physically describing characters (or not)

[underwhere]

You are partially right though, while anyone can think of a few hard and fast rules, nobody should follow them all the time.That would be boring.
Knowing when you can get away with rule busting, that's the key.

Yours
Mad & Lews

I guess thats really the heart of the question I was asking, though. What, exactly, are "the rules" here? One can't, after all, effectively engage in "rule busting" without knowing what rules there are to be busted in the first place. Based upon this discussion, it seems to me that one simply CAN'T generalize at all because different authors and different readers seem to have differing expectations for what they like.

Which leads me back to my original question, I guess. What is an author to do: go with what works for the author, whether that happens to include physical descriptions or not, or go with a perceived expectation of the reader which, as an author, one simply can't make any rational or reasonable guesses at? I'm currently leaning towards "write for the author, and if the story and premise is good enough, no matter how the story is told, the reader will come along for the ride". Is this a reasonable assumption to make?