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

Thus all the crazy pairings we get. People see what isn't there. As for AO 3 tagging/custom tags, I put a lot on Zelda's Honor because I didn't want people going into it expecting something like My Little Pony and instead getting Hellraiser. You know what I mean? I'm keeping away needless negative reviews because of bad case of misinformation about a fic because it wasn't what they expected and welcoming reviews from those readers who knew what they were getting into and read it from beginning to end.

That's what the summary is for. I'm less likely to read your fic because of the mass tagging than I am to read it and complain about being misinformed (who does that, anyway?).

Totally agree with TMI tagging on AO3. I've seen way too many things that made me want brain bleach without even reading them. If your fic is going to creep people out, make sure that the seeing the tags doesn't have the exact same effect.

I suppose it DOES make it very clear what to stay away from, though. Although if AO3 had a way to filter out certain ratings, it would make this a lot less of a problem. I find porn fics awkward and uncomfortable to read even if it's a pairing I like, so I'd totally filter out the explicit-rated ones if there was an easy way to do it.

edited 7th Aug '15 3:44:31 PM by SapphireBlue

Oh, yes, let's not tag all that stuff so that it comes off as a surprise to the reader when they go in expecting a fic that doesn't have that stuff!

...

Sorry, dood, but at this point, you're complaining about something incredibly convenient because you don't like it.

The element of surprise is great thing in writing, though.

Well, I think it's the difference between tagging all the different types of sex going on in a work vs tagging a work with "hardcore porn". One type of tagging makes me go for the brain bleach just by reading it, the other just lets me know that I don't want to click on it.

edited 7th Aug '15 4:14:34 PM by ObsidianFire

I'm not against tagging, I'm against mass tagging. I don't need every little detail that may or may not scare off a reader tagged for me, I just want the following:

• Main characters
• Villains
• The 2 most important ships (if any). If there's love triangle then list the 2 possible pairings to get the idea across.
• Genre of story
• If it's an alternate universe/timeline/whatever

That's all you need. If you're afraid you're going to scare people off because of your content, you're either doing something that doesn't fit the universe or aren't confident in yourself. If you're afraid that you're misinforming people for telling them the wrong premise, try to make sure the general idea is in the summary without spoiling stuff.

edited 7th Aug '15 4:19:08 PM by Karxrida

You have no idea what hardcore porn actually is and why just saying that does not cover 99% of the tags I mean when I say that there are tags you asbsolutely WANT to see before going into a work, do you?

I suppose what we need is some sort of hierarchical tagging system.

Methinks that we should simply have a button that goes "hide custom tags" which hides nonstandard tags.

I could live with that.

Sure, sometimes that's enough. But say, what if I wanna read a story about Friends to Lovers? Oh look, there's a tag for that. If I wanna read Fluff or Angst or Crack (or all three), there are tags for those too. Say I wanna read High School A Us, but don't want to read about a punk version of a character then I'll just add Alternate Universe - High Shool then filter out punk. Hell, it's not just about story tropes too, it can be about the structure—like PO Vs of a certain character, or if it's in 1st or 2nd person (which I really wished people tagged more, because I'm seriously getting sick of reading 2nd person by surprise. Most of the time you can tell by the summary, but sometimes not), stuff like that.

Same goes for fics with sexual content. If you wanna read about a certain kink, I'm sure there's already a tag for it. If you don't wanna read about a certain kink, then it definitely makes it easier to filter it out.

There already is if you're a registered user. If by nonstandard you mean the freeform tags.

But anyway, it's gotten kinda offtopic.

Red Flag: When they forget the punctuation at the end of dialogues, and the only the question mark or an exclamation point maybe appears. Those definitely shoots up fics to unreadable territory for me.

Shit formatting in general, actually.

edited 7th Aug '15 8:56:23 PM by ramenradian

It's really strange to me how many people get the basic format of a fanfiction story wrong. When I was writing my story it's really quite simple to get the formatting down, watching your grammar and sentence structure was the hard part. The sad part is there is some good stories out there that suffer heavily from this shitty formatting.

Shitty formatting can make a story unreadable no matter how good the content itself actually is.

It continues to baffle me because you'd think the ones most willing to write fanfiction would be the ones most likely to have paid attention in high school English.

(This excludes the cases where its apparent that the writer is non-fluent, which is a completely different can of worms.)

(I'm also pretty sure I've made this post before, but dammit if it doesn't need repeating a couple times.)

edited 8th Aug '15 6:35:33 AM by Watchtower

The lack of an entry bar means that writing fanfiction doesn't really need a particular amount of effort so anyone can do it. Which is why you'll see infinitely more shitty fanfic than just about anything else.

Yep. It's really frustrating. When I look at fanfic, it's rare to see one which is free of basic grammar mistakes or typos, let alone the subtler writing flaws.

I guess this is what editors are for in the professional publishing industry.

Nah, those people would never get to the point of having an editor, 'cause an editor only comes in after someone has read your manuscript and deemed it worthy of going through the expense of hiring an editor to look it over.

I have a new red flag: Fics that confuse being DarkerandEdgier as being more realistic.

So many people make that mistake.

Those fics seem to misunderstand why some people like those type of stories. You have to execute it out right so you don't alienate your audience....

Very few people ever execute it right though.....

edited 21st Aug '15 9:48:10 PM by Bleddyn

Related, any fic that tries to present a more "realistic" take on a common fandom plot (For example, a human ends up in Equestria) that just makes me facepalm and say "No, that is not realistic. Realistic does not equal everybody being an arsehole!"

A lot of Darker and Edgier stories wind up causing Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy.

That annoys me so much. To add on to that, I'm reading a sport of a fix where that is not is that happening, but the authors expects us to sympathize with these people without ever fleshing them out. When the authors occasionally do, it's stupid.

Realistic is not equals to Darker and Edgier, but a lot of people like to think they're the same.

"Realistic" would ideally include a person in a confusing situation being polite to those around them that know more so they can get maximum information.