[Imaginative]:[Clockwork]

Well . . . no. Any activity is not necessarily good activity, which was the exact problem Astinus had with the FFL. Everyone was posting there when they could have been reviewing - in some periods, it moved as fast as the DCC (back when that moved fast too >_>). Also, it wasn't 'everyone', unfortunately. The newbie writers didn't really get in there, and if they did, they found the discussion moved far too fast for their liking and we were hardly expending all effort to bring them in and make them feel welcome. :/ It was a clique made up of the veteran writers. I had the balls to go in there pretty much right off the cuff and stick around, but in the year or so that I was there, I saw one new member become a FFL regular. One. (He then had a car accident and spent a week in a coma which left him unable to type properly so he kinda left.) The rest of the makeup didn't change the whole time I was there, and then when it finally closed everybody just . . . drifted away, leaving only the newbies behind. Dagzar and I hung around a little bit, but everyone else basically bogged off somewhere where there was more happening - be it Serebii, Jax's own forum or elsewhere. The golden days of the FF&W section were over, and although several attempts have been made to facilitate a renaissance (one such putsch is in progress right now), none have had any significant measure of success.

And there's your history lesson for the day. XD

One-word titles are for the absolute win, and 'aaa' is just me screaming from the awesomeness. Quietly and considerately. >_>

I actually do that too, posting things just before I go to bed. Partially because I love getting a review in the morning, partially because I often stay up late just to finish the chapter just five hundred more words a few more paragraphs nearly there oh god it's midnight doesn't matter I'm almost done and post it before dropping into bed.

Yeah, I do avoid doing that. I will freely name-drop my fic, of course, but that's only when it's necessary. For example, in a discussion about battles, I feel much more comfortable posting an example from Champion Game or convalescence+convergence than just grabbing a good one I found in someone else's fic. I use my fics to answer questions pertaining to them directly as well, of course. Things like 'In your fics, how do you deal with sexual tension between your MC and their rival?' (Not that there's any of that in Champion Game. Yet.) But no, advertising like that is just a bit kablaah.

And yeah, extra-long posts in the Author's Cafe threads are great. I've been doing long reviews over on Bulbagarden too, because that's essentially a new forum for me (although my account is now over two years old) and I want to make an impression. (It seems to work . . . I just won Best Newcomer in the quarterly awards, so . . .)

Well, the reason it was closed was because it was getting all the activity and the section itself was getting none. Everyone came on to hang out in the FFL and we were all turning into some kind of horrible big clique thing. Ugh.

Yeah, titles are horrible to try and come up with. For a while, I had this naming scheme . . . first came Torn, then Shattered, Broken and Crushed XD. Champion Game's working title was Devastated or something stupid for a while.

Headcanon is a brilliant word that I only learned a few weeks ago XD And (b")b is one of the best smilies in the history of ever. aaa

That's all you can really do, isn't it? I've realised lately how much actual work goes into becoming a 'successful' fanfic writer even after putting the words on the page. I've been experimenting with posting chapters on weekends, weekdays, different times on weekdays, reviewing popular stories so people will see my banner and so on . . . I'm waxing tangential here, but the point I'm trying to make is that writing fanfiction has a lot of PR involved. XD

Yeah, that's pretty much the long and short of it. Some people do put a lot of stock in someone's join date, though. Yeah, the FFL was a monster of a thread. You could probably still dredge it up with a search in the Writer's Lounge - it used to be the biggest sticky there. Oh look, there it is. And check out the post stats. XD I had nearly 700 posts. At the time of its closure in early 2010, that was more than half of my postcount, haha. It was a brilliant community, though. It's the only reason I can sit around and chat with Jax and Astinus and Dagzar and all those other guys. :3

Successful? I guess you could say that. But no, I will finish One Last Summer in the next couple of weeks, at least. And yeah, I have that unfinished one-shot catalogue somewhere too. I was flicking through it a few months ago, and I found this little thing called Broken. I think that one turned out all right XD.

Headcanon is as good as canon to a fanfic author. (b")b Actually, that would make a surprising amount of- WAIT. In RS, we see Wally again AFTER battling and defeating Wallace! :0 What do we do now? @_@

*sad high five* indeed. :( Jax was kinda right, though. I think I got maybe three useful reviews on New Game. The others were all just 'zomg you reminded me of my old blue version now i'm sad'. I mean, that was precisely the effect I was going for, but it was essentially the nostalgia value that got it the reviews it did.

I haven't been on the forums that long, I suppose - two and a half years, give or take a couple of weeks - but I somehow find that I'm categorising myself with the veterans rather than the newbies. I blame the old Fanfiction Lounge for that, because that was basically a great big hangout thread where we talked about writing, and I frequented that a lot back in '09. I got to know the older members and learned a lot from them. I still look up to them and place them on a different level, but for the purposes of my point, we're all pretty much groupable.

Turns out I couldn't finish it, hehe. I got distracted by the chapter of Champion Game that I needed. I'll try and finish it sometime?

OH GOD. WALLACE IS WALLY. That is freaky. They must have had some reason for doing that, because they normally never make two characters with the same name, especially not in the same game. Wow, that's actually worth thinking about. But I can't imagine Wally ditching his Gardevoir for those silly Water-types.

Seriously, I don't get the VIP forums either. :/ Not allowed to talk about what exactly goes on in there, though. ^_~

But you see, as long as you deliver it with a smile, a mountain of cruel can be the best thing for an author. Maybe not for the new kids, but for those who've been in the business a couple of years or more (like me, Jax, Dragonfree, Breezy etc god I feel old next to those names) it's a wealth of important information. I've been working on my reviewing skills lately, and I'm now becoming known for my pages-long reviews as well as my depressing one-shots :/ (on Bulba at least).

