Brutal honesty: What I Don't Want To Read, by Valis, Age...er...old enough.

[valis2]

As some of you probably know, I am a bit OCD. I like to read fic, and I usually am looking for a specific genre (er, h/c, if it hasn't been obvious). Occasionally I will wade through archives where you can't sort by genre, and this usually means that I skim every summary for fics I might possibly want to read. Usually this just leads to my badfic entries, but sometimes I do find something yummy to read. Anyway, the point is that, over the years, after reading thousands of summaries, I've become very adept at avoiding what I don't want to read. Certain words and phrases are triggers for me at this point.

These are the things that will make me click the back button (well, close tab button) without bothering to read a fic. I mean, besides the obvious squicky stuff--I'm not talking about sex or violence triggers.

• Genres: Parody, Humor, Crossover (just about any kind)


• Any mention of a "sugar high" in the summary


• Script format


• Any actor's name in the title (Duchovny Hears the Who, for example)


• Any actor's name in the summary


• The word "muse" in the summary (I hit the close tab button even faster if there are multiple muses conversing with each other)


• Too much talk about plot bunnies and how they have bitten, clawed, nibbled, ferociously attacked, spindled, folded, or mutilated anyone or anything


• The author mentioning that s/he is a character in the fic


• No summary at all


• Any mention of "beanie baby" in the summary


• More than one noticeable-to-me spelling or punctuation error in the summary


• One noticeable-to-me spelling or punctuation error in the title, unless it's meant as a joke or slyly ironic reference


• Any holiday in the title or summary--Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, you name it


• De-aging fics or fics where the characters are baby versions of themselves


• Fics with the characters as child versions of themselves (except for the very occasional adult-cast-in-high-school-setting fic)


• Fics that are dialogue only


• Death!fic--well, death of a character I like, I should say


• Most AUs, unless the premise is really intriguing and/or I'm hugely vested in the pairing


• Fics where the character is a different gender than in canon, though occasionally I take a peek

And you, flist? What are yours? Please do tell, I'm really interested.

Comments

[ghost-eye.livejournal.com]

I don't mind de-ageing fics as long as the character grows up, or the de-ageing is something that happens right at the end as part of the conclusion. But if the fic, say, is all about Snape/The Master/Darth Vader caring for baby!Harry/The Doctor/Luke & changing his nappies*, then it's time for me to Abandon Read.

*unless it's humor & written by someone I can trust to do it right

[valis2.livejournal.com]

If the right author wrote it, it would probably work. But most of them are just all about the changing of the nappies, and I'm just not interested. lol.