I. Um, "Angstbunny"?
Yes, Angstbunny. An angstbunny character is a sobbing, distrustful martyr who wants the blame to be on him or her (for purposes of keeping the wording kinda succinct, I'm gonna use masculine pronouns. Don't screech about sexism; this is my disclaimer) for any wrongdoing. If there's a fight and someone is injured, the angstbunny takes the blame and goes off into isolation to cry and pout over it, thinking over and over and over about what went wrong. Angstbunnies feed off guilt and do not feel worthy of being loved or even liked and accepted by their contemporaries. If the angstbunny character is in a relationship, he's suspicious, he's insecure, he's depressed, he's submissive, and he's traumatized. It's his duty to carry a Past with him - that's capitalized for a reason. A Past usually includes some form of abuse or torment, be it emotional, physical, or sexual. The angstbunny seems unwilling to get over this, and probably has to have another character offer a helping hand, after a long bout of assurance and reassurance of the other character's good intentions. Even then, the angstbunny doesn't want to believe that anyone could bear him good will or tidings of great joy; he wants to see the darkness and never even a pinprick of light. He sees the darkness of space and not the stars, so he'd rather shuffle his feet miserably and stare at the floor, trying to avoid what he swears are the hateful stares of other people.

This is a crime. Especially when the character hasn't done anything to merit being turned into a quivering mass of shameless attention-slutting. For those characters who might legitimately be called tragic heroes or possibly even angsy heroes, it's still out of line to go so far as to contort their personalities into unfamiliar blobs of near-clinical depression.

Several examples of characters who're often made angstbunnies and why I think this is so: 1. Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII. Squall is aloof and cold, prone to saying more in his thoughts than he does to other characters ("...", anybody?); by distancing himself from other people, he's ushering in all the angst authors who want him to be miserable and crying himself to sleep every night in his lonely, lonely bed. He has a happy relationship with Rinoa at the end of the game. It begs to be torn down, thrown around, and beaten till it jumps out the window of its own accord. He's opening up, too, when he's lived by the policy of holding his emotions closer even than his enemies; he deserves to be punished for beginning to show his feelings and his care for his friends. Squall is a convenient tool for gawth kids or emo kids to use their own agendas as Squall's. As the team leader, he's more likely to think that something is his responsibility. There you go, it's instant angst factor. Squall can take on the guilt for any injury to any of the others in the party, especially the more traditionally vulnerable ones like Rinoa (duh), Irvine, and Zell, who've always shown their feelings and should also be punished for being so out in the open.

2. Himura Kenshin of Rurouni Kenshin. Although he puts forth what he thinks is his best face, that being the face of a carefree rurouni, Kenshin is almost literally plagued by the demons of his past. He's murdered people. He's unwittingly killed the woman he loved most. And he's forged a new life based on what you might say is a lie. The man is a walking angstbunny waiting to happen; the cotton tail is hopping right after him, seeking to attatch itself to his cute little hakama-covered butt. Kenshin can angst about any number of things: his past as the Battousai, Tomoe, Kaoru's love for him and how he doesn't deserve it, his friends - like Sano, and possibly, Sano's love, which he also doesn't deserve - and his returns to violence to solve problems - Kyoto arc ahoy! He is also clearly conflicted. His conflict is shown physically in the show when his eyes turn yellow and his voice deepens and his speech changes. What's easier than a character who hands you his emotions? Why, a character who hands you his feelings in a physical manifestation. Kenshin is the obvious choice for those who want a character to have a chance to break down under the pressure of life's everyday troubles.

3. Remy LeBeau, a.k.a. Gambit, of X-Men. Remy's childhood and past in New Orleans is open to the author's interpretation, as far as I've managed to learn; slash authors almost invariably seek to make Remy a former hustler/whore on top of being a thief. Any character with such gaps in his past, such an ability to fill in whatever the author wants, is bound to be twisted and wrapped around fingers. Also, look, he's an empath! There's more free candy! His empathy allows him to read - and better yet, misread - the emotions of others and act on what he's discovered, sometimes unwittingly, which opens yet another door for possible guilt: feeling as if he's violated a teammate's privacy by reading that person's feelings. Many of the common plot devices for Remy, especially in slash, pit him against his empathy and trying to figure out how he can control it and not use it subconsciously to get the team to like him. As an isolationist, someone different from the other X-Men, he's an easy angst vehicle who'll cry when no one wants him to come hang out and have an outburst when someone does, insisting that they should've come along earlier.

