More Pet Peeves with Fanfic

These are some things that a lot of the Final Fantasy VIII fanfic I read had in common, and that really bugged me. As usual, the key number is three. :)

1. Yoo?! Yoo hoo, that's so annoying, yoo know?

I know the translator(s) for FFVIII decided to use "yoo" instead of "you" when younger characters are speaking, but that doesn't mean fanfic writers have to follow their lead. I mean, "yoo?" Is that really necessary to establish the fact that it's a child who's speaking? How about using diction, vocabulary, and description? For instance, if someone says:

"Seifer, you're so mean! I'm not talking to you anymore."

It's not hard to tell the person is fairly young. (Or just immature, as in the case of a certain seventeen-year-old who goes around calling people "Big Meanie.") Used in conjunction with descriptions of appearances or actions, the reader should be able to guess at the speaker's approximate age even if it's not explicitly stated. Therefore, there's no need to say:

"Seifer, yoo're so mean! I'm not talking to yoo anymore."

It adds nothing to the story, and only serves to jar and annoy the reader. Or worse, much worse, the author may do something like this to describe a lisp:

"Seifew, yoo'we so mean! I'm not tawking to yoo anymowe."

I mean, can you just feel the pain? The dialogue becomes obtuse, almost impossible to read. I personally think something along the lines of:

"Seifer, you're so mean!" The little girl crossed her arms, pouting. "I'm not talking to you anymore." Her endearing lisp did nothing to detract from the annoyance in her voice.

..Would be somewhat more effective, and a hell of a lot less annoying.

If anyone's thinking about using "yoo" for children's dialogue, they should think again. There are much better ways to establish a character's age. Intentional misspellings are just distracting about 95% of the time, and there's no need to use any just because Square did.

2. Everyone's a General

Why is it that the Galbadian Army has no privates, corporals, sergeants, majors, lieutenants, captains, lieutenant colonels, or even colonels, but ONLY GENERALS? I realize that Caraway was a general, but does that mean everyone in the military has to be one, especially if he or she is a parent of one or more of the Orphanage Gang? Man, it's annoying.

A general is the highest military rank achievable, and only about 1% of career officers will ever become generals. And they usually do so around the age of 48, an age usually considered a little late to have children. Granted, prolonged war (as the First Sorceress War presumably was) has the propensity to kill off older officers, letting young men and women achieve higher rank than they would have in times of peace. But men and women young enough to be starting families still do not become generals at the drop of a hat! It's unusual, or rather extremely rare even in wartime, and if someone's twenty, thirty-year-old father was General Kinneas or whatever, there would have to be a damn good explanation. I've never seen such an explanation forthcoming, however.

Now, there are probably a lot of well-researched stories where people's fathers were lieutenants or majors or even (egad!) enlisted men, but I appear to have missed out on them. (Well maybe The Sorceress War, though I find the their-parents-all-knew-each-other premise a bit clich´d.) Heck, there's not even a lot of research involved--it takes all of five seconds to type "army military rank" into Google, and maybe five minutes, at most, to learn the basics of what officers and enlisted men are called and what they do.

I think authors should be both more creative and realistic when it comes to military rank. There's a whole wealth of different jobs and positions in any military force, many of them more interesting than a general's. FFVIII's main characters were born during wartime, it's logical for many of their parents to have been in the Galbadian military.

So why can't someone's father be, for instance, a battle-hardened but perpetually upbeat sergeant who has to single-handedly keep up the flagging spirits of a bunch of scared kids in uniform, otherwise known as soldiers? Aforementioned scared kids includes his superior, a commissioned officer and platoon leader one month out of military academy and one hundred per cent clueless.

Or he could be an overworked warrant officer plucked from his job as a technician and straight into a battlefield of a different sort, where, constantly short of supplies and time, he has to repair jet fighters with little more than duct tape and determination.

Or someone's mother could be a sniper who has over a hundred kills to her name but is never treated as an equal by her own side, who see her not only as a woman infringing on their turf but also as a cowardly assassin who never sees hand-to-hand combat.

(There is real historical precedence of women snipers--as there are in just about every military position--such as Soviet Union snipers Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Aliya Moldagulova, Tatyana Kostyrina, etc. during the invasion by Nazi Germany. Soviet women snipers are estimated to have killed ten thousand German soldiers among them, and were held in high regard by fellow soldiers, which unfortunately isn't always true of snipers.)

Where was I? Oh yeah. In terms of human interest, I'd put any of these non-commissioned or warrant officers against any general guzzling coffee and doing paperwork in his office or agonizing over tactics and politics. Not to deprecate generals or anything, but they are most certainly not the only military personnel to do interesting and important jobs!

To conclude, authors should get real about military rank. Not only are young men and women unlikely to become generals, it would be less interesting (and unbelievably trite) for them to be promoted so quickly just because they're "good." Make them privates, non-commissioned officers, warrant officers, low-ranking commissioned officers, or hell, majors and even lieutenant colonels. Just no more three-star general fathers for no good reason, please.

3. And let's abuse Seifer a lot while we're at it...

And as long as I'm on a roll, what is it with all those Seiftis stories (Seiftii?) where Quistis constantly harasses and humiliates Seifer? The stories often depict this as necessary because Seifer is just as stubborn and obnoxious as ever. This brings me to a couple of points I'd like to address.

For one thing, am I the only one who finds it a little repulsive that Quistis, who is Seifer's instructor in these fics and generally in a position of power over him, treats him lower than dirt? And is seen as justified in doing so? I don't know if it's some female fantasy about taming bad boys or what, but I personally find it disturbing because the balance of power is unequal. (I have seen exactly one Seifer-humiliation fic where Quistis isn't this huge hero for treating him that way.)

For another, why does Seifer, one of the most dynamic characters in video gaming, remain totally unchanged after falling apart at the seams and pulling himself back together? He's still the exact same jerk with the same insubordinate attitude, the same obstinacy, the same smirk... only with a nightmare or two stuck on for good measure. This kind of static characterization is convenient because it "necessitates" Quistis' treatment of him. Seems a lot more like payback than tough love to me.

Couldn't Seifer have changed the least bit due to his rather extraordinary experience with power, mind control and defeat? Is Seifer so dependent a character that he can't learn from his experiences without Quistis hitting him upside the head? That just makes him look dense and unsympathetic. Let him learn his own lessons, find his own way first, and then let Quistis help. Otherwise, Seifer loses all semblance of autonomy and has to depend on yet another strong woman's orders and punishments to have any direction in life. All that happens is that Ultimecia's control is replaced by Quistis', and that's not character growth, it's character stagnation. A scary one at that.

Ramble, ramble, ramble. Complain, complain, complain. That's me. :D Thanks for reading.