What are your most hated fanfic tropes

[OverseerEX]

Mind control. I haven't read a lot of stories with it, and recently when I tried it just felt cheap and repulsing to read.

It takes away any sort of thinking (hah) that an author has to do in order for a story to make sense or be coherent, and just bashes it with a bat.

It can be done well, that's for sure, but that also means thinking about the plot, powers, and development, world building, etc, which is rarely seen or done in this case.

 

[Stimpak Medic]

Nerfing characters when specifically justified by the idea that keeping characters abilities as they were would lead to a "boring story".

If you can't make a story work with two characters, maybe don't make the story in the first place or use other characters, or an OC. But no, of course they won't do that (Usually). Also, these nerfs are usually implemented in a way that completely breaks cannon.

The worst case of this I ever saw was Salem from RWBY with no stated or shown powerup defusing, restraining, and suppressing a Post Vegito fused Zamasu into a barely above human level Goku Black. That genuinely pissed me off.

 

[Arythios]

I've got a bunch. In no particular order:

1: The main character is supposed to be smart, but the writer just makes the rest of the cast stupid.
2: The main character is supposed to be smart, so the author dedicates at least a chapter if not more to them doing something completely irrelevant to the plot, like large-scale war gaming, starting a business or a cult, or designing and planting mystery box puzzles.
3: The main character is supposed to be pragmatic and morally grey, but suddenly gets uppity and self-righteous when another pragmatic character or faction is doing something that isn't 100% selfless and moral.
4: The main character is an implausibly young soldier and is somehow not messed up by it.
5: Mass Effect fanfics with alternate humanities, crossover or otherwise, where the authors entire story can be boiled down to, "lol just invent different technology, humans rule xenos drool". Bonus points for alt. Humans somehow figuring out reapers before they even meet the Citadel races, or alt. Humanity deciding to clutch pearls about how eezo is dangerous and how they will never use it, despite using equally if not more dangerous technologies themselves.
6: 'Dark' Pokemon stories. Darkness being conflated with realism overall, frankly.
7: The main character won't stop talking to the audience. Fourth wall breaks can be funny, but use them too much and they overstay their welcome.
8: Crossovers where it's just one side being aggressively bashed by the author.
9: Self Inserts being silently smug about having canon foreknowledge

 

[Stimpak Medic]

I've got a bunch. In no particular order:

3: The main character is supposed to be pragmatic and morally grey, but suddenly gets uppity and self-righteous when another pragmatic character or faction is doing something that isn't 100% selfless and moral.
4: The main character is an implausibly young soldier and is somehow not messed up by it.

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These two genuinely make me drop a story regardless of how good the story is otherwise, since they come packaged along with a myriad of other things you know are coming later on.

 

[Arythios]

These two genuinely make me drop a story regardless of how good the story is otherwise, since they come packaged along with a myriad of other things you know are coming later on.

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No need to be vague, vent away. This is the thread for it, after all.

I've got a bunch. In no particular order:

1: The main character is supposed to be smart, but the writer just makes the rest of the cast stupid.
2: The main character is supposed to be smart, so the author dedicates at least a chapter if not more to them doing something completely irrelevant to the plot, like large-scale war gaming, starting a business or a cult, or designing and planting mystery box puzzles.
3: The main character is supposed to be pragmatic and morally grey, but suddenly gets uppity and self-righteous when another pragmatic character or faction is doing something that isn't 100% selfless and moral.
4: The main character is an implausibly young soldier and is somehow not messed up by it.
5: Mass Effect fanfics with alternate humanities, crossover or otherwise, where the authors entire story can be boiled down to, "lol just invent different technology, humans rule xenos drool". Bonus points for alt. Humans somehow figuring out reapers before they even meet the Citadel races, or alt. Humanity deciding to clutch pearls about how eezo is dangerous and how they will never use it, despite using equally if not more dangerous technologies themselves.
6: 'Dark' Pokemon stories. Darkness being conflated with realism overall, frankly.
7: The main character won't stop talking to the audience. Fourth wall breaks can be funny, but use them too much and they overstay their welcome.
8: Crossovers where it's just one side being aggressively bashed by the author.
9: Self Inserts being silently smug about having canon foreknowledge

