What are your most hated fanfic tropes

[fareakyhoneybee]

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.

 

[Avernus]

Isekai fics seem to forget that plans don't survive with contact with enemy quote because somehow all their plans execute flawlessly.

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That's less an isekai problem than it is with most portrayals of clever planners in fiction.

And a fair number of would-be clever planners in real life, for that matter. Except they don't have an author watching over them to make sure events run on rails for them, so their grand master plan goes off the rails after a few steps. That tends to end poorly.

 

[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.