This is arguably her most passionately articulated category. She wants horror that chills, thrills, and disturbs — but not through gratuitous gore. Her sweet spot is unconventional settings: think haunted convenience stores, apartment buildings, photobooths, or skate parks rather than isolated manor houses. She loves slashers in both dark and comedic registers, gothic horror that plants dread in crowded, grimy spaces instead of remote ones, and narratives that blur the line between the real and the supernatural (in the vein of Mister Magic by Kiersten White). Mixed-media formats (transcripts, documentary footage, articles) and meta-horror structures excite her. Unlikable, child-free-by-choice narrators are a plus.

She is drawn to deadly secrets, co-dependent toxic friendships, and betrayal narratives — but wants genre tropes transplanted out of the middle-class suburban milieu and into more unexpected social worlds (underground bars, athletic or religious high-control groups, non-rural small towns with generational grudges). Chaotic lesbian friend groups, speculative genre-blending, and stories with an edge of dark humor all appeal strongly. She is not interested in stories that center wealthy protagonists as a default.

Her interest here is narrow but clear: exclusively BIPOC and queer stories centered on millennial queer people of color living their lives in the modern world. She wants the messy, funny, dark, and poignant texture of queer life after the coming-out arc — not the singular pain narrative, and not stories whose primary lens is navigating whiteness. She welcomes contemporary, speculative, or genre-blended approaches. Tonally she is looking for something with the genre-fluid voice of Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You or the comedic-yet-vulnerable register of Work in Progress.

She prefers standalone novels or duologies over long series, and grounded contemporary settings or non-Western secondary worlds over the standard Eurocentric epic fantasy template. The more technologically modern the world, the better; she is not drawn to swords-and-torchlight aesthetics or brooding shadow-figure love interests. Stakes should feel intimate and personally motivated rather than world-saving and sacrificial. She is not a fan of 'shadow daddies.'

Romance is part of her list, with the same overarching preference for queer and BIPOC characters and high-concept, commercially driven stories. Her broader taste for fast-paced plots, opinionated protagonists, and unconventional settings applies here as well.

She wants YA centered on slackers, miscreants, and the misguided — teens whose ambitions run nowhere near the Ivy League. The cultural reference points she invokes are Skins and Heartbreak High rather than Gilmore Girls or Never Have I Ever. She explicitly wants the story set outside of school as a primary location; private schools and magical academies are hard nos. She welcomes slice-of-life, coming-of-age, and romance within this framework and has no interest in rigid social hierarchy narratives.

YA horror should center snarky, devious misfits — whether they are the ones causing the mayhem or surviving it. She wants drama, angst, and dark energy from teen characters who are not model students. The same preference for unconventional settings and morally complex protagonists from her adult horror wishlist carries over here.