#the unfiltered tozette experience is obnoxious as hell

[tozettastone]

I wish honest reviews of fics on your blog were less of a dick move, because I always end up making recommendations with a feeling of like: "Listen, I'm not saying this fic is amazing and has no flaws, I would love to tell you specifically what the flaws are, but I liked it for these other reasons as well —"

And then what I write is: "uhhh, this is a [ship] fic in which [event] occurs. it's pretty fun."

Like, I've been around in fandom for a while. I've been MSTed. I've had my fics land on LJ comms dedicated to complaining about Mary Sues. I've had forum threads dedicated to my fics complaining that I'm an evil cunt. You don't have to Google these things to find them, people will just be so happy tell you about those mean guys being mean to you somewhere online. So believe me: I KNOW why it's a dick move to post public, unsolicited critique of writing made by people who are doing a hobby and who often already feel threatened, embattled and vulnerable. And I get why writers come out of the gate frothing at the mouth and barking about it.

But sometimes I wish it was like... more acceptable to discuss the various qualities of fics when recommending them. As a reader, I will forgive a lot of pretty full-on flaws if the characterisation hits right or the themes are spectacularly well executed, and so there are plenty of fics about which I would be like "well written and you may like it if you like XYZ, but if you need it to be good at ABC, don't read this one."

No good solution to this one, I think. Just gotta keep avoiding significant criticism of this kind and preserve some of the recommendations for the DMs, haha.