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

Word.

Here's one unusual thing you might never heard before: the author using his fanfic to win back his ex.

No seriously. This really happened to a fanfic i was reading. It was the fans favorite ship of an anime that finished airing (the characters had a similar backgrounds and both being honorable warriors which lead them to respect each other and fans shipping them). Most of the chapters were just the couple being embarrassed trying to admit each others feelings while their friends root for them. And then one chapter, the author revealed, he and his girlfriend, who both work on this fanfic, broke up. Hence why there wasn't a new chapter for sometime.

Some time later, another chapter from that author appeared. Rather than a continuation of the story, it was a sassy love poem he wrote hoping for his ex to read it and win her back.

Look dude. I'm sorry that you and your girlfriend broke up but don't use your fanfic as a tool to win her back. We want to read a story, not your love life. Plus. you only embarrass yourself just like that viral video of some dude asking his ex to come back to him while the Winter Sonata theme song was playing in the background.

This right here shows how far a man can be willing to go for his girl.

That's just sad.

Well, there's something you don't see every day...

And this is why I try to keep my personal life out of my writing. Also why I don't do collabs.

Now I feel tempted to try and write such a thing and make it good. Crossing the fourth wall, after all, can be intended. And there are novels that contain novels. Perhaps it is possible to do this "trying to win his girlfriend back" thing as part of the story, which then leads to other events that are shown either by the way the fanfic continues or does not continue, or with other poems.

However:

I think it can be safely assumed that the girlfriend did not appreciate this. Emotional blackmailing by dragging things out into the public is unkind, and as such will not be appreciated by anyone sane. Same goes for trying to contact someone who does not want contact.

edited 3rd Oct '16 2:26:49 AM by Gowan

Agreed. I wish one fanfic author read this advice. This author wrote a couple of Yuri fanfics (with one based on Princess Lover) until he deleted them because of his girlfriend, who was very religious and conservative and didn't like his fanfics.

Months later, he broke up with her and continue writing yuri fanfics but unfortunately, he didn't save backups of the fanfics he deleted.

Recently I have been annoyed by the concept of bringing back a character previously gone from a series... just to pair them up with someone. A prime example of this is Achaka from King's Quest 2015, whom everyone has been writing fanfic of him surviving... just to pair him up with Graham.

Now, I have no problem with the pairing itself. I don't ship them (kinda hard to when Achaka's dead), but I think it can be done well (seen it at least twice). But it's getting to the point of being ridiculous because EVERYONE is doing it! Nobody ever tries, say, to have a premise where he lives and have them just be brothers in arms and best friends or rivals. I'm sure the stories are fantastic, but it's getting a little ridiculous when that's ALL people decide to do with the very interesting premise of, "What if Achaka survived The Well?"

God, I feel so frustrated right now! I swear to god, Wattpad fanfics can suck my cock for all I care!

I enjoy the Miraculous Ladybug/Beauty and the Beast fanfics, where Adrien is Beast and Marinette is Belle. But I just read one on Wattpad that makes me want to scream in rage. The fic basically just took the plot of Beauty and the Beast, and slapped Miraculous Ladybug on it. End result is that Nathaniel is set up as the Gaston, only to never show up again after Marinette rejects him. It isn't a Ronthe Death Eater mind you. When Marinette takes her parents place, Adrien's entire demeanour just changes. Like, no character development. Next chapter, he's just all shy and awkward around Marinette. Then Hawk Moth showed up as the maim villain at the climax, OUT OF MOTHERFUCKING NOWHERE, and is all, 'KILL THE BEAST!" Blah blah blah, he actually is going to kill Adrien with a sword, and also wants to kill Marinette for some reason, before Adrien pushes him off the building, and I finished it, and felt unsatisfied. It was so uncreative and short, skipping very important scenes from the movie.

I expressed my criticism, and the author was all, "Sorry this wasn't up to your standards! Thank you for your worthless information!"

YOU CAN PRACTICALLY SMELL HOW SUMG, SNOTTY AND FULL OF THEMSELVES THE AUTHOR IS FROM THAT ONE COMMENT!

Beauty and the Beast-type stories where other actual characters replace the main characters can really leave me scratching my head, as sometimes the "Beast" character is actually a wholly separate character from the other one instead of just a monster version of the "Prince Adam" character in the story, which is just odd. I don't remember if I actually read this or just saw someone mention it somewhere, but there was this one B&TB story where Mordecai was the Prince Adam of the story who had been turned into....Professor Ratigan and not some Beast version of himself.

With Miraculous Ladybug, it works in the case of Adrien becoming a cat monster, but sometimes it can be just stupid and shameless.

Egocentric fanfic authors can quickly disinterest me in their work.

Disrespecting power levels in battles, crossovers or not. Especially if the author doesn't know the characters as well either. If you have naruto and goku fight for a legitimate, story driven reason, then at least do respect to both fighters and show how equal or unequally the fight is. Make the weaker character act smart (long as it stays to IC level) if you plan for them to win. Deus ex power-up is NOT a valid reason.

I remember reading a comment here, detailing a fic involving Super Saiyan 2 Gohan failing to stop Naruto and Sasuke during their Valley of the End fight. That's pretty disrespectful in my view.

Ah, different power levels being ignored. Or as I like to say, "Batman should not be able to curbstomp Saitama

Batman in general started that type of thing in the first place....

So, it's a red flag to have too much Popularity Power going on? Makes sense. It's just supposed to be a JOKE that Batman can beat anyone with prep time. At the same time, I don't really like it when heroes fight each other for OOC reasons period.

Having superheroes fight each other because of a misunderstanding or mind control is pretty staple. I cowrote a Young Justice fanfic where heroes fought each other because of mind control, and that's been something in the genre since day one. But having heroes in their own minds fight each other for stupid reasons is also an issue with modern comics.

Honestly, the only times two heroes who know each other and came to blows made sense that I can think of is probably Batman v Red Hood, and Jaime Reyes v Guy Gardner when they met

Given how the superheroes in MCU fight each other in almost every movie they appear in, that might not be that much of an issue, actually.

Superheroes fighting each other is indeed almost a staple of the genre by now, just as is Power Creep, Power Seep to explain victories that should never happen (such as a Badass Normal defeating a Flying Brick). I don't care much about the former, but the later is usually something that makes me grind my teeth (either in fanfics or in the source material).

Fair enough. I guess it's like everything in fiction: You can do it if you can make it work and justify it

It's funny that professional writers still make the same mistakes that amateur writers make. Except that edit correct most of the errors. I don't like any story where characters are only there for the titillation of the reader. I do not like se scenes or objectification. Hmm... I really don't like romance and sex. Maybe I'm asexual? Or I just have a lack of hormones.

I like romance really. I'm just a hopeless romantic!

With you on the general lack of romance/titillation love. Though like anything, it can be done well and I don't mind romance being included in the story- as long as it's not the sort of thing where taking out the romance will do nothing to change the story, making it pointless.

On the other hand, I prefer that romance not be the main focus either. So if a story has romance, I like it to be a subplot that builds character development, not something that takes over the story completely or is so pointless it might as well not even be there. It's a tricky balance. Personally, I just don't bother.