Things I don't like in books

[feuervogel]

1. Characters whose life history is basically trauma after trauma after trauma.

2. Plots that exist mainly to further traumatize the characters.

These are not what I look for in my fiction. I do not enjoy reading about people's misery. Yet I also understand that sunshine and bunnies and kumbayah make for rather dull stories, so of course there should be problems and bad things happening. Balance. It's a good thing.

Comments

[corbae.livejournal.com]

or trauma as a plot device.

I am a big fan of non-ambiguous happy endings.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

These are also Things I Don't Like in Roleplaying Games. It seems you can't get a big group of people playing a White Wolf game without at least one of them wanting to play a character who's completely off their nut with a background chock full of rape and child abuse. And do it badly.

[tiercel]

See also: a REALLY disturbing amount of fanfic. I am still traumatized by one GWA author I had to archive.