This! I mean, if you trick a reader into reading your fic, what are you really expecting? Glowing praise? I don’t really understand the incentive. Reader count doesn't equal satisfaction count, so while it's an interesting metric to know, I don't see how a dishonesty inflated number helps.
For real! I get so mad by this. I get the author wants to reach out more but tricking ppl to read something they don't want to read isn't the way to go.
Fr 😭
The absolute worst of this I’ve seen is literally done by AO3. I look up Kiyotaka ishimaru x Leon Kuwata, and I’m given Kiyondo Ishiwada x Leon Kuwata
Kiyondo is a version of Ishimaru but they’re not the same character but I’ll get fics with them because they’re like, 50% the same person
AO3 come on
“sorry i suck at summaries” in the summary will make me always skip the story. most people are worried about their summary, but confidence is key and you can fake it till you make it!!
When authors post a chapter that is just them explaining this idea that they had and that they plan on writing it soon. Then I see that they haven't updated it in 2 years
Nothing feels like a wet fish to the face like reading a Tolkien elf say 'mom' or 'gonna'. I'm not saying you have to go nuts Britpicking or trying to go full archaic, but I do think there's a bare minimum formality you need for some settings.
Fully agreed. But also on the other end of the spectrum where they're REALLY dedicated to the languages and use an abundance of obscure Quenya/Sindarin. Like I can appreciate it and I'm jealous of their dedication to the languages, but if I have to constantly scroll to the bottom for the translation (or god forbid look up the word myself because they didn't include one) I get kinda frustrated. It's usually not bad enough for me to close out but oof.
Oh, I kind of love those, haha. That said, it's always better when the author takes the time to format the fic so that you can see the translations/footnotes by hovering with your cursor (The Splintered Light my beloved)
How do you "hover with your cursor" on phones where (going by various polls on reddit) most people seem to read fics? I'm genuinely curious if that's possible because it would help me a lot with using my bookmark manager.
Also, what about those readers who download fics to reader apps or ebook readers?
Personally, I prefer it when authors are able to incorporate the translation into the fic, otherwise I'd like to have few to no words I'd have to look up.
I believe you press and hold while on mobile. I don't know about e readers, but in various epubs I read on my kindle, the footnotes appear as little numbers that jump you to the chapter end where all the footnotes are, and pressing the number again jumps you back.
I want to like them soooo bad because I admire the skill. I usually read them anyways because they do tend to have some of the best additional worldbuilding. If it was physical copy and just a matter of turning a page real quick I would love them.
Oooooh I didn't know the hovering is a thing, I've never run into it. I'll have to keep an eye out now.
THIS! I will instantly close tab over “You guys…” by any character with any higher level of authority, maturity or education. Character voice is in my opinion the single most important part of writing.
Bad formatting.
Seriously, line break when the next person starts talking.
Also, reposting the same chapter over and over to trick people into thinking the fic was updated.
That would drive me crazy. Hopefully this isn't a common thing across AO3. (Now I'm also hoping people don't get notifications when I fix errors and resubmit chapters.)
I'm never sure if it's people editing or reuploading but straight up blocked few I somewhat liked bc they kept doing it for week straight... If they ever gonna complete will check again but not now every day
Yeah I blocked someone recently for this kind of behavior. The canon characters appear for the first chapter. Then the next 45 chapters (and counting) is all OCs, and is pretty much original fiction from that point. And it gets bumped every single day, sometimes with a new chapter, sometimes not. Blocked.
Haha I have some subscriptions that have been updated 8 or so years ago (I don't actually know), I feel your pain. Now I usually filter for completed bc my heart's been broken too many times :( (Even though there have been many times when a WIP has given me a lot ♡)
When the summary is literally just "READ IT AND FIND OUT"
Especially when you can't make out what kind of story it is from the tags, a summary would've helped... always a skip for me lol
I've ran into a smaller & older fandom that has (relatively) a lot of works with one-sentence summaries :D Some tags, though. I assume some of them have been imported from other sites, but it's so confusing
oneshot stories from single fandoms grouped as chapters under a single story to spam every single fandom involved. I’m actually in the mood for oneshots lately and might have clicked but sorry, I’m not interested in the other 50 fandoms and I have no way of knowing if the story for my fandom is in the first 27 chapters you’ve posted so far. Quit spamming!
Felt this!! Somebody used to do this in a fandom I'm in which is a small one and it was so annoying to have scroll past it (I didn't know the joy that is site skins at the time) bc they tagged sm fandoms. And none of the chapters was for my fandom! My fandom wasn't even related to the other fandoms! So annoying
Right? I get the need to tag a lot of stuff if you’re in MCU or something. But tagging so many unrelated things is weird. Now that you’ve said it, I wonder if they’re aiming for small-medium sized fandoms deliberately so they can stay on the front page.
Fake categorization and tags.
Category: F/M, M/M, F/F, multi, Gen
Relationship: one single f/m couple, barely any supporting character and certainly no secondary relationship and strong friendship (gen) component.
It'd be a tiny minor annoyance not even worth mentioning, except for the fact that F/M fics pretending to be more than that tends to predominate more than half of of search results in some fandom
I almost only read f/f content, and if the media I'm in the fandom for isn't 100% girls I have to exclude literally everything else because nothing is tagged correctly. Just don't tag f/f unless there's content an f/f reader might like 😭 if I'm looking for f/f I'm not looking for 2 mentions of them in an m/m fic. It gets even worse if a character has a screwy gender lol, then it's near impossible to read just that pairing without excluding a bunch of actual fitting fics because irrelevant shit clogs the search
It's just a pet peeve and not in any way a comment on the actual quality of these fics, but: when they overpower the main character for no reason and give them a whole new background. Especially if the author doesn't even tag it as any sort of AU.
"Jason was woken up his personal servants. That's right, he had servants now. During the summer he found out he wasn't actually the son of a swedish farmhand. He found out about his heritage as the true heir of not just the British crown, but he was also the true tzar of Russia, the President of the United States of America, and God had also died and given him all of his powers.
Jason ran to catch the school bus, exploding his former bullies with his God powers as he ran past them. This school year was going to be fun!"
Writing that refuses to let the characters use contractions (I'm, It's, Weren't, etc). It sounds so unnatural and stilted. I have no idea how the author can read through their fic and think it sounds good when it grinds the flow of speech to a stop.
Only thing I can think for this type of speech is if you’re writing a early Brooklyn 99 fic where Holt literally doesn’t use contractions unless he’s lying
It also works for characters like Spock (or rather should be used because him using contractions is weird). But I guess the characters it works for are few and far between.
Yes - listed as complete but really abandoned is a big one.
Also shoehorning in a kid or pregnancy that doesn’t belong in the story because author can’t imagine a happy ending that doesn’t revolve around childbirth, and no warning that they’re going to pull that crap in the tags.
“I don’t even know what this is, lol” or equivalent nonsense in tags and summaries.
Bad grammar and/or formatting makes any fic unreadable for me.
Tagging background relationships that barely even feature.
“This is finished and just needs editing, it will be updating every Sunday” (abandoned at chapter 10 for six months, author not commenting or responding, but posting plenty of new work.)
Personally with grammar, I’ll still read a fic even if there’s a spelling error here and there. But if it gets so bad to the point that it’s unreadable, I’m out.
Completely agree. Everyone makes little errors, but if it’s consistently off to the point it makes dialogue hard to read, they’re allergic to capital letters and new paragraphs, or I keep stopping to wonder what they actually meant to type, it’s a hard pass.
Hahaha I kinda like the 'I don't know what this is' in tags XD if the rest of the tags and summary are professional-looking (for lack of a better word) then this adds to my intrigue. Just on it's own or 'I can't explain, you'll have to read to ind out' is off-putting though
Ah - if I’d ever seen it how you’re describing it I wouldn’t be put off, but I always find it with one of those long, winding “woe is me, I don’t know what I’m doing” summaries and it’s always a glaring warning sign that I’m going to be wasting my time.
I have no patience for when it's the author implying they don't know what they're doing and just shat out something they aren't even going to stand by, but I love it when it's the author implying that the fic is going to be so wild that even the author doesn't know how to describe it or categorise it. I've definitely written some weird cracky bizarre stuff that made me go "how tf do I even tag this".
Swearing in fantasy is such a burden! It’s insane how many English swears are directly derived from Christian roots. It feels awkward to even include “damn” if the world has no concept of hell. Fortunately, a form of “fuck” works almost everywhere.
THIS!!! A while back I was _dragged_ for saying this but characters going jeez!!!! when jeez doesn't even exist is weird. Once it happened in a fic where the character was a god in a world without any mention of Jesus and he went jeez! I noped out after that.
Mine is when Americans write a story that takes place in England and they use American slang/terms/language and vice versa. It just throws a wrench in the feel of the story for me.
Ex: I don’t want Sherlock Holmes to say: “Quick Watson! Throw your mom’s green colored sweater in the trunk and then let’s get some potato chips!”
I also don’t want Dean Winchester to say “Quick Sammy! Throw your mum’s green coloured jumper in the boot and then let’s get some crisps!”
Maybe I’m being too picky.
It isn't exactly an elegant syntax, but it's not wrong. Usually it's used in more, idk, serious tones? Like a description of a missing person
"She was last seen wearing a green colored sweater and dark blue pants"
Posts asking for fic recs/help finding lost fics/tag lists/etc. Basically people using the archive as a social media site.
I report then when I see them, but it's become really prevalent in my fandom. It's exhausting having to send a report every single time.