Rather than write these characters in a new and refreshing light, many authors in these respective fandoms would prefer to write them as weepy crybabies who are on the verge of emotional breakdown and need constant attention and moral support to stay alive. Almost invariably, Squall is a cold hard bitch filled with frozen tears, Kenshin is smiling at his new friends but crying inside, and Remy is a slutty ball of sad and tragedy. We aren't supposed to see Squall bantering with anyone but perhaps Rinoa (and that's always about as intelligent as Rinoa cooing at her dog, Angelo) or showing care for his teammates that won't later throw him into a guilty episode of self-hatred for endangering his friends; we aren't supposed to see Kenshin growing to accept that the Battousai is part of him, Tomoe herself forgives him for his mistakes of the past, and he can continue mourning without sacrificing himself and his future happiness; we aren't supposed to see Remy growing stronger and learning to trust others without having their trust thrown at him in dramatic fights that wouldn't shatter the real Gambit, but will break the fic!Gambit. No, along with characters like Draco Malfoy ("I'm sooo badly abused! Wah!" / "I hate you, but I love you! Wah!" / "I wanna kill myself! Wah!" / "I'm secretly a good guy! Wah!"), Anakin Skywalker (the original KING of wallowing in angst to the point of throwing everything else away - just watch Episode III again), and Kurosaki Hisoka (canonically angsty and abused, but turned into a boy who is angst-sexual and fucks his depression every night before crying himself to sleep), these angstbunnies are supposed to be weakened and cut apart. Not just in the fic, either; their canon character starts to take a beating as more people seem to accept that the non-canon angst obsession rising out of the fanfiction world is the real thing. I'll tell you what you've got when you've got an angstbunny: not a lot but an annoyance, and here is why.

II. When I Think of an Angstbunny, I Wanna Kill Myself, Too
The point of fanfiction is ultimately to enjoy yourself. As someone who indulges in reading and writing fanfiction almost every single day of the years that constitute my life, I understand that really well. My main trouble with excessively angsty characters is that they are not enjoyable. I feel myself wading much too far into the mire of wondering why the author can't stick to what s/he's seen in canon. In my experience, Kenshin is not bursting into tears or going on a murderous rampage every twenty minutes, and Malfoy isn't about to try to kill himself if Harry bloody Potter doesn't return his affections. This experience may be limited, but it tells you something about me: I don't like to see characters manipulated beyond recognition. Once you've taken the character's face and planted it on a marionette with sad, pity-me posture, it's no longer Kenshin, or Hisoka, or Chichiri, or Sasuke. It's a whiny crybaby I don't want to deal with. Part of what makes fanfiction enjoyable for me is seeing characters act in ways they haven't in canon - note that I did not say in ways they wouldn't.

It strikes me as a real shame that we pounce on authors who make these characters overly happy and bouncy - I, for one, can't imagine a sugar high Uchiha Sasuke, and I hope to God you can't, either - but swallow down stories about how pathetic and incapable of handling themselves they are.

