Weiss Kreuz Badfic of the Moment

GenericSue and the Assassins who Don't Do Anything

2009-09-19T22:53:40Z

The more Suefic I read the more convinced I become that there's a Secret Suethor Checklist doing the rounds behind my back. Why else are so many of these stories - not to mention their tiresomely specially special heroines - so painfully cookie-cutter? There's either a list out there or a lot of very unimaginative fangirls, and I really don't know which is worse.

Story Title: Beautiful Dream
Perpetrator: Draconsis
Summary: '[Aya x Ken] A female agent has to room with Weiss due to complications in Kyoto. What changes will she bring to Weiss and Schwarz? A tale of courage, friendship, family and love. R+R Onegai!'

Rating:

Resident Sue: Kaede 'Kae-chan' Akizaki, (Codenames: Tsubasa, Fittiche)
Full Species: Mulier interferia selfinsertia.
Luxuriant Tresses: "The sudden breeze tousled her long, messy hair. Such a pale shade of brown, almost a dark orange, it was held back unsuccessfully in a ponytail. She brushed the stray strands from her face."
Vibrant Orbs: "Jade green eyes"
Special Possessions: Apart from the obligatory suitcases of her belongings (and guess where she's going with those! Go on, it'll be fun!), she has a can of INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC green tea, black jacket to billow in the wind, a red and white school uniform and the usual piece of significant Sue bling: in this case "a silver tag hung from her neck, and [Ken] could just make out the phrase ‘Yume02’ engraved on one side". Ken somehow manages to read this from across the store.
Canon Love Interest: None mentioned, but She's Not Like The Other Girls™. Possibly this is because she's only really there to see that Aya and Ken hook up, making it possible she's a self-insert whose sole purpose in the story is to force Weiss to conform to her creator's OTP preferences.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: She's a Kritiker assassin, but aren't they all? That aside, we're told virtually nothing about Kaede save that she's from Kritiker's 'only all-female group', who labor under the unfortunately cutesy name Traum and... do something in Kyoto for some reason, though it's never explained why they're there, what they've been up to, where they were when Esset were trying to DESTROY THE FUCKING WORLD or why Kaede can't damn well stay there. Of course, Kaede has left her snazzy Sue team before the fic even opens, and we're just supposed to take it as read that This Was Totally Necessary, Really and not a painful plot contrivance at all. Apart from that, she's a third-year in a random high school with 'campuses' in Tokyo and Kyoto and has a random big brother who calls her 'dearest, most huggable Kae-chan', which leaves me counting his life expectancy in minutes.
Canon-Raping Connections: She's joining Weiss because she is and gets to move in with them because she does (and, or so says Manx, that's what the spare rooms Weiss don't have are for - for Mary Sues to move into at five minutes' notice. Good to see that confirmed at last.) She immediately joins the massively oversubscribed Not Like The Other Girls™ Club, proving her credentials even before she shows her face when Manx tells Youji that he'd better not try and flirt with her in case she hospitalizes him. Needless to say he hits on her anyway and suffers the tediously inevitable Gratuitous Beatdown, because that's precisely all that Youji's there for if the Suethors are to be believed. Aside from that, despite the obligatory lip service about how awesome she is and what an asset she'll be to the team, not a lot: Ken, for instance, barely seems to have noticed she exists. Smart boy.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Another leet assassin with the kind of deeply generic skillbase that just leaves me wondering what it is she's actually supposed to be offering Weiss as a teammate aside from the sheer joy of her presence. Kaede's talents are basically just warmed-over versions of things Weiss can do just fine already. She's yet another female version of Omi, with Ken's fondness for hitting shit, who appears to be under the delusion that she's in Splinter Cell and that what Weiss really need is an almost entirely pointless fifth member who stalks about the place and makes sure that 'the levels are secure' before they go in and get the actual job done. Clearly Omi's reconnaissance talents pale into nothingness next to those of the implausible MPREG Mary Sue hellspawn of Sam Fisher and Solid fucking Snake. Oh, and she speaks fluent Japanese, French and German and is a talented and sensitive painter as well. In fact, so awesome are her painting skills that Youji (who, let us remember, is a good - not to mention knowledgeable - enough artist to pass as an art teacher) is totally wowed and asks if she'll teach him how to be awesome, too. Whatever, Mary Sue.

The Charges:
A goddamn Mary Sue (and possibly a self-insert Sue at that) shows up and crashes Weiss's lives with the intention of helping Aya and Ken get it on. There's no plot, Youji and Aya are painful caricatures and though Ken is valiantly trying to stay IC, everything he does is presented as if it proves how desperately he yearns for Aya's powerful manlovings.

The Case for the Prosecution:

It's not a good sign when a fic - after a needlessly chatty author's note which goes on forever and tells a reader nothing - starts with a key explaining the author's personal take on punctuation conventions. It's even worse when the key includes notation for ((sounds)) and *actions/emotions* and decides the only use for (parentheses) is to indicate author's notes and comments. On discovering, however, that after the key comes a chunk of song lyrics, a reader may be forgiven for getting a bad feeling - a feeling which is confirmed when the first sign there's an actual story in here comes in the form of a scene focusing on Epic Mary Sue Snack-Buying. Some fics fail right from the starting gate, and this is one of them.

This Mary Sue's name is Kaede and she's joining Weiss, in accordance with the scriptures. In the process she whines constantly about how Weiss are dangerous (no, really?) and are going to kill her the minute she shows her face. Boy howdy do I wish they would, but all they do is sit in the basement and gawp at Manx The Incredible Walking Exposition as she tells them they're getting a new teammate RIGHT NOW and she's a HOT GIRL. What a unique and compelling premise!

Speaking of Kaede's status as a Hot Girl, I'm getting very tired of Youji being used as an unsubtle way to point out how breathtakingly sextacular every other Mary Sue is. Once again the routine runs as follows: Manx gets out picture of Neat New Teammate; Neat New Teammate revealed to be Hot Girl; Youji sees Hot Girl's picture and is immediately all OMG A HOT GIRL I WANT TO DO HER; Manx is all DREAM ON LITTLE BOY SHE IS TOO AWESOME AND KICKASS FOR YOU. End Scene. Next up: the no-less-inevitable follow-up where Youji gets used as a punching bag all the better to beat the readers over the head - again - with the fact the Sue's not just a pretty face, she's got sass and is tough and feisty and won't take any crap from dumb boys and is also desperately hoping she'll be convicted for assault before it goes out of style. If there's a better way to prove a female character is sassy and tough than this, you won't find it in Suefic.

And Kaede Is Not Like The Other Girls™ and she's going to prove it by beating up Youji for daring to find her physically attractive this is so fucking boring, get a new line! The fic wastes no time trotting out the usual trite bullshit about how Kaede is so damn hot and wonderful Weiss might not be able to control themselves because OMG BOOBIES but don't worry, She's Not Like The Other Girls™ and if they so much as hint that they find her cute she'll brutally assault them. Okay, Suethor, Kaede has tits and lives with Weiss... why is this supposed to be such a novel concept for them? These guys are not sailors who've just come back into port after five years floating around the Pacific in a soapbox. They deal with women on a daily basis (deal with and then some, in Youji's case). It is going to take more than OMG BOOBIES to turn them into a bunch of hormone-addled would-be rapists who are madly hawt for Kaede and her generic. The worst thing is that the possibility of Weiss raping Kaede is actually treated as a credible threat by her Sue brother!

Weiss are OOC from the minute they're introduced. There's nothing very remarkable here, mind: just the usual Aya-is-everyone's-Daddy schtick in which Aya treats the rest of Weiss like naughty children and Weiss let him. Ken, for example, is comically bad at mornings and needs to be woken by Omi so he doesn't get scolded by his Daddy Aya for being late.

Speaking of Ken and Aya, did you know Ken seldom talked to Aya because he wanted to give him his space? Nor, I suspect, did Ken. See, in this fic Ken is madly in love with Aya because he is: the end result is a drastic misinterpretation of the way they canonically interact to make them look as if they're meant to be rather than two guys who may grudgingly respect one another but don't really get on most of the time. The weird thing is that a lot of the descriptions of both Ken as a person and the way he treats Aya are accurate - the ficcer simply draws completely the wrong conclusions about what these then say about their relationship. The most ridiculous expression of this is the relentlessly positive spin put on attempted murder followed by a punch to the face and a knock-down fight: you see, Ken was just freely and naturally expressing his emotions around Aya rather than treating him guardedly because he was new! They're totally OTP 4 LYFE!

Where the first chapter is taken up with Kaede's arrival, the second is mostly padding. The best example is a needless scene where an OC Kritiker computer expert, the unfortunately-named Mirai Kagaya - a guy, for the record, supposedly an MIT student - tries to locate Schwarz. Nothing that is said or done in the scene makes any real sense; the information Mirai is given is trading-card standard at best, and his methods rely heavily on Google searches. Couldn't Omi have done this?

The prose style isn't much to write home about - not particularly interesting, but not all that bad either. At least, it isn't until halfway through chapter two, when the POV shifts totally at random - after a chapter and a half in the third person, the fic then randomly jumps to the first person POV of a wildly OOC Aya interacting with (and drooling all over) a disturbingly peppy Ken, who seems to be doing his damndest to stay in-character but not making a very good job of it. As soon as the rhapsody-roster about how unconvincingly awesome Ken is supposed to be and how very infatuated with him Aya is because Ken brings him sunshine in the pouring rain and there ain't no sunshine when he's gone and he's always gone too long, the fic abruptly flips back to third-person omniscient perspective and tries to forget the digression ever happened.

Schwarz show up, are pointless and go away again. Of course they're all OOC as well, getting their standard bad-fanon portrayals: Crawford is auditioning for the role of Daddy Aya, Schuldig is a petulant brat who thinks sending porn to their bosses is just hilaaaarious and Farfarello - yes, Farfarello - is the voice of reason. All right, then. Moving swiftly on...

This fic is, at present count, two chapters long. It's not until the end of chapter two that we the readers get the first sign that all this nonsense might be going somewhere. After a whole chapter devoted to the arrival of Kaede Sue and then the best part of another devoted to dull, goes-nowhere padding (mostly, of course, about Kaede) Weiss are given a mission. Unfortunately we the audience aren't actually told anything about any of it save that 'they have a mission and Kaede is very important to it for some reason' and so it all just looks deeply vague and might as well not have happened at all for how little it seems to matter to any of them. Six thousand words in and damn-all has happened at length. What is the hook here, story? Aya and Ken's OOC wub? Kaede and her annoying? Because it sure ain't the compelling plot!

Exposing the Hideousness:

Stupid, crazy fangirls. Well, at least most of them have gone home by now. You’d think they’d have some other things to do rather than drool over us all day.
Omi’s upstairs doing homework, and Kudou… Well, Kudou is skiving as per normal, so that leaves Ken and me alone in the shop. Plus a few fangirls and the plants.
“Hey, Aya!” Ken smiles at me from where he’s watering some gentians. “I’m buying some Donburi for dinner later, that okay with you?” Another dazzling smile.
I give a non-committable mutter, intent on working the register. The customer, one of those crazy schoolgirls – surprise, surprise, they’re actually buying something – smiles sickeningly at me before waltzing out of the shop. Really. How can they claim to love me, when none of them have even spoken to me? I slide shut the register, and catch Ken looking at me out of the corner of his eye. But as soon as my gaze lands fully onto him, he resumes watering the flowers, fidgeting nervously. He may even be blushing, but I can’t tell, since he’s on the other side of the shop.
There’s a temporary lull in the business, since the aforementioned schoolgirls have finally packed up and gone home. There aren’t any other customers since it’s not yet 5 o’clock, the end of work for those with desk jobs. Ken has put away the hose, and has started sweeping the floor. It’s actually quiet for once, the only sound being the swish of the broom as Ken sweeps, and the faint ringing of the wind chime from outside the shop.
The afternoon sunlight highlights his hair, and the backdrop of the gentians brings out the colour of his eyes nicely. I don’t know why, but I feel more comfortable around Ken than anybody else. Maybe it’s because he understands that I’m not a talkative person, and doesn’t engage me in conversation just for the sake of talking, letting me be alone with my thoughts.
Maybe it’s because when I had just joined Weiss, Ken was the only one who didn’t treat me as “the new guy”, didn’t put up any guards against me. After all, socking someone in the face the first time you meet isn’t how a normal person would treat a stranger they would be working with. He told me flat out what he though of me, unlike Omi and Youji who hovered around for a few days before finally accepting me as part of Weiss.
Maybe it’s because he’s always been nice to me even though he doesn’t need to. Like how he’ll ask me if I want a drink after a long day in the shop, or how he’ll volunteer to help patch me up after missions, or how he’ll ask me what I want for dinner, like just now. Even though I’ve refused and snubbed him so many times, he continues asking. It’s not that Omi and Youji aren’t nice to me, but with Ken it seems as if he really wants to know if I’m comfortable, not just asking since he’s my team mate, co-worker and housemate.
Ken has always been a mystery. It’s hard to believe that the Siberian who works with me on a mission is the same person as Hidaka Ken. Sure, they have the same fluidity of movement, the same sensation of being a coiled spring, the same vivaciousness and zest for life (though Siberian’s sense of balance, sadly, is often lacking in Ken). But Ken… Ken is trusting, caring, warm-hearted… He’s just, well, Ken. Not like an assassin at all. But this still doesn’t explain why I get this feeling in the middle of my chest every time I’m with him; this warm, relaxing feeling that makes me feel almost…
Happy.
I thought I’d left happiness behind me a long time ago when Aya was knocked down. Without her, it was as if all the colour had gone out of my world, leaving me with black, white, and monotone grey. Eventually I added another two colours, the silver of a blade and the crimson of spilt blood.
But now… the colour is slowly seeping back into my life. Aya is back, bringing with her the yellow of a summer day, the lime green of a dress, the crystal sparkle of laughter and the pink of health renewed.
But for the deep blue of a pair of eyes, the scarlet hue of a blush, the tan of skin brown from the sun… It was Ken who had brought these colours back into my life, with his smiles and warmth. The incessant burning of his passion clashed with the cold barrier I had hidden myself behind, and slowly, he wormed his way through behind the barrier. This still doesn’t explain the feeling I get every time I look at him, each time I catch him looking at me. Maybe it’s because he understands me. Maybe it’s because he cared. Maybe it’s because he never gave up no matter how many times I was horrible to him.
Maybe it’s because… I love him.
Do I? Do I love him?

To: Kaede akizaki_.jp From: why_am_icandela_
Dearest, most-huggablest, Kae-chan,
You’re staying with a couple of GUYS!? You sure that’s safe… If they do anything to you, I’ll help you give it to them. As for meeting up… I’m not sure if I’ll be in Tokyo anytime soon…
The typist’s fingers paused. How he did hate to lie to her. But it was a necessary lie…
Be careful when you come back at night, sister. The streets of Tokyo aren’t as safe as those of Kyoto. The prices are also much higher. If you need any money to supplement those that you earn, just drop me a mail. Wish you success in finding another part-time job here in Tokyo… competition is stiff.
Yes, it occasionally does snow up there in Tokyo. Hopefully it will snow this year.
Love,
Aniki

“Weiss, deny the dark beasts their tomorrows.” The computer-generated video of Persia winked out, leaving the basement in total darkness.
Manx flipped the light switch. “Who’s in?”
All of Weiss accepted the mission, including Kaede. Manx handed them the manila folders containing further information, waiting to see how Kaede would fit into the mission plan.
Omi had rapidly digested the information provided. It was a relatively simple mission, get in, finish off the target, and get out. The building plans were provided as well, including the route the guards would normally take. The targets were staying late so they could meet each other in private, making it even easier for Weiss due to the lack of innocent bystanders.
Bombay turned to the newest addition to their team, looking thoughtful. “Kaede, what do you normally do during missions?”
“I reconnoiter the place. I normally go in first and make sure the place is secure for the rest of the team to follow, then fall back and act as rearguard for the rest of the mission, as well as continuing the check the parameters.” Kaede’s brow wrinkled as she though. “I can finish a hundred square meters in about two or three minutes.”
“Mm.” Omi continued looking at the data. She was much faster than him at doing recon, and it would certainly lighten the load for the other three. He tapped his fingers on his chin, his mind already working out the fastest escape route. “Okay, here’s the plan.”
Weiss gathered around him, looking at the copy of the building plans Omi had put on the table. “Tsubasa will secure the area as we progress to the seventh level where the meeting will be taking place. Abyssinian and Siberian will take this route,” he traced the route on the plans, “with Balinese covering them while I take out the security system. When Tsubasa has confirmed that the seventh level is secure, Abyssinian and Siberian will move in and finish off the targets while I progress to level five. Tsubasa will re-secure level six, and you all will move down to level five where Tsubasa and I will rendezvous before continuing to secure the escape route. Balinese will secure the rear. Everything okay?”
Watching Weiss nod, Manx felt some of her fears ease. Tsubasa would fit in well with Weiss, her speed easily helping them. Bombay was also shaping up nicely, becoming a great agent for Kritiker.
“Good luck, Weiss,” She called out as she left the house, smiling her enigmatic smile.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

Zeto
2003-08-09 chapter 2
Sorry, Schu, you're just not doing it for me.
Schu: *Sexy smile deflates* What? I'm outraged!
Yeah, right. Now Ken-ken...
Ken: EEp!
Aya: Shi-ne!
OOps, better run now. Another great chapter by the way.

chibi koneko
2003-03-19 chapter 1
wai~!
this is such an interesting storyline... i can't wait to see how this develops, and what kaede's role in all this is...
plus a big fat bonus... it's RANKEN ~!
*waves ranken banner*... i'm not obsessed... much...
keep up the awesome work, and i'm looking forward to reading the rest...

Aya Fujimiya: Superstar

2009-09-09T16:35:08Z

What is this I don't even.

So, we've got Aya the twenty-eight year old flangedemon who is Omi's dad and it's all downhill from there. Now read on.

Story Title: Of fathers and killers
Perpetrator: evalita
Summary: 'Omi have been in Weiss since he was rescued by Persia when he was 7. But who was it that trained him? Who was the man with the beautiful kind violet eyes and long silky red hair that took him in?'

Rating:

The Charges:
THIS IS SHIT. We've got Aya the flangedemon and an idiot Omi under the impression he is his daddy; the rest of Weiss with little to do but admiringly buzz round him; everyone is OOC; there's no plot save 'AYA IS AWESOME', something that gets reiterated ad nauseam; the prose is bad; nothing that happens makes sense; and the fic is basically just painful to read.

The Case for the Prosecution:

We open to discover that Weiss Kreuz canon has been beaten semi-conscious, sodomized sideways with a crowbar and left for dead in a vacant lot. Yup, though this fic is nominally set in the canon universe and features a bunch of guys who are supposedly still Weiss, the canon has been warped and twisted into a veritable hideous-pretzel of stupid. First things first, there's that old saw that Kritiker have somehow been around for at least long enough for Aya's parents to have been member, and for both he and his sister to have been born and raised as leet assassins of leetness, supposedly explaining why Aya is now a flange-ridden demi-god. And they're cat demons. Yes, really. The Fujimiyas are cat demons and Kritiker love them because of it. Did I mention that Aya is now pushing thirty? Alas, poor canon. I knew it, Horatio...

... and, as if this wasn't bad enough, the ficcer decides that Manx is Aya's cousin. (No word on whether or not she's a Mighty Morphin' Cat Demon; I presume not because it'd make Aya look less overwhelmingly speshul.) Why she's his cousin now I have no idea, unless red hair = related to Aya now. Thank God Schuldig never showed up is all I can say.

In this fic the role of Ran Fujimiya will be played by Ninja Jesus. Don't you think it would be way cooler if Aya had assembled Weiss damn near single-handedly, trained Omi and Ken, recruited Youji, was the bestest of the best at every armed and unarmed combat technique ever, an explosives expert, a genius hacker, amazingly good with children, cooked, sung like an angel, and was a ninja samurai thief cat demon and just about anything else the ficcer thought was cool too?! No, me either - too bad that's what we're getting. Look, if Aya is this great you don't need the rest of the team because his awesome renders them completely redundant. In this fic there is nothing - literally nothing - they can do which Aya can't do better and the only reason for them to show up is so Aya can show them up. This. Is. Pathetic. Why can't Aya be cool just the way he is, for God's sake? You don't have to turn him into Ninja Jesus to be worthy of attention, surely?

But it's not enough for Aya to be great: everyone else has to suck mightily the better to prove how very awesome he is. Take Omi - canonically (lest we forget) a child prodigy. The scene where Aya trains Omi downplays all Omi's skills to the extent it becomes offensive. Omi is only trained with a crossbow and as a hacker because he's useless at everything else he tries, to the extent RenaissanceFlangeCatThing!Aya bitches about how unlikely it is WeepyIdiot!Omi will ever make a good assassin. He's not even allowed his canonical ability with explosives. Ficcer: it is perfectly possible for Omi - or anyone for that matter - to develop skills without Daddy Aya nursemaiding him along. The idea that Omi only became who he was because Aya showed him how is a real slight against a character who is competent and brilliant in his own right.

Then there's the 'Aya the cat demon' thing. (And of course Weiss only have cat codenames because of Aya!) Needless to say his cat form is 'a red Abyssinian, with violet eyes'. Ignoring how very creepy a violet-eyed cat would be, or how absurd and conspicuous a 'demon version the size of 'a huge horse' would be, the whole angle is utterly irrelevant. The small fact Aya turns into a kitty is never even mentioned again after the opening spiel. It's just there to ramp up his speshul.

... and then Aya's family get one-linered into being mostly dead. Including Aya, who gets an angsty coma all to his very own because his bitch sister can't possibly hog all the medical angst. If this is such a supposedly defining event in his life - turning him from a no-kill flangebeast into an assassin - shouldn't it be worthy of more than a mere passing mention?

All Omi gets to do in this fanfic is pout, whine and cry while his daddy Aya looks on shaking his head. The sad thing is, this looks like a good deal seeing how painfully beside-the-point Youji and Ken are. Why are Youji and Ken even in this fanfic when absolutely EVERYTHING they can do Aya can do better with one hand tied behind his back, standing on one leg in a tub of flaming Jello, blindfolded and whistling the Hallelujah Chorus? I don't think they know either as all they get to do is explain how painfully significant Aya is to their own backstories, too, because God forbid anyone in this story do anything at all without Aya looking on to make sure they don't fuck it up. Oh, and for some reason they think Omi is actually Aya's child, because they're incapable of realizing that twenty-one year olds don't as a rule have ten year old sons.

It's probably worth mentioning at about this point that Aya, in this ficcer's hands, becomes an exceedingly unlikeable man. The sheer weight of all the flange he's been buried under warps him into an arrogant, obnoxious, self-righteous Gary Stu asshole who treats the rest of the cast as if they were somehow beneath him. He has no weaknesses whatsoever and consequently has no redeeming features either. Look. Aya, in canon, is interesting precisely because he's a very, very flawed character. Remove the flaws and he's just boring and aggravating. This is a guy who's so flipping perfect and awesome that he can be punched full in the face and not even FEEL it. Remind me again why I'm supposed to give a shit what happens to Aya when he's got no failings, no flaws, nothing to learn and whatever happens he'll probably be fine?

Then there are the optional extras. Not content with merely being a tricked-out combination of Batman and Inuyasha, Aya is also a master of customer service. Of course (because there's no way anyone else could teach him anything) he turns out to have worked as a florist before, in between working in a book-store, a drug-store, a restaurant, as a hairdresser, a chef, and singing in a nightclub. Anything you can do Aya can do better, Aya can do anything better than you!

Finally - perhaps in a failed attempt to add some kind of drama to the proceedings, as there is precisely no plot here save 'Aya is awesome and is Omi's daddy' - Omi seems incapable of remembering that his kindly and beloved 'Oto-Ran' (ugh) is his broody angsty thirtyishy new teammate, though what earthly difference it would make if he did I have no idea. Maybe it's because Aya isn't stood next to him holding his hand thus permitting his brain to work, I don't know. Either way it seems painfully contrived that Aya should have been so ridiculously significant to Omi and yet the boy is supposed to be incapable of recognizing him a few years down the line because Aya has cut his hair. How many red-haired, violet-eyed, flangey cat demon assassins are there wandering around Tokyo that Omi shouldn't be able to recognize him instantly?

Exposing the Hideousness:

The Fujimiya couple had 2 children, their son Ran, and their daughter Aya. Ryou Fujimiya and his wife Hana, was one of the best Kritiker agents. For now they were undercover as workers for a Takatori. As other Kritker-agents that had children together, those children were trained to become the next generation of agents. So you could say that Ran had been born into Kritiker.
The Fujimiya's were a special family, they were of the cat-clan. They could all turn themselves into cats. Ran's cat form was a red Abyssinian, with violet eyes. He could also do a demon-version of that cat, same size as a huge horse.
Ran was some sort of a prodigy, a wonder child. He could fight with every kind of weapon, kick-boxing, karate, you name it he could do it, as well as kendo. He was a trained ninja and samurai, he was a sharp-shooter with any kind of weapon, and he was a master in making bombs that actually worked. He was also a master hacker, he hadn't meat a system he couldn't hack his way into yet. He was an acrobat, he could do everything he set his mind to, except one thing...

“You got to be kidding me...” Ran said, looking at the boss.
“I assure you I'm very serious” Persia said.
“With all my training... and mind you, I'm 18 years old, and you want me to babysit a 7 year old kid?” Ran said.
“I rescued him, and I know you're young, but you'll not just babysit, you'll be training him too... You will in many ways be his father” Persia said.
“A father? Me? Sorry, but I don't do kids very well... I just got my little sister to stop being scared of me, I'm not used to kids... I can't do this... I'm too young to be a dad” Ran said.
“You get to live alone with the child” Persia said.
Ran had wanted to get his own place for a while now, but still...
“You'll get paid of course” Persia said.
“You could at least meet the child Ran” Manx said. Those too were cousins.
“Fine... I'll see the child” Ran sighed.
It was a boy, with huge blue scared eyes, blond hair... he was tiny.
“This boy? You want me to train this one? He looks scared of his own shadow...” Ran said.
“Ran!” Manx warned.
“Omi, this is Ran, he's gonna be your daddy oto-san!” Persia said.
Ran looked at the boy, cute, but... he didn't think this could be a agent in the future.
“What happened to him?” he asked.
Persia explained, everything, while Manx was tending to the child.
“You already decided that I shall take the child haven't you?” Ran asked.
“Pretty much, yes. Your parents are thrilled about it, said it would be so nice to you, and perhaps calm you down a little” Persia smirked.
“Then why bother to ask me if you're going to make it an order?” Ran growled.
“Because it's more fun, for me!”

First try went wrong. Ran thought about training Omi in kendo. First day, Omi knocked down all the swords and cut himself up. After that he was afraid of swords.
Next thing, Ran thought about train Omi in making bombs. But when it was supposed to go BOOM, it went pfffftttt.
“I don't like it loud...” was Omi's comment to that one.
So, next up was poison. But after killing a rat with a poison he made right, Omi started crying, and so that was out of the question. Ran started to wonder if the boy was ever gonna cut it out to be an agent, probably not.
Ran started to learn Omi to hack, and what do you know, the boy had real talent. There was hope for him yet. But Omi should know some sort of combat technique.
Material-arts, no weapons, surly that should work. But no, one fall on his ass and Omi started screaming bloody murder.
“OK Omi, this is a crossbow, this is a dart, that is the target, now shoot!” Ran sighed.
And Omi shot, and hit the target... Not in the middle, but close enough.
“Not bad, let's go for that one” Ran said.
And so he trained Omi in hacking and sharp-shooting with a crossbow.
“How is it going?” Persia asked.
“Well, I went for hacking and shooting with crossbow, he suck at everything else” Ran sighed.
“That bad? Not even karate or kick-boxing... material-arts?” Persia.
“He fell on his ass and started crying. He cry too much” Ran sighed.
Manx snickered.
“Oh shut up!” Ran snorted.

Ran started to train Omi as an acrobat too, it could come in handy. Ran himself was the perfect master-thief, he had done a few jobs for Kritiker as that.
Omi still cried a lot, but at least Ran had gotten immune against his puppy-dog-eyes.
Ran was now 21, and Omi 10. Over the years Ran had tried to get a girlfriend, but Omi sabotaged that every single time, he wanted his oto-ran-san all to himself.
“My dad is a girl!”
“You're not as pretty as dad's other girlfriend!”
“If you're gonna become my mommy I'm gonna make your life hell!”
Those was just some of the things Omi said, while smiling like an angel.
At this age Omi was just as good at hacking as Ran was, and a very good sharp-shooter so fare.
This year everything changed.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are (Sometimes) Stupid:

darkdranzer
2009-05-26 chapter 2
um lol this is amusing. i think you messed with aya's age a bit right? but thats ok. i like how you made aya omi's "father" that weird but intersting. althogh if i could point out 2 errors i saw? in ch i think you put "meet" as "meat". meat is like food--you want to use meet , as in meeting someone. in ch2, you use "teas"...um that's the plural for tea, i think you mean "tease" right? as in make fun of someone.

KYAYAKAKAKAKA
2009-04-26 chapter 1
I am not a fan of such heavy AU fics-- after all I am a fan of Weiss Kreuz and the characters from the series, here they are different people... Anyway, in the case of your story I will keep reading. You've got rather nice style, a few moments were really cute... and I am curious if some characters a la Ken and Yohji will appear (and just how old would they be?;) ), where you are going with it...
I thought I would add-- I am not reviewing because of this
"But if you don't review, you won't get the next chapter!"
Actually, after seeing that I started wondering if I really want to leave a review for you. Do you have any idea how lame it is?

"I suddenly love Aya. His being a rape victim makes me love him."

2009-08-22T17:04:24Z

I really should pay more attention to the stories I read and liked way back when I first got into Weiss Kreuz when it comes to looking for things to spork. While hunting for generic Youji/Aya hurt/comfort - I deserve a break after the last Sue - I spent a fair amount of time stalking the Adult Pit before remembering this fanfic. I had very bad taste as a wee fangirl...

Story Title: Staking Claim
Perpetrator: firewolfsg
Summary: 'Yaoi Youji has to decide what to do with the feelings Schuldich has awakened within him. Repercussions to the events that surround that 'incident' could blow up in Youji's face if he's not careful... And is it a good or bad thing that Ay'

Rating:

The Charges:
Hideous cliché non-con fic in which Schuldig has nothing more to do with his time than rape Aya in a creepily romanticized manner. The plot is scanty, Youji spends most of the fic emoing tiresomely, Omi and Ken are reduced to the status of plot devices, there are signposted flashbacks and once again the only person whose trauma seems to count is Aya.

The Case for the Prosecution:

It may seem rather unfair of me to slate a fic from 2001 for its painful adherence to all the YxA hurt/comfort clichés - but let's be totally fair here, the clichés were always pretty awful. Even if this fic kicked all the ridiculous fanon we know and hate off in the first place,that doesn't mean the fanon was any less ridiculous for being vaguely innovative at the time. We've got Youji and Aya bonding while going clubbing; we've got Youji's angst over Asuka used as an excuse to get the OTP ball rolling; we've got Schuldig as Random Rapist to add angst; we've got repeated assertions Aya is the hottest thing to ever hot in the middle of a rape scene; we've even got the chestnut about Aya being Youji's best friend and attendant blatant sidelining of Ken. Tell me, were these ever good ideas? Because I don't think so.

Okay, so what's the plot? Well, it's a Youji x Aya fic so that means Youji and Aya go clubbing and. As usual something happens while clubbing that makes Youji realize whoops! He wants Aya. It's not even surprising that 'something' is a rape: Aya gets drugged and abducted by Schuldig, who manages to abduct Youji as well when he goes after them though you'd think he'd have difficulty hauling two unconscious guys about the place by himself. The usual rape and angst plot follows, with the 'twist' that Youji is forced to watch and predictably finds it hot, and Aya can't remember what happened to him because he's too daft to know that he didn't wake up feeling like he'd been assraped because nothing happened.

... seriously, does Schuldig have NOTHING to do with his time? Once again, here's another fanfic which sees Schuldig enacting a ludicrously complicated and micromanaged plan to rape Aya in his freakishly well-equipped Sex Den and make Youji watch, for no more reason than he's bored. Since when has anything about Schuldig suggested he's at all interested in putting that degree of planning into what, to him, is a mindless diversion? He's far too impulsive and easily-bored for that.

This fic fetishises Aya's status as a helpless little victim wile downplaying (or even totally ignoring) what the rest of the cast may be going through - to the extent that Omi and Ken exist mainly as set dressing and on the rare occasions that Aya or Youji do try and pay attention to them Omi and Ken themselves insist that their well-being doesn't count in the face of the OTP. Never mind that this isn't fair to the rest of the cast, it isn't fair to Aya either. He really should not be turned into a wibbly defenseless uberuke just because he's pretty. Aya is an angry, violent, dangerous young man, fangirls. He does not need Youji to hold his hand, protect him from Hideous Reality or take his revenge for him. In fact, I think he'd be rather insulted if anyone suggested he was anything less than perfectly capable of managing that by himself.

Unsurprisingly, given the fic's obsession with treating Aya like a helpless victim whose extraordinary suffering outdoes all others, it barely seems to consider that a person who is forced to participate in perpetrating a sex crime is also a victim of sex crime. Once again, fandom: if Youji and Aya are held captive and Youji is tied down while a barely-conscious Aya performs oral sex on him, Youji is as much a victim of sexual assault as Aya is. Yes, even if he got off. This is not that difficult a concept. A man does not have to be taken up the ass to be a victim of a sex crime, okay?

Moving on from the strict definition of the act of rape - the portrayal of rape here is ridiculously romanticized, with far too much play made of how mouthwatering RapeVictim!Aya looks and how amazing a lay he is even when drugged out of his head what with him 'moaning and moving so wonderfully erotically' while Schuldig RAPES HIM. As if that wasn't bad enough, then there's how the fic sets Aya up: his 'unconscious form' is 'gracing' a bed 'draped in black satin sheets, with artfully scattered red and white rose petals'. Yup. Fucking ROSE PETALS. And he's tied up with silk scarves. This sounds like a slightly kinky sex scene in a cheesy romance novel, not a rape. 'Was the scattered red and white rose petals overkill?' Schuldig asks later. Yes, that was overkill. For fuck sake YOU ARE WRITING. A. RAPE. Stop trying to pretty it up.

And then Aya being raped in front of him makes Youji realize he wants him. Youji's anger over their shared victimization isn't because, you know, it was hideously degrading and he hates knowing Aya was used like that or anything else partway normal: it's because Schuldig had his paws all over Aya's hot hotness and Youji is jealous. Stay classy, fandom.

The whole point of the second half of the fic is that Aya doesn't remember what happened and Youji is wrestling with his conscience over whether or not to fill him in. Okay, let's ignore the fact that Youji would most likely just tell him, end of story: yes, rohypnol causes memory loss, but even if he can't remember what happened when he was unconscious Aya has to be pathologically thick not to realize that rape is a possibility. There should be bruising, there should be soreness, his clothes should be on wrong and it should be obvious someone had something shoved where it had no place being - all that before he's got his head round the bit where he was dosed with a fucking date-rape drug, abducted by Schuldig and found in a creepy pit of sex. Aya is not stupid, story. Quit writing him stupid just for the sake of TEH DRAMAZ.

The prose style is clumsy and awkward-sounding, but that's not as bad as the formatting. This is another one of those fics that wheels out a load of non-standard punctuation to denote things like when a character is thinking, which should be obvious from the text, and relies on a damn KEY to be intelligible: apparently " ... " = Normal Speech; #…# = Telepathic speech; / … / = Thoughts. That's nice, but a better alternative is to put a bit of effort into producing coherent prose...

Then there are the nods to canon, which where they're not excruciatingly twee are just excruciating. Take Manx and Birman. They barely appear save to be described as a 'pair of yaoi freaks' who are gleefully happy Youji is getting over his upset over a girl and trying to woo Aya with his manlovings. Yes, great, thank you, turn two competent and deadly young women into a pair of squeeing fangirls why don't you. Worse, during the confrontation at the museum, Youji isn't trying to kill Schuldig because it's his job but because he's in a possessive rage over Aya, and Omi and Ken's sole purpose is to make Aya look like a Big Damn Hero for saving them from drowning, all the while selflessly denying they might have been a touch inconvenienced by this so the OTP are free to get their confession and wangst on. Yup, yet again, it's all about Aya - even Youji doesn't have a lot to say for himself when he's not obsessing over him. Next!

Exposing the Hideousness:

Schuldich grinned wickedly at the fuming man and stepped aside to let Youji see that his chair was placed beside a bed. A bed draped in black satin sheets, with artfully scattered red and white rose petals. A bed that was currently graced with the unconscious form of his friend, currently stripped to the waist and whose wrists were tied to the headboard with silken scarves.
"Mouth watering, isn't he?"
Youji turned murder filled eyes on the smirking German as he struggled to slip free of his bonds. But the only thing he succeeded in doing was bruising his wrists. The German's eyes were positively aglow with excitement to see his furious struggles at the unmistakable intentions.
"Ready for a show, You-tan?" Schuldich smirked as he took off his green jacket and moved to the bed to climb over the unconscious figure. "If you're good, maybe I'll let you have a little taste too."
Youji flushed as he turned his face away. He didn't want to be witness to his friend's rape. /Kami-sama-- this is my fault./
#Are you so sure you don't want to watch?# Schudich's mental voice intruded.
/I will kill you for this./ Youji tried desperately to shut out the sounds of Aya's light moaning as the Schuldich kissed and caressed him.
#You might as well watch, You-tan.# Youji's discomfort grew to know that Schuldich's words were echoing his distressful realisation. #I do believe your imagination is conjuring up worse images.#
/Damn you!/ Youji opened his eyes to take a look.
#Good boy.#
Youji flushed with guilt. He could feel his pants growing unbearably tight as he watched the Schwartz redhead caressing Aya's pale body and covering his neck and face with little nips and kisses. Try as he might, he could not fight down his reaction. He had felt sickened. Confused over how he was getting off watching the German rape his drugged team-mate.
#Deny it if you can, You-tan. You're enjoying the show. You're probably going to remember every delicious detail. I can see you getting hard watching me.# Schuldich purred at him, as he kissed down Aya's pale body and started to remove the unresisting man's pants. #The kitten's not being entirely unresponsive, you know?#
/You have him *drugged*!/
#So? It just means *he* doesn't have to feel guilty over what I'm doing to him.# Schudich chuckled as he continued to play with the receptive figure under him. #'Mine.' Do you know you are practically exuding that word, You-tan?#
Was he? Youji stared at the Schwartz redhead in confusion. They were friends. Over the years they had come to work with each other, they had arrived at a comfortable partnership. But an object of lust? When had he looked at Aya in that way?
To be honest about it, it wasn't difficult to see why not. Being a self admitted connoisseur of comeliness in the human form, Youji would easily admit that Aya was beautiful. Occasionally, when there was a period of lull at the Koneko no sumu Ie, Youji would find himself taking up his favourite activity of Weiß watching. Which was essentially his wasting time observing his friends as they pottered around the shop keeping busy rather then sinking into boredom. On most occasions, Omi and Ken didn't stay long. Ken was usually dragged out by his opportunity seeking kids for a game of soccer, Omi would disappear back to his apartment to finish his homework and surf the net. So, that would leave him alone in the store with Aya.
'Beautiful.' That description was always foremost in his mind when he was watching Aya. But he swore he had never thought beyond that. Youji *couldn't* remember when he started looking at Aya as a lust object. *When* would a feeling of possessiveness have appeared?

Youji chewed on his lower lip as he sneaked a glance at the redhead dozing against him. He didn't want to give this up. It had taken so long for him to get Aya to feel comfortable about entering a relationship with him. The man had been skittish when he first sensed the change in the dynamics Youji was taking their association and Youji came to understand that Aya was afraid of having any sort of relationship. But with a lot of patience, Youji eventually broke through his walls to learn about the doomed relationship Aya had had with his former colleague, Kikyou and the difficult acceptance of his own sexual orientation. His master Shion had disapproved of the relationship from the start, thinking it disgusting, and feeling that Kikyou, being almost twice his age, was taking advantage of him. It did not make matters any easier for Aya to handle later when his team died leaving him alone. Then later having to face his former lover in combat, as the man proved to be the culprit who had caused the deaths of their comrades and who turned towards the dark in his wanton murder of innocents. Aya had foresworn love at that point, hurting beyond his ability to stand for having to kill his first love. Weiß hadn't been aware. Since the mission occurred early in Aya's association with Weiß, he did not share or let them know of his pain. So, they were oblivious of his anguish.
Youji closed his eyes, he didn't want to hurt Aya again. The truth would make him feel betrayed. It was, in a way, so much safer to keep it a secret and not let him know. Wasn't it in his best interest that Youji spared him the trauma? Yet... what right did he have to make these decisions for Aya?
/The truth hurts./ It was a risk he had to take. Ultimately, his reasons for not telling Aya were selfish. He didn't want to lose what he had with him now. Aya had approached him months ago with a query of what actually occurred, but Youji had artfully pretended innocence. Aya eventually waved the incident away as of little importance, thinking the physical ache and general wretchedness he had been feeling the morning after was due to the drugs and the alcohol he had consumed. Youji realised that he *should* have revealed it then. But he didn't, and it was his own fault for making it worse now. Even if Aya broke up with him for keep the secret, he had to tell him. Just so he could know and move on. And so Schuldich would not be allowed to shatter Aya with a revelation that he had been deliberately kept in the dark.
Decision made, Youji took a deep breath and softly called attention to him. "Aya--?"
"Hmm?" Sleepy lavender eyes looked up at him.
"There's something I--" Youji shifted his position so that they'd be able to look each other in the face. "I should have told you a long time ago. Have-- have you ever heard of the drug Rohypnol?"
Aya blinked at him for a moment before his eyes widened in understanding as they stared into his green eyes.
Youji told him everything, holding nothing back. He could feel Aya's hand trembling as it clutched at his jacket. When he was done, Youji found that he had to look away. He couldn't stand to see the pain in the pair of lavender eyes any longer.
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Aya's voice was very soft and subdued.
"I-- was-- misguided. I'm sorry-- I thought if you didn't remember--"
"I have no memories of it. Still--you should have *told* me."
"Aya-- I'm-- sorry. I--"
"Was-- you started this relationship--" Hearing the hurt in his voice, Youji looked up to see Aya's head bowed, his eye lashes giving just a hint of unshed tears of betrayal. "Was this all-- just to-- to make up for--"
"No." Youji reached over to grip his chin and turned his face up to look at him. "Aya-- Ran, I love you. You're important to me, that's why I just told you the truth about what happened that night. I didn't do it to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you, Ran.
"I know-- you thought it was sudden. That I was morning for Asuka one moment, then I suddenly turned around and started to court you. Like it or not, I have to thank Schuldich for shaking me to my senses."
"Schuldich?"
"When he was-- I-- Look, it's going to sound all wrong when it comes out, but I was-- I was jealous-- I was angry with him for touching you. It-- it wasn't just because I hated him for raping you. I-- I felt angrier that he-- I'm sorry-- you're not a possession-- I-- I shouldn't be thinking this way." Youji released his chin and looked away.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

Azzie
2001-07-19 chapter 1
You're such a wonderful writer. I am so serious. This fic was soo good!! And so sweet. Schu is being his usual manipulative self and the relationship between Youji and Aya is really, really sweet. *sighs happily* Loved it!

ali-chan
2001-04-06 chapter 1
*stares in awe* i am not worthy! that was fantastically written. you have converted me to AYAxYOJI relationships (i was YOJIxOMI) ^_^
keep on writing!

The Future's Bright: The Future's Orange

2009-08-15T18:48:08Z

Well, this is a new record - a fic I decided was a Lethal before I'd even read it. Well, it was on Quizilla, home of fanfic so bad even the Pit doesn't want to know, and it features a Sue who loves Ken but bangs Aya to cause romantic angst, the constant use of the word 'Jagan' and at least a dozen full-length songs, so... well, it certainly wasn't premature.

Story Title: What We Fight For
Perpetrator: Vurea021
Summary: 'I heard an AWESOME song right after I watched a Weiss vid so I just had to write this!!! Now I'm tired of all these Mary-Suey deals so I'll try not to make it predictable!!!! Also, I don't own any characters except Sakura Minase, Ichigo Huyamio, and Kasumi Huyamio! The Black Dragons are a rival assiassn group.'

