Originally posted by S_Couture
Too many names start with a "B" around here and I screwed up. I removed the above reference to your name Boccaccio. I appologize.

No problem

Your review kind of blended in with another that said something very similar. (ie I didn't care for the subject matter.) Now I know there are plenty of gray areas and you might not know that you will not care for the subject until you read it, but I still feel that if you don't like 'fetish' 'tg' fill in the blank stories . . .and it is coded appropriately . . . and you are going to grade/review the author down on it, you probably shouldn't review.

I would agree with that; I don't think any of us consciously goes looking for stories that we know we won't like -- that masochistic, we're not! :-)

But very often the codes are mixed or misleading, and you find yourself in the middle of something a little different than what you expected. I still think it is possible to review such stories fairly, if not enthusiastically. As long as you explain that it didn't "push your personal buttons", as opposed to simply saying "This story sucks".

And I think that most of our fellow readers are able to draw the proper inferences from reviews of that type.

S C: If I were a new author submitting my first story, I wouldn't rather not get a review at all, than get panned by someone who wouldn't like the story no matter what I did, due to the genre.

I agree; I would not 'open' a story with the intent of reviewing it, having already made up my mind in advance that I was going to pan it because of the subject matter; I doubt if any of us would.

S C: I also differ with you regarding reviews. A review from a critic who hates westerns about a western would be of no use to me if I liked westerns.

Not even if she said "I don't ordinarily care for westerns, (or horror stories, or sci-fi dramas or musicals) but I found much to admire in X's latest film?"

S C: On the other hand, if the critic liked westerns and he/she found one they didn't like. . .there's a good chance I probably won't like it either.
Very true; and by the same token, if a reader was familiar with the critic's tastes, and shared them, the critic's review would be of some value to that reader regardless of whether the critic was enamored with that particular genre or not, no?

I think we're both in danger of taking this all too seriously; the stories should be fun. And the reviews should be part of the fun. We're reading and writing erotic stories, not holy writ.
You and I might rue this or that review that we thought was unfair, but if we think that anyone else in the world cares about the "injustice" done to us, we're crazy! ;-)

Boccaccio