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*Note: this article is highly graphic, basically because
that's what I was subjected to through my horrible experiences
and I feel I should make all of you suffer with me. :) Rated
R.*
Fanrape is a fairly simple concept. You take a show, for
the purposes of this article let's say Gundam Wing, and
then you rape it! This rape often takes the form of fanfiction
and fanart of a highly scatological nature. I think I can
sum all that is wrong with fanrape by this simple quote
I yelled after reading a fanfic submitted to the Gundam
Wing Mailing List (GWML) last year: "BLOOD CANNOT
BE USED AS A LUBRICANT FOR ANAL SEX!" I was soon thereafter
found trying to gouge out my eyes, an action that I usually
reserve for when the conversation turns to CLAMP.
Gundam Wing will always have a special place in my heart,
though Adamus
Prime usually says it sucks because the little pretty
boys have these giant Gundams but only whine about how sad
they are. I think Wing is a very good example of Gundam--not
the best, but a very good one. The first fansubs I ever
got were Gundam Wing, my first artbook and poster were Gundam
Wing, Duo was my first cosplay (you have no idea how hard
it is to dig up a priest's vespers), and so forth. And so,
for me, the next logical step on my road to otakuism (intense
fandom) was to read and write fanfiction. Being the innocent,
naive boy that I was, I went to Yahoo Groups and signed
up for the largest Gundam Wing mailing list that I saw (which
at the time and still is GWML) and started on my own fanfics
starring Wu Fei and his adventures with Lady Une (they're
quite bad, but if you want to learn what not to do when
writing fanfiction, search FF.net
for Dog of War).
But to write fanfics, you must read fanfics, so I started
my research by reading all the fanfics that went through
my mailbox. This was a very high-traffic mailing list, so
it wasn't out of the ordinary for me to get more then a
hundred messages a day, 80% of which were new fics that
I read and commented on. This was while I was in high school
and before I had a real job, so I had hours every day to
waste in this manner.
Now, for full disclosure, I find nothing wrong with erotic
fiction--there is nothing wrong with eroticism in literature,
as long as it serves a purpose. No one accuses Lolita
of being a piece of child pr0n (porn) because it's simply
one of the best examples of modern Russian literature. However,
a movie such as Deep Throat (if you don't know what that
movie is, maybe you shouldn't be reading this, eh?), no
matter how praised it is, is still a pr0n flick. It's the
same in fanfics: if the sex has a purpose, I'm all for it.
If you want to have Hiro and Duo making out in response
to the tremendous stress of fighting an unpopular war while
going through puberty, you have my complete blessing as
the Pope of the Gainax
Cult. However, if you want a 5-way male-on-male orgy
in Zech's winter palace (ohh how I wish I were making this
up) for the simple fact that you want a 5-way male-on-male
orgy in Zech's winter palace, that's the line. You're no
longer writing a fanfic--you're writing a piece of erotic
fiction with names stolen from a well-known show.
That's where fanrape occurs, when the characters' actions
are so removed from what they would do in the show that
the resemblance is in name only (OOC aka out-of-characterness
and AU aka alternate universe ideas are very accepted themes
in fanfiction, but that's an issue for another article).
This is a lamentable practice as fanfiction is meant as
a way to explore a character, to find out what makes him
tick. When you take a character and place in him in a cheep
pr0n flick, you remove the purpose of fanfiction.
And so the moral of this story--when writing fanfics, remember
that this is a piece of fan fiction, written by and
meant for other fans of a show. The readers (I'm assuming
here based on what I want, given the fact that I am the
universe) do not want a fic with characters who share only
a name with characters from a show. When creating OOC stories,
keep it in line, and don't base your entire career on OOC
fics; no one minds one or two of these, but when it's just
sex scene after sex scene after sex scene (and for the record,
Wu Fei's misogyny is not repressed homosexuality that shows
itself in ... odd ... ways, it's based on his first love
dying before he could save her, dammit!), it gets old very
quickly and makes you want to stab out your eyes. 
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