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10: Any fanfic set in a superhero setting where the authors whole deal is "superheroes suck because they don't kill, soldiers and the military rule because they kill bad guys!".
11: Anytime a fic glazes the military, but the author's only understanding of the military is, 'be badass, kill bad guys, and goof off on base'.
12: Anytime a fic features an MC that is in the military, and they pick their callsign. It's always something cool, edgy, and badass, and that's not how it works.
13: Any time a fanfic author clearly doesn't understand what is and isn't appropriate for someone in a position of authority, and writes their politicians, generals, and other grown-ass adults in positions of power like they're grandstanding belligerent teenagers.
14: The author inserts a political filibuster that isn't even relevant or accurate to the setting. For example, in Mass Effect, the Citadel is canonically capitalist. I've seen multiple ME fics where the author dismisses the Citadel as socialist, and has a character rant about the superiority of capitalism.
15: Any time I've read a fic from an author who claims to be an objectivist, they have their MC do things that are antithetical to objectivism. To be clear, I don't respect objectivism, but it baffles me to read someone argue that giving to charity and investing in the welfare of their employees is objectivist. Ayn Rand is rolling in her grave fast enough to power half the Midwest.
16: Modern-day guns being superior to advanced futuristic weapons. I blame the Halo fandom.
17: Crossover fanfics that fuse the settings but leave both canons completely untouched. Bonus points if the fic pulls a #5 and argues that one side of the crossover is stupid for not developing tech or knowing about events outside their canon.
18: Author writes their protagonist character/faction effortlessly brutalizing their foes and tries to argue, 'I'm just trying to show that war is hell'.
19: Jumping off of #8, crossovers where one side of the crossover moralizes at the other side for their misdeeds while the author completely glosses over the misdeeds of the moralizer. Why yes, UNSC, the Citadel has done awful things, but which one of you did child soldiers? What about Far Isle, or the laundry list of shit that ONI has done? What's that? Spartans are based, so it's ok? Alright then.
19.1: It's even worse if the moralizer is a character or faction who genuinely would not care about that shit. Look me in the eyes and tell me a 40K Inquisitor would be upset about the Genophage or the Quarian exile. Unless that's an SI larping as someone from 40K, even the most radical inquisitor isn't going to bat an eye.

 

[hrepdrep]

14: The author inserts a political filibuster that isn't even relevant or accurate to the setting. For example, in Mass Effect, the Citadel is canonically capitalist. I've seen multiple ME fics where the author dismisses the Citadel as socialist, and has a character rant about the superiority of capitalism.
15: Any time I've read a fic from an author who claims to be an objectivist, they have their MC do things that are antithetical to objectivism. To be clear, I don't respect objectivism, but it baffles me to read someone argue that giving to charity and investing in the welfare of their employees is objectivist. Ayn Rand is rolling in her grave fast enough to power half the Midwest.

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Where are you finding enough right wing fanfics for them to take up two whole rules? Maybe it's just the fandoms I look in but most of the overtly political fanfics I've encountered are on the left, ranging from milquetoast liberal to outright anti-capitalist at the most extreme. I can honestly say I've never heard of an Objectivist fanfic, lmao.

 

[Arythios]

Where are you finding enough right wing fanfics for them to take up two whole rules? Maybe it's just the fandoms I look in but most of the overtly political fanfics I've encountered are on the left, ranging from milquetoast liberal to outright anti-capitalist at the most extreme. I can honestly say I've never heard of an Objectivist fanfic, lmao.

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Military sci-fi fandoms attract right-wingers and once in a blue moon, objectivists. Here's a couple things to look for that can usually (though not always) indicate the author is right-wing:
1: Anti-alien sentiment regardless of the actual canon hostility of the aliens. Bonus points if they get called 'xenos' in a non 40K setting.
2: Military organizations like the UNSC getting white-washed for 'doing what they had to', while civilian or alien governments never get the same grace.
3: If the humans are space fascists, they are either totally justified or at very least 'had some good points' and the author studiously refuses to outright condemn them.
4: Future Earth is always space-America. Admittedly this happens plenty in most works of fiction, but certain fandoms tend to double down.
5: If they added a timeline in the beginning, you might see things like, 'ended welfare, so we went to space earlier', 'nuked the middle east to achieve world peace', 'ended the UN because it was bad'.
6: Megacorps aren't a bad thing, bonus points if the MC owns one and they're totally normal and ethical.
7: Hundreds of years into the future, and we're still using 'The American Dollar'.
Now, some of these are totally normal and not objectionable, but once you start noticing them, it's hard to stop. Also, I don't want to assume anything about you or your political leanings, but I find most right-wingers tend to not consider right-wing leaning elements to be 'overtly political', and oftentimes don't notice them unless the work is expressly billed as right-wing in some way (I'm sure this goes both ways though).

