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

I also dislike it when authors say characters have aged - take Ash Ketchum being forced to go from 10 to 16 for ... shipping purposes - and have them still act and talk like they were 10. Take for example my favorite Pokemon fic punching bag, the Ash Betrayal story. He's suppose to be 10 at the impetus. Whenever a legitimate argument against his journeying is made, he storms off to Mt. Silver, trains just to kill his betrayers, bangs whoever the author ships him with, and kills the traitors. Our hero, everyone. And these authors tag these works as "mature" when in reality, expecting maturity from these stories is like expecting faithfulness in my high school relationships.

Works flagged as Mature are becoming a reddish flag for me, as I have noticed that "Mature" meant "every sentence contain at least two swearwords and there is at least a sex or gorn scene per chapter" for a lot of authors. Thankfully these can be spotted rather quickly.

I only read M-rated fics if the author has a track records for decent stories and the rating is due to subject matter that is handled in a good manner. Like one story was M-rated because the villain was a pedophile social worker trying to take Dick away from Bruce to sell him to some other evil creep. But the author had written other stories that I liked and didn't use the subject matter for shock value. And nothing actually happened to Robin.

Or stupidly angsty. M-rated crap is stupidly angsty. Meaningful conflict is the soul of drama, people. Angst for the sake of angst is a pile of Narm. I was reading one about Stranger Things where Will Byers had some PTSD. It was a great look into a person's mind. Really, the only typical M-rated crap was the language and that was in respect to the source material.

Edited by Dr.XXX on Jul 5th 2018 at 10:21:52 AM

The usage of gratuitious foreign languages in titles. Some authors can make it work, but most of the time it comes off as very pretentious. If the title isn’t romanised, like if it’s in Japanese and kanji for example, it can also make it very difficult to tell what the title even is unless you’re knowledgeable in that language.

On another note, I think a lot of you guys will be pleased to know that AO 3 has FINALLY implemented a tag blacklisting system, so now we’re all free to blacklist tags and stuff we don’t like without having to download any extensions.

And half the time, they mess up the grammar of those languages because they have no clue how that language works. It's "El Problema" not "La Problema", people.

Definitely noticed the “without” filters. About freaking time.

...Wait, is it a full blacklisting system, or just the filters within each section? I knew about the new filters, but I haven’t seen any way to apply them across the board. If there’s a way to do that, please tell me.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Jul 10th 2018 at 5:55:31 AM

Last I checked, the only way to do "without" tags on AO3 is by putting a minus before the tag—and it's glitchy and liable to remove any fic that so much mentions the word, not just ones tagged with it.

That was true until recently, but now there are a whole set of exclude filters below the include ones, along with other stuff like filtering for crossovers or word count.

Unfortunately, no, it’s not a full blacklisting system from what I can tell. You have to apply all your desired filters every time you check a tag.

Edited by Psychedelicate on Jul 10th 2018 at 10:59:11 PM

That’s what I thought. The new filters are still a huge improvement, so no complaints here.

I just wish there was a way to block the explicit-rated fics by default like what fanfiction.net lets you do with M-rated ones. Ratings are one of the few things AO3 Savior can’t block.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Jul 11th 2018 at 5:55:47 AM

I don't know if anyone's mentioned this before, but the thing that really annoys me when I read fanfiction is when the main character whom the writer intends to be the hero, is an awful person who gets away with pretty much everything, and when they don't they quit their job and go do something else, like in this awful fanfiction series that came out of the NCIS fandom, where Anthony Dinozzo JR (the former senior field agent on Gibbs' team) got Caitlin Todd pregnant when they were both 14, and got them both disowned by their families, and he's adopted by Sonny Corinthios (a mobster from General Hospital), and joined the army (after helping his adopted father kill his enemies in order to take over the city), not long after this he joined the US army, and eventually worked his way into Delta Force, more than a decade prior to joining NCIS which happened in 2001 but in this AU happens in 2003.

Oh, and he kills EJ Barrett's father an Original Character created by the author and derailed into a monster, (EJ Barrett was the Sec Nav's niece, the one before the one killed in the explosion from the first episode of season 11) and he kills another person from his list of his many superior officers sometime in the 1990's (I forgot exactly when but it was after Desert Shield, and after the death of Gunnery Sergeant Gibbs' wife and daughter), and then had the body buried somewhere it wouldn't be found.