I'll use an example I've been seeing most recently in fanfiction, since I've been reading a lot of X-Men fic since the third movie came out. That is, of course, Remy LeBeau, otherwise called Gambit, otherwise called "the Cajun" or "the thief" almost universally in fics I've read. (I'll switch between names, but not the quoted nicknames, just so you know.) This man is a figure of tragedy, oozing la misére from every pore and other orifice, right? Wrong! Even though I'm only on the outside of this fandom, looking in on the party everyone else is having with the characters, I can see that Remy's being left in the corner with too much of the bubbly or burning, whichever's your choice. Remy is beaten black and blue in abusive relationships, but I'm expected to believe that within a matter of days spent in Wolverine's grumpy company or stuck with Bobby's exuberant pranks, he's going to heal just enough to slice himself up all over again at the slightest remark. I'm expected to believe that a man who has to deal with the emotions of others invading his mind at all times is going to take a hard hit from a teammate he hasn't seemed to think of as a threat to his own emotions before. That's hard to swallow for me! I may not know Remy as well as I know, say, Bobby and St. John, or even Peter, but I know just enough to say that someone from a traumatic past isn't going to be trusting of everybody. However, I also know that this distrust doesn't have to be a point of tearful outbursts and cries for attention. Remy is a show-boater, not a drama queen. Remy is, for the most part, in control of himself and controls his distrust of the other X-Men, as far as I know. He's in control enough not to broadcast his miseries to the world. Those, my friends, are what we call weaknesses, and as an X-Man, some weaknesses are too costly. Even for emotional Gambit, walking around close to tears is a recipe for disaster. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is something inherently non-canon about him breaking into a sobbing, quivering wreck in Wolverine's arms and throwing himself at Wolverine, or any other character, begging for forgiveness for whatever new martyrdom-worthy deed he's done. So you supposedly slaughtered the Morlocks; so you aren't likely to run to a teammate demanding that he show you love. So you're banished from New Orleans; so you've created a new life for yourself and while it may not be what you hoped it would be, you are more likely to want to create a niche for yourself than cut yourself off by crying all alone in the boathouse, or locked in your room, or in the shower, where no one but you can see or feel your tears.

In case you aren't yet noticing the theme, one of the biggest troubles with angstbunny characters is that this tendency to turn all interactions into excuses for another cheap cry out of the characters and possibly the readers will tear the characters apart. You no longer have a firm grasp of what this person is about once you've made him so much your own that he's no longer behaving as he would in canon. You aren't allowing him to grow as a character as long as you try to throw him back into the loop of willing self-destruction. You've lost sight of the character there was and have created somebody new with his face, possibly his powers, and a twisted alternative version of his story that will also likely wrench a reader's heart in his favor without having to put in the time and effort of building him up and creating a likeable, three-dimensional person out of the character.

Angstbunnies love to rewrite personal pasts, too, wherever applicable or necessary. If a rewrite is too much, exaggerating certain events to the point that they dominate the character's existence is another method. An example here is Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter, a fan favorite even more than ever after Half-Blood Prince and as we hurtle toward the final book. Draco's past is assumed to be that of a spoiled pureblood wizard with parents who aren't meddling, but not totally uninvolved, either. Of course, fanon has turned him into a neglected or even abused boy who seeks a way out of his oppressive family and their oppressive, hateful customs. Draco's past is now riddled with sexual assault, incestuous rape, torture, and emotional trauma over his bisexuality or homosexuality or his love for one bushy-headed Mudblood. He's no longer the snide, immature boy who sucks up to his head of house to get his enemies in trouble; he's sniveling and weak, barely able to control Crabbe and Goyle's combined intellect, much less throw off unwanted advances. He bows down to Harry or he tries to dominate Harry without success. This isn't true of all characterizations of Draco; it's overwhelmingly the proud creators angstbunny!Dracos that have it down to a not-so-fine art.

A character was created how he or she is for a reason; that character serves a specific person in his or her world, and while transplanting characters into another world or an alternate universe, or even using your own interpretation of the existing universe, allows for some artistic license, you must keep in mind what this person's motivations are. Why would Draco's hopes, dreams, aspirations, and whatever else change if he was in a world without magic? Arguably, much of his character might be gone, but he's still predisposed to prejudice; if he isn't rallying against Mudbloods, he might be against homosexuals, Catholics, or another social group or strata. And arguably, Draco wouldn't have to worry about Voldemort in a world without magic, although I still think he would likely take the quick and easy path to evil rather than the smooth but steeper than steep walk up a cliff to the good side. That's the kind of person Draco Malfoy is, beaten nightly with his father's cane or not.

