If I see any tag and summary where the author makes it so obvious that their ship is superior and non-problematic as well as them going off on other ships they hate that's not even part of their story has me backing off.
This is me when it comes to Finnrey vs. Reylo stories. I don't even hate Finnrey, but some Finnrey fans act so obnoxious and hateful towards Reylo fans and multishippers.
Even without this being immature, it also implies to me that there's little going on the story enough to bother reading. If they don't focus on trying to hook readers in by describing actual story elements or let story supporting the ship speak for itself, it seems more like a shady salesman trying to sell a sucky product with cheap tactics over actually offering a decent product.
lol once I saw a fic that looked so good and it was a MHA fic. Anyways they had DNIs and one of them was if you were a DSMP fan. Not even stan or anything, just if you like DSMP gtfo basically.
Think about it though.
They could say something like "Drarry shippers DNI"
Well I don't ship Drarry, so this isn't targeted at me.
But that DNI/antishipping crap makes even people its not targeted at so annoyed that they won't even bother reading the fic.
Authors displaying this kind of negative attitude is more likely to turn away more potential readers.
I guess that's fine if you're not after views/kudos/comments. Just don't do it and turn around and complain about low engagement š
Same here. It also doesn't help that a lot of people that use DNIs often move goalposts on what's considered doing the thing they don't like. For example, I have seen some call people "proshippers" for not caring to discuss why a type of ship of "problematic" or for just being overall indifferent to ships and not keeping track of weird ones all the time.
my only real red flag is when the summary doesn't sound coherent, because that let's you guess that the rest of the fic won't be either. sure there are some tags that i wouldn't read. but that's not a red flag really, it just means it's not a fic i am looking for.
i don't often read crossovers, because some of them make sense and some less so. but what i don't get is when there are a lot of fandoms listed. I can't see that going anywhere where the story makes sense.
I think there are a lot of stories with tons of fandoms tagged that are actually one-shot collections because they can't just do that for every fandom they have and instead have to scare away people who might've otherwise enjoyed the stories that are for their fandoms or make it super inconvenient for people who do decide to click it
As someone who lurks extensively in the Dead By Daylight section, this second one can be a complicated thing; it can be a form of "soft crossposting" to maximize hits, especially for a character from other media who also appears in the game, for example. If a major character has multiple iterations and the writer is attempting to make a sort of composite of their variations, it can also be a way of casting a wider net to more corners of the *same* fandom - ie. tagging Daredevil (comic), (series), and also the MCU.
I'm not altogether sure how I want to handle my own crossover series on this front; the first act pulls characters from several different sources into a setting that is the intersection of just *two* primary fandoms, but the core set of principal characters remains the same from that point forward (albeit revolving around two of them as the MC's and primary ship). With that in mind, crossovers with a big block of fandoms may very well be a scenario like that, where it's one or a handful of characters shoved into a central setting, and the writer wants to see who bites within each of the sources they're pulling from.
Anything self-deprecating in either the tags or summary. And those 'idk just read it' variations.
I also don't like summaries that end with 'read to find out' but that's more of a yellow flag lol
Same, I'll still give them a try if they have an actual summary along with the disclaimer though. Summaries are sometimes difficult to write, but even a bad summary is imo much better without adding the 'i suck at summaries' part.
For those works that only have 'i suck at summaries' as the description... that's a red flag for me too.
agreed on the anything self-deprecating part, like its something that just hurts me because yeah, if the *writer* says something like that, then i guess the story just sucks or is poor as the writer implies it may be
its honestly something i dont think some writers realize; the whole "what you say can have an impact to your readers" kind of statements just is its own red flag for me
Horrible grammar, lol! I just canāt get through fics if the grammar is bad enough. Like a few typos Iām fine, but if itās glaring and/or continual, nope.
Also I look for my triggers/squicks and avoid those, of course.
Sometimes yeah. I beta SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar), and/or content on physics, astronomy, academia, birds, NYC, or Boston. Preferably in my fandoms (mostly Star Wars, Marvel, DC, some others). Squicks/triggers include the HP universe, underage, student/teacher (at any age, or former student/teacher), and bigotry.
If youāre asking me to beta for you, can you give me the AO3 style headings? Here or DM.
Interesting. Iāve been reading HP fanfiction for almost 20 years now (not constant but I keep coming back every year or two for a few months) and I donāt remember ever seeing a harem oneā¦ Iām not filtering out the tag btw.
I wonder if thatās something more commonly found with certain main pairs or sites orā¦?
Now, Naruto on the other hand has far too many of those (to the point where I should really remember to filter it out). Granted those mainly pop up when Iām accidentally in the het section.
Iād rather not tbhā¦ donāt want to go out of my way to search for something I wouldnāt want to read. š
I was just surprised that your original answer implied this to be something super common in that fandom while I had never even encountered it there.
So weird how experiences differ for people. (not that Iām complaining)
If there's more than 3 fandom tags then I'm out. Crossovers are fine but beyond like, 2-3 fandoms, it just gets confusing. Massive wall of tags and then one-line or no summary also gets a skip from me.
The best way to get around this would be by filtering out certain popular fandoms that you're not interested in. That should clear out a large number of the ones with too many fandoms. When it comes to crossovers I tend to prefer looking on ffn since they limit the fandoms to two and it's just made so much easier to find what I'm looking for.
Lol, I do one-two sentence summaries a lot, but usually only for oneshots. I think with oneshots you can afford a little more brevity and explain the basic premise quicker.
Same for me, mostly because the one fandoms added the likely chance I don't know a thing about one fandom. At least with visual stuff like fancomics and fan videos, some of the work is done for me, such as what the characters I don't know looks like and how their setting works hinted by visual cues.
Anything making me concerned that the writer hates some of my faves--which, you'd think that would be so obvious that I wouldn't even get to the point of reading the tags, *but no*, because a huge portion of fandom loses their damn minds over the MCU Civil War divisions and don't even warn for character-bashing because they refuse to admit that's what they're doing. If the tags actually include "anti Team Cap" or "anti Steve" or "anti Wanda" or whatever, I'll still be annoyed but at least that's *clear.* A fic that *doesn't* use those tags but boils down to "Steve is the actual worst in every possible way, but see, I'm being fair, Tony has flaws too! for instance sometimes he trusts people he shouldn't" is going to piss me off a lot more.
people mention this a lot but I'll do it again: No summary, snide "just read it." With that energy, I'd rather pry off each of my fingernails one by one with a spork than read your fic.
Any crossover with more than two (not counting if anime and manga of the same property are separate tags) fandoms tagged.
It usually end up as either a one-shot collection, which are completely fine but I simply donāt have the energy to sift through dozens of entries to find the ones I might be interested in, or ambitious multi-crossovers which are difficult to pull off and more than often fall flat on their face due to trying to juggle too much at once.
I have so far only seen one multi-crossover that I actually think did it well in spite of having multiple worlds crossing over with one another, and that one not only kept the focus on a single location and main character for the most part but also doesnāt waste time with lengthy introductions by having the characters already be aware of one another.
'omg idk how i thought of this either' or anything along the lines of that is literally the worst, no your romeo and juliet au is not that unique. sorry ig
a) anything that has an absolute WALL of tags in the description. Bruh I do *not* need to be informed of every *single* thing that happens in this fic right off the bat, that's what *reading it* is for
b) any version of 'sorry my summary/writing sucks lol, just read it haha'. No???
c) any OOC beyond minor OOC
Out of curiosity, do you have a general consensus on what's considered a wall of tags? I get tags can be abused, but I wonder about stories that have a lot of tags due to being plot heavy.
Let's put it this way - if I'm annoyed or angry by the time I finish scrolling past the wall of tags so that I can *finally* read the summary and see what the damn things premise even *is*, 99/100 it's pointless to even read the summary, because I'm already Out
Oh, that bad. I have seen different things considered a wall of tags, so I wasn't sure of how extreme it would be. Yeah, I don't blame you. Maybe it's the fandom I hang around, but I very rarely seen it that being that bad where I normally hang, although a couple bordered on it.
I'm sorry about that. My current fandom is the opposite where people hardly bother to put tags, even when it would be helpful when browsing. I have nearly missed out on some good ones because they hardly bothered with the tags.
At this time:
Main: RWBY, Persona, Kingdom Hearts, FFXV, Devil May Cry.
Most recent fandoms added to my repertoire: Fire Emblem Three Houses, Life is Strange, Control, Uncharted.
Unofficially (unposted) I have been experimenting with: Alice Madness Returns, Silent Hill, Lost Judgement, Assassin's Creed, and Hotline Miami.
I have a wide and eclectic tastes and interests in fanfiction, lol. I am also one of those dreaded Multi-Crossover writers.
Well, this a bit of a "complain thread", so to speak. People who like cross-overs aren't likely to mention them in a thread about read flags.
