DP Thoughts: A Word To The Purists

A WORD TO THE PURISTS
June 19, 2005

Welcome to the new Darkpower: The Site, the site for basically me, darkpower, the man responsible for some of the more "interesting" fanfiction on the net, and some of the more controversial things on message boards ever. While that is all good to a point (I would never in my life think of some things that I have done to be of any good to me), there are things that I have to get off of my chest. And today, I think I have to get something off of my chest that has been there for a long time, since I started writing fanfiction.

I am taking about fanfiction "purists" or "traditionalists". You do know who these people are, hopefully. These are the people who believe that, in a fanfiction, if a fanfiction they are reading is not exactly following the rules to the letter, then it isn't worth their time.

Now, I don't mean to single any fandom out because this happens alot in other fandoms, as well, but it seems to me that the Sailor Moon fandom universe seems to be very bad at having these kinds of people. I'm also not saying that no one has the right to have any kind of opinion, because they do have that right. However, I think that this is a horrible way of going.

I started writing in 1999. At the time, I was writing on Cartoon Network's AOL Message Boards. I had a small little thing aptly called Sailor Moon 99 (yeah, I know, horrible title, but this was me in 1999). In it, I had decided to mix up, or "cross over" Sailor Moon with some Marvel Comics flavor. And plus, alot of other little interesting things I did that when I look back on them now I say to myself "what the hell was I thinking," to were in there. Now, was that in any way following the rules of the purists or traditionalists? Maybe. At the time, I didn't know there WERE rules set in place. I was just a writer finding this AOL board as an outlet.

But I would have a chance to see how "into it" these purists actually were when I started doing my weekly CWE fanfiction (a brainchild that was a crossover of WWE and mainstream anime) on A Sailor Moon Romance (ASMR). On their site, which is a mainstream Sailor Moon fanfiction archive site, they had a fanfiction guide on there, I forget who exactly wrote it, nor do I know if it's still up on there of this was even the site I found it at, but did they ever have some rules. Some I could understand, like the normal thing about keeping inherited characters IN character. Everyone should abide by that in fanfiction. It's a golden rule. Or at least START in character, and then take it from there, all with some good reasoning.

However, it's when I got to what kind of rules that were made especially for SM fanfiction that I really started to have some issues. For one, according to this, we cannot give a Senshi (Japanese name for "Solider") a personality trait that they would "never have". For instance, we can't give Ami, who is a braniacy genius and uses a mini super-computer (can I call it a super comp here) as Sailor Mercury, a sort of problem where she would end up a drug-addict. Now don't get me wrong, it is wrong for anyone to go about doing character assassination, but this wasn't what the guide was talking about. According to the guide, not even with a reason should we be doing such a thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this stiffen creativity? If these purists open a fanfiction, and then, three chapters into it, see the poor blue Sailor suddenly get wasted, are they really going to forget that they enjoyed the first few chapters of said fic and hate it because it's not what they wanted to see? I wouldn't know for sure, maybe the purist will give them a pass in an extreme circumstance, but I highly doubt it would happen even then. The druggie thing stuck out like a sore thumb, too. That actually gave me an idea when I read it to do something like that, though I never acted on it...YET!!

Of course, that wasn't all. I then got to the couples thing. This was the thing that flashed the red light. Now, I know how Sailor Moon fans tend to like their pairings, but damn it, can't we have a little fun now and then? In this guide, and I can swear up and down that this was in there (as I can swear that this was a REAL guide written by a REAL person, if I find that thing again, I'll show this to you), they have another good little cardinal rule. Serena and Darien/Usagi and Mamoru/whoever you want to call them, should never be separated with the fanfiction ending in that way, for any reason at ALL! As SOON as I read that, I got that sign that said, "yeah, this is one I'm definitely breaking". And I did, too. CWE in the 2000 year. Darien turned heel (wrestling lingo for "bad guy/villain") and kicked Serena to the curb. And oh, did I ever catch heat for this one. I got an e-mail from someone stating that I had done a terrible mistake and should get them back together immediately. You should've read the thoughts in my mind when I read that. I didn't want to get them back together anytime soon. But I did at Wrestlemania 2000, but with a different storyline. Now Serena was also a villain, setting up her own mother and forming her own "Devil Family". It ended up being a long-lasting "stable", and it worked out all well, but damn, did I ever wanted to do that first storyline I had planned. Maybe someday, I will write the true storyline I wanted to do.

