I don't know if a thread like this is allowed. If it isn't, feel free to delete it. What's the most problematic fan fic you ever read and why? Not just Sailor Moon fan fics. Fan fics from any and all fandoms are allowed to be discussed here at your volition. But this isn't a plain bashing thread, as that's against the rules. You have to explain why you feel this fan fic is bad and talk about how you feel it could be improved or done better. (Was it poorly written? Did some twists feel forced? Did you not like how the author treated a certain character? Etc.)


I normally don't read bad fan fics, as they're not my cup of tea. But I read about a female author who was very infamous in the Pokemon fan fic fandom back in the day. She loved Team Rocket and wrote an entire fan fic series on them. I didn't read most of her fics, only an excerpt of a chapter because someone on Dreamwidth talked about it and...oh my God. I cannot even begin to describe the demon sorcery that is the horrible, offensive Ash bashing in her fics. He's portrayed to be a volatile, disgusting, inconsiderate manchild who is constantly abused for pretty much every blight against Team Rocket, and in the end of the stories, he is grown up but acts like a disabled five-year-old who does nothing but whine and cause trouble. This in itself is pretty offensive, but what's worse? EVERYONE PICKS ON HIM AND HE IS REDUCED TO THIS THING WHO IS REGULARLY INSULTED AND DEGRADED SIMPLY FOR EXISTING!!! Basically, he's thought of as a walking joke.

I...I just cannot...  I've seen character bashing, but never to the levels like she achieved, and people call ME and MY WORKS ableist, offensive, and problematic! At least I don't treat my disabled characters like walking jokes who get picked on just for existing! My God, what in the world was she thinking?! Now I know there are people out there who don't like Ash, and that's okay, but this...this is just degrading, offensive, and sad. I don't know what convinced her to think this was not only okay, but funny. It isn't funny.

As Sailor Jupiter states in the post below, the titles and authors of those fan fics cannot be mentioned in order to respect the authors and their hard work, no matter how bad or problematic those fics are, and there is to be no discussion of M-rated material.

As this is a PG-13 setting the open discussion of an M rated fan fic would not be appropriate for these forums.  So, please no discussions of anything rated higher than a PG-13.

We understand writing a fan fic take time and effort, so please do not name the author or title in discussions. Constructive criticism is always welcome, be mindful of how things are worded.

Thank you!

Whoops. Sorry about that. Ugh. I need to start figuring these things out better.

Can't really discuss any fics here. The problematic fics I've read are all rated M, and apparently even just stating the titles is against the rules.

I just read an MST of a certain My Little Pony fan fic starring Big MacIntosh. Ugh. Not only was the fan fic itself badly written, but it was really degrading and violent. If people like it, that's fine. But I don't, and I just don't like stories like that. It's gotten infamous in the MLP fandom. But don't worry! Not all bronies write stuff like that!

Wait, you can't post titles? But can you still talk about them, as long as it's not discrptive?

I haven't read that. You can't post titles. New rule imposed by Sailor Jupiter.

It looks like this author had a very active fan-fiction career! I poked through a few of them and didn't find what the Ash character bashing you are talking about, but I don't have the time to read the entire series of works she wrote ('cause, she was pretty active as an author, judging by this page).

From what I did read, it looks like most of the fan-fiction is written from Team Rocket's point of view, often first-person. I doubt Team Rocket has a rosy opinion about Ash and his friends (although, I think there are one or two episodes in which they all work together toward a common goal) and these negative opinions would likely shine through the most when written in the first-person.

That being said, do you think the degree and amount of Ash bashing is uncharacteristic of Team Rocket? I haven't watched the television show in ages and can't say I have a good grasp of Team Rocket's personalities.

Also, don't forget the rules of this thread.

Quote :

But this isn't a plain bashing thread, as that's against the rules. You have to explain why you feel this fan fic is bad and talk about how you feel it could be improved or done better. (Was it poorly written? Did some twists feel forced? Did you not like how the author treated a certain character? Etc.)

it's been...soooo long....since i've read what i consider a legitimate fanfic. mostly stuff on fanfiction. net. most of the things i remember were...yeah, not pg-13. the one i can remember that bugs me the most though, in vague detail, was a fanfic about uh...Sky and Layla being a couple behind their significant others backs. it was very....wtf? kinda out of the blue...and i'm not the type of person who enjoys cheating anyways. it's like...if you guys wanna be together then just...friggin break up with Bloom and Elios(?) and stop sneaking. what's wrong with you?

...i can admit, probably a lot of the fanfics i had written were problematic. XD i was...weird as a kid. so i did do the very bad characterization, my opinion of characters showed, poor structure...blah blah, you name it, i probably did it. XD

Well, the one I posted earlier, The MLP one, had to do with pinkie going nuts and..well..baking people into cupcakes. Apparently it's really infamous in the MLP fandom. I only looked up a summery as to how it ended, since I couldn't make it through the whole thing.
It was well written and had a wide verse of vocab, and the descriptors were top notch, but the out of character behavior and the events were almost too well written.

