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This turned out a trickier question than I had anticipated, because no sooner had I typed a dealbreaker that an exception from the rule occured to me. Still, let's see: first of all, said dealbreakers only apply for voluntary reading, i.e. texts I read for my leisure. If I need to read them, say, for research, there are no dealbreakers, no matter how unpleasant the text is. (This is also why students complaining about triggers get no sympathy from me and awake my inner cranky old woman instead. I read the bloody (literally) Malleus Maleficarum, one of the vilest, most misogynist texts ever written, with horrible real life results, you can damn well put up with Othello strangling his wife.)
So, reading for purely for fun/entertainment. As far as fanfiction is concerned, fandom has developed a few ever so useful patterns to avoid in the summaries already. "This story sucks" and any variation thereof in the summary: thanks for telling me, I'll be avoiding it, then. "I don't know the canon, I'm basing this on the great fanfiction I've read" : won't read it. (Special Highlander related subclause: "I only watched the Methos episodes" , when the story is about something more than Methos' past. Thanks for telling me, I won't read it.) "Character X bashing" as a tag: thank you for being honest. I won't read it, whether or not I'm fond of X. "Alpha/Beta/Omega": so not my thing. " Then there are relationships I'm not a fan of. Not because of something being wrong with them, just out of personal l like and dislike, so naturally if a summary tells me this story will be focused on Pairing I Don't Like, I won't read it. (BTW, this holds true for professional fiction as well, of course, though sometimes a summary could be so Out There that it makes me curious how on earth the author will justify it, so I might at least take a look. )
But say the summary of professional or fan fiction sounds intriguing, and then the actual texts still has things in it which make me put the book down/click the button. What could these be?
Most of what follows has exceptions, see above. Not least because if you become interested in a new subject, be it a new fandom or a figure of history, you tend to read at first anything you can get your hands on, and some of it will inevitably be very bad and would at a later point of your interest make you back away early on. I'm sure we've all gone through this stage, feverishly infatuated and thus far more uncritical about any given subject.
So: if the text isn't able to get me emotionally invested or at least interested in more than one of its characters, or in none at all, it is a dealbreaker. "Emotionally invested in", btw, doesn' t mean "identify with" or "agree with character's world view, politics or attitude". I've cared for a great many fictional characters whose views, even given their historic context, were very different from mine, and some characters who were murderers, abusers and what not. And no, in the later case these weren't all characters later redeemed or justified by the narrative, or characters who got their narrative punishment in the end. I think what makes a difference is whether or not the narrative itself gives me the sense that we're on the same page as to what these characters are like. For example, mistaken Kate Beaton caricature not withstanding, Emily Bronte is very clear on Heathcliff not being a misunderstood woobie. (See separate post on why I love Wuthering Heights. ) Meanwhile, I have very mixed feelings re: Jane Eyre because I don't think Charlotte and I agree about Mr. Rochester.
Character bashing both for fanfiction and historical fiction was a criteria that came immediately to mind when pondering this topic, but the more I think about it, the more my awareness of how subjective it is rises. For example: a while ago, I read a review in which the writer thought Elizabeth Woodville in Sharon Penman's Sunne in Splendour was vilified and demonized. This surprised me, as Penman's version is by far my favourite Elizabeth Woodville, far more interesting a character than the one in Philippa Gregory's White Queen where she's meant to be the heroine. Similarly, a review of Jude Morgan's novel Passion thought he was too hard on Annabella Milbanke ( the later Lady Byron), and I thought "huh? I've read Annabella's letters. She totally was like that". So what felt like character bashing for those reviewers was to me good characterisation. Conversely, I'm sure that when I've been grumbling about Hilary Mantel's Thomas More and Anne Boleyn characterisations in her Cromwell novels, a lot of other readers thought "yeah? Well, I think HM was dead on and they WERE like that!"
With this caveat: in both pro and fanfiction, I tend to be put off by what I perceive as character bashing. On a related level, I'm also put off by sudden 180° turnarounds and unearned plot twists. An example would be Lindsey Davis' novel "Rebels and Traitors", which I very much enjoyed until the bizarro ending with characterisation and genre changes and the big confrontation given to the wrong pair of characters, more here, which meant I never read the novel again, which I otherwise certainly would have. I think it comes down to: do I feel the story keeps faith with me or not?
Style is not a dealbreaker. Thomas Man writes gorgeous prose, but his novels still leave me cold. (Consequently, the Thomas Mann texts I'm most familiar with because I reread them a lot are his correspondance with brother Heinrich; TM had massive brother issues and the letters are thus a highly captivating testimony to a complex sibling relationship.) Conversely, my guy Feuchtwanger isn't nearly as much an artist with the language, but I enjoy (most of) his novels.
World view in the text: it depends. Obviously, I wouldn't have read the Malleus Malleficarum for fun, but the Oresteia by Aeschylus is deeply entrenched in ancient Greek misogyny, and I still have read these three dramas a lot, in various translations, and watched them performed. Of course, Aeschylus was a genius and Jakob Sprenger & Heinrich Krämer/Institoris weren't, but I don't think literary quality is the decisive criteria here, see above re: style.
Author misdeeds or views as voiced outside the text: can be tricky, and can certainly be a reason why I haven't approached a text in the first place (see also: Ender's Game, because Orson Scott Carr), but aren't , if I'm honest, a deal breaker as to whether or not pro or fanfiction stays with me if I've already read it, or if the author is dead. (In the not metaphorical way.) It may keep me from rereading for a while. For example: Marion Zimmer Bradley. Finding out what she did was a great blow because of what those novels had meant when I was 13, it made me reexamine some plot lines in my memory, and it will be some time before I can read any of them again, but I haven't felt the need to throw them of my book shelves.