On the subject of abuse, as a brief tangent, while I agree that abuse shapes a person, so does the method of dealing with that abuse. Everybody reacts at least slightly differently to abuse, but fundamentally, I believe that Draco would not be a kind, yet depressed and suicidal, young man if he had been raped or battered. If anything, he would be more hateful, quicker to lash out and blame others for his troubles and sublimate with violence and anger. An excellent example of a Draco Malfoy who is abused and neglected is MamaLaz's Draco in "I'm Not In Denial," a fic that proves that not all FFN stories are rubbish; her Draco strikes out at Ron after he runs away from home, going on to strike out at Harry and Hermione as well, but without the same hatred and intensity covering up for his real feelings - this is a slash story, and rated R for a reason, as there's sex and bloody violence. Anyway, that citation through with, abuse is not an excuse! Not for anything that's implausible for a character as we know him, anyway. Obviously, a character who was meek and submissive and prone to breakdowns to begin with would handle abuse differently than a feisty character like Hisoka who's out for vengeance, or a raging character like Draco whose arms are unlikely to open unless he thinks he can get something out of it. To look at a large number of fics in which abuse is part of a character's background, though, you would think that all abuse victims are easily spotted by their faces streaked from crying or eyes swimming with tears, as well as their flagrant displays of doormat syndrome and a willingness to bend over backward to see loathing in other people's behavior towards them. I find that ridiculous. Making a character who has strengths and flaws into a bundle of raw nerves who wants to be crucified at the next opportunity is ruining that character. It isn't displaying love as much as it is displaying an ignorance of that character's motivation and purpose. Again, abuse does not a strong character make; a strong case for getting that character help, maybe, but I'm not inclined to pity a character so much as I am wonder when he'll get beyond the flinching and running away crying stage that apparently follows all forms of abuse. This is not to belittle abuse, rape, molestation, or any other form of harassment or violation. In fact, it's to say that it's more belittling to assume that these people are robbed of every gram of strength they once possessed. Even if they only exist in our minds and in the fictional world, the characters who have been abused deserve better than to break down crying and beating on another character's chest when that outsider says, "Hey, are you all right?" in an attempt to get them to open up. I don't pretend to understand humans - or our fictional counterparts - fully, so I can't be definitive about this, but it is my strong opinion that abuse is no longer as big a deal, as horrific a crime, to some of these people who shove characters into alleyways to be raped on a daily basis, all for the sake of glowing reviews about their characterization of post-traumatic Draco. That's a huger than huge problem we face with angstbunnies.

This brings me to my next point: if you're already sacrificing characterization, you are also greatly in danger of sacrificing the quality of the story. It's another strong opinion of mine that too much angst in a story renders it powerless to move me beyond confusion as to how awful a person's life can possibly be, and how I'm supposed to believe that all these catastrophic things are happening within the span of one month. Also, I find it manipulative when I find out that the author is trying to drag me around like a fish with a hook tearing into the roof of its mouth en route to its brain. Manipulating the reader is never a good idea; too much tear-jerking and you become a plain old jerk, not a master creator or creatrix. It's simply not creative to try too hard to get me to cry along with Chichiri at any mention of his mask and its significance to his truly saddening past. I don't need to be forced into crying along with him if you've built onto his character and done renovations in a way that's true to his original character; I already have sympathy. I'll already cry. It's cheating me as the reader, who'd like to be entertained, to shove a substandard plot at me and douse it with the salty tears of as many characters as is possible. It's also cheating yourself. As an author, regurgitating the same tired plots in which Squall tries to kill himself over his growing attraction to Seifer or Irvine, or in which Zell does the same, isn't letting you grow. It's hindering you as much as it hinders the characters, maybe more!

