What are your most hated fanfic tropes

Just as the title says. Ill go first!!

My most hated one is gamer systems tbh. Dont get me wrobg i enjoy gamer fics its just thete are so many issues with the format. Plus from my experiance most non gamer-lite gamer fics get dropped.

 

I hate the super clunky exposition filled starts for gamer/self insert/isekai fics. Those are generally some of my favourite genre fics, but I hate the ones where they feel the need to dump a ton of stuff setting up the scene, often writing huge chunks where the protagonist has panic attacks and stuff and acts in disbelief. You know, ASB appears before them, they're all full of disbelief, lots of boring talking setting things up. Paragraphs of stats. Them dropped off into their new life. More disbelief and existential crisis.

I much prefer it when they dive headfirst into shit and hit the ground running.


Oh I also hate the super miserable over the top filled with abuse and suffering starts as well. I get it, zero to hero, but first chapters filled with suffering porn of the protagonist tend to lose me.

 

Weakening your main character in the middle of the story because they got too strong, I think it stems from a GTA:SA trauma, that freaking airport mission where you have to leave all your weapons behind.

 

Self hating self inserts. Don't get me wrong, self insert's were the author lectures the main character's on his superiority are just as pathetic, but I dislike the self hating one's more. I understand a lot of times the author's depressed and fan fiction allows him to process his cuck fetish, but I swear to god if I find one more fanfic where the self insert get's shit on and he just meekly accepts it, even though he has a over powered ability that he refuses to use, iIm going to explode.

 

I have a certain hatred for self inserts. They are so repugnantly self indulgent that either become power fantasy self wanks, abovementioned self hatred circlejerks, self fellating morality pieces or some other tripe. I am also very guilty of this since I also write self inserts. I stand by my hypocrisy.

There's also that whole waifu market thing. Personally, I feel repulsed by the idea of using bullshit powers to influence a character to make the love the SI because to me, the SI is so repulsive physically, mentally, emotionally or whatnot that they need magic powers to make a character want to spread their legs for them. Hence, I do not write it. That will not stop me from enjoying some admittedly good ones for the sheer guilty pleasure of it nor will I denigrate anyone who wants to read, write or enjoy it. Whatever floats your boat, my brother or sister. I just will not write one.

And speaking of waifu market thing, the fics which do those and complain about the morality of it or gaslight themselves into thinking this is not slavery. Like, my brother in christ, you are actively stamping out another human being's free will and subconsciously or actively turning them into mindless bots whose only purpose in life is to love you. Just stop pretending otherwise and embrace the slavery bit otherwise stop complaining. If it is so repulsive to you, either you do not do it, get these characters and get them to love you naturally since you are so concerned about your conscience or embrace the whole domination aspect and dom them. Simple as.

 

Another thing that annoys me are the overly self-indulgent self-insertions that seem more like some kind of diary or some weird thing like that whose only reason for existing is because the author wanted to have sex with his favorite female character. Don't get me wrong, I like reading self-insertions to see how they change the story and how things develop (and its porn obviously) but there's a huge difference between a decent self-insert and a blatant self-insert that more like a wish list of what would you do. Ugh, no bro, I don't want to read what sex position you would do with ruby rose.

Maybe what I just wrote sounds a bit contradictory but in my mind it makes sense. I'm using a translator to translate to English, so maybe everything I just wrote doesn't make any bad sense....

Well, I spilled my shit, goodbye and good day. I'll go eat some nuggets.

 

Yeah a lot of self inserts is shitty wish fulfillment. There are many annoying parts as people above stated. The big ones are gamer systems, oh and also waifu catalog or r34 stuff those have two annoying pieces the kind control. It would be great to have a waifu catalog where the waifus are dropped into the new world with the main character without any kind control. Maybe at most something tieing them together like them sharing sensations or damage so if one gets killed or injured the other does as well. That way it’s not just wish fulfillment on one side.
Also get rid of stupid stuff that gives the main character powers from waifu catalogues like dragon physiology or mind defense or whatever. Either have the main character reliant on the waifus or have them slowly power up using the new worlds power.

Oh and another thing that I hate with self inserts is the irreverence towards the godlike beings. After you die your totally be all “Oh hey rob how’s it going? Oh we are going to go to worm today?”

Honestly get rid of the rob thing you don’t act like that with people in a position of power your future boss in a job interview or a police officer who you don’t know as a friend. Why would you do that towards a god who can send you to hell?

