Fanfiction "Red Flags" (r/FanFiction)

I back straight out of a fic when it's just a block of text, with zero separation between paragraphs.

My favorite kind of summary is [intriguing excerpt from the fic] + [short description of the scenario].
It's like drug to me. Yum.

I got a lot of pet peeves, but the biggest one is when the story is written in either huge paragraphs unnecessarily, or when the character interactions is in a roleplay style, like so:
A: something something
B: Something something.

Like it's alright ig, but it just irks me to no end

unnecessary smut. like. i'm fine with any type of explicit content if it works within the story and i don't tend do skip it until it's something that's specifically grosses me out but sometimes sex scenes are just. have no reason to exist

also one time i instantly stopped reading a long ass work because the characters considered "love you madly" by the doors just the song to make their friend ask a girl out and it worked

Not allowed to read fan fictions, but I’ve written my own and been in roleplays. Something that drives me INSANE is when the person writing uses Second Person, like, why?? I am not doing it, that’s the character. I don’t care how good the plot is, if someone does this, I will leave. This is why I write my fan fictions in Third Person, at least I can use more descriptive words instead of “you feel your heart began to pound faster than it has, you feel bad” I could do “he felt his heart beat faster than he could remember, making him feel worse” Idk if this is just me, I just started to stop doing First person fan fics because I hated doing those. Tell me what you think, I may just be overreacting.

Oh, I HATE when the tags aren’t related. Why did you put # wolf under a story about two people from the same school that fall in love? There isn’t a fracking wolf in that! I love writing fanfiction and I put a lot of work into it, as in 900+ words per chapter on Wattpad, so I REALLY do not appreciate when people make these mistakes. I don’t like seeing incorrect tags, misspelled character names, un-capitalized anything, complaints. There are so many good fan fictions out there though, so even if you hate this stuff, it’s still worth the search!

My pet peeves, after existing on AO3 for over 3 years:
-Poor punctuation/grammar
-"no beta we die like men"
-Walls of text
-Copy-pasted "artsy" letters to make a title/headings (mostly on Wattpad)
-Too many unnecessary tags
-Incorrect complete markings
-Summaries that spoil the whole story
-Summaries that don't tell you anything about the story
-Aggressive authors notes
-Using texting abbreviations/slang/emojis in dialogue

I understand dyslexia is a thing but people please spell words correctly it’s the most annoying thing ever. If you aren’t sure how to spell something, ask someone who does or look it up.

Id forgotten most people find second person a weird pov since I read all of homestuck and millions of words of homestuck fanfiction and started writing almost exclusively in second person

One thing that drives me insane is way too many references to the original media. It just becomes inorganic and annoying and ruins the immersion

My biggest pet peeve is when rarepairs are used as background ships for the more popular main ship in a fic. Scrolling through the rarepair's tag only to be flooded with fics about a completely different relationship is so frustrating.

Amen to second person pov. First person CAN be done well, second person is almost impossible to pull off, and it's incredibly presumptuous to even try. Also: present tense. There's a reason the vast majority of professionally published work is in past tense, and it's not that most authors are unaware that present tense exists. Present tense is basically a big banner that reads "Why yes, I am trying to be pretentiously artsy, thank you for noticing."

A big one of mine is chat fic. I feel like it’s such an interesting format, where the limitations could force the author to be creative… and then the “chat” is the same overly meme-y dialogue that doesn’t feel tied to the digital format or to the characters supposedly exploring this digital format.

For example, if you’re texting someone, you’re not going to type out “u-um im sorry”, because you’d have to go vastly out of your way to type out a stutter. Or if you’ve gone AFK, you won’t type “…” in the group chat, because not being on your device is the definition of AFK. Timestamps add so much environmental storytelling, and it’s not difficult to add! And if you think every character in a group chat will be an active participant at all times, I have reason to believe you’ve never been in a group chat before.

My big pet peeve about fanfics in general is that trans characters literally NEVER get to have their preffered genitalia. I mean, yeah, I get that someone may not know that a person can get bottom surgery and change their lower organs, but its EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SMUT FANFIC WITH A TRANS PERSON IN IT. They never get to have bottom surgery and, to be frank, its only so they can have sex 'like hetro people' in the same sex fanfics, and vice versa, and it just bugs me, and I DONT KNOW WHY.

GIVE BOTTOM SURGERY REPRESENTATION, PLEASE !!!!

One of my Pet peeves is that when a fanfic is from an Anime/manga, but then the OC's name is clearly not a Japanese. I mean, it would be better if you could make your OC's name suitable for the fanfic you're writing about. Another is this: Y/N or anything like that. I think it's better if you set your OC's name

"Don't like? Don't read!!1!1!" is one that will have me skip a fic so fast you'd think you imagined it on screen.

The author feels rude and combative in a space that should just be folks swapping passion projects. It's such a disappointing turn off when you are reading the summary or tags and the fic seems right up your alley only for the author to ruin any interest with the attitude :/

Half expect them to argue with you in the comments even if you compliment/question the story

Overuse of speech tags. I used to do this with all of my writing and I look back now like how did anyone read this? It just disrupts the flow of dialogue so much, and dialogue is usually the thing that carries fics, so if you make it hard to read/follow the whole thing is doomed.
Also: I've never liked groupchat/texting fics. Homestuck is the only one that gets a pass because fic writers usually use the pesterlogs correctly (they write actual descriptive text and insert snippets of conversations in the text format similar to how the story is actually written). But I don't want to read a fanfic where a group of characters (who don't have phones or text in canon) talk for upwards of half of the wordcount in a script style chat with no actual scenes playing out. This isn't Mystic Messenger man, I want to read an actual story.

pet peeve: using multiple different pronouns (he/she/it/they) for the same character

It sucks so bad to have a fave that's so often used as background character. Whenever they're not one of the first 3 characters listed, I just assume they have one line and don't even try.

