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

AO3 tags can reveal a lot about the quality of an author's writing direction or the way they handle certain subjects.

Like not bothering with editors for touchy subject matters, or being willing to crack jokes in awful taste about them.

I suppose mine would be a Fusion Fic or Crossover with a gargantuan amount of works included in it. Mainly because I feel like that’s way too many characters and storylines to keep track of, but also (a bit pettily, I might add on my part) because a lot of the time, it feels like, at some point, the author just decides to cram any work they can think of into their fic just because, regardless of whether it makes sense or not, and don’t know when to stop. The fic risks becoming rather bloated, at any rate, at least in my opinion.

I’m not saying that a Mega Crossover fanfic is automatically bad, mind you; I’m sure many authors have been able to write great ones. But too many works combined just puts me off. It’s just not for me, I guess.

More of an old-school problem that's thankfully absent today, but seeing someone allude to it just now as a thing that rubbed them the wrong way about the beginning of the "Promote your fics" thread - any mention WHATSOEVER of the words 'Mary Sue' in a description is a very, very bad sign for me. Less in the specifically Suspiciously Specific Denial sense and more in just how fundamentally warped that whole culture was. Especially if they actually namecheck those damn tests.

Also, unrelated but as someone who doesn't like Hate Fic even if I hate the work myself, nothing is more off-putting than seeing an author's note complaining about some aspect of the canon work.

(There's actually a lot more than these, but I just came here because of that ATT comment and wanted to mention what was immediately on my mind.)

Edited by nrjxll on Aug 19th 2023 at 12:25:19 PM

Sometimes, it can be the result of trying to do fun guest stars for little gags or even just filling up inconsequential character slots. However, these additions sometimes carry extra baggage related to their own lore or home setting that also needs to fit in for even the slightest hint at their presence to make sense, especially if the author is going for an extended universe or other lore-heavy style of writing.

I do quite enjoy worldbuilding when stories make opportunities to talk about it, so it's often quite aggravating to watch authors bite off more than they can chew without even recognizing it, or using the "extras" argument to sweep it under the rug. Just because Bellisario's Maxim is a thing doesn't mean I won't stop puzzling over it if the implications are particularly unfortunate.

Edited by TrocyteV on Aug 20th 2023 at 10:58:04 AM

If this makes you feel any better, the creator of The Mary Sue Litmus Test thinks it's outdated.

Also, earlier I saw a Tumblr post about self-deprecating AO3 tags.

Edited by NitroIndigo on Aug 20th 2023 at 7:11:45 PM

Star Wars specific: any use of "Grey Jedi" in tags/summary. Especially if there is something about "contains more nuanced portrayal of force than usual". To me, that reads as "contains edgy protagonist(s)" especially when combined with "Gray Jedi".

Since I'm at it,fic which prompted me to write this post actually contained other two red flags. Seriously, it was a pretty good example of what you should NOT do when you write a (Star Wars) fanfic."

First fic forgive me" as a tag. First, tags are supposed to the story, not the author. I have read many good stories with this problem, but this annoys me. Now on the "first fic" I actually do not mind this, but when combined with stuff like "forgive me" then it is a red flag. Also, if you really want to write "first fic" put in author's notes not summary and certainly not tags.

Just to complete the whole "how do you NOT make a fanfic" they started a summary with "summary sucks". Now you may notice that I used the word "started" so they actually proceeded with "but I will try anyway". That is how you do this ! By trying ! Much better than "summary sucks, please give the story a chance". You cannot expect me to think the actual story is worth it if you cannot be bothered to even try to write a summary. Anyway, the summary was clichéd, and I learned very little about the story from it. So I guess that they were somewhat justified here because it really did suck.

Fanfic writers, please take basic care to how you present your work to us readers. You are only hurting your chances by doing stuff like this.

Edited by Risa123 on Sep 27th 2023 at 10:32:47 AM

x4 Agree. While there are definitely fics that are Better Than Canon, any author claiming that about their fic is a red flag.

Edited by LadyBlackwood on Nov 11th 2023 at 7:53:06 AM

Speaking about crossovers... I don't know why, but I really dislike the idea of crossing over Harry Potter and MCU/Marvel Comics.

Modern AUs of any historical drama I tend treat with a grain of salt. Idk if it's just me but I just cannot do it, they're almost always so OOC. Even if I daydream about modern AUs they almost always suck.

