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

Their is a very small few high school A Us that I have seen that were good.

Even worse when they used trite stereotypes for most of the characters instead of their canon selves.

Rape as Backstory. Far to many writers use it as mere shock value to drum up sympathy for their characters, and don't do anything to explore the damage that can cause someone and treat rape about as casually as, say, a broken arm (not saying that breaking your arm isn't traumatizing, but it's not rape).

Also, whenever someone displays powers that are not present in canon, and have no real basis in canon. I call it "Dual Bending" (the name comes from how a lot of Avatar: The Last Airbender characters and OCs somehow develop the ability to bend two Elements despite not being the Avatar).

edited 29th Sep '16 1:46:49 PM by iowaforever

Fucking this. Rape is the cheapest shit to give someone sympathy.

High School A Us are way too common in fandoms set in a fantasy world or other environment that isn't strictly school. Especially Naruto. Honestly, most of the time these have characters OOC up the wazoo and, as pointed out, sometimes use shallow stereotypes in place of their canonical personality (e.g. if I see one more HSAU where Sasuke is simply an emo kid...)

I have seen some that manage to pull it off well and get together all the canonical personalities and elements that would be appropriate for the setting, but even then, I'd much rather read about the canonical universe, thanks.

edited 29th Sep '16 5:12:08 PM by Psychedelicate

I maintain that while vanilla High School AU's suffer very heavily from Sturgeon's Law, when an author works at blending a High School setting with fantastic elements it can make for a good story.

As in this Fic. Which I'm pretty sure I've already reced before in this thread.

I recall a really good Teen Titans fic that was a high school AU but it did something completely different with the Titans.

And by that I mean none of the Titans had powers in that setting, they were just really well trained high school students with good costumes that ended up coming together by some happenstance. They had their own physical or social issues that were different from what you would expect either (or if they were drawn from cliches they were turned on their heads)

Here's a question for you - have you ever seen a High School AU for a series which already had its main cast in high school - it just removed any more fantastical trappings it might have?

I mean, normally for that kind of series, I'd expect fic writers would just do a story that focused on high school drama with little to no adventuring or what-not. But I'm still wondering if someone ever wrote a fic that stripped all of it out of the narrative completely.

edited 29th Sep '16 9:38:59 PM by KarkatTheDalek

Hmm. I do wonder about that, myself...

Was that fic good?

edited 29th Sep '16 10:36:30 PM by Psychedelicate

x7 I think rape in general as a way of forcing sympathy is usually poorly written. And it always happens to women, never to men, and like you said, the victim never experiences real psychological consequences. It's usually done just to add gratuitous grittiness, as a way of saying look at how dark and edgy I can be. Maybe it can be well executed but haven't found any yet. Technically not a fanfic, but Stephenie Meyer's genderflipped Twilight did that, threatening Bella with rape when she was female, but changing it to being accused of being a cop when he was male. (Yeah, I don't like the ASOIAF series.)

edited 29th Sep '16 10:41:35 PM by dysphere

I only read one HSAU fic that was characters with powers. But it was on a forum where actual forum users were turned into characters and was clearly meant to be fun and not taken that seriously.

Finding a good HSAU fic is pretty difficult as is. Mostly when using fictional characters due to not handling how powerful some can be very well. Or even avoiding that as is. One of the few good things are stuff like Puberty Powers since that at least can make some sense to put into the actual fic. But it's pretty hard to handle that well too.

Yes it was quite good. It wasn't too bad in the romance department as well as the romances were played realistically from what I saw. It also had a rather interesting (if Tear Jerker) spin on Beast Boy's backstory although admittedly that isn't too surprising considering Beast Boy canon wise had one of the most depressing backstories I have seen.

If I recall correctly it was named Dance of the Ghosts or something like that on fanfiction.net

edited 29th Sep '16 10:58:16 PM by Ecrivan

Neat. I might check it out sometime.

Kind of. I've seen Lyrical Nanoha High School A Us and its canon that a portion of the cast attended Junior High/Middle School together (with some of them going on to High School) but the series proper skipped over those years

There are some fanfics for The Goblin Emperor that use Rape as Backstory in a sensitive way, but then, Csevet was almost raped in canon, and that already does have an effect on him in canon, so it is relatively easy to change to a successful rape in fanfic and handle it decently.

I have to say I find rape as a way of evoking sympathy less gruesome than rape as way of ... I don't know, just eroticising violence against women, or giving the male protagonist something to save a woman from. (I neither like ASOIAF nor Game of Thrones)

If it is part of the main characters backstory, then however badly it is done, at least it has the decency to portray the victim as person.

That said, all rape is a deep orange flag, and I only read fanfic or novels with rape in them if there are green flags that hint at it being handled responsibly.

Part of the problem with the usage of rape in stories that I find generally is that it rarely if ever is treated sensitively and it's just used as a way to pad out a tragic backstory more often then not. I don't mind tragic backstories but I find the flagrant usage of rape as some sort of box to tick to make a character tragic frankly insulting.

....I also really really hate when they use the Hollywood version of a rape scenario. Aka some random guy ambushes you in a alley. That makes me cringe every time I see it

Geez, why are we all talking about rape all of a sudden?

I hate when an author just can't be bothered to finish a story.

Oh wait. That's me. Look, in my defence, I have problems with writers block!

Well, for all we know, everyone who doesn't finish a story has problems with that.

I know I've had a problem with that. Before re-launching my fanfic-writing career under a new profile on Fanfiction.net, I had only finished two or three of the stories I had started because I either didn't know where to go with them or decided they weren't working.

Sadly I'm guilty of not finishing stories as well. I always seem to start off strong but after a certain point I just freeze. I say it's too uncomfortable to continue, I just leave it behind, or something else I say and I just feel like a douchenozzle leaving things hanging like that, like I've insulted not only my readers but myself at the same time.

The worst part I feel for myself is I can discuss my storylines all day long but the moment I start restarting or writing the events out, BAM, writer's block in the face. Or I make up something else I want to get done first.

Lurker here and fanfic binger.

If you are going to binge fanfiction you are inevitably run into Dead Fic. Accepting it is part of being a fan in the first place. Even here, I believe that we have more unfinished recommendations then we have finished ones. I do not have a problem with it so long as the story doesn't end on a cliffhanger. I rationalize it as not all stories need to have endings that are final or dramatic. A lot of authors end up invoking And the Adventure Continues unintentionally by leaving their fic unfinished and that is fine. Keep writing!

edited 1st Oct '16 4:51:33 PM by DocJamore

Coming across dead fics is one of the reasons why I try to limit my fanfic searches to ones that are actually completed.

There are some really good dead fics, but yes, it's just a thing you have deal with as a reader of fanfic. I'd prefer if there was actually an ending (as I'm sure everyone does), but the journey can be worth it.

It's always disappointing when you find a fanfic with a really good premise and good writing only to discover that it's a Dead Fic.

I don't mind Dead Fc too much. Because a lot of authors who didn't plan out the story from the start tend to end up with a rushed ending that can spoil the feel of the entire fic. Or the ever annoying skip forward 10+ years and tell the reader how everything worked out.

Of course this occurs much more often with >100K word count stories.

edited 1st Oct '16 6:19:17 PM by 32ndfreeze