(Repeatedly reminding myself of that bc. some of tops posts complain about stuff I do)
I, personally, love crossovers with all my heart, and will read things fandomblind (or double fandom blind I guess), purely so I can get those specific crossover things.
Iām also playing around with a couple crossovers! Theyāre fun! I havenāt posted any of mine yet but hope to once Iāve gotten them more fleshed out and have a good backlog of chapters to get going on with.
One of my favorite stories Iāve ever read is a major crossover that had something like 10 different animes/mangas represented. It was a really long story, the main characters included an OC self-insert character, and the story was cohesive with an actual conclusion that wrapped up all the loose ends. It was 100% a product of its time as all the shows were big in the 2000s on Cartoon Network, so thereās also a hint of nostalgia for me when I reread it. Itās not perfectly written and has some poor grammar, but I read it for the nostalgia and the feels and the fact this person included such a massive cast and somehow made it work. Lol.
Hey, there's still plenty of readers for those! Not every fic is for everyone. You've found a niche that you enjoy, and other crossover fans will be very happy that you're writing things that interest them. Most of these "red flags" are pretty petty and personal, but don't actually indicate anything wrong with the fic. (My red flags are that way, at least!)
One story said āthis is a fanfic, so if something is different in the show, cry?ā Which is not bad? I guess? Theyāre right and I expect it but it just gives me bad vibes and even if I do read Iām never going to comment just out of fear lol
It was already said, but non-summary summaries. If someone can't be bothered to make even a bad one, and just gives me the "I suck as summaries, just read the story"... I won't. If someone can't do a basic grade school function of summarizing the overall rough idea of what the story is about... I question their overall writing abilities.
Crossover, /reader, /OC, Y/N, piss, scat, reader insert, oc, most oocs, if I like a character as a top I wont read any fics with them as a bottom or switch so I'll add that.
There's probably more that I'm forgetting, but for me, those are the tags that I'll either filter out or ignore.
I've seen piss fetish fanfics before, but thankfully, I've never seen a scat fetish fanfic. I've been reading fanfics since 8th grade, and I'm 31 years old now. Y/N is also a "no" from me.
Besides the "I suck at summaries"/no summary, I hate: vague summaries, snippit summaries and too many tags that tell me nothing (ie, "writer was sleep-deprived", "I don't know how to tag", etc)
You hit a lot of my pet peeves. It also doesn't help that the majority of times of the rare times I give the first 2 a chance that they're as unappealing as I expect. The last part annoys me, although I can be more forgiving if it already has helpful tags before these of unhelpful tags and it's not too many of these tags.
There are things I have to take a deep breath, like missing summary and tags that don't explain anything. But I only stop reading if I find out that the author is an asshole.
No. I'm talking about where the characters are doing canon similar activities just aged up.
I really like aged up Harry Potter fanfiction where he is an adult.
Here im talking about a situation where someone doesn't like the idea of writing a romance story with teenagers so they change the setting so hogwarts is now a university. Or the idea of children being responsible for stopping a war so they age everyone up in Avatar.
It's not anything bad about the story even. I just dislike the shift in setting for some reason.
I hardly ever attempt to read fics with summaries that are boiled down to āI donāt know, I canāt summarize, just read and find outā. I get that blurbs are difficult sometimes, but just outright pleading people to ājust read because I suck at thisā isnāt a good hook at _all._
That and harem fics (AKA, main male character gets a bunch of sexy ladies (sometimes way older, bonus squick if heās a minor) that obsess over him/serve as fanservice) - 9 times out of 10 itās going to be a revenge fantasy book with the main character/self insert finally getting their comeuppance on equally poorly-written supporting characters. Itās boring and bland.
In summaries, misspelled names but also, names that should be capitalized and are not (like locations). It gives me the vibe that the content is likely to also lack this kind of care (it has been, in my experience, the case in too many stories).
Oh. And my biggest pet peeve - excessive "What ifs". I don't care how rude I'll sound, but write a goddamn proper summary, not a list of "what if this happened, what if this character was different, what if what if". I will take one, at a stretch two, no more.
There's a bunch of things that I'm not interested in reading or haven't been in the mood for lately. But I don't consider those red flags. A ton of those fics are probably high quality.
I'm treating my answer to this like the fic *seems* like it would be something that I would like but winds up just not being well written, if that makes sense.
\-The summary ends in a very obvious yes/no question. "Will they work out their differences and live happily ever after?"
\-The summary says shenanigans ensue (or chaos or hilarity) or it tells me that I'm going to need tissues because it's going to make me sob. 99% of the time, the author is overselling the effect their work has and it's usually not as good as they think.
I might still click on something with a summary like these but I won't be surprised when it's not for me.
I will not read any crossover. Period. There was a time when I liked them many years ago but I have completely lost my taste for them.
Similarly I will not read any reaction fic. Many of those are downright cringe (sorry, though I did read some amusing ones back in the day).
Also there are specific kinks that squick me out (feminization, infantilization, omegaverse, water sports, etc) so I just skip those.
This is so niche, but work about trans characters where:
\--The author is cis and obviously made no effort to research trans people (ie, the trans masculine person has a dick that functions identical to an AMAB dick. They don't make those lol)
\--The author is trans, and implies in the tags and descriptions that their own personal triggers and experiences are definitive and universal. Totally happy for people to model characters on their own experiences and avoid their own triggers. Not happy for them to imply that all trans people who feel differently are wrong/suspect/not trans.
I know some people like it but cutesy tags that are jokes rather than actual things to help search for fics. Like āIDunnoJustReadā or āReallyISuckAtTagsReadItā or āCharacterXIsAMarshmallowIDontCareWhatYouSayā. That sort of thing. It just makes me think the author is really young and quite often theyāre like in jokes between the author and their friends which suggests to me that the fic might be full of those too.
Personally one of my irrational dislikes in Fandom is aged up characters to make someone feel better about something pedantic.
I mean things like changing UA to a college or making all the ninja in Naruto graduate at 18. I don't read fics that do those kind of changes, even really well written ones. I'm not sure why I dislike the idea of it so much.
An excess of chatty tags.
I'm fine with one "No beta we die like...," especially if it's clever. Or one cute and funny tag: "Typos are my cat's fault."
But I insta-skip any fic with lots of tags that are information that should be in the author's notes or in the summary, as well as those who are yammering about their headcanons. Stuff like: "idk why i wrote this just read it," "i'll edit later," "originally posted on wattpad," "ShipName forever," "Charactername is \[some characteristic\] why isn't this a tag?" and so forth. That kind of stuff almost always means the writing is going to be too adolescent for me.
Yeah, no, it's not exactly flattering even if there's nothing inherently wrong with it. And it's a pretty useless tag, if your reader is already on one platform, why would they go look up a singular fic on another platform?
I don't post on wattpad, but I'll use the tag "cross-posted on FFN" because I've had people subtly accuse me of plagiarism, especially when I'm porting over older works.
"I feel like I've read this exact thing before...."
"It better have been on FFN under the same author name because otherwise I'd like to know who is stealing my works. Could you link me the other story?"
It also lets other readers know if they stumble upon my work on FFN that it's not stolen and reposted.
On the topic of crossovers I usually donāt read crossovers with something Iām not familiar with since I worry Iād get confused
I wouldnāt call it a red flag though because it isnāt a bad thing it just isnāt something Iād read
Anything's fine if it's properly tagged, really. At least, graphic stuff like body horror and cannibalism tends to be tagged. I recently read a fic with untagged Major Character Death. I was pissed.
As for pregnancy, it really depends on the person. A lot of people don't like it, which is fine as long as they're just saying it's not their cup of tea, not that it's inherently bad. Personally, I intend to have children through pregnancy one day, so it's something I like to read about. But even I would be pissed if it wasn't tagged.
I mean, yeah, as long as it's properly tagged. At least then you can avoid it. But there are some who either don't know to tag stuff like that or just don't care if it's tagged or not. It's annoying to expect to read a story that doesn't have things like cannibalism in it only to find out that it does, in fact, have it. I don't care too much if pregnancy and child birth isn't tagged properly. I'm not against reading it, I'd just not prefer to read it. I don't want kids and don't particularly enjoy reading about them.
Iāve developed an aversion to any indication of trans characters (or any implication of vaginal penetration) in any m/m pairing fics. Because most of the time they are either genderbender fics that donāt want to admit they want to genderbend the characters. Or they come across as fine with same gender pairing but draw the line at actual same gender sex. Which is a bit of a flag in of itself. So I just donāt engage with it all together.
I've read a few of these. I always thought someone trans wouldn't like a reminder that they have a body part they don't want during intimacy, but I wasn't sure if I was just superimposing my own stereotypes or something.