Not all fanfiction authors step into the sphere of original fiction; for those who do, though, it's worthwhile to have a background in writing that allows you to write about diverse subjects. The advice "write what you know" isn't as startlingly limited as it might seem at first. Doubtless your life isn't full of such large doses of angst that you'd be catatonic from it within two nights. When I say that you are hindering yourself, not allowing yourself to grow, I mean that you're limiting yourself to one subject and one basic plot. How many times can Squall be a whore with a heart of gold who feels rejected every time Seifer looks at him the wrong way? How many times must I hit the back button when I find that Sasuke is drinking himself into oblivion and on the verge of suicide over not Itachi, but his inability to confess his feelings to Naruto? Why is Fai, the ruler of the kingdom of hiding his true feelings, crying - and why aren't you giving me a better reason than "he's upset because Kuro was more brusque than usual"? This is not creative thinking, nor is it creative writing. Shoving yourself into one tiny corner of the writing world isn't even honing a speciality; in fact, you're shoving the characters into a stereotype and you're doing the same to yourself. You're becoming an angst writer. There isn't anything wrong with being an angst writer, apart from lacking the creativity to write angst well and not try to dig at your readers for cheap sympathy and crocodile tears. When you write an angstbunny character, you're using and you're losing. You're using stereotypes and easy ways out, and you're losing your ability to strengthen yourself and your characters. In the original fiction world, you don't have the framework of the character, and often the plot, already established for you. Once your duty is to create the characters and give them depth with which the audience can identify, your angstbunnies aren't going to help you. They're going to multiply until they knock you over.

For the fanfiction writers who have no intentions of writing original fiction, there are still pitfalls: following the same cookie-cutter angst plot of throwing all the characters to the wolves gets old for the repeat readers who might want to discover more of your work. Imagine their disappointment when, for the third time, they're seeing you pair Kenshin with another of the Rurouni Kenshin men, and, for the third time, they're seeing Kenshin sobbing into that man's shoulder, asking for help to "make me feel human again" and "fight off this stifling pain." If you're not as concerned about your audience as you are about your own enjoyment, it's bound to drag you down when you realize that you're almost vomiting up the same simile you used in the last fic in which you had Jounouchi getting raped on his way home from school. If those consequences still aren't enough, it's an insult to your intelligence to see that you're unable to write anything beyond the tiny pinprick of your comfort zone. An insult to your intelligence and to your creativity, as well as to your courage. It takes no courage to write a fic about Jounouchi being raped after school if you've done this before, you had Kaiba save him last time, too, and you're determined to make him spend the next month crying in his room while his dad gets drunk and beats up a new girlfriend across the hallway - which is a variant of what you did last time.

Overall, angstbunnies weaken the characters, and if you succumb to writing them time and again, their presence in your stories is weakening you as well.

III. Framing - or Outright Killing - the Angst Rabbit
In three easy steps!

1. Avoid deus ex machina and cheap plot devices of any kind; strive to be realistic when you do throw curve balls at your characters, and be more realistic with the consequences of them fumbling the ball or it hitting them in the face. In other words, stay away from randomly deciding to have Trowa admit his past sexual abuse to the other Gundam pilots and proceeding to turn him into a weepy wreck over it; stay away from sending innocent young Yugi or Ash down a dark side street at one o'clock in the morning, knowing as you do that there is a group of rapists on the next (unlit) corner. When you want to include angst in your plot, make it feel real. Angst feels real when you're punishing a character for his own deeds, but keeping the punishment within the realm of what would happen in that world. So if you want Kenshin to suffer more for being Battousai than he already has, you might send Kaoru into danger - an old standard for the anime's writers as well as for Watsuki Nobuhiro - or force him to face a discomfiting conversation with Saitou. Rather than send him sniffling into Saitou's bedroom, send him into a confrontation with Saitou about a case the cop man is working on. Or send him out to rescue Kaoru and sic Sano on him to remind him that he mustn't go too far to save her, no matter how much he loves her. Angst also feels real when you're using a traumatic experience to allow a character to rise beyond her own, and others', expectations to become stronger rather than weaker. While you can get other characters involved in giving her a boost, angst is more realistic when she's fighting with herself as well as with their opposing advice and viewpoints, trying to figure out what to do after the tragedy. I'm tired of seeing Nuriko curl up into a ball and give up on living life if there's no chance of getting Hotohori interested in him. How about this revolutionary idea: after Hotohori turns him down, send Nuriko into a tizzy of beautifying and feminizing himself even further, and fuel it with self-hatred and anger with Hotohori, Miaka, and maybe even Tamahome. If you want someone involved, have Tasuki or Chichiri try to chip in and point out that being more like an idealized woman isn't going to change Hotohori's mind, and allow Nuriko to worry about that but remain stubbornly fixated, as futile as he now thinks all this makeup and all these dresses are.

