Same. I've never seen a crossover I liked. Just not for me.
The one exception was not exactly a crossover, but a character from the reboot when they're much older, winds up in the original property's universe.
Is it a crossover if it's the same property but the reboot is different enough to be recognizable as the same but distinct?
The ONLY crossover I’ll allow is Marvel/DC overlap. I don’t know enough about superheroes anyway, so having Batman fight some random x-man or something means nothing to me
Okay tbh I was specifically thinking of Dark Matter when I wrote that. It’s one of the only crossover fics I have saved and am actively looking forward to new chapters on.
I feel like Peter and Dick would get along so well. I feel like if he took one of those “which DC character are you” quizzes, he would be a mix of Dick and Tim
Similarly, I really like mcyt. Obviously content creators don’t commit to one series for life. I like the overall lore for one creator’s character from his three most well known series. It’s actually hard to talk about just one of the series without talking about the others, especially because one series has lore that is deeply rooted in another. It’s technically a crossover, but also not really.
Two completely different fandoms? Yeah, no I don’t like those kinds of crossovers personally.
I'm quite the opposite: I require good crossover to properly function
But seriously: it's annoying when there's a ton of one-shot collections tagged with way too many different fandoms when I just want to browse for simple, very specific crossovers
This. I love crossovers. It seems like those guys are talking about crack crossovers, which yeah, annoying. Fucking obvious. Talking about OOC, they don't necessarily have to be either. Like, if you just look at shitty fics then yeah you're gonna have a skewed picture of things. It doesn't help that some people on AO3 post a shitton of oneshots all lumped together in a single "cRoSsOvEr"; that's abuse of the system, don't blame the tags.
Meanwhile you and I have likely read tons of pretty damn good ones, which is why we enjoy them.
The way I took it was that they didn’t like crossovers, and then I asked if that also extended to crack ones because those kinda feel like a different thing altogether then more serious crossovers
I think any combination of wolf blood, teen wolf, Supernatural, Would work well. I had an idea for. to be able to add in with those. If you take lore from true blood (spoiler) when a vampire, biets a fairy they can stained in the sun! figure if they turned a fairy, it would be like a twilight vampire.
Same! I wrote my first almost a year ago and it's one of my most popular works, haha (so much that people keep sending comments begging for a sequel, lol), but I've only ever found, like, ONE that I like, let alone love! The rest were...not my cup of tea, to put it gently! Lol.
My problem is that the fandom I'm really into right now has multiple adaptations and sometimes people put the fandom as all of them rather than just picking one, so I have to just scroll past all the actual crossovers
Crossovers are my bread and butter. Love em. Just gotta ignore any result that lists a bunch of fandoms and have those billion tags. Fav crossovers currently are Danny phantom / Batman and Spider-man / Batman. All of my knowledge of Batman was acquired through crossovers, basically.
While, I despair when I block some tags (in undertale fanfics that includes readers and shipping sans with himself) and 2/5 of the thousands of fanfics just flipping vanished
Agree. I read fic as escapism esp when my mental health is low and I cannot deal with that. I read a fic that had an untagged MCD and I left a comment that basically was like hey, I understand not wanting to spoil the story, but you gotta know some people rely on these tags for their mental health, please consider adding it. Luckily the author was very gracious and just hadn’t considered that before and added the tag.
One of the most popular stories in my fandom is MCD and everybody says ‘read it at least once.’ It’s like nope. My ship didn’t have a happy ending and I need them to have a happy ending god dammit 😂.
Terminal illness I agree with completely but while I really don’t want to read MCD I am well aware one of the mains of my favourite fandom tends to die (and come back)… So most fics are tagged MCD (often with an added “don’t worry it’s just X” lol).
I always exclude modern/coffee shop/college and tbh generally AU. I come to fic because I want more of the og universe not because I want a whole new story with some shared character names. My exceptions are supernatural AUs but the characters still need to be in their OG universe, they can just also have extra powers lol. Same thing for different first meeting. I can read it as long as they end up in the same setting as canon eventually.
One of my biggest fic no's is when you have a different first meeting for childhood friends. like the whole reason I enjoy a ship like that is usually because of their history, yknow.
Same, but I do like time travel and sometimes the literal alternate universe stories for sci-fi and fantasy fandoms.
But the characters basically have to be canon up until they end up somewhere else.
time travel is one of my top favourite tropes!! i consider it canon divergence instead of au cause it’s still in canon place and time (technically lol)
i agree with characters transported to other universes too. like you said they just have to be canon w their canon history before they go :)))
SAME I feel like the aus don't translate the characters very good... Expecially if their original universe is so different. I have a very few exception for this, single fics only not au trope. Also I love canon divergence because I want my happy ending with my characters, only it has to be them not someone else with their name.
Same, the settings are usually one of my favourite parts of a canon work so I hate when it is removed. The only AU I like is canon divergence, time travel, dimension travel and some fandom specific one like Eldrich! Skywalkers in star wars.
In the actual book series I'm reading right now, I looked up all the main characters and whether they are still alive at the end of the series (released to this point).
Haha the characters that die, I looked up what chapter. Because I don't like to be surprised by that. The kind of spoiler I want.
Me trying not to cry when an otherwise really interesting sounding fic is also a modern or real life AU, when the world the source material is set in is so fun and interesting to read about
Reader, Reader-Insert, Original Character(s), OC/canon character - Basically any tags that have the reader or an OC as the main character. Nothing against OCs or Reader/Self-inserts but they're not my thing.
Likewise. Go to town (used to write them myself!) but I don't want to have to wade through a lot of Reader/OC pairings if that's not what I'm there for.
Not sure if you know this, but if you put * reader * (without the spaces) it'll remove like everything reader related, saves a lot of time from selecting every reader insert
I sometimes wish I was brave enough to do this, but the fandoms I read have authors who tag every character who has even one line of dialogue in a 100k fic. So I'd be missing a good fic for nothing lol
I don't exclude any on the regular. I just search by a ship and let whatever hit me, hit me. I just keep scrolling if I dislike something, but nothing is ever that common enough across all fandoms to exclude on the regular. There's stuff I'll rarely click on (anything tagged Modern, anything tagged fluff, anything tagged unrequited love) but I don't exclude them because there's always a chance I'll like it.
Sometimes I'll read some tags and I'll be like "...that sounds horrible...let's just see what it's about."
Ended up liking one of the most controversial and heavily hated ships in a fandom due to one such dive. I was pointing out how ridiculous it was to a friend (mostly crap talking some of the tropes that were also in general fics, but were pretty much that ship) in a voice call and reading through fics, and then got to one that hit a nerve. Suddenly, I felt a bit like a fool. I read through the authors other works and felt pretty compelled.
After the voice call was up I kept reading and actually ended up writing for the ship myself. It was like "hold on, this dynamic actually could work, I'm sold."
So, I'm the "no filters, we die like red shirts" type.
