Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Most Fanfic Writers Are Female

Where do you think all of that Naruto doujin comes from?

Most fanfic writers are girls.

Various theories abound as to why, but the cause is most likely related to the fact that most visual porn is male-oriented (see: any adult video site) while most written porn is female-oriented (see: your local bookstore's erotica section) and Fan Fiction, like porn, trades heavily in Author Appeal.

Because Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls, and because most girls are more interested in who's sleeping with whom than who could take whom in a fight, this means most Fan Fiction is primarily focused on relationships (romantic or otherwise) and shipping. Other side effects include a proliferation of Mary Sues compared with Marty Stus and the heavy favoritism of guy/guy Slash Fic and Yaoi over girl/girl Femme Slash and Yuri, and sometimes het.

This trope is extremely common, even in fandoms that presumably lean heavily male, such as Star Trek, Naruto, and Transformers.

This trope has been in effect since well before the internet made it much easier to proliferate fanfic. Studies of early Star Trek fanfiction showed as many as 90% of authors were female in the 1970s, even though at the time such stories could only be shared through fanzines or through sending self-addressed-stamped-envelopes to the authors and having them mail you a manuscript.

A totally ubiquitous trope. Nonetheless, some examples stand out more than most. Note: if you plan to add an example that can be summarized as Complaining About Fanfic Tropes You Don't Like, please leave it out.

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Anime and Manga

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.
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 between the loose cannon and a minor character that some readers didn't even notice in their fixation on things like the plot.
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, one of whom is a widower (the wife was female), and two of whom have prospect girlfriends.
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!
Rabid fans of the two main Bleach het pairings duke it out with other characters dragged into it as Ship Mates. Yes, Bleach is one of the very few fandoms where the yaoi fans generate less Fanwank than het fans. Contrary to the tone of the show itself, Hollows and Arrancrar generally feature only when they're in the fic's preferred pairing, and sword fights usually only occur in an If You Know What I Mean Slash Fic sense.
Naruto, a show about members of Highly Visible Ninja armies which kill each other revolving around the Cycle Of Revenge, falls into this hard. Madara? Orochimaru? Never heard of them!
Prince Of Tennis. We have the yaoi fics, the het fics, the Dream Novels, the Tsundere Sues, the Die For Our Ship based hate of Sakuno or how she becomes a Possession Sue, the rabid Atobe worship...
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, 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. The show itself is firmly in DBZ's "action show" genre, with romance only being mentioned in the context of how it affects motivations for pitched combat.
Sorcerer Hunters. Even though it's practically the patron saint of Stripperiffic costumes, more than half of the fanfic written is based on the Ho Yay that was also thrown in the series - especially the hot hot Carrot/Marron incest subtext.
Around the time it was created, the Beyblade category on fanfiction.net consisted entirely of Shota Con Ho Yay fics.
Never mind the robots; Code Geass has all the right ingredients to be a fangirl's dream come true - two Bishonen childhood friends turned rivals, pretty character designs by Clamp, and shipping options both het and slash galore.
You'll be lucky to find Digimon fanfiction that actually includes any digimon.
Pokemon: a story of a nerdy boy with a collector's fetish whose affection for his pet is greater than for his friends, but shipping turns him into pretty much the hottest male around with an impressive harem of wanna-be grilfriends. Oh, by the way: there is plenty of mon/mon romance too.
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 a Draco-esque unhealthy infatuation with Seto Kaiba and his Destined True Love. Need I point out that Yu-Gi-Oh! revolves around a card game?
- A children's card game.
Leaving aside the gallons of Fetish Fuel in Ranma 1/2, you still have the uber-macho gender shifting Jerk With A Heart Of Gold and his moody yet surprisingly sensitive Rival Ryouga. You can pretty much guess the most popular pairing, never mind that Ranma is really rather homophobic and Ryouga is obsessed with Akane almost to the point of being a Stalker With A Crush throughout the majority of the series, and that he actually acquires a girlfriend, Akari Unryuu, at the end of the manga. In fact, there is a sizeable portion of fanfic devoted to curing Ranma's gender curse just so he and Ryouga can get together as guys...
- Worth mentioning is that there is one manga chapter where Ranma gets hit by a Love Potion for Ryoga. While under the spell, he intentionally spends most of his time female.
The most prominent themes among Fushigi Yuugi fanfics are the following: 1) Replacing Miaka with ~~someone else~~ an Author Avatar while keeping Tamahome/Hotohori/Tasuki/any other Seishi there (or vice versa); 2) a new Miko (usually Suzaku No Miko) is introduced, either acing out Miaka or repeating the quest; 3) ~~a new girl~~ an Author Avatar shows up and befriends/antagonizes Miaka and the gang, falling in love with one of them in the process.
Monster, despite being seinen, has attracted a fanbase that prefers writing about how Nina wants to sleep with her twin brother.
Dragon Ball Z, the quintessential action show, falls prey to this. A depressingly large amount of its fanfic is generic high-school romance about Gohan and Videl, although slash is curiously rare. There's a fair bit of good girl/bad boy stuff about how Bulma and Vegeta made Trunks, as well.
Actually invoked in Corrector Yui canon. Yui, the main character, was a prospect manga artist who wrote and drew stories about becoming a Magical Girl. . . and then she became one for real.

