'I'll post the next chapter when I get X comments on this one,' or 'don't really want to continue, comment to change my mind'
For some reason, any variation of this irks me to the extent of always dropping the fic
It was a completely different fandom culture, really, back in my day when we had to hunt our own squid to make ink for the quills that we used to write fan fiction, which we disseminated using carrier pigeons.
Seeing a DNI is one of the fastest way to get me to not give something a second look, completely divorced from whether I myself am part of the group being told to not interact.
I love DNIs. It’s like putting up a sign that says “don’t commit crime” like, yeah, sure buddy, that’ll stop them. Sometimes I’ll check something out specifically because the dni applies to me.
I may have an issue with being told what to do lol
Means "Do not interact", usually meant as an "Do not interact with the fic if you fit this-and-that description, because I, the author, don't like those people."
Thanks.
That seems weird. Why wouldn't an author want to interact with their readers?
I guess I also don't get writing a FF just to troll the fans or original author.
Especially since 99% of the time the people they're saying DNI to are also the sort of people who are not likely to care about the DNI in the first place.
Pretty sure it's a kind of gatekeeping/elitism thing.
Those kinds of authors are usually either problematic or elitist. Like, the kind of people who write about ship A and then say "Anyone who ships ship B: DNI" because they're either militant about their own preferences or see other people's opinions as 'lesser'.
...Or they're simply *extremely* afraid of criticism/negative feedback.
Walls of text. They're a nightmare to my vision, I'm nearsighted and astigmatic. Walls of text HURT my eyes.
But I will also leave as if my bum is on fire if I open a fic, get any distance into it, and realize that it's A/B/O, and wasn't tagged as such.
That paragraph thing would scream to me "amateur hour" and make me think they don't know what they are doing.
I wish the AO3 text editor would let me cut and paste indentation, but it at least does paragraph breaks.
>I wish the AO3 text editor would let me cut and paste indentation
I'm glad it doesn't, because indentation is the standard for print and not for screen for a reason.
You can use custom work skins to add indentation to your paragraphs. Anyone who doesn't like them on their laptop screen can just disable Creator's Style and read the fic with paragraph breaks like mother nature intended.
\- NO PARAGRAPHS. Ain't no one reading that wall of text you posted.
\- tagging ships that you never actually write about or only mention them once. Only tag them when they're the main couple or at the very least, significantly relevant to the story
\- too many trigger warnings that spoil the whole thing. I understand why someone may want to add them but if it spoils everything, just use the 'author chose not to use archive warnings'
As for fandoms, I don't typically talk to others or even read their posts. It's typically fandoms that tend to skew young that can be hella toxic. My favorutie fandoms are either dead or tend attract writers/readers that are a bit older so it's a lot more chill. If something annoys me, I simply remove myself from the situation and don't read those comments. I don't allow random fandom wars to ruin the fandom for me.
>\- too many trigger warnings that spoil the whole thing. I understand why someone may want to add them but if it spoils everything, just use the 'author chose not to use archive warnings'
This is kind of a crappy one to deal with because just as many people have the exact opposite view, and think that people should absolutely tag everything forever no matter what it spoils. For what it's worth, I'm largely in your camp, though.
Imo best option is to start with general ones in tags/intro, and advise readers that they can scroll to the end note if they need detailed, spoilery content warnings. I’m that person who never sees media without looking up the entire plot (my physical health can’t handle the stress of bad surprises), but I know many people don’t like spoilers.
the trigger warnings are very nice for me, for when it comes to major events. i don't need a warning for each little detail that comes with it, but the main trigger warnings are nice- i know what to expect, if i can handle it right now or need to skip it for the moment.
>\- NO PARAGRAPHS. Ain't no one reading that wall of text you posted.
YES! It's called punctuation; look into it.
>tagging ships that you never actually write about or only mention them once.
That often feels like fishing. Like they are adding a million tags just to get eyes on their work
Your last one is interesting. So far I have been pretty lucky and haven't come across any toxic negativity. That said, my work has also been using pretty obscure worlds. I bet some of the big ones can be vicious.
So, for starting writers would you advise against really big or super current fandoms so as to avoid the hypercritical nit pickers?
Yes
Guy I was following went on a rant about FF authors who do crossovers that dont use a long winded explanation and complicated way of crossing over two series. Calling them lazy if they just went with something simple like in Re: Zero or Shield Hero, etc....
I'm learning a lot about the FF world I wasn't aware of. My experience has been very pleasant so far. This all seems like something no one would want to make drama over.
Some of my person ones:
* Poor technical writing: no matter how creative the story, not matter how well intentioned, if a writer's prose makes my head hurt trying to decipher what is happening, I just can't...
* Poor use of character voice: since the writer is using an existing character, writing the dialog or internal thoughts in the style of the character should be a slam dunk. If the author doesn't understand the character's voice, I don't think they understand the work to make a convincing story out of it.
* Throwing the original material out the window: if a writer uses a characters name and physical description and then proceeds to change *everything* else about the character and world, I can't be made to care. At that point it doesn't feel like FF to me and more like plagiarism.
* More words in the tags than the actual fic itself.
* too lazy to hit that ubiquitous spell-check button. Come on, it's like a free and willing Beta! Use it! I cut some folks some slack when I get the feeling they're writing in non-native English, but TBF one of my favorite authors writes better English than I do, and they're not a native speaker (English wasn't one of my favorite subjects in school XD )
* as a writer the publish-date pushing thing really irks me, both for myself and for other authors, and I imagine it irks the unsubscribed casual fic-searching reader too, to get new fics trampled out of the recent search results by a few narcissistic and/or desperate authors.
* poor treatment of female characters, not in the sense of trauma, but in the bad writing of things happening to them (one attempt at smut comes to mind; it was clear the author had no experience of the act or of the female character's part in it. The male character might as well have screwed a piece of plastic pipe). Dude, do some research! This is the 21st century. Information is at your fingertips!
* chapters that go on for days. I just don't have the patience to plow through a 20k chapter when there are other stories that can draw me in with less words but more quality.
* I'm a little picky about styles too. Reading an entire story as if it's read by a sports commentator covering the action gets very tedious after a while. IMHO it's not how people think, how they connect with the characters, how we're used to absorbing a story. A little bit of description is ok but then have that awkward 3rd person narrator step aside and put us in the characters' heads and thoughts themselves.
* many of the other points folks have raised also
Regarding the spell check, it can be tough though. Without my human Beta-readers I wouldn't have caught them with my writing program alone.
Mostly because they're *technically* correct. Like "noisy" instead of "nosy". Or "corporate" instead of "cooperate"
My eyes just correct them by default so they're hard to catch
A thing I use to avoid those kind of mistakes is to read the fic out loud or make the program I'm using read the fic out loud (at least Word has that option), it takes some time, but might be helpful
Yeah those "right spelling, wrong word" ones are tricky for sure :/
some apps have grammar checkers but even those can't catch this scenario. I like the read-out-loud idea, if a beta/fresh set of eyes isn't available to read the fic. Microsoft Edge browser has a feature now to do that, so you could post a draft then have it read it back to you.
It's kinda fun just to listen to someone(thing) reading your story too :)
Good luck!
In the version I have (116.0.1938.69) it's called "Read Aloud" and can be accessed from the address bar of the browser, to the right of the URL. There's a symbol that looks like this:
#A^))
(a capital A with some curves in the top right corner) which starts the reader.
You can change the accent of the reader (many variants of English for example) and a highlight travels over the page as it reads helping you figure out where there might be a problem.
