A few comments, as someone who writes, but who reads fifty stories for every one that I write.

- I agree that a completely Subjective review can be annoying, but so can one that attempts to be completely Objective. I read reviews because I want to know what passions were brought up by the story for each reader, and also because I want to know whether people have similar tastes to me. If they're purely talking about grammar, ability to communicate and spelling, there might as well not be any reviews at all on the site - just do an automatic spelling / grammar check and give a mark based on that.

I think there's some confusion here about subjective/objective, as opposed to constructive/destructive. First rule of reviewing should always be that the writers deserve respect simply for taking the effort to write something and post it here.

- Unlike a film or a radio play, the only way in which communication happens in a written story is through the written word (DUH ) . If the writing is so bad that it makes the reader focus more on mentally correcting the spelling, and stopping to rearrange bad grammar in their heads, the 'image' that the story is trying to summon up never materialises. Sure James Joyce broke the rules of language, but he learned them all first, and knew what he was breaking, and why he was doing it. He also knew how to break them while still communicating effectively, and even then, as anyone who's tried to make it through Finnegan's Wake knows, sometimes it works better as a game than a pure aesthetic experience.

- I don't review stories that include fetishes that don't interest me, or turn me off. If I did, I would not be being fair to the writer or to other readers (IMO), as my review would be missing the point of the story. Reviewing erotica is wildly different to marking student essays - I know many people (including professors, etc), who would give some of the stories that are recognised here as classics - ie, ones that have well deserved marks of 9 or 10/10 - a 0/10, based on the fact that they include sexual perversions that they find repulsive.

Having said that, I will criticize stories that I think could have done it for me, but fell short somehow (this is actually rare on this particular site,with the awful exception of stories that are abandoned just as they are heating up).

ps - re-reading the thread just before submitting this, I notice that others have come up with my ideas before, so don't be annoyed at me ... think of it as flattering imitation