What are your personal "red flags" before reading any fanfic?

If you wanted a more normal chapter name as well, I suppose you could do something like "Character X: Title Y".

Yeah, shifting PO Vs in general are really easy to make clear if that's the point of the story. "Name of POV character = Head of Chapter/section." I don't see why people find it so hard.

George R R Martin does it.

I should have worded that better. I meant like what Meta Four said with the POV shifting being labeled by the author within the text and not the chapter names or whatever.

TransplantedCharacterFics. They're lazy crossovers because they're just "Show X with Characters from Y".

edited 29th Apr '15 10:12:28 PM by TroperNo9001

Shitty porn fanfics where a male character has the entire female cast as his harem. Too many of these in the Harry Potter and My Little Pony fandom.

I just came to the horrifying realization that, if fanfiction in multiple fandoms follow similar patterns, that there must be a bunch of those in the Steven Universe fandom.

Bleeeeech.

Those are so out of control in popular shonen anime fandoms it's sad. I hate harem and most people who write them.

Mah red flags.

-When the author depict characters the way (S)HE see them, even if it's OOC, bizarre or creepy.

-Fanfics who try to be as GRIMDARK as possible (in a setting that probably isn't) by featuring characters from kids's TV shows being killed in a gruesome way. It's hard to take a fic of Spongebob being in a satanic cult and murdering Patrick because of how silly each characters are, +1 if the fanfic takes itself seriously.

-"A girl/a dude from the normal world is thrown into Bleach/Naruto/SNK/Star Trek/dear wtf. Some are goods but otherwise, they try too hard to be snarky and stuff, and each of these stories follows the same development. Bonus cringe point for when the "real kid" has strange powers, with these powers being either OP and unique or not even present in the original work.

-Fics where a character turns eeevvviillllll. Mostly when they transform the heroes into douches and turns the handsome villains into walking donuts of happiness.

edited 30th Apr '15 6:15:42 AM by Bolded1

Congratulations, you have made me want to see a fic in which the heroes turn into bottles of douche to fight the villains who turn into donuts of happiness.

You know, I've always wanted to see a 'normal kid going into crazy universe' fic where the crazy powers the normal kid develops is medium awareness. Like 'Oh hey why is such and such a character's eyes weirdly blank can nobody else see this'.

"Oh God, why does no one in that crowd have faces?"

EDIT: Deadpool played straight? Dunno.

edited 30th Apr '15 11:56:11 AM by Night

OO Cness, but to clarify. When the narrative (and the author notes) have a blatant smug, conceited, arrogant "my version is just better" tone to them. This is particularly grating when the character has been turned into a hypocritical sociopath who gets away with stuff just because he's the main character and the world has treated him so terribly.

Even if you didn't like the character in canon this version is certainly not "better" from a moral stand point.

Naruto gets hit with this a lot. Why do some people not seem to get they've made him as bad if not worse then Sasuke?

Or they go about fixing what they perceive as "flaws" in the character. Like getting rid of Naruto's Trademark Favorite Food, changing his orange clothes for "proper ninja attire", etc. It always feels forced and awkward. People don't just drop aspects of who they are like that.

In contrast when the author is clearly just having fun writing a story (likely a crazy awesome crack fic) meant to entertain. That's totally a different thing.

edited 30th Apr '15 12:14:55 PM by WorldTurtle2

The hilarious bit is the blatant hypocrisy that comes with them.

When it comes down to it, it's actually an argument that comes down to this:

Naruto is who they are. Pathetic, idiotic, loud mouthed, obnoxious, desperate for affection and nearly universally disliked. Sasuke is who they want to be, cool, smart, quiet, badass and too cool for anyone's affection.

Which is why you usually end up seeing shitty powertrip fics in which the mechanics are reversed. It's not because the author is trying to write an actual story. They're just writing out their wish fulfilment fantasies using vessels for things in their lives. Naruto is a vessel for themselves, Sasuke is a vessel for the cool kid who makes fun of them in class, the authority figures are the vessels for the authority figures in their lives...

This is also why you see so often in those stories the entire world except his harem conspiring against the self insert wearing Naruto's skin. Because this kind of people can seldom understand that they are not the center of the world, and that their position in life is less 'people are conspiring to keep me down because I'm secretly awesome' and more 'people dislike me because I am unlikable/socially inept/have different interests/am obnoxious/other legitimate reason to dislike me'.

Well. Naruto is a story about forgiveness, or at least, the main character forgot people such as Sasuke or Nagato.

