Earned and unearned

[mrissa]

I put down Sarah Hoyt's Ill Met by Moonlight last week after reading a chapter and a half. It was not entirely Hoyt's fault. It may not have been mostly Hoyt's fault. Here's the thing: William Shakespeare was a major character. Not just anybody gets to have Shakespeare as a character and keep my eyes nailed to the page. You have to earn it. Like, say, with three or four other books I've loved, or a close friendship. Or...no, that's pretty much it.

Everybody has hot buttons as a reader. Everybody has things they don't want to read about unless there's a really good reason; everybody has squids (stuff they definitely want to read about with the slightest excuse). A bad enough writer can ruin your squids, and a good enough writer can earn the hot buttons. Still: oof.

Here are some things a writer must earn the right to use and still have me read the story:
Shakespeare as a character
John Dee same
Tesla same
King Arthur
superstring theory in any form
orbs
parallel universes interacting in the story
vampires
anything that resembles a hobbit (especially if it's not called a "hobbit")
any being with pointed ears
any alien with apostrophes in its name
any human with apostrophes in its name (yes, I know, I go by M'ris; the apostrophe is entirely optional, and anyway I also have a bio of Tesla on my shelves; real life is different)
song lyrics written by the author
an entire story structured around song lyrics written by someone else (different from "inspired by a lyric")
anything related to the US Civil War, up to and including Great-Granddad's rifle
Freemasons
a main character who is a writer
a main character who "wishes" he/she was "still" a writer but who has been blocked
teenagers whose clothes are as cool as the author desperately wished her (or his, but let's be real here: her) clothes were in high school
teenagers who use improbable dialect
anyone with a stutter, drawl, or brogue spelled phonetically, particularly if it's done wrong: I have had friends with each of same, and they do not actually sound like that
excessive similes

Oh, lordy, that one jolts me right out of the list, because Ill Met by Moonlight had William Shakespeare, his plays as an aspect of reality, and the similes, heaven help me, the similes. They were so carefully period. "His thoughts tumbled through his mind like the extremely period fool he'd seen at the extremely period village fair in Well-Researched Local Town." Yeah, and her thoughts flew like a book flying through the air into the trash can.

So anyway, what are some of your hot buttons? What elements does a writer have to earn? What has to be incredibly well-handled to get over your automatic dislike?

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Governments which operate much better than any real-life government.

Alternate history in which the outcome of one battle changes the outcome of a war. Extra demerits if that battle is Gettysburg.

Military leaders who never make mistakes; though I'll accept that if magic is involved.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

M'ris?

Please don't read my Shakespeare book. *g* kthxbye!

More seriously, I didn't like either of the two Hoyt books I read, but it was more a plot and prose style issue than a historical character issue.

I have a list of hot buttons as long as your arm. Unearned happy endings are high on it, so are ugly duckling stories. (ugly girl turns beautiful, gets guy.) (So of course I wrote myself into a plot corner where the ugly girl had to turn, at least, plain, but I did try to deconstruct it a bit in passing. :-P)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Funny, I'm less likely to accept mistake-free military leaders if magic is involved, because there are more variables and also the magic looks like it could very easily be a crutch or a blind spot.

I'm more the other way with alternate histories: I get frustrated when the "one change" doesn't change enough. The Roman Empire never fell...but somehow Thomas Jefferson was still born and became a polymath and did important things! Yah. WhatEVer.

Almost every alternate history I read is like this. Authors (damned idiotic things, authors) can't seem to resist sticking their favorite historical figures in them for cameos, even when it makes no damn sense for the historical figure in question to exist at all, much less in their famous form. It's beyond determinism into fate and destiny, is what, and I'll have none of it.

[platypus]

Any wackiness of punctuation, tense or capitalization requires some serious justification, and it had damn well better happen quickly. My library gets a lot of "popular reading" books, varying wildly from trashy but popular bestsellers to current works of fairly well-respected literature. I often place holds on them based on a one-paragraph blurb in the catalog. This often proves to be a bad idea. Once, I picked up one of my holds only to find that the author did not believe in using quotation marks or question marks. He was apparently okay with periods and commas, but I didn't last long enough to see if there were semicolons. Present tense is a huge hurdle that a very good story may overcome; on very, very rare occasions I may be able to warily tolerate a book that switches tenses for backstory.

I'm fond of reading first efforts by non-famous fantasy/sci-fi authors, but a lot of them use impossible-to-remember (or mentally pronounce) character names. I'm not crazy about italicized terms from other languages within the fantasy universe, or unusual punctuation meant to designate mental telepathy. A book I recently read had a class of magicians called ahalad-kaaslane. This term appeared hundreds of times in the book, whole and italicized every goddamn time. Could the author not come up with something a little shorter? I bet she had a macro for typing it. I suppose I should have known better -- going into the book, I knew it was about people who telepathically bond with talking animals. But I am a little bit of a sucker for stories like that, because there is a part of me that is still thirteen.

