what i'll read

[necessarian]

mostly to satisfy my own hankering for completeness, a list of things i like and don't like to read, in general and organised by fandom. next to each fandom below, i have noted my level of engagement with the fandom at the present time. it is possible but unlikely that i will read fics in a fandom not listed. assume spoilers for all fandoms listed.


contents

1. general notes
2. a song of ice and fire [inactive; unlikely to read]
3. brideshead revisited [minor; likely to read]
4. haikyuu!! [inactive; unlikely to read]
5. hamlet [minor; likely to read]
6. harry potter [major; actively reading]
7. the magicians [inactive; likely to read]
8. merlin [minor; likely to read]
9. the raven cycle [inactive; likely to read]
10. the secret history [major; likely to read]
11. yuri!!! on ice [inactive; unlikely to read]

in general...

you can assume that i am positive-neutral to anything not listed below.

favourite tropes and themes:

• politics
• espionage
• sci-fi
• fantasy
• university
• celebrity (especially if there is in-universe fandom)
• different time periods (i.e. modern/historical depending on source material)
• character/relationship studies
• genfic
• canon divergence
• fix-it fic
• time travel/time loops
• fusion crossovers
• getting together
• fake dating
• kisses in the rain
• psychic connections/drift compatibility
• bittersweet open endings
• swordfighting
• bodyswap
• possession/body sharing

squick territory - i am likely to list these as DNWs in exchanges, but will read fics containing them, and in many cases these are things i enjoy. i am just extremely picky about how these concepts are pulled off:

• dubcon
• de-aging/characters as kids
• PWP
• prostitution/strippers
• hospitals/medical patients
• mental health issues
• bigotry as a central theme
• major character death
• animal death
• animals as a plot point
• world war 2
• group chats/texting
• mentor/student ships
• non-canonical murder

hard no:

• underage
• noncon
• sexual abuse/harassment
• mpreg
• omegaverse
• BDSMverse
• unsanitary kink (e.g. piss, scat, food kink)
• terminal illness
• slavery/bondage
• genderbend/cisswap (note: this does not include trans headcanons)
• mafia
• flower shop/tattoo artist

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a song of ice and fire

favourite themes:

• jaime/brienne - sad endings will only be tolerated on occasion
• renly/loras
• happy endings for poor old jon connington
• genfic, especially:
  • team dragonstone - without a trace of irony, i want stannis to end up on the iron throne
  • the night's watch
  • less-explored canon characters and regions - the reach, the vale, the riverlands, dorne
  • villains - tywin, roose, ramsay - the more fucked up the better
• canon divergence/speculative canon
• worldbuilding, fics with scope and exploration
• magic - destructive or otherwise
• swordfights, battle
• unlikely AU settings, modern or fusion

things i'll avoid:

• anything at all relating to the TV adaptation
• the vast majority of ships, canon or otherwise
• canon typical slavery and/or sexual violence - if you're going to engage with that, i want to see fix-it worldbuilding
• daenerys. sorry
• straight up modern aus without any flavour to them. it's hard to give an example of flavour; but let's just say i've read one high school au that was incredible and i don't think i could read another.

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brideshead revisited

favourite themes:

• charles/sebastian, happy endings, requited love, the spirit of "epilogue what epilogue"
• missing moments from canon
• any sort of different setting/fusion AU

things i'll avoid:

• bury your gays/any sort of painfully unhappy ending that isn't canon compliant. if i wanted that i would just... reread canon :P
• too much minor character focus - i am pretty single-focus on the main trio for this canon

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haikyuu!!

favourite themes:

• team bonding genfic - in particular any of the sendai teams but mainly datekou
• datekou.
• minor characters in the character study spotlight
• the holy trinity of ships i love: tsukkiyama, oisuga, ennofuta
• but really, most crack ships
• levyaku, ukatake... timeskip content??
• GIRLS!!!!!!!
• weird and exciting AUs, so long as they don't involve making anyone/everyone an anglophone
• missing moments and episode tag

things i'll avoid:

• these days, most ships. in particular i physically cannot go near ennotana, kurotsuki, and oiyama. nothing personal.
• i will also broadly avoid iwaoi; it's not a notp, but it does turn me off, especially as a background ship
• fics with more than two or three ships, depending
• anything set in america or whatever for no apparent reason, e.g. fics where everyone is born in america
• blatant disregard for the fact that the series is set in japan; fics with zero grounding in any cultural context except a "default western" one
• memes

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hamlet

favourite themes:

• hamlet/horatio
• wildly AU settings - modern AUs set in denmark preferred but i'll take any western setting
• crossovers, particularly fusion but also intra-shakespeare crossovers
• justice for ophelia
• character study - any character!
• canon divergence - everyone lives?
• post-canon horatio fic - horatio/fortinbras welcome but not necessary for a good time

things i'll avoid:

• i'm seriously not fussy about hamlet fic, beyond my usual squicks. beggars can't be choosers i'll eat it all up

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harry potter

favourite themes:

• percy/oliver - preferably post-canon but canon era is good too
• remus/sirius - first war era is my favourite
• minor characters in the spotlight!!! particularly:
  • zacharias smith
  • percy weasley
  • anthony goldstein
  • any ravenclaws or hufflepuffs in and around harry's age group
  • the slytherin girls - pansy, millicent, daphne, and tracey
• really, really plotty canon divergence
• re-sorting (except ravenclaw harry, which has been poisoned for me by the cult of MoR)
• unusual minor character ships - dare i say... crack ships...
• casefic (though i prefer harry not being an auror)
• epilogue, what epilogue?
• ministry of magic & politics
• post-war fic that really gets into the nitty gritty of the country's recovery
• dumbledore's army as real revolutionaries
• any focus on the wizarding world outside the UK which doesn't rely on jkr's lazy worldbuilding (lol)
• unusual darkfic - by unusual i mean tropes i haven't seen done before, or psychological horror that doesn't rely too heavily on tropey torture
• pro quidditch player harry
• redeemed but still a shitlord draco
• ron&draco&zacharias friendship, in any permutation
• lesbian ginny, lesbian tonks
• jewish remus
• magical dudley

things i'll avoid:

• marriage law fic. if you haven't heard of it, it's the stuff with all those eugenics undertones, where usually the conceit is that magic is dying out after the war and all muggleborns are forced to marry purebloods. my #1 least favourite harry potter trope, i can't even be kind and say "it's just not my cup of tea." like, completely unironically, if you think this trope is in any way acceptable, please just stay 10 feet away from me.
• literally anything that threatens the sanctity of romione (threesomes with viktor not included in this)
• student/teacher ships, any snape ships
• i know i already mentioned romione, but i particularly dislike hermione being shipped with slytherins/canon death eaters, cf dramione, pansmione, hermione/scabior & stuff in that ilk
• creature inheritance/veela fic
• all that weird harem fic that's out there
• anything with like dark!harry or secretly-a-prince!harry, that sort of thing
• racebending/jewbending any of the villainous/posh pureblood characters
• professor harry
• salazar slytherin apologia
• uncritical dumbledore bashing
• uncritical snape apologia or bashing
• weasley bashing
• gryffindor morality - i.e. "it's fine if the protagonists do it"
• zacharias smith as an arbitrary villain, e.g. a bully to a way worse magnitude than in canon, sexually abusive, a literal murderer (i have seen all of these)
• any fantastic beasts/cursed child content
• ilvermorny
• fics set in the american schooling/college system

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the magicians

favourite themes:

• queliot!!! in particular, i love relationship studies. i am mainly interested in getting together if it's canon divergent, or bookverse, but i'm always open to being surprised.
• alternate versions of queliot, such as: beast!quentin, monster!eliot, lizard!eliot, brian, nigel, and alternate timeline selves
• anything eliot-centric, particularly wrt his relationships with quentin, margo, and fen
• fix-it for both the show and the books
• stuff relating to the books; i'm mainly in the fandom for the tv show but i'm interested in the way the books get into the magic of the world and i love reading about that stuff
• weird and whacky worldbuilding
• canon divergence/speculative canon/wild theorising
• mental health stuff, for any character. they all need therapy. (but note: mental health issues being treated in ways that i personally find lazy or insensitive will get me to close the tab) (side note: i wrote that before 4x13 and guess what? i closed the tab on watching the show. still in the fandom tho)
• possession - particularly the monster, but as a theme in general. (marge simpson voice) i just think it's neat
• not to put too fine a point on it... fucked up shit. darkfic.