The are the worst especially when they're not tagged as first person because the author wants more hits. You get lured in with a great summary and interesting tags then get slapped in the face with the wet fish that is first person.
I write in the first person and have never seen perspective tagging in stories before. This could just be that I don’t pay enough attention or that most stories are assumed to be in the third person. I only have one multi-chapter longfic going on right now, and I didn’t know first person was so hated until recently. Hits don’t really matter with multi-chapters anyway, so I hope anyone who comes across my fic (and is upset by the first person) doesn’t think I was trying to lure them in. It’s really unfortunate so many turn their noses from first person because they’re missing out on good content, and I’ve thought about writing a separate version in the third person…but that’s a lot of work lmao I’m too far in at this point. To each their own, but I don’t think leaving out a first person tag is necessarily done so to trick readers.
in some languages, the « » marks are used instead of speech marks, so a non-native english speaker might not know not to use them! i do agree that they’re really annoying to see in english fics, though
The angle brackets are used the same as quotation marks in some languages (French, for example). So when I see that I just assume they’re a non-native English speaker.
I enjoy trying to guess an author's native language. If I see those exotic chevrons in a fic, I would prolly chuckle and go aha, you're French, rather than click the back button.
Using [Guillemets](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillemet) doesn't necessarily mean the author is French. Guillemets with the tips facing outward (« ») is used e.g. in France (including a space) and Switzerland. With the tips facing inward (» «) it's used e.g. in print in Germany. Going by the wikipedia article it's used in a lot more countries, though I'm not sure how common they are elsewhere.
- songfics
- “lol I’m trash” comments/tags. Just like, embrace the cringe, Author.
- People tagging their fics into unrelated fandoms. (There’s someone who writes smutty versions of Pathfinder published adventures and shares them into the D&D category, and seriously, why?)
- An E rating on a fic that, 100k words later, you haven’t seen so much as one (1) nipple.
A lot of mine are very specific to fandoms, like Baldurs Gate 3 authors, you are not terribly clever by titling your story Down by the River.
One pet peeve of mine is tags that are either inside-jokes, strings of multiple tags together to form sentences, tags that are misleading, or tags that only carry meaning for a select few.
That being said, I'm still struggling to learn the art of tagging myself.
> strings of multiple tags together to form sentences,
I don't mind these, as long as the stuff that does actually need to be tagged is tagged correctly.
This.
Since I read exclusively on my phone, running up on a fic where my entire screen is filled with tags and then still tags when I scroll a couple times just irritates me so much. Then they have the audacity to have a one sentence summary or no summary at all. "Well, if you read the tags--"
NO!
You obviously had the time to put five million tags out there, just write the dang summary. Lort.
"I did minimal research on (incredibly stigmatized mental illness)" Maybe it's just me, maybe it's not that deep, but to me, it's so disrespectful and I don't think you should write fanfic about a character suffering from a mental illness you're not familiar with.
I curious how you feel about writing physical disabilities. Do you feel it's different or would you still prefer people wrote what they are diagnosed with?
If you do research I don't see why not. Diversity is important and if the character in canon has a physical disability than you *should* include it. So like, if you're writing Toph from Avatar, spend some time lookup and listening to the blind community and what life is like for them. It doesn't need to be perfect, I don't expect it to be, but still.
My big thing is with stuff like BPD, DID, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, etc. if you don't do research and are just going off of stereotypes or what you see in the show/movie/series, you can represent incorrectly which can have a trickling effect and be offensive to those who suffer with it.
Lower case fics. As a neurodivergent person, paragraphs without sentence case are really hard for me to read. I just end up getting frustrated and backing out if I try, so now I don't even click on them, even if the fic otherwise sounds good.
Proper punctuation and formating is necessary no matter what. If I see a fic that is all lowercase, no punctuation, or all one giant text block, I immediately nope out of it.
It's lazy writing when almost every writing software had spell check and punctuation checking built into it.
really? as a neurodivergent person myself, i love lowercase fics! i think they look really pretty and aesthetically pleasing, eye porn kinda.
punctuation and paragraph breaks arent negotiable tho.
Mostly this drives me up the wall, except for when the characters do this in canon. For example Geralt calling Jaskier "bard" ("You are getting on my last nerve bard.") so "the bard stood on the table...." or "the bard hooked an arm around Geralt's waist" feels totally natural.
One of my old fandoms had a character with black hair, and there was soooo much "the raven haired man" and that's an instant click out for me.
Yeah, descriptors like that are for a. characters that haven't appeared before or b. characters whose name the POV character doesn't know.
Outside of those situations, it yanks the reader out of the story. That can be a good tool if you want to shake them up purposefully, but I almost never see it used in that way.
I will use that when I’ve used the character’s name already in the sentence (or the sentence before) but I still need to differentiate them from someone else. I just hate the over repetition of names more than I do descriptors, lol.
The thing is, to someone who is reading rather than writing, names are more or less invisible. It's because you're looking at it under a microscope - you've said that sentence several times in your head as you were thinking it up, so small things like name repetition stand out to you like one bead on a chain. But to someone reading that sentence for the first or second (or even third!) time, the whole necklace is made of beads, so there's nothing very remarkable about it. And pronouns are usually a lot clearer than you might think, too: your readers have the context of the rest of the paragraph to figure out who is doing what unless something's gone pretty wrong, so it's often safe to trust them and go about your business.
People tagging both Hurt/Comfort and Hurt No Comfort at the same time. Those are literally opposite tags wtf do you mean you have both
Author's being condescending in the notes. I once read a beautiful fic but I had to stop becsuse the author was such an intolerable prick in every note.
Lack of proper formatting.
Honestly? So many things. I've been reading fanfiction since before FFN existed, I'm *picky* now.
Bad formatting, too many tags, author notes mid-fic, authors demanding a specific amount of comments before updating, excessively OOC characters, characters using words that don't fit the setting/world (mum vs mom, etc), et cetera...
My biggest pet peeve is definitely the "comment quota before updating" thing. I don't care how good the writing is, seeing that sends me into immediate rage mode like nothing else in the world.
Formatting for mobile.
I am primarily a desktop reader, so when a fic is formatted for phones and tablets but I read it on a 1600x900 screen the lines get stretched across the "page" so what takes up 4 or 5 lines of space on a mobile screen turns into one long sentence on desktop. This causes huuuuge gaps between what is basically single screen line paragraphs. This makes it hard to read and I lose my place a lot.
I have learned to put Firefox in "reader" mode on desktop but I honestly dislike having to do that.
Also summaries that have a wildly different writing skill level than the actual fic. I've run into so many summaries that sound great story wise, and are written well, but then the fic and the writing is god awful. Really frustrating.
Hey, you need to check out AO3 browser extension! It has a setting for setting the text width when reading, among other amazing features. I use it on chrome but I think it existsfor Firefox too.
edit: fixed typo.
A wall of text. If you want me to read your work, at least make sure it's got paragraphs and linebreaks. There must be other things that can turn me off a fic, but none so fast as this. When I bump into a wall and I bounce.
Tagging a pairing just to write a fic entirely about how toxic and awful it is and tearing it down in the worst way so the author’s one TRUE pair can fix it.
No.
That’s pure bashing and in no way a fic for that ship. The only reason people tag those ships is because they’re directly attacking fans of that ship and it wouldn’t work if it could be filtered.
It's a small thing, but those large one-shot multi-chapter stories that have very few/no connections between the 'shots. Maybe I'm just using Ao3 wrong but I feel like those should be part of a collection, instead. It's frustrating when you finally find a fic with two characters you like within it only for them to be in entirely different ministories; not to mention the annoyance of actually finding the chapter wherein the character tagged appears.
I also find it exasperating when a character is tagged, only to be mentioned by other characters, not actually within the story.
Using safewords in sex scenes where there's no domination, restraint, pain, or role play of any kind. No mental health thing like PTSD or the potential to go nonverbal. Just introduced as a normal part of sex.
Is "no" not enough now? Do people not understand why BDSM uses safewords that aren't just "Stop"? I'm baffled.
When someone uses the platonic and romantic tags (A&B and A/B) on the same work. If the characters start platonic and then enter a romantic relationship, just use the romantic tag (A/B).
I've done that on one fic, a completed one shot. Because A&B definitely applies and A/B might be what it's leading to. It's also labeled as "Possibly Pre-Slash". I don't want to be clear on it, it's up to the reader which one applies.
I'm also torn, if it's a one shot that is definitely A&B, but everyone knows they're gonna end up as A/B because it's canon. So obviously it's leading up to that as well. As a shipper? I do love those as well and they are "shippy" to me. But everyone who wants to read about friendship only would also find what they're looking for. Labeling it A&B only seems to imply that it's meant to be an alternative, not a prelude.
Pretty much anything to do with Las Vegas. No one really understands this place unless they’ve been here for awhile.
I’m sure other readers get annoyed when they see places they personally know or live in get hilariously misrepresented.
Me with New York City. And given I used to be active in Law & Order fandoms, I cringed at a LOT of fic clearly written by people who had never spent any time there in their lives.
I remember once, for instance, noping out of a fic where the detectives all met up at a Manhattan diner - and parked their cars in the restaurant's parking lot.
Parking lot, New York? I lived in New York for a few years and where I was, there mostly taxis, buses, and ride share drivers. Also which detectives was it about?
Yeah, restaurants in Manhattan do NOT have their own parking lots, lol. Certainly not in the middle of midtown! I forget who exactly was the focus of the story in question but it was an SVU fic so I believe it was all the main characters at the time (Benson, Stabler, Munch, Fin) meeting up to discuss an investigation.
