So, it turns out that fanon still sucks.

I honestly don't get the appeal of OOC fanfic, especially not for shows as character-driven as Weiss Kreuz. I assumed - and call me crazy if you like - that the whole appeal of fanfiction was that it gave a fan more of characters they'd already grown to know and love. I simply don't know why anybody would want to read a story in which those characters simply weren't themselves.

I don't get why anyone would like - still less favor - the fanon take on a character as opposed to the more nuanced original.

This, of course, means that my endless quest to Find Something Decent to Read (That Wasn't Written By Someone I Already Know) is doomed to almost inevitable frustration. I don't like the constant focus on romance or how amazingly phoned-in half those romances are. I don't like the way the canon women are lucky if a ficcer just decides to ignore them rather than pouring scorn on them from a great height for daring to stand in the way of sparkly buttsex or even sparklier Mary Sues. I - whisper it - don't actually find Schwarz all that interesting outside of their role as antagonists. And I really, really don't like the standardWeiss Kreuz fanon or what it does to the one thing I'm really here for: the characters.

You know why? It's because I like Youji.

Terrible though the fanon portrayals for most of Weiss are, the way the fandom as a whole treats Youji is by far the worst. Because what we get when the fandom writes about him is shit like this:

Yohji wasn't listening anymore. Instead, he had stepped over next to the girl, flirting like he always was. Normally, Aya would ignored everything, but not this time. This time it was different.
She didn't respond like all the other girls. No, she didn't blush like a tomato or giggle and bat her eyes. She just stood there, her hands tightening on the straps of her backpack until her knuckles were white. Her face was paling, as if afraid of something, but her one visible eye was sparkling dangerously, like a cat that was ready to strike.
"Yohji."
His warning was too late. Aya didn't know what Yohji did, but she had punched him. Not slapped, punched. Right in the stomach, sending him buckling forward onto his knees from the surprise attack.
And he could see Yohji's confusion. The playboy was use to being able to charm any girl he wanted to in less than 2 minutes. Never had a single girl hit him before. Until now.

From Fox Tales by Silver Fox

( And that isn't even the worst of it. )

If Youji's not being insulted and belittled by characters who are supposed to be among his best friends, he's being abused either verbally or physically by girls he's been nothing but pleasant to - or, most sickeningly, his character's totally shredded just because someone has to rape Aya for the fangirl thrills.

Yeah, the fanon takes on Youji really are utterly inexcusable. He's barely even the same character in the hands of fans like these. With Omi and Ken the fanon might be stupid, but it's at least possible to see where it comes from: it's more a distortion rather than the out-and-out misreading we see with Fanon Youji. Aya may not be particularly like himself either, but he's warped into something that's generally supposed to be far more flattering than his canon portrayal - true, it makes him pretty damn annoying with it, but at least the intent was to make him look better and quite why this is so goddamn irritating is a rant for another day - and one I've probably already written, at that.

Youji? The standard fanon take on Youji is a total bastardization. At best he's an Aya-fixated idiot with nothing on his mind but Aya's rose-scented redheaded perfection; at worst? A leering rapist. Not only not IC, but not someone his canon self would even want to share space with. If he's not beaing beaten up by Mary Sues for daring to Talk To Girls, he's being told he's not good enough to go out with Aya unless he changes everything about himself.

Worst of all are the fics where he is somehow forced into sexually assaulting or out and out raping Aya. The small fact that if Youji had been given any choice in the matter he wouldn't have wanted to have sex either is either brushed aside or never comes up. If it did? That would mean accepting that Youji was also a rape victim, and that might mean Aya didn't look quite so uniquely martyred any more. Far better to have everyone and their dog scorn and vilify him because How Could You Hurt Aya?! as if he was more responsible for what had happened than the person who had forced him into that position in the first place (most usually Schuldig). After all, he was the one on top...

But rape is sex you don't want. It doesn't matter what position you were in at the time.

Honestly? I think he comes in for this degree of denigration for daring to be straight and sexually successful.

The Suethors, almost to a woman, hate on Youji because Little Miss Different and Speshul is Not Like The Other Girls™ and a quick, easy and utterly thoughtless way to immediately 'prove' it is to have her jump all over Youji for daring to be friendly and flirtatious because that's bad somehow. See, the other girls all think he's a great guy so if she doesn't that makes her look different. Of course it also makes her look batshit and in some cases irrationally violent and that won't do, so they have to portray her as the only woman who can See Beneath The Façade and knows he's really a creepy pervert and potential date-rapist with all the charm of a scruffy terrier who's missing his master's leg. Never mind that if he actually was all those things, he wouldn't be half as popular with girls as he is. It's like Suethors think that if you're not their speshul Sue of speshulness, you not only lack a brain or, for that matter, any sense of self-preservation, but you never actually talk to other women. (Perhaps because Mary Sues seldom treat other women - unless they're also Not Like The Other Girls Speshul - as anything but a threat to be neutralized as soon as possible? Rant for another day, laila...)

Not that the slash fangirls handle things any better. The slash ficcers think Youji is hot and looks good on Aya, but there's a problem for them as well: specifically, Youji is straight.

The fact that the hottie they want to pair with Aya likes girls Will, of course, Clearly Not Do. They have to do something about the whole inconvenient heterosexual thing, meaning that they portray all the traits that tie into his heterosexuality as bad and wrong and something that he has to get over before he can be worthy of Aya's (it's almost always Aya's) love. Meaning they greatly overstate how ruled he is by his vices and present them as things that it's absolutely impossible to enjoy in moderation, and who cares that pre-Gluhen this is exactly what he does? Proving his love for Aya usually involves him giving up 90% of the things that make him who he is to make his beloved happy - never mind that if Aya wants a teetotal non-smoker who goes to bed at nine with a mug of Horlicks and an improving book he doesn't really want to be with Youji at all - and he's still treated as if he's constantly five seconds away from trying to rape something because he actually shows some sign of possessing a sex drive.

Note that Aya is never presumed to have to change anything about himself but is supposed to be just perfect the way he is. The obsession with vengeance? That's totally understandable. And who cares if he seldom, if ever does anything to indicate that he actually feels any affection for Youji at all?

And Heaven forbid any of these fanficcers remember that if Youji and Aya were to get together, Aya wouldn't be the only one with relationship issues. In fact Youji's issues, related as they are to romantic love, are actually far more likely to derail a potential relationship than Aya's. Aya lost his family, but Youji lost a lover. Not only is he nowhere near over Asuka, he's clearly still deeply in love with her even though she's dead. Aya is not going to change that, and he certainly isn't if he (and the fanfic he inhabits) doesn't even begin to realize that just maybe Youji's hurting too.

It's getting to the point I'm starting to wonder if half these fanficcers saw the same show I did, or if they even bothered witching it in the first place. Youji has his faults, sure, but so do all of them. Ken, for example, is short-tempered, violent and has a tendency to try and solve his problems by hitting them until they go away, but it's almost never suggested by fanficcers that this makes him a potential abuser. Sure it probably wouldn't in Ken's case, but it's a Hell of a lot more plausible that a person with a short temper, a violent streak and a very combative approach to life's problems could become physically abusive than suggesting a healthy sex drive and active, multi-partnered love life means 'rapist' almost by default.

And Youji Kudou is not, repeat not a rapist. If we can't get anything else about him right, we should at least remember that.