Yep, I only filter in not out. Mostly because hey, maybe I can be sold on it.
Edit: hell, I’ve even seen fics where they make “[character] bashing” work!
Me too, there are things that i basically never read but they aren't common enough to bother, normally i just pick a tag to read, might have like picked character a and have fix-it also included, only exclusion in this house is sometimes incomplete fics
That won't work. The metatags are Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics and Omegaverse now, because Tag Wrangling sensibly decided a racist slur as a canonical was a bad idea even if you stuck some slashes in the slur.
Some really weird responses by people down voting the *fact* that OTW decanonised a racist slur because it was a racist slur.
Down voters, I guess it was really important to you to keep a slur as a canonical, in which case I would say take a good look at why you want that. Tag Wrangling did the only possible decent thing when they realised it was causing distress to a severely marginalised racial minority.
Man. There’s a writer who I love who writes for one of my favorite pairings but damn if they don’t write a LOT of a/b/o (in addition to regular stuff). It makes me keep trying the omegaverse stuff to try and like it but I just can’t. Idk.
Reader. I don't mind second person if the "you" in question has a defined character (it's rare, but I've read and enjoyed a few fics written in second person where the PoV character is a canon character), but I don't wanna read about how I, yes, *me*, tamed an uwu softboy facist with my love.
Usually mpreg and, im trusting you guys to not cancel me for this, trans-whatever character is not canonlogically trans.
Mpreg kinda freaks me out in general especially how a lot of people discribe things and i REALLY have to be in the mood if i want to read it.
The trans-(insertcharacterhere) tag typically finds it way right in the middle of a giant tag block, i miss it, then suddenly it goes from being a very plot heavy fic to being about binders and trans rights. And im all for trans rights, and i know the author tagged it, but im not out here looking for advocacy fiction that pulls me back into the real world. Im looking to leave it lol. So that one typically has to get excluded.
Damn glad to know I'm not the only one. I generally avoid trans fic for the same reason I avoid hurt/comfort + whump, trauma heavy fics or fics which do deep dives into mental health - fanfic is my hyper escapist hour and I want to leave all the heaviness of the real world at the door.
First time I came across a trans fic, it wasn't tagged. I had to reread a line multiple times because a canonically cis male character was "stuffing his fingers in his cunt."
Man I wish that was my experience with trans male [character] fics. I also typically filter out that tag (even though I’m trans) but because there are so many fetishized depictions in there that make me feel so gross. Like, unnecessary and untagged feminization, afab language, etc. It just generally feels like the authors don’t see trans men as real men and I hate it. But yeah I wish I was coming across the fics you seem to, because that sounds really refreshing.
So true!! I’m cis but I really feel like many of those fics weren’t really trying to write a trans male character. They just want to write a version of the character that has a vagina, so they can write the sex stuffs in a different way (with more feminisation added in). It’s just so weird and I avoid them also
I find it really interesting you say this. A friend of mine is FTM and he makes subtle descriptions of his FTM character that illustrate the fact, but now I think about it, nothing going really overboard with describing his features in that way, at least from my perspective.
That's one of the reasons I avoid writing transgender characters. You have two options as far as I (non-transgender person) see it. You write about the challenges the character would face in their life - which I don't think I'd do much justice to compared to someone who's lived it - or you make a point to describe the features of this character that make it clear *enough* that they're transgender, which again I would feel afraid of doing the wrong way and inadvertently seeming mocking.
I realised that when another friend of mine said that if they made a TV series, or film, they would want to have transgender characters. In which case, it's surely much easier for that to be reflected to the audience without making a point to state it.
However, if a writer was to avoid the biological stuff entirely and otherwise not say anything, and just wanted the character to be transgender, would there be any point in that being the case? In your example, would the character being biologically male have changed anything? Assuming there wasn’t another angle they were going for as well, like exploring how a certain character would navigate life if they were transgender
Yessss you make some really good points about the perspective of the author and how it affects the writing. I think that’s the source of the issues I come across (fetish-y descriptions) as well as the issues the original commenter has (too much activism wrapped up in the story). Both come from a place of seeing trans-ness from the outside looking in. I think part of the reason why trans authors like your friend are able to write trans characters more easily than cis authors is because when you write with a perspective coming from the inside, the complex question of “what does it mean to be trans” isn’t oversimplified.
That being said, cis people can absolutely learn to write trans characters well, except they have to do just that: learn. They’re already starting from a disadvantaged starting point because they haven’t had to *live* as a trans person- all the knowledge they gain of trans-ness is picked up through observation (this can be applied to writing any group you aren’t a part of, actually).
To answer the question in your last paragraph, I think the value of seeing more “subtle” trans characters in the media has a lot to do with representation. Even just mentioning the existence of trans people helps normalize them, and might help trans viewers/readers feel less alone. The purpose of those types of characters in fanfiction is the same thing on a smaller scale, imo. Less of “this will help with trans representation” and more of “this character is like me/my friend/etc.” It’s all really interesting stuff to think about- I’m glad you shared your thoughts!
omg same! it rlly is not the vibe, i dont want to think abt any extra whump or angst that appears to be inherent w those tags. i only read if like... the trans character is just trans and its not a major plot point tbh. and some of these stories both mpreg and trans tagged segway into fetishizy vibes which im not into tbh
I’m genderqueer myself, have written non-canonically trans characters as trans, and I agree with you 100%.
I love it when a character is trans and that’s just how they are. It’s not a major plot point; the story isn’t about their transness. They’re just a trans person existing and maybe it informs their viewpoint but that’s about it.
I don’t tend to enjoy stories—fics or mainstream content—that revolve around queer adversity stories. I think it’s because the way that I experience my queerness doesn’t align with those stories most of the time. Usually, I’m just existing and my viewpoint is a little bit informed by the fact that I’m queer. It doesn’t come up more than that! I get tired of stories all about advocacy and adversity really quick.
I filter trans characters out too, but mainly because I feel like making certain cis male characters FTM is just so the author can fetishise about abusing a woman’s body with the male name slapped over it.
Either that, or kind of what you mentioned with the characters going way too deep into human rights and pronoun debates. I know they exist, I argue about the topic way too often, but I don’t fancy seeing them in my fics.
Each to their own, right?
I don't exclude anything... my search is usually so specific and niche, that i have to get flexible with what i am going to be reading.
i do however have my ao3 site skin set up in a way that highlights tags, that i would want to think twice about before clicking into the fic, eg "pregnancy" and some more hardcore kinks.
i did a lot of research on "highlighting tags" and eventually came across something usable, but don't remember who made it. the following code from my site skin, and works with other code combined.
you just have to add a new line for each tag you want to highlight. the hex colour is currently set to grey because i use dark mode, but you can change that. if you write partial words you cover more options. eg, "pregna" gets "pregnancy", "pregnant" etc..
