Other Fanfiction pet peeves.

[Shawdios]

What are some of your pet peeves when searching for fanfiction to read?

Or, what makes you “nope” out of a fic without hesitation?

Personally, i click out if i see its been written in first person. Or if its got a {POV [insert character]} tag at the top of the chapter.

It’s almost always not going to be written well in my experience. No offence intended towards writers who may write in first person or put a POV tag at the top of a chapter. It’s simply not something i enjoy or it‘s something i’ve always had bad experiences with.

 

[Onmyoji]

Aside from the things that are not allowed by RpN rules so I don't want to mention them, it's modern AU for me. I need escape from real world, not throwing my favorite historical / fantasy characters into modern world grinder. It doesn't make it more relatable for me, it makes it unnatural when those cool magic-users are talking about taxes and salary lol I don't deny there are some amazing modern AU fics in my fandoms but I can't enjoy them enough because of the setting.
I'm generally very picky with AUs, and even though I like some canon divergence here and there, I prefer canon-compliant fics.

 

[The Random Fox]

Anything that results in a Canon character getting someone's OC pregnant. Just...no. I don't like pregnancy topics, it makes me uncomfortable to the point that I no longer read Fanfiction. Weird as it may sound, the whole thing about pregnancy/parenthood isn't my cup of tea.

 

[Sugarnaut]

I can withstand a lot of fanfiction tropes. Like a lot.
Just. Give. Me. The. Right. Tags. And. Warnings. Thanks.

 

[KawaiiCat444]

Overpowered, angsty, reader inserts. I loved reading these specific undertale fanfics that where like 'they betrayed me and left me to die so I'm going to join the bad guys and hurt them back because i'm powerful all of a sudden' yeah trying to reread those now just puts me into a cringe induced coma. I still love a good betrayal, emphases on the 'good'

 

[Sethos]

Underage and non-con are always huge nos for me. I always filter them out on AO3. I also don't very much enjoy "chatfics" where the concept is simply the main characters in a chatbox. First person perspective, focus on an OC with the pre-established cast, OOCness of canonical characters/bashfics, and grammar usually tend to be deal-breakers for me too.

 

[SandraDeelightful]

This one doesn’t make me nope out, but it does get on my last nerve: purposely not capitalizing anything because of aesthetic.

 

[Heyyimghost]

What are some of your pet peeves when searching for fanfiction to read?

Or, what makes you “nope” out of a fic without hesitation?

Personally, i click out if i see its been written in first person. Or if its got a {POV [insert character]} tag at the top of the chapter.

It’s almost always not going to be written well in my experience. No offence intended towards writers who may write in first person or put a POV tag at the top of a chapter. It’s simply not something i enjoy or it‘s something i’ve always had bad experiences with.

I agree with you on first person. Also if it's a giant wall of text with no paragraphs

 

[bunniboo]

I gotta go with “fixing” flawed characters or clear favoritism in the writing where they forgive or give no consequences to the antagonist the writer clearly likes

Totally cool to like antagonists and villains, I just can't stand when its likes I dunno a character that brought cities to their knees and commits endless crimes on the daily within canon and the fanfic and it's just glossed over like it's a minor annoyance if anything

 

[bad wolf]

When someone takes a really badass character and treats them like a child. To the point where it’s clearly OOC for them.

Most OCs.

Happy endings for the sake of happy endings. Like, you can’t just scrub clean all the trauma you put a character through. Bittersweet endings are just as good, my man. There are consequences to your actions, some lasting.

Stylistic choices, how the writing is set up. No breaks between paragraphs. All the dialogue between different characters in one block of text. If it’s just not written well??? Sorry.

Reader fics. I don’t really get these. I don’t want to see myself in whatever I’m reading.

Crack fics that just don’t make sense or where the humor falls flat.

 

[GojiBean]

It's just a personal pet peeve cause I've always got a special place in my heart for most source material of fanfiction stories, but whenever a fanfiction basically turns the source material 180 degrees to the point where it becomes unrecognizable... Count me out.

For example, back in the day (yes, I'm old, and I won't say how old, lol) I saw an Avatar: The Last Airbender RP where the Avatar (not Aang, but still an Air bender) was the antagonist and the Fire Lord was the protagonist. Not inherently bad in and of itself, but it gets worse. The Water and Earth Kingdoms were completely destroyed a few years before , all their people are dead (yes, ALL of them, so no Earth or Water benders left outside of the Avatar), and the Fire Nation itself is on the brink of being destroyed.

Basically, there's no chance to win against the Avatar. He's already conquered like 80% of the world. And the Fire Nation's on the run and by itself now. How do they expect to win?... A "new" Avatar is expected to awaken from... Somewhere? I guess?