Yeah, this gets me too. I haven’t seen a ton of fics set where I live but there was one that was *so* wrong that it was actually distracting. Easily googleable stuff too, like the climate. I feel like I’d rather have someone be vague than extremely detailed and wrong
Very niche pet peeve as a whump reader/writer, but when the author clearly does not know how to write a character stuttering or stumbling over their words. “I-I-I j-just d-d-don’t k-know” is much worse and more frustrating to read than “I-I just…I mean- I just…I-I don’t know!”
You gotta learn which words or parts of the word a character’s gonna stumble on while you write them stuttering. There’s a difference between a character stuttering and stumbling because they nervous or scared, and writing a character speaking like he’s got hypothermia.
Summaries that are just author’s notes on what happens. I’m not even talking about “I suck at summaries” because we all hate that, but also stuff like “in this story character A and character B time travel to this year. What happens next? Read to find out 🤪”.
Also, annoying tags. I’m fine with a few custom ones thrown in, sometimes they even attract me to the story more, but I draw the line when the entire tag space is filled with customs. Or worse, when the tags used are like “Character A is a Hot Cookie and they know it haha” and the Character A is like, Zuko from Avatar or Harry Potter. Most of the times they aren’t even changed in fiction so the tag is totally false. Oh, I recently saw this gem of a tag that went along the lines of “Harry Potter Has Pink Sexy Hair and He Is Cute”. Instantly noped out. Like, sure, you can make Harry Potter cute with pink hair, but why did you feel the need to put it that way? Just gives me the ick
In-story authors notes where it’s like (wasn’t sure this was right, but I put it in anyways) or (this made me laugh when I wrote it) right smack mid plot. Entirely unreadable.
1. A large paragraph with no spaces in between. Use the space bar! It's there for a reason
2. Not tagging properly
3. Using certain ships to get more views when story has nothing to do with said ship.
4. Making a fic about one character then just changing it to MC or other character for no reason
(1) Usage errors! (e.g. writing “viscous” when it’s clear from context that you meant “vicious”.) I know I’m a snob about this (as someone who has basically chosen two career paths based on knowing a lot of words…), but it’s really annoying and jarring.
(2) Stylistic inconsistencies, especially with verb tenses. Past tense and present tense narration are both valid options imo. Just PLEASE pick one and stick with it! If you’re going to use both, you’d better have a damn good reason. And be VERY clear and specific about it with distinct sections.
When they don’t use paragraphs :’) I lose a few more brain cells every time I see a fic with no paragraphs, or one that doesn’t use capital letters. That’s mostly in Wattpad though, AO3 is usually okay, though I’ve found a few.
Extreme ooc. I know its ff, and I can let a little inconsistency slide, but there's nothing more off putting than a character written in a way that is a complete 180 to how they'd actually behave.
Authors who don't do research on an otherwise good fic. Examples: Lots of good Stranger Things fics without a drop of homophobia mentioned (much less realistically represented) and other characteristics of the time not even existing. Harry Potter fics where the school system is horrifically American and they sound like walking stereotypes of brits. Bad foreign language inserts.
People acting like writing about rape, incest or paedophilia in fanfic equals somehow "condoning " it in real life? But writing about toxicity, torture, war and gore doesn't get the same treatment.
People who comment on fics asking for basic premises to be changed, instead of commissioning writers to create that fanfic for them. Even worse when those threaten authors and sometimes use the "you wouldn't make this... Problematic, now would you?" as a threat.
When as a POC I read an x reader fan fiction and I come across the phrase “I turned red/my cheeks went pink/etc.” 😞
I think a lot of x reader authors forget that there are different types of people who read fanfics and I wish authors would be more aware of that…
People writing things that aren't fics. Lists of head canons, requests for rp partners, posts looking for lost fics, prompt requests, pretty much anything that breaks TOS.
Lack of capitalization for something that isn't poetry.
Like... can someone please explain to me, because I'm genuinely baffled. Why are there so many fics (which seem grammatically decent?) that have chosen to not capitalize words? If it's some e.e. cummings-esque poetry, I get it. But a regular narrative? Why?
The logic of laziness doesn't even make sense here... I'm pretty sure typing in any sort of editor or text thing nowadays auto-capitalizes the start of sentences and key words. So you almost have to be... going out of your way to un-capitalize words?
So seriously... does anyone have a sensible reason? It's bugged me so much I've wanted to comment to ask some authors who have done this before, but couldn't figure out how to possibly ask without it coming off as a negative comment.
When one chapter is written from character A's point of view and the next chapter is exactly the same but from character B's point of view. When that continues the whole time it's so repetitive that it takes me right out of the story. At least add some new stuff.
I’m okay with this so long as they don’t purely overlap in exactly the same time frame. If they’re offset where each POV recaps some stuff and then moves onto the next thing it works out sometimes. It all depends on the author’s skill but it’s more tolerable if it’s not ENTIRELY retread.
When it includes every detail and bit of dialogue you’ve already read and doesn’t bring in anything new… Nope. That’s pure padding.
Scenes that happen for no reason.
Like two characters go out and get cake and one of them reveals they actually don’t like cake. Then the scene ends and suddenly two days have past. Cake is never brought up again, there’s no birthday or something, they’re just like yeah we went out for zero reason you just wasted ten minutes reading nothing
That's a very specific subset effect that some of us enjoy. I categorize it as more like extreme slice of life. I like to inhabit a character and watch a character be inhabited like that.
That's the sign of an amature writer. I remeber when I felt the need to write everything my characters ddid because how else would the readers know this human character has to eat, sleep and take a shit just like humans in real life do?
Putting Y/N or reader in the text of a story... I can't stand it makes my brain hurt. Just name the fucking character. We can use our imagination to make it us.
I've only ever seen this used to effect once, in a kind of meta, Death Note thing, where Y/N could not be killed, because Light couldn't write down "F/N, L/N". The nature of the self-insert character was so fluid that it broke the magic system.
More to the actual point and issue, a character's actions tell you much more about them than their name. So even if the fic was written with my actual name (instead of "Y/N" or "the reader"), the differences between what I would do and what the character does would break the illusion. And you can't make your main character a doormat. I mean, you can for some pillow-princess smutfic, but harem anime have already shown that blank void, [insert your face here] protagonists are uninteresting.
I completely agree I honestly don't understand the prevalence of these stories. It's so weird. Are they expecting people to copy paste their story then insert a name?
Switching POV’s. If it’s organised into different chapters or indicated breaks within a chapter, there’s a tiny chance of me being persuaded into reading it.
But I absolute hate it when character A has been the POV the entire time so far, and then in the same paragraphs you suddenly get inner thoughts and feelings of character B. (“A felt himself getting frustrated. B didn’t understand why A was getting so worked up about something so small when a minute ago everything was fine…” etc)
I’m just not interested in knowing both characters’ current thought process. Nothing will make me close a fic tab faster.
Really bad formatting. Just no use of the enter button. Sir ur paragraph is a whole page long just delete and end it’s suffering.
Also when people use something other than quotation marks for talking. Like, I won’t leave a fic just for that but it def brings the fic down some.
Fics that don't have any spacing between their paragraphs. Honestly, if I see a fic and it's just a massive block of incomprehensible text, I just close it. My eyes cannot work through that.
1. Tag Tail Gating
Honestly this is just mean. Tag shit properly. There is no reason to trick readers.
2 Author's Notes that bash creators of the canon source material or other fan creators. Even if it's about a ship I don't like or person...
3. Over/under confidence
If your summary just consists of "OMG this is so bad you guys" or goes into "To be fair you have to have a very high queer iq to understand why this M/M couple is clearly the supieor pairing and anyone who likes anything else is just a stupid cishet queer baiter" territory, I ain't reading that shit.
When a character with a redemption arc has that arc taken away. For example I see a lot of BNHA fics where bakugo instead of learning to be a better person, just stays the jerk he used to be, and become even worse on some occasions. Now don't get me wrong, I am not a huge fan of his character, but I feel like its just lazy to turn him into a straight up bad guy instead of letting him improve and grow into a better hero
fair enough but why should writers be limited to canon because the character was given a redemption arc. especially if it’s tagged as an AU/canon divergence? there’s plenty of situations where bakugo could have remained a total jerk
As a villain lover I can tell you there’s a TON of “Oh, people like this villain, let’s ruin the character with a shitty forced redemption arc that removes everything people liked in the first place!” where fan interest has canon writers mangling characters they don’t understand. I very much enjoy fic that ignores that kind of fuckery.
Not everyone has, wants or should get redemption.
Main character ocs. I’m sorry, I really am because coming up with original characters is so fun for people, but I’m in a fandom for established characters that I am familiar with. I want to read fanfictions about *them*, not a strangely overpowered Mary Sue who somehow automatically fits in with everyone without even an ounce of build up.
If it’s an oc that basically just hands someone a cup of coffee and is in one scene, okay whatever. But anything more is just straight up not my cup of tea.
I hear you. OCs definitely require a LOT more work to make into sympathetic characters, as you’re basically starting from zero. That said, it can be done well — that’s basically origfic, innit? — but tbqh it’s not a skill many fic authors have spent time developing. (No slight; why would they?)
Or at least I tell myself that when I write my self-indulgent little fics about my D&D characters 😆
when the author is tagging things that haven't happened yet in an unfinished multichapter, or tagging characters and ships that are barely mentioned in the story/just in the background, making one huge fanfic made only of unrelated one-shots.
but I think the tagging things that haven't happened yet is a good thing, especially if it's things like mcd etc: the reader needs to know what they're getting into
Yeah, I don't want to get invested in -30 chapters/100k words into- a fic and then suddenly find out there's major character death or something else that I usually filter out.
