#food critique

[the-dining-diary]

Welcome to The Dining Diary! (or rather *my* dining diary)

Howdy everyone! I’m Marie, the voice behind this blog. I’m a big food lover and I’m never afraid to try something new and give my honest opinion, so I decided to create a place to put my food-related thoughts and adventures.

On this blog you’ll find primarily food reviews from an array of restaurants around central Pennsylvania. (but hopefully I’ll get to branch out in the future!) You’ll also occasionally see me post my own recipes. Cooking is just a hoppy for me, I am by no means a chef. This blog is simply a hobby for me and is entirely just for fun (so don’t feel the need to tell me I’m not qualified to be a food critic, I already know).

I hope you stick around to share in my fun! All of my content will also be on my twitter(now X) so feel free to follow me over there if you’d like! @/DiningDiary

Have a blessed one :)

[zipper-neck]

TIL baby food with banana puree tastes like trash, the banana tastes older than the baby it’s meant for. Does not bode well for the rest of baby food

[qwakque]

CULINARY CRUUCIBLEEE

[sjbattleangel]

Double D facts book: When we said "Be critical of the media you love"... we didn't mean "nitpick and tear it to shreds" to the point of seeing things that aren't there such as "pro-status quo Neoliberalism" or "Nazi apologia".

[first-class-coatl-emporium]

Okay first time putting actual work into a skin is this anything?

[ace-lemonade]

they're so sweet to make sure she eats plently of liver but. give my girl some fucking kelpie thigh meat

[showtoonzfan]

I really like this redesign because it actually fits Viv’s interpretation more, or at least how she described it lol. It’s circus and food themed, but also it’s an insect so the audience actually knows that THAT’S Beezlebub, unlike Viv’s actual design because it feels more like an OC rather than a textbook demon.

[beesie]

strawberry shortcake. | digital painting. 07.03.23

reference photo

consider helping a starving artist out? ko-fi | paypal | venmo

[iamchickenhearmesquawk]

I want a spiritfarer cookbook so bad

Or eastward/octopia

[thedreadvampy]

white americans will be like oh british food is so unseasoned and underspiced and then talk as if taco bell is extremely flavourful. this is true I've seen it happen multiple times.

[milkwizard]

get so annoyed by archaeologists who are surprised when it turns out Neanderthals did things like Talk or Prepare Food like get over urselves lol

[mightymizora]

Unfortunately for everybody writing about Samson has me thinking about the relationship between Cullen and Samson again

[steveharrington]

ohhh they’re mood boarding bunny by mona awad in the tags… theyre tagging it coquette and im just a girl… yeah i fear we may have missed the point guys!

[lord-squiggletits]

NGL I think one of my least favorite "gotchas" that I see/get while critiquing stories is "so how would you fix it? oh so you don't have an idea of how to rewrite the story to make it better? oh so basically you're just complaining that you don't like it and don't have actual critique."

Buddy.

Sometimes the reason I don't have a "solution" to how the author should've rewritten their story to be better, is because I'm not privy to the author's thought process, what their alternate story ideas were, what they talked about with their editor, what they might've been forced to do by deadlines, or even what they might've thought they were writing towards at first but then later changed the trajectory of their story to be about something else.

It's all well and good for me to say something like, idk, "I think Character A should've gotten more narrative focus because their story could have helped fix XYZ Plot Hole," but it could very well be that the author never intended for Character A to be a prominent character (just a secondary or tertiary character). Maybe using Character A to solve one Plot Hole would've gone against the writer's plans because then it would open up a different plot hole for something else they had planned later in the story. If it's an ongoing story, maybe something I see as a "plot hole" is actually a deliberate mystery that the creator left open to write about later-- or maybe the plot hole is because there was a deadline crunch and the author had to drop a certain character/plot point/etc because they couldn't fit it into the story any more. Maybe having Character A be a more prominent part of the story is just based on MY personal tastes and what I would want to write in MY version of the story, but completely clashes with the characters/conflicts the author wanted to focus on.

Because yes, there are some story critiques that are as simple as "part A doesn't make sense, you could just fix it by doing B", but there are also some story critiques where suggesting a viable "solution" would require BEING the author or someone involved in the production of the story to understand what limitations or plans were involved in the selection of that flawed plot point. There are also some story critiques where even if there is a "problem" and my critique offers a "solution," there could be another "solution" or even dozens that do just as good of a job fixing the issue, but involve vastly different characters, plot ideas, so on and so forth.

Being a good critic isn't (just) about going "the story would've been better if X happened" because the story is ultimately in control of the author and their vision, and without knowing what the author's vision was (something that you almost exclusively know if you're 1. the author or 2. their beta reader), it's impossible to definitively say "this plot point should've been cut/[completely different thing] should've happened instead" because THAT is the point at which you're complaining, not critiquing. I would argue that in some cases, trying to "fix" a story yourself actually makes your critique worse, not better, because it ends up being a case of you simply imposing your artistic vision over the author's to say "I think it would've been better this way."

At least if you just say "this part of the story was flawed because XYZ" without saying "it should have been ABC instead", then you're stating your grievances with the story without being presumptuous enough to assume that YOUR version of the story would fit the author's original vision, or the constraints they were working under, or the other versions of the story that they were debating over at the time before ultimately settling on one version (even if flawed).

There's a point at which "this plot is flawed, that should've happened instead" is just fix-it fan fiction and not actual critique that could help the writer write their story in a way that fits their vision.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Party of Fools

first installment in an adult RPG-inspired fantasy novella series

an immortal emperor consort runs away to have an adventure and meets a pair of older aroaces, and invites them on a worldwide food-tasting tour

while being pursued by her bodyguard slash only friend who’s a little annoyed to be left behind

autistic, aspec, lesbian & various other queer characters