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Astinus, at this rate, this thread is going to be to be rated PG-13 |
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...my head hurts now. D: This is what I get for being away playing SS. D: Yeahhhhh...sorry to backtrack a bit, but I think we all should try to talk about a couple topics at a time and not branch off. Then again, it seems as if I'm being serious. D: Maybe. For now I'll join a couple conversations here real quick: Quote:
This is best vid I can find of that song. D: Quote:
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That book is sitting on my bookshelf right now. I swear, it's watching me. I should start reading it. Is it any good?
Also, I love Clair. Not like amar, more like encantar, but still, the point is there. Best Gym Leader ever. |
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Also, agree Clair is the best Gym Leader ever. However, dang it her Kindgra is a beast! Both Hydro Pump and Hyper Beam! D: Should have gotten myself a Pokemon that can learn electric moves. >.> |
Do you think 'real world' products, events and people/animals have a place in Pokemon fanfiction? Do you include them in your own fics?
Considering that my stories are riddled with real world references I'm going to say a resounding yes. Also Jasmine is the ultimate Gym Leader. |
@ Bay: Lapras is your friend. Ice Beam for the Dragonair (x2), get something else to deal with Gyarados, and then Perish Song the Kingdra and hope you survive the three turns. :D
@ LeSabre: Jasmine is also pwnage, as is Whitney. (pattern much? XD) But I like Clair the best, perhaps due to my love of Dragon-types. |
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/liked both? Do you think 'real world' products, events and people/animals have a place in Pokemon fanfiction? Do you include them in your own fics? I think that the Pokémon World is a separate universe from the Real World, and so only animals and products could find a place in my Pokémon World. If there's any mention of animals, though, it will be quick and not dwelled upon. Quote:
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Honest, this place is so weird what with all the conversations taking place at once and people placing bets on who wins a debate between Redstar and anyone. And what with some of you enjoying HG&SS now... :tired: |
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*goes of to play Crystal* It seems activity has died down a bit. I'm wondering if it'll pick up during Easter? |
I'm gonna have to agree with Bay on the conversations. Things are moving way too fast that conversations fall onto earlier pages way before everyone could have a chance to respond to them.
I feel as if I should propose the rule of the OC DCC that says you aren't allowed to randomly change the subject. The new subject has to be related to the old subject. I really never posted in the DCC. (Last time I did was probably way back in 2006.) I'm not sure how things work there, but I think it's time that some sort of ruling was tossed into this thread. Otherwise, this thread moves way too fast, and gets way too random. If things continue on like this, I'm afraid I might have to restart this thread entirely with a list of rules specific for this thread in the first post. This is supposed to be discussing fanfiction, and things have gotten so bad that people I thought were friends are complaining about things behind my back. Also, Bay, that monorail song was exactly what I was thinking of. |
Maybe modify the first post and incorporate it into the rules instead of restarting the FFL?
Apart from that, I'm in agreement with Astinus, Bay, and Jax on this. Partly from the way that Astinus explained it. I think that we need some sort of balance in between bold topics, fiction discussion, and general randomness. We can't be random and mad all the time I suppose. Also, what Astinus said is another reason why I sometimes take a long time in between posting here... That said, to bring back the conversation, What's your usual style of reviewing? Style referring to the format in which you do a full review. |
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I has a question: Not trying to be a pain the arse, but I want to ask this question so I don't get my arse in trouble. What if we are gone for a couple of days? Am I allowed to answer/ talk about something form when I left or do I have to only talk about what is current? |
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Textual backhanding time because I'm trying to advocate decent reviewing practices (which the forum seems to be in a desperate lack of, if anyone's read any of my recent rants).
