Yaoi Fangirls, that is.
Modern fiction is composed of hundreds of different genres and storytelling styles. Epics that sweep us across countries and worlds, horror that creeps inside our minds and stays for days, comedy that makes our hearts warm and our sides ache - this and so much more in a glorious rainbow of human emotion and experience.
In the world of fanfiction, things are not quite the same.
Original Flavour is an endangered species. Regardless of the original subject material, the vast majority of all fanfiction deals with
romance of a fairly simplistic variety, often between characters who have displayed no such feelings in the series itself. The most significant (and heavily advertised) fact about a fanfic is which
ship it endorses, and any summary of the story is incomplete without a handy footnote detailing the pairings within (
04x03/
Squinoa/
teen!snapexOC, etc). Especially amusing when the summary is something like "X happens, what will Y and Z do? Y/Z" which is essentially the
Fan Fiction version of
Trailers Always Spoil. The answer to the question, almost invariably, is "shag".
This is very often combined with
ignoring or removing everything that distinguishes the story as a whole - devices like magic, vampires, hospitals, wars, crimes and so on are
included as window dressing, if at all.
It doesn't matter if the original story was
a cartoon aimed at twelve-year-old boys and featuring the inevitability of war as its central theme or
a video game with no dialogue starring a cartoon insectivore, there will always be a minority of its fanbase who decide that most appealing aspect of the story is a hypothetical romance between
the noble hero and his moody, sultry rival. This minority, it seems, are the ones who produce the great majority of fanfiction.
This will be even
more prominent, of course, if a) there is an actual romantic subplot (stories that focus on a specific romance as their main plot rarely attract attention of this kind, since
shipping is fairly obsolete) in
Canon, or b) if there is a
Blue Bishonen Ghetto involved.
This applies to almost everything. Go to Fanfiction.net and check out the proportion of the 'romance' category compared to every other genre. This speaks for itself.
This is largely because a great deal of fanfiction is written by young women as a way of connecting with a character that appeals to them, or simply as a form of
titillation. Note that said young women are not necessarily
Yaoi Fangirls; there are many fanfic writers who write nothing but
Mary Sue fiction, often openly disparaging
Slash Fic. (Such writers tend to be the youngest specimens, usually girls in late middle school or early high school.)Moreover, the paired characters' sexes do not always inversely parallel the writers'; there are female fanfictionists who write femslash and male fanfictionists who write slash, though male fanfictionists in general are inexplicably rare.
What we have here is the opposite of a
Self Insert Fic - instead of putting themselves in the universe of a story, they put a character in the sort of situations they deal with in real life - most commonly, "Why doesn't he like me?". This provides an outlet for the author's excess angst, sometimes sadly in the form of
wangst (The logical conclusion of this attitude, of course, is the
High School AU).
See also
Sturgeons Law,
Shipping,
Slash Fic,
Everyone Is Gay,
Estrogen Brigade. When the writers are themselves sexually inexperienced, expect
IKEA Erotica. Compare
Most Writers Are Male and
Most Tropers Are Young Nerds.
A totally ubiquitous trope. Nonetheless, some examples stand out more than most.
- Star Trek: The origin of the term 'slash', Kirk/Spock fanfics have been around since the show's early days.
- At least 95% of all Harry Potter fanfiction falls into this one way or another. The worst of it is posted on Quizilla.
- One Piece: A boys' comic about adventures on the high seas. Features not even the most chaste of affectionate physical contact, but even that does not save it from this trope. Common pairings include Sanji/Zoro or Zoro/Luffy. In the rare event of a straight pairing, Nami/Sanji or Nami/Luffy is not all that uncommon (although the latter at least has a shred of basis in it).
- I'm surprised to see no mention of the Zoro/Nami pairing, popular enough to have even a couple of webrings of fansites in Japan. Not counting the arguments between Zonam shippers and others this troper witnessed.
- Death Note: A densely plotted supernatural melodrama where Jumping Off The Slippery Slope is inevitable and the nature of being is explored. (And potato chips are epic.) Fanfics rarely feature anything but romance between either the two Bishonen antagonists/protagonists/whatever, or a pair of minor characters that some readers didn't even notice in their fixation on things like the plot.