In fact one thing I’d like to see that would help get rid of so much power fantasy is to make it so the god doesn’t give the Isekai power with no strings attached, the god demands a certain standard of conduct and the isekai is basically a paladin if they violate the gods rule whether lying having sex killing the innocent or those who surrender or whatever law the god sets down the powers are permanently removed. Maybe a previous isekai made that mistake, then you could have a plot point where the isekai watches his behavior and checks himself.

 

Trite motivation. The number of MC's motivated purely by survival/fear of death is a sad window into the cowardly souls of the authors. Sometimes you see some kind of hero complex, but not an actual heroic spirit. I prefer my stories to have rather hard and gritty MC's taking full agency and responsibility for better or worse. Fearlessness is not required so long as courage is present.

Oh, and dream sequences used for foreshadowing and character arcing. You know a plot is C tier at best when there is a significant reliance on dream sequences or even worse sudden Schizophrenia where the MC needs some voice in their head to tell them to stop being a loser. Automatic D tier on that as it's both lazy and insensitive.

 

Sometimes there's justification for it, such as the deity behaving inept and immature or the protagonist being an idiot (here's looking at you Aqua and Kazuma), or the god or goddess puts out a 'relax, don't shit your pants' type aura.

If I were a god I know I'd fart out a calming gas to save on excessive brown noising and panic attacks, who wants to deal with that when you can choose not to?

 

When stories that had a thrust and some marginally interesting ideas or polished execution devolve into harem politics and characters that previously displayed agency lose it in favour of deferring to the MC.

Harems in general really, and it's okay if it's you. I don't hate the concept but I've never seen it improve a story. Case in point, Noodlehammer's Naruto and HP stories. NarutoxKyubi was actually kinda enjoyable in a way too needy way and HarryxLuna was codependent as fuck but ultimately superior to the harems that developed imo.

Overreacting to what Machiavelli referred to as small injuries, acting like a Machiavellian pastiche in general really.
It's stuff like the MC is blending in in a low stakes environment like a place of learning and they react to academic sabotage by a 'rival' they thoroughly outclass with Nine Familial Extermination.

Would be immortals taking shortcuts and acting in ways sure to leave them a mountain of regrets they plan to live with forever.
With little time pressure a light step and excessive care for the sake of your own conscience only makes sense no matter how powerful you are. I'd want to sleep like a baby in a thousand years and have lived a mostly happy & content life, borrowing trouble is a young (wo)man's game.

 

Uplifting by SI. This bit from Dara O' Brian encapsulates my feelings ; https://youtu.be/BVxOb8-d7Ic .

The sheer arrogance of thinking your basic understanding of a subject would make the past your personal playground is infuriating.

 

I mean remember Aqua and Kazuma are from a comedy and even the. He was only a duck to her after she lost her powers and was banished from heaven because he is somewhat smart. But I’d prefer for the main characters to wait until they are positive that they are safe from the god maybe another being intervention or something.

wait when has a harem isekai ever devolved into harem politics? Usually they are all happy to share the man. I’d love to see one where the women compete like it’s an Ottoman or Chinese Emperor’s harem with the women poisoned or sabatoged and trying to manuever themselves to get the iseakais child who will have all the powers of the isekai so the isekai won’t be a living god forever. The isekai will wish he picked monogamous marriage. What anime has that?

 

Bashing/Betrayal. Intentionally stupid MCs expecting me to go slog through all that crap in hopes for a character development.

Anything posted on AO3 because those damn monkeys don't know how to write their shit without some kind of M/M on the side and without any character being all hurt/comfort self harm bullshit.

like Jesus fucking Christ how hard is it to write a character and NOT give them depression or a mental illness?!

 

AO3's fanfic tagging system is bad fucking trope in and of itself. Christ reading some of those self indulgent useless fucking tags makes me want to throw up a bit. It's like some Tumblr shit going on.

 

While yaoi it's not my cup of tea I don't mind it, hell one of the best Naruto stories I read was a yaoi one with Naruto x Male Haku.
What I have problems with is when not only the MC is gay, every named character in the fic is gay too. Like, what the hell happened there?

Another annoying thing I hate are those Self Insert that refuse to change canon at all. In that case what is the fucking point, I didn't come to read a rehash of canon with barely any differences. I didn't click on that Naruto/DxD crossover just to see a post 4th world war Naruto die to fucking Raynare of all people, all to see Rias somehow reincarnating him and Kurama with a single piece and no problems at all.