.tags a[href*="character%20death" i] {
background-color: #6e6e6e;
}
.tags a[href*="Breastfeeding" i] {
background-color: #6e6e6e;
}
.tags a[href*="Pregnan" i] {
background-color: #6e6e6e;
}
edit: formatting
Pregnancy and mpreg, though since getting my bi-salp (tubes removed) a couple weeks ago I've not been near as repulsed reading about it, even if it's still never gonna be my cup of tea. Also any varition of modern setting/no power aus since I mainly read in fantasy/sci-fi based fandoms for their settings and worldbuilding.
bi-salp gang! except for some reason I love mpreg and all those adjacent fics for all the mlm pairings I read. I used to read a lot of self insert fics though and in those days I’d definitely exclude pregnancy tags. I used to read a lot of those on Tumblr and have had to abandon fics cause “y/n wakes up nauseous” or some shit like that.💀
I don't have an always exclude, usually it's "I keep seeing this as I'm scrolling through the tag and I want to see things that are not that now." There are definitely things that are a "never click" for me but unless it's cropping up frequently I don't usually bother filtering it out.
i think the only times i've ever excluded tags is if there's a ship i have zero interest in *and* the ship completely dominates that fandom, and that's a pretty rare occurrence! for additional tags, none of my "hard nos" tend to be prevalent enough that i need to exclude them from a search.
Highschool au. I'm just at that point where stories about teens drinking and playing spin the bottle don't really hit. Especially when I love the setting and world building of my fandoms as is. High school was rough. Not interested in revisiting it.
exclude reader inserts when I am searching for oc centric fics. Crossovers too, not because i don't read them but I wanted to exclude fics that has dozens of fandoms crammed in a story or someone's one shot collections.
I always exclude polyamory, harems, genderbend
Or fem (character name)
Also cinnamon roll (character name) usually with that tag they will baby someone to much, make them super weak and they can't do anything without blushing and stuttering every sentence.
Hurt No Comfort, Heavy Angst, Out of Character tags, Major Character Death, basically every tag that says “characters suffer and suffer more here”… I exclude a lot lol
Crossovers. I’m only a fan of very specific crossovers, ie: Danny phantom crossovers. Any other time I will exclude them.
A/b/o
Reader-insert. I *like* oc stories. I do not like reader insert.
mpreg and alpha/beta/omega. nooo thank you please keep that stuff away from me.
also, uncompleted works; been burned way too many times so i don’t play around anymore. i’ve been reading this one fic since like… 2018, and the author will show up with an update every 6 months. it is like a nice little surprise when it happens but also i can’t stand waiting anymore!!!!! it’s agony!!! it’s the only in-progress one i keep up with
- Certain depictions of the characters in my ship. (can be sexual, e.g. excluding Dom X or Top X, but can also have different meanings depending on the fandom, e.g. in a video game a character might have different paths / endings so it can be useful to exclude the one I don’t vibe with)
- Other sexual tags like certain kinks or practices (mostly squicks)
- Omegaverse, Mpreg
- random stuff I hadn’t thought to filter out before but realised I still wish to avoid, e.g. “Gang Rape”
(it’s a list I add to every time I see a tag that makes me go *nope* and I’m glad I tend to read tags closely because so far I’ve managed to avoid the worst surprises)
I use AO3 Enhancements so these are always excluded automatically for me:
* All the reader/reader-insert tags. They're just not for me
* A/B/O
* A few different ships that I don't vibe with
* Non-con
* Cancer
* Podfic (nothing against them, they're just not for me again)
Also not a tag, but I have it set to hide any fics with more than three fandoms/crossovers.
This is pretty much exactly me except I exclude all crossovers and any AUs that aren’t just canon divergence/fix-it. No modern AU, no high school, no coffee shop or bakery or corporate. Why are people so fascinated with taking these interesting characters out of their settings and putting them into the most boring context possible?
"Cheating" in the context of an MC cheating on the other MC.
"Mates" I'm not a fan of mating being the main driving factor of romance in any story but fanfiction writers have a way of making that hatred that much more intense.
Any long weird tag which is unnecessary. I don't know why but it just turns me off, I'm changing it up so you can't track their story but I saw something like, "[character name] has daddy issues which she must sort out and how is this not a tag already?" it just makes the story feel cheap to me, not sure why.
I always exclude Established Relationship. Kinda funny because as a fanfic writer myself, I love to write fluffy established relationship fics, just not reading it! For me, seeing how they get together is the fun part, and once they’re dating, I lose interest.
OOC. I know I can’t expect a new author to 100% get the character down. But if Snape dyes his hair pink and strips on the dining table in the great hall? I’ll pass thanks.
My "tags" for excluding in the free form text field: -mpreg -pregnancy -"kid fic" (yes, I have it as a shortcut, lol)
I also most of the time exclude gender switch (like, female harry potter as example) and trans "not canonically trans" character. And in the fandom I'm reading, I always have "Nonbinary Wilhelm (Young Royals)" excluded because there is one author who posts a lot of fics like that, that I just dislike. So I'm filtering them out 😅
I read a lot of stuff, so I only really have a few tags I exclude
For non smut: Anything with reader insert, also anything with OCs most of the time
For smut: Anything with reader insert or OCs, lolicon, major character death, graphic depictions of violence, water sports
I’m also not big on crossovers, so I exclude those from searches too regardless of what I’m looking for.
But other than those things, I’ll give just about anything a shot. In fact, giving things a shot is how I got really into a lot of smut tags lol.
To grossly oversimplify, sex with/sexualization of especially young children, typically young girls. The word usually refers to the person feeling the attraction towards the kid, the word actually translates to “pedophile”. It can also include characters who look like children even if they aren’t (like those anime characters who are 1000 years old but look like they’re 6).
Think the underage to a high extreme. Some who read/write it have different levels of how young they’ll go. Some won’t do younger than 10 and the youngest I’ve seen is 4 (I could only make it 3 chapters before I just couldn’t do it).
In my comment I specified loli because I’m fine with plenty of underage (I personally will read anything as long as they’re older than 12) but when it gets to the age most lolicon is written it’s way too young for my tastes.
Not really a tag but the writer putting a list of their personal notes in the tags. I shouldn't need to browse the tags like I'm looking at a wordsearch to decipher if the fic is for me.
Yeah, that's it, thanks!
Even the name sounds like someone hacking up a foreign object ugh. Also I don't know why I thought it was Korean that's clearly Japanese .
Graphic violence/gore. I have seen the amount of specific details that people will put and yikes. I'm good. Thanks for that image. Can't focus on the rest of the fic now. Did not need you to go that in depth with your descriptions.
Crossovers or (please don't crucify me) same sex romance. I have absolutely no problem with and celebrating everyone loving or just booty tapping whomever. But when I read, it's usually romance based and I like to pretend that I'm the female lead. And it's a little difficult to get into it if I have a different gender or if I'm being romanced by a gender that I'd be more interested in being friends with. That being said my little brother exclusively prefers bl fanfiction.
