What are your most hated fanfic tropes

[Avernus]

For once I want to see an MC that ignores the plot.
Seeing the noble carriage getting attacked by the bandits, turning away, and saying "This doesn't concern me." as they leave.
Seeing the genki girl crying under the rain as they are walking with an umbrella, and not offering to share theirs with her...
Looking at the female child slave looking up at him with hope, knowing that buying her would draw in the accusations of being a loli pervert, and buying the burly buff muscular testosterone-man slave instead, to protect him as they grin levels against the hordes of monsters.
Or finding a baby monster, and selling it to the slave trader for cash.

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I mean, blatantly evil protagonists like that are a thing in fanfic, but they tend to be deeply unpopular and the audience keeps screaming at the author to have them tortured or killed. Which is probably very unpleasant for most authors.

People typically don't like protagonists that are vile. Badass or ruthless or pragmatic yes, "total bastard" no.

 

[Stanley_Jeb]

Badass or ruthless or pragmatic yes, "total bastard" no.

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Eh, ruthless or pragmatic also only really functions if you reign it in with enough dog-petting. Most "ruthless" or "pragmatic" MCs I've seen at least were little more than an excuse for some edge.

 

[humon]

Best play is to go by the specific qualities that attract women to bad boys: High competence, high intelligence, refusal to back down from challenge or submit to peer pressure, a willingness to break the rules when necessary, including the ability to kill without flinching or hesitating, but also someone who cares enough about the future that his violence can be channeled only towards the right kind of enemies and away from hurting allies and babies. In other words, a high quality weapon. Tame enough to be wielded by the female reader-insert (in the case of romantasy novels), but wild enough not to be captured by the reader-insert's rivals.

 

[CILinkz]

Spoiler

I mean, blatantly evil protagonists like that are a thing in fanfic, but they tend to be deeply unpopular and the audience keeps screaming at the author to have them tortured or killed. Which is probably very unpleasant for most authors.

People typically don't like protagonists that are vile. Badass or ruthless or pragmatic yes, "total bastard" no.

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i think that would work if consequences and betrayals were more fleshed out. how many MCs run around the setting, trying to help everyone, get all the best items and gear asap, try to dialogue the best outcome after meeting the girl for 5 minutes in a fix-it craze. giving them all his gold and treasure after "securing them" after a month of travelling together bc a month is enough to warp everyone into his orbit forever. but most of the time when one digs deeper, the trades, deals and all the good stuff actually dont have any staying power or the mc cant actually enforce them if someone decides to break them. how many parts of that whole machine runs on autopilot in the background after the mc made a deal and everything worked out perfectly and hes already off to do the next thing and forgets about it until its coincidentally brought up again bc the guy came with wads of cash unprompted to pay it off.

there needs to be more Betrayal, backtracking, and changing of opinions in such fics in my mind. what if you save the poor orphan but after playing house for 10 chapters she runs of with half your stuff. or something the author didnt keep in mind coming back to bite one in the ass and the author doesnt erase it so it never happend, but rolls with the punches and makes the best of it.

 

[GatoArc]

Passive MCs. Main characters that just let themselves be walked all over by other characters, or that freely divulge all their secrets. You see it prevalent on SIs who allow the attitude due to offending character having some significance to the plot (I.E the character is popular/good/bad guy etc).

Economical illiteracy. You see this when the author wants to portray the MC as generous or wants to move the plot along. However, when done, most times than not, it trivializes the currency of the universe the story takes place in.

Mary/Gary Stu. Basically power fantasies with no character development, setbacks and prominent with overpowered MCs in comparison to the other characters of the setting.

Perfect meta knowledge. Prevalent in SI stories. Trivializes most of the story, as conflict is resolved prematurely. Bad guys are not given the opportunity to be bad guys or if they are, their impact is lessened, and other characters/secrets are exploited for their canon potential instead of being introduced with plot significance.

On Rails. Prevalent in most Fanfiction. The protagonist is a side character of the canon protagonist, and they provide minimal addition to the story.

 

[Arythios]

30: Unless the setting of the fanfic has something significant to do with gender, if I see "Male MC" or "Male SI" in the title of all places, my experience is that there's some incel shit going on.
31: If the MC spaces out for a flashback or vision multiple times in a chapter, it annoys me greatly. If it happens in multiple chapters, I'm gone. I don't care if it's how their abilities work, it's annoying.
32: worm fics where Greg is the MC. I know there's a trend where works of fiction that feature a girl who fights as the MC usually have a lot of fanfics where the less-capable guy friend gets a power boost and narrative focus (Xander from Buffy, Jaune from RWBY, etc), and those are often weird power fantasies to begin with, but Greg isn't even that guy. Taylor doesn't even consider him a friend in canon. He only appears in like three chapters, is only relevant in two, and his only purpose is to think he's going to be Taylor's Xander only to get shot down.
33: NSFW power fantasies (like the ones on this site) where the MC/SI is just a total piece of shit. I have seen some truly horrendous things in these fics (one of the first fanfics I read on QQ, I dropped at the end of the first chapter when the SI, after spending his entire time being passive and assessing his situation, stabs two children to death and laughs because one of them was rude to him and no one was watching), and brother, that better not be an accurate representation of yourself, that motherfucker deserves to be put down like a rabid dog.

