It's true.

I hate yaoi fangirls, and I am one.

You may be looking at me with tears in your eyes right now and saying, "Why Chopstick... why?!"  

Well, I'm gonna tell you why.

1.  You're just writing about them because they're hot.

Let's just forget that they hated each other in the game.  Let's completely forget that both of them were completely straight and had loving girlfriends in the anime.  And heaven forbid I bring up the idea that they were really "just friends" in the manga.  I'm not really bitching about drabbles or crackfics so much as I am the fifty-page-long epics that completely ignore canon.  

AND I MEAN COMPLETELY.

Rinoa was just so whiny and Squall and Seifer were just SO KAWAII, you HAD to kill her or maim her or turn her into a ditzy bitch that Squall despised.  I hated her too, you know, but I'm not willing to actually sit down and write her out of the picture in such an abrupt and unlikely way it could be considered a cop-out.  For gods' sake, have pride in what you're writing and give it some believability.

2.  You think Japanese is TEH BESTEST LANGY-WAGE EVAR.

I said the word "kawaii" up there, and actually died a little on the inside when I did.  I might use Japanglish in real life, but, uh, I use it with my Japanese friends.  It stays out of my fics and my posts.  Why?  Because I speak English.  I am making an English-speaking post.  When I write fanfiction, I write it for the English-speaking reader.  I think the most Japanese I've ever used in a fic was for my Petshop of Horrors fanfic, but those are honorifics, and I can't figure out a proper way to translate honorifics into English without them sounding competely retarded.

Just to be completely clear, I'll include a little example that shows exactly what I hate.  (And excuse any similarity to any actual fic; this is one of my own creation written just for this rant.  However, if there is a fic just like this out there... I'm sure I hate it.  A lot.)

"Oh, Yuki-chan, you're so kawaii!" squealed Tohma, eyeing the blond bishounen.

"Hn."  Yuki arched an eyebrow at the CEO.  "You baka.  Urusai..."

Tohma shook his head, leaning into Yuki insistently.  "Urusai nai yo!  Watashi wa aishteru!"

WHAT.  THE.  FUCK.

Okay, one: I've seen Japanese like this actually used in fics.  And it's shit Japanese.  Like, really shit Japanese.  As in, "I-just-kinda-threw-some-stuff-I-saw-together-hope-it-fits-teehee" Japanese.

IF YOU LOVE THE LANGUAGE SO MUCH, WHY DO YOU ABUSE IT?

Some people might excuse it by saying, "Well, they're still learning.  This is how they practice."  They shouldn't be using the goddamn language in fics at all, dammit.  There are forums and chatrooms and pen-pal programs and websites, ALL geared towards learning Japanese.  Welcome to the Internet, kids.  It's a wonderful place.  Lemme introduce you to my best friend, Google.

3.  You write shitty songfics.

Okay, so maybe this is just a generic gripe that can go for any fic at all, but it runs pretty rampant in yaoi too.  I hate songfics.  I don't really care if a certain fic was inspired by a song, or features the lyrics quoted (at most, a few lines) before the fic starts, but any fic that features the song prominently in its body just annoys the crap out of me.  It breaks up the flow of the fic pretty dreadfully and just distracts from it.  Are you trying to hide the fact tht you can't write at all by hiding behind Prince's "When Doves Cry?"

Sadly, I have seen perfectly good fics completely ruined by song lyrics randomly inserted inbetween paragraphs.  Sometimes I go to the effort to actually open the fic in a word editor and remove the lyrics, but I mostly just skip over any fic that has "songfic" in its description completely.

4.  You leave the WORST reviews.

"liek omg ^_____^  THAT WUZ SO KAWAII!!!1  i luv inuyasha an miroku 2gether, their teh best lol ^_^;; PLZ WRITE MORE!!"

You review everything like this.  EVERYTHING.  I don't care if it's the most typo-ridden, OOC, badly-written drivel that has ever graced the Intarwebnet, you think it is THE BEST THING EVER.  And you will add it to your favorites list and surely read it at least once a week, because it features your favorite unlikely couple and that's all that matters, dammit.  

Man, that ticks me off.

I've had the poor luck to run across terrible fics, then glance at the reviews and see eight pages of naught but praise.  If you're going to read a pile of shit fic, at least have the grace to know that's what you're reading.  If you don't out-and-out flame the author, at least give them what we of the more-than-one-brain-cell club like to call "constructive criticism" and tell them how to improve their fic.  