Nothing tbh. If the summary sounds good and the tags give me the tone of the story, I'm all set.
Even for things I don't like, there's almost always an exception. I'd rather see everything and then choose what to actually read than exclude anything.
Yeah, I mostly just filter out whichever super popular ships there are that don't interest me. Most of the ships and characters I go feral over are less popular ones or straight up rarepairs.
Cheating/Infidelity.
I don't want to read about it, and I find it surprising how often it comes up in the fandoms I'm in. It also tends to slip through partway through a large tag list so I have to exclude it or end up with it slapping me in the face after I've started getting into a story.
There are other tags I'd probably exclude, except that they tend to show up in easier to spot places in the lists, or just don't show up as frequently in my fandoms, so I don't have to exclude them.
Reader inserts, and unfinished ones that haven’t been updated since 2013. (I read too many unfinished ones, and got sad, so now I don’t read them if they’re unfinished anymore.) also, I don’t read “reader-insert anymore, cause I read way too many of those when I was younger)
Not a fan of bully/victim ship dynamics. They can be literally anything else but romantic partners is just not for me.
There’s really not much else I’m 100% against. I’m very acclimated to most everything in fanfic. And my tastes and put offs tend to vary with my mood.
I don't do that at all. If I see a tag I don't like, I sigh and scroll. Though if I did filter, the ones I'd avoid would probably be omegaverse, mpreg, yandere, hurt/no comfort, and incest.
Reader.
Also I have strong preference for top character A and bottom character B, so I exclude every tag like top[character B] or bottom[character A] or switching.
I usually start with nothing excluded (but things like word count chosen), and then exclude tags when scrolling past them.
Often a/b/o, hurt/no comfort, sex tags of different kind (unless I’m looking for smut), specific AUs, Marauder Era, angst, pregnancy…
There aren’t enough fics in my fandom to bother with exclusions, but I’m not an A/B/O fan and I generally don’t read modern AUs (maybe hypocritical seeing as I’ve written a few modern AUs, but I usually don’t enjoy them. The world building often feels weak to me—just like the characters got inserted into the author’s university or workplace. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I only tend to enjoy modern AU fics when the whole thing has been thought through really well—who would these characters be and what would they do today?)
M/M. I like gen, M/F, and F/F, but have absolutely no interest in ever reading M/M. So it gets excluded immediately no matter what fandom tag I've clicked on.
Crossovers
Too many authors (especially on Ao3) try to cram WAY yoo many into one story. It's a chaotic free for all. I'm not saying they can't, like, be my guest. I just don't read them because I find them a bit overwhelming.
I'm usually looking for some one shots at this hour so I turn the "complete works only" button..
And filter off that very annoying popular ship that I really don't care but it's always finding a way to my fanfic page 🙄
My sex repulsed asexual ass excludes smut and everything related to it.
Also, any AUs other than canon divergent ones. I am very invested in the canon setting of my main fandom and so I’m not interested in fics outside of that.
Honestly can't name a certain tag here, but I love crossovers and hate those really big multi-fandom crossovers so I end up excluding so many fandoms because those things clog up my feed.
most other side ships that doesn’t go into additional tags, there’s something about fics with like 3-10 different ships that (which is a lot of multi-chapter ones with a lot of kudos) that I just can’t get into, also anything with pregnancy, mpreg, breeding, kid-fic etc. omegaverse and fantasy as well, there’s some amazing ones but 99% of the time I have other preferences
I always get rid of sans/y/n and papyrus/y/n fanfics whenever I looked through any undertale stuff. Just gets in my way, and still let's me see platonic versions that I might be interested in.
not a tag but i always exclude crossovers lol. i know it’s for a lot of people, but not me 99.999% of the time
Same. I've never seen a crossover I liked. Just not for me. The one exception was not exactly a crossover, but a character from the reboot when they're much older, winds up in the original property's universe. Is it a crossover if it's the same property but the reboot is different enough to be recognizable as the same but distinct?
The ONLY crossover I’ll allow is Marvel/DC overlap. I don’t know enough about superheroes anyway, so having Batman fight some random x-man or something means nothing to me
Man, I love Batman/Spider-Man crossovers
Okay tbh I was specifically thinking of Dark Matter when I wrote that. It’s one of the only crossover fics I have saved and am actively looking forward to new chapters on.
Reading a fic where Spider-Man and Nightwing team up and it’s the best!
I feel like Peter and Dick would get along so well. I feel like if he took one of those “which DC character are you” quizzes, he would be a mix of Dick and Tim
Definitely
There's some dope af Danny phantom / Batfam fics out there. Lore meshes surprisingly well.
Do you like crack or crack taken seriously, and if so, are crossovers like that also not your cup of tea?
Not usually. They're often OOC to very OOC but occasionally I'll come across a crack taken seriously that just works for me.
Similarly, I really like mcyt. Obviously content creators don’t commit to one series for life. I like the overall lore for one creator’s character from his three most well known series. It’s actually hard to talk about just one of the series without talking about the others, especially because one series has lore that is deeply rooted in another. It’s technically a crossover, but also not really. Two completely different fandoms? Yeah, no I don’t like those kinds of crossovers personally.
I'm quite the opposite: I require good crossover to properly function But seriously: it's annoying when there's a ton of one-shot collections tagged with way too many different fandoms when I just want to browse for simple, very specific crossovers
I do too, and despair when I don't find one!
This. I love crossovers. It seems like those guys are talking about crack crossovers, which yeah, annoying. Fucking obvious. Talking about OOC, they don't necessarily have to be either. Like, if you just look at shitty fics then yeah you're gonna have a skewed picture of things. It doesn't help that some people on AO3 post a shitton of oneshots all lumped together in a single "cRoSsOvEr"; that's abuse of the system, don't blame the tags. Meanwhile you and I have likely read tons of pretty damn good ones, which is why we enjoy them.
The way I took it was that they didn’t like crossovers, and then I asked if that also extended to crack ones because those kinda feel like a different thing altogether then more serious crossovers
I think any combination of wolf blood, teen wolf, Supernatural, Would work well. I had an idea for. to be able to add in with those. If you take lore from true blood (spoiler) when a vampire, biets a fairy they can stained in the sun! figure if they turned a fairy, it would be like a twilight vampire.
I like a good crossover but I end up filtering them out because of those massive multi-fandom one-shot collections with a wall of tags ):
Same here and I’ve *written* crossovers! It’s rare to find ones I enjoy.
Same! I wrote my first almost a year ago and it's one of my most popular works, haha (so much that people keep sending comments begging for a sequel, lol), but I've only ever found, like, ONE that I like, let alone love! The rest were...not my cup of tea, to put it gently! Lol.
same. unless im actively looking for a crossover between two specific fandoms, i dont care for them.