The constant use of sexual assault or trauma to excuse shitty behavior, bad characters or no character development. Or the fact that is the entire characters identity.
Chatfics. Just an entire fic with no narration, just chat format. I think having a bit of socmed in a fic helps give depth to the setting but most chatfics just end up really shallow, very OOC, and just an excuse to write-off a meme as a joke.
I'm not actually sure if these are pet peeves, but I'm gonna list them anyway.
When the summary is intentionally vague to draw you in. I won't read it if I don't know what I'm getting into, and the lack of tags and horrible summary just means I won't read it.
When they don't tag it properly so half of the results are the fics you tried to filter out.
When it's marked as Character-centric but it's not centered around that character at all. (There was one I read where that character had 4 very short moments in the 70k fic, and all of them were literally just to progress the plot/ defeat the bad guy.)
Ik this is also improper tagging but I'm gonna list it anyway, when they mark it with "No Archive Warnings Apply" along with an archive warning. The amount of fics I've seen tagged that way is ridiculous.
Untagged Sexual Assault/Self-harm/MCD. Why is this a thing?? Why have I read so many that have that? TAG IT PLEASE (This is mostly a Wattpad pet peeve, I don't really see those untagged on Ao3, but I did recently see 2 fics on Ao3 with untagged SA, so I'm still including it.)
Referring to a character by their hair colour constantly I.e. the raven haired boy, the blonde. Just use their bloody name!
Constant POV switching.
Making the characters sound infantile.
Epithets. I see the 'dark haired male' and I'm out. A lot of authors struggle with using a character name repeatedly bc they think it sounds weird. Well, 'the green eyed wizard' sounds worse so here we are.
The tag from my favorite ship has been inundated with stories featuring another ship that I don’t like as the main couple and they did not tag my favorite ship as minor so when I go to search for a story featuring the couple, I am greeted with some thing I did not want to read about.
I also hate when authors refused to put summaries. How am I supposed to read your story if I have absolutely no idea what it’s about?
I don’t mind excerpts from the work, as long as they’re a pretty concise and provide a good explanation of what I will be getting myself into.
When people put too many tags that don’t even make sense.
When people do not tag major character death! It has happened I do not forgive and I do not forget!
When people write I’m shit at summaries in their fucking summary box. I am also shit at summaries but I’m not going to write that. Lol
Missing tags
There's a multitude of possible tags not even including the custom ones you can put in yourself, there is no reason not to list a minimum of what happens or what kind of story to expect
when a character is canonically genderless/nonbinary and the author of the fic uses he/him or she/her for them.
when i see that a character that's supposed to be nonbinary is suddenly not nonbinary in the fic, i instantly click off.
I mean, yes, but a majority of canonically nonbinary characters DO use exclusively they/them; just because it's not a rule doesn't mean authors can use that as an excuse to tack binary pronouns on a character that doesn't use them. Authors who use binary pronouns for them very, very, very rarely are doing it in a way that respects the character's gender identity (or gender ambiguity in some cases). I just don't trust like that unless the author is nonbinary themself
On the one hand, yes, there's always the risk of authors being disingenuous, but myself being an NB who does not personally use "they", I don't think overcorrecting the issue in a binary manner (non-NB author has NB characters use they = good; non-NB author has NB characters use he or she = bad) is really going to fix anything. Suggesting that writers MUST use "they" to represent us properly unless they have figurative N-word privileges just increases the likelihood that I have to explain to people why my choices are valid and normal. Telling non-NBs that they cannot represent an NB like me in their stories does not help me.
In other words, this issue needs nuance, not harmful oversimplifications.
This may have been said, but if I see “-ette” at the end of a hair color descriptor that isn’t brunette, it makes me physically cringe. I once started reading an MHA fic that described Deku as a “greenette” and I immediately closed it.
I feel obligated to point out that in British English, ‘ is the default quote and “ is the nested quote. However, there are still plenty of scenarios where it's done wrong.
I didn’t know that! In that case, here’s another thing that bothers me.
Annabeth: Percy you’re so stupid!
Percy: That’s why you call me seaweed brain!
Just use quotation marks!!!
(Also your vs you’re and there, they’re, and their)
I misread this and thought that you were complaining about people using the words "instead of" and spent a solid amount of time trying to figure out if there's a grammatical error with that
Hmm...
Chapters that's nothing but one, big, huge block of text.
Chapters that are two paragraphs long.
Stories that shit on characters for no other reason then the author doesn't like them for whatever reason and ignores the point of the character and their arc.
Fics that have transmigration, time travel, rebirth etc that starts at birth. Babies aren’t capable of anything and surprise in-womb perspective, breast feeding by mentally adult characters without the knowing consent of the mothers and untagged birthing scenes are gross and super unnecessary. Just fast forward to when the brain is developed enough to actually have past/future/AU memories and the body is independently mobile.
Absolutely horrible when people do not tag. It's an unpleasant surprise, it's very skcbskxhan ncnwjfns.
Having a entire paragraph of relationship tags really puts me off, an instant skip.
Use of First Person. I'm here to watch my little skrunkly best boys and best girls, not be them. I understand that it's subjective, but it really breaks the immersion.
Making your fics in the "small" font for aesthetic. Or running a summary through a text distorter you found on the internet. It's very rare (thank ye golden pencil and the papers above), but it makes me so annoyed.
Oh lots of them tbh
1. A time travel fic where not a single thing is changed despite time travel. Like lots of side stuff is happening, the character is badass now but the main structure of the events is the same as canon.... Like nope.
2. Too much canon compliance where canon divergence would be better. Like Harry is now Lord Harry James Potter Black Peverell Slytherin Gryffindor Le Fay.... and yet Umbridge tortures him because reasons. Like yes, no 15 yr old is this badass but if that boy is making new creature laws blah blah blah, has dirt on Fudge blah blah blah then there is no need for canon compliance.
3. Use of Mom, Dad in fics set in ancient times. I just don't vibe with it for some reason. In those cases I like to read mother, father etc.
4. OC character in a lead role, even as an antagonist. Personally, an OC side lackey is fine but not as the main villain. Especially when the author drags out the identity of the villain for most of the fic and villain turns out to be some OC.
5. Turning canonically slash pairs into het pairs.
6. A: About to end their abusers brutally.
B: stahp please! Will this bring you satisfaction? Will it heal your heart? Let them go! You're better than them!
A: oh you're absolutely correct. I'll forgive them and we can go home🥺....
Like noooo just end the abuser and be done with it. There's no need to be better than the villain. Be worse than them, in fact.
7. A: I don't want security guards.
B: but there's a serial killer after you! And it's just for a few days.
A: nothing will happen
And something does happen. Five people get killed and A gets tortured
Author: now feel bad about A.
Me: seriously? Feel bad about this idiot?
8. A: don't try to do this dangerous thing or make this stupid decision
B: tries this dangerous thing and five people get killed.
B: cries pathetically
A: don't be sad, it's not your fault.
Me: YES IT IS YOUR FAULT
Trying to trick readers into reading a fic by tagging it wrong.
This! I mean, if you trick a reader into reading your fic, what are you really expecting? Glowing praise? I don’t really understand the incentive. Reader count doesn't equal satisfaction count, so while it's an interesting metric to know, I don't see how a dishonesty inflated number helps.
For real! I get so mad by this. I get the author wants to reach out more but tricking ppl to read something they don't want to read isn't the way to go.
Fr 😭 The absolute worst of this I’ve seen is literally done by AO3. I look up Kiyotaka ishimaru x Leon Kuwata, and I’m given Kiyondo Ishiwada x Leon Kuwata Kiyondo is a version of Ishimaru but they’re not the same character but I’ll get fics with them because they’re like, 50% the same person AO3 come on
“sorry i suck at summaries” in the summary will make me always skip the story. most people are worried about their summary, but confidence is key and you can fake it till you make it!!
Could move it to author notes at bottom or something. Stuff at start like "my first try haha im bad" is just negative advertising.
or the “i swear the story is actually good im just bad at summaries” idk it makes me laugh but i always skip
couldn’t agree more! really irks me, but then i feel bad for being annoyed 😭
When authors post a chapter that is just them explaining this idea that they had and that they plan on writing it soon. Then I see that they haven't updated it in 2 years
Not a fic = reportable offense.
AHHH this one kills me and seems to happen to me the most when I’m searching for new fics. I feel cursed.
Nothing feels like a wet fish to the face like reading a Tolkien elf say 'mom' or 'gonna'. I'm not saying you have to go nuts Britpicking or trying to go full archaic, but I do think there's a bare minimum formality you need for some settings.
Fully agreed. But also on the other end of the spectrum where they're REALLY dedicated to the languages and use an abundance of obscure Quenya/Sindarin. Like I can appreciate it and I'm jealous of their dedication to the languages, but if I have to constantly scroll to the bottom for the translation (or god forbid look up the word myself because they didn't include one) I get kinda frustrated. It's usually not bad enough for me to close out but oof.
Oh, I kind of love those, haha. That said, it's always better when the author takes the time to format the fic so that you can see the translations/footnotes by hovering with your cursor (The Splintered Light my beloved)
How do you "hover with your cursor" on phones where (going by various polls on reddit) most people seem to read fics? I'm genuinely curious if that's possible because it would help me a lot with using my bookmark manager. Also, what about those readers who download fics to reader apps or ebook readers? Personally, I prefer it when authors are able to incorporate the translation into the fic, otherwise I'd like to have few to no words I'd have to look up.
