It was to be just fiction

“Cat’s Cradle is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.”

Though most works of fiction carry a reminder on the copyright page stating that the following story is solely fiction, for Vonnegut’s works in particular, I think that it may be better if it had a page of its own. After reading Cat’s Cradle, which I am well aware, is a work of fiction, I could not help but to find the grains of wisdom within the untruths plausible and a creeping worry that reality as we know it stands upon layers of lies. Science is too often placed on a pedestal. Modern inventions do have the power and yield god-like results. Religion can be deceiving. People lie.

Yet, we are to acknowledge that the story is not our story, that the characters’ realities are not ours. We can temporarily immerse ourselves within the fictional realities of a story, but we are held responsible for assuming the role of a reader and not that of a character. For some works, however, “extreme” fans consciously disregard the warning and norms by challenging the confines of fiction.

How?

With fandom.

Fanfiction, which often gets a poor reputation for being the product of hyper-imaginative geeks, offers an alternate view of reality for many. By allowing a fan to delve into an extended world of fiction, fanfiction has merged realities and created new ones.

I used to write fanfiction; it was to be a hobby and nothing more.

(See what I just did there?)

When I first joined an online fanfiction archive and community (I ended up being involved an active reader and writer for three to four years), I immediately noticed that the majority of the users on the site had a strong preference for reader-inserts. Reader-inserts are well, reader inserts. You, the reader, are referred to as a character in the story and would be given a blank or would even be directly addressed as (Your Name).

Much like the ironic nature of CYOA (choose your own action, choices within the boundaries set by the author), reader-inserts are shallow. The “reader” character never accurately represents the reader; the “reader” is just an unnamed figure in the story which the reader is supposed to use as a tool to close the distance between reality and “reality.”

My first piece of fanfiction was written in the perspective of one of the story’s original characters; it received no reviews and practically no views. The idea of reader-inserts bothered me, but as it the style was so popular, I decided to use it. Instead of writing “she” or “he” I used “you,” and instead of naming the main character or developing a specific background for the main, I left the most important character to be an undeveloped figure, (Your Name).

As much as I loved receiving gushing reviews, I came to hate writing reader-inserts. Reader-inserts repress both the reader and writer. As a writer, you simply couldn’t give the “reader” too much of a personality or too much of a history (which in turn, weakens the plot and defeats the point of writing); the “reader” had to be left vague for the reader’s imagination. The reader, on the other hand, fell deeper into a false sense of “reality.” Though most would draw the line between fact and fiction and think of fanfiction as leisure, there are also some who don’t and regularly used reader-inserts as a way to temporarily escape into the worlds of their favorite works. Simply said, reader-inserts aren’t healthy because it prompted readers to reject reality to substitute their own.

The phrase "I reject your reality and substitute my own" was made popular by Adam Savage of Mythbusters (in case you were wondering):