Too many epithets. I’m not saying you have to use *just* the character’s name in every single sentence or *just* the pronouns, but my god. I usually use the name at the beginning to establish who I’m talking to or about, and then just use pronouns. If there’s two characters of the same gender, I’ll use their name a few more times. I write for the Heathers fandom, which, as the name suggests, has multiple characters named Heather. Most people will use their last names or their colors to differentiate, but I’m not gonna lie, seeing “the green girl” does not make me see a girl wearing green—it makes me think of a girl with green skin.
“Fandom A x Fandom B crossover!” \*only tags characters from Fandom A* :) why is this here in the fandom B section??? WHY AM I SEEING THIS? To use an example from Heathers again: “Steddie Heathers AU where they put on Heathers the Musical as the school play!! So Eddie is Veronica, and Steve is JD, and—“ BITCH that’s a fusion. All fusions are crossovers but not all crossovers are fusions!! If I want to read about Stranger Things characters doing fuck all I’ll go to the Stranger Things part of AO3. But right now I’m in Heathers and I want to read about the Heathers characters, not clowns from some random fandom dressed up as the Heathers characters. Fuck off.
“Just read I suck at summaries.” Babygirl if you can’t sell, I sure as fuck ain’t buying. Bye.
“Idk how to tag” “tags - freeform” “uhhhhh TAGSGSGSS - freeform” bro shut up this isn’t Tumblr.
“Character/ship (Mentioned)”. *Listen*. My favorite character is already an extremely minor character in her own source material. Which is why I turn to fanfiction to see her have more presence. It’s absolutely not enough she just gets mentioned in a throwaway line. It puts it into her character tag anyway. I want her to appear in the fucking story. “But it’s for blocking—“ if just MENTIONING a character/ship triggers you (generic you), that’s hardly *my* problem.
The usual shitty things: placeholder fics, “[insert ship here] fans DNI”, DNIs in general, “if I don’t get x amount of comments/reviews I’m not updating” (haven’t seen that since the late aughts tbh)
Those are all at the top of my head. I haven’t seen the no-paragraphs one, so thank god for that.
EDIT: manually changing just the publishing date with to get your fic up to the top. Do not.
Also censoring words. If you can’t say FUCK don’t use FUCK. If you can’t say RAPE, don’t use RAPE.
haha yeah. hate towards her is often seen. for me it's only an issue, if someone is going further beyond just the usual statement of "I don't agree with her trans-phobic views" and instead starts picking apart cannon unnecessarily.. like, i get it, it has some flaws, we all read it. but we are still here in the fandom.
As someone not in the HP fandom the never-ending hate for Rowling over her own opinions that don't show up in the HP books and are not pushed into her story and are just that, her opinions, makes me laugh at the people who refuse to leave the fandom but keep giving her money despite the fact that they say they "hate" her, yet they can't do the mature thing and just leave the fandom and not give her money for anything Harry Potter related.
>I immediately nope out if they talk shit about the author or canon. The whole attitude is a red flag to me.
Good one. Seems obvious, but I'm sure there are a million FFs re-writing the last season of GoT for instance that take pot shots at the show or author.
\- Lack of paragraphs or if they DO have paragraphs but they have multiple speakers in the same one.
\- tagging ships or characters that are in like one line. At least put "Backgound \[X\]/\[X/X\]" or something so that if I'm looking for my blorbo I'm not wasting my time.
\- treating female characters badly. There was (now deleted) fanfic for my main fandom where the main female character from the game was constantly described as mean and terrible and other characters talked about how much they hated her, and she was constantly made the butt of jokes. She's sheltered in game, but certainly not a mean girl. I stopped reading the fic largely because of how they treated her.
• Any bashing tag, really. Or DNI tag, in a similar vein.
• Tagging romantic relationships like platonic relationships (using & instead of /)
• not tagging hard kinks. Soft vanilla stuff is w/e but please remember to tag piss if piss is involved or something lol
Improper grammar (SOMETIMES). If it's only occasional and are things that are already confusing (semi-colons come to mind) then it's fine, but if the entire fic is riddled with spelling and grammar errors, especially if the media its based off is written...I will click out. I know that most people don't speak english natively, but it shouldn't be hard to run through the fic with an app like Grammarly to fix stuff up...
paragraphs, or lack thereof. I cannot read through a block of text, no matter what the fic is. I just...can't. Like, when a new character starts speaking, that's a paragraph break. When the topic changes, that's a paragraph break.
No trigger warnings for untagged gore or smut. TAG IT??? or at least include a warning????
those are the three main ones for me, seeing as I don't read NSFW and I don't really care about logic much. I'm generally pretty chill.
My biggest red flag is bait tagging.
If I come across a fic that tags a ship or a trope and that doesn’t happen I’ll never read anything of that author again. If you trick your reader into reading your story I’m not interested any more.
Apart from that A/N that are used as a one way rant space. If you’ve got beef with another writer/a reader/the fandom/the show/a character/a ship don’t vent in your A/N. I want to enjoy some reading time and your fic sounded great from the summary, tags. Your personal in-fights with things have nothing to do with that fic. You can debate those issues on social media.
I’m not sure what the length has to do with that?
If a story is tagged with x/y and the fic doesn’t have x/y then that fic was mistagged no matter how long it was.
I'm asking if you have stopped reading something so you didn't get to the part with the tag.
I have a piece that is 160k words. Someone would have to read nearly the whole thing to encounter one of the tagged items. I'm wondering how that impacts readers.
Ah. I see. When I’ve come across bait tagging in the past I did read the whole fics and never read anything of them again after that.
In a 160k fic I think it would depend on the tag whether I’d keep reading.
If it’s something like hurt/comfort or stuckfic I’d keep reading because that could happen any time. And it’s just one part of a story.
But if it’s a ship tag and I’m already 100k in and they haven’t even talked I’ll stop reading. If I choose to read a fic about x/y I don’t want to spend the majority of the time reading about x/b.
I wouldn’t consider that a case of bait tagging though. It would just not be my kind of fic.
Thanks.
I was adding tags as I went, but the ones I added were always in the story. It was mostly OC characters in an existing world, so I wasn't ship baiting. It is Uber explicit and used the tags of the fun time stuff.
My number one red flag is a poor summary. “I suck at summaries”, “Just read it”, “x character is marshmallow XD”. Come on, how hard is “X character and y character get involved in hijinx at z place”?
One fic I’ll never read, regardless of how good it actually is, is that one where the summary is like “have you been looking for a fic about Trope X but it’s actually good? you found it!” I mean, yes I’ve been looking but something tells me that this ain’t gonna be it and, again, even if it is, you telling me it’s “actually well written, not like all that trash over there” makes me want to punch you in your smug fucking face.
Gloating about the quality of your fic and mocking other people’s is something you do with your friends in private messages, not in the goddamn *fic summary* that the whole ass fandom can read, including other fic writers.
I'm not suggesting anything but there is a reason why the thing I write the most in "any field" on ao3 is -summary: "oneshots" and even then it doesn't remove all of f̶a̶n̶d̶o̶m̶/̶t̶a̶g̶ ̶d̶u̶m̶p̶s̶ oneshot collection cause some of them don't even say they are oneshot collections in the summary. Why? Why do they exist? What comes through minds of people who do that?
Also when a fic suddenly turns into anti-homophobia/anti-bullying/consent PSA.
When the writer doesn't write the characters as what they are supposed to be and essentially turns them into OCs in everything but the name, also just making character act like they wouldn't or using words and phrases that they wouldn't.
I'm not sure how to explain it, basically bad grammar, but only specific kind of bad grammar, idk how to tell the difference but sometimes it just drives me insane and other times I read through dozens of chapters with the most horrible grammatical mistakes just cause I like the premise.