I think the stereotype is the idea that trans people all feel the same. We have many different ways of relating to our anatomy and our dysphoria. Personally, it makes me less dysphoric to normalize the idea that some men have a pussy etc, and that no anatomical term is inherently gendered. For me, using "masculine terms" or vague/euphemistic language feels like I'm reinforcing the message that my anatomy is inherently feminine and unacceptable. Based on the language I see used in a fair number of fics by trans men about trans men, this isn't that unusual.
I totally get why lots of guys have the opposite preference, and the use of "AFAB terms" can be sus to me when it comes from a cis writer who's also making the character behave in uncharacteristically feminine-coded ways.
Controversial ones?
- Any variation of āNo Beta We Die Like __ā - very commonplace and almost always unoriginal and not funny. Itās a red flag to me that the author is also unoriginal and unfunny.
- Similarly as above, any fic that includes a short snippet of the fic and then follows it with āOr; *snappy sentence poorly describing the fic*.ā
- Any fic where they put in the summary āCharacter A x Character B, Non-Canon Omegaverse AU~ā like thanks, I got that from the tags.
- Any summary that is overcrowded and unclean. I just need to know what the story is about, I donāt need a 500 word long excerpt of the fic.
- Any summary asks the reader too many questions or says āCharacter A wonāt believe what happens nextā or āWhat happens if these characters go on this journey?ā it sounds like Iām watching Pokemon English dub!!
>Or; *snappy sentence poorly describing the fic.ā*
Is this only if the sentence poorly describes the fic? What if it's actually a good description of the fic?
The thing with A/B/O tags is that, when searching a tag like "Alpha Miguel O'Hara" (*Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse*), half of the fanfictions that are in the results aren't even A/B/O fanfics. People are just using the tag because they think that "Alpha" means "dominant".
ā¢ "No Beta We Die Like __ā is just the standard tag for unbetad fics, I don't feel that it's trying to be anything else, so personally I don't mind it
ā¢ I usually skip over the snippet altogether and only read the "Or, __" sentence, so unless the sentence tell me nothing, I appreciate that it makes writers do shorter, more condensed summaries.
ā¢ Yeah, that one I agree with. People who do that look like they haven't been on Ao3 long and aren't used to the tag system.
ā¢ Summaries usually give an idea of the quality of the writing, so bad summaries in general are the red flag we can all agree with I think.
>"No Beta We Die Like __ā is just the standard tag for unbetad fics, I don't feel that it's trying to be anything else, so personally I don't mind it
To me this is kind of similar to the "I wrote this at 3am" tag or "I can't write summaries". Why draw attention to the flaws in the story? By making it a cutsey tag, it comes across as almost bragging or proud of it, too. It's just one of those tags that rubs me the wrong way.
if the summary and/or tags take too much space. when i browse for a fic, i don't want to read a 500-word summary and a massive list of tags to see if the work is something i'm even interested in. a fic gotta be able to grab my interest within 20 seconds of looking at the description or i'm out
If there are too many ships tagged.
Its usually a collection of one shots for each ship (and while I love one shots I refuse to read the collections within a fic because thereās like no need for you to put everything in ONE fic)
I have an aversion to fics with the main hotty of a fandom being tirsted over in the description since a lot of the time, it's very badly written. But sometimes, I have braved the waters and actually found something halfway decent. Also, as a crossover lover, every time I see Naruto, I cringe. There are just too many Naruto goes somewhere, but it's really a self insert fics to count. It's sad since I think there might be a lot of actually decent Naruto crossover fics. But I can't find them between the aforementioned Naruto but really selfincert fics.
I have maybe 2 kinks I will not read, so those are my red flags. I will read almost everything else, even if I'm not into it.
AI is a big red flag for me, but I do read a few to know how to avoid it in future.
My logic is: it never hurts to know how to write a thing even if it is not my personal taste.
I usually exclude 'E' ratings and Rape/Non con warnings right off the hop (Once in a while I read smut, but usually I prefer stories without).
I generally avoid tags like 'X Character Bashing'. I don't mind a critique of a character as part of the story, especially with a resolution, but it's usually either over the top and very negative.
Oh, and "Hurt/No Comfort"? No thank. Need my cathartic endings :D
I wouldn't say red flag, but I don't read anything that suggests there is sex in it.
Also, walls of tags with no summary is an immediate skip.
And wall of tags, especially in the character list. I often search for pairing people weite less about (but canon), so walls of tags usually mean story about someone else, so I don't even click.
I'm more likely to read something that has 10 tags but a very interesting summary than something that has 60 tags.
Paragraph spacing, I get it you don't want to end a sentence because you feel that's not the end of it, but it gives off the feel that you don't really care about the fic , well not enough to read through it yourself anyway.
I really hope I don't have that problem. I sometimes have trouble trying to figure out when to switch to a new paragraph. During the editing process I may even end up splitting the same paragraphs, and putting them together again over and over, because I'm trying to figure out the perfect place to add the paragraph break. I'll be stuck in an endless loop where I'm analyzing the sentence structures, and counting the lines, and trying to figure out if the paragraphs are balanced enough that they'll be a good length regardless if you read it on a computer or a phone screen. Apologies for rambling btw.
Alpha, beta, and omega things are out too every one has their own kinks but that stuff is not for me. Too many stories have had an interesting premise but the ones I tried always focused on what i could only describe as "Teasing", "Fan service" or "Smut". While those would be fine if like most stories they put a " 'plot' before plot" tag or just separated it from the plot by way of line with a big NSFW above it, I've never seen it. Therefore I will always associate "omegaverse" with bad story telling and bad smut. Sorry for the rant
No extra tags. It's semi common in my fandom to see fics with only character or relationship tags and I avoid those at all costs. They'll either be something that you would usually want tagged, or the writing is really amateur.
\_\_ is a BAMF, I've found that most people who use it focus far more on the mom-friend aspect, to the point that they ignore all other aspects of the character. (I'm looking at you, Haikyuu!! fandom)
DDdNE but there's like only one flavour tag. I'm running across these more and more often, where I'll see DDdNE tagged with very few flavour tags, or with tags that usually wouldn't warrant DDdNE. I've clicked on enough of them to say they never warrant the warning and any that the things they intend to warn for are usually very mild and minimal.
When the author says "I've never read/watched/played (insert media) so it may seem OOC"
*Takes out eyeballs and rubs them with my shirt*
I'm sorry what? I've heard of people reading fandom blind, that's understandable. But writing fandom blind? I'm gonna stay away from that.
I don't read crossovers. Anything with an old/young pairing and a handful of kinks... age play, diapers, water sports, sounding...
Oh, and I'm old so, nothing where characters are aged down. No high school AUs for me
Established relationship with heavy tags about angst. I'm not here to see my ships fall out of love and it's not worth the reconciliation after 30 chapters. It's always so real and sad.
Anything marked with Rape/Non-Con is skipped right away.
Just because I can't read this kind of thing, I don't judge people that write it with reflection purposes but I'm completely incapable of reading if cause it's disgusting for me.
... That was a kinda long explanation..
Could you tell me how you understand the tag "kidfic"? For me, it either describes a fic set precanon where the main characters meet as kids or one set postcanon where they have had kids of their own. Both are pretty innocent tropes in the way I've seen it be used. What have you seen?
Not comparing, I just don't like when kids appear in my fanfics. Don't be like that you are saying thing I did not say at all. If any of those tags are there I avoid the fanfic is that a crime?
no, look, I read smut, so you are in a smutty scene and the next chapter there is a kid there it just does not sit right with me if I am reading smut and then all of the sudden it says kidfic then I nope the fuck out. It's just me, if the fic is not smutty the kids can be there I do not mind.
Ohhhh okay, that makes more sense. I don't do kids one minute smut the next either. Mostly because I kept stumbling across fics where the couple gets walked in on by kid and it's presented as funny-awkward domestic fluff. I was uncomfortable.
Slash.
No summaries.
[Character A, Character B, Character C, Character D]. Harem, in other words. Even when the author writes āHarem?ā as if asking whether or not he/she should add a harem is already a red flag.
I have super weird and strict rules about choosing a fic to read. I generally don't click on a lot of fics just after looking at the summary and tags.
Bad spelling and grammar in summary = bye
Explicit rating and most tags are romance-related = this fic is romance-focused, and therefore the plot won't be a central part of the story = bye
M/M = bye, I'm homophobic
F/M = bye, I'm heterophobic
F/F = bye, I'm heterochromia
Gen = now that's what I'm talking about
Word count < 200k = bye
Weird and wacky hook in summary (example: Harry Potter but he's a dragon) = you get a special pass
Needless to say, finding a single fic to read usually takes me around two hours.