Genre: no deal breaker. Every time I thought "Oh, I'd never read *fiction of type X*" I at some point read it anyway. Sometimes this resulted in me changing my view on X, sometimes it reaffirmed it (i.e. that I dislike it), but there are no absolutes there.
The other days
So, reading for purely for fun/entertainment. As far as fanfiction is concerned, fandom has developed a few ever so useful patterns to avoid in the summaries already. "This story sucks" and any variation thereof in the summary: thanks for telling me, I'll be avoiding it, then. "I don't know the canon, I'm basing this on the great fanfiction I've read" : won't read it. (Special Highlander related subclause: "I only watched the Methos episodes" , when the story is about something more than Methos' past. Thanks for telling me, I won't read it.) "Character X bashing" as a tag: thank you for being honest. I won't read it, whether or not I'm fond of X. "Alpha/Beta/Omega": so not my thing. " Then there are relationships I'm not a fan of. Not because of something being wrong with them, just out of personal l like and dislike, so naturally if a summary tells me this story will be focused on Pairing I Don't Like, I won't read it. (BTW, this holds true for professional fiction as well, of course, though sometimes a summary could be so Out There that it makes me curious how on earth the author will justify it, so I might at least take a look. )
But say the summary of professional or fan fiction sounds intriguing, and then the actual texts still has things in it which make me put the book down/click the button. What could these be?
Most of what follows has exceptions, see above. Not least because if you become interested in a new subject, be it a new fandom or a figure of history, you tend to read at first anything you can get your hands on, and some of it will inevitably be very bad and would at a later point of your interest make you back away early on. I'm sure we've all gone through this stage, feverishly infatuated and thus far more uncritical about any given subject.
So: if the text isn't able to get me emotionally invested or at least interested in more than one of its characters, or in none at all, it is a dealbreaker. "Emotionally invested in", btw, doesn' t mean "identify with" or "agree with character's world view, politics or attitude". I've cared for a great many fictional characters whose views, even given their historic context, were very different from mine, and some characters who were murderers, abusers and what not. And no, in the later case these weren't all characters later redeemed or justified by the narrative, or characters who got their narrative punishment in the end. I think what makes a difference is whether or not the narrative itself gives me the sense that we're on the same page as to what these characters are like. For example, mistaken Kate Beaton caricature not withstanding, Emily Bronte is very clear on Heathcliff not being a misunderstood woobie. (See separate post on why I love Wuthering Heights. ) Meanwhile, I have very mixed feelings re: Jane Eyre because I don't think Charlotte and I agree about Mr. Rochester.
Character bashing both for fanfiction and historical fiction was a criteria that came immediately to mind when pondering this topic, but the more I think about it, the more my awareness of how subjective it is rises. For example: a while ago, I read a review in which the writer thought Elizabeth Woodville in Sharon Penman's Sunne in Splendour was vilified and demonized. This surprised me, as Penman's version is by far my favourite Elizabeth Woodville, far more interesting a character than the one in Philippa Gregory's White Queen where she's meant to be the heroine. Similarly, a review of Jude Morgan's novel Passion thought he was too hard on Annabella Milbanke ( the later Lady Byron), and I thought "huh? I've read Annabella's letters. She totally was like that". So what felt like character bashing for those reviewers was to me good characterisation. Conversely, I'm sure that when I've been grumbling about Hilary Mantel's Thomas More and Anne Boleyn characterisations in her Cromwell novels, a lot of other readers thought "yeah? Well, I think HM was dead on and they WERE like that!"
With this caveat: in both pro and fanfiction, I tend to be put off by what I perceive as character bashing. On a related level, I'm also put off by sudden 180° turnarounds and unearned plot twists. An example would be Lindsey Davis' novel "Rebels and Traitors", which I very much enjoyed until the bizarro ending with characterisation and genre changes and the big confrontation given to the wrong pair of characters, more here, which meant I never read the novel again, which I otherwise certainly would have. I think it comes down to: do I feel the story keeps faith with me or not?
Style is not a dealbreaker. Thomas Man writes gorgeous prose, but his novels still leave me cold. (Consequently, the Thomas Mann texts I'm most familiar with because I reread them a lot are his correspondance with brother Heinrich; TM had massive brother issues and the letters are thus a highly captivating testimony to a complex sibling relationship.) Conversely, my guy Feuchtwanger isn't nearly as much an artist with the language, but I enjoy (most of) his novels.
World view in the text: it depends. Obviously, I wouldn't have read the Malleus Malleficarum for fun, but the Oresteia by Aeschylus is deeply entrenched in ancient Greek misogyny, and I still have read these three dramas a lot, in various translations, and watched them performed. Of course, Aeschylus was a genius and Jakob Sprenger & Heinrich Krämer/Institoris weren't, but I don't think literary quality is the decisive criteria here, see above re: style.
Author misdeeds or views as voiced outside the text: can be tricky, and can certainly be a reason why I haven't approached a text in the first place (see also: Ender's Game, because Orson Scott Carr), but aren't , if I'm honest, a deal breaker as to whether or not pro or fanfiction stays with me if I've already read it, or if the author is dead. (In the not metaphorical way.) It may keep me from rereading for a while. For example: Marion Zimmer Bradley. Finding out what she did was a great blow because of what those novels had meant when I was 13, it made me reexamine some plot lines in my memory, and it will be some time before I can read any of them again, but I haven't felt the need to throw them of my book shelves.
Genre: no deal breaker. Every time I thought "Oh, I'd never read *fiction of type X*" I at some point read it anyway. Sometimes this resulted in me changing my view on X, sometimes it reaffirmed it (i.e. that I dislike it), but there are no absolutes there.
The other days