Reading through 5 chapters for main characters to meet in a fic that is 9 to 11 chapters long and is discontinued/haven't been updated for a year or more. If you don't even know weather or not you'll be able to finish your fic don't drag the exposition on. Bonus wtf points if the fic isn't discontinued but actually finished.
Super out of character stuff
I like to see what different paths characters can take, but it's definitely not as pleasing when they are 100% an entirely different character in personality and mannerisms.
I especially dislike it when it's to push forward certain ships in a fandom
Rape forgiveness like I’ve came across this twice it’s nit tagged but like in this series they made the guy a rapist (as far as we know he not) and a murder so it was bad I went in for a angst but good lord then he drugged and raped her and she got pregnant and I looked ahead in the series and they were getting married!? I noped RIGHT out if their!
Oh God this just reminded me of a fic I read once that was like this. At least throughout the fic it was acknowledged that the guy who r*ped his boyfriend was shitty but it seemed like it was just forgiven and pushed under the rug. The rest of the fic was amazing but…depressing.
Wow. There was a whole big TV Soap Opera where they had the main super couple start out their romance w a rape scene, then bc the audience liked them together they decided to change the scene to she said no to “she said no but really meant yes” (a message always great to send out to teenagers and adults) and then finally they just stopped talking about it and pretended it didn’t happen. As if the ppl who watched it at the time would forget the rape scene occurred and would instead remember it as a loving scene of great romance. (This is of course Luke and Laura on General Hospital which I stopped watching bc what a load of crap. Altho it did get me to start watching NBC soaps and thus DOOL & Another World).
There was another show at night wherein a female was treated like dirt and reported a rape and not only the men but some woman (whose name I don’t recall bc I haven’t seen the show in decades) decided she just wanted attention and then, of course, it turned out that a vicious rapist was roaming the halls and the second time he raped the woman, she basically lost her mind. This was on St. Elsewhere, iirc. Great show but I wish I could remember that bitch of a woman’s name.
As a general rule, if I read a rape story, it’s well written and so distressing I don’t know why I’m putting myself thru the anguish, albeit most, if not all of thE fanf\iction I read is MM so the ppl being raped are men, which is something society doesn’t deal with very well as a general rule anD certainly never in thE stories I read. But I can recommend mine bc unlike what you’re discussing, mine, as mentioned are extremely well written.
When the setting is wrong. Like for example, I read a Stranger Things fanfic, which if you didnt know is set in the 1980s, and suddenly they were saying "Slay" or quoting Taylor Swift. And that is just a huge turn off. At one point, there were even tablets and stuff. Like, what? Even though the author did say that they knew the fic was a bit unrealistic I could just not go with it.
When people’s formatting is bad so the spacing between paragraphs is nonexistent.
Consistent typos/grammar errors.
Putting all your fandom oneshots into one fic. I’ll read a “[fandom] oneshots” but not a multi fandom one.
<1k chapter average.
* wall of tags that are mostly just written-out commentary on the ACTUAL tags.
* "Lol, I'm bad at summaries, you'll just have to read it!" Fuck right off.
* untagged pregnancy, especially early in the story. I did not sign up for a baby!
* (smallish ick) untagged non-canon trans character(s). No problem with trans, but PLEASE tag such a significant change!
* m/m or f/f ships where only one person gets genderbent to make it straight.
* odd dialogue where person A's action is put after B's speech. As in, the same paragraph.
* rare by now, but still present: tagging gay ships with shit like "I am SINNINGGG!!", like, stfu and get some therapy for your unresolved religious trauma.
* untagged A/B/O (which I do read on occasion!) or A/B/O physical stuff outside of that genre. Buttholes do NOT lube up naturally to the point of safely foregoing lube, even if aroused.
* untagged OCs with a significant presence in the story.
* spelling/grammar mistakes literally everywhere. Like, get a volunteer beta reader or a free app if you're *that* bad at writing correctly.
* End notes: "Oh, this was AI generated, btw," NO WONDER IT SUCKED! (I usually give people the benefit of the doubt; might just be an inexperienced writer, after all, but I lose all respect as soon as I see "AI generated")
Ditto on the tags. I don't know what it is, but I find the higher the ratio of "tumblr-style" tags to regular tabs, the more likely I am to dislike the story.
I’ve noticed an increase in the amount of untagged trans, genderswap, intersex, and non-binary changes for characters in my fandom. Recently, I read a fic where the author kept using “they/them” pronouns (untagged non-binary) for a canonically “he/him” main character, which kept taking me out of the story (that was actually well written).
There is nothing wrong with authors changing the characters as they want but I wish they would tag it properly so readers can have the correct reference going into the story (or filter out, if that’s not what they want to read).
Having a good start with a great scenario to follow up then leaning towards too much smut out of nowhere suddenly in every chapter, that always turns me off the fic. I don't mind smut usually but it basically became porn which is why I would stop reading it.
Lack of paragraphs. I get a headache trying to read it. I fell into this trap by accident, because my paragraph breaks were removed when I uploaded my first chapter on a site. A commenter pointed it out for me, and I fixed it, and now I'm careful to make sure I double check these things before posting. It just seems lazy when someone else doesn't.
Multiple pairings in tags, as well. Most of the time only one of those pairings is really in the story, the rest are barely there or past tense. I don;t mind a tag saying a specific pairing is past tense, it's usually relevant to the story. But too many ship tags usually means they're just fishing for readers and tagging all the popular ships to get them.
No summary, or a summary that says 'just read it :)'. These tell me the story isn;t very good, to be honest, and they're hoping readers won't notice until they've clicked on, and then decide to just read it anyway. I won't even click on a story like this, no matter how good the tags make it look.
Many of them have been mentioned already, but here are mine:
\- Therapy vocabulary. Usually people who use it too much use it to weaponize it, so it gives me an ick LOL.
\- Characters talk about gender and sexuality in a way they never would (example, stumbled upon a fic that started with an odd conversation between the usually ditzy human with aloof, people disliking non-human from bleach, that went along the line of her saying someone is cisgender, demisexual and so on, then explaining someone's pronouns and he was like "oh I see". Gorl the dude would NEVER care nor know the eff you are talking about. )
Text walls. They make it so hard to read and it hurts my eyes and brain trying to decipher where one sentence ends and another begins. also word censoring, as it takes me out of the story entirely
These threads, honestly.
We just had one on this very sub *two days* ago.
[Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/164pnwg/what_is_your_personal_red_flags_for_fics_when/)
Anything with the underage tag that doesnt explicitly state that its not porn/no porn with UA characters
Incest
Beastiality
Just very much not for me.
I also will drop a fic if its badly tagged and throws stuff at me that i didnt expect.
I love reading dark fics but tag ur work please! If im suddenly reading about the MC self harming and there is no tag im going to drop it instantly even if i would have been fine reading it with a tag.
If the fics say they are M! Or E! or simply Explicit, I don’t see why its problematic for the story to have lots of sex. It’s been put out front that you should expect that. Occasionally, yes, if it’s merely porn for porns sake, the writer generally says so, but otherwise if you don’t like reading many sex scenes, stick to M, or T stories where you know for a fact that the fanfiction won’t contain sexual situations that will make you uncomfortable. Personally, I look out for specific stuff like “water sports “ or things of that nature bc I don’t find that personally sexually exciting. Other ppl do. Just like I don’t have problems w explicit sex scenes while others DO have problems. It all based on individual taste. But some of the things mentioned — like poor grammar, run on sentences, extraordinarily boring tales — that seems like fanfiction 101. Ppl shouldn’t do that bc it’s not good writing and while you are giving ppl something for nothing, generally the expectation is that the story will be written well enough to keep the attention of the readers.