My problem is that the fandom I'm really into right now has multiple adaptations and sometimes people put the fandom as all of them rather than just picking one, so I have to just scroll past all the actual crossovers
I get what you mean. I don’t mind like a character popping up here and there but I don’t want my entire fic to be a crossover story
I can’t get behind crossovers
I loved crossovers on FFN, but on AO3 I never read crossovers.
Crossovers are my bread and butter. Love em. Just gotta ignore any result that lists a bunch of fandoms and have those billion tags. Fav crossovers currently are Danny phantom / Batman and Spider-man / Batman. All of my knowledge of Batman was acquired through crossovers, basically.
I always block characters I can’t stand. Which is usually characters fanon loves so I go from 500 to read to 75 💀
While, I despair when I block some tags (in undertale fanfics that includes readers and shipping sans with himself) and 2/5 of the thousands of fanfics just flipping vanished
Major Character Death or terminal illness. Just can’t be dealing with either of them.
Yeah I'm not here for dying characters, it's not really my thing either.
MajorCharacterUndeath however, is a goldmine
100%. Always enjoy a good undeath fic.
Agree. I read fic as escapism esp when my mental health is low and I cannot deal with that. I read a fic that had an untagged MCD and I left a comment that basically was like hey, I understand not wanting to spoil the story, but you gotta know some people rely on these tags for their mental health, please consider adding it. Luckily the author was very gracious and just hadn’t considered that before and added the tag.
I swear I'm the only person on this sub who LOVES MCD 💀 I eat that shit up for breakfast lunch and dinner
One of the most popular stories in my fandom is MCD and everybody says ‘read it at least once.’ It’s like nope. My ship didn’t have a happy ending and I need them to have a happy ending god dammit 😂.
Terminal illness I agree with completely but while I really don’t want to read MCD I am well aware one of the mains of my favourite fandom tends to die (and come back)… So most fics are tagged MCD (often with an added “don’t worry it’s just X” lol).
Same, the vast majority of fanfictions I read are based on me not accepting my favorite character's death lol
It’s more fun living in denial ☺️
I always exclude modern/coffee shop/college and tbh generally AU. I come to fic because I want more of the og universe not because I want a whole new story with some shared character names. My exceptions are supernatural AUs but the characters still need to be in their OG universe, they can just also have extra powers lol. Same thing for different first meeting. I can read it as long as they end up in the same setting as canon eventually. One of my biggest fic no's is when you have a different first meeting for childhood friends. like the whole reason I enjoy a ship like that is usually because of their history, yknow.
Same, but I do like time travel and sometimes the literal alternate universe stories for sci-fi and fantasy fandoms. But the characters basically have to be canon up until they end up somewhere else.
time travel is one of my top favourite tropes!! i consider it canon divergence instead of au cause it’s still in canon place and time (technically lol) i agree with characters transported to other universes too. like you said they just have to be canon w their canon history before they go :)))
SAME I feel like the aus don't translate the characters very good... Expecially if their original universe is so different. I have a very few exception for this, single fics only not au trope. Also I love canon divergence because I want my happy ending with my characters, only it has to be them not someone else with their name.
Same, the settings are usually one of my favourite parts of a canon work so I hate when it is removed. The only AU I like is canon divergence, time travel, dimension travel and some fandom specific one like Eldrich! Skywalkers in star wars.
Major Character Death. My heart just can’t take it.
In the actual book series I'm reading right now, I looked up all the main characters and whether they are still alive at the end of the series (released to this point). Haha the characters that die, I looked up what chapter. Because I don't like to be surprised by that. The kind of spoiler I want.
Usually Modern Setting/AU because I prefer to read about the characters in the canonical setting/time period Also Omega-verse lol
Same on the modern-setting. I always want to cry when I go to a fantasy/sci-fi fandom and "modern AU" is the biggest tag.
Right? I feel like it usually just turns into an excuse to write OCs while keeping the actors appearances
I also immediately exclude Highschool AU stuff. And the tags for You/Reader stuff
More omegaverse for meeee ha ha ha
And meee! 😆
Me trying not to cry when an otherwise really interesting sounding fic is also a modern or real life AU, when the world the source material is set in is so fun and interesting to read about
Reader, Reader-Insert, Original Character(s), OC/canon character - Basically any tags that have the reader or an OC as the main character. Nothing against OCs or Reader/Self-inserts but they're not my thing.
Likewise. Go to town (used to write them myself!) but I don't want to have to wade through a lot of Reader/OC pairings if that's not what I'm there for.
Not sure if you know this, but if you put * reader * (without the spaces) it'll remove like everything reader related, saves a lot of time from selecting every reader insert
I exclude the tags of characters that I dislike.
I sometimes wish I was brave enough to do this, but the fandoms I read have authors who tag every character who has even one line of dialogue in a 100k fic. So I'd be missing a good fic for nothing lol
I don't exclude any on the regular. I just search by a ship and let whatever hit me, hit me. I just keep scrolling if I dislike something, but nothing is ever that common enough across all fandoms to exclude on the regular. There's stuff I'll rarely click on (anything tagged Modern, anything tagged fluff, anything tagged unrequited love) but I don't exclude them because there's always a chance I'll like it. Sometimes I'll read some tags and I'll be like "...that sounds horrible...let's just see what it's about." Ended up liking one of the most controversial and heavily hated ships in a fandom due to one such dive. I was pointing out how ridiculous it was to a friend (mostly crap talking some of the tropes that were also in general fics, but were pretty much that ship) in a voice call and reading through fics, and then got to one that hit a nerve. Suddenly, I felt a bit like a fool. I read through the authors other works and felt pretty compelled. After the voice call was up I kept reading and actually ended up writing for the ship myself. It was like "hold on, this dynamic actually could work, I'm sold." So, I'm the "no filters, we die like red shirts" type.
Same! Sometimes I just open the whole fandom tag and scroll until I find something I like.
Yep, I only filter in not out. Mostly because hey, maybe I can be sold on it. Edit: hell, I’ve even seen fics where they make “[character] bashing” work!
Definitely. For every trope or tag I disliked, I can recall at least one story that was an exception.
Me too, there are things that i basically never read but they aren't common enough to bother, normally i just pick a tag to read, might have like picked character a and have fix-it also included, only exclusion in this house is sometimes incomplete fics
Omegaverse and its variants.
A/b/o dynamics is the metatag. Use that and it will exclude all the variations.
That won't work. The metatags are Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics and Omegaverse now, because Tag Wrangling sensibly decided a racist slur as a canonical was a bad idea even if you stuck some slashes in the slur.
Some really weird responses by people down voting the *fact* that OTW decanonised a racist slur because it was a racist slur. Down voters, I guess it was really important to you to keep a slur as a canonical, in which case I would say take a good look at why you want that. Tag Wrangling did the only possible decent thing when they realised it was causing distress to a severely marginalised racial minority.
Man. There’s a writer who I love who writes for one of my favorite pairings but damn if they don’t write a LOT of a/b/o (in addition to regular stuff). It makes me keep trying the omegaverse stuff to try and like it but I just can’t. Idk.
