Oracle Spockanort:
I'm not talking to myself. I have a number of friends who feel similarly to me and who enjoy fandom media and art as they're meant to be enjoyed. One, a close friend of mine named Amber, even created one of the best XENOGEARS WebSites and Fanfiction archives around. Another close friend of mine, named Nanaki, isn't the sole person from IcyBrian's other than I who frown on fandom's popular culture practices. *A lot* of Fanfiction authors don't care for Fanfiction.Net and other popular culture Fanfiction and fandom nonsense. Some Post on Fanfiction.Net themselves, yes - though I refused to Post there until early 2018, and I still prefer not to more often than not - but there are a *lot* of people other than I myself who frown on popular culture Fanfiction and popular culture fandom practices and feel and think similarly to me.
Though it doesn't matter how many people agree with me. Majority =/= right.
However, this *isn't* just me. I'm just one of a large number of people who have little to no tolerance for popular culture Fanfiction and fandom, and we *do* enjoy fandom media.
Don't tell me that I need to 'operate within popular culture confines' as though they're 'regular artistic confines.' They're not.
It you want regular artistic confines, try Icy Brian's, Guardian Angels, Rocket Town if it's still up, The Phantasy Star Pages, The Shrine to Ghaleon, or any number of other Fanfiction WebSites that treat Fanfiction as *art.*
I'm not criticizing anything with erroneous data. *Popular culture perspectives* are the erroneous data.
Face My Fears:
Yet once more, I'm not saying Sora returns Anna's feelings if any romance is involved on her side.
And I *don't* distort bonds. I *wouldn't* be arguing Anna might feel anything different than friendship love for Sora if I wasn't able to cross-reference her words, facial expressions, and body language with those of a lot of people in a lot of other stories. I *loathe* random pairings... It's one of the reasons I back up Ava and Ephemer's romantic love so much. I *loathe* the wholly unsubstantiated and out-of-character Ava/Gula pairing. It's currently my newest least favorite random out-of-character 'romance.' Gula might have romantic feelings for Ava, but they *are not* returned. Ava is tense and uncomfortable around Gula much of the time. She's more relaxed and at ease around Ephemer than anyone else, and more considerate of Ephemer's feelings than any of the Foretellers'.
Trapinchmon:
Those 'individual WebSites' are the 'big Sites.' Fanfiction.Net isn't - it's popular culture garbage nonsense.
And even if you *did* call Fanfiction.Net a Fanfiction archive, it's a general Fanfiction archive. IcyBrian's Fanfiction archive is the largest Role-Playing Game Fanfiction archive Online.
Fourteen-year-olds and people goofing off have no requirement to create professional literary *masterpieces,* but they sure as heck have a requirement not to write out-of-character random 'romantic' pairings where two people supposedly 'fall in love' without the relationship developing and the story doesn't acknowledge the character's other bonds as equally important, et cetera. Fourteen-year-olds and people goofing off, et cetera, *did* take friendship, family, romance, themes, philosophy, plot, and setting seriously on The Phantasy Star Pages, The Shrine to Ghaleon, Guardia, IcyBrian's, Rocket Town, Square Net, and elsewhere before Fanfiction.Net came around. They didn't all produce masterpieces like Jerm's PERENNIAL TRIGGER trilogy and a CHRONO TRIGGER story of his that I can't remember the name of that had the Book titles 'False Prophet,' 'Dark Prophet,' and 'True Prophet,' Keith Adams' CHRONO TRIGGER: THE SHADOWS, Nanaki's THE ORIGIN/AFTERMATH OF MOUNT WOE and TEMPO TRIGGER, MarkedCain's CHRONO CONTINUUM, Junj's JENOVA PROJECT/CLOUD COVER, Tamerine's unnamed series of WILD ARMS one-shot stories and her FINAL FANTASY VII: TWISTED, Amber's/Myaru's SHADOWS FALLING and SHINONOME, Arcana's story about Emeralda's origins that I can't recall the name of, The Captain's CRISIS FROM THE HEAVENS, and Nightsong's PRELUDE TO DESTRUCTION: DARK ANGEL, to name fifteen of them, but they *did* produce art, even if it was amateur-level art.
Most of Fanfiction.Net's writers don't.