For the love of god, DON'T ENCOURAGE THE BAD WRITERS.  The type of yaoi fangirl that does is part of the reason why the rest of us have to muck through page after page of poorly-written crap just to find a single good fic.  

Actually, this goes for flames, too.  Often times this type of yaoi fangirl mindlessly flames any fic featuring a pairing she doesn't like, regardless of the actual fic's quality.  "NO U SUCK SESSHOMARU ONLY LUVS NARAKU!!!11  >_<"

5. Your fics are terrible.

This ties more into the ideas above, but I'd just like to expand on it a little bit.

Most yaoi fics are what I like to call Old Yeller fics.  They start out with a good idea, but after a while it just all goes to hell, and then it's time to take it out to the back yard and shoot it in the head.  Tragic, but necessary.

So sure, YaoiNoMiko0843 has this really cool idea... at first.  But then she lapses into five million cliches, makes it a rape fic, kills off all the main female characters, and caps it all off with a wedding... and my next gripe.

6.  You write MPREG.

FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD, WHY?

You DO know that the characters you're writing are MALE, right?  That they have penises and no tits, much less vaginas?  I could possibly understand something like this when you're dealing with a mysterious, alien/otherworldly character (like D from Petshop of Horrors, maybe), but Quatre of Gundam Wing?  

Why?

WHY?

"But they're in love and they need to have a BAY-BEEEE, Chopstick!"  you cry in protest, pointing to a very much in love Trieze and Zechs, with Zechs cradling his adorable hellspawn.

What the fuck.   Ever heard of adoption?  Men don't have the equipment for making babies, kids; I don't care how many times you watched Junior.  You're just writing it because you think that your adorable couple needs a baby to cement their relationship, and babies just have to come from the innards of one of them, or it just doesn't count.  I swear to god, you'd think that to become a Gundam pilot it was a prerequisite to have ovaries planted up your ass, these fics are so rampant in the Gundam (Wing) fandom.

7.  You don't care about spelling/grammar/typos/MY SANITY.

I kick myself every time I catch the slightest mis-type I made that goes unnoticed by everyone else, I really do.  You, on the other hand, don't give a damn.  This is made obvious by the fact that you're misspelling the main character's name, using "loose" instead of "lose," and think that awkward only has one w in it.  Okay, so I'm being a little unfair and pointing out some really common misspellings, but just consider this a public service.  

I don't really care about those two common misspellings as much as I care about those who commit the unforgivable crime of using Internet abbreviations, smilies, and/or 1337 speak in their fics.   If Edward made a slightly nervous smile after he confessed his feelings to Greed, DO NOT express it with ^_^;.  Write it.  Describe it.  And when you're done doing that, read it a few times over to make sure it's devoid of typos.  Double-check your spelling of words you're not quite sure about.

When to use "he and I" instead of "him and me":  If you're writing about Edward and Alphonse going out to buy more condoms and lube and you're writing from Al's perspective, there is a common mistake with grammar, and that is to automatically use "he and I" because it "sounds more correct."  As a rule of thumb, you subtract the other person from the sentence.  If what you're using still makes sense ("I wanted to get the Astroglide" versus "Me wanted to get the Astroglide") then you're in the clear.

8.  Your stupid Mary Sues/Marty Stus.

You sneak them in when no one's looking.  You insist they aren't self-inserts, but the smart ones know better.  The Mary Sue is usually paired up with another character (not distracting from the main HAWT YAOI SEXX0RZ, of course), while the Marty Stu can either be paired up with the afore-mentioned "other character," or he can even be the other half of the actual yaoi pairing.

Lesser crimes include making a Mary/Marty one of the main characters' confidants, despite the fact that there were twenty canonical characters to choose from.  Suddenly there's this random, made up character that Leon has to run and confide in, despite the fact that he has D/Jill/Chris in the manga.  

9.  Addendum.

I'm a yaoi fangirl.  I confess this.  I embrace this.  I enjoy the occasional pure smut or WAFF or angst-ridden fic.  Unfortunately, however, I do not always enjoy my fellow fangirls and what they produce.  Ultimately I'm probably in the yaoi community to stay (for better or for worse), but that doesn't mean I'm not going to bitch about things every once in a while.  

Things can be improved.  Always.

I desperately want to see the yaoi fandom improve.

10.  Useful Links.

USE THEM, THEY ARE YOUR FRIENDS.

Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com
Google: http://www.google.com/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
GrammarStation.com: http://www.grammarstation.com/     Thanks to my fellow LJer thespooniest for pointing this one out.