Nick Street

It would be awfully easy to say "If these are the best, I'd hate to see the worst" – and awfully flippant, and awfully unkind. Unfortunately, it would also be pretty much true; these range from not-too-bad to bloody awful, and there's almost nothing here that wouldn't be out of place on ff.net. Plus some of the writers do use the most astonishingly flowery prose: one character boasts not only 'glistening sealskin eyes', a voice 'like the rain itself had come inside to converse', and 'arched seabird wings of his upper lip', but also an 'unblemished complexion like porcelain' and 'the vulnerability of a waking child'. Suddenly I feel so much better about my own crappy writing. It's possible that, even in this day and age, it's more important that gay writing exists at all than that it has to be good. But I hope not… (meer)