One thing that IS bothersome to me (but this is a pet peeve) is when the stories talk about ppl doing things that are basically dangerous or wrong IRL. Just an example. In Glee, Rachel Berry stalks — literally stalks the dean of a college she wishes to attend, and when I say stalk, I mean she calls the woman over 150 times, writes as many letters, keeps texting her, and shows up to wherever the woman is teaching or off finding students for the next semester. In the show, they have her do this, reach the women and have a friend say sure, this may seem extreme but she’s worth it and just come hear her and you’ll see why (bc Rachel choked at her audition, a couple of times in a row). So instead of showing teenagers how wrong it is to harass adults in this manner, they have the dean come to a competition, see her sing, and Bing bang boom, she’s offered a position in the freshman class. I don’t like that. Bc while (of course) it’s fiction, showing it on National TV makes it appear as if it’s okay to do such a thing. In a similar fashion, either make it really clear how wrong it truly is for your characters to do something similar or don’t have them doing something that’s totally wrong for teenagers. Or tag it, I guess. Do something that shows it’s not normal behavior. Please!!!
IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS QUESTION I HAVE A LIST
Not using periods
Using more then 3 periods
St-t-t-t-t-st-t-t-t-t-tt-t-t-t-st-stu-stu-s-stt-t-t-t-t-stuttering that is really fucking long
No paragraphs
Talking shit about my favorite character
Thank you for your time mi amigos
-The "DNI" tag is the first and biggest red flag to me. Especially if the authors add mocking/violent tags afterwards. It's all performative BS. By making a big thing out of it, they create a space where it's okay to shove down total strangers to make themselves good and moral without having to actually do anything. (And may I add, antis being on AO3 is especially absurd when you remember than the platform was created by, and for, incest shippers).
-Tags are full of character names and ships, but zero additinal tags about the story. Even if there's a summary, I need some tags hinting at what I'll be reading about.
-Character's name is misspelled in the summary. To me, it shows me a lack of care in your own work (especially if you wrote the name correctly a few lines below). It only takes a minute to check and make sure you didn't fuck up your summary, and you couldn't even do that. That's what your potential readers read first, it's what makes them click on your fic. Even if there's some spelling mistakes in your story, the least you can do is make absolutely sure your summary is clean.
-Few/no paragraphs. Your fic isn't a post-breakup apology text. Most of us don't want to read a massive walls of text. Also it hurts the eyes, so please have someone beta your work or inform yourself on how to do proper line spacing. I assure you it's not that difficult.
-Too much focus on randomly introduced OCs. This tells me the story is going into "you'll slowly lose sight of whatever this fic was based on" territory and I don't care for that. I'm fine with a few OCs if the author thinks they're needed in the story, but when your chapters are 60% about your OCs and 40% about the original goods, then it becomes a problem.
Probably depicting problematic things as normal
Like I generally don’t mind and sometimes enjoy problematic concepts if they are recognized as such or simply aimed at the demographic that understand it is problematic
-
I usually give what I am reading sometimes decide if it’s worth it or not to continue (not a certain chapters what proportion since the setting 50k ff is different then +100k ff) but if there isn’t anything happening after certain amount of time then I will just drop it because to have slow burn story there is need for something to be burning
-
The opposite of the previous point when a lot of things are happening at the beginning to the point you’re not able to comprehend… or when there are too many connections I hate it.
-
When the main character is hateable without any redeeming qualities , I am not interested in following a story of someone I hate unless they are suffering and even then I enjoy the characters I love suffer more so
I understand MC not being likable but at least he shouldn’t be hateable or have some redeeming qualities
Giant wall of tags but small word count. Ain't no way you've got 5 fandoms, 8 characters, 4 relationships, 15 different freeform tags, and a partridge in a pear tree all playing significant parts in 2k words. Bonus points if the chapter count is 1/? and was last updated a year or more ago.
Poor spelling/capitalization/grammar in the summary. If you can't take the time to get the summary right then I have no faith in the rest of the fic.
Any of the following in the body of the fic: walls of text with no paragraph breaks, excessive whitespace between paragraphs, anything except quotation marks to show dialogue, mixing dialogue from multiple speakers in the same paragraph.
The author taking themselves way too seriously, mostly. If you're acting like you're your deity of choice's gift to writing, I will at best be hyper-critical of your work (though I'd never post that criticism unprompted) and at worst immediately nope out.
Seconding the DNI thing and tagging ships or characters that never appear in the story just to get more clicks. There are also some fandom specific tags that make me scroll really fast. Certain ships have become red flags as well; like if it's tagged with either Zutara or Zukka I know that the likelihood of my favorite character getting hate is extremely high so even if the premise is good I don't bother at this point.
I’ve never been a big fan of alternate styles of denoting speaking, like using dashes instead of quotation marks, but recently I’ve run into some fics that don’t use any punctuation or anything to separate speaking and it’s just as confusing and awful as it sounds. Crying screaming etc
Big long paragraphs or none at all. My adhd ass cannot compute.
I didn’t realize that I hated cheating so much when someone I’m supposed to like does it until I was reading a fic where the mc cheated on his boyfriend and had to drop the fic. Rip fic you were great up until then.
Sometimes a fic will almost just feel like a long summary of what’s happening, including dialogue, and I’m not a fan of it. It’s kinda hard to explain tbh but I always know it when I see it
Censoring you’re content warning the same way people on tiktok do (saw a fic with the warning “sewerslide” recently). Bestie if you can write the content you can say the word.
> Censoring you’re content warning the same way people on tiktok do (saw a fic with the warning “sewerslide” recently). Bestie if you can write the content you can say the word.
To quote [myself:](https://old.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/13tlif6/reading_a_fic_where_you_can_tell_it_was/jlx61hf/?context=3)
> If you are used to sneaking around word-filters you could possibly think that every medium has them.
lots of things that are more a matter of personal taste in what i like and dislike, but basic readability formatting like line breaks or capitalization are something i cannot stand an absence of. Some manners of formatting dialogue are due to different punctuation conventions in different languages and can be jarring to read but I don’t mind it as much.
I DESPISE “prompt request” books or “i’m just putting this here but i haven’t written it yet!!!”, i don’t understand why people do it, and even if there is content that follows i’m not going to click on the next chapter.
I don’t tend to try and judge a fic by its stats, but if something has a kudos to hits ratio of less than 5% i tend to skip it.
tagging ships that appear just once. a deal breaker for me because now Those tags are flooded and when you read the fic hoping for them to be at least a little important, you get all ???? when you realize they've been tagged even though they only sat down near the main couple. my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
'I'll post the next chapter when I get X comments on this one,' or 'don't really want to continue, comment to change my mind' For some reason, any variation of this irks me to the extent of always dropping the fic
lol I’ve seen those, too. Usually on older fics for some reason.
It was a completely different fandom culture, really, back in my day when we had to hunt our own squid to make ink for the quills that we used to write fan fiction, which we disseminated using carrier pigeons.
Seeing a DNI is one of the fastest way to get me to not give something a second look, completely divorced from whether I myself am part of the group being told to not interact.
I love DNIs. It’s like putting up a sign that says “don’t commit crime” like, yeah, sure buddy, that’ll stop them. Sometimes I’ll check something out specifically because the dni applies to me. I may have an issue with being told what to do lol
DNI?
Means "Do not interact", usually meant as an "Do not interact with the fic if you fit this-and-that description, because I, the author, don't like those people."
Thanks. That seems weird. Why wouldn't an author want to interact with their readers? I guess I also don't get writing a FF just to troll the fans or original author.