Plot devices that are commonly misused: rape, sexual abuse or trauma of any kind (a family member leering at or trying to cop a feel on the character does count), turning to prostitution or to drugs, death of a family member or lover, death of a friend, emotional abuse, neglect, ostracism over sexuality or physical traits, religious zeal gone too far (on behalf of your main would-be angstbunny or his/her family or friends), participating in the death of others, a past in crime of any sort, being fooled into acting against his/her morals, discovering a new power after accidentally harming an innocent with it, rejection by a friend or lover, running away, being thrown out of the house, being disowned, and finally but not the definite last of all the overused and misused devices, cheating on a lover (often for no apparent reason apart from sex, even if we've been told that the character isn't in relationships for that).

All of the above could be used well, but when thrown out of left field with no background to explain their emergence, they're rendered less effective. They're most likely to be contrivances designed to get my attention and my sorrow over the character's sorrow than they are to be chances for the character(s) to grow up and get stronger. An accident with power doesn't have to be an excuse to run up to one's bedroom and hide while concerned friends bang on the door and call, "Harry/Anakin/Cloud/Remy/Hisoka, what's wrong?! Open up! I wanna talk to you, that's all!" It could cause tension that the character tries to break by talking with his friends, but ends up worsening; there's your chance to have the character storm off to brood, followed by a realization that the other characters may have a reason to feel suspicious and uncomfortable with the accident. At the end, recognizing the other side's rationale and realizing - with much horror - that they may be right can cause even more angst to crop up, and it's natural-feeling angst, stemmed from the character's thoughts and feelings, not purely from your meddling in your little cosmos.

2. Avoid any enterprise that requires new clothes for the character; about the time you start having to tweak Cloud's personality to get your SephirothxCloud tragedy in three parts to work out perfectly, you've gone too far. (Many yaoi and slash fics are guilty of this in the sense that one partner is feminized and weakened into a depression-saddled wimp who requires the other to keep him afloat and breathing. There you go! They're instant potential angstbunnies, not totally recognizable as the characters you're supposed to be writing about!) It's important to stick to the canon as closely as you can, as if you've cuffed your wrist to it and managed to drop the key into the backed-up toilet. I'm not insisting that you be a canon nazi and attack the idea of going outside the preinstalled universe. I am, however, insisting that you consider the original before trying to emulate it. If you can't write a character without changing her, you don't have any business trying to post that fic until you can learn to stick to her traits as established by her creator. Clearly, if every time you start to write a fic about Yuki and Shuichi from Gravitation, you wind up with a sympathetic, emotional Yuki who tells Shuichi how he feels without any catches or ulterior motives, you have a problem understanding your characters. It's time you looked into getting a beta reader for your fandom, or simply distanced yourself from the fic just enough to look at it as if it were an episode of the anime, a scene in the movie, a chapter in the book, a volume of the manga. Would the characters act this way in a distressing situation? If the answer is no, perhaps you need to rethink your plot or rethink who's involved in it.