I actually found an objectivist fic here on QQ once. The SI was sent into the past and became a big businessman trying to jumpstart technological development. I think it was also intended to be a crossover with something once they reached the space age, but I might be mixing that up with another story. I had read through dozens of chapters before the author had his SI unironically write a treatise on objectivism and why it's the best philosophy, and pretty much everyone reading clowned on him because his SI was definitely not an objectivist if you considered his actions (super generous to his employees, finding people from the past who had brilliant ideas but couldn't bring them to fruition and gave them second chances, supporting progressive (especially for the time) policies, etc).
While he could argue he did all that for his own benefit, Rand belived altruism was immoral because people needed to stand on their own without outside assistance, and providing that assistance taught people to 'expect handouts' and such, so it could be argued that the SI is smarter than Rand by understanding that society requires cooperation, but he chose to hitch himself to Rand's philosophy anyway.

 

[hrepdrep]

While he could argue he did all that for his own benefit, Rand belived altruism was immoral because people needed to stand on their own without outside assistance, and providing that assistance taught people to 'expect handouts' and such, so it could be argued that the SI is smarter than Rand by understanding that society requires cooperation, but he chose to hitch himself to Rand's philosophy anyway.

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I think you're misgendering Ayn Rand here, she was a woman.

As for right-wing vs left-wing, I guess I just don't read many fanfics set in more military-heavy settings (like Halo or Mass Effect). I'll take your word for it that those settings have more right-leaning writers than the ones I'm usually interested in.

 

[ForestDweller]

Where are you finding enough right wing fanfics for them to take up two whole rules? Maybe it's just the fandoms I look in but most of the overtly political fanfics I've encountered are on the left, ranging from milquetoast liberal to outright anti-capitalist at the most extreme. I can honestly say I've never heard of an Objectivist fanfic, lmao.

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Yeah, I just found a Culture fanfic that has a drone demanding a CEO to surrender his capital before shooting him in the face.

 

[Avernus]

Military sci-fi fandoms attract right-wingers and once in a blue moon, objectivists. Here's a couple things to look for that can usually (though not always) indicate the author is right-wing:
1: Anti-alien sentiment regardless of the actual canon hostility of the aliens. Bonus points if they get called 'xenos' in a non 40K setting.

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Related, some "HFY" fics are like that. Both in being right wing and being genocidally anti-alien (and often using the "xeno" term)."

Also, fics that have tags like "rational protagonist".

 

[Arythios]

I think you're misgendering Ayn Rand here, she was a woman.

As for right-wing vs left-wing, I guess I just don't read many fanfics set in more military-heavy settings (like Halo or Mass Effect). I'll take your word for it that those settings have more right-leaning writers than the ones I'm usually interested in.

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'He' in this post is the SI. I know Rand is a woman.

 

[Stimpak Medic]

No need to be vague, vent away. This is the thread for it, after all.

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I'll take you up on that. When I say those come packaged with other things, I've almost never been wrong.

On the child soldier bit, it almost always devolves into military/army wankery and white washes a lot of shitty decisions of the involved army. Regardless of the morality of the situation it feels kinda gross.

As for the pragmatic and morally grey part, I for the most part abhor the double standard of it regardless of the actual story. And if there's one double standard there's usually more down the line.

 

[humon]

These kinds of lists make me feel good when I can tick off each one and say, "Yep, not something I would ever write"

1: The main character is supposed to be smart, but the writer just makes the rest of the cast stupid.

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Pretty standard, and a well-deserved #1. Characters can never be smarter than the author. At least, if you ever want to show and not tell.

4: The main character is an implausibly young soldier and is somehow not messed up by it.