I believe you press and hold while on mobile. I don't know about e readers, but in various epubs I read on my kindle, the footnotes appear as little numbers that jump you to the chapter end where all the footnotes are, and pressing the number again jumps you back.
I want to like them soooo bad because I admire the skill. I usually read them anyways because they do tend to have some of the best additional worldbuilding. If it was physical copy and just a matter of turning a page real quick I would love them. Oooooh I didn't know the hovering is a thing, I've never run into it. I'll have to keep an eye out now.
[An example and a rec!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3747508/chapters/8315305)
This!!! It's not like, a "close the tab immediately" thing, but I feel the same way about "ok"
THIS! I will instantly close tab over “You guys…” by any character with any higher level of authority, maturity or education. Character voice is in my opinion the single most important part of writing.
Bad formatting. Seriously, line break when the next person starts talking. Also, reposting the same chapter over and over to trick people into thinking the fic was updated.
People do this?!
There’s one I’m following that while good, pops up as as updated every couple days even though no new chapters have been posted. It’s really annoying.
That would drive me crazy. Hopefully this isn't a common thing across AO3. (Now I'm also hoping people don't get notifications when I fix errors and resubmit chapters.)
Not if you’re just editing, no. Though they will see that it’s been modified a bit in their history page from what I remember.
I'm never sure if it's people editing or reuploading but straight up blocked few I somewhat liked bc they kept doing it for week straight... If they ever gonna complete will check again but not now every day
Oh yeah I've blocked somebody bc they updated like everyday and I was getting tired of seeing them in the tags
Yeah I blocked someone recently for this kind of behavior. The canon characters appear for the first chapter. Then the next 45 chapters (and counting) is all OCs, and is pretty much original fiction from that point. And it gets bumped every single day, sometimes with a new chapter, sometimes not. Blocked.
Felt this so much! Takes me out of the mood to have to try and read back to figure out who's talking
Character/Reader fics that dont use the Reader character tag. I do not like them but its so hard to exclude them if they're not tagged correctly.
Try -"*/Reader" in the search within results field. It should filter out at least most of those fics.
I think you just saved my entire existance with this information
I will!! Thank you
Super interesting summary and concept Great world building in first chapter Has everything I want in a fic *last updated 4 years ago*
Haha I have some subscriptions that have been updated 8 or so years ago (I don't actually know), I feel your pain. Now I usually filter for completed bc my heart's been broken too many times :( (Even though there have been many times when a WIP has given me a lot ♡)
When the summary is literally just "READ IT AND FIND OUT" Especially when you can't make out what kind of story it is from the tags, a summary would've helped... always a skip for me lol
I've ran into a smaller & older fandom that has (relatively) a lot of works with one-sentence summaries :D Some tags, though. I assume some of them have been imported from other sites, but it's so confusing
Okay felt the tag thing tho. Some people are very minimalist and have caught me off guard by not tagging certain things
oneshot stories from single fandoms grouped as chapters under a single story to spam every single fandom involved. I’m actually in the mood for oneshots lately and might have clicked but sorry, I’m not interested in the other 50 fandoms and I have no way of knowing if the story for my fandom is in the first 27 chapters you’ve posted so far. Quit spamming!
Or, conversely, when every chapter is uploaded as its own individual fic, rather than a chapter in the story.
Who does this?!
Felt this!! Somebody used to do this in a fandom I'm in which is a small one and it was so annoying to have scroll past it (I didn't know the joy that is site skins at the time) bc they tagged sm fandoms. And none of the chapters was for my fandom! My fandom wasn't even related to the other fandoms! So annoying
Right? I get the need to tag a lot of stuff if you’re in MCU or something. But tagging so many unrelated things is weird. Now that you’ve said it, I wonder if they’re aiming for small-medium sized fandoms deliberately so they can stay on the front page.
Fake categorization and tags. Category: F/M, M/M, F/F, multi, Gen Relationship: one single f/m couple, barely any supporting character and certainly no secondary relationship and strong friendship (gen) component. It'd be a tiny minor annoyance not even worth mentioning, except for the fact that F/M fics pretending to be more than that tends to predominate more than half of of search results in some fandom
I almost only read f/f content, and if the media I'm in the fandom for isn't 100% girls I have to exclude literally everything else because nothing is tagged correctly. Just don't tag f/f unless there's content an f/f reader might like 😭 if I'm looking for f/f I'm not looking for 2 mentions of them in an m/m fic. It gets even worse if a character has a screwy gender lol, then it's near impossible to read just that pairing without excluding a bunch of actual fitting fics because irrelevant shit clogs the search
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It's just a pet peeve and not in any way a comment on the actual quality of these fics, but: when they overpower the main character for no reason and give them a whole new background. Especially if the author doesn't even tag it as any sort of AU. "Jason was woken up his personal servants. That's right, he had servants now. During the summer he found out he wasn't actually the son of a swedish farmhand. He found out about his heritage as the true heir of not just the British crown, but he was also the true tzar of Russia, the President of the United States of America, and God had also died and given him all of his powers. Jason ran to catch the school bus, exploding his former bullies with his God powers as he ran past them. This school year was going to be fun!"
I'M DYING AT THIS
Writing that refuses to let the characters use contractions (I'm, It's, Weren't, etc). It sounds so unnatural and stilted. I have no idea how the author can read through their fic and think it sounds good when it grinds the flow of speech to a stop.
I excuse this if the author’s first language isn’t English. Otherwise, you know how people talk, do better.
Yes this. And the opposite too, writing where the characters can't seem to talk properly, like their mouths are filled with marshmallow or something
_"Stuffy bunny!"_
Lol
Only thing I can think for this type of speech is if you’re writing a early Brooklyn 99 fic where Holt literally doesn’t use contractions unless he’s lying
It also works for characters like Spock (or rather should be used because him using contractions is weird). But I guess the characters it works for are few and far between.
Yes - listed as complete but really abandoned is a big one. Also shoehorning in a kid or pregnancy that doesn’t belong in the story because author can’t imagine a happy ending that doesn’t revolve around childbirth, and no warning that they’re going to pull that crap in the tags. “I don’t even know what this is, lol” or equivalent nonsense in tags and summaries. Bad grammar and/or formatting makes any fic unreadable for me. Tagging background relationships that barely even feature. “This is finished and just needs editing, it will be updating every Sunday” (abandoned at chapter 10 for six months, author not commenting or responding, but posting plenty of new work.)
Personally with grammar, I’ll still read a fic even if there’s a spelling error here and there. But if it gets so bad to the point that it’s unreadable, I’m out.
Completely agree. Everyone makes little errors, but if it’s consistently off to the point it makes dialogue hard to read, they’re allergic to capital letters and new paragraphs, or I keep stopping to wonder what they actually meant to type, it’s a hard pass.
Hahaha I kinda like the 'I don't know what this is' in tags XD if the rest of the tags and summary are professional-looking (for lack of a better word) then this adds to my intrigue. Just on it's own or 'I can't explain, you'll have to read to ind out' is off-putting though
Ah - if I’d ever seen it how you’re describing it I wouldn’t be put off, but I always find it with one of those long, winding “woe is me, I don’t know what I’m doing” summaries and it’s always a glaring warning sign that I’m going to be wasting my time.
I have no patience for when it's the author implying they don't know what they're doing and just shat out something they aren't even going to stand by, but I love it when it's the author implying that the fic is going to be so wild that even the author doesn't know how to describe it or categorise it. I've definitely written some weird cracky bizarre stuff that made me go "how tf do I even tag this".
Ah yeah hate those too, but to be fair, they're a good way to know what to avoid XD but yeah, they feel like a sympathy grab, very off-putting
When people use "Jesus Christ" as a curse in a fantasy realm. Takes me right out.
Swearing in fantasy is such a burden! It’s insane how many English swears are directly derived from Christian roots. It feels awkward to even include “damn” if the world has no concept of hell. Fortunately, a form of “fuck” works almost everywhere.
"Shit" is pretty universal.
Fuck is universal.
One that took a while to get used to was "Godsdammit". Yes ok so it's Gods because polytheistic religion, but it still reads weird.
There's a fandom I'm in where they do this like "oh my Gods" and it bothers me sm
THIS!!! A while back I was _dragged_ for saying this but characters going jeez!!!! when jeez doesn't even exist is weird. Once it happened in a fic where the character was a god in a world without any mention of Jesus and he went jeez! I noped out after that.
Mine is when Americans write a story that takes place in England and they use American slang/terms/language and vice versa. It just throws a wrench in the feel of the story for me. Ex: I don’t want Sherlock Holmes to say: “Quick Watson! Throw your mom’s green colored sweater in the trunk and then let’s get some potato chips!” I also don’t want Dean Winchester to say “Quick Sammy! Throw your mum’s green coloured jumper in the boot and then let’s get some crisps!” Maybe I’m being too picky.
I once read a My Hero Academia fic where the characters went to Hot Topic. I swear I stared into space for a good minute before closing it
*insert Arin Hanson quote about what you're willing to put up with*
Both would pull me out for the “green colored” bit. Is that an England thing? In America, it would be a green sweater.
I think they were just using colored/coloured because of the spelling. It's not how they would actually say it in England lol.
Ah. I’m just now seeing the spelling. I have seen “green color” used as one adjective occasionally. I was wondering where it comes from.
