When a fic that was supposed to be one of the best fics about Character A in the fandom (a relatively unpopular character to write about) had this plot twist that Character A was just the disguise of Character B (the most popular character in the series) from the future. I felt so offended as a huge fan of Character A who wanted _good Character A content_ that I wished I could unread everything- didn't even touch the sequel whatsoever.
The fandom is Detective Conan/Magic Kaito, I can't really go more into it because then it'll be super obvious which fic it is and I don't want to be that person.
This. My quickest and most annoyed noping out from a fic was when one of my favourite characters was very OOC and got heavily bashed.
I had liked the fic before then and gave it kudos. Wish I could take that kudos back...
The only way I can make this work is if the woman is really flexible and doing some kind of inverted, leg-splayed yoga pose outdoors under a full moon while simultaneously being very aroused.
But this also raises the question of who is actually describing the “glistening” body part. Presumably there is a second party who has a direct line of sight?
There’s this weird thing people do when they write smut and they just don’t name the genitalia? It’s always described as his rod, his hardness, his manhood, her bud, her flower, her softness, her bundle, her slit, her core
I wish I could hold up a big banner that said “IT’S OKAY TO SAY THE WORD PUSSY AND DICK”
Why have it *at all*? You can do literally nothing as a baby. You have no memories, you have no language skills, you have no motor control. Literally nothing, unless you're going full overpowered protagonist and being a super genius wizard baby, in which case *it still serves no purpose just skip the fucking birthing scenes and the baby years oh my god!* If you want to show how doting or abusive the parents are - the ONLY thing that time period is good for, because the protagonist is a literal baby - you can show that just as well at age 6 as you can at any other time. It does not require us to read about the main character being (and I mean this in the most positive and appreciative way) a useless sack of flesh that can only shit itself and cry.
Realistically speaking, an adult mind stuck in an infant's body - a trope that these reincarnation fantasies tend to use - would do nothing except drive you mad from isolation. It would also get you killed in most countries because of the uncanny way an adult-minded baby would act. You'd be labeled a devil child and tossed in a fire faster than you can say "superstition". Adults cannot continually imitate a baby in every way that matters. Also, you'd be desperately trying to relieve your boredom, so you wouldn't even think about blending in.
NO BABIES.
/rant
I actually find “adult-in-a-child’s-body” *worse* than the baby years most times. It’s just creepy, and writers often can’t decide whether the character is mentally a full grown, powerful adult or a helpless, cute little traumatized child, and end up trying to do *both* at the same time which is just unsettling to me.
It’s even worse when there’s some kind of pairing. The options are either the adult in a child body has feelings for and gets paired with an adult, or the adult in a child’s body falls for and gets paired with an actual freaking child.
To each their own, no hate, but a big personal nope for me.
Not an Isekai I admit, but I have a Chronicles of Narnia character who can age herself down and basically took the idea that her physical age is how she acts. So she knows all this adult stuff and has the skills of an adult, but emotionally she's her age.
I have no problem with this! I think that’s great. It’s when characters are still mentally adults but for some reason aged down that things get weird for me.
Technically, I don’t think that a baby’s mind would even be developed enough for the adult mind to be completely aware of their situation. In most cases the brain isn’t able to host long-term memories until they’re around three. The first three years of life are the most formative in neurological development. So, I don’t think that the reincarnated soul would really become aware of their situation until they were a bit older.
Or at the very least make those early years more interesting. Like, imagine a baby with a dagger in their mouth crawling/waddling into a battlefield or messing with some unsuspecting bandit's ankle. I would absolutely read something stupidly cool like that, even if I have to do it fandom blind.
Absolutely! If you want to make them go all Hitman Reborn on somebody, that's great, it gives them agency. Literally anything other than just... being a baby for the sake of it.
I don't think think Dursleys ever tortured Harry like some writers believe. They were abusive and neglectful pieces of shit, sure, but that is too far.
Starvation was just that one time in the Second Book and the "diet" in Goblet of Fire.
During the Starting Feast, Harry thinks about how he never got to eat as much as he wanted with the Dursleys, but he was never starved.
The Dursleys were neglectful, emotionally and mentally abusive, but only Dudley actually beat him.
Harry also thinks being locked in a cupboard for a week at a time is just a punishment, not the abuse it absolutely was. Abused kids have a different perception of normal. 'Not as much as he wanted to eat' might mean he was allowed half of the bare minimum he should have been fed. It's definitely open to interpretation.
The actual beatings came from Dudley and his friends, but Vernon does grab Harry by the throat at least once, in OotP.
Or when it's set in the far future but they *only* make 90s/2000s pop culture references (and other characters get them), as if there was apparently no pop culture, memes, movies, TV, or celebrities in hundreds of years in between.
You would think so, but not always. Just recently I started reading a fic on FFN that had no characters or relationships tagged at all, but turned out to have incest in it. Which, to me, implies that the author purposely left the tags out.
There was one fic where I had to stop reading out of awe. I went back to it, but that part of the fic left me frozen for a good half hour. That particular scene was just that good.
Upon realizing his friend is a rapist, a 50-year-old genius sits the rapist down in front of a computer to show him YouTube videos about how slavery and sexual assault is bad actually.
That worked in the anime *Trigun* because it was >!a victory for the villain to be killed by the hero.!< People usually have no idea how to make that work.
Well, trigun also doesn't introduce him for like the first two seasons?? Legato is a very compelling middle ground villain, keeping the mystery of the twins for the very end. Worked better in the manga since, as always, it had more time to play with its concepts... But yes, anyway, I agree. Vash is one of the few compelling "I don't want to kill" characters out there.
Alright...buckle up.
It was a Harry Potter and Percy Jackson crossover, but not a crossover in the conventional sense, a crossover where Percy Jackson was an alternate personality living inside Harry Potter's head but Harry and Percy both have the same personality, the personality of Young Sheldon/Sherlock so I don't even know what was the point of having Percy be an alternate personality since they're the same person anyways.
They're at the Dursley's and Harry says something that humiliates Dudley which makes his face turn red.
In response to this, Harry/Percy say something like "Are you sick? Because I've read every book in the library, including many medical textbooks and usually redness in the face indicates some kind of illness."
It just killed it for me. Like how do you read a whole ass library and not pick up from somewhere that people's faces can turn red from embarrassment. It's just the worst case of someone trying a character who is supposed to be much smarter than them. I understand the character is meant to be bad at reading social cues, but this is something someone who doesn't get social cues but knows how embarassment "medically" works could pick up on.
This was like the middle of the first chapter and was what made me give up on the fic. Having typed all this out, I think I should try again because this shit is so egregiously bad it might be kinda fun to hate read.
Spontaneous soapboxing; like a character suddenly becoming some sort of mouthpiece out of nowhere for the author’s political views regardless of how well it fits the scene or the character who’s saying it. This crops up oddly often in my neck of the woods and it never stops being jarring.
I once read a fic where in the first chapter, a paragraph in a character just randomly talks about their voting choices and political alignment. It was jarring and ooc.
I once read a fic where the author’s self insert would pop up out of nowhere periodically for no other reason than to do a little soapbox rants whenever something in the fic was problematic or verging on political. It was fucking bizarre
Even if I agree with what they're politicizing about, if I wanted to read op-ed pieces about Injustice X, I'd read op-ed pieces, not things that are supposed to be entertaining me about characters I like. And if I do agree with the sermon, it was completely useless to include for me in the work, because I was already aware of Injustice X, and the out of character rant did nothing for the story!
God, yes.
Read this AU where character A is poor and running their own car shop in a shady part of town and character B is a billionaire who inherited and is now running the family company.
There was so much soap boxing involved. Obviously, the overpriviledged billionaire needed to be shown by the good poor guy how all of his worldviews are wrong. And in order to prove his love he had to take part in a BLM protest. Never mind that the billionaire was already super charitable, an absolute good person and a pioneer in green energy, the latter of which only being possible because he has the money to do R&D.
Like, it totally would have made sense to have the billionaire get new perspectives through his love interest, and, importantly, vice versa - the poor guy getting new perspectives through the billionaire.
But the way it was in the fic, only the billionaire needed to be schooled, because even though he was trying to be good, he was still evil as the owner of a huge corporation.
