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.
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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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