How to Write Reasonable Self-Insert Humans in Equestria Stories · 2:44pm Dec 8th, 2015
I am first going to admit that Self-Inserts have never been my cup of tea. Even when I was a teenager and young man participating in role-playing games, I preferred pretending to be someone else. But I do think that it is possible to write a self-insert reasonably well and here I will briefly discuss how to do it.
First of all, how did you get to Equestria? Was it voluntary or involuntary (it's usually the latter)? Can you ever go home again (usually, not)? Does this method have any larger implications for the culture, technology or situation, or was it just a one-time freak accident that nopony can figure out how to duplicate (remember this: if it can be reliably and safely duplicated then trade can open up between your home and Equestria, with all this implies, and you are potentially in a position of great importance as a liaison).
Face up to how disorienting it would actually be to be stranded amongst an alien race (even an extremely friendly one) and in an alien civilization (even a very tolerant one). If this is a SI who knows the show, focus on some of the differences between show-Equestria and real-Equestria. This need not be as extreme as, say, seasonal heat-induced orgies or bloodthirsty sacrifices or routine random violence: just think about some of the complexities that certainly exist in that society which the show doesn't discuss because they get in the way of plot in short episodes, or which are mildly upsetting (such as the death of AJ's parents, or the likely reasons why Derpy is a single mother) and thus are not shown. Some of those differences might be xenocultural ones.
How would you feel about being exiled from your homeland (even by circumstance rather than rejection) and having to leave behind all your family and friends? Yes, you may find them boring and irritating now, but what if you could never see them again? Do you have best friends? Lovers? A wife? Children? You can't see them ever again, either. This, by the way, would be a source of meaningful and believable emotional anguish, rather than "I'm special and no one fully appreciates my wonderfulness and they think they're all so important just because they're major national figures," which simply makes the SI look like a self-entitled prick.
What would you know that would be interesting or useful or of vital importance to the Equestrians? What would they know that would be awe-inspiring, disturbing or fascinating to you? What changes would result in Equestria, or yourself, as the result of the exchange of this knowledge?
What could you do that would make a difference to Equestria and its destiny? What special abilities do you have? What limitations would prevent or at least make it more difficult for you to do these things?
Who do you meet and befriend? Or dislike? Keep in mind that Equestria is a nation of millions, probably tens of millions, of Ponies. You are not limited to the Mane Six and their immediate friends. You're not even limited to known secondary and background Ponies. Think about who might exist, whom you would be likely to meet, who would be especially attractive or annoying to you.
Though I'm pitching this in terms of SI, this actually works for any Human In Equestria. They all came from somewhere, knew people and things, and have a distinct personality which would attract or repel other characters. None are flawless heroes, complete nebbishes or generic blobs. Or at least, none should be.
I still have my doubts about SI HIE's, because they demand a degree of publicly-displayed honesty about oneself which many will find uncomfortable. It is difficult to keep them from becoming either "Look at me! I am awesome!" or "Poor pitiful me! I am pathetic!" I personally think it's better if you want to SI to make a character who is similar to yourself, but not actually yourself -- the detachment makes the writing much easier.
An excellent guide to what to think about when being dimensionally displaced. (Note the lowercase d.)
Also, let's not forget the language barrier. "Voice Among The Strangers" is a pretty good example of that in that the ponies speak an alien language while there are others that have them speak English but write it in Wingdinglish.
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Yes. I tend to assume Translation Spells, but those actually have to be cast by somepony who knows how to do it, and require renewal. I could as easily do like Jonathan Swift did and assume an alien language rendered rather difficult by non-human vocal systems (incidentally, the part of Gulliver's Travels with the Houyhnhnms is possibly the first attempt at well thought out rendering of nonhumanoid sapient life in all fiction).
It's fairly obvious to me that the Equestrians aren't speaking English. There's no reason why they would be, and they logically would have rather different vocal systems, probably more capable versions of the ones possessed by actual horses, just as ours are more capable versions of those possessed by prosimians. Their languages would have evolved to suit their own voices, not ours.
Likewise, they would probably not be writing in English. I like the idea of a common writing system rendered into at least three related alphabets -- one for each of the Three Kinds -- and probably at least two more, one for the Flutter Ponies / Changelings and one for the Sea Ponies.
