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

Could you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested.

Personality Blood Types is a minor superstition, mostly Japanese, that I'm not particularly fond of. On the other hand, it's really minor—as in, you might see it in some behind the scenes stuff in an anime, but it's never a major plot point—so it is very, very easy to ignore.

If some fic had that trope front and center then I would avoid it because it sounds stupid. It's neo pseudo-science with no basis in reality. If people cared more, I'd say it's racism, but literally no one cares. It's like astrology signs, but less important.

Wasn't really disputing it, G2, but you know what I mean.

I tend to stay away from anything smutty featuring any of my comfort characters. I might read a bit out of sheer bile fascination, but otherwise, it's off the table.

On the topic of smut, reader insert smutfics, ESPECIALLY if it's written from the reader's pov. God I can not take the sheer second-hand embarrassment I get reading those.

Never read the reader ones, but I know they're never good, unless they've been doing it for a long time.

Edited by Anasui on Apr 22nd 2021 at 6:00:50 AM

I’ve seen a few reader-insert romance fics I kinda liked (not smut), but even then, it’s usually in a guilty pleasure way. Otherwise yeah, it’s usually secondhand embarrassment or otherwise really awkward to read.

I’m not trying to shame the people who write them - they’re having fun with it and there’s clearly an audience. It’s just not my thing 99% of the time.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Apr 23rd 2021 at 8:49:37 AM

Not exactly fanfic, but anyway...

I've been getting into the Godzilla fandom lately, and I really detest the "gijin-kaiju" that seems to be quite popular in tumblr. My reasoning generally goes along the same lines as why people tend to dislike High School AU fics—stripping the characters, story and setting of their unique charms and turning them into bland and/or OOC version of themselves.

Now, unlike most AU fics (which are typically badly written), these gijinka art are usually well-drawn... but at the end of the day they still look like generic anime (or, rather, Animesque) characters dressed in bad cosplay outfit, and they're pretty much some of the worst examples of You Don't Look Like You (itself a Pet-Peeve Trope of mine).

Edited by Adept on May 2nd 2021 at 11:36:36 PM

Genericness bc of lack of imagination from the authors doing G-Zilla

Well, to be fair, most anime characters are arguably kind of "generic", especially if you've seen enough of them. Also, humans are humans—no matter how you try to distinguish their designs, they are inevitably going to be less varied than the originals (giant animals and/or Mix-and-Match Critter based on a much more diverse array of creatures).

And I usually don't mind generic character designs as long as they are visually appealing. I do make exceptions when they're supposed to represent well-known non-human characters like Godzilla, WALL•E, etc.

Edited by Adept on May 2nd 2021 at 11:39:44 PM

On Fimfiction, my red flags include certain crossovers (because they tend to be edgy and/or poorly-written from a technical standpoint), and the adventure and slice of life tags together (because they tend to indicate that the story is all over the place). On AO3, my red flags are walls of tags (especially when they have a bajillion fandoms), and long, all lowercase titles because they look pretentious. Also, every time I forget to filter out explicit, because there isn't an option for a site-wide filter for some reason.

Edited by NitroIndigo on Jun 12th 2021 at 7:23:37 PM

I just discovered one: when the summary is a short passage of the story, especially if said passage gives little indication of the actual tone and setting of the story. I have seen book cover blurbs do that too but I really don't like it since it does not give any information about what the story will be about (unless if the passage was very well chosen, but even then it is hard to know just by reading it).

I've found a new one. Whenever writers tag their flashbacks, especially stuff like (flashback) / (end flashback)

If you're writing a flashback, you can make it obvious without saying so. I usually portray mine in italics, the same as a dream sequence or such, and I will either have the prose note that the character is thinking back or make it its own scene in a chapter entirely so that there's no confusion.

It just takes me right out every time I see it, as though they're trying to add some kind of "television script tag" to text.

That reminds me of when authors begin a fic with a list of what each kind of formatting means, even though it should be obvious from the context and the conventions of writing.

Isn't this just a complaining thread?

We've been over this before with other people. It's a thread over quirks in fanfics we have distaste for, discussed (for the most part) civilly and with no harm to anyone that actually writes it.

Ah. Well, I don't have any. I don't read that many.

Oh, wait. Explicit stuff. If I start hangin' out on FIM Fiction, I am gonna block it.

Red flags for me are:

Character bashing: I get a whiff of it and I'm gone. Nothing irritates me more.

Fix fics: Not the kind when the MC go back in time, etc, but the ones where the author decides they need to fix canon. Never seen one worth reading.

Replacement crossovers: The type where the MC of one story gets replaced by the MC of another. I mean, there might be some good versions of this, but they're vanishingly rare.

OC fics: Specifically of the type where the authors adheres to The Stations of the Canon. These aren't bad per say, just really dull.

Edited by Chaosjunction on Jul 24th 2021 at 12:27:57 PM

I'm gotten really tired of seeing fanfic where the main character isn't just Demoted to Extra in order to make either the author's OC or a crossover main character from a different show the protagonist, but given the Ron the Death Eater treatment in the process.

The replacement main character is the red flag in this case, because I don't have anything against it in theory, but in practice it's never done without the above two stipulations I listed. It's just, keeping the main character around just to parade your "improvement" in what's supposed to be the original protagonists' story leaves a worse taste in my mouth than simply writing them out.

That was a real problem for me when I read Naruto fanfiction back when the manga wasn't finished. I read:

• a Star Wars fic where Naruto obtained The Force and made Sasuke look bad at every opportunity, trounced Danzo, and had the Death Star at his beck and call
• a Sonic fic where he became Dr. Eggman and did everything in his power to court Hinata and make Sasuke look bad (while still following canonical story beats)
• a Sliders fic where he and a team of other Narutos journeyed to other worlds where anything anti-Team 7 was brought up and discussed at length; albeit, the story reneged on this halfway through and started writing Naruto as a specific Anti-Hero whose judgment of others had gotten way out of control
• a lot of fics in general where Naruto gets "boosted" so that he can treat everybody else like crap in some perversely justified attempt at revenge

I’ve seen a few too many of those crossovers where the “cooler” main character drags the other series’ plot off the rails and fixes everything just by existing. Figures out everything early, that kind of thing. They’re so annoying to find.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Aug 31st 2021 at 8:58:13 AM

Wattpad sends me running for the hills. I always find the worst, most disgusting fanfiction there.

It's a fanfiction website, which I refuse to use again. I stick to Fanfiction.net.

Edited by NoonboryKedabory on Aug 31st 2021 at 12:59:38 PM

Wattpad?

That's another issue with them, that unsurprisingly goes hand in hand with making replacement MC's look better than the original. The only solace I can take is when the authors of said fanfic admit to the naked blandness of what they're writing instead of dressing it up in something more presentable to critics.

Dunno what it is about that place, don't think I've ever seen anything written decently from a purely technical standpoint there.

Edited by Chaosjunction on Aug 31st 2021 at 2:26:43 PM