Rating:

Resident Sue Mark I: Sakura Minase
Full Species: Puella shattercanonica.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Her light brown hair {which only went to her shoulder blades unlike Kasumi-san who’s went to her waist} was nothing special."
Vibrant Orbs: "The prettiest light blue eyes Ken had ever seen." And, as the fic is at pains to point out and repeatedly, they're the lightest blue eyes just about everyone else has ever seen too. When she's using her 'Jagan' flange "her pale blue irises turned almost white". Later on she goes even further and they change to "a dark honey color, almost like a reptile of some kinds", or even "an eerie repltian gold".
Special Possessions: An all-white semi-transparent spirit dragon produced by her 'Jagan', of which more anon. She also has a Glock 19 pistol, backpack, laptop and the lovingly-described Sue wardrobe that keeps intruding where it doesn't belong. Check this out: "She wore a long sleeved black blouse with a black skirt about two inches above her knees, black and white striped thigh length socks, and two heavy looking black combat boots. Her black hat was perched towards the right side of her head, two pins a shocking bright yellow and orange {The yellow pin had bright blue writing that said: Of course I seem like a smartass but that's because I'm surrounded by dumbasses, and the orange one said inneon green: The best mind altering drug is truth and the next best is a foot up yer ass, and her light, shoulder length brown was loose. On one shoulder was cauaslly slung a black backpack with more bright colored pins but Ken wasn't paying attention to that". She gets more clothes when she goes shopping on someone else's credit card. Also an Ipod Nano that she listens to on missions, because actually paying attention is just boring or something. Finally, she has an implausibly large soccer jersey that supposedly belongs to the 5'3" Ken.
Canon Love Interest: Some dude called Ken Hikada, but she goes to bed with Aya anyway.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: It's seen as a 'dirty move' for Omi to want her personal information, and her Kritiker files have nothing about her past before she joined the organization. From this you'd expect wangst, but Sakura's wangst is curiously ill-defined. What we do know is that she's from a wealthy pureblood psychic family and the oldest child of Lady Hisanna Minase, a beautiful and powerful woman who is - yup - abusive. She and her younger brother Daichi were routinely beaten and subjected to 'insane tests' by their mother, and if they failed were put in a straw-filled cell called 'The Black Room' where the little Sue would heal her brother with her powers. The one 'unnamed servant' who tried to comfort her in her wangst was beheaded for his/her/its pains. It's never made clear what exactly happened to Daichi apart from 'Lady Hisanna killed him for not having the Jagan'. If you're wondering what the Jagan is and why not having it is a big deal... well, I would say read on but it never starts making much more sense than this. Finally, she has a vision in which her best friend tries to kill her 'but it hasn't happened yet'. No shit Sherlock.
Canon-Raping Connections: She meets Weiss in the usual 'girl walks into a flowershop' way, whereupon she immediately decks Youji of course. For her next trick, she busts a door down onto Ken and pitches a ridiculous violent spazz-out because he asked Youji if she was 'the crazy bitch' who decked him. Because the best way to prove you're not a crazy bitch is to try and kick a total stranger in the fork. Yup. When she gets injured due to idiot plot Weiss take her to the hospital then home with her for the usual never-explained reason. Weiss buy her dresses and she SULKS because she's 'not girly' and dresses are the Devil or something. She ends up psychically linked to Ken for no adequately explicable reason. Sakura also gives the regulars annoying nicknames: Cherry for Aya, Four-Eyes for Youji, Tiger Boy for Ken, Midget for Omi. I am amazed that nobody has killed this girl in her sleep yet. Sakura is supposed to be just as essentail to summoning The One as Aya-chan is. JUST. NO.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Apart from being a leet assassin and biting people like a rabid bitch? Sakura can recognize a fellow 'assiassn' on sight because anything else might mean that the regulars actually had an edge over her. She's also clairvoyant, and knows when a premonition is going to hit her 'like a slap in the face' because she can smell 'tangy orange' immediately beforehand. She decides that absolutely the best way to let Weiss in on this is to randomly state 'I had a vision and someone in Weiss is going to die' and then throw one of her many, many bitchfits because they don't immediately believe her. Oh, and then there's this thing called a 'Jagan'. (Get used to this word; the fic throws it around near-constantly.) Kasumi's Jagan allows her to 'heal any wound' - other people's as well as her own - within minutes, and if she concentrates really hard she can cause a victim to hallucinate their worst nightmare. She can also turn into a dragon-like thing, but it doesn't seem to make much difference to her abilities. Finally, she's great at Soccer but what Ken Sue isn't?

Resident Sue Mark II: Ichigo Huyamio
Full Species: Puer leetassassinus bitchius.
Luxuriant Tresses: "crimson streaks in his ebony colored hair"
Vibrant Orbs: "Dark brown eyes", apparently, though he's later described as "glaring at [Kasumi] with golden eyes... like a tiger".
Special Possessions: He has a gihang (which the Suethor asures us is a '7 fit retractable spear with a 23 cm blade hidden in the clothes'), butterfly swords and a jagan of his very own.
Canon Love Interest: What canon love interest? He wants to bone the Sue, of course!

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: Half-American teammate of Sakura, brother of fellow Sue Kasumi. Ichigo conforms fairly neatly to the standard template for antagonistic OCs in this fic by being ridiculously capital-E Evil and believing he was created 'for the sole purpose of destruction, just like the Four Kings'. He met Sakura as a little boy and was immediately captivated by her beauty and general wonderfulness, and blames Sue sister Kasumi for the fact that Sakura went off him. Ichigo's motivations for his Evil are largely left undisclosed, but he waves a knife at both girls during a flashback sequence because he's been EVIL AS FUCK since grade school. Apparently he goes on to massacre his entire family except his sister, but constantly stops short of killing her though it's made very plain several times that he's absolutely desperate to, when he remembers she exists. Yeah, it makes no sense.
Canon-Raping Connections: Ichigo rolls along in the middle of the absurdly wrongheaded mission which sees the two main Sues meeting up with Weiss and Schwarz to deliver the immortal line “The bitch is gone. Finally gone,” and then start cackling while beating up Sakura. Weiss just stand there. He's stalking Sakura and pitches up on at least three other occasions to beat and/or stab and/or abduct someone every time the plot looks like it might be getting slack. He's horribly jealous of Ken because Ken and Sakura are lovers and psychically linked courtesy of all this Jaganing, and spends most of the middle portion of the fic banging Lady Hisanna while thinking longingly about how much he longs to bang Sakura. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: He's another leet assassin and a complete psychopath. He can disarm Sakura effortlessly, unlike Weiss, but he's a Stu and they are mere canon charas. He also has the Jagan, though Sakura's infodump on the subject points out that he 'doesn't come from one of the four pureblood lines' which is why his sister has no Jagan powers of her own. This is apparently unusual, which makes no sense as not being a pureblood makes the Jagan flange stronger so you think there'd be more of them. The end result is basically that he can run off cackling after Ken claws the shit out of him. His powers include invisibility and invulnerability: he can still feel pain, but is impervious to all attacks and can make bullets explode on contact. His Jagan's animal form turns out to be a saber-tooth tiger with blood red eyes which is on fire. Right then.

Resident Sue Mark III: Kasumi Huyamio
Full Species: Puella angstia superfluita.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Hair like black silk that shone in the sun."
Vibrant Orbs: "Wide, doe-like dark blue eyes."
Special Possessions: Apart from a brain which was apparently made out of 100% pure cotton candy? She also has a lovingly-described Sue wardrobe: "Even though she wore an oversized long sleeved shirt and an ankle-length lace skirt Yoji could see her curves". She apparently assassinates people with a rapier, then it turns into a katana, then it turns back into a rapier again.
Canon Love Interest: Nagi Naoe. Schuldig has the poorly-written hots for her too, perhaps because she's stupid enough she might actually consent to sex with him.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: She's half-American (of course) with a mother described as an 'angel straight from heaven' with 'platinum blond hair and dark brown eyes, pools of dark chocolate'. Of course Mama ends up tragically murdered. She met Sakura aged three or four because she was so occupied with chasing a butterfly she got lost. Even as a baby Kasumi was a moron, and even as an infant she was in awe of Sakura's speshul speshulness. Within minutes of meeting her Sakura started yelling at her to run because Ichigo was EVIL AS FUCK and Lady Hisanna was after her for some reason that is never explained. She then finds her mother bleeding to death under a bush, apparently having been murdered by Ichigo, who butchered her entire family because Kasumi 'wasn't there for him". Naturally he never killed her, though, because that might have made sense. Sakura then saves her again and after that her five year old self is recruited into Kritiker by an 'ndescriptent man in black' with 'a smile fit for a shark'.
Canon-Raping Connections: The final member of Sakura's team, 'The Black Dragons'. (Because yeah, that sounds like a Kritiker team.) She gets to tag along with Sakura for the 'girl walks into a flower shop' scene then Schwarz randomly abduct her during a mission, except they don't tell her they're abducting her. She joins 'Eszerett' despite having precisely no special powers because she believes that it will somehow help her save Sakura. Needless to say Schwarz aren't actually interested in her, but they hope by manipulating her to gain access to Miss Thang up there because everyone wants Sakura. She's a Kritiker agent and yet apparently doesn't know about Schwarz or Esset, still less that they're evil. All it takes is Schuldig telling her 'oh yeah, Weiss are torturing Sakura for no reason' for her to believe that her former employers are all TEH EBIL. She is manipulated into believing that Schuldig, the six-foot-plus German with bright red hair, is her big brother and somehow fails to notice that he's not even from the same ethnic group she is.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: We're expected to believe that she has exceptionally good intuition as a result of having Jagan blood in her, but this is plainly an informed attribute as Kasumi is probably the dimmest person ever to independently breathe. She is also supposedly a leet assassin, but it's quite plain that her reason for being in this story is to unsubtly point out how very significant and special to everyone and everything Sakura is. Everything she does she does because she's so deeply obsessed with Sakura. In fact, relationship with Nagi notwithstanding, she comes across more like Sakura's would-be lesbian lover than her BFF. She 'doesn't have a physic bone in her body', all the better to contrast with The Flange-Powered Awesome that is Sakura.

Resident Sue Mark IV: Lady Hisanna Minase
Full Species: Uxorrobinsonia milfia.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Her golden, waist-length hair was tied back in a peach colored ribbon at the base of her neck and looked to be at least 5’9’." Okay?
Vibrant Orbs: Like both the other Jagan users, she's an ocular-shifting Sue; unlike them she seems to do it damn near constantly. Her eyes are variously described as "a dark sapphire", "a dark amytheist", "royal blue", and "a penetrating violet".
Special Possessions: Ichigo is her boy-toy. She also has overdescribed Sue clothes: "she wore a low cut {it was barely hanging by her shoulders} dark blue kimono with white petals sprinkles across it". She also owns a limo which drives itself and a magical flange-laptop which is somehow immune to any and all invasion attempts. Finally, being the viallain of a bad Weiss Kreuz fanfic, she has the usual implausible numbers of security guards.
Canon Love Interest: She's an evil older woman so she's portrayed as a ginormous slut, regularly banging Ichigo and hitting on Ken, though of course nobody would have her if they could have Sakura instead because she's so old and worn-out. That's skeevy, Suethor.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: She's Sakura and Daichi's mother, a powerful psychic from a long line of Jagan-bearers. In the past it seems that Jagan users were (as usual) persecuted for their special differentness and to that end four mighty warriors banded together into four psychic houses, all refusing to trust the outside world and marrying only with representatives of the other three bloodlines. Lady Hisanna is very proud of her status: too bad this is nothing to crow about as all this intermarriage basically means that both she and Sakura are substantially inbred. Oh well. She was abusive to both her children, especially so to Daichi who was born without the Jagan flange. It's never really explained what happened to Daichi or where Sakura went, but needless to say Lady Hisanna is obsessed with getting her hands on the Sue as well. Oh, and she's sleeping with Ichigo but he'd rather have Sakura, though she sounds far less appealing than Lady Hisanna in every way. ELAINE! ELAINE!
Canon-Raping Connections: The most beautiful woman Youji ever saw since the last one, Kasumi 'whoops, where's my brain gone' Huyamio. Kidnaps Omi from Schwarz, drives him about a bit, sneers derisively all over him then... lets him go. Later she appears to Kasumi for some reason and threatens Nagi, which never becomes relevant to anything that happens afterward. She is apparently the mastermind behind 'Eszerett's' abduction of Aya-chan, something which no doubt comes as a bit of a surprise to Schwarz. Finally, she propositions Ken after having him abducted too, but to his credit he's having none of it.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Claims she's royalty, which is odd in a country run by an Emperor. Her aristocratic disdain for the poor and the Jaganless is so very overdone that on her first appearances she near-constantly slides into the realm of self-parody. Her Jagan powers are described as unusual but since we only see two other people with these powers in the first place I guess I'll just have to take the fic's word for it. Apparently it allows her to hypnotize people at a glance, powerful telekinetic abilities and 'some slight teleportation'. Given what an all-or-nothing process teleportation is, I really have to wonder by what token this is a power that one can posess 'slightly'. Oh, and she force-chokes people just like Darth Vader, but isn't allowed to kill her victims because (surpeise!) the victim is Sakura and nobody must cause lasting harm to Sakura.

Resident Sue Mark V: Hana Tsukiya
Full Species: Puella superfluita.
Luxuriant Tresses: She has "strands of orange hair falling into her face".
Vibrant Orbs: "Wide light blue eyes".
Special Possessions: Bunny girl outfit and "adingygray overcoat to cover her curve fitting outfit", a shabby apartment which is too down-at-heel for 'someone of Hana-chan's calibre'
Canon Love Interest: Youji Koudo, whoever he is.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: She's very much the other one of this group of Sues. Her past is never explained; all we know is that she's an Okinawan, she lives alone, and she doesn't have much money. Described as 'really... very shy; one of the shyest young women Youji had ever seen'. Her ludicrous self-consciousness is apparently no impediment to her working as a bunny girl in a club called 'Dante's Inferno' and when Youji runs into her on the job she hits him and then expects him to apologize for it, because it's utterly unreasonable for him to be at all surprised by this. Apparently she's too pretty and classy-looking for it to be right that she has to struggle with money.
Canon-Raping Connections: She shows up halfway through the fic simply so that Youji has someone to hook up with and almost immediately gets compared to Asuka despite being absolutely nothing like Asuka either in looks or in personality. After Youji leaves Okinawa she is abducted by Schwarz for no reason whatsoever other than to keep her in the fic and within seconds of being dragged off she starts calling Schuldig 'Orangie'. She's very clearly a tedious filler character and her entire plot arc serves as little more than pointless, useless padding.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Very little apart from her utterly inhuman reactions to getting in danger: Hana, you see, is so absurdly calm in the face of abduction she seems to have been lobotomized. Despite the fact Schwarz are trained killers and she's a bar girl she somehow outwits the whole of the team in the most ridiculous way possible. She asks to go to the bathroom while they're driving her back to Tokyo, Crawford tells Schuldig that she'll use the opportunity to try and escape... but then they let hwer out the car and untie her hands and are utterly blindsides when she immediately escapes. Finally, her reaction to all this and to nearly getting run down when she makes a break for it into expressway traffic is to sit around on Youji's bed blithely swinging her legs and drinking coffee. Okay!

The Charges:
A goddamn Mary Sue, or five of them, and it's all downhill from there. The fic is full of spelling errors, the plot is the usual string of daft Sue-centric events involving nonsensical flange-powers, the old characters are OOC and the new ones are appalling. It's badly-plotted and worse-written, very little is ever explained and there's fangirl Japanese. At least it's funny?

The Case for the Prosecution:

Yup, it's Quizilla again. There's a reason I rarely visit Quizilla: the fics hosted there are atrocious and today's spork is of course no exception. Given how epically bad this fic is, and how epically long the spork got, it's rather strange to note that What We Fight for has a Generic Opening of Genericness. This is, you see, yet another fic in which two Sues - this time called Sakura and Kasumi - walk into a flowershop and.There are a couple of interesting ideas here and there is a plot: it's just not a very good plot and the few interesting moments are little more than tiny islands in an ocean of Mary Sewage.

The plot runs as follows. After an eight-months earlier opening which explains nothing and goes nowhere, two Sues walk into a flower shop then a bio lab where Weiss and Schwarz show up. The main Sue is stabbed by Ichigo and Weiss take her to a hospital, but she's fine because she has FLANGE so she gets to move in with them for the usual no reason. They bond for a bit then a Stu attacks pointlessly. Omi gets abducted by Schwarz, the Sue's Sue Mom is ominous, then everyone goes to Okinawa and the fic is padded to a ridiculous degree. There's a bar fight, the Sue takes ten to bang Aya, and Ken gets stabbed and abducted. So does the Sue, sadly for Ken. Also, Aya-chan gets kidnapped by Ezzett led by the Sue's mom. Then Crawford kidnaps Youji's Sue girlfriend because he was feeling left out and everyone goes to the Sue Mom's place for the inevitable Final Confrontation. To summarize: there's this girl and she's cool.

Two out of the three plot arcs in this fic are almost completely pointless, serving as little more than filler. Kasumi does nothing at all relevant for most of the fic's length and Hana is even worse. Both their plotlines could have been sizably pared down or removed altogether with no noticeable ill-effect effect save for making it shorter, which might have helped.

This is another of those Suefics that involves little more than a whole heap of Sue infighting with the canon characters watching from the sidelines and making approving noises at the right moment. This story, such as it is, revolves around a string of dumb running battles for control over Sakura and her flange. Everyone is after her and usually for really lame reasons like 'she's going to kill everyone save the psychics so they can come to power'. And rule over who, may I ask?

The opening wastes no time in making Sakura appear sublimely obnoxious. She walks into the Koneko with her Sue friend, who is seventeen but looks at least twenty. Youji hits on the Sue friend but the minute he is told she is seventeen, he backs off. This is not good enough for our Sueoine because he failed to magically go back in time armed with this information and not hit on Sue friend at all, so she immediately decks Youji, then calls him a 'prick' and 'flips him the bird' while ordering him to hit on a girl his own age. Which is exactly what he thought he was doing because he immediately thought Sakura (who looks underage) was off-limits, while her friend appears to be in her twenties and nothing about her appearance - for example a school uniform or a pin badge saying 'seventeen today!' suggested otherwise. Did I mention that Sakura Sue is five foot tall? Ficcer, all this does is make your heroine look repellant! Even more so when it is later revealed that she hit Youji to blow off some steam. This is assault. Unprovoked assault. She could be jailed for this.

The first and so-far only official mission the fic boasts is painfully dumb. First off Weiss and the Sue team 'The Black Dragons' are both working for Kritiker and yet get sent after the same (seemingly nonexistent) target without being told another assassin team is on the premises. Secondly, it seems Takatori has decided that what he needs to win the Election is the freakin' Krytos Virus, only here it's the “Anilation Virus” to keep Iceheart off his tracks. 'eat away at the flesh and bone from the inside out, literally turning a person into a pile of jelly'. Needless to say after Weiss and Schwarz meet their designated Sue this is never mentioned again in favor of romantic wangstsap and going on about the Jagan.

The first time we see Weiss Ken reflects on how bugnuks work, then the door he and Youji are waiting by explodes. Needless to say this is Sakura making the obligatory Dramatic Entrance and, as she's the Sue, the narrative shudders to a halt to note everything she's got on down to the humorous slogans on her pin badges and the precise color of her eyes, which are of course the prettiest eyes Ken has ever seen. As Ken has a life so fascinating he was just thinking about how doors worked this probably isn't that hard, though quite why he thought the logical thing to do when a stranger busts the door down in the middle of a mission was 'marvel over her pretty eyes' will have to remain a mystery.

Kasumi Sue is quite painfully thick. I just can't feel sorry for her trials and tribulations as they could have been avoided if she hadn't been so wantonly obtuse. Her entire story arc is dependant in the first instance on her really believing that Schuldig is her brother and Weiss are torturing Sakura in a flower shop. What does she think they did, tied her up with ribbon then got Youji to pour water on her head? Kasumi's stupidity would be a running joke if only this was a comedy.

If you're getting annoyed by the constant use of the word 'Jagan' with little to no explanation - well, now you know what it's like to read this fic. Despite the massive infodumps, the fhe fic constantly under-explains plot points and then moves on as if everything was cleared up, which it isn't. The workings of the Jagan are deeply vague; Ichigo is evil because he is, as is Lady Hisanna; and the Sue infighting happens because it does. There is a plot here, it just makes no sense.

Not only is it is never adequately explained what makes Sakura's Jagan-variety flange so much awesome than standard psychic flange, it's barely explained what a Jagan is either. Ken calls it the 'Evil Eye', which is about as useful as the explanation we're offered gets, but prior to the infodump in Chapter Ten the Jagan is mentioned over and over as if the audience should already know what it is. Unfortunately I didn't. The explanation the fic gives that people with the Jagan have powers and get called the 'Devil's Children' doesn't really clarify matters. All I really took away is 'Sakura is speshul' and that I knew already. From the way it's used in this fic, the Jagan basically seems to bestow generic flange-abilities. There appear to be no real limits or restrictions on its use save 'it's taboo'. The Jagan also removes any and all tension from dramatic scenes because whatever happens flange will happen. Nothing's really at stake. How many times, fanficcers? Superpowered characters are boring because we know that whatever mess they're in they'll probably be fine.

Sakura uses her Jagan to heal Ken, who has a broken arm. The tradeoff? The act of healing risked killing him by mind-crush; even though it worked it left them psychically bonded for life, meaning they now share one another's thoughts and feel each other's pain. This is all very well but Ken's broken arm could have been healed at a hospital and he didn't ask for any of this. Sakura forces all this on Ken without forewarning him of what she was doing, still less seeking his consent, to cure an injury that was nowhere near bad enough to warrant it. If this isn't supposed to count as a psychic rape, what would do? Perhaps it's fitting that the more I read, the more 'Jagan' starts to sound like a really dodgy euphemism.

The rape thing ends up looking horribly literal as there's a dream sequence in which Ken appears to have been raped by an 'adocanda'. This is seemingly the embodiment of Sakura's 'Jagan' (why she later turns into a dragon is, you guessed it, never explained.) The whole thing gets really unsettling when the two of them are imprisoned together and Ken feels he needs to apologize to Sakura though she dragged him into this mess and has been treating him like crap ever since. I cannot remember reading a Suefic where the Obligatory Love Interest came off more like a battered wife. Speaking of...

Story, stop having people being interrupted mid-sentence by being punched in the head. This happens at least a dozen times by my estimation, it's almost always because a Sue is hitting a regular, and it's at least twelve times too many. Can't your Sues find any less damaging way to express their displeasure? Ken probably needs a neurologist by now.

And speaking of, Suethor, stop letting your Sues beat their boyfriends. It does not make them look cool, liberated or not like the other girls. It is abuse of the why-you-gotta-make-me-hurt-you-baby school and the way the guys sit there and take it (in Ken's case this goes so far as to have him saying that he deserved to be punched in the face for daring to suggest that Sakura wasn't that great at soccer) just makes it worse. Most of the time, too, the Sues are overreacting to really, really trivial shit that most normal adults should be well capable of taking in their stride. Take Youji's Sue 'girlfriend', Hana. He catches her working as a waitress wearing a bunny girl outfit and her immediate reaction to seeing him? Slap him. He hasn't said or done anything to warrant it. He accidentally runs into her and the second she sees him she hits him. Because he's there. This. Is. Abuse, and it should have got her dumped and fired in quick succession.

Speaking of the Sues, the ficcer has done the fairly standard bad-fanficcer thing of looking for random 'anime girls' that look like she imagines her characters do. Because it bears repeating, here is how she sees Sakura, Kasumi, Ichigo, Lady Hisanna and Hana. The sad thing, of course, is that almost all these images come from Hentai game CGs... but the weird thing is that our Suethor didn't stop there, and instead dug up a lot more images of characters who looked vaguely like the ones she had picked to serve as her Sues and claimed they were the same girls... and that the generic male leads in the pictures with them were Aya, Ken and Nagi. Yes, she color-swapped the first guy's hair. Yes, the original character is a schoolboy. Yes, with his hair left uncolored he does look more like Ken than Aya. No, his hair is not styled similarly to Aya's. No, the girl kissing him looks nothing like the girl she said was Sakura. Yes, the whole thing is really stupid.

If Sakura is meant to come across as infuriating, story, you're doing great... too bad she's utterly unlikeable. Her behavior in the opening scene should have got her arrested and the shit she pulls during the mission should have got her killed - but it doesn't because she's the Sue. She's constantly shrieking and trying to hit people for no reason, in one case pitching a fit after she wakes up in the Koneko where Weiss have taken her to tend to her injuries. They took her home, they cleaned her up, they gave her a bed... and Sakura responds by throwing a shrieking tantrum because they had to take her bloody shirt off to do so and saw her in her bra. Can we say 'ungrateful bitch'? Then there's the cognitive dissonance caused by her character profile, where this shrieking harpy is described as 'undoubtly the ever cheeryglue' that keeps teams together: clearly the informed attribute to end them all, as in 29 chapters Sakura tantrums, pouts, wangsts, bitches and screams, but only ever seems cheerful for five minutes at a time before she's shrieking and hitting Ken again.

The characters, canon and Sue, in this fic occasionally have to act too dumb to live to keep the plot moving. For instance, everyone gets really worried that Omi is alone at the flower shop... and they should as Omi forgets he's an assassin and gets pwned by the painfully incompetent Kasumi. Later Ichigo decides to give an unarmed Ken his weapons back, and then Schuldig goes all out for a final showdown with Nagi over Kasumi, seemingly having forgotten that Nagi is a telekine.

When he's not raping his character hard because he's so desperate to bang Sakura, Aya is actually surprisingly IC (but still not Weiss' leader). He's about the only one, though. Omi, Farfarello and Crawford get off lightly because they're barely in it but Youji, when not mooning over his designated Sue, is the usual bad fanon cliche and avert your eyes from Ken, this is truly hideous. The one positive is that, unusually for Suefic, Ken is allowed to be angry with the Sue for cheating on him and doesn't instantly forgive her for it just because she wants him to. Nagi hardly has it any better as he claps eyes on Kasumi and her stupid and immediately comes over all woobie, once again wanting to leave Schwarz and run away with her within a few days of meeting her. This might work if there actually seemed to be any reason he should like Kasumi save 'She's there', but this maudlin, obsessive moron not only is not Tot, she isn't anything like Tot.

Where are Tot and Canon!Sakura while Nagi and Aya are chasing Sues? The Suethor gets about halfway through the fic before tossing some of the canon women name-checks - then, job done, ignores them thereafter. Manx, uniquely, actually gets to appear... but is of course made out to be an unreasonable bitch for thinking that Sakura is very bad for the team. Because everyone nice loves the Sue, so clearly Manx isn't nice and Omi can forget he regards her like a mother.

... okay, let's look into this claim a little closer. Manx thinks Sakura is bad for Weiss and that Omi should kick her out for the good of the team. Because this is a Suefic, Omi refuses. Let's ignore the fact that Omi never refuses Kritiker anything and address the question of Is Sakura Bad For Weiss. Well, let's see... she crashes one of Weiss's missions, holds Youji and Ken at gunpoint and then gets stabbed, and while Weiss are rushing her to hospital their target is totally forgotten. Then, a week after she moves in with them, she and Ken are attacked while out walking and Omi is abducted from his own home because both abductors, though working separately, are desperate to get their hands on Sakura. They have to flee the city for their own safety, holing up in Okinawa... and Sakura treats this like a vacation and is constantly at her teammates to spend Kritiker's money on fireworks and partying. While they're gone, the Koneko is destroyed by Sakura's enemies. Manx tells them to flee to Hokkaido and get away from Sakura, and Omi is so keen on keeping in with Sakura that he lies then disobeys a direct order. As a direct result, Youji is stabbed and Ken is abducted. Omi? You're an idiot.

So there's a main plot, and it's inexplicable. The subplot is more comprehensible, but unfortunately it's not really worth the reading. The subplot, you see, is an annoying soap-opera 'love triangle' between Aya, Ken and Sakura and every time the plot starts to slacken, there it is being boring in the gaps. For a change it's Aya who's the also-ran, but this doesn't make things any less predictable. Sakura and Ken, after ~~Sakura psychically rapes him into becoming her bondmate~~ inadvertently bonding for life, are clearly in love... but Aya also wants Sakura, as proven by his hitting on her in the most perfunctory way possible. Becuse it's Aya doing the hitting, of course, it works to the extent Sakura thinks about Aya when Ken kisses her, then randomly goes to bed with him seemingly simply to add romantic angst and this doesn't make her look like a fickle idiot who can't make her mind up at all. It's all ridiculous anyway because it's a foregone conclusion that this is going to be Sakura/Ken but we have to sit through the Aya/Sakura crap anyway despite knowing it's a fictional dead end.

Up to and including the sex. Oh god, the sex. It's 10:32 PM: time for Aya to mount the Sue! Aya and Sakura's coupling takes ten minutes from the time she walks into the room with her hair wet until the moment they achieve completion - and we know this because the alarm clock Aya's staring at as the scene open reads 10:42 PM at the conclusion. It sounds as furtive, cheap and unsatisfying as it reads... and leaves both Sakura and Aya looking like selfish fuck-addicts. There is no good reason for them to have sex unless the fact the other person is there counts, and a Hell of a lot of reasons for them to keep their damn clothes on - including the fact that Sakura chose to become psychically bonded for life to another man, something both she and the author appear to have forgotten about - but they bang anyway. Stay classy, Suethors!

And then, contradiction. When Sakura twists her ankle a short while previous to the badsex, Ken is earlier able to sense that she has been hurt through their psychic mindrape bond without having to try. So why didn't he realize Aya was banging her before Schuldig told him? If the link is, as was stated earlier, always there why does Ken have to sense for it to find out about the badsex? You can't ignore what's already established because it's more dramatic that way, sorry.

We also have signposted perspective-shifts. Why I have no idea as the fic reads exactly like a basic third-person limited fic and the 'perspectives' aren't individualized in any way - all the notes saying '[Character's] Perspective' at the start of each scene does is tell us who the fic's following round right now, which readers can be trusted to pick up on alone.

This is rather more than they can be expected to do with the body text, what with the way the malapropisms run wild and free. The most oft-repeated one is 'physic' for psychic, which shows up over and over again and makes a nonsense of... oh, most of the fic's plot. Take this line: “RUN MINASE! THEY’VE GOT A PHYSIC! RUN AND I’LL DISTRACT THEM!” This comes in the middle of what is supposed to be a tense opening scene and utterly wrecks what little mood was successfully set. Then we discover that Sakura is an 'assiassn', that Ken fights with 'bakugans' while Kasumi and Aya favor a 'katanna', and when characters get injured (which they do near-constantly) they get taken to 'hospitable'. Ichigo has 'invaluability'. Okinawa is not a 'battle felid'. Fog parts 'labourisoly' revealing Ken's bloodied form and the 'adocanda' that's 'causally' draped over it 'minute peaice by peaice'. And then it rubs his cheek 'possivlely'. This is not a comedy.

This fic would be about half the length if it wasn't for the fact that every other chapter ends with a supposedly relevant song. Too bad it's text-only so what this means, effectively, is that the ficcer copies and pastes the lyrics of entire songs at the end of her fic's chapters and expects people to read them. The songs that receive this treatment, in order, are Ocean Avenue By Yellowcard; All The Things She Said by T.A.T.U; Hit Me With Your Best Shot by Pat Benatar; Unbreakable by Fireflight; Every Little Thing She Does is Magic and Message in a Bottle by The Police; Loser by 3 Doors Down; Touch, Peel and Stand by Days of the New; I'm in Heaven (When You Kiss Me) by ATC; Come On Get Higher by Matthew Nathanson; Romeo & Juliet by Toybox; Higher Love by Steve Winwood and Check Yes Juliet by We the Kings.

The fic also repeatedly fails at just not being horribly stupid. For example, Omi is put under house arrest by Manx, except he's not in a house, he's in a cell. That's nothing, though, compared to the bit where Weiss somehow manage to drive to Okinawa though it's 676 km away from Kyushu Island, almost all of which is across open ocean. And then they drive back.

Every time Sakura goes somewhere the rest of the cast feel like they have to follow after her because she's that important. This reaches its absurd zenith when Sakura and the Supremes go to Okinawa for no reason and EVERYBODY FOLLOWS HER, though they're supposed to be back in a few days anyway. (Incidentally, you cannot take the train to Okinawa, seeing as it's an island and going to Okinawa does not involve leaving Japan for the same reason that going to Hawaii does not mean you've left America.) And then, just when you thought it was safe to go back to the fanfic, Manx phones Omi to tell him that the bad guys BLEW UP THE KONEKO and now everyone has to go to Hokkaido because that's a logical place for the chief of the Tokyo Police to have an assassin team. Only then they don't leave. Idiots!

Though the fic is not quite finished what there is of the end is surprisingly okay, though the Sue battles are disappointing. The final confrontation between Sakura and Ichigo is written so poorly that it's difficult to really realize it's happening: we finally get to see the characters unleash the full power of the Jagan on one another, and it's just yet more dull flange and nowhere near as fun as the knock-down drag-out fight between Ken and Ichigo that precedes it. Ichigo's death, perhaps fittingly, is the ultimate non-event. The rest of Weiss, however, suddenly remember they're assassins and have an oddly satisfying fight with Lady Hisanna... but it's come after so much boring crap that it really is too little too late. That, ultimately, is the saddest thing about this fic: it's so, so bad, and yet beneath it all one can almost see glimpses of the story it could have been, if only the fangirl responsible had any idea how to write.

Exposing the Hideousness:

Someone’s going to die??? “You’ve been running too long in the sun huh,” Ken asked and a look of …shock? Disbelief? crossed her face.
“NO! Didn’t you hear me,” she yelped, “I have visions and someone is Weiss is gonna die because of me and… get out of my face!” Sakura shoved Ken away and twisted out of Youji’s grasp, landing hard on the sidewalk. Sakura stayed down on the pavement, her small hands balled into fists, glaring up at Ken with a look Ken had honestly never seen on her face before. It wasn’t hatred but it wasn’t an “I’m-just-joking-sorry-‘bout-that” look either. For a second Ken thought she was going to burst into tears but she just stared up at him and then at Youji.
“Maybe you should go back to the couch and rest eh? I’ll make you some soup an-“ Youji started and almost got slammed in the face by Sakura’s head as she suddenly sat up. “Nani?! Wha-”
“Do I have to prove it to you two,” she screeched and leapt to her feet. Without thinking Ken grasped one arm as she tried running around him, only succeeding in twisting it in an awkward angle. “Let me go,” she yelled and savagely kicked Ken’s shins as hard as she could.
But Ken had at one point been a professional J-League goalie; Sakura’s kicks felt like a soccer ball was being tossed against them very softly. “Sakura calm down,” he said but Sakura was only trying to move farther away from him, her arm twisting even more in an awkward angle, and turning red around the place where Ken held her. If she kept up the twisting she’d break her own arm and Ken couldn’t let her go. Not in the state Sakura was in, talking about people dying and whatnot. “Sa-“
BAM!
Ken went sprawling backwards, taking a hard hook to the right. Youji? He looked up to see Aya in front of him, his right hand curled into a fist and his left holding a shocked Sakura’s wrist tightly. Ken’s heart stopped as he saw his handprint on Sakura’s arm; an ugly dark red hand on her otherwise pale skin, covering her lower forearm right below the elbow. “She said let go,” Aya said softly, so softly that Ken almost didn’t hear him.
“Oi Aya! You don’t understand! Sakura wa-”Youji began but one look from Aya silenced him.
“Aya lemme go,” Sakura said and yanked {or tried to really} her hand from his grasp but Aya’s was a grip of steel. But Ken wasn’t paying attention to Aya’s glare or the tense silence that had fallen between Youji, Aya and him. Ken was paying attention to the ugly mark he’d left on Sakura’s skin and the sudden numbness that had come over him.

Sakura POV
Ichigo was coming closer. Sakura didn’t know how she knew but she knew. Every fiber in her being was screaming at her to run and save the guys and now was the time for them have to a huge fight over God-knows-what! Aya was giving glares that could vaporize anthrax at Ken and Youji, Ken was googling her slightly {ok fine! Very throbbing} throbbing arm and it seemed to her, getting ready to faint, and Youji was right behind Ken giving a glare at Aya that would have made Superman proud. “Aya lemme go,” Sakura said and gave a pathetic yank. “Aya someone in Weiss is going to die!”
Not even a blink. Aya was still glaring. Ken still looked like he accidently ran over Lassie with his motorbike. Youji looked like he wanted to bitch slap Aya back to America. And then she saw it. It was just a glint over the old streetlamp to Aya’s left, but Sakura’s vision came crashing back. The gihang. “MOVE,” Sakura screamed and bit down as hard as she could on Aya’s wrist. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth and when she felt Aya jerk in surprise she used it to her advantage; she kicked the inside of his knee and shoved him to the right…just as the gihang came cruising past where his head had been. The gihang clanged as it hit the street and Sakura gasped as she felt a sliver of pain in her left leg. One glance was all it took to see Ichigo’s butterfly knife had cut her from her thigh down to the side of her knee, tearing up her dress.
“Glad to see your skills aren’t rusty yet,” Ichigo chuckled and stepped out from the shadows, his bloody butterfly knife in one hand. “ I’m nothing more than a mere messager. Come back to her Sakura. She doesn’t hate you anymore. She told me she’d take care of you better than Kirtker ever did.”
Her blood ran cold. She. “I thought she was at the instution Ichigo,” Sakura said in what she hoped was a calm, controlled voice. “You told me she was under maxmium servalience in the institution.”
Her voice wasn’t calm or collected. The evil grin that spread across Ichigo’s face told her that much. “You again,” Youji snapped and pulled the garrote from his wristwatch. “You deserve to rot in hell for stabbing a woman!”
“Back off fucker,” Ken hissed and scrambled to his feet and assumed a defensive boxing position.
Aya slowly stood up and placed himself in front of Sakura. Ichigo seemed pleased by this, as if that was what he had wanted all along was to get them riled up.“Why Sakura, is that any way to talk about your mother,” Ichigo asked in a sickingly sweet voice and Sakura couldn’t help but shiver.
“I won’t let you hurt them,” Sakura said and Ichigo laughed.
“Like you told Daichi eh? Right before you shot him in the head with your Glock ,” he said and then said in a voice so frighteningly like his, “Onee-chan! Onee-chan you said you wouldn’t let her hurt me anymore! It hurts Nee-chan! Make it stop!” Sakura could feel her eyes tear up but she didn’t make a move to wipe them. Any sign of weakness would send Ichigo into a frenzy, like a shark smelling blood. “Your new commerade Omi…he’s in the flower shop right now isn’t he? By himself,” Ichigo asked and now all four assassins shivered as they realized what Ichigo really had planned. Divide and Conquer.

Ichigo lay naked in bed with the cotton sheets wrapped around his waist, a cigarette dangling in one hand over the edge of the bed and the other a makeshift pillow for his head. He couldn’t sleep tonight. Too many thoughts were running through his head. Lady Hisanna and her beauty, Sakura, his love and his hatred for both, and the little bitch of a sister Kasumi who has it all. If he closed his eyes tight he could smell the sandalwood in the breeze, hear the sound of crickets chirping, and see Sakura, a mere girl of six, in a delicate crimson colored kimono with sliver lining and sakura blossom behind one ear.
“Hi I’m Minase Sakura! What’s your name?”
“H-h-huyamio Ichigo.”
He had stuttered like a virgin attempts his first kiss, and even now he could feel his face burn with embarrassment of the memory. She had been so sweet then. So innocent and so giving, always ready to help her little brother Daichi or him regardless of the consequences. And then Kasumi had come along and it was all gone. Sakura became …different. She no longer wanted to be around him. Detested the very sight of him. And it seemed that no matter what he did, no matter how much advice he got from Lady Hisanna, Sakura only distanced herself further from him. He remembered the first time Sakura had slapped him; a point blank gunshot to his heart. And the cause of it all was Kasumi. “Is this what you do with your free time Ichigo,” a bored voice called out from the other bedroom and Ichigo didn’t have to be physic to know it was Lady Hisanna. “Lay there like a spent out whore and reminase about the past?”
Ichigo took a deep breath a, inhaling the perfume Lady Hisanna had dabbed on. Ocean Breeze? He thought quietly and turned his head to see Lady Hisanna standing in the doorway wearing a thin cotton shirt that showed off her curves, and nothing else. “What do you want My Lady,” he asked and brought his cigarette up for a puff.
Lady Hisanna giggled, the sound like wind chimes on a summer day, and waltzed over to his side. She gently took the cigarette from his fingers and puffed delicately. “What do I want? I want you my darling Ichigo,” she whispered and stubbed the cigarette out on the nightstand beside the bed. “Don’t you want me again?”
Ichigo looked Lady Hisanna up and down. To any other man she was Aphrodite, even Ichigo had to admit that. But her dark blue eyes were not the same light colored blue he saw in his dreams, her luscious mouth not the same normal one he envisioned kissing him, and she was not and never would be Sakura. “You’re an old flavor,” he whispered and grinned at the sight of her eyes turning amethyst. He’d gotten her angry…good.
“You’ll never have her,” Lady Hisanna spat, a flush spreading across her face. “The way you treat her, she’d rather step in front of a train then love you!”
“Then I’ll kill the conductor to stop the train,” he replied matter-of-factly and Lady Hisanna kissed him hard. On impulse he pulled her down beside him and returned the kiss with equal intensity, tearing off the shirt. They broke, but only so Lady Hisanna could breathe, her chest rising up and down rapidly.
“You love me my little one,” she chuckled and ran one hand through Ichigo’s hair, resting it comfortably on the nape of his neck. “Fooling yourself by “loving” Sakura…it is merely a guilt complex. You see her as what you once were and not what you are now.”
“And what am I now?”
Lady Hisanna smiled, her eyes fading to a royal blue. “Now you are my lover and one of the greatest physic warriors alive. You are Ichigo Huyamio, whose power may rival that of the legendary Four Kings if they were still alive.”
“And what do you think Sakura is to me?”
“I think she is your prison, where you try to hide your ugliness from the world. Why do you ask? I love you Ichigo,” She murmured and gave a small tug at his ear lobe. Ichigo returned the favor, biting her neck. You’re wrong Lady Hisanna, he thought as he proceeded to yet again make love to her, Sakura ...is my way of escape in this world.

Ichigo POV
*Fast forward towards sunset lol*
He was almost there…he could sense it. Someone was trying to sabotage the tech systems but thankfully Lady Hisanna’s laptop had proved to be superior to this stranger’s hacking skills. And now Ichigo was less than two days away from Okinawa. But that couldn’t queasy the feeling of urgency he felt. That something tonight was going down with Sakura and Ichigo was at the moment helpless to do anything about it.
He sighed and inhaled his newly lit cigarette, exhaling slowly, watching the smoke float upwards in a lazy spiral. The sun was a dark red ball bathing in a sea of pastel oranges, yellows, pinks, and reds…such beauty. It made Ichigo want to puke.

Aya POV
10:32 p.m. The numbers of the alarm clock flashes slowly with an almost dreamlike quality to it and Aya slammed it off the intable. The last thing he needed was to think this was all a dream. Earlier in the morning they had held hands and Aya had finally allowed himself to feel just a tiny bit, something that Aya-chan would be proud of he knew. In truth, Aya had felt like he was walking on Cloud 9 after running the Boston Marathon. He couldn’t understand why Sakura did this to him. She made him feel like a junior high kid again and he couldn’t understand it. And now here he was alone in a hotel room with Sakura taking a shower; she wanted to watch a funny movie before bed and she had told him that he shouldn’t be alone all the time.
The bathroom door opened and there Sakura stood in her usual pj’s attire; a black tank top with slim black pants, her hair was a damp, dark luminous brown that hung down. She smiled, making his heart skip a beat and she happily skipped over to him. “Ready for the movie,” she asked cheerfully and Aya returned her smile with a tentative one of his own.
“Which one?”
“Dunno.” She cocked her head in a birdlike expression and said, “I didn’t think that far,” she said with a laugh.
Should he kiss her? And look like an overly horny Youji? Aya could think of better ways to die than to embarrass himself in front ofSakura like that. And yet she was so close to him, he could almost smell the peach scented shampoo. It was now or never. What would he choose? Now.

