Oooh, I have found a fandom meme! I must do it (and I bet you all know which fandom I must do it for; I love my mad gay florist assassins, I do) because fandom memes are almost as up my personal alley as MP3 player memes are and I haven't seen either of them for a while.

I got this particular flavor of fandom meme off pichi. I don't know if she's posted her version of it quite yet as I got it off her over MSN messenger, but I am doing it anyway and I did get if off pichi, so it still counts. Chances are she has anyway, as I always take far too long to fill these things in...

List 5 personal quirks you have about your fandom(s)-- such as your opinion about a certain character regardless of what anyone else says, or your argument about why/why not a couple would "work". That sort of thing.
Then list 5 things that ANNOY you about the fandom-- what other people do that irritates you. Even if it makes you sound like a hypocrite.

I might have done something like this before, if I'm not thinking of the ten unpopular fandom opinions thing I was working on a while back, but even if I have I don't care. On with the fangirl bitching!

Five Quirks

• I'm a unrepentant yaoi fangirl and suspect I always will be, but I think that Weiss Kreuz fans need more and better het. I've seen fans fall all over themselves to praise the most brazen of Mary Sues just because it's not yaoi: while some of the commenters seem brazenly homophobic, others are clearly just desperate for a change. Anything that means the Mary Sue crap gets seen for the exercise in fangirl masturbation that it is would be good for everyone (except the Suethors, but who cares what they think?), and much as I love yaoi, even I'll admit it gets tedious when Weiss and Schwarz all start channeling the cast of Queer as Folk.
  
  
• I believe that Youji Kudou is straight as a line despite unrepentantly slashing him with Ken - and I don't think that this is an untenable position to take on the subject. It's perfectly possible for Youji to be in love with Ken (or with anyone, male or female) and still retain his appreciation for female beauty. Flirting, for Youji, is as natural a process as standing upright and breathing oxygen, and without it he's simply not the same character. It's quite possible for him to flirt with girls without wanting to push it any further, and it's quite possible for him to fall in love with a man because he loves him, not because he's so hot for Teh Cawk. Personally, I think it's more romantic if Youji is utterly straight but loves Ken anyway than if he was just waiting for the right bishie so he could admit what a raging wooftah he was.
  
  
• I think Omi is a top. While I don't think he physically tops every single time, he is absolutely not a submissive little uber-uke by temperament. He may sometimes bottom in bed but even then he's almost always on top, and even when he isn't it's because he wants to be, not because he's a submissive little shrinking violent who couldn't dominate anybody if he tried all year. Omi has an uncertain side to him, sure, but that doesn't translate to 'helpless uberuke who can't function without a big strong boy holding his hand'.
  
  
• I like all the female characters except Sakura (and that is a matter of disliking her personality, not thinking she's the Spawn of Satan because she has breasts and crushes on Aya) and it distresses me to see them character-bashed or denigrated for supposedly getting in the way of Teh Hawt Mansexx, which they don't. Weiss Kreuz's female cast represent a huge well of untapped awesome and I dearly wish that more people out there would take the yaoi blinkers off for five seconds and realize this. Some day, I will write a fic where Schreient are the main antagonists and it will be FABULOUS. I have a plotbunny in cold storage already...
  
  
• I don't think Aya is all that wonderful, actually - a feeling I strongly suspect I share with Aya himself. Though he's not really my cup of tea, I'll admit he's a fascinating character... when he's actually in character, that is, which usually he isn't. Fanon!Aya - the perfectly perfectful hot and wonderful multi-talented Demi-God Ice Prince who can do no wrong and is lusted after by all - is frankly boring as shit. I can't understand why his so-called fans feel the need to turn him into something he isn't when he was far more interesting before.
  

Five Things That Just Piss Me Right Off, Thanks

• Fangirls who downplay, denigrate or utterly ignore the boys' canonical (heterosexual) romances for the sake of badly-written buttsex. Youji loved Asuka, Omi loved Ouka, Ken loved Yuriko, Nagi loved Tot... and this gets in the way of the mansex like how, exactly? The girls, without exception, either die or move on. They're not actually stopping anyone from writing slash because after a point they're no longer in the picture. That being the case, there is absolutely no reason to pretend that the girls in question were shrill, pushy bitches without a single redeeming feature who their so-called lovers felt nothing but contempt for or, in the case of Asuka, that they were the product of a desperate attempt on Youji's part to prove his heterosexuality (something he manages to do repeatedly in canon). Omi can love Ouka, lose her, mourn for her, and then fall for Ken. It's not an either/or thing. First loves aren't the only ones that are worth having.
  
  
• Weiss-on-Weiss rapefics. I can safely say these are the dumbest things ever. Not only is suggesting that any Weiss member would rape another without being forced into it (meaning that the physical top was also a rape victim) an utter bastardization of the characters of every last one of them, it's also deeply, deeply stupid to rape a trained killer you're later going to rely on to watch your back in combat. An IC Weiss-on-Weiss rapefic should end up with either or both parties dead and no sex whatsoever. ASSASSINS, fandom. Thanks.
  
  
• Lighting up Aya at the expense of his teammates, or by pasting other characters' canon traits onto him to make him look cooler, more talented, or angstier, or to try and make him look massively self-sacrificing or noble or whatever the Hell else his fangirls feel they need him to be in order to legitimize his actions. Look. Aya is not Weiss's leader, Omi is. (Aya wouldn't want to be Weiss's leader, anyway.) Aya is not Youji's closest friend, Ken is. (And Aya's quite content to let Ken have him.) The guy doesn't have to be the handsome, noble and wonderful Sir Gary of Stuland to be an interesting character who's worthy of fangirl adulation. Why do so many Aya fangirls seem so deeply insecure, anyway? Aya doesn't make excuses for himself; why do the fangirls feel they have to?
  
  
• Youji being turned into Big Gay Al. Do I even have to explain why this is daft? I do not buy the idea Youji is closeted and in denial - unless, of course, he has to keep having enthusiastic sex with many beautiful women just to make sure he hates it. (And then, of course, he's still not totally sure, so he has to do it again just to be certain.) Youji Kudou genuinely appreciates the female form, and genuinely enjoys female company. Falling in love with a male won't stop him finding women gorgeous, sexy and fascinating or enjoying being round them.
  
  
• Ficcers who seem to have no conception of the fact that these guys are assassins and then write stories in which Weiss utterly forget they have actual jobs. Stories which make no mention of the darker side of their lives almost always utterly fail as Weiss Kreuz fanfics. Weiss are not four florists of ambiguous sexuality who happen to share an apartment and have nothing better to do with their time than sit around scheming about how to get one another into bed. They are assassins, and they therefore have to occasionally climb out of each other's beds and go and kill something. If people don't want to write about blood, death and gore, there are plenty of other bishounen-heavy shows for them to write fic for, most of which are absolutely not about trained killers who murder for money.