Fandom-Specific Plot/Anime and Manga

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    Examples of Fandom-Specific Plots based on Anime and Manga include:

    Axis Powers Hetalia

    • Axis Powers Hetalia fandom is full of works regarding current and past politics and unions. This is (obviously) pretty much only feasible in this continuity, considering that the show is about personified countries.
    • The "Letters" trend: characters answering fanmail being sent to them (via reviews by readers). The strange thing about this is the fact that A) these typically don't require/have an actual plot, and B) interactive fanfic is actually against the rules on FF.net, but they manage to make up a VERY prevalent chunk of the APH category there. Occasionally Did Not Do the Research shows up, since some feature countries/cities/places that the authors do not hail from/have been to.
    • An APH fanfic writer's motto could practically be "If you look hard enough, any pairing can be historical." And it's generally true.
    • The APH fandom is infamous for its Mpreg. Any geographic or administrative region could potentially have its own personification, and for some fanfic writers, there's no better way to Hand Wave in an OC than by having two characters go to town. America tends to get this treatment most often, but search in the right place and you will find Mpreg for any and every Hetalian.
    • AU fanfics with the characters rewritten as ordinary people instead of countries are especially common, since they allow the author to write certain pairings/situations without any of the political/historical stickiness.

    Death Note

    • Death Note fanfiction not only has its two overwhelmingly popular pairings of L/Light and Matt/Mello, but also predictable storylines of just how they get together. L and Light frequently fall in love during the Yotsuba arc, often with special attention paid to the anime-only rooftop rain scene and averting the canon outcome of the 13-day test.
      • Matt/Mello fanfics often include a teen romance (perhaps unconsummated) in Wammy's House, Matt's heartbreak over Mello leaving to join the Mafia, and then later include angst over either Matt's death, Mello's death, both, or if their canon fates are avoided, their near-brushes with death. If the fanfic is non-angsty, Matt/Mello often appears as a secondary couple in a Ship Mates fanfic along with L/Light, with all four working as detectives together and getting along surprisingly well, despite Light being a (possibly reformed) serial killer.
    • Light complains about L eating so much sugar and not letting him sleep. L complains about the time Light spends on personal hygiene.
    • Light and L forget that they are working on a high profile murder case and are paranoid neurotics and go to the movies / beach / mall / candy store / fun place for no good reason.
    • Light forgets that he's on a righteous crusade to eliminate evil and because of the power of twu lub gives up the notebook to be with L.
    • Mr. Yagami gets mad at L or Light for sleeping together.
    • Misa is a hateful bitch and tries to kill L and/or Light.
    • For the rare het fic: Misa is a stupid puppet that does whatever Light tells her.
    • Light is an abusive ass, Misa falls in love with L, and Misa or more commonly Rem cuts a deal with L.
    • Mello gets into a fight with Matt about lack of chocolate or ignoring him in favor of his video games.
    • Beyond Birthday arrives to rape/dismember/kill L, Light, Mello, Near or whatever Woobie of choice.
    • Light becomes a Shinigami.
    • Light develops Dissociative Identity Disorder.
    • Rewrite the show so that Light never picked up the notebook.
    • L's Backstory is finally revealed. It's very dark and tragic.
    • Matt saves the day.
    • Mello lied about having no interest in Sayu. Sayu is raped by the mafia guys. Or Mello saves her to rape her himself.
    • A Mary Sue with a tragic past falls into the Death Note world from our world and derails the plot with her charms.
    • A Mary Sue with a tragic past arrives at Wammy's House but eventually gets kicked out for being smarter than everyone else and goes on to pair up with the character of choice.
    • A Mary Sue with a tragic past has a super special Life Note and the Eyes and a Shinigami buddy at her side and goes on to pair up with the character of choice.

    K-On!

    • A common plot in K-On! ero-Doujinshi is one or more band members having sex in the club room, and somebody else spying and/or walking in on them. Western fanfics frequently use the following plots:
      • The school becomes co-ed so that a male Author Avatar can join the cast.
      • Ritsu becoming sexually irresistable when she takes her headband off.
      • One or more characters' parents disapproves of them being lesbians. (Nobody seems to want to write a scene that actually depicts the characters coming out to disapproving parents: it either happens offscreen, in backstory, or the fic dies before getting to that point.)

