In Which Charlie Has An Opinion

#14: WTF even are skylox fanfics

[A/N: i use the phrase "Team Crafted" in this rant a lot, and i do realize it no longer exists. i'm using it to refer to the specific group of YouTubers that i see a whole lot of terrible fanfictions about. i just wanted to say so nobody comments "nyeh nyeh you fake fan you don't know shit about anything".]

This rant focuses around a series of skylox fanfictions. All of them suck. I won't name names, but I have all three books in my Minecraft reading list, if you're that curious.

I have a whole bunch of pet peeves when it comes to pretty much every gay fanfiction ever, or even every straight fanfiction ever. Good fanfiction can be written! But if you can't handle that responsibility, then you shouldn't write it at all. Unless you're doing it ironically.

#1: Self-Harm Fics

Self-harm's a real issue. Believe me, I know. I go to a therapeutic boarding school. Pretty much everyone here has either done it or thought about it. My roommate has scars literally everywhere. It's a serious thing, and I'm fucking sick of people glorifying it. 

In the fanfiction trilogy I'm talking about, pretty much every character likes to cut himself because they are gay and they hate themselves for it. Not only does this glorify cutting, it implies that being gay is a bad thing. It's not! Jesus, you're writing a gay fanfiction. Why don't you write about how fantastic it is to be gay instead of how much your father hates you for it?

Depression and self-harm are, like I said, real issues, and need to be talked about in some stories. But why, of all the stories in the goddamn universe that you could work depression and self-harm into, do you HAVE to put it in a Team Crafted fanfiction? Team Crafted is about fun! It's about falling off of things and throwing snowballs at your friends and screaming "BUDDER!" every ten seconds. Why do you have to make it all sad and bloody?

#2: MPreg Fics

-.- don't even get me started.

One, it's biologically impossible. Guys do not have uteruses! I mean, unless they're intersex and were born with both a uterus and a dick. But I don't think any Team Crafted guys are intersex, so none of them can get pregnant. Did you read that? Read it again. NONE OF THEM CAN GET PREGNANT! NONE. OF. THEM. (Unless it's an AU where one of them is a girl.) DO NOT MAKE THEM HAVE CHILDREN THROUGH THEIR DICKS. The dick would probably explode, and then you wouldn't be able to write those hilariously inaccurate smut scenes you seem to love so much.

Okay, so let's say that somehow, your two biologically male MCs are able to get pregnant. But who says they have to have sex in the first place? I feel like the only reason anyone writes an LGBT love story ever is so they can have weird gay sex scenes. I've never seen any LGBT stories that don't at least mention sex between the two main characters. It's not a necessity! There are plenty of straight fanfics that don't involve sex. Why does every gay fanfiction ever have to involve it?

#3: Plot? What Plot?

Pretty much every fanfiction I've ever read is completely unplanned. Your story needs to have an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. You can't just wing it! Writing a story without outlining it first is like jumping into an abandoned pool in a $10,000 tuxedo. It's a bad idea and it's only going to hurt you.

You may be familiar with the "witch hat" structure of a fictional story. Yep, the very same diagram your sixth-grade teacher gave you to help you write that retelling of "The Three Little Pigs" as a story about three poodle fashion designers. Use it. Know it well. Write up what's going to happen in every single chapter before you even THINK about putting pen to paper. That way, you won't have to end your story with "it was all a hallucination you had while you were dying in the hospital." Make a problem that seems unsolvable, but in reality is going to be solved just in the nick of time by something other than the main character waking up.

That's all I can think of for now. I will make a part two if I think of any other things, or if any of you think there's anything I missed.