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

What don't you get?

As far as Shipping fics goes, I always see to notice that the majority of them is always the same couples over and over again. Or a character is altered to make them head over heels when I wouldn't imagine the said character to be.

I hadn't read a Harem fic, nor would I want to.

le derp

edited 1st Feb '16 7:12:06 AM by heliosKAISER

Well, certain couples just tend to be more popular among fans, I suppose. That's why there's such a thing as Fan-Preferred Couple.

...Wha...? I think you're posting in the wrong thread.

i still have no clue how or why snape/hermione got popular.

Eww. New red flag: Too AU AU's.

AU Au's? What does this mean?

Oh, those in-name only fics where everyone is normal, takes place on a more modern setting and is generally a slice of life story when the original works weren't like Kingdom Hearts or Fire Emblem.

edited 1st Feb '16 11:02:40 AM by heliosKAISER

Those A Us are just the worst. Especially with works where most of the appeal is in how out of the ordinary everything is, like Night Vale. No, authors, I may ship Cecil/Carlos, but I'd rather be reading a story that contains the typical Night Vale weirdness, not one where they're normal teenagers in a normal high school!

I've also discovered, thanks to Night Vale Fanfiction, that Wimpification is also a big red flag for me. Yes Cecil is capable of showing emotion in the show (just listen to "One Year Later", or much of Year Three), but this is also a man who reports horrific incidents on a daily basis and stays perfectly stoic for the most part. But fics tend to make him into a guy that cries at things that in canon he went through calmly (a crossover with Sharknado of all things was ruined for me when he had to be comforted and told that a Sharknado wasn't actually going to happen, for crying out loud! Granted, it actually did, but still!)

edited 1st Feb '16 12:36:17 PM by AshlynNyx

I might be able to see Cecil crying in disappointment that a Sharknado isn't happening.

This is a pet peeve that mostly concerns AO 3 which has a problematic tagging system. I believe an author should tag only characters that have the largest role in the story. It bothers me when the names of twelve characters are listed in the tags because it's hard to know who the story's really about.

Back when I used AO3, I had a pretty good rule of thumb: if the character wasn't one of the first five tagged, and they weren't specifically mentioned in the story description, then they were a minor character and the author was just being anal about tagging everyone.

For stuff like that I feel like it would be helpful to have separate "main character" and "secondary character" tags. Sure, you'd have issues defining exactly how much screentime differentiates the two, but at least you wouldn't have the issue of some character being tagged who only appears in one chapter of a 30 chapter story.

I don't know why you even need that many characters tagged anyway.

Like, I get FF.net expanding the number of tags to 4, since the original limit of 2 kinda restricted the tags to main characters and/or pairs. I could even see it expanding a little more. But 12 just sounds ridiculously silly.

I remember that people had to mess with code for tags.

Rule of thumb for tagging is 'if the character has a story arc or appears in most of it, tag them'. Same with ships. (Least, that's how I did my story)

Despite hating the idea of 15 tags, tagging minor characters could be nice. Like if they include a character I like. However 15 different tags is overkill.

Some people (like me) don't like it when minor characters are tagged a lot when they are barely in a work, because if the character doesn't get much love looking through their tags on AO 3 means 'work where they have one line' is all that appears.

I know! I actually have never read a fic on AO 3. I just thought that if a character has a minor but considerable role, it could be nice if it came tagged. But I dont kid myself. This is Fanfiction and like all fanfiction its more often than not that its badly executed. I dont want all those tags. They are misleading and annoying.

Do you think the threshold for whether it's worth it to tag them might be different for different characters?

Can I mention something specific to a certain fandom in this thread?

In Pokemon fics and Creepypasta... for me, never, EVER mention Lavender Town! I've learned to loathe the place, not because it scared me (I never grew up with Generation 1/3, I started with 4) but because inevitably the writer goes RIGHT into cliches ALWAYS with it!

• Excessive blood and gore
• Mention of (provided it's a post Gen 1 story) "Oh! The NEW LV SUCKS compared to the OLD one even though it gave me NIGHTMARES" and ALWAYS subsequently making the Radio Tower haunted by ghosts.
• Going on and on about that damn theme music sometimes with mentions of it going into reverse and/or slowed down rumbling pitch.
• Pokemon never Faint, they ALWAYS Die.
• Ignoring the line "The mother's spirit was calmed. It departed to the afterlife." And always making her come back to haunt the place.
• Never having a happy ending.
• Turning the town into an Expy of Silent Hill.
• Making the town be a place that nobody visits, despite it being canonically required.
• Have Mr.Fuji be a scumbag instead of a kindly old man.

And there's probably a few more I'm just not thinking of.

Seriously, I've seen a story that does Lavender Town well ONCE. It's called Sinner, and focuses on a former Team Rocket member that's tormented every night by nightmares of his past transgressions at the town.

Why doesn't ANYONE just choose somewhere else?! In every region, there's a Lavender Town/Pokemon Tower equivalent or at the very least a relatively creepy area somewhere. Nobody does the Ruins of Alph, or Mt.Pyre or whatever, because they're all stuck in the past and can't let it go. Well, I say it's time for people to move on, don't you think?

Now, to be fair, I can see that happening. I mean, really, turning a burial site into a radio tower? That's practically asking for a haunting. Granted, they moved the graves, but still...

Wait, what?

Yeah, those sound stupid.

I will say this, the other spooky locations seem a bit more...settled than Pokémon Tower does, what with its angry spirit of a murdered Pokémon and possessed trainers. Places like Mt. Pyre and Celestial Tower feel safer, and thus don't seem to lend themselves as readily to these types of stories. I'm not saying it can't be done, and I can understand that Lavender Town is overused and often not done especially well, but it does probably seem like the most attractive option to a lot of people.

edited 6th Feb '16 10:54:26 PM by KarkatTheDalek

Also, Lavender Town's theme was pretty unsettling.

I actually tend to seek out fanfiction that are so-bad-it's-good.

See: Homestuck high, Sonic Highschool, Chlorine Grown Roses, etc

Real-Person Fic.

It's just creepy.