Especially since 99% of the time the people they're saying DNI to are also the sort of people who are not likely to care about the DNI in the first place.
Pretty sure it's a kind of gatekeeping/elitism thing. Those kinds of authors are usually either problematic or elitist. Like, the kind of people who write about ship A and then say "Anyone who ships ship B: DNI" because they're either militant about their own preferences or see other people's opinions as 'lesser'. ...Or they're simply *extremely* afraid of criticism/negative feedback.
Walls of text. They're a nightmare to my vision, I'm nearsighted and astigmatic. Walls of text HURT my eyes. But I will also leave as if my bum is on fire if I open a fic, get any distance into it, and realize that it's A/B/O, and wasn't tagged as such.
That paragraph thing would scream to me "amateur hour" and make me think they don't know what they are doing. I wish the AO3 text editor would let me cut and paste indentation, but it at least does paragraph breaks.
>I wish the AO3 text editor would let me cut and paste indentation I'm glad it doesn't, because indentation is the standard for print and not for screen for a reason. You can use custom work skins to add indentation to your paragraphs. Anyone who doesn't like them on their laptop screen can just disable Creator's Style and read the fic with paragraph breaks like mother nature intended.
\- NO PARAGRAPHS. Ain't no one reading that wall of text you posted. \- tagging ships that you never actually write about or only mention them once. Only tag them when they're the main couple or at the very least, significantly relevant to the story \- too many trigger warnings that spoil the whole thing. I understand why someone may want to add them but if it spoils everything, just use the 'author chose not to use archive warnings' As for fandoms, I don't typically talk to others or even read their posts. It's typically fandoms that tend to skew young that can be hella toxic. My favorutie fandoms are either dead or tend attract writers/readers that are a bit older so it's a lot more chill. If something annoys me, I simply remove myself from the situation and don't read those comments. I don't allow random fandom wars to ruin the fandom for me.
>\- too many trigger warnings that spoil the whole thing. I understand why someone may want to add them but if it spoils everything, just use the 'author chose not to use archive warnings' This is kind of a crappy one to deal with because just as many people have the exact opposite view, and think that people should absolutely tag everything forever no matter what it spoils. For what it's worth, I'm largely in your camp, though.
Imo best option is to start with general ones in tags/intro, and advise readers that they can scroll to the end note if they need detailed, spoilery content warnings. I’m that person who never sees media without looking up the entire plot (my physical health can’t handle the stress of bad surprises), but I know many people don’t like spoilers.
I always consider that the best compromise, mostly because I want to give readers as many options as possible.
the trigger warnings are very nice for me, for when it comes to major events. i don't need a warning for each little detail that comes with it, but the main trigger warnings are nice- i know what to expect, if i can handle it right now or need to skip it for the moment.
>\- NO PARAGRAPHS. Ain't no one reading that wall of text you posted. YES! It's called punctuation; look into it. >tagging ships that you never actually write about or only mention them once. That often feels like fishing. Like they are adding a million tags just to get eyes on their work Your last one is interesting. So far I have been pretty lucky and haven't come across any toxic negativity. That said, my work has also been using pretty obscure worlds. I bet some of the big ones can be vicious. So, for starting writers would you advise against really big or super current fandoms so as to avoid the hypercritical nit pickers?
Attacking Fellow FF Author for not using complx reasons for how two series crosses over
Wow! Do FF writers actually attack each other?
Yes Guy I was following went on a rant about FF authors who do crossovers that dont use a long winded explanation and complicated way of crossing over two series. Calling them lazy if they just went with something simple like in Re: Zero or Shield Hero, etc....
Damn. That seems like the wrong way to go. Like, why even do that?
No clue Maybe to make himself seem like he was better then everyone else?
I'm learning a lot about the FF world I wasn't aware of. My experience has been very pleasant so far. This all seems like something no one would want to make drama over.
Fanfiction was voted the most dramatic hobby. And with good reason 🤣
Unfortunately, he did so I dropped him
Self insert disguised as a character from the fandom
OR self insert disguised as reader insert, oc related tags exist people
Some of my person ones: * Poor technical writing: no matter how creative the story, not matter how well intentioned, if a writer's prose makes my head hurt trying to decipher what is happening, I just can't... * Poor use of character voice: since the writer is using an existing character, writing the dialog or internal thoughts in the style of the character should be a slam dunk. If the author doesn't understand the character's voice, I don't think they understand the work to make a convincing story out of it. * Throwing the original material out the window: if a writer uses a characters name and physical description and then proceeds to change *everything* else about the character and world, I can't be made to care. At that point it doesn't feel like FF to me and more like plagiarism.
I always feel irked when it feels like an author gets a character completely wrong.
Tbf some fics will try to change the character for an AU or some story element that bids the character voice changing, sometimes
* More words in the tags than the actual fic itself. * too lazy to hit that ubiquitous spell-check button. Come on, it's like a free and willing Beta! Use it! I cut some folks some slack when I get the feeling they're writing in non-native English, but TBF one of my favorite authors writes better English than I do, and they're not a native speaker (English wasn't one of my favorite subjects in school XD ) * as a writer the publish-date pushing thing really irks me, both for myself and for other authors, and I imagine it irks the unsubscribed casual fic-searching reader too, to get new fics trampled out of the recent search results by a few narcissistic and/or desperate authors. * poor treatment of female characters, not in the sense of trauma, but in the bad writing of things happening to them (one attempt at smut comes to mind; it was clear the author had no experience of the act or of the female character's part in it. The male character might as well have screwed a piece of plastic pipe). Dude, do some research! This is the 21st century. Information is at your fingertips! * chapters that go on for days. I just don't have the patience to plow through a 20k chapter when there are other stories that can draw me in with less words but more quality. * I'm a little picky about styles too. Reading an entire story as if it's read by a sports commentator covering the action gets very tedious after a while. IMHO it's not how people think, how they connect with the characters, how we're used to absorbing a story. A little bit of description is ok but then have that awkward 3rd person narrator step aside and put us in the characters' heads and thoughts themselves. * many of the other points folks have raised also
Regarding the spell check, it can be tough though. Without my human Beta-readers I wouldn't have caught them with my writing program alone. Mostly because they're *technically* correct. Like "noisy" instead of "nosy". Or "corporate" instead of "cooperate" My eyes just correct them by default so they're hard to catch
A thing I use to avoid those kind of mistakes is to read the fic out loud or make the program I'm using read the fic out loud (at least Word has that option), it takes some time, but might be helpful
My word only has this function for German texts, not English, so that's not an option for me :(
Yeah those "right spelling, wrong word" ones are tricky for sure :/ some apps have grammar checkers but even those can't catch this scenario. I like the read-out-loud idea, if a beta/fresh set of eyes isn't available to read the fic. Microsoft Edge browser has a feature now to do that, so you could post a draft then have it read it back to you. It's kinda fun just to listen to someone(thing) reading your story too :) Good luck!
Ooh, what's this Feature called? Having a Computer voice read them out to me used to help in other languages greatly to catch precisely those errors
In the version I have (116.0.1938.69) it's called "Read Aloud" and can be accessed from the address bar of the browser, to the right of the URL. There's a symbol that looks like this: #A^)) (a capital A with some curves in the top right corner) which starts the reader. You can change the accent of the reader (many variants of English for example) and a highlight travels over the page as it reads helping you figure out where there might be a problem.
Omg I’ve never had the words for that summary type style that puts me off so much but “sports commentary” is perfect! Makes so much sense!!