Let's say that your aforementioned tragedy in three parts requires you to get Tifa to reject Cloud's desperate advances - borne out of his love for the dearly departed Aeris - before he runs to his arch-nemesis, Sephiroth, seeking the one person he knows needs him to exist. Now, hit the pause button. First, would Tifa reject Cloud? Hm. I think that for those who know Final Fantasy VII, the answer is obvious: she would only reject him if she thought he was seeking to use her as a substitute for Aeris, and in that case, she would try to help him, not send him packing. Second, would Cloud's first choice of sanctuary be Sephiroth? I doubt it; I wouldn't dash to someone I fought with and despised to reassure myself that I have a reason to keep living. Third, why is Cloud so pathetic and so reliant upon other people? The Cloud many people love is a loner. For goodness' sake, watch "Advent Children" and observe his behavior in the movie if you don't have access to the game and Cloud's solitary behavior therein. As for his pathetic behavior, I was always under the impression that Cloud would prefer to be strong for Aeris, not buckle under and run to hide in the safety of the car the minute lightning strikes ten miles away.

That enterprise requires dressing Cloud in the outfit of a character who cries at small provocations and gives up deep, true love for his own temporary satisfaction. Therefore, it's cheap angst to expect us to cry and wring our hands when he fights with Sephiroth over the best way to get over Aeris's death. It's cheaper still to send Sephiroth away from Cloud and hope that we're all going to despair with blondie when we could be cheering him on to stand up straight, shoulders back, and strut his SOLDIER way after the man we're supposed to believe he's starting to love. More realistic would be for Cloud to seek revenge for Aeris's death - although that's still not a perfect reason to send him in search of Sephiroth, it's better than a rejection from Tifa or a need to feel validated in the world - and discover that Sephiroth has his share of troubles with which he could use some help, his own share of personal tragedies that compare at least a bit to Cloud's loss of Aeris.

For what I think is a fabulous example of dressing a character in suitable clothes, check out the VincentxYuffie (Yuffentine) fic "Much Ado About Yuffie" by Guardian1, another proof that FFN deserves some credit for its existence. I know I've recommended this fic before, during OTP week back in January, but it's that good. Rather than letting Vinny and Yuffsters get away with an argument that could cost them their love, it lets Yuffie grow up a little, taking responsibilities she never dreamed of taking, and Vincent come to terms with the fact that he is in love again and would like some company and affection. I cried when I read this fic, and not because I felt someone was shoving the Visine at the corners of my eyes. There's a misunderstanding that, when placed between these two characters, makes perfect sense and results in pain that's resolved through going over the misunderstanding. It's a love story that does not sacrifice Vincent's private, quiet, lonely character completely, but rather, morphs his loneliness into a better understanding of himself and what he needs to be happy. It doesn't turn Yuffie into a bawling nuisance who blows her nose on the other characters' sleeves; Yuffie goes from mourning what she thought she had with Vincent to taking over for her father as the ruler of Wutai, although she knows that she can't get over Vincent so easily. They're growing and changing within their capacity to grow and change - no one forced the molds over their heads and shouted at them to conform to that shape to wring tears and reviews from the audience.

3. Avoid the temptation to go so far over the top that you're about to go over the cuckoo's nest. Or, in simpler terms, don't overexaggerate the sadness of what's happening. Subtler, quieter shifts in your fic's mood are more likely to move me to tears and hitting that review button to tell you so. You do not necessarily have to resort to extreme understatement, either; the problem is with blowing things out of proportion to the point that it the story's getting unbelievable. Soap operas may have their share of devoted viewers, but there are plenty of us who think that if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all and don't need 'em. They're also strikingly unbelievable. Even those of you who're desperately in love with "Days of Our Lives" must know that. It's hard for me to immerse myself in a story when I have to back out of it and think over what's happening and why it's happening the particular way that it's happening. Once you lose that suspension of my disbelief, you've lost it near-permanently. Effort upon effort upon lots of effort is the only thing that might win me back over.

