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

I don't ship real people either because I respect the actors. I find it disgusting to write slash about them, especially the underaged actors of Stranger Things.

I’m uncomfortable with shipping real people period, whether or not it’s slash.

What about entire online communities? Namely, the old 4chumblr ship.

Oh, yeah, the Anthropomorphic Personifications of various websites and the like. Who came up with that idea?

...And don't forget Earth-chan and uh the various personifications of various Internet browsers.

Bearing in mind we have Trope-tan on this site...

I think it started when the Anons started to pretend to be a guy in a suit with a green head and a question mark, and that eventually just kind of became known as the personification of 4chan, so everyone started making their own. Other than that, I'm not sure.

Any thing A/B/O related. Even though I feel like the premise can be used in a fashionable way, I wince slightly at the potential heresy i could be reading.

Edited by KeironCioran on Dec 27th 2018 at 4:30:10 AM

A/B/O? Like, blood types, or...?

Alpha/Beta/Omega, like the wolf caste system, which is actually a myth.

Sorta.

Edited by TroperNo9001 on Dec 29th 2018 at 12:57:37 AM

So, basically, Seme/Uke?

Worse, because it includes animal mating characteristics and sometimes male pregnancy. For the record, I'm not saying this to kinkshame, but as far as how difficult it would be for people not already into the fetish to read these kinds of stories it would be a hard sell.

Edited by VeryMelon on Dec 28th 2018 at 2:24:35 PM

Actually given my admittedly limited experience with the genre, (pretty much just fic summaries and second hand reports), the entire thing is riddled with unhealthy amounts of Romanticized Abuse and given that its based on outdated and incorrect ideas about canine pack-dynamics I would argue that equating it with kink-shaming is giving the entire premise more credit than it deserves.

Well it never helps to cover your basis just in case, so thanks for that bit of input.

Kind of piggybacking off of this- Mpreg being played for anything other than comedy or body horror is a huge red flag for me.

A/B/O is super popular on AO3 but I don't understand the appeal. It can't just be kinks because a lot of the material is SFW. A/B/O is so restrictive, most Alphas are weirdly dominant, and it isn't remotely similar to how wolves even work.

A/B/O is one of those common fanfic prompts I just ignore, like coffee shop AUs and soulmate AUs.

My preferred mpreg is the ever-rare female/male variation that almost never pops up. It's an interesting role reversal. Works where at least one of the guys is trans are also fine, though admittedly I rarely read anything mpreg. I've never particularly been into mpreg, or its lesbian equivalent ("fpreg"?). It's not horrible but I've always preferred cute adoption stories.

Does the lesbian version even count as fantasy any more? Because we can do that in real life with minimal difficulty.

I really wish that concept would die. Its based on a heavily disproved study and has given rise to a whole range of shitty world views and conceptions of how people work despite the fact that wolves are obviously not people.

Also, wolves don't act like that in the wild. Captive wolves behave most like humans in prison, though of course the omegaverse stuff still massively misinterprets all that anyway.

x 3

Actually we've only done that with mice so far. And there was some gene editing done on the donor mother mouse to make it possible. And given how, despite recent publicity stunts developments, everyone's being very cautious before letting that techno-genie out of the bag on a wide scale so that route may be a long way off.

I did hear that there was one group trying to induce adult stem cells to pretend to be sperm cells, but it was being developed as work around for extreme male infertility so I'm not sure if anyone checked if it worked for female donors. And that was still in mouse models as well anyway, though it's probably a more viable route given the wider applications.

Slash, poor spelling and grammar, and poor formatting. Songfics are tolerable but still not my favorite.

If your Warrior Cats fic is based on the Evil!Spottedleaf AU, I won't read it.

Bellatrix Lestrange being *that* kind of sadist. Fine, to each their own, but I don't want to see it.

Yet another reason why Cursed Child is non-canon to me. It gave me the mental image of Voldy and Bella doing the dirty.

That book really is just up-jumped fanfiction in the end. I don't care what Rowling says, that book ain't canon.

I don't think Voldemort has any interest in matters of the flesh unless it's something he actually needs to do to survive, like eating and maybe sleeping. Maybe using the bathroom. Maybe.

Also, I don't think she'd keep being pregnant with his child a secret. I mean, she'd be so darn proud of herself for actually getting to that point that she'd probably at least tell the Malfoys, if not LITERALLY EVERYONE.

A few more fandom specific ones:

• Luna actually being "normal". Please don't do this, she's one of the only characters in existence whose brain works like mine.

• Killing off a character in a way that feels less like a natural progression of the story and more like you just did it for shock value. (I saw this done with Luna once. Don't get me wrong, if done well her death could be a huge tearjerker, but this felt more like the author telling us "you should be sad now.")

• Making a nice, kindhearted love interest like Raoul, Cosette, or Ron Weasley suddenly turn abusive because they're in the way of your prefered ship. (Looking at you, Andrew Lloyd Webber.)

Edited by Spottedleaf on Jan 2nd 2019 at 2:38:11 PM

Yeah, Those Lacking Spines had a field day with this. People read stories about familiar characters for those familiar characters. Insert OC characters if you wish, but for god's sake, make sure the canon characters STAY IN CHARACTER.

To some extent, I don't mind if the character's personality changes over the course of the story- heck, a friend of mine and I wrote a crackfic (never published it) featuring Bellatrix going from 'villain' to 'awkward friend' but keeps many of her negative qualities- but it needs to happen naturally over the course of the story, rather than being retconned in.

(x4)

I love the evil!Spottedleaf AU but I can't find any fics on it. Just a lot of animations and fan-art. I'm not really sure why so many Warriors fans prefer drawing over of writing.

Peggy Sue fics are a guilty pleasure of mine. I've read several and few have been particularly good, but they're just so interesting.