    Naruto

    • Tons of Peggy Sue fics.
    • A lot of fics in which the genin teams are different, either because someone else is teaching Team 8 or someone else wanted Naruto, which shuffled the teams around. (These fics are most often Naruto/Hinata)
    • The infamous Clan Restoration Act, where one male character is forced to pair with multiple women to revive his clan.
    • Also there multiple fics when Naruto gains an awesome power and virtually every girl except Sakura, usually fall for him that includes his mother, Tsunade and girls he never met like Yugito.
    • Nearly every story starts with Naruto being hated and attacked by the citizens of Konoha and the Third doing absolutely nothing about it.
    • Also there are many fics that deal with Naruto bringing back Sasuke only to be betrayed by Sakura and is later exiled/executed.
    • Twelve-plus young characters of the same age, with a variety of personalities? Let's put them in high school!
    • Another really common one is the non-massacre AU, usually used as an excuse to pair up Itachi and Sakura.

    One Piece

    • A retelling of the canon story, but with a new OC added. Typically will follow The Stations of the Canon almost to a T and peter out sometime before the Alabasta arc.
    • A new generation of pirates story set X years after the death of Luffy, the 2nd Pirate King. Typically will solicit readers to submit their OCs to fill up positions on the crew and as rivals/enemies.
    • An OC from the real world gets pulled into the One Piece world and makes friends with the Straw Hats, Whitebeard or the Heart Pirates. Typically later falls in love with Luffy/Zoro, Ace, or Trafalgar Law.
    • Sanji/Luffy/Nami getting sick and Zoro taking care of him/her. Instead of, you know, the actual doctor, Chopper. And yes, it always seems to be Zoro.

    Ranma ½

    • Ranma ½ fanfic is heavy on the Gender Bender fanfics (for characters besids Ranma himself), as there's a canon way to do it. And while girl-Ranma getting pregnant isn't exactly Mister Seahorse, some fics will have him discover that yes, the pregnancy doesn't go away when he's male. (Most Pregnant!Ranma fanfics have him trapped in female form instead.) And there's also a canon source for plenty of Animorphism fics.
    • Another common plot is Ranma discovering that he is (or is becoming) gender dysphoric, his self-image shifting to that of a girl instead of a guy, or at least a "both/neither" state. Ranma getting stuck as a girl is the usual plot device to reach this conclusion.
    • Also, Ranma ½/Sailor Moon crossovers where Ranma turns out to be a sailor senshi are so prevalent that they have their own trope.
    • "Split-Ranma" fics, wherein Ranma's male and female halves are separated into distinct individuals, but both with the same mind as the original and both locked permanently into their respective genders, were a dime a dozen in the late '90s. Some would explore the female Ranma's psychological anxieties; others would happily assume that she would gladly accept this situation and go off from there.
    • For a while during the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a spate of "what if someone else raised Ranma" stories, with everyone from Elminster of the Forgotten Realms to Bugs Bunny taking Ranma off Genma's hands as a youngster and arriving with him, somewhat... differently trained, on the Tendos' doorstep years later. Many of these were loosely connected to the greater continuity of The Bet-verse, and came from the minicommunity of fic writers around Gregg "Metroanime" Sharp.
      • This last one is not specific to Ranma; several characters have been subject to this: Naruto, Shirou Emiya, Harry Potter, Shinji Ikari—basically anyone who had a messed up childhood that was still vague enough for some canon or crossover character to take notice and bring the kid under her/his/its/their wing. For example, Shinji and Warhammer40K is basically "Shinji Ikari as raised by Warhammer 40,000".
    • Then there were the "Passion Spice" fics. Based on an influential early fic, these all adhered to the fanon that among Cologne's assorted magical doodads was a collection of magical spices and herbs with various psychoactive properties—and the king of them all was the aphrodisiac "Passion Spice". Depending on the author these could range from simple farce to No Plot, No Problem Lemons.
    • Happosai summoning a demon to teach his disrespectful students a lesson (and more often than not losing control of it) showed up in more than a few fics, especially darker ones. The influential Self-Insert Fic Twisted Path starts off with such a summoning also scooping up a random schlub from another Earth.

    Sailor Moon

    • Mamoru abuses Usagi or dies. Usagi runs to Demand/Haruka/SEIYA. ChibiUsa is either handwaved into a new child or ignored outright.
      • Alternatively, Mamoru abuses Usagi but she still stays with him for the good of the world and to have ChibiUsa. She then has an affair with Demand/Haruka/Seiya.
      • Usagi and Seiya's bastard child goes to the past/Earth to learn about her history (and accidentally get her parents back together)/purposely get her parents back together/stop her own birth.
    • ChibiUsa comes back from the future as a chesty teen and is much more badass.
      • Given her canon appearance as Dark Lady at the end of Sailor Moon R and her appearance when she and Usagi swap ages in Sailor Moon SuperS, "chesty teenager" isn't without merit... but many fics took her figure into Gag Boobs territory.
    • Usagi is betrayed by Mamoru and/or the Inner Senshi. She joins the Outers or Starlights, romances Haruka or Seiya, and is suddenly totally badass/capable/intelligent.
    • One that was popular in the early days of the English fandom: Amara abuses Michelle. Gary Stu arrives to tell Amara off and rescue poor, vulnerable Michelle from the "sin" of homosexuality. (Extremely discredited nowadays. Don't write a fanfic like this unless you want to be nuked from orbit by the rest of the fandom.)