things i'll avoid:

• polyamory getting together fics. yes, specifically just for this fandom. this is a bit of a weird one because everyone on the show is implied to be a little bit poly (with the exception of, like, alice?) but i am really personally not interested in reading about non-established/casual poly for this fandom. (i will talk about this in private if you're curious.)
• excessively more noncon or suicide than is already canon.
• not really interested in AUs or crossovers for this fandom, which is unusual for me, but there you have it. good AUs can always convince me but i'm a lot harder to convince here.
• permadeath - sad/open endings are fine but right now i am particularly sensitive to permanent bad ends. (side note: i also wrote this before 4x13. i will read fics that acknowledge what happened but ONLY if they are fix-it.)

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merlin

favourite themes:

• merthur
• gwen/lance or gwen/morgana
• modern AU, especially modern with magic, or period AUs (eg 80s/90s)
• magic reveal fics
• reincarnation - this is basically the only fandom where i can read this trope, because it has specific canon parameters

things i'll avoid:

• i am less interested in canonverse fic for merlin, with the exception of canon divergence or magic reveal AUs
• being wholly harsh on morgana really harshes my vibe

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the raven cycle

favourite themes:

• adansey - adam in general
• adansey that happens even though pynch and bluesy have already happened in the past
• vancouver boys
• dreams and magic and small town strangeness
• fics with a strong sense of henrietta as a character, not just a place
• post-canon which tinkers with the ending a little, particularly where adam is concerned
• declan and helen as real people not just nasty older siblings - in general a rich inner life for all the bad guys and "okay" guys
• i love college AUs for this fandom, even better when they're future fic
• complete AUs which still have magic anyway
• complete AUs which have nothing magical about them except the inherent spark of the characters and prose

things i'll avoid:

• i used to read a lot of pynch and i still have a soft spot for the ship but at the moment i'm not really looking to read more
• opal. sorry, hoof child squicks me, also i'm not a fan of magic baby for gay couple. like, you know they can just adopt, right?
• henry/noah; feels very pair the spares to me

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the secret history

favourite themes:

• francis getting to relax and be happy
• richard/francis - chiefly post-canon, once everything has gone down, these two being stuck together forever and somehow making a home there
• richard/twins - chiefly during canon, when richard has a massive honking crush on both of them
• bunny/henry, unfortunately - the more fucked up the better
• ensemble cast fic, genfic, casefic or heavily plotty stuff
• AUs of most stripes

things i'll avoid:

• woobie francis - i am particularly irked by the recurrent depiction of anxiety disorders as something that just means you cry all the time and need a lot of pampering. i am happy to talk more about this in private or even act as a sensitivity reader.
• henry/julian
• henry/richard, though i can be convinced in the transient, "it happened once in a dream" sense
• francis/charles; it's unhealthy, and i don't mind reading it portrayed as such, but sometimes the dramatisation of charles' abuse is a bit on the nose for me

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yuri!!! on ice

favourite themes:

• viktuuri
• jewish viktor. my agenda.
• canonverse - missing moments, episode tag
• explorations of yuuri's anxiety
• genfic that centres minor characters, especially female characters
• canon divergence
• lots of AU settings, in particular celebrity AUs and alternate getting-togethers
• language barriers and explorations of cultural differences
• comedy
• excessive consumption of alcohol

things i'll avoid:

• fics that wholesale ignore viktor and yuuri's different backgrounds
• minor ships; sorry, i'm mostly here for viktuuri
• excessively dark fic. not in my token fluff canon, satan.
• character bashing; the ones i see most commonly being yurio or viktor bashing

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