- To the shippers' defense, they probably lack imagination to conceive a Xanatos Roulette even half as complex as Light pulls off every day before breakfast. Don't be too harsh on them.
- This editor has had to explain "No, it's not really a yaoi anime" more than once while trying to get someone to watch it. Just to mix things up, someone once suggested it to him because of the yaoiness. You just can't win.
- While it has an innocent logic to it, the implications of Light and L being handcuffed for a long period of time don't help matters much.
- Kingdom Hearts: The main plot (and 70% of the cast) is usually ignored totally in favour of the speculated love lives of Organization XIII. Or rivalslash between Sora and Riku (often making Kairi the target of Die For Our Ship.) Here's a fun game: go to the Kingdom Hearts section of any respectable Fan Fic repository. Try to find a fic that isn't Sora/Riku slash or "Orgy XIII" slash. Not too easy, is it? Then again, few people want to see Disney characters in slash fiction.
- Gundam Wing: The futility of war and mankind's endless desire for battle do not seem to interest writers nearly as much as the homosexual relationships between the five protagonists.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Any Fanfiction not taking the Wangst route often reads like that of a cheerful, fluffy harem anime. Wow, Shinji has all these gorgeous ladies (and one guy) to choose from! No mental anguish, mutilation, Cosmic Horror or death here! No sir!
- Hell, Gainax itself made a series of computer games under that premise. Yes, that kind of computer game.
- Full Metal Alchemist fandom tends to favor yaoi pairings, but could swing both ways... If You Know What I Mean.
- This isn't limited to Yaoi Fangirls, either. Certain Magical Girls shows, especially the Mai-HiME and Nanoha verses (which focus as much on character interaction as monsters getting their asses handed to them every week), have quite active yuri shipping communities with both male and female fans. Rare is the ShizNat or NanoFei fic that actually features those girls using their powers.
- Similarly, the large majority of Mahou Sensei Negima fanfiction seems to revolve around Konoka and Setsuna, whose relationship, though more or less canonical, was a central matter in only one volume out of more than twenty.
- From the fanfic, you'd think the main theme of Kim Possible was forbidden love between Kim and Shego. You'd think that would mean that most are Yuri Fanboys, but as far as this editor could tell from dipping a toe in the fandom, most of the 'Kigo' shippers are indeed females, though primarily gay ones.
- Naruto, a show about Highly Visible Ninjas flipping out and killing people, falls into this hard. Considering the presentation of Naruto and Sasuke's rivalry, though..
- Prince Of Tennis... just... Prince Of Tennis.
- Yu Yu Hakusho. A good 95% of fanfiction that isn't the Mary Sue type is about Kurama and Hiei hooking up and having hot demon-sex. Ironically, proving yet again that most fanfic writers are girls, most fanwriters either ignore or bash the canonical relationship between Sensui and Itsuki (it's Word Of God, BTW, as Sensui isn't all that emotional) because they're too realistically gay. (More for us fanboys, if you ask me.)
- Given that Torchwood is essentially just big-budget, authorized Doctor Who fanfic, it falls into this category as well, tending to eschew most of the major themes and features of the Whoniverse in favor of as much Bi Yay as Russell T Davies can pack into 45 minutes.
- Two Words: Sorcerer Hunters. Even though it's practically the patron saint of Stripperiffic costumes, more than half of the fanfic released is based on the Ho Yay that was also thrown in the series -- especially the hot hot Carrot/Marron incest subtext.
- House: A series surrounded by medical mysteries? Writing about that's too much work! No, let's just enjoy a nice fluffy House/Wilson fic instead. It's not even like the writers were particularly accurate anyways!
- The Final Fantasy series, especially the more recent games, are the target of ravenous shipping and slashing that has nothing to do with the airships and big swords that the creators obviously intend to be the games' draw card, to the extent that the creators of FFVII were stupefied by an interviewer asking them "Who was Sephiroth really in love with?". They've gotten savvier now, though...