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1. Reviewing. You're doing it wrong. Please don't make me shove the entire first half of my guide down another throat. (Kids, about half of it isn't a pack of guidelines. It's how to avoid being a jack in a writing community. Unless your goal is to actually be a jack in a writing community; in which case, carry on.) 2. Your sig says the FFL is full of intelligent, friendly writers. It might be a good idea to avoid any implication that you're being elitist here (by saying you snark all over the place in reviews) because there's a lot of people in the main forum who don't post in this thread and probably don't because of how hilariously closed-off it's been getting in recent months. Seriously, kids? You're focusing only on this thread. At some point in the FF&W's distant past, the FFL was meant to be a hang-out, yes, but the main portion of the community was in writers helping each other by reviewing and talking to reviewers/writers on their story threads. That's actually how a writing community works. I'm not sure when the FFL turned into a black hole where people don't branch out except the occasional headdeskery in the rest of the Writer's Lounge and to post in their own fics/their friends' fics, but frankly, my point is if you want to have a tea party, go to the DCC. If you want to actually have a community of writers, go out there and make a community of writers instead of twiddling your thumbs over "shenanigans" (and, incidentally, overabused memes =/= insanity) in one thread. Because, seriously, have some of you actually sat down to read what's going on in the main forum lately? We need decent reviewers. Ones who actually get why reviewers sit down and write a review. 3. I've seen your reviews. (Or, well, review in the singular, considering I just went back and found out you deleted the one I was thinking of in particular, and you haven't really reviewed much after that.) "High-powered, concentrated snark" isn't the first term that would pop into mind if I went back and reread it. If you got vanilla-flavored fluff if you tried to distill snark into its concentrated form and if "high-powered" for such a concoction was the equivalent of a thimble full of 50% low-grade gasoline and 50% water, then I can definitely agree that your reviews are high-powered, concentrated snark. Yeah, see, that was sarcasm. Just in case you, you know, were trying to be completely and utterly serious when you said you give writers who probably need help more than snark some attitude. Just covering the bases here. Sorry, kids. I know I probably should leave because I've found other places to hang out (like Serebii my own board real life). It's just that I've spent a lot of time on PC, and this kind of thing has been pissing me off since last summer. Also... Quote:
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This thread has seriously overpowered this forum. Instead of saying "Come to the FFL, where we're fun/intelligent/whathaveyou", we should be advertising the section has a whole where people who have any interest in writing, no matter what the level is, can come here and oh say I don't know fit in?
I've noticed that there always seems to be a cycle to things here. The Lounge gets started talking about writing; something goes random; people start relaxing more; the thread gets more random; people get pissed; the moderator gets an anxiety attack; the thread returns to writing discussions; repeat as needed. It's like I'm trying to do everything that I can to get this section to work. I love this section these days. But I'm going to be getting a full-time job soon. I don't have a lot of time to do what I want to in this section, which is review. (Heck, I still owe a review from early 2009.) Before, I would have claimed this section doomed, where the people who enter here want that review. The one that actually shows them that someone cares about their story as much as they do. Then I saw that people were getting those reviews at a constant rate, and I figured that others would help. But just as recently as a few days ago, someone wanted that kind of review and didn't get it. Solutions have been tossed around. Solutions have been tried and all were met with failure. Just to get reviews to authors. There's always the "review me, I'll review you" saying, but that doesn't work when there's nothing recent to review. And the reviews have to be good. You all said that something needed to be done for those quick one-liner "i lyk this" reviews. So I put the rule in, to make it official, link to a guide to help people figure out what constitutes a review for this section, and...nothing. I get the time to look around this section better than I could, and I see one-liner reviews going around and no reports for these reviews which are against the rules. Those people who used to review that well have left because of what this thread has done to this section. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm getting tired of people saying that there are problems but either not letting a person in charge know, or offering/doing anything about them. I mean, yes, there are problems. But hey, maybe if there's some actual effort tossed into things, this section would actually be a section instead of a thread. There seems to be some sort of nostalgia going around. A missing of the old days. And even though I have major difficulties forming emotional attachment to anything, I still have to admit that I miss the way the section used to be. The Lounge was a place for the writers/readers to relax as they took breaks from reviewing. But now, there's very few reviewers, and so people aren't posting their works, which makes this section look terribly dead. And the bold topics. Sorry, Mizan, but I remember that bold topic clearly, and that means that it appeared in the past month. Solovino took the time to go through the thread and write up the bold topic list, but it makes no difference. Yes, if there's no bold topic and no randomness allowed, then the Lounge seems dead. But that's okay. The Lounge can not have a new