We need to go cuter - Against self-insertion

Look around you. I bet you 50$ that, over the course of 3 days, at least one story about a human in Equestria or some kind of OC which is basically just the author's self-insertion vessel will be in the feature box. And yes, I'll hold you to that. Contact me if you're in and we'll start the 3 days. I'm preparing the invoice.

But what makes all of those people write about what will literally never happen (Lauren Faust promised to never show any humans in MLP) instead of clopping once more in that time?
I think there might be multiple reasons, so I'll list them one by one, organised from noblest to scumbaggiest. As there's technically little difference between HiE and Alicorn self-insertion OCs, I'll treat them as if they were the same thing.

...

Okay, I lied, there's no noble reason to do this. But whatever.

1. The human is actually a major plot device.
Okay, most of the time, he is. But picture this: The Mane 6 have to go on some kind of adventure to get the human back to his own world, from which he was torn by a mishap of Twilight's (It's ALWAYS that way), on which he can actually be pretty helpful due to his different anatomy.
Or: Twilight summons a human, who always happens to be the author, to study.

There's technically nothing wrong about this kind of story. Hell, I considered writing one of those myself, as they can be quite, and it's really hard to use that word in that context, good, if well executed. But I will leave the blatant self-copying to others.
Little secret: Midnight from Splitting aMid the Night is actually kind of self-insertion. But I didn't just copy myself, oh no. If you're going to the mall to have kids touch your dick, you gotta put some sweets around it for them to grab, or they'll notice what's going on.
So what I did was that I took the base character (And the setting is also kind of SI, I have to admit.) and then added some more facettes. Those being, in a non-exclusive list: Dead mother, unicornness, ability to feel love, average talent (I'm fairly above par myself), insanity.
You could say that those are actually some of the major points that make Midnight herself, and I'd agree. After all, the whole story is about her trying not to fall into madness.

I'll get to those points again at the end, but first, let me finish my list.

2. The author just wants to ship himself with whomever is his favorite pony (A surprising lot of the time, it's also Twilight.)
... eh. Do your thing. I prefer shipping my poniesh with those whose genes would actually result in a surviving fetus. Yes, that includes yuri pairings. Horn goes where?
I mean, seriously, you have those kind of fantasies. It's ok, I won't judge you too hard for it. But, why can't you keep it to yourself?

3. No matter what else, it's in first person.
Burn in hell.

So, now that we've wrapped that up tight, let's resume the major rant of this blog post. Close your eyes. As soon as I begin a new paragraph, of course. When you have done that, picture Ponyville. The main market square, you know what I'm talking about. That thing from Putting your Hoof Down. Everypony's assembled, waiting for something to happen. Twilight is busy casting. In the middle of the square, a blue-green entity pops into existence. Seconds later, an abomination emerges from it, yet nopony seems scared. You just entered Equestria and are free to date and do everypony you want.

Now wipe that fantasy from your mind because you just did HiE. Believe me, there are too many of those already. Also, what would you write?

"First, I got summoned into Equestria by Twilight. Then, I talked to Fluttershy for a few minutes, went on a date with her and she fell in love with me the day after."
Sounding familiar? That's because that's ALL THERE BLOODY IS to HiE! Everybody is just blankly adding themselves to the universe, where they apparently forgot to put in their weaknesses, such as sitting in their mom's basement for days on end and having a tiny dick for even making HiE.

The result is a mary sue. I've talked about those before. Cardboard characters with no flaws at all. They are tricky to avoid altogether, but when you already have your character done, with the added in ability to make everything that makes you the antisocial nerd you are go away, what are you going to do? Of course you'll use it!
This is the problem I have with self-inserts. To make a character believable, you have to give them both strengths and weaknesses, throw them into situations they don't know what to do. Only then will they look like a real being.

Obviously, I have little trouble having my characters make realistic decisions through the Bleeding Effect, but even if you don't have that, just build a personality, set the situation, then look at each trait and decide how it influences the character in that moment.

Writing is a bit like the Inception. You can make great places for yourself or others to visit, but never ever ever ever ever make something you know from the real world, for else you'll lose yourself, unable to derive what's real and what's not. As soon as you do, there is a high chance that you'll make the scene go as you know it, instead of how it would, given by the correspondence between each individual character.

Next up on this blog: The name game.