Sakura POV
She hadn’t expected him to kiss her, this was Aya after all. He had been sitting down on the edge of his bed wearing his blue jeans and a partially opened shirt, staring intently at the alarm clock. He actually looked the most relaxed Sakura had ever seen him. Sakura had come bouncing up, a smile on her face, trying to remember for the life of God what movie she had ordered, when he'd kissed her. Aya's kiss was rougher and more passionate than Ken's and before she knew it she was on the bed with Aya on top. They broke for air gasping; only cms apartand Sakura noticed that Aya's face was slightly flustered. Her own face felt like it was on fire. "Whats wrong Aya," she asked, trying to calm her heart.
"Ran," he said softly as he gave a tug on her ear, "My name is Ran."
"Ran," Sakura repeated and the gasped as Ay-Ran slipped one hand inside her panties to find her hidden nub and began to stroke rhythmically. He used her moment of surprise to kiss her again, thus she made it rougher when he felt her soft hands run through his hair, driving him mad with need or lust, and he couldn't tell which. They were kissing wildly, madly, now, only breaking to take off her tank top and to slip out of their pants. Her hands roamed over his body,tracing each muscle she came across, his chest, his abdomen, going lower and lower and finally slipping off his boxers. Ran seemed not to notice, not even blushing, as he attacked her neck feverishly, his hands busyunclasping and throwing away her bra.
She felt her slightly damppanties slip down and finally off her legs and then wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling him just cms away from her vagina. "Once we do this... there's no going back Ran," she panted, her face flushed.
"Who's going back," he huffed and entered her with a hard, swift thrust, making Sakura cry out and grasp the bed sheets. He groaned her name ashe thrusted again and Sakuraunballed one hand to run along his spine,lightly scratching it. Like a cat he purred in her ear began to thrust faster, faster. They both came in each other's arms on his bed, the sheets pooled on the floor next to the shrewn clothes, the alarm clock blinking with that same dream quality Aya had hated.
The time was 10:42 p.m.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:
If there are any reviews for this thing, I can't find them. I blame this on the fact that it's been posted on Quizilla, which was never meant to be a fanfic archive and God alone only knows why idiots out there started using it as one, meaning that it lacks just about everything a well-run fic archive should have including a way to leave actual feedback.

You Aren't Getting Away That Easily.

2009-08-08T20:52:14Z

... no, badficcers, changing your pen name does not mean you will be safe from my wrath. Today's victim, responsible for not one but two tiny travesties, used to be known to us all as Deutschrocker. While I wouldn't want to admit I was the creator of Aloisa Hidaka either, it'll take more than a name change to keep you from Repeat offender status. Twice.

Story Title: A Child's Pain
Perpetrator: Heilig Schatze
Summary: 'Broken ribs, bloodied shirts and shorts, bruises and black eyes until the morning rise. That's all he knew, pain. It was in his blood. It was what he saw everyday, and what he felt everynight. It was all he could remember; his abuse. He is Ken Hidaka.'

Rating:

The Charges:
Utterly insane fic in which Ken is randomly seven years old and (yes, you guessed it) being horrifically abused AND THAT'S THE PLOT. Every single character is so OOC they're barely even the same people any more, Weiss's collective back stories are raped sideways with a crowbar, nothing makes sense and the fic is totally pointless anyway.

The Case for the Prosecution:

First off, a fic in which some events happen to Ken. Ken is being abused by his parents (either that or his father is going to be the subject of a book called The Man Who Mistook His Son For a Stress Doll) so he runs away from home. He is found by Persia, who immediately has Ken's parents shot and recruits him as an assassin. It's like canon, just stupid!

So Ken should be dead, right? As this fic opens, we are introduced to a huddled mass yearning to be free claiming to be a seven year old Ken. As it's that kind of fanfic, he is clearly being horrifically abused by his parents, who have already beaten him to the point he should have checked out half an hour back and, going by the fact his father, who's clearly in a PCP-induced rage or something, 'shooting his body' against Ken's locked door because he's that mad keen to beat him again. As being beaten to death would stop the story, Ken escapes through the window instead and then walks thirty blocks in the rain to a soccer pitch, wearing a sweater stained with 'blood, sweat and tears' but no coat because his mother sold it for drug money. Clearly in this fanfic Ken Hidaka's past has been sponsored by the Lifetime channel.

Ficcer: please, please, please stop describing stuff. The initial description of Ken (about the only one in the whole fic) is not only overlong and overfull of clumsy metaphors working overtime to try and make us all pity him, it's almost impossible to work out who she's describing in the first place. Simply, this porcelain-faced, creamy-chocolate-haired, bulging-skulled kid looks nothing like Ken and doesn't act like him either. To add to that, the descriptions of the abuse Ken is suffering are so absurdly overblown that they become quite hilarious. Oh, and then Ken's first thought on seeing a random pile of rope in his room is to try and hang himself. Story, he's seven. I doubt he'd even know how to make a noose.

And then we find out Persia the Cuddly Humanitarian saved Ken to have him become 'a bringer of justice'. Yeah, Ken was a Kritiker assassin aged seven, along with Omi - bit odd, really, as he wasn't due to be kidnapped for at least another two years. As if that wasn't enough to be getting along with, Aya and Youji showed up when Ken was all of ten. This means Youji was clearly the world's only twelve-year-old PI and renders Aya's backstory totally nonsensical.

Finally, there are the little details. Take Manx, for example. Apparently she has no idea that the man she's working for is Shuuichi Takatori and the head of the Tokyo police and is genuinely surprised when Persia tells her who he is. Clearly her duties do not involve such esoteric tasks as 'getting the mail' and she makes a habit of walking to work blindfolded. In other news, Ken is then one-linered into a relationship with Farfarello. Because you know that's logical. He was abused as a child so now he's going to fuck a lunatic with a knife fetish. Kenken, I don't think you've thought this one through...

Exposing the Hideousness:

A small, creamy-chocolate haired, glistening eyed child stared at the wall blankly. His arms encased his legs as they were kept safe curled to his chest. His hands were bruised, and the contusions wound up his arms like fireworks. His knees ached; dirt, lint and dust had crusted around the caps. Tears stained his porcelain face and the pain was infested in his eyes. If you looked at him, you would immediately break to tears. Blood cursed his lower lip as the dead skin seemed to drip as it flaked off in the breeze. The lump on the back of his skull bulged in the same beat as his heart. His heart thundered and rang in his now compromised rib cage. Everytime he exhaled, a small click and prick was heard, at the crimson siren on his shirt got larger and darker. His door shook vehemently, and the child jumped. The knob turned, but the assailant cursed when he found that his son had locked the door. A small tear mingled with a drop of blood and stained over the finished floor. The assailant began shooting his body into the body of the door; the frame losing its grip fast. The child searched for something, anything that would save him from his father. Knowing he had only seconds before his addict of a mother would help his father, the child’s twinkling eye caught something. A pile of rope; his mind concocted two ideas. End it all, or use it to escape. Thinking how long it would actually take for him to hang, he snatched the rope and tied it to the bedpost. He went to grab his coat, but then realized that his mother had sold it for drug money. He pulled a thin sweater on, caked with blood, sweat and tears; he threw the attached rope out the window of this 5th story prison. He vowed to himself never to cry about his troubles again, for if there was anything his abusive parents drilled into him; it was that self pity would eventually be the end of you. He slowly descended from the window, the rope burning his palms. When he reached the city street, he looked around. He did not notice the man in the pearl white suit walking a distance behind him. The child walked calmly for about thirty blocks, and the pearled man followed. The child ran out on to a soccer field when he approached the park. A soccer ball was perched precariously on the center line. The morning mist and dew stung and cooled his wounds. The boy took all his strength and might and drilled his toes into that ball and shot it into the back of the net. Bittersweet, the victory was. For his parents had to abuse him for that smile-bringing power to pour into his sports. The man, walked up to the child.
“Do you have a name?” he asked
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” the boy said quietly
“How long have your parents been hurting you?” the man asked
“My parents love me.” the boy responded
“My name is Persia. I want to help you.” the man said, he extended his hand to the child, the boy gladly accepted, “Do you have a name, son?”
Being called a son burned his soul. He hated his father for all the things he did to him. He hated his mother for helping him. He’d wished over and over again to have dead parents, to be an orphan. The child’s tears welled in his eyes, but he smacked them to their final resting places on his hand. No self pity, his mother had said once; after a beating.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:
Nobody reviewed this nonsensical dribble, actually. OH GEE I WONDER WHY NOT.

Story Title: Darkness in Love
Perpetrator: Heilig Schatze
Summary: 'Ken is in love. He is in love with an abusive man. A man that takes Ken's innocence. Beaten. Broken. Bloody. Alone. Alone with no man to love. He needs help. He needs it now. Before that man comes back to finish Ken off for good.'

Rating:

The Charges:
This one doesn't make any sense either! The plot, such as it is, can basically be summed up as 'Ken has an abusive boyfriend', the only thing that happens in between Ken's nonsensical angst flashbacks is 'muffins are made', and Weiss continue to act like four guys who live together who aren't actually Weiss. Oh, and then there's fangirl Japanese.

The Case for the Prosecution:

... seriously, does Ken wander round in a tee-shirt reading 'I Love Cerebral Trauma'? In this story he's taken up with an abusive boyfriend who manages to be even more of a cliche than his abusive father in the fic before. The minute we meet him he's calling Ken 'his bitch' and from there on it's downhill all the way, as the man throws a violent temper tantrum because Ken doesn't want to get drunk. This is all happening in the middle of a crowded bar and yet everyone else is so busy 'bouncing and swaying' that they don't seem to notice one guy basically forcing a glass down another one's throat and ordering him to 'Obey me or die'. Seriously, Ken is intimidated by this? It is a measure of how very, very OOC Ken is that his reaction is to cower like a meek little uberuke instead of giving this pointless OC a funny look then walking off.

In this fic the part of Youji Kudou will be played by Teen Talk Barbie. He's bubbly and airheaded, he sways his hips as he walks, he loves home-made double-choc muffins and on seeing Ken bleeding in covered in bruises, tells him that he looks a bit off-color. Yes, hangovers leave you looking like you just tried to sodomize a tiger, of course. Also, math is hard.

... and just when you thought things couldn't get any more cliched, along comes Aya to be wonderful and better than everyone. The minute Youji finally works out that maybe Ken's actually a little bit unwell he reacts by... yelling for Aya. Because Aya will know how to fix things because he's Aya. In this fic he turns out to have been an EMT! So, Ken is a pitiful abuse victim, Youji is a bippy airhead with a sprinkle obsession, Omi is a housewife and Aya is basically Aslan and he and his awesome DAN GREEN will be able to cure all ills and solve all problems simply by showing up. OOC? Just a bit.

YOU'RE STILL DESCRIBING STUFF, STOP IT. Ficcer, your prose is so purple I can't tell what it's talking about half the time. Why in the world does Ken have 'cherry risen slits' on his thighs and arms 'encased by blotches of horrid colors'? Is he ill? Is that what caused the 'sickening syrup' to 'descend on his bedsheets'? He really should have known better than to hang out in that 'torrid and crowded' bar. Heilig Schatze, no more thesauruses for you until you know how to use them!

Finally, funny though this has been, I'll finish on a more serious note. Look, Heilig Schatze or Deutschrocker or whatever you want us to call you, you are not too good to do some research on the subject of abuse. While I don't doubt you feel strongly that abuse is a bad thing, you clearly don't understand it at all. Both these fics rely very, very heavily on worn-out clichés which, while they have a grain of truth in them, are largely discredited tropes in fiction. By making Ken's boyfriend into a complete asshole with no redeeming features whatsoever (he doesn't even pretend to be pleasant to him, for God's sakes) you have made Ken - and this is KEN HIDAKA we're talking about here - look like a total doormat who's incapable of standing up for himself and will put up with anything just to say he's in a relationship. If you don't know why this portrayal is totally wrong, you really shouldn't be writing about Ken. Sorry.

Exposing the Hideousness:

It was torrid and crowded. Perched at the bar, sat Ken and his boyfriend. Ken did not plan on drinking; his date insisted he did. He ordered Heineken: light, non-filling. He sipped it quietly, making several attempts to block out any background noise.
"My bitch wants tequila!" His date roared, slamming his fist into the bar. The bartender stopped and stared at the man, blinking. She turned for a moment, looking into the sea of people bouncing and swaying to the music. "Come on! Tequila! Now!" He screamed, "To my bitch." He smiled sweetly at Ken, entwining their hands together. "Right? Just a little tequila? For me?"
"No, I don't want any. I still have to get home." Ken returned, "I'm leaving. I'll call you tomorrow." Slipping off the stool, still steady on his feet, he began venturing to the entrance.
"No. You are having a shot. You are staying." His boyfriend's branches gripping Ken's waist. He spoke angrily. Yanking Ken back to the bar, he shoved the heavy liquor in Ken's face. "You'll drink it, and you'll drink it now."
"No! I have work in the morning! You can't make me drink!"
He flew, slamming and then pinning Ken against the bar. One hand crunching Ken's wrists, the other forcing the glass to his lips and making Ken swallow.
"Obey me, or die."
"Ken? Ken! Snap out of it, buddy." It was Yohji's voice. "Oh damn. He's out cold, Aya."
"Hn." Aya brushed the hair from Ken's face. "I need to examine his body."
Yohji stared blankly. "That means you have to leave, Yohji."
Crossing his arms, Yohji leaned on the windowsill adjacent to Siberian's bedside. "I am no stranger to the human body."
"Obviously, you know nothing about the practice of medicine. Ken is my patient. Doctor-patient confidentiality. Having a third party in the room voids that privilege."
"You are not a doctor, Aya. You have emergency medicine technician experience."
"Well I need some reason to get you out the room."

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

l-annethunder
2009-05-18 . chapter 1
ahh ken ken-chan! who did that to you. I am so gonna harm his **. grr. okie doki long time since i haunted your page,but alas i am back :-D college so owned me :-(. Anyway awesom start am too intrigued, update soon! I must now whose ** I have to go and kick for ken ken endangerment. das woot!

bombayxprodigy
2009-05-17 . chapter 1
Omg! poor ken ken ! i really hope you contuine this story soon.

From The Journal of a Zombie Badfic Sporker.

2009-07-29T00:52:56Z

... just don't ask, It's safer. Clues: Plotbunny from hell, writer's block, OHSHIT I CAN'T WRITE, eight hours later I had written two sentences. There. That covers what I've been up to for the last WTF months. In all fairness, I was burned out for a lot of things. Having started sporking random Sues again, though, I feel the time is ripe to attempt a return. Here goes.

Story Title: Silbern Kreuz and Silbern Blut
Perpetrator: Auramancer
Summary (Silbern Kreuz): 'There are two new members of Weiss. An in-training group called Silbern made up of two girls with troubled pasts. These are the stories of Silbern: Cymric and Mau.'
Summary (Silbern Blut): 'Silbern Blut: A new assassin team formed by Kritker. They are forced into an underground world withholding dark secrets of society and bloody deeds. Will terrible occurences within the team and an exceptionally difficult new enemy prove to be too much?'

Rating:

Resident Sue Mark I: Tory Hayes (Codename: Cymric)
Full Species: Puella angstia infuriatia.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Chin-length, dark brown (almost black) hair".
Vibrant Orbs: "bluish-green eyes"
Special Possessions: A look of mystery upon her face. An all-black wardrobe. Her shears remind her of her knives - apparently she poisons the blades, which seems a shade gratuitous to me - and her angst past. Her image flower is apparently 'aconite' because she's antisocial and likes poisoning people. Right then.
Canon Love Interest: Looks to be one Ken Hidaka.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: Her parents are dead and she has sworn revenge! This either makes her an annoying cliché or Batman. Anyway, her brother was a brilliant scientist who worked for a Japanese company that was based in New York, for some reason, and designed a computer chip that 'would leave Takatori Enterprises in the dust'. Perhaps because they don't make computers. Of course, he and the rest of Tory's family immediately get massacred by a woman called 'Furcht', who as usual somehow managed to miss the Sue despite the fact that everyone else in her family was poisioned before their apartment was set on fire. The stupid woman then walks up to the shivering, barefoot Sue and out and out tells her 'im in ur house killin ur folkz'. More on Furcht anon.
Canon-Raping Connections: Manx describes her as a 'Kritiker train-ee'. Tory rolls up at the flower shop bringing the standard Mary Sue fanfic opening with her - she pours scorn on Omi for being 'too cheerful' and utterly rebuffs his friendly advances, spurns Youji because She's Not Like The Other Girls, and then pours scorn all over the shop girls because OMG U GAIZ R LAME and she's got black nail polish on so clearly Tory wins because EDGY. She and her Sue mate are apparently being sent to Weiss to be trained up for three months and are expected to be 'the best' by the end of it. One wonders if anyone has informed Persia he already has an elite assassin team and it's, um, Weiss. She spends most of the fic being unsubtly 'paired up' with Ken for missions and sparring, though to Ken's credit he actually seems more interested in training her than trying to get in her panties, something that seems to annoy Tory somewhat.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Ridiculous anti-socialness, to the degree that it's anyone's guess why she's supposed to work in a shop. She's actually refreshingly non-leet at assassination, at least at the start of the first fic: she's presented as competent enough to not get herself killed, but she's clearly not on a par with any of the members of Weiss. By the second fic, however, she seems to have become the usual one-woman army and fanon!Aya clone, given that Persia is describing her team as teh bestest Kritiker have!1!!!11! and Weiss don't even get a look-in.

Resident Sue Mark II: Shona Blackwood (Codename: Mau)
Full Species: Mulier bitchia superfluita.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Brownish-red hair with blue streaks that was tied back into two low ponytails"
Vibrant Orbs: "Grey-blue eyes".
Special Possessions: Angst engagement ring given to her by the boyfriend who cheated on her and the usual lovingly-described Sue wardrobe: "Her outfit was not almost all black like Tory's was, but was quite punk." Okay! She kills with - wait for it! - a machete. Yup. A fucking machete. Her image flower is a maude lilac because she just wants love. Aww.
Canon Love Interest: My guess is Aya Fujimiya.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: Her mother ran off with another man 'being the slut she was', leaving Shona to be raised by her father, who was of course murdered. Tear. She moved in with her fiancee, Jake, but after waking up from a bad dream where he gets murdered outside their door she catches him cheating on her with a 'whore'. In the room next door. She locks herself in the bathroom with a knife, then comes out again and punches Jake's 'whore' and that's it. Why she hit her and not, I dunno, the cheating bastard who brought another woman home while his girlfriend was asleep next door I--oh, wait, misogyny. Sigh.
Canon-Raping Connections: Another Kritiker train-ee who is foisted on the decidedly uninterested Weiss members to get on-the-job experience. (By their disinterested reaction, this happens every six months.) She also wastes no time proving that she's Not Like The Other Girls by rolling her eyes at the 'stupid whores' who flock to the flower shop. The small fact Weiss actually quite like those girls doesn't seem to have occurred to her. She is unsubtly paired up with Aya in much the same way that Ken is with Tory, seemingly for no reason at all other than that's who the Suethor wants her to ultimately get with.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Ridiculously literal dreams and the ability to sleep like the damn dead. That aside, she's also not presented as a particularly wonderful assassin at first - once again she's competent, but by no means able to outclass her new teammates. This is actually pretty refreshing, but I get a horrible feeling that had the fic continued, this state of affairs double damn sure would not have lasted.

Resident Sue Mark III: Furcht
Full Species: Leetassassina incompetentia maxima.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Straight brown hair."
Vibrant Orbs: "brown eyes, and glasses"
Special Possessions: A 'schringe' full of poison, whatever that is, and apparently the awesome computer chip of awesome Tory's brother designed and carried with him everywhere, because this clearly wasn't likely to cause him trouble at all.
Canon Love Interest: None.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: Furcht is perhaps the worst assassin in the world. After murdering Tory Sue's family in the most ridiculous way possible, she feels the need to walk up to her, let her get a good look at her face, tell her exactly who hired her - Takatori, of course - why she killed the Sue's family and what Takatori's going to get out of it. She also somehow managed to miss killing Tory herself despite the fact that Tory was right there in the apartment at the time, and asleep in her own bed. Why, exactly, she 'missed' Tory is never explained when SHE WAS RIGHT THERE. Even worse, she tells Tory all this and then just WALKS. AWAY.
Canon-Raping Connections: None so far, unless we count Tory Sue as 'canon' now and despite the presence of an entire fic about her and her team of awesome doing not very much in New York, she is not an actual Kritiker assassin. Weiss themselves have yet to run into her, which is perhaps a good thing as their most likely reaction to her and her leet assassinator skillz would be to die laughing. This strikes me as about the only way Furcht could kill anybody who was actually able to fight back, and the thought of Weiss treating this dimwit as an actual credible threat is just dispiriting.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: The worst assassin in the world. Oh, she may possess some kind of psi power, but it's barely even mentioned still less actually relevant. She stabs people in the heart with 'schringes' full of poison without actually injecting the poison into their systems, feels the need to write her name on the forehead of a victim who is lying face-down, then burns the place down so the whole name-writing was pointless anyway as the body would be too badly charred for the writing to be legible on autopsy, and somehow manages to totally miss one of her targets simply because she couldn't be bothered to check the third bedroom. Her entire MO seems to be based around giving Mary Sues the most pointlessly dramatic and stupid wangst flashbacks ever.

The Charges:
A goddamn Mary Sue, her Sue mate and the Sue what fucked her up walk into a flowershop. Weiss are surprisingly IC and there are a few good moments, but for the most part the fic is stupid, tedious and doesn't serve to do anything but showcase the Sues' wangst. The plot is flimsy to nonexistent and... wait, why is there a sequel to this ridiculous shod?!

The Case for the Prosecution:

Well, this is a break from the norm. I've seen a lot of excuses to have Mary Sues join Weiss before, but this is a new one - and it's actually surprisingly plausible. In this fanfic Kritiker offer courses in Assassination 101 for New Teammate Sues, sending them out on placements to Weiss for a few months to allow them to gain practical experience before assigning them elsewhere. As a reason for a newcomer to be allowed to join a fully-functioning team, it's pretty sound. The problem, though? The new teammates are still Neat: namely, they're Sues, and once again we are expected to buy that Kritiker, a Japanese agency, want to train two random American girls who are in Japan for the usual no good reason as assassins. Still, I suppose it beats Sues being foisted off on Weiss for no reason other than Weiss are there.

The funniest thing about this story is that it reads - at first - almost like a parody of Neat New Teammate fics. Take Omi's somewhat disinterested response on being introduced to the first Sue, Tory: 'She must be the newest member of Weiss'. It's like he's used to this. Yup, Weiss have gotten wise. They know where this is going even before an OOC Manx shows up to reel off the usual non-explanation about why they (and the readers) should give a damn about some random girl.

Tory and Shona - further adding to the impression this is meant to be a parody - show up at the shop and work their way through all the usual Suefic standards as if they're ticking points off a list. Standoffish to Omi in an attempt to look deep and angsty, check. Rudely dismissive of Youji because Not Like The Other Girls, check. Whining about how Weiss's 'fangirls' suck, check. Entire chapter dedicated to wangst past, check. Worse, they themselves are painfully cookie-cutter characters: Tory is a sulky black-clad Aya clone; Shona, with her streaked hair and 'quite punk' wardrobe is the prototypical Scenester Sue. They might as well be called Generic Sue #715 and #716. Weirdly, Weiss appear to be acting as if they've gone through all this before and can't even be bothered to pretend to be interested any more... hmm.

And then there's Furcht. Who the Hell is Furcht? Apart from by far the most painfully inept would-be badass assassin Sue I have ever come across, that is. Suethor, I really hope you weren't shooting for this character to seem like a credible threat because she's utterly ridiculous. Dora the Explorer's faced more competent, quick-witted villains than Furcht here!

As usual, Tory Sue's entire family are offed for a ridiculous non-reason - and, as usual, no reason is given as to why they missed the Sue despite the fact she was right there. That's not the stupid thing, though. The stupid thing is that they were apparently killed on Takatori's orders to stop Tory's brother from giving the company he worked for a new 'computer chip' that would leave Takatori's company in the dust. Plausible? Well maybe, if we ignore the fact that his company didn't have anything to do with computing until Mamoru took over. The real issue is how very, very stupid an assassination it was. It would have made far more sense to simply blow Genius Brother up while he was at work and claim it was a laboratory accident as opposed to ineptly massacring his entire family. He didn't even live with them, for porny's sake!

I have no problem with new Weiss members having troubled pasts - all of Weiss do. The difference is that the canon members are actually partly responsible for the shit they go through, and the Sues, almost to a woman, are angsty little put-upon woobies who never did a thing wrong in their lives but are still so, so tormented. Tory and Shona are absolutely no exception to this rule. They also, like pretty much every other Sue out there, wave their wangst in the readers' faces at the earliest possible opportunity - forgetting that it took Weiss the best part of 24 episodes to get all their issues out into the open. They didn't just show up then spend the whole of episodes two through five explaining their tragic backstories.

Weiss are surprisingly IC all the way through. Though they're given little to do when they're not holding the Sues' hands, they at least aren't all immediately thrilled to be doing it. Take the training sequence in Chapter Five: Ken just trains Tory. He doesn't think she's awesome; she doesn't immediately outclass him; they don't finish by Having A Moment. No. In fact Ken spends much of the session yelling at her to raise her game and seems to find the whole process rather frustrating

Chapter Four and the first half of Chapter Five show some sign of promise, suggesting that this fic really didn't have to be this bad. I'm not much of one for neat new teammate fanfics, but if the whole of the story had been written this competently I'd have no real complaint with it. Refreshingly, the Sues are not presented as automatically brilliant at the whole assassination thing, and their training session and first mission are both actually handled quite intelligently. If I were to take any issues with it, they would be the decision to show the Sues on a mission before they are seen training, the idea that they shadow Aya and Ken, easily the two least predictable members of the team, and actually allowing Shona to make a kill. Shadowing Ken - or any point man, really - is a good way to get a newbie killed. The real problem, though, is this is far too little too late and I can't imagine a lot of readers even got this far.

Anyway, that's Silbern Kreuz. Onto Silbern Blut, which really isn't worth sporking by itself - it's too short, nothing much of anything actually happens, and its connections to canon are tenuous at best. The sole connection to Weiss Kreuz is a brief discussion between Persia and Manx - all about how awesome Tory and her team of badly-characterized Sues are - and a mention of the Koneko... except that it's not our Koneko, this is a bakery in New York. Even Shona seems to have been deemed surplus to requirements; it's set in New York and seems to be solely about Tory and her speshul team of speshulness and some random new Sue called Jocelyn who pitches up when one of the members offs himself. That's it.

So, from a fic where Weiss seem like set dressing to one where they don't even show up. As if that wasn't enough, the second fic informs readers that 'Silbern Blut' and 'Grau Herz' are the best assassin teams Kritiker have. Weiss aren't even mentioned. Perhaps they realized how surplus to requirements they were and left while the going was merely bad?

Exposing the Hideousness:

"Kombanwa! How may I help you?"
The girl tried to remember some of her Japanese. "A woman sent me here. She called herself Manx."
The young boy's expression changed immediately. It went from one of extreme happiness to one of extreme seriousness. "Manx? Okay. Help me close up then, and I will get the others."
The girl was confused about who the others were, but nodded anyway. The boy went to the shop door and locked it as the girl pulled down the shutters.
When they had finished, the boy took off the green apron he was wearing and hung it on a small peg in the back. He turned to the girl. "My name it Tsukiyono Omi, by the way." Omi held out his hand so she could shake it.
"Tory Hayes," the girl said, not accepting the gesture. This boy, Omi, was far to cheerful for his own good.
Omi led her out of the shop and down some stairs into a larger room. It had a couch and several chairs set up in it, with a large T.V. in the middle. Several young men were already seated.
One with longish blonde hair that was pulled into ponytail looked up to Tory and Omi. He pushed his sunglasses up to the bridge of his nose, only to have them slip down again. "Who'd you bring down with you, Omittichi? and is she over eighteen?"
Tory gave him a mean glare.
He laughed. "Uh oh, looks like we'll have another Aya running around, won't we?"
Omi frowned. "Cut it out Yohji! This is Tory. Manx sent her, so I'm guessing she's the newest member of Weiss. Tory, that's Kudou Yohji," he said, pointing to the blonde man," That's Fujimiya Aya," pointing to a red-haired man, leaning against a wall, wearing an expression much like Tory's,"And that's Hidaka Ken." The last was a brunette sitting in a chair resting his foot on a soccer ball.
"Now, Ken," said Yohji,"No beating up this new member, okay?"
Ken scowled at Yohji and turned quite red.
"It's good to see you all getting along so well," said a new voice.
Everyone looked up to see a red haired woman in a very red outfit and large heels standing at the top of the stairs.
"'Evening, Manx," said Yohji. "You doing anything tonight?"
She smirked. "Shut up, Balinese. I see you've all met Cymric?"
Everyone looked at Tory. The nodded. "Good," Manx said. "Let me introduce another member. This is Shona Blackwood, Mau."
She stepped aside to reveal a girl a little older than Tory with brownish-red hair with blue streaks that was tied back into two low ponytails and grey-blue eyes. Her outfit was not almost all black like Tory's was, but was quite punk. Her expression was quite sad, not angry like Cymric's.
"Mau and Cymric are train-ees," Manx continued. "You will train them to be asassins as you are. They will only be here for three months, and by the end of that time, Persia expects them to be the best."

It was late when Dominick returned to his apartment that night. He yawned as he opened his door and stepped inside. He tossed his keys on the side table in his hall and flicked on the lights.
They didn't turn on.
He scratched his head and moved to the kitchen to find a flashlight. Pale moonlight and flourescent lights of buildings filtered in through the kitchen window. He walked over a droor and rummaged through it. He let out a small cry of victory after he found a mini flashlight. As he started to turn around, however, something blunt collided with the side of his head.
"Oof!" He was knocked to the floor. His head started to throb.
"Where is it, Hayes?" said a dark figure with a menacing voice standing infront of him.
"W-Where's what?" he struggled to say, trying to stand up.
He felt something cold and metallic pressed to his forehead. A gun. "You know what."
Domonick's eyes widened. "T-The f-files?" he stuttered. "In my b-b-briefcase, by t-the door!"
"Good." And that was the last thing Domonick Hayes ever heard. The figure pulled the trigger of his gun.

Tory woke up with a start. She thought she could smell something burning in her family's apartment. She crawled out of bed and walked towards her door. Something hot was on the other side.
She pulled it open cautiously and jumped back as flames jumped at her feet. Fire! Her apartment was on fire!
She dashed out of her room and towards her brother's. She flung open the door and ran towards his bed.
"Roone!" she screamed. "Roone! Wake up!" She leaned down and turned the boy who was lying on his stomach over. She screamed again.
The boy's eyes had rolled back and blood and foam trickled out of his mouth. A large schringe filled with poison stuck out of his chest. The word "Furcht" was written across his forehead in blood.
"Oh...my...God..." Tory felt herself ready to throw up and rushed out of the room. The fire had grown progressively worse.
She ran into her parent's room, only to find them in the same murdered state as her brother.
Tory choked from the smoke filling the apartment and the urge to vomit. She blindly made her way to the apartment door. It wouldn't budge.
"C'MON DAMMIT!" she shouted as she rammed the door with her side. She threw all her weight into the last ramming and the door finally gave. She tumbled into the hall.
"FIRE!" she shouted, hoping the other residents would hear her. "FIRE!"

Tory stood outside of her burning home. The bitter cold bit at her skin and bare feet.
The fire department had swarmed the place and was trying to extinguish the inferno. She just stared in disbelief as she saw her past go up in flames. Her family was dead. Her home destroyed. She had nothing left.
"So you're the one we missed," said a voice behind her.
Tory spun around. A tall woman with straight brown hair, brown eyes, and glasses stood behind her. She wore a black trenchcoat. "How fortunate for you."
"Who the Hell are you?!" Tory questioned.
The woman laughed. "Someone who is a good friend of Mr. Takatori. I'll leave it at that."
Tory's eyes widened. "Takatori sent you to...to kill my family? For what?! WHY?!"
The woman turned to leave. "That should be easy enough to answer. Your brother, of course."
Tory felt anger burn up into her throat. "I'LL KILL YOU!" she screamed.
The woman turned around and simply pointed a hand at Tory, knocking her backwards with and invisible force.
"I think not."
And with that, she walked off.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

BunjyGuM-Boy
2002-12-31 . chapter 1
howdy, dudy!
how'd you get the Cymric name?
fyi... am not mad... that's just, well... my name,,, hehehe...
as in real name. (",)
Cymric is a mANX TYPE OF CAT, NE? cute, isn't it...

sweetxslaughter
2002-12-27 . chapter 4
Hooray! It's Ana and I like chapters with plots! I like this chapter... it's... "quite punk" hahah... Okay, well, let's hope I never have to write for this again... it may ruin your reputation... ^.^;

Right. I'm going to try for at least one sporking a week, posted on whatever day I damn well feel like. This seems like an achievable goal, so let's see how things pan out. Here we go again, kiddies.

The Fifth Beatle... I Mean Cat

2009-03-24T22:06:26Z

Guest Spork by rokesmith
It's always a warning sign when Weiss get a female teammate, however, somehow when they get given a new male teammate, things somehow manage to be even worse. With this in mind, allow me to introduce Shane Alexander, another latest member of Weiss who's far too cool for his own good.

Story Title: Kitten Number 5
Perpetrator: Rhetorical Answers
Summary: 'The kittens of Koneko get a new kitty to play with. M/M, S/OC, other pairings implied, violence, language... you know... the good stuff'

Rating:

Resident Sue: Shane Alexander, aka Amadeus Prüße
Full Species: Puer leetassasinus.
Luxuriant Tresses: 'Simple brown hair'
Vibrant Orbs: None mentioned
Special Possessions: A knife he holds to Omi's throat, an American accent he speaks with until he decides not to anymore, a 'bank card, a valid Japanese ID, passport, etc' provided by Manx within hours of his arrival, a bank account of his own containing $750,000, some of which he uses to buy huge amounts of expensive shopping including a snappy new suit.
Canon Love Interest: Schuldig

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: His grandparents moved from New York to Germany and 'my mom managed to find a German man', which I can't imagine would be that hard given that Germany's probably full of them. He spent an unspecified period of time in an orphanage before becoming the toyboy to a rich plastic surgeon who gave him a load of free surgery and then conveniently died, leaving him all his money. At some point in the middle of all that, or possibly after, he manages to become 'a mercenary, infiltrator, assassin... you name it, I do it.'
Canon-Raping Connections: He's hired by Persia (who left him letters while he was asleep) to infiltrate Weiss and so prove himself worthy of joining the team. Weiss are initially understandably upset about this because he introduced himself by slamming Ken's head in a door, broke a vase over Aya and challenged Youji to what looked like Queensbury Rules boxing. Luckily for Shane, they forget about this in a few paragraphs as he moves into their imaginary spare room, joins their team and starts attending school with Omi and Nagi. He randomly bumps into Schuldig and they flirt.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: No obvious ones, except the usual talent for warping the universe around him to make him look cool and speshul and sexy, and the usual leet assassin abilities (including Muay Thai boxing) that are getting so common I'm starting to wonder if there's a website somewhere that sends you a certificate proving your assassination credentials for $500, and throws in a PhD in astrophysics for an exta $100. I suppose you could also count abonormal growth as a special power, given that according to his birth date, when the series is set he should be five years old.

The Charges:
A goddamn Gary Stu, OOC from all comers, character bashing, fangirl Japanese, fangirl German and a plot that seems to be disappearing into the distance as the new member Weiss have gained for no reason cements his place in the team by hitting on one of their motal enemies.

The Case for the Prosecution:

This fic begins in the ancient tradition of bad Suefics. This time there's a twist, in that the Stu walks into the Koneko and asks to use the bathroom. When Youji and Aya - who at least have the sense to be a bit suspicious - send him upstairs with Ken, he somehow manages to blindside the close combat expert and former professional goalkeeper by elbowing him in the face and then slams his head in the bathroom door. When Youji and Aya turn up, he hits Aya with a vase and then chloroforms him while he's down, then challenges Youji to a kickboxing match in the corridor. Luckily for Youji, who probably couldn't compete with Shane's leet skilz, Aya proves himself immune to chloroform, and breaks another perfectly good vase over the Stu's head while he's distracted by Omi's arrival. However, just because Shane doesn't instantly out-cool all the regulars doesn't make me like him any more.

The reason for this absurd confrontation, it appears later, is that Persia had heard tell of the Stu's awesome - more on that later - and decided to recruit him by having him attempt to infiltrate Weiss' base. For once, we get a change to the exposition being delivered by an OOC Manx, but what actually happens is so much worse. The exposition is delivered by Persia, who seems to have gained the ability to hold conversations through the television - any television, apparently, since at no point is it mentioned they're in the basement - who asks the Stu some questions that he already knows the answers to and then tells Weiss he's their new teammate. Sadly, in their shock, they forgo putting Shane through the traditional Weiss initiation ritual of having Ken kick the shit out of him.

The infodump which follows Shane's introduction isn't as bad as it could be, but it makes up for this by making no sense whatsoever. The Stu explains his backstory to Omi under the pretense of having it entered into his Kritiker file, beginning with the fact he is from New York, New York (so good they named it twice) but also manages to be '100% German'. In a backstory whose nosensical complexity rivals that of Ken Hidaka, he also somehow managed to spend what I assume is several years in an orphanage run by a Japanese couple, where he learned the language so he could talk to their daughter. No word on what happened to his parents; if they did die in angsty circumstances, it's never mentioned, but his mother did have time to give him a middle name that's a town from a Greek myth before suffering whatever fate she suffered. Finally, he topped this off by becoming the - presumably underaged - sex toy of a plastic surgeon while training to be an International Man of Mystery or something. In the middle of all this he changed his name from Amadeus Prüße to Shane Alexander for reasons that are never explained.

Persia never sees fit to give the rest of his trusted team a reason why they need a fifth member, or why he's prepared to spend huge amounts of time and energy stalking Shane should he refuse the 'offer' to join Weiss. The reason for all of this seems to be 'because the Stu is awesome'. Having apparently dispatched half the team in the prologue, he seems reasonably confident he could take them all out if things came down to a fight. During his time working as an international spy/mercenary/hitman/something he managed to earn three quarters of a million dollars, including his latest payment from Persia. During that time he also managed to find time to assassinate the British Prime Minister, and as a citizen of the UK I find that deeply offensive. For the record, the last, and in fact only Prime Minister to be assassinated was Spencer Perceval in 1812. What's Shane's next trick, claiming he was the second gunman on the grassy knoll?

On the subject of the Stu's skills, he's starting to sound a bit familiar. Don't Weiss already have someone with brown hair who's good at hitting things and fights with sharp objects? I'm sure they do. Ken something... The ficcer seems to have forgotten this fact too, as in this fic, Ken seems to have been relegated to sitting around watching soccer matches and clearing girls out of the shop. That's the other odd bit of character bashing in this fic, the schoolgirls are treated as a homogenous tide that Weiss would much rather do without because they're acting like the screaming crowd at a Beatles concert, rather than the quiet, shy customers Weiss value and care about as individuals.

Something else I feel worth mentioning is that this fic contains the most gratuitous use of the word 'kitten' I have ever come across. It's in the title, it's in the summary twice, it changes the team name to 'Weiss Kreuz, aka the four cats'. I'll shout for the people at the back: THE TEAM IS CALLED WEISS. WESS KREUZ - which means white crosses incidentally, it's got nothing to do with cats - IS THE NAME OF THE SERIES.

As usual, it becomes clear that the story is all about Shane and how great he is, despite the fact that other than the prologue, we haven't actually seen him do anything. Weiss simply exist to orbit this gravity field of condensed awesome. It's clear that the ficcer has only the vaguest idea of who these people are, which can be summed up as follows: 'Weiss set about their evening activites. Ken was sprawled on the couch nursing his back and watching a soccer game. Aya was reading a book. Yohji had his cell phone to his ear and was chatting up some girl, while Omi was in the basement doing paperwork.' Beyond that we've got the old staple of Daddy!Aya, Omi being comically careless enough to leave the team's detailed Kritiker files under his mattress (he's even abandoned the '-kun' suffix that even the worst badficcers can usually remember), Youji at least being friendly and he doesn't seem to be gay (in fact, he's acting more like Omi) and Ken, who's not so much phoning this one in as routing the call to the Speaking Clock and wandering off.

Then Schuldig and Nagi arrive, and they're also really OOC. Schuldig takes advantage of Shane's apparently suicidal stupidity to hit on him when they randomly bump into each other and the demonstration of his telepathy doesn't seem to bother the Stu at all. The only thing that saves them from each other - despite reading his mind, Schuldig hasn't realised Shane's in Weiss - is a summons from Crawford. After this unwlecome interruption, they agree to meet again and this time Schuldig brings along Nagi, who Shane bumps into at school and has a whole day's worth of classes with despite the fact that they're not the same age. In a final display of OOC just before the fic cuts off, Schuldig calls Nagi a chibi and then 'Nagi-chan', an act which should have had him looking for his head on Google Earth. Nagi does slam him into a wall with his brain, so maybe there's hope for him yet. No word on the rest of Schwarz, but I'm not hopeful. When the ficcer confesses in the author's notes she knows that Schuldig - and everyone else for that matter - is probably OOC, there's not really much hope left.

As you might have guessed, it's revealed apropos of nothing that the Stu is gay. I'm trying desperately to think of one who isn't. As a result, the Koneko is packed not only with the usual complement of teenage girls but boys too, who seem to have had their gaydars switched on years early and turned up to eleven by the sheer force of Shane's sexiness. The funny thing is that the girls describe him in glowing terms as the typical rugged, good looking all American boy and swoon as a result, but I'd always assumed that they came to look at Weiss because they liked pretty boys. If they wanted rugged and manly, they'd have gone somewhere else. In defiance of this simple human logic, Shane manages to prove his homosexual credentials and make almost everyone involved pass out by grabbing and kissing a random boy. Isn't that called sexual assault out here in the real world?

Finally, floating like shattered planks in the ocean from the shipwreck that is the fic, we have the details. They're only little things, but they're jarring and manage to make it painfully obvious that the ficcer hasn't seen the series in a very, very long time. There's the fact that the series is set in 1997 (or theoretically 1999 if you want some of the premillenial stuff to make proper sense) which would make a Stu born in 1992 five years old. There's Youji and Aya's ages; they're not both 21, Aya's 20 and Youji's 22. There's Youji's car, which is a two-seater with no trunk so there's no way you could fit that much shopping into it along with two people. There's the fact that despite Nagi being fifteen he's in the same classes with the seventeen year old Stu who we're repeatedly told looks nineteen. Finally there's the fact that in between the descriptions of the school and the ficcer's belief that Japan uses the dollar rather than the yen, and despite the use of fangirl Japanese by Omi and - of all people - Schuldig, it doesn't really feel like it's taking place in Japan at all.