post for days. And who knows, maybe that means that the people who can't post because they have no idea what's going on in this thread can join in and bring some new sort of discussion and ideas here. And not all serious discussions have to turn into a wank bait. Which means that they can happen. Sure, people could turn things into wank by being triggering annoying people, but that doesn't have to happen. We can have some discussions here that are actually serious, and where the discussions aren't all in bold. The memes are getting tiring. The "Sentret with Flamethrowers" thing? Almost two years old. I know because I mentioned it about a fic I was writing back then. This is the Internet. Memes move fast. Come up with new ones and let the old ones go out in a blaze of glory before they get run into the ground. How're the awards going to work if no one is out there reading the stories posted? I'll say right now that I really and honestly don't have the time to review like I used to back when I was feared throughout another forum. And maybe others are the same. But for those that have the time, try a little? A small bit of effort that follows the rules and guidelines that are nicely pointed out to you? Look, this section is for fanfiction writing. Wanna talk games/books/anything else? There's a whole wide forum out there that has sections for each one of those. This forum was created for writing stories, posting them, and getting reviews, and getting advice needed for any part of that. But right now? Honestly, I wouldn't ask here for help needed for my fanfics, and that's saying something. Right now, I'm just really not happy with anyone. I've been tempted many times to close this thread so that its domination could end, but I've never done it because I've always had the belief that people could change this on your own. All I'm asking is that Fanfiction & Writing becomes a section again and not one single thread of the same people posting so quickly people are scared away. I also think all of this rage is built up from one book cover change. Quote:
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I haven't reviewed for a while, exactly because my reviews started to turn into snark (or so I'm told.) Basically, I'm a sulky little kid who decided not to do something because he got snapped at for doing it wrong. Yeah, sue me. :(
The last review I did, in particular, immediately got slammed by other reviewers of the fic in question as being unnecessarily rude and sarcastic, so I deleted it and haven't reviewed a single fanfic since. |
Reading Astinus's post makes me want to not post my FF character.
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Second off, I've got a few ideas. One of these strategies is to close the FFL for awhile. Obviously, it's what might be causing part of the problem because people get so focused on only it that they forget an entire forum exists. Hence, you could try experimenting by leaving it closed for awhile. I was thinking a week might do it, but in order to get people to keep checking the forum, you'd probably need to make it a random time that's longer than a day or two. This forces people to take their private discussions (i.e., "craziness") to VMs or the DCC while giving people a reason to go look at something else for awhile. A result of this may be chasing most of the FFL regulars to the DCC or a similar thread (or even cause them to try to create a new FFL), but that's just a worst-case scenario. A more favorable result, hopefully, is that the FFL kids will get bored and end up on the main forum. I'm of course not saying you should close it forever. I'm just saying close it to give people more of a reason to stop hanging around the same place forever. If that happens, you might get reviewers, but because that's unlikely to happen on its own, there's a few things that need to occur first: 1. The reviewer's guide needs to be consolidated and clarified. (Including a note that says a paragraph is okay as a review as long as it points out something specific about the fic.) The main points just need to be emphasized, and it needs to be clarified that a reviewer's job isn't to be funny or snarky. Incidentally, on the subject of reviewing, I honestly can't remember how snarky you got, MW, but I get the feeling it wasn't that bad and that you ran into groupies. Review again. If it turns out you were snarky or if you're afraid of being snarky, then err on the side of caution and use the "I'm here to help writers" line as a mantra. Think of puppies or something. Point is, if people miss the point of the guide, it clearly needs to be rewritten. (And I'm working on it in the spare moments I have, I assure you.) And then it needs to be shoved as far down the regulars' throats as possible before they're sent out. If we establish a standard for reviewing, people will try to conform to it. For example, Mizan's early reviews seemed to mirror my betaing, so it's clear to me that if you get a handful of regulars all reviewing in their own version of quality (that isn't littered with errors -- because research is godly, kids -- or full of snark), people will follow your example. Heck, for an off-site example, people emulated Yami Ryu on Serebii all the time, just because she was such a prominent reviewer. This is why there was a lot of drama, but the point is, if you give a mouse a good reviewer, the mouse will want to review the same way. 2. We need to have either an incentive for reviewing or a connection between writers and reviewers. This tends to be more of a problem because there's only so much you can do without knowing how the community will react to it (i.e., ignore it or otherwise). I've considered a few possibilities, including: - Emblems that are handed out to quality reviewers. There's one for writers, after all. - A NaReWriMo (basically, NaNoWriMo for reviews) challenge. Maybe one that involves prizes such as emblems for participation. (I'm not sure what level of security you need in order to create emblems, so if it's out of the question, we can toss around other ideas for incentives. A banner to put