It's pretty weird to see how many fans have Naruto lash out and beat the crap out of the villagers/Sasuke/Kakashi with his control over Kurama/his two rinnegans/stuff, basically being a sociopathic clown who crush anyone who cross him without remorse, with Kakashi and Sasuke always wanting to grievously harm Naruto or kill him before that.

P1 Naruto is the guy who's bad at ninjaing but at least, he try to get better at it and have qualities. The fanfic Naruto is just Kage Arc Sasuke with Naruto's body, and a Mary Sue at that.

edited 30th Apr '15 2:41:38 PM by Bolded1

One of those things is not like the others. And in any case, regardless of how maladjusted the authors of those fics may be, I have a hard time sympathizing with some of their critics, who seem to take sadistic pleasure in rubbing their failures in their faces and belittling them.

Not really. Being bullied is something the authors can identify with (or think they can identify with). Lashing out at people who torment you and then expect you to "forgive" them is a fairly common desire because of that.

edited 30th Apr '15 2:58:52 PM by Robotnik

I am far past sympathy. The grand majority of such authors are not like the characters they describe, that is, violent sociopaths, solely because they don't have the ability to be. They don't have the power to be.

And whether you believe it or not, having different interests is a legitimate reason to not like someone, and sometimes even dislike them, depending on the interest in question.

Simply asserting that something is true "whether you believe it or not" is not a convincing argument.

And I am "far past sympathy" for critics, and people in general, who make society look like a protection racket.

edited 30th Apr '15 3:08:15 PM by Robotnik

Simply asserting that it's wrong is not convincing argument either. You got the level of response you deserved, honestly.

The statement is overly broad, and overly harsh. There are plenty of people who don't share my interests, but I would never say I don't "like" them just because of that. I may not socialize with them too closely or form deep and everlasting friendships with them, but that's a far cry from not "liking" them.

The statement isn't meant to imply that you should hate people just because you don't like the same things they do.

It's simply a reason why people don't like, and sometimes even dislike, each other.

Sharing interests leads to people bonding over said shared interests. Not sharing interests means you have less things to talk, and therefore bond, about. If the thing you have an interest in happens to be something someone else dislikes intensely, well, they'll dislike you as well for liking that thing.

It's a perfectly valid reaction. You're perfectly within your rights to dislike people who like things you find distasteful. Otherwise, it'd be wrong to dislike people for being nazis. And yes, Godwin's Law and all that crap, I'm being extreme to prove the point.

Pretty sure you've met people who had interests you regarded as distasteful, prurient, disgusting, or even criminal in your life. Most people do. Hell, when you were five or six you were probably avoiding girl/boy things for fear of the cooties. That you wish to ignore that for the sake of picking a fight reflects poorly on you.

edited 30th Apr '15 4:00:20 PM by Night

Unless it's something that extreme, like murder or rape, etc, then yes, you might be kind of a dick if you dislike a person because of their interests, depending on what those interests are and exactly why you find them "distasteful".

If I were to dislike gay people because I find gay porn "distasteful", then that would make me an asshole.

Yeah, and then I grew up and realized that's a dumb thing to be afraid of, as well as a dumb reason to dislike girls (not that there's necessarily a good one anyway). The only interest I could ever truly dislike someone for would be a criminal one.

edited 30th Apr '15 4:10:31 PM by Robotnik

Even things that are less extreme are valid reasons to dislike someone.

People dislike each other because of the music they like. People dislike each other because of the sports teams they support. People dislike each other for liking a flavor of ice cream more than they like another.

I think you may have a point Robotnik, but you can also point out that said sociopathic writers want to have Naruto do sociopathic and reprehensible behaviour which IS criminal. Sure, its fantasy, but it does go into the whole 'The writer is a bit bitter and wants to lash out via writing'. Sure, I do understand that the author may have lead a though and cruel life, but its fair to criticize said bitter and self centered writing. Sure, the guy you responded to (I Am Not Creative Enough) had a bit too much glee and vindictiveness which is pretty hypocritical too.

edited 30th Apr '15 4:35:32 PM by AegisP

If by "things that are less extreme", you mean music, ice cream flavors, and sports, then no, those are not particularly valid reasons to straight-up dislike somebody. The fact that people do anyway means that people are petty and cruel, not that doing so is good, or something to be accepted and/or encouraged.

When you are deciding which is a valid reason to dislike someone and which is not, you have to stop and ask yourself a question:

Who are you to decide what is and what is not a valid reason to dislike someone?

To you, those things are insignificant. They're nothing important. That's why you say "oh, well, that's not a valid reason to dislike someone". But to others, it's very important.

By saying that those are not important things, you are being bigoted. You're saying that what is important to those people isn't important. You're belittling the people to whom it is important. How is that not bigoted?