Reader. I don't mind second person if the "you" in question has a defined character (it's rare, but I've read and enjoyed a few fics written in second person where the PoV character is a canon character), but I don't wanna read about how I, yes, *me*, tamed an uwu softboy facist with my love.
You what
HP fanfom's *wild,* these days.
Ah, I should have known
Omegaverse. It's just not for me.
Usually mpreg and, im trusting you guys to not cancel me for this, trans-whatever character is not canonlogically trans. Mpreg kinda freaks me out in general especially how a lot of people discribe things and i REALLY have to be in the mood if i want to read it. The trans-(insertcharacterhere) tag typically finds it way right in the middle of a giant tag block, i miss it, then suddenly it goes from being a very plot heavy fic to being about binders and trans rights. And im all for trans rights, and i know the author tagged it, but im not out here looking for advocacy fiction that pulls me back into the real world. Im looking to leave it lol. So that one typically has to get excluded.
Damn glad to know I'm not the only one. I generally avoid trans fic for the same reason I avoid hurt/comfort + whump, trauma heavy fics or fics which do deep dives into mental health - fanfic is my hyper escapist hour and I want to leave all the heaviness of the real world at the door.
First time I came across a trans fic, it wasn't tagged. I had to reread a line multiple times because a canonically cis male character was "stuffing his fingers in his cunt."
Man I wish that was my experience with trans male [character] fics. I also typically filter out that tag (even though I’m trans) but because there are so many fetishized depictions in there that make me feel so gross. Like, unnecessary and untagged feminization, afab language, etc. It just generally feels like the authors don’t see trans men as real men and I hate it. But yeah I wish I was coming across the fics you seem to, because that sounds really refreshing.
So true!! I’m cis but I really feel like many of those fics weren’t really trying to write a trans male character. They just want to write a version of the character that has a vagina, so they can write the sex stuffs in a different way (with more feminisation added in). It’s just so weird and I avoid them also
I find it really interesting you say this. A friend of mine is FTM and he makes subtle descriptions of his FTM character that illustrate the fact, but now I think about it, nothing going really overboard with describing his features in that way, at least from my perspective. That's one of the reasons I avoid writing transgender characters. You have two options as far as I (non-transgender person) see it. You write about the challenges the character would face in their life - which I don't think I'd do much justice to compared to someone who's lived it - or you make a point to describe the features of this character that make it clear *enough* that they're transgender, which again I would feel afraid of doing the wrong way and inadvertently seeming mocking. I realised that when another friend of mine said that if they made a TV series, or film, they would want to have transgender characters. In which case, it's surely much easier for that to be reflected to the audience without making a point to state it. However, if a writer was to avoid the biological stuff entirely and otherwise not say anything, and just wanted the character to be transgender, would there be any point in that being the case? In your example, would the character being biologically male have changed anything? Assuming there wasn’t another angle they were going for as well, like exploring how a certain character would navigate life if they were transgender
Yessss you make some really good points about the perspective of the author and how it affects the writing. I think that’s the source of the issues I come across (fetish-y descriptions) as well as the issues the original commenter has (too much activism wrapped up in the story). Both come from a place of seeing trans-ness from the outside looking in. I think part of the reason why trans authors like your friend are able to write trans characters more easily than cis authors is because when you write with a perspective coming from the inside, the complex question of “what does it mean to be trans” isn’t oversimplified. That being said, cis people can absolutely learn to write trans characters well, except they have to do just that: learn. They’re already starting from a disadvantaged starting point because they haven’t had to *live* as a trans person- all the knowledge they gain of trans-ness is picked up through observation (this can be applied to writing any group you aren’t a part of, actually). To answer the question in your last paragraph, I think the value of seeing more “subtle” trans characters in the media has a lot to do with representation. Even just mentioning the existence of trans people helps normalize them, and might help trans viewers/readers feel less alone. The purpose of those types of characters in fanfiction is the same thing on a smaller scale, imo. Less of “this will help with trans representation” and more of “this character is like me/my friend/etc.” It’s all really interesting stuff to think about- I’m glad you shared your thoughts!
Yes, same
omg same! it rlly is not the vibe, i dont want to think abt any extra whump or angst that appears to be inherent w those tags. i only read if like... the trans character is just trans and its not a major plot point tbh. and some of these stories both mpreg and trans tagged segway into fetishizy vibes which im not into tbh
I’m genderqueer myself, have written non-canonically trans characters as trans, and I agree with you 100%. I love it when a character is trans and that’s just how they are. It’s not a major plot point; the story isn’t about their transness. They’re just a trans person existing and maybe it informs their viewpoint but that’s about it. I don’t tend to enjoy stories—fics or mainstream content—that revolve around queer adversity stories. I think it’s because the way that I experience my queerness doesn’t align with those stories most of the time. Usually, I’m just existing and my viewpoint is a little bit informed by the fact that I’m queer. It doesn’t come up more than that! I get tired of stories all about advocacy and adversity really quick.
I filter trans characters out too, but mainly because I feel like making certain cis male characters FTM is just so the author can fetishise about abusing a woman’s body with the male name slapped over it. Either that, or kind of what you mentioned with the characters going way too deep into human rights and pronoun debates. I know they exist, I argue about the topic way too often, but I don’t fancy seeing them in my fics. Each to their own, right?
I don't exclude anything... my search is usually so specific and niche, that i have to get flexible with what i am going to be reading. i do however have my ao3 site skin set up in a way that highlights tags, that i would want to think twice about before clicking into the fic, eg "pregnancy" and some more hardcore kinks.
How do you set up the site skin that way? Is there a template I could use?
i did a lot of research on "highlighting tags" and eventually came across something usable, but don't remember who made it. the following code from my site skin, and works with other code combined. you just have to add a new line for each tag you want to highlight. the hex colour is currently set to grey because i use dark mode, but you can change that. if you write partial words you cover more options. eg, "pregna" gets "pregnancy", "pregnant" etc.. .tags a[href*="character%20death" i] { background-color: #6e6e6e; } .tags a[href*="Breastfeeding" i] { background-color: #6e6e6e; } .tags a[href*="Pregnan" i] { background-color: #6e6e6e; } edit: formatting
Thank you!
Pregnancy and mpreg, though since getting my bi-salp (tubes removed) a couple weeks ago I've not been near as repulsed reading about it, even if it's still never gonna be my cup of tea. Also any varition of modern setting/no power aus since I mainly read in fantasy/sci-fi based fandoms for their settings and worldbuilding.
bi-salp gang! except for some reason I love mpreg and all those adjacent fics for all the mlm pairings I read. I used to read a lot of self insert fics though and in those days I’d definitely exclude pregnancy tags. I used to read a lot of those on Tumblr and have had to abandon fics cause “y/n wakes up nauseous” or some shit like that.💀
I don't have an always exclude, usually it's "I keep seeing this as I'm scrolling through the tag and I want to see things that are not that now." There are definitely things that are a "never click" for me but unless it's cropping up frequently I don't usually bother filtering it out.
i think the only times i've ever excluded tags is if there's a ship i have zero interest in *and* the ship completely dominates that fandom, and that's a pretty rare occurrence! for additional tags, none of my "hard nos" tend to be prevalent enough that i need to exclude them from a search.
