Fanfiction "Red Flags" (r/FanFiction)

My biggest red flags is when there are no paragraph breaks, even worse if there are no indents! Or when the author keeps switching between first person and third person 🥲

if I don't like the formatting it just gives me a nope even if certain ships/fandoms are in it have little things, if i don't like the formatting and dialogue i won't read even if people recommend it me or if it is the only fic tI have it. i think it is just because it makes me overstimulated reading formatting that just makes me go WHOA that is a lot and i can barely look at it without getting a slight headache

My biggest pet peeve is the WAY out of character fics. Things like if Percy Jackson stayed on Calypso's island? Not a problem, I ciuld see Percy making that choice, which is why it js so impactful to the story. On another Greek note, Odysseus from EPIC: The Musical.

To keep it brief, Odysseus is a master tactician and warrior who fought not only beasts of legends but the very gods themselves to get home, slaughtering hundreds and playing with lives like pawns while battling to find a balance between Mercy and Ruthlessness.

But the Fannon? Nah, he is just a soft uwu bean who F****S and Penelope is actually the warrior. Except she doesn't. She does nothing. Odysseus somehow goes to war and banga his way into not dying.

Having wrestled with some of the ideas and relating hard to both the charachters and the ideas of EPIC, it feels like a travesty, like pissing on the Mona Lisa.

Authors who can very clearly write in fluent english, but for some goddamn inane reason, absolutely refuse to use the period at the end of a dialogue line, instead just closing the quote with a double inverted comma.
Like this: "Meet me at the station at 4pm"
instead of: "Meet me at the station at 4pm."

If its a typo, I understand. If it happens only a few*** times, I can still get past that. But if its a dialogue heavy story, where over half of the text consists of conversations? Fuck no, I'm getting out of there. I'm not going to let the cognitive dissonance give me a stroke.

"what if x happened onstead of Y" being hated on is so goofy, 90% of fanfics are exactly that just not explicitly stated. I mean come on dawg, do we suddenly hate AUs?

⚠️TW⚠️ Mentions of r-pe, inc3st, and a-use
I can’t stand:
-Starker(and a commentator had the audacity to ask in one of those fics, “why isn’t there any more of this ship?” 🥺 hmm wonder why!?)

-Pr0shippers

-Incest (T-Cest, Parkercest, etc)

-Romanticized r@pe, @buse, and serious stuff like that (can’t stand when people call it “hot” like wow, yeah, getting forced to do something against your will is sooo hot)

-Readers/Writers barely calling out problematic things like what’s listed above. They’re just as bad as the writers who made the bad stuff.

-mistagging

It really ruins ao3…I apologize for the ramble but I had to get this off my chest but if you read all of it, thank you and if you didn’t, still thank you for finding this comment :)

When the author sees a cartoon villain and goes “ah yes, p diddy”
Characters like Magolor and sir Pentious do not deserve that treatment T.T

I wish multifandom oneshots had a unique tag so they didn’t appear when you sort by crossovers

I agree with the thing against character bashing. There was a dude who did a Pokémon fic, and he straight called Goh an idiot who got mauled to death by a horde of Scyther, it straight up killed any positivity I had towards the story.

calling theese red flags and more is kinda, icky for me cause you saying the author is bad for wanting to do x thing with their fic, most of theese are pet peeves

I’m legitimately considering writing a story with the intention of including as many icks as possible… but would anyone read it?

I agree with a lot of these and very much disagree with others. When seeing a “I suck” thing, I assume the writer is simply self-conscious and trying to get the reader to know they’re not bragging, they’re aware they suck, and is basically just a plea to not get bullied for it. With the complaint about the “‘super detailed description’ or ‘funny, sassy description’”, I like it because I see it more as the author trying to be funny than anything. I like funny authors who write well but still engage with their audience in notes and stuff. Anyway, this was just a quick little thing. I just prefer giving author’s the benefit of the doubt, especially if they’re young or simply inexperienced. It saves a lot of frustration. 👍

Tbf, I do find I suck at summeraies annoying because I'm picking on what I read. It's ok to do that, won't hate you for it. I just won't read the fic. Just as they said, not everyone will like it.
I also get really annoyed at people marking fics done when they're not or adding/not adding something in the tags that they shouldn't have/ should've
(EX warnings! Or they just add something completely unrelated!)
That's a genuine thing they have to fix tho bc that's false advertising, is annoying for people or can cause triggers

I really feel for the authors that don't get a lot of interaction. Like yes, the author isn't owed interaction, but it can be so disparaging to post content only to get little to no feedback on it. Especially when you can see people are clicking on it and liking it, but no one is commenting on it. Even just something like "I really like ___" is so so so nice. I 100% understand complaining about the lack of engagement and I don't consider it a red flag.

I’m going to say your a bad person if you write fanfics about real people. Especially if they are erotic. That’s nasty stalker behavior, and you SHOULD be ashamed. It’s okay to judge people for doing bad things.

I don't mind silly tags or bad summaries, I do mind a bad attitude and a self-importance about a fic that isn't even good.

