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

True, it is annoying when the only thing that changes in a What If? premise is switching around who says or does something. Although I don't like it either if the story adds way too much changes to the setting that is completely unrelated to the original premise (e.g. a Role Swap AU that suddenly introduce time-travel subplots even though the original setting don't have time travel).

This is a severe matter of taste and contexts all things considered.

Some people prefer to avoid fics that follow the Stations of the Canon as much as possible, while others aren't a fan of fanfics that stray from the canon to any real degree. For Want Of A Nail fanfics are an example of the former, where the point of the fanfic is to see the domino effect brought on by the changes the author made to the canon. Examples of the latter on the other hand are fanfics that employ In Spite of a Nail on many if not all major plot points in the original media's canon no matter how many other changes occur within the fanfic itself.

Others still might only have a problem with divergence fanfics or the Fix Fic if the reputation of the fanfic suggest the fandom likes it for being Better Than Canon, because some people dislike these authors for assuming they can tell the story better, and by extension be dismissive of the fic's fans for liking it. Or some people just legit think the fanfic had a better execution of whatever the canon was trying to do and is able to bring out it's full potential, and thus gained a fandom from people who wonder how some plot points would play out if they were thought over better.

It's a mixed bag and one of the hugest red flags anyone can have for any fanfic for that reason. I know I'd rather read a canon retread with some crossover characters thrown in and no major plot points changed over something wholly original most of the time because the former has a structure that makes it easier to tell if it's well written or not, but that's just me and just one way to go about this.

• Bad localization, e.g. American characters using British expressions/syntax and vice-versa, will cause me to drop a fic in the first chapter. It's one thing if the author uses it in 3rd person narration, I can forgive that, but another entirely when characters use the wrong dialect in dialogue. It's just so distracting, it pulls me out of the story unless it's otherwise extremely well written. Especially since this could be easily solved in most cases by a competent beta reader from the country in question, something likely to be available on many fanfic-focused forums. This seems to be a particular issue in the Worm (British Islanders/Australians failing to write dialog between American teenagers) and Harry Potter (the other way around) fandoms.
• Nazi/supremacist main characters, unless it's clear up front that the fic is a story of redemption.
• Edited to add: High School AU. Universally this lowers the stakes and makes the story more boring than the original. I don't understand their popularity, and didn't even when I was in high school (~20 years ago).

Edited by TheAntiTed on May 9th 2023 at 1:38:46 AM

Ron the Death Eater (and similar sorts of Adaptational Villainy phenomena). It's fine for really minor characters and stuff, but for a major character, absolutely nothing turns me off a fic faster than "[x] is secretly an abuser/rapist/homophobe/whatever-bad-thing-the-author-thinks-is-angsty" when [x] in canon was, like, a teenager guilty of being overly emotional sometimes or something. If even that.

Doesn't even have to be one of my favorite characters either, this isn't just me complaining about my favs or whatever. I used to read Miraculous Ladybug fics and I didn't even like most of the classmates in that show, and them getting demonized constantly still put me off.

There remains a foothold out of this mire — now climb.

• If the story is supposed to be a sort of "what if" alternate universe yet the start comes off as more of a transcript that recreates the exact same scenes and has dialogue unchanged word-for-word. The very few times I stuck around with them (because the premise sounded very interesting and I hoped they'd diverge more), it never became more original and just kept relying on copying the source work in some way even dozens of chapters in to it. Maybe at most assigning different characters the same roles, but even minor jokes and such are left in. I get The Stations of the Canon are a thing (and I'm "fine" with unchanged dialogue if it's, like, a mod of a game that's more focused on gameplay than a new story or something) but there is little that turns me off of a fanwork faster than a scene from canon being rewritten and presented like it's something new.
• "Some characters may be OOC" honestly indicates that the author didn't even try to have the work suit canon.
• Characters being redesigned right off the bat (or heck, in general, like if so-and-so decides to drastically change their Limited Wardrobe or something a few chapters in), unless there's a convincing in-universe reason for it. It gives off major self-insertion or(/and?) "I want to make this character hot to me" vibes. (I was guilty of doing this once like a decade ago, I undid it, and the story in general is a huge Old Shame of mine for multiple reasons.)
• I don't actually mind original characters in general, especially for something with a history of oneoff characters coming and going (Mario, Gravity Falls, etc), but if there's just one and it's a blatant self-insert for the author I'm turned off even if they don't demonstrate anything Stuish/Sueish at the moment. Or if even the most prominant original character is a self-insert.
• Edgifying the main character and/or giving them some obscenely powerful new ability. Again major self-insert power fantasy vibes, in this case through projecting on someone instead of plopping the author in as a character.
• Fourth wall breaking, especially if the work had a solid fourth wall to begin with.
• Vague/cryptic summaries.
• I ain't touching Nazi AUs or anything like that.