It doesn't matter if you're not truly interested in writing, or if you're an amateur writer writing for fun. If you're not going to take the characters and the story seriously and you're going to just distort them into caricatures with the names of the original characters who aren't the original characters at all, you shouldn't be writing.
Shiki was joking about Riku being 'her knight in shining armor.' She's a light-hearted person. There was no romance involved.
KeybladeLordSora:
How about *you* spend many years in your life reading and looking at a lot of well-written, if amateur-level, Fanfictions that take the creative writing process and characterization seriously and enjoying them, growing as a Fanfiction writer yourself with friends - such as Tamerine and Nanaki and Jerm and Amber and Nightsong and MarkedCain - and acquaintances as they grow, writing and sharing ideas and your love for Role-Playing Games with those friends and acquaintances; and then watching popular culture-catering idiots on a new archive that doesn't understand literary art and that should never have been created corrupt and distort much of what you love and value until it's *very difficult* to make new friends and acquaintances who value literary art and find good, amateur-level or better, stories.
Particularly if your dream is to be a professional writer of published fantasy and/or science fiction, as mine has been since my childhood. I'm not 'getting all fussy and up in arms.' I'm very upset for valid reasons about idiots who have no concept of art and literature wrecking much of what my friends and acquaintances and I have worked for and stand for.
Tamerine, *especially,* is a painful issue. Her FINAL FANTASY VII: TWISTED is what popularized the 'alternate reality version of an existing Role-Playing Game' Fanfiction story concept back in 1997 and 1998. Even before Fanfiction.Net came around, she was upset at being mimicked by a lot of lesser-quality alternate reality versions of other Role-Playing Games, she felt that that disgraced her story and the around a year of effort she'd put into writing it, and she regretted writing it. Now that Fanfiction.Net is around and that concept is a lot more widespread... it's *horrific.* Tamerine's FINAL FANTASY VII: TWISTED is one of the best Role-Playing Game Fanfiction stories around, it *is* a literary artistic masterpiece, and Tamerine was one of my first good Fanfiction writer friends, and the 'alternate reality' Fanfiction concept became a *nightmare* once Fanfiction.Net went up Online.
Do you have *any idea* what it's like to watch, helplessly, month after month, year after year, as one of your first good friend's best writings and one of her longest efforts to write that she told you became *a source of pain to her* after she spent a very long time putting her heart and soul into it even when there *wasn't* much Fanfiction of Fanfiction.Net's quality, is distorted and warped, again and again and again and again, endlessly and in more and more and more and more widespread ways?
You write an alternate reality Role-Playing Game Fanfiction and I'm in a position to talk to you about it, you measure up to Tamerine's characterization quality and theme quality and philosophy quality and attention-to-detail quality and setting quality and plot quality and write a story that is worthy of FINAL FANTASY VII: TWISTED, or you *will* hear about it from me, in no uncertain terms.
You *do not* hurt one of my friends, and you *do not* distort around a year of her best and most devoted efforts when she already became badly hurt that they were distorted to a lesser extent.
And it's not just Tamerine. *Most* of my friends' works are overlooked in favor of popular culture garbage. Amber's Fanfiction is on par with the best *published works* that I've read or looked at in my life, as are the Fanfictions of two other close friends of mine, Mieu - who I'm no longer in touch with - and Rem/Mirriem.
No one has personally attacked me, and if they had, I wouldn't care. But they *have* personally attacked Rem/Mirriem, Mieu, Amber, Nanaki, Jerm, another close friend of mine who I'm out of touch with named Croik, other friends of mine, and *especially* Tamerine.
I have *a very large amount* of reasons to be bitter and upset.
This has nothing to do with entitlement. It has to do with other *monsters* believing that they're entitled to Pulitzer Prizes and refusing to accept constructive criticism while ostracizing my close friends and good friends and other friends and, with Tamerine, not just ostracizing her and one of her best and most heartfelt works of art but *continually and often distorting and warping it into disgusting farces of literature and art.*
The last time I read Tamerine's LiveJournal, years ago, she was *very bitter and furious* with the large number of popular culture garbage Fanfictions on Fanfiction.Net and people's attitudes towards them.
And I couldn't be there for her about it.
How do you *think* I feel about that?
Paul
"Hands off my friends."-Roxas
KINGDOM HEARTS III