*boggle*

Okay, I dread boring exposition dumps as much as the next reader, but while I'm not actually opposed to AUs that randomly cast canonically purely human characters as something with claws, merely encountering a sentence like "His extended claws clicked on the metal." will throw me out of a story. I mean, some kind of noticeable setup for this would have really helped, as I tend to assume (not unreasonably I think) the character's basic anatomy to be like what I'm familiar with, especially if the source media doesn't have any humanoid clawed creatures at all. So I'd like some hint what the character is supposed to be now that he suddenly isn't human anymore. Were-creature? Shapeshifter? Animal-hybrid? Mutant?

ETA: Why did I read on? Right, I was curious, only did I still not get an explanation for the claws, but instead there's now added a similarly unexplained "double row of extra-mammary nipples" -- albeit on another formerly human character, who btw is male in canon. Seriously...what?!? I don't think finding out why there are claws is worth more of this.

I think this dream was supposed to go to derryderrydown...

Why do I get a slightly porny (though thankfully not explicit) John/Dean Wincest dream?!? It is not my pairing, and despite derryderrydown's pimping, unlike with Sam/Dean I have never even read a single story with it. *headdesk*

sometimes I read things that are not fanfic...

Like just now I am reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, because I had seen it recced a lot. But... so far (I'm only on page 344 of its slightly over 1000 pages) I'm kind of underwhelmed.

It hasn't really hooked me, a sure sign for that being that I read it mostly on public transport, whereas if I'm really engaged with a book I usually bother to take it out of my bag and continue reading it at home rather than leaving it. I still don't like any of the characters. I realize that that's probably intentional, but while the book is kind of interesting with its worldbuilding I'm starting to ask myself whether I really want to spend several hundreds of pages more with characters I dislike. Also, I find the whole excessive footnote thing kind of jarring. If it was just brief footnotes it would be different maybe, but some are four full pages long.