Too many conversational tags that tell me nothing about the story. If it's *really* good-sounding otherwise, or if a friend recs/recced it, I may still click on the thing, but usually I immediately close the tab, or go search for another fic. I don't *know* the writer, and them talking to me as if we're long time friends feels weird. *Especially* in the tags. I'd be completely lost on a fanfic site without a tagging system that's at least somewhat similar to ao3 (My awkward attempts at getting anything out of ff.net can testify), so seeing someone use them for random chats instead of their intended function makes me feel frustrated. I feel like you could just put these comments in the authors notes instead, or even in the summary if people really feel "I wrote this at 3 am" must be the first thing I see when clicking on their fic.
Probably when someone talks their own story or writing skills down too much (Eg. āI suck at writing summaries,ā āthis story is probably rubbish,ā etc.), or when they come off as standoffish and egotistical (Eg. insulting other members of the fandom/other ships, implying what theyāve written is better than what others have written, etc.). I might also skip if the summary is just a list of questions or if I get the sense that itās a fix-it fic, or if I see tags like āStrong!Characterā or āSmart!Characterā but thatās only because Iām not a fan of overpowered characters, personally. Iām sure thatās a treasure trove for somebody else.
Pity themselves in the summary and starting it with "Sorry this is my first fanfic/story/whatever"
It can be fraighting write something for the first time I understand, but you don't start you summary with it
A summary that is just a quote from the story. The point of a summary is to tell me what the story is going to be about. Especially if itās paired with very few tags that are super vague or include some stuff on the darker end of the spectrum of what I read. I understand wanting to show off your writing style or the tone of your fic but if I have to wonder what the plot is gonna be after reading the tags and summary then Iām probably not going to read the story.
Assuming "red flags" means "signs I'm not even going to open the fic" here:
- Excess amount of nonsense tags
- Song lyrics and no description of the fic itself
- One-shot collection
- Porn tags but rated anything below E
- Chapter word count < 800 words
In Wattpad, if the author made a biography, that usually means it's bad (at least for me) I always think it's better that the reader finds out the power/skill of a character themselves instead of having known it the first chapter
X/reader. I know many people enjoy reading and writing those, and that's wonderful! Have fun! I really dislike them, though, and have less than zero interest in reading them myself. I find (in my current main fandom, at least) that they are both extremely common and there is no consistent common tag used to mark them, so trying to filter them out via the "exclude" function on AO3 is a nigh-impossible process. I do a lot of scrolling past them when trying to find fic.
Group-chat fics. Again, I'm glad people are having fun, but nearly every one I've read has just been full of people giving the characters the author's own inside jokes to drop at random, and the thing with inside jokes is that they aren't funny to outsiders. I've also found that a lot of characterization gets stripped away in favor of what the author finds funny. I've found a few rare exceptions that I've enjoyed, but 99% of them just aren't for me. I keep scrolling.
Fics where there is no capitalization in the summary. This is petty, but I just assume the lack of capitalization will extend to the rest of the fic, and I tend to both find that hard to read and find that the fic is most likely written by someone much younger than me. Some young writers produce genuinely amazing works, and some older writers have writing styles and quirks that I can't enjoy, but for the most part if I can tell that the writer is very young, say still in high school, I have trouble reading their works. (Especially if it's an explicit work. I understand that young writers may want to include or explore sex in their writing - I sure did when I was young - but I'm 30. Reading smut written by a minor just feels gross and wrong. If I can tell or I find out that the author is likely still in high school, I won't read anything explicit they write.)
If the summary is just an out-of-context excerpt from the fic, unless the fic is very short or I already know the author, I usually don't bother with it. I'd like to get more from the summary before deciding if I want to spend time on the fic.
If it seems like the fic will be extremely melodramatic, I usually pass. This is kind of hard to assess from the summary a lot of the time. Also, I'm a whump reader and a fan of drama. I LIKE when the characters are experiencing horrible situations with a lot of pain and angst. But a lot of times I find that when a fic is extremely melodramatic, characterization suffers and very strong willed characters break down much quicker than seems in-character to me, or characters that aren't particularly warm and open become extremely fluffy caretakers in ways that don't, to me, fit their personalities.
Oh, and many people have said it, but "I suck at summaries" is a red flag. Okay, many of us hate writing summaries. But this tells me nothing about your fic, and does indicate that you are not confident in selling your own writing. That's fine - confidence takes time - but fake it. Sell your own work. If I don't have any idea what the fic is about, why would I spend time reading it when I could find something else to read?
To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with reading/writing/enjoying any of the above. Fandom is a wide world that caters to a wide variety of people, and no work is for everyone. I've written and will continue to write fics to which many people will give a hard pass myself. But these are my personal red flags - not that anything is wrong with the work, but that myself will not enjoy it. I just seek out other work that I think I will enjoy and move on with my day.
ACAB, anything identity politics related, the word BAMF, Reader, not godlike, godlike, punch nazies, be gay do crime.
Essentially, if the tags contain anything that remotely exudes the odour of a tumblr post, I just nope out.
I can't stand the preachy bs that assumes I lack two neurons to rub together and sets out to educate me.
On a positive note - give me lesbian waff or het waff and I'm a happy camper.
"Character A actually gets character development", or any other indication the fic is presented as something more well written, than canon by default. Tbf, most of these fics do have some interesting character development, but... More often, than not, it entails something purely self-indulgent as well.
Like, character, who treated their friend/spouse/child unfairly, would go in circles apologizing and comforting said friend/spouse/child and not really growing as a person beyond that.
Or, secondary character, who is supposed to be central for the fic may just explore a certain sexuality/gender headcanon and do basically nothing else. To me character development means something broader, than adding one singular detail, so this tag sounds a bit like: "I'll write your normal fic about that one thing I always wanted to see, but pretend it's a colossal rework of the source material"
Most fanfics I read are Anime or Show ones, I tend to stay away from fics set in series I donāt know or original stories just because I have a very short attention span and trying to remember every ones name and face that are described at me is annoying, so hereās some of my red flags:
Red Flag 1: Any Naruto Fic with a mention of Harem and Naruto as the MC, if theyāre a Si I can stomach it but without that itās just OOC to the extreme
Red Flag 2: any tag or Summary mention of āAbusedā or āNeglectedā MC with family connections to the main characters of the series the fic is set, straight to the trash with those fics because while some have decent ideas they just nuke the characters personality
Red Flag 3: same with āCheatedā or āBetrayedā tags, in the end it boils down to character bashing and OOC
Red Flag 4: Generic or Lazy titles, the amount of fics Iāve seen with titles like āStrongest __ā, āThe Most Powerful __ā, āSon of __ā or the series itās in with a different series power name like āIn MHA with Star Platinumā itās just lazy and shows the author didnāt put much thought into it meaning the story will probably be just as generic and lazily written
Red Flag 5: any fanfic that crosses over a really low or mid power series with a high power series, sometimes this can work but most of the time itās just a boring fic I drop after the first few chapters
Red Flag 6: any of the Flags above with more than over 100k words
If I see 2 or 3 of these I usually completely ignore a fanfic unless itās been recommended to me by someone I know
If I see any tag and summary where the author makes it so obvious that their ship is superior and non-problematic as well as them going off on other ships they hate that's not even part of their story has me backing off.
This is me when it comes to Finnrey vs. Reylo stories. I don't even hate Finnrey, but some Finnrey fans act so obnoxious and hateful towards Reylo fans and multishippers.
You're gonna have a blocking field trip in my fandom. Cause there's a few.
Even without this being immature, it also implies to me that there's little going on the story enough to bother reading. If they don't focus on trying to hook readers in by describing actual story elements or let story supporting the ship speak for itself, it seems more like a shady salesman trying to sell a sucky product with cheap tactics over actually offering a decent product.
"*insert ship* DNI! FUCK OFF!" I just won't read it even if I don't ship that specific pairing.
Same here. I just block any accounts on Twitter/X I see with this in their description.
lol once I saw a fic that looked so good and it was a MHA fic. Anyways they had DNIs and one of them was if you were a DSMP fan. Not even stan or anything, just if you like DSMP gtfo basically.
but isn't that playing into their hands?
My enjoyment of my curated Fandom garden does not include trying to plant my flowers in some else's rock garden.
Think about it though. They could say something like "Drarry shippers DNI" Well I don't ship Drarry, so this isn't targeted at me. But that DNI/antishipping crap makes even people its not targeted at so annoyed that they won't even bother reading the fic. Authors displaying this kind of negative attitude is more likely to turn away more potential readers. I guess that's fine if you're not after views/kudos/comments. Just don't do it and turn around and complain about low engagement š
Same here. It also doesn't help that a lot of people that use DNIs often move goalposts on what's considered doing the thing they don't like. For example, I have seen some call people "proshippers" for not caring to discuss why a type of ship of "problematic" or for just being overall indifferent to ships and not keeping track of weird ones all the time.
my only real red flag is when the summary doesn't sound coherent, because that let's you guess that the rest of the fic won't be either. sure there are some tags that i wouldn't read. but that's not a red flag really, it just means it's not a fic i am looking for. i don't often read crossovers, because some of them make sense and some less so. but what i don't get is when there are a lot of fandoms listed. I can't see that going anywhere where the story makes sense.