Exposing the Hideousness:

"What is your name?" Persia asked the boy. "Keep in mind you're tied up in a room with four trained assassins who're quite upset with what you've done to them previously."
Almost immediatley after saying this, the boy blurted out, "Shane Alexander!" Persia asked him if it was really his name. "Yes! God, I swear! I have my American driver's license in my wallet. It's in my back-right pocket."
"That won't be nescessary. You seem to realize the consequences of lying. Who do you work for?" Persia continued.
"No one. I'm a mercenary, infiltrator, assassin... you name it, I do it." Shane said taking a deep breath.
"What was your mission and who hired you?"
"My mission was to find out as much as possible about Weiss Kreuz a.k.a. the 'four cats'. I was to leave them all alive, but use force if nescessary. I don't know who hired me. He'd contact me by letters that were left while I was asleep," Shane soon realized how ludicrious his story sounded. "I swear thats the truth! I don't know who he is! I don't even know if it's a he!" By this point, Shane's breath was getting uneven and tears were starting down his face.
"Don't worry, I believe you. What did you learn?" Amusement seemed to dance in Persia's eyes.
"I learned that the four men employed by 'Koneko' are assassins of the group Weiss Kreuz employed by Kritiker. Comprising Weiss Kreuz are: Fujimiya Aya, codename Abyssinian, age 21. Hidaka Ken, codename Siberian, age 19. Kudou Yohji, codename Balinese, age 21. Tsukiono Omi, codename Bombay, age 17." Shane recited the information like clockwork.
The four men were shocked. How had he managed to learn so much?
"Impressive. How did you learn this?" Persia pressed further.
"I found files under a mattress in one of the bedrooms. The room as quite neat and there was a large computer in it. I tried the computer, but there was too much protection on it," Shane closed his eyes and began to calm himself.
"Omi!" Ken yelled. The yound blonde blushed and looked down. Aya and Yohji were glaring at him as well.
"Sorry! I was doing paperwork last night, and I got really tired so I went to bed. This morning, I didn't have time to refile it before I left for school so I shoved them under the mattress thinking they would be okay! I was wrong! I made a mistake," Omi said apologizing.
Ken, Aya and Yohji began to berate their teammate for his carelessness until Persia cleared his throat signaling for quiet.
"Impressive for someone so young." Shane blushed and murmured a quick thank you. "Manx, his money." The redhead nodded when he said this and picked up a suitcase she had carried in with her. She set the suitcase before Shane and opened it. Inside were stacks of American bills. "You will find that all $200,000 are present. I am a man of my word."
Shane was dumbstruck. Weiss was just as confused.
"You?" Shane asked. Persia nodded. "Why?"
"I've heard stories of a young mercenary's skill. I wanted to find out if the rumors were true or not. They are." Shane's jaw dropped. "Manx, untie him."

"Are you really gay?"
"I am indeed. Is that a problem?"
"No... just shocked, I guess. You're the first one I've met that hasn't hit on me."
"Well, that wouldn't do good for our team dynamics, now would it?"
"Hah! I see your point!" Yohji laughed and patted Shane on the back.
By this point the store had begun to fill with hormonal teenage boys who had received text messages from their female friends about 'the fucking gorgeous new employee who they have a shot with'. Cries of 'I love you Shane' and 'Be my boyfriend!' could be heard amongst the teenage girls' screeching.
"Is this what's it's like everyday?" Shane asked as a sweatdrop formed anime style.
"Well, we used to have only girls. Boys are your fault... which also makes them your responsibility." Yohji said placing a hand on Shane's shoulder. "Good luck."
Omi hopped down the stairs but then stopped when he noticed the larger than average crowd. "Why're there so many boys here?" He asked with wide eyes. Ken and Aya appeared behind him and asked the same thing.
"My fault!" Shane said. "I'll take care of them."
"You mean he's--?" Ken asked Yohji.
"Yep." Came the response.
"I thought the story about being a boy toy for a rich doctor was a joke." Ken said. Aya nodded in agreement.
"Probably was. But he does like boys. That's a fact." Yohji folded his arms. He wanted to see how Shane would take care of everyone.
Shane stepped from behind the counter and sat upon it, legs crossed femininely at the knees. "Fellas! Fellas! Just relax!" He began. His voice was comparable to the sweetest honey known to man. He reached forward and seductively grabbed the chin of the nearest boy and drew him closer. "I'm more than confident that I will be able to help all of you before the day is done. I'm quite skilled with my hands, afterall." To punctuate this, he gave the boy who's face he was holding a kiss on the cheek. Half a second later, the building shook as all of the boys and half of the girls collapsed.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:
There are no reviews for this fic as yet. I can only hope that means no one's read it.

Aloisa: Fucking Woeful.

2009-03-19T21:45:39Z

Because life just keeps on happening and I wouldn't be me if it wasn't me it was happening to. And it all sucks! Rather like this fanfic, for that matter. It may, technically, have been possible to encapsulate this into the normal ten-point format, but that would just make it sound like Another Boring Suefic... and it's so much more than that. So much hideously more.

Story Title: Aloisa: Fearless Warrior
Perpetrator: Deutschrocker
Summary: 'Aloisa means 'fearless warrior' in German; and that's exactly what Aloisa wants to be. Fearless. A native of Berlin, she is the Thief of Light and Apprentice to a Bullet. After running away from Schwarz, she finds Weiss and quickly falls for Ken Hidaka.'

Rating:

Resident Sue: Aloisa Hidaka. She's stealing Ken's family name for no reason despite not being remotely Japanese.
Full Species: Puella angstia shattercanonica.
Luxuriant Tresses: "My black hair, the tips; where soused in what was a crimson river."
Vibrant Orbs: Never mentioned, though we do get this wonderful; descriptor about how Aloisa is "smothered with blood, it [...] jaded my eyes". Nobody knows what this means.
Special Possessions: Magical withering shoes. Ken buys her an iPod, presumably from a hyperactive skinny guy with glasses and a brown suit who set up a second-hand store from out a police box, while taking her shopping to buy a ton of consumer shit after he's known her ten minutes. From then on she has all the usual Sue bric-a-brac floating about the place, up to and including the extensive wardrobe and spare room Weiss don't have. Oh, and a load of terrible injuries that are only a problem when the ficcer remembers they're there.
Canon Love Interest: Ken Hidaka.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: Aloisa - who has 'survived torrid weather, lived in squalid conditions and had lived as an unkempt person' for much of her life and promised hersef at the grand old age of three she would never cry, ever - has one of those back stories that was clearly made up as the ficcer went along. She's lived on the streets for most of her life and claims she never knew her family, because she's a Sue and that's what they do. The only family she had was a very pastede-on kid sister called Fern who she apparently looked after since she could toddle. Fern was abducted and sent to Rosenkreuz (who, in this fic, are just people who abduct kids and torture them pointlessly for years) with Aloisa so she could be dramatically shot within seconds of her arrival. Of course Aloisa escapes, randomly killing someone possibly while in the process of doing so, and is picked up by Schwarz because she's speshul. She makes it to Japan during a nonexistent scene break, passes out in the doorway of the Koneko by sheer coincidence, and is taken in by Weiss because she's there.
Canon-Raping Connections: Schwarz are after her for some reason not even they fully understand, largely because it seems to change with the weather and how Crawford's feeling at any given moment. Her first meeting with Weiss involves them all feeding lines at her so she can better explain her wangst past and connections to Schwarz that leaves me convinced they read the script. Ken then begs to be allowed to keep her like she was a stray kitten he'd found while out running, and is filled with idiot glee when Aya (yes, Aya) relents and says that she can stay as long as she joins Weiss and just like that she gets to join Weiss. Ken wants to be either her dad or her boyfriend, neither he or the fic appear to quite be able to make up their minds on this matter, and she goes to school with Nagi and Omi, who are now at the same high school and classmates to boot.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Aloisa's speshul seems to have been bolted on as an afterthought to explain why Schwarz are interested in her and allow herself to flange her way out of danger. She develops pyrokinesis at random when she needs to run from Schwarz, and can apparently break glass with her brain - but it's the non-psychic aspects of her flange that are annoying. For example, Aloisa has never been to school but is well-educated enough to attend a Japanese high school with no difficulty, she's a natural at (groan) soccer and speaks three languages - self taught, at that - fluently... except when it's suddenly dramatic she can't. Naturally one of those languages is Japanese even though French would have made far more sense. She used to be a pickpocket and apparently was fantastic at it, and also seems to have some kind of bizarre healing ability that allows her to be dramatically ill except when she suddenly isn't, then be fine right up until the point she's suddenly dramatically ill again. Finally, she appears to be magic, because she can make the Koneko stay open until 1 AM simply so that she can dramatically pass out in it.

The Charges:
A goddamn Mary Sue - the title lies, she is neither fearless nor a warrior - OOC coming out the walls, no plot whatsoever, lame romance, bad slash, fangirl German, fangirl Japanese and cultural slips. And, just when you think it can't get worse, the ficcer copy/pastes an entire song into a chapter as if anyone cared what her Sue had on her brand-new iPod.

The Case for the Prosecution:

... no, once again it is really not a good idea, when writing fanfic, to tell the story (all or mostly) from the point of view of a character whom your readers have firstly never heard of and secondly have no reason to care about. Some ficcers can pull this off, but in general it helps to presume that you are not one of the five who can, because the chances are that you're dead wrong. In short, Suethors - nobody wants to read an entire story told from the point of view of your OC, because they just don't care about her. This fic, much of which is told from the first-person perspective of Aloisa, a girl tragically born without a personality, makes that elemental mistake. Unfortunately, that's not the only mistake it makes...

According to the summary Aloisa is apparently the 'thief of light' and 'apprentice to a bullet'. This sounds cool, but has the unfortunate tendency to mean damn-all. Her nonsensical titles are mentioned once in the summary, once in body text, and then left to fall by the wayside. I have very little idea of how these descriptors relate to anything, still less do I care.

Okay, there's a plot? Sort of? Admittedly it's mostly gone by Chapter Four, but for what it's worth there's this girl and she's cool. Aloisa runs away from Rosenkreuz and kills someone, then gets abducted by Schwarz - the two events may or may not be connected, it's never specified - and ends up in Japan, and then she moves in with Weiss and goes to high school. I think. I may be missing something very important here, but in my defense it appears that the ficcer did, too. We know Aloisa is important for some reason - but nobody really knows why Schwarz want the Sue, least of all Schwarz. She may have worked for Rosenkreuz, or just been abducted by them, but it really doesn't make any sense.

Just how OOC is Ken? Well, if it gives you some kind of an idea how badly he's been mutilated by Aloisa and her author, he's apparently six foot three in this fic. (As yet there is no word on how tall Youji is.) He's also madly, obsessively in love with this annoying Sue within a matter of minutes after first laying eyes on her scrawny fifteen-year-old murderous street-kid ass, though canonically he likes older... partners. In fact, Ken is so very OOC in this fic (he doesn't even look the same, for porny's sake!) he's become a completely different character. Specifically, he's become Fanon!Daddy!Aya, if he was being played by Jeremy Irons in Lolita - except, of course, he can't cook. Hilarity! You may all laugh now.

The others get off no more lightly. Everyone else is OOC, too, with the possible exception of Farfarello because he's not in it. Omi and Youji get their bog-standard bad-fanon interpretations, but avert your eyes from Nagi: his caring-BFF act is truly hideous. The lone redeeming feature is that if you imagine that the person going by the name of 'Aya' in this fic is in fact Ken in a red wig trying to hide from the Sue, you've actually got a half-decent bit of characterization going on there.

Aloisa doesn't act her age. To be fair, the ficcer doesn't want her acting her age, but where she seems to hope Aloisa will seem far more mature than she is, the girl actually acts like a case of arrested development. She's supposedly fifteen, but is treated as if she's about ten. There's a really disturbing infantilization of the female lead going on, who (despite being described as a 'fearless warrior' and lip service paid to how tough she is though nothing she does backs this up) is presented as utterly clueless and largely dependant on Ken and the rest of Weiss for everything. They make her bed, they escort her to school - all of them - they cook her meals and unpack her belongings... ficcer, a tough street kid should be able to do this stuff herself, and should resent being forced into this kind of dependant role. Why doesn't Aloisa?

Of course there's a wish-fulfilment shopping mall sequence where Aloisa goes to conspicuously consume with a Weiss member footing the bill, because it's a Suefic, and really, unless you fantasize about being bought an iPod by Ken Hidaka there's no point to it. The entire sequence is almost totally irrelevant - the one piece of storyline development could have happened anywhere - and deeply tedious to have to read. It's also about the point where the plot goes AWOL...

Schwarz need to make up their mind why they want Aloisa. First they want her to join them, then they want to hold her captive, then they don't actually want her at all and are planning to hand her over to Esset, then they're wondering if maybe she's Aya-Chan II, and then they just randomly picked her name from Esset's records but for some reason can't just say fuck it and pick a new one, then they want to kill her because she's suddenly the center of the fucking universe and killing her would really make Ken SUFFER or something. Story, it's called a 'decision' and you need to make one.

Youji makes some daft crack about how the Sue's wound isn't healing because Ken was the one to tend to it. Actually, I think her wound isn't healing because instead of staying in bed like a normal gunshot victim she went to the goddamn mall then enrolled in high school, but I'm just the reader so what do I know. Ken is so insulted by the aspersions cast on his Sue-healing skillz he tries to murder Youji, though he claims that he's doing it because Youji is putting the moves on Aloisa and 'she's got nothing' and if you don't understand how this follows, well, congratulations, you're not OOC!Ken. This is the non-sequiter of all time and it'd be bad enough even if Ken and Youji weren't close friends. Too bad they are and it makes no sense for Ken to slap Youji over a really weak tease Ken usually wouldn't bother acknowledging.

Youji is once again coming in for no end of abuse seemingly for being Youji in the presence of a Sue. I can't honestly work out what he did to get Aloisa and her ficcer so enraged at him, but this is yet another fic where he's going around acting like a travesty of his canon self. He's been turned into a macho idiot who makes really crude sexist remarks and leers all over defenseless fifteen year old girls because hey, boobies! Needless to say he is scorned and abused for it.

Okay, so the ficcer works overtime to establish an air of mystery around her Sue. She tries to build up an atmosphere of brooding threat, establish that Aloisa is in grave danger and then... well, then she has Aloisa go to high school, and what little plot there was utterly goes out the window in favor of mundane domestic details about her class schedule and homeroom conversations. We've been overburdened with tedious wank about her tragic past, mysterious powers and the danger she's facing, just so she can attend school with Omi (and, apparently, Nagi). All that drama about her mysterious origins and abilities and we're left with a lame-ass soap opera fic in which nothing happens, and it happens at length.

Nagi is problematic. After trying to get Aloisa to join Schwarz and claiming to be thirteen, he is randomly revealed to be good, presumably because he's too cute to be IC. He claims he didn't realize Schwarz wanted Aloisa to join them because they wanted to do anything bad and pinky swears that he won't hurt her because - wait for it! - he's in love with Omi. And I didn't see that coming a mile off the minute it was revealed that Omi was sneaking out the house to meet 'a friend'. Sigh.

There's a really obvious daddy complex in all this which is just cringemaking. Most of the time OOC!Ken doesn't act like he wants to be Aloisa's boyfriend, he acts like he wants to be her father. The fact he also clearly wants to go to bed with her? Well. It's like Ken's crushing on his adoptive daughter... which is rather more accurate a description than one might at first think, as when this 15-year-old German enrols in school the person registering (a woman named Mrs. Hotsigami, who must be kicking herself that she didn't keep her maiden name when she married) asks if Ken, a 19-year-old Japanese, is her DAD... and then Omi says Ken has practically adopted the Sue, who is 'basically a stranger' to him - and yet we the readers are still supposed to support the idea of a romantic relationship occurring between Ken and Aloisa. By the time Ken is kissing the Sue gently to wake her up this is turning into Weiss Kreuz does Lolita.

Aloisa is clearly going to high school in Podunk, Arkansas. The school that the ficcer describes is very very clearly an American high school, right down to the thing about lunch periods, junior and senior cafeterias, the lack of a school uniform and the fact that students attend for four years from age fourteen, though in Japan high school doesn't start until age fifteen, runs for three years, and is not mandatory. The ficcer also makes a big deal of the fact that Nagi, Omi and the Sue are all in different years, right up until the point the Sue gets her 'class schedule' and suddenly has pretty much all her classes with both of them, though she's a sophomore, Nagi is a freshman, and Omi a junior.

THEN there's the bit where Schwarz randomly attack the Koneko and menace Ken with a gun to demand he tell them where Aloisa is. Ken lies and tells them she died and Crawford is all 'oh, right then' and walks off even though he knows this is bullcrap. And he doesn't actually do anything about this because...? Oh, that's right, it's a shitty Suefic.

One of the 'high school' chapters contains an excruciating sequence in which Aloisa has her first PE lesson. Because it's that kind of fanfic, she's playing soccer; because it's that kind of fanfic, Aloisa turns out to be amazing at it despite the fact she's never actually played before. In fact, she's so amazing at soccer that she's recruited for the school soccer team within about five seconds of first stepping onto a pitch. Guess what position she's going to be playing! I really hate the way ficcers denigrate Ken's talents by suggesting it's so easy to be a brilliant sportsperson that any idiot can acquire in five seconds the skills he spent years honing and perfecting. It is very hard to be a good goalkeeper.

Aloisa's absurd angst, like her injuries, is treated as utterly non-existent until it would be dramatic for her to be angsty now. For example, Aloisa locks herself in her room and has an attack of Emo because Ken broke a glass pane in his Emo rage and she believed her super-speshul powers had harmed him, though she has no reason to believe this is the case except that it'd be dramatic if she did. Ken's solution is actually vaguely IC - break the door down - but he can't comfort her in her Emo and eventually has to sedate her to stop her from dying of hyperventilation. None of this makes sense!

As usual, Aloisa just randomly knows Weiss are assassins within seconds of meeting them and this bothers her not one bit. Once again, there is no reason for her to know this, or any explanation as to why she does other than 1. It'd be cool if she did and 2. Her author has seen the anime, and hasn't quite got her head round the fact that things that are common knowledge to the viewers should not be common knowledge to the characters. Would it be asking too much for an OC to not be immediately cool with the idea of Weiss being hired killers? Just once? She doesn't even have to stay that way!

You'll have to forgive me for a minute, but: STOP ABUSING THE SEMI-COLON, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Don't use a semi-colon because you think it makes you look smart; it doesn't, given how utterly hamfistedly you use them. The semi-colon is not a fancier form of comma. If you want to use a comma then use a fucking comma and leave the semi-colons out of it.

We're occasionaly given insights into Aloisia's world that are clearly supposed to be heartwrenching - for example, it's mentioned that Ken manages 'something amazing' when he gets Aloisa to smile, and at one point Aloisa flashes back to the death of her younger sister. These are both clearly supposed to be deeply significant moments but, because they're not built up to at all and are simply dumped down any old how they're not even that interesting, still less shocking or upsetting.

Did I mention there were POV shifts? Because they are, and they're utterly rampant. Most of the story, regrettably, is told from the point of view of the exceptionally tedious Aloisa (whose brain is no place to be stuck, let me tell you) but every so often it jumps to the perspective of another person, usually after a little note pointing out that we are now hearing the story from ~Ken’s POV~. Surprise! He sounds exactly like Aloisa. Then after that it's back to Aloisa, then, just when you think the bouncing perspective's settling down a bit, the fic abruptly shifts to the third person and STAYS THERE for a chapter or so - then it's right back to Aloisa again. Once again - decisions, motherfucker, can you make them?

Finally, to illustrate the sheer study in wrongosity that is this fic - Omi and Aloisa leave the store early one morning to go for a walk. They get up, leave the store, and cross the road to the forest on the other side of the street. From there, they walk for a long while down a muddy woodland track lined with towering trees. They talk with Nagi for a while in a clearing with a boulder, then make their way back across the soccer field, only for Omi to almost get hit by a car and Aloisa saves him: it, however, neglects to take into account one small thing. That thing? The Koneko no Sumu Ie is in the middle of Tokyo, one of the densest, most built-up areas on the entire planet. This story only makes sense if you think with portals.

Exposing the Hideousness:

I had made a promise to myself when I was very little; no older than three, and that promise was never to cry. Not out of pity or hatred or pain. It was a sign of weakness, no matter how I looked at it.
So why was I on my knees, reduced to tears?
My black hair, the tips; where soused in what was a crimson river. Blood was speckled across my face, and dripping from the corners of my mouth.
My hands had been drowned in it. Smothered with blood, it stained my nails and jaded my eyes. I could not believe my actions, what my mind had planned and how my hands had followed. My body had reacted so… So quickly and thoroughly, swiftly and gracefully, my being had worked.
My heart raced, pumping, flying, and soaring, a bomb ticking, exploding and repeating, shaking every fiber of my core.
I had been baptized Roman Catholic, that much I knew;
And if I had been baptized, I had just committed the biggest sin I knew of:
Murder.
I, Aloisa, a mere child from the Berlin ghetto; had just killed a man.
“Aloisa, Aloisa, look what you’ve done.” A voice mocked, I turned, but no body was there.
So who was I hearing? What was I hearing?
“Who’s there?” I called out, turning, and regretting I spoke, people could hear me, and if they walked by, see me and my victim.
I looked down, was the man not dead after all? Was I spared from the depths of hell?
Only a fly was moving, just a measly fly.
The cracked tar dug into my palms as I raised my lower half from the ground.
I stumbled, my voice squeaked out a yelp.
I ran out of the alleyway, my feet gliding along the pavement. Was I hearing voices? Was this my punishment for stealing a life?
God, I hope not.
“Aloisa, you can’t hide from me.” the voice taunted as I increased my speed
I ran my fingers through my hair as I ran, blood smearing, leaving a purple stain.
“Aloisa, Aloisa, a stubborn girl you are.” The voice mocked again
I finally stopped dead in my tracks, tripping over the slew of people. I lay on my stomach, and I screamed to the sky:
“Who are you and what do you want?!”
But nobody stopped; nobody ever did stop in Berlin. I had heard it was like this in all major cities.
I heard somebody scream, I turned on my back.
A woman had found my bloody crime.
I scrambled to my feet and began to run again. I turned the corner, running, and my breathing fast and unstable.
“Aloisa, it’s no use, I’ll find you.” The voice mocked a final time
My head felt like it was going to explode.
I turned a corner, and stopped short when I saw a man. I fell backwards.
He bore a kelly green pea-coat that reached just beyond his knees. An evil and sadistic smile was sculpted around his face. His flaming orange hair dangled past his shoulders, and was held up by a canary yellow head band and a pair of aviator sun glasses.
“Who… Who… Who are you?” I asked, panic evident in my voice
“The name’s Schuldig, I am the voice in your head.”
I felt sick, deathly sick. I could feel the bile rising in my throat and my stomach churning, but I dare not get sick.
“What do you want with me?” I asked
“We want you Aloisa.” Schuldig said, looming over me
“Who is ‘we’?” I trembled, I began to crawl backwards, but I stopped when I felt the barrel of a gun
I turned to find an American man holding the weapon.
“This is Crawford,” Schuldig started
“Nagi, Farferello!” The man, Crawford summoned, he was quickly surrounded by a teen and a deranged looking man.
And the last thing I remember from that dusty day was my skin and muscles moving to clear a bullet.

This time, because there were three of us, Aya drove us to the school in his car. Ken told me that Yohji was probably still in bed. Ken sat in the shot-gun seat while Aya drove and Omi and I sat in the backseat.
“Do you like Japan so far?” Omi asked me
“Yes, I do.” I said
“Are you excited about school?”
“I’ve never been to one.”
“It’s a great school. They’ve got sports, clubs, band and orchestra.”
“Are the classes hard?”
“Well mine are harder than yours will be since I’m a junior or 11th grade, but once you get in the hang of things I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“What do you learn?”
“Math, science, language arts, history and P.E. and for one marking period you have health. You’ll pick up on it.”
“Okay.”
Aya remained silent for most of the ride. The only time we spoke is when we arrived at the school, he asked us not to slam the doors.
We walked inside, and this school was huge. I mean enormous, absolutely gigantic.
“Can I help you?” a woman asked, (teacher?) as she walked by us
“My name is Omi Tsukiyono, this is Aloisa, and she needs to be enrolled here.”
“What’s your last name, Aloisa?”
I panicked for a second. Ken said I could have his last name right? That means I’m allowed to use it right? So why aren’t the words coming to my mouth?!
I felt Ken place his hand on my shoulder. My muscles untwined, evident that they were a mangled mess a few seconds ago; they lay flat and seemingly unharmed, though they ache horribly.
“Hidaka, her name is Aloisa Hidaka.” Ken said
“And you are?” she asked, sticking out her hand
“Ken Hidaka.”
“Her father?”
“Guardian.”
“What happened to your parents, sweetie?”
She reached a hand out to me, I jumped backwards. I looked at her, eyes widened in fear, Ken caught me.
“Are you okay?” Ken asked me
“Fine.” I said
“Well then, you’ll need to fill out the necessary paperwork,” she began, “place of residence, emergency contact numbers, and her age of course.”
We followed the woman carefully through the hallways and into what seemed to be her office. She offered us all seats, which we took gladly and she pulled out a set of papers.
“Now, Aloisa, how old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Where did you last go to school?”
I could feel the panic evident in Ken’s face.
“Berlin Central High School.” I lied, relaxing my muscles
The key to running a believable lie was being in role with the situation. If you’re in a serene setting, you relax your muscles to make it appear you’re telling the truth, and if you’re going to lie your ass off to the police, you have to do two things:
One, make sure you’re not laughing from their stupidity for believing you,
And two, if you’re at a crime scene, make sure you look distraught, not calm and collected, otherwise they’ll just think you’re a sociopath, and a damn good one at that.
“If you could just fill out the paperwork,” she said, sliding Ken the paperwork, “I could show you around-”
“Don’t worry about it Ms. Hotsigami, I’ll gladly show Aloisa the school.” Omi said, motioning for me to follow him
“Go ahead, Aloisa, I’ll catch up later.” Ken said with a smile
I got up from my chair and followed Omi out the door.
Omi began showing me around the campus.
“Lunch is at the same time for all the grades, around noon, I usually bring lunch, because it’s pretty expensive to buy everyday. There are only two cafeterias, and this year the sophomores eat lunch with the juniors; so we’ll be in the same lunch room. If you wanted to eat together, that’d be great.”
I nodded yes in reply.
About a half hour later I had completely zoned out, just a zombie following Omi around. I tried to respond without yawning and was relieved to hear Ken and Aya call out to us from down the hall.
“Aloisa! Omi! Time to go home guys!” Ken called; Omi and I ran down the hall, but shortly after I tripped on something, sending me flying down the stairs halfway down the hall.
“Verdammt!” I cursed the German word for ‘damnit’ as I hit the floor. Ken came running and helped me up. I realized what I had just tripped over,
My shadow.
My shadow for God’s sake! How stupid could I be?
“Are you okay Aloisa?!” he asked, helping me up, his face about 3 centimeters from mine, he held me close and it made me feel at ease.
“I’m fine Ken, I’m okay now.” I said softly, resting my head on his shoulder, he gently embraced me, placing a soft kiss on my head; he stroked my hair gently, then placing his head on top of mine. His body felt warm against mine.
“Let’s go home.” he said
A small tear fled my ducts and stained his shirt, a tear that had followers.
God, I needed to cry. I needed to cry more than anything in the world right now. So much had happened within the last day, the pain had finally caught up to me.
Ken gave me a soft squeeze.
“It’s okay to cry.” he whispered in my ear
I took a deep breath and started sobbing. Tears racked my body, staining my face and Ken’s neck. He released me, taking off his leather jacket and placing it around my shoulders. He embraced me, leading me down out to the car.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are (Sometimes) Stupid:

Jil
2009-03-18 chapter 1
hi there, :D I don't want to sound fussy or arrogant but I'm German and I'm sorry to tell you "Aloisa" means nothing in my language. It would be rather considered a women's first name, meaning "wise"(at least wikipedia says so XD)... just so you know. ^.^

Badfic Showcase: Too Bad To Spork, Part 3

2009-02-24T23:53:35Z

You know, the great thing about the undead is that they don't go off.

In the process of vampire hunting... well, hunting vampire badfic, same difference... I came across several other stories that I decided I wanted to say something about - but didn't want to actually have to read, because even I have my limits for what I'll put myself through in the name of harvesting badfic lulz. It's the usual thing: either the fics are too long, or the content is a massive UGH DO NOT WANT - I am, after all, not entirely unsquickable - or, for whatever reason, I just don't think that I'd be able to spork them amusingly enough. Thus a Badfic Showcase is born.

Of course this begs the question... why am I posting this now, all of one entry after declaring that I was trying to start a Vampire theme pack? Well, the answer is simple: vampire AUs tend to be quite long. It's Shrove Tuesday, and I'm full of pancakes. This means I and my eggs and flour are sleepy. But I still want to spork. But I can't find any vampire fics that are short enough to be amenable to this and not send me to sleep.

Of course, that doesn't explain why my next spork won't have a single vampire in it either, but there are some things that a sporker's just gotta do, and kick the shit out of a stupid AU where Ken is an abused child and Weiss's collective age on Aya's arrival is 'about thirteen' is one of them...

Story Title: You See Past My Scars
Perpetrator: Shangri-La
Summary: Farfello never thought he'd be more than a freak to anyone, but when a young girl sees past his scars, he's caught. But for all his love, one problem stands between them. She's Christian. So, who's gonna change who?
Genres: Angst, Romance.
Type: 26 Chapters, Completed.

This fic shoehorns yet another tediously saintly Sue (who is Weiss's new part-time shop girl) into the series, and goes on and on about her love for Farfarello and the redemptive power of her speshul vagoo. For 61,000 words. On top of all this, it's another nonsensical Weiss/Schwarz team-up. How come Farfarello refrained from butchering this girl for long enough to get to know her is anyone's guess. Despite the fact the story is about Farfarello, the ficcer cannot spell his name.
____

Story Title: The Sous-Chef
Perpetrator: RedQueen
Summary: The members of Weiss and Schwarz have gone their separate ways. Five years later, a chance encounter in rural France brings them back together.
Genres: Angst, Language, WIP, Yaoi, M/M/M, Anal, BDSM, BP, Fet, HJ, Lemon, Oral, Rim.
Type: 20 Chapters, Ongoing.

In this fic, Aya gets promoted to Gary Stu McSpecialpants and becomes a complete douche, yet everyone seems to think he's an angel and want to fuck him. Ken, meanwhile, suffers from brain damage and is abused horrifically. The rest of the cast - and the reviewers - still think Aya is the wronged party. The fic seems to justify the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of a vulnerable adult, which makes it reprehensible in a way that goes far beyond 'hey, you can't do that to Ken!'.
____

Story Title: Red Shaman and Black Velvet
Perpetrator: Darkephoenix
Summary (Red Shaman): Who is the mysterious woman who keeps coming into the shop to visit Omi? Why does she make Aya suspicious and how will he react when Weiss & Schwarz have to work together? Complex plot.
Summary (Black Velvet): Nothing new. Just editing. Ever wonder where Brad Crawford REALLY came from? Or how Aya learned to tame his inner beast? Read and find out. Sequel to Red Shaman.
Genres: Abuse, Angst, AU/AR, Crossover, Language, MC, OC, Violence, Yaoi.
Type: Red Shaman - 69 Chapters, Completed. Black Velvet - 22 Chapters, Completed.

When a ficcer's profile warns you she loves 'very strong women' to the extent she relies exclusively on 'OCs' to carry her plots because she finds every canonical female character ever too weak and simpering for her, it's really not worth trying to plow through 91 chapters of fanfic in the (forlorn) hope the mysterious woman the summary mentions isn't going to be an overbearing, insufferable bitch on wheels. Life's too short to waste it on the War and Peace of crossover Sues.
____

Story Title: Angels of the Assassins
Perpetrator: Knight Celestial
Summary: Who says assassins don't have guardian angels? That's what the four boys found out when another assassin group joined them. But even uner the protection of each other, can they handle the new threat that looms over them? R&R
Genres: Continuation.
Type: 19 Chapters, Stalled.

... and on the subject of Sues, in this fic Weiss take a mission on a plantation and are randomly stalked by a gang of Sues called the 'Rebelling Angels'. Subtle! Six annoying girls with names like Jelmerie and Morgaine are introduced in between rampant scene breaks and the usual Sue-centric melodrama kicks off, and the readers are somehow expected to care. And this goes on and on and motherfucking on and I have seen nothing to suggest it's worth my, or anyone's time.
____

Story Title: WeissKreuz Fading Light
Perpetrator: LoveYouHateYou
Summary: A dark take on the flowershop boys and their adversaries. No cutie Omi but one that smokes and uses a gun. Are Weiss and Schwarz really so different from one another? They're all in here: Yohji, Aya, Ken, Omi, Crawford, Schuldig, Farfarello, Nagi.
Genres: Drama, Angst.
Type: 45 Chapters, Stalled.

Not only is this fic far too long for me to spork - it clocks in at just under a mind-fucking 100,000 words - it also seems utterly pointless. Largely because we already have a dark take on the flowershop boys and it's called Weiss Kreuz. This fic removes pretty much everything about Weiss that made them interesting and fun in favor of turning them into Dark! And! Edgy! cliches. Oh, and everyone wants Youji's forty-year-old ass, because LoveYouHateYou wrote this fic. Thrilling!
____

Story Title: The Happy House
Perpetrator: Sybil Rowan
Summary: Aya is recruited as a Weiss assassin, but he’s not exactly sure why his new teammates seem so strange. They all seem too nice and too perfect. Their cover is a delicatessen. Bizarre things happen after each mission that Aya can’t account for. A locked fre
Genres: Suspense.
Type: 3 Chapters, Completed.

This ficcer loves Sweeney Todd and it shows. Weiss now run a deli, weird things happen after missions, yadda yadda cannibalism and it'd all be very samey and predictable and sporkworthy if cannibalism wasn't one of white huntress's few squicks. What really dooms this fic is the decision to use Aya as the sweet young innocent he isn't, while Youji, Ken and Omi are unrepentantly into the gamey tang of human flesh. Not only is it gross and stupid, it's OOC and pointless.
____

Story Title: Aphrodisiac
Perpetrator: Aislin
Summary: When a mission goes wrong and Aya is drugged with an unknown subtance what will it mean for the boys
Genres: Anal, Lemon, Yaoi.
Type: 2 Chapters, Completed.

I refuse to read this one because my own fangirl preferences would color any eventual sporking to the extent it wasn't funny to read. Long story short Youji and Ken are lovers, but their relationship is portrayed as little more than a misstep before the main event: Aya gets smutdrugged and Youji realizes that actually he wants Aya and gleefully cheats on Ken, while Ken is presented as deeply unreasonable for not being immediately wild about the idea of Youji banging Aya.
____

Story Title: Trinity, Wife, Aunt and Mother-to-Be
Perpetrator: Deutschrocker
Summary: *FIRST 15 CHAPTERS ARE LAW & ORDER: SVU* Weiß's operations were in Japan. Weiß lives and works in Japan. So then why are they in America? To take out one of the worst families in history; the Tucker family. They rape, beat and kill. The whole lot is bad.
Genres: Crime, Supernatural.
Type: 23 Chapters, Ongoing.

The sequel to a Law and Order: SVU Suefic laboring under the title of Trinity, Kid, Detective, Rape Victim. The one positive about this? It spares you from actually having to read the fic. The second fic starts out as a straightforward SVU Suefic, for fifteen chapters, and then Weiss pitch up to kill 'the worst family in history' and Ken falls for a red-haired vampire Sue who is called Sakura despite being Irish. This was posted in the SVU archives, and I dread to think what they made of it.

Another spork to follow sometime very soon in which Ken is horrifically abused for no good reason, as if he didn't have a messy enough backstory as it is. After that, I swear I really am going back to the vampire fics. Oh, what fun I shall have.

Interview With A Ranpire

2009-02-23T00:31:26Z

... I'm doing it. I'm going to spork bad Weiss Kreuz vampire AUs (are there any good ones?) and expose the dark, twisted heart that beats therein. From random Weiss members turning into vampires to random vampire Stus and the OOC regulars who love them, bad vampire AUs have got the lot... starting today with Interview With A Vampire: Tokyo Drift!

Story Title: Lurking in the Dark
Perpetrator: DatenshiBlue39
Summary: 'AU! Vampires? Well now, Weiss is a trio who slays the evil lurking in the throbbing city of Tokyo, Japan. Ran is a less than human man looking for something to free him from the sadistic clutches of his master. Will he find what he's looking for, or will'

Rating:

The Charges:
Painfully inane Vampire AU with attendant bad proto-slash that is clearly supposed to be romantic but actually is rather creepy. Nothing happens, most of the fic is in the perspective of OOCVampire!Aya, Ken exists solely to be unconvincingly lusted after and everyone else is largely non-present. The ficcer seems blissfully unaware this is happening in Tokyo.

The Case for the Prosecution:

This story features Schuldig and Aya as gay vampires in the European tradition and it occurs to me that in sporking Vampire AUs I may have bitten off more than I can chew. Tokyo is not a good place to set a vampire story if you're after anything but urban fantasy. In this fic Schuldig and Aya live in towering Castle Vampire - but castles in Tokyo? While they exist, they look more like this than this and any vampires would likely have to explain their presence to the Arts Council.

The fic beats any prospective readers over the head with the author's preferred pairing pretty much from the word 'Go'. Within seconds of the story opening we're introduced to a blood-spattered Ken and within a few more Aya has a huge vampire boner for him. He goes from zero to OBSESSED in 0.6 seconds. There's no attempt to have his feelings for Ken develop over time or even explain Why The Hell Ken, unless one counts the 'his blood smells extra extra good!' one that Twilight goes for to explain why a sexy undead creature of the night is immediately all-consumingly fascinated with a plain-faced, brown-haired human who he knows absolutely nothing about save they're an uninteresting-looking brunette. Aya is a slightly better vampire than Edward Cullen, though, because his reaction to this is to imemdiately freak the fuck out and go murder a nameless courting couple simply because they are In Love. Our romantic hero, ladies and gentlemen.

'AU' isn't an excuse for everything. You can't chuck canon out the window and still claim Weiss got together to hunt vampires. Without individual tragedy to reel them in and and Persia - who isn't in this fic at all; Youji, Ken and Omi teamed up to sell flowers and hunt vampires for the sheer Hell of it - to force them together, there is no Weiss: you've got a private detective, a schoolboy genius and a soccer player who never meet. I like that Weiss as a team sans Aya isn't seen as a total disaster, but I don't understand why no Persia - or why Youji is suddenly 28, Ken is 21 and Omi just 16.

Okay, so it's a vampire AU and a degree of creepiness comes with the territory - but, as with many other vampire AUs, the ficcer doesn't seem to realize that they're not portraying the 'good', 'pure' vampire/human romance as any less icky than the 'creepy', 'twisted' master/minion slash. There's a creepy air of coercion about Vampire!Aya's lusting over Ken - largely because Ken doesn't actually know he's being lusted over and it doesn't seem as if his knowing or not would make any difference. The problem is that I can tell the Aya/Ken relationship is going to be portrayed as true love and not abusive at all unlike Aya's partnership with his 'Sire', which is going to be portrayed as very coercive indeed never mind that in that case at least they're both vampires, not a vampire and a kid who basically functions as vampire antacid.

Suddenly: a POV shift! The first chapter is written in the third person; the second jumps to the first, and is told entirely from Aya's perspective. Unfortunately, in this fic Vampire!Aya is not only whiny and obsessive, he's a tedious, pompous git who believes quoting a chunk of Joshua Reynolds will make him sound intelligent. It doesn't: he sounds pretentious.

The fic can apparently find no way to reveal supposedly crucial, plot-related information about vampires and vampire lore aside from 'have Aya spend half the second chapter delivering a tedious infodump'. Apparently there's some kind of caste system for vampires, starting with Royal vampires (or, in English, master vampires) and Lunars (their thralls). Aya is a Lunar, but unlike most vampires he is is a speshul Daywalker (don't you have to be Blade for that?) largely because Schuldig - his sire - is one, meaning he has all the advantages of being a vampire and wouldn't have any drawbacks at all if he wasn't Schuldig's thrall. And he's only a thrall for the cheap buttsex, not because it puts Aya at any disadvantage. All the same, it's extremely tedious and if it wasn't coming from Aya the awesome vampire, nobody would care.

Sadly, after spending all that time expositioning about his angst past and how awesome and powerful vampires are, Aya... goes and cleans the stables. Because Schuldig told him to. Okay, all very degrading and tiresome for the poor emo boy, but - stables? In Tokyo in 1999? Don't vampires, even the really rubbish ones, usually have people for that?

Anyway, the point of the infodumping aside from 'vampires re awesome'? Turns out there's a way for a vampire (read: Aya) to break the blood contract with the sire who holds him in thrall and regain his humanity. This could be interesting if this didn't just seem to run 'find a non-vampire who is a Vampire's Lover' - this is what they're called - 'and woo them'. Not only is this far too simple a process, it's already painfully obvious Ken is going to be Ye Mythical Vampire's Lover. Next!

Now, the big question as regards this fanfic: What's in this for Ken? Certainly it doesn't seem likely to be True Love. Not only is he presented as little more than vampire catnip and the oblivious target of Aya's lusts, Aya is obsessed with him for entirely selfish reasons and Ken actually has far less say in where he stands with regards to Aya than Aya ever had as regards Schuldig. Yes, Schuldig may have seduced him but at least took him willingly. The whole 'Vampire's Lover' thing doesn't seem to require anything of the sort, and certainly doesn't seem to come with any Beauty and the Beast-style caveats that state it only works if their love is freely and gladly given. Meaning this is creepy and coercive as fuck.

Finally, ficcer, if you want to convince us Aya's lust for Ken isn't developing far too fast, saying 'oh, their relationship is going to develop over time!' isn't going to hold much weight while Aya is still acting like a combination between a squealing fanboy and a creepy stalker every time Ken shows up. Aya fanboys Ken's hair, pouts because Ken sullies his pretty mouth with foul language, buys a sport magazine for no reason other then Ken dropped it, reads it avidly then decides he's going to stalk Ken back to his house so he can use 'you dropped your magazine' as an excuse to talk to him... and this doesn't make him look creepy? If this doesn't make Aya look like a deranged lunatic who's obsessed with a guy he's spoken to for five seconds, what would stalking Ken involve? Breaking into his apartment to drink his bathwater?

Exposing the Hideousness:

“Ran.”
“Yes, master?”
“Tonight is the full moon, is it not?”
“Yes, master.”
“Then you know what you must do.” Not a question, but a demand.
Silence. Violet eyes peer through the complete darkness towards the sound of the other man’s voice. Then, “Yes, master.”
Turning on his heel, the slender man clothed in black, strides from the room and down the countless maze of hallways to the looming doors that spit him out into the night’s frigid air. He glimpses back quickly at the gloomy castle behind him before disappearing from the castle grounds, only to reappear minutes later on an abandoned rooftop in the thriving city of Tokyo.
“Who shall it be tonight?” He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, searching for that seductive smell of fresh prey. Blood! There it is! Swiftly, he leaps from the slippery roof to the dank street below and begins to run in the direction of the alluring scent. ‘A man… A young man.’
Rounding a corner, he sights a crimson scene which, with his heightened senses, nearly drives him mad as he is filled with insatiable lust. Hunger gnaws unbidden at his mind causing him to grin in pleasure as his imagination runs wild at the sight of the lithe brunette before him.
The young man is covered in blood, some of it his own, but most of it belongs to the huddled forms on the ground. They aren’t dead, but are beaten to an inch from it. The brunette staggers up and looks around cautiously, his body is still tensed and ready to take on any more opposition, but when the owner seems to find no threat left it sags wearily.
The red-haired observer keeps his presence hidden and follows silently as his prey stumbles down the moonlit streets towards his home. Unknown feelings course through the veins of the violet-eyed man, causing him to frown in confusion.
‘What am I feeling? Why do I feel this way? …… I don’t want this man as my prey, my victim, I want him as my… as my what? What do I want? What am I searching for?’
Shaking his head angrily, the stalker glanced at the house that the chocolate-haired man had entered, and memorized its location. Then, turning swiftly from the scene, he continued back to the heart of the city, towards a newer, less tantalizing and confusing, victim.
As he traversed the dark streets his mind continued to run circles around the mysterious man that he had run to mere minutes ago, and it infuriated him that he could feel foreign emotions welling up in the holes of his frozen heart. He thought he had been rid of the unnecessary ‘human’ emotions, but now he was beginning to resort back to them again… all because of a chance meeting with a dark-haired handsome man.
Life had never gone the way he had wanted it to so… why should it choose to do so now? The longer he thought about it the angrier he got, and as he came upon a pair of lovers in the shadows of some lonely trees he took out his frustration on their vile throats.
Minutes later, the crimson man calmly walked away, his thirst quenched and his mind numbed at the present moment. He felt nothing as he fled the scene and that was how it should be.