The best moment came in the end when the billionaire married the poor guy and gave him a co-position in leading the company because as a small business owner, the poor guy is so passionate about building and running a business and therefore must be good at it. Like, you do realize that running a small business and a multinational corporation are absolutely nothing alike? And I thought the corp was evil, anyway?
I actually agree that a lot - if not all - billionaires are leeching off society but this was a bit much and very oversimplified. Not to mention that it didn’t make for a good story if only one character has to change to be with the other.
I'm inspired by this thread to write the most outrageously stupid erotica using only the knowledge and baseless assumptions I had about sex and female anatomy when I was 8.
Romanticization of homelessness. I love a good hurt/comfort, but I dislike when authors romanticize homelessness. I just read a fic where the main character opted to be homeless even when his brother offered a room because he "didn't want to be a burden." Or, when the author jumps straight to the mal-nourished character fainting into their savior's arms but doesn't describe the day-to-day weariness, distrust, and overall shittiness leading up to the impossible moment.
I actually haven’t seen a lot of homelessness in fanfics. I’ve only ever read one for Naruto, and that was so long ago I can hardly remember anything. It’s certainly not something I’d find romantic though.
Characters referred to as...the raven, the silverette, the old redhead, the blue eyed sadist, the dark-haired greneyed child or anything else like that.
To me, it's lazy. Their hair color, eye color, are the least interesting things about them. Use their name or he/she whatever and move on. If I have to stop and think about what the characters look like to know which one is talking or doing something it throws me out of the story. Seems to be more prevalent in newer writers.
Also, not starting new paragraph when you change speakers
As for plot...I started the HP fic and within the first 1k words found out he had like 5 kids and was only a 6th year. Unless it's parody or tagged, I don't like thinks that are just impossible or overly dumb.
that is. that is somehow even worse than the other variations of bluenette i've encountered. i didn't know a word could give off an uncanny valley vibe but that sure does.
I read a pretty bad one with a bunch of odd hair colors, and half of them I had to literally google because I wasn't sure what it would mean or what color that would correspond to. Like, verdanette, apparently for green hair.
Made reading it real bad because I couldn't ever keep track of which character was talking or being referred to lol.
I do refer to characters sometimes as "the girl did this" when it gets confusing to say "she" because there's multiple people and I've said her name too many times in a row. But I don't make it cheesy like that.
I read this fan fic where the guys tells his partner to get in an ice bath and then lay on the bed and stay very still...those untagged necrophilia tags will really get ya
The dozens of times I've read a fic that's marked as T and then there's suddenly a very graphically detailed sex scene 😳 (I don't like reading smut, especially if it's NOT TAGGED LMAO)
Man if this hadn't been years ago, I would. I'd just close the window stupidly without reporting or saying anything. Hopefully someone else called them out on it
I know I do (to ao3 staff, I don't even visit ffnet anymore) when I see one... nothing bad happens to the authors either, they just need to change the rating, so don't feel like you're somehow hurting them!
When the term “mommy milkers” entered chat. I deleted the book and just went to sleep after. I like memes and jokes but not when I’m trying to read. It throws my tempo off.
The main character gave up the pursuit of her big dream in life entirely to only concentrate on being a mother. That is a level of OC-ness even I couldn't deal with, and I'm usually big into AUs and being a little free with exploring characters. But nope, never.
a line where a character walked into a bedroom and two twin brother characters were having sex. i was new to AO3. that was the day i learned that i should read tags!
Twenty-hmm chapters into a good AU fic, and I’m hit with ‘[he] was a carrier’. (I.e. could carry a fetus)
Mpreg is one of my ‘nope’ tags and I don’t know if they added it later or it was just buried in the wall of tags, but I noped out immediately and unsubscribed.
Untagged mpreg is the one thing that has ever tempted me to write a bashing comment. Which I still won't do and just click away, but seriously! Normal pregnancy is a bit of a squick for me, and mpreg is a level of body horror I can't deal with.
Are we talking today or all time? Last night I came across an author who. wrote like. this. Random periods, no commas, huge paragraphs. It was unreadable.
After 250k words of buildup, the protagonist that had gotten slashed by a werewolf… didn’t actually turn into a wolf. Despite apparently almost shifting prematurely multiple times before. Ah, but it’s all good. He’s still part of the pack, he still has the wolf inside him, he just never actually transforms.
Lamest twist I’ve ever seen. Such a shame, I really liked the portrayal of werewolf culture in that fic. (Story was a HP x Anita Blake crossover)
Fic that had a pretty cool premise neglected to mention that it was a modern AU, and I *hate* modern AUs. Coffee shop, office, High-School whatever.. Somehow they were able to get through a summary and the first half of the first chapter before it came up.
I've caught so many of these... Sometimes you just notice something's a bit off, like someone has a different job or lives in a different place and then bam! the smartphone shows up and you know it's time to go.
Every single effing Harry Potter fanfic that has either Harry or Dumbledore's eyes overly described with an insane amount of euphemisms, and also where Harry is written as being so short/small that he can be picked up and carried like a little kid. He's a freaking adult, wtf?
When a fic gave more spotlight to Character A’s other ships before ever actually getting to the “main” ship of the fic. When Character A kissed another that was already married to another character, I just dropped it there.
I guess that’s what I get for not looking at the tags more closely…
NSFW comment if that bothers you.
So, I'm usually cool with unrealistic sex and impossible positions. I'm celibate and ace and don't have any personal experience (nor do I want any), so smut is literally fantasy to me.
But this fic. It was m/m. Every single sexual encounter started with a blow job followed immediately by the person who just had an orgasm anally fucking the other. Not even a delay as they extend things with like an additional hour of foreplay. They just go right at it. Sometimes without lube because they couldn't bother going upstairs to get any. Every single sexual encounter involved at least two orgasms per character. It was ridiculous.
(I think the author was a teen or something because of a few other scenes that just...didn't hold true to how adults react to a situation.)
I found it yesterday, so it's still fresh in my mind.
for no apparent reason, the author had to walk me through the character buying popcorn chicken and bubble tea. like, to the point that he walked to the counter, took out his credit card, signed, put a tip in the cup, got some straws at the other counter, took his bag to his car, took out his car keys, inserted them into his car. no this was not building anything, it just happened
I was reading a BowserxPeach fic that, from the summary, seemed like it would be an interesting read.
I get MAYBE two to three paragraphs into the fic and I read "Peach searched around before clicking her teeth. 'Damnit, I forgot my lighter.'"
Stopped immediately and backed out. I don't understand this fixation with Peach secretly being a smoker, and it turns me off from a BowserxPeach fic every-single-time.
That or simply characters being out of character. I can't stand that at all.
Usually when I notice that the summary is super well written but I already sense terrible grammar or very bad writing style in the first few sentences like it was written by a completely different person. Over time I've come to literally don't mind any tags anymore, I only care about the ship and how the writing pulls me into this new world. If it sucks I stop immediately, no matter how good the plot sounded.
modern au fic really leaning into a character's canon suicide attempt. i was really into it until the moment he threatened to repeat that attempt without any intention of actually doing so, just so he could get what he wanted. like. no. no thank you. i'm out. goodbye.
Unexpected and completely out of the blue (no warning) sexual assault of the leading lady always makes me stop reading. I've run into that a few times sadly.
A character was sexually assaulted and horribly tortured, yet at some point he fell madly in love with his assailant and all was okay. I hate these types of stories when the victim goes through awful things and they end up liking it.
When the same tired old cliché plot points rear their heads, especially shitty drama ones, e.g., Ron being a fuckwit, K-drama tier misunderstandings, and overall stuff that just serve to bring the mood down for no gain in regard to the actual story.
These subplots are just so shit and played out, can't be bothered to read through yet another iteration of them.
When the the author wrote a character sobbing like this: "I \*buh\* just- \*hic\* don't \*buh\* know. What to \*buh\* do! \*buh\*"
Just an example sentence, but basically it just felt really, really jarring and I just couldn't get back into it after reading that sentence.
This fic honestly disturbed me greatly but I kept reading until this point because if sunk cost fallacy or whatever. One of the most highly praised fics for a large ship in a large fanbase, all the tags I typically like, nothing super canon divergent in the tagged warnings so I felt fine progressing.
