Uh...I'm, me? I hate personal notes.

Okay, that's not actually true. I love writing these long things, I just never know how to start them off.

Anyway I don't actually write that much fanfiction of my own, but I read quite a lot. In the many years since I've started reading these stories I think I've developed a fairly good ability to judge the good from the bad.

Good:

Original, interesting plot that deals with a concept that was very undeveloped in the original work. Into this category falls an equally facinating group: speculation about the past of a character who's past was only partially revealed.

A piece on an underappreciated character

A thoughtful, character-faithful continuation of a story that ended with lots of loose ends.

A romantic interlude that might have happened, if it's character-faithful and well writen

A well written comedic interlude

Crossovers can be really awesome if they're written properly

A story about one or more side characters set at a time when their adventures were not being chronicled for us.

I must admit to a certain weakness with regards to shameless smut, if it's framed properly.

Bad:

Vignetts. Espeically ones that repeat words for emphasis. Trust me, you are not a good enough writer to make the come out right.

A story that is just a re-hash of part of the original work. I already read/saw/heard this once, I don't need you to write it for me again, even if it's from the point of veiw of a different character.

Self-Insertion characters. If you don't know what they are that's not my problem. To put it breifly, if your character is beautiful and strong but also broken and hurting, and if she seems to have a habit of beating up boys who hit on her, she may be a self insertion character. These characters generally seem really cool to anyone under the age of about 17, and kind of lame to everyone older. On their own they can actually sometimes make decent main characters, but in a fanfic they're extreamly inappropriate.

As a sub-class of self-insertion are stories where some notable female character who is in the source material is converted into a self-insertion character.

Stories where nothing happens are really annoying. If you want to write an alternate universe story about someone hanging around in highschool, that's fine, but they can't just go to class and make friends.

Speculation about something that will eventually happen in the story is annoying, because lets face it, sooner or later it's going to be contradicted. Sure, comic books and tv shoes go on forever, and we all want to know how it's going to end, but guess what? It's not going to end like you think it is. Honestly stories like this are neat to read before the show/comic/whatever has ended and only become really annoying after it's over.

Male pregnancy should be avoided AT ALL COSTS. There is NEVER ANY REASON to make a male character have a baby if there is no indication in the source material that this is possible. It's just so indescribably weird, and will cause readers to question weather or not you are aware of how human anatomy is supposed to function. It also falls into the realm of stories where two characters have an annoying kid, another of the kinds of fanfiction I don't like.

Which leads me to The story where the main characters have an annoying kid who has adventures of their own. This kid is almost ALWAYS a self insertion character.

Personally, I also have some unreasonable dislikes:

I hate poetry.

I hate stories about weird crack pairings.

I HATE HATE HATE a story where a character gets raped. This is so unnecessary. It's almost as bad as suicide fics, which I also dislike. Usually non-con is used to bring two characters together, but that's not how it works in real life. People who get raped in the real world have terrible problems with relationships later in life, especially intimacy. to have a character who gets raped and then, to ease the pain, goes and has "good" sex with their significant other is just completely stupid. The only way I can see this working is if it's fairly clear that the character is VERY experienced and jaded with regards to sex, or has already been raped before. But in that case, their sleeping with their significant other seems rather meaningless, doesn't it?

To have a person turn out to have been raped as a child is also a terrible thing to do. Unless you have done some research about how this effects people and think it must really have happened to the character, it's just not something that should be drug out.

My final gripe is stories where "love takes all the pain away" because unless the source material was really that silly, love does not take all the pain away. Stories that start with one character sad or angsting or whatever, and then Significant Other comes and gives them a hug, and then it's all peaches and sunshine, are a dime a dozen on this site, and frankly they need to stop.

Geeze, I didn't mean to make that so long. I guess the best rule I've ever made for myself was to not read any story that was under 1000 words per chapter if it was more than one chapter long. (unless it was a group of unrelated short pieces.)

Currently I'm not particularly tied to any one fandom, I just sort of skim around as the fancy strikes me.