This is a static copy of In the Rose Garden, which existed as the center of the western Utena fandom for years. Enjoy. :)
We all have them! Something that plain out makes you stop reading an Utena fanfic, or something that just makes you cringe through it. Humongous pet peeves that inspire florid verbal onpourings of rage. Tiny pet peeves that make you twitch.
My list is rather long, but that is because I'm a nitpicker and I'm obnoxious about what I read. Shortened list here:
- Wangsting out Touga. When Touga angsts, he angst fashionably and somewhat romantically ina darkened room, listening to loud, classical music and refusing to go to school. Touga does not cry himself to sleep to Linkin Park. He doesn't decide to share his problems by whining pathetically to Saionji. AND HE DOES NOT COMMIT SUICIDE WITH A DAGGER IN THE MEN'S RESTROOM.
- Ignoring the whole point of the series and having Anthy give up, come back to the academy, and start the Duels anew with Akio. Especially if the point of that is to glorify an OC.
- This recent Saionji/Juri fluff romance trend and the utter lack of thought and planning involved in every one of the pairing fics I've seen. It's like someone decided that since their hair colors make up the traditional color scheme for Halloween, it must be love. What should have been glorious and rage-fueled, dynamic, clashing opposites duking it out in power struggles became...dreck. Soppy, sentimental dreck. I weep.
- Making Akio/Mikage/Saionji Snidely Whiplash evil. The kind of evil that goes and does generally bad things with no taste and no apparent purpose other than to be antagonistic.
Last edited by Ivy-chan (11-09-2006 10:46:43 AM)
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Ivy-chan wrote:
- Wangsting out Touga. When Touga angsts, he angst fashionably and somewhat romantically ina darkened room, listening to loud, classical music and refusing to go to school. Touga does not cry himself to sleep to Linkin Park. He doesn't decide to share his problems by whining pathetically to Saionji. AND HE DOES NOT COMMIT SUICIDE WITH A DAGGER IN THE MEN'S RESTROOM.
This one. Mostly because the idea of Touga whining pathetically to Saionji warps my fragile little mind in ways I thought only movie Akio could.
(LOL LINKIN PARK)
This Saionji/Juri thing confuses me. So they're both hardasses...that makes them a couple? Also Saionji doesn't have a vagina?
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Ivy-chan wrote:
AND HE DOES NOT COMMIT SUICIDE WITH A DAGGER IN THE MEN'S RESTROOM.
No he wouldn't, if Touga killed himself it would be in Women restroom!!!!
Ok that was stupid...
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Romanticide wrote:
No he wouldn't, if Touga killed himself it would be in Women restroom!!!!
No way, Touga would never kill himself. He can't cockwave suicide.
That said, if he did kill himself, it would be a gun or pills or something similarly painless. Sharp objects...those you need to keep away from Saionji.
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Ger wrote:
"After revolution" fanfiction where everyone magically gets transported to an American high school.
Oh wait, that's 99% of fanfiction in every fandom.
I thought that 99% was skewing the entire series to make way for the hot new American exchange student. Or ski trips in different countries. Where Juri unexplicably starts channeling Ryouga Hibiki.
Oh, and the whole Juri/Saionji thing. Even if he did have a vagina, she still wouldn't have anything to do with him.
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Giovanna wrote:
Romanticide wrote:
No he wouldn't, if Touga killed himself it would be in Women restroom!!!!
No way, Touga would never kill himself. He can't cockwave suicide.
That said, if he did kill himself, it would be a gun or pills or something similarly painless.
I imagine that he'd go out with drama and style - he'd spend days just to choose what book he was just reading when he "spontaneously" decided to kill himself. And he'd do something that'd leave his body to dramatic, defying position, if possible. And he'd make damn sure that everyone within a mile's width would feel guilty for his passing.
EDIT: Oh, and my peeves. All the fanfics that imply that Akio doesn't want Utena to win the duels and does anything to stop her. Essentially, Akio acting as a classical, two-dimensional cardboard villain. Talk about missing the point of the show...
Last edited by Lightice (11-09-2006 05:26:27 AM)
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Fics where Juri and Shiori get together, but neither of them have changed appreciably.
Fics where Juri and Shiori commit lovers' suicide.
Fics where Anthy is the be-all and end-all evil behind everything.
