Why are there so many self insert fanfics?!

cb5

Let me clarify, I do not dislike fanfics, in fact I love reading fanfics. However why are there so many self insert fanfics of people writing their characters as alicorns who need to save the kingdom and save the world with their one of kind power ™ that only they can use and totally [s]is[/s] isn’t a mary sue cause they are invincible?

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather read a fanfic about a character who has real world limitations and isn’t special who has to solve a problem with what they can do. What I mean is think of it as batman vs superman. Even though superman is more powerful he can barely defeat darkseid; batman on the other hand, even though he doesn’t have super powers, has defeated darkseid on several occasions through his cunning and wit.

I would much rather read a story about a interesting nobody who can actually lose and isn’t special than some self insert juggernaut who can do things like revive the dead or summon meteors for attacks or something.

That isn’t to say all self insert fics are bad. It’s that when you don’t give the character any limitations in term of how powerful they are and come up with some deus ex machina out of your hat of something that has never been shown before that is bad writing.

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Itsthinking

🅱

People with crappy lives want to escape to a world where they’re the one everyone wants to be and the person who does everything. Add in narcissism and you’ve got quite a mix.

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♥♥Princess♥♥Celestia♥♥

The Bestia

Attempting to put myself in their shoes for a second. I would guess those fics are popular, because some people think a dark and edgy, alicorn, whatever character would be cool to read about. Or it’s just a form of self wish fulfillment. They get to feel important and strong in some way, even if it’s just in a story.

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cb5

@Itsthinking
Yeah, but even alicorns aren’t all powerful in the show. Celestia got her butt kicked by Chrysalis, Chrysalis got her butt kicked by the power of love, Cadance couldn’t stop Sombra without the crystal heart. Heck, not even Celestia, Luna, or Cadance could perform the shield spell.

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Kazapsky

Five scoops of ice cream

@cb5

This could easily be phrased as “why are there so many overpowered OCs?”, which would be a much less loaded and more accurate question. Most OCs are not self-inserts, overpowered or not.
Considering how many canon characters in FiM are walking Deus Ex Machinas (you can’t fit them all on one hand), you have to be pretty far out there to truly make an OC overpowered. Hell, your last paragraph describes the show’s usual conflict-resolution technique to a T.
“Interesting nobody” is an oxymoron. The character has to have something unusual/noteworthy about them to be worthy of a protagonist slot. And they need to be exceptional in general to have any real hope of solving a crisis worse than “escaping bank robber right in your path”. No story concept destroys suspension of disbelief worse than “Joe Nobody saves the world”.
Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap. You WILL get large numbers of badly-written fanfics because most people with genuine writing talent are - surprise! - getting paid to write something other than fanfiction.

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Grieffon

h

Same reason why there are so many black and red alicorn ocs. People think they themselves are cool, and being overpowered is cool. In reality both are just awful, but they don’t really that so both continue to suck.

I’m not saying overpower can’t be done right though.

full

full

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cb5

@cb5

“Interesting nobody” is an oxymoron. The character has to have something unusual/noteworthy about them to be worthy of a protagonist slot. And they need to be exceptional in general to have any real hope of solving a crisis worse than “escaping bank robber right in your path”. No story concept destroys suspension of disbelief worse than “Joe Nobody saves the world”.

A example of what I mean is murky number seven(YES I KNOW IT’S NOT A SELF INSERT FIC, JUST HEAR ME OUT), he’s a interesting nobody cause he’s literally a no one. He’s a dying pegasus slave with no super powers, no means of defending himself when alone, susceptible to radiation, has been abused and beaten all his life, has never known freedom in any manner. Even his hope to be free isn’t unique.

You can have a interesting nobody, cause a average run of the mill individual with nothing special about them is far more interesting than a mary sue superman who can punch planets.

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Kazapsky

Five scoops of ice cream

You can have a interesting nobody, cause a average run of the mill individual with nothing special about them is far more interesting than a mary sue superman who can punch planets.

Except the run of the mill nobody has no hope whatsoever of solving a crisis that applies to more than just them - they may not even be capable of that much. If you want to write a story on a larger scale than slice-of-life, you need a protagonist that can actually deal with the odds you’re siccing on them. And you need an antagonist formidable enough to seriously challenge your hero.