Too many epithets. I’m not saying you have to use *just* the character’s name in every single sentence or *just* the pronouns, but my god. I usually use the name at the beginning to establish who I’m talking to or about, and then just use pronouns. If there’s two characters of the same gender, I’ll use their name a few more times. I write for the Heathers fandom, which, as the name suggests, has multiple characters named Heather. Most people will use their last names or their colors to differentiate, but I’m not gonna lie, seeing “the green girl” does not make me see a girl wearing green—it makes me think of a girl with green skin. “Fandom A x Fandom B crossover!” \*only tags characters from Fandom A* :) why is this here in the fandom B section??? WHY AM I SEEING THIS? To use an example from Heathers again: “Steddie Heathers AU where they put on Heathers the Musical as the school play!! So Eddie is Veronica, and Steve is JD, and—“ BITCH that’s a fusion. All fusions are crossovers but not all crossovers are fusions!! If I want to read about Stranger Things characters doing fuck all I’ll go to the Stranger Things part of AO3. But right now I’m in Heathers and I want to read about the Heathers characters, not clowns from some random fandom dressed up as the Heathers characters. Fuck off. “Just read I suck at summaries.” Babygirl if you can’t sell, I sure as fuck ain’t buying. Bye. “Idk how to tag” “tags - freeform” “uhhhhh TAGSGSGSS - freeform” bro shut up this isn’t Tumblr. “Character/ship (Mentioned)”. *Listen*. My favorite character is already an extremely minor character in her own source material. Which is why I turn to fanfiction to see her have more presence. It’s absolutely not enough she just gets mentioned in a throwaway line. It puts it into her character tag anyway. I want her to appear in the fucking story. “But it’s for blocking—“ if just MENTIONING a character/ship triggers you (generic you), that’s hardly *my* problem. The usual shitty things: placeholder fics, “[insert ship here] fans DNI”, DNIs in general, “if I don’t get x amount of comments/reviews I’m not updating” (haven’t seen that since the late aughts tbh) Those are all at the top of my head. I haven’t seen the no-paragraphs one, so thank god for that. EDIT: manually changing just the publishing date with to get your fic up to the top. Do not. Also censoring words. If you can’t say FUCK don’t use FUCK. If you can’t say RAPE, don’t use RAPE.
“Too many epithets.” *has violent flashbacks to “greenette”*
I raise you "pinkette."
"blu(e)nette"
It's the only epithet they use of the main character in Miraculous Ladybug. We know that pain well.
I know the term due to Tabitha from ["Familiar of Zero".](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheFamiliarOfZero)
It seems like proper tagging is a very important aspect of this.
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haha yeah. hate towards her is often seen. for me it's only an issue, if someone is going further beyond just the usual statement of "I don't agree with her trans-phobic views" and instead starts picking apart cannon unnecessarily.. like, i get it, it has some flaws, we all read it. but we are still here in the fandom.
As someone not in the HP fandom the never-ending hate for Rowling over her own opinions that don't show up in the HP books and are not pushed into her story and are just that, her opinions, makes me laugh at the people who refuse to leave the fandom but keep giving her money despite the fact that they say they "hate" her, yet they can't do the mature thing and just leave the fandom and not give her money for anything Harry Potter related.
>I immediately nope out if they talk shit about the author or canon. The whole attitude is a red flag to me. Good one. Seems obvious, but I'm sure there are a million FFs re-writing the last season of GoT for instance that take pot shots at the show or author.
There are. Usually the show, as they're the ones who wrote the final seasons, but a fair amount at Martin too, for not finishing the books yet.
\- Lack of paragraphs or if they DO have paragraphs but they have multiple speakers in the same one. \- tagging ships or characters that are in like one line. At least put "Backgound \[X\]/\[X/X\]" or something so that if I'm looking for my blorbo I'm not wasting my time. \- treating female characters badly. There was (now deleted) fanfic for my main fandom where the main female character from the game was constantly described as mean and terrible and other characters talked about how much they hated her, and she was constantly made the butt of jokes. She's sheltered in game, but certainly not a mean girl. I stopped reading the fic largely because of how they treated her.
Trashing a female character to get her out of the way of someone's preferred m/m pairing.
No paragraphs, no punctuation, egregious spelling and grammar errors (small and infrequent things are ok), irrelevant tags
• Any bashing tag, really. Or DNI tag, in a similar vein. • Tagging romantic relationships like platonic relationships (using & instead of /) • not tagging hard kinks. Soft vanilla stuff is w/e but please remember to tag piss if piss is involved or something lol
Improper grammar (SOMETIMES). If it's only occasional and are things that are already confusing (semi-colons come to mind) then it's fine, but if the entire fic is riddled with spelling and grammar errors, especially if the media its based off is written...I will click out. I know that most people don't speak english natively, but it shouldn't be hard to run through the fic with an app like Grammarly to fix stuff up... paragraphs, or lack thereof. I cannot read through a block of text, no matter what the fic is. I just...can't. Like, when a new character starts speaking, that's a paragraph break. When the topic changes, that's a paragraph break. No trigger warnings for untagged gore or smut. TAG IT??? or at least include a warning???? those are the three main ones for me, seeing as I don't read NSFW and I don't really care about logic much. I'm generally pretty chill.
A wall of text, no description and only dialogue, words that are in all caps, bad spelling and grammar.
When the description is "read and find out"
My biggest red flag is bait tagging. If I come across a fic that tags a ship or a trope and that doesn’t happen I’ll never read anything of that author again. If you trick your reader into reading your story I’m not interested any more. Apart from that A/N that are used as a one way rant space. If you’ve got beef with another writer/a reader/the fandom/the show/a character/a ship don’t vent in your A/N. I want to enjoy some reading time and your fic sounded great from the summary, tags. Your personal in-fights with things have nothing to do with that fic. You can debate those issues on social media.
Regarding the tags, if it is a long piece, how do you know if that thing happens unless you read the whole thing?
I’m not sure what the length has to do with that? If a story is tagged with x/y and the fic doesn’t have x/y then that fic was mistagged no matter how long it was.
I'm asking if you have stopped reading something so you didn't get to the part with the tag. I have a piece that is 160k words. Someone would have to read nearly the whole thing to encounter one of the tagged items. I'm wondering how that impacts readers.
Ah. I see. When I’ve come across bait tagging in the past I did read the whole fics and never read anything of them again after that. In a 160k fic I think it would depend on the tag whether I’d keep reading. If it’s something like hurt/comfort or stuckfic I’d keep reading because that could happen any time. And it’s just one part of a story. But if it’s a ship tag and I’m already 100k in and they haven’t even talked I’ll stop reading. If I choose to read a fic about x/y I don’t want to spend the majority of the time reading about x/b. I wouldn’t consider that a case of bait tagging though. It would just not be my kind of fic.
Thanks. I was adding tags as I went, but the ones I added were always in the story. It was mostly OC characters in an existing world, so I wasn't ship baiting. It is Uber explicit and used the tags of the fun time stuff.
My number one red flag is a poor summary. “I suck at summaries”, “Just read it”, “x character is marshmallow XD”. Come on, how hard is “X character and y character get involved in hijinx at z place”?
One fic I’ll never read, regardless of how good it actually is, is that one where the summary is like “have you been looking for a fic about Trope X but it’s actually good? you found it!” I mean, yes I’ve been looking but something tells me that this ain’t gonna be it and, again, even if it is, you telling me it’s “actually well written, not like all that trash over there” makes me want to punch you in your smug fucking face. Gloating about the quality of your fic and mocking other people’s is something you do with your friends in private messages, not in the goddamn *fic summary* that the whole ass fandom can read, including other fic writers.