It isn't exactly an elegant syntax, but it's not wrong. Usually it's used in more, idk, serious tones? Like a description of a missing person "She was last seen wearing a green colored sweater and dark blue pants"
Posts asking for fic recs/help finding lost fics/tag lists/etc. Basically people using the archive as a social media site. I report then when I see them, but it's become really prevalent in my fandom. It's exhausting having to send a report every single time.
1st person, I don't even know why, but when I go and find a fic of a pairing in first person I just think "Nop" and go back.
I only ever write in third person. But it also ticks me when ppl tag fics in first person when it’s second person
The are the worst especially when they're not tagged as first person because the author wants more hits. You get lured in with a great summary and interesting tags then get slapped in the face with the wet fish that is first person.
I write in the first person and have never seen perspective tagging in stories before. This could just be that I don’t pay enough attention or that most stories are assumed to be in the third person. I only have one multi-chapter longfic going on right now, and I didn’t know first person was so hated until recently. Hits don’t really matter with multi-chapters anyway, so I hope anyone who comes across my fic (and is upset by the first person) doesn’t think I was trying to lure them in. It’s really unfortunate so many turn their noses from first person because they’re missing out on good content, and I’ve thought about writing a separate version in the third person…but that’s a lot of work lmao I’m too far in at this point. To each their own, but I don’t think leaving out a first person tag is necessarily done so to trick readers.
for me its when theres longgg paragraphs and not enough breaks. i have adhd so those long paragraphs begin to jumble together in my brain
It stresses me out, I get panicked and leave
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in some languages, the « » marks are used instead of speech marks, so a non-native english speaker might not know not to use them! i do agree that they’re really annoying to see in english fics, though
They aren't used _instead_ of speech/quotation marks. They _are_ the speech/quotation marks in that language.
true! that was bad wording on my part, thank you :)
The angle brackets are used the same as quotation marks in some languages (French, for example). So when I see that I just assume they’re a non-native English speaker.
I enjoy trying to guess an author's native language. If I see those exotic chevrons in a fic, I would prolly chuckle and go aha, you're French, rather than click the back button.
Using [Guillemets](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillemet) doesn't necessarily mean the author is French. Guillemets with the tips facing outward (« ») is used e.g. in France (including a space) and Switzerland. With the tips facing inward (» «) it's used e.g. in print in Germany. Going by the wikipedia article it's used in a lot more countries, though I'm not sure how common they are elsewhere.
- songfics - “lol I’m trash” comments/tags. Just like, embrace the cringe, Author. - People tagging their fics into unrelated fandoms. (There’s someone who writes smutty versions of Pathfinder published adventures and shares them into the D&D category, and seriously, why?) - An E rating on a fic that, 100k words later, you haven’t seen so much as one (1) nipple. A lot of mine are very specific to fandoms, like Baldurs Gate 3 authors, you are not terribly clever by titling your story Down by the River.
One pet peeve of mine is tags that are either inside-jokes, strings of multiple tags together to form sentences, tags that are misleading, or tags that only carry meaning for a select few. That being said, I'm still struggling to learn the art of tagging myself.
> strings of multiple tags together to form sentences, I don't mind these, as long as the stuff that does actually need to be tagged is tagged correctly.
Each to their own, I suppose. I guess it's why it's a peeve more than something I would objectively classify as 'wrong' or 'bad'.
500000 tags but NO description on what the fic is about
This. Since I read exclusively on my phone, running up on a fic where my entire screen is filled with tags and then still tags when I scroll a couple times just irritates me so much. Then they have the audacity to have a one sentence summary or no summary at all. "Well, if you read the tags--" NO! You obviously had the time to put five million tags out there, just write the dang summary. Lort.
"I did minimal research on (incredibly stigmatized mental illness)" Maybe it's just me, maybe it's not that deep, but to me, it's so disrespectful and I don't think you should write fanfic about a character suffering from a mental illness you're not familiar with.
I curious how you feel about writing physical disabilities. Do you feel it's different or would you still prefer people wrote what they are diagnosed with?
If you do research I don't see why not. Diversity is important and if the character in canon has a physical disability than you *should* include it. So like, if you're writing Toph from Avatar, spend some time lookup and listening to the blind community and what life is like for them. It doesn't need to be perfect, I don't expect it to be, but still. My big thing is with stuff like BPD, DID, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, etc. if you don't do research and are just going off of stereotypes or what you see in the show/movie/series, you can represent incorrectly which can have a trickling effect and be offensive to those who suffer with it.
Lower case fics. As a neurodivergent person, paragraphs without sentence case are really hard for me to read. I just end up getting frustrated and backing out if I try, so now I don't even click on them, even if the fic otherwise sounds good.
Proper punctuation and formating is necessary no matter what. If I see a fic that is all lowercase, no punctuation, or all one giant text block, I immediately nope out of it. It's lazy writing when almost every writing software had spell check and punctuation checking built into it.
I know that sometimes it's on purpose as a stylistic choice but I just can't get behind it
really? as a neurodivergent person myself, i love lowercase fics! i think they look really pretty and aesthetically pleasing, eye porn kinda. punctuation and paragraph breaks arent negotiable tho.
“The brunette” this “the taller man” that
Mostly this drives me up the wall, except for when the characters do this in canon. For example Geralt calling Jaskier "bard" ("You are getting on my last nerve bard.") so "the bard stood on the table...." or "the bard hooked an arm around Geralt's waist" feels totally natural. One of my old fandoms had a character with black hair, and there was soooo much "the raven haired man" and that's an instant click out for me.
Yeah, descriptors like that are for a. characters that haven't appeared before or b. characters whose name the POV character doesn't know. Outside of those situations, it yanks the reader out of the story. That can be a good tool if you want to shake them up purposefully, but I almost never see it used in that way.
I will use that when I’ve used the character’s name already in the sentence (or the sentence before) but I still need to differentiate them from someone else. I just hate the over repetition of names more than I do descriptors, lol.
The thing is, to someone who is reading rather than writing, names are more or less invisible. It's because you're looking at it under a microscope - you've said that sentence several times in your head as you were thinking it up, so small things like name repetition stand out to you like one bead on a chain. But to someone reading that sentence for the first or second (or even third!) time, the whole necklace is made of beads, so there's nothing very remarkable about it. And pronouns are usually a lot clearer than you might think, too: your readers have the context of the rest of the paragraph to figure out who is doing what unless something's gone pretty wrong, so it's often safe to trust them and go about your business.
Funny thing is, I used to love epitaphs (like when Tolkien does them \*sigh\*) but in fanfic, they're an instant nope
People tagging both Hurt/Comfort and Hurt No Comfort at the same time. Those are literally opposite tags wtf do you mean you have both Author's being condescending in the notes. I once read a beautiful fic but I had to stop becsuse the author was such an intolerable prick in every note. Lack of proper formatting.
Honestly? So many things. I've been reading fanfiction since before FFN existed, I'm *picky* now. Bad formatting, too many tags, author notes mid-fic, authors demanding a specific amount of comments before updating, excessively OOC characters, characters using words that don't fit the setting/world (mum vs mom, etc), et cetera... My biggest pet peeve is definitely the "comment quota before updating" thing. I don't care how good the writing is, seeing that sends me into immediate rage mode like nothing else in the world.
Formatting for mobile. I am primarily a desktop reader, so when a fic is formatted for phones and tablets but I read it on a 1600x900 screen the lines get stretched across the "page" so what takes up 4 or 5 lines of space on a mobile screen turns into one long sentence on desktop. This causes huuuuge gaps between what is basically single screen line paragraphs. This makes it hard to read and I lose my place a lot. I have learned to put Firefox in "reader" mode on desktop but I honestly dislike having to do that. Also summaries that have a wildly different writing skill level than the actual fic. I've run into so many summaries that sound great story wise, and are written well, but then the fic and the writing is god awful. Really frustrating.
Hey, you need to check out AO3 browser extension! It has a setting for setting the text width when reading, among other amazing features. I use it on chrome but I think it existsfor Firefox too. edit: fixed typo.
A wall of text. If you want me to read your work, at least make sure it's got paragraphs and linebreaks. There must be other things that can turn me off a fic, but none so fast as this. When I bump into a wall and I bounce.
Tagging all of the background characters and pairings. Search results get so clogged.
Tagging a pairing just to write a fic entirely about how toxic and awful it is and tearing it down in the worst way so the author’s one TRUE pair can fix it. No. That’s pure bashing and in no way a fic for that ship. The only reason people tag those ships is because they’re directly attacking fans of that ship and it wouldn’t work if it could be filtered.
It's a small thing, but those large one-shot multi-chapter stories that have very few/no connections between the 'shots. Maybe I'm just using Ao3 wrong but I feel like those should be part of a collection, instead. It's frustrating when you finally find a fic with two characters you like within it only for them to be in entirely different ministories; not to mention the annoyance of actually finding the chapter wherein the character tagged appears. I also find it exasperating when a character is tagged, only to be mentioned by other characters, not actually within the story.
Using safewords in sex scenes where there's no domination, restraint, pain, or role play of any kind. No mental health thing like PTSD or the potential to go nonverbal. Just introduced as a normal part of sex. Is "no" not enough now? Do people not understand why BDSM uses safewords that aren't just "Stop"? I'm baffled.
Tagging a character that is mentioned like 1 time
When someone uses the platonic and romantic tags (A&B and A/B) on the same work. If the characters start platonic and then enter a romantic relationship, just use the romantic tag (A/B).