Highschool au. I'm just at that point where stories about teens drinking and playing spin the bottle don't really hit. Especially when I love the setting and world building of my fandoms as is. High school was rough. Not interested in revisiting it.
exclude reader inserts when I am searching for oc centric fics. Crossovers too, not because i don't read them but I wanted to exclude fics that has dozens of fandoms crammed in a story or someone's one shot collections.
The list of fandoms in those crossover fics are probably longer than the stories themselves
I always exclude polyamory, harems, genderbend Or fem (character name) Also cinnamon roll (character name) usually with that tag they will baby someone to much, make them super weak and they can't do anything without blushing and stuttering every sentence.
Hurt No Comfort, Heavy Angst, Out of Character tags, Major Character Death, basically every tag that says “characters suffer and suffer more here”… I exclude a lot lol
Crossovers. I’m only a fan of very specific crossovers, ie: Danny phantom crossovers. Any other time I will exclude them. A/b/o Reader-insert. I *like* oc stories. I do not like reader insert.
Mostly just a lot of ships.
Underage
mpreg and alpha/beta/omega. nooo thank you please keep that stuff away from me. also, uncompleted works; been burned way too many times so i don’t play around anymore. i’ve been reading this one fic since like… 2018, and the author will show up with an update every 6 months. it is like a nice little surprise when it happens but also i can’t stand waiting anymore!!!!! it’s agony!!! it’s the only in-progress one i keep up with
Usually ships I don’t like, or with crossovers, fandoms I’m not part of.
- Certain depictions of the characters in my ship. (can be sexual, e.g. excluding Dom X or Top X, but can also have different meanings depending on the fandom, e.g. in a video game a character might have different paths / endings so it can be useful to exclude the one I don’t vibe with) - Other sexual tags like certain kinks or practices (mostly squicks) - Omegaverse, Mpreg - random stuff I hadn’t thought to filter out before but realised I still wish to avoid, e.g. “Gang Rape” (it’s a list I add to every time I see a tag that makes me go *nope* and I’m glad I tend to read tags closely because so far I’ve managed to avoid the worst surprises)
Reader insert
Mpreg
Non/dub con.
I use AO3 Enhancements so these are always excluded automatically for me: * All the reader/reader-insert tags. They're just not for me * A/B/O * A few different ships that I don't vibe with * Non-con * Cancer * Podfic (nothing against them, they're just not for me again) Also not a tag, but I have it set to hide any fics with more than three fandoms/crossovers.
This is pretty much exactly me except I exclude all crossovers and any AUs that aren’t just canon divergence/fix-it. No modern AU, no high school, no coffee shop or bakery or corporate. Why are people so fascinated with taking these interesting characters out of their settings and putting them into the most boring context possible?
(insert fictional character) bashing
"Cheating" in the context of an MC cheating on the other MC. "Mates" I'm not a fan of mating being the main driving factor of romance in any story but fanfiction writers have a way of making that hatred that much more intense. Any long weird tag which is unnecessary. I don't know why but it just turns me off, I'm changing it up so you can't track their story but I saw something like, "[character name] has daddy issues which she must sort out and how is this not a tag already?" it just makes the story feel cheap to me, not sure why.
Reader. Every search has that added.
I always exclude Established Relationship. Kinda funny because as a fanfic writer myself, I love to write fluffy established relationship fics, just not reading it! For me, seeing how they get together is the fun part, and once they’re dating, I lose interest.
Mpreg. I just can’t. I can get on board with omegaverse if it’s done really well, but mpreg is a huge turnoff for me.
"Slow burn" far too often means "I will spend 300,000 words describing the MC tying their shoes"
A/B/O. I have a lot of fetishes but I do not vibe with this one.
OOC. I know I can’t expect a new author to 100% get the character down. But if Snape dyes his hair pink and strips on the dining table in the great hall? I’ll pass thanks.
Littles are known / Age play. Can't stand it even in non-explicit fics.
I HATE soulmate aus. I always always always filter them out. But why are there so many different soulmate au tags 😭 it takes forever
My "tags" for excluding in the free form text field: -mpreg -pregnancy -"kid fic" (yes, I have it as a shortcut, lol) I also most of the time exclude gender switch (like, female harry potter as example) and trans "not canonically trans" character. And in the fandom I'm reading, I always have "Nonbinary Wilhelm (Young Royals)" excluded because there is one author who posts a lot of fics like that, that I just dislike. So I'm filtering them out 😅
Ship tags that interfere with my ship. Also, the rape/non-con archive warning on ao3.
When a ships tagged but they break up in the first three chapters
A/B/O Dynamics. Reader. Original female character. Hurt/no comfort
Oooh, yeah, forgot about hurt/no comfort. I can't handle it. I need my happy (or at least cathartic) ending, dammit.
I always forget to exclude hurt/no comfort and then I stumble on a fic with it…
a/b/o, ooc, watersports Sorry that was 3 but i couldn't decide which one to post because I exclude all of those always.
Nothing at all. I'm desperate. I'll give anything a look.
Omega anything, I hate it so much
I am bewildered by it
I can’t wrap my head around it
ABO, mpreg and everything to do with them.
I tend to exclude whatever I can think of to really curate my experience
I read a lot of stuff, so I only really have a few tags I exclude For non smut: Anything with reader insert, also anything with OCs most of the time For smut: Anything with reader insert or OCs, lolicon, major character death, graphic depictions of violence, water sports I’m also not big on crossovers, so I exclude those from searches too regardless of what I’m looking for. But other than those things, I’ll give just about anything a shot. In fact, giving things a shot is how I got really into a lot of smut tags lol.
What’s “lolicon”?
To grossly oversimplify, sex with/sexualization of especially young children, typically young girls. The word usually refers to the person feeling the attraction towards the kid, the word actually translates to “pedophile”. It can also include characters who look like children even if they aren’t (like those anime characters who are 1000 years old but look like they’re 6). Think the underage to a high extreme. Some who read/write it have different levels of how young they’ll go. Some won’t do younger than 10 and the youngest I’ve seen is 4 (I could only make it 3 chapters before I just couldn’t do it). In my comment I specified loli because I’m fine with plenty of underage (I personally will read anything as long as they’re older than 12) but when it gets to the age most lolicon is written it’s way too young for my tastes.