Edited by trashconverters on Nov 12th 2023 at 11:48:09 PM

Is it the Hype Aversion ?

in the realm of ao3, i grit my teeth and bare it because in some fandoms i'm in this seems to just be... convention, but tags like "soft [character]" or "[character] needs a hug" or "protective [character]" or... anything along those lines. to me it just gives the impression that you can't sell your story past tropes, tbh, and a lot of whump-adjacent stuff, though i like darkfics angst etc, just reads as very shallow to me and "THIS character is the victim and THIS one is the protector<3"-esque tags... don't help, lol.

also i get the use for it as a darkfic writer, i really do, but i've seen too many people use "dead dove: do not eat" tags as shorthand for "i'm so edgy look at my edgy smut!" (treating it as a type of fic and not a neutral descriptor) that i kind of bristle when i see it used. i've had people say that tag would fit my fics, but i just don't like using it because of the connotations in my mind. plus, i'd rather just say outright "heed the tags, i REALLY mean them!!!" than assume every reader is familiar with a nonsense vaguely-artsy meme phrase. just not my thing.

The phrase "actions have consequences" either on the tags or the summary. 90% of the time it's either an Accusation Fic or the author trying and failing to pull out a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome.

Edited by LadyBlackwood on Jan 5th 2024 at 11:18:08 AM

oh my god, hate those, yeah. in general, any fic tag/summary/etc that seems to think it's above the source material in some manner. "x but REALISTIC", or whatever else, just makes me roll my eyes. fanfic should be a show of passion for the source material in some way, and acting like you know better than the writers - while in very rare occasions true but nowhere near as much as the average person who thinks they're "fixing" canon - just makes you look self-important. ideally, you should just let your fic speak for itself, tbh.

The (character)-critical tag usually ends up being thinly-veiled bashing. Even when it’s not, it’s usually the sort of thing that would be better as an analysis post than a fanfic.

Serious, partly because I intend all ages to enjoy the ultimate crossover project and partly because I started working when I was a minor, I hate writing overly, explicitly sexual actions. Not only would it be truly NSFW (and violate a lot of content policies), it would detract away for most of everything. At the very most, I can hint them. I do accept various characters from NSFW works, but I do not write any actions directly involved with lewdness or sheer sexuality. Gore and violence, however, is definitely acceptable (in case of "kids' work" case, the gore disallow the classification entirely).

Using summaries for self-promotion (e.g. something along the lines of "join my patreon to read updates earlier"). Especially if there is no actual summary for the story at all.

Any fanfic whose first chapter has less than 1k words. That's when I know that either it's going to have bad formatting or that it's going to end before it gets interesting.

I normally stay away from any fic where the summary is all about how cool the OC is. Especially if it's some isekai situation where a """normal""" guy came into the verse and is suddenly super special.

I'm also very picky on fics involving OCs, and I won't read them if they're the main character. I want to read fanfiction about the characters from the actual show, not some completely brand new character who I'm afraid will overshadow the rest of the cast. Stories about children OCs are the one exception to me.

I don't like angst/"""""""whump""""""" (that word sucks so fucking bad Jesus) fics because half of the time I have a gut feeling it's fetish shit.

Don't ask me why or how, I just know.

Edited by Wafer on Apr 13th 2024 at 9:21:13 AM

I don't mind OCs being the fanfic's M Cs depending on the work or the fanfic's author intent.

Like, if you want to see the world's reaction to a huge canon event that the original work didn't show or the main character is missing for some reason in canon and you want to explore that.

I think that is fine.

On topic, I don't like self inserts because most of the time the author cannot seperate themselves from the avatar. And I get it, but you need to seperate yourself because ultimately it is necessary because ultimately they are just an OC but with extra steps.

That and some cringe is involved. Most of the time.

I'll accept OCs if it's made clear that they're supporting characters and NOT the main focus. If they're the main lead then they're just a self-insert to me.

Not so much a red flag regarding the quality of the fanfic (although it applies a little bit to that too) but moreso the author. This will probably have come up before but I don't want to go back too far in the thread because I will see something that describes a habit I have and I will take it extremely personally and feel sad.

Back in the day on fanfiction dot net, I remember seeing a few plot summaries that openly ended in 'Flames welcome! :)' and like... no! Feedback or criticism welcome, they're both fine, but openly telling people that you're comfortable with them just insulting you? No. Have more respect for yourself! You don't deserve that. And it lowers my expectations of your story if you think that in order to get reviews, you have to let shitty people know that you are available to be verbally abused. Even if you're writing something that you half-suspect you deserve to be flamed for, don't ever say that.

... I mean, that advice is very late because I haven't seen 'Flames welcome!' said in years, but it was still a red flag, way back when.