Literary Tastes

[lillibet]

Someone on my f-list (wave!) mentioned that she doesn't enjoy reading love stories. Fair enough and good to know yourself well enough to see that pattern. Me, I've got lots of likes and dislikes--love science fiction, enjoy a good mystery, not much for war stories, really dislike horror--although any book is going to lose or win points for style.

But thinking about this brought to mind one of my oddest literary kinks: I don't do diminutive protagonists. I'm not talking a few inches below average--I'm not that much of a size queen (although my taste for tall men may play into this)--but actual little people or otherwise stunted characters really turn me off. I can deal with them as sidekicks or if they're not short for their fantastical races (hobbits and Tolkeinesque dwarves are fine) but I realized a year or two ago that when the physical description of the main character involves them being stunted in some way, a misfit due to height, it turns me right off reading it. Oddly, this doesn't extend to visual media or the real world--I don't mind looking at little people, just reading about them, apparently. I think this is a large part of why I never warmed to Miles Vorkosigan.

Anyway, enough about me--what particular details reliably turn you on or off, literarily?

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

redheaded, green-eyed witches. it's just....too many times.

(my spouse similarly demonstrates that this doesn't apply to the real world, like, at all ;)

[billmarrs.livejournal.com]

When a character cheats (has an affair or something like that), I tend to get annoyed with them and this annoyance can extend to the whole work, turning me off. I think it applies equally to all media. Though, it's not a deal killer, per se, just a general turn-off.

[skreeky]

I'm with you on this. At that point I have no sympathy or connection to the character at all. If he or she is not sorry and then damages things further (lying, or at the other extreme cruelly rubbing the spouse's nose in it) I close the book and never pick it up again.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Right with both of you on that one, at least if we're talking about a situation where someone else gets hurt by the cheating/betrayal, or someone may potentially get hurt (even if the writer decides to fortuitously write the character having any need to feel guilt because the wounded party ends up better off somehow). And this literary preference actually does extend to real life, for the most part.

I suppose I might come around if the character learns a good lesson from it, but that doesn't seem to happen in real life very often, and in any case I'm not going to be able to sympathize with the betraying-character in the meantime.

(If anybody reading this suspects this preference has anything to do with experiences in my real life, yes, you're 100% correct. It's interesting, because for the most part in this discussion it doesn't sound like that's where other people's rational/irrational revulsions stem from...)

[skreeky]

Stupid characters that don't do the obvious solution. You know the type.

"I wonder why he doesn't just [thing that would solve problem immediately]. Oh, right. Because then there wouldn't be a book."

I also have low tolerance for characters that are needlessly mean to each other, or thoughtless or selfish but the reader is supposed to like them anyway. This seems to be most common in the newer "realistic" romantic comedies, many of which I find myself thinking "Well, at least the characters seem to DESERVE each other."

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

> Stupid characters that don't do the obvious solution.

Since I read children's books almost exclusively, I have to deal with this a lot. It irks me in YA novels in particular. It's something that I sometimes struggle with -- there are times when I'm not being fair, expecting a child or teen to act as if he or she were an adult like me, with all my experience. This is particularly true when it comes to emotional experiences! And since another pet peeve of mine is "child" protagonists who really aren't children at all, just mouthpieces for adult authors, I try to be aware.

On the other hand, there are plenty of teen novels where the protagonists really are just so dumb I can't take it. This tends to bother me the most in genre fiction (where I'm going oh come ON, he's so obviously the villain in disguise, what are you, stupid???) -- and I don't think teen readers would like that any more than I do. I can handle a young character's immaturity in realistic novels, but total incompetence in genre fiction? It defeats one of child genre fiction's big attractions, its tendency to empower child and teen characters in literal ways. (Not that all genre fiction, nor even all good genre fiction, does this -- I've read some really great bumbling-protagonist stories -- but those are different, and I'd definitely say that protagonist empowerment is characteristic of genre fiction for kids.)

Needless meanness is Right Out. (Unless it's really funny.)

[joyeous.livejournal.com]

I admit, I do not have much of a taste for love stories. I should clarify that I like them when they are set within some other setting or have other plots going on. For example, one could call "Girl With a Pearl Earring" a love story, but because of the historical fiction aspect of it, I really loved that book, whereas I wouldn't like a modern day version of it necessarily.