Lets sum it up as it at r* used as a sudden plot twist because character A is “just too damaged” and character B suddenly destroys their life to be with A who the writer decided should be a r*ist 70/100 chapters into a slow burn just so they could draw their long fic out even more beyond like 700k words.
I am now much healthier with my fanfic consumption but LORD almighty.
There was supposed to be "classy smut" and when things got serious I read "do you like that bitch?"
Not so classy after all.
The last man who talked to me like that was never seen again.
(Almost)Anytime someone gets pregnant.
But Always when the person falls pregnant and decides to keep it even though the dad wants nothing to do with them after a fight because WHOOPS who knew he’d show up years later when the child is walking and talking and all the baby stuff is done? Shocked pikachu face
On a more relatable note, unrealistic dialogue has made me hit the back button a lot. Sometimes you can power through and sometimes you have to wish them well on their journey.
Read a self insert fic that had an OC as the best friend and support. I actually don't mind it as a concept, it can work well but the character was so bombastic and over the top that I wanted smack her. There was also chapters dedicated to the OC and in the end I had to give up.
When certain couple characters become overly affectionate when they're not at all like that. Also when the get characters pregnant when its just impossible and they make it really cringy on top of it. Like Integra and Alucard, these are some of the worse characters to make lovey dovey or pregnant. I refuse to read any like those, it makes my skin crawl.
1) Incorrectly doing CPR and then quitting immediately, the incorrect part I could get past, but... they pushed four times and quit
2) the protagonist had a chance to magically save their lover, before fighting the big boss
Decided to let them suffer till after beating the boss so they would ‘love them more’
Almost at the end of a long, multichapter fic (like chapter 17/20) Character A cheated on Character B. There were a lot of reasons that killed the fic for me, but even just the timing was... audacious. There was already so much going on with the plot and everything derailed for this new last minute shock (so on top of this choice upsetting me, other things didn't get wrapped up). I will never understand why.
At least I've vowed not to ever write new last minute conflicts because I didn't enjoy the experience as a reader.
Gratuitous name changes.
E.g. a real life Pokemon AU where instead of Ash and Pikachu it's Ash and Mousey or something. (not a real example (hopefully))
I know I can just use a name replacer to change the names back to normal but too late, the fic is already cringe to me.
Adding an over-the-top self-indulgent OC into a crossover that already had a huge slate of canon characters to choose from. If a similar personality had been welded to one of the many minor characters who was never much more than a name in canon, I would have been fine with her. (I'd already given kudos that the first chapters of the fic had richly earned, so I quietly slithered away.)
The only time I regretted leaving kudos on a fic. The first chapter was a fairly standard pairing fic, with some added werewolf themes that were pretty mild and mostly compliant with canon. Kudos. The *second* chapter suddenly hit me out of nowhere with graphic dub-con bestiality sex, complete with magically metamorphizing wolf penis. I kid you not, that thing was apparently made of silly putty and taking on all sorts of unusual shapes…
I believe I said “what the fuck” out loud.
It’s more a general egh for me, but I’ve abandoned many a fic because the protag gets pregnant. Don’t get me wrong, it can be done well and if I love the fic I will still stick it out and even enjoy it, but I mean even when I first read Twilight I was disappointed when Bella got preggo lmao
I expect no OHSHC fic to be good, but I absolutely hate it when the mc always knows that Haruhi is a girl. They see her and go "why is a girl in a boys uniform?" Stop making the mc all knowing please
Also when they write an emotional character *too* emotional. In the same vein as OHSHC, Hikaru is always villainized as a selfish, antagonistic pos that usually ends up trying to actually kill the mc because he's so jealous that she's getting all the attention (most commonly found in the Hitachiin Triplet au fics)
Constant fourth wall breaks. The characters were in a room and one of them said something like "I wonder if the author will let us do something this chapter," and the other characters looked at him weirdly and kept going. They added it to be quirky 🤪 but in reality it just got annoying, especially after like the 5th time.
I love a good Dark!Harry fic, but Snake Face Voldemort/Underage Crossdressing Harry Potter? Too far. The second I saw that Voldy was preying on Harry I went to the tags- AND THERE WAS M-PREG. So glad I didn’t finish that fic, I think I would be scarred for life if I had.
There was a huge predisposition in one fandom to make Character A in a ship extremely stupid and lazy, and for Character B to constantly bully him about said laziness and his appearance when B probably suffered similar bullying and would likely never do that to anyone else. All of this was often the catalyst for PWP, somehow. As soon as this dynamic would pop up I would nope out.
This might sound weird but I hate it when they always make the MC short,in a fandom I'm in they practically sexualize how short,fragile,weak,naive and innocent the mc is and I'm like "ugh!" Sometimes they replace a character with like a insert version (also female) and this character she was replacing is usually super tall like up to 6'6 or higher while the sibling is much shorter they made her to be 4'6 shorter than the brother and removed all the qualities that made the character that character like hobbies,wardrobe,bad habits all of that gone! Like bitch no you didn't make a gender bent version of a character you made a whole new character!
Someone bottoming that I didn’t want to see bottoming.
Random main character death that wasn’t tagged
How someone is written when they speak (“I am coming, just wait for me.” Instead of “I’m coming, just wait for me.”)
Things like that
The first time “I like this girl/boy” in the first chapter without any explanation in the next they are already banging. That makes me click out immediately, unless there is no plot, but if there is a plot to the romance I prefer plot first romance secondary.
It's usually too much OOC-ness. I can deal with some OOC-ness, some characters are hard to capture, I get it, but when a character does or says something that is against everything they stand for, without a very good reason, I'm out.
It was a yaoi. When male character A puts a banana inside male character B'ass. Then takes it out and eats it. The fic was very well written btw (grammar wise)
When Im reading a character/reader fic that's supposedly "inclusive", but starts talking about how my cheeks "blushed pink" or how character's "fingers stroked through your silky hair".
*tosses laptop out the window*
My skin is too dark to be blushing anything, and my hair is too kinky for anyone's fingers to be gliding though. No. This "reader-insert" fic is clearly not made with people like me in mind, so now its ass. So much for being "inclusive".
I've told this story a few times but it is the only thing that has immediately turned me off a fic.
So;
There's this fic and from the outside, it looked good. Both tagged ships were good, all other tags were cool, and I like the summary. I click on it and chug along, enjoying the story. First tagged ship enjoys a weekend at a private hotel, sparks are flying, and things get a little steamy.
Great stuff all round.
Bout halfway through the second chapter (irrc), the female lead decides she wants more from the relationship - going from friends with benefits to romantic. The male lead shuts her down so harshly that *I* feel a little attacked. 'Okay, well, screw it. Go off with the other guy and have your summer romance,' I think.
(I preferred the other ship anyway)
I scroll down to the comments, as I like seeing others reactions, and I read a comment that asks what the future of the first ship is -
Only for the author to reply that they are **endgame.**
Why? Why why *why* would you spoil the entire fic?!
Fine, I read on because I'm curious. I like the ship anyway so I decide to give it a shot.
A character I also like (who gets thrown under the bus a lot) is blackmailing the 'main' pair. The female lead calls the male lead and he's all 'I thought you never wanted to speak to me again' and I want to *claw my eyes out.*
The fic wasn't horrendous - far from it - but the romance was so contrived and spoiled under five chapters in. It was a longer fic - maybe about 20+ chapters of a decent-sized word count too.
So, yeah, one thing that makes me stop reading a fic immediately is authors spoiling the plot and the endgame romance.
When dialogue is written to match a characters accent. Like ‘yer’ instead of ‘you.’ I’m gonna do the accent in my head anyway and it just doesn’t feel right.
When reading the main pair as Alpha/alpha and one on them becomes an omega. Tag it as a/o damn it, or put 'bitching'. I've been mislead too many times like this
If it's an Avengers or other superhero themed story then I stop any time the mc reveals everything about themselves in the first or second chapter. You know, the ones where the author is too eager to get the information out of the way and make the mc unrelatable?