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Sounds like the author might be a bit messed up from the fantasy (played too much Call of Duty when he was 10 years old and now wishes he had been a child soldier).

6: 'Dark' Pokemon stories. Darkness being conflated with realism overall, frankly.

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That reminds me of a meme I wanted to put in the Dark Humor thread but I can't find it anywhere on the internet. It was a cute thing about training pokemon, where it's like, "Oops! Squirtle made a puddle on the bed", and oops, some other pokemon did a seed bomb on the carpet, and then it gets to Charizard and this guy is sobbing next to a fire truck while his house burns down, muttering to himself how he couldn't save his family. (Char-char!)

9: Self Inserts being silently smug about having canon foreknowledge

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Ooh! I did that one in my SI story, but it was totally justified in context.

10: Any fanfic set in a superhero setting where the authors whole deal is "superheroes suck because they don't kill, soldiers and the military rule because they kill bad guys!".

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May as well be saying, "Police suck because they don't kill (usually)", which would make sense if it was coming from the type of author who would be kind of okay with martial law.

13: Any time a fanfic author clearly doesn't understand what is and isn't appropriate for someone in a position of authority, and writes their politicians, generals, and other grown-ass adults in positions of power like they're grandstanding belligerent teenagers.

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They act like the author, in other words (I can only assume).

16: Modern-day guns being superior to advanced futuristic weapons. I blame the Halo fandom.

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I blame a lack of imagination about just how terrifyingly deadly futuristic weapons could be. Shooting through cover and around corners, auto-aiming with cyborg arms, picking guys off from miles away, integrating with drone swarms to track individual targets of interest in a crowd while maintaining a clean line of fire no matter where they go. The good ol' discombobulator... A whole host of advantages that would be considered cheats if they appeared in a shooter game and would probably make the author feel icky if wrote his MC winning battles that way (but the enemy has them too, which means even more thought needs to be put into what the countermeasures look like!)

 

[Avernus]

I blame a lack of imagination about just how terrifyingly deadly futuristic weapons could be. Shooting through cover and around corners, auto-aiming with cyborg arms, picking guys off from miles away, integrating with drone swarms to track individual targets of interest in a crowd while maintaining a clean line of fire no matter where they go. The good ol' discombobulator...

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Also, in many cases cherry picking low showings. It's always "phasers can get stopped by packing crates" (and we'll ignore that they are dial-a-yield), not "phasers can disintegrate entire walls of solid rock".

Also, a related bad fanfic trope: the idea that "realistic" military forces should and would always immediately escalate to the maximum possible firepower and ruthlessness regardless of the mission or the nature of the opposition. As if "go straight for the WMDs and genocide" was the military standard in real life. Even most conquerors want something more than planting a flag in a wasteland (or asteroid belt).

 

[Stanley_Jeb]

Any time a fanfic author clearly doesn't understand what is and isn't appropriate for someone in a position of authority, and writes their politicians, generals, and other grown-ass adults in positions of power like they're grandstanding belligerent teenagers.

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On one hand, true, but on the other... Man, I don't know if I want to consider the people currently in those high-ranking positions all that appropriate. Feels like one of those "reality is stranger than fiction" things.

 

[Arythios]