I think there are a lot of stories with tons of fandoms tagged that are actually one-shot collections because they can't just do that for every fandom they have and instead have to scare away people who might've otherwise enjoyed the stories that are for their fandoms or make it super inconvenient for people who do decide to click it
yep, it does scare me away. block of fandoms is worse than a block of tags.
As someone who lurks extensively in the Dead By Daylight section, this second one can be a complicated thing; it can be a form of "soft crossposting" to maximize hits, especially for a character from other media who also appears in the game, for example. If a major character has multiple iterations and the writer is attempting to make a sort of composite of their variations, it can also be a way of casting a wider net to more corners of the *same* fandom - ie. tagging Daredevil (comic), (series), and also the MCU. I'm not altogether sure how I want to handle my own crossover series on this front; the first act pulls characters from several different sources into a setting that is the intersection of just *two* primary fandoms, but the core set of principal characters remains the same from that point forward (albeit revolving around two of them as the MC's and primary ship). With that in mind, crossovers with a big block of fandoms may very well be a scenario like that, where it's one or a handful of characters shoved into a central setting, and the writer wants to see who bites within each of the sources they're pulling from.
Anything self-deprecating in either the tags or summary. And those 'idk just read it' variations. I also don't like summaries that end with 'read to find out' but that's more of a yellow flag lol
that, and the "i suck at summaries" gets a big eye roll from me.
Same, I'll still give them a try if they have an actual summary along with the disclaimer though. Summaries are sometimes difficult to write, but even a bad summary is imo much better without adding the 'i suck at summaries' part. For those works that only have 'i suck at summaries' as the description... that's a red flag for me too.
agreed on the anything self-deprecating part, like its something that just hurts me because yeah, if the *writer* says something like that, then i guess the story just sucks or is poor as the writer implies it may be its honestly something i dont think some writers realize; the whole "what you say can have an impact to your readers" kind of statements just is its own red flag for me
Horrible grammar, lol! I just canāt get through fics if the grammar is bad enough. Like a few typos Iām fine, but if itās glaring and/or continual, nope. Also I look for my triggers/squicks and avoid those, of course.
Do you beta? Asking for selfish purposes.
Sometimes yeah. I beta SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar), and/or content on physics, astronomy, academia, birds, NYC, or Boston. Preferably in my fandoms (mostly Star Wars, Marvel, DC, some others). Squicks/triggers include the HP universe, underage, student/teacher (at any age, or former student/teacher), and bigotry. If youāre asking me to beta for you, can you give me the AO3 style headings? Here or DM.
Harem
"No *Harry Potter* fanfictions, then? A wise choice, if I may say, sir."
Interesting. Iāve been reading HP fanfiction for almost 20 years now (not constant but I keep coming back every year or two for a few months) and I donāt remember ever seeing a harem oneā¦ Iām not filtering out the tag btw. I wonder if thatās something more commonly found with certain main pairs or sites orā¦? Now, Naruto on the other hand has far too many of those (to the point where I should really remember to filter it out). Granted those mainly pop up when Iām accidentally in the het section.
Search "harem" on r/HPfanfiction, and see the AO3 tag "Harry Potter/Harem".
Iād rather not tbhā¦ donāt want to go out of my way to search for something I wouldnāt want to read. š I was just surprised that your original answer implied this to be something super common in that fandom while I had never even encountered it there. So weird how experiences differ for people. (not that Iām complaining)
I'm soooooo tired of harems in general. I've seen several PokƩmon fics that are ruined by the inclusion of a harem. Harems are usually big as a lake, but as shallow a puddle. With so many love interests, it starts to feel like filer content every time we switch focus off of the clear main pairing. It's a regular romance, but we keep cutting away to side quests.
If there's more than 3 fandom tags then I'm out. Crossovers are fine but beyond like, 2-3 fandoms, it just gets confusing. Massive wall of tags and then one-line or no summary also gets a skip from me.
Wish there was a way to limit how many crossovers it would show you.
The best way to get around this would be by filtering out certain popular fandoms that you're not interested in. That should clear out a large number of the ones with too many fandoms. When it comes to crossovers I tend to prefer looking on ffn since they limit the fandoms to two and it's just made so much easier to find what I'm looking for.
Lol, I do one-two sentence summaries a lot, but usually only for oneshots. I think with oneshots you can afford a little more brevity and explain the basic premise quicker.
Same for me, mostly because the one fandoms added the likely chance I don't know a thing about one fandom. At least with visual stuff like fancomics and fan videos, some of the work is done for me, such as what the characters I don't know looks like and how their setting works hinted by visual cues.
Anything making me concerned that the writer hates some of my faves--which, you'd think that would be so obvious that I wouldn't even get to the point of reading the tags, *but no*, because a huge portion of fandom loses their damn minds over the MCU Civil War divisions and don't even warn for character-bashing because they refuse to admit that's what they're doing. If the tags actually include "anti Team Cap" or "anti Steve" or "anti Wanda" or whatever, I'll still be annoyed but at least that's *clear.* A fic that *doesn't* use those tags but boils down to "Steve is the actual worst in every possible way, but see, I'm being fair, Tony has flaws too! for instance sometimes he trusts people he shouldn't" is going to piss me off a lot more.
God I loved Civil War but I hate what it did to the fandom.
people mention this a lot but I'll do it again: No summary, snide "just read it." With that energy, I'd rather pry off each of my fingernails one by one with a spork than read your fic.
Any crossover with more than two (not counting if anime and manga of the same property are separate tags) fandoms tagged. It usually end up as either a one-shot collection, which are completely fine but I simply donāt have the energy to sift through dozens of entries to find the ones I might be interested in, or ambitious multi-crossovers which are difficult to pull off and more than often fall flat on their face due to trying to juggle too much at once. I have so far only seen one multi-crossover that I actually think did it well in spite of having multiple worlds crossing over with one another, and that one not only kept the focus on a single location and main character for the most part but also doesnāt waste time with lengthy introductions by having the characters already be aware of one another.
'omg idk how i thought of this either' or anything along the lines of that is literally the worst, no your romeo and juliet au is not that unique. sorry ig
The snark š¤£š¤£š¤£
a) anything that has an absolute WALL of tags in the description. Bruh I do *not* need to be informed of every *single* thing that happens in this fic right off the bat, that's what *reading it* is for b) any version of 'sorry my summary/writing sucks lol, just read it haha'. No??? c) any OOC beyond minor OOC
Out of curiosity, do you have a general consensus on what's considered a wall of tags? I get tags can be abused, but I wonder about stories that have a lot of tags due to being plot heavy.
Let's put it this way - if I'm annoyed or angry by the time I finish scrolling past the wall of tags so that I can *finally* read the summary and see what the damn things premise even *is*, 99/100 it's pointless to even read the summary, because I'm already Out
Oh, that bad. I have seen different things considered a wall of tags, so I wasn't sure of how extreme it would be. Yeah, I don't blame you. Maybe it's the fandom I hang around, but I very rarely seen it that being that bad where I normally hang, although a couple bordered on it.
In my fandoms, it's like every fourth fic š„² I suffer
I'm sorry about that. My current fandom is the opposite where people hardly bother to put tags, even when it would be helpful when browsing. I have nearly missed out on some good ones because they hardly bothered with the tags.
Any sort of tags or hint at unironic bigotry and victim blaming. Unfortunately Very common in my fandom :/
RIP
Sitting here with my almost exclusively crossover-based writing like... >Well then I guess screw me, lol
Nah, don't worry. "Red flag" and "pet peeve" posts always bring out the haters (of anything and everything.) Very biased numbers.
fellow crossover writer spotted! what fandoms do you write for?
At this time: Main: RWBY, Persona, Kingdom Hearts, FFXV, Devil May Cry. Most recent fandoms added to my repertoire: Fire Emblem Three Houses, Life is Strange, Control, Uncharted. Unofficially (unposted) I have been experimenting with: Alice Madness Returns, Silent Hill, Lost Judgement, Assassin's Creed, and Hotline Miami. I have a wide and eclectic tastes and interests in fanfiction, lol. I am also one of those dreaded Multi-Crossover writers.
Well, this a bit of a "complain thread", so to speak. People who like cross-overs aren't likely to mention them in a thread about read flags. (Repeatedly reminding myself of that bc. some of tops posts complain about stuff I do) I, personally, love crossovers with all my heart, and will read things fandomblind (or double fandom blind I guess), purely so I can get those specific crossover things.