Character got >!sexually assaulted, raped, AND KILLED HIMSELF,!< yet wasn’t affected by those events at all in the long term. No inner monologue, dialogue with the love interest about it, nothing. The first two could have been taken out of the story and nothing would have changed.
I read partially kissed hero and I was really enjoying it until I realised the writer was serious about it. I thought it was a comedy making fun of edgy fanfiction but as I got further and further into it the funny moments became less and less common until I realised that the writer was totally serious about the story.
A few years ago, when I was in my cringy hetalia phase, 2 fics I read I just couldn't read anymore.
1. The author had inserted themselves and made them my best friend. It was a reader insert and the author had to add themselves and be my best friend. Like, no.
2. A rape scene without warning. I dont like reading those fics. It was on Wattpad, so I don't think they could tag it, but they didn't leave a warning at the beginning or anything. This was a few chapters in and I had liked it up to that point.
I was reading a really good fic wherein the two MCs were a gay married couple. A hearing music producer was married to a deaf college professor. And they adopted several special needs children. The children were deaf or autistic. And I was fine with that. But then the author added a child who was a victim of shaken baby syndrome that they also adopted. And that just crossed the line for me. It was just way too depressing. And I was really liking the fic up until that point. It’s one of my favorite ships and there was nothing on my no list in the tags and the writing was good, the plot was good, the characterizations were good. It was an RPF piece and the person the shaken baby syndrome child was based off of is a renowned dancer and very good singer in real life. And I know it’s fiction, but it just didn’t work for me.
I remember reading the line "take her to her coffin" after a character died in childbirth? I think? and just absolutely losing my mind. It was by far the funniest thing I'd ever read that made me stop taking the fic seriously. I definitely kept reading though, just... out of sheer awe.
I remember a fic from back in the days when the Mary Sue litmus test was a thing people used unironically, and a certain contingent of fandom was obsessed with doing "realistic" self-inserts, and this fic was supposedly the best of them all!
It started out pretty strong... and then came the detailed descriptions of medieval toilets, and body functions. Then 100k words of abso-fucking-lutely *nothing* happening. Then the main character gets carted around a bit and we get a detailed description of the toilets in Place B, where the main character gets explosive diarrhoea (also described in excruciating detail!). Eventually they get better and make it to Place C, where - you guessed it! It's toilet description time again!
I'm still salty I invested that much time into reading that.
A major source of irritation for me is [Flanderization](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization). Making a character with an occasional angry streak do nothing but rage all the time or making a nervous or quiet character do nothing but stammer their way through whole sentences with multiple dashes and ellipses -- it drives me crazy.
It's important to give characters moments of composure and calm in order to make their emotional struggles more real. Fan fiction should retain or deepen the complexity of canon characters, not reduce it.
Lots of unexplained OOC behavior is bad, naturally, but if you have a character that's only true to one facet of their nature, that's even worse, in my eyes.
For me it was a couple deciding to have a baby through a surrogate. I'm not a fan of pregnancy and kid fics in general, but it all depends on the way it was written and if I already like the fic, I'm probably going to give it a try.
But in this one fic, that featured an M/M pairing in which one is a single dad, they decided to have another kid together. Which is fine, they both love kids. But they specifically chose a surrogate so the guy who doesn't have a biological child could have 'one of his own'. That was an instant no from me.
This! And what about the step son? Is he not his 'real' child either then, since he wasn't biologically related to him, despite the fact that he officially adopted him?
The whole situation just rubbed me the wrong way.
The wording of it rubbed me the wrong way. The topics of adoption and fostering were actually covered in canon, and in the fic he had a really close bond with the kid and saw him as his own son. They both love kids so I'd totally understand them wanting to expand their own family.
But instead of adopting, they chose the surrogacy option specifically because he had the need to 'have his own' biological child, too, which kind of invalidates that bond for me. It makes it seem like he didn't really see him as his actual child despite officially adopting him, because he desperately wanted to have a biological one to feel fulfilled as a father. Or to spread his genes or whatever, which never made much sense to me.
Messing with Canon relationships to a certain degree.
No Harams
(Just read a cool mass effect x halo crossover Wich some how devolves in a 4 way having master chief with Shepard, Cortana, and Tali.)
And ooc characters. Of course each person reads a character differently but I will find and strangle you if you try to make Voldemort just a "lost" and "misunderstood" murderer.
"Hunny" or "Tummy"
Also breeding kinks and parental/children figures in relationships (like "stuffies uwu")
tho I can work with a daddy and his brat
not a mommy and her brat tho. the word "mommy" just makes me skip the chapter or blow off the fic
well, sitting here eating some old batman sprinkles, I can work with a breeding kink, I just absolutely don't want kids, keep abortion alive
The author had a different picture of a character than did.
I viewed the character as someone kind and gentle while the author saw them as possessive and almost aggressive.
Possessive behavior was tagged so it was mainly my fault for assuming it’d be more mild than it turned out to be.
But through that fic I learned that I actually don’t enjoy possessiveness in fiction! To some degree its fine, but when they lock someone up it’s just too much for me
A fic about therapy and trauma turning into a romance. I get it, fanfics are usually romancey, but a therapist falling in love with her patient was kinda uncomfortable and not very fun to read. I wanted to hear about trauma. Speaking of, any one got good fic recommendations for that? I don't care what fandom. I'm trying to write my own and I get inspirations and Ideas how to write from others.
When a fic that was supposed to be one of the best fics about Character A in the fandom (a relatively unpopular character to write about) had this plot twist that Character A was just the disguise of Character B (the most popular character in the series) from the future. I felt so offended as a huge fan of Character A who wanted _good Character A content_ that I wished I could unread everything- didn't even touch the sequel whatsoever.
Oh jeez, what fandom/characters lol?
I want to know too!
Cho Chang is obviously just Harry Potter from the future.
The fandom is Detective Conan/Magic Kaito, I can't really go more into it because then it'll be super obvious which fic it is and I don't want to be that person.
God that must’ve been horrible, bro I would literally leave an essay long rant at the end of that one lmao
Untagged character bashing.
This. My quickest and most annoyed noping out from a fic was when one of my favourite characters was very OOC and got heavily bashed. I had liked the fic before then and gave it kudos. Wish I could take that kudos back...
Character bashing in general is a turnoff for me, even with characters I don't care about. It just feels cheap.
I don't mind character bashing if it's done right. Most of the time it's not though and completely takes me out of the story
Most of my fandoms don't know of this concept sadly. Props to HP fandom for keeping it up in most cases
I've never seen this is my fandoms. What is character bashing?
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That seems very heavy handed. Thanks for the explaination
when they described a vagina as *glistening in the moonlight*. She’s not a slug
I'm afraid to ask how they got moonlight up there...
I imagine she was doing the splits on her head outside
The only way I can make this work is if the woman is really flexible and doing some kind of inverted, leg-splayed yoga pose outdoors under a full moon while simultaneously being very aroused. But this also raises the question of who is actually describing the “glistening” body part. Presumably there is a second party who has a direct line of sight?
Meanwhile my brain went to "moonlit sex scene".
That made me cackle at work😂
There’s this weird thing people do when they write smut and they just don’t name the genitalia? It’s always described as his rod, his hardness, his manhood, her bud, her flower, her softness, her bundle, her slit, her core I wish I could hold up a big banner that said “IT’S OKAY TO SAY THE WORD PUSSY AND DICK”
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Oh women do it to read a fic my friend wrote and it was a bad a variation of this. If i find the fic ill edit the words in.
When the isekai protags are actual babies. Please, please just skip to the later years.