Comic Books

Film

Literature

Live Action TV

Modern fanfiction was invented by Star Trek Fan Girls in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The term "slash" originally came from how the Kirk/Spock pairing was denoted. "Mary Sue" was coined by the 1974 fanfic "A Trekkie's Tale".
The Price Of The Phoenix and The Fate Of The Phoenix are official, printed, 70s-era Star Trek novels by Myrna Culbreath and Sondra Marshak... and they just feel like well-written fanfictions, right down to the, er, rather emotionally deeper relationship between Kirk and Spock.
- That's probably because they are fan fiction. And not that very well written, either, although of course YMMV. Among ST fans, Culbreath and Marshak are notorious for having used Trek fan fiction (including the Kraith series, when they took it over from its originator) to elaborate on their personal BDSM obsessions. Their biggest turn-on — uh, pet theory, is the idea that physical strength is the ultimate deciding factor in just about everything. I think it's Authority Equals Asskicking? Anyway, over a hundred official, printed, '70s- and '80s-era Star Trek novels have been written by (yes, mostly women) fans, many of them rather good — Diane Duane's stories about the Romulans in particular.
Supernatural. Almost every fic seems to be written by a girl who either wants to sleep with one of the Winchester brothers, have them sleep with each other, or be their younger sister. Or, y'know, all three.
House: A series surrounded by medical mysteries? Let's just enjoy a nice fluffy House/Wilson fic instead!
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 the mopey teenage girl is 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.
Meet Daily Show/Colbert Report fandom. If you've never read a fanfic slashing a comedian with the President of the United States. Or his Memetic Badass Chief of Staff.
Power Rangers: For a show with a target audience of 6-10 year old boys, there are an awful lot of ship fics, but I suppose that's what happens with a universe with Loads And Loads Of Characters. PR has experienced an interesting inversion of this trope. Back in the early days of the fandom, while Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls was still heavily in effect, the majority of stories at the time were more Original Flavour than romance, though there was often a suitable mix of the two. Fifteen years later, things have changed to a straight example of this trope, with a bit of Het Is Ew sprinkled in here and there.
Similarly, Kamen Rider. For a series geared towards young boys about kicking monsters in the face, male members of the fandom are all but extinct.
Mock The Week. MOCK THE BLOODY WEEK. Yes, seriously. Frankie has hilariously mentioned, on the show, the existence of Frankie/Hugh fics...
Pro Wrestling is supposedly the male answer to a soap opera. Judging by how many different people Jeff Hardy's been banged by in fic world, you could almost argue against it being the MALE answer to anything.
Eureka has a pretty small fic community, but the Carter/Stark slash ship has triple the fanbase as every other ship on the show combined.
Doctor Who ficers often pair the Doctor with his one of his Female (sometimes Male) Companions, past or current. Common ships include The 4th Doctor/Sarah Jane and the 10th Doctor/Rose Tyler (or 10th Doctor/Jack Harkness, if you swing that way).

