Which Tags are red flags?

[Redemit]

I feel the exact same way, except I am transphobic.

I'm not transphobic I'm Anti trans

 

[SailusGebel]

I don't find escapism in romance, I find it in scenarios where MC is blugeoning someone who deserves it to death with their well trained muscles.

My boy, I would put a dozen likes to your comment but I have none

 

[TotallyHuman]

I'm not transphobic I'm Anti trans

sorry, from now on I will refer to you by your prefered term

 

[SsemouyOnan]

Titles and synopsis are a better indicator of red flags to me, I care less about tags

 

[Sagacious_Punk]

My red flags have nothing to do with tags. I still live in the era where tags are just SEO. (early 2000s).

For me, red flags are turned on by default. Rather, I look for "green flags" - stuff that catches my attention. In this day and age, time and attention are the two most precious resources (chiefly because we still lack any means of increasing their quantity on an absolute scale), so something has to be worth my time in order to pay it any attention.

That said, I look first at the usual suspects: cover, blurb (aka synopsis/description), and any cursory metadata.
They say to not judge a book by its cover, but sadly everyone does it subconsciously, myself included. I try to look past that as much as I can, though; I look not only for well-made covers, but for interesting ones too.

After that, if I get curious about what I see, I give the first chapter a read (or a random chapter if the story seems slow-paced). If I can read something for 5 minutes without feeling bored or frustrated with the writing - well, then I might have found something that's worth the read.

Unfortunately, rarely is any novel a completed work, which is a total turn off for me.

Spoiler

Books are not movies, or tv series, or videogames. They don't need dozens or hundreds of people to be completed. They also don't need to run for thousands of pages. If somebody can't tell a decent story in 100k words (~330 pages), chances are they can't tell it in a million words either.

If you have enough material for the story to go beyond the length of a normal book, write a sequel. It's that simple; don't just fucking go writing until eternity. Hot damn.

Also, when did quantity became more important than quality?? Oh, wait... Ok, that one's on me.

That's for "web novels". For ordinary books, I usually search for a plot synopsis on Wikipedia and/or read enough reviews on Goodreads until I have a picture in mind whether the story is something that will be up my alley.

(Spoilered text is a mini-rant.)

Cheers,
Sagacious

 

[BigBadBoi]

Personally it's BL, genderbender, transgender, and ESL writing.
BL is just not for me
Genderbender means you can't write a good character of the opposite gender so you rely on this as a crutch
Anybody that uses the transgender tag I'm 90% sure is writing identity politics
ESL writing/horrible grammar means the writing will be horrible. Don't get me wrong there are some good ones but those are outliers.

 

[l8rose]

I don't really have red flags when it comes to tags but I tend to not read BL, GL, Harem/Reverse-Harem, Sports or Seinen. There are exceptions to the rule.

First two are because those tend to focus solely on those relationships. Everyone in the story is engaged in that kind of relationship (whether it's all BL or all GL). I'm not expecting complete realism in a story but I'd expect at least one or two couples to not be the same. Not that I have anything against people writing representation for themselves, it's just not something that I want to read. Mind you, I also prefer my romance stories to have a plot other than slice-of-life or the difficulties of teens/twentysomethings getting together.

Harem because well... Harem is always a weird thing for me. I'm pansexual and polyamorous, harem stories always irritate me as it feels like they had the opportunity to do a perfectly good pod but just decided to indulge in the fantasy of all these girls wanting that one guy. Same with the reverse. Why can't everybody be into mutual pining and boning?

Sports because I don't like sports.

Seinen because I am not a young man and cannot identify with what young men like (usually).

 

[beast_regards]

So are you implying there is a chance ...

.... if only I removed harem from tags?

 

[Dreyva]

This thread is making me wonder if I should have even included the transgender and gender bending tags?

If the community feels this way about those tags, then I might be turning people away from the story even though none of the content associated with those tags in this thread is in my story…

My red flags would be: Fanfiction, Harem, Horror, Sports, Tragedy

 

[MatchaChocolate69]

This thread is making me wonder if I should have even included the transgender and gender bending tags?

If the community feels this way about those tags, then I might be turning people away from the story even though none of the content associated with those tags in this thread is in my story…

These opinions do not reflect those of your potential readers. If your story deals with those themes, it's right that it has those tags, because they will attract the audience interested in those topics. It would be worse if the themes were addressed in your story but not indicated.

 

[SailusGebel]

This thread is making me wonder if I should have even included the transgender and gender bending tags?

