Because last night's emoangsty whine really disturbs me, I'm going to rant about Weiss Kreuz fans again. I was going to post this to the appropriate place, but if I did I suspect I'd get one of the resident poseurs jumping on me over it for some reason. Never mind that, um, it's valid. So it's here for now and may end up on fanficrants later.

Okay, Weiss Kreuz fangirl, you're new here. Want to know how to play in this particular sandbox without making a complete fanbrat of yourself? Well, here's some clues...

• We do not need pairing names. Really. We don't. This fandom's been around since the late nineties and about the closest we got to pairing names was chopping the end off Youji and Schuldich's names and squishing them onto those of random other guys. First time I saw someone talking about 'Kemi' I thought I'd missed something in a Drama CD. Pairing names are not the mark of a grown-up fandom: quite the opposite. Just because they do it in the Naruto fandom (and then there's oh my God, Yu-Gi-Oh!) doesn't mean we now have to do it everywhere. Look. The guys' names are Ken and Omi AND THEY ARE BOTH THREE LETTERS LONG. Please do not abbreviate names which are THREE LETTERS LONG.



• Your neat new shiny Weiss/Schwarz member who just so happens to be a stunningly beautiful teenage girl with speshul powers of speshulness and a dark past of wangst, rape and legitimate torment? Back of the line, thank you. Check the archives at The Pit, okay? How many other neat new shiny Weiss/Schwarz members who just so happen to be stunningly beautiful girls with leet powers of leetness and dark pasts of wangst do you see there? Well, exactly. If you insist on making the guys work with Raven Katharine Sakura Serenity DeLune (as a prelude, of course, to one or more of them falling madly in love with her) could you please try and find a way of doing it that we haven't seen nine million times before?



• We've got quite enough all-girl assassin teams too, okay? Including one called - oh yeah, SCHREIENT. No, this really isn't a neat and novel new idea. Please refrain from saying Weiss and Schwarz find the presence of your All-Girl Assassin Team the major shock to the system it isn't. They have fought women before.



• We are not the largest fandom out there. Specifically, we are not the [InuYasha/Yu-gi-oh!/Full Metal Alchemist/Naruto/Sailor Moon/Anything else that's been on US TV] Fandom. There aren't as many of us. You are not going to get as many reviews for your fic as you did when writing for [InuYasha/Yu-gi-oh!/Full Metal Alchemist/Naruto/Sailor Moon/Anything else that's been on US TV]. This does not mean we all think your fic sucks. This does not mean we're all elitist bitches who won't give a newbie a break. This does not mean we hate you. It just means, hey, there's less of us. Do not have a fit because your new fic 'only' got eight reviews for its first chapter. In this fandom, eight reviews for a single chapter is damned good going.



• A lot of us here like slash. A lot (in fact, we could do with more decent het ficcers). This doesn't mean we must all hate het. Het fans can play down one end of the sandbox, the slash fans play down the other and we'll all try not to fling sand at one another, okay? We can all save that for the Suethors.



• Respect the characters and canon. Even if you hated Gluhen, ignored the Drama CDs and are writing an AT fic you can still respect the characters and canon. You can definitely respect the characters and canon if the only difference is the sudden presence of Raven Katharine Sakura Serenity DeLune - just because she's there and Aya is going OOC by the sheer force and power of his Twu Wub for her, that doesn't make the fic an AU. If you get it wrong and someone calls you on it, they're not jealous or stupid or zOMGMEEN for saying the rest of the fandom is most likely thinking. It does look stupid to say your Sue is Schuldich's surprisingly Japanese little sister or to claim that Youji and Ken are at all interested in violently raping Omi.



• Finally: WATCH THE FUCKING SHOW. You like the way the boys look, you've read a few fics and you'd like to get involved yourself? Great. Go watch the show. No, it's not Great Art but if you're going to call yourself a Weiss Kreuz fan you need to at least TRY to get to grips with the source material. Basing your fanfic on other people's fanfic is genuinely not a good idea and it makes you look like a fanbrat even if you're not one. If you like the show so much, surely watching it shouldn't be such a chore?