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@Desiderius Price Thanks! Yeah, I prefer realism too, to an extent. IE: In a medieval fantasy I'll look the other way if the princess smells like flowers as opposed to b.o. because she hasn’t bathed in days, versus a story where a parent visits a school where his child’s being bullied, finds the kids in question, and threatens them. I certainly understand wanting to smack the bullies, but that is in no way plausible, more so in this case because the parent is an important political figure. I guess I look for realism in how people react to things around them and how the world responds to their behavior. So the whole “the world bends over backwards to accommodate my precious cinnamon roll” stuff annoys me greatly. I admit to be willing to ignore spelling mistakes if the story’s engaging enough and the author’s aware of the problem (“I know about the spelling errors, but I don’t have a beta and I’m trying my best to catch them” – I can sympathize. It can be hard to find a beta, especially if you don’t write in a popular fandom). But if there’s enough of them I will max out. Just haven't run into any that have made me do that.The ones that have a ton of spelling errors also tend to have other problems too, so I don’t really get too far with those. Yes, yes, yes. I see that quite a bit too, and it drives me loco. Joe looked angry. “I am mad, Max.” Then he went home. His dog Bart looked at him and said “Woof.” Joe sat down. Suddenly Mom walked in. “Joe, let’s go to the movies.” That’s not much of an exaggeration of the fics I've seen that are like this. Can I get some more story in my story, please?

Just saw this elsewhere, “Please do not annoy the writer. They may put you in a book and kill you.”

Well that’s unfortunate, unrealistic and highly improbable are my forte. The rules of writing are more like stable observations, everything is ultimately circumstantial. I guess my biggest personal peeve is lack of detail. A lot of internet fiction I’ve read take place in a vacuum, with the setting only vaguely described and characters who lack motivations or identities. Fan fiction tends to be especially guilty of this because novice or lazy authors may just assume we know the characters and setting. Failing to fill in the blanks makes immersing the reader into the story difficult. This makes the story inaccessible to newer readers, doesn’t convey what the author has in mind, and ultimately doesn’t build upon the established lore. Which I think is the whole point of fan fiction, never mind original works that need to be engrossing right out of the gate. Other than that, basic literacy errors that should have been corrected in grade school will turn me away. Such as spelling mistaiks, poorer grammar, missplaced!punctuation, verbing, run on sentances that go on and on and on, and sentences that end before they.

Wow, such an old topic, interesting find @Dirty Unicorn. In my stories, I want things to be realistic/plausible, so I excise anything that isn’t. Guess that’s a pet peeve of mine, unrealistic/highly-improbable. (Though, I’ll overlook it on a story/movie if it’s otherwise very, very, interesting.)