I pass hastily through the sports to reach the other end of the store, where the books lay, calling to me softly. Suddenly, a form comes hurtling around the sharp end of a nearby book shelf and flies haphazardly into me, spinning us both to the floor in a tangle of limbs.
A mop of beautiful brown hair is scattered across my chest, and when the mop pulls back it reveals a set of milk chocolate eyes, warm enough to melt the glaciers of Antarctica. They widen in shock and the man’s mouth hangs open as he freezes atop me and stares right back without flinching.
Sputtering he jumps up off me and stretches out a hand to help me up. “S.. sorry. I am so sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going. I wanted to get a magazine, but I was already late for work so I was running, and I wasn’t looking where I was going. And I’m … I’m so sorry,” he finishes as I raise up a hand to silence his rambling.
I slide my mask in place and reply coolly, “It’s no problem. No one was hurt, and I was partially to blame as well. Don’t get so worked up over it, it was nothing.”
“N…no. It was my fault, honestly. I’m really sorry… I’m sorry,” he insists.
I deny myself the urge to roll my eyes, ‘You poor strange little man. You have my pity, farewell,’ and refrain from spitting out the snotty remark. Instead I reply, “Seriously, it’s ok…” ’How do I end this conversation?’ “Weren’t you late for work?”
I never would have thought that it was humanly possible for anyone’s eyes to get bigger than his already were, but lo and behold, they did, and if it weren’t for my senses telling me that he was human, I would’ve sworn he was some strange species of elf, or something else along that line.
“Oh shit!”
‘Oh, what distasteful language coming from such a pretty mouth… pity, really.’
When I look back up he’s gone, and where he had stood moments ago lay a copy of Sports Weekly. Bending down, I pick up the neglected pad of colorful papers, and flip through it to glance briefly at all of the stats and photos, so on and so forth. On a spur-of-the-moment impulse I grip the paper tightly in my hands and stride up to the counter to buy the item. I’ve never read anything about sports, and like I said earlier, or rather, like Joshua Reynolds said, my mind needs to be ‘enriched with foreign matter.’
As I leave the store with my purchase in hand it finally strikes me… I’ve seen that man before! He was the man that I had followed the night before that had given me the unexpected feeling of butterflies in my stomach! Frantically, I peer up and down the bustling Tokyo streets, in search of a luscious mop of warm brown hair and shining eyes, but the crowd is much too dense to see more than 20 before me, even with my advantage of height over the majority of the population.
Swiftly, I coil my way around numerous, less than dignified smelling, people and down a dank alleyway. Jumping up onto the rafters of the nearest building, I race along the pipeline agilely, while still scavenging the bobbing heads below. I’d search for him by smell, but with so many different people around, each with their own unique odor, they all mix together in one witch-craft of a stew of putrid smells, and so I choose to breathe through my mouth, and therefore save my nose from unnecessary burning.
Sighing in miserable defeat, I alight from the roof and make my way slowly back towards the gloomy castle and the repulsive touch of my master. Once I’m out of the city I glance down at the magazine, that I’m still miraculously clutching, and decide to stop along the countryside path to read a portion of it. The majority of it contains facts on numerous soccer players and matches between famous teams from all over the world. ‘He must like soccer…a lot!’ I actually find myself enjoying the words that streak across the page in excited clamor, and I can even feel a tiny smile play at my lips as I imagine the joy the man would have gotten out of reading a particular article. ‘Maybe I should go to his house and give him the magazine… yeah, I’ll just say I stumbled into him on accident and just happened to have the thing with me… yeah, that’s what I’ll do.’
Smirking to myself in pleasure, I stumble up from the ground and return my feet to the path in the direction of my prison.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

Utsukushi-Mayonaka
2006-06-01 chapter 3
o_o What quote by Buzz Lightyear? I tought he says "To infinity and BEYOND!" or something like that.
Ew! You're turning Ran into mush. xD
n__n Ken is still Ken. That's good. It feels familiar, the rushing, clumsiness and all.
T__T I have an urgh to shove a shear into Schuldig's you-know-where for being bad to Ran.
;__; You gave Nagi a make over! I don't recognize him nemore! >.> But this story is about Ran so that might be besides the point..
And Crawford isn't introduced yet! Or are you not ever going to use him? o__o
=__= You haven't updated in a long time.. I'm sad that I like your writing.. and have to wait for much longer..
Best wishes to you anyway! n__n

Nigellashade
2005-09-06 chapter 2
We read these Fanfictions, because we Love Weiss & we also Love Vampires.
Aya *aka* Ran should have been a Vampire in the series,,one way or the other..
I think it's exciting, thinking of him kissing & biting his team-mates necks..
Please update soon,,this sounds like a starting of a Awesome Vampire story of Weiss.
~Nigellashade *aka* M&M~ v~v

I Was A Teenage Mad Scientist

2009-02-16T06:48:14Z

... okay, technically it's Monday-ish? In penance for allowing myself to be distracted by other things for the past fortnight, I bring you a spork of a fic written by an author with the worst Pit profile ever containing five Mary Sues, one of whom is a blatant self-insert, all of whom have stupid animal nicknames and flange-powers courtesy of a teenage Masafumi.

Story Title: Five Different Colors
Perpetrator: Goddess of Power
Summary: 'There might be many colors in the world, but only five of them stand out amungst the others clearly. Green, Yellow, Purple, Red, and Blue. These colors are the strongest and the weakest. But these colors also hold secrets of child DNA testing by Masafumi.'

Rating:

Resident Sue Mark I: Doreanda 'Doe' Yoko
Full Species: Mulier bitchia selfinsertia.
Luxuriant Tresses: "She had light brown hair that was a little longer then the blondes had white spots all over; her hair also had white tips that went up an inch or two; and her bangs ended right below her eyebrows."
Vibrant Orbs: "Her eyes were a green color that seemed to stare right trough you." Good luck with that, Ken.
Special Possessions: Another story-stopping Super Sue Outfit that is supposedly very 'different' but sounds like standard scenester wear to me, this time in green. "Her outfit was very different from most girls. She had a short black ruffled skirt with green lace towards the ends. Her top was a black and green striped shirt with the short sleeves hanging past her shoulders. Her black combat boots went past her knees just a bit and had green knee socks slightly peeking over the top of the boots; her fingerless black gloves went to her elbows and had matching buckles on the sides that went with the boots. She had the same kind of necklace on that the taller one had but hers was green. She had small green earrings that seemed to glow as she smiled." She also has a motorbike she shares with her Sue sister. It's green and yellow. Guess what color her sister wears a shitload of!
Canon Love Interest: Ken Hidaka, I guess, as evinced by the fact that she practically is Ken, just with breasts,

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: Supposedly the eldest daughter of the 'richest shrine owners in Japan', who despite being stupendously wealthy have yet to figure out how birth control works and have twelve other nameless and pointless children (six girls and six boys, of course) aside from her and Sue sis Angelica. Doreanda was abducted at age 10 and never went home again; it's suggested that this is because she - like the four other Sues who are going to show up in this mess - was abducted by Masafumi so he could perform genetic experiments on her. After that, she ended up in a circus working as a trapeze artist, animal tamer and acrobat, but somehow still found time to get a fantastic education, attend the culturally confused 'Sakura Catholic Prep School', and be the front woman of a girl-pop band consisting of her and her four Sue mates.
Canon-Raping Connections: Oh, and she's in Kritiker. She and her Sue mates, as well as being a girl-pop band, also used to be Weiss before the current Weiss was founded but just stopped for some reason that never gets explained. Of course, Kritiker want her and her teammates back to work with them because... well, they just do, just go with it it's the best plot we have. Meets Weiss when she and three of her friends do the whole 'so, a Mary Sue walks into a flower shop' thing where she wastes no time in character-raping Ken into his clumsy idiot fanon self, simply so she can help him up then sweetly patronize him about how he should be more careful.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Despite the fact the story constantly bangs on about how very powerful and speshully speshul she is, she hasn't actually done anything to justify it. What we do know is she's lead singer of the Sues' silly girlpop group who were offered a recording contract (and seemingly insta-fame) after singing at a school festival, meaning she must have a fabulous singing voict. She's supposedly great with childen to the extent that many of the Sues' younger fans have 'have even called her ‘Mother, Mom, Mama, Mommy, etc., etc' yes, we get it, she's great with kids, sheesh. What this means, in translation? She's a creepy child abductor and somehow gets away with it. Yes, really. Her creepy Chris-Hansen-Would-Like-A-Word-Now love of kids is meant to prove that she is Totally Like Ken and faciliate her Bonding with him: only problem is, Ken would never drag a lost child home with him then REFUSE to let him or her leave with their parents. This is disturbing enough even before you remember this is supposed to be CUTE.

Resident Sue Mark II: Bunro 'Bun-Bun' Ichigo
Full Species: Rebellius infuriatia americana.
Luxuriant Tresses: "She had curly blonde hair that went down past her shoulder blades and was a color just a little darker then Yoji’s; her bangs went to the side of her face and curled."
Vibrant Orbs: "Her eyes were almost scary if you looked into them long enough, they were a dark red color and looked like they had been stained from blood."
Special Possessions: A trademark color-coded Super Sue Outfit: "She had on a pair of very tight dark washed jeans with a red halter-top; she was also wearing red flip-flops. She had a red necklace around her neck also; the necklace was a silver chain and looked like a rare gem of some sort at the end, in the middle of it was something darker but couldn’t be seen from where the boys were. Her huge red earrings were hard not to notice, they looked as if the were weighing her down a bit." She also owns a red convertible. Getting the feeling this one's 'different color' is red?
Canon Love Interest: Most likely Youji Kudou, though it's hinted they may actually be brother and sister.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: America. Yeah, there's always one from America. She was born in a shack in Mississippi, which - apart from a brief break at age ten to be randomly abducted just like Doreanda was - she apparently didn't leave even to attend school right up until the point Kritiker found her working in a diner and offered to make her a ~~star~~ leet assassin. Her mother and brother have mysteriously vanished and are either dead or in hiding for the usual inexplicable reason. She was invited to join Dorenda's all-Sue pop band after they were offered a recording contract because they were there, and for some bizarre reason the company offering were cool with this though they had never heard her sing a note. Oh, and she was apparently abducted for 'child genetic experiments' by a sixteen year old boy.
Canon-Raping Connections: Another former Kritiker agent Weiss are supposed to want to help re-recruit because she's so very speshul. She bonds with Youji when he goes for a moonlight stroll and runs into her sitting on a bench humming to herself. He mentions that he's looking for his missing family, including an older sister he 'barley remembers at all', though he remembers enough to know Bunro's humming reminds him of her; Bunro says she's also searching for her mother and younger brother. DUN DUN DAH. I can't begin to imagine where this might be going. Despite this deep emotional moment the night before, by the following morning she has decided that all of Weiss, who have done little more than show up at her shop, are annoying losers because they're impeding on the Sues' screen time.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Though the fic constantly beats us over the head with the fact that she, like Doreanda, is supposedly conspicuously and overbearingly speshul and must be Really Important because of it, once again it doesn't bother to actually try to explain why we should think that. Is the kind of cute drug addict who only ever shows up in Suefic. This, I suppose, is meant to imply 'she's a party girl' facilitating her hookup with Youji despite the fact that Kapitel-era Youji merely smokes and drinks and doesn't even frequently drink to excess before the Drama CDs. This is good for nothing but unfunny 'tease the addict' crap which fails to take into account the nature of addiction. Finally, she knows that Youji is both in Weiss and after her and her Sue mates just because it'd make her look cool and dramatic if she did, despite the fact he hasn't actually done anything and as far as she should know he's simply a Tokyo florist.

Resident Sue Mark III: FoxLonna 'Foxy' Royal
Full Species: Richbitchia hiltonii.
Luxuriant Tresses: "She had silky black hair that went to her waist and her bang were cut perfectly straight and ended at her eyelids."
Vibrant Orbs: "Her blue eyes weren’t like the normal blue eyes; it was a very dark navy blue that matched the color of her sundress... Her eyes were very calm but very scary at the same time."
Special Possessions: Her own color-coded Super Sue Outfit of Eye-matching. "Her dress went past her knees a little, the thin straps that went over her shoulders seemed to lose to hold the dress. She then had light blue sandals that had darker blue bows on the straps. She had a dark blue necklace that was the same as the other girls also; she didn’t have any other jewelry because it didn’t seem like she had her eyes pierced. She seemed to be the one that kept the other girls from fighting all the time." Also, reading glasses. They're blue as well.
Canon Love Interest: Aya Fujimiya.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: England, apparently. (We never heard of her, I swear.) Her father was apparently 'the Duke' - not the Duke of anywhere, just 'the Duke' - at one point: you probably have to be British to understand why the 'at one point' thing doesn't quite work, and appreciate how weird it is not only that her brother is not now 'the Duke' instead, but also that FoxLonna doesn't have a title. Daddy was, of course stinking rich; both he and her mother are of course conveniently dead meaning that FoxLonna and her siblings inherited the lot and 'still live a high and fancy life it seems'. She's apparently like rilly smart and a Book Club president, though she has yet to act in a way that suggests she has any more up top than the average high-school sophomore. Oh, and she also vanished for a while at age ten and gets to be a pop star because her friends do.
Canon-Raping Connections: She's the Aya clone, except really sanctimonious. In this fic, Aya is apparently the Self-Control poster boy. She was also in All-Sue Weiss and Kritiker now want her back, too, and have enlisted Weiss's help to try and get her. (To their credit, Weiss think this is a dumb idea.) She also does the 'Sue walks into a shop' thing, meets up with Weiss and then encourages them to come round to their shop, the 'Five Different Songs' music shop, so that Weiss can watch them all flail around moaning at one another and otherwise acting like a gang of shrieking dumbass bitches... then wonder why they never seem to get any custom.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Like her Sue sisters, she's apparently really really specially special and the story goes on about this to the extent that being special just doesn't seem like that big a deal any more. Once again, though, she never actually does anything to even vaguely prove it. This leaves us (and Weiss) saddled with a character who we only know is special and interesting because we've been repeatedly told she's special and interesting and we should thus react to her as if she were special and interesting... despite the fact she's a bland, inconsistently-characterized nonentity who's largely distinguishable from the other Sues because This One Wears Blue Guys, and never does anything that might actually qualify as either.

Resident Sue Mark IV: Angelica 'Angel' Yoko
Full Species: Soror gratuitus selfinsertia.
Luxuriant Tresses: "She had the same color brown hair as the other young girl but without the white spots, her hair was in aloes braid that was the same length and the other; but on half of her braid was a bright yellow. Her bangs were the same as the other brunette also."
Vibrant Orbs: In an uncharacteristic oversight, Angelica's eyes don't actually get mentioned. Given that all the other Sues have eyes of the exact same shade as their 'trademark' color, most likely her eyes are yellow. Sexy.
Special Possessions: Yet another lovingly overdescribed Super Sue Outfit O' Maximum Boringosity in yes-you-guessed-it-yellow. "She had a pair of short shorts with yellow cuffs on that were really lose but managed to stay in place as she walked. Her top was a yellow and black hockey jersey with the number ‘12’ in the front and back; the long sleeves were rolled up to her shoulders because of the heat. She also had that same kind of combat boots and fingerless gloves that the other had but her knee socks were yellow. She had that same necklace but yellow also. Her earrings were small yellow ones that matched the yelling brunettes green ones."
Canon Love Interest: Omi Tsukiyono

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: In keeping with younger Sue siblings everywhere, her backstory is basically Doreanda's just with slightly different speshul skills to make her appear as if she's actually a different character. She's got the rich shrine-owner parents, the dozen younger siblings, and the random abduction - presumably by a college-age Masafumi for the purposes of mad science - after which she didn't go home for the usual WTF reason and ended up working in a circus as a trapeze artist and animal trainer too, all the while going to Catholic school, running a store with the other Sues and being a world-famous pop star. The only difference is that she was abducted when she was nine, unlike her sister or any of the other Sues, and while in the circus she was also a 'shark swimmer', whatever the Hell that is.
Canon-Raping Connections: Angelica is another awesome ex-Kritiker agent who Kritiker want back who Weiss somehow never heard of before, ever. She's the one who asks Weiss to come over if they want to 'talk or hang' at any point, something the rest of the Sues act as if they're absolutely fine with (only to later decide that you know, Weiss are losers). She was also abducted by Masafumi when she was a child, begging the question, didn't the guy have anything better to do, like graduate? And why did his genetic meddling at age twenty seemingly leave her utterly indistinguishable from a normal human being (except for the slight tendency to color-code herself) when he's turning people into mutant baboons ten years down the line?
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: She's special and important and Deeply Significant to Kritiker because she is, okay? Yes, there's absolutely no reason given for why Weiss should give a damn about what happens to Angelica either, except that she's there and they've been told they should. Despite being described as an incredibly intelligent and well-educated young woman, Angel believes that smoking cigarettes (which she calls 'cancer sticks', like every other preachy non-smoker out there) is bad because it destroys the 'O-zone' layer. She's the only member of Sue!Weiss to have a normal name because she's the ficcer's younger sister's self-insert, and no doubt she insisted on 'Angelica' for this Sue's name.

Resident Sue Mark V: Neklynn 'Neko' Sakaya
Full Species: Puella superfluita bitchia.
Luxuriant Tresses: "She had light green hair that were in pigtails on the sides of her head but still managed to reach her shoulders, and her bangs were clipped back out of her face with two purple hair clips."
Vibrant Orbs: "She had dark purple eyes that matched the gem on her necklace"
Special Possessions: She appears later than the other girls, but the ficcer doesn't forget to give her a color-coded Super Sue Outfit either. This one's purple: "She was wearing a dark purple short-sleeved shirt with the words ‘Kitty Cat Girl’ printed on the front in Japanese and had a little black cat sitting on the words ‘Cat’. She had light blue Capri’s on that ended right before her knees. She had the same kind of boots and fingerless gloves on that the other two girls were wearing except they were black and purple instead of yellow or green." Insert character wearing copious amounts of black and purple... check. Okay, now it's a shitty Suefic.
Canon Love Interest: No idea; she's the only one who doesn't neatly correspond to a random Weiss member. If Bunro does turn out to be Youji's sister, maybe he'll have to hook up with Neklynn instead.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: She actually has a relatively normal childhood - unless we count the fact she has two siblings in China, land of the One-Child Policy, ended up called Neklynn Sakuya not, say, Ming-Yue Lin and was also abducted at age 10 and never seen again by her family and friends, and this is tragic though that's largely because she simply never bothered to get back in touch with them. She also goes to Culturally Confused Catholic School, also worked at the same circus as the lovely Sue Sisters up there, again as an animal tamer and trapeze artist, though to ring in the changes a bit she was apparently an 'electric knife thrower' to - Weiss are no more clued in than the readers as to what the Hell 'electric knife throwing' is - and is also a world-famous pop star.
Canon-Raping Connections: The final member of Team Flange-Powered Female!Weiss, utterly buggering up the whole Four Is Death numerical symbology thing Weiss Kreuz has going on. Kritiker want her back, too, again never bothering to explain why. She also thinks Weiss are losers because she's an obnoxious Sue and if she wasn't insulting canon characters for existing around her within seconds of showing her face, nobody would know she was an obnoxious Sue of course. This despite the fact Weiss haven't really said or done anything yet, which she then complains about.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Yet again, we the readers are beaten repeatedly over the head with how speshul and awesome this girl is, and there's even less of a reason for it than the others because she has even less personality, or any sign of any kind of special talent aside from sitting around being a generic Sue bitch, than they do. (She's not even supposed to be 'very intelligent'.) As the last of the Sues to get an introduction, she's the only one who isn't acting like, or supposed to act like, the female clone of someone in Weiss. Consequently, when she's not being a bitch for no reason, she has no personality at all.

The Charges:
A goddamn Mary Sue and her four color-coded Sue friends who were Weiss before Weiss showed up arrive and then nothing happens apart from the fic beats us over the head with how very special and awesome and how very important to Kritiker they are. Weiss are OOC, what plot there is they're too smart for, and nothing that happens makes sense.

The Case for the Prosecution:

Oh, how about that? Looks like it's time to meet yet another super-speshul Team Female!Weiss. And, as usual, they act like little more than Weiss's female clones, only with none of the subtlety the original Weiss members' personalities possess, and all their more obvious canon (and sometimes fanon) traits played up to the point they seem more like bad parodies of Weiss than genuine female counterparts, which would have been a bad enough idea by itself. The story starts with the usual 'so, some Sues walk into a flower shop' trope - and, it's impossible to tell any of the OCs apart even with the barrage of hair- and clothing descriptions that stop the story such as it is dead in its tracks. The Sues start out as painful nonentities where they're not total Weiss clones, but the more we learn of them the more we find to despise...

The plot involves Weiss being given a mission which basically runs 'bring the Sues into the basement'. This is the exact same thing as happened in Second Stringers and it happens for the exact same 'they're speshul!' reason... just with four times as much Sue and rather less VD. Aya thinks this mission is a load of shit and I, like his teammates, agree with him.

No, story, your Sues are not the previous incarnation of Weiss. We meet the previous incarnation of Weiss in Dramatic Precious and none of them were speshul teenage Sues named Doreanda. Even ignoring the gang of nutters who were beta Weiss in canon and the fact Persia specified it was an all-male team - how old were these Sues while they were the 'old' Weiss? Angelica is only seventeen now, and Omi's incarnation of Weiss has been around for at least two years.

Where the summary mentions 'Child DNA testing', I guess what it meant to say was 'DNA testing by a child'. Masafumi Takatori, in canon, is in his very early thirties and just too young to have had anything whatever to do with these Sues and their flange-powers, all of whom vanished at age ten. As the oldest Sue is twenty-five, this must mean that Masafumi somehow managed to abduct her from her shack in Mississippi and subjected her to genetic testing while he was still in high school. In Tokyo. Even if we buy that Masafumi was experimenting on kidnapped Sues before he'd decided what college he was going to go to, it's still kind of a stretch to imagine that he was somehow capable of conducting subtle genetic experiments that left the Sues physically unaltered, just really speshul, when ten years down the line everything he tries results in mutant ten foot babboon-things with a tendency to grow tentacles.

The Sues are world-famous pop stars, something you'd think would be incompatible with being a flangey assassin and experimental test subject. Doreanda, Angelica and Neklynn - as Omi explains, because of course he fanboys them and their disposable girl-pop - apparently having been offered a recording contract after being 'discovered' at their school festival by a management team who had no issues with them bringing Bunro and FoxLonna along because they're, like, BFFs. Not only that, these supposedly world-famous popstars work retail in a Tokyo music shop for no readily explicable reason without anyone but small kids caring or even really noticing, while three of them also find time to go to high school. How many jobs are these girls supposed to be able to do - without seeming to have to work at any of them?

The hilarious thing about this story is how bored and infuriated Weiss become with the Sues, and how fast. All four of them are far too smart for the plot - of which there is far more in the summary than appears in the six thousand words that comprise the story to date. Weiss find the fic they're stuck in so boring that in one scene it sends them all to sleep (except Youji who gets a 'you couldn't sleep either, huh?' moment with Bunro) and, when they have to start spending time with the Sues, Ken and Omi wearily comment about what godawful company they are. They're totally right, too.

The story goes on about how significant the Sues are to the point Manx (poor Manx!) has to darkly mutter 'they actually have special senses from the rest of the people in the world' in a way that makes me desperately hope she was actually trying to be overheard... yet there's no proof of this whatsoever. The Sues' specialness becomes the informed attribute to end all informed attributes: we know they're special and important not because they've done anything to make them seem that way, but because the fic just won't shut up telling us they are. Look. If your characters really aren't acting like they're that amazing and awesome, simply beating your readers repeatedly over the head with the fact they're meant to be isn't going to make the characters look any more amazing and awesome. You've got to change the way they act.

Kritiker now exists largely to revolve around the Sues. Manx exists mainly to exposition about their awesome, and Weiss's lone 'mission' is just 'bring us the Sues because they're speshul'. Worse, Weiss's mission to get the Sues to their basement? Takes place because Persia wants to talk to them. Their boss, whose identity they are clearly not supposed to know, is going to come round to the flower shop and blow his own cover just to try and win over the Sues. Right then!

The Sues' pointless color coding doesn't actually seem to have anything to do with anything that happens except that it a) is really annoying and b) makes the Sues' music shop look like an inside-out Rubik's cube. For some reason they've painted every wall of the store and the ceiling with one of their 'signature' colors. No wonder nobody ever goes in.

In short: dull, pointless, and a mess - and it's largely because the ficcer's trying to do too much at once. When writing a wish-fulfilment Mary Sue, fangirl, please decide which of your wishes this Sue is going to fulfil. Don't try and fulfil all of them in the one story unless you like the idea of Sue-serving plots like this one, featuring five stunningly beautiful flange-powered circus performer popstar assassin schoolgirl shop assistant test subject Kritiker agents with half a personality between them. The fic's trying to do far too much at once, with far too many new characters, and it's suffering because of it... and, apparently, there are five more OCs who have yet to even appear. Weiss are already barely getting a word in edgeways with the five we're enduring already; add another five and they might as well spend the rest of the fic in bed.

Exposing the Hideousness:

“Hello, can my friends and I get some Poppies… please?” She asked nicely.
The group of girls weren’t like the other customers… that was certain. All four of them had very different characteristics from one another. They looked almost as if they were different somehow from the other girls that came there, but the boys couldn’t place it right away.
The eldest was slightly taller than the others, which were different heights themselves; she was just a little shorter then Yoji himself. She seemed about Yoji’s age too but probably a bit older. She had curly blonde hair that went down past her shoulder blades and was a color just a little darker then Yoji’s; her bangs went to the side of her face and curled. Her eyes were almost scary if you looked into them long enough, they were a dark red color and looked like they had been stained from blood. She had on a pair of very tight dark washed jeans with a red halter-top; she was also wearing red flip-flops. She had a red necklace around her neck also; the necklace was a silver chain and looked like a rare gem of some sort at the end, in the middle of it was something darker but couldn’t be seen from where the boys were. Her huge red earrings were hard not to notice, they looked as if the were weighing her down a bit. She had a very cute smile that seemed to never fade as she spoke, and that was also hard not to notice.
Yoji stared at her and then to Aya, who was leaning against the wall.
“Well certainly, how many would you like?” Yoji said as he came around the counter to go to where the Poppies were.
She just smiled as she spoke.
“Just a few, we need to lighten up things at our shop… it seems very dark in there. And we need to be in our spending range.”
While Yoji talked to the blonde women the other boys were examining the girls from the corner of their eyes. They knew that they were nothing to fear; it was just that they were different somehow. Ken then tripped over the gardening hose and landed on his hands and knees. Then one of the girls came over a lent him a hand.
She was one of the youngest of the girls, you could tell by her height and features; Ken was a little taller then she was. She had light brown hair that was a little longer then the blondes had white spots all over; her hair also had white tips that went up an inch or two; and her bangs ended right below her eyebrows. Her eyes were a green color that seemed to stare right trough you. Her outfit was very different from most girls. She had a short black ruffled skirt with green lace towards the ends. Her top was a black and green striped shirt with the short sleeves hanging past her shoulders. Her black combat boots went past her knees just a bit and had green knee socks slightly peeking over the top of the boots; her fingerless black gloves went to her elbows and had matching buckles on the sides that went with the boots. She had the same kind of necklace on that the taller one had but hers was green. She had small green earrings that seemed to glow as she smiled.
“You have to be more careful or you might hurt yourself really badly. Trust me, you don’t want to break a bone because of something stupid like tripping over a hose.” She laughed as she spoke. Ken toke her hand and she helped him up.
“Doe… stop flirting with the florist!” Said the Blonde.
“Oh shut up, its not like you should be talking… you have a different boyfriend every week.” She said as she stuck her nose in the air and folded her arms across her chest. She then started yelling as she realized something the blonde had said. “HEY! I WAS NOT FLIRTING, I WAS JUST HELPING HIM UP!”
“Don’t yell at your elders, Doe.” Said one of the other girls.
This girl was probably the second oldest. She looked about Aya’s age and was certainly calmer then the other girls. She had silky black hair that went to her waist and her bang were cut perfectly straight and ended at her eyelids. Her blue eyes weren’t like the normal blue eyes; it was a very dark navy blue that matched the color of her sundress. Her dress went past her knees a little, the thin straps that went over her shoulders seemed to lose to hold the dress. She then had light blue sandals that had darker blue bows on the straps. She had a dark blue necklace that was the same as the other girls also; she didn’t have any other jewelry because it didn’t seem like she had her eyes pierced. She seemed to be the one that kept the other girls from fighting all the time. Her eyes were very calm but very scary at the same time.
“Why should I even respect Bunro when I’m more mature than she is, at least I don’t go around hitting on guys everyday.” She said to the black haired girl.
The youngest out of all the girls then stepped forward to speak to Aya, Ken, and Omi.
“I’m very sorry for their behavior, they aren’t like this all the time. It’s just been a rough day at the shop and their really pissed… excuse my language please.” She said after she bowed in respect.
“Oh no it’s okay, it’s like that here sometimes too, so don’t worry.” Omi said.
The youngest was about Omi’s age, maybe even younger. She had the same color brown hair as the other young girl but without the white spots, her hair was in aloes braid that was the same length and the other; but on half of her braid was a bright yellow. Her bangs were the same as the other brunette also. She had a pair of short shorts with yellow cuffs on that were really lose but managed to stay in place as she walked. Her top was a yellow and black hockey jersey with the number ‘12’ in the front and back; the long sleeves were rolled up to her shoulders because of the heat. She also had that same kind of combat boots and fingerless gloves that the other had but her knee socks were yellow. She had that same necklace but yellow also. Her earrings were small yellow ones that matched the yelling brunettes green ones

After a while Omi went over to his computer and started searching something that the others weren’t entirely certain of. A few hours went by fast and Omi was getting a headache… he really wanted to know why they all disappeared when they were 10 (or when Angelica was 9). Ken had fallen asleep on the chair and Yoji was watching television. Aya went to bed a few hours before because he had no nothing else to do.
Once Omi fell asleep Yoji stood up and draped a blanket over Ken and Omi. He just smiled to himself and walked up the stairs. The flower shop was dark but still smelled like all the flowers that were there. He made his way to the door, put his dark-blue leather jacket on and walked out the door.
It was a dark and silent night but Yoji liked those kinds of nights, because it gave him time to think about his place in the world and how he wanted to change it for the better. Yoji walked down to the park and looked over to the garden. He smiled because he could name every flower there, not many people could do that. He suddenly looked around when he heard footsteps coming and there was a girl humming.
He turned around and was a little frightened to find one of the five girls he was supposed to lure to the mission room in two days. It was Bunro Ichigo and she looked as if she was heading to the park also. She had a red sweatshirt on and her hands were folded inside the pocket. Once she reached the park she walked right past Yoji (who was hiding in the shadows of an old Willow tree) with her eyes closed and still humming and sat on the park bench.
Yoji stood still because he didn’t want to trigger her senses. But if she was once an assassin like he was then she probably already knew he was there. He just listened to the tune that she was humming and it reminded it of her older sister that he barley remembered at all. But she was still a killer like himself and he had to be on his toes.
“Ya know… I’m not stupid, I knew you were there all along, Yoji.” Bunro said as she turned her head slightly and opened her eyes.
Yoji stepped out of the shadows and sat on the other side other bench.
“I liked your humming.” Yoji said randomly. “It reminded me of my big sisters songs.”
“She must be a great person.”
“I don’t know… I don’t even know my mother or father… I surprised I even remember my sister. But she always used to sing me songs or hum while I was going to bed… it was nice, but I don’t really know what happened to her or my parents.”
“I know how you feel… ever since my mother and brother went missing, I have searched and searched for them, but I have no leads… I was gone from home for about 3 years and when I came back, they were gone… I suspect my mothers dead because she was horribly sick, and the Welfare probably came for my baby brother… but I cant back my theory up with any kind of clue or anything.” Bunro sighed and looked at the ground.
Yoji felt bad for her, because was also trying to find his family. He thought that the same thoughts were probably running through her head also. Yoji then looked over to Bunro’s glare once he felt her eyes on him. He actually felt a little scared because it was a glare that said ‘I know about you’.
“What?” Yoji managed to get out.
“I know what Manx and the others are trying to do… but it wont work… just stay away from the rest of the girls, they are very special to me, their my family now… we were tired of our old lives so we changed them… so just leave us alone… we never want to see Persia or Manx again. Nothing is going to make us come back again. If one of the other girls gets hurt, I would die… I never want to return back to the life that we all hated… we ran from that past, so just tell Persia to leave us alone.” Bunro said as she stood up and walked the same direction that she came from.
Yoji stood as well and walked back to the flower shop. He was deep in thought about what the blonde said… and he didn’t want anybody to suffer again the life of an assassin. Once he reached the flower shop he noticed that the younger boys were still in the places where they had fallen asleep before he left. He went to his bedroom and lay on his bed.
“I know how you feel, Bunro.” Yoji said as he drifted asleep.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

DaughterSkyVanny
2009-01-04 chapter 1
dude you so need to write another chapter lol! i want to know what happens...i read this at like 1 and had a dreab about it las night lollolol

Fifty Ways To Say I Hate You(r Fanfic)

2009-01-31T16:07:45Z

Four years and three hundred and some-odd sporks into my career - and, on the verge if contemplating a prolonged descent into the dizzy world of the Weiss Kreuz Vampire AU - I find myself wondering what, exactly, is it makes us read bad fanfiction? Are we just that masochistic, or that bored? Or is it because bad fanfiction, when read in the right spirit or the right company - or, in the case of spork journals, when the bad's been dissected and laid bare before us, sparing us from actually having to wade into the morass of stupid ourselves - can be so outrageously, if unintentionally, funny?

Very often, of course, bad fanfic is just samey. But every so often you'll come across one that isn't. One which possesses moments of such utter ineptitude or absurdity that, for a few fleeting moments, they almost become worth reading. Whatever the inverse of 'wit and wisdom' is, these fics possess it. They possess it in spades.

No doubt believing the idiocy that was bad fanfiction was deserving of a wider audience, sevendials - who is clearly not of the opinion that enough is as good as a feast - was inspired to make a series of icons commemorating the very best of the very worst moments that Weiss Kreuz fanfiction has to offer and, as they drew very heavily on these sporkings, suggested that they were cross-posted here. This first series of fifty icons is dedicated solely to truly absurd lines of dialogue or text; further instalments (for there may well be more of these) may well see icons being made to take in some choice phrases from a few of the truly terrible summaries bad fanfiction often boasts.

Though occasional cosmetic alterations have been made to allow them to fit on a 100 x 100 virtual canvas, these are genuine lines from Weiss Kreuz fics which have been reported on here. All errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar are, of course, presented as they were in the published fic.

Report 008	Report 012	Report 021	Report 025	Report 029

Report 029	Report 048	Report 048	Report 053	Report 057

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Report 135	Report 145	Report 159	Report 164	Report 166

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Texture brushes created by hanako_lovely, cdg, colorfilter, ewanism, iconictea, innocent_lexys, lifeisdolce, memora_obscura, offbeat_upbeat, resunik, ohfreckle, snarkybecky, starlit_designs, and the_preamble.

The usual rules as regards sevendials's icon dumps apply: any comments gratefully recieved; no need to comment if you're taking; credit would be appreciated but is not essential. If you find that the text on Report 097's icon moves too fast for your liking, a 95% static version with a single blinking-cursor animation is available here, and a version of the third icon from Report 166 without the submersible Aya can be found here.

ETA of next spork: Monday-ish.

... wait, who the hell is Ran Fujisawa?

2009-01-27T23:14:18Z

Given that it was written in 2001 and gets (among numerous other things) Aya's family name wrong, I have a feeling this ficcer hadn't seen Weiss Kreuz when she wrote this story. It goes some way to explaining the numerous inaccuracies, but it doesn't really explain why it was written at all. Why produce fanfiction for a show you've never seen?

Story Title: The Encounters
Perpetrator: Lady Blackfire
Summary: 'A young Ran Fujisawa meets a crying girl in the park will she change him forever?'

Rating:

Resident Sue: Kate Crawford
Full Species: Puella angstia.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Long blond hair."
Vibrant Orbs: "Blue eyes."
Special Possessions: A super Sue wardrobe in all black - she's so damn Gothy and tragic that even as a little girl she dressed in top to toe black. She has a deeply significant doll in an elaborate wedding dress, which used to belong to her tragically dead mother. Oh, and then she gets given Mini!Aya's toy katana, which is also called Aya, because she cried at him for about fifteen minutes.
Canon Love Interest: Ran Fujisawa, whoever he is. Even though she's Takatori's mistress.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: America, of course, but she's in Japan for the usual no reason and has been since she was a small child. She has an angstily dead mother who died of some poorly-defined Hollywood illness that makes the sufferer romantically pallid and not very ill right up until the point that they snuff it. Of course, for maximum tragic thrill, our Sue-oine has it too, and is just as tragically pallid and not very ill. She meets Aya as a little girl while angsting about how she's lost her doll and her mommy is dead, dead, dead, and Aya immediately pities her for it. The fic claims she is Takatori's mistress but also claims that she hated every minute of it, suggesting he was effectively holding her prisoner and coming round to rape her. This is a definition of 'mistress' that would put even the so-called 'mistresses' in Harlequin romances to shame.
Canon-Raping Connections: Another Sue who claims relation to one B. Crawford. This one thinks she's Crawford's cousin, but I guess Crawford never liked Kate as he doesn't even show up. She becomes Takatori's other mistress (you know, the one canon totally forgot to mention) at the grand old age of seventeen because... I don't know, because she was there perhaps? There seems to be no logical reason why Takatori would want to abuse the innocent little cousin of his scary precognitive bodyguard. She has some very vague past connection to Aya, who she met once as a little girl - this is, of course, supposed to be Epically Significant to them both despite the fact it lasted five minutes and was pointless. Oh, and Schuldig rapes her because that's what he does.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Surprisingly enough, not very much. Well, not apart from the poorly-defined Hollywood wasting disease that makes her not very sick and still allows her to look 'muscular'. She also possesses Epic Self-Pity +4: from the minute she's introduced she's wandering around dressed from top to toe in OMGawthic black, whining and emoing about how much her life sucks. And she barely stops emoing about how awful it is to be her up until the point that Aya mercifully kills her - but sadly her emo is contagious! So Aya immediately picks up the slack.

The Charges:
Hideous cliché non-con fic in which a goddamn Mary Sue shows up, whines a lot about how sucky her life is, gets raped offpage by Schuldig and dies. It might be tragic if only the audience gave a damn: too bad the story fails to provide any real reason why they should do save 'she's there'. Everyone is OOC, there's no plot, and nothing about it makes sense.

The Case for the Prosecution:

The first chapter of this fic isn't exactly punchy. We open in a park, where a larval Sue named Kate whines about a missing doll and her dead mommy until we the readers just want to fill her little mouth with cement. A miniature version of a canon character (it's Aya, of course) shows up and proves to be OOC and stupid. Then the chapter ends. Fast-forward ten years, and Weiss have been given a random mission to kill the same whiny girl, now a fully-grown Sue and even more whiny than she was as a child. The weird thing? Kate hasn't actually done anything unless being related to a Schwarz member and banging Takatori counts. Unless we presume Kritiker know Kate is a Sue and have decided to expand the definition of 'Dark Beast' to include Sues, there is no reason for Weiss to kill her. No problem. No fic.

The first problem with Kate as a character is that she is and always has been a whiny, annoying pain - yet Aya is supposed to remember her fondly. The strange thing is their meeting lasted ten minutes and she spent most of that lying in the dirt noisily bawling her eyes out. Why this encounter stayed with Aya for the rest of his life I have no idea. Little boys, even little boys with sisters they adore, are not this patient with girls pitching tantrums over stupid missing dolls.

The second problem? The whole Takatori's-Mistress thing. Even before we consider that this ficcer thinks that would be enough to mark Kate for death, this is problematic. See, Takatori already has a mistress and she is not a seventeen year old blonde American. Hell, he has a seventeen year old daughter, going to bed with a girl his daugher's age would probably leave him feeling prehistoric. He would most likely look at this girl and compare her to Ouka. Not. Sexy. Even if she were a bit older, though, Kate still wouldn’t exactly be Takatori's type given that both his wife and his mistress were dark, traditionally sophisticated Japanese women, not wangsty dying American minors with self-pity problems. Finally - look, there are bastards and bastards, okay? Takatori is evil, yes, but I don't think that makes him a rapist, kthx.

The third problem? Aya has named his katana after Kate the Sue. This would be disturbing in itself if it weren't for the fact that actually, Aya's katana already has a perfectly good name already. It is named after Shion, the man who actually taught Aya how to use a damn katana, not some random crying girl he met for ten minutes and never saw again.

The final problem with Kate is that she is very poorly-characterized and I have very little sympathy for her. (Almost as little, in fact, as Crawford appears to.) PROTIP: it is really not a good idea to introduce your neat new character by having her show up and cry at people until they do whatever the Hell she wants to shut her whiny ass up. The sad thing is, on further acquaintance Kate gets no better characterized. She's still weepy and annoying and doesn't react to rape or impending death in any way beyond whimpering to herself and occasionally throwing herself down flights of stairs. She barely does anything, in fact, other than sit around crying. Story, it's not enough for this OC to mope about being angsty and demanding the audience's sympathy. I'd find it far easier to pity Kate if I actually had any reason to care about her.

Then there's the small but crucial fact that Weiss don't kill people without being on a mission and - and this is important - there needs to be a reason for that person to have been marked for death. A problem a lot of ficcers have regarding mission targets is failing to explain why the police couldn't handle them: this fic, however, goes one better by having them kill someone who hasn't actually done anything. No, there is utterly no reason for Weiss to be after Kate other than if they weren't the fic wouldn't happen. If all they're doing this for is to 'destroy a tiny bit of Takatori's happiness', that makes them no better than the people they go after. Ficcer, hate to say it but if you want Weiss after your speshul Sue, they at least need a reason to think she's been up to something naughty. No, 'banging the bad guy' doesn't count as naughty.

... once again, FANDOM, look. Aya's childhood was not miserable. He had loving parents, a sister he doted on, a nice home and far more security and stability than Omi and Ken at least. That's largely why he reacted so extremely to losing it all - if his past had been one long roster of angst this would be par for the course. Kate is not the one happy moment in his blighted childhood. Why would comforting a screaming brat by giving her a toy sword be a happy memory anyway?

Youji, in all of one sentence, goes horribly OOC largely in the cause of making Aya look like he's the only one who cares about the Sue and her pain. I'm sorry, I really can't see Youji agreeing to take a mission to kill a defenseless girl, still less buy that he'd then call her a 'whore' and complain the mission was taking too long and cutting into his boozing.

You may be getting the impression by now that this story is rather silly. Well, go with that. Nothing that happens in this fic makes sense... especially not Schuldig. Yeah, I wondered where the Hell he came from too. Schuldig, you see, is randomly in Kate's house when Aya pitches up: you see, he felt the need to beat and rape her because he's a bad man. Once that particular piece of gratuitous nastiness is over, he tells Kate Aya is there to kill her - then explains his entire dastardly plot to Weiss over Aya's radio while holding Aya over a stairwell by the neck. (Weiss respond by not giving a shit.) After Aya has put Kate out of ~~our~~ ~~his~~ her misery, Schuldig sticks his tongue down Aya's throat and runs. Away.

I get the feeling this story could have made sense if it had been about ten times the length and Kate had an actual personality when she wasn't whining and was a target for a good reason. As things stand, though, the fic is just too short. A lot of stuff happens, but that's where it ends: it's just stuff happening which half the cast clearly don't care about. What emotional effect it does have on the characters is so absurdly overblown that it just stops mattering - Kate cries about everything, so why should the readers be so affected by her crying when Aya comes to kill her? There's consequently no emotional impact on the audience whatsoever because none of it really seems to bloody matter.

