Not a phrase usually associated with Blackpool...

 

Eh, not really. There's a difference between going AU halfway through the book series - where so many canon plot-lines and character arcs are already in motion and can still provide rough guideposts for the story - versus changing things so early in the timeline that you essentially invalidate most (or all) of canon in the process. As a writer, you can do the latter, but then the entire plot (and most sub-plots) from there on are up to the fanfic writer's skills alone to pull off. While authors of original fiction do this all the time, the sad fact is that vanishingly few fanfic authors have the chops to do this even passably well.

As a good example, one of the better (and I use this term very loosely) Marauders-era AUs I've read starred a genderbent Snape (Severa Snape, iirc, nicknamed Vera) who was reasonably well-written (just as unpleasant as canon-Snape, physically and personality-wise, but a touch more feminine and vulnerable) and wound up at first in a toxic lesbian relationship with Lily that broke down when FemSnape realized that she was making Lily miserable. Eventually, FemSnape gets roped into acting as Dumbledore's spy with the Death Eaters with James Potter as her handler/public boyfriend/eventual husband (initially as a prank-gone-humiliatingly-wrong, then later as part of their cover as spies). FemSnape and James have a weird love/hate thing going on that slowly transitions to an odd sort of love/tolerate relationship. It was creepy and only quasi-believable, at best (if surprisingly well-written, otherwise).

And that monstrosity is the first thing that comes to mind when I try to think of a "good Marauders-era AU." So yeah, not a fan of the whole sub-genre, really.

 

Annerb's Ginny might be awesome, but her Harry is terrible.

My red lines:
Mpreg, Slash, Gender reversal's, Muggle wank, character bashing

Not red lines, but thing's I tend to avoid:
Hogwarts settings (They've been written to death so I can't read them anymore), magical exhastion, magical cores

 

I'll drop any Skyrim fanfic if author treats the Stormcloacks as definetly right through the narration. That has only happened once so far, since I read few Skyrim fanfics, but I know I'd do it again.

Rants, I was gonna be more specific about it, but at this point I wouldn't read past any real rant.

The MC getting cheated on, I usually project myelf on to one of the Main characters and having their significant other cheat on them would just ruin my mood.

I also drop any story where it's clear the author doesn't really know canon, but still goes out of their way to complain about it.

 

I just discovered a red line I didn't know I had. Bask in the glory of this summary.

The fic is called The Elf Who Lived and it's on Ao3. You don't want to see the tags.

 

Bashing in general, but any HP fic that depicts Ron as being unintelligent/gluttonous/asshole-ish gets dropped immediately. If you can't understand HP enough to recognize that Ron is a normal teenager with exceptional friends doing his best, I don't want to read it.

Summaries that include Godlike! or Powerful! as descriptors for the main characters are instant skips as well. Also fics with summaries that describe, in any way shape or form, Harry "taking control" of his life. I know what that entails and I don't need it.

Harem fics. Or Protagonist/Multi that aren't the protagonist being in different relationships throughout the course of the fic. Keeping one partner happy is a full time job. You expect me to believe a teenager can manage more than one at a time?

 

I have to admit, I kind of do.

I mean, from the summary alone this fic is clearly an abomination that should burn in the eternal flame of the God-Emperor's Judgement, but I'm a little morbidly curious what they would tag such a thing with.

EDIT: Ooookaaay, then. Just looked it up, and I regret it immensely. The tags seemed more-or-less par for the course compared to the horror shows commonly found on AO3, until toward the end I found "Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." Meaning all the horrific shit tagged there happens when Harry is 11... Will now go looking for a brillo pad to scrub my brainpan.

 

The summary is designed to horrify so perfectly that I almost admire it. Look at the way it escalates:

First Line: Harry is a house elf, not a human? That's bizarre.
Second Line: Wait, Harry's human mum liked to shag house elves? Ugh, gross.
Third Line: Harry the 11-year-old house elf is about to be raped repeatedly by all of Hogwarts? Holy fucking shit, I'm out.

This is generally why I stay away from Ao3. It's one big red line, full of Harry/Snape slash, first years having sex, and creature fics.