10: Any fanfic set in a superhero setting where the authors whole deal is "superheroes suck because they don't kill, soldiers and the military rule because they kill bad guys!".
11: Anytime a fic glazes the military, but the author's only understanding of the military is, 'be badass, kill bad guys, and goof off on base'.
12: Anytime a fic features an MC that is in the military, and they pick their callsign. It's always something cool, edgy, and badass, and that's not how it works.
13: Any time a fanfic author clearly doesn't understand what is and isn't appropriate for someone in a position of authority, and writes their politicians, generals, and other grown-ass adults in positions of power like they're grandstanding belligerent teenagers.
14: The author inserts a political filibuster that isn't even relevant or accurate to the setting. For example, in Mass Effect, the Citadel is canonically capitalist. I've seen multiple ME fics where the author dismisses the Citadel as socialist, and has a character rant about the superiority of capitalism.
15: Any time I've read a fic from an author who claims to be an objectivist, they have their MC do things that are antithetical to objectivism. To be clear, I don't respect objectivism, but it baffles me to read someone argue that giving to charity and investing in the welfare of their employees is objectivist. Ayn Rand is rolling in her grave fast enough to power half the Midwest.
16: Modern-day guns being superior to advanced futuristic weapons. I blame the Halo fandom.
17: Crossover fanfics that fuse the settings but leave both canons completely untouched. Bonus points if the fic pulls a #5 and argues that one side of the crossover is stupid for not developing tech or knowing about events outside their canon.
18: Author writes their protagonist character/faction effortlessly brutalizing their foes and tries to argue, 'I'm just trying to show that war is hell'.
19: Jumping off of #8, crossovers where one side of the crossover moralizes at the other side for their misdeeds while the author completely glosses over the misdeeds of the moralizer. Why yes, UNSC, the Citadel has done awful things, but which one of you did child soldiers? What about Far Isle, or the laundry list of shit that ONI has done? What's that? Spartans are based, so it's ok? Alright then.
19.1: It's even worse if the moralizer is a character or faction who genuinely would not care about that shit. Look me in the eyes and tell me a 40K Inquisitor would be upset about the Genophage or the Quarian exile. Unless that's an SI larping as someone from 40K, even the most radical inquisitor isn't going to bat an eye.

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20: When a self insert, instead of telling people they're an SI, comes up with a backstory so ridiculous and convoluted that they frankly should have just told the truth.
21: When the author gives their MC something particularly OP, be it powers or resources, establishes the MC as smart and competent, and then they genuinely fail to use them properly. Not an issue if the MC is supposed to start inexperienced or get set back, however.
22: The author's notes at the beginning or end of the first chapter is whining about how stupid the setting is.
23: This one's a bit more vague, but sometimes you just see the SI/OCs name and you just know they're insufferable.
24: In a story where there is an entirely different group of people in the government, or it's set far in the future, the author decides to add a rant about a real-life modern political figure. I once found a Stargate/Mass Effect fic that managed to check both versions of this, where a chapter started with O'Neill and Shepard casually talking about how Obama was an evil traitor who was executed in both their timelines. Also, there was a third Obama in the room with them whining about how they were being mean, for some fucking reason.
25: I've already mentioned crossovers where one side gets shit on, but I also don't care for crossovers where one side is aggressively OP but shouldn't be. Like, not talking 'superman in Worm', he's OP there, that makes sense. I'm talking shit like, 'The UNSC ends up in 40K and effortlessly dogwalks the setting'. They are not doing that.
26: I mentioned this in the 'spot if the writer is right-wing', but I hate it when I see 'xeno' getting used in a fanfic when its not a term used in canon. That's not a term used in Halo, or Mass Effect, or Star Wars, or most other works of fiction, and it's usually a precursor to obnoxious anti-alien saber-rattling and the worst kinds of HFY.
27: SIs/OCs that are way too young to be badass warriors, but somehow are. It's one thing to have a 10-year-old be a super-intelligent hacker or something via the magic of fiction, but being a soldier/warrior/fighter of somekind is much more SOD-breaking.
28: When an SI is inserted and then immediately starts acting like they know exactly what to do, without any panic or confusion. This is less of an issue if they got inserted on purpose.
29: When a crossover nerfs one setting to a ridiculous degree, 'for balance'. A minor nerf is fine though.

Feel like i'm going to end up overlapping bullet points at this rate, if I haven't already done it.

 

[backgroundnoise]

Anticlimactic rug-pulls aren't fucking funny, they're just incredibly annoying. Now, you can make an anticlimax work, but the more invested your readers are in a specific event happening, the more annoyed and potentially even upset they'll be when it just... doesn't happen. Okay, more specific example, this one fic I was reading teased out a romantic sub-plot for longer than most actual novels, only for the author to have the character just show up one day dating someone else and the subplot was dropped entirely. Legit made it feel like 90% of their interactions leading up to that point were retroactively now a waste of time, as it never actually went anywhere.