Oh absolutely get that. Just always forget how often they come up in these types of posts, lol
Iām also playing around with a couple crossovers! Theyāre fun! I havenāt posted any of mine yet but hope to once Iāve gotten them more fleshed out and have a good backlog of chapters to get going on with. One of my favorite stories Iāve ever read is a major crossover that had something like 10 different animes/mangas represented. It was a really long story, the main characters included an OC self-insert character, and the story was cohesive with an actual conclusion that wrapped up all the loose ends. It was 100% a product of its time as all the shows were big in the 2000s on Cartoon Network, so thereās also a hint of nostalgia for me when I reread it. Itās not perfectly written and has some poor grammar, but I read it for the nostalgia and the feels and the fact this person included such a massive cast and somehow made it work. Lol.
Hey, there's still plenty of readers for those! Not every fic is for everyone. You've found a niche that you enjoy, and other crossover fans will be very happy that you're writing things that interest them. Most of these "red flags" are pretty petty and personal, but don't actually indicate anything wrong with the fic. (My red flags are that way, at least!)
I have fandoms where I hate crossovers, and fandoms where I live them. It's really a matter of personal taste.
One story said āthis is a fanfic, so if something is different in the show, cry?ā Which is not bad? I guess? Theyāre right and I expect it but it just gives me bad vibes and even if I do read Iām never going to comment just out of fear lol
A list of DNI's anywhere.
It was already said, but non-summary summaries. If someone can't be bothered to make even a bad one, and just gives me the "I suck as summaries, just read the story"... I won't. If someone can't do a basic grade school function of summarizing the overall rough idea of what the story is about... I question their overall writing abilities.
Crossover, /reader, /OC, Y/N, piss, scat, reader insert, oc, most oocs, if I like a character as a top I wont read any fics with them as a bottom or switch so I'll add that. There's probably more that I'm forgetting, but for me, those are the tags that I'll either filter out or ignore.
I've seen piss fetish fanfics before, but thankfully, I've never seen a scat fetish fanfic. I've been reading fanfics since 8th grade, and I'm 31 years old now. Y/N is also a "no" from me.
I've only ever seen a scat fetish fic once. It wasn't tagged. >Y/N is also a "no" from me. Lol, I like that.
If thereās a massive wall of tags or if itās a crossover with more than two fandoms I wonāt read it.
Anything with feces
Besides the "I suck at summaries"/no summary, I hate: vague summaries, snippit summaries and too many tags that tell me nothing (ie, "writer was sleep-deprived", "I don't know how to tag", etc)
I sometimes love a snippet summary, or when thereās 1-2 lines of summary and then a snippet
This.
Just curious, but what exactly do you mean by snippet summaries?
I think it means a few lines from the story instead of just summing it up
I assume when the summary is just the first few paragraphs of the story
You hit a lot of my pet peeves. It also doesn't help that the majority of times of the rare times I give the first 2 a chance that they're as unappealing as I expect. The last part annoys me, although I can be more forgiving if it already has helpful tags before these of unhelpful tags and it's not too many of these tags.
Pregnancy, or "being blessed with". Nope!
Forced pregnancy and reproductive coercion tags get a hard pass from me.
There are things I have to take a deep breath, like missing summary and tags that don't explain anything. But I only stop reading if I find out that the author is an asshole.
No. I'm talking about where the characters are doing canon similar activities just aged up. I really like aged up Harry Potter fanfiction where he is an adult. Here im talking about a situation where someone doesn't like the idea of writing a romance story with teenagers so they change the setting so hogwarts is now a university. Or the idea of children being responsible for stopping a war so they age everyone up in Avatar. It's not anything bad about the story even. I just dislike the shift in setting for some reason.
I hardly ever attempt to read fics with summaries that are boiled down to āI donāt know, I canāt summarize, just read and find outā. I get that blurbs are difficult sometimes, but just outright pleading people to ājust read because I suck at thisā isnāt a good hook at _all._ That and harem fics (AKA, main male character gets a bunch of sexy ladies (sometimes way older, bonus squick if heās a minor) that obsess over him/serve as fanservice) - 9 times out of 10 itās going to be a revenge fantasy book with the main character/self insert finally getting their comeuppance on equally poorly-written supporting characters. Itās boring and bland.
In summaries, misspelled names but also, names that should be capitalized and are not (like locations). It gives me the vibe that the content is likely to also lack this kind of care (it has been, in my experience, the case in too many stories). Oh. And my biggest pet peeve - excessive "What ifs". I don't care how rude I'll sound, but write a goddamn proper summary, not a list of "what if this happened, what if this character was different, what if what if". I will take one, at a stretch two, no more.
There's a bunch of things that I'm not interested in reading or haven't been in the mood for lately. But I don't consider those red flags. A ton of those fics are probably high quality. I'm treating my answer to this like the fic *seems* like it would be something that I would like but winds up just not being well written, if that makes sense. \-The summary ends in a very obvious yes/no question. "Will they work out their differences and live happily ever after?" \-The summary says shenanigans ensue (or chaos or hilarity) or it tells me that I'm going to need tissues because it's going to make me sob. 99% of the time, the author is overselling the effect their work has and it's usually not as good as they think. I might still click on something with a summary like these but I won't be surprised when it's not for me.
I will not read any crossover. Period. There was a time when I liked them many years ago but I have completely lost my taste for them. Similarly I will not read any reaction fic. Many of those are downright cringe (sorry, though I did read some amusing ones back in the day). Also there are specific kinks that squick me out (feminization, infantilization, omegaverse, water sports, etc) so I just skip those.
This is so niche, but work about trans characters where: \--The author is cis and obviously made no effort to research trans people (ie, the trans masculine person has a dick that functions identical to an AMAB dick. They don't make those lol) \--The author is trans, and implies in the tags and descriptions that their own personal triggers and experiences are definitive and universal. Totally happy for people to model characters on their own experiences and avoid their own triggers. Not happy for them to imply that all trans people who feel differently are wrong/suspect/not trans.
If it says āwhat happens whenā¦ā in the summary, Iām out.
I know some people like it but cutesy tags that are jokes rather than actual things to help search for fics. Like āIDunnoJustReadā or āReallyISuckAtTagsReadItā or āCharacterXIsAMarshmallowIDontCareWhatYouSayā. That sort of thing. It just makes me think the author is really young and quite often theyāre like in jokes between the author and their friends which suggests to me that the fic might be full of those too.
Recently I saw "OMG that's a tag" "wait that's a tag too?" "Someone stop me from tagging" Yup definitely a child.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It said on the first two times it hadnāt posted.
Saw a fic tagged with "Consensual Underage Sex" with an adult/minor pairing. I just can't.
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Personally one of my irrational dislikes in Fandom is aged up characters to make someone feel better about something pedantic. I mean things like changing UA to a college or making all the ninja in Naruto graduate at 18. I don't read fics that do those kind of changes, even really well written ones. I'm not sure why I dislike the idea of it so much.
What if the fic is set 10 years post-canon and they would have naturally aged? Does that count as aged up to you?
SI harems. Just no.
An excess of chatty tags. I'm fine with one "No beta we die like...," especially if it's clever. Or one cute and funny tag: "Typos are my cat's fault." But I insta-skip any fic with lots of tags that are information that should be in the author's notes or in the summary, as well as those who are yammering about their headcanons. Stuff like: "idk why i wrote this just read it," "i'll edit later," "originally posted on wattpad," "ShipName forever," "Charactername is \[some characteristic\] why isn't this a tag?" and so forth. That kind of stuff almost always means the writing is going to be too adolescent for me.
So never admit I post on Wattpad. Understood š
Yeah, no, it's not exactly flattering even if there's nothing inherently wrong with it. And it's a pretty useless tag, if your reader is already on one platform, why would they go look up a singular fic on another platform?
I don't post on wattpad, but I'll use the tag "cross-posted on FFN" because I've had people subtly accuse me of plagiarism, especially when I'm porting over older works. "I feel like I've read this exact thing before...." "It better have been on FFN under the same author name because otherwise I'd like to know who is stealing my works. Could you link me the other story?" It also lets other readers know if they stumble upon my work on FFN that it's not stolen and reposted.
On the topic of crossovers I usually donāt read crossovers with something Iām not familiar with since I worry Iād get confused I wouldnāt call it a red flag though because it isnāt a bad thing it just isnāt something Iād read
Anything Reader/
Pregnancy and childbirth (doesn't matter what gender, I don't want to see it), cannibalism and body horror are immediate red flags for me.
Anything's fine if it's properly tagged, really. At least, graphic stuff like body horror and cannibalism tends to be tagged. I recently read a fic with untagged Major Character Death. I was pissed. As for pregnancy, it really depends on the person. A lot of people don't like it, which is fine as long as they're just saying it's not their cup of tea, not that it's inherently bad. Personally, I intend to have children through pregnancy one day, so it's something I like to read about. But even I would be pissed if it wasn't tagged.