Murky is a horrible example. He spends the entire story getting trampled on; he’s little more than a spectator to his own life because he’s too weak to change anything. Sticking a background pony in the spotlight simply does not work.

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cb5

@cb5

Except the run of the mill nobody has no hope whatsoever of solving a crisis that applies to more than just them - they may not even be capable of that much. If you want to write a story on a larger scale than slice-of-life, you need a protagonist that can actually deal with the odds you’re siccing on them. And you need an antagonist formidable enough to seriously challenge your hero.

That’s called cheating while writing. If the way you resolve any conflict is “lol super powers” then there wasn’t any real conflict to begin with.

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Kazapsky

Five scoops of ice cream

@cb5

Stuff the strawman somewhere. A character having sufficient ability to handle the situation at hand is not “lol superpowers”.

It doesn’t take superpowers to win a fight, unless your opponent is himself superpowered. But it does take skill and physical ability on a greater level than your opponent. If an untrained shmuck goes up against a martial artist, the latter will dictate the outcome every single time. If you want to stop the evil soldiers from burning your village, guess what? You need to be able to beat them back. That means you need to be capable of fighting at least on par with them individually, and unless you’re exceedingly tough, you’re going to need backup who can also fight.

Likewise, you don’t need to be psychic to get to the other end of a complex maze, solve a logic puzzle, or decrypt a secret code. But you do need to be quite a bit smarter than Joe the Plumber to fully grasp what’s in front of you, and a whole lot smarter to finish the job within a reasonable timeframe. If you want to solve a problem involving rocket science, then yes you do need a rocket scientist.

This applies to every possible scenario. If you don’t have the skills or the tools, the outcome will be failure. Mr Random Nobody cannot pick the lock to free himself from a cage, or play a musical instrument well enough to be part of an orchestra, or survive outdoors for more than a couple days in a harsh environment, or negotiate a peace treaty between two grumpy neighbors.

If you don’t have a wrench or something that can be MacGuyvered (by you) into a substitute, that bolt isn’t gonna budge. Don’t know how to mix gunpowder and don’t have a ready supply? That gun is a useless hunk of metal. Don’t know anything about gardening? Those pretty flowers won’t live long enough to bloom.

Are you getting the point yet? Every character needs limitations, but they also need strengths. If they lack the skills/tools/raw talent to reach their ultimate goal, you’re wasting your time writing about them.

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Itsthinking

🅱

What I want to see is a character that’s a “nobody,” tries really hard, and still kind of loses. Like, he tries and sort of succeeds and sort of fails, and he’s not really lauded or hated. Just sort of a “thanks, I guess” kind of thing.

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cb5

@Itsthinking
Yeah, too many extremes when it comes to fanfics.

You either wind up with “Peace in equestria” endings or “everyone dies” endings. A ending to a fanfic where the character sort of wins, but doesn’t get what they want would be pretty unique.

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Itsthinking

🅱

@cb5
I don’t know, I suppose I’m biased to “bittersweet” endings. But I’m thinking of something like a villain who ruined the land, killed the princess and enslaved the people being defeated by the hero. The villain may be gone, but the land is still ruined beyond repair and their beloved monarch is dead.

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Kazapsky

Five scoops of ice cream

@Itsthinking

Dead ruler is plenty plausible, but it takes a LOT to inflict permanent damage to a place like Equestria, for good or ill. Ponyville has suffered catastrophic damage on at least 3 occasions in the past couple (in-universe) years, and it doesn’t take them long to put things back to rights. Ponies are insanely good at picking up the pieces of a shattered hometown and putting them back together again.

I think I’ve seen one fanfic that managed to plausibly make large-scale damage stick for any length of time, and that was Fallout: Equestria. And even Armageddon wasn’t permanent for them.

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cb5

@Kazapsky
To be fair, if someone did what hannibal did to Carthage to equestria no amount of magic could undo the damage.

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Apokalypse

@Itsthinking
This is probably why most stories like that end at that point. I think Fable tried to do that story, but it didn’t go very well.

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Feral_Socks

The same reason High School AUs are a thing.

To make me hate fanfiction. Good thing it only worked a bit.

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