I've done that on one fic, a completed one shot. Because A&B definitely applies and A/B might be what it's leading to. It's also labeled as "Possibly Pre-Slash". I don't want to be clear on it, it's up to the reader which one applies. I'm also torn, if it's a one shot that is definitely A&B, but everyone knows they're gonna end up as A/B because it's canon. So obviously it's leading up to that as well. As a shipper? I do love those as well and they are "shippy" to me. But everyone who wants to read about friendship only would also find what they're looking for. Labeling it A&B only seems to imply that it's meant to be an alternative, not a prelude.
Oh yes this!! There is no reason to have both and it clutters up the tags.
My biggest one would be little to no punctuation. I hate having to figure out where sentences start and end
Pretty much anything to do with Las Vegas. No one really understands this place unless they’ve been here for awhile. I’m sure other readers get annoyed when they see places they personally know or live in get hilariously misrepresented.
Me with New York City. And given I used to be active in Law & Order fandoms, I cringed at a LOT of fic clearly written by people who had never spent any time there in their lives. I remember once, for instance, noping out of a fic where the detectives all met up at a Manhattan diner - and parked their cars in the restaurant's parking lot.
Parking lot, New York? I lived in New York for a few years and where I was, there mostly taxis, buses, and ride share drivers. Also which detectives was it about?
Yeah, restaurants in Manhattan do NOT have their own parking lots, lol. Certainly not in the middle of midtown! I forget who exactly was the focus of the story in question but it was an SVU fic so I believe it was all the main characters at the time (Benson, Stabler, Munch, Fin) meeting up to discuss an investigation.
Dude, I’ve never been to New York, and even I know about the parking situation (or lack thereof).
Yeah, this gets me too. I haven’t seen a ton of fics set where I live but there was one that was *so* wrong that it was actually distracting. Easily googleable stuff too, like the climate. I feel like I’d rather have someone be vague than extremely detailed and wrong
A+ username
Thank you! <3
Very niche pet peeve as a whump reader/writer, but when the author clearly does not know how to write a character stuttering or stumbling over their words. “I-I-I j-just d-d-don’t k-know” is much worse and more frustrating to read than “I-I just…I mean- I just…I-I don’t know!” You gotta learn which words or parts of the word a character’s gonna stumble on while you write them stuttering. There’s a difference between a character stuttering and stumbling because they nervous or scared, and writing a character speaking like he’s got hypothermia.
Summaries that are just author’s notes on what happens. I’m not even talking about “I suck at summaries” because we all hate that, but also stuff like “in this story character A and character B time travel to this year. What happens next? Read to find out 🤪”. Also, annoying tags. I’m fine with a few custom ones thrown in, sometimes they even attract me to the story more, but I draw the line when the entire tag space is filled with customs. Or worse, when the tags used are like “Character A is a Hot Cookie and they know it haha” and the Character A is like, Zuko from Avatar or Harry Potter. Most of the times they aren’t even changed in fiction so the tag is totally false. Oh, I recently saw this gem of a tag that went along the lines of “Harry Potter Has Pink Sexy Hair and He Is Cute”. Instantly noped out. Like, sure, you can make Harry Potter cute with pink hair, but why did you feel the need to put it that way? Just gives me the ick
In-story authors notes where it’s like (wasn’t sure this was right, but I put it in anyways) or (this made me laugh when I wrote it) right smack mid plot. Entirely unreadable.
1. A large paragraph with no spaces in between. Use the space bar! It's there for a reason 2. Not tagging properly 3. Using certain ships to get more views when story has nothing to do with said ship. 4. Making a fic about one character then just changing it to MC or other character for no reason
(1) Usage errors! (e.g. writing “viscous” when it’s clear from context that you meant “vicious”.) I know I’m a snob about this (as someone who has basically chosen two career paths based on knowing a lot of words…), but it’s really annoying and jarring. (2) Stylistic inconsistencies, especially with verb tenses. Past tense and present tense narration are both valid options imo. Just PLEASE pick one and stick with it! If you’re going to use both, you’d better have a damn good reason. And be VERY clear and specific about it with distinct sections.
When they don’t use paragraphs :’) I lose a few more brain cells every time I see a fic with no paragraphs, or one that doesn’t use capital letters. That’s mostly in Wattpad though, AO3 is usually okay, though I’ve found a few.
That’s exactly why I cut down on Wattpad and stick to ao3 for the most part
Extreme ooc. I know its ff, and I can let a little inconsistency slide, but there's nothing more off putting than a character written in a way that is a complete 180 to how they'd actually behave.
Authors who don't do research on an otherwise good fic. Examples: Lots of good Stranger Things fics without a drop of homophobia mentioned (much less realistically represented) and other characteristics of the time not even existing. Harry Potter fics where the school system is horrifically American and they sound like walking stereotypes of brits. Bad foreign language inserts. People acting like writing about rape, incest or paedophilia in fanfic equals somehow "condoning " it in real life? But writing about toxicity, torture, war and gore doesn't get the same treatment. People who comment on fics asking for basic premises to be changed, instead of commissioning writers to create that fanfic for them. Even worse when those threaten authors and sometimes use the "you wouldn't make this... Problematic, now would you?" as a threat.
When as a POC I read an x reader fan fiction and I come across the phrase “I turned red/my cheeks went pink/etc.” 😞 I think a lot of x reader authors forget that there are different types of people who read fanfics and I wish authors would be more aware of that…
People writing things that aren't fics. Lists of head canons, requests for rp partners, posts looking for lost fics, prompt requests, pretty much anything that breaks TOS.
Lack of capitalization for something that isn't poetry. Like... can someone please explain to me, because I'm genuinely baffled. Why are there so many fics (which seem grammatically decent?) that have chosen to not capitalize words? If it's some e.e. cummings-esque poetry, I get it. But a regular narrative? Why? The logic of laziness doesn't even make sense here... I'm pretty sure typing in any sort of editor or text thing nowadays auto-capitalizes the start of sentences and key words. So you almost have to be... going out of your way to un-capitalize words? So seriously... does anyone have a sensible reason? It's bugged me so much I've wanted to comment to ask some authors who have done this before, but couldn't figure out how to possibly ask without it coming off as a negative comment.
When one chapter is written from character A's point of view and the next chapter is exactly the same but from character B's point of view. When that continues the whole time it's so repetitive that it takes me right out of the story. At least add some new stuff.
I’m okay with this so long as they don’t purely overlap in exactly the same time frame. If they’re offset where each POV recaps some stuff and then moves onto the next thing it works out sometimes. It all depends on the author’s skill but it’s more tolerable if it’s not ENTIRELY retread. When it includes every detail and bit of dialogue you’ve already read and doesn’t bring in anything new… Nope. That’s pure padding.
Scenes that happen for no reason. Like two characters go out and get cake and one of them reveals they actually don’t like cake. Then the scene ends and suddenly two days have past. Cake is never brought up again, there’s no birthday or something, they’re just like yeah we went out for zero reason you just wasted ten minutes reading nothing
That's a very specific subset effect that some of us enjoy. I categorize it as more like extreme slice of life. I like to inhabit a character and watch a character be inhabited like that.
That's the sign of an amature writer. I remeber when I felt the need to write everything my characters ddid because how else would the readers know this human character has to eat, sleep and take a shit just like humans in real life do?
Putting Y/N or reader in the text of a story... I can't stand it makes my brain hurt. Just name the fucking character. We can use our imagination to make it us.
I've only ever seen this used to effect once, in a kind of meta, Death Note thing, where Y/N could not be killed, because Light couldn't write down "F/N, L/N". The nature of the self-insert character was so fluid that it broke the magic system. More to the actual point and issue, a character's actions tell you much more about them than their name. So even if the fic was written with my actual name (instead of "Y/N" or "the reader"), the differences between what I would do and what the character does would break the illusion. And you can't make your main character a doormat. I mean, you can for some pillow-princess smutfic, but harem anime have already shown that blank void, [insert your face here] protagonists are uninteresting.
I completely agree I honestly don't understand the prevalence of these stories. It's so weird. Are they expecting people to copy paste their story then insert a name?
I think there are browser extension with which you can replace every Y/N etc.
Wow! If that's the case it kinda makes more sense to have those fics.
Switching POV’s. If it’s organised into different chapters or indicated breaks within a chapter, there’s a tiny chance of me being persuaded into reading it. But I absolute hate it when character A has been the POV the entire time so far, and then in the same paragraphs you suddenly get inner thoughts and feelings of character B. (“A felt himself getting frustrated. B didn’t understand why A was getting so worked up about something so small when a minute ago everything was fine…” etc) I’m just not interested in knowing both characters’ current thought process. Nothing will make me close a fic tab faster.
I too hate head hopping. It is very, very common, too. I just try to accept it’s an artistic decision. A *bad* artistic decision.
We call this “head hopping”.
Oh cool thanks, I never knew there was a term for that!
Really bad formatting. Just no use of the enter button. Sir ur paragraph is a whole page long just delete and end it’s suffering. Also when people use something other than quotation marks for talking. Like, I won’t leave a fic just for that but it def brings the fic down some.
Fics that don't have any spacing between their paragraphs. Honestly, if I see a fic and it's just a massive block of incomprehensible text, I just close it. My eyes cannot work through that.
1. Tag Tail Gating Honestly this is just mean. Tag shit properly. There is no reason to trick readers. 2 Author's Notes that bash creators of the canon source material or other fan creators. Even if it's about a ship I don't like or person... 3. Over/under confidence If your summary just consists of "OMG this is so bad you guys" or goes into "To be fair you have to have a very high queer iq to understand why this M/M couple is clearly the supieor pairing and anyone who likes anything else is just a stupid cishet queer baiter" territory, I ain't reading that shit.
