1. I'm shamefully and somewhat psychotically addicted to baby fics. I have no fucking clue why but your entire fic could suck monkey balls and if Cameron ends up pregnant in the end, I equate it to a work of Chaucerian literature. So just know that you're gonna find a lot of them here, whether they're good or not.

2. I love, love, love angsty stories that play to a romantic angle (read: Saints and Saviors, Eradication, etc.) not frustrating 'conflict'-ridden ones. If I wanted to be frustrated or deal with conflict, I'd just watch the damn show. I read fanfic to escape that crap. Point is, if you wonder if you should rec me a fic that's all depressing and goes 30 chapters with no sex and HC are fighting through the entire thing, cheating on each other or they break-up for a large chunk of the story... nope, no thanks. Really. I'm good.

3. I love rape-fics (hurt!comfort in general: Cameron hurt in an accident, etc). Before you judge too harshly, I'm a woman who has had some experience with this in real life, therefore I already know that I should know better. I can't speak for everyone but, for me, it isn't about the rape; it's about the idea that there's someone out there who loves you so much that they're willing to walk through Hell with you in order to help you and support you through something so horrible. Which then becomes romantic and why these stories are sometimes really wonderful. Particularly because that rarely happens in real life. So rape fics, while so many people oppose them because they glamorize rape (which I actually don't think is true but that's an argument for another day), aren't about rape at all; they're about the connection people make in tragic circumstances when they care about each other so much. That makes these stories so appealing. Of course, it's also completely dependent on how well the fic is written.

4. I hate overdramatically happy fics. I love positive fics, don't get me wrong. But if you can't actually see it happening on the show (bad characterization), then I probably won't like it. I like realistic happy fics. That means House is still House, just in love with Cameron. HOUSE...not some HouseBot you've created in your evil Gary-Stu factory where House is singing and twirling on a mountaintop.

5. I tend not to like fics that discuss Cameron's family. They're always these insanely nice Brady Bunch types. I have my own ideas about her family and they're usually very far from that.

6. Some posting issues I have:

   • If you're posting a link to an updated chapter of your fic on your LJ rather than on FF.net-- which has drop down menus for other chapters-- please offer links to the other chapters somewhere. It's annoying to have to search through your entire LJ for each chapter of your fic. Especially if it's an older fic that we're just now finding. HOWEVER-- please place the links behind a cut! We don't need to scroll through 30 links in every post.
   • Personal annoyance: I just hate it when people create special titles and colored fonts when they announce their fic on the HC LJ as if their fic is special. It's just kind of tacky. Just stick to the basic format. By making colored or extra large, fancy-font titles or headers, bolding/italicizing/underlining everything....it just seems like you're trying too hard. If your fic is amazing, the readers will know and will be waiting with bated breath for every update. There's no need to set it apart (the writing will do that!).
   • Not having a summary or, worse, using the same summary for every chapter of your fic. 99.9999% of a person's decision to read a fic is based on the summary. I always find it funny when people go to all the trouble of making a fancy header/title for their story but put no effort toward writing a 1-2 lined summary. A lot of times, I'll end up reading a story because I read the chapter summary from one of the later chapters and it sounds interesting, so I start back at the beginning. Plus, a lot of people find fics by doing a simple google search for what they're looking for. By using the same or generic summary for your fic, that makes it easier for a person to skip over yours and choose someone else's with a little more detail to entice them.

7. Please stop trying to sound smart, and just write smart. As a former editor, I can't tell you how tired I am of people trying to make House and Cameron sound ridiculously deep and thoughtful. Every fart they make gets an inner monologue that goes on for 6 pages. Hyperbole, metaphors, inner monologues... use with caution and in moderation!

8. Things that annoy me for $800, Alex: People who forget to put the romance in the 'House/Cameron romance'. Nothing annoys me more than starting to read a fic that has House and Cameron as buddy-buddy through the whole fic with a noticeable lack of romance. Yes, I get that it would be nice that HC are friends before they're lovers but remember you're writing a FANFIC... if we wanted to be frustrated for 20 chapters, we could just watch the show. Most people read fic to get what they aren't getting on the show. Stop trying to write the show and write what we WANT to get!

9. I like reading about people's inspiration for fics, music they listened to, where they got the idea, etc. When I was writing fics I often listed the music I listened to while writing each chapter because music was such a huge influence on what I wrote. I wish more people would do this.

10. Please stop having House 'miraculously' recover from his vicodin addiction because he's in love. This is the dumbest fucking thing ever. House is in pain. That isn't just going to go away because he's having sex. In fact, the pain will get worse if their doing it right *wink*. I just hate when suddenly he stops taking his pills and he's pain free based on the strength of his love for Cameron. It's hilarious.

11. I love one-shot fics. I think that some of the best fics written are one-shots. Not every idea has to be developed into a multichaptered fic. Quality over quantity.

12. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If your fic is getting great reviews, don't suddenly change what you're doing or change the plot. There's this one fic I loved from the Alias fandom that started out so great. I think the author just got all these great reviews and it went to her head, so she figured she had to develop the original idea into a more involved fic. She changed this very simple, very easy idea into this overly complicated plot that obviously wasn't intended in the beginning. It was a simple fluffy fic that became this angst-ridden, 40 chapter-long monster. It ruined the whole fic. So don't suddenly change the entire basis of the original, good idea because you can't control your urge to write a more complex storyline.

13. Editor's tip: If you find yourself constantly writing stories that never seem to end, so you just start new ones with new ideas, this is because you probably don't develop the stories before you write them. You start off with an idea or a few lines of dialogue and you can't wait to share them, so you write it up. Now you're stuck with trying to develop a fic. Instead, try starting with the idea and do a basic, 1 page outline with a beginning, middle and end... and stick to it. Don't just keep putting out chapter after chapter with no progression or direction simply because you don't know what else to write but don't want it to end. It will help keep you on course if you have the overall plot written down in a simple list-form. You can always alter the ending if need-be but try to at least stick to some kind of purpose and progression. Otherwise, you get stuck with a fic that started out great and ended with a bunch of useless chapters that didn't need to be there, were interchangable, and made no sense in context with the story, thus making the fic suck for the most part. It's also frustrating for fans of your writing if you never finish anything; it makes us not want to read anything else by you for fear of disappointment that we're going to get into the story and, once again, you won't finish it.

14. Song fics should die a thousand deaths. That is all.

15. No, really. Songfics are stupid. For songfics to work, the person reading has to like the song you chose. You may get a few people who do but, chances are, 90% have a different musical preference than you. Not to mention that-- and I don't want to offend anyone but it has to be said-- people often chose the cheesiest songs with the cheesiest lines on the planet. I've yet to read a songfic, even with a song that I do like, that doesn't make me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

16. Please stop begging for reviews. It's fine to ask that readers 'read and review' or 'comments are love' etc, but some people take it too far. Some will refuse to update unless they get so many reviews, demand they get comments as though it were required for reading the fic, or shamelessly beg in a way that pretty much makes me NOT want to review out of spite. If your story is good, trust me- you'll get tons of reviews.

17. I can often overlook bad characterization if the story idea is good enough. Similarly, I can overlook a bad idea if the characterization is spot-on.

18. Please learn how to spell the damn character names. Seriously. I'm tired of reading fics about Gregg, Camaron, Wilsen, Forman, Stacey and Alison.

Got an annoyance or something you love about fics? Let me know and maybe I'll add it!