The first time you find yourself wanting to pile up the traumatic events - hey, let's mortally injure Tatsumi, have him confess his remaining love to Tsuzuki, put them in get-it-on mode in a hospital bed, let Watari walk in on it, get him to sleep with Hisoka to get back at Tatsumi, and have Hisoka realize the truth and accuse Watari of raping him! Then we find out that Watari has a rare disease that can affect even the Shinigami! Yeah! - take a step back. In your own life, do things like that happen, or might they? The odds of you sleeping with an ex, whose current then sleeps with your current and gives that person HIV as well as learning that your current has killed somebody on top of having about a dozen years to live, max, are pretty low. Or at least I think they are; maybe you lead an interesting life! Anyway, step back a bit more. In the lives of people you know, do things like this happen? Might they? What would the consequences be, and are those consequences at all applicable to what you're writing? All right, so if applying the situation to yourself and others in the Real World™ doesn't work for you, think of it this way: are people more likely to believe you if you let those events happen over the course of two chapters, or twenty-four? Depending upon how much time and energy you want to put into the fanfiction life, you may have to make some changes and start cutting out the more ludicrous bits of tragedy you've concocted. Plus, even in a longer fic that's nearing epic length, it's critical that you balance out all those life-changing and life-scarring events by not screaming them at people. Hint quietly at Watari's disease; have Hisoka know about Tatsumi and Tsuzuki's tryst, and incorrectly read Watari's intention as a more permanent relationship; allow for plenty of introspection and time to let discoveries sink in. Within the span of the first half of the fic, if all the action has transpired and now you have to clean up the mess, that's a cop out. Carry your action through the story, which is a good general tip for anything, not just writing angst; the longer you can keep the story rising to the inevitable peak, the more suspense there is for the readers. The more in limbo they feel, the less likely they are to screech at you for piling everything up all in four chapters and thinking they'll fall for that trick. Spread out your action to give yourself some time to pick up as you go along, maybe add in subplots that temper out the drama of the main events in the center ring of your fanfic circus. Whatever it takes to keep the action constant and not spiking to inhuman levels.

IV. Kill the Angst so the Story Can Live
To be all cliché about it, in conclusion, you're saving your story by scrapping trashy plotlines that revolve around unbelievable character action and interaction, and you're saving the characters when you write them with some level of consciousness - and conscientiousness. Not every fic in which a character cries is immediately shafted into the category of an angstbunny-ridden story, but every fic in which a character who never, ever cries bursts into tears and flees the premises with arms flailing and screams echoing is probably full of rabbits worse than dustbunnies. Maybe I'm not one you trust to tell you how to write, or how to improve your writing. On the whole, though, I think what I'm going on about is practical advice. It's practical for a writer to want to feel a connection with the characters - without manipulating them is preferable - and practical to want good reviews. However, you assume too much when you write your characters as hypersensitive wimps who flinch at loud noises and attempt suicide every weekend as a form of recreation; you're assuming that people want to be shoved and ushered into crying over, or just feeling upset over, such a thing. Angstbunnies have a cute name, but they're not a cute phenomenon that's trying to dig its claws into fandom after fandom after tragedy-filled fandom. And I don't always want my fandom to be drowning in an ocean of its tears. Fluffbunnies are good, too! (Just not in excess.)

Everything in moderation; even angstbunnies could be all right, or at least tolerable, if they didn't reproduce nearly so rapidly and in such quantities. I think that fanfiction on the whole could benefit from a few authors taking a step back or trying to have a more objective standpoint to see when too much is just that. Fics get a bad rep for being all about sex, or just like little soap operas with characters' names attached as slapdash as a badly forged signature. That has to change; fanfiction isn't an evil art, or an inherently flawed one. I'm prejudiced, of course, but I consider it a real form of art. If someone took your masterpiece painting and splashed blue tempera paint all over it, then rubbed it in with grubby fingers, you probably wouldn't appreciate it. That's how I feel about excessive angst and with it, angstbunnies.

Live and let die. In this case, to maintain the balance between good angst fics and good fics that understand that overdoing the trauma will cause trauma to the canon world as we know it and to the readers who've invested time, even the small amount of time it takes to click the link and read a few paragraphs of uncharacteristic whimpering and click the back button. Keep angst from taking too deep a root in your story, or vice-versa. Hack at its roots and only allow it to grow where you want it to be, but keep in mind that it can be a noxious weed that's killing off native plants if you let it get out of hand. Those native plants could very well be endangered (like good Snape or Obi-Wan characterizations, ugh)!