Okay, this next pet peeve doesn't show up a lot, but it's really annoying when it does. Listen, authors, the main character has to be the main character for a reason. This doesn't mean they need to be a Mary Sue, it doesn't mean they need to always win, but they need to have an interesting story to tell, and there needs to be a good reason that it's being told from their perspective. This one's a bit more esoteric, but if I had to try and put it simply, it'd be this: don't try and make a natural side character into the main character. A protagonist is a person that undergoes growth, someone that moves the plot forward, they are an active participant in the events going on around them, without them the story simply doesn't happen.

Naturally I fully understand the desire to not make the protagonist into some kind of overpowered shit-kicker who always wins no matter what so that there's never any kind of dramatic tension, but at the same time you can absolutely go too far and make your protagonist so unimportant and ineffectual that your readers start to wonder 'Why the Hell are we following this absolute mook again?', and that's not an accomplishment! It's like... if a character can be too important to the plot they can also be not important enough, and the latter problem isn't really any better than the former, it's just the same issue from the opposite angle.

 

[ImperialMage701139]

I hate when reincarnation stories have the MC to start freaking out over whether or not they killed the original bodies inhabitant, when they have no reason to assume such. It's especially annoying when they decide to solve it by having the MC pledge to live the life the way they would have wanted, but no I'm pretty sure the original body did not dream of getting their shit beat in every day only to maybe possibly get a harem.

The next few aren't story tropes but rather meta tropes.

Anything tagged with something along the lines of I demand you comment, I just find it incredibly cringe for the undergoing, it also reeks of desperation.
Anything tagged with polyamorous, open relationship, or similar progressive terms, yet when you look inside the story is just your standard harem.
When a story has been abandoned for a while and the author comes back just to let you know, hey they abandoned the story.
When commenters read a story set in a setting that has absolutely incredible and often impossible physical feats and then they complain about something being unrealistic. A great example is when the main character in Naruto and uses some absolutely ridiculous training method at the age of five, and someone feels need to go actually if a child actually did that they'd be permanently crippled. Valid point, counter-argument Rock Lee.
And finally people not tagging their shit correctly, this is more so an issue the few times I'll try to read something on ao3. But the amount of times I've started a story only for the main character to suddenly be gay, or suddenly trans, or suddenly a woman is genuinely annoying. And the few times where I felt I need to tell them hey you should probably tag your story this way the response is something along the lines of, oh I didn't think it was that important or well it doesn't have a major effect on the plot so there's no need.

 

[ForestDweller]

I hate when reincarnation stories have the MC to start freaking out over whether or not they killed the original bodies inhabitant, when they have no reason to assume such

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I think it's good for Isekai stories to address that though.

 

[ImperialMage701139]

I think it's good for Isekai stories to address that though.

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If there's any reason for them to actually believe that's what happened yeah sure, but more often when I see it they had a Rob punt their soul into a body. Or they reincarnated into a baby that hadn't even been born yet. Or they'll find out the original body had a fever and then they woke up in it and they assume oh two souls merging must have caused a fever in my soul one when in actuality babies got fevers and died all the fuckin time. And all the times I've seen it happen I've only seen one story where the main character actually went to some effort to revive the body's original inhabitant. Like most of the hated tropes on this thread it's the kind of thing where it's like when done well I have no issue with it, unfortunately the majority of time I don't think it's done well.

 

[Frater Astrotechnicus]

If the story starts with "genius kid, first degree at age twelve, multiple phd's at age sixteen" I am dropping that story like a brick

 

[Stimpak Medic]

I think it's good for Isekai stories to address that though.

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I agree, It's almost always glossed over, even in stories where the actual person doesn't die or have anything happen to them. A good writer could make a great story out of that, but that's expecting too much from your average isekai writer, and even more so readers of isekai. You have to remember that the average isekai reader is probably dumber than the isekai author. You're the exception to this bleak and depressing rule just by raising this question in the first place.

The only isekai novel I remember that tackled this was "The Novel's Extra."

 

[humon]

Okay, this next pet peeve doesn't show up a lot, but it's really annoying when it does. Listen, authors, the main character has to be the main character for a reason. This doesn't mean they need to be a Mary Sue, it doesn't mean they need to always win, but they need to have an interesting story to tell, and there needs to be a good reason that it's being told from their perspective. This one's a bit more esoteric, but if I had to try and put it simply, it'd be this: don't try and make a natural side character into the main character. A protagonist is a person that undergoes growth, someone that moves the plot forward, they are an active participant in the events going on around them, without them the story simply doesn't happen.

