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

It is. People still do it all the time.

My Angst Aversion is really, and I mean really bad, so my biggest red flag when it comes to any fic is "pretty much anything that can be considered part of the angst umbrella."

Anything else is fair game if it's either bad enough for me to enjoy or if it has a premise I'm interested in.

"Major Character Death" is a red flag for me if it's a tag I see for a fic for a super lighthearted setting, such as Love Live!. In something like that the thought of any of the characters dying is too depressing and kind of doesn't jive with the lighthearted tone. Not so much if it's something like, say Madoka Magica where the source material is dark enough to warrant that. Still sad, but it doesn't feel out of place either, and I'm a bit more flexible towards fics of ostensibly lighthearted franchises that still canonatically drench into dark territory doing that (such as Sonic).

Edited by marston on May 27th 2022 at 1:10:35 AM

The tricky thing is that some authors use the Major Character Death tag for deaths that happen in canon, even if they’re just talked about after the fact and not depicted. They’ll usually add an extra tag to indicate that, but it means that filtering out the warning tag filters those fics out too.

It’s annoying, because I agree entirely about the kind of fics that the tag was intended for - I almost never read them.

Yeah, I primarily mean instances of that tag being in a fic for a series that generally doesn't off characters at all. Like if your browsing a series tag for a Slice of Life anime, and you see that tag in one of the fics you run into.

Edited by marston on May 27th 2022 at 1:01:47 AM

Oof, yeah, that’s even worse.

So another of my red flags is regarding A Us that kinda have author imply they think their AU is superior to canon

It's... Kinda disingenous to me? Like "I don't respect what creators did with my favorite fiction even though I clearly continue to take inspiration from it even after the point where AU diverged"

Absolutely agree. It just seems mean-spirited. I've also seen a variant where the fanfic author clearly misinterprets canon events in the worst way and then treats the canon writers as if they're idiots for not doing things their way.

"I'm going to make fun of the stupid plan the Big Good made and imply he's just a selfish, stupid asshole!" "Except that wasn't his plan, it was someone else/random chance/deliberate sabotage."

But... don't ALL fic that have a Fix Fic tag sort of imply that their "outcome" is superior to what actually happened in Canon?

Edited by Adept on Jun 2nd 2022 at 9:41:14 PM

Back in my Harry Potter days, nothing would turn me off a story like calling the epilogue the crapalogue. It used to shock me how many good writers would be so juvenile. Granted there are valid reasons to dislike Rowling and her writing, but calling it crap just because you don't like the pairings or the names is just being childish. Speaking of the HP fandom, overblowing character's faults a.k.a bashing is another way to turn me off a story.

Summaries that start with questions.

I might be terrible at writing interesting summaries, but at least I try for better than just regurgitating the writing prompt onto the page.

Not really. There are Fix Fics where the authors use devices like Peggy Sues or OCs to change the events of the stories.

Then there are those where the author makes it clear they dislike the setting itself and just change things so it will go the way they want it to.

It's basically the difference between Watsonian and Doylist commentary.

That is exactly why I stopped reading HP fanfic long ago. Too much bashing.

It’s hard for me to really think of anything I hate, so I’ll consider my red flags as more of things that I’m either annoyed at or not interested in.

• Bad grammar: Pretty self-explanatory.
• Author notes in the middle of the chapter: I prefer A/Ns to be at the end of the chapter. It’s less distracting that way. Notes at the beginning are alright.
• Rewrite fics: Particularly those that try to rewrite canon because the author didn’t like how the story turned out. Not to mention when the author acts like their version is superior to the original writer’s.
• Long titles: Usually when it makes it hard to bring it up without shortening the title to something easier to type. Doesn’t have to do with the fic’s quality.
• Soulmate AUs: Instead of having the characters meeting and falling in love naturally, these AUs have the whole universe force two characters (or more, if it’s a polyship) to get together because it says so.
• “The Mentor is The Hero’s Parent” fics (i.e. Tony and Peter): I just feel like it can undermine their canon relationship by implying that they get along so well because they’re family.
• Incomplete fic, months/years since last update: Even if a fic is really good, it can still sting when you reach the end of a cliffhanger and realize that it hasn’t been updated in a while.
• Fics written early within the series’ lifespan: They have a tendency to be Outdated by Canon. It can be jarring to read, say, a Harry Potter fic written/finished in 2003 where Harry goes to Hogwarts for his seventh year after the Half-Blood Prince (released in 2005) shows him deciding to drop out to go search for Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Especially if Dumbledore is still the headmaster in it.

