Skyflower

Mmkay, here's a little more for you.

Blame it on Akatsuki/Sound, continued:
This is closely tied to character bashing. It's where people take away anything that made a villain seem at all likable, understandable, or pitiable, and make them into mindless monsters. It's especially prevalent in series where the "villains" are on the line between being "good" and "evil" (Death Note, Yami no Matsuei, and D.Gray Man, for example). It really kills the whole fic when people do that, because you're stuck thinking "Wait, what? They never did things like that in the manga." It's OOC, and it's just plain bad taste.

Songfics:
It's nice that a song can inspire an author so much, but is it really necessary to add the lyrics in at random intervals? Sure, add some at the very top (and in quote form, please!), if you want to make it look fancy. But adding lyrics to the general body of the fic can really break the flow. Of course, there are exceptions, but not very many. It's also something that a lot of newer writers make the mistake of doing (I have a few buried in a journal somewhere).

Talk-show Style Fics:
These are fics where the author has a self-insert (or in rare cases, a canon character) host a Q and A style "show", where they have other characters from one (or many) series on as "guests". Sure, there are a few pretty darn humorous ones out there, but it's gotten very, very old now. I can't exactly say that I hate these things, but they do bore me to death.

Sap:
This goes along with fluff. Weepy, extremely helpless and childlike characters (either male or female) are dependent upon strong, macho-here type characters (who are always male, except in those rare few shoujo-ai fics that try it). It's like reading an old chick flick or uber-cliched action hero show. It's sometimes what people are trying to think of when they include a warning for fluff in their fics. But in reality, it's far worse than fluff. In "fluffy" fics, there's a possibility that all the characters in it can be IC (so long as you use the right characters). But in "sappy" fics, you have to make at least one of them OOC in order for it to work. And as far as I'm concerned, OOC-ness is one of fandom's greatest sins.

"Make-Over" Fics
Please, God, why? This is as OOC as OOC gets. It's where people take a character and make them have an epiphany of some sort that completely changes their personality. One of the most common in the Naruto fandom is Hinata suddenly becoming bold, and Sasuke or Itachi repenting their sins to become loving, caring, normal (or sometimes better than normal) boyfriends. It sickens me, really it does.

Rebirth Fics:
Ah, the reincarnation fic. Everybody's seen them. In fact, there's usually nothing wrong with them on the basic level, except that they've been done to death. Every single fandom has them; Where a character that's died comes back to life in a body that's identical, or nearly identical to their original one. Really, what's the point of reincarnating at all if you're just going to be a copy of your former self? But, you know, you can put a creative twist on it. I've seen plenty of really interesting ones- Just like every other good fic, you have to dig for an eternity to find them. But it can be done.

"Pick a Guy, Any Guy!"
You know these. There are so many that they should have their own FF.net section (if they don't already, it's been a while). A girl has to choose between two guys she likes equally (and, of course, there is the occasional reverse, and copious amounts of shounen-ai and shoujo-ai versions). It can sometimes be interesting if a good author does it, but it's usually a repeat of the same old thing. What's more, there's rarely a plot, besides the general "get everybody paired off" thing. You end up just wanting them to flip a coin to get it over with most of the time (or better yet, end up in a threesome and spare everybody the horribly predictable ending. At least it would be a surprise.) Why are most of them predictable in the first place, though? Because the majority of the people who write the darn things show their own personal pairing preference very early on in the fic. Rarely does anybody try to make the end pairing a surprise.


Well, there are more, but... I think it's apparent enough already that I'm a fic-nazi. X3

Things that I don't like. Ah, so many. I'm too picky for my own good, really. Though here are a few that weren't listed on the very first page:


Blame it on Akatsuki/Sound!
Yes, they are the main villains. Yes, there's very good reason to hate them. But c'mon, blaming them for every insignificant little bad thing that's happened? Even if it's canon, it's starting to get cliche. The protagonists of this series have bad points too, you know. Use them. Or at least explain why Akatsuki or Sound would be interested in doing such things. They both seem to be very goal-oriented organizations. Individual character quirks aside, they're not interested in torturing everybody they come across unless they're getting something out of it.

Crossing Characters
This is something that I see in doujinshi more often than fanfiction. One character will start acting like another (and in the case of doujinshi, looking like that character). Naruto is not a good replacement for Sasuke just because you've had an epiphany on Sasuke's bastardism. You see this most often in fics where SasuSaku fans are trying to write NaruSaku.

"Fluff"
I do not write "fluffy" fics, and I don't usually read them. All too often the male character(s) involved is made effeminate, or OOC in some other way. There's the whole seme/uke thing (which applies to het fics just as much as it does to slash ones), which I'll get to in a second. In other words, it's your usual fairytale love. All sighs and "awww"s and no development at all. Of course, there are exceptions, but I try to stay away from it, especially when it's bad enough that the author actually has to include a warning for it.

Badly Written Crack Pairings
There are good crack pairings out there, but when it's a rare one, and most of the fics that you can find for it are bad, most people tend to assume that the pairing itself is bad. This happened with my male-slash OTP. Which is sad, because it has the potential to be very interesting.