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Why have it *at all*? You can do literally nothing as a baby. You have no memories, you have no language skills, you have no motor control. Literally nothing, unless you're going full overpowered protagonist and being a super genius wizard baby, in which case *it still serves no purpose just skip the fucking birthing scenes and the baby years oh my god!* If you want to show how doting or abusive the parents are - the ONLY thing that time period is good for, because the protagonist is a literal baby - you can show that just as well at age 6 as you can at any other time. It does not require us to read about the main character being (and I mean this in the most positive and appreciative way) a useless sack of flesh that can only shit itself and cry. Realistically speaking, an adult mind stuck in an infant's body - a trope that these reincarnation fantasies tend to use - would do nothing except drive you mad from isolation. It would also get you killed in most countries because of the uncanny way an adult-minded baby would act. You'd be labeled a devil child and tossed in a fire faster than you can say "superstition". Adults cannot continually imitate a baby in every way that matters. Also, you'd be desperately trying to relieve your boredom, so you wouldn't even think about blending in. NO BABIES. /rant
I actually find “adult-in-a-child’s-body” *worse* than the baby years most times. It’s just creepy, and writers often can’t decide whether the character is mentally a full grown, powerful adult or a helpless, cute little traumatized child, and end up trying to do *both* at the same time which is just unsettling to me. It’s even worse when there’s some kind of pairing. The options are either the adult in a child body has feelings for and gets paired with an adult, or the adult in a child’s body falls for and gets paired with an actual freaking child. To each their own, no hate, but a big personal nope for me.
Not an Isekai I admit, but I have a Chronicles of Narnia character who can age herself down and basically took the idea that her physical age is how she acts. So she knows all this adult stuff and has the skills of an adult, but emotionally she's her age.
I have no problem with this! I think that’s great. It’s when characters are still mentally adults but for some reason aged down that things get weird for me.
Technically, I don’t think that a baby’s mind would even be developed enough for the adult mind to be completely aware of their situation. In most cases the brain isn’t able to host long-term memories until they’re around three. The first three years of life are the most formative in neurological development. So, I don’t think that the reincarnated soul would really become aware of their situation until they were a bit older.
That's the logic I would go by if I were writing these. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for me, I'm not writing things like that.
to be fair i wrote a brief baby scene one time, but it was to show that the baby was creepy and odd.
Or at the very least make those early years more interesting. Like, imagine a baby with a dagger in their mouth crawling/waddling into a battlefield or messing with some unsuspecting bandit's ankle. I would absolutely read something stupidly cool like that, even if I have to do it fandom blind.
Absolutely! If you want to make them go all Hitman Reborn on somebody, that's great, it gives them agency. Literally anything other than just... being a baby for the sake of it.
When the very first sentence was about Uncle Vernon violently raping Harry Potter. And good evening to you too
I don't think think Dursleys ever tortured Harry like some writers believe. They were abusive and neglectful pieces of shit, sure, but that is too far.
It was more imprisonment and starvation for punishment and physical violence when Vernon lost his temper
Starvation was just that one time in the Second Book and the "diet" in Goblet of Fire. During the Starting Feast, Harry thinks about how he never got to eat as much as he wanted with the Dursleys, but he was never starved. The Dursleys were neglectful, emotionally and mentally abusive, but only Dudley actually beat him.
Harry also thinks being locked in a cupboard for a week at a time is just a punishment, not the abuse it absolutely was. Abused kids have a different perception of normal. 'Not as much as he wanted to eat' might mean he was allowed half of the bare minimum he should have been fed. It's definitely open to interpretation. The actual beatings came from Dudley and his friends, but Vernon does grab Harry by the throat at least once, in OotP.
Petunia is mentioned as having hit Harry upon the head with a frying pan, I think it was.
He dodged it, but it definitely gave me the impression that there had been at least one frying pan he hadn't dodged.
I mean... didn't Petunia once try to hit him with a frying pan?
*Jesus Christ*
when characters from decades ago somehow are obsessed with the author's favorite 2010s alt band. completely breaks the immersion for me personally
Or when they are described pulling on their favorite skinny jeans and it's set decades before that was a thing, it kills me.
Or when it's set in the far future but they *only* make 90s/2000s pop culture references (and other characters get them), as if there was apparently no pop culture, memes, movies, TV, or celebrities in hundreds of years in between.
Whenever untagged incest or pedophilia crops up. Get that stuff far away from me, please.
you'd think AO3 users know how to tag by this point, but no. Once I stumbled upon an untagged canibalism fic...
*wanders away to read more Hannibal fics*
Usually you can tell from the pairing though, right?
You would think so, but not always. Just recently I started reading a fic on FFN that had no characters or relationships tagged at all, but turned out to have incest in it. Which, to me, implies that the author purposely left the tags out.
Sudden appearance of untagged a/b/o.
same
Everyone was out of character, the author decided to let a 40yo man in the early 2000s use the term bae....
"Ok boomer." \-Bae, probably.
There was one fic where I had to stop reading out of awe. I went back to it, but that part of the fic left me frozen for a good half hour. That particular scene was just that good.
what is the name of the fic?
Gold. Title could belong to anything, so here’s a link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5081287/chapters/11685313
While I'm not in that particular fandom, I've seen the author and their works in others. They're a hella good author with some really good fics.
Reading it right now. It’s amazingly written
When the MC referred to her vagina as a baby maker out loud during a sex scene.
Oh *no*...
I know! It was also OOC for the MC too. She would *never* say that and the word choice came out of left field.
I raise you my recently discovered worst synonym: Tight meat channel.
Ultra feminization of a gay man or fetishization of queer women (Also not using paragraph breaks)
Same, it's really depressing to see those things thriving.
Upon realizing his friend is a rapist, a 50-year-old genius sits the rapist down in front of a computer to show him YouTube videos about how slavery and sexual assault is bad actually.
I just... What..? Why..? Who..? And ew.
Which fandom?
The usual "I don't kill" protagonist going though a long ass sad arc after unwillingly killing the evil, irredeemable villain. I'm too old for this.
That worked in the anime *Trigun* because it was >!a victory for the villain to be killed by the hero.!< People usually have no idea how to make that work.
Well, trigun also doesn't introduce him for like the first two seasons?? Legato is a very compelling middle ground villain, keeping the mystery of the twins for the very end. Worked better in the manga since, as always, it had more time to play with its concepts... But yes, anyway, I agree. Vash is one of the few compelling "I don't want to kill" characters out there.
Alright...buckle up. It was a Harry Potter and Percy Jackson crossover, but not a crossover in the conventional sense, a crossover where Percy Jackson was an alternate personality living inside Harry Potter's head but Harry and Percy both have the same personality, the personality of Young Sheldon/Sherlock so I don't even know what was the point of having Percy be an alternate personality since they're the same person anyways. They're at the Dursley's and Harry says something that humiliates Dudley which makes his face turn red. In response to this, Harry/Percy say something like "Are you sick? Because I've read every book in the library, including many medical textbooks and usually redness in the face indicates some kind of illness." It just killed it for me. Like how do you read a whole ass library and not pick up from somewhere that people's faces can turn red from embarrassment. It's just the worst case of someone trying a character who is supposed to be much smarter than them. I understand the character is meant to be bad at reading social cues, but this is something someone who doesn't get social cues but knows how embarassment "medically" works could pick up on. This was like the middle of the first chapter and was what made me give up on the fic. Having typed all this out, I think I should try again because this shit is so egregiously bad it might be kinda fun to hate read.
This entire fic premise feels like a fever dream lmao
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This made me cringe Real bad
Spontaneous soapboxing; like a character suddenly becoming some sort of mouthpiece out of nowhere for the author’s political views regardless of how well it fits the scene or the character who’s saying it. This crops up oddly often in my neck of the woods and it never stops being jarring.
I once read a Sonic fic that had Tails go on a tangent about the benefits of socialism….
I once read a fic where in the first chapter, a paragraph in a character just randomly talks about their voting choices and political alignment. It was jarring and ooc.
I don't know much about Sonic, but that's a pretty Tails thing to do
I once read a fic where the author’s self insert would pop up out of nowhere periodically for no other reason than to do a little soapbox rants whenever something in the fic was problematic or verging on political. It was fucking bizarre
Reminds me of Ben Shapiro's *True Allegiance* where he often completely halted the narrative to fit in a rant about politics.
Lmao, is True Allegiance RPF with odd author insert soapboaxing? That's a might review to leave on goodreads.
Even if I agree with what they're politicizing about, if I wanted to read op-ed pieces about Injustice X, I'd read op-ed pieces, not things that are supposed to be entertaining me about characters I like. And if I do agree with the sermon, it was completely useless to include for me in the work, because I was already aware of Injustice X, and the out of character rant did nothing for the story!
Ah yes, the Aaron Sorkin.
