Thanks so much for this! I can think of, like, one SI that breaks all these rules unabashedly over in the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners fandom, but if that fic had gone on much longer I fear the fic would have become insufferable.
I do think that many of these rules apply to writing a protagonist in general in fanfic, remembering that Caesar art mortal so to speak. OCs can feel even more obnoxious than SIs sometimes if care isn’t taken. For example, to endlessly harp about BGC fanfiction, I love Craig Reed’s self-insert in Bubblegum Avatar but his OC Greg Mallory in Black Knights Steel Hearts, written a few years earlier, feels very forced. Or, hell, licensed fanfic: Adam Warren’s Grand Mal. Maybe that would have worked in more than four issues, but as-is it feels like Warren bent Megatokyo and Crisis around to be more like with Dark Age comic sensibilities and his more cynical sensibilities in general to make the comics more about Vash than the Sabers.
Or, god, there’s no shortage of Edgerunner fanfics I can get angry at. But many of them are by people I know elsewhere so I’m not sure I can tell those stories here, except maybe under spoiler tags???
At the end of the day even the pulpiest, high-power-level stories are best when there’s a chance of failure, and our heroes are harrowed by that chance and come out hopefully more decent people.
I do think that many of these rules apply to writing a protagonist in general in fanfic, remembering that Caesar art mortal so to speak. OCs can feel even more obnoxious than SIs sometimes if care isn’t taken. For example, to endlessly harp about BGC fanfiction, I love Craig Reed’s self-insert in Bubblegum Avatar but his OC Greg Mallory in Black Knights Steel Hearts, written a few years earlier, feels very forced. Or, hell, licensed fanfic: Adam Warren’s Grand Mal. Maybe that would have worked in more than four issues, but as-is it feels like Warren bent Megatokyo and Crisis around to be more like with Dark Age comic sensibilities and his more cynical sensibilities in general to make the comics more about Vash than the Sabers.
Or, god, there’s no shortage of Edgerunner fanfics I can get angry at. But many of them are by people I know elsewhere so I’m not sure I can tell those stories here, except maybe under spoiler tags???
At the end of the day even the pulpiest, high-power-level stories are best when there’s a chance of failure, and our heroes are harrowed by that chance and come out hopefully more decent people.