I love you so hard for that, seriously. The ONLY person who gets to say "No, not this, never use this" is Zathras. XP I'm tired of the rants that say "you can't EVER use X or Y or Z or A or B in your writing because it's BADBADBADBADBAD! ALWAYS. NO EXCEPTIONS. You just CAN'T DO IT because it's BAD. And I know it's bad because only bad writers do it because I SAID it's BAD."
Like using anything but 'said' or 'asked', or using anything but 'he', 'she', or their name as a tag, or this or that or so on and so forth. They're abused by badficcers. They're abused by published ficcers. It gets annoying when they're overdone but it does NOT mean the tool itself is bad. It just means... moderation and being more prudent about when and where you do apply it is all.