There's probably loads more but none come to mind right now, I'm way more of a writer than a reader. And when I go to read I tend to look for pretty specific stuff.

I'm also generally not a big crossover fan so I don't really go looking for any of those to begin with.

I write stupid crap about naked people.

Incest.

Nach jeder Ebbe kommt die Flut.

"Harem fics". My own thoughts about polygamy aside, a lot of these feel more like wish-fulfillment that don't feel the settings of the works they're based on. There's a weirdly big amount of One Piece fanfics that are like this and it's, like, Monkey D. Luffy being in a romantic relationship stretches the suspension of disbelief already, him having a harem is pushing it.

Just a simple man, making my way through the Tropes.

I mentioned mine in another reply, but I figured I'd turn them into a list without relying on any explicit examples of offending fanfics (though I do speak very much from experience regardless):

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• Any fic that attempts to reframe production drama in the original work as a diegetic series of events. The PPC loves to drone on about how many a fanfic writer gets their claws on a sensitive topic and proceeds to run it into the ground, but this particular way of doing it is quite the silent killer IMO.
• The story uses a disproportionate level of spite to deal with an antagonistic force or character, even Acceptable Targets. Related to the above, bonus points if anything or anyone relevant is based on the real world.
• Dramatic Trauma Conga Lines when either the canon work is not equipped to handle it or if the author fails to properly establish the necessary tone or setup beforehand.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover fics that do not bother with a unifying excuse beyond "worlds colliding" (unless you're invoking a component work's lore to do so, e.g. Super Dimension Century Orguss in Super Robot Wars Z.) For me, it's a sign of a lack of effort and an author itching to cut to the chase rather than organically building up a setting.

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Edited by TrocyteV on May 9th 2023 at 11:02:16 AM

"If you spent as much time fightin' as ye did hidin', maybe this wouldn't have happened!"

Whitewashing characters you like while demonizing characters you either dislike or don't care to bother writing with dignity. Especially if its shipping related, which is very often the case sadly.

These should be illegal. I shouldn't have to skip the first ten-to-twenty chapters of your story to actually get to the bit where your additions start impacting the plot. Or worse, read through a few chapters of decent AU only for the fic to suddenly turn into a transcript once its events hit the beginning of the show/film, because you somehow came to the conclusion that literally everything still happens exactly the same, note-for-note, despite all your changes.

Ummmmmmmmmmmm... Trocyte I cant make heads or tails out of your first point I dont get it.

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

I mentioned that earlier in the thread but that's the trap some people fall into with Stations of the Canon. The story never feels like the additions made in the story are significant because the writer doesn't want to risk removing plot critical events from the media they like that much. This often means simply shifting your new events around the canon so they aren't really able to stop certain things from happening but still claiming you're writing something with big changes.

An overabundance of grammar and spelling issues. It speaks to either amateurish writing, or an inability to proofread the work and make it look more palatable. Doesn't help that I have OCD and seeing too many grammar and spelling issues from the outset can end up triggering it and making it a slog to try reading.

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

That reminds me, a red flag I once encountered but wound up ignoring was "first few chapters aren't beta-read." Considering it played around with some pretty heavy subjects, a proofreader and someone to say "hey, this ain't it and you should stop immediately" when necessary would be the last thing I'd neglect to search around for if I was writing it myself.

And wouldn't you know it, it dramatizes a real person's suicide attempt without consent or consideration for the fact that knowledge of this was semi-private for a while within the first two chapters. What a mess.

