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

Yeah, if it's a Darker and Edgier fanfic that just cranks up the Three S's and not explore anything else, I'm not interested.

edited 13th Jan '16 4:03:01 AM by TheFarmboy

The only fandom that I have seen that can do grimdark well is the Worm fandom. Although mind you the original work is an example of grimdark done well in itself....

Personally, I kind of like writing darker and edgier fanfics myself. Though I usually do this with some sort of reconstruction in mind, and try to keep the main themes in tact. I also write a lot of crossovers, and I usually make lighter settings darker in order to avoid mood whiplash.

For example, I made a mega crossover that, among other things, crossed over Bioshock and Mario. So, I made the Koopas and Bowser less cute (Bowser's a sardonic, intelligent warlord) in order to make it possible to take them seriously.

In general, I think the trick with writing Darker and Edgier fanfiction is to pretend the original work is some kind of Lighter and Softer parody/Bowdlerization of your work-which perhaps actually could be true spiritually speaking. Also, embrace Narm, at least to some extent.

edited 13th Jan '16 6:29:18 PM by Protagonist506

The Worm fandom is a bit of an outlier as well, in regards to average quality of fanfiction. So that's a factor too.

Yeah, they even managed to take pretty much one of the biggest red flags of all, The Self Insert, and create something simply beautiful.^note Neither the author or the self insert has any knowledge of the last third or so of the story, including many very important late game reveals.

edited 13th Jan '16 11:29:43 PM by 32ndfreeze

Yeah I was generally surprised about how a good chunk of the Worm fanworks were good. That's rather unusual even for a small fandom, let alone in a work that's in a superhero setting.

re: Dark fics

I'm fine with it as long it has point to it. Like having a OC cast for an action oriented series and they're new blood so they're understandably not going to handle live combat that well or make the best decisions.

I have a new red flag. Crossover fanfiction taking a male character from one series and turning the lesbian cast of another series into the male character's harem.

Surprisingly, I discovered this flag after discovering a Naruto x Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid crossover.

This is a thing that happens?

Yikes.

That sounds like a very specific scenario. Or at least, I hope so.

Yep. Naruto crossovers have a bad enough rep with this formula of inserting Naruto into another series to make a harem of that series' women, but the author of this fanfic just didn't think about the implications of writing that kind of story with a lesbian cast here. Doesn't help that he:

1. Started the fanfic when the series only aired 2 episodes.
2. Literally asked his viewers to suggest girls from other series for Naruto's harem.

Has this author received any sort of criticism in regards to this?

While sadly most of it came from flamers who made their opinions easy to brush off, The author has started to get criticism from both the "asking the readers for harem member suggestions from other series" and "turning a lesbian cast into a male's harem" ideas.

While he has responded to the criticism of writing a Naruto crossover harem in the first place, he hasn't said a word about the other specific issues.

edited 29th Jan '16 9:50:47 AM by VeryMelon

Seriously, yes!

Why the fuck does Naruto crossover writers keep trying to make him a harem master?

Isn't Hinata not enough?

From what I gather, Naruto is used for Wish-Fulfillment fanfiction in general because so many fans that caught the "Big 3" boom back in the day really identified with him.

In general any fic that turns a female cast into somebody's harem when they weren't a harem to begin with would rub me the wrong way, because it just screams of wish fulfillment. The only exception would be if the setup is used as comedy.

I'm not at all fond of the Harem Genre to begin with, so turning a series into a Harem when it's not supposed to be is an instant-red-flag, regardless of the other issues.

Harem Genre is really one of those tropes where Sturgeon's Law applies very heavily.

edited 29th Jan '16 4:27:27 PM by 32ndfreeze

I hate most Harem fics because they seem always to be written poorly when ever I read them.

I'm also not a fan of Harem as a genre as a concept, unless it's straight-up comedy. Even then I'm probably not likely to read/watch it because it makes me uncomfortable.

People have a hard time making Romance fics believable and enjoyable at the same time. Harem has that issue but 10 times worse for obvious reasons.

It's pretty obvious that harem anything will be a problem for most people.

I've seen (and not been interested in) a lot of harem fics with one guy and a lot of girls, but has the reverse ever really been done?

Reverse Harems (one girl with multiple guys) are written, just not as commonly as the opposite.

I'm a general fan of the harem genre, and I'll admit I don't run into a whole lot of harem fanfics, but the few I have run into haven't been very good.

Mainly because it seems like all the shitty writers who are willing to tackle them are misogynistic perverts, while all the "normal" and "well-adjusted" shitty writers stick to singular couples. And I'm gonna be honest, I don't get that.

It really seems that way, huh.

I can't imagine why exactly, just guess at possible reasons for that dichotomy. Like, maybe they won't do it to a work that was perverted to begin with because they don't view it as "interesting" or "worthwhile", but turning a family friendly work into pornography is "a challenge", or something.

This is all a guess, don't take my word as gospel.