I like action thrillers, but cannot get into them if the characters are too perfect and I cannot sympathize or empathize with them at all. For example, I liked the Da Vinci Code, but there was this other Dan Brown novel about a computer, where the main character was a woman who was not only the smartest woman alive, but was also like a model, a tennis pro, extremely wealthy, had several Ph.D's, etc.

They said her biggest problem in life was that her fiancee, who was a well-renowned professor and extremely good-looking, was "old-fashioned" and would not let her pay for dinners, even though she was much wealthier than him.

I think I put the book down, and perhaps threw up a little in my mouth, at this point.

[dpolicar]

I think this is a large part of why I never warmed to Miles Vorkosigan.

Amusingly, about halfway through that paragraph I thought "Oh! THAT's why she doesn't like Vorkosigan." I remember you telling me once that you didn't, and giving me an explanation that made no sense to me at the time, though I don't remember it clearly.

Mostly, my literary turnons in protagonists are smart and funny. My major protagonist-turnoff is mean. The ons usually trump the offs... I can like smart funny mean protagonists, but they have to actually be written funny. (Often a protagonist can be written as funny without the text itself making me laugh, and that's OK.)

One turnoff that comes strongly to mind is unsympathetic antagonists.

I don't just mean cardboard villains here (though that's an example)... I also have a very hard time with stories about protagonists struggling against bureaucracies, or against very diffuse cultural issues, or Fate, etc.

Note that I distinguish between antagonists and settings or plot. "Playing God", for example, is a novel about a protagonist struggling with a very diffuse cultural issue, but it's basically a gadget-story with the gadget being a culture. She doesn't have to defeat or overcome the culture, she has to figure out how to make it work to suit her needs. That's different.

Thinking about it now, I think I can summarize it as that I don't demand that there be conflict between entities at all, but if there is I want the entities to actually have points of view.

Relatedly, I am most turned on by protagonists with POVs very different from mine presented compellingly.
In a minimalist way, this is what makes "Falling Down" one of my favorite movies... I'm able to hitch a ride with this guy as he climbs carefully into his own private abyss. Not that I like where he ends up, but I like that he takes me there and doesn't lose me along the way.

[lordfeepness.livejournal.com]

I personally have sworn off fantasy novels/series that start with a main character who's a Lowly Farmboy Who Does Not Know His Own Destiny. You may substitute Apprentice, Orphan, Stablekeeper, or Street Urchin for Farmboy. Double turn-off if he ('cause it's always a "he" for some reason) was stashed there by some ally who DOES know his destiny.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

So, I take it, you must *hate* the Harry Potter series?

[dancenerd.livejournal.com]

I made it all the way through both the Belgariad and the Malloreon and two Raymond Feist series before I got to this point, but yeah. I'm with you. (Although Harry Potter didn't bother me in the same way.)

[moria923.livejournal.com]

I have a hard time sympathizing with protagonists who lie regularly. And here I thought *that* was your reason for "loathing" Miles Vorkosigan! If "The Warrior's Apprentice" had been my first bujold read, it probably would have been my last.

[hotpoint.livejournal.com]

That's a particular interesting bent! I think I feel like fiction could use more shorter-than-average protagonists. :) On the other hand, I know that I have trouble with the Hero Who Can't Believe He/She Is Destined To Save The World, ESPECIALLY when they have an unbelievably cute and difficult to tame pet that just happens to be telepathically linked to them.

There are authors who write nothing but bildungsromanen. After a while, you'd think that one of their characters might have the foresight to avoid cursing their own dull humdrum lives and thus get thrust into the center of a continent-spanning duel of magickal wills or something.

One aspect helping run programming for a science fiction convention is getting a chance to see how other people run with your ideas. I had one that I thought would be fruitful: contrasting the tall, blond, dashing action hero archetype with his/her opposite, someone who has to overcome societal opprobium and disability to save the day. I titled it "Kim Kinnison vs. Miles Vorkosigan". Unfortunately, the panelists apparently turned into a debate about trivia from the Lensman series.