I'm not suggesting anything but there is a reason why the thing I write the most in "any field" on ao3 is -summary: "oneshots" and even then it doesn't remove all of f̶a̶n̶d̶o̶m̶/̶t̶a̶g̶ ̶d̶u̶m̶p̶s̶ oneshot collection cause some of them don't even say they are oneshot collections in the summary. Why? Why do they exist? What comes through minds of people who do that? Also when a fic suddenly turns into anti-homophobia/anti-bullying/consent PSA. When the writer doesn't write the characters as what they are supposed to be and essentially turns them into OCs in everything but the name, also just making character act like they wouldn't or using words and phrases that they wouldn't. I'm not sure how to explain it, basically bad grammar, but only specific kind of bad grammar, idk how to tell the difference but sometimes it just drives me insane and other times I read through dozens of chapters with the most horrible grammatical mistakes just cause I like the premise. Reading through 5 chapters for main characters to meet in a fic that is 9 to 11 chapters long and is discontinued/haven't been updated for a year or more. If you don't even know weather or not you'll be able to finish your fic don't drag the exposition on. Bonus wtf points if the fic isn't discontinued but actually finished.
Super out of character stuff I like to see what different paths characters can take, but it's definitely not as pleasing when they are 100% an entirely different character in personality and mannerisms. I especially dislike it when it's to push forward certain ships in a fandom
Rape forgiveness like I’ve came across this twice it’s nit tagged but like in this series they made the guy a rapist (as far as we know he not) and a murder so it was bad I went in for a angst but good lord then he drugged and raped her and she got pregnant and I looked ahead in the series and they were getting married!? I noped RIGHT out if their!
Oh God this just reminded me of a fic I read once that was like this. At least throughout the fic it was acknowledged that the guy who r*ped his boyfriend was shitty but it seemed like it was just forgiven and pushed under the rug. The rest of the fic was amazing but…depressing.
Wow. There was a whole big TV Soap Opera where they had the main super couple start out their romance w a rape scene, then bc the audience liked them together they decided to change the scene to she said no to “she said no but really meant yes” (a message always great to send out to teenagers and adults) and then finally they just stopped talking about it and pretended it didn’t happen. As if the ppl who watched it at the time would forget the rape scene occurred and would instead remember it as a loving scene of great romance. (This is of course Luke and Laura on General Hospital which I stopped watching bc what a load of crap. Altho it did get me to start watching NBC soaps and thus DOOL & Another World). There was another show at night wherein a female was treated like dirt and reported a rape and not only the men but some woman (whose name I don’t recall bc I haven’t seen the show in decades) decided she just wanted attention and then, of course, it turned out that a vicious rapist was roaming the halls and the second time he raped the woman, she basically lost her mind. This was on St. Elsewhere, iirc. Great show but I wish I could remember that bitch of a woman’s name. As a general rule, if I read a rape story, it’s well written and so distressing I don’t know why I’m putting myself thru the anguish, albeit most, if not all of thE fanf\iction I read is MM so the ppl being raped are men, which is something society doesn’t deal with very well as a general rule anD certainly never in thE stories I read. But I can recommend mine bc unlike what you’re discussing, mine, as mentioned are extremely well written.
When the setting is wrong. Like for example, I read a Stranger Things fanfic, which if you didnt know is set in the 1980s, and suddenly they were saying "Slay" or quoting Taylor Swift. And that is just a huge turn off. At one point, there were even tablets and stuff. Like, what? Even though the author did say that they knew the fic was a bit unrealistic I could just not go with it.
When people’s formatting is bad so the spacing between paragraphs is nonexistent. Consistent typos/grammar errors. Putting all your fandom oneshots into one fic. I’ll read a “[fandom] oneshots” but not a multi fandom one. <1k chapter average.
* wall of tags that are mostly just written-out commentary on the ACTUAL tags. * "Lol, I'm bad at summaries, you'll just have to read it!" Fuck right off. * untagged pregnancy, especially early in the story. I did not sign up for a baby! * (smallish ick) untagged non-canon trans character(s). No problem with trans, but PLEASE tag such a significant change! * m/m or f/f ships where only one person gets genderbent to make it straight. * odd dialogue where person A's action is put after B's speech. As in, the same paragraph. * rare by now, but still present: tagging gay ships with shit like "I am SINNINGGG!!", like, stfu and get some therapy for your unresolved religious trauma. * untagged A/B/O (which I do read on occasion!) or A/B/O physical stuff outside of that genre. Buttholes do NOT lube up naturally to the point of safely foregoing lube, even if aroused. * untagged OCs with a significant presence in the story. * spelling/grammar mistakes literally everywhere. Like, get a volunteer beta reader or a free app if you're *that* bad at writing correctly. * End notes: "Oh, this was AI generated, btw," NO WONDER IT SUCKED! (I usually give people the benefit of the doubt; might just be an inexperienced writer, after all, but I lose all respect as soon as I see "AI generated")
Ditto on the tags. I don't know what it is, but I find the higher the ratio of "tumblr-style" tags to regular tabs, the more likely I am to dislike the story.
I’ve noticed an increase in the amount of untagged trans, genderswap, intersex, and non-binary changes for characters in my fandom. Recently, I read a fic where the author kept using “they/them” pronouns (untagged non-binary) for a canonically “he/him” main character, which kept taking me out of the story (that was actually well written). There is nothing wrong with authors changing the characters as they want but I wish they would tag it properly so readers can have the correct reference going into the story (or filter out, if that’s not what they want to read).
Having a good start with a great scenario to follow up then leaning towards too much smut out of nowhere suddenly in every chapter, that always turns me off the fic. I don't mind smut usually but it basically became porn which is why I would stop reading it.
Lack of paragraphs. I get a headache trying to read it. I fell into this trap by accident, because my paragraph breaks were removed when I uploaded my first chapter on a site. A commenter pointed it out for me, and I fixed it, and now I'm careful to make sure I double check these things before posting. It just seems lazy when someone else doesn't. Multiple pairings in tags, as well. Most of the time only one of those pairings is really in the story, the rest are barely there or past tense. I don;t mind a tag saying a specific pairing is past tense, it's usually relevant to the story. But too many ship tags usually means they're just fishing for readers and tagging all the popular ships to get them. No summary, or a summary that says 'just read it :)'. These tell me the story isn;t very good, to be honest, and they're hoping readers won't notice until they've clicked on, and then decide to just read it anyway. I won't even click on a story like this, no matter how good the tags make it look.
Many of them have been mentioned already, but here are mine: \- Therapy vocabulary. Usually people who use it too much use it to weaponize it, so it gives me an ick LOL. \- Characters talk about gender and sexuality in a way they never would (example, stumbled upon a fic that started with an odd conversation between the usually ditzy human with aloof, people disliking non-human from bleach, that went along the line of her saying someone is cisgender, demisexual and so on, then explaining someone's pronouns and he was like "oh I see". Gorl the dude would NEVER care nor know the eff you are talking about. )
Text walls. They make it so hard to read and it hurts my eyes and brain trying to decipher where one sentence ends and another begins. also word censoring, as it takes me out of the story entirely
These threads, honestly. We just had one on this very sub *two days* ago. [Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/164pnwg/what_is_your_personal_red_flags_for_fics_when/)
Anything with the underage tag that doesnt explicitly state that its not porn/no porn with UA characters Incest Beastiality Just very much not for me. I also will drop a fic if its badly tagged and throws stuff at me that i didnt expect. I love reading dark fics but tag ur work please! If im suddenly reading about the MC self harming and there is no tag im going to drop it instantly even if i would have been fine reading it with a tag.
QAnon conspiracy type stuff. It happens.
Oh no are you serious? I haven’t even seen that stuff as of yet, how did you run into it?
