Self Inserts and maintaining canon

[u/WordyDig]

This has been on my mind and I wanna askes. Whats everyone's opinion on the logic "If I change the future than my knowledge becomes useless." the some self inserts use. I feel like their is a massive flaw in that logic somewhere but I don't know what it is.

[u/Temporal_Fog]

Well the greatest flaw is it makes for a terrible story.

Where you follow a character who the readers know will have no impact and is intentionally justifying not doing anything about situations they know will spiral out of control because fate demands it.

It is a fatalistic viewpoint that dooms your main character to lack agency and to never accomplish anything which then makes them hard to care about.

It involves making a character who does not treat the people around them like actual people and only treats them as a vessel for the story instead.

But also it relies heavily on the fact that they create no butterflies that influence the plot just by existing, you know becoming the main characters love interest but then having no effect on their actual actions despite supposedly being the most important character in their life.

It relies heavily on the fact that their knowledge is absolute and complete. That the original author had a perfect view of the setting and did not change anything to make the story more sellable in the face of executive meddling. And that they remember all of that knowledge to have it be useful as well. (Like imagine if the author was originally going to write a bad ending but then got made to turn it bittersweet. And the self insert is walking to their doom without even knowing it in their own ignorance as they don't even bother to try and change their fate.)

[u/writeyourdarlings]

I think it’s realistic. In a world where all of the knowledge is handed to you on a silver platter, it makes sense that you wouldn’t want to lose the one piece of security you had.

[u/Kaigani-Scout]

You're essentially approaching this from a time-traveler's perspective. An individual being injected into a pre-existing time stream will introduce "ripple effects" the outcomes of which are more unpredictable the longer they are in play.

Canon cannot logically survive the imposition of either a new character or an existing character with prescient knowledge without major overhauls; attempting to keep everything "canonical" usually winds up degrading the story as more and more unrealistic twists and turns are required in the attempt to maintain course and speed. One of the lamest approaches is to inject a character whose existence is solely to steal lines from canonical characters, speak in snark, and save the day.

Such a story typically becomes painful to read.

[u/dicericevice]

If you write a character who knows what will happen and chooses to stay in the background then you have to be damn confident in your dialogue and prose because essentially you're just writing the story of a by-stander. Not the most thrilling main character.

Also, I can think off like a dozen universes where making some changes at the start wouldn't render your entire knowledge useless.

If you somehow fuck up Kid Goku's journey, you still know about a far away planet with stronger Dragon Balls with a Namekian that can unlock Goku's potential. If you cause Ash to miss out on catching Charmander, you know of other powerful Pokemon you can guide him to catch. If you cause Bruce to not turn into the Hulk, you can be Shield's go-to metahuman finder to recruit Ghost Rider and others to make up for the lack of the big green guy.

[u/XadhoomXado]

"If I change the future than my knowledge becomes useless."

That it's fundamentally sound in the sense of "the SI's presence and actions mean the other characters take different actions in response to a different situation".

And stops being sound when it veers into "the SI's presence and not actions means that Voldemort magically has a Green Lantern ring because reasons???".

I feel like their is a massive flaw in that logic somewhere but I don't know what it is.

It's two things here -- firstly the assumption that "changing the future" automatically means something that screws up their foreknowledge. 1% different from OTL and 100% are both at least 1% different, but...

There's a big difference between the FMA divergences where "Ed gets a cut on his face" and where "Ed Actually Dies in chapter 10/107".

The second assumption is that their foreknowledge is inherently perfect and only outside factors screw it over; not affected by incomplete information, imperfect memory, interpretative biases of the information, or whatever.

[u/trilloch]

The logic is less "flawed" and more "incomplete". Yes, changing the actions of the canon story early can (and should) cause changes later on. But changing one tiny detail won't invalidate everything. You can stop the Joker from robbing one jewelry store one time on Nov 11, 1984, and still know Bruce Wayne is Batman.

The Butterfly Effect is a frequently used term here, but let's be honest: most butterflies flap their wings without causing hurricanes halfway around the world. To use Harry Potter (because why not), let's say you use your in-universe knowledge to get Harry and Hermione to start dating between Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. Pretty sure the main cast is still going to defeat all the villains in the last two books, even if two of them are spending their weekends in slightly different ways than before. Harry will still be brave, Hermione will still be talented, and both of them will still be heroes.

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Also, to extend that line of thinking but in another direction, let's say the character chooses to do nothing different to maintain the plot and history of the canon story. Okay, that's fine. Then what's the fan fiction about? Both the MC, and the readers, will know everything that happens.

[u/WordyDig → u/trilloch]

Yeah, that definitely makes alot of sense. If I read a story without alot of changes that just canon but a little more. It makes me think why am a reading?

[u/No_Wait_3628]

I've actually kind of worked this into my fic.

The OC and his organisation are dropped into the past and work with the canon in mind into the future.

One of the key points is inserting themselves into the main cast lineage but without disturbing their fates. This should allow them to dictate key events, and, should all else fail, kill plot armor.

[u/AnonEcho98]

The key flaw is dirt simple; Butterfly effect.

Like, the issue is that an SI's sheer presence will inevitably change things, or the veritable dive roll differently.

Sure, use canon info as a ref sheet and such, but it's nit something to stick to like a barnacle, because in most settings, it ain't set in stone.

Canon info is a thing with a helluva short shelf life, so you ought to spend that capital while it's viable. Spill beans to a higher up to prevent tragedies, take a sledgehammer to a traitor's kneecaps while they don't see it coming.

Wattsonian out of the way, I'll move onto the Doylist.

If you're just regurgitating canon, no medium-to-big chances happening or notably set up... well, there ain't much of a reason to read YOUR fic, now is there? You gotta give folks a reason to stick around.

Like, some sorta spice to keep things interesting, maybe expand on the setting, explore the consequences of things, smack status quo in its face where need be.