Well, I figured I'd turn my SWC entry-to-be into something of a sequel for Something Will Be Born, so look out for that, I guess? I hope to get it up tonight if I can finish it.

Pretty much, eh? Steven Stone would have been fine as Champion in Emerald - better, even, because it would have gone well with his role in the Sootopolis Crisis. I guess Nintendo's logic was that they wanted the Champion largely removed from the legendaries' storyline, but they sure threw that out the window with Cynthia! ^_^;

>_> Yeah. That'll fly. And I guess some people think strings of numbers make their usernames more unique? But really, if it's unique enough to begin with (like Misheard Whisper or [Imaginative]:[Clockwork]) there's no NEED to make it more so.

The only real privilege of the VIP forums is that you get to read people's threads asking why there isn't more VIP stuff in the VIP forums. >_>

I actually know several reviewers who do that, actually. Farla There's an old adage in the fanfiction world - 'The only fics that get mountains of reviews are the really good ones and the really ****** ones'. People - myself included - love to tear apart bad fics, so that I can sort of understand. Unfortunately, everyone has a different definition of a 'good' fic. The one that seems to apply most to the above saying is 'journeyfic, not too dark, written by somebody with a competent grasp of the English language'. Those seem to be the main criteria for a 'good' fanfic. I like to think Champion Game is well written and interesting (I mean, I can't really judge because I wrote the thing) but I think I have maybe two or three people reading it at Serebii, one or two here, and three to five at Bulbagarden, judging by the people who've reviewed. Nobody's had anything particularly bad to say about it, and many do praise it, but it still seems to lack readership . . . oh, dear. I'm ranting about my own fics again somehow.

Sequel? Oh, yeah . . . that. I honestly have no idea. I remember starting one, but Arceus only knows where the bastard disappeared to. :/

Yeah, Wallace is kinda boring. He makes up for it somewhat by being excessively flamboyant and as camp as a row of tents, however.

Haha, well. It was a little noobish. At least I can proudly say I never appended strings of numbers to my username, though. (Also, if Serebii allowed it, I'd totes make a new account called Misheard Whisper. >_< )

Yeah, people love PC. Some only donate because you get perks (access to 'VIP forums', bigger avatar size - which is why mine's 150x150 - more PM space, a blog and so on) but on the whole, I think there's just a lot of appreciation for the site and how it's run.

I've noticed that double-barrelled sarcasm/cynicism thing, actually. Say, did you ever encounter a reviewer named Yami Ryu? She was banned some time ago, but I can't remember exactly how far back. She was one of the worst. Not sure what eventually got her banned, but let's just say nobody was sorry to be lacking her reviews of their fics. And god yes, that layout. >_< Where PC is clean and fresh and sharp, Serebii looks like a bulletin board from the age of Windows 2000.

Why aren't I linking to it in my sig? Because it's OLD and it's HORRIBLE and also it's GHASTLYYYYY. And yeah, old. And I forgot about it entirely until Cynthia came up again.

I have this strange fascination with Champions . . . >_<

I think I picked it because OMG DRAGONS ARE COOL (they still are btw) and OMG X IS A MYSTERIOUS LETTER. >_>

Oh, that. Blue and italicised is community supporter (yep, donating), blue and bold is a Moderator, orange is a Super Moderator, green is an Assistant Admin, red is a Staff Admin, purple is a Site Admin (highest rank) and pink is a prank the staff like to pull on random members now and then.

My friends on Serebii are all, from memory, friends from either here or Bulbagarden that also happen to have accounts on Serebii. XD Yeah, Serebii's not really a community. There seems to be this air of 'do what you like, but for God's sake, if you have FUN I will come over there and TOOT MY AIR HORN.' *toot toot*

I need to review something of yours, too. I was going to do Fad, but it went into the archive while I was reading it . . . I'll find something. But yes, I seem to have a history of writing one-shots about Cynthia being emo. Oh god, where did I put that old one? good lord there it is >_<

I'm split between forums because . . . well, the full story is ridiculously convoluted, but the gist of it is that I was Dragon user X everywhere until I decided I wanted to change. Here and Bulba allowed name changes, Serebii didn't. *shrug* But yeah, I like Misheard Whisper much better. It's the only one I've never actually wanted to change, and I've had it almost two years. (PC doesn't have name changes anymore, though, so it wouldn't matter if I did.)

That was my biggest dish with Serebii, actually. It's just so impersonal - or at least, that was my impression of it. I'll still hang out there and post my stuff, but I don't really talk to people or interact with them much. It's kinda cliquey in the fanfiction section, too.

Yeah, the one shot is about Cynthia after being ousted from her position as Champion. I'll finish and post it sometime soon.

Ohhhhh . . . . right. ffff I keep forgetting I'm Dragon user X over there, not Misheard Whisper. I'm automatically logged in to all my forums, so I never have to type it. Stupid Serebii not having a name change function.

Get-Together this year was a little bit meh. It was better in previous years, and somehow I didn't even get to enter the SWC because I ran out of time. :/

*makes it SIX*

My godddd you are here as well

Hi! Saw you in the SWC thread and recognised your username from Serebii, thought I'd stop by to say hi and welcome you to PC! Hope you stick around - the fanfiction section here is severely lacking at this point in time.

(Lacking what, you may ask? Everything. Competent writers, competent reviewers, thoughtful readers. There's maybe five of each that post with any regularity, and most of them overlap.)