[mood : preditory]

I was lurking around FF.net and MM.org this evening, hunting down Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross fanfiction when a pair of rants began trying to pound its way out of my skull. They’re about crossovers and “Insert YOU” fanfiction; both of which are seldom - if ever - well executed and seem to be the latest fads in bad fanfiction.

And since this might attract some flames or at least some rebuttals, please at least have the balls to identify yourself. If you flame me anonymously, I’ll just assume that you’re another snot nosed toddler masquerading as a supposed adult.

What is it with the crossovers?

And I’m not taking about well executed crossovers, either. I’m not that shallow as to condemn all crossovers, especially since I’ve read a few very good ones. But those are few and far between. No, I’m talking upwards of 79 pages of poorly executed humor crossed over with vastly different anime and games.

You have Sailor Moon crossed over with Digimon, Yu Yu Hakusho crossed over Dragonball Z/GT, and even one where Sonic X, Beyblade G-Revolution, DICE, Yu-yu Hakusho, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Foce Go, Kingdo Hearts, Inuyasha, Stitch, Dragonball GT and more are all crossed over into one fic. That 79 page fic above, found on one Media Miner, the author crossed over thirteen - count `em, thirteen - different anime, manga, and games.

Much of these anime, manga, and games really have no business being put together, mainly by virtue of the different genre, setting, time period, circumstances - except to make it easy for a very lazy author. Beyond this, what’s left is a collection of inside jokes, pathetic attempts at slapstick humor or romance.

And their readers (or their clique, you choose) obviously love it.

MM.org seems to hold the bulk of it, but I’m noticing it too in FF.net, though mostly contained in their Crossovers section.

PLEASE, authors… if you’re going to write a crossover, do it tastefully. Choose ones that would fit together well and be judicious about what situation you put them in. Inside jokes really should stay between you and your friends. And to be frank, the slap stick really isn’t as funny as you think it is. Try to exercise some restraint: You’d be surprised at how effective and awsome a smaller-scale plot can be.

And now for my secondary rant.

I’m sure everyone who reads this is well-aquatinted with the Mary Sue and Self-Insert phenomenon. She’s gorgeous, perfect, powerful, lost member of the team, everyone loves her, yadda yadda yadda, and everything with a penis lusts after her or will eventually.

Well, Mary Sue has hit a new, all time low. It’s called “CYOA” which is short for Choose Your Own Adventure. However, unlike the CYOAs we all grew up with where you really could make choices as to where to story went, these fics are little more than glorified Mary Sues. They also go by the far more descriptive title of “Insert YOU” or “Reader Insert.” I suppose you could call them “interactive” fanfiction but I fail to see any true interaction, unless you count the stroking of egos through the artificial, glowing reviews.

Basically, what the author does is create a Mary Sue of the usual caliber, but leaves all the descriptions up to the reader. She inserts her name, hair color/style/length, eye color, and even sometimes her measurements. >_>

So what you have is something like this, and this.

Fortunately, both MM.org and FF.net delete these types of fics whenever they find them. However, these authors feel it’s their god-given right to publish these wastes of space anywhere they please. So far they’ve hit lesser known archives such as Animespiral.com and e-fiction.org, who don’t have rules yet against these.

If you think classic Mary Sue stories are bad, these will take you to a whole new world of loathing.

I just don’t see how they have any real merit to them. I know everything has an audience, BUT -!