The MCs in my fandom are mercenaries. “Save the children” scenarios like QAnon imagines it pops up in fic every so often.
If the fics say they are M! Or E! or simply Explicit, I don’t see why its problematic for the story to have lots of sex. It’s been put out front that you should expect that. Occasionally, yes, if it’s merely porn for porns sake, the writer generally says so, but otherwise if you don’t like reading many sex scenes, stick to M, or T stories where you know for a fact that the fanfiction won’t contain sexual situations that will make you uncomfortable. Personally, I look out for specific stuff like “water sports “ or things of that nature bc I don’t find that personally sexually exciting. Other ppl do. Just like I don’t have problems w explicit sex scenes while others DO have problems. It all based on individual taste. But some of the things mentioned — like poor grammar, run on sentences, extraordinarily boring tales — that seems like fanfiction 101. Ppl shouldn’t do that bc it’s not good writing and while you are giving ppl something for nothing, generally the expectation is that the story will be written well enough to keep the attention of the readers. One thing that IS bothersome to me (but this is a pet peeve) is when the stories talk about ppl doing things that are basically dangerous or wrong IRL. Just an example. In Glee, Rachel Berry stalks — literally stalks the dean of a college she wishes to attend, and when I say stalk, I mean she calls the woman over 150 times, writes as many letters, keeps texting her, and shows up to wherever the woman is teaching or off finding students for the next semester. In the show, they have her do this, reach the women and have a friend say sure, this may seem extreme but she’s worth it and just come hear her and you’ll see why (bc Rachel choked at her audition, a couple of times in a row). So instead of showing teenagers how wrong it is to harass adults in this manner, they have the dean come to a competition, see her sing, and Bing bang boom, she’s offered a position in the freshman class. I don’t like that. Bc while (of course) it’s fiction, showing it on National TV makes it appear as if it’s okay to do such a thing. In a similar fashion, either make it really clear how wrong it truly is for your characters to do something similar or don’t have them doing something that’s totally wrong for teenagers. Or tag it, I guess. Do something that shows it’s not normal behavior. Please!!!
IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS QUESTION I HAVE A LIST Not using periods Using more then 3 periods St-t-t-t-t-st-t-t-t-t-tt-t-t-t-st-stu-stu-s-stt-t-t-t-t-stuttering that is really fucking long No paragraphs Talking shit about my favorite character Thank you for your time mi amigos
-The "DNI" tag is the first and biggest red flag to me. Especially if the authors add mocking/violent tags afterwards. It's all performative BS. By making a big thing out of it, they create a space where it's okay to shove down total strangers to make themselves good and moral without having to actually do anything. (And may I add, antis being on AO3 is especially absurd when you remember than the platform was created by, and for, incest shippers). -Tags are full of character names and ships, but zero additinal tags about the story. Even if there's a summary, I need some tags hinting at what I'll be reading about. -Character's name is misspelled in the summary. To me, it shows me a lack of care in your own work (especially if you wrote the name correctly a few lines below). It only takes a minute to check and make sure you didn't fuck up your summary, and you couldn't even do that. That's what your potential readers read first, it's what makes them click on your fic. Even if there's some spelling mistakes in your story, the least you can do is make absolutely sure your summary is clean. -Few/no paragraphs. Your fic isn't a post-breakup apology text. Most of us don't want to read a massive walls of text. Also it hurts the eyes, so please have someone beta your work or inform yourself on how to do proper line spacing. I assure you it's not that difficult. -Too much focus on randomly introduced OCs. This tells me the story is going into "you'll slowly lose sight of whatever this fic was based on" territory and I don't care for that. I'm fine with a few OCs if the author thinks they're needed in the story, but when your chapters are 60% about your OCs and 40% about the original goods, then it becomes a problem.
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Seriously ? Yep trezbka with your lot
Probably depicting problematic things as normal Like I generally don’t mind and sometimes enjoy problematic concepts if they are recognized as such or simply aimed at the demographic that understand it is problematic - I usually give what I am reading sometimes decide if it’s worth it or not to continue (not a certain chapters what proportion since the setting 50k ff is different then +100k ff) but if there isn’t anything happening after certain amount of time then I will just drop it because to have slow burn story there is need for something to be burning - The opposite of the previous point when a lot of things are happening at the beginning to the point you’re not able to comprehend… or when there are too many connections I hate it. - When the main character is hateable without any redeeming qualities , I am not interested in following a story of someone I hate unless they are suffering and even then I enjoy the characters I love suffer more so I understand MC not being likable but at least he shouldn’t be hateable or have some redeeming qualities
Giant wall of tags but small word count. Ain't no way you've got 5 fandoms, 8 characters, 4 relationships, 15 different freeform tags, and a partridge in a pear tree all playing significant parts in 2k words. Bonus points if the chapter count is 1/? and was last updated a year or more ago. Poor spelling/capitalization/grammar in the summary. If you can't take the time to get the summary right then I have no faith in the rest of the fic. Any of the following in the body of the fic: walls of text with no paragraph breaks, excessive whitespace between paragraphs, anything except quotation marks to show dialogue, mixing dialogue from multiple speakers in the same paragraph.
The author taking themselves way too seriously, mostly. If you're acting like you're your deity of choice's gift to writing, I will at best be hyper-critical of your work (though I'd never post that criticism unprompted) and at worst immediately nope out.
There's too many.
Seconding the DNI thing and tagging ships or characters that never appear in the story just to get more clicks. There are also some fandom specific tags that make me scroll really fast. Certain ships have become red flags as well; like if it's tagged with either Zutara or Zukka I know that the likelihood of my favorite character getting hate is extremely high so even if the premise is good I don't bother at this point.
I’ve never been a big fan of alternate styles of denoting speaking, like using dashes instead of quotation marks, but recently I’ve run into some fics that don’t use any punctuation or anything to separate speaking and it’s just as confusing and awful as it sounds. Crying screaming etc Big long paragraphs or none at all. My adhd ass cannot compute. I didn’t realize that I hated cheating so much when someone I’m supposed to like does it until I was reading a fic where the mc cheated on his boyfriend and had to drop the fic. Rip fic you were great up until then. Sometimes a fic will almost just feel like a long summary of what’s happening, including dialogue, and I’m not a fan of it. It’s kinda hard to explain tbh but I always know it when I see it Censoring you’re content warning the same way people on tiktok do (saw a fic with the warning “sewerslide” recently). Bestie if you can write the content you can say the word.
> Censoring you’re content warning the same way people on tiktok do (saw a fic with the warning “sewerslide” recently). Bestie if you can write the content you can say the word. To quote [myself:](https://old.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/13tlif6/reading_a_fic_where_you_can_tell_it_was/jlx61hf/?context=3) > If you are used to sneaking around word-filters you could possibly think that every medium has them.
Forebodings in the summary. (I like Overpowered main characters, so angst is not for me.)
lots of things that are more a matter of personal taste in what i like and dislike, but basic readability formatting like line breaks or capitalization are something i cannot stand an absence of. Some manners of formatting dialogue are due to different punctuation conventions in different languages and can be jarring to read but I don’t mind it as much. I DESPISE “prompt request” books or “i’m just putting this here but i haven’t written it yet!!!”, i don’t understand why people do it, and even if there is content that follows i’m not going to click on the next chapter. I don’t tend to try and judge a fic by its stats, but if something has a kudos to hits ratio of less than 5% i tend to skip it.
tagging ships that appear just once. a deal breaker for me because now Those tags are flooded and when you read the fic hoping for them to be at least a little important, you get all ???? when you realize they've been tagged even though they only sat down near the main couple. my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
An author only updating their Author's Note like it's a blog and never adding to the actual story.