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34: Bit of a weird one, but every now and then I come across a fanfic where the main character decides that their outfit of choice is a tuxedo. They aren't a James Bond-esque superspy, it's not the only option available to them, they just decide to go into combat in a tux, or to go around a fantasy world where a tuxedo would look silly and out of place. I don't get it.
35: Any time a self-insert arrives in a dark setting and completely ignores the dark/serious nature of the setting. Like, even if you have an OP cheat power in Westeros, innocent people could die if you're too loose with meta-knowledge, so unless you're a sociopath you should take that shit seriously.
36: Bit of a meta issue, but when a character in a story says something offensive and readers get upset, any time an author responds with, "but that's what the character would say". You're supposed to precede that with "I don't condone *offensive thing*", and maybe follow up with, "It wasn't my intent to present *offensive thing* as good or correct", and you definitely don't say shit like, "get over it", or "I'm sorry you feel that way". When an author gets defensive about these things, it makes them look like they support what's being called out, and that they're butthurt about it. De-escalation isn't hard if you aren't an asshole, and I've seen more than a few good fics sputter and die because some dumbass on the internet is too proud (or possibly to much of a shitheel, but I'd rather not assume) to say, "my bad, sorry".
37: When the author deliberately misnames things. Sometimes they think they're being funny, like referring to a character by the name of their actor or the actor's other roles. Sometimes they're just lazy (once saw a Mass Effect fic where the author forgot the name of the Batarian homeworld, called it 'Bataria', and then decided that humanity renamed it that after beating the Hegemony).
38: SIs/OCs/crossover characters who add literally nothing to the plot, and are just there to witlessly follow the canon viewpoint characters and maybe at most fight some mooks and make some comments while canon happens around them.

 

[Smuthunter]

This isn't necessarily a trope, but I do think it's bad writing advice.

"It's fanfiction, you can write whatever you want."

Technically true in that the fanfiction police aren't going to kick your door down if you write someone out of character but in practice no you can't. Original fiction writers can write whatever they want because they're making a new setting and characters and they can make all the rules. Fanfiction writers are playing with someone else's toys and readers come into the story with pre-set expectations for how the characters and setting are going to behave and be used that they wouldn't have if they were picking up a brand new novel. You might not be bound to those expectations, you can always write an AU or something, but you do have to think about the framework that you're starting with. Break the rules intentionally, not accidentally.

 

[sewwipvt]

Passive MCs. Main characters that just let themselves be walked all over by other characters, or that freely divulge all their secrets. You see it prevalent on SIs who allow the attitude due to offending character having some significance to the plot (I.E the character is popular/good/bad guy etc).

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This is a problem with many mc's in general imo, you don't have to be a dick or an asshole to be able to push back against someone or to not let them bulldoze over you. Being firm isn't the same as being rude or disruptive. It's a guilty pleasure of mine to see an SI or MC actually stand firm against characters who are usually allowed to get away with stuff in canon as long as it's actually reasonable and not an excuse to bash a character because that can get off the rails very quickly

 

[GatoArc]

Abundance amount of cursing. Fuck that, fuck this, fuck me, fuckity fuck fuck fuck~. How about you fucking wash your mouth with fucking soap?

 

[dsfjr1190]

Keeping supporting and side characters weak and useless to make the main character look better.

The author rolling dice to decide the direction of the story/fights even when it causes inconsistencies in the story and characterizations.

Authors not tagging their shit properly. Surprise, after 12 chapters its suddeny a generic harem! You click on a yuri story and one of them suddenly has a dick; whether it's futanari or transgender, it should have been tagged as such!

Excessive popculture references. So annoying.

 

[Cherico]

Gatcha fics are really really hard to write and balance I don't think I can do it.

 

[Narcissist]

Fics that are 3/4 as long as the original work yet are somehow still in act 1.

 

[samChan]

Character that try to be meta but also too afraid to change the story. Like what is the point of knowing the future if they not going to change it. And many time they don't even give the reason why they have to keep the timeline. Not even "oh, if I change too much I don't know what will happen" or "it doesn't matter what I do, the timeline will corrected itself." They just don't explain at all.

 

[xihute]

Gatcha fics are really really hard to write and balance I don't think I can do it.

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The point is, don't balance them. Describe the glorious trainwreck the powers cause and end it by chapter 8, be it good or bad end.