[palinade.livejournal.com]

Talking animals who bond with their person and are more human than animal.

Child characters who act more like adults then children.

Neat and tidy endings to highly conflicted and complex plots.

Authors who lose interest in their own works before the trilogy is completed.

Authors who have too much interest in their own works and continue the story even when it's long over.

"Moral of the story" stories.

Fantasy that is derivative and predictable.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Did I not say multiple books I'd loved? Did I not? And was not friendship also on the list, hmmmmmmmmm?

The prose was not my thing, but I didn't read far enough to find out about the plot.

Are unearned unhappy endings also no good?

[loup_noir]

Continuing from a discussion in buymeaclue's journal: unnecessary relationships. Just because there is more than one character in a story does not mean that there has to be a romance involved. Can't people be friends/acquaintances/not interested?

Long descriptions of clothing. Hate it. Don't care. Don't care. Don't care. This piggybacks onto female protagonists with weird eye colors, hair down to their butts, and too sexy for their whatevers.

20th century mindsets on previous eras' characters. The plucky female character who seems to head most historical fiction drives me insane.


The corollary is the cloistered religious who blithely waltzes out of the monastery/abbey all the time.

Eleanor of Aquitaine has to be earned, dammit. Likewise, Jehanne d'Arc.

Cutsey talking animals with human motivations.

Whiny protagonists.

Protagonists with dopey made-up names or descriptive ones like Saffira of the Wicked-Cool Knives.

Hot buttons. Whoa. Too many. However, that doesn't seem to slow down my book buying much.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*g* *snuggles M'ris.*

Hmm. I tend to think of those as gratuitous unhappy endings. If they suit the story, they're not gratuitous. If I feel like it's the writer going "Hah hah! you thought this would have a happy ending, but I'm pulling a switcheroo!" I get cranky.

[platypus]

Oh, one of my favorites: characters who look into mirrors and describe themselves, because the author cannot bear to creep into omniscience enough to tell us what we need to know.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

Any story in which a cat is a major character. I'm okay with catlike aliens, I'll even swallow telepathic "treecats" although it was a hard swallow, but that's it.

Elves.

Future history in which the plot mirrors past history right down to the too-cutesy names. (David Weber, I'm looking at you.)

Genocide by cultures that the writer considers the good guys, which goes unremarked and unregretted. (Alan Foster, this means you.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I, too, require quotation marks and question marks.

You know, I have a hard time believing in something like ahalad-kaaslane from a linguistic standpoint. People don't call them "kaaslanes" or "ahalads" or "allis" or something? It's not even that the author couldn't have come up with something shorter, it's that "ahalad-kaaslane" is a mouthful to use regularly for an entire class of people.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Because the author cannot conceive of the idea that the character's flowing locks and impish chin might be totally irrelevant to us in the first place.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There was one -- ummm, Robin Hobb, maybe? -- character who had telepathy with animals, and the cat was always thinking things like, "Pet the cat!" and "Food for the cat!" Which is much better than the "cats are aloof and mysterious and thinking deep thoughts" meme. (Also not a major character.)

The main problem I remember with David Weber -- and I haven't read any of these books since college -- is that he's like freakin' Batman: you can tell who's good and who's bad by how they look.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Also, child characters who act like idealized children instead of real adults or real children. Disingenuous Victorian confusion of ignorance and innocence.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you not care about clothing in real life, either, or just not in fiction?

Eleanor of Aquitaine is not the same person if everybody else is a Strong And Willful Queen.

There are actual earth societies with descriptive names. Does Frank the Bald annoy you as much, or is it just Elfiniel the Ethereal?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

If I open a book in the bookstore and the first page has more than say, two words starting with Portentious Capital Letters, then I put it back.

Repeat the above, substituting "words in italics" for "Portentious Capital Letters."

Present tense.

Plot points hinging on votes and dull politicking.

Plots that involve political parties of any sort - fantasy and historical as well as contemporary.

Talking animals. Animals that walk upright.

Telepathy in any way, shape, form, or fashion.

Aliens, elves, or human tribes that are thinly-disgusied versions of the Noble Savage myth.

Painfully obvious environmental axes to gind, especially since most of them are simplistic.

Humans and aliens in love.

Elves that are nothing more than humans with pointy ears, attitudes, and good hair. As a corollary to that, elves and elflike creatures that owe more to bastardizations of Tolkien and RPGs than to actual European fairy legends.