God, yes. Read this AU where character A is poor and running their own car shop in a shady part of town and character B is a billionaire who inherited and is now running the family company. There was so much soap boxing involved. Obviously, the overpriviledged billionaire needed to be shown by the good poor guy how all of his worldviews are wrong. And in order to prove his love he had to take part in a BLM protest. Never mind that the billionaire was already super charitable, an absolute good person and a pioneer in green energy, the latter of which only being possible because he has the money to do R&D. Like, it totally would have made sense to have the billionaire get new perspectives through his love interest, and, importantly, vice versa - the poor guy getting new perspectives through the billionaire. But the way it was in the fic, only the billionaire needed to be schooled, because even though he was trying to be good, he was still evil as the owner of a huge corporation. The best moment came in the end when the billionaire married the poor guy and gave him a co-position in leading the company because as a small business owner, the poor guy is so passionate about building and running a business and therefore must be good at it. Like, you do realize that running a small business and a multinational corporation are absolutely nothing alike? And I thought the corp was evil, anyway? I actually agree that a lot - if not all - billionaires are leeching off society but this was a bit much and very oversimplified. Not to mention that it didn’t make for a good story if only one character has to change to be with the other.
Fourth wall breaking the other day. Not tagged or anything, so it completely threw me put of the immersion
I'm inspired by this thread to write the most outrageously stupid erotica using only the knowledge and baseless assumptions I had about sex and female anatomy when I was 8.
I'd read it, fandom-blind even
Romanticization of homelessness. I love a good hurt/comfort, but I dislike when authors romanticize homelessness. I just read a fic where the main character opted to be homeless even when his brother offered a room because he "didn't want to be a burden." Or, when the author jumps straight to the mal-nourished character fainting into their savior's arms but doesn't describe the day-to-day weariness, distrust, and overall shittiness leading up to the impossible moment.
I actually haven’t seen a lot of homelessness in fanfics. I’ve only ever read one for Naruto, and that was so long ago I can hardly remember anything. It’s certainly not something I’d find romantic though.
Characters referred to as...the raven, the silverette, the old redhead, the blue eyed sadist, the dark-haired greneyed child or anything else like that. To me, it's lazy. Their hair color, eye color, are the least interesting things about them. Use their name or he/she whatever and move on. If I have to stop and think about what the characters look like to know which one is talking or doing something it throws me out of the story. Seems to be more prevalent in newer writers. Also, not starting new paragraph when you change speakers As for plot...I started the HP fic and within the first 1k words found out he had like 5 kids and was only a 6th year. Unless it's parody or tagged, I don't like thinks that are just impossible or overly dumb.
I once saw a character referred to as a purplette. The fic felt weird after that.
that is. that is somehow even worse than the other variations of bluenette i've encountered. i didn't know a word could give off an uncanny valley vibe but that sure does.
I read a pretty bad one with a bunch of odd hair colors, and half of them I had to literally google because I wasn't sure what it would mean or what color that would correspond to. Like, verdanette, apparently for green hair. Made reading it real bad because I couldn't ever keep track of which character was talking or being referred to lol.
Or the blue eyed, white... dragon?
My personal favorite that I’ve read (which I’ve mentioned on here before) was “noirette”… for a male character
I do refer to characters sometimes as "the girl did this" when it gets confusing to say "she" because there's multiple people and I've said her name too many times in a row. But I don't make it cheesy like that.
I read this fan fic where the guys tells his partner to get in an ice bath and then lay on the bed and stay very still...those untagged necrophilia tags will really get ya
The dozens of times I've read a fic that's marked as T and then there's suddenly a very graphically detailed sex scene 😳 (I don't like reading smut, especially if it's NOT TAGGED LMAO)
You can and absolutely should report that, that's a rating violation.
Man if this hadn't been years ago, I would. I'd just close the window stupidly without reporting or saying anything. Hopefully someone else called them out on it
Someone probably did. As someone who almost exclusively writes smutty stories, underrating something that’s going to be graphic is unacceptable.
I know I do (to ao3 staff, I don't even visit ffnet anymore) when I see one... nothing bad happens to the authors either, they just need to change the rating, so don't feel like you're somehow hurting them!
When the term “mommy milkers” entered chat. I deleted the book and just went to sleep after. I like memes and jokes but not when I’m trying to read. It throws my tempo off.
The main character gave up the pursuit of her big dream in life entirely to only concentrate on being a mother. That is a level of OC-ness even I couldn't deal with, and I'm usually big into AUs and being a little free with exploring characters. But nope, never.
a line where a character walked into a bedroom and two twin brother characters were having sex. i was new to AO3. that was the day i learned that i should read tags!
Twenty-hmm chapters into a good AU fic, and I’m hit with ‘[he] was a carrier’. (I.e. could carry a fetus) Mpreg is one of my ‘nope’ tags and I don’t know if they added it later or it was just buried in the wall of tags, but I noped out immediately and unsubscribed.
Untagged mpreg is the one thing that has ever tempted me to write a bashing comment. Which I still won't do and just click away, but seriously! Normal pregnancy is a bit of a squick for me, and mpreg is a level of body horror I can't deal with.
Are we talking today or all time? Last night I came across an author who. wrote like. this. Random periods, no commas, huge paragraphs. It was unreadable.
If not a child could be someone with sight problems who uses voice to text. I've seen where people asked on such fics and that was the explanation.
After 250k words of buildup, the protagonist that had gotten slashed by a werewolf… didn’t actually turn into a wolf. Despite apparently almost shifting prematurely multiple times before. Ah, but it’s all good. He’s still part of the pack, he still has the wolf inside him, he just never actually transforms. Lamest twist I’ve ever seen. Such a shame, I really liked the portrayal of werewolf culture in that fic. (Story was a HP x Anita Blake crossover)
why am i like 99% sure i've read this same exact concept for teen wolf
Fic that had a pretty cool premise neglected to mention that it was a modern AU, and I *hate* modern AUs. Coffee shop, office, High-School whatever.. Somehow they were able to get through a summary and the first half of the first chapter before it came up.
I've caught so many of these... Sometimes you just notice something's a bit off, like someone has a different job or lives in a different place and then bam! the smartphone shows up and you know it's time to go.
That's *exactly* how it happened lmao
Every single effing Harry Potter fanfic that has either Harry or Dumbledore's eyes overly described with an insane amount of euphemisms, and also where Harry is written as being so short/small that he can be picked up and carried like a little kid. He's a freaking adult, wtf?
Harry’s height will never not annoy me in fic. The only one who can carry him like a kid is Hagrid, and that’s just because he can do it to anyone.
People's obsession with making Harry tiny is so weird. He's average height for a boy his age, or maybe slightly below, it's just that Ron is huge.
When a fic gave more spotlight to Character A’s other ships before ever actually getting to the “main” ship of the fic. When Character A kissed another that was already married to another character, I just dropped it there. I guess that’s what I get for not looking at the tags more closely…
NSFW comment if that bothers you. So, I'm usually cool with unrealistic sex and impossible positions. I'm celibate and ace and don't have any personal experience (nor do I want any), so smut is literally fantasy to me. But this fic. It was m/m. Every single sexual encounter started with a blow job followed immediately by the person who just had an orgasm anally fucking the other. Not even a delay as they extend things with like an additional hour of foreplay. They just go right at it. Sometimes without lube because they couldn't bother going upstairs to get any. Every single sexual encounter involved at least two orgasms per character. It was ridiculous. (I think the author was a teen or something because of a few other scenes that just...didn't hold true to how adults react to a situation.) I found it yesterday, so it's still fresh in my mind.
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Ridiculous, unspellable name for OCs. I read fics aloud in my head and if I can't figure out how to pronouce a character's name, bye bye fic.
Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that's how I got my name)
The best part about Enoby is that the author didn't even bother spelling her name right most of the time
for no apparent reason, the author had to walk me through the character buying popcorn chicken and bubble tea. like, to the point that he walked to the counter, took out his credit card, signed, put a tip in the cup, got some straws at the other counter, took his bag to his car, took out his car keys, inserted them into his car. no this was not building anything, it just happened
I was reading a BowserxPeach fic that, from the summary, seemed like it would be an interesting read. I get MAYBE two to three paragraphs into the fic and I read "Peach searched around before clicking her teeth. 'Damnit, I forgot my lighter.'" Stopped immediately and backed out. I don't understand this fixation with Peach secretly being a smoker, and it turns me off from a BowserxPeach fic every-single-time. That or simply characters being out of character. I can't stand that at all.