They'd already lost me at that point. So, I didn't bother waiting to see where else it was supposed to go. That's not Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not by a long shot.

So yeah. When people butcher source material in their fanfictions to making them unrecognizable, I'm out.

 

[GrumpySwallow]

One major peeve of mine is when fan-content creators take a trait of a character and exaggerate it to the point that it's their whole character. A character has a favorite food that an episode of the show focuses on? In fan content, the character is OBSESSED with that one food item. A character is a little bit dim in canon? Now that character will be written or drawn to be as stupid as Ralph Wiggum or Patrick Star! A character is light-hearted in canon? In fanfiction, they are completely incapable of being serious at all!

I don't care for song-fics, First Person POV fics, or fics that heavily focus on the writer's OC, or features OC x Canon pairings.

Fanfiction that is written in one big-ass paragraph with no spacing will have me immediately hitting the Back button.

 

[Murdergurl]

I have yet to read (attempt to read) any fan fiction that isn't terribly written and/or super cringey. Granted, I don't often look for fanfic. But between what I've read on Wattpad and Ao3 (Archive of Our Own), I cannot think of a single work of fanfiction that I didn't wish I could get my wasted time back from reading. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places? I dunno.

To begin with, none of my major fandoms are less than 30 years old. So, finding fanfic of those fandoms is generally not easy to accomplish to begin with. Star Wars being the exception. Those are super easy to find, and also super terrible overall. Keep in mind I have no interest in Kylo Ren, Rey, Princess Amidala, or Anakin. Also, I hate romance stories in general. And 9 times out of 10, a fanfic winds up being some kind of stupid, gag-worthy, romance setup.

 

[SandraDeelightful]

Another thing that really grinds my gears: if you’re going to write an OC, for the love of God, do not put other characters words in their mouth. If you’re going to have your OC and a canon character have a conversation that was in the source material, put your own spin on it. Your OC should not be talking exactly like another character.

 

[Phantom Thief of Hearts]

High School AUs, Crossovers where the fandoms don't crossover at all and it's a retelling featuring the other fandom's characters, and Self Insert OCs x Canon Characters.

 

[420Babe]

- Crybaby OCs/reader inserts.

- Anything to to with pregnancy.

- Having to sit through the main charecter go through an entirely different relationship before it gets to the pairing that was advertised that I came for.

 

[MissMeTomorrow]

referring to eyes as "orbs"

 

[ChaoticallyCreative]

First person although it can be remedied if done correctly, love at first sight, smut at first sight, mary sue characters or "Im not like other girls" lines?

 

[xpstitch]

Incomplete. My heart breaks every time I read an angsty romance of my otp... and then the author goes on hiatus....

 

[CrimsonDawn]