Most alternate history.

Women in medieval societies that have modern attitudes towards gender roles without a corresponding modern pharmeceutical toolkit of reliable contraceptives. Also, any nobleperson who has modern attitudes towards the plight of the poor and working class without a corresponding social or religious background woven into the society.

[ellarien]

Vampires -- I'll take those from Barbara Hambly, Robin McKinley, and Terry Pratchett, but hardly anyone else.

King Arthur and friends.

Disposable guards, on either side. Disposable horses.

Ancient evil stirring after generations of peace -- anything along those lines in the blurb is likely to get a new fantasy author put right back on the shelf.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

'I'm more the other way with alternate histories: I get frustrated when the "one change" doesn't change enough. The Roman Empire never fell...but somehow Thomas Jefferson was still born and became a polymath and did important things!'

Writers often manage to combine both. The Roman Empire never fell because one battle went the other way -- after which it never again faced an enemy which could possibly defeat it. And Thomas Jefferson and various others somehow managed to get born.

[loup_noir]

I don't mind the "Philip the Bold picked up his cloak" sentences, or even when the cloak is described in detail because it's important, but when each chapter has endless descriptions of shirts, dresses, underwear, etc... I get bored. If the clothing actually has a part to play in the story, I'm there, but when the author appears to have a fashion fetish, no.

I am well aware that there are many societies with descriptive names. Some of them are hilarious. I am also aware that the Joe of Blahsville naming convention is common. It's the high falutin', wanna be atmospheric names that make me snigger that bug me. Most descriptive names tend to be the Frank the Bald sorts of things. Peppin the Short, Charles the Simple, Philip the Fair, all historical names and still the sort of thing people tag others with. C'aruthra of the Silvery Unicorn or Saphira of the Sparkling Eyes and Bouncy Bodice... just doesn't have the ring of a real name. To me, at least.

Eleanor is possibly to me what William Shakespeare is to you.

[palinade.livejournal.com]

Robin Hobb did the "pet the cat" thing in her second Farseer trilogy. But I got the impression that the Wit wasn't exactly telepathy as it was more like empathy or a deeper understanding of the animal mindset. It was different enough from the Pern thing, so it didn't bother overly much.

But yah, I'm also not impressed by the "cats are aloof" meme.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Point of order - you can't always tell who's good and who's bad by appearance in Batman.

Unless you mean, "He looks like he's about to shoot me!"

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Bitchy, Know-it-all important female characters
Groups of characters who save the entire world/universe/whatever more than once
Sequels about the first crop of characters' direct descendents.
The use of the word "smithy" to refer to a person rather than a place.
Phonetic spellings of perfectly sensible words. "Should of"
Characters who are the absolute Best.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Ap'os'tro'phe n'ames that don't make linguistic sense (if there is a genuine glottal stop there, I'm fine with it)--and same with double aa names or ii names. (Unless there is a real reason for them.)

Raven locks. (What the hell is wrong with black hair?)

John Dee. (What about Paracelsus? Melancthon? Agrippa? At least Nostradamus has gone out of fashion, thank goodness.)

Any sword, path, or crown of destiny. Or fate.

Dirty cities of eternal night where there don't seem to be anything but thirty-somethings in terminally cool clothes, who are all revolutionaries, except for the incredibly ugly bad guys who all work either for gangsters or for the corrupt bourgeoisie. I mean, doesn't anyone run a laundromat? A preschool? Doesn't anyone wear, like, pink?

Dragons and vampires (Jo Walton and Barbara Hambly made me love their dragon stories--and Robin McKinley and Steven Brust their vampires, so What You Said about winning over one's automatic dislike)

Regency era anything that has obviously had its research done from Georgette Heyer

The evial priests in red or black who never conduct a service, see to the poor, or do much of anything but lurk around menacing passing heroes

telepathic animal companions who are more more perfect, wiser, and more powerful than God

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

Eh... Batman does hew pretty close to the warped mind == warped body convention. But not always, I'll grant that.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I can't deal with names that have bizarre apostrophes and/or overtly cutsey "You Are In A Different World" spellings.

No gratuitous unhappy endings simply because the author things it gives him/her more street cred to be dark.

No gigantic coincidences - I can barely swallow some of the ones in the early Vorkosigan books, and I adore Bujold. So from a writer I don't trust? Not a chance.

Main characters who make really stupid assumptions that the whole plot hinges on. I read a book about a woman who wished to go back to the days of the Roman Empire...because women had more freedom and people were more enlightened than they are in modern America. So of course, she gets her chance and oh, goodness! Turns out they aren't! Who would have thought! Cue grinding teeth noises here.