Exposing the Hideousness:

The doll was missing. She searched high and low, but she could not find the doll. It was an important doll, and she was upset. The doll had been her mother's and now it was gone. Her mother was gone too, maybe that said something about the dolls disappearance. She had no mother, and she had no doll. The little girl ran through the park, calling for her mother, but she knew that no answer would come, for her mother was gone, lying deep in the cold ground.
She tripped and fell, landing at the foot of the slide. Tears slid down her cheeks and she began to wail. Her mother was gone, and so was her doll. Other children came to gather around the small girl in the solemn black dress. They asked what was wrong but she could give no answer, only cry and cry and cry. Finally the younger children, tired, bored and disturbed by her cries, wandered away. The other trickled away, one by one, until there was only one child left.
She continued to cry, paying no attention to the boy whom squatted before her, peering quizzically at her through his mass of red hair. She could not stop the tears they came and came. Her mothers loss, combined with the loss of the doll, making her feel worse and worse.
Ran sighed and continued looking at the girl. She was much younger than he was, closer to his sisters' age. She cried and cried, the tears making her face blotchy. Ran shook his head and sat down on the sand, keeping his body between hers and the slide. She was pretty, like one of the flowers his sister was always presenting him with. She was pale, and hand long blonde hair. She wore black, and her eyes were blue, although they were mostly red and puffy.
He began drawing patterns in the dust, waiting patiently for her to stop crying. But her wails had disturbed several babies, and a few mothers were advancing on them. Ran decided that if he didn't stop her, she would cry for hours.
"I'll let you play with my sword." He offered, and smiled. "Its not real, not yet, but I'm gonna have a real one someday. Then I'll be able to do what I want. And my mom will be proud." She quieted.
"I don't have a momma. She's gone. Like my dolly." She whispered, looking up at Ran. "They put her in the ground. She isn't ever gonna come back. I miss my momma. She gave me my doll. Now they're both gone."
"I'll find your doll for you. And you can have my mom. She's real nice and she smells like flowers." Ran said, standing up. He took her hand, and led her towards the woods on the edge of the park. "Were you over here?" She nodded, and they began to search the trees. They found nothing and moved on to the cherry trees. "What does your doll look like?" He asked, spying a patch of color under one of the trees.
"She's wearing a pretty white dress, and has long black hair. She's a bride." The girl replied, looking around. Ran led her towards the white shape that lay among the cherry blossoms. The girl saw the colored patch, and cried out. "My doll!" She pulled her hand from Rans, and sprinted towards the doll. She picked up her treasure and laughed with joy. Ran slowly followed after her, taking his bokken, his wooden katana from its sheath on his back.

Aya shoved Schuldich away. Then moved towards Kate, who now knelt on the floor, her doll in her hands. He grasped her chin lightly.
"You're dying?" He asked, she nodded. "Will it be painful?" Again she nodded. Aya sighed and felt tears come to his eyes, he had only ever cried for his sister, and now he cried for Kate. "I can.." he stopped, unable to go on for a moment. "I can make it painless." Kate's head whipped up, and she met his eyes. They were both crying, and Aya hugged her, as she nodded into his chest. He felt his katana being laid into his hand. He lowered his head to Kate's and kissed her gently. He thrust his blade into her neck, just where the spinal column met the skull. She shuddered once, and Aya tasted blood on his tongue. He pulled back, and looked into her blue eyes, beginning to cloud with death. He gently removed the blade from her neck, and lay it on the floor.
Aya lay the body on the floor; taking care to pick up the doll and set it gently on the stair, out of the way of any harm that might come to it. This done he turned to Schuldich, who stood casually in the shadowed doorway that Aya himself had once occupied. Schuldich smiled, and flipped the remains of the bokken from hand to hand.
"Is there something you wanted?" Schuldich asked, his smile growing into a smirk. He stepped forward, hands out offering the bokken to Aya. "This perhaps?" He stepped again, and was now in reach of Aya. Aya grabbed Schuldich's wrists and took the pieces from him. "Oh Aya, did I make you mad? Are you upset that you ended her suffering. That you destroyed the childhood memory that kept you sane? Does that bother you? You ended it didn't you?" Schuldich almost purred, stepping closer to Aya. "Do you want to weep? You ended her pain, saved her from Takatori. Saved her from us. Shouldn't you be pleased? You’re the hero now Aya. You’re the hero now.. Ran." He smiled and moved his face closer to Aya's. Aya shoved Schuldich away, his face twisted with pain and revulsion.
"Get out of my sight. Get away from here now." Aya hissed his eyes full of hate. Schuldich laughed. "I said go." Aya hissed, reaching for his katana. Schuldich grabbed Ayas hand, and pulled Aya to him.
"I think I'll take my pleasure in you. You'd love it; I can feel it in your heart in your thoughts. You want it, the pain, the pleasure, the feeling. The release. The gift, the glory. It wouldn't be rape would it Aya. You want it, you need it. I know the way you think." Schuldich whispered, then pulled Aya to his lips.
The first kiss was rough, a fight for dominance, a tumultuous meeting of tongues and bodies. Schuldich moan raggedly into Ayas mouth as the redhead took charge, changing the pace and running his hands down the lanky Germans back. They pulled apart. Aya breathing raggedly, Schuldich smiling.
"I know you. I know all of you now. The thoughts, the dreams, and the wishes. I know you now Ran Fujisawa, and you are just like me." Schuldich said softly, then pulled Aya back to him. This kiss was gentle, soft, the complete lovers gift. It was over quickly and when Ran opened his eyes he saw Schuldichs back as he sprinted though the hall and out the back door of the house.
Ran collasped to the floor empty handed. He had dropped the bokken pieces, and now only one of them was on the floor. The blade was all that remained. He gathered up the blade, the doll, and Kate's lifeless body. He held the doll cradled in one arm, and Kates head lay on his lap. Tears began to fall from his face, and he did not move for several hours. When he did move, it was only to sheath his katana, and stand holding the broken pieces of his childhood, the doll, and the blade. It was only as dawn broke over the city that ran left the house, his remaining remnants of innocence and love shattered irrevocably with the death of the single happy living memory of his childhood. She too had joined the others from his past in the shadows of death.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

SuzakuAngel
2008-10-15 chapter 1
Crawford!? Wow, I'm gonna like this! Ran is so sweet!^-^

SuzakuAngel
2008-10-15 chapter 2
she...she died?? died... NO! PLEASE REVIVE HER! I LOVE AYA/RANxOC pairings! PLEASE! You're my only hope on reviving her!

It's a Wonderful Weiss

2009-01-24T00:58:52Z

This is a truly fantastic idea for an AT fanfic - unfortunately all that potential seems to have been pressed into service as an excuse for the ficcer to basically just rewrite the series, just with tedious wangsting and Aya x Omi slash. It's a series of not very good ideas stapled to a plot that always got by just fine without them.

Story Title: Fate
Perpetrator: LadyA20
Summary: 'Omi never wanted this to be like this. Never wanted to kill his family. Never wanted to watch his friends suffer one by one but it seems he may not be able to help it. So, he gathered his last strength and wished to change the past even if the past might come to hurt him. Yaoi AxO.'

Rating:

The Charges:
Weird and somewhat pointless AT fic that might be interesting if the series hadn't already done all this already, and done it better. The characters are OOC, something of an achievement for an episode rewrite, and none of the action - though nothing much actually seems to have happened yet - really makes sense. The writing style's kind of flat, too.

The Case for the Prosecution:

This fic takes Weiss and, via flange-magic, somehow removes Omi from the equation. This could be a very interesting idea if only for what it implied would have to change about series canon but in this ficcer's hands it quickly becomes more 'WTF?!' than 'wow!'. It doesn't help that this fic's take on what Omi's life would be without Weiss suggests it's just a rather mundane high-school drama with tacked-on weird incidents he really had no right to be present for. Even more irritatingly, Weiss itself functions exactly the same way it does in canon despite the fact they're one man down and that man is their leader. Weiss without Omi is a very different dynamic as team lacks effective leadership. No, fangirls, Aya is not an effective leader figure. I said, AYA IS NOT AN--oh, forget it, you're not listening anyway. Moving on...

The plot: Weiss Redux. Without Omi! It's like that webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield, only we're meant to take it totally seriously. Apparently Omi doesn't want to be an assassin any more, so now he isn't! He lives with the not-dead Takatori family, but everything else is exactly the same and a weird series rewrite commences immediately. No, I don't get it either.

It probably doesn't take a genius to see what the problem with this is. Remove Omi from Weiss, and not only does half the damn plot go with him, what's left of Weiss are constantly failing their Intelligence checks. The more you think about this premise the more problems with the way it plays out here you discover - it simply doesn't make sense to presume the canon scenarios are even workable if Omi's not in Weiss and is, in fact, a Takatori. Take Omi's name. Even before you take into account the bit where Omi's family name is suddenly Tsukino, it just doesn't make sense he'd be called Omi or Tsukiyono. If he knows Reiji Takatori is his father and is still acknowledged by him, why is he not Mamoru Takatori?

Events play out as they did in Episode 1 (that's all there is so far) starting with Omi giving Michiru a flower from a shop he doesn't work at. This gesture made sense in canon: Michiru was a familiar face, Omi was worried about her. Here, she's a stranger whose boyfriend just died and it looks at best odd and at worst tactless. He then tags along to see Weiss with her and Akihiko. Why does she ask him to come? Because canon demands it? If it did, why isn't he in Weiss?

Question. How do you get the characters to go quite this OOC when doing a simple episode rewrite? Needless to say Omi is off - it kind of comes with the territory given how very weird the role he's been asked to play is - but what's rather odder is that Weiss are as well. This is very odd, because Aya, Youji and Ken aren't called upon to do anything different from what they did in canon. Youji and Aya are... well, recognizable, but then there's Ken. The ficcer's decision to interpret Ken's short temper as surliness interspersed with random bursts of absurd bitchosity just doesn't work. Ken, in canon, gets angry with Youji during the Michiru episode because Youji has accused him of messing up a plan he thought was ridiculous anyway. All of which was faked. The 'mix-up' with the note and all the events surrounding it didn't actually happen, it just had to look as if it could have done. She could just have used his canon dialogue!

I'm almost inclined to bet that there are two major reasons why Omi is living with the Takatoris: firstly so that he can be more romantically wooed by Aya, secondly so that he'll already know that Ouka - who, incidentally, is being portrayed as dim and puddle-shallow - is his sister in this, presumably so she won't get in the way of the slash. He also appears to be going to school with her... and with Nagi, who is his bodyguard and likes him. Ouka's bodyguard is Schuldig. WTFuckity?

The fic abounds in research errors and cultural slips. Most of these are minor, but add them all together and they quickly become an annoying barrage of what-the-fuckery that fad me wondering why in the world this ficcer didn't just look this stuff up. Examples? Okay, here goes. The Koneko is not 'newly-opened'; Ouka is comfortably-off, not fabulously wealthy; Michiru attends college, she is not a high schooler; Weiss's heights may have been taken from a canonical source, but said source ignores the very obvious height differences between them - for my money, the best resource on Weiss's heights isn't any of the movie books but this .jpg; and finally, who on earth is Akiko and why is Michiru hanging round with her when she should be busy marking time with Akihiko, the ax crazy Slipknot cosplayer?

For some reason, Omi keeps insisting on being called 'Omi-chan'. It's good that this ficcer understands that '-chan' is an affectionate diminutive: too bad she doesn't realize you don't use it on men if you value your face, and men certainly don't use it on themselves unless they are insane. What's so wrong with calling him 'Omi-kun', anyway? Or even 'Omi'?

I don't understand why the ficcer rewrote Youji, Ken and Aya's lines. They have, so far, done damn near nothing their canon dialogue wouldn't have covered. I know that copying lines from a transcript might feel like cheating, but - look at it this way, it's the same characters doing the same things. As it stands you're acting as if you know something about keeping Weiss IC that Episode One of Kapitel didn't. The ficcer's decision to rewrite, for example, Youji and Ken's 'past met my future' exchange so all the humor and characterization is bleached from it just doesn't make sense to me. There's no attempt to convey personality in the characters' speech; they're too busy infodumping for Japan in a bored monotone.

The general weirdness and wtfery might be forgivable if the fic seemed to be going somewhere we hadn't all been before and better. The major problem with the story is that it's just rather dull and nobody, not even the characters who inhabit it, seems to care that much about any of it. Plenty of events have occurred in a chronological order, but nothing of any real emotional significance seems to take place. This may have something to do with the flat, documentary prose style, in which this happened and that happened and then that happened... and nobody gives a shit. Omi's simply too clever to display this stunning lack of interest in what happens around him - but if even he doesn't care, why should we?

Exposing the Hideousness:

Ken rolled his eyes. “Whatever! Anyway,”-he glanced towards one of the girls by the entrance. “Himiko-chan do you want to order the usual set of flowers for today?”
Himiko shooked her head. “I’m afraid not yet, Ken-kun. I’m still waiting for Michiru. I wanted to cheer her up today so I thought I could bring her here again.”
Ken nodded.
“Oh yeah, how is she by the way.” A girl asked. “It hasn’t been long since her boyfriend got killed in an accident.
“Killed?” Yoji asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes.” Himiko nodded, looking down. “It hasn’t been long since a small car suddenly lost control and flew out of the highway. Unfortunately – she paused hesitating - Michiru’s boyfriend was driving her home at that time…”
A small silence filled the shop. Ken and Yoji looked at each other.
“I see.” Ken replied touching her shoulder sympathetically.
Himiko smiled sadly. “Anyway, she said she was okay now but I wasn-“
“Michiru-chan!” A girl interrupted waving at the entrance in the street where a brown-haired girl in a highschool uniform stood staring at the floor.
“Michiru…” Himiko called looking hesitantly at her friend. Ken just smiled at her as if encouraging her. She breathed deeply before she slowly walked towards her friend.
A hand with a white flower, however, rose interrupting her walk.
“Here!” A voice called surprising them all.
Michiru looked up to find wide blue eyes staring at her with one hand outstretched. In it was a long white flower.
“It’s a carnation.” The boy explained, handing her the flower. “I don’t like them as much as I like freesias but I think this one will suit you better.” He turned, walking towards the counter before stopping.
“Here you go, neko-chan!” He said, placing a couple of yen at the counter.
Aya looked up angry at the name, only to find yen placed on the counter and the boy gone. He stared at the money, finding the exact amount of yen for one carnation.
The girls squealed.
“Sugoi!! Who was that cute chibi?”
“Oh my god! How come, I didn’t notice him before?”
“Michiru-chan? Daijabu? Do you know him?” Ken asked coming up to stand beside the girl.
“Oh!” Michiru voiced out surprised. “He’s Tsukiyono Omi. He usually likes to hang-out across the street in the café though this is the first since the store opened that he went in here. I haven’t met him but he’s really popular in school.”
Ken and Yoji looked at each other.

“Are there here yet, Ken-ken?” asked the newcomer who Michiru identified as another worker from the shop.
Ken snorted. “Not yet Yoji and don’t call me Ken-ken! You know how I dislike that name!”
“Maa Maa. Don’t stand here then and try to scare my future important guests then.” Yoji stated opening the door wider. “You’re blocking the way!”
“Why You-?”
“Ano…” another voice interrupted, making them stop. They all looked up, finding Omi standing not so far away from the porch. “I don’t mean to interrupt but you wouldn’t happen to be the owners of this place, would you?” He pointed to the skies where small flakes of ice started to come down. “I was going to leave but I don’t think the weather would allow me to at this point.”
Ken and Yoji stared at him before quickly ushering the couple inside. Omi followed them as Michiru and others sited themselves around a small fireplace where a red-haired person who Michiru identified as Aya, another worker sat reading a newspaper.
“What’s going on? What are they doing here?” Aya asked, glaring at them.
Yoji shrugged. “Don’t know. The only people I invited here were my girlfriends and so far I haven’t seen hair or hide of them yet.”
“Girlfriends?” Michiru asked confused. “But I—I received a note stating that I should meet…” she trailed off looking at her friend Akiko who remain frowning.
“What?!” Yoji exclaimed surprised. “Don’t tell me you gave my note to the wrong person Ken!” He groaned. “I was hoping I could fix the mess up during my vacation!”
Ken rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I told you I don’t want to be your messenger for your stupidity but you still insisted.” He turned towards Michiru. “Long story short, his two girlfriends found out that he was dating them both and had a row.”
“So you were hoping that they will come and you can talk to them about it is that it?” Omi finished amusement in his eyes. “I’m sorry but I don’t think a mere talk would fix that kind of mistake Yoji-kun.”
Aya narrowed his eyes. “And who are you again?” he asked, crossing his arms. “You seem to act familiar with us (hint: they are Japanese) but I don’t think we’ve even introduced ourselves yet.”
Omi blinked at him innocently. “Oh how impolite of me. I’m sorry if I forgot to introduce myself earlier, Aya. I’m normally isn’t this horrible of a character.” He stated, extending his hand. “You can call me Omi-chan.”
Yoji grinned. “Nice to meet you then Omi-chan!” he caught the extended hand in a handshake ignoring Aya who continue to stare at the blond. “Don’t mind him. I’m afraid he hasn’t been taught manners before either.”
Ken grimaced. “And I suspect you wouldn’t be either because I don’t think you have that long to live to be taught any.” He stated gesturing to the redhead who was now glaring at him.
“Ano---" Michiru started, biting her lip. “Please don’t fight. I’m sorry if I accidentally ruing your vacation. Omi-kun and Akiko-kun were only accompanying me that’s why they are here.”
Akiko nodded before breaking his silence. “She’s right. Speaking of which, I think it’s time for us to go anyway before it gets too dark.”
“I don’t know…” Ken said glancing at the small flakes falling outside the window. “The weather seems to be going in a bad direction. Why don’t you guys stay for a while instead? It’s because of Yoji that you guys are stuck here anyways.”
“Hey! Hey! This isn’t just my doing you know!” Yoji complained. “You were the one who was supposed to deliver the notes anyway.”
Ken sniffed. “Well you are the one who decided to date to women at the same time you know. Naturally, everything is your fault.”

Conclusive Proof (Some) Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

BloodRaevynn
2008-12-03 chapter 3
"You can call me Omi-chan."
Um...the odds of a guy ever saying this to a complete stranger are pretty much nil. For one thing, -chan is rarely used for guys, and even then only girlfriends, family, and _really_ close friends can get away with it; "get away with it" being the operative term; it's cutesy, and therefore somewhat immasculating, so there aren't a lot of guys who would elect to have it applied to them, so for him to suggest it himself like this is... well, it just wouldn't happen.
You misspelled "Tsukiyono" as "Tsukino."
Also in chapter two, it's Daijoubu, not Daijabu.
If you intend to use Japanese in your fics, at the very least look up the words to make sure they're spelled correctly. (Also, this probably goes without saying, but don't ever use a machine translator to translate English into Japanese, the results are always horrific.) If you use phrases, only use ones that you've actually heard before and make sure your terms of address are the ones the character uses. Make a note of which form of "I" each character uses and be sure to stick to that form if you write a japanese phrase that requires it. But really the most important thing you could do if you're going to write japanese into your fics, is get a beta who actually knows enough japanese to be able to tell when you're wrong.

Wonderland
2006-12-15 chapter 2
Great start, though I'm not exactly sure why Omi is still with his family. Does he remember what happened the first time around? If so I would think that he wouldn't like his family. Maybe he would try to do something about his family by his self, or maybe go to his uncle. I think if he wanted to save the others, he would try to change things before Ken, Aya, and Yoji became killers. Must admit AyaxOmi is my favorite pairing of Weiss Kreuz. Update soon.

The Mummy: Tokyo Drift

2009-01-17T22:18:09Z

Within a few paragraphs of this fic beginning, Aya's calling Ken out for failing to use codenames in the field. Why should Ken have started doing that just because he's in a crappy Youji x Aya fanfic ? Hell, why has Aya started caring? Seems it's just because the ficcer says so... still, I guess you can't accuse her of not starting as she means to go on.

Story Title: The Stalk
Perpetrator: AolaniDathomir
Summary: 'Pairing is Youji/Aya, with implied Schu/Aya and Farfie/Aya. Youji and Aya begin to build a relationship after realizing their affection for each other, noyl to have Schuldich snatch Aya away! Can Youji get him back before it's too late?! (one in a series)'

Rating:

The Charges:
Hideously boring lame romance in which Aya and Youji get it together just in time for Aya to get abducted by Schwarz, who are generically evil at him. There is OOC from just about everyone, there's no real plot, there's an unannounced POV shift, fangirl Japanese, random song lyrics, and pastede-on Ken/Omi. It's samey and dull even before the club scene...

The Case for the Prosecution:

... no, I haven't missed reviewing dumb Youji x Aya fanfics in which Aya gets abducted on a mission and the audience are forced to sit through signposted flashbacks explaining how his relationship with Youji began, actually, why do you ask? Because today's fic is one of them? Oh, what joy, how I have longed for yet another take on this paint-by-numbers premise, complete with the usual ludicrously short amount of time it takes Youji and Aya to go from workmates to timeless lovers - in this case, about a week - and tacked-on scenes in which Schuldig perves all over Aya because he wants him all to himself. Fandom, why do we keep writing this crap? How many more fics like this can we need?

Kudos to the ficcer for including a mission in her fic, and one which wasn't about yet another child porn ring at that. This one involves a target testing drugs on the homeless. She loses all the respect she briefly gained, however, for suggesting that the entire mission (and, presumably, the target's nefarious scheme) was some dumb Schwarz-inspired setup to allow Schuldig and Farfarello to abduct Aya while the rest of the team were distracted. This seems to me like a lot of work for Schuldig to put into abducting someone he can reasonably expect to run into on a regular basis and could easily have made a brief detour to get his hands on. Worse, the fic then goes on to suggest Youji, Ken and Omi are so worried about what might have happened to Aya that they let the target get away - either that or he vanishes down a plot hole, as he's never so much as mentioned again. Story, Weiss didn't actually kill this target. What happened to him?

The first problem? Aya and Youji's relationship progresses far too fast. They're opening out to one another within days and exchanging body fluids minutes after declaring love, seemingly more because the ficcer wants it to happen than because it's at all plausible that either could have gotten over their multiplicity of issues relating to intimacy in a week.

The second problem for Youji and Aya's relationship is it seems to spring more from 'but I want it to happen!' fangirl contrivance than as the result of any real enthusiasm, still less actual desire, from the characters in question. There's more chemistry in a dozen lines of Youji bickering with Ken than in all the supposedly deeply heartfelt and passionate exchanges he shares with Aya. It's perhaps rather telling that Aya sounds far more like Ken than himself during their first heart-to-heart. It doesn't feel as if Aya and Youji have any real fondness for one another's company and are simply being thrust together because the ficcer thinks it'd be cool if they were, not because there's any reason for Youji to actually want to waste hours watching Aya practice, then sneak up on said sword-wielding loon and put his arms round him.

It's probably obvious by now that Aya spends much of the fic horrifically OOC. In fact his personality appears to have been made by taking Youji's intimacy issues (yes, fangirls, he has them) and Ken's attitude ~~problem~~, blending on a high setting, then leaving the resulting mess to set in an Aya-shaped mold and serving. Youji isn't so bad, but... look, Asuka, to Youji, is a very painful memory, not something he'd wheel out to allow himself to Bond with Aya over love and its loss.

For a moment I thought I'd run into one of the three Youji x Aya fics that didn't involve Youji and Aya bonding by going clubbing... well, I was wrong as halfway through the fic they do just that. Once again, this seems to happen more because the ficcer wants to doll Aya up in leather and bondage collars and top-sekrit nipple rings than because he might actually want to go clubbing now or ever. As if that wasn't bad enough, she then casts Youji in the role of easily startled ingénue to Aya's accomplished seducer by having them go to a gay club which Aya is of course totally at home in. Youji is deeply uncomfortable for about five seconds, then forgets all his anxiety in the face of getting hot and bothered at the sight of Aya Fujimiya, Dancing Queen. You know, I've read this fanfic before. And so have you. And so has everyone.

The Schwarz scenes - which largely serve as a framing device for the far-more-lengthy Youji x Aya relationship flashbacks - are deeply clichéd and largely devoid of menace. (I'm sorry, but Schuldig calling a grown man 'kitten'? Not scary.) Not only have I seen this sort of thing done a lot better before, I've also seen it done a lot worse. These? They're just dull. They're also a bit of a copout in that they're supposed to be creepy and dangerous and sinister and violent, and yet nothing ever happens on-page. Not showing exactly what a character is going theough can be a perfectly good way to write violence - but only if you don't leave your readers with the impression that nothing is actually happening to them. This is unfortunately rather the feeling I got from Aya's 'torture' right up until the point Farfarello showed up alone - and, again, we don't actually get to see anything but the OOC aftermath in which Nagi bandages Aya's wounds.

Speaking of Nagi, can we as a fandom please get over the idea that he is somehow sweetly innocent because he's a cute little teenager? Yes, he looks adorable, but the boy is the most dangerous member of Schwarz - and he's utterly misanthropic. Nagi hates everyone who isn't a teammate, and will only make an exception for sweet blue-haired girls with stuffed bunnies. He is not going to give a shit about Aya's plight, still less burst into tears over his bloodied form.

And, speaking of Aya's bloodied form... look, if he's critically ill, so much so he's comatose and living off machines, he is not going to be able to do that in Youji's bedroom with a medical team showing up WEEKLY to check he hasn't snuffed it yet. He needs an ITU bed, not his Twu Wub on a cot. Also, something made of skin, bones and bandages is a Mummy.

Then, just when you think you've got a handle on the horrid, there's a sudden screeching perspective-shift in the last - well, segment, I guess you'd call it. The fic is in the third person most of the way through, with the most jarring stylistic error being the flashbacks, all of which are conveniently labeled [FLASHBACK] - and, when they finish, we get another tag to explain that we are now in the [PRESENT]. Both the convenient labels and the random ~song lyrics~ (most of which aren't differentiated from body text in any more meaningful way than ~that~, which doesn't help much) pale into nothingness after the sudden switch to the first-person perspective of a desperately OOC Youji, who seems to have precisely nothing on his mind apart from Aya. Once again, fandom, perspective-shifts are hard to pull off; the first person is perhaps even harder, as the ficcer has to convince their readers that the characters not only act like that and talk like that, but think like that. This character, quite simply, does not think like Youji. You're not even surprised, are you?

Exposing the Hideousness:

"A gay club?! Aya, what the hell are we doing at a gay club?!?"
Aya simply smiled and didn't answer before disappearing into the crowd of strangers. Youji sighed and decided to go to the bar and drink; maybe he would loosen up enough to be comfortable in this environment. He chuckled as he ordered rum, seating himself on a barstool. Kudou Youji, everyone's desire, ladies man extraordinare was sitting at a barstool, drinking a rum in a gay bar. The guys would have a real laugh over this one, seeing his usual cool form so tense as he tried to radiate 'stay the hell away from me' to anyone who got close. Not that he was completely straight. He'd had his share of trysts with men and had very much enjoyed Aya's kiss, but he had never considered himself gay or even really bisexual. The men he had previous relationships with had always been prettier than he was, seeming like girls minus breasts and plus a little more equipment. He hadn't ever considered Aya as being gay...or even consdiered Aya's sexual preference at all. in all respects, Youji had thought the man to be asexual, never seeing a girlfriend or boyfriend hanging around or calling Aya up for a date.
Youji's eyes turned to the dance floor and settled on Aya who was dancing with another man, hips swaying suggestively. The man put a hand on Aya's hip and pulled him closer, until they were grinding into each other. Aya's arms were above his head, and his face showed signs of ecstasy as the man lowered his mouth into the crook between Aya's neck and shoulder blade. Youji gasped as the man sucked lightly on the skin, and Aya threw his head back in a gesture of pleasure. Youji had to be careful not to drop his drink as he watched the erotic sight...suddenly his pants were growing uncomfortably tight. He downed the drink and decided to do a little mingling of his own. Keeping an eye on Aya, he found a man who was quite pleasing to the eye and led him onto the dance floor, hips moving in a lazy sway in time with the music. Aya watched Youji from across the dance floor, and was shocked when his partner threw a leg around his dance partner's waist, pulling him even closer as he moved his hips against the other man's. The song ended abruptly, and Youji separated from the man with a flirtatious grin, and then he made his way toward Aya, who was now alone.
"May I have this dance?"
"Depends if you can keep up, pretty boy," Aya said smiling as the techno beat started in the darkness.
Youji was practically drooling as he watched Aya's movements, and reminded himself to find out later if Aya was always this way around strangers. It hurt Youji to think that he couldn't be this open around his makeshift family, but Youji thought maybe dancing with him like this could have a positive response later. Youji fell into Aya's rhythm and moved closer, lips almost brushing Aya's. He slid his hand under Aya's shirt and up his side, circling one of his nipple rings slowly. Aya groaned a little, but never broke eye contact with Youji. His electric stare was sending chills down Youji's spine, and Youji was starting to feel something utterly strange for the red head. He'd had the same nagging feeling that night in the training room, but now it was stronger, and much more demanding. When Youji found Aya's lips, he kissed them hard, surely bruising the tender flesh. He groaned as Aya's tongue snaked out to meet his lips, and Youji opened his mouth, welcoming the intrusion. The song had stopped, but Aya and Youji had barely noticed, still very much involved in their kiss.
When they broke apart, Aya was panting, and Youji had a hungry lust in his eyes. They walked over to the bar and ordered drinks, electing to take a breather. When the drinks came and Youji had downed his second drink and ordered a third, he focused on Aya, trying to formulate a conversation.
"So, are you always this laid back when you're away from us?"
"When the mood strikes me. I have nothing to hide from strangers, Youji. They can't get close to me within a few hours."
"So ka. So you just distance the ones who love you? You remain a cold ice block because we may end up caring at the end of the night?"
"Youji, you should understand. You lost Asuka. Why do you want people to get close to you? Attachment only makes you weaker."
"People need attachments, Aya. It's not good to be alone all the time."
"Says who? I love my sister, Youji, and in one second, she was gone. Removed from life so fast, I didn't even have time to mourn. I'm trying to find the faith to believe she'll be okay, but I'm not sure she'll ever wake up. You want me to give my heart to someone just to have it be torn in half when something happens to them? Love makes you weak, Youji; it makes you care about more than yourself."

Aya Fujimiya had broken...finally. Schu could hear him screaming in his mind and crying, and though the German was sure it was only mental, that was better then nothing. He wondered what had set the kitten off, or whether the mental images Schu had been feeding him of torturing him and his teammates had finally sunken in. He wanted to get back to his toy before the pain stopped, wanted to see the man breaking with his eyes. Damn Crawford for sending him on some random errand and monopolizing his time all day. He hurried home, hands in his pockets as he strolled leisurely but briskly. He laughed as he heard the kitten sobbing, crying out for his lover.
Youji...Jesus Christ, Youji, help me! He's hurting me, Youji!
Then the next thing Aya screamed made Schu stop dead in his tracks, and his blood ran cold.
Schuldich! God, where are you?! Nagi? Anyone, help!! Schuldich!!
What could be happening to the kitten to make him call for him for help? If Crawford had done anything to his kitten, he was going to be terribly pissed off. He had made it perfectly clear to Crawford he intended to keep the kitten, and was not ready to dispose of him yet. Then Schuldich picked up the brain waves he definitely didn't want to at the moment.
Make God suffer. Angels cry when pretty things bleed. So pretty, so red. Angels cry...
Schuldich's strangled cry barely escaped his throat as he picked up the broken brain waves of the sadistic Irishman. He broke into a run, hoping he could get there before whatever Farfello was doing damaged the kitten horribly or worse.
Fuck. What the hell is he doing with my kitten alone? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
/Nagi. Nagi, where the fuck are you?!/
/What do you want, Schuldich?/ Nagi answered sounding very tired.
/Farfello is doing god knows what. He's alone with Aya, and I'm still a block away. Go see what the hell he's doing before we have a dead kitten on our hands./ Surprisingly enough, Schu was able to sound much calmer mentally than he actually was.
/Me, alone with Farfello? You've got to be kidding./ But Nagi had already risen from the computer and was walking toward Aya's room, worried for the Weiss.
/Then get Crawford. The stupid prick shouldn't have left Farfello unattended./
/I'm going./
But Schu was almost there now, to the abandoned building they'd secured as a make shift base, away from Reiji. He opened the door and ran inside, finding the door to Aya's room ajar, meaning Nagi had already gone in.
Good, Nagi's already stopped it then. I'll kill that damned Berserker if he's soiled my kitten. I swear to...holy fuck!
Farfello was leaning against the far wall, blood running from one corner of his lip. Nagi had apparently thrown him when he had entered the room, and now Nagi knelt before Aya, brows knitted in extreme concern for the Weiss. There was blood everywhere, and obviously none of it belonged to Farfello. Nagi appeared to be crying as he knelt down, bandages in his hand he'd obviously gotten using his telekinesis. He was trying to bandage the worst of the wounds on Aya's pale body. He'd been stripped naked and there were cuts everywhere. He really needed to be cleaned up so they could find the cuts, but it appeared time was of the utmost importance of Aya was to live.
Dammit, I'm going to kill him.
~@~

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

Reviewed By: tmelange On: July 30, 2003 10:39 CDT
Comment/Review:
Great story! Look forward to more!

Reviewed By: nekojita_chan [MediaMiner Member] On: July 30, 2003 09:01 CDT
Comment/Review:
I'm looking forward to see where you take this series.

Who Wants To Catch An STD?

2009-01-12T00:58:49Z

If only Weiss and Schwarz knew what having their sights set on the same two people meant, fangirl? I think they already know they're stuck in a horrible Mary Sue fic marking time with two vile excuses for actual human women whose shitty, speshuler-than-thou behavior they're supposed to totally ignore because the women in question are hot, thank you...

Story Title: Second Stringers
Perpetrator: Jepardy
Summary: 'Kritiker and Esstet are rebuilding for a final showdown. And they both have their eyes set on the same two people. If only they knew what that meant…'

Rating:

Resident Sue Mark I: Kytee Himura, AKA 'Sünde' (Codename: Jepardy. There's this whole conversation in the fic about how the codename gives you no clue about her 'can answer any question correctly' powers... well, not unless you've heard of the game show Jeopardy!, anyway.)
Full Species: Mulier bitchia fivedollarwhorrica.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Her hair, in the picture he held appeared to be nearly black, now shone with natural color as the flashing lights reflected off it. It was purple. The darkest shade of which could be imagined. It was long and fell well over her back and beyond." Because that's really practical for a hooker/assassin/psychic/suebitch. Later on she ties it back "in several small ponytail like clumps, swinging with curls."
Vibrant Orbs: "She peered up at Schuldich through half lidded eyes. Eyes that shown a magnificent violet. Dark and hard, yet willing to be so much more."
Special Possessions: The usual lovingly-described barely-there Hooker!Sue wardrobe that brings the narrative to a screeching halt on several occasions as everyone marvels over every single thing she has on (or, more likely, largely doesn't) and how wonderful and sexy and totally not trashy at all it looks on her, the 'most perfect tan ever' though she still looks dramatically Mary Sue pallid later, perfume that smells like cherry kool-aid.
Canon Love Interest: Half the male cast are drooling all over her, but I'm guessing Aya Fujimiya.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: Her nationality is a closely-guarded secret for some non-reason, leaving me to believe that she's American and the ficcer just won't admit it. They're always American. She's a former Esset agent and one-time Schwarz member who's been working as a Tokyo hooker for the last ho-hum years and has a pasted-on drug addiction the ficcer forgets all about the minute she takes up with Schwarz. That aside, she spends most of Chapter Four going on about how awesome and significant she is to both Kritiker and Esset, both of whom she screwed over royally but neither of whom are prepared to kill her because she's just that speshul and awesome and significant: apparently she was sent to infiltrate Kritiker by Esset and did so leaving a trail of dead agents behind her everywhere she went, but then decided one day she'd randomly had enough and quit both teams for no good reason in favor of becoming a bargain-basement whore.
Canon-Raping Connections: Apart from the bit where she pitches up and is a horrible bitch to the entire regular cast just because she can be without anyone calling her on it? She's a Schwarz member who was sent to infiltrate Kritiker, which she made an OMG-Amazing success of despite the fact the organization trusted her no further than they could throw her. Bonded with Aya when they were both in Crashers, which the Sue seems to think is a lethal team. It isn't. It takes Weiss three attempts to abduct her: needless to say Aya is the one who predictably succeeds where Youji and Ken failed ignominiously for not being cool enough. Ken is drooling all over her in a ridiculously OOC manner because she's a Sue and needs someone to repeatedly spurn and insult for daring to think he could ever be worthy of her, and Youji's out for this fic; Aya jumps into bed with her despite being Spoken For. Prior to the pastede-on Sue sex she expositions for a bit about how she's too cool to work for Weiss then just ups and leaves with no difficulty at all to take up with Schwarz again and torment Schuldig (who is supposedly gay but wants her anyway) with her sexiness, without anyone giving a shit this untrustworthy bitch now knows everything about Weiss and where to find them. Calls Crawford 'Braddikins' with no comeback whatsoever.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: The usual bestest-of-the-best-at-everything-ever crap which doesn't really sit with the idea of her being a substitute agent. She has a speshul power which allows her to magically know 'the answer to any and every question that ever has, or might be asked. It is a tremendous gift, yet at times it makes her quite unstable'. Despite making her an absolute cert on game shows this power has very little practical application in combat: how fortunate for her she's a fantastic bare-hand fighter, an amazing swordswoman and brilliant at marksmanship too! She's so amazing at languages that she speaks better Russian than a native speaker would (she speaks Japanese, English and German utterly perfectly, too). Oh, and she spends a few weeks being repeatedly tormented by Esset just to prove that she can 'take down three Esstet trainers, piss off Crawford at every given chance, AND stay alive' because she's just that cool and awesome. She can somehow be 'trained to be Japanese' to the extent she can fool the native-born Nagi into believing she's Japanese (lolwut?) and' is also immune to Tinkerbell's powers because she's a speshul Sue.

Resident Sue Mark II: Dasha Ekaterina (Codename: Tinkerbell).
Full Species: Puella superfluita bitchia.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Her bright green hair bobbed out in a long ponytail."
Vibrant Orbs: "Darkened eyes."
Special Possessions: She also has a Sue wardrobe, much of which she stole from the closets of various Schwarz members, that keeps bringing what there is of the plotline to a shrieking halt so it can be lovingly described. A timeshare in Fanon!Farfarello's yes-you-guessed-it-blender.
Canon Love Interest: Farfarello.

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: Russia, apparently. She's another cute teenage Esset agent and Sünde's BFF who was supposed to be a member of Schwarz, but was cut from the team years previously for being too unstable. Esset now want her back because she's a Sue. Schwarz - who have to be reminded who she is although they worked with her - ditched Tinkerbell in Germany five years ago and by God I wish she'd stayed there or got run over by a car or something. Apparently this wasn't enough for her to get the hint that they thought she was unbearable so now she's magically back in Japan to annoy the fuck out of all of them (except Farfarello who wubs her twuly) some more.
Canon-Raping Connections: Joins Schwarz in the first chapter and spends the rest of the fic being a hyperactive, violent bitch because she can be. Hangs aroun d in the background being self-consciously kooky and marveling over Sünde and her awesome for most of the fic. When she finally decides to do something that isn't just fawn all over her far more awesome Sue friend, it's 'beat up on Nagi for daring to call her by something other than her IDIOT CODENAME, then shriek at Crawford for daring to interrupt her in the middle of trying to cut Nagi's throat'. She also insists on calling Crawford 'Braddikins' without suffering any real comebacks for her insolent behavior, which is perhaps a shade hypocritical of her given her ridiculous overreaction to being called by a name she dislikes...
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Being the secondary Sue, she possesses nowhere near the same levels of absurd and gratuitous SPESHUL that Sünde does - it's some measure of quite how excessive Sünde's speshul is that Tinkerbell is still absurdly overpowered. Her speshul power is 'soul draining' - she can read and absorb a person's entire 'soul', becoming a part of them for a while, which allows her to establish a link with them which will allow her to trace them from absolutely anywhere (this is apparently the down side!) and that's not overpowered at all. Naturally, Schuldig can't read her mind because she has massively potent shielding abilities far in excess of anything Crawford could manage. Oh, and she's also immune to Sünde's power because she's a Sue.

The Charges:
A goddamn Mary Sue and her BFF, both of whom are unbearable on first appearance and get worse. The nonsensical plot is Sue-serving to a fault and largely exists to showcase how cool and awesome the Sues are at the expense of the deeply OOC regulars. Crawford and Ken get character-bashed and there is painfully inaccurate fangirl Japanese.

The Case for the Prosecution:

I'm getting extremely tired of fics featuring utterly vile Sues who believe they deserve 'respect' for being beautiful and super-speshul while showing absolutely none to anybody else. Unfortunately, this side of gangsta rap videos respect is something you give to get, not something that's doled out on a plate for being superficially awesome. This fic rolls out the tired old 'so there's this girl and she's cool' standard - and that's pretty much the sum total of the plot - but fails to give any reason for the regulars to tolerate the newcomer's company for any reason other than the bit where she's beautiful and super-speshul. Both the Sues in this story are horrible human beings, and if they weren't beautiful and super-speshul the regulars wouldn't keep them around. Even knowing they are, it still doesn’t explain why they put up with their shit.

The regulars spend most of the fic distressingly OOC. All the members of Weiss and Schwarz have been character-raped into the usual bad fanon versions of themselves - well, except Manx, who's really only there to feed Sünde dialoge so the Sue can exposition about her awesome, and Ken who's been character-raped into fanon!Youji, just stupider.

The ficcer couldn't make her contempt for Ken and Crawford any more obvious if she'd decided not to bother with the fanfic and instead written 'Crawford and Ken are lame and suck and are really lame' five hundred times. Crawford's sole purpose in the story is to be reduced to idiot comic relief and from there be repeatedly and unconvincingly pwned by the Sues to prove how much cooler they are than him; Ken to be character-bashed for not being cool and sexy enough to get into a trendy rave club even with the help of Aya's Porsche, still less catch gonorrhea from the breathtakingly skanky Sünde who, despite repeated insults and spurning, he still has to literally drool all over every time he lays eyes on her.

The fic's plot just... doesn't make a lot of sense. There are these girls and they're cool? What I do know is it's post-Kapitel but everything is the same as it was in the series, save for the fact Esset are searching for their old agents in the wake of the disaster at the museum. That idea makes sense until it becomes obvious it's a lame excuse to shoehorn in the Sues and precisely nobody else. Later on, Sünde - the main and most obnoxious Sue - wastes an entire chapter on an illogical infodump, half of which is about how awesome she is while the other half rapes canon sideways with a bargepole. In this fic's little world, Kritiker and Esset are supposed to both be about 30 years old and started off as twin branches of the same organization which then seceded from one another. This plot 'twist' utterly ignores two plainly-stated canon facts: Kritiker is Shuichi Takatori's brainchild and Esset has been around for fifty years at the very least.

Back to Sünde and her skankiness - and need I mention how absurd it is that this half-dressed junkie hooker is held up as the epitome of female beauty and desirability? - she drapes herself over, then climbs into bed with, Aya within hours of meeting up with him again, even though Aya is already in a relationship with Youji. Youji, predictably, acts like a jealous female cliché around Sünde because she's trying to 'steal' Aya. Such a shame this is all he is allowed to hate her for...

The plot revolves around the Sues and their awesome to the extent it becomes nonsensical. Everything that happens in this story, as in so many other Suefics, is a blatant attempt to warp the plot of Weiss Kreuz to the point it becomes The Sünde Show (Guest starring her BFF Tinkerbell, oh and Weiss and Schwarz are here too). This becomes even more ridiculous when one considers that Sünde and Tinkerbell aren't even pleasant to read about. They're a pair of infuriating bitches who harangue, belittle and abuse all their teammates save the one guy they want to bang - in Sünde's case this works out to seven out of eight regulars - yet Weiss and Schwarz still treat them like they're wonderful and perfect.

Of course, they're not. Both the Sues in this fic are bratty, entitled, self-aggrandizing, hypocritical bitches the regular characters wouldn't by rights give the time of day to, still less drool all over. Sünde and Tinkerbell are absolute shits of human beings who assume it's utterly beneath them to treat the canon cast with any degree of civility and yet still expect to be virtually worshipped. Ficcer: please grow up. Your characters presume being bitchy brats who won't listen or take advice makes them seem cool and rebellious when it makes them look like infuriating children who have no right to be let anywhere near a functioning black-ops team. An unprofessional assassin is a dead one, and not listening to commands? Is unprofessional. These girls should be DEAD, not held up as the be-all and end-all of field agents they clearly are not.