But folks, that is just the type of thing I am talking about. The couples thing alone. And while the S/D thing is not alone in such respects, S/D shipping is the purists gold mine for nailing you with a citation, as if they were some sort of police. Of course, I haven't been writing for a while, now (although I've been working on more works, none have went to the public yet), so I haven't gotten these "citations", but I am sure that many would be getting them sooner or later, and if I write anything else, I am sure that at some point or another, I will be getting another one.

Let me ask you: Why should the S/D thing stay that way in fanfiction regardless of anything anyone wants to try? Why is it that the most celebrated couple in all of anime (and yes, I do believe that the last statement I just said is true) can't be broke up?...Ok, maybe I just had a case of open mouth, insert foot right there. Maybe I should ask why no one can rewrite some rules in this and show that even a couple so celebrated can become, for both parties, a living Hell?

It's because I think purists, traditionalists, whatever you should call them, have some sort of bad influence when it comes to fanfiction. And this is just my opinion that you can disagree with if you like, but purists, I think, never really get to enjoy a piece of work for what it truly is, which is a expression of one's own mind. What someone would do with the show if they were calling the shots. In the case of Sailor Moon, they are, for that 15 minutes of fame, Naoko, and they are the creators of the characters own "destiny." Naoko has said that all the Sailors would be female, but I succeeded, or at least I am adamant at believing I did (yeah, I can have a huge ego sometimes) , at creating a male Senshi (Casto and "Sailor Vulture") and get away with it. This is because I made sure that, to the best of my ability, that his story made sense.

Now, do I think that everyone that is looking for a SM fic to be as parallel as possible to the show it's based on is a purist? Of course not. Many people who look for such will be disappointed 90 percent of the time. However, they do tend to sit back and just enjoy the fanfic, as long as it doesn't stray too far from the road. They will enjoy a great story, even if the fic strays a little from its source material. The purists I'm talking about are those that will complain about one little detail that can be overlooked by everyone else or can be enjoyed by everyone else, and hate the fic just because something just isn't to their liking. Yeah, these are the people that can never be happy with something, and they just make us fanfiction writers live in the very same living Hell that we end up throwing Serena and Darien into (and if we really want some fun, let's throw President Bush in there to run the damn place, but I digress, as that another DP Thought for another date, and I'll be here all day telling you why I despise that guy).

So this is to all you purists that may be reading this and have figured out that I was talking about you: LIGHTEN UP!! Fanfiction is about unleashing your soul. The artists within yourself. It's not about people taking issue about something that they think shouldn't be in any fic, explained or not. We are artists, we have ideas that you could never imagine. You would be scared half to death at some of the manipulations we can do to your sacred couples, or how high we can get your faithful characters. So my advice is to, for one, leave us alone. And secondly, sit back and enjoy the fanfiction you read at fanfiction sites. I don't care if it's this site, ASMR, Fanfiction.net, it can be anyplace where fics populate. If you become immersed in the story, then you will see why you are not making our artistic lives any easier. Please sit back and enjoy the artistic flow, and stop worrying about if we smoke a blunt along the way. And if you find something that your little rule book made just for you finds offensive that wouldn't be offensive to anyone else reading it, got three words for you: GET OVER IT!!

And if you still can't, then we're throwing you into that living Hell. Word is that Bush is thinking that Darien is stockpiling non-existing WMDs as we speak.

Good night, and good luck.