#'no no you don't understand. it's very important that she has a cajun accent. for... reasons.'

[miceenscene]

Hi Mice!

Since you're someone who has written in several fandoms, I have a question for you. (I'm loving your Mandalorian fic, by the way. A soulmate AU is perfect for the lonely tin can cowboy!) I certainly don't feel like I have my finger on the pulse of fandom or anything (I'm pretty much just a lurker), but I've started to notice an uptick in second-person, reader-insert fics lately. (I realize this could have been a super popular trend for ages, and I’m just discovering it, haha.) As someone interested in narrative theory, I find this fascinating. Second person narratives are used very rarely in literature; the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Italo Calvino's wonderful If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.

Have you noticed a similar trend? What do you think might account for it? Is it a convention of particular fandoms, or is this a trend across the board? Is it a kind of natural evolution of Tumblr fics?

I can't decide how I feel about it overall. At its worst, it seems a shameless update on ye olde Mary Sue. But when done well, the reader can be a well-drawn, engaging character, and it can lend an urgency and immediacy to the writing.

I'm totally not expecting you to be an expert here or anything, just thought I'd get thoughts from a writer I respect. Feel free to ignore this, if you’d like! Haha. Hope you're well!

Hey!

This is rather funny that you should ask because I was just talking about second-person fics in a group chat this morning. And so I shared your ask with them and got some additional insights.

I’ve certainly noticed an uptick in the amount of second-person I’m seeing, but I also have just added a much more Vibrant fandom to my collection after living for so long in one that is defined by glories past. The group says that they’ve also noticed an uptick; fandoms like Chris Evans or Hiddleston used to be much more OC focused are now heavily second-person focused instead. It’s certainly easy to see the evidence. The Mando/Reader tag is LEAGUES larger than Mando/OC on both tumblr & Ao3. (Same with the rest of Pedro Pascal’s shippable characters, but you mentioned Mandalorian in particular. :D)

As to why, there could really be any number of reasons. 

The group wisely suggested, and I agree, that the COVID lockdowns have a part to play. Everyone everywhere is just fuckin’ desperate for happy brain chemicals. And this fic here is about my current comfort character thinking I’m pretty and wanting to spend time with me. Weeeeeeee. Happy day dreams ahoy.

I think they may also come from a natural progression of Mary Sues/OC’s of the past. A reader-insert certainly cuts out the middle man. Like how fanfic helps streamline the writing process by doing the heavy lifting of world-building and partial character creation, Reader Insert streamlines even more by letting the reader themself also half-fashion the OC in their own head. (Though to be fair, the best reader inserts I’ve ever read have the ‘You’ be very much their own character. So some writers take that labor back from their readers to some truly fantastic results.)

I think also there may be something truly engaging in the semi-communal feeling of a second-person story. Every second-person story has a story-teller. There’s another voice telling you what is happening to ‘You’, another person specifically crafting a scenario for you. And it feels more personal because it’s addressed directly to you, and often highly subjective in nature (the ‘You’s feelings typically being the key reasoning for writing in the first place). This goes back to the Covid point but with Covid and even capitalism doing its damnedest to continually separate people (because we are so much easier to market to when we’re alone), it’s not surprising that the older forms of seeking community through storytelling are getting a renaissance. Dungeons & Dragons (and tabletop roleplaying) is a really great example of second-person storytelling that has exploded in recent years. Humans have always liked telling stories (our brains even tell us stories when we sleep). Just its no longer happening around a fire after a meal, but through my phone in the middle of the night, curled up in my bed.

Though even in published fiction, we may not see ‘You’ as a character but we do see characters crafted specifically for audience projection. Both in media like Doctor Who where you have the Audience Insert Companion that’s there to ask the questions about the weird bullshit that’s happening that the audience themselves might be having (and also to make googoo eyes at the Doctor to varying levels of success); or in stories like Twilight where Bella has far more in common with a ‘You’ than she does say Elizabeth Bennet. (Bella’s even managed to get the first person POV while still being a highly projectable outline of a character. She’s essentially one pronoun away from being a ‘You’. YA as a whole genre makes a lot of money off this exact concept. Tumblr and Ao3 just take it the next step forward.)

The key to a good story is engaging your reader. Second-person seems be a new trend to doing that. But if the last decade has taught us anything it’s that things that start online rarely ever stay there. Traditional Publishing moves slow so I don’t think we’ll be seeing Simon & Schuster promoting any second-person novels anytime soon. But it wouldn’t surprise me if there are smaller boutique publishers already making them and people already buying them. 

You said that you didn’t know how you felt about Second-person overall. And I don’t think that’s an incorrect place to be. Second-person is just a tool, like a paintbrush is a tool or a rolling pin is a tool. In the hands of a novice, it can leave something to be desired. And in the hands of a good craftsman, it can be used to create something truly astounding.

(However, all this to say, the use of ‘y/n’ (or any of its derivatives) will always be a big Nope for me. I’ve read enough second person to have it patently proven that it’s possible to write without it.)

<3, Mice