Video Games

The Legend Of Zelda: Sheik/Link, self fanserviced Dark Link/Link, anyone?
- Some girl did a Vaati/Dark Link pairing with their canon appearances (Minish Cap canon for Vaati). Unfortantly, Author Appeal for her seems to be...
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.)
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 intended 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...
Ace Attorney fandom is all about the Phoenix/Edgeworth rather than mysterious murders with quirky witnesses. Admittedly, the characters themselves have a lot of subtext going anyway, either of platonic Nakama or intense UST that is never resolved onscreen. Even the writers have commented on this...
The game Psychonauts has a lot of potential to generate interesting stories about Raz's adventures or the psyches of the campers that we didn't get to see. But no, stories about 10 year olds making out are much more interesting apparently.
The Sonic The Hedgehog fanbase has no shortage of romance fics and especially slash. Apart from the massive amount of fans with crushes on Shadow (that is, the ones that don't hate him) and a Relationship Sue to match, if you look further down the rabbit hole you'll find every possible pairing no matter how improbable, ridiculous or just plain wrong. Apparently, The Hedgehog Can Be Buggered After All.
Explains (partly) why, Knights of the Old Republic fanfic depicting a female Revan outnumbers that depicting a male Revan about five to one, despite Revan being "canonized" male. Female Exiles (which is the "canon" one, though) outnumber male ones only by a three-to-one margin.
Despite the relative youth of the Mass Effect fandom, the sheer number of Garrus/Female Shepard fics out there is rather impressive, especially considering a female Shepard is pretty much a ready-made self-insert, and Garrus is an avian alien with a naturally-occurring tribal warrior facemask and who is only vaguely humanoid.
Bully. That ought to be enough, but do I have to elaborate? The game's damn fun to begin with, but something about the appealing combination of playing a 15-year-old redheaded badass in a practically all-male environment (moreso if you pretend all those strange leggy creatures in skirts and high socks are cleverly concealed transvestites) with a uniquely twisted bad boy villain leads to either oodles of Slash Fic or oodles of self insert Draco In Leather Pants fic.
Largely averted in Halo fanfiction, in spite of the tremendous potential for Ho Yay.
The female minority of Team Fortress 2 fandom is not so much concerned with playing the game itself as creating gobs and gobs of slash fanart and fanfiction. The game's cast is essentially a Blue Bishonen Ghetto minus the "bishonen" part, which may or may not justify this.
- In fact, a large number of said female fans have admitted to having never even played the game in the first place.
Dragon Age: A lot of these fics deal with romance, but most of them involve Alistair and any Female PC (mostly Cousland) or Zevran & a Female PC. Well, since we're talking about these two who are more than qualified enough to be Estrogen Brigade Baits and Fetish Fuel Station Attendants... and let's not forget Morrigan, Leliana and other NP Cs.

Web Original

Western Animation

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, not surprising at all, supports a very high count in Romance fan fiction. Even though the main theme of the Turtles is adventure, stopping the Shredder, alien invasions, monsters from different dimensions and far off lands and tons of Kung-Fu fighting... fic authors could care less. You'll find stock piles of yaoi/incest stories or the even more "girl(s) gets lost/abandoned/chased into sewers and discovers the turtles, inevitably one of whom is her true love." But you'll be hard pressed to find a story with a decent fight scene.
Not even Transformers is safe. The most common pairing appears to be Megatron/Starscream. They're freaking robots, for crying out loud!
- Starscream Glomps Megatron.
- Of particular note here is that, although transformer reproduction has been shown to consist of applying the local Mac Guffin to a convenient empty shell, reproduction and mpreg abound anyway. Primus help us all.
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.
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.
The impressive thing about Avatar: The Last Airbender Avatar fanfiction is not the amount of shipping fics, but the sheer variety. Every possible combination with every possible orientation in every possible genre with every single character, and not just the main characters either. It seems, though, the single most popular pairing remains the one hooking up The Hero's True Love and the guy who spent most of the series trying to drag The Hero in chains before the Evil Overlord. Why, fangirls? Why?
Danny Phantom fangirls will pair Danny with anything, including Vlad, Dark Danny, Ghost Writer, Sam, even the Fenton Thermos.
The largest fan forum in existence for Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! is virtually all girls, and the rest of the internet fandom follows suit.
The majority of Futurama fanfiction is Fry/Leela romances, often set exclusively in New New York. Who needs insane space adventures and satire when you can have Fry and Leela wangsting about their feelings like any twentysomethings? There is no shortage of Sues and Stus, either.
How the hell you take Metalocalypse, a series about a death metal band full of sociopaths on the verge of destroying the world and turn that into fodder for countless slashfics is nothing short of stupefying.
- Well, the series does repeatedly show that the band members have extremely dysfunctional and abnormal relationships with each other, as well as frequently grotesque sexual perversions. Plus, you know, Murderface.