"X, the daughter/brother/cousin of popular canon character...." I really don't like when they change the canon family dynamics I love. Especially because these insert OCs tend to be quite cringey and OP as well.

A major pet peeve of of mine is when the author just gives their characters an accent for no reason. Like saying "Ya" instead of "yes" or "you".
Maybe they just dont know, but it happens a lot more than I like.

I don't mind the 'or' thing after summaries. In the main fandom I read, they tend to be funny. One thing I can't do though is loads of spelling and grammatical errors.

Those big multifandom crossover request things that clog up a fandom on ao3. Like i dont hate them, people can write what they want, but its annoying to scroll looking for well written crossovers of one or two fandoms only to find pages upon pages of request fics with like one chapter

ngl, I love summaries where they have the "Or" thing, tho usually instead of the first part being a summary, it's an excerpt,, and then the or gives a meme-y or oversimplified explanation of the concept,, and honestly,, I love it,, total green flag for me,, like, you get a taste of what their writing is like in advance along with their sense of humour in the "or" section,,,,,,,, every fic I've read that's had one of these was high quality stuff and an absolute pleasure to read,, that's all I've gotta say

I adore the last one. I need that haha, I struggle with tagging 💀

idk why, even outside of fanfics, the amount of times i saw angel be spelled like angle drives me insane, angle is fucking a math thing

Honestly, anything not tagged as "Gen" with few exceptions. I know, but I am not looking for romance... ever. I want interesting characters doing non-cannon things. Not ships.

wooo boy, do i have MANY pet peeves with my fanfiction

- fics where a character is made SO ooc to the point where theyre entirely unrecognizable aside from their appearance just so theyre an obstacle to the main couple (mostly andrew hanbridge from little witch academia, my boy is public enemy #1)
- when the author makes the character stop and go on a preachy tangent about like, concent or healthy coping mechanisms or whatever the author needs to hear. im all for writing as a form of therapy, or having these values, but making characters go on this 2 paragraph long rant about it just takes me out of whatever scene youre trying to establish (this happens most in hurt/comfort n sm_t)
- "slow burn" but when the characters immediately accept their feelings for the other person
- "slow burn" and the characters meet in chapter 54
- miscommunication thats blown way out of proportion and could easily be solved with a single sentence (or 2)
- NO PARAGRAPH BREAKS
- weird, untagged f*tish content that has nothing to do with the fic itself and feels very out of place
- overuse of japanese honorifics/phrases (like name-kun or name-chan EVERY SINGLE TIME A CHARACTER REFERS TO ANOTHER BY NAME)
- using words from another language and not providing translations (bonus points if that language isnt written in the english alphabet ( abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz))

Liking the video just because of reading that whole number instead of just jokingly passing it off as an insane high number like it was meant to be.

I usally write in first person, is it really that bad to people?

I honestly need the "or" at the end, if a fic has a long summary and no "or" tbh i will probably not read it

The one complaining about lack of reader interaction I can kinda understand.

I have only written one fanfic in my life. I put a lot of work into it and it took a couple months because my ability to sit down and write properly only lasts for about 30 minutes a week. And I really love what came out of it. So to see 6 Kudos and 1 comment on it feels disproportionate to how much I love what I did. And I sort of wonder that since it was my first fic, did I tag it wrong and not get it out to people who want to see it? Did I make some other mistake?

oc love children.

Me watching this to make sure my unpublished fanfic I gave up on 3 years ago won't annoy readers

I don't see it too often, but I really dislike when writers make everyone in the story trans. I'm speaking as a trans person myself, here, but it really takes me out of the story. I'm cool with one headcanoned trans character every now and again, but when it's almost everyone? Nah

Idk if its a pet peeve, but i always hated seeing "background relationships" and theres like 5 to 3 chapter dedicated to their pov, like if theres gonna be important to the story FUCKING MENTION THEM.
Also when the author forgot the tags and go on the note "i forgot to tag it lmao 💀", gurl dont give me that, i was reading a tmnt fic and boom the brother fuck, like where was the incest tag at 😭

this is just a me thing, but i hate overuse of the word "cock". im sorry its too porny for me. dick is just so much better imo

Idk, I would read a fanfic with Catelyn saying "Hey kids! That's totes yeet yo!" It would be funny, and I read fanfic for entertainment. I can see how that would a red flag for people though, especially if it's meant to be a serious fic.

I'll just second any of the wannabe fancop/fandom police stuff. That's just annoying and it says more bad things about you than the ship or trope you hate.

Always misspelling the character names is annoying too. It's one thing if there's a bunch of different ways to spell it or if it's just an occassional typo. For example, Prince Demande from Sailor Moon has been Demande/Dimande in Japanese with English subs and was "Prince Diamond" in the 90s English dub. There was also Saphir/Sapphire and Esmeraude/Emerald. The characters are named after English words for these gemstones, but the pronunciation isn't quite the same as the English pronunciation. In those cases, just pick a spelling and I'm good as long as you don't call him "Prince Desmond".

i can’t stand things with so many tags when it’s actually only like 300 words

Something I often find is that even the best writers don't use the most realistic of dialogue when writing for a character that is originally written as smart and more verbose, stuff like an absolute refusal to use contractions, words that nobody would use in casual conversation, basically making the character a walking thesaurus. It bothers me, and pulls me away from the character.

the reason I stopped reading fics in my native language is the amount of ???cultural transfers??? I'll call it that, like when the author sprinkles fanfic that has different culture from the language in which it was written with stereotypes or phrases peculiar to the author's native culture / language they are writing (my native language isn't English)