in your signature to say you won the challenge, for example.) - A more open reviewer request thread. As in, the review exchange failed. I admit that, and I see it's because we didn't really have that many active writers in the FFL at the time. Hence, I'm thinking maybe there might be a place (maybe an entire usergroup to give people space to create profile threads where people can request reviews) where writers can come along, read a profile, and send requests to people they want to get to review their fic. Most people like talking about themselves (so a profile thread might be appealing), and I doubt many people will be able to resist a review request if the writer keeps pestering them about whether or not the review is getting done. Either way, this one's a vague concept. We can either do it like Serebii's review thread, or we can try something new with the usergroup/individual profile thread idea. Or someone else could try something that might help. So, yes, we're going to have to figure out a way to get the FFL to actually participate. Don't get me wrong. I understand that people are busy, but with all the time a lot of people spend in the FFL, you could be doing something like making friends with some of those writers out there and actually opening up the community as a whole. Devote your time to reaching out and helping everyone else instead of spamming a single thread, basically. And don't give me crap about "but it's fun for a few people." This is PC. We're supposed to be an open community. If this were a smaller forum, I might accept that, but we've got newbies in the main forum. They're part of the community too, so you might as well actually go in there and say hello or go find a new place to hang out. Like VMs. Quote:
Seriously, though, this is exactly my point. It's all for teh lulz, I'm sure, but you guys just have to remember that this is a writing community. As such, the FFL isn't meant to stand alone as the home for one tiny group of people who don't do much in the main forum. (There's a couple of you who do, and more power to you for getting it. Seriously. However, I'm referring to the kids who actually don't do anything outside of the FFL and maybe their own fic threads.) It's meant to be a writing community. You know, a place for writers -- those people who post in threads in the main forum and those people who review threads and need help with creating their fics -- to come in and ask those little questions that wouldn't cover an entire thread by themselves. (Like "Hey, does anyone know what the word is for X concept?" or "Hey, how's this for a fic idea? Too cliche?") I honestly don't care if you want to keep a close-knit family, but that's what VMs are for, in all seriousness. You may want to try those if you really want to continue to share with the less than ten other people who make up the regulars of this thread updates about your game. Or, alternatively, you could try a usergroup. Or a private board of your own. Or the DCC/a more appropriate thread for that. Because, seriously, it's entirely possible to get a group of kids to migrate. Quote:
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But yeah, if you need help with your FF character or your story overall, at least I'll help you. :) Just remind me in PM/VM so that I don’t forget because with uni and work I tend to lost track of what reviews I owe. XD BUT ANYWAYS, POST IT, DANG IT! Quote:
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In all seriousness though, maybe emblems will work. Honestly, writers wouldn’t be able to be decent without good reviewers helping them, so reviewers should be appericated more. As for the NaReWriMo part, hm we discussed the challenge thing before and it flopped. However, I guess for this it might work as this will go for quanity and not quality, but only problem is I’m afraid some people might just copy and past their review or their reviews are basically telling or or less so the same (like Yami Ryu at Serebii). As for the review request thread thing, I think this could work more better than Serebii, actually. There seems to be a lot of people needing reviews here more than at Serebii, so I think we should give this a shot. Quote:
But yeah, realizing now how bad this is getting, something must be done this time to get this part of the forum back in shape like it used to be. We have been talking about this over and over, but nothing has been done, as Astinus mentioned. |
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However, if you said that was an interesting story about dog filth and you really thought it's impressive how the writer managed to give dog filth a personality in its struggle against the shovel, that actually shows you were paying some kind of attention. And no snark intended at all in this entire paragraph. Quote:
Maybe, though, we can have a thread that has a running tally of how many (non-generic, non-one-liner, non-copypasta'd) reviews you've submitted, with X number of reviews being the key to getting a shiny emblem/prize? Speaking about quality, I had another idea after thinking about what MW said. Clearly, feedback from other reviewers tends to be a problem, too. What about a thread that reviews reviewing style? As in, a place where reviewers can submit samples for other people to discuss and help refine. That way, we don't have kids scaring people away from reviewing, and Jax won't have to smack people on the backs of their heads for ripping apart fics without actually doing any research into what they're talking about (which has happened far more times than I care to mention). It'd be a helpful discussion, basically, for people to trade tips on reviewing and whatnot. Because, yeah, you're right. Reviewers don't really get too much appreciation, and we don't really seem to talk as much about the reviewing process as we do about the writing one. Quote:
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Moreover, if you volunteer to do any of the above, I'm probably going to be on your ass until it gets done, especially if I find you posting in this thread when you can be working. No more of this "oh, we've got plans, but we're not going to execute them" crap. If you want a better forum with a more open atmosphere where it feels like you're actually doing something to help your fellow forum-goers and where you're not just sitting around and talking about the same things over and over again and where it's actually possible to do things like the awards, we're going to get to work. Sound good? |
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So you can still post your character. Just, for right now, in a separate thread so that it doesn't get brushed aside from everything else. I do think I was a bit more blunt last night, but I'm going through a terrible time right now. I'll try not to bring it into this. Quote:
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Good: I like your description of Ilex Forest when Aden woke up. Hope to see more writing like that! Bad: I like this chapter. More please! That's it. Damn it, Jax and Bay pretty much said everything else I could say. So if I tend to gloss over things, they already said it better than I could. Quote:
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Heck, the Beta Thread is slowly going. I just told someone today to find a beta, and I'm not sure if there is one around here. Quote:
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I'm happy with anything just as long as something gets done. Sure, it seems like I'm squashing people's fun, but I do that enough at my real job. I just want to see a section I love get the attention it deserves. |
Yeah. Since I haven't been in here when the conversation started, I think I may just need to make little points on whatever tangents the rest of you all have gone off to. |D
I think that we do need a usergroup for "writers goofing off" and this thread be returned to its original purpose, "writers helping writers with writing". (If that wasn't the original purpose after all, please excuse me and my lateness...) We would be able to organize things a lot easier and still retain the goofiness that emnates from this thread, but it does seem to dominate over most places. I can name plenty of writers who haven't even set foot in this thread - it may be because they've told themselves that they don't need any help with their fanfics, but I think it also may involve the fact that we, as the main question thread, seem to be such a tight-knit group that any newcomers might just be shunned. And I hate to say it, but we sort of have shown that tendency on more than one occasion. I really hate to make this sound like one of those horrible persuasive essays I (or some of you) had to write in middle school, but like Astinus pointed out, we have been pretty lax on the rules in favor of goofing off. However, even if we do have a separate thread or usergroup for people goofing off, it might still make the whole dead forum situation worse. So unless we can all find a way to magically strike the balance between discussion and serious-business Writing Talk, I don't know what to do on that count. ...As a sub-note, we need moar bold topics. When was the last time we had one of those? Quote:
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And now that the awards have been mentioned: I don't know if they're really going to fly. I mean, yes, they're going just peachy on Serebii, but I think that's because every writer and reviewer sort of lives inside their own thread and pokes at the Authors' Café every so often - there's none of the familiarity we here at PokéCom harbor. Plus, it's got a lot more members, so not everyone voting is as likely to know the writer - or be the writer - of a fic they're nominated for. So to be honest, I like the idea, but right now the community really isn't fit for it. Quote:
And now that we have thaaat subject up, do you all think we ought to move the Reviewing Guide (back?) to the main forum? I mean, it's not like the reviewers either A. enter the Writers' Lounge if they don't write or B. look past the FFL if they do. Quote:
...says the lost thirteen-year-old who came somewhat late. |D |
I can't believe four people posted while I was formulating my response. I had to change to accommodate.
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For the matter of reviewing beginner fics, I find that the most fun, and or challenging to review since there’s something satisfying about pointing out mistakes even though you know that you make plenty of those same mistakes. In the process, you learn more about writing too. Quote:
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Also, to me the main pattern which happens when someone new joins the FFL and is too scared(or isn’t bothered enough) to strongly impose their presence(either by following the flow or challenging norms) then what we have is at least one or two members saying ‘Hi’ and or responding and the rest ignoring that single person. After a while, maybe because said writer feels ignored or something or maybe because he feels as though he can’t really join in the lounge, they leave… Quote:
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Anyway, like I said, I don’t know why you guys don’t review as much as you should(though I’m one to talk), but I think that if hat Jax said is true, we might move the FFL to the Main section so that fics and the FFL aren’t separated by a subforum. Quote:
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-To a certain extent, you can judge how people react based on the current analysis of the community. My guess is that when emblems are thrown out into the crowd, they lose thei value pretty quickly. Also, a banner would sometimes prove to be ineffective since not many people like modifying their sigs for something that trvial. Also, it’s kind of hard to judge reviews since their even more varied than writing. -You mean kind of like the beta-thread, but more open and more of requesting feedback rather than asking for help? Quote:
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Yeah, I think I might be able to knock something up. Possibly... |
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