About This Reverie

About this Reverie

Fanfiction is a common, known word nowadays. So what are Reader-Inserts?

The general definition is that indeed you, the reader, becomes part of the story written. HOW you become so can differ greatly. There are the most commonly known story types known as CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) which makes a story pretty interactive by being able to make your own story via your own choices (but writing those can get pretty tedious…). There are Third-Person or First-Person narration with blanks or skillfully omitted name and appearance. Or, my favorite way to write Reader-Inserts, in Second-Person narration, most preferred in Present Tense. (Many write in past Tense, but after thinking in Second-Person Narration in my language, I just found it weird in Past tense and keep writing in Present Tense now.) In such stories you either leave name and appearance blanks, or like before, don’t mention it at all, working it into the story somehow that you yourself can add that part mentally yourself.

Now, it’s difficult in general to say that we are including you into a story when there are so many yous, each of you individuals that cannot put into one narrated ‘you’ and pretend it’s really you. After all, we, teh authors, write this story, shape the story, write, narrate what you do but we do not own you. We only narrate what you do, what you supposedly say.

In my opinion, we narrate what one you says and you, whoever reads it, will be thrown into this role, adapts to it and accepts what he does or doesn’t do, says or thinks because we try to write so that you can sympathize with the ‘you’ of the story and still wonder and puzzle what maybe might come next.

Yes, to me it is a way to write like I’d write an OC of mine, just in second person narration, BUT, more than that, I feel like I am narrating what you do to you, the reader. My imagination thinks up of what you do now, what you say because I think that would be funny, would be significant, would be irrelevant but is entirely possible and I just want to tell you a story with you in it, with you possibly throwing an entire stable fandom into disarray due to your existence in it, to experience an adventure different from your normal usual life as a main character of a story I am narrating.

It is like you read a normal story, experience an adventure as a spectator, feel with the character but not actually being it. Reader-Inserts can go either way. You can feel with the character and not quite feel like you are the you i the story but still feel a bond and the adventure, or you are indeed the you in there, curious of what I make up next, what I have up my sleeve for you. In a way, this is somewhat pulling author and reader closer onto the same wavelength, the more I think and write down here.

So, if you know this kind of story already, feel free to see what I come up with (again, and probably never finish; yes, I am a terrible procrastinator), and if you don’t you are free to join. I am not forcing you.

There is a short story about how I came to know this kind of story. It starts with Quizilla. With a lot of authors of reader-Inserts it started with Quizilla. Back then those kinds of second-person narration popped up (but often for a set character with names and appearance given by the author, their OC and still you would take up the role of that character and feel somewhat more involved in the story) and I started trying out writing them. I fell in love with that. But Quizilla turned stupid after its layout update and stuff, I escaped to FOS-FF, which was a great collection of fanfictions, primary Reader-Insert. But FOS-FF had some problems (host-maintenance-wise) and eventually I found out about Lunaesence. And I never want this site to close down. So. If you ever have time, check out this site. It hosts everything, fanfiction or Reader-Inserts, and great authors, great mods and…really nice people hanging out there♥