• Mary Sues | Gary Stus - y'know the loved by all OCs who have all the powers and whatnot, whose only weakness is that they're being abused (that's not their weakness, though, arguably) or that they're "clumsy".
• First Person - I avoid first-person point-of-view stories like the plague. Something about them is so "nef". They tend not to be particularly well-written either.
• Canon characters that are not only wildly out of character, but have personalities and behaviours faster than traffic lights change colours - It's honestly quite... horrifying to see some of your favourite characters butchered alive, then buried and then having their graves stomped all over.
• "Brit" talk - when people write words to sound more British because the character they're writing for has a British accent, and all they can manage is having them say "luv" every few lines it makes me want to pull my hair out. It's also so generic, uncreative and impersonal that you could have anyone use the word, which just makes the whole text even less interesting.
• Turning characters into caricatures - It's fine when their canon personalities feature very prominently. Subtlety isn't a must. But when you flanderize a character, or worse you "expand" upon it, but in a way that just constantly hits you over the head with the same few key elements to these new features -- for instance, if a character that often wears black now only really like things that have "black" in them, like "black forest cake", "black liquorice" and "black tea", and you never consider they might be a multifaceted person - you turn them into this caricature that is not only less relatable and less human-like but also... is pretty lazy.
• Non-texting Text Talk - Ever had to roll your eyes because someone genuinely thought writing a whole 1000+ word chapter in text talk was a good idea? If it's a few lines, fine, that's easy enough to decode. But a whole chapter? Moreover, not everyone uses the same shortcuts for words. I am not willing to spend hours scrolling through Urban Dictionary and other sites just to translate your chapter when it's supposedly written in English. I quit the moment I see "u" outside of an author's note or an example of characters texting with each other.
• 1 Big Paragraph - if it's all written in one big paragraph, I quit. If there are multiple big paragraphs that seem to be of suspiciously similar lengths, as though someone had separated them out "just 'cause" without considering where and when it makes sense... I tend to quit because of a lack of variety. It gets boring to read and makes it difficult to focus when people write just to meet a quota, an expected word count.
• Speech - when two characters speak in the same paragraph, it tends to confuse me and thus bother me. Just place the other one's words on a whole new line.
• 0 Punctuation - I see this, I immediately nope out of anything. Doesn't matter if your usage isn't perfect -- I'm not an expert in punctuation either --, but I need the breaks. No excuses will save you from me clicking off if you write a five (computer) lines long paragraph sans a single comma, parenthesis, ellipses, period, etc.
• all lowercase - I can accept it in author's notes... I just can't when it's the actual body of prose that I'm supposed to read.
• ALL UPPERCASE - it's fine when a character is shouting/when something is being emphasised/highlighted, but for this very reason, I cannot stand it when it is used for just anything. Tiny/small caps are something else entirely, and I still will generally avoid whole stories written in it.
• Bad Boy/Good Girl - with exceptions, this trope annoys me to no end. I much prefer the more subversive Good Boy x Bad Girl.
• Omegaverse & Werewolves - very little of it is well-written and it's very repetitive. Plus, it panders to modern standards of masculinity, even when an alpha is female. In that way, it lacks nuance, it's frustrating, dull, very gendered, and a show of very outdated views that aren't even based on anything in nature. No, seriously, wolves don't actually have that kind of pack structure. We're just shoving toxic masculinity into fiction... and for my part, I'd like to escape from such things in fiction. Doesn't even matter whether it's gay or straight omegaverse, both are equally as bad for ultimately shoving men and women into solid, inflexible categories, there's just a couple more of them, but it still clearly isn't a spectrum, just a bunch of categories. I'll only rarely read something like that and I'll often switch off after a few chapters when I'm reminded "Oh, yeah, this is an omegaverse fic after all, silly me for expecting actual inclusivity and nuance instead of just the fetishistic kind".
• Pregnancy - Not interested.
• Drinking & Smoking being glamourised/aestheticised - And really, any sort of issues. Some will just create a pretty little Pinterest board of addictions and disorders for their characters completely disregarding any nuance, development, conversation, or healing surrounding the topics they shove in just to make their stories feel more "mature" (at a glance). To be honest, I'm yet to see anyone handle this well. Sans all the colourful filters, Pinterest Boards, and things getting resolved the moment our addict/mentally ill person gets laid. (At least, sometime thereafter with no real road to healing being shown.)
• Certain characters being turned into perverts to make other characters look better - Just because a character can be an ass, doesn't mean they are all these other things as well. Them being manipulative doesn't make them perverts. And using them to gain your favourite character cheap sympathy or to avoid needing to write in another character who could fill the role of pervert without any actual consideration of the two characters ... is just lazy and uncreative. These stories don't tend to be well-written either, and those that are read like torture... smut. The first is in some ways worse and generally stems from people not understanding nuance and so taking an existing antagonist and dialing up to 9000, even if they were never suggested to be that evil just for a scene that builds cheap sympathy so the writer doesn't need to think about writing a character to be interesting or go through development because all they need is to go through a traumatic event and then just, with the click of your fingers get better.
• All Original Characters / Next Gen - I read fanfiction for the canon characters. If you try to replace the characters I like, you're not keeping my interest. I did admittedly make a few mistakes along the way in skipping parts of fanfiction solely dedicated to the original character which would've been helpful to read simply because I was not invested in the original character. Also, I really, really don't like it when people give characters I like kids and then have the characters I like be abusive/neglectful parents. It's worse when they were in some source material parents beforehand, and by all accounts didn't really become any of that and only really forgot their child(ren) because they died. You tend to forget stuff when you die and then become some sort of immortal or reincarnate. It's worse when even discounting the other source material - which might not count anyway because its version of the "canon" is very different from what you're actually basing the fic on - the character who is supposedly this abusive parent in fanfiction is actually very eager to have family and even strikes as affectionate, and at worst maybe snaps once in the whole story at the closest thing they have to something of a family. Yes, this all sounds oddly specific - because it technically is - but that doesn't make it less annoying when it happens. Hence, and just to be sure, I skip Next Gen type fics, or "Canon Character's Non-Canon Daughter x This Other Canon Guy" stories.
• Original Character x Canon Characters - For all the above reasons most original character x canon character stories have either been boring or frustrating to me and thus I tend to avoid them, if possible. Plus... most characters don't have a stand-out personality that I would consider to work well against/with the canon they're being shipped with. Many are just coloured-in cardboard. At least in roleplays I occasionally come across genuinely interesting original characters, but it's still not as canon characters, hence, for my part, I tend to cautiously stick to canon character x canon character with pairings. Besides, most people ship the original characters they actually take time on with vastly different characters from those that I want to pair up and let them have their family and their romantic happily ever after.
• Chatfics - Rarely done well, and the lack of substance from other aspects of the characters and their environments takes away from what the story could be. Heck, it's part of why a lot of plays just don't work for me. They don't ever have any actions/non-verbal reactions described, settings are dismissed, behaviours and habits are forgotten, and voices tend to lack individuality. Actually...
• Single voice stories - where everyone speaks in the exact same, highly inconsistent manner. You can add in so much personality with dialogue, yet people just choose not to, because apparently it's too hard to even consider writing one character as speaking more formally, and another one less so. Even that distinction rarely makes it on the page, even when it's apparent in canon and these are canon characters.
• Babe, Baby - I just... *shudders* I don't like it.
• "Daddy" - *Shudders again* Never, nuh-uh, no thanks, we're not doing this.
• Redemption in Death - Everything is forgiven and the character is now a hero upon death. 'Cuz that's how it works, right? RIIIIGHT? I love antagonists, anti-heroes, etc. But y'know what I love more? When they get to experience some actual shifting of views and actions, some proper development, they don't die, and especially not just as a flimsy excuse to gain sympathy points.
• Or just, y'know Major Character Death - If it's my favourite, the moment they die, I'm done with the story. I just know they'll be replaced, the replacing characters will immediately become the superior version of my deceased darling, and it doesn't even matter that the person replacing them is a 12 y/o with all the personality of a grey crayon.
• When a writer clearly underestimates and overlooks the potential and the full extent of the character - Even when it is unintentional, you and I will often notice that there is more to a character than is ever fully acknowledged in the canon, even though it is suggested or implied heavily enough that anyone who actually consumed the piece of media would surely know. Moreover, some critical thinking outside of the canon can reveal the character, in the larger picture had a purpose and had nuance. But this is often dismissed in fanfiction and those angles that never get explored in any canon or semi-canon interpretation of your character are similarly left on the sidelines in fanfiction when it's right there. So then, instead of taking a new route not considered by the canon and doing something interesting with it, old ideas are constantly rehashed, things remain static and any potential developments or discussions are... very simplistic, very child-oriented. It is a pity, because family movies are for the whole family, not just for the child. It's all black and white, good and evil, and if an evil character is to be improved they must be defeated and then turned good. All it takes is some pseudo-exorcism and now they're back to their goodie-good former self that never had any flaws... and, to be honest, often no real personality besides "they were a hero until some people died and then they became a villain". There's no real progression with either of these and doesn't need to be because "magic".