Another thing about Self Inserts I hate are those that refuse to change the canon pairings even when they changed the things that would have gotten two characters interested in each other.

It's worse mainly in harem stories when they refuse to pair the SI with someone because she is supposed to be the Waifu of the Main Character of the setting, even when she has better chemistry and the relationship feels more natural than the ones the SI has with his harem members.

 

If they chose healthy viewpoint characters, they couldn't write what they know.

For my part I hate cardboard-cutout enemies that are talked about as if they are credible threats, but which never ever get a W or otherwise demonstrate that threat.

 

The recent influx of waifu catalog, "the company", and CYOA stories in general, have seriously put my ability to blacklist things to the test. I have about ten pages of stories blacklisted at this point, and it isn't slowing down.
It's honestly making me wish for the ability to blacklist tags at this point, especially when they don't have any mention of it in the story header.

 

This is one of my pet peeves. Not the video, but people like this guy who, whenever the topic of uplifts comes up, treat even the simplest of inventions as being complex beyond human comprehension. Usually they present some stupid strawman where the SI can only make steam engines if he can draw the entirety of USS Iowa's powerplant from memory, or can only invent the computer if he not only memorizes every single transistor of a modern CPU but also manufactures it as a nanometer-scale IC. (They get very confused and upset if you point out that each of these technologies was invented by a single ordinary man with no technical background, and that neither of them had any real trouble building prototypes of their inventions all by themselves while also working a full-time job.)

My other, much bigger pet peeve is when the protagonist is able to easily persuade everybody he meets to adopt the author's favorite ideology, even if they used to be vehemently opposed to it. Half the time there isn't even any attempt at persuasion, MC just mentions his enlightened views and everybody in earshot spontaneously converts.

 

But the history channel told me that humans never invented anything, and that it was the ancient aliens who gifted humanity with everything from how to put two rocks on top of each other to the internet...

Wait, that means SIs are actually ancient aliens!

 

Thanks for the feedback yall. This will all go towards a fic im writing. Ive not updated in a while due to being busy irl but check it out! Its at 2 chapters rn if i remember correctly and its called
My Titan Acadamia

Seeya. Anymore pet peeves will be appreciated!

 

I remember that I had the same issues, that until I needed to take a part of myself into account. The rage.
I thought for a moment when I wrote myself getting shat on and I stopped for a moment and thought rationally.
'If...in RL I am no longer taking shit on, why would my SI taking it meekly?'

Suddenly it felt dumb. Really dumb.

 

Hard men making soft choices. Its father trope is already bad, but you can at least pretend there's something of substance there which reveals a character's sense of priorities/morality, but if I have to read one more extended monologue shitting on Batman, I might just have to hurl. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you have to adhere to his no killing rule or something, but don't jerk yourself off over it is all I'm saying.

 

Reverse sexuality. Mc will either get the sexism wamen treatment or nothing changes except they get pussy on falling all over them.

 

All I’m saying is, I’m killing the joker amd zsaz the first chance I get.


nvm, most of his gallery is on that list.

That is God’s way of population control/cleansing the gene pool

 

Finally a venting thread. I have a few hang-ups despite being a long-time fanfic veteran.

Unsynpatic/edge lord SI stories.
Stories where the SI is an unlikeable asshole. Evil for the sake of evil. If you're putting yourself in a story why write yourself as this? Are you that despicable in real life? I refuse to believe that so many sociopaths run around.

Bad Uplifting stories.
The classic teaches the primitives by my superior knowledge. No, I don't believe you know how to fight, design early industrial machines, and the virtue of crop rotation. I mean I have a degree in iron age archeology but I wouldn't know shit how to use this in practice.

Alt history SI stories.
A combination of the two above. A classic example is the SI insert in Emperor William 2. Goes from a normal American to a hardcore German nationalist in a heartbeat. Killing political opponents and colonizing worse than Leopold 2.

Wife catalog.
Just lazy writing. Mind slavery always gets me angry. It doesn't help that many SI in these stories are complete assholes. Fur fucks sake at least the typical main character in a generic harem manga gets his harem by actually helping the girls out and at least "being nice" without using mind slavery.

Of course, good examples of the above cases exist. But it's a needle in a haystack to find.