The fic is extremely heavy on the fangirl Japanese: it's inaccurate fangirl Japanese, too, unless I am to presume the Sues are too speshul to use the word 'God'. Fangirl, the phrase 'Shinigami damned morning'? It just sounds weird. Look, Kami means 'God'; the most accurate English equivalent to Shinigami is 'Grim Reaper'. Nobody says 'Grim reaper damn it'!

The fic abounds in a series of painfully bad formatting errors - some speech marks and sometimes even apostrophes, for example, haven't uploaded correctly, leaving dialogue in several chapters denoted â€œthuslyâ€. This is Hell to read. Worse, chapter five failed to upload altogether, leaving a blank page. All of which could have been avoided if the ficcer checked her after uploading instead of nodding, smiling and leaving it to rot, but I guess that was too like hard work...

Finally and most worryingly, Sünde is an obvious author avatar. 'Sünde', you see, is not the codename this Sue was known by in Schwarz: her Schwarz codename was in fact 'Jepardy'. You know, like the author's pen name. Considering what a self-centered intolerant brat Sünde is, this makes me worried about the kind of person her author would like to be as, nine times out of ten, holding names in common means the author either overidentifies with her character to the extent any criticism of the character becomes a personal slight, or literally wants to be her character. Ficcer, if Sünde isn't supposed to be, on some level, you, why call both yourself and her 'Jepardy'? I presume there was a good reason, right?

Exposing the Hideousness:

Ken sighed lightly as he leaned against his borrowed Porsche. His eyes were scanning the crowd of people who were constantly flowing in and out of the club. Well, it was more of an abandoned building with flashing lights than a club. And filled to the brim with people looking to disappear, to forget, to remember, or who knows what else. He had tried to go in to that swirling mass of people, twice. He couldnâ€™t make it past the bouncer. He looked like the typical nark. Or better yet, a rich kid wanting to have fun with no idea of what they were getting into. He certainly was not your average clubber, much less someone to frequent the best rave in all of Tokyo.
Finally, she came out and it was a good thing for him, too. He hadn't really wanted to go back and tell everyone he'd failed simply because he wasn't 'cool' enough to get in. Manx had been right when she first looked at Yohji for this mission, he would have already been back with her by now. 'Oh well, I'm in charge now,' Ken thought to himself. 'If I could only figure out how to pick her up without making an ass of myself.' He watched as she walked slowly over to a nearby light post with, 'oh god willing let it be a cigarette and not what I think it really is', lit up between her lips. She took a few drags and handed it off to a guy who came up from behind her, still swaying to the pounding thud of the music from the building behind them. She received a kiss, well, kiss was a loose term for it, but that was all Ken could come up with. It was more like having sex with only their mouths he finally decided, and somehow the girl also managed to steal the guyâ€™s wallet.
As Ken watched her, he noticed that she looked different than Manx had made her out to be. She didnâ€™t look as worked over by the world as one in her place might be. Her black pants hung low on her slender hips, the pale blue shirt she wore rode high and was cut low. Its sleeves were merely wisps of silk that billowed out into the night. Her hair, in the picture he held appeared to be nearly black, now shone with natural color as the flashing lights reflected off it. It was purple. The darkest shade of which could be imagined. It was long and fell well over her back and beyond. She didnâ€™t have â€œwhoreâ€ tattooed on her as many of the girls, and guys, that had been passing by Ken did, but there was no mistaking it, she was a trick.
'Now or never,' Ken figured as he started over to her, stopping to toss his wallet in the back of the car first. He didnâ€™t have much in there, but keeping it was something heâ€™d like to do. hadnâ€™t made it two steps when she was right there beside him. She stood shorter than him, and her eyes looked him over as if he were a piece of meat.
â€œForget it kid,â€ she said with a causal flick of her hair as she turned around.
â€œHey, wait a minute!â€ He called to her departing figure. 'What the hell just happened?'
â€œI ainâ€™t for you kid. Though I do like the car. To bad itâ€™s not yours,â€ she said giving him a quick look over her shoulder and a half smile. This kid was cute, it was a shame, she would have liked to have some fun with him, but what he had in mind wasnâ€™t her idea of fun.
â€œI didnâ€™t even say a thing!â€ Ken shouted out of confusion. 'I have been waiting here for two, nearly three hours and Iâ€™m not even going to be able to bring in the target, a stupid piece of street trash. This is not good.'
â€œYou didnâ€™t have to, you smell of it, or actually you donâ€™t which is the problem. Youâ€™re too clean, for this, and for me, go home kid.â€ And with that she vanished from the crowed sidewalk and back inside. The night was far from young, yet also far from being over. She had time, and thanks to an anonymous wallet, money enough to make it last a little longer.
Ken stared after her for a little while longer. 'This is horrible, two plus hours down and nothing.' Maybe if he went back home with his tail between his legs now, Yohji might have a chance at grabbing her yet tonight. He hoped anyway. They, WeiÃŸ, had never failed in a mission yet, and this was just too simple to let it be their first.

Ken slowly walked in and set the keys down in the waiting palm of their true owner. Aya didnâ€™t even ask his normal 'humph' which was generally interpreted as, â€˜Howâ€™d the mission go?â€™. Then Ken sheepishly looked around. No one was glaring at him, or ready to yell from the look of it. They all just looked like theyâ€™d been waiting for this, for him to come home, alone. â€˜Wow, a lot of faith they have in me,â€™ he thought bitterly. Yohji stood up and stretched. The belly shirt he was wearing slid even farther up his perfectly formed abdomen and the light glanced off his golden tan skin. The leather of his pants was so tight, Ken was surprised that Yohji could breathe. His arms were bare underneath the sleeveless shirt, and it was still warm out, so he wouldnâ€™t need a jacket. He strode off to the door, passing Ken without a word.
â€œBe quick Yohji, this will be the last shot we have,â€ Manx finally spoke from the couch she was sitting on, breaking the deafening silence that Ken felt.
â€œQuick? Manx, my dear, I pride myself on my stamina, maybe someday you can find out first hand even,â€ he told the red haired â€˜secretaryâ€™ as he walked out and to his waiting Super Seven.
â€œWatch it.â€ Came the cold warning about his lame pick up line thrown at Manx, but it didnâ€™t come from her, it came from Aya. The man he fancied as his boyfriend. Yohji just flashed his famous smile and left.
â€œSo, you all just planed on me failing, huh? Sure know how to make a guy feel special,â€ Ken grumbled as he flopped down on the floor with his back to the arm of the chair Omi was in.
â€œOh, itâ€™s not like that at all Ken-ken.â€ Omi peered down at him, and gave him a reassuring pat to the head. â€œManx just thought it would be nice to be ready to move right away in the slight chance you wouldnâ€™t make it. Thatâ€™s all.â€ His genki voice doing its best to cheer him up.
A grumpy â€˜humphâ€™ was all the former soccer player could mange to come back with.

â€œWhat the hell is this all about anyway Braddykins you fucking asshole?â€ Tink spat at the man, with a maddeningly evil grin on her face though, as he walked in to join them in the mission prep room. Them consisted of herself, Schuldich, and Farfarello. Nagi had disappeared somewhere, probably to change his clothes, she really didnâ€™t care, she didnâ€™t like that kid now. At her words Schuâ€™s eyes jumped four sizes larger. Braddykins! And he thought Braddy was bad. But the man before him seemed to have a lot less temperament and restraint with this nickname then he did with SÃ¼nde. One thing that he was leaning quickly though was that these girls were something else all right.
â€œI have a mission for you.â€ He said simply. He was getting a hell of a lot of hostility from Tinkerbell, and he just couldnâ€™t figure it out. He had worked with her around the same time as SÃ¼nde, and he thought they had parted on fairly normal terms. Sure he had dumped her off in the streets of Berlin, but she had come off of those streets, it didnâ€™t seem to bother her too much at the time. But he was getting the distant impression he needed to watch his step around her or by maimed in as many ways possible as she could come up with. He couldnâ€™t help but wonder why.
â€œDoes it involve me?â€ Schu asked lazily. He had other things to do, places to be, men to flirt with.
â€œNo, you may go.â€ As Schu walked by, he was very tempted to grab Crawfordâ€™s ass, but he had grown to like having his wrist in one piece, not three, so he decided against it.
â€œCan I hurt god?â€ the white haired Irish lunatic asked. Crawford sighed. He really didnâ€™t like the idea of sending these too out together, but he needed, Esstet needed, that damned Chinese ambassador dead. He had gotten to close to what had gone on around the time of Takatoriâ€™s death, and they didnâ€™t need him poking his nose around now. The quickest way would be for both of them to go and finish him off.
â€œAnswer the fucking question Braddykins?â€ Tink purred at him, pulling out a knife and flashing it in the light to occupy herself, when he took too long to answer the question. Crawfordâ€™s eyes roared at the sound of his name.
â€œDo not call me that. That is not my name.â€
â€œClose enough.â€ She said pointing the knife at him in a very unfriendly manner.
â€œNo. If you want your right to be called Tinkerbell respected, please only refer to me as Crawford.â€ His voice was steaming with anger despite the kindness the words by them selves seemed to have.
â€œBut thatâ€™s two separate things Braddy.â€ Came a voice from near the door. Tink barley looked over in that direction before continuing.
â€œDamn straight it is Braddykinâ€¦â€¦JEPARDY!!!!âS 64; she started talking to Crawford again before she realized that it was SÃ¼nde in the doorway. Once she did connect the two though all thoughts of what she had been doing slipped out of her mind. She tore across the few feet of space and threw herself at the shorter girl, hugging her tightly. SÃ¼nde winced slightly, and drew a quick breath. Most people wouldnâ€™t have noticed, if they did, they wouldnâ€™t have thought it anything other then the force of the hug. Tinkerbell knew better. She instantly dropped back and off of her friend. And then she also noticed the bandaged wrist.
â€œWhat happened?â€ her voice held a serious tone that a person would not have expected to come out of the bouncing green haired girl. SÃ¼nde just met her look, and lightly shrugged.
â€œWelcome home party.â€ She said simply. She wasnâ€™t much for talking. Never had been, never would be. Tinkerbell just backed up from her and shot Crawford a death ray of a look that would have made anyone else â€˜eepâ€™ out of fear. He simply glared back at her, and somewhere in the back of his mind wondered again just where in the hell that hostility came from. Pissy, yes, mad, yes, annoying by calling him â€˜Braddykinsâ€™, oh god yes, but LITERALLY trying to kill him, no, she had never been that pissed at him even at the height of her full force Farfarello â€˜soul drainâ€™. And now anything and everything was making her ready to kill him. This was going to be a LONG mission, fuck that, they were back to stay this was just going to be long in general.
As Crawford stood off scowling and thinking about the twist of fate that had screwed him over so badly, Farfarello stood by and smiled around the blade of the knife that was in his mouth. It was nice to see those two together again. He knew that they had been friends from far back, and if the sinner and the lunatic were together again then there was no way god was happy. No, if they were near each other again, then god would be stomping mad. He liked that idea.
â€œSÃ¼nde, what pupos..â€ Crawford tried to ask, after his thoughts regained focus again, but he was promptly cut off by Tinkerbell.
â€œSÃ¼nde? Thatâ€™s the name youâ€™re going by now. Well, thatâ€™s new, but totally sugee.â€ Tinkerbell was happily chatting to, not with because she wasnâ€™t responding, SÃ¼nde. â€œIâ€™m still only calling you Jepardy though, no sense messing with a good thing right?â€
â€œTINKERBELL! Shut up.â€ Crawford snapped at the girl. He was rewarded with silence, and a double cold glare, one from each girl.
â€œSÃ¼nde, what purpose do you have here?â€ He said, trying to ignore both of them, yet still scold them both with his tone. It didnâ€™t really work, but he was trying. SÃ¼nde shot him and even colder glare, Tink laughed. Laughed so hard in fact that she fell to the floor in tears. SÃ¼nde shot her a glare too, but it didnâ€™t have the same coldness in it that she gave to Crawford. Crawford was literally shaking with anger and hatred for the two standing in front of him. Farfarello was still off to the side, still smirking around the knife in his mouth.
â€œAnswer the question SÃ¼nde.â€ Crawford spat at her again. Trying to hold back his rage to the best of his ability.
â€œIâ€™m heading out. A night on the town. I thought Tink would like to join me. Whatâ€™d ya say hanÃ?â€ She told Crawford, helping her friend up off the ground as she did. Crawford almost lost himself in his thoughts again. He had forgotten just how close the two of them were in the years they had spent training in Germany. Now in these few seconds it had become crystal clear to him. And he was hoping it wouldnâ€™t become a problem.
â€œTinkerbell has a mission.â€ He finally told the two in front of him.
â€œYeah, we gitta hurt God.â€ Farfarello chirped in from the background. Everyone ignored him, but that was normal, he didnâ€™t mind.
â€œAh, yeah, besides, I donâ€™t think Iâ€™m up with your crowed.â€ Tink replied as she looked at SÃ¼ndeâ€™s clothes. What few there were on her anyway. The paints were a sparkly purple that was a good two shades lighter then her hair. They were so low on her hips that her entire tight stomach and navel were shown very clearly. Her shirt was a tube top of the same color, tight beyond belief, and covering just the essentials. Her hair was tied back in several small ponytail like clumps, swinging with curls. She looked ready for the nearest street lamp, or dingy dance floor. And if Tink knew her friend like she thought she did, she knew SÃ¼nde would be hitting both. Tink herself was wearing a pair of Farfarelloâ€™s bondage pants, with loops and straps and buckles enough to trip over. It had three belts around the waist to try and keep them up. The rest of her was covered by one of Crawfordâ€™s best dress shirts, it was well over three sizes too big. Half the buttons werenâ€™t hooked, showing off part of her stomach. She was wearing it mostly to piss him off, and it was working well too. SÃ¼nde eyed Tinkerbellâ€™s outfit the same way Tink had eyed hers.
â€œI guess your right. Oh well, Iâ€™ll see you later then hanÃ.â€ And with that she turned to walk out, sashaying her hips with each step.
â€œI donâ€™t think so.â€ Snapped the voice of Crawford. He was fuming with anger to a level that smoke was ready to come pouring out of his ears. SÃ¼nde turned to look at him with a distinctly annoyed look.
â€œYou are NOT going out.â€ He growled at her between clenched teeth.
â€œYes I am. I wonâ€™t get the chance to do this once Esstet starts in, and we ALL know that. So, Iâ€™m taking tonight at least.â€ And before he could protest anymore, which he was trying to do, she was gone. Crawford stood and fumed for a while longer, while Tink tried to hide her giggles at how much she loved the idea of SÃ¼nde telling him off. Finally it was Farfarello who snapped them both out of it.
â€œSo, can we go hurt God now or what?â€ he asked, waving the knife around for emphasis. Crawford glanced at him and sighed. Yes, it was VERY stupid to send these two out together. But theyâ€™d at lest get the job done quickly. After it was done, well that was a whole other story, but at least the guy would be dead.
â€œYes, as I was saying before..â€ he started as he gave them their assignment.

Conclusive Proof (Some) Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

Reviewed By: a.k.a Asuka Murase On: January 11, 2009 20:05 CST
Comment/Review:
Okay, honestly? This needs work. A lot of work. You've got an interesting concept for a fic here, but it's buried beneath a lot of formatting issues (the issue with the dialogue tags uploading â€œlike thisâ€ in several chapters makes the story really difficult on the eyes) and - If I'm to be completely frank with you - two of the most unlikeable new characters I have come across in quite some time. I'm sorry, but I really didn't like Sunde, and Tinkerbell wasn't much better. They were both extremely overbearing and became the focus of the story pretty much from the minute they showed up. This is going to put a lot of readers off from the start as they're here to read about Weiss and Schwarz, not your girls. Worse, they seemed to be effortlessly far better at everything they tried than the regulars, characters who've been established in canon as being very good at what they do. It doesn't really make sense for second-choice agents to be so much more accomplished than one of Esset's top field teams when it was established early on they didn't make the cut for it. It also doesn't make sense that they'd still be so accomplished when they've been out of touch with their handlers and consequently out of practice. I liked the idea that Sunde needed a refresher course when she got back to Schwarz, but found the fact that it was just used as another way to establish her superiority to her handlers depressing. The regular characters' reactions to the newcomers are also way off. Crawford is a disciplinarian who runs a very tight ship and it's part of why Schwarz works so well as a team. I really don't think he'd let Sunde and Tinkerbell get away with behaving the way they do toward him, because it undermines his status with the rest of the team. It also makes them look rather reckless, as disregarding the wishes of their far more experienced boss when it comes to field work should be a really good way to get into serious trouble. He's the leader for a reason, and that really should be respected - maybe grudgingly so, but even Schuldig can be trusted to follow orders some of the time. Agents who constantly refused to follow orders wouldn't last long on a field team, sorry. On the same note, there's Ken. I agree that he'd have serious issues trying to get Sunde to go home with him, but not just because she turned him down; he probably wouldn't have volunteered to try and pick her up in the first place. Ken, as is obvious from his relationship with Yuriko, really isn't very confident around women and tends to relate to them in a way that's very similar to the way he deals with men. He's more likely to blush and avert his eyes when confronted with a woman in a tight top, not drool and stare at her breasts, and if she wasn't showing overt interest in him, he probably wouldn't take any real interest in her. There are issues with the other characters as well - Aya, for instance, is not Weiss's leader, Omi is; Farfarello never uses the phrase 'hurts God' in the series and really should not be used as blender-obsessed light relief - but they don't stand out as much as the issues I noticed with the portrayal of Crawford and Ken. Either way, it may help to go back and reacquaint yourself with series canon. I'm really sorry if this review seems harsh but this fic, as it stands, really needs a lot of revising. The premise isn't unworkable and the plot has potential, but it's being let down by the characterization issues and the - I would say inadvisable - inclusion of two new characters. Your readers have been given no reason to care about these characters save that they're supposedly powerful and special, and that alone is supposed to be enough to justify their continued presence, the plot revolving round them, and the abuse they heap on the regulars. If they carry on behaving like this, people won't think they're spunky and rebellious and start caring for them because they're so cool; they'll just be turned off and anno

Reviewed By: moimoi-chan [MediaMiner Member] On: January 02, 2009 09:46 CST
Comment/Review:
i am a horrible reviewer, I must confess. But I am intrigued and wish to know more! So write! (with the speed of the wind) :) ps chapter 5 didn't load properly pps huge fan of A x Y...please don't break my heart ppps feel free to ignore anything I say

Takehito Koyasu's 'Rock Star'. Starring Youji Kudou as Kris Phoenix!

2009-01-09T19:34:01Z

Those of you who've been here since 2005 may remember the Year One fic As You See Me. I know I said I wasn't going to spork the continuation I didn't see the first time - but I lied! I also lied about it being an 'appalling'. Once again, this spork has to be the length it is: condensing it to fit the normal ten-point proforma simply doesn't even scratch the surface...

Story Title: As You See Me
Perpetrator: Mishaela
Summary: 'An AU fic where Yohji is a rock star and Ran is a prostitute that he saves. Can their budding relationship survive the interference of Yohji's ex-boyfriend, Schuldig? Cameos of other WK characters abound!'

Rating:

The Charges:
Youji's a rock star, Aya's a hooker. They meet, fall for one another in two seconds and have a wangsty lame romance while the rest of the cast do various implausible things in the background. The only good thing about this fic is that Ken gets to wear a slave collar, and that's only good if you like the idea of Schuldig dragging SexSlave!Ken around with him...

The Case for the Prosecution:

Oh. Oh, dear. I knew I was taking on something kinda excessively stupid when I decided to try and finish the job I started back on Hideous Porn Fortnight and finish off sporking the oddly-titled As You See Me, but I had no idea quite how epic a job it was going to turn out to be. What is it about fics that don't get posted in full to large, multifandom archives and yet are all finished up elsewhere? Why do the follow-up reports insist on being twice the length of normal sporks? I mean, look what happened with Nori Nanba Mutsu and now here it is happening again, but this time in the form of a fic that reads worryingly like a gay porn homage to Jackie Collins' Rock Star, only with male sex slaves.

The plot: Rockstar!Youji meets and falls madly in love with Hooker!Aya. They fuck, declare love, and move in together but Schuldig, Youji's jealous ex - who already killed his last partner - wants in on the manloving and devotes way too much time and money to chasing them. Sex, off-screen nonconsensual sodomy, and rampant stupidity follows.

So: where the MediaMiner version of As You See Me leaves off, the plot of Pretty Woman has just left the building as Youji and Aya have sex on a piano and declare true love. Where the full version (available on the author's homepage) picks up, we discover Youji and Aya buggering off to - wait for it! - America, where much of the rest of the fic is set, to start their new lives together. They have, as usual in this kind of story, known one another for about a fortnight and now consider themselves true lovers for life despite the fact that their relationship is almost entirely predicated on physical attraction and lust, and Aya is not yet twenty. I'm trying to imagine this pair in five years and the thought ain't nice...

Youji and Aya don't have much to do except angst, trade endearments and bodily fluids, and get threatened by Schu every time the plot is getting slack, which basically means every other chapter. In between times Aya wanders around playing with his pert, strawberry-colored nubs and demanding sex from Youji at just about every conceivable moment, and quite a few that aren't. Since a large part of Aya's past wangst involves selling himself to anyone who asked from the age of fourteen - it's worth noting that most of Aya's wangst, which involves his family having no money at all and having to look after himself all alone from age fourteen, stops making any kind of sense if you factor in the existence of foster care and social welfare programs - quite why he's so keen on jumping Youji every half-hour is anyone's guess.

Once Youji gets Aya home, the fic gets rather heavy on the cutestypoo domestic details. Youji's house is apparently adorably dinky - at least by LA standards - and has a great view of the ocean which Youji loves to look at. Worse, there are random chow chows. Can anyone else see Youji owning a pair of chows called Apollo and Artemis? Ficcer, I know you like chows but I doubt Youji - especially a Youji who was away from home as often as this one - would agree.

It is never actually explained quite why Schuldig can't get over Youji to the extent he'll waste vast amounts of time and money in the pursuit of getting him back, except that if he just got over some guy he briefly banged in his mid-teens like a normal human being this plot couldn't happen. Not that it'd be a bad thing if it didn't, as this plot requires Schuldig to act like the Lex Luthor of abandoned boyfriends. He starts out as Youji's ex-boyfriend but becomes a fantastically wealthy crime lord at the head of some Kritiker-esque agency set up for the sole purpose of stalking Youji and Aya. The only way the fantastic amounts of money he spends on this makes sense is if he's Schuldig Von Doom, President-For-Life of Schuldigzstania, and told his secret service that Youji was spying for the CIA. And he has a sex slave, 'cause he's Evil.

On the subject of sex slaves, ladies and gentlemen... Ken Hidaka, who has no idea why he's in this fanfic. Ken's sole purpose appears to be to remind us Schuldig is a bad man by getting beaten and raped whenever his master gets angry, which means every five minutes. It's like the ficcer realized she was writing Weiss Kreuz slash fic and nobody had been pointlessly raped yet, so here's Ken to pick up the slack. On one occasion he gets gang-raped offpage by Schuldig's goons and Schuldig's only comment is to wish he'd raped Ken first because now he wants to get his end away.

The one plot-relevant thing Ken does - call Youji and warn him Schuldig wants to kill Aya, of which more anon - does not require him to be at Schuldig's fly in a slave collar. He could have been a henchman who wanted out without the plot changing much to accommodate the lack of sodomy. (It might even have given Ken more to do than 'get done'.) Worse, it's utterly gratuitous as Youji already knows that Schuldig is after Aya before Ken calls to spell out the plot twist.

How much worse? Well, meet Manx. Manx, in her capacity as Youji's entire management team, seems almost as disinclined to get on with her work as Youji does and instead gushes brainlessly over how wonderful a couple Youji and Aya are and how happy Youji looks now they've got each other and how she'll kill anyone who harms Aya. It might seem more logical for her to worry about Youji dragging a potentially disease-ridden illegal alien back from Japan insisting he and his hooker were going to live happily ever after. Isn't she worried about the press finding out and wondering how the Hell she could induce Youji to keep his mouth shut about his new love and stop this becoming an utter PR disaster?

Aya has been randomly de-aged two years. Not only does this make Ken older than him, it makes Omi his senior, as Omi is also 19 for some utterly inexplicable reason. If that wasn't clue enough the chronology in this fic is not good - well, once again, everything just happens too damn fast. Schuldig threatens Youji with random Aya photos within days of his arrival in the States, and is sending people round to kill him what seems like about ten minutes later. Also, Ken gets beaten half-conscious in one scene, then in another one set what looks to be no more than a day or so down the line Schuldig decides Ken hasn't been brutally assaulted recently enough for his liking and does it again. The boy should be DEAD.

The bad gay porn would be bad enough if it weren't for its nonsensical habit of butting in where it has no right to belong. Ficcer, don't you think it interrupts the story's flow a little to have Youji angstily prepare to go confront Schuldig... then decide that oh wait, maybe he'll go do it later because there's Aya with a boner and Aya's just so fuckable?

One supposedly tense confrontation between Youji and Schuldig's mooks becomes more wtf-worthy than worrying when Aya randomly kills a cannon fodder intruder with a katana Youji owns for no good reason. Just in case Hooker!Aya knowing kendo looked worryingly like bullshit, he explains he kept going back for classes while working as a bargain-basement hustler. Youji worries over how offhandedly his perfect Aya is about killing someone for five seconds, then forgets all about it for the rest of the fic. Then the lone remaining attacker is savaged by a lone chow chow. I know chows are territorial, but there's a limit to how much damage a well-domesticated one will do - and I really doubt one of Schuldig's heavily-armed mooks is going to be so bothered by a small dog biting him that he forgets he has a gun.

Every single character gets a lengthy headdesk-worthy infodump about their wangst past. Unfortunately, despite said lengthy expository passages, a lot of the back stories don't make sense and have to be explained further in author's notes. For example, Youji is an American citizen by birth in this fictional universe, but you'd never know that without the author's notes. Look, ficcer, if it's relevant to the plot you need to get it in the story. If not, we don't need to know at all.

Okay, so Aya's a hooker, Youji's a world-famous rock star with Manx as his manager, Schuldig is an incompetent Don Corleone and Ken (poor Ken!) is a sex slave... needless to say, the roles the rest of the cast get forced into don't really break this pattern of being too random and stupid to be believable. Okay, so Farfarello's still a hired killer and Omi gets to be Youji's pet hacker and a college student, and they at least make some kind of sense. The others? No. Not a bit of it. Nagi is Ken's friend and maybe-lover who exists mainly to get Ken out the picture at the end; Crawford is an Interpol agent who seems more interested in banging Omi than taking down Schu and his organization o' maximum stupid; Birman is a random secret agent girl in a catsuit who shows up for two seconds at the end then leaves.

Like in Jackie Collins novels, people are given glamorous or unusual professions and only seem to pay attention to them when there's nothing else happening they'd rather devote time to instead. Youji, nominally 'on tour', seems to have all the time in the world to waste dallying with his boy toy and, once he reaches LA, does barely anything that is music business related as he'd rather have sex, wangst, and have wangsty sex. Schuldig's criminal empire is shamelessly neglected because its lavender-scented boss is too busy obsessing over his ex-boyfriend and his latest squeeze. About the only regular character who actually does anything job-related on a regular basis is Ken. Pity he's a sex slave.

Nagi's entire character could be cut without the plot suffering one bit. He's a random ex-prostitute Ken took a liking to who, after Ken went missing, started beating up Schuldig's men and got 'targeted' by his global criminal enterprise as a consequence - and he's even less relevant to the plot than Ken. Nagi does nothing of any value unless getting shot so Aya can scream his name dramatically when Schuldig abducts him counts. Weirdly, though none of the other Schwarz members get to keep their psychic powers, Nagi is still a telekine and nobody even seems to notice, still less care.

Youji and Aya choose the most inappropriate moments to get it on, like on pianos and in Youji's dressing room and also Aya wants sex bare seconds after Youji explains his wangst past in the middle of a room full of corpses. Youji also has to leave to conclude his vendetta against Schuldig twice - the first time he tries Aya stops him and demands sex.

What is with the pastede-on Crawford and Omi? Crawford - who is quite happy to let a college kid and a rock star try to take down a dangerous crime lord, making him possibly the worst Interpol agent since Chun Li - shows up totally randomly in the fic to save Omi from Farfarello (presumably a leet assassin, but we only see him try to kill one unarmed teenage boy and he fails) whose identity Omi is aware of for some reason. Though why Omi knows Farfarello after hearing of him once is debatable, as Crawford has been living next to him for six months and he never noticed this. And then they exchange excruciatingly clumsy pick-up lines and presumably get it on, but thankfully the fic ends first.

And then there are all the random song lyrics that seem to serve no purpose other than to bump up the word count. These are more prevalent in the first half of this story (which subjects us to both Youji's songs and Aya's heartfelt love poems), but we still have to sit through a scene where Youji moons over Aya's shagged-out sleeping beauty and listens to an entire Pretty Boy Floyd song in his head, then promises to record a rubbish cover version of it for Aya if he lives.

Ken has good reason not to call the cops; Youji does not, but doesn't because the plot couldn't happen if any of the law enforcement agencies in this fic were halfway competent. They appear utterly unwilling to investigate crimes - Youji, for example, decides he can't even attempt to report that he's being stalked by an international crime boss presuming before he even tried that the cops would say said crime boss was just another obsessed fan. Too bad said crime boss just sent him an envelope full of Aya photos and a hand-written note confessing to the unsolved murder of said rock star's former lover, which he signed 'Schu'. Why don't the police in LA of all places take threats concerning celebrities seriously? Shouldn't it concern them that absurd international crime lords with unfathomable obsessions on world-famous rock stars are running round banging kidnapped ex-soccer players, though everyone knows about him and exactly what he gets up to. Couldn't they at least get him for transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes?

Remember I said Ken warns Youji that Schuldig wants to kill Aya? Well, either Ken got it wrong or Schuldig did, as Schuldig falls victim to Aya Is Awesome And Hot and Awesome Disease and decides he actually wants to bang Aya. Around Chapter Twelve (read: white huntress didn't notice exactly when and damn sure isn't going back to find it) after being firmly established as wanting to torment Aya only to get to Youji who he desperately wants to bang again, Schuldig randomly decides that actually he wants to kill Youji and make Aya his next sex slave. It's really jarring after all this time of Youji being Schuldig's focus to see the fic forget this and shift into the standard 'universe revolves around Aya and his wonderful' configuration, but I guess it happens because Aya is awesome and hot and awesome.

The first time we meet Ken he seems happy to be screwing Schuldig in the back of a limo, raising the question, does he have Stockholm Syndrome or not? Most of the time he's all dude, fuck your sexual slavery - which is a pity, as if he'd continued to act the way he did in his first scene, he could have been a really interesting character. If he'd convinced himself he loved Schuldig and tried to save him, the final confrontation could have been fascinating. Too bad we got...

... the dramatic, nonsensical climax! Ken, who's been naked for most of the fic, finally gets dressed again to wait for the plot to catch up with him. It does in the form of Youji, who breaks into the estate to find Schuldig. Aya and Nagi also break into the estate in search of Schuldig, but Schuldig finds them first and shoots Nagi, who forgot he was a telekine since he floated over the fence. Youji goes after Schuldig and his snugglebunny and Ken goes back IC for about 1.5 lines. Schuldig goes on about how much he wants to bang Aya then tries to drown him in a swimming pool. Youji then performs CPR on Aya while Schuldig watches and then swears vengeance. Schuldig asks Youji to come back to him, Youji refuses, so Schuldig tries to shoot Aya then gets shot in the hand by deus ex machina Birman. Yes. Birman. Then Youji kills Schuldig to make him shut up. Did that make sense to anyone else out there? What, it did? Get help, man.

Finally, the randomly-placed nods to canon just make all the WTF this fic contains that much WTFier. Take Ken. Ken has his canonical back story right up to the point he got kicked out the J-league, which in this fic had to happen so Schuldig could abduct and sexually abuse him. Youji gets to keep his Seven and Asuka angst, but it looks weird in a fic where he's a rock star. Aya still has his little sister's hospital bills to worry about, and he does, right up until the Miracle Romance kicks in and he flees the country, presumably leaving his sister to rot in some asylum. I don't normally say this, but this fic would be a lot better if the ficcer had the courage of their convictions and had gone totally AU, leaving canon out of it.

Exposing the Hideousness:

Schuldig was pissed.
Now, when one usually says 'pissed', one can generally assume that it's a rather unhappy state that involves a lot of grumbling, bitching, and complaining.
Not with the German. When he got pissed, he got very violent.
Ken knelt nearby, riding out the storm of his master's anger. It was just a matter of time, he knew, until he was sporting fresh bruises. He would take the brunt of it, to be sure, but he'd been doing this for over a year. He was used to it. It didn't, however, have the effect that Schuldig desired.
Pretty Ken Hidaka was *not* a masochist.
Once the initial flare of anger faded out, Ken could look forward to a night of rough sex. Not how he preferred to spend them. He liked his nights quiet and lazy so that he could remember what he'd been as opposed to what he'd become. He used those nights to give him the strength it took not to hang himself at first opportunity. He'd tried it once - even had the scar around his throat to prove it.
Schuldig had come in and cut him down, dragging his limp body to the shower to rouse the former soccer player. After that, there was a series of sound beatings that left him battered, bloody, and too scared to try it again for nearly a year. Ken used to flinch everytime his master's hand came near his face.
Not anymore.
Now, he felt the burning anger in his gut. He wanted out. He had a good idea of what was going on. Somehow, Schuldig's ex-lover had thrown a spike into the German's plans. It almost brought a smile to his face. He loved to see the redhead thwarted. He wished someone would have done that for him.
He snapped out of it when he realized that Schuldig was talking to him, "Master?"
"Stupid boy! I said, 'I'm going to handle some business alone. Do you need more recovery time?'" Schuldig wasn't in the mood to be screwed around. If Ken stayed behind, he'd just have his fun when he got back.
"Yes, master. I'm…" The athletic slave made a show of squirming as he knelt on the floor, "I need to use that balm… and then rest so I can be ready for you when you get back." He kept his eyes to the floor, wishing the German would just leave and be done with it.
"Fine," Schuldig growled, "I should be back in a few hours."
The door slammed and he was alone. Ken let out a sigh of relief. This was as serious a mess as he'd ever seen. He pulled himself to his feet and moved to the desk, where a bunch of photographs lay scattered about. His azure eyes flicked over the pictures, admiring the beauty of the redheaded subject.
He moved a few around, just so he could see the rest of them, and found a memo pad that had a number scrawled on it. Ken read it aloud in a soft voice, "'Balinese - 555-7802… Call and ask how his little toy's doing…'" He shook his head. Why couldn't the German just leave it alone?
An idea came to him suddenly and Ken looked at the bottom of the door, checking the shadows. It appeared as though the bodyguards had gone with Schuldig. He almost smiled. His shaking hand moved to the phone receiver, knowing that - if the German found out - he'd have hell to pay. It came off it's cradle smoothly and he put it to his ear.
Dialing the number on the paper, Ken held his breath. This… This was as bold a move as ever and he hoped it would do *something*. It might not ease his plight, sure, but if he died… he'd be just as well off.
After a few rings, there was a pick up,"Hello?"
"Ummm… Moshi-moshi. Kudou Yohji-san?"
The voice on the other end immediately switched to Japanese, "Yes. Can I help you?"
Ken took a deep breath, "My name is… is… Ken Hidaka."
"Hey! I used to watch you play all the time! You were the best in the League… I'm sorry about what happened." Yohji seemed amicable enough.
"That's okay," Ken said with a wince. He didn't like to be reminded of that fateful week in his life. "I… I don't know how to say this… Schuldig is planning on killing your… lover."
Yohji's voice went quiet instantly, "How do you know this?"
Ashamed as he was of his current predicament, Ken knew that it was the only way to make the rock star believe him, "Because… I… I'm his… slave." His blue eyes closed and his whole body shook. Admitting that to another compassionate human being was absolute torture.
"Oh, God… Is there anything I can do for you?" Yohji was immediately ready to do whatever it took to make things right.
"I used to know this boy… His name's Nagi Naoe. If you could find him and let him know I'm all right," Ken let the sentence trail off. How was the boy doing in his absence? Did he go back to that streetgang after all?
"Will do. How much freedom do you have? Can you get someplace where I can pick you up? Is there a way for me to get you the fuck out?"
"No. I'm not allowed to leave the mansion." Ken thought about things. While he didn't know exactly where he was, his knowledge of the surrounding area was good enough to give him an idea of how far from L.A. his location was. "I can see smog to the south of the house… and it takes about an hour to get there… Maybe a half hour east of the freeway…"
Yohji's voice softened, "Thanks, Ken. I'll see what I can do for you. Just hold out and *don't* contact me again unless it's an emergency, okay?"
"Yes… Thank you." Ken put down the receiver and looked out the window. Maybe… just maybe… Things would go back to being right in his little screwed up world.

Yohji sat on his bed, staring at the long black coat that he usually wore for only two occasions. 'Will this be the last time I ever have to wear it again?' The thought did have some appeal. Now that he had Ran, he didn't see himself ever having to wear it out again. The singer had no desire to go out and cruise around for potential partners.
And, if he managed to take out Schuldig, he'd never have to wear it again as what he used to be.
He rose from the bed and pulled it up, sliding his arms into the sleeves. The black cropped tank top showed off his upper abdomen so that others could see how hard he worked to keep in great shape. Truth be told, he didn't work all that hard. Yohji just had a naturally high metabolism.
A noise at the door brought his head up and the musician saw his lover in the entrance to their bedroom. Ran brought with him the clean scent of someone fresh from a shower. His violet gaze locked on the blond. "Leaving already?"
"Not quite," Yohji said, moving closer to the younger man. His hand reached out and grabbed the top of the towel around his redheaded lover's hips, using it to pull him against the lean body. Ran went willingly, tilting his head up for a kiss, which he got.
Arms went up and around Yohji's shoulders, tightening to pull their bodies into close contact. The singer could feel his young lover's hardness brushing against his hip and he drew back enough to look down at Ran. "You have a problem…"
"I know," Ran said, blushing. His violet eyes gazed up at the musician through the slight fan of crimson lashes and he feathered his lips over Yohji's cheek. "Help me with it before you go?"
Yohji closed his eyes for a moment, fighting back a few tears. 'Just in case, huh, Ran? In case I never make it back.' He didn't want to think about the fact that he might not return to the redhead. The musician couldn't bear the thought of Ran at the mercy of his ex-lover. Yohji let his fingers walk their way to one of the teen's nipples and stroke it to pebble hardness.
"Hmmm… that's nice…" Ran's voice was nearly obscured by a low moan of pleasure. He reached out and buried his fingers in golden silk, grabbing hold as Yohji lowered his mouth to replace his fingers.

Ran shuddered from the cool metal against his cheek but, other than that, he remained still. "Yohji's going to find you," he whispered softly, wincing as the grip in his hair tightened. "Everyone will be so much happier when he kills you."
"Dumb kid," the fiery crime lord said, yanking the youth towards the largest pool. "I was better than he was. Rock star life makes one soft… And you'll be dead before Balinese gets within five feet of me." Schuldig knocked the teen's legs out from under him and forced his face down into the surface of the water. He started laughing hysterically as Ran struggled against him, trying to push himself out of the fluid, trying to keep himself from drowning.
Yohji broke through the glass doors just then and his face twisted in rage. "Let him GO!" His boots crunched the shards under his feet as he started running towards his ex-lover and his current one. He was nearly there when the redhead's struggles ceased. "Oh, God… RAN!!!"
Backing away, Schuldig put quite a bit of distance between himself and the musician. "Too fragile, these lovers you pick. Tsk, tsk… You should have better taste, Balinese."
He couldn't find a way past the huge lump in his throat to respond, otherwise Yohji would have been screaming his outrage at the tops of his lungs. Shaking hands pulled the youth from the water and turned him over so that he could lay back against long, leather encased legs. The singer reached up and wiped back soaked crimson hairs that stuck to the pale forehead.
"C-come on, Ran…" Yohji pressed a kiss to the still lips, covering them with his own, and then exhaled all the oxygen in his body. He waited for a few moments, pinched Ran's nose closed, and then did it again. "Open those sexy eyes for me…"
The slim frame shuddered and then the young man's violet eyes snapped wide as he pitched forward, coughing out chlorinated water. Ran's throat burned, as did his eyes, while his body forcefully expelled the foreign liquid. He couldn't hear Yohji's loud sigh of relief, but he did feel the gentle hands leave his arms as the singer stood up.
"I'm going to fucking kill you, Schuldig." Yohji ripped out a length of his wire, verdant eyes glaring at the fiery redhead nearly twenty feet away. The line glittered in the moonlight as the musician stared over it. "You're going to pay for Asuka and, now, for the pain you've caused Ran."
Schuldig yawned and trained the gun on the youth behind his ex-lover. "Did I ever tell you how sexy you look when you're completely pissed off, Balinese?" His finger twitched slightly, not quite pulling the trigger enough to fire. "I'll let him live on one condition… That you come back to me."
"Not a chance in hell," Yohji growled, his eyes narrowing. "I'd sooner kill myself."
"I gave you an option… his death is on your hands, Balinese." The crime lord reset his sight and started to ease back the trigger again. A shot rang out, slightly deafening everyone, and then the jade eyed ex-assassin looked surprised as blood poured from his hand. "What the fuck?"
A woman in a black catsuit walked from between the trees, gun held up and trained on the group. "Yohji Kudou?"
The blond singer turned, facing the brunette. "Now what?" He'd never seen her before and was trying to place where she fit into all of this.
She gave a smirk. "He's all yours. Have fun." Without a sound, she turned and walked calmly back between the shaded trunks, disappearing from view.
Yohji's surprise changed into something else, something that resembled him back in his older, more deadly, days. He started forward, the thin metal line stretched between his hands. "Say 'Hello' to our friends in hell, Schuldig."
"You can't… you love me… I know you do…" The German backed away, his eyes widening, liquid scarlet dripping from his fingers as he clutched them with his good hand. He spun around, getting ready to run, disbelief written across his features.
"Schuldig… You should know better," Yohji said huskily, as if he were talking to a lover. "You know that I love it when prey runs… Or did you forget?"
"I didn't forget, Balinese… But I'm not about to make this easy on you." Schuldig broke for the house, his fiery-orange hair trailing behind him. "We both know I'm faster than you." He stumbled over an unseen obstacle, tumbling headlong across the concrete around the jacuzzi.
"I remember," the singer said, his smile sinister. "That's why I made sure to string some line around… so that you couldn't get away." He continued his approach. "I made two circuits around this entire house before I broke in… plenty enough time to make the last few seconds of your life difficult."
There was a rather unmanly scream as the blond pounced, wrapping his line around the German crime lord's throat several times. Yohji didn't have to tighten it - Schuldig did that for himself with all his struggles. Grim satisfaction replaced the dark look on the singer's face as his ex-lover finally fell still. He turned to Ran, his voice thick.
"The gun… please."
Ran tossed the firearm towards his lover and turned his head. He tensed as the weapon cried out its muffled bark. "Is… is it over?" He turned to the blond musician, eyes glittering with hope.
The watch dropped soundlessly to the ground beside Schuldig's body before Yohji slowly turned to face the redhead, tears streaming down his face. "No… *now* it's over." He opened his arms to the youth and was relieved when Ran literally ran into them.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:
I'm afraid I can't dig up any reviews for the second half of this fanfic, being as they're archived on the author's homepage and neither her guestbook or her bbs seem to be working any more. So, instead, I've dug up a couple more Mediaminer reviews which beg her for a continuation to the six chapters archived there, never mind that the whole story is right there on her homepage for anyone who cares to look...

Reviewed By: Shalorn On: April 06, 2004 23:08 CDT
Rating(s):

Style of Writing: 10 of 10

Spelling & Grammar: 10 of 10

Originality/Creativity: 10 of 10

Enjoyment Factor: 10 of 10

Overall Rating: 10 of 10
Comment/Review:
well done, beautifully put together and amazingly inticing... i can't wait for more (hint hint)

Reviewed By: StarHoshi [MediaMiner Member] On: December 24, 2003 04:47 CST
Comment/Review:
Wonderful please more. Feed my craving. I'll feed yours all ya want. More story please? I'll promise you anything in my power.

Don't Start A Band! (nobody really cares, nobody understands...)

