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

Oh, yes. Makes one wonder, "why am I wasting my time reading your amateurish piece of writing, if it's no different from the original?"

I remember reading this fic that pretty much rewrote an entire manga chapter in prose form. The author promised that it would head to a different direction in the next chapters, but never updated at all.

Also annoying are stories which has an interesting premise but never truly elaborate it, and the story reads like a plot summary than an actual literature.

The rewrites thing also goes into For Want Of A Nail fics that never actually make use of the nail.

The biggest changes they make tend to be purely cosmetic, with some different dialogue and maybe a changed love interest.

On that note, For Want Of A Nail fics where the nail is the inclusion of a new character. Everything plays out the same, except this character is there, and maybe occasionally says something or changes the story for the "better" (never worse). Egad.

edited 25th Aug '14 6:11:26 AM by Jinxmenow

Yet the reverse is just as bad, where we have a For Want Of A Nail premise being used as a filmsy excuse for the author to do a 180 degree change on the verse.

@Jinx: Regarding "shallow crossovers", one massive red flag is if there's no attempt to actually have them meet up. It's just POOF! now Naruto and Harry Potter know each other because reasons.

@Adept Rogue: Oh god do you remember which fic you're specifically referring to? I feel like I might've actually seen it in the past.

Oh, sweet fuck, those. I remember one Dragon Ball Multiverse online RP where one guy's character was born from the "nail" that one of Master Roshi's victims decided to call the police instead of trying to forget about it. And when the character, the kid of the woman and the officer grew up, he gunned down all the main characters and Cell. With regular Earth guns.

If that was in an RP, did anyone ever try to stop him but he ignored them, or was that his backstory? And if the latter, why didn't he get denied and told to try again?

It was his backstory, and he didn't reveal it until later.

And what happened after that? Tell me people let him have it.

Sorry. That's not how this story ends.

Because of the site's flawed power level raising system, which was based on word count^note There was a multiplier bonus for quality, but that could easily be written past with enough padding., he legitimately became one of the most powerful characters in the RP.

I didn't mean fight, I meant complain.

Well... He didn't get the quality bonus. That's about as far as the backlash he ever got. Nobody wanted to be the "that guy" who criticized other peoples' characters.

Oh? Which post are you referring to? If it's the For Want Of A Nail one, I believe it's a Harry Potter fanfic where Sirius and Remus "kidnapped" baby Harry and raised him in place of the Dursleys - which somehow becomes an excuse to demonize Dumbledore, the Weasleys, and some other Gryffindor kids so that the story can freely ship Harry/Hermione.

That one.

I'm very guilty of commiting that one, lifting material directly from the source. When I realized this, I decided to change the story in another direction (while in other fic I preffered to delete it).

I'm sorta guilty of that. I was writing a For Want Of A Nail type story (it was a genderflip thing), but I didn't make it to the first major point of departure before I moved on to something else. In my defense it was my first major fanfic project that wasn't a comedy oneshot.

I see. For that one, it was a Pandora Hearts fic that is supposed to place in the Cheshire Cat's dimension. The author rewrote the entire chapter that precludes that arc... and I don't think the fic even exists anymore. I don't even remember where the author promised the story would lead to.

A particular sin of Team Fortress 2 shipping stories in which two of the mercs get together, and the others are okay with it, or even cheer them on. You know, because homosexuals in the 1950s were respected and tolerated.

Oh boy, the LGBT version of Eternal Sexual Freedom? Yeah, that's a huge sore spot for me depending on context.

If they're just in a small and relatively open area or the story revolves around an accepting group of True Companions, sure. But in the 50s, I'm pretty sure that anyone coming out would be terrified shitless of the police finding out or getting shipped to a psych ward, because anything non-cis heterosexual is probably considered a crime or disease.

edited 25th Aug '14 5:43:25 PM by Sharysa

One I've been seeing a lot lately and was only made possible recently — when the cover art features a series that has nothing to do with the story. I mean like MLP characters on a (non-crossover) Sherlock fic, or the TARDIS on a (non-crossover) Pokémon fic...

You're probably seeing the author's avatar on a story that doesn't have its own cover art.

edited 31st Aug '14 6:41:56 AM by BaffleBlend

My big red flag For Want Of A Nail thing is "what would have happened if the story went the same... except the main character had a twin sister/girlfriend/obvious self insert."

Though you see these everywhere, I tend to associate them with Treasure Planet simply because "the plot of the movie redone with Jim's sister/friend/cabin girl with inexplicable identical backstory" is so noticeable there, especially since most of those don't really do anything original anyway.

On a vaguely related note, something I've come to dislike recently is characters who are obviously created to be the woobie, with no real substance beyond that. Especially when the character's backstory is made to be a retread of an already woobified main character, but with no actual reason behind it.

In fact, characters being assholes to other characters simply for the sake of having a character be an asshole to that character (if that makes any sense). It's like how it seems like every single Next Gen Harry Potter fic has to have a "Snape," but half the time those characters have no real personality beyond being jerks for no reason - though the thing that's made it really start bugging me recently are Wreck It Ralph fics.

edited 31st Aug '14 8:18:25 PM by KnownUnknown

Something else that bugs me — The Unintelligible suddenly being able to talk. This is especially jarring and common with The Legend of Zelda fics and Link.

I guess I can forgive it, though, if it's a conversation between TWO unintelligibles, such as Yoshi and Mr. Game & Watch. (The fic with them in question did have other problems, though.)

I can buy Link being able to talk mostly because having a protagonist as a Heroic Mime is something that works a lot better for a video game than it does elsewhere, though I suppose if there were any other medium where that sort of thing would work easily it'd be prose.

If they ever made a Lo Z movie, or another tv show, I would expect the "Link doesn't talk" thing to be dropped entirely there as well.