    Other works

    • In Princess Tutu, if you are a fanfic writer, odds are that you have written a story where Fakir transforms Ahiru back into a girl.
      • Princess Tutu ends on a bittersweet note, with Ahiru remaining a duck because it's her true self. Lots of fans were unhappy with that, and that means 90% of fanfiction out there for the series is Fakir turning her back into a girl with storyspinning. No exaggerating. Almost. Every. Single. Fic.
    • There is an entire Fullmetal Alchemist fan community devoted to Mister Seahorse.
    • Inuyasha has a great amount of hurt/comfort with Rin as the sick person.
    • It's still a common belief that Fushigi Yuugi: Eikoden was a subtle Take That against the sheer amount of "Mary Sue is sucked into the book and becomes the new priestess" fics in the fandom.
    • The future arc means that the Katekyo Hitman Reborn Kink Meme is filled with age specific pairing fics such as TYL!(10 Years Later)Xanxus with 14!Squalo. Kinda justified with the Adults!Acrobalenos if you want to avoid the Squick.
    • In Love Hina fandom it's not unusual to find a fic in which Su permanently changes into her older form to become a viable love interest for Keitaro.
    • In Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction the Peggy Sue fic is extremely common, the most well-known being the doujin RE-TAKE (which, in a suitably Eva way, is actually a subversion). There are fics out there that set up a For Want of a Nail situation, and then reveal that either the changes were actually caused by a Peggy Sue, or that the events of the original series had happened before. There are also Crossover fanfics where this happens. It's reached the point where some fans think that Rebuild of Evangelion is one of these!
      • Post-Third Impact fic. This can range from Shinji and Asuka by themselves in a wasteland, to everyone coming Back from the Dead and the world returned to (mostly) normal. Most of the time, Rei has vanished and Toji gets his leg back (both of which might be supported by canon).
      • Not so much a Fandom Specific Plot as a Fandom Specific Title, but after the release of Rebuild of Evangelion, odds are good that a revision of a fanfic will be entitled "Rebuild of X".
    • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Fix Fic in which Kamina and/or Nia aren't dead is incredibly common. Justifications tend to be that the series is based on punching physics in the face via sheer manliness anyway, so why not?
    • The Familiar of Zero's basic premise, summoning a familiar from elsewhere, allows for almost anything to replace Saito in a crossover. The Hill of Swords has given the phenomenon some new life, but time will tell how long the trend will last.
    • In the Shugo Chara fandom, a LOT of fan fics are "Ikuto is the school playboy and has kissed every girl in the school, until the new girl Amu arrives and resists his romantic advances, will they fall in love or not?" and they also usually are roommates. Thankfully, this kind of story eventually lost its popularity and a lot of deconstructions were written.
    • A good 95 percent of The Cat Returns fanfiction has Haru remaining in/returning to the Cat Kingdom, becoming a cat, and marrying Baron, Completely Missing the Point of the original film. More often than not, these stories will pay little regard to Haru's single mother with no other children who is now alone in the world.
    • In Dragon Ball Z fanfics centered around Gohan like to feature him in high school, where Videl tries to expose him as Saiyaman, and, through a bunch of events that never happen in canon, falls for him.
    • In Fruits Basket fandom there's the 'wolf of the zodiac' story. A new animal (usually a wolf, cheetah or other 'cool' animal) is added to the Eastern Zodiac. This is almost always a girl.
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom, a huge amount of Kaiba/Jonouchi fanfiction seems to be about how the mighty Kaiba rescues poor, defenceless Jonouchi from his abusive father, often finding him beaten half to death in a dark alley. He then offers him to live with him "temporarily". You can probably imagine how this one ends. Expect Jonouchi's True Companions to be suspiciously absent.
      • It's rather popular to bring Atem back from the dead (explained or not) for shipping purposes. Generally with Yuugi, but other examples do exist.
    • Mary Sues in Black Butler tend to come in groups of two and more. These are usually friends from the modern world who get mysteriously transported to the past (or to "the world of Black Butler" for teen authors who think Victorian Britain is fictional) and are granted permission to live at the Phantomhive Manor. One girl will get Sebastian, another will get Ciel, and if there are any left they will get Grell, Undertaker, etc.
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