Top 10 WORST Tropes in Fanfiction

I talk about my all-time LEAST favorite tropes, cliches, and tags to ever be written in fanfiction/fanfics.

From basic opinion (ageplay, tentacles, sad endings) to serious moral outrage (dub-con, underage), I share the top ten worst tropes to hit fanfiction websites like Archive of Our Own.

Make sure your share YOUR least favorite fanfic tropes in the comments!

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Related Videos/Playlists:

Top 10 BEST Fanfic Tropes:

Tropes Playlist:

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[BillMcSciFi]

Consensual sex is sex, nonconsensual sex is rape. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Anyway, good show.

[AnekoFoxx]

I hate characters being OOC’d into precious cinnabuns who call their love interest, ”turtle dove/angel/my darling one”.

[_smartie_]

Consent! Is! Important! So yeah, I totaly agree on that one.

I normally stay away from Major Character Death as well. I remember 2x where I read one by accident because I wasnt careful enough and I was CRYING at the end of it - Im not making this up. I mean, yeah the fic was amazing but I didnt really want to get my heart ripped out :)

Stuff I also dont like - thats just me though and if people enjoy it, good for them:
Alpha/Beta/Omega
& BDSM or any form of Sub/Dom stuff.
Also on the list: PwP that stands for Porn without Plot / Plot? What plot? And is a big no thanks from me :) I like my fics fluffy and sfw

You: Heros x Villains!
Me & the army of Batman x Joker & Light x L fics Ive read : I ... I swear I dont need help 😅🙈

[Pikeandglaive]

TLDR: we sound like we mostly line up on this...but because I'm stuck in training today, you ALSO get the long form reply. ;-)

1. Incest...

Okay, I'm assuming when we use this tag its referring to situations where at least one of the partners knows they are related to the other?
The only reason I ask is that I actually have a respectable number of books on my shelf right now where one of the plot twists are "oh, by the way, you are are actually related, and you didn't know it", and some people have tried to tell me that's "incest", and I'm like..."um?"....

Anyway, overall, however, I'm right there with you, the whole topic is UGLY.

2/3 non-con/dub-con - I have seen this done where the author "claims" that it was written to show how evil the bad guy is, but I REALLY have to wonder if that is a thinly veiled excuse to canter to a certain reader demographic.

4/5 - sad endings...

Did you ever watch "Requiem for a dream"?
Word of advice...don't. its like they boiled down clinical depression into a bottle, and injected it into your body while you watch that movie.
So yeah, I'm with you on sad endings.

6 - Age play
... I got nothing.

7/8 Underage

Yeah, don't get me going on this one. I both hate the whole tag, and have issues with some of the stories that hit tagged with it because people are WAY to hung up on numbers, and not more relevant facts.

9 Hero/Villain -
*I* happen to like this metric...but only when its done right, and lord, its SO, SO easy to get this one wrong.

10....

Tentacles

You said
Now, I actually happen to know the answer to that, by the way (filed under 'questions you never want to ask your Psychologists friends'). That answer, by the way, leaves ME feeling like I need to go seek help after hearing it.

Good job, and keep up the good work!

[FwooshEye]

One of my biggest pet peeves are Soulmates. Like, it could have been an interesting trope, but people pretty much always use it either as a cheap short cut and/or as an excuse as to why an abusive or otherwise problematic relationship would work. Like, the most common one I've seen is where the soulmate's name is written on the arm. Now if that's working, what about people who have namesakes? Some names are freaking common! What if they're trans but in the closet? What if it's written in a different language and the family is a bunch of racists? What if it's a name that implies the soulmate have the same gender and the family is very homophobic?

Other tropes I can't stand is the alpha/omega shit, the stuff you mentioned, any trope that glorifies bad relationships, all ladies fall for the CasanovaTM, and when fat characters are either villains or comic relief...

[sxwriter]

I've been trying to get better at writing fanfiction alongside OG stories, but the thing I'm most worried about is making sure I keep the characters in character while telling a story that fits them, especially since some of them are crossovers, and I'm not the best consistent.

My biggest issue with fanfiction is a lot of people just seem not to put any effort in any of them. Not like bad grammar, but a lot of people just don't do anything interesting with the idea or the execution just feels so lazy. I get canon divergence, but people, especially band x reader fics just make all these abusive relationships, which as someone who doesn't care much for Harry Styles and others like this, it's disturbing to see characters, real or not, be turned into psychopathic jerks when most are cool people.

My thing is that I don't wanna be a gatekeeper, but fanfic has such a bad rep when there are so many cool ones out there that don't get much love, Code Lyoko fanfics are freaking amazing on fanfiction, but there's like none on wattpad, and I joined wattpad cuz I know the perception can be much better, but my writing isn't that competent compared to published authors.

I dunno, wadda think Chris?

[christianschwietzke]

Yup. Consent, or forget about it!

Other than what you´ve already listed, I think my least favorite... I´m not even sure there´s a proper term for it. Some fanfic writers take their favorite characters, groups or faction, and make them more powerful, have them make all the right decisions with fail and/or just have them be incredibly lucky, while dumbing down or weakening their least favorites, especially the ones opposing their favorites. Often the morality of things also gets skewed massively in favor of those favorites, while their enemies inexplicably either start acting uncharacteristically villainous, or their actions that would normally be considered okay morally are treated as obviously villainous behavior... or both.

I mean, sure, we´re probably all guilty of favoritism to some degree when we write fanfic, but there is such as thing as "too much" and "too blatantly obvious".

[lesliesnow]

Me being oh shit, most of the tropes she hates are tropes that I like.

[Lilas.Duveteux]

I am an emotionally repressed person with not safe for work fantasies, and those kinds of steamy fanfictions are my guilty pleasure. Tentacle things aren't my thing, and I find them silly to the point of hilarity.

[emadSciFi]

Oh on the topic of underaged sex and statuary rape, there are some 'bizarre' double standards out there in the mainstream media. Look at 'Cuties'. We had a problem like that in Egypt once with a movie that was adapted from the Italian film 'Malena', and weirder still was a TV series (social drama) about drug addiction. One of the characters, a teenage girl, runs away from school and her home with a junky, a grown man, and gets pregnant from him but loses the baby thanks to the drugs she's taking, then ends up having to live a life of crime with him to pay for their habit and even gets 'pimped' by him on one occasion.

In one scene they get caught for living in sin (this is Egypt) and it can be exposed she's under age then his lawyer finds some loophole that allows him to hide this fact and pretend he's in something like a common law marriage with her, and all the time the girl is portrayed as assertive and independent and 'sexy' because of these things. They practically gave a legal tool to people to break the law on underaged marriages, on Egyptian television, and worse than that still the person who wrote the script was a woman - an Egyptian living in France that writes radical unconservative stuff!! Just like the woman responsible for Cuties, with the girl there also going after men older than her!!!!

[KaaSerpent]

Oh, you must have HATED "Spar" by Kij Johnson. :)

[jeromelancashire]

6:17 IF I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT SQUIDWARD TENTACLES, (not fucking but you said Tentacles you didn't say whether they had to be wrapped around shit, ) I WILL!

[emadSciFi]

Thought you looked tired in the video. 10 hours shift. You should do like me and go into early retirement!!

[CharlyDeamen]

I wholly agree with this list, and I would add Alpha/Beta/Omega junk. It's my LEAST favorite thing. It's like the even WORSE cousin for the non/dub-cons with just a smidge of bestiality fetishism that quite frankly goes past merely creeping me out, to outright causing me to feel revulsion. Sorry, not sorry.