Those of you who know me from fanfiction.net for a few years might know what I'm referring to the most, however this piece of thinking can apply to any fandom in general.

You know how people rant about fanfiction peeves. We all do it. So it often makes me wonder...is there is a point to fanfiction at all if all if a fan simply nitpicks the good and evil parts of a fanfic? Sure you can explore unexplained plots from a series and might improve in your writing skill (raise your hand if that happened to you) but no matter what we write about we'll just be...ranting about another person's work. Take Sailormoon crossovers for instance. You've got loads of characters, right? Most of the stories are dominated by Usagi fans. The really good works somehow motivated the rest of the fandom to write in the same way. Bastardize Chiba Mamoru and the rest of the characters so that Usagi can go find her tru luv with any random Bish from another series. We'd complain about the abundance of Mary Sue Usagi or OOC Mamoru, wouldn't we?

If I were to read a fanfic that had Makoto included and find she was written in a way I would find not true to her character I would say, "That's just not Mako." It's happened to a lot of stories in fact. Whether she was the side character or the protagonist I found a lot of the fics altered her slightly. BTW I am not referring to anyone on my FL with the above point i.e. Sarien, GC, Aisu and Kourui plus some other names who I know from ff.net The same thing might apply if a fan of another Sailor Senshi thought my characterisation of their fav girl was not right. In other words it's all one huge circle.

I guess I also envy how a large number of the better writers are those who write about the main characters or the canon and traditional pairings in a series. Obviously it would vary depending by how the character is in their series but it seems a lot of Usagi or Rei authors can show their heroines' strengths better than how I would write about Makoto. This is probably due to the fact Makoto doesn't get a lot of story around her and as a result doesn't hold so much interest from the fans. For those of us who like the underdog Senshi we end up having the challenge to demonstrate a believable scenario surrounding this fighter with what little we know of her.

So when there's plenty of Kenshin/Kaoru or Aoshi/Misao you have little Enishi/Misao, Aoshi/Kaoru, Soujirou/Misao or faithful Aoshi/Megumi flying around. When there's well-written Sanzo/Goku or Gojyo/Hakkai it's a long road ahead to find a limited amount of non-traditional relationships in the fandom.

After observing the fandoms, I can say I've given up on fanfiction. It's changed a lot. A few writers have moved on. And let's face it, writing fanfiction is like a little war to see who can show justice on their favourite bashed characters. I'll safely declare I've been defeated by most of the Sailormoon crossover fandom because they've honestly scared me away. Chiba Mamoru can't win in a war against the hardcore Moonies and neither can Mako-chan.

To the small population of Makoto writers I've had the pleasure of meeting on ff.net, you and your stories still rock. If any of you ever find yourself scribbling a drabble or vignette I'd like to read it and I'll do the same for you.