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

Agreed. I love "what ifs" with a passion, but once you up and shift the entire setting...it takes work.

While I tend not to like "setting shifts" in singular works, I actually expect them with crossovers, especially when the two realms have completely different rules, history, and whatnot. I've seen a lot of crossovers where they just followed the story of one of the works they used, and the rest of the additional characters just become glorified cameos, and I just can't get into those no matter how well those other elements integrate to the "main" universe.

One of the first Rise Of The Brave Tangled Dragons fanfics I encounter (this was before the crossover became big enough to warrant its own fandom) was pretty much a beat-for-beat retelling of Tangled with additional characters reacting to Rapunzel's adventures and antics.

edited 14th Dec '16 6:02:05 PM by Adept

Certain types of Crossovers if they don't seem like they would 'gel' in my mind very well, by taking a more lighthearted series (MLP) and a MUCH darker series (Warhammer 40k) and combining them.

Similarly, a Crossover that goes, "Person X is dropped in setting Y" for almost no reason, and ends up uber-breaking the universe because paper-rock-scissors becomes paper-rock-rocket launcher.

A recent prejudice I've been working against is, "Fics with a low word count." Like, I see a story that's 2 chapters and has 3000 words, that's not one I'm gonna waste time with...usually.

OOC, which I don't FEEL needs to be said, but I wanna say it anyway because it can drive me nuts. Two examples of that. One is a One Piece fic where Luffy reached Raftel, but his crew died so he committed suicide, and for SOME reason he was given a do-over from when he was a little kid. The second the LITTLE KID Luffy ripped the heart out of that mountain bandit, I went, "And I'm done here." and walked away. Second example: Young Justice crossed with Warhammer 40k, where a Krieger (Clone/vat-bred uber grimdark soldier) becomes a member of the league and I'm sorry, but there's no way in hell the league would keep making allowances for what amounts to an even more stupidly dark Punisher to go around crippling people and breaking limbs left-and-right. Especially when the author is TOO descriptive with the scenes of violence and forearm-snappage involving his OC.

When I see an all too brief description that describes some event happening to a character as an explanation for them being OOC, but is so short that it's basically a handwave so they can get into the Character-In-Name-Only doing what they think is cool, that's a copout to me. (most Egregious example: Vimesenthusiasts Harry Potter/Marvel Crossover "A Third Path to the Future", where Chapter 2 is a summary of the WILDLY divergent HP canon that resulted in Harry landing in the Marvel-verse Deadzone. Also, a huge Mary-Sue fic, like all of VE's stories...)

[EDIT]

STUPIDLY Bashing fics. You want to hate a character, fine by me, convince me that they're an A——le, more power to you if they're canonically in a grey area.

Robin from Teen Titans, breaking up with Starfire immediately after the Tokyo movie by saying "NO ONE is allowed to have a relationship" and not given any kind of explanation for it? And when Beast Boy knocks up Raven, Robin is so angry that among the other plans, he considers slipping morning-after pills in Raven's tea so she'll miscarry?

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you, author of that dreck. You do not MAKE-UP reasons for people to hate a character because you can't come up with any legit reason for them to be the villain in your Po S fic. At that point, it's ridiculously ignorant fan-wankery.

edited 22nd Dec '16 4:33:12 PM by janusmaxwell

I'm all up for modern day alternate universes as long as you try to do something with them other than providing an excuse for Legolas and Aragorn dating in college because that's all the background you know and you can't be bothered to write a convincing Middle Earth.

That's honestly not that short; you can get a lot of mileage out of 3k words.

If it's like only 200 words then I'd worry.

edited 23rd Dec '16 6:24:31 AM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Of course, it depends on the genre. For a slice of life piece, 3000 words is easily enough to paint a scene and make it memorable. For an adventure, 3000 words is a decent first chapter.

I remember a Code Geass fanfic that took place in our real world and told a comedy story with the characters. The premise was C.C. wanting to be be killed by a stranger, so she leaves her apartment door open and sleeps on her couch until it happens. Then Suzaku and Lelouche walk through the door. It had nothing to do with any canon Geass elements, but it was damn fucking funny. I wish I could find it again.

Personally I dislike A Us that are so much alternate universe that only similarity they have to the source work are the names.

