i've stumbled across multiple public bookmark comments lately that have revolved completely around managing expectations, eg. "this fic would have been great if it had been about xyz, but it's not and therefore it was bad."

it is part of the reader's responsibility to look at tags & assess whether or not a story is what they are looking to read, either in that moment or overall. in all of these cases, the crux of the complaint was found prominently in the tags.

obviously, readers are allowed to have opinions about what they consume. but all of these comments were public, opposed to private, where authors could find and read them easily. this also unfortunately happens in regular comments, as well.

the sheer entitlement of criticizing something to not be geared to your personal taste is -- just honestly so demoralizing. it's not the author's fault that you wanted to read a specific story & this story isn't that. & it's not their fault that you didn't manage ur expectations.

go off in your private bookmark comments! rant in your group chat! but keep your rude commentary to yourself, out of the eyes of content creators who are just doing this for fun.

(this thread brought 2 u by a comment i received on a modern au horror story which boiled down to: "this wasn't very good; it would have been better if it was less-au and had way less horror."
of course, every other comment in their bookmarks said basically the same thing :/ )