alright, let me get some groundwork first. loads of people watch anime/read manga, yes? and among the fans there are those who wish to reproduce their beloved characters/setting through various means; cosplay, fanart, rp, fanfics, what-have-you. cool and dandy, really, because it's a pretty lovely way to show your love for the stuff in my honest opinion, and man, some of them have colourful rainbow chocolate scented fairy sparkle talent flowing through them because the stuff they make is amazing. the things they touch becomes a great contribution to the fandom (a kingdom of fans so to speak; it's where fans share their fanstuffs and do their phemphem-ing ), yet still remain distinctively theirs. but remember we're talking about loads of people here and they're each different with unique tastes and individuality. sometimes their unique taste can be a bit... overbearing. doesn't help my case much that anime/manga offers a shitload of fanservice. either that or you can just throw in a sprinkle of over-imaginative phemphems and the perversion pretty much works its own way from there.

the fan industry is what supports the anime/manga industry. young (or not so young) children clamour for the latest Naruto release just as much as the fujoshi wants her latest hertz issue, some want action, some want tragedy; it's a classic case of supply and demand. i don't know if this is just a trend but current shounen manga usually have romance in it as well action and destruction, hence making the story more appealing to a wider audience. but the authors have storyboard and group demographic to target at, and they can't possibly cater to the demands of all types of fan. this is where fan community come in handy. they each come together and satisfy each others' demands, fulfilling in requests of any kind. mostly, the perverted kind. i'm not going to pretend i'm a saint at this point of venture (some are pretty hot, even), but i hate it when the characters are mangled and twisted to perform unrealistic feats far beyond their natural perimeters just for the sake of lust. case in point; using your original character (that is in some way a representation of yourself) making out with a chaste shounen jump hero. or a teenage mutant ninja turtle for that matter. i mean it's just...how self-absorbed can you get?

fanstuff isn't something that you can easily hide from. try google for a particular anime just to get its synopsis and it is highly likely that some fanstuff will jump at you. i usually sift my way through fanstuff carefully. very, carefully. bad fanarts (read: crappy pairings) are pretty easy to evade, although sometimes the art is just so goshdarn good that one can't help but feel the attraction. after the spell washes away and everything is torn down back to its original roots, i can't help but feel the biggest UGH for having momentarily supported such a ridiculous pairing. in the case of FMAs' Nightingale series however, it's pretty much a rinse and repeat process because the art is just so goshdarn gorgeous. that has always been a problem with me, the conflict of interest in the art and unmasked disdain for ooc fanstuff (and a tinge of perversion on my part? damn this phemphem heart of mine!). and now there's a One Piece fancomic by kyuugou (ninekoks circle) with Ace. it says here that there is no pairing, as it is mostly Ace-related stuff, but hoooooooow can i trust that phemphem heart not to 'accidentally' mix up a friendly brush to the shoulder with a silently burning flame of passion?....

haa....haa... i think i'm overthinking things. must be getting paranoid.

in the end, fanstuffs mean a lot to the fandom. it can act as a kind of popularity gauge, it encourages strangers to get to know each other under a single common interest, it stimulates the imagination and gets creative juices to flow by borrowing a ready-made background story and developing the characters purely on your own interest. admittedly, that last bit of the final point there is the part that i'm having a problem with regading the entire fandom issue. but just as much as there are fanstuff suited to another phemphems' taste, there is sure to be some fanstuff that suits mine. or i can just ignore everything entirely and just stick to canon.