... so yeah, I think I'm done for now.

 

[blutgang]

most of my issues honestly have to do with formatting i.e lack of breaks between paragraphs, italicizing speech instead of using quotation marks, etc.

similarly, any use of a tilde when a character is trying to speak flirtatiously will make me tab out at lightspeed. it's netspeak. WHY are you using it as a form of punctuation.

 

[DreamyJ]

For me it is sometimes the writing or the format. When they start a dialogue with the " but never put it at the end too and it confuses me at times

 

[Metallic Bold]

Long chapters:
50- 100+ Chapters or 50+/unfinished. 100,000-300,000+ words. I can't invest anymore time reading long fanfictions. I'm even hesitant with 30+ chapters. They just always dip in quality and the ending lands really flat. If it's an AU, I can understand because their fleshing out a new world. But if your slow burn takes me chapter 47 for anything romantic to happen, I'm on the fence.

Hate 'shipping':
There is nothing like the raw, unfiltered pettiness of purposely writing a fanfiction based on a ship or ship au and depicting the characters in an abusive relationship because you don't like it. Bonus points if they remove the romance entirely and change the ship from MxM to a MxF one. It's been years since I've stumbled across these kinds of fanfiction, but it's still a core memory.

 

[Phantom Thief of Hearts]

50- 100+ Chapters or 50+/unfinished. 100,000-300,000+ words. I can't invest anymore time reading long fanfictions. I'm even hesitant with 30+ chapters. They just always dip in quality and the ending lands really flat. If it's an AU, I can understand because their fleshing out a new world. But if your slow burn takes me chapter 47 for anything romantic to happen, I'm on the fence.

That strikes “Loud House: Revamped” out of your reading list. lol

 

[dara]

Reader inserts, modern AU and when the writer uses hair color (or relative age/height) as epithets. I can handle it if they only do it a couple of times but when it's used as often as their name it can genuinely ruin an otherwise good story

No judgement though, shout-out to writers who write however they want!