Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls
|
 Ogiue is probably slashing you right now.
Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls (and many are yaoi fangirls at that).
Various theories abound as to why without real consensus. The cause is likely related to the fact that most visual porn is male-oriented (see hentai) while most written porn is female-oriented (see yaoi) 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 who than who could take who 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 yaoi fanfic over yuri.
This trope is extremely common, even in fandoms that (theoretically) lean heavily male, such as Star Trek, Naruto, and Transformers.
See also Shipping, Slash Fic, Everyone Is Gay, Estrogen Brigade. Compare Most Writers Are Male and Most Tropers Are Young Nerds.
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.
open/close all folders
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.
- 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.
- And there aren't many het pairings that would reasonably work whilst providing the chance to add to the already ballooning number of over-angsty/badly-convoluted fics out there.
- 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.
- Nor does the foot massage scene. What Do You Mean It's Not Symbolic, anyone?
- In the nicest possible way, of course...This troper feels the mangaka should share some of the responsibility for the whole "Death Note" really is YAOI monster, this time.
- The foot massage scene was not in the manga - it's original to the anime, added specifically for fanservice purposes ("symbolic" my ass).
- Seriously, in the anime at least the characters practically beg to be slashed.
- 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!
- There's a lot of shipping fanfic for NGE that doesn't completely ignore the Mind Screw horror elements, but rather pushes them aside for a bit and tells a short story set in the interim of an episode or the area between two episodes. Plus, NGE is more conducive to shipping, as it's a combination of All Love Is Unrequited and Love Dodecahedron in that regard to begin with.
- Hell, Gainax itself made a series of computer games under that premise. Yes, that kind of computer game.
- Not only that, but of the three alternate universe Evangelion manga that have been written in the last few years, only ONE of them ISN'T a romantic comedy. Angelic Days
 is based on a dream sequence from episode 26, and Shinji Ikari Raising Project is based on a videogame based on that dream sequence from episode 26 — coincidentally, both are written by women.
- This Troper has bumped into one of the most amazingly complicated Ship Wars in the realm of Bleach Fanfiction.
- It's not really complicated: rabid fans of the two main het pairings duke it out (with one side being decidedly more ah, dedicated than the other), with other characters dragged into it as Ship Mates. Bleach is one of the very few fandoms where the yaoi fans generate less Fanwank than het fangirls.
- Full Metal Alchemist
- This explains the lack of Winry/Sheska fic...
- 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 (so far) more than twenty.
- 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..
- Nothing is sacred when it comes to Naruto shipping. The amount of pairings with characters who want to fucking kill each other in the anime can still clearly be in love and WHY DON'T YOU NOTICE ITS SO OBVIOUS THAT THEY DON'T REALLY HATE EACH OTHER! And that's not including the rampant amounts of incest...
- Though looking at the final confrontation between Sasuke and Itachi...
- To be fair, if you pick two random characters of Naruto, there's a pretty good chance they want each other dead. The Naruto universe would be vastly improved by a huge insertion of "Make Love, Not War"... Well, at least until the villages decided to go to war and everyone was forced to kill their romantic partners for the sake of their village.
- 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.
- I would expect a lot of the "ignoring" is actually ignorance. Both because it's never explicitly stated in the films or anime and because a lot Yu Yu Hakusho fanfics display complete ignorance of relevant facts.
- Also, almost every crossover with Inu Yasha features a Kagome who has miraculously gained incredible power and beauty and falls instantly in love with Kurama/Hiei/Yuusuke, who feel exactly the same way about her. Considering she has a long-term semi-relationship already, generally attacks demons on sight and acts much younger than the Yu Yu Hakusho characters despite being the same age as the main characters, it's a striking, if somewhat obscure, example.
- 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.
- 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.
- Around the time it was created, the Beyblade category on fanfiction.net consisted entirely of Shota Con Ho Yay fics.
- 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. Though still, considering that they sorta men their friendship and Suzaku becomes Lelouch's Knight... well, maybe the fangirls weren't that lost
- Considering what has been going on in R2... The ships have sailed, specially after Shirley's tragic death.
- 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.
- Pokemon
- 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.
- Which is more interesting: A card game or paedophiliac, slightly necrophiliac identical-twincest between murdering, dark magic-using psychopaths and their better halves?
