a lot of fanfics about specialist except for that one by Umodin.
 
I really want a SI to end up in a fantasy setting but be so far away from the canon story that the fanfic is just about them dealing with the far reaching effects of the canon.
So they can't actually change what happens but they know what's coming their way so they might be able to do something about it.
 
Dunno if this is a new idea or not. (likely not, but...)

Mass Effect Self Insert: You Are Shepard's Clone​
 
SI as an Archangel, but the twist is that you are in Dresden File and as such can't interfere with the plot directly unless you want to fall
 
SpiritualSlacker said:
I have only read the first book, is falling very bad?
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In-universe, the last time an archangel Fell majorly rearranged the setting's cosmology in a bad way.
JuDracus said:
SI as an Archangel, but the twist is that you are in Dresden File and as such can't interfere with the plot directly unless you want to fall
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That sounds really boring and frustrating since it means that you can't do anything about the horrible things that happen on Earth.
 
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