And when fans of color talk about how they wish they could see themselves in more of these stories, the response from fellow fans can often be aggressive and racist. Black and brown readers – especially ones with curlier, thicker hair or darker skin – aren’t able to visualize themselves in place of the reader because the blank slate is a little too beige. One of the biggest ways that reader inserts frequently fail to capture a wide range of reader experiences and make more people feel included? Most readers are coded to be white, or written in a way that only light skinned people with certain features can read themselves into. Ableism is also a huge problem in reader inserts – as it is in fandom at large – and readers who have disabilities, are neurodivergent, or are dealing with trauma are under-represented in these spaces, or can even be subject to portrayals that are offensive or bigoted. Male reader inserts are uncommon as well, something that is somewhat expected due to the demographics of fanwork-creating fandom at large where men appear to make up a minority of fanfiction creators and consumers. Reader inserts pairing a female reader with female characters are rare outside of fandoms with preexisting femslash cultures like Supergirl, The Legend of Korra, or Xena: The Warrior Princess. While the function of Reader Inserts is to make sure the reader can see themselves in fandom and get to have the fantasy of having adventures or romance with the main characters… plenty of fans feel left out of the narratives that their peers build. Unfortunately, it’s not all fun and games in the land of reader inserts. Reader inserts are an amazing form of wish fulfillment in fandom, a way to actively see and center yourself in stories that only exist on television or in romance novels. I wondered, ‘What if I turned one of the scenarios I find myself thinking about into a fuller story and follow this model of having readers guide the plot?’ When I started writing that draft, I thought it would be simpler to write it from a second-person perspective rather than naming and describing a main character that might alienate readers.” “ I thought that was a really fun way to approach a writing project. It was usually quick thought experiments like, ‘What might happen if I met BTS? What if I randomly ran into them in real life? What if I had the opportunity to interview them?’” Simultaneously, a popular interactive horror fic called Outcast was going viral online, and the writer would use Twitter polls to determine where the story would go next. “At the time, I was going through a rough period professionally and found myself escaping into little daydreams more often, I think as a form of mental self-preservation. “Honestly, when I first wrote a reader insert story, I wasn't very familiar with fanfic and had never written it before,” she tells Teen Vogue. For Erin, who writes for BTS, the stories she put together were built from daydreams during a tough time. They serve as sites of escapism for author and reader alike, a way for them to flex their creative muscles while diving into a new world with characters they already like. Reader inserts can be a way for fans to see themselves and their experiences in scenarios that they don’t have access to in their offline lives. Even the corresponding term – “ Gary Stu”– isn’t said with the same disdain as “Mary Sue” is. After all, cishet men have put themselves and their fantasies into the narratives they’ve created for centuries with limited backlash. It’s only relatively recently that cultural critics, fan studies scholars, and fans on the ground have made it clear that a lot of the pushback against “Mary Sues” in fan fiction and in media (Bella Swan, anyone?) is largely fueled by misogyny. They were beloved by the creators that wrote them… but not so much the readers that came across those stories. The “Mary Sue,” a character archetype named by Star Trek zine writer Paula Smith back in 1973, came to represent a specific class of character that was slotted clumsily into the existing canon and gained the spotlight that canon characters had. Decades ago, writers wrote original characters into their stories as partners, friends, or best friends of the characters the author adored. Reader inserts aren’t anything new to fandom or to fiction outside of that, and you could argue that in some form, they’re part of all fiction - writers often work in aspects of their lives (identities, careers, locations) into their writing.
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