- Bearing in mind, two of the "better" halves condoned what amounted to murdering their darker halves, so every possible twosome of the six except Ryou/Yuugi has had one try to kill the other.
- 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 Ranma is really rather homophobic and Ryouga is obsessed with Akane to the point of being a Stalker With A Crush. In fact there is a sizable portion of fanfic devoted to curing Ranma's gender curse just so he and Ryouga can get together as guys.
Comic Books
- As far as the X-Men fandom goes, there are... some action fanfics which actually try to keep the characters in character. For all of those, there are 10 or 20 about one of three things: Wolverine and Jean, Wolverine and Rogue, or Wolverine/male character he can't stand (usually Sabretooth, but sometimes Cyclops, Angel, or Gambit). Rogue and Gambit win second place for Most Shipped Within the Fandom, however. And the Crack Pairings generated by the Loads And Loads Of Characters, ye gods...
- While most Batman fictions are okay, the number of Batman/Joker slash stories as compared to Original Flavour is pretty disturbing. Of course, that fact that the Joker was played by Heath Ledger in the most recent movie doesn't help matters.
- Brokeback Gotham, anyone?
- "Why...so...curious?" (...Arrgh!)
- Could do a pretty interesting rewrite of the interrogation scene...
- "I wish I knew how to quit being y so srs!" ( LOL)
Literature
Live Action TV
- Fanfiction as we know it 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".
- 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.
- This trope is so prevalent that when that second item was given a Fandom Nod on the show, with Dean calling it "sick", large portions of the fanbase got really ticked off. Apparently, the concept of people finding homoerotic incestuous fanfiction written about them and their close sibling distateful is a deliberate shot at the fandom.
- Or, y'know, all three.
- The introduction of Castiel to season four and his epic Ho Yay with Dean, as well as Ruby's relationship with Sam throughout the season, seem to have at least broadened the number of pairings the fandom is willing to write.
- House: A series surrounded by medical mysteries? Let's just enjoy a nice fluffy House/Wilson fic instead. It's not even like the writers were particularly accurate anyways!
- 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...
- 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, and things have changed to a straight example of this trope, with a bit of Het Is Ew sprinkled in here and there.
- 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.
Video Games
- 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.
- There is one exception: Riku/King Mickey
- This troper saw a fanart showcasing the fact that, even though the girls in Kingdom Hearts are quite stripperiffic, Tetsuya Nomura is complaining about the massive amount of yaoi.
- 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.
- Even bloody violent FPS games like Team Fortress 2 are not immune.
- 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.
- The amount of gayness in the canon is generally inversely proportional to the amount of gayness in the fics. Shippers like a challenge. (Didn't stop Yahtzee renaming them "Mr. and Mrs. Skeletor", though.)
- 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.
- Sonic The Hedgehog, having apparently one of the largest and most broken fanbases around, has no shortage of romance fics and especially slash. Apart from the disturbingly 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. Like Manic/Elise. Apparently, The Hedgehog Can Be Buggered After All.
- Of course, the overlap with Furry Fandom does not help at all.
- While Fire Emblem ficwriters are good about remembering the game's premise, quite a few tend to treat said premise as an afterthought and focus entirely on the characters' love lives.
- 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.
- Inverted for Gears Of War, which has losts and lots of Dom/Marcus slashart. Except that most of it comes from 4chan, which is mostly male...
- Slash-thread (and threads of a attractive males characters) are fairly common on 4chan indicating either posters allowing them because they think they're funny, because Even The Guys Want Him, and/or there are really far more females on 4chan than most people will admit.
Western Animation
- Invader Zim. ZADR. Enough said.
- Not even Transformers is safe. The most common pairing appears to be Megatron/Starscream. They're freaking robots, for crying out loud!
- 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, though primarily gay ones.
- Can't say about the "Kigo" shippers, but Kim Possible fanfic writers in general seem to range from kids to parents of kids, college students to, well, anyone else.
- Nope, definitely not all gay. Bicurious, on the other hand...
- The impressive thing about 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?
- Because it's hot. And a heck of a lot more interesting than the ill-suited canon pairings.
- Danny Phantom fangirls will pair Danny with anything, including Vlad, Dark Danny, Ghost Writer, Sam, even the Fenton Thermos.
- This troper was about to comment on how exactly the Fenton Thermos would work, and then saw canon love interest Sam next to it and felt strangely sad for some reason.
- 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.
|
|