- Sailor Moon may be filled with Self Insert Fic (it named Sailor Earth, after all), but these days it's also stuffed with very, very strange Alternate Universe Cookie Cutter Fic that bears more resemblance to a Soap Opera. No powers, no destiny, just Makoto as a stripper and Usagi with a crush on her teacher.
- Don't forget all the Usagi running away because the Senshi betrays her, combined with her going to a Crossover series in order to romance a popular male character of said series whether it be Heero, Vegeta, Legolas. Oh yeah not to mention the Draco In Leather Pants.
- Despite having no characters between the ages of 10 and 40, if you only read the fanfiction you'd think at least one of LazyTown's main characters was a mopey teenage girl, though who is the mopey teenage girl depends on the ship written. Most frequently she's Stephanie, but quite a lot of the time "she's" Robbie Rotten. In a significant minority of these fics, the other one of the two is a rival for Sportacus's affections, and therefore an evil conniving bitch.
- Despite the fact that none of the main characters seem to have hit puberty yet, the Beyblade fandom fell into this. Around the time it was created, the Beyblade category on fanfiction.net consisted entirely of Shota Con Ho Yay fics.
- Ace Attorney fandom is all about the Phoenix/Edgeworth rather than mysterious murders with quirky witnesses.
- Invader Zim. ZADR. Enough. FUCKING. SAID.
- ZAGR as well, to a
slightly much lesser extent.
- Should we mention that the series was not written to have any romantic couplings at all?
- Never underestimate the slash fans.
- They love the challenge.
- Even bloody violent FPS games like Team Fortress 2 are not immune.
- Code Geass has all the right ingredients to be a Yaoi Fangirl's dream come true - two Bishonen childhood friends turned rivals as central characters, with character designs by Clamp, to boot. However, just as many female fans of the show support the heterosexual pairings, apparently because the show's female cast has yet to set off any major Die For Our Ship...that, and the fact that Suzaku and Euphie make such a cute couple.
- What steps that might have been taken to prevent the rival pairing of Lelouch/Suzaku have actually amounted to very little, as they're paired off constantly despite each having female love interests.
- You'll be lucky to find Digimon fanfiction that actually includes any digimon. You are a god of the search if they are developed as characters in their own right.
- Here's a Sturgeons Law-esque rule about Pokemon fanfiction: you generally can't find a good fic pertaining to ''your'' pairing of choice. Sure, you may like Brock, and you may like May, but good luck finding a fanfic about Brock and May as a couple...
- Good luck finding a South Park fic that isn't slash, High School AU, or with a Mary Sue OC. You might get a oneshot or two.
- Much to this Troper's horror, not even Transformers is safe. The most common pairing appears to be Megatron/Starscream. They're freaking robots, for crying out loud!
- To this other troper's horror, one of the most common Armada pairings is Starscream/Alexis. He's a giant robot, she's a twelve-year-old girl. They may have had something resembling a friendship. What the hell, fangirls?
- Oh that's easy. Starscream (any version) has always been a fangirl favorite, for whatever the reason. Alexis is about as ready-made an author surrogate as they come.
- Army Of Two seems to avert this by virtue of not having enough fangirls, despite it providing the absolutely most blatant Ho Yay characters in recent memory. Alternatively, perhaps the lack of "effort" required to imagine Salem and Rios as a couple actually turns typical Yaoi Fangirls off.
- Try to find good, book-based Phantom of the Opera fanfiction. Just try...
- At least 80% of all Yu-Gi-Oh fics are about pairing two male characters together, the majority of these pairings including characters who share the same body. Giving these characters separate bodies as if they always had them is established fanon, and many of the fics who don't focus on them instead have an unhealthy infatuation with Seto Kaiba and his Destined True Love. Need I point out that Yu-Gi-Oh! revolves around a card game?
- Neil Gaiman has expressed bewilderment at the existence of Good Omens slash (though he seems to have later caught on
). Considering the close relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley as well as them being Mistaken For Gay several times, it would be even more of a surprise if the vast majority of GO fics weren't focused on getting these two to "make an effort" with each other.
- This troper feels fortunate that she writes for Myst, a fandom that generally has some decent fic. Sadly, there is not a lot of good fanfiction even there.
