Thoughts of a Ponyfic Reviewer 5: We are not the Only True Arbiters of Good Ponyfic

Because anxiety, I have to say this first: this piece has been mostly ready and waiting for me to get it finished for ages. If you're wondering whether it's a subtweet (oh, you know what I mean) at something you said, it isn't.

Today my subject is something I confess I have sometimes struggled to get right. My job as a ponyfic reviewer is partly to give authors constructive feedback but, first and foremost, to help people reading this blog to decide whether they'd like to read any of the stories I cover. It is not to make them feel they're being lectured. For example, consider these two (made-up) summing-up passages from reviews:

1. "If you can look past its hurried pacing and a number of minor but persistent grammar and spelling errors, this fic may be worth a look if you want an undemanding short read."
2. "If you have low standards when it comes to pacing and grammar, I guess you may still like this fic."

Although the second passage is the more concise, it's also the poorer summing up. Even if I don't mean it that way, that passage can easily come across as patronising and even sneering. Worse, it suggests that I the reviewer am the Only True Arbiter of Good Ponyfic, and that someone who disagrees with me must surely be doing so because they don't care as much as I do. Nope. Wrong.

Yes, I know it's easy to get frustrated when a story which seems to have glaring flaws becomes enormously popular, to wonder how it is that all those people can't see those flaws when they're staring you in the face. We've all been there. Nevertheless, it's not for us to tell (or even imply to) readers who like that fic that they're doing it wrong. Because they're not. They're not us.

This isn't so far removed from another principle of good reviewing: play the ball, not the man. We can criticise a story all we want, but telling its author outright that they "really need to stop writing this stuff" is a no-no and rightly so.¹ Much the same applies here: again we can criticise a story all we want, but if we shade into condescension towards the people who like it then that's our problem, not theirs.
¹ There are a few exceptions, such as unrepentant plagiarists

The best reviewers can simultaneously point out flaws in a story, even serious flaws, and give those reading its review a good idea of whether they'd be likely to enjoy it anyway. This is the aspect I tend to find the trickiest, since my reviews start from a position of "this is how I feel about it" and are perhaps therefore less... "professional", I suppose, than some other reviewers' assessments.

Still, even if I don't always get the combination right in my own reviews, I do at least acknowledge that it is there. Although some things are outright errors – barring specific context, "Pinky Pie" is one such – it still doesn't mean that a reader has low standards or doesn't care if they nevertheless greatly enjoy a fic that persistently makes those errors. It just means the errors don't put them off too much.

To adapt a common writing adage, as reviewers our main task here is to show our readers what a fic is like, not to tell our readers what they should like. We're writing these reviews for them.