Ending the story on a cliffhanger, letting the readers know that the story is mostly finished, and then not coming back. You know that author has this chapters you so want to see, but will not release them out of his own doubts. "I dunnoooo, i'm not motivaaaated, the fics about this character seems to flop nowdaaays...". Yes, leave your readers to suffer on a cliffhanger for an uncertain amount of time because you're too egoistic to release your story unperfected and because popularity is apparently more important for you than art. "This work is not popular, so i will just not finish it and leave it on a cliffhanger forever". You know how large the audience i write for, dear author? The audience i keep coming back for again and again, struggle to not abandon my works for, put all of my hearts in them for? Do you know how many people it consists of? ONE. IT'S JUST ME. I write for myself and myself only, and surprisingly enough, i still write. I don't abandon my works because i don't see them becoming popular in the future and you just bring suffering on your small audience as a form of punishment for it not being as big as you want.

2nd person is only okay when it’s homestuck

The readers: - We are so invested! We will die for the next chapter! Please, continue, we so want to know what will happen next!
The author: - I have little motivation, but nevertheless, the work is mostly finished and i will post the rest of it in one update this month!
The same author: dissapears from the face of the Earth, not posting nor the promised month, nor the next
The readers: .....

This is literally what happened to me just recently. It's almost cruel to make you invested in the work and worried for the characters, end the work on a cliffhanger and never come back despite promising to do so. Damn it, author, we are not merciless critics that will set you on fire should the work not be perfect, just post it! Post it unfinished, post it unperfected, at least tell us what it would be, we just want to know!

sigh I just... want to know what happens next. I already prepared myself to sink into misery for two weeks should the character i symathize with die, and now author just dissapeared. Should i accept that the work will not be finished? Writing a note to let the audience know that you did not dissapear from the site completely is also a good idea.

For me definitely bad grammar and lack of punctuation........ The moment I see that I'm out

Biggest fanfiction red flag? Fanfiction itself /j

Second person pov is killing me too

Mine is when they vanish with no explanation

One time I read a really good fandom fic that I really enjoyed. But near the end the author stated that they would make two endings; one being that character X has a crush on character Z however they both date two different people due to plot reasons, and get together at the end after drama, or the second one where the fic hurries up and gets Characters X and Z together because they’ve already been separated way too long imo. Well I wanted to read the latter because I didn’t like the character X was shipped with, and didnt ship character Z with anyone else. And when I went to go read the ending I wanted too, only the first one was written. I was disappointed because the fic was tagged and labeled as complete, so I clicked off. The fic had a few other pet peeves I didn’t like, but I just ignored them cuz it was a pretty damn good fic, and I’m sad I had to click off.

So not just fanfics, as I mostly have seen it in web novels but authors who don't seem to know or pay attention to distance and/or time. I.E. the town is 3000 Km across or outlining at least 26 hours of time between when they got up in the morning and when the sun starts to set. I can put up with a lot, I can even handle some MTL but messing up these two things that badly will make me drop a book really fast.

When the fic is just the same events of the canon but with slight changes

second person pov is cool tho :(

disagree with the one that mentioned how writing the accent is annoying. I love when people write the way an accent pronounces something, cause then it forces you to read it in that accent so you understand. it's so much fun, plus it seriously adds to characterization (if done correctly)

like seeing someone really commit to a dialect and accent makes a work 1000x better

my fav example is Appalachian accent, when authors write "warshing" instead of "washing" or "ongyuns" instead of "onions" it makes a huge difference and a really good one too, it makes a character feel real.

however, it's annoying if it's like "Euhe halftuh gaw oawt thaytu whay" (you have to go out that way) that is very annoying

2nd person pov is actually very fun for me and I wish more people tried it. idk why people think an entire pov is a red flag, like, i get not liking it, but its not really something that should be avoided.

My preference in fanfiction is when it feels grounded and accurate to canon, so i don’t really like crossovers and tend to avoid them like a plague. Nothing against them i just don’t like them

Straight up: "Sorry if OOC-". Just insta drop, nothing that follows this sentence can convince me to keep reading.

Okay, 2nd person with /reader is fine, ESPECIALLY when it’s gender neutral reader.

Second or first person when it’s char/char? NO.

Red flags are all put in the warnings already by the authors themselves (hopefully, at least most of the time). Everybody just names pet peeves, not red flags. There's no need for red flag spotting on a site freely allowed pedo/incest/rape fantasies. That and I guess gross mischaracterization or bigotry projected from the author could be the content to look out for, but then again, everyone horribly misunderstood the assignment here

I think ppl need to realize sometimes ppl learning to write post stuff just to have completed something. Thats also part of Ao3s original mission statement. Its not merely for readers or reading fanfic, its a community of writers and those writers may be at any level. Sure, dont read the fic with no summary - thats understandable. Complaining about it is not understandable though.

I like how you included the palette cleanser at the end, because we humans do need friendly little reminders now and then. Thank you.

Once read a fic with no spaces at all, like no paragraphs with periods or spaces. All of the words were one word basically.

I think I'm understanding people's aversion to first person pov now. When I was younger and primarily read fic on wattpad, I read first person all the time. But I just started reading a fic I had saved for later that happened to be in first person, and within the first few paragraphs I could feel my interest draining. Something about the narration just didn't feel right for the character speaking. Despite that, I was trying to stick it out and give it a chance...but then he used a tilde in his inner monologue, and I was done ^^''

I don't know if it's because I haven't read or written in first person for a long time or what, but I just can't handle it anymore. I guess I've come to associate it with bad or at least mediocre fics now, which is a shame because when it's used well, it can be pretty effective.