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Ivy-chan wrote:
- Ignoring the whole point of the series and having Anthy give up, come back to the academy, and start the Duels anew with Akio. Especially if the point of that is to glorify an OC.-
Yes. All of the crappy fanfics I have ever read, and all of the bad SKU role plays I've seen include this. It makes me want to beat people in the head with a blunt object. Have they learned NOTHING from watching the show in the first place?
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ShatteredMirror wrote:
I thought that 99% was skewing the entire series to make way for the hot new American exchange student. Or ski trips in different countries. Where Juri unexplicably starts channeling Ryouga Hibiki.
You can tell that those sorts of stories are written by ‘Mary Sue’ authors who choose SKU as their setting because they think its pretty and they want to appear to be deep individuals because of the nature of the series.
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I can't be the only one who thinks the best Juri/Shiori fics are rapefics.
Anyway, any notably happy ending tends to piss me off in Utena. Probably because most of them involve one character getting over all the crap they've got going on and zoomj saving teh daayzors. And if Touga was going to commit suicide nobody would notice it. He's -much- more likely to wait around until he finds an opportunity to get himself killed in a glorious and valiant way, which is what makes his character so cool.
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I don't think that Shiori is a good person, but I don't think that she is as bad as most fanfiction writers seem to think she is. For a while, as far as I knew, this was how everyone viewed Shiori. The reason why I started analyzing her was because of these views on her, since I felt that a character who is nothing but pure evil was too unrealistic for an anime like Utena.
I like to write my own fanfictions, rather than reading them, because she's usually portrayed as nothing but evil. Yes, she is cruel, but I don't think that she would make a sport out of hurting Juri, as she does in many fanfictions. She's usually a slut, too... Sleeping with half the school, and then forming some sort of sadistic plan to hurt Juri when she breaks up with her because of it. I can't stand when Shiori does things like that, all so they can portray Juri as the helpless victim who is still trying to break free from the thorns that constrain her, and what not. (I don't understand... How can Shiori be both the thorns and the parasite in that metaphor? And yet people hear the title and think, "Thorns? Death? It must be Shiori!")
In one of the worst case scenarios, I thought that the author was writing it just for the plot, and that she knew that how Shiori was acting wasn't it character. But at the end of the fanfiction the author said that she thought what Shiori was doing was in character, and asked if everyone hated her now because of it. ("Look! I added an 'h' to Shiori's name! Shihori. Get it? Aren't I witty?") And I can only hope the author of another fanfiction wasn't serious when she made Shiori was a slut, a drug addict, an alcoholic, and a psychopath in general...
I'm sorry for the rant. It's not as though Shiori is the only character who is portrayed this way, either. I recall a fanfiction where Akio was afraid of reindeer, and was upset because he couldn't "sparkle like the other bishounen." I've also seen Ruka portrayed in the same manor as Shiori as well... I'm sure there are fanfictions like that with every character, so I don't have any right to complain.
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I don't think Shiori's that evil either. I said in another thread that I'm pretty sure she just grew up in a world where manipulations were one of her few options so that's how she gets what she wants. Have you ever watched old I Love Lucy? Comedy aside, you get the feeling that there are definitely times in our history when women and children almost have to resort to trickery and mean spiritedness to get the same kind of freedom the rest of the world has. I kind of assume Shiori grew up in an incredibly backwards family and had to get that way to survive. There isn't much else special about her. Juri's the opposite. She's supposed to be this gorgeous and intelligent and well respected person, and seems to always have been. That's probably afforded her a peaceful enough life so that she's incredibly confused by the treatment she gets by the woman she loves, and as a result she bottles everything she feels about her up. Have you ever noticed that Juri's probably one of the most open characters in the series (save maybe Saionji). Shiori strikes me as a special case.
(By the way, I was talking about Juri raping Shiori, not the other way around.)
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I haven't gotten a chance to read a lot of Utena fic yet (Sadly. I whimper. ;_;) and I avoid ff.net at all costs, but I agree about the 2-D villian thing. Especially fics where it's obvious the author is biased and doesn't like a particular character. Akio, for example. He may be a manipulitive jerk, but he has power over people, and all the other characters aren't just going to decide he sucks.