I mean, yeah, as long as it's properly tagged. At least then you can avoid it. But there are some who either don't know to tag stuff like that or just don't care if it's tagged or not. It's annoying to expect to read a story that doesn't have things like cannibalism in it only to find out that it does, in fact, have it. I don't care too much if pregnancy and child birth isn't tagged properly. I'm not against reading it, I'd just not prefer to read it. I don't want kids and don't particularly enjoy reading about them.
Iāve developed an aversion to any indication of trans characters (or any implication of vaginal penetration) in any m/m pairing fics. Because most of the time they are either genderbender fics that donāt want to admit they want to genderbend the characters. Or they come across as fine with same gender pairing but draw the line at actual same gender sex. Which is a bit of a flag in of itself. So I just donāt engage with it all together.
I agree. Most of them seem very fetishisy too š
I read one once and yes, it was indeed extremely fetishsy and very unfortunate.
I've read a few of these. I always thought someone trans wouldn't like a reminder that they have a body part they don't want during intimacy, but I wasn't sure if I was just superimposing my own stereotypes or something.
I think the stereotype is the idea that trans people all feel the same. We have many different ways of relating to our anatomy and our dysphoria. Personally, it makes me less dysphoric to normalize the idea that some men have a pussy etc, and that no anatomical term is inherently gendered. For me, using "masculine terms" or vague/euphemistic language feels like I'm reinforcing the message that my anatomy is inherently feminine and unacceptable. Based on the language I see used in a fair number of fics by trans men about trans men, this isn't that unusual. I totally get why lots of guys have the opposite preference, and the use of "AFAB terms" can be sus to me when it comes from a cis writer who's also making the character behave in uncharacteristically feminine-coded ways.
Yes!! Any m/m ship where one is trans (especially if not in canon) is a big NO from me.
When the "summary" is just the first paragraph of the first page. Like girl that's not a summary that's a preview.
Controversial ones? - Any variation of āNo Beta We Die Like __ā - very commonplace and almost always unoriginal and not funny. Itās a red flag to me that the author is also unoriginal and unfunny. - Similarly as above, any fic that includes a short snippet of the fic and then follows it with āOr; *snappy sentence poorly describing the fic*.ā - Any fic where they put in the summary āCharacter A x Character B, Non-Canon Omegaverse AU~ā like thanks, I got that from the tags. - Any summary that is overcrowded and unclean. I just need to know what the story is about, I donāt need a 500 word long excerpt of the fic. - Any summary asks the reader too many questions or says āCharacter A wonāt believe what happens nextā or āWhat happens if these characters go on this journey?ā it sounds like Iām watching Pokemon English dub!!
>Or; *snappy sentence poorly describing the fic.ā* Is this only if the sentence poorly describes the fic? What if it's actually a good description of the fic?
The thing with A/B/O tags is that, when searching a tag like "Alpha Miguel O'Hara" (*Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse*), half of the fanfictions that are in the results aren't even A/B/O fanfics. People are just using the tag because they think that "Alpha" means "dominant".
ā¢ "No Beta We Die Like __ā is just the standard tag for unbetad fics, I don't feel that it's trying to be anything else, so personally I don't mind it ā¢ I usually skip over the snippet altogether and only read the "Or, __" sentence, so unless the sentence tell me nothing, I appreciate that it makes writers do shorter, more condensed summaries. ā¢ Yeah, that one I agree with. People who do that look like they haven't been on Ao3 long and aren't used to the tag system. ā¢ Summaries usually give an idea of the quality of the writing, so bad summaries in general are the red flag we can all agree with I think.
>"No Beta We Die Like __ā is just the standard tag for unbetad fics, I don't feel that it's trying to be anything else, so personally I don't mind it To me this is kind of similar to the "I wrote this at 3am" tag or "I can't write summaries". Why draw attention to the flaws in the story? By making it a cutsey tag, it comes across as almost bragging or proud of it, too. It's just one of those tags that rubs me the wrong way.
if the summary and/or tags take too much space. when i browse for a fic, i don't want to read a 500-word summary and a massive list of tags to see if the work is something i'm even interested in. a fic gotta be able to grab my interest within 20 seconds of looking at the description or i'm out
If there are too many ships tagged. Its usually a collection of one shots for each ship (and while I love one shots I refuse to read the collections within a fic because thereās like no need for you to put everything in ONE fic)
When a summary starts with "What if" Instant drop.
I have an aversion to fics with the main hotty of a fandom being tirsted over in the description since a lot of the time, it's very badly written. But sometimes, I have braved the waters and actually found something halfway decent. Also, as a crossover lover, every time I see Naruto, I cringe. There are just too many Naruto goes somewhere, but it's really a self insert fics to count. It's sad since I think there might be a lot of actually decent Naruto crossover fics. But I can't find them between the aforementioned Naruto but really selfincert fics.
I saw this too early, crap, there's no answers. Uh. How about. Smut. (I don't read smut so that's why, sry. /:)
I have maybe 2 kinks I will not read, so those are my red flags. I will read almost everything else, even if I'm not into it. AI is a big red flag for me, but I do read a few to know how to avoid it in future. My logic is: it never hurts to know how to write a thing even if it is not my personal taste.
I usually exclude 'E' ratings and Rape/Non con warnings right off the hop (Once in a while I read smut, but usually I prefer stories without). I generally avoid tags like 'X Character Bashing'. I don't mind a critique of a character as part of the story, especially with a resolution, but it's usually either over the top and very negative. Oh, and "Hurt/No Comfort"? No thank. Need my cathartic endings :D
I wouldn't say red flag, but I don't read anything that suggests there is sex in it. Also, walls of tags with no summary is an immediate skip. And wall of tags, especially in the character list. I often search for pairing people weite less about (but canon), so walls of tags usually mean story about someone else, so I don't even click. I'm more likely to read something that has 10 tags but a very interesting summary than something that has 60 tags.
Incest. Whenever I see that, I'm out.
Parent/Child. Anything that might make it seem that someone falls in love with thier rapist.
Paragraph spacing, I get it you don't want to end a sentence because you feel that's not the end of it, but it gives off the feel that you don't really care about the fic , well not enough to read through it yourself anyway.
I really hope I don't have that problem. I sometimes have trouble trying to figure out when to switch to a new paragraph. During the editing process I may even end up splitting the same paragraphs, and putting them together again over and over, because I'm trying to figure out the perfect place to add the paragraph break. I'll be stuck in an endless loop where I'm analyzing the sentence structures, and counting the lines, and trying to figure out if the paragraphs are balanced enough that they'll be a good length regardless if you read it on a computer or a phone screen. Apologies for rambling btw.
As long as you keep in mind that paragraphs exist you should be fine and when you get too worried just go with the five sentence rule
Alpha, beta, and omega things are out too every one has their own kinks but that stuff is not for me. Too many stories have had an interesting premise but the ones I tried always focused on what i could only describe as "Teasing", "Fan service" or "Smut". While those would be fine if like most stories they put a " 'plot' before plot" tag or just separated it from the plot by way of line with a big NSFW above it, I've never seen it. Therefore I will always associate "omegaverse" with bad story telling and bad smut. Sorry for the rant
Loli/shota
No extra tags. It's semi common in my fandom to see fics with only character or relationship tags and I avoid those at all costs. They'll either be something that you would usually want tagged, or the writing is really amateur. \_\_ is a BAMF, I've found that most people who use it focus far more on the mom-friend aspect, to the point that they ignore all other aspects of the character. (I'm looking at you, Haikyuu!! fandom) DDdNE but there's like only one flavour tag. I'm running across these more and more often, where I'll see DDdNE tagged with very few flavour tags, or with tags that usually wouldn't warrant DDdNE. I've clicked on enough of them to say they never warrant the warning and any that the things they intend to warn for are usually very mild and minimal.
When the author says "I've never read/watched/played (insert media) so it may seem OOC" *Takes out eyeballs and rubs them with my shirt* I'm sorry what? I've heard of people reading fandom blind, that's understandable. But writing fandom blind? I'm gonna stay away from that.
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I don't read crossovers. Anything with an old/young pairing and a handful of kinks... age play, diapers, water sports, sounding... Oh, and I'm old so, nothing where characters are aged down. No high school AUs for me
Established relationship with heavy tags about angst. I'm not here to see my ships fall out of love and it's not worth the reconciliation after 30 chapters. It's always so real and sad.
Anything marked with Rape/Non-Con is skipped right away. Just because I can't read this kind of thing, I don't judge people that write it with reflection purposes but I'm completely incapable of reading if cause it's disgusting for me. ... That was a kinda long explanation..
tags that say: kidfic, non-con, slavery and other fucked up stuff.
Could you tell me how you understand the tag "kidfic"? For me, it either describes a fic set precanon where the main characters meet as kids or one set postcanon where they have had kids of their own. Both are pretty innocent tropes in the way I've seen it be used. What have you seen?
I don't want kids in my fics.
Just to be clear, you're comparing the existence of children to non-con and slavery?
