YOU CAN'T JUST BE LIKE "I HATE HIM I HATE HIM OH HE'S CUTE OH I LOVE HIM NOW (and have no ideological problems with him anymore)" AND THEN WAVE AWAY EVERYTHING THEY CONFLICT OVERRRR
YES. Not even a canon trait, but I have dwelt too long in the halls of fanon for one of my favorite series, and I get cognitive dissonance something fierce if the fic portrays the main character as anything other than extremely nonviolent, even though it's not really canon. It's a really old fandom trope and I'm too used to it. It was, like, everywhere in the late 2000's, and it's good for angst, and now I'm too attached to it.
I have the opposite, I have One Headcanon Trait that I will drop fics in my main fandom over immediately, no questions asked, goodbye.
another pet peeve: tagging for shit that really doesn't need to be tagged for because the author wants to flaunt how Good and Open Minded they are. i don't need to know the specific race, sexuality, and/or gender of every single one of your characters in the tags! i'm sure i will discover this in time in the fic! leave it alone!
Non-indicative summaries. That's a fun one. My friend who made the quote about Quirrell upthread says this is a problem he has with Hogwarts Exposed, his fanfic nemesis. The summary is about Hermione reuniting with her friends after five years and how "her life is about to change"; the story's actual primary focus is on rampant underage nudism and random violence. I then upset him by pointing out how I'd heard of a worse example; someone's summary described Voldemort "bringing the Golden Trio closer" and neglected to mention it was a Human Centipede fusion.
That reminds me of a Hamilton fic I read where the chapter summary was "If you think the President is in your sights, you take the shot." This was after several chapters of building up the romantic tension between Washington and Hamilton, so I went into that chapter thinking Hamilton was going to make a move. Turns out that chapter summary was a bit more literal than I'd thought.
Another one I heard of second-hand had a similar issue where suddenly three characters started having sex and even more suddenly one shot another in the head while it was in progress, and the author put a note about it after that scene, not before where it would have done some good.
(I feel the need to clarify - it wasn't Hamilton doing the shooting, in this fic. That may or may not have been clear but I'm clarifying it anyways.)
the worst for non-indicative summaries are the ones that are just a quote. bonus points of "quote" here means song lyrics. double bonus of it's on AO3 and has nothing but a fandom and maybe a character tag.
Where's that Tumblr post about super-lyrical summaries which tell you nothing and are then followed up with tags for stuff like fisting? Another; sex scenes which overuse the phrase "in and out" multiple times in a row. My brain immediately inserts "shake it all about", and then produces a very painful mental image of that happening.
Along the tagging/warning complaints vein, I've always understood the "Character X/Character Y" tag on AO3 to be for shipping while the "Character X & Character Y" tag would be for a fic where they have a non-romantic relationship but it's one that's central to the plot of the fic enough that it's worth being tagged. So, petty complaint: I've seen people use the "Character X & Character Y" tags in various fandoms for shipfic though and it's really annoying, because I am in the tag for platonic stuff.
I feel like the ones that are a quote from the fic itself can actually be decent/ok summaries, if the quote is a good enough indicator of what the rest of the fic is about/like? But I definitely agree about the song lyrics. Song lyrics as titles are a ok, song lyrics as summaries are... not.
SOMETIMES. But more often than not they're like "what are you going to do now, harry" type generic crap that's a wham line *in* context and therefore the author thinks it works *out* of context.
I've seen it used in Homestuck for moirallegiance stuff, and use it that way myself most of the time since copy and pasting a diamond symbol is Hard and I am Lazy But oh god, people not sufficiently tagging on AO3. I was talking to @spockandawe about one repeat offender who absolutely refuses to use actual archive tags for the pairings or non/dubcon warnings. They have warning stuff in the text description once you open the fic itself, so it's okay, but for tags they list a random stream of characters and you have to basically just guess who will be banging who today for the duration of the fic
TOKEN TRANS CHARACTERS usually the fandoms wangsty fave, or if not, theyre def gonna b written that way. always transmasc. WHY always transmasc everyone else is cis and either violently bigoted or gushingly supportive. not a single other trans person in sight despite the fact that we clump together like herd animals wheres my fics where EVERYONES trans and no one cares and they can focus on somethin fucking else for once its always either 'trans-focused plot' or 'cis by default' :^(