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I think an easy 9/10 of the fics I read where Akio's present reduce him either to a doomy overlord (he's not doomy) or a mindless whore (not mindless). A couple times though, people have tried to capture his intellect by abusing Wikipedia. Akio knows a bunch of stuff, yes. He does not rattle off quotes at random. If I want someone to pretend they're intelligent by reading an encyclopedia at me...well I can get that at college.
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Hinotori wrote:
(By the way, I was talking about Juri raping Shiori, not the other way around.)
I'm curious. You got a link to one of these?
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I've seen several fanfic with a situation that could be Shiori raping Juri, but I've never seen it the other way around. I am intruigued.
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I read a one ages ago and it was -really- well done. It was this interesting spur-of-passion kind of thing. I'll probably be spending the rest of my night digging it back up, but I think I read it in the days of FF.net before the NC17 purge.
Now you done went and made me nostalgic. Don't ask.
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I would never say that Shiori is raping Juri in this fic... it's just... getting even. I love Shiori and I love Juri to death. And I really only wrote it because I wanted to read a PWP Shiori and Juri fic and couldn't find one I liked. Really though, and my grilfriend could probably attest to this, this fic just goes to prove how evil I am.
Broken Under Me: http://www.mediaminer.org/fanfic/view_c … 5645#fic_c
And in an effort to contribute to this thread...
I don't understand Juri/Saionji and it sort of took me off gaurd when I went back to ff.net. Actually it really frightened me and I still have yet to be able to read a story with that pairing all the way through, and I live for unconventional pairings.
For the most part I don't like fics that portray a character in his/her ultimate extreme, which is what happens an awful lot in fan fiction, and I say that knowing I'm probably very guilty of doing that from time to time.
Last edited by Alithea (11-09-2006 08:59:25 PM)
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I liked Broken Under Me because it was a PWP that kept the characters in character. But then, I like all of your stuff that I've read.
And FF.net after the purge scares me. I thought that the purge was stupid to begin with, given that you had to click a button declaring that you were of legal age to read such materials. Talk about people not taking responsibility for their own actions.
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tohubohu wrote:
Fics where Anthy is the be-all and end-all evil behind everything.
...I want to read a fic like that. Evil!Anthy is
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Alithea wrote:
Really though, and my grilfriend could probably attest to this, this fic just goes to prove how evil I am.
Yes, yes... She is quite evil when she wants to be.
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Alithea wrote:
I don't understand Juri/Saionji and it sort of took me off gaurd when I went back to ff.net.
I'm always hearing about that pairing, yet I've never actually read one myself. It's not a pairing that interests me, and I can't really see it happening. Of course, Juri is... Well, Juri, and so she gets paired with everyone. Shiori, Ruka, Utena, Anthy, Akio, Touga, Saionji, Miki, Nanami, Wakaba, Kanae, Keiko, Kozue, and Mitsuru. I should write JurixMrs. Ohtori and JurixThe Guidance Councilor just to finish off that last few non-existing pairings. >_o
I love pairings that don't make sense, but some of those fanfictions don't work out very well. It's difficult to make them seem realistic.
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Razara wrote:
Alithea wrote:
I don't understand Juri/Saionji and it sort of took me off gaurd when I went back to ff.net.
I'm always hearing about that pairing, yet I've never actually read one myself. It's not a pairing that interests me, and I can't really see it happening. Of course, Juri is... Well, Juri, and so she gets paired with everyone. Shiori, Ruka, Utena, Anthy, Akio, Touga, Saionji, Miki, Nanami, Wakaba, Kanae, Keiko, Kozue, and Mitsuru. I should write JurixMrs. Ohtori and JurixThe Guidance Councilor just to finish off that last few non-existing pairings. >_o
I love pairings that don't make sense, but some of those fanfictions don't work out very well. It's difficult to make them seem realistic.
What about Jurixthat teacher with the awful glasses? Or is that the guidance counselor? I can never quite tell what her purpose on campus is, other than harassing Utena.
You know, technically it's not all that offensive to make straight characters gay in fanfic... so it shouldn't annoy me so much to see people making Juri straight... but it does, and not only because they have to butcher her character to do it.
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ShatteredMirror wrote:
You know, technically it's not all that offensive to make straight characters gay in fanfic... so it shouldn't annoy me so much to see people making Juri straight... but it does, and not only because they have to butcher her character to do it.
Maybe it's just that Juri seems to be less of a lesbian and more of a Shiorisexual.
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