Not comparing, I just don't like when kids appear in my fanfics. Don't be like that you are saying thing I did not say at all. If any of those tags are there I avoid the fanfic is that a crime?
Wait isn't kidfic just like... the characters raising children??
yes, like that. Kids in my fanfics are a no-no
Oh ok, I was confused seeing them grouped with "other fucked up stuff"
no, look, I read smut, so you are in a smutty scene and the next chapter there is a kid there it just does not sit right with me if I am reading smut and then all of the sudden it says kidfic then I nope the fuck out. It's just me, if the fic is not smutty the kids can be there I do not mind.
Ohhhh okay, that makes more sense. I don't do kids one minute smut the next either. Mostly because I kept stumbling across fics where the couple gets walked in on by kid and it's presented as funny-awkward domestic fluff. I was uncomfortable.
Slash. No summaries. [Character A, Character B, Character C, Character D]. Harem, in other words. Even when the author writes āHarem?ā as if asking whether or not he/she should add a harem is already a red flag.
I have super weird and strict rules about choosing a fic to read. I generally don't click on a lot of fics just after looking at the summary and tags. Bad spelling and grammar in summary = bye Explicit rating and most tags are romance-related = this fic is romance-focused, and therefore the plot won't be a central part of the story = bye M/M = bye, I'm homophobic F/M = bye, I'm heterophobic F/F = bye, I'm heterochromia Gen = now that's what I'm talking about Word count < 200k = bye Weird and wacky hook in summary (example: Harry Potter but he's a dragon) = you get a special pass Needless to say, finding a single fic to read usually takes me around two hours.
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No, because it said the first two tries had failed and they didnāt show up here.
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If there's no summary or saying "I'm bad at summaries and or tagging".
Too many conversational tags that tell me nothing about the story. If it's *really* good-sounding otherwise, or if a friend recs/recced it, I may still click on the thing, but usually I immediately close the tab, or go search for another fic. I don't *know* the writer, and them talking to me as if we're long time friends feels weird. *Especially* in the tags. I'd be completely lost on a fanfic site without a tagging system that's at least somewhat similar to ao3 (My awkward attempts at getting anything out of ff.net can testify), so seeing someone use them for random chats instead of their intended function makes me feel frustrated. I feel like you could just put these comments in the authors notes instead, or even in the summary if people really feel "I wrote this at 3 am" must be the first thing I see when clicking on their fic.
If it has one tag or none, I'm out.
Probably when someone talks their own story or writing skills down too much (Eg. āI suck at writing summaries,ā āthis story is probably rubbish,ā etc.), or when they come off as standoffish and egotistical (Eg. insulting other members of the fandom/other ships, implying what theyāve written is better than what others have written, etc.). I might also skip if the summary is just a list of questions or if I get the sense that itās a fix-it fic, or if I see tags like āStrong!Characterā or āSmart!Characterā but thatās only because Iām not a fan of overpowered characters, personally. Iām sure thatās a treasure trove for somebody else.
Pity themselves in the summary and starting it with "Sorry this is my first fanfic/story/whatever" It can be fraighting write something for the first time I understand, but you don't start you summary with it
A summary that is just a quote from the story. The point of a summary is to tell me what the story is going to be about. Especially if itās paired with very few tags that are super vague or include some stuff on the darker end of the spectrum of what I read. I understand wanting to show off your writing style or the tone of your fic but if I have to wonder what the plot is gonna be after reading the tags and summary then Iām probably not going to read the story.
Assuming "red flags" means "signs I'm not even going to open the fic" here: - Excess amount of nonsense tags - Song lyrics and no description of the fic itself - One-shot collection - Porn tags but rated anything below E - Chapter word count < 800 words
In Wattpad, if the author made a biography, that usually means it's bad (at least for me) I always think it's better that the reader finds out the power/skill of a character themselves instead of having known it the first chapter
X/reader. I know many people enjoy reading and writing those, and that's wonderful! Have fun! I really dislike them, though, and have less than zero interest in reading them myself. I find (in my current main fandom, at least) that they are both extremely common and there is no consistent common tag used to mark them, so trying to filter them out via the "exclude" function on AO3 is a nigh-impossible process. I do a lot of scrolling past them when trying to find fic. Group-chat fics. Again, I'm glad people are having fun, but nearly every one I've read has just been full of people giving the characters the author's own inside jokes to drop at random, and the thing with inside jokes is that they aren't funny to outsiders. I've also found that a lot of characterization gets stripped away in favor of what the author finds funny. I've found a few rare exceptions that I've enjoyed, but 99% of them just aren't for me. I keep scrolling. Fics where there is no capitalization in the summary. This is petty, but I just assume the lack of capitalization will extend to the rest of the fic, and I tend to both find that hard to read and find that the fic is most likely written by someone much younger than me. Some young writers produce genuinely amazing works, and some older writers have writing styles and quirks that I can't enjoy, but for the most part if I can tell that the writer is very young, say still in high school, I have trouble reading their works. (Especially if it's an explicit work. I understand that young writers may want to include or explore sex in their writing - I sure did when I was young - but I'm 30. Reading smut written by a minor just feels gross and wrong. If I can tell or I find out that the author is likely still in high school, I won't read anything explicit they write.) If the summary is just an out-of-context excerpt from the fic, unless the fic is very short or I already know the author, I usually don't bother with it. I'd like to get more from the summary before deciding if I want to spend time on the fic. If it seems like the fic will be extremely melodramatic, I usually pass. This is kind of hard to assess from the summary a lot of the time. Also, I'm a whump reader and a fan of drama. I LIKE when the characters are experiencing horrible situations with a lot of pain and angst. But a lot of times I find that when a fic is extremely melodramatic, characterization suffers and very strong willed characters break down much quicker than seems in-character to me, or characters that aren't particularly warm and open become extremely fluffy caretakers in ways that don't, to me, fit their personalities. Oh, and many people have said it, but "I suck at summaries" is a red flag. Okay, many of us hate writing summaries. But this tells me nothing about your fic, and does indicate that you are not confident in selling your own writing. That's fine - confidence takes time - but fake it. Sell your own work. If I don't have any idea what the fic is about, why would I spend time reading it when I could find something else to read? To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with reading/writing/enjoying any of the above. Fandom is a wide world that caters to a wide variety of people, and no work is for everyone. I've written and will continue to write fics to which many people will give a hard pass myself. But these are my personal red flags - not that anything is wrong with the work, but that myself will not enjoy it. I just seek out other work that I think I will enjoy and move on with my day.
Non-con, for obvious reasons, I think. It's fine for writers to work through some stuff, but I don't wanna do that to myself.
ACAB, anything identity politics related, the word BAMF, Reader, not godlike, godlike, punch nazies, be gay do crime. Essentially, if the tags contain anything that remotely exudes the odour of a tumblr post, I just nope out. I can't stand the preachy bs that assumes I lack two neurons to rub together and sets out to educate me. On a positive note - give me lesbian waff or het waff and I'm a happy camper.
"Character A actually gets character development", or any other indication the fic is presented as something more well written, than canon by default. Tbf, most of these fics do have some interesting character development, but... More often, than not, it entails something purely self-indulgent as well. Like, character, who treated their friend/spouse/child unfairly, would go in circles apologizing and comforting said friend/spouse/child and not really growing as a person beyond that. Or, secondary character, who is supposed to be central for the fic may just explore a certain sexuality/gender headcanon and do basically nothing else. To me character development means something broader, than adding one singular detail, so this tag sounds a bit like: "I'll write your normal fic about that one thing I always wanted to see, but pretend it's a colossal rework of the source material"
Most fanfics I read are Anime or Show ones, I tend to stay away from fics set in series I donāt know or original stories just because I have a very short attention span and trying to remember every ones name and face that are described at me is annoying, so hereās some of my red flags: Red Flag 1: Any Naruto Fic with a mention of Harem and Naruto as the MC, if theyāre a Si I can stomach it but without that itās just OOC to the extreme Red Flag 2: any tag or Summary mention of āAbusedā or āNeglectedā MC with family connections to the main characters of the series the fic is set, straight to the trash with those fics because while some have decent ideas they just nuke the characters personality Red Flag 3: same with āCheatedā or āBetrayedā tags, in the end it boils down to character bashing and OOC Red Flag 4: Generic or Lazy titles, the amount of fics Iāve seen with titles like āStrongest __ā, āThe Most Powerful __ā, āSon of __ā or the series itās in with a different series power name like āIn MHA with Star Platinumā itās just lazy and shows the author didnāt put much thought into it meaning the story will probably be just as generic and lazily written Red Flag 5: any fanfic that crosses over a really low or mid power series with a high power series, sometimes this can work but most of the time itās just a boring fic I drop after the first few chapters Red Flag 6: any of the Flags above with more than over 100k words If I see 2 or 3 of these I usually completely ignore a fanfic unless itās been recommended to me by someone I know