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

Said Bookism is annoying, but I can usually live with it. The much bigger problem (which I'm not sure we have a specific trope for) is the related "over description" or "name avoidance." Instead of:

It's:

Names (and he/she) are, like said, invisible. You don't need to worry about overusing them, and can disguise them by changing up sentence structure. Using descriptions when they're not explicitly relevant just pulls the reader out of the story.

And worse, authors will get defensive when you point this out. Not just fanfic authors, I've seen plenty of actual published authors (admittedly self-published authors on Kindle) making this mistake.

Edited by Discar on Jan 10th 2019 at 12:14:46 PM

The MLP fandom calls it "Lavender Unicorn Syndrome", which I think is significant enough to warrant a trope page, but it needs a better name than a fandom-specific one.

There was a YKTTW for "Burly Detective Syndrome" WAAAAAAY back when, but it appears to be Deader Than Disco.

It's definitely significant enough to warrant a page, although I guess the issue is that it doesn't lend itself well to specific examples. I see it all over the place, even in otherwise-good writing. There's nothing wrong with using descriptors sometimes, especially for specific sentences that would sound awkward if you did just use their name (like if you've already used it twice in the same sentence), but when an author decides to throw them around like confetti, it gets obnoxious.

It's not bad enough for me to drop a fic over unless the fic has a lot of other problems, but it is annoying.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:31:59 AM

While we're on the topic of dialogue, take a shot for every time eyes are described as orbs and spheres.

If you're going to use "exotic" words, please have a point to them. When Lovecraft wrote his panic attack over being Welch, he used antiquated words to enhance the ancient and mysterious nature of the Deep Ones.

If you're taking 1000+ words to describe a fight scene blow for blow, then I'll get bored if it lacks dramatic value. I don't want to know about how many degrees your character move her arms in order to block. I want to feel like I'm in the heat of the moment, not using a manual on how to fight.

If you're writing dialogue in a language that you are not familiar with, don't Google Translate it.

Well, made a TLP, Overly Descriptive Name Avoidance. Any help would be appreciated.

If I think of any examples, I’ll put them there.

Worth mentioning that it happens in narration, too, not just dialogue. You get stuff like “the green-eyed witch crossed her arms and frowned” just as often.

I've noticed several fics with descriptions like "the Asian woman said", "said the gay boy", etc and it just comes off as annoying to me. The writer's obviously don't mean anything by it but it comes off as "othering" characters. You rarely would see something like "the straight woman said". We don't really need to be reminded of a character's sexuality, ethnicity, etc every other sentence.

Might as well use that to segway into another personal red flag of mine: stories making a huge deal out of characters' ethnicities, sexualities, genders, etc, sometimes even making it the character's sole defining trait. You see this in chatfics a fair bit now that today's teens feel the need to say that they're gay every other sentence.

Edited by Psychedelicate on Jan 13th 2019 at 2:57:19 AM

I've honestly never saw a chatfic that is not garbage, so I can't say that's surprising.

I’ve seen a few that were entertaining in a Crack Fic sort of way, but I’m not sure I’d call them good.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Jan 13th 2019 at 9:13:54 AM

Chat videos are a guilty pleasure of mine. I unironically liked "Naruto Chat Room" videos as a tween but, looking back at them, they're all So Bad, It's Good.

Chat fics and script fics, though? I can't enjoy them.

The only time I'll forgive a script fic is if it's an actual script- I.E. it's written in the format of a play script or a screen play. Those can be fun because it's entertaining to imagine how it would be performed, and I've actually written some myself.

Script format, however, is lazy.

Writing a good script is just as hard as writing a good story in regular narrative prose. But unfortunately, a lot of amateur writers think script-writing must be easier, so the format attracts an unfair number of first-timers and just plain lazy authors.

I remember those Naruto Chat Videos. Pretty memorable as a kid, but they surely must have aged poorly.

So here's a new one from me; writing out anime intros each chapter before the story either starts or resumes. I can ignore these and move on, but nearly every story I've found that does this turned out pretty subpar for one reason or another.

Anime intros?

What's the purpose of that, even?

The reasons for it seems to be an attempt at verisimilitude, the idea that you're watching an anime as official as the fanfic you're reading. Or just that it's a cool idea to write. I can only guess really.

Im sorry for the language Im about to use but WHAT THE FUCK!? How does someone do anime intros in a NON AUDIOVISUAL medium? They storyboard the "Opening" with words?

Might as well extend that to music. I've seen too many people try to write out music lyrics on pages. Yes, even instrumentals like the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack was written on page with onamonapias.

If the music exists, then I'll be fine with it, but if it was just lyrics on a page, I say no.

In other words, you hate songfics.

Huh, I used to think a Song Fic means writing a story inspired by a music piece, which would be a cool idea, because there has been actual novelizations of song series done out there.

But when song lyrics gets shoehorned in the narrative in an *insert this BGM in this scene here* kind of fashion, it is annoyingly intrusive.

I think song lyrics in a fic can work if:

1. They appear as an Epigraph or Source Music. (Or if the author's particularly sneaky, they incorporate the lyrics into the dialogue in a natural-sounding way.)
2. If it's source music, then the quote is brief—or at least broken up into brief sections, with story action continuing in between.

So I guess my red flag is when a fic:

• tries to add a "soundtrack" to a text-based medium by shoving lyrics into the body of the story without any in-story justification, or
• when they quote lyrics as a long, uninterrupted block—essentially pausing the story so the characters can listen to a song the author likes.

(Full disclosure: I wrote a fanfic that could be considered a Song Fic.)

I only tolerated it in one fanfic I ended up dropping later on anyways and that was only because it used new lyrics.

The one time I've seen song lyrics work was actually pretty similar to the time I've seen scripts work: a fic that was meant to be a musical (Warning: it's pretty silly.)

Edited by Spottedleaf on Jan 26th 2019 at 9:04:20 AM