By: Whitney
Fanfiction. How wonderful it is.
Sailormoon fanfiction. How....nevermind.
This is just my little ramble on the way things tend to work out in the
fan stories that perculate across the Internet. Some are hailed and
revelled for their ground breaking storylines and style of writing. Others
are hailed and revelled for storylines that don't exist and given
praise that they truly don't deserve. Sailormoon fanfiction tends to go
either way, depending on the fan.
My first point shall bring up the ever-present topic of ORIGINALITY.
The Internet seems to not know this word very well, what with the blatant
copyright theft that seems as commonplace as the sun rising. In
Sailormoon fanfiction, however, the originality problem originates with the
recycling of storylines. Over and over. Now really, who wants to read how
"Serena cheated on Darien with the Dark Moon Emerald Sparkling Mean
Fightin' Dude Knight" or how "Molly and Serena are secret lovers"? Trust
me, I've seen these same plot devices used constantly in different
stories, and they get old. Especially when the writing is as animated as a
piece of cold cardboard. Why not break the mold a little bit, and try to
even change the laws of the Sailormoon universe? It makes for an
interesting story and an even more interesting reaction from your readers.
This brings me onto my second point about writing and writing styles.
If you're going to set out to write a story, at least know how to spell
what you're going to write. If there's anything that irks me more about
fanfiction, it's the severe lack of punctuation. Learn or at least know
the basic rules of sentence structure, punctuation and capitalization,
and SPELLING. Come on. It's so third grade.
In my last and final point, Sailormoon fanfiction (and Sailormoon
sites, really...) have this strange tendency to mix information around from
season to season, lose consistency in the storyline (for instance,
setting the story in the time of the R season but describing events that
occur in Stars), and use an outrageous amount of Fanboy Japanese. Mixing
information is bad enough, but mixing the English names with -chan or
-san is just silly. When was the last time you walked into Kmart and
heard the cashier screaming "Kawaii Marisol-chan, your party is waiting"
over the intercom?
Before we know it, there may be the Fanfiction Awards instead of the
Emmys..
Comments on this article can be sent to: Whitney.
