Dear Entire Weiss Kreuz Fandom:

'CALICO' IS NOT A BREED OF CAT.

No, really. It isn't. What it is, is a coat color. You may think you've hit upon a neat new codename for your random Kritiker staffer/renegade assassin/unnecessary fifth Weiss member/shiny Mary Sue, but you haven't. You might as well have called the character Tabby. Or Seal-Pointed. Or Largely Black With White Splotches. Doesn't that look a bit out of place in a group whose members are named after pedigree cat breeds?

Why am I seeing otherwise perfectly decent fanficccers calling characters 'Calico'? Even the most pointlessly comprehensive list of Cat Breeds I have come across doesn't include Calicos. The closest it gets is Calimanco and that, it is at pains to point out, is an archaic term which, yup, referred once again to a cat with a certain type of coat color.

Calico is a coat color. Got that? Or do I have to make my obnoxiously large type a little bit larger? Or come over there and beat you over the head (repeatedly) with the Bumper Book of Cat Breeds before it sinks in? It's a coat color. The end. And even if it wasn't, it'd still be overused. Hellishly. There are plenty of pedigree cat breeds out there, you know, and a lot of them have rather prettier names than Calico. Chartreux. Korat. Nebelung. Savannah. Somali. Sphynx. It goes on. Five minutes with Google, fandom. Also please note that the characters' code names have been chosen for a reason. Your OC is not about to get given a name just because it sounds pretty.

Now stop calling your OCs Calico.

Incidentally: Weiss is the only team which uses cat breeds for code names - Crashers uses chess pieces, Aya's Sendai team used flowers, a team in the Drama CDs used insects, for God's sakes. Your 'solo agent' (does Kritiker have them?) will, therefore, not have a kitty-cat codename. Weiss might know them by a kitty-cat codename, but that won't be the only name the character works under. Said codename certainly won't be Persian. Where do you think Persia got his name?

Oh, and please to stop referring to the Weiss boys as 'kittens'. Once was cute. Kind of. But over and over again? Um, I think you'll find they're human males, not cute little kitty cats. And I highly doubt they'd have chosen those code names if they had any choice in the matter either. Your OC will almost definitely not be allowed to choose their own codename. That's really not the way it works.

Love (really),
laila

Cross-posted from fanficrants, because I wanted to.