I discussed possible pitfalls for a Human in Equestria attempting romance with a Pony in this essay, and really, this also applies to other aspects of Equestrian life and culture. Show has even touched on this the other way round with the problems Twilight Sparkle first had with Humanoid customs; for instance the Equestrians see nothing unusual about manipulating things with their mouths, lips and tongues, and are far more dextrous at such manipulations than are such humans. Even powerful telekinetics such as Twilight Sparkle and Rarity Belle would have often used their mouths for such purposes when they were fillies, and still would use their mouths if overchannelled.
There are probably a lot of little things that would throw us about Equestrian culture. Heck, they sometimes throw Equestrians -- note Twilight's problems with the way that Ponyville does Winter Wrap-Up, or Applejack's confusion when she encountered the Pie version of Hearth's Warming Eve. There is signficant regional and subcultural variation, at least as much as in America -- and Equestria is on the same scale, a continental empire.
3602656 We can also probably dispense with a base-10 numeration system. There'd be no need for a four-limbed sapient to have a higher base than four. (Which would explain AJ's existential crisis when confronted with the concept of fiveness.)
What are your thought on The Audience? The protagonist is based off of the author, but isn't him specifically, which was one of your suggestions. As I recall, the entire point of the fic was to skip to the only really important part, the HiE's audience with Princess Celestia.
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I'm guessing, though, that if they had a base-four system they'd also have the zero, so large numbers wouldn't be that hard to express. They probably also have scientific notation for really large numbers.
This will sound odd, but I wonder how many stories of either (sorta) self-insert or HiE end very quickly, because the human appeared in the Everfree and was spotted by hungry monsters, or showed up inside a dragon's den, or ended up shoveling rocks in a Diamond Dog den? Kind of like a poem I once read in a Conan fanzine where several of the authors go to Hyboria and find themselves working the oars in a slave galley.
3604077 They might also use base 16. In any event, the real fun is plopping a group of them into, say, downtown Middle America and wondering how long it would take for people to realize that the pastel equines are sapient. Remember, what people are going to hear from Applejack is unusually articulated whinnying and braying and not what some woman from Vancouver's idea of what a Southern accent is.
3604112 Or else the human appears in the middle of nowhere, and Princess Celestia has set an alarm for interdimensional portals, so she finds him and sends him home quietly before anypony else notices.
3604608 True. I can now imagine a whole story set around Celestia being yanked out of policy meetings, dinner, conversations with Twilight, etc. as her spell keeps warning her about some clueless human zapping into Equestria and she has to go send them home.
Probably it ends with Discord laughing at the great joke he just played on her.
3604607 Well, people will notice pretty quickly that something's up, unless it's just Earth Ponies, and their bodies look a lot more like real horses than the cartoon shows them. But, sure, it still might take a little while to be clear that this flying horse is sapient.
Now Twilight would probably know exactly what to do: drum out prime number series with her hooves, draw Pythagorean triples on the ground... and throw up her wings in disgust when it turns out that most humans don't have the slightest idea what she's doing. I wonder what Applejack would do, though? Or the Cutie Mark Crusaders?
3605296 End up in a petting zoo until Blythe Baxter shows up.
Two more things a Self-Insert/Brony in Equestria story could examine are the psychological impact on the SI/HiE, and the impact on the SI's perspective on reality.
I'd imagine finding oneself transported to a cartoon world would be terrifying and highly traumatic (especially if the transportation was involuntary). How would the mind cope with having its basic understanding of reality suddenly thrown out the door? What would happen a human who couldn't handle the mental strain? Could he or she recover? A writer could use his/her knowledge of his/her own mental/emotional reactions to explore these questions in Self-Insert story.
A writer could use a Self-Insert story to explore questions about his or her philosophical/religious worldview. Speaking for myself (since we're talking about Self-Inserts), if I ended up in Equestria and my mind was able to accept what had happened to me, I'd try to work out the metaphysical implications. Has Equestria always existed and its details were somehow unconsciously made know to Faust and the writers, or did Equestria come into existence because humans imagined it? If it's the latter, then do all imaginary worlds exist somewhere? Is my reality someone else's fantasy?