 

For me it’s characters being introduced and forgotten. Like some writers just introduce characters just to fill out somesort of imaginary waifu roster but like if someone’s gonna introduce a character then I want them to at least show up and not be devoid of characterisation besides the whole loving the MC thing. They don’t have to dedicate their entire fictional lives to the MC, but close friends and allies should appear more and be relevant (or if they’re close allies message or contact the mc through letters or messages to check up on them) instead of merely introducing a character just so they could get laid and forgetting about them whilst sometimes bringing them back as an afterthought.

Another trope I dislike is the lack of failures. Like, sure having meta-knowledge or at times simply modern knowledge could be a boon—but some authors over-exaggerate such things. I refuse to believe that some grand masterminds see that their plans have been unveiled by the MC and somehow don’t have spare plans in case their original plan doesn’t work. Of course, this could also border the line of ridiculousness so it’s better if the villain and the capacity of the villain is better well-written. Or that after a few times they could master something that many take a long time to master. This could be summarised as me wanting the MCs to suffer (whether physically, mentally or socially) at least a little depending on the gravity of the situation without it feeling shallow.

 

If slavery was reintroduced for all races in America it wouldn’t become this all powerful dictatorship like certain fanfics portray it, it would be a nationwide Bleeding Kansas. (mainly those feature male on male sex, it’s clear the writers are more interested in that than in making a believable historical divergence)

It’s a common fanfic trope in fandoms like Supernatural.

Which almost always conveniently avoids all the outrage this would cause among the African American community, or how there would be a massive civil war if white people could legally be enslaved, especially from the poor whites and descendants of the planter elite in the South who had a pathological need to hate AA’s and see them as inferior, they would not accept having that status forced on them. It would be a massive civil war and the resulting society would be very alien from ours, it wouldn’t literally be a carbon copy of our modern world except oh there there are slaves.

I stumbled on one of these fics a year ago, checked it out if only to see “How can they make this alt historical premise believable?” And quickly found that fic and others like it were more interested in being misery porn than anything resembling believable alternate history.

 

Goblins. Every fantasy story has them. Please stop.

Instant attraction for every single female the MC comes across. I recently read a story where the 1st girl backstabbed the MC for power. They formed an unreconcileable enmity with one another. I hadn't been so happy in a long time.

MC's who never use dialogue to solve an issue. It's always violence. Look, I love action, that's what I mostly write. But in history, there often isn't one decisive victor every time. Diplomacy is an option.

Justice Lord's. They're the cousin to Edgelords. They're like Edgelords, only they have moral high ground. Such as Emiya or Ichigo.

Passive MC's. You ever notice that 90% of MC's never start a conflict? They're always reacting to some generic super rapist molesting a girl. Or their sick younger sister needs medicine or their family got slaughtered. It's really pathetic. They then get super depressed, or can't stop screaming in fights.

Lack of loyalty/permanently solo. I can't blame most people for this. But it seems that killing the enemy in a group seems to be anathema to us forever online.

Lowkey mentality. Some of these motherfuckers make HUGE movements and perform stupendous feats, yet the author treats it like it's no big deal, and no one has ever heard/seen the MC perform these feats. Lowkey mentality isn't the issue, I actually agree with it a lot of the time.

This is a xianxia exclusive, but cultivation levels, and higher realms. People get all impressed by a Foundation or Golden Core, and I'm like 'Bitch, these guys are from a 3rd rate force, what's so impressive about a Golden Core?!?!' And higher realms. Such nonsense. Imagine advancing to the "Immortsl Realm" but you're not actually immortal. In fact, you have to start all over again at the bottom of the power ladder! How pathetic!

And as people have stated, Gamers. Observe is the lowest quality crutch I've ever seen next to an all tell-no show story. Endless stat walls. (-54hp) (-99hp) (-11hp) how is that descriptive combat in any way?!

BS plot armor. Plot armor is kind of essential to a lot of stories and I am guilty of it at times. But so many ppl like Naruto, Deku, Ichigo, Luffy, etc all they need to do is scream louder, and they can't lose.

I have more but this is good enough.

 

Everything is a meta reference
Everything breaks the fourth wall
If there ever, somehow, happens to be a tense or serious moment, the mood or tension gets destroyed by quips the author heard in a marvel film or referential "humor"

 

Overstacked crossovers. Two different properties crossing over? Perfectly acceptable. Three? Getting a little iffy, but the fic could still be good. When the list of featured properties looks like the Smash Bros roster? It's long since time to stop.

Also, goblins and orcs being used as the Ugly Bastards of fantasy exclusively. I don't mind their being present in a story or quest, just please do something original with them!