Naturally I fully understand the desire to not make the protagonist into some kind of overpowered shit-kicker who always wins no matter what so that there's never any kind of dramatic tension, but at the same time you can absolutely go too far and make your protagonist so unimportant and ineffectual that your readers start to wonder 'Why the Hell are we following this absolute mook again?', and that's not an accomplishment! It's like... if a character can be too important to the plot they can also be not important enough, and the latter problem isn't really any better than the former, it's just the same issue from the opposite angle.

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This is a good point. I'll add that one scenario where the MC being a side character could possibly work is if he is taking the role of narrator, and the story is actually about a different character who is more important. Like in the 13th warrior, where the protagonist is ostensibly Antonio Banderas, but he's really only a tourist who is writing down the story of the Norse king who was leading a band of heroes against the bear cult. In this case the MC's importance to the story is to be a surrogate for the audience as he learns things about this foreign culture and world that he's been thrown into, and forms bonds with the other warriors along the way.

 

[sewwipvt]

20: When a self insert, instead of telling people they're an SI, comes up with a backstory so ridiculous and convoluted that they frankly should have just told the truth.

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Ok, this is kind of hilarious because I've seen fics where the author refuses to admit that they're writing an SI and make a convoluted backstory only for it to not matter at all. And when they try and write about said backstory, they end up being surprised that viewers don't care about it

 

[Arythios]

Ok, this is kind of hilarious because I've seen fics where the author refuses to admit that they're writing an SI and make a convoluted backstory only for it to not matter at all. And when they try and write about said backstory, they end up being surprised that viewers don't care about it

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That's pretty funny, but I was thinking about where the SI makes up a fake backstory in-universe.
I remember this one story on SB a long time ago where the SI ends up in Worm with 'weak psychic abilities', according to the author, but as far as I'm concerned his real power was making up the most inane bullshit and having it be true. The SI introduces himself to the PRT by claiming he's an important member of an alternate universe version of the PRT, and it's his job back home to test parahumans with 'puzzle boxes' which as we all know (as the author insists), are escape rooms filled with lethal traps. He even writes up comprehensive studies on the Endbringers of 'his reality' (which, as a reminder, doesn't exist) to justify the whole Puzzle Box deal. The SI then proceeded to do a bunch of random shit like subverting Tattletale to his side (the author claims this is easy, because he 'looks exactly like her dead brother') and starting a "puzzle cult" in his new apartment. I dipped shortly after reading the words "puzzle cult".

 

[humon]

He should have called himself "The Puzzler", and he could walk around wearing a green suit and bowler hat with little mazes drawn all over it.

Puzzle me this. Puzzle me that.
Do you think this suit makes my ass look fat?

 

[Karmic Acumen]

I've been wanting to say this for a long time so be prepared. This is more for Worm but can apply to other examples as well, but it's whenever the story kills its own momentum and shifts over to a PHO react chapter just for the purpose fellating their own protagonist, especially after a big turning point in the story or a major story arc ends.

This one bothers me specifically not just because of my deep and systemic hatred for all forms of reaction content, but also because PHO is such a non-factor in canon. When I read Worm, I was honestly expecting for PHO to be included alot more, but before Greg's POV chapter, it only gets brief mentioning a few times at best. It's mainly a Ward thing, but apparently the community stopped ignoring that story for a second and just ran with it, writing it in a way that resembles an unholy abomination of reddit and twitter where a ton of important characters in the setting are on it and everything posted there is taken at face value.

In my opinion, where I very much could be wrong, it's supposed to be one of the many niche internet forum sites of that time period. But for some very strange reason I'm supposed to believe the opinions of Lubegonecold_1991, 88Hitlermybeloved88 (how the Empire and the other gangs in general are written is a topic for another time), and CapedickSuckerXxX on the protagonist and their actions are important enough to warrent pausing the story and hear them out? Who honestly gives a shit about these fake ass opinions, stop writing a reaction fic and get back to the story I want to read. PHO segments serve absolutely zero purpose to the story, nor does it advance the plot in any meaningful way.