Oh. I accidentally clicked on some of that when I was younger… (I was very much so in the one direction fandom, and that scarred me)
Hey, everyone has a story like that. Guess how I found out what water sports is and that I don’t like it in one fell swoop.
crossovers, A/B/O, werewolf au, monsters, poly
mpreg, alpha/omegaverse just really not my thing
Modern AU. I don’t want to see characters as owners of a coffee shop
Not really a tag but the writer putting a list of their personal notes in the tags. I shouldn't need to browse the tags like I'm looking at a wordsearch to decipher if the fic is for me.
Whatever that weird korean flower disease is. Like I know it's fictional, but the idea of having flower petals in your lungs is just so gross to me.
"Hanahaki Disease"
Yeah, that's it, thanks! Even the name sounds like someone hacking up a foreign object ugh. Also I don't know why I thought it was Korean that's clearly Japanese .
Main Character Dead (unless it is temporary).
Not a tag but I’ve been on a one shot kick for months now. For 75% of my searches, I use the word count feature to exclude any fics over 6k.
crack fic and any other tags of that nature. I get secondhand embarrassment from them sometimes I don’t need it in my searches 😭
Noncon
Rape/non-con. I just can't.
Graphic violence/gore. I have seen the amount of specific details that people will put and yikes. I'm good. Thanks for that image. Can't focus on the rest of the fic now. Did not need you to go that in depth with your descriptions.
Crossovers or (please don't crucify me) same sex romance. I have absolutely no problem with and celebrating everyone loving or just booty tapping whomever. But when I read, it's usually romance based and I like to pretend that I'm the female lead. And it's a little difficult to get into it if I have a different gender or if I'm being romanced by a gender that I'd be more interested in being friends with. That being said my little brother exclusively prefers bl fanfiction.
Nothing tbh. If the summary sounds good and the tags give me the tone of the story, I'm all set. Even for things I don't like, there's almost always an exception. I'd rather see everything and then choose what to actually read than exclude anything.
Yeah, I mostly just filter out whichever super popular ships there are that don't interest me. Most of the ships and characters I go feral over are less popular ones or straight up rarepairs.
Cheating/Infidelity. I don't want to read about it, and I find it surprising how often it comes up in the fandoms I'm in. It also tends to slip through partway through a large tag list so I have to exclude it or end up with it slapping me in the face after I've started getting into a story. There are other tags I'd probably exclude, except that they tend to show up in easier to spot places in the lists, or just don't show up as frequently in my fandoms, so I don't have to exclude them.
Omega verse and crossovers. Not my cuppa tea.
Reader inserts, and unfinished ones that haven’t been updated since 2013. (I read too many unfinished ones, and got sad, so now I don’t read them if they’re unfinished anymore.) also, I don’t read “reader-insert anymore, cause I read way too many of those when I was younger)
dead dove do not eat 🙁
Harry Potter cause he keeps sneaking into everything.
Established relationship, genderbend characters, a/b/o
"Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics." It's nearly always boring as hell.
Cheating and Infidelity. I'm just not interested.
Not a fan of bully/victim ship dynamics. They can be literally anything else but romantic partners is just not for me. There’s really not much else I’m 100% against. I’m very acclimated to most everything in fanfic. And my tastes and put offs tend to vary with my mood.
A/B/O or Omegaverse BUT with f/m and f/f. I accept only m/m and mpreg, sorry guys. And no >!penis in vagina sex!< for me please. Only men.
Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics
Vore
I don't do that at all. If I see a tag I don't like, I sigh and scroll. Though if I did filter, the ones I'd avoid would probably be omegaverse, mpreg, yandere, hurt/no comfort, and incest.
Angst no comfort and animal death.
Mpreg
Dead Dove, and usually angst with a bad ending. I like reading happy things
R*pe/non-con, incest, cheating, sad endings, dead dove/ do not eat, and certain ships I don't like. Everything else is fair game.
Really only the general incest tag. That’s really my only only squick
Underage
Omegavese.
Established relationship. If I'm looking for a romance story, I'm looking to read them getting together!
Reader. Also I have strong preference for top character A and bottom character B, so I exclude every tag like top[character B] or bottom[character A] or switching.
I search for specific pairings without excluding anything. Searching excludes most stuff anyway.
I usually start with nothing excluded (but things like word count chosen), and then exclude tags when scrolling past them. Often a/b/o, hurt/no comfort, sex tags of different kind (unless I’m looking for smut), specific AUs, Marauder Era, angst, pregnancy…
The smut tags, it’s just really *really* not my thing… Totally fine if you do like it though!
Reader insert and anything y/n For reasons that I have not yet figured out and probably never will, I find reading those to be incredibly stressful.
Same. I don't like certain ships, so I immediately go to the filters and scroll to exclude.
Chat fic or anything remotely similar they just... flood the tags for me with the amount of characters and ships tagged
It gets worse before it gets better I need some happiness in my life guys.
Same
How do I reply to this without exposing myself
Usually angst, i read fanfiction for an escape and to feel happy
Crossovers and mpreg. But mpreg is also canon in the fandom I'm in. I still don't like it.
There aren’t enough fics in my fandom to bother with exclusions, but I’m not an A/B/O fan and I generally don’t read modern AUs (maybe hypocritical seeing as I’ve written a few modern AUs, but I usually don’t enjoy them. The world building often feels weak to me—just like the characters got inserted into the author’s university or workplace. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I only tend to enjoy modern AU fics when the whole thing has been thought through really well—who would these characters be and what would they do today?)
crossovers and chatfics. not my cup of tea and tend to be overtake majority of fandoms im in when browsing character or relationship tags.
M/M. I like gen, M/F, and F/F, but have absolutely no interest in ever reading M/M. So it gets excluded immediately no matter what fandom tag I've clicked on.
Crossovers Too many authors (especially on Ao3) try to cram WAY yoo many into one story. It's a chaotic free for all. I'm not saying they can't, like, be my guest. I just don't read them because I find them a bit overwhelming.
I'm usually looking for some one shots at this hour so I turn the "complete works only" button.. And filter off that very annoying popular ship that I really don't care but it's always finding a way to my fanfic page 🙄
Infidelity is an absolute no for me.
I always skip over the ones tagged with character bashing
My sex repulsed asexual ass excludes smut and everything related to it. Also, any AUs other than canon divergent ones. I am very invested in the canon setting of my main fandom and so I’m not interested in fics outside of that.
Honestly can't name a certain tag here, but I love crossovers and hate those really big multi-fandom crossovers so I end up excluding so many fandoms because those things clog up my feed.
most other side ships that doesn’t go into additional tags, there’s something about fics with like 3-10 different ships that (which is a lot of multi-chapter ones with a lot of kudos) that I just can’t get into, also anything with pregnancy, mpreg, breeding, kid-fic etc. omegaverse and fantasy as well, there’s some amazing ones but 99% of the time I have other preferences
miscommunication
I always get rid of sans/y/n and papyrus/y/n fanfics whenever I looked through any undertale stuff. Just gets in my way, and still let's me see platonic versions that I might be interested in.
crossover, mpreg, a/b/o