2009-01-06T00:46:06Z

Ahem. I hate to ruin the magic, I hate to kill the dream, but once you've been behind the scenes then you'll know just what I mean. You might think that's its cool to get up on stage, and play rock and roll from your heart and soul. But no one shows up, and your songs all suck--and this is why assassins shouldn't play rock n' roll.

Story Title: The Making of the Band
Perpetrator: Proverbial Pumpkin
Summary: 'The boys have to form themselves into a band, and what starts as a headache mission for Aya turns into an unexpected opportunity for Yohji. Mission, humor, romance, angst, etc. Yohji/Aya.'

Rating:

The Charges:
Unfunny comedy fic in which Weiss, yes, start a band for some lame mission-related non-reason. The plot exists simply to force Weiss to start a band - oh, and to showcase Aya's ridiculously overbearing AWESOME at the expense of his equally OOC teammates. Also, there are omens of Sue in this story's future, which does not bode well for any of us.

The Case for the Prosecution:

... for about the ten thousandth time, Weiss is a team which would not function as effectively if any of the members were removed, not Aya and the Supremes. I've often accused ficcers who portray the rest of Weiss as little more than a support act for Aya's awesome as treating Youji, Omi and Ken as Aya's backing singers: this ficcer, unfortunately, takes that figure of speech and makes it regrettably literal. A lame mission-related contrivance forces Weiss to form a band and Aya (because he's so hot and wonderful) is immediately promoted - by Manx of all people - to lead singer, band leader, resident sex symbol, and in all likelihood grand poobah of the universe. All without singing a note!

The mission briefing that kicks off all this unfunniness makes no sense. There's no target meaning Weiss have to work out which stooges to kill all by themselves, and no real objective aside from perhaps offing Simon Cowell. All we really know is three musical Sues have gone missing after winning Japanese Idol and Weiss have to run to their rescue by forming a band - and this isn't even their idea, it's Kritiker's. Because it's not like Weiss plan their missions alone.

Everything that happens is stupidly contrived the better to force Weiss to form a band. All other routes for them to conduct the mission are cut off for no reason other than they are. For example, they can't even enter the talent contest unless they form a band. Surely there was a better way to do this than 'you're forming a band because you are'?

Aya (who is deeply sexy and awesome) might be more help to his long-suffering bandmates - neither of whom are any good at this whole 'music' thing and they know it - if he could hear them over the sound of how awesome he thought he was. In this fic, everyone up to and including Manx thinks he's Teh Hawt. Unfortunately, in this ficcer's hands he's also utterly insufferable. Aya is a know-it-all prick who spends far more time snarking over Youji's lack of musical talent than worrying about his own as-yet-untested ability to hold a note, and for some reason the fic expects us not to mind this. The fic could hardly have made a bigger author's pet of him if it'd deliberately set out to try to.

Once again Aya (who is wonderful) is made out to be fabulous at everything. This wouldn't be so annoying if it weren't for the ficcers insistence that Youji and Ken royally suck and need to be coached in the ways of flange-speshul by Aya. There's no sense of proportion in this fic at all: you're either Aya and awe-inspiringly amazing at damn near everything (and sexy with it) or you're everyone else and you suck in an hilarious manner, the better to showcase Aya's obscene perfection. Needless to say, he can already play a musical instrument - in fact, he's a classically trained violinist. But he's not actually going to be playing the violin or even any actual musical instrument because Manx, in all her OOC wisdom, has decided that Aya's brand of HAWT is so potent that he has to be the frontman. So, the one person in this band who can play worth a damn and he's... singing. Which so far he hasn't even tried to do. Okay!

Are you bored of my going on about how wonderful Aya (WHO IS FUCKING AWESOME, YOU HEAR? AWESOME!) is yet? Because the entire fic is like this. Even the OOC in this fic is utterly Aya-serving. Omi's barely in it, Youji and Ken have had to lay down their competence in sacrifice before the altar of Aya and his Wonderful - Youji, who is of course crushing all over Aya in a manner which is brazenly obvious to everyone but Youji, presumably having added his heterosexuality with it in penance for some sin - and even Manx is getting hot pants over his deep Dan Green voice and sexiness. Of course, to further prove how very awestruck she is by Aya, she starts acting like a complete bitch to Youji for obsessing over totally irrelevant trivia like the bit where he and Ken are not actually halfway talented musicians.

And then Aya (who is the bestest assassin ever) is revealed to have taken a random solo mission the night before. Look. Fangirls. It has occurred to you that Weiss have teammates for a reason? They don't get solo missions because if a situation's gotten bad enough to need a Weiss member's attention, letting the rest of them pitch in might help further.

As Aya's solo mission involves killing rapists for some ill-defined reason, I wondering if this ficcer realizes the Tokyo police force is not zero plus the four members of Weiss. Look, story, could you see your way to explaining why exactly these people can't just be arrested? It might make things make a little more sense about here - and Hell, a few arrests would cut down the target list, which at present seems to include everyone who had anything to do with abducting the Sue musicians and a couple of people who just looked at them funny one time. Canonical target lists seldom go over four a mission, but this fic suggests a few dozen people need to die for little more than aiding and abetting.

And there's blatant signposting that Aya (who thinks this song is about him) will be abducted. Weiss only crash this competition to track the next abduction, which for some reason they can't do without entering. Alert readers will guess where this is likely to go: Weiss are going to magically win this competition despite being made of fail and Aya will get abducted by the 'one individual or elite ring' behind these abductions because he's so much hotter than his fail!band.

The most damning thing about this fic is that Youji and Ken are clearly far smarter than the utterly inane plot and have to be strongarmed into taking part by Manx and her terrifying OOC. It really does make one wonder when characters try to do the logical, canon-appropriate thing - Weiss members can, after all, reject missions with no comeback, which Youji and Ken try to do here - and are promptly told No You Can't Do That Because You Can't and forced into taking part in the Idiot Plot regardless of the fact that they clearly know it's stupid and shouldn't be happening. When even OOC fictional assassins want nothing to do with the story they're stuck in, it's obvious the plot is failing on five of four cylinders.

Exposing the Hideousness:

Manx was smiling slightly and speaking to Omi about the case. “Persia will begin to explain, Omi-kun,” she said, playing the video. The screen flickered grey for a moment, before the images of three attractive young women appeared, all three photos clearly professionally taken. Yohji whistled.
“Hey, the one on the right looks familiar,” said Ken, squinting at the monitor.
Omi nodded in agreement. “Hino-san. She goes to a high school near mine. I think she was in the newspaper for getting a recording contract signed for her band a few weeks ago.”
The voice of Persia came through the speakers. “In the past two months, the three rising music artists shown here have been kidnapped. Each abduction occurred directly before performances, in secured areas open only to authorized personnel. No other links have been made connecting the incidents.”
A map of their region of Japan, highlighting several large concert houses, appeared. Omi began flipping through his pages to see if he had a copy. Digging through his pocket for a cigarette, Yohji frowned at the boy’s dedication. He was making him look bad.
The voice of Persia continued. “Each artist was performing at a different venue, and under different management. In addition, one girl had secured a recording label; the other two had not. These inconsistencies may be intentional, and lead us to believe that one individual, or an elite ring, is behind all the kidnappings. They are obtaining the women by employing music industry workers, possibly recording scouts, label managers, or other persons with access backstage to the three different performances. Members of Weiss, hunt the tomorrows of these Dark Beasts!”
The screen went black, and no one said anything for a moment. Aya continued to stare at the monitor as if he’d expected more. Ken and Omi exchanged confused glances, and Yohji turned on Manx. “What the fuck?” he demanded. “That’s it?”
Manx ejected the tape. “You’ll find a bit more in your file. As Persia said, each of the victims were at similar points in their careers, and involved in the same type of productions. Never the same organizers, though. Whoever’s behind the kidnappings, they’re being sure not to leave any connections between the music industry authorities, and we need to find these middle-men before we can find the person who has possession of the women.”
“What do we know about them? The women, other than Hino-san?” Omi asked.
“Not much. No striking physical similarities or uncommon backgrounds. They were all recently signed or promoted through various music competitions or shows, only to go missing weeks afterwards. The mastermind behind all of this doesn’t lose much time in obtaining the women he wants, once he finds them through his informants.”
Aya spoke for the first time in his low, eerily professional voice. “Is there a motivation suspected for these ‘informants’?” Yohji tried not to notice how exhausted his voice sounded. Aya had probably taken down a few rapists or something the night before, and here Yohji was complaining about being awake after an alcohol binge.
Manx shrugged. “The usual, we’ve got to assume. Could be money, could be blackmailed or having their families threatened. There’s no way to know, right now.”
“But they’re all targets regardless, I suppose?” Omi said sadly.
“That’s right. They’ve all contributed to the abduction of these women. But don’t worry, Omi-kun, we need the music production members alive in order to find whoever’s organizing it all. You won’t kill them until after you’ve found the main source of everything.”
“That’s great,” I said, lighting the cigarette. “Fucking brilliant. But how the hell do we know who these music men are, if Kritiker hasn’t managed to put anything together for us besides the names and pictures of three missing girls?”
Manx smiled smugly. “Haven’t you been listening? We know the type of show where the kidnappings take place. We don’t know who’s involved, but we can arrange to have you four to be there when they make a move. Not to stop the kidnapping, but to track it.”
Omi furrowed his brows and started reading over his scant file, as if already mulling over how to pull the mission off. Ken rolled his eyes, and dropped his file to the table unread. “What the hell are we supposed to do, stake out in air vents at a concert until someone starts screaming, and then sneak over and put a tracker on her jacket?”
Manx’s shook her head. “That certainly would be relying on luck more than Kritiker likes. So no. We’ll have to arrange for you to be able to stay backstage, near potential or likely victims, during the next multi-band performance at the Crescent Center. We believe another kidnapping may be attempted at its competition for upcoming artists, scheduled next month. Nothing has happened so far at that location connected to the case, and the production is being run by a company that also hasn’t been involved, so far.”
“What do you mean?” Yohji asked. “You want us to, like… manage some chick band or something?”
Aya’s eyes narrowed, as if he knew were this was going and he wasn’t pleased with it. “We don’t have the credentials,” he nearly growled.
“Bingo,” Manx answered. “You have to enter as contestants in the competition.”

“Kudoh, you have five fingers. You only have to use three. Figure it out.”
Three sentences- Yohji had definitely put Aya in a good mood by taking his shift. He did have a funny way of showing it though, ordering him about as if he himself were some sort of guitar expert. They were situated back room of the koneko, Aya standing over Yohji with his arms crossed like a school instructor.
“You try it then!” Yohji said, shoving the instrument towards him. “It’s harder than it looks, alright?”
Aya stared levelly at Yohji. Ah, yes. Mr. classically-trained violinist. “I know how hard it is and isn’t to play an instrument. And it should not be this difficult to hold it correctly and play one damn chord.”
Ken came in holding a tall, wilted plant, one that Yohji vaguely remembered Omi asking him to look after, and set it down in the corner. “Just show him how, Aya,” Ken sighed, brushing his hands on his apron.
Aya shot him a look. “Go find us a song,” he retorted.
As Ken left in a huff, Yohji tried to reposition the guitar. It certainly was an eye-catching instrument, although not the color he would have chosen. Still, it was sleek and black, and he knew for a fact he looked good with it.
He attempted another strum, and something grotesque sounded from the small amp Kritiker had delivered. Aya scowled and bent down to fiddle with it, and when his backside jutted into the air, and Yohji didn’t bother looking tactfully down at his instrument. Suddenly, a loud crack emitted from the speaker, and Aya straightened with the cord in his hand.
“Hey!” Yohji exclaimed. “Put that back in!”
“No,” he said, coiling it in a loop.
“Aya!”
“Until you can play less offensively, there’s no reason to amplify it,” he said, again with his obnoxious reason. “The customers will think you’re trying to ward them off.”
Yohji began to suggest that it would sound better to Aya if his whole head wasn’t shoved up his own behind, but then, to his surprise, Aya sat down next to him on his right. Yohji closed his mouth as Aya picked up the thin instruction book Kritiker had so thoughtfully supplied. “Look, Kudoh,” he said, opening it. “You’ve even got diagrams.”
Yohji took a close look at the lines and dots, and awkwardly positioned his fingers where it looked like they might belong. He attacked the strings again. Without the amp, it just sounded…plinky, but Aya cringed as if his delicate ear had been insulted. Sighing, he leaned across the instrument, and for a split moment Yohji thought he was going to position Yohji’s hand where it belonged. Instead, he just pointed to one of the strings.
He nodded toward the page in front of them. “This string. Fourth finger, right here.”
“What?” Yohji said, distracted by Aya’s proximity, and yet how carefully Aya was keeping from actually touching Yohji’s arm as he gestured at the instrument. “Fourth finger from which side?”
Aya looked like he just barely kept from rolling his eyes, and was starting to re-think their assignments in the mission. “Can you sing?”
Yohji held the instrument tighter towards him, as if Aya might yank it straight out of his hands if he weren’t careful. “Not at all, and Manx said I could play this.”
“Oh, give it to me,” Aya snapped. Yohji yelped as his guitar was pried from his grip. Suck as he may, he was still becoming attached to the instrument. He grinned as Aya fiddled with it, clearly unused to having to finger such a large instrument. Aya’s brow furrowed, and he looked back and forth from the neck to the page in the book.
“See? I told you it wasn’t as easy as it looks,” Yohji sneered.
Giving his positioning one more glance, Aya strummed, and a clean chord sounded out. “Don’t hold it so tightly,” he said, ignoring Yohji’s remark. “Just get your fingers where they belong. Curve them more, too.”
Yohji counted to ten as Aya handed him back the instrument.
“That was E-flat Major, by the way,” Aya said stoically, watching Yohji continue his vain attempts. “If you were interested.”
Yohji certainly was not, and would have told the redhead to fuck off if he weren’t enjoying Aya being forced to speak in actual sentences to him. As it was, he set his jaw and set about his task. Fourth finger, curved…. A blessed sound of near-harmony emitted from the instrument, and though he wished it were amped, Yohji looked pridefully up at Aya, smiling.
Aya rested his chin on his hand. “Kind of a slow start to “re-defining” an instrument.”

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

moimoi-chan
2008-08-16 chapter 2
i will admit to being drawn in not so much by the summary as by the A x Y (so sue me for being a fan girl), but this has been a treat! continue writing, as I look forward to more!
On a side note how do you react to concrit?
Never wanna hear it leave me alone!
It's alright, I get the point of it but I don't want to have to make any changes, and it's my fic darn it!
Or I love concrit! I'm one of those crazy people who likes to be told what they did not quite right!
Or if it makes you review then I don't care...

NeuroticSquirrel
2008-08-07 chapter 1
I admit it. I was about to just roll my eyes and skip to the next fic when I saw the synopsis. But I gave this a chance, and, boy, am I glad I did! You managed to create a rock band story while keeping the boys very OC. This story is well written and all around fun! It put a big smile on my face!
I'm looking forward to the next chapter!

For Everything Else There's Mastercard.

2009-01-03T00:06:18Z

It seems nobody ever told Omi Tsukiyono not to take candy from strangers. Especially not strangers who were tall, redheaded Germans who weren't actually strangers to him because they were, in fact, mortal enemies. All those of you who think utterly ridiculous, plotless badfic is strictly limited to the large fic archives out there will have to think again...

Story Title: Inescapable Conclusions
Perpetrator: TPod
Summary: 'A man's obssession reaches a turning point. A short bit I wrote, inspired by a really naughty picture I drew.'

Rating:

The Charges:
Hideous cliché non-con in which Schuldig abducts Omi and taunts him with a beverage in the middle of an utter torrent of ridiculously flowery urple prose. Nothing that happens makes sense either in terms of the characters or simple human logic, there's no plot, and the story goes nowhere. It's half an idea padded ridiculously to spin it out to story length.

The Case for the Prosecution:

The first thing anyone opening this fic would notice about it? The prose. Not because it's bad, but because the opening section - and all the sections written in the first person and, infuriatingly, in all italics - consists of some of the most absurdly overblown, flowery language I have come across in Weiss fic for a very long time. It's not quite so ultraviolet that it's impossible to work out what's going on, but it's certainly getting there. That said, when the alert reader realizes that this fic's take on Schuldig is only rhapsodizing over Omi's smiles and delicacy of touch because he wants to know if Omi would 'smile gently as my cock blossomed before [him]', most of them will find themselves wishing that the language had been that one bit more decorative and spared them that truly horrible mental image. I know I am.

The plot can be summed up extremely quickly. Schuldig is once again obsessing over a Weiss member in a very un-Schuldig-like way - this time Omi is the lucky recipient of the Golden Restraining Order and is acting like Ken to celebrate. So Schuldig abducts Omi in a manner that really shouldn't have worked but did, goes down on him, then takes him home.

How does Schuldig abduct Omi? Well, he places an order at the Koneko and asks them to deliver an expensive bouquet to an abandoned warehouse. Fortunately for Schuldig's frankly moronic sex plan, Ken wasn't doing deliveries. Two questions. Firstly, why does Schuldig like having sex in abandoned warehouses so much, is it some kind of fetish? Secondly, why doesn't Omi find the idea of delivering said expensive bouquet to an abandoned warehouse at all odd?

Much of the story is spent massively fetishizing the innocence that, canonically, Omi doesn't possess. Schuldig wastes an entire paragraph blathering quasi-poetically on about how Omi is an evil murderer but still has an unblemished character and is just as sweetly naive as he was when he lived with, um, Reiji Takatori. The unfortunate side effect of all this is that the ficcer seems, once again, to assume that 'innocence' translates to 'total mind-fucking idiocy'. This story turns Omi into a complete moron who blithely delivers flowers to abandoned warehouses and, on coming round from being randomly drugged in to unconsciousness, concludes that just maybe he was drugged into unconsciousness. It also takes him far too long to remember that he knows Schuldig. Did I mention that this is all set after Ouka's death?

Once again, this ficcer doesn't seem to realize Schwarz possess jobs. Schuldig, yet again finding himself with more free time than he knows what to do with, decides to fill it by stalking Omi and telepathically eavesdropping on him going about his business - wandering round the shop, eating ice-cream, making friends with his hand. The truly frightening thing is that Schuldig draws far cruder associations from watching Omi pottering round the shop and eating confectionary than he does from watching him pleasure himself. Either way it's plain that Schuldig needs to get himself an actual hobby instead of wasting time coming up with elaborate plans to abduct and molest random Weiss members.

Another question. How did Schuldig manage to drug Omi in the first place? The story, for some reason, doesn't bother to even begin to explain how this came to happen. It cuts from Omi waiting at the door with the flowers to him tied to a chair, unconscious. There's no explanation at all of how he got from Point A to Point B, still less how come he was drugged. Did Schuldig show up at the door and offer him barbiturates by claiming that they were yummy candy?

The characterization needs work. If it weren't for the paralyzing idiocy he exhibits, Omi would be IC if only the author had replaced every instance of the word 'Omi' with the word 'Ken'. Ken is the naive one who screams curses at his enemies and has ludicrous virginity issues despite arguably not actually being a virgin. As for Schuldig, he would be IC if he were a hyperliterate Joker after using himself as the subject of a trick to make a copy of the sonnets of William Shakespere disappear, though Omi/Ken would have to be Batman, the ridiculous fanon about Schuldig being a child prostitute would have to be dealt with and once the sex starts he can't even claim that much.

Schuldig is the most inept rapist ever. He goes to bizarre lengths over this absurd assault, even tying Omi up with silk scarves imported from China for Omi-tying-up purposes, just to perform deeply unsatisfactory (for Schuldig) oral sex on Omi, then carry him home to bed and angst about how much he loves him. Just what is Schuldig getting out of this?

Omi's response to being threatened by what he thinks is rape is not to try and fight, to feel horrified by his situation or utter loathing for Schuldig for putting him in this position. No, it is in fact to regret that he never asked to bang Ken while he had the chance. In fact, he regrets not banging pretty much everybody he's ever thought of affectionately, up to and including Youji who is having blatantly pastede on yey gay sex with Aya (and we know this because Omi walked in on them damaging each other for the sake of bad porn). This utterly transparent attempt to shoehorn a Youji x Aya shipper agenda in where it clearly has no place belonging is extremely jarring and rather throws the reader out of the situation they're reluctantly stuck in - it has no bearing on anything else and there's no good reason to mention it in the first place. It's just pointless and distracting and makes me wonder why Omi wants to do a guy who's already railing Aya anyway.

Finally there's the perspective problem. As if there wasn't quite enough to be getting on with already, the all italics inner monologue is far too floral, highfalutin' and ridiculously Omi-fixated to convince as Schuldig's. Schuldig is a lot more to-the-point than this, his linguistic games being of a rather different nature, and he only has room for one true love in his life and that love is clearly himself. His thoughts on watching Omi tied to a chair having been brought low by his ~~stupid~~ truly cunning and fantastic sex plan would be to congratulate himself on how truly awesome he must have been to come up with it, not how pure and lovely Omi was and how much he wanted him. Where have all the narcissists gone?

Exposing the Hideousness:

I feel your fear, little one. It shines as brightly as your big blue eyes, wide and scared at the newfound knowledge of your captor. I can taste your trepidation, thick and sluggish, outwardly apparent in the way you sink more deeply in the seat of the chair, as if you could hide in its corners and angles. But you cannot hide from me, my boy. I will find you whereever you flee. You see, you are in my blood. Your essence has become intertwined with my own. That is why I must have you this night. It is not my intention to rape you, dear boy, but to complete a task begun so long ago, when I kidnapped you at your uncle's party, and took your limp form in my arms. It was in that first touch, that first awareness of your body, your scent, your innocent beauty, that I became lost. And yet, found something that apparently never had a clue I needed.
I smile at you, and you flinch. You are considering a million possible escapes at this moment, all of which I know would be in vain. Omi, lovely Omi...I cannot bring myself to call you by your given name. You are no longer the child you once were, ignorant of the horrors of the world and the evil it encapsulated. Now - now, my beautiful boy, you are as much of an evildoer as myself. You, too, have committed murder, albeit in the name of a shady type of justice; but sanctioned or not, murder it was. And yet, you've remained as unblemished in character as you certainly were the day you were kidnapped from your childhood home, denied by the man you thought was your father, rescued by a stranger who, in reality, was your father, and thrust into the shadow-world of WeiB. White. Untainted. Free of the stains of sin. How have you remained thus? Tell me your secrets, all of them. I won't tell a soul. I will keep them locked deep inside. I will treasure them, Omi Tsukyono. I will treasure you.

"What do you want?" he rasped, fear clenching his throat tight. "Why have you brought me here?"
The man - Schudich? - merely smiled. It was chilling in its harmlessness. Eerily, it was almost...gentle.
Omi pulled at his bonds to no avail. And jerked his head back when the German stepped closer. Red-orange hair lay in a haphazard tangle over his bandana-covered forehead, and cascaded down his pale, bare shoulders in a fall of burnished copper. Omi's eyes fell lower, taking in the dark, tight pants and shining black boots. No weapons visible; the assassin must have other, less expedient means of torture and death in mind for him.
He flinched when the older man's hand swept up, until he realized what was clasped in his long-fingered fist. A glass. Filled with water, condensation dripping down its clear sides. Omi licked his dry lips, swallowed against an arid throat.
As, so this was the beginning of the torture, then. Teasing him with the beverage, and mocking when he resorted to begging for it. Well, the damned orange-haired bastard wasn't getting a fucking plea from him.
"Are you thirsty, little one?"
Startled, Omi glanced up at the man's face. Surely the sincerity in those hazel eyes was yet another sham. And the softness of the question he voiced.
Warily, he gave a short nod.
He gulped the water as fast as he could before it had chance to be ripped from his mouth. It dribbled over his chin and onto his shirt and lap, but he didn't care. This might very well be the last liquid he received for a long time, and it was best to make it last as long as possible.

Your heart, my dear, is so enigmatic. It can go from heated rage to great sorrow in the frame of an instant.
How incredible you are, child of light.
I cannot help myself. I must touch you. Your eyes are pools of blue water, swirling with confusion as I tenderly raise your chin in my trembling hand, my thumb tracing the smooth lines of your jaw, my index finger feeling the jump of your jugular. Your hair gleams a dark gold in the subdued light of this dull warehouse, a beacon to my other hand, which finds itself tentatively touching it, stroking the silken strands between thumb and fingers.
My lips find yours, lightly brushing them and I revel in the gasp that I feel puff from them. It doesn't matter that it is from shock rather than desire; this will soon change.
I drop in genuflect before you. Why yes, I am worshipping you. You are everything I wish I could have been. Purity in a poisoned generation.
The buttons of your trendy little shirt open before my deft fingers and soon your slender chest and pink nipples are revealed to my starving eyes. I shut them, lest I fall over the precipice so soon.
But I can't stop the whisper that escapes.

"You are so beautiful."
The whispered statement only served to increase Omi's terror. And his confusion. So this was how it would be, then. The torture du jour was to be rape at the hands of his enemy. A thousand regrets flittered through his mind, that he had never acted on his impulses and offered himself to Oka or to one of his fellow Weiss members. Ken, he was certain, would have been a gentle lover for his first time. Or Yohji, who he had once walked in on with another young man in the throes of passion, the latter crying out Yohji's name with abandon as his body arched against the tall chestnut-haired man's steady thrusts. How surprised he had been to discover that it had been Aya-kun who raked his fingernails across his lover's backside.
You are so beautiful.
Now, why would the man who was about to violently assault him tell him something like that?
Schuldich's eyes snapped open, and Omi remembered belatedly that although he had not spoken that thought aloud, the man before him was a reader of thoughts.
The redhead tilted his head, puzzlement in his expression. "But you are." As though it was an obvious thing to all.
Omi wasn't ready to give up just yet. His curiosity had been piqued, despite his initial fear. "But I'm a man, I can't be beautiful."
Schuldich's next smile was...dazzling.
"Oh, no, my dear, there you are very much mistaken. Everything about you is lovely. Your face, your body-"
Omi felt a flush sweep through him.
"-your voice, your scent, your nature, your character...I could say more but it would only compound the proof." The older man moved forward again, his face very, very close to Omi's.
Omi watched the German lick his lips and unconsciously mirrored the action, which was not lost on the other.
A whisper. "I've never known beauty. Until I saw you. Until I touched you. I tried to deny you, but you've got me dead to rights, Omi-ai."
Omi-love. Definite misuse of the Japanese language, but somehow...
Heat uncoiled in Omi's lower belly and warm tentacles spread throughout him to the tips of his limbs.
He hadn't a thing to say to that.
And a moment later, when Schuldich's mouth descended once more on his own, there just didn't seem the opportunity.

You taste sweeter than I had imagined. I plunge my tongue into your mouth, swallowing the gasp you exhale, drinking you down like a smooth confectionary beverage. Ohhh, but you are exquisite.
I must say that I am completely unprepared for your first moan. I had truly expected for it to take a little longer, for us to become a little more involved, before I would receive that particular reaction. Momentarily, your tongue joins mine in a heated battle for superiority. I'm not entirely certain when it was that I opened the snaps and unzipped your shorts, but suddenly my hands are caressing your soft, quivering thighs, thumbs running on the insides and you are writhing deliciously beneath my ministrations. You are still bound to the chair, but for what I want to do, that is of no consequence.
My lips and teeth find your rosy buds and your chest arches towards my face, a small cry erupting from somewhere deep inside you. Ah, the unrestrained passion of youth.
But when my hand reaches the hard length of you and takes it firmly in my grasp - that is when the savagery of your lifestyle emerges in a violent rush.

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:
No actual reviews as this is a fansite, but for those of you who want to know what kind of feedback the author gets for her work in general, the site's guestbook can be found here. I couldn’t see this fic mentioned specifically, but all that means is that I personally couldn’t see it; it could well be there if you just have a bit more patience with plowing through gushy guestbook posts and comments about an anime convention held six years ago than I do.

white huntress would like to mention that the decidedly not worksafe picture that supposedly inspired this piece of fail!porn can be found here and, like the fic, it's a bit cack-handed. I was too busy being distracted by terrible anatomy and terrible fuzzy pencilwork to notice the naughtiness at first.

Future Imperfect

2009-01-01T21:30:47Z

In this story, Ran meets and is vaguely irked by a random Sue called Hanako who shows up for no reason and rants about loving flowers over... and over... and over again. You know, a while back I read a fic featuring an office girl called Hanako whose life was changed by the sudden arrival of a Weiss member. Sadly for me, this is not that fanfic.

Story Title: Fouetté
Perpetrator: Yami Bakura
Summary: '[FOLLOWS OVERTIME] Ran visits his sister in Kyoto, and learns a great deal about everything. Bi, M/M, OC, Oneshot, Other'

Rating:

Resident Sue: Hanako Fujiwara
Full Species: Puella americana superfluita.
Luxuriant Tresses: "Her long black hair hung in a braid to her hips."
Vibrant Orbs: "She stared up at him with the biggest pair of green eyes he'd ever seen in another human being."
Special Possessions: Eyes as big as cart-wheels? Also wears large hoop earrings and the usual lovingly-described Sue wardrobe consisting of a tight tee-shirt and capri pants, leaving her looking unfortunately like a fifteen year old on her first date. In 1957. Also has a bucket of popcorn and a favorite restaurant she's never visited.
Canon Love Interest: Aya Fujimiya, is there anyone else?

Infuriatingly Wangsty Origin: As is mentioned totally at random, as the Suethor clearly couldn't think of a way to introduce this angle at all naturally, Hanako is apparently half-American: her mother was in the Navy stationed in Japan, met and married her father, and they spawned a Sue. As there's been absolutely no sign that Hanako herself was anything of the sort before Aya randomly brings it up apropos of nothing at all, the angle about her having foreign parentage and being teased for it as a child feels as if it was randomly pasted on in an attempt to give this utterly one-note 'cute young girl' character some kind of depth and individuality, and some past trauma to bond with Aya over because OMG he was teased as a child for looking speshully different too! If there's anything more to her than this, it entirely passed me by.
Canon-Raping Connections: Hanako forces her way into the story in the guise of Aya-chan's infuriatingly tedious 'best friend'. Aya-chan clearly wants her to hook up with her brother because Aya needs a girlfriend and the Sue is there: of course, the minute he sets eyes on her Aya checks her out and decides he likes what he sees, because Youji's heterosexuality had to go somewhere after he unconvincingly hooked up with Farfarello. Hanako asks Aya if she can show him around Kyoto, and when Aya agrees she... takes him to the movies. She and Aya have the same favorite restaurant (though she's never actually been there - the Hell?) and taste in films, so they're clearly destined for each other.
Speshul Powers of Speshulness: Makes Aya care about his appearance simply because she's in the house with him, never mind that he's been surrounded by attractive girls for years and was quite happy in his orange sweater of doom. Naturally, within seconds of clapping eyes on Hanako in all her slender gorgeousness Aya's deciding that he wants nothing more than to follow her around all day like a little lost sheep, and within hours of leaving the house they're having cutesy 'moments' and holding hands feels totally natural. Oh, and she magically knows what restaurants she'll like without ever eating there.

The Charges:
A goddamn Mary Sue. She's largely pointless and serves only to pad the fic by several thousand words. The fic itself is incredibly dull and claims to be a 'one-shot', though it's obviously nothing of the sort as the ficcer damn near insists that her audience read the previous parts to 'understand' what's going on. And don't even get me started on the OOC...

The Case for the Prosecution:

This clearly isn't a one-shot, so why post it as one? Here's a fanficcer who's writing what is plainly intended as one story. So far, however, she has posted what are obviously the first four chapters as four vaguely-related stories, none of which make sense in isolation. Either way, this fic doesn't work alone: it doesn't open and end, it starts and stops in a manner that would be acceptable for chapter three of a fic, not a short story. There's no attempt to meet the readers halfway, ease them into the situation or actually explain anything, and therefore it fails as a standalone work. Ficcer, if you want us to read the part preceding this to 'get it', post this new work as another chapter. Not a new story.

The plot? So, there's this girl and she's cool. That's it. We're introduced, after a brief bit of sibling bonding between Aya and his sister, to a girl called Hanako... and she's utterly pointless. She's simply there to be cute and have Aya fall in love with her for no more reason than she's there and the ficcer wants to pair up everybody - she's already fixed half the others up with incredibly unlikely gay partners. Even Aya-chan's claiming to be bi-curious, but Extra Crispy Aya is speshul and gets to be straight. Why, with all this gay play going on, throw in a random female OC for Aya's benefit?

The first desperately wrong note is struck when Aya-chan teases Ran about his missions. Yes. Teases. The ficcer admits that sometimes this worries Aya-chan, but she's more likely to rib him about saving damsels in distress. Which she knows all about because Omi has been sending her little postcards about killing baddies for money. I'm sorry, what?

Aya-chan knows everything about Weiss because she reads badfic. I have no idea what happened to her in this story, but I'm going to guess she was abducted and replaced by a robot clone who'd been shown the script. Why else to explain how come she knows more about Who's Doing Who in Weiss than Aya does though he lives with them and she doesn't? She knows that Ken's a top, and claims Aya doesn't think the rest of Weiss are ALL GAY because they never hit on him. She also talks casually in the middle of a restaurant about gay sex and by the way I'd like to fuck girls. I know Aya-chan's bold and unconventional, but even she has limits as to what she'd tell her overprotective big brother.

The fic is set six years after Kapitel and not only utterly ignores post-Kapitel canon, it seems to have no idea what the passage of seven years would involve. Aya-chan, for example, is still saving up for college at the age of 23. Nagi, at 21, appears to be in high school and doing homework. As for the men of Weiss, they appear to have made no emotional development at all unless 'going really OOC' counts. Weird, as both Omi and Ken weren't even fully grown in Kapitel...

Hanako and Aya's date is just lame padding that doesn't go anywhere or explain what Aya sees in this exceptionally dull specimen. Worse, it breaks the rules of show, don't tell. We the readers don't get to see the reputedly phenomenal chemistry that keeps Aya around a random girl he was introduced to at six a.m. that morning until ten at night, as they go from sightseeing, to a movie, to lunch in Aya's favorite restaurant, to a trip to the park to feed ducks, to dinner, to a concert. (Yes, this is one date.) We're just told that yes there was chemistry and yes it was awesomely awesome and they both really hit it off. The only thing that's actually detailed is about five minutes in the restaurant where Hanako and Aya pout over living in different towns, then bond over her half-American wangst and her obsessive love of flowers.

Aya goes to Reverse!Nandos with his sister and they have, as I mentioned, this really weird and wrong discussion about his teammates and their sex lives. Aya-chan, in this scene, is there to make Aya want to leave Weiss by loudly and embarrassingly discussing sex in public, thus proving she's All Grown Up. It seems the whole point of this ridiculous not-chapter-fic is that Weiss ends up disbanding because the team are all too busy having gay sex with desperately OOC Schwarz members or equally dull OCs, so Aya has to find love with a dull OC and leave Weiss too so the plot doesn't get derailed. I don't know what worries me more: that Aya wants to live near his embarrassing, OOC sister, or that this really was the best way the ficcer came up with to have him realize what he's been missing.

And then there's Ken. The ficcer really doesn't seem to have any idea what to do with Ken when she's not claiming he's - in his own highly OOC words - a 'confirmed twink', so she one-liners him into an unlikely relationship with Omi's American clone who he met in a gay bar and then rids him from the plot forthwith. He's just phoning this in now, isn't he?

And finally, we return to Tokyo to find Nagi telekinetically pinning Omi to his chair then... doing his homework in front of him, which almost makes all that crap with Hanako look logical and totally relevant. Yeah, you may be wondering why the Hell I'm going on about Omi and Nagi all of a sudden. Well, so am I. This scene has no bearing at all on anything else in the fic - yet another sign that this is an intermediate chapter of a longer work, and should be treated as one.

Finally, though this is clearly an attempt to pair Aya off and get him out the way so that hot pointless gay sex can continue to happen, Aya's romantic subplot feels almost as pastede on yey as Ken's - who, as mentioned, the ficcer has no idea how to write. The OC she pairs Aya up with has no personality save for being generically okay to be around (though, sadly, she's nowhere near as generic as some of the Sues I've come across), no orignal thought went into creating her, and she has no purpose in the scheme of things except as 'Aya's love interest' because all of Weiss are going to be paired up by the end of this fic come Hell or high water. It's going to happen because the ficcer wants it to happen, and that's supposed to be good enough no effort need be placed into explaining why. Sadly, it's not.

Exposing the Hideousness:

The next morning, he was awoken bright and early by Aya pounding on his door with all the gentle finesse of a blind elephant. "Wake up, brother! I've got a surprise for you!"
Blearily, Ran dragged himself out of bed and cracked open the door, glowering at his perky sister. "What?" he grunted. She giggled.
"I've got to go to work, but I called my friend Hanako over to keep you company." She flitted away, leaving behind a flowery scent that momentarily gagged him. Did she bathe in that stuff? he wondered briefly, and then a second female voice from down the hall alerted him to the fact that he was still in his pajama pants. He hurriedly showered and dressed, paying unusual attention to how he looked.
I'm not looking for a girlfriend, he told himself. So don't be silly. I can't have a girlfriend until I move anyway. I could never expose anyone else to my life.
He made an effort to appear relaxed as he walked down the hall, and even though he was expecting another person, he was still floored by the appearance of Hanako.
Her long black hair hung in a braid to her hips, and she wore large hoop earrings. Her shirt was in the same style as Aya's, although, he noted with relief, not quite as small. She wore capri pants that hugged her tiny hips snugly, and she stared up at him with the biggest pair of green eyes he'd ever seen in another human being.
"Fujiwara-san, this is my brother, Fujimiya Ran." Aya said, giggling. She hadn't missed the way Ran had sized her friend up instantly, or the way - that Ran hadn't seen - Hana checked out her brother. Confident that her good deed for the day had been done, she floated out the door, already wondering what sort of things they'd get up to. It was high time Hana had a boyfriend, and she knew Ran was lonely.
Once the sound of Aya's car leaving the drive had faded out, Ran and Hana said at the same time, "Sorry about her."
Ran grinned, and Hana blushed. "No really, I'm sorry," Ran insisted. "It's very kind of you to come over, and if you have other plans today, feel free to do whatever you need to."
"So polite," Hana murmured. "I have nothing else to do, and so if you don't mind, I can show you around town?" Ran didn't even have to consider it.
"I would be honoured," he said, and meant it.

After the movie, they exited the theatre laughing so hard tears were coming out of their eyes. "And then he said-" Hana started, and it trailed off into laughter. Ran understood, however, and laughed harder. He couldn't remember the last time he'd let go like this. After a few minutes, she straightened, wiping her eyes.
"I haven't laughed like that in a long time," she said wistfully. Ran's smile turned sad.
"Neither have I." Hana gave him a startled look, and he shrugged. Their eyes caught, and Ran felt the beginnings of a moment, when it was ruined by the sound of a stomach growling. Hana's face turned violently red.
"I'm sorry!" she said. "I skipped breakfast this morning." Ran grinned, and rubbed his stomach as well.
"That popcorn just barely took the edge off. Would you like to get something to eat?"
He picked out a nice-looking restaurant, and was gratified when she smiled. "This is my favourite place! I always try to come here at least once a month."
"Have you been yet?" Ran asked, almost disappointed.
"Rent was higher than I was expecting, so no! You have great taste!" She took his hand, and he allowed her to lead him in without taking notice of it immediately. It just seemed so natural to hold her hand.
"I'll tell you a secret," Ran said when they were waiting for a table. Hana looked at him expectantly. "This is my favourite restaurant, too. I always drag Aya out here when I'm down from Tokyo."
She laughed easily, and then her face fell. "I forgot," she said quietly. Ran wondered at the shift in her mood.
"Forgot?" he prompted, hoping she wouldn't realize that their hands were still clasped between them.
"You live in Tokyo. That's so far away. I was just hoping that I could see you again, but Aya said you're only here for a week."
The waittress collected them, smiling gently at their hands, and deposited them at a quiet table in the back. Hana flushed to the roots of her hair when she realized they'd been holding hands the whole time.
"I do live in Tokyo," Ran said after the waittress had taken their drink orders. "But I'm planning to move here soon. I don't like being so far from Aya, and..." He fixed his eyes on the wall, almost embarrassed. "I'd like to see you again, too." Venturing a glance at Hana, he noticed she looked a little embarrassed, but also happy.
"Excuse me," Ran said suddenly. "I can't help but ask... are you... were your parents American?" The word "American" conjured nasty images up of Schwarz's precognitive, although he had to admit that recently - within the last year or so - Schwarz had become less and less of a problem. And with Yohji involved with one of their member, he couldn't hate them completely.
"My mother was. She was in the American military, and stationed here in Japan on one of the bases. She met my father here, and they fell in love, and when she got out of the Navy, she moved over here permanently." Hana seemed to be used to fielding questions of this nature, and also looked like she was at ease with her dual heritage. Ran admired her for it. He'd been teased endlessly as a child for having violet eyes, to say nothing of his hair, and knew that she must have gone through something similar.

"Aya, I've been meaning to talk to you about Omi." Ran said. True to her word, she'd taken him to the zoo, although she'd had to leave the room when one of the animal handlers took out a large tarantula from a cage.
"Omi? What about him?" She sipped delicately on her drink, and Ran reflected on how strange it was to see his baby sister drinking alcohol. Legally.
"He's been really weighted down lately. You remember Schwarz?" Aya shuddered. She'd heard horror stories about the psychic team practically since waking up. "Well... Yohji got involved with one of them. I don't even know how it started."
"Is Yohji ... okay?" she asked hesitantly. Ran nodded.
"It's completely his decision. Schuldig can't do things like that. And the scary part is... he seems happy with it." Aya frowned.
"Why is that scary, though?" she wondered. Ran sighed.
"He's sleeping with Farfarello." Her mouth fell open, and the straw dropped back into her violent green drink.
"The white-haired one?" she asked. He nodded, thinking about the unlikelyhood of that couple. "I suppose... he's not bad looking," Aya ventured. Ran shot her a dark look.
"Please don't ever think about Farfarello like that again," he asked, only half-joking.
She smiled. "Well, Schuldig's not really my type, and Crawford's too old, but Nagi's really cute, too. And he's talented, as well. I bet he could rearrange my furniture."
"That's not fair, Aya-chan, comparing me with someone who knocked down a mansion with his mind!" Actually, now that he'd thought about it, Aya always asked about the littlest Schwarz. "You don't-" he asked horrified, and she shook her head.
"He's gay. He's gayer than Ken-san is, actually." Their number was called, and he stood to collect their food, wondering about what she'd just said. Ken was gay? Nagi was gay?
"Alright," he said, setting her plate in front of her. "I'll bite. How is Nagi gayer than Ken? And since when was Ken gay, anyway?"
Aya looked at him sadly. "You mean you don't know?"
"Know what?" Ran asked, exasperated. "If I knew, I wouldn't have to ask, now would I?"
"Well, Ken's a top." she said frankly. "He's obviously the dominant one in his relationship."
"Ken doesn't have a relationship," Ran reminded her. Aya clucked her tongue at him.
"He's dating a little foreign boy named.. Jay... Jason, that's it. Jason Whatts. Ask Omi, he knows. Actually, Omi might be jealous."
"My team-mates aren't gay," Ran argued. "I think I'd know if they were."
"Well, just because they haven't come after you. I always thought of Yohji-san as being bisexual, myself. Didn't you tell me he always went after girls? Or maybe he's just severely in the closet."
"I can't believe I'm hearing my sister say these things so bluntly," Ran said, pressing a hand to his forehead.
"It's nothing bad," she argued. "I don't care that they're gay. I'm bisexual too,"
Ran choked on his drink. "What?" he wheezed, and she giggled.
"Bi-curious," she amended. "I haven't met any guys that I liked, and Hana's got a friend... At least if I get a girlfriend, I won't get pregnant."

Conclusive Proof Weiss Fangirls Are Stupid:

Jei Svenka
2008-08-23 id # 3000057045
It's soooogood 8DD I love Ran's interactions with his sister, and for some reason the idea of him getting with Hana doesn't bother me as much as I'd expected it to. She's really adorable ^^ So Ayachan's scared of tarantulas, aye? I guess I saw that coming XD You'd better be careful, though. This is threatening to become one of the most awesome, epic fics ever... >D