All of my Hunter x Hunter works were written before the 2011 anime was finished and the manga was still on it's year long hiatus so if something doesn't add up to the current manga facts, that's why. A lot of what I wrote followed the 1999 anime so if a character color scheme doesn't match, that is also why.

I've been a fan of Phalanx for quite some time, I highly recommend her works. So here, take this list because I love it and am also too lazy to be original.

Phalanx's Fanfic Jargon Decryption and Taboo List:

Sturgeon's Law says 90 percent of everything fanfic is crap. Maybe by learning to decipher what the story summaries (and related) REALLY mean, I can bypass the 90 and get to the good 10 percent. At least, I hope.

1. "Don't Like Don't Read" = Author is insecure about own work and scared of being flamed. If an author is that scared of criticism, chances are they're unlikely to improve in their writing, making the chances of what they've already written highly unlikely to be something worth reading anyway. Just stick with the "Don't Read" portion.

2. CharacterxOC, Character2xOC, Character3xOC = OC romances can be done well. Multiples of those in one fic and advertised in the summary? Priority of writer is shown that way. No. Just no.

3. "Will Only Update If I Get Enough Reviews" = Author lacks confidence in own ability and needs to emotionally blackmail readers into leaving reviews. If the the story is worth reading, people would leave reviews. If the story is really bad, people leave flames. If the story is mediocre, people ignore it. (Deal with it!) Not worth reading as the chances of the story being left hanging is extremely high.

4. "My Summary Sucks!" = Skip. If one cannot write a good summary of a hundred words or so, can really I hope for a better effort in a few thousand words? I think not.

5. "Don't Send Me PMs, Reply in Reviews" = Author wants to artificially inflate number of reviews to hide the fact quality of writing does not match up. Ignore.

6. "Character is now called OCname and is Totally Different Person" = OC story with a paper-thin disguise as fanfic. (Seriously, what's the point? Is the story that damn bad they have to try and trick people into reading it?)

7. "OCs Needed!" = MMORPG Self-Inserts Needed. I wouldn't dislike this type of fic so much if it wasn't for the fact most of them seem to extremely bland and relying on a readership of people who want to see their characters in the story propping it up. Worst of all, they seem to be copying the same ideas from each other, with hardly any new twists or original input at all. Where art thou, imagination and creativity? Also, they have inflated review counts from misusing the reviews section as a forum, making my job of finding genuinely well-reviewed stories so much harder.

8. "No Flames!" = See entry #1.

9. "Mysterious" followed by the word "Girl" followed by attractive canon character's names mentioned in ANY story summary = See entry #2

10. A (Colour) haired girl/guy with (colour) eyes wearing (clothing description) was (Activity) = Every character's introduction is done in this same pattern. And then every subsequent reference to them is 99% of the time referencing the colour of their hair or eyes. Because there is absolutely no other defining feature about them other than their freaking eyes and hair. Nice to know their priorities, and thanks for making it easy on me to identify a bad writer. Hit the back button for this one. Don't click if any appear in the summary.

11. It's Better Than It Sounds = Highly Doubtful if the author is the one saying this...

12. Anything with the words " his/her lover" in the title or summary = See (#2)

13. This is a story about X, an OC who joins the [main cast name here] = See (#9)

14. The first sentence of the summary starts with the OC's name, and the rest of the summary is all about describing the OC = See (#9) again.

15. If You Have Nothing Nice To Say, Don't Say Anything At All = A well-meaning, if extremely BAD piece of advice oft repeated by people who didn't know better, and probably has been responsible for more damage and heartbreak than outright sabotage has ever managed. Sure, one's ego is preserved that way, but that's a very steep price to pay for keeping yourself in denial and not hearing things you NEED to hear. Good friends tell the hard truth to the people they care about, because they want to help their friends get better. False friends will insincerely tell you how great you are in your face and ditch you when you get overconfident as a result of it and make a prat of yourself. Good friends, they tell you the things you don't want to hear, but they also stick with you unless you drive them away. Don't drive them away.

Phalanx's Good Fanfic Glossary:

1. OC = Only-Created-Out-Of-Necessity Character. If there are no secondary background characters or cameos you can use to fulfill whatever it is you have planned, THEN you create an OC to serve that purpose. Not the other way around.

2. Romance = Something you only end up writing into a story as a side effect of the plot because two characters ended up having too much chemistry you couldn't just ignore it because that would have been unrealistic.

3. Research = Something you should always do before even thinking about writing about a topic you know nothing about. At the very least read the Wikipedia article on the subject, will you?

4. Concrit = Solid gold. Hug and thank the reviewer and then hug and thank them some more.

5. Paragraph-Break = Requirement to keep any kind of writing readable.

6. Line-Break = Something FFnet eats for dessert but you can and have to reinstate manually.

7. Succinctness = The key to good writing. If you can't write a good summary, you can't write a good anything with a word limit. If you can't write a good word-limited fic, you definitely can't write a good epic saga spanning several chapters because it's going to wander all over the place. What you're going to end up with is a handful of meandering chapters that never get to the point before you give up. And this is something I learned the hard way.