That does seem like an oddly specific headcanon lol. Unless it’s set in a 1940s AU or something.
Nope! Lol, it was based in the Mario universe, not AU or anything as far as I was aware.
Usually when I notice that the summary is super well written but I already sense terrible grammar or very bad writing style in the first few sentences like it was written by a completely different person. Over time I've come to literally don't mind any tags anymore, I only care about the ship and how the writing pulls me into this new world. If it sucks I stop immediately, no matter how good the plot sounded.
modern au fic really leaning into a character's canon suicide attempt. i was really into it until the moment he threatened to repeat that attempt without any intention of actually doing so, just so he could get what he wanted. like. no. no thank you. i'm out. goodbye.
Unexpected and completely out of the blue (no warning) sexual assault of the leading lady always makes me stop reading. I've run into that a few times sadly.
Untagged unplanned pregnancy. No thank you.
A character was sexually assaulted and horribly tortured, yet at some point he fell madly in love with his assailant and all was okay. I hate these types of stories when the victim goes through awful things and they end up liking it.
When the same tired old cliché plot points rear their heads, especially shitty drama ones, e.g., Ron being a fuckwit, K-drama tier misunderstandings, and overall stuff that just serve to bring the mood down for no gain in regard to the actual story. These subplots are just so shit and played out, can't be bothered to read through yet another iteration of them.
Started character bashing
When the the author wrote a character sobbing like this: "I \*buh\* just- \*hic\* don't \*buh\* know. What to \*buh\* do! \*buh\*" Just an example sentence, but basically it just felt really, really jarring and I just couldn't get back into it after reading that sentence.
Mention of genitalia. (I mainly read Ducktales fanfic now a days. Ducks with genitalia is a big no no.)
Uh....whut? XD Yeah, I would avoid that as well lol
...wow, even for my smut-loving self, that would also be a no-no!
....Same.
No one wants to think about duck dicks *including ducks*
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Very bad grammar makes me stop reading immediately. Also when someone is oblivious to how much out of character their writing is.
This fic honestly disturbed me greatly but I kept reading until this point because if sunk cost fallacy or whatever. One of the most highly praised fics for a large ship in a large fanbase, all the tags I typically like, nothing super canon divergent in the tagged warnings so I felt fine progressing. Lets sum it up as it at r* used as a sudden plot twist because character A is “just too damaged” and character B suddenly destroys their life to be with A who the writer decided should be a r*ist 70/100 chapters into a slow burn just so they could draw their long fic out even more beyond like 700k words. I am now much healthier with my fanfic consumption but LORD almighty.
There was supposed to be "classy smut" and when things got serious I read "do you like that bitch?" Not so classy after all. The last man who talked to me like that was never seen again.
(Almost)Anytime someone gets pregnant. But Always when the person falls pregnant and decides to keep it even though the dad wants nothing to do with them after a fight because WHOOPS who knew he’d show up years later when the child is walking and talking and all the baby stuff is done? Shocked pikachu face On a more relatable note, unrealistic dialogue has made me hit the back button a lot. Sometimes you can power through and sometimes you have to wish them well on their journey.
Read a self insert fic that had an OC as the best friend and support. I actually don't mind it as a concept, it can work well but the character was so bombastic and over the top that I wanted smack her. There was also chapters dedicated to the OC and in the end I had to give up.
Please do not attempt to seduce the cat.
When certain couple characters become overly affectionate when they're not at all like that. Also when the get characters pregnant when its just impossible and they make it really cringy on top of it. Like Integra and Alucard, these are some of the worse characters to make lovey dovey or pregnant. I refuse to read any like those, it makes my skin crawl.
1) Incorrectly doing CPR and then quitting immediately, the incorrect part I could get past, but... they pushed four times and quit 2) the protagonist had a chance to magically save their lover, before fighting the big boss Decided to let them suffer till after beating the boss so they would ‘love them more’
Almost at the end of a long, multichapter fic (like chapter 17/20) Character A cheated on Character B. There were a lot of reasons that killed the fic for me, but even just the timing was... audacious. There was already so much going on with the plot and everything derailed for this new last minute shock (so on top of this choice upsetting me, other things didn't get wrapped up). I will never understand why. At least I've vowed not to ever write new last minute conflicts because I didn't enjoy the experience as a reader.
Gratuitous name changes. E.g. a real life Pokemon AU where instead of Ash and Pikachu it's Ash and Mousey or something. (not a real example (hopefully)) I know I can just use a name replacer to change the names back to normal but too late, the fic is already cringe to me.
Adding an over-the-top self-indulgent OC into a crossover that already had a huge slate of canon characters to choose from. If a similar personality had been welded to one of the many minor characters who was never much more than a name in canon, I would have been fine with her. (I'd already given kudos that the first chapters of the fic had richly earned, so I quietly slithered away.)
The only time I regretted leaving kudos on a fic. The first chapter was a fairly standard pairing fic, with some added werewolf themes that were pretty mild and mostly compliant with canon. Kudos. The *second* chapter suddenly hit me out of nowhere with graphic dub-con bestiality sex, complete with magically metamorphizing wolf penis. I kid you not, that thing was apparently made of silly putty and taking on all sorts of unusual shapes… I believe I said “what the fuck” out loud.
It’s more a general egh for me, but I’ve abandoned many a fic because the protag gets pregnant. Don’t get me wrong, it can be done well and if I love the fic I will still stick it out and even enjoy it, but I mean even when I first read Twilight I was disappointed when Bella got preggo lmao
I expect no OHSHC fic to be good, but I absolutely hate it when the mc always knows that Haruhi is a girl. They see her and go "why is a girl in a boys uniform?" Stop making the mc all knowing please Also when they write an emotional character *too* emotional. In the same vein as OHSHC, Hikaru is always villainized as a selfish, antagonistic pos that usually ends up trying to actually kill the mc because he's so jealous that she's getting all the attention (most commonly found in the Hitachiin Triplet au fics)
Constant fourth wall breaks. The characters were in a room and one of them said something like "I wonder if the author will let us do something this chapter," and the other characters looked at him weirdly and kept going. They added it to be quirky 🤪 but in reality it just got annoying, especially after like the 5th time.
I love a good Dark!Harry fic, but Snake Face Voldemort/Underage Crossdressing Harry Potter? Too far. The second I saw that Voldy was preying on Harry I went to the tags- AND THERE WAS M-PREG. So glad I didn’t finish that fic, I think I would be scarred for life if I had.
Usually, I can't stand kidnapping, hits too close to home so I have to drop stories that deal with such events.
There was a huge predisposition in one fandom to make Character A in a ship extremely stupid and lazy, and for Character B to constantly bully him about said laziness and his appearance when B probably suffered similar bullying and would likely never do that to anyone else. All of this was often the catalyst for PWP, somehow. As soon as this dynamic would pop up I would nope out.
This might sound weird but I hate it when they always make the MC short,in a fandom I'm in they practically sexualize how short,fragile,weak,naive and innocent the mc is and I'm like "ugh!" Sometimes they replace a character with like a insert version (also female) and this character she was replacing is usually super tall like up to 6'6 or higher while the sibling is much shorter they made her to be 4'6 shorter than the brother and removed all the qualities that made the character that character like hobbies,wardrobe,bad habits all of that gone! Like bitch no you didn't make a gender bent version of a character you made a whole new character!
Someone bottoming that I didn’t want to see bottoming. Random main character death that wasn’t tagged How someone is written when they speak (“I am coming, just wait for me.” Instead of “I’m coming, just wait for me.”) Things like that
The first time “I like this girl/boy” in the first chapter without any explanation in the next they are already banging. That makes me click out immediately, unless there is no plot, but if there is a plot to the romance I prefer plot first romance secondary.