To further prove that he's a jerk, he uses Jessup's speech from A Few Good Men several times throughout the series to justify his actions, and Eli David is turned into the devil, whilst in NCIS itself he's certainly evil but not that evil. Anyway there is a good story in there it just needs a lot of work to get out of the designated hero/Gary Stu territory.

Edited by superkid761 on Jul 21st 2018 at 7:55:42 PM

Dude. Paragraphs.

Thank god you said it. I wanted to, but didnt have the courage.

This.

The case you're talking about seems like a mix of O.C. Stand-in and Jerk Sue, with a bit of Ron the Death Eater being treated like a good thing and thrown in for good measure. I'm not sure I've seen anything that extreme in a while, but it sounds really obnoxious.

One major red flag in that synopsis for me would be that teenage pregnancy thing.

That stuff just reeks of unnecessary drama/

Speaking of summaries, saying you suck at them is one I know turns many off.

Summaries are not the easiest thing to write but I do expect at least some minimal ability to tell me what the story is going to be about other than "Trust me it's awesome" or "Read it to find out". If you're not going to bother putting a semblance of effort in telling me what it is about, then I'd rather not waste my time.

Somewhat related to Synopsis, I really like author's notes on the first chapter that clarify how things are going to work with that specific fiction, such as relation to canon or when it's happening etc. As such, I find it hard to get invested in those that just jump in directly without saying anything.

Lastly, short fics are an immediate shoo as far as I'm concerned. I've only read a few short ones that actually were great but I prefer something long term (No qualms about waiting for its completion).

Yeah, I Suck at Summaries is a bit of a no from me. You can't rely on just character tags and stuff alone to draw readers. You have to draw them in with something that tantalizes them. If you suck at doing that, it usually means you also suck at storytelling.

How short are you talking about here? Like, under a few hundred or under one hundred?

Pretty much, not to mention that Fanfiction.net's tag system is very lacking. The choice of four characters and two genres is crippling to say the least.

I'm thinking anything less than 50K, depending on what it's about. The last fic I read (And followed over a year) ended up at 175k word in 19 chapters. Quite a satisfying read). That said, I would still read short ones if I find the premise interesting. This is especially true for casual/mundane happenings (Like a field trip, or a day at the beach etc.)

Long fics like that turn me away, actually, unless I was reading it before hand and was caught up, or if the fic has an interesting summary or is recommended. I think 40k is about as high as I'll go for fics I've never read before.

Fanfics are like comic books to be. If they stop getting interesting or start doing some things I highly disagree about, I drop it. This is especially easy with Frame Stories. I like Frame Stories, but just don't randomly shift POV within one of the stories unless it's necessary.

Edited by Dr.XXX on Jul 18th 2018 at 12:04:59 PM

I prefer to find the fic a few chapters in to figure out whether I like it or not and then would follow it as it nears completion (If it ever does). Alternatively, I'm more inclined to sort the fics by size and scour the longest ones, reading two to three chapters before deciding on whether to read it or just go to the next one.

The only time I would drop one I got a long way into is when they deliberately break the setting they established or through filler that doesn't develop characters further or puts focus on their interactions. Magic A is Magic A is especially sacred to me and any unexplained violation of it is a surefire way to drive me away.

On a side note, is it just me or do the "Personal red flags" expand further and further whenever someone points something else?

Violations of logic would be another red flag for me. I know this doesn't really apply until you're already in the fic, but...

There was this one story where it was an AU where the antagonist is a detective sent in from another city to track down a criminal. One of the officers in the precinct starts asking questions, realising a number of things don't sit quite right. The detective agrees, and snaps the poor guy's neck, or kills him with a gun, or whatever: point is, he's dead now.

And then two officers who turn up immediately afterwards decide to fulfil the corrupt detective's request to get rid of the body. Guys, I think one of your friends is dead next to a guy who literally turned up two days beforehand. At least be suspicious, for crying out loud!

Edited by G2BattleConvoy on Jul 18th 2018 at 11:06:15 AM