How wide ranging are your tastes? Do you have deal breakers within your categories?

[AchtungNight]

I like it when authors depict messy relationships- it builds realism. I also enjoy satire. Look that up if you don’t know what it is.

 

[LonRivers]

I won't write about Father/Daughter incest. I don't do rape fantasy or any other "forced" sexual activity. I am not into BDSM either, although not against it if it fits the story in some way.

I don't do defecation or urination for sexual arousal either. I may write about a character going to the bathroom, but it is not to arouse the reader.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

What I can find erotic is almost always more about style than content.

I want interesting dialogue and mostly-decent people behaving mostly decently. So my only real deal breakers are selfish cheating (casual sex and non-monogamy are fine) and non-con (reluctance could be really interesting but in the NC/R category tends to be rape or abuse in disguise, so I've given up on that).

And people acting somewhat sensibly and coherently, which wipes out most of the I/T category (it's not a kink that does anything for me, though a story showing how siblings come round to it in certain circs could be very erotic. Flowers in the Attic was a classic for a reason! Even parent/child could be - Pat Califia wrote a good mothers/daughter one)

I also don't want to read too much sad stuff or have my emotions played with (I have a particular hate for stories which try to make themselves into Art by killing off a beloved character at the 75%-through point. See way too many films and books.) Evoking emotions, fine, but don't double down on that. So I want to see the tags before reading Romance and Mature.

I want to know what characters are thinking and wrestling with. It's just as well I'll happily read Gay Male, Lesbian, BDSM and Fetish, as that's where most such stories are (which came first? The interest in psychology or interest in those topics? I couldn't tell you.) People realising they have desires or needs that conflict.

So I tend to look at those categories plus Group and EC. There could be interesting stories in Interracial (a black guy dealing with being expected to have a big cock and be the big scary guy, when that's not what he is, a white woman dealing with the assumptions about her relationship with a guy?) but without recs I'm not going looking.

And any stories where women are treated as mere things turn me off too (insert Granny Weatherwax quote) - as opposed to objectification being the story. The Pink Orchid stories usually have a large number of stories where characters make sense because the aim is for the women to make sense.

So what I find erotic is more an effort of exclusion, though I may start with certain interests and work from there. Sometimes it's just easier to write my own stories...