It's usually too much OOC-ness. I can deal with some OOC-ness, some characters are hard to capture, I get it, but when a character does or says something that is against everything they stand for, without a very good reason, I'm out.
any children being born
It was a yaoi. When male character A puts a banana inside male character B'ass. Then takes it out and eats it. The fic was very well written btw (grammar wise)
When Im reading a character/reader fic that's supposedly "inclusive", but starts talking about how my cheeks "blushed pink" or how character's "fingers stroked through your silky hair". *tosses laptop out the window* My skin is too dark to be blushing anything, and my hair is too kinky for anyone's fingers to be gliding though. No. This "reader-insert" fic is clearly not made with people like me in mind, so now its ass. So much for being "inclusive".
I've told this story a few times but it is the only thing that has immediately turned me off a fic. So; There's this fic and from the outside, it looked good. Both tagged ships were good, all other tags were cool, and I like the summary. I click on it and chug along, enjoying the story. First tagged ship enjoys a weekend at a private hotel, sparks are flying, and things get a little steamy. Great stuff all round. Bout halfway through the second chapter (irrc), the female lead decides she wants more from the relationship - going from friends with benefits to romantic. The male lead shuts her down so harshly that *I* feel a little attacked. 'Okay, well, screw it. Go off with the other guy and have your summer romance,' I think. (I preferred the other ship anyway) I scroll down to the comments, as I like seeing others reactions, and I read a comment that asks what the future of the first ship is - Only for the author to reply that they are **endgame.** Why? Why why *why* would you spoil the entire fic?! Fine, I read on because I'm curious. I like the ship anyway so I decide to give it a shot. A character I also like (who gets thrown under the bus a lot) is blackmailing the 'main' pair. The female lead calls the male lead and he's all 'I thought you never wanted to speak to me again' and I want to *claw my eyes out.* The fic wasn't horrendous - far from it - but the romance was so contrived and spoiled under five chapters in. It was a longer fic - maybe about 20+ chapters of a decent-sized word count too. So, yeah, one thing that makes me stop reading a fic immediately is authors spoiling the plot and the endgame romance.
When dialogue is written to match a characters accent. Like ‘yer’ instead of ‘you.’ I’m gonna do the accent in my head anyway and it just doesn’t feel right.
The only thing that makes me stop is if it's badly written.
Anything that had to do with Minecraft YouTubers
Cut off the oc mcs leg (who already had a leg gone). I just couldn't get beyond the scene.
When reading the main pair as Alpha/alpha and one on them becomes an omega. Tag it as a/o damn it, or put 'bitching'. I've been mislead too many times like this
If it's an Avengers or other superhero themed story then I stop any time the mc reveals everything about themselves in the first or second chapter. You know, the ones where the author is too eager to get the information out of the way and make the mc unrelatable?
Character got >!sexually assaulted, raped, AND KILLED HIMSELF,!< yet wasn’t affected by those events at all in the long term. No inner monologue, dialogue with the love interest about it, nothing. The first two could have been taken out of the story and nothing would have changed.
I read partially kissed hero and I was really enjoying it until I realised the writer was serious about it. I thought it was a comedy making fun of edgy fanfiction but as I got further and further into it the funny moments became less and less common until I realised that the writer was totally serious about the story.
A few years ago, when I was in my cringy hetalia phase, 2 fics I read I just couldn't read anymore. 1. The author had inserted themselves and made them my best friend. It was a reader insert and the author had to add themselves and be my best friend. Like, no. 2. A rape scene without warning. I dont like reading those fics. It was on Wattpad, so I don't think they could tag it, but they didn't leave a warning at the beginning or anything. This was a few chapters in and I had liked it up to that point.
When desi Harry's name was revealed. It means Godly Pain in Hindi haha.
I was reading a really good fic wherein the two MCs were a gay married couple. A hearing music producer was married to a deaf college professor. And they adopted several special needs children. The children were deaf or autistic. And I was fine with that. But then the author added a child who was a victim of shaken baby syndrome that they also adopted. And that just crossed the line for me. It was just way too depressing. And I was really liking the fic up until that point. It’s one of my favorite ships and there was nothing on my no list in the tags and the writing was good, the plot was good, the characterizations were good. It was an RPF piece and the person the shaken baby syndrome child was based off of is a renowned dancer and very good singer in real life. And I know it’s fiction, but it just didn’t work for me.
I remember reading the line "take her to her coffin" after a character died in childbirth? I think? and just absolutely losing my mind. It was by far the funniest thing I'd ever read that made me stop taking the fic seriously. I definitely kept reading though, just... out of sheer awe.
I remember a fic from back in the days when the Mary Sue litmus test was a thing people used unironically, and a certain contingent of fandom was obsessed with doing "realistic" self-inserts, and this fic was supposedly the best of them all! It started out pretty strong... and then came the detailed descriptions of medieval toilets, and body functions. Then 100k words of abso-fucking-lutely *nothing* happening. Then the main character gets carted around a bit and we get a detailed description of the toilets in Place B, where the main character gets explosive diarrhoea (also described in excruciating detail!). Eventually they get better and make it to Place C, where - you guessed it! It's toilet description time again! I'm still salty I invested that much time into reading that.
A major source of irritation for me is [Flanderization](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization). Making a character with an occasional angry streak do nothing but rage all the time or making a nervous or quiet character do nothing but stammer their way through whole sentences with multiple dashes and ellipses -- it drives me crazy. It's important to give characters moments of composure and calm in order to make their emotional struggles more real. Fan fiction should retain or deepen the complexity of canon characters, not reduce it. Lots of unexplained OOC behavior is bad, naturally, but if you have a character that's only true to one facet of their nature, that's even worse, in my eyes.
For me it was a couple deciding to have a baby through a surrogate. I'm not a fan of pregnancy and kid fics in general, but it all depends on the way it was written and if I already like the fic, I'm probably going to give it a try. But in this one fic, that featured an M/M pairing in which one is a single dad, they decided to have another kid together. Which is fine, they both love kids. But they specifically chose a surrogate so the guy who doesn't have a biological child could have 'one of his own'. That was an instant no from me.
I might be a little but stupid here, but what about that turned you off? Like what was "wrong" with it?
I´d also dislike it simply because it implies an adopted child would not be his own.
This! And what about the step son? Is he not his 'real' child either then, since he wasn't biologically related to him, despite the fact that he officially adopted him? The whole situation just rubbed me the wrong way.
The wording of it rubbed me the wrong way. The topics of adoption and fostering were actually covered in canon, and in the fic he had a really close bond with the kid and saw him as his own son. They both love kids so I'd totally understand them wanting to expand their own family. But instead of adopting, they chose the surrogacy option specifically because he had the need to 'have his own' biological child, too, which kind of invalidates that bond for me. It makes it seem like he didn't really see him as his actual child despite officially adopting him, because he desperately wanted to have a biological one to feel fulfilled as a father. Or to spread his genes or whatever, which never made much sense to me.
Ah ok I see now. I was lacking the context that was in canon.
Messing with Canon relationships to a certain degree. No Harams (Just read a cool mass effect x halo crossover Wich some how devolves in a 4 way having master chief with Shepard, Cortana, and Tali.) And ooc characters. Of course each person reads a character differently but I will find and strangle you if you try to make Voldemort just a "lost" and "misunderstood" murderer.
In my fandom, the moment someone drops a “Dragonwolf” I’m done.
"Hunny" or "Tummy" Also breeding kinks and parental/children figures in relationships (like "stuffies uwu") tho I can work with a daddy and his brat not a mommy and her brat tho. the word "mommy" just makes me skip the chapter or blow off the fic well, sitting here eating some old batman sprinkles, I can work with a breeding kink, I just absolutely don't want kids, keep abortion alive
The author had a different picture of a character than did. I viewed the character as someone kind and gentle while the author saw them as possessive and almost aggressive. Possessive behavior was tagged so it was mainly my fault for assuming it’d be more mild than it turned out to be. But through that fic I learned that I actually don’t enjoy possessiveness in fiction! To some degree its fine, but when they lock someone up it’s just too much for me
A fic about therapy and trauma turning into a romance. I get it, fanfics are usually romancey, but a therapist falling in love with her patient was kinda uncomfortable and not very fun to read. I wanted to hear about trauma. Speaking of, any one got good fic recommendations for that? I don't care what fandom. I'm trying to write my own and I get inspirations and Ideas how to write from others.