I haven't read a lot of fanfiction, which is weird because I wrote a couple of pieces when I was young. But the piece that had me in stitches was a Harry Potter - Sailor Moon cross-over fic. This was before I seriously got back into Sailor Moon (there was a 6-7 year period when I thought I was too grown-up for Sailor Moon  ) and it was shortly before the release of Deathly Hallows so I was excited and impatient and had turned to Internet fanfiction. I tried looking for that specific piece a few times since then but I could never find it again. 

Anyway, so what happened in the fanfic was that... Usagi's friends (her name was Serena in this one but I hate the English dub names so I'll call her Usagi) had died in battle and she had fled to the UK. Somehow she moved into a house on the Dursleys' street all alone (because you know, young Japanese girls with no parents and no obvious income just show up owning suburban houses in the vicinity of London) and she met Harry and they fell madly in love. This is when a lot of angsty and cheesy conversations happened in front of a fireplace and Harry was amazed at Usagi's mysterious allure and "sad wisdom" (yeah so he looked at Usagi and saw a blonde Setsuna - got a problem with that?  ). And I think he had a fight with the Dursleys and ran away from "home" to move in with his now fiancee... But then came the moment when Harry would have to go back to Hogwarts. And he took Usagi with him, because apparently in the writer's world students can bring not only pets to Hogwarts but also orphan young women. But hopefully not transported in cages, like the pets. Hopefully.

So Harry attends the opening festivities and he chats with Dumbledore and the other teachers like they were best buds. And somehow Dumbledore says that there's a new evil coming and that he isn't strong enough to stop it. But then Usagi interferes and says that she is powerful enough (more powerful than Dumbledore...) and that she'll help the wizards because she felt bad about deserting her friends in Japan. And then Dumbledore congratulates Harry on the lovely young bride he's found himself and blesses their union. The end.

Now... I don't remember how the text was written. If I remember correctly the author didn't have any "Enoby" moments or anything. But the ideas in the fic and how awfully it managed to not care about either HP or SM canon... And of course it took itself very seriously! You have Harry Potter drinking wine next to Usagi Tsukino's British fireplace in summer and thinking about how mysterious and wise Usagi is and it's just... ugh.

.....Fire, thank you for posting that, because it reminded me of something we must not forget in this thread. sometimes the worst ever fanfics can be the most hilarious. XD loved your comments by the way, totally get how "realistic" everything is.

....swear to god i've read some harry potter fanfics, but i can't remember them....it's been so many years!!

You know what's most problematic?

A great fan-fiction that is never finished!

There are some many awesome fan-fictions I have read and you are about the story you are reading. There are so many chapters that it has to be finished, right? Then, you start nearing the end of the available chapters and either start to doubt yourself or be amazed by how the author must manage to wrap everything up so quickly.

Oh, no! The story hasn't been updated since 2009 and you don't know the ending!

Too bad real life can get in the way of great writing.

that is indeed problematic( and a situation i've been put it), only if you do not have EPIC STALKER SKILLS so you can force them to write and finish the fanfic.

....now THAT sounds like a problematic fanfic idea. :p i wonder if i should start fresh and make a new fanfiction. net account?....maybe i'm too lazy..

...lazy writing, that is problematic. like the people who you can tell just...wrote the whole plot as it was in the series, and threw themselves into it, i know i've read fanfics like this in MANY genre.(i'm guilty of it too..)

I really dont like it when I get engrossed in a fic and I finish it, but its not finished and hast been updated in years, its like please come back one day and finish this gem.

I won't name names, but there was someone who was infamous in the Pretty Cure fan fic fandom for writing extremely bloody, dark, and edgy stories (a little too much), and when someone gave him criticism or pointed out his stories' faults, he took them all as personal attacks, held petty grudges against them, wrote rip-offs of their stories, and made one-note antagonist characters based on them who often got killed off in horrible ways. He also made an offensive Mexican caricature stereotype which offended someone really bad. He was also known for ableism (his characters gave disabled kids bread crumbs), lack of empathy for victims of tragedy (he tried to make a fan fic capitalize on the Aurora Colorado Dark Knight Returns movie massacre back in 2012), skirt-shaming (his characters hated nice girls who wore skirts to the point of punching them), ridiculous amounts of pop culture references, and his deep seated and somewhat creepy fascination with Emma Watson.

Crystalsetsuna: Thank you, thank you. I can't help making fun of things like this

Sailor Venus: I have the advantage of being LAZY. So I don't think I ever started reading a fanfic that didn't have "complete" in the description and that was more than 5 chapters long.

Juliko wrote:

I won't name names, but there was someone who was infamous in the Pretty Cure fan fic fandom for writing extremely bloody, dark, and edgy stories (a little too much), and when someone gave him criticism or pointed out his stories' faults, he took them all as personal attacks, held petty grudges against them, wrote rip-offs of their stories, and made one-note antagonist characters based on them who often got killed off in horrible ways. He also made an offensive Mexican caricature stereotype which offended someone really bad. He was also known for ableism (his characters gave disabled kids bread crumbs), lack of empathy for victims of tragedy (he tried to make a fan fic capitalize on the Aurora Colorado Dark Knight Returns movie massacre back in 2012), skirt-shaming (his characters hated nice girls who wore skirts to the point of punching them), ridiculous amounts of pop culture references, and his deep seated and somewhat creepy fascination with Emma Watson.