If the community feels this way about those tags, then I might be turning people away from the story even though none of the content associated with those tags in this thread is in my story…

Depends on what you write. GB + GL is a very popular combo. BL isn't popular, but has a steady demand. GB on it's own is a tricky tricky thing. If it's male to female it will be popular, but barely anyone would read female to male. Everything that I've said is about SH. Don't know about other sites.

 

[Dreyva]

These opinions do not reflect those of your potential readers. If your story deals with those themes, it's right that it has those tags, because they will attract the audience interested in those topics. It would be worse if the themes were addressed in your story but not indicated.

So, better off including tags even if those themes are only minorly represented than to not include the tags at all?

 

[MatchaChocolate69]

So, better off including tags even if those themes are only minorly represented than to not include the tags at all?

Tricky question. It depends on what you mean by minor. If there's, for example, a trans character who appears only once and doesn't play a significant role, then no. If we delve into their story and themes, then yes.

 

[SailusGebel]

So, better off including tags even if those themes are only minorly represented than to not include the tags at all?

Oh, you were asking about using tags. My bad. You should always include divisive tags\genres, if you don't want to bask in negative reviews and ratings. It's not limited to GB, GL, or BL. Gore warning, strong language warning, sexual content, and similar stuff.

 

[Dreyva]

Tricky question. It depends on what you mean by minor. If there's, for example, a trans character who appears only once and doesn't play a significant role, then no. If we delve into their story and themes, then yes.

What if you have a trans character, that character is an important one, but their trans identity barely factors into the story? Or a character who's trans identity factors into their character background, but it's only ever alluded to once or twice.

 

[Sabruness]

So, better off including tags even if those themes are only minorly represented than to not include the tags at all?

if it's only minorly represented, a note in the synopsis should be fine. if it's a significant recurring factor, even if not a major plot factor, then tag it. like @MatchaChocolate69 said.

What if you have a trans character, that character is an important one, but their trans identity barely factors into the story? Or a character who's trans identity factors into their character background, but it's only ever alluded to once or twice.

note in the synopsis should be fine for most. you might still get flak from the pedants but that'd be about it.

for me, major "NOPE" red flags are: BL (not my thing), tragedy (if i wanted misery porn, i'd just read about the shitty real world), bisexual protagonist (nothing against Bi but, again, not my thing. i prefer my relationships one or the other, not both. het or GL.) and....

futa. god do i hate how many times i've clicked onto a GL novel with good genre tags, only to check the sub-tags and find futa tag.

FUTA IS THE PESTILENT PLAGUE UPON GL AND SHOULD BE PURGED WITH FLAME! srsly, i see futa as a lazy-AF way for authors to have het sex in a GL novel without having either a bisexual protag or just writing a het story in the first place. if you feel like you absolutely have to have futa in your GL novel, YOU'RE DOING IT SO WRONG that you might as well just write het.

 

[MatchaChocolate69]

What if you have a trans character, that character is an important one, but their trans identity barely factors into the story?

It would be better to put the tag in this case.

 

[melchi]

This thread is making me wonder if I should have even included the transgender and gender bending tags?

If the community feels this way about those tags, then I might be turning people away from the story even though none of the content associated with those tags in this thread is in my story…

Nah, they are popular tags, just some people like them and others don't. Nothing wrong with that.

I don't like stories that are trying to make a point about the real world either weather they are about gender or no.

There are some good transgender stories out there that don't do this.

Clockwork girl is a good example.

This kind of writing is not something specific to transgender, the jungle by Upton Sinclair is a well known communist propaganda piece from many years ago for example.

 

[SailusGebel]

futa. god do i hate how many times i've clicked onto a GL novel with good genre tags, only to check the sub-tags and find futa tag.

FUTA IS THE PESTILENT PLAGUE UPON GL AND SHOULD BE PURGED WITH FLAME! srsly, i see futa as a lazy-AF way for authors to have het sex in a GL novel without having either a bisexual protag or just writing a het story in the first place. if you feel like you absolutely have to have futa in your GL novel, YOU'RE DOING IT SO WRONG that you might as well just write het.

Holy shit! My "writing slander" meme was right about this part?

 

[TotallyHuman]

This thread is making me wonder if I should have even included the transgender and gender bending tags?

If the community feels this way about those tags, then I might be turning people away from the story even though none of the content associated with those tags in this thread is in my story…

I would give a poor review and at least one very negative comment if something I didn't like and was major was not tagged properly. Don't remove these tags it will not attract readers who will be interested and get you many angry readers