Edited by AdtAuthor44 on Jun 8th 2022 at 2:52:36 PM

Personally, I find that using OC to introduce a canon divergence and "fix" an outcome is actually worse than changing how the setting works due to legit perceived flaws.

Like, if someone dislikes how Time Travel works in MCU and rewrites Endgame so that the outcome is different than what we get, I'd probably find it more interesting than if the writer introduced some random OC replace the Canon characters' Heroic Sacrifice so that "Everyone Lives" or something.

Following on from the above: not even writing a summary.

Lot of Fix Fics are basically just meant to be "happy AU where things happen to go in good guys' way due to x" rather than "fix bad canon"

Anyway, another red flag, but not because of usual reasons:

Mentions of dissoassociation. This is mostly because while I know lot of writers like to talk about mental health issues they themselves suffer from or such and add them to characters who don't necessarely have them, I actually know someone who suffers from dissoassociation and have been there for them during their episodes, so I'm kinda sensitive to idea of somebody mishandling portrayal of the subject matter (because let's face it lot of fanfiction writers do like to bring up health issues even if they don't have personal or professional experience), so I can't read the fic as result to find out whether writer knows what they are talking about or not since I don't want to run into example of it being done badly or being done "because writer self admitedly loves angst"

(so basically trigger warnings doing their purpose I guess)

Edited by SpookyMask on Jun 10th 2022 at 10:44:20 PM

So what do you think of "rewrites" proposed by film reviewers who thinks there's legitimate issues about the original source materials, and offer "fixes" to how the story should go? Things like What If the Star Wars Prequels Were Good? or Rewriting Star Wars?

It kind of depends on both the context and attitude writer takes. Like some stories are just infamous for writing problems so its easier to accept it in that case. And even then usually those stories are years old and already finished, so its not case of talking shit about currently ongoing work. And even then if writer's attitude is respectful towards source material, even "fix the bad parts" fics can work better.

But yeah overall I just don't like "Let's do exact same thing but better written" fics What you are talking about isn't really same thig as what I'm thinking of.

(I don't mind suggestions of "I think it would work better if it was like this", but thats different from "I shall now create my own version that is superior")

Edit: I think this is most annoying in cases when the "better" version of canon is just "my favorite character survives" or "my favorite character is more like how I imagine them to be" or even just "my favorite ship is canon". If its just alternate plot or covering plot holes or exploring characters more in depth (and assuming writer doesn't seem like they consider original writers of their favorite characters shit) then its usually okay

(in general its bit of turn off to see author rant about hating specific character a lot :p)

Edited by SpookyMask on Jun 12th 2022 at 12:21:43 PM

The problem with fics of this type is that the writer can't separate whatever spite they feel towards the original out of their work. In fact, many of them brag about how much they hate it.

Since I read fanfics of things I enjoy, why would I read a work written by someone who is open about how much they hate what they're writing about.

Well, it depends. With franchises as large as Star Wars or MCU or Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts, it's possible to dislike part of the series and rewrite those problematic parts while still liking the world and characters enough to write about them.

^^Everything is more bearable when author isn't being openly spiteful all the time. Like author having that attitude sours even well written fics

Speaking of author attitude, it does get annoying when the author use overly subjective adjectives to describe the plot of their fic, as though it's written by NYT reviewers.

I remember coming across a fic which the author describes their story as a "complex, gritty AU" of the source material. It was decently written, but that summary irks me to no end.

I discussed the mentality behind Fix Fics in my video analysing Animorphs fanfic trends. The idea of Tom being happy goes against the themes of canon, for example, but Eleutherophobia works because the author understands and respects why canon was that way, but puts her own spin on it.

Edited by NitroIndigo on Jun 17th 2022 at 9:07:08 AM

These days, whenever I run into a time travel or multiverse fic, I look ahead and check to see if the writer does that thing where they rename the characters / give alternate version of the characters random nicknames.

Mostly because imo it's one of things that tends towards something that's... less well structured, at least from a prose perspective. It's a choice that makes things slightly easier for the writer but a fair amount more confusing for the reader, and it's mostly something I see writers do because everyone else is doing it and they want to get in on the trend.

On the same vein, trying to write in fandom nicknames for characters as though they're used in-universe.

If a fanfic starts by introducing familiar characters like I've never heard of them before, that's a red flag. Don't spend five paragraphs describing their appearance and definitely don't wait to call them by name until their names come up in dialog. It's a fanfic, and I'm reading it because I'm a fan—I already know who these people are.