Edited by TrocyteV on May 22nd 2023 at 1:46:00 AM

"If you spent as much time fightin' as ye did hidin', maybe this wouldn't have happened!"

How do you know something is or isnt beta read though? I mean I agree with you but that's hard to know unless the author admits it.

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

The fic in question literally had the admission embedded in the AO3 tags.

It's one thing to not be good at writing, but it's another to knowingly forego assistance, say this out loud, and then make 100% preventable slip-ups, especially at the scale of what I mentioned above.

"If you spent as much time fightin' as ye did hidin', maybe this wouldn't have happened!"

Yeah, that bit sounds pretty... like damn, I hope the writer was just a teenager. That's one of the only ways I can even begin to justify a lapse in judgement like that.

Unfortunately, they are not. I am a college student and they are older than I am.

It's my understanding they had a humongous savior complex towards the person in question, and refused any attempts to tone it down. The story (and the greater Stillborn Franchise it was meant to hold up) was supposed to be about helping them out of their rut, but even then, I still don't understand what led them to think that or their lack of oversight was okay.

"If you spent as much time fightin' as ye did hidin', maybe this wouldn't have happened!"

Lack of Oversight.

There's your answer lol.

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

I already mentioned poorly worded summaries as a red flag. Now that I have given a try to Archive Of Our Own, I have to add the "custom" tags as one, especially when those custom tags are poorly worded themselves (and that's not counting when the content of the tags themselves is another red flag of mine itself, e.g. something porn-related in an original work aimed at children).

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

Another red flag for me? Including a character just to bash them. If the writer really dislikes a character that much, they don't need to include them just to constantly "bash" or "dunk on" them. The writer can just as easily have them Adapted Out or write them in a way they find better without devolving to Character Derailment or making them a literal punching bag. It just gets tedious and tiring reading about a character getting relentlessly derided and mocked in fic in favor of spending that time on literally anything else, especially when said bashing is in no way relevant to the actual plot of the fic.

I'm a big Anime and Manga fan, so seeing this happen can easily get annoying with certain characters infamous for being divisive, to the point I actually had to install a program to filter certain tags on a03 just so I wouldn't have to see a fic I might possibly like the premise of, only to get let down by the blatant "Bashing" tag. Unless you are writing a Hate Fic, a Spite Fic, or there is somehow no possible way of the character being Adapted Out or substituted with a Redeeming Replacement, you shouldn't waste time openly bashing a character you dislike just because you dislike them.

Or, if you'd rather, I don't want to read about your massive hate boner for a character when you could focus on anything else.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Jun 5th 2023 at 5:06:45 AM

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

I agree. With how personal the act of writing a fanfic or doing a fan project is, I get why some people have a hard time letting go of their biases for certain characters or plot points. Thing is, you literally have all the tools you need to address what you disliked about those in a much more interesting way than simple bashing.

An example would be Sasuke Uchiha from 'Naruto. I dislike his character over the way he and his clan's writing is executed in Naruto proper, and if I were younger I can't say I wouldn't have given in and wrote content that would be called bashing by his fans. Instead, now I would just choose to improve how his part of the story is handled, or even avoid the issues I have with him entirely by taking his character in a new and less contentious direction. Writing this way may take more effort, but if you already writing something fairly long and/or ambitious then you can spare the time to tighten up more than just the characters you like.

Reading that, I realize that the solution you propose would actually be a red flag of mine. Removing controversial edge to a character or event is deeply uninteresting for me. I find it makes things flat and contribute to my main gripe against most of fanfiction: that they are not about the work itself, but about the fantasies of the author. And, in the grand scheme of things, it's fine. It is what it is. But it's not my cup of tea.

I do not think it is always bad. For example, if you have a character who is clearly supposed to be good and only does bad things because of ValuesDissonance between the author and the audience, then I think it's fair to remove that. The intent was for the character to be good after all.

Edited by Risa123 on Jun 14th 2023 at 1:43:53 PM

But I love some Values Dissonance! I love reading and thinking about foreign morality, how they came to be, how they apply, etc. And if I read/write fanfiction, it's because I want to engage with the work as it is, not the work as I would have written.

Like, if the work promotes values that are so offensive to me that they spoil the story, I won't ever feel the need to go looking for fanfiction about it.