Holy crap. What a sociopath. O.O

I love fan fiction, I really do. And I probably have read more Sailor Moon fan fics than I should ever admit to, but there have been a whole lot that have been problematic. I find that a lot of the stories either have an amazing idea, but poor writing, or poor ideas but amazing writing. 

Luckily, only good ones seem to be stuck in my head right now. But Fire, I loved the explanation of the one you read, haha. 

I am also one of those authors who has written stuff and hasn't finished it for years. Not saying my stories are great, but I always feel guilty when I look at the first published date, haha. I'm trying to rectify that, though!

Most of the fanfiction i read is good fanfiction rated M and higher, so no discussion for me me

There is this one harry potter one that was some odd, poorly written gothic AU that starred an OC vampire named Ebony Darnkness Ravenway and all the characters from the series had (mostly) different names for some reason. I was laughing the entire time, it made zero sense.

^ Yes, that's exactly what I was referencing when I said the writer doesn't have any "Enoby" moments! It's because whoever wrote the Ebony Dark'ness one often mistyped her own character's name. I want to describe how a supposedly "M" moment sounded in that fanfic, but I don't think I'm allowed to (even though it's childish rather than anything truly "M"). Let's just say the whole thing was described in a single sentence and the phrases "his thingy" and "you-know-what" were used 

(Only trouble is, I never understood if the fanfic was written seriously or if it was a troll work. Either way, it's a gem)

Is it horrible that I actually want to read this now?

^ That's how everyone first reads it. Kinda like a car crash: it's awful but you can't look away.

Hahahaha, I love it.

I can't seriously remember every problematic fanfiction I've read. However lately I've been reading for a fandom that's got a big character base (as in half way through the original series they had introduced close to 100 character though i may be exaggerating and they still had more to bring in not even going into the spin of that had even more characters to come) an i can safely say some of the most problematic ones I've read have instead of bringing them in gradually and spread out through chapters they dumped over half the characters in your lap in the first three sentences several of which were characters that had the least impact on the show and no one actually remembers who they are to begin with. I see no problem with using all the characters in a single fic but that's only when it's a few at a time and than gradually they are all introduced (and those minor characters wit very and i mean as close as you can get to no impact on the original plot at all are flushed out a bit more as a reminder of sorts as to who they are.) but it just get confusing when you have hundreds of characters running around the main characters school especially since very few of them actually went to the school or had a logical reason to be there. 

love prince of tennis love mos of the characters (and i know most of the pot fics i write will likely be problematic right now but that's at this point because i'm unfamiliar with writing these characters) but even i find myself asking who half the characters in these fics are. i myself also tend to find gender bending a bit problematic since half the time when i read one it was done solely for this character to have a romance with another male or female character because the author doesn't like yaoi or yuri

Fire wrote:

^ Yes, that's exactly what I was referencing when I said the writer doesn't have any "Enoby" moments! It's because whoever wrote the Ebony Dark'ness one often mistyped her own character's name. I want to describe how a supposedly "M" moment sounded in that fanfic, but I don't think I'm allowed to (even though it's childish rather than anything truly "M"). Let's just say the whole thing was described in a single sentence and the phrases "his thingy" and "you-know-what" were used 

(Only trouble is, I never understood if the fanfic was written seriously or if it was a troll work. Either way, it's a gem)

 My boyfriend insists that it was in fact troll work. If it was, it was very well done. Also, for anyone wanting to know this fic I can PM them the title, but be aware that it's horrible and extraordinarily laughable. Also discontinued.

I used to read a few Gundam Wing fanfics back in the day, and if any of them weren't catching my interested or "any good", I just stopped reading them, so I can't think of anything in particular. I used to write DragonballZ fanfics when I was, like, 12, but I never posted them online. They were insanely Mary Sue-ish (lol, I'll admit), but I wrote them more for myself than anyone else.

The only BAD fanfic (and I mean ABSOLUTELY AWFUL) I ever read was that girl who did the bat-poop (lol, censoring) crazy Harry Potter fanfiction, but it was always up for debate whether she REALLY thought she was a good writer, or if she was deliberately trying to troll people with some of the crazy things she would write and just how she changed all of the characters into emos and vampires. It was funny, though, because so many people made cartoons and fanart of some of the most ridiculous scenes, so even though it was bad, it was very entertaining.



A few moments later, Evangeline realizes this work has already been brought up...


Omg, ENOBY! So I'm not the only one, lol!

Cosmos-Hime wrote:

There is this one harry potter one that was some odd, poorly written gothic AU that starred an OC vampire named Ebony Darnkness Ravenway and all the characters from the series had (mostly) different names for some reason. I was laughing the entire time, it made zero sense.

Don't forget "Dementia"...

Ebony Darkness Dementia Raven Way! (No relation to Gerard Way, of course.  )



Edit: Eek! Sorry for the double post. 

Yeah that harry potter fanfic is literally the most infamous, poorly written fanfic of all time. It's the butt of so many internet jokes, it's great.