 

In fairness, they do have a pretty good filter system so you can keep most of that crap out. I read stuff on AO3 about as often as FFN these days. Especially because there's a lot of decent stories that are only posted there, or uncensored versions of stories that are edited all to hell on FFN by authors that are paranoid about the site's mods deleting their stuff.

But yeah, hoo boy is there a ton of irredeemably evil shit on that site just waiting for an unsuspecting reader to stumble across it.

 

Eh, its just all the same type of stuff that was on places like AFF, Ficwad, or Livejournal. A03 suffers from bringing together all the disparate elements of the fandom in one place, and so bringing the deviance from every corner of the fandom into one place.

 

It's a real shame because I genuinely like their interface. Too bad there's so much shit to wade through.

 

If the main character gets raped, I stop reading.

Amnesia as a big plot device... I've dropped most fics that did that.

If I encounter excessive bashing in 2020, there's a 99.9% chance the story is shit, so I also tend to drop those on the spot.

In regards to HP, I haven't finished a single muggle wank fic.

I'd like to say Highschool AU fics, but the truth is, I've never even started reading one, so I can't exactly stop if I never even give them a chance.

Oh, and homosexual main character. Just not my thing.

 

This is something I always think is quite weird to have as a red line for a fic. You'd seriously click out of a fic you were thoroughly enjoying and were 40 chapters deep in, if the main character ended up being gay? You're 2 and a half years through a 7 year re-write that you're loving, and then Harry ends up being gay and you'd stop reading despite otherwise enjoying the fic?

 

Yeah, probably. Unless the fic was 5/5 before, and the gay thing was something in the background I could ignore. A slash pairing for the main character just ruins it for me, and the downside of it overweighs almost any good points of the fic. But I don't recall your specific scenario ever happening to me - even if not explicitly stated to be slash, the characterization in the first few chapters usually reveals if it will be, so I've never read far into a story like that.

 

My problem with slash fiction isn’t a dislike/disgust with gay relationships, I’m of a rather nebulous sexuality myself, it’s that the VAST majority of slash fiction is written by heterosexual teenage girls for heterosexual teenage girls. I’ve heard a few explanations as to why this is, but I’ll save that for another time and just talk about why that’s such a dealbreaker.

It boils down to my distaste for homosexual relationships written through a heterosexual lens. One character, usually the main character so the author and readers can better self insert, is a soft, shy, uwu must be protected little cinnamon roll and the love interest is a dominant, self-assured, masculine douchebag who will guide our shy virginal protagonist through the subtle art of buttsecks.

One character is written as feminine and the other is masculine.

Obviously not all slash fics are written like this, but so many are that I can’t blame anyone for running for the hills when they see a hint of gay on the horizon.

 

Sounds like your red line, Bagel, isn't so much slash as it is bad writing. Which is a completely fair red line to have. Clerith doesn't really seem to be saying that though, he's saying if he even gets a hint that the main character might be gay he'll exit the fic. Thats a much more extreme position to take than not liking badly written fics.

 

Romance that starts taking over a story. I have no problem reading romance stories if the romance is the story. But when the tension is high and characters begin ignoring the important plot and start focusing on sex and romance, it really kills it for me. If your life is in danger because a psychopathic mass murderer has put you at the top of their shit list then surviving that should be the main priority. But no, sports and sex are way more important right now. Gotta put those hilarious hormone hijinks in the story!

I basically just described Half-Blood Prince, which just so happens to be my least favourite of the books.

 

^This^

Unless the main character is female. I have no issue with FemSlash because, as a straight cis-male I can absolutely relate to the character being attracted to women. That's the problem for me with M/M Slash: When I read fiction, I'm mentally putting myself in the main character's shoes, and being attracted to males is something that I find completely baffling and unrelatable. I run into the same problem with straight romance when the main POV character is female. Nothing against any of it irl, just doesn't appeal to me in the slightest as reading material.

 

If I see a typo or a grammatical error in the first paragraph I stop reading. Needless to say I have not been reading much fanfic lately.

 

My redlines are:
Bad Grammer, Super Hermione, Character Bashing.