No, Tin Mother isn't real, she is fanmade concept and certainly isn't Dragon, she has more important things to do. No, Greg isn't breaking the 4th wall and spouting crackpot theories that are actually true. In fact, in his chapter, it's shown he's a pathetic loser who shamelessly lied about being in BB when Leviathan attacked in order to get internet brownie points. And no, all the major heroes and villains and their organizations are not publicly known to be hanging around there and confirming or denying things, because again, they have better things to do then browse some internet forum. If you really want to make a PHO chapter, then that's fine, just put it under extras so I don't have to read it.

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I'm going to tout my own horn here a bit.

I use the rare PHO-style segments in one of my stories, but only as part of actual chapters, and only because they do advance the plot. It's on a secret dark web forum for people in the know about the supernatural (exclusively in person invitation after serious vetting, like in WoD Hunter), which the protagonist uses to disseminate what knowledge he accumulates (magic training methods, technology, supernatural who's who, that sort of thing), and to make contacts around the world, via which I've set up future plotlines.

I also use it to show what other people are doing independent of the mc and his group, illustrate the variety of mentalities (plus issues of trust) that exist even within the same 'conspiracy' (which the protagonist didn't do himself any favors with, due to registering on the site in a way explicitly meant to expose a security weakness and prove his competence and intentions immediately, at the cost of low starting reputation/trust, but it also showed it's not an echo chamber). Conversely, a character used it to essentially recruit himself for the big fight of the volume (deep iceberg with that one).

I'm with you that I never saw other pho style posts that do anything like this, though.

Isekai fics seem to forget that plans don't survive with contact with enemy quote because somehow all their plans execute flawlessly. Like, somehow the villain runs on a script to make the SI seem smart when reality everyone IQ level just drops.

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This I don't think is actually the case anymore, though. But it could be exposure bias, we probably read different things on different websites, so I can imagine one site or genre being worse about this than others.

 

[Charon]

I despise it when an SI of any sort never tells anyone what they know because they treat the world they're in as objectively fictional and the world they came from as objectively "the real world", and act like telling anyone at all that they remember being from a world where this one is fiction is like some eldritch truth that will inevitably drive anyone who hears it irrevocably insane.

Multiverse theory is a thing, and people are capable of comprehending it without losing their marbles. And even without that, no one ever thinks to couch it in terms of "I clearly remember this, I don't know how true every memory is but the stuff about the future is panning out so far" or somesuch, which isn't the worst thing but it annoys me I've never seen anyone think to do that even if only to dismiss the idea for some reason.

 

[Bear_Mint]

Not sure how well that will turn out when most authors and their audience treat having meta knowledge as a strategic weapon that needs to be hoarded and abused to their maximum benefit.

And considering how that is what fics usually do, telling the natives tends to open a can of worms of how much of their relationship is genuine and not a product of manipulation, unless they pop the cherry right at the start.

 

[humon]

Meta knowledge might be the only advantage an SI has, if he didn't get cheat powers from a ROB. Gotta play your cards close to your chest if you don't want to lose.

In the SI fic that I'm writing, I decided to play with the idea a little bit:

Spoiler

"I know for certain that he is there", I told her. This was not the time to be hedging. I was 98% certain. As certain as I could be about any bit of lore in this place. Dacyn was such a critical character to the campaign, there was no way I could imagine any version update removing him or relocating him.

"You saw it in one of your...", Lenawyn whispered. I nodded to her, knowingly. That answer suited both of us. She fell quiet, and then she curled her hand around my arm, drawing even closer. In a faint and timid voice she dared to ask, "Vinogin, what are you... Are you a prophet? Are you.... are you a god?"

I cringed a little. I knew where all of this could possibly go, if I let it. Of course she wanted to believe that she had fucked a god and possibly become pregnant with his divine progeny. Perhaps she had even prayed for such a thing to happen to her. She would worship me forever if she believed that. She would overlook any flaw in my character and do everything in her power to make me appear as a god in the eyes of others. She would probably do anything I told her, no matter how disgusting or disgraceful: I could make her **snipped out because this is a SFW thread**. I refused to go down that path. Gods at some point had to back up their words with action. All it would take was for some random thug to strike my head with a club to prove I was mortal.

"I don't know what I am", I replied. That part was at least the truth.