How to Write a Good Fanfic

9.1.1 - No Facts, No OTP

Violet threw a pillow across the room, a sniffle escaping her lip. How dare that person, that reviewer dare to tell her that her OTP didn't work. No, Violet's OTP wasn't a crossover pairing, nor was her pairing one that contained an OC. Her pairing, her "one true pairing" was between Hitsugaya Toshiro and Hinamori Momo from bleach, a pairing she knew to already be canon, that's how true her pairing was.

Why?

What drew Violet to the pairing lay in how cute the two looked together. She spent quite a few days pursuing fanart to find pictures of each other in romantic poses, even kissing each other. Of course, the other draw of the pairing lay in the childhood friends aspect, and how perfect they were for each other personality wise. Toshiro had declared he would kill Ichimaru Gin should the man shed any of Momo's blood. Momo lived in soul society like him, she was a fukutaicho, and the only thing standing in the way of the pairing was poor Momo's obsession with Aizen, which wasn't that hard to get over, right?

She ranted about how her pairing was true, her reviewers ranted about how her pairing was true, so it must be true? The reviewer was wrong for calling her out for her pairing not working in the story she wrote.

Right?

Wrong.

...

I'm one of those readers who will read pretty much anything regardless of pairing. However, the one pairing I've given up on is the one between Hitsugaya Toshiro, and Hinamori Momo from Bleach. My reasons lay not with the actual pairing, as there are a few stories out there which are well written for this very hard to write for OTP. The problem actually lies with the fans, as in most cases the pairing is not an OTP for the writer, as there isn't an ounce of truth to what they write. The amount of denial among this fanbase is honestly one of the worst cases I've seen in fandom.

Do the readers of this essay need to know the Bleach fandom to get this essay?

Nope, as I'm going to feel them in on the details they need to know about this pairing, starting off with the perceived notions of the fanbase for this particular pairing. Most I've found think like Violet, and by thinking like Violet they end up showing how little they really know about the two characters.

"What drew Violet to the pairing lay in how cute the two looked together. She spent quite a few days pursuing fanart to find pictures of each other in romantic poses, even kissing each other."

I am going to admit the two characters do look really cute with each other in fanart, but right here, we already start to have some of the denial issues crop up. In the vast majority of the pictures for the two characters, Toshiro is taller than Momo. However, Toshiro is actually in canon half-a-head shorter than Momo, and used to be an entire head shorter than Momo. Toshiro stands at four feet and four-and-a-half inches Momo on the other hand stands at four feet and eleven-and-a-half inches. She's seven inches taller than Toshiro, but typically, this doesn't show up in fan art meant specifically for the pairing. If Toshiro does manage to be shorter, this isn't the full seven inches.

Mind you, one could argue that Toshiro had a growth spurt, but the other thing the vast majority of the pictures don't do is age Toshiro into his adult self either. For those who don't know, Toshiro is the resident child genius in the series. The fact he's referred to as such in the present tense is proof, as were other clues, but finally Toshiro's adult-self did get a reveal later on. His adult self though doesn't mesh as well with Hinamori, due to losing a lot of the cuteness which draws people to this particular pairing. The baby fat is all gone, and he's rather lanky when he's in his adult form. A few fans of this pairing though don't believe he's a child genius, but a midget. These are the few which tend to draw him at his correct height, but even then, they don't see what's wrong with increasing his height to make the picture more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.