The "Seme/Uke" Dynamic
This is shallow. That's all there is to it. The majority of the characters in Naruto (and, hey, most other shounen series!) can be both aggressive and submissive. Besides that, the "seme/uke" relationship is usually determined by gender, age, height, hair color, and other things which have nothing to do with how they act around each other. An older character can be submissive around a younger character if the latter has a strong personality, and the former a weaker or quieter one. Switch it around a little! Show some creativity! So long as the characters aren't out of character, it's all well and good.



Oh yes, there will be more. When my brain starts working again. Those are the ones I hate most, though. As well as the more general things like Mary-sues and High School fics.

Hum! A debate! How lovely.

Well, I have to say that I dislike a lot of the yaoi and yuri circulating the web. However, I'm fond of shounen-ai and shoujo-ai. That is, so long as the characters involved are not out of character. That's the easy answer, at least.

My real life preferences have nothing to do with my interests in fandom. I obsess over the canon, and won't even begin to write for a pairing if I think I can't do it without bias. On a similar note, I will ship pairings that I won't write, and I will write pairings that I won't ship. In other words, I'll support pairings that have canon hints even if I don't like them, but I won't support a pairing that has no hints, even though I write for it. Now that we have that out of the way, here's what I think about fanworks in relation to shounen-ai and shoujo-ai (and to a lesser extent, yaoi and yuri).

In my opinion, all kinds of fiction should involve character development, and a plot. I think there was once a person who said that the difference between American cartoons and Japanese ones was that the former made characters to fit around its plot, whereas the latter made a plot to fit around its characters. In my mind, that means that a plot is a means of character development. Now, in fanfiction, a fan shouldn't really be trying to develop the characters, per se. What we should be doing is taking the author's character, as defined in their original work, and making an informed guess as to how they would react in certain situations. Of course, some parameters will need to be set. I think I'm safe in assuming that we all need to have a fairly good understanding of the things a character would not do before we even begin thinking about writing them, never mind the things that they might do. It's quite possible to mess with those parameters a little, so long as you have a really, really good plot that would affect the characters in just the right way, but fics like that are so rare that I can count them on the fingers of one hand. Sure, be as creative as you want, just so long as the characters don't abruptly start having completely different thought patterns. Sasuke will never be weepy or touchy-feely. It's unlikely that Kakashi will ever give up his porn. And for the love of all things holy, Hinata is not going to suddenly seduce Naruto. Even things that are less obvious than those few can be just as bad. At some point, it just stops being fanfiction.

Nooow, sexual preferences? Those of most teens can change on a whim. Granted, it depends a great deal upon the personality of the individual, but a whole lot of it also depends upon their environment. We're going deeper than personal beliefs and opinions here; We're talking sociology and deep subconsciousness -the reasons that they even have those beliefs and opinions. In fandom, you can only get a vague idea of a character's subconscious from their actions, their known history (if applicable), and the society into which they were born. From all of that, you can make guesses as to how they think, and then how they act. Needless to say, you have to be good at psychological reverse-engineering. To say that anybody is "definitely straight" or "definitely gay" is silly. None of us are psychic, and unless the author announces all of his or her characters' preferences, we're never going to know for sure. The best way to go in this situation is to assume that every character is bisexual, but again, use common sense. A character that shows open disgust towards homosexuality, has been abused by or had bad experiences with homosexual people, or is in a society where homosexuality is a taboo equal to murder is going to be far less likely to suddenly take a romantic interest in their friend of the same gender. A homosexual relationship is still possible, but it's so far off the charts of plausibility that it's barely even worth the risk of OOC to explore. That's usually not the case in Naruto, though. So we have to keep guessing. Just because a character "likes girls" or "likes guys", or shows a bad reaction to a perceived come on, does not mean that they are gay or straight. They could like both genders, sometimes without even realizing it, or they could have other aversions to the person coming on to them besides that person's gender, or any number of other things! Heck, they might not even have the slightest interest in romantic relationships at all. It happens often enough in real life. So what should really be debated is what character would or would not have an interest in whom, and other reasons for such. Blanket statements like "he/she is straight" or "he/she is gay", which are too generalized, don't help anything.

The Narutoverse is a field day for people who like sociology and psychology. It's so complex and diverse that there are almost endless possibilities. That's why I write fanfiction. I like to play with the characters' minds, trying to figure out what they might or might not think or do. To me, a pairing is just a catalyst. It's only as important as the way it affects the characters in it. So it really shouldn't be the entire focus of the creative work.




So there you go. My two little cents. I like to think that nobody's opinion is better or worse than anybody else's, you know? =3


Edit: I just realized that half of what I just said has already been stated. And I almost feel like I'm necroposting anyways. But meh, I'm so used to posting on forums and communities where opinion rules all. It's nice to have a change.

Anyways, since my head is spinning right now, I won't say any more. Though I would like to continue on this topic. Debates are love, no matter how bad I am at them. <3