Is it really so hard to pick a character name that people need to take an official character name to use in their original fanfic? For example, if you take a team of superheros and remove every thing fantastical about them to stick them in a mundane world, and then you make them as OOC as possible so that you may as well have written yet another "original" romance novel(because there will be shipping), then you have missed the point of fan-fiction! If I wanted an original story, I'd read an original story. If I'm reading a fanfic, it's because I want to read more stories about a certain work of fiction and it's beloved characters. Without shipping them with the reader. That just sounds creepy. I don't have any desire to be romantically involved with a character from someone's imagination. Batman isn't meant to be your imaginary boyfriend!

When there's incest or ships a character with the reader. That either squicks me out, in the case of the incest, and shipping a character with the reader means it never fully captures what you'd do anyway, so I don't see the point.

I really don't like it when an author blatantly inserts one of their favorite songs/movies/games into the story as one of the characters' interests when it clearly doesn't align with their established personality and pastimes. It can be good to Write What You Know , but that's taking it a little too far.

edited 22nd Jan '17 2:21:55 PM by cake1

The ink flows into a dark puddle, just move your hand- write the way into his heart

Whenever I see an Anglophone author use Japanese Ranguage and/or Engrish completely seriously, a small part of me just.... dies.

This happens all the freaking time in crossovers with Fate/stay night or other elements of the Nasuverse.

edited 24th Jan '17 5:20:05 PM by EvaUnit01

Reader x character. Especially when it has stuff like second person narration or characters going "Hey Y/N wanna go for a ride?" I just...I have no idea where these stories came from and how are they popular. I'd just prefer for people to write OCs and deal with it, damn if they're Mary Sues. It's much better than this weird blandish thing that's supposed to represent me.

Some A Us can work, but others I just feel that they overall lose the "theme/ideals" of the original, so to say.

Oh, and weird CRACK stories that feature porn or not. I get the author wants to be "funny", but often it fails since there's no character or tension, and it's just LELRANDOMXD events one after another. It's less funny and more weird.

Sometimes I feel like a number of crack fics would make for great web comics. The wackiness would be better represented by visuals than prose.

Like I've seen a number of stupid story ideas that I liked in concept but didn't want to read because they were pure text. I'd eat that shit up as a web comic.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I recently stumbled across "Alpha/Omega" fics.

Never. Frigging. Again.

....Also there was one that combined the above with my real most hated fic type, Real Person Fics.

Everybody's all "Jerry's old and feeble" till they see him run down a skyscraper and hijack a helicopter mid-flight.

They have fics for those? Don't get me wrong. I'm a parent of two and I like the string of movies/videos well enough for what they are. But to actually write about them?

...they didnt mean the movies. The reality is so horrible you will never sleep at night again...LOL.

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

Let's just say some people have really messed up ideas about wolf pack hierarchy.

Pretty sure someone's linked to an explanation of that whole concept somewhere in this thread.

But yeah, that's a massive red flag for me. I have the tag blocked on AO3.

edited 7th Mar '17 2:53:59 PM by SapphireBlue

Yeah, I didn't mean the movies.

Everybody's all "Jerry's old and feeble" till they see him run down a skyscraper and hijack a helicopter mid-flight.

I am so tempted to write a realistic portrayal of wolf pack like behavior(you know, a family!) that does not involve creepy kinks that seem a bit too rapey(why is dubcon a thing???) for me. And men CANNOT get pregnant! Or I can just write an overprotective friendship fic! Or have the characters come across a creepy fanfic, but I don't want to really read one. I did read parts of a creepy fanfic where Clark kept making clones(and then killing them!) of a dead Batman. That was weird.

If I ever wrote a werewolf pack, I'm pretty sure I'd make it a huge family run by a fussy overprotective pair of parents.

Be not afraid...

I can't fault real person fics to much because technically Barkley Shut Up And Jam Gaiden is one.

You say I am loved, when I don’t feel a thing. You say I am strong, when I think I am weak. You say I am held, when I am falling short.

To be fair, this sounds like something that DC would actually do. Comics are perfectly capable of getting really weird.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

It would have to be an elseworld for Clark to be that OOC. Then again, DC Comics does have a precedent for evil!Superman elseworlds.