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

The Worm fandom is particularly bad about LGBT fetishizing to a creepy degree as the characters that always get it are underaged and its almost always written badly over there. I have only seen one Worm fanfic out of dozens I have read that had a decent romance arc where you can feel the chemistry.

Edited by Wispy on Mar 4th 2019 at 9:22:13 AM

I too am against shipping fics as a whole. I won't deny that I probably have a heterenormative view, but I'm just as peeved by fics that ship two characters I'd better not see shipped regardless of their gender.

And since I tend to have my Anti Shipping Goggles glued to my eyes, there is a fair lot of characters I don't like to see shipped... Basically anything that does not have some canon evidence in the source work as Unresolved Sexual Tension or Will They or Won't They? is a big no for me (except for Crack Ship, if funny).

So anything that turns a non romantic relationship into a sexual one, ignores characters sexual orientations or alignement. I heartfully agree with the posters above that a close relationship between two characters must not automatically mean that they will want to jump each other's bones at some point.

Edited by C105 on Mar 5th 2019 at 9:56:33 PM

Worm fic has the issue in that there's a minuscule amount of actual romance fic.

So, I think its a bit unfair to tar the whole fandom with that brush, when its more or less than lower percentile of the fanfics that do that.

Edited by 32ndfreeze on Mar 5th 2019 at 9:32:00 PM

No singular fandom can hold a monopoly on a shipping issue. Thinking otherwise only means you aren't into that many fandoms.

They don't have many pure romance fics yes. Thats not the problem.

Romance is always randomly being shoved into the fics without any planning, its obvious because it becomes a Romantic Plot Tumor and their is no shipping tags or warnings (although that is mainly because I use Space Battles and Sufficient Velocity for Worm fics but thats not much of an excuse as they can just edit the titles or add the tag in the index post).

I have only seen a couple Worm fics that managed to pull romance off out of dozens. Most of the others I have seen where fetishizing underaged lesbians which really creeps me out.

And no I have been in many fandoms, its par of the course. I think to me its more surprising that the Worm fandom is so crap when writing romance as they write pretty much everything else pretty well but then again romance has always been hard to do.

Edited by Wispy on Mar 5th 2019 at 4:47:30 AM

To answer why Slash Fic is a personal red flag of mine:

1) I'm heteronormative.

2) I'm Catholic and I'm straight.

3) They're usually not canon pairings.

4) Often it goes against established characterizations.

5) It often forces sexuality on the reader - in more ways than one.

And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

I don't like any kind of romance. I might tolerate a canon romance as long as it is not the main focus.

If I find a male/male romance I like, I'll read fanfic about it even though I'm straight. If said fanfic is bad, I'll drop it and go my merry way.

Found a post about Murphy's Law and fanfiction. Seems to fit here.

Edited by Discar on Mar 5th 2019 at 10:12:05 AM

Re: ships, I feel like the problem often stems from poor execution of the ships, but I'm someone who thinks even noncanon pairings can be fascinating if proper care and characterization apply.

I also feel like you can have a gen fic where ships exist but aren't a focal point and that works as well. Romance in fanfics doesn't HAVE to dominate a story. It can be integrated as a natural part of the progression of character development...

It's just a lot of the time it isn't.

On AO 3, a fic being rated "Gen" but tagged as "smut." That's...not how it works, and if a writer does that, I'll assume they're not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Well yeah, it was rated for a "general audience."

Edited by Spottedleaf on Mar 7th 2019 at 12:52:32 PM

Oh, bet it's also has an all ages or teen rating instead of mature or explicit?

I have seen a few crack or non-standard ships that actually made me like the ships more.

The problem with ships in general is a lot of people just suck at writing them or what they are trying to do with the ship has been done before so it comes across as boring because its samey.

Although nothing turns me off romance fics faster then that stupid complete misunderstanding trope. Ugh.

Another thing I’ve noticed: if “why did I write this” or “this is trash” is tagged, it probably is, well, trash. If you hate your own work, do you really expect me to read it?

There was this one fanfic I enjoyed...until the author did something at the end to piss me off.

It was a Negima Negi x Setsuna fanfic. The story was going just fine and the ending was sweet with the two characters hooking up. Then the author drop this Wham Line: he revealed he only did this fanfic because he was a homophobe and didn't believe in homosexual relationships and wanted to "straighten" Setsuna.

This instantly made me hate this fanfic. I usually don't mind fanfics between Setsuna and Negi since even though she's a lesbian and is love with her childhood friend Konoka and thinks her friend Asuna is hot, she also finds Negi attractive as well. (And the fact the boy is a Memetic Sex God).

But the fact the author only made this fanfic cause he didn't like one character's sexuality and justify his homophobic views infuriated me.

Edited by MrTerrorist on Mar 22nd 2019 at 8:52:41 AM

Fuck that guy. That's vile. Also kudos for originality there Mr T. Nice!

If that's not a Broken Pedestal, then I don't know what it is.

Edited by TroperNo9001 on Mar 24th 2019 at 1:06:12 AM

OMG Troper 9001 I know its off topic but your avatar is AWESOME!!!

@Loctavia I totally feel you on that one. From my own experiences, it is usually a ploy for attention. I used to "play along" and try to encourage the few people I knew who pulled that off for a while. A while was all I could muster.

One thing that really gets on my nerves is the summary of a fic. It's not much that it describes the plot badly, I can live with those to an extent. Writing an all-encompassing summary can be a bit difficult for more complex stories. It's the ones that use the already limited space to pre-emptively ask for reviews, likes or other stupid things such as: Read it and see for yourself. Oh gee, that really captivates me and urges me to actually check it.

(x6) People are their own worst critics and for years I hated rereading my own works, but it seems in bad taste to tag that your fic is bad. AO 3 has a lot of talking-in-the-tags and joke tagging. I've never liked it but that's just something most social media sites deal with.

I hate when the summary of a fanfic is just song lyrics (or is otherwise a quote). It doesn't tell anything about the work or the writer's abilities, meaning you have to click essentially a random story and judge yourself.

Edited by Pichu-kun on Apr 5th 2019 at 5:13:53 AM

Edgy dark titles for series that aren't meant to be edgy and especially for series that are primarily idealistic (i.e. "The Dark Below" a My Hero Academia fic). Dark and edgy fic in general is a turn off for me because of how bland and monotone the plot usually is, not to mention how much of a breeding ground it is for dark power fantasies.

I tend to not like fics that sound like they're trying guilt trip me for something that shouldn't be harmful.

Want to partner up with someone for any fic idea and writing? Do not be controlling or manipulate them into writing something they don't like.

On less serious note, Please do not recommend me a RL person x Reader. I prefer fictional characters, thank you very much.

Edited by Wheatleyfangirl on Apr 12th 2019 at 8:16:34 AM

The Reader x character are one of my actual red flags, in the sense that I never even clicked on one just to see what it was like. I just don't see the point.

Agreed! Why would I want to be in a romantic relationship with a figment of imagination? Weird!

Same here. They’re transparent wish fulfillment, so if you’re not looking for that, they're not going to be appealing. I don’t mind that they exist - let people have their fun and all - but they’re usually not well-written, and even if the writing is OK, I find them awkward to read. I’ve looked at a few out of curiosity, but aside from that, I don’t touch them. Not my thing.

Plus, all the shorthand (like y/n for “your name”) kills immersion, which seems counterproductive given what these fics are for. Do they expect people to copy and paste it somewhere else and edit in all the custom bits?

Edited by SapphireBlue on Apr 12th 2019 at 8:10:14 AM