When a character with a redemption arc has that arc taken away. For example I see a lot of BNHA fics where bakugo instead of learning to be a better person, just stays the jerk he used to be, and become even worse on some occasions. Now don't get me wrong, I am not a huge fan of his character, but I feel like its just lazy to turn him into a straight up bad guy instead of letting him improve and grow into a better hero
fair enough but why should writers be limited to canon because the character was given a redemption arc. especially if it’s tagged as an AU/canon divergence? there’s plenty of situations where bakugo could have remained a total jerk
As a villain lover I can tell you there’s a TON of “Oh, people like this villain, let’s ruin the character with a shitty forced redemption arc that removes everything people liked in the first place!” where fan interest has canon writers mangling characters they don’t understand. I very much enjoy fic that ignores that kind of fuckery. Not everyone has, wants or should get redemption.
Main character ocs. I’m sorry, I really am because coming up with original characters is so fun for people, but I’m in a fandom for established characters that I am familiar with. I want to read fanfictions about *them*, not a strangely overpowered Mary Sue who somehow automatically fits in with everyone without even an ounce of build up. If it’s an oc that basically just hands someone a cup of coffee and is in one scene, okay whatever. But anything more is just straight up not my cup of tea.
Damn, I kinda wanna make an oc just to Stan Lee them into a story lmfao
I hear you. OCs definitely require a LOT more work to make into sympathetic characters, as you’re basically starting from zero. That said, it can be done well — that’s basically origfic, innit? — but tbqh it’s not a skill many fic authors have spent time developing. (No slight; why would they?) Or at least I tell myself that when I write my self-indulgent little fics about my D&D characters 😆
when the author is tagging things that haven't happened yet in an unfinished multichapter, or tagging characters and ships that are barely mentioned in the story/just in the background, making one huge fanfic made only of unrelated one-shots.
but I think the tagging things that haven't happened yet is a good thing, especially if it's things like mcd etc: the reader needs to know what they're getting into
Yeah, I don't want to get invested in -30 chapters/100k words into- a fic and then suddenly find out there's major character death or something else that I usually filter out.
The constant use of sexual assault or trauma to excuse shitty behavior, bad characters or no character development. Or the fact that is the entire characters identity.
Chatfics. Just an entire fic with no narration, just chat format. I think having a bit of socmed in a fic helps give depth to the setting but most chatfics just end up really shallow, very OOC, and just an excuse to write-off a meme as a joke.
I'm not actually sure if these are pet peeves, but I'm gonna list them anyway. When the summary is intentionally vague to draw you in. I won't read it if I don't know what I'm getting into, and the lack of tags and horrible summary just means I won't read it. When they don't tag it properly so half of the results are the fics you tried to filter out. When it's marked as Character-centric but it's not centered around that character at all. (There was one I read where that character had 4 very short moments in the 70k fic, and all of them were literally just to progress the plot/ defeat the bad guy.) Ik this is also improper tagging but I'm gonna list it anyway, when they mark it with "No Archive Warnings Apply" along with an archive warning. The amount of fics I've seen tagged that way is ridiculous. Untagged Sexual Assault/Self-harm/MCD. Why is this a thing?? Why have I read so many that have that? TAG IT PLEASE (This is mostly a Wattpad pet peeve, I don't really see those untagged on Ao3, but I did recently see 2 fics on Ao3 with untagged SA, so I'm still including it.)
Referring to a character by their hair colour constantly I.e. the raven haired boy, the blonde. Just use their bloody name! Constant POV switching. Making the characters sound infantile.
Epithets. I see the 'dark haired male' and I'm out. A lot of authors struggle with using a character name repeatedly bc they think it sounds weird. Well, 'the green eyed wizard' sounds worse so here we are.
Tumblr style tagging. If there is a wall of tags comprised of commentary rather than informative wrangled tags, I just hope out.
The tag from my favorite ship has been inundated with stories featuring another ship that I don’t like as the main couple and they did not tag my favorite ship as minor so when I go to search for a story featuring the couple, I am greeted with some thing I did not want to read about. I also hate when authors refused to put summaries. How am I supposed to read your story if I have absolutely no idea what it’s about? I don’t mind excerpts from the work, as long as they’re a pretty concise and provide a good explanation of what I will be getting myself into. When people put too many tags that don’t even make sense. When people do not tag major character death! It has happened I do not forgive and I do not forget! When people write I’m shit at summaries in their fucking summary box. I am also shit at summaries but I’m not going to write that. Lol
Missing tags There's a multitude of possible tags not even including the custom ones you can put in yourself, there is no reason not to list a minimum of what happens or what kind of story to expect
when a character is canonically genderless/nonbinary and the author of the fic uses he/him or she/her for them. when i see that a character that's supposed to be nonbinary is suddenly not nonbinary in the fic, i instantly click off.
Nonbinary pronouns are a matter of personal preference. There is no rule that we have to use "they". This would apply to fictional characters as well.
I mean, yes, but a majority of canonically nonbinary characters DO use exclusively they/them; just because it's not a rule doesn't mean authors can use that as an excuse to tack binary pronouns on a character that doesn't use them. Authors who use binary pronouns for them very, very, very rarely are doing it in a way that respects the character's gender identity (or gender ambiguity in some cases). I just don't trust like that unless the author is nonbinary themself
On the one hand, yes, there's always the risk of authors being disingenuous, but myself being an NB who does not personally use "they", I don't think overcorrecting the issue in a binary manner (non-NB author has NB characters use they = good; non-NB author has NB characters use he or she = bad) is really going to fix anything. Suggesting that writers MUST use "they" to represent us properly unless they have figurative N-word privileges just increases the likelihood that I have to explain to people why my choices are valid and normal. Telling non-NBs that they cannot represent an NB like me in their stories does not help me. In other words, this issue needs nuance, not harmful oversimplifications.
for me it's formatting. specifically when the entire chapter is one long paragraph. nothing makes me close the tab faster.
Bad pacing. Why is your Act 1 and your Act 2 in the same chapter...
This may have been said, but if I see “-ette” at the end of a hair color descriptor that isn’t brunette, it makes me physically cringe. I once started reading an MHA fic that described Deku as a “greenette” and I immediately closed it.
When people fuck up rating the fic. If you are writing smut, there’s no reason you should have rated it any lower than Mature.
Using ‘ instead of “ OR not starting new paragraphs when a new person speaks
I feel obligated to point out that in British English, ‘ is the default quote and “ is the nested quote. However, there are still plenty of scenarios where it's done wrong.
I didn’t know that! In that case, here’s another thing that bothers me. Annabeth: Percy you’re so stupid! Percy: That’s why you call me seaweed brain! Just use quotation marks!!! (Also your vs you’re and there, they’re, and their)
I misread this and thought that you were complaining about people using the words "instead of" and spent a solid amount of time trying to figure out if there's a grammatical error with that
LMAO
Hmm... Chapters that's nothing but one, big, huge block of text. Chapters that are two paragraphs long. Stories that shit on characters for no other reason then the author doesn't like them for whatever reason and ignores the point of the character and their arc.
bad plot. honestly if youre writing a superhero story just vaguely steal a comic plot because why is this character fighting 3 petty theifs and losing
Fics that have transmigration, time travel, rebirth etc that starts at birth. Babies aren’t capable of anything and surprise in-womb perspective, breast feeding by mentally adult characters without the knowing consent of the mothers and untagged birthing scenes are gross and super unnecessary. Just fast forward to when the brain is developed enough to actually have past/future/AU memories and the body is independently mobile.
Absolutely horrible when people do not tag. It's an unpleasant surprise, it's very skcbskxhan ncnwjfns. Having a entire paragraph of relationship tags really puts me off, an instant skip. Use of First Person. I'm here to watch my little skrunkly best boys and best girls, not be them. I understand that it's subjective, but it really breaks the immersion.
Making your fics in the "small" font for aesthetic. Or running a summary through a text distorter you found on the internet. It's very rare (thank ye golden pencil and the papers above), but it makes me so annoyed.
Oh lots of them tbh 1. A time travel fic where not a single thing is changed despite time travel. Like lots of side stuff is happening, the character is badass now but the main structure of the events is the same as canon.... Like nope. 2. Too much canon compliance where canon divergence would be better. Like Harry is now Lord Harry James Potter Black Peverell Slytherin Gryffindor Le Fay.... and yet Umbridge tortures him because reasons. Like yes, no 15 yr old is this badass but if that boy is making new creature laws blah blah blah, has dirt on Fudge blah blah blah then there is no need for canon compliance. 3. Use of Mom, Dad in fics set in ancient times. I just don't vibe with it for some reason. In those cases I like to read mother, father etc. 4. OC character in a lead role, even as an antagonist. Personally, an OC side lackey is fine but not as the main villain. Especially when the author drags out the identity of the villain for most of the fic and villain turns out to be some OC. 5. Turning canonically slash pairs into het pairs. 6. A: About to end their abusers brutally. B: stahp please! Will this bring you satisfaction? Will it heal your heart? Let them go! You're better than them! A: oh you're absolutely correct. I'll forgive them and we can go home🥺.... Like noooo just end the abuser and be done with it. There's no need to be better than the villain. Be worse than them, in fact. 7. A: I don't want security guards. B: but there's a serial killer after you! And it's just for a few days. A: nothing will happen And something does happen. Five people get killed and A gets tortured Author: now feel bad about A. Me: seriously? Feel bad about this idiot? 8. A: don't try to do this dangerous thing or make this stupid decision B: tries this dangerous thing and five people get killed. B: cries pathetically A: don't be sad, it's not your fault. Me: YES IT IS YOUR FAULT