A Face for FIMFiction · 9:00pm May 23rd
After a lot of serious consideration, I have decided to take this whole “news cycle” thing on a test drive. We’ll see how it goes for a few blogs and make a more concrete decision from there. I’ve also decided not to make any significant changes to my blog format. Nobody on the admin side has told me I can’t do the introduction portions when I’m public-facing, so I’ll just keep on keeping on. Although what I talk about in the review blogs may be a bit less personal, i.e. less about my hobbies and my family and my life, more about writing and reviewing and so on. I’ll also adhere to the “no links to M-rated stories” rule, and the style of my negative reviews may start to change as well. Other than that, though? Same content. We’ll see what happens. May FIMFiction not explode. Or maybe it should. Who knows, might be good for it.
But if I am going to do this, then I think it would be a good idea to create a blog where I explain to new readers what the “rules” are, so to speak, which I can link to in future review blogs as a “go here for explanation” option. There’s no time like the present, so that’s what this blog will be doing! So if you’re a new reader who just discovered this: welcome! I’ll try to keep my inner Twilight Sparkle contained as I go through this, but no promises.
If there’s any information you’d like to see on this blog about my practices, feel free to make suggestions. Also, be aware that these rules exist entirely at my own discretion; I can change them at will and have in the past.
Regularity
- Reviews are released every second Thursday.
There are 10 reviews per blog, barring special circumstances.
- Reviews are typically from FIMFiction, but sometimes something from the dark crevices of the outer world seeps in.
- I try to have an additional non-fanfiction story in the blog as an eleventh review.
One review in every blog is for a Long Story.
- This means I have a strict limit of 26 Long Stories per year.
Blogs are soft-scheduled, hard-scheduled, and upcoming.
- Soft-scheduled stories appear in a set of lists that allow me to efficiently divide them up per review. Soft-scheduled stories will be marked in one of my FIMFiction bookshelves as a warning to the authors of my interest. If you want to convince me to turn my attention elsewhere, now’s the time to contact me.
- Hard-scheduled stories have been given a specific calendar date for when their review will come out. I update the hard schedule every Saturday (unless circumstances require me to do it earlier). Once a story is hard-scheduled, I consider it set in stone and will not entertain requests to change it. The Hard Schedule is always filled up to a minimum of five blogs, but may go much further than that.
- Upcoming stories are (at most) one week away from me actually reading them. These will be placed in my “Now Reading” FIMFiction bookshelf as a final notice to authors that my arrival is imminent.
Requests
- Yes, I AM open to review requests!
- There is a strict limit of 10 requests. Once the last slot is filled I will stop accepting until some of the requests have been scheduled.
Check my user page to see how many slots are open!
- Long stories do not apply as they have their own special rules. See the Story Sizes section below.
- Requests are strictly first-come, first-serve.
- Any method of communicating the request (comment, PM, etc.) is okay.
There is no length limitation and any rating is okay. I also accept any genre.
- I reserve the right to reject any request made, even if I have slots available.
- Any story with the porn tag will be rejected unless a convincing argument can be made that there’s more to the story than mere sex.
- I am unlikely to accept incomplete stories, though I’ve made exceptions in the past.
- Multiple requests up to three stories are allowed, though I may stagger their review releases over multiple blogs. Such requests are still subject to the 10-slot limitation above.
- I will not pre-accept review requests. That would defy the whole point of the request limit.
Story Sizes
Stories are divided by length: Short, Medium, and Long.
- Short: <10,000 Words
- Medium: 10,000 - 69,999 Words
- Long: >69,999 Words
- Stories in each blog may feature any number of Short- and Medium-length stories, based solely around my ongoing efforts to maintain a release schedule.
Excepting special circumstances, one Long story will appear in every blog. This limit is strictly enforced to prevent my reading schedule from becoming unsustainable.
- As a result of the above, there is a strict limit of 26 Long stories per year.
- Long stories have their own separate schedule kept apart from the others so as to better manage them.
Long stories may be scheduled up to the end of the upcoming year. Once that year is filled up, I will stop accepting any Long stories until the next calendar year.
- Example: If the current year is 2024, I will stop accepting Long stories for review once all 26 weeks of 2025 have been filled. The 2026 calendar would open January 1, 2025.
- Any requests for Long stories will go directly into the Long Story Schedule. If the schedule is booked, the request will be rejected by default.
Story Lists
Stories in my calendar are divided into four types. How many stories I pull from each list will vary per blog based on how many stories are currently in each list (i.e., lists with more stories contribute more reviews in a given blog). Long Stories are never included in these lists, as they have their own separate list (as explained above). The lists include:
- Read It Later (RIL): This list consists of any stories by authors I’ve never reviewed before. This is filled in by my own scouring of the site. I try to include at least one per blog.
Sequel/Completes: A combination list, because there’s usually not enough of either type to warrant a list of their own. It includes:
- Sequels: If I read a story that is part of an AU/ continuity and decide I want to read more, the next story in the AU/continuity will be placed here. Note that a story does not have to be a direct sequel to qualify for this list; as long as it’s within the same AU/continuity, it’s fair game. Stories set in the continuity but written by other authors are also allowed, provided the story is ordained canon by the original author.
- Completes: If I discover a story in the works that is incomplete and want to read it, I’ll put it on a special bookshelf for tracking. Once the author finishes the story (and assuming it’s not a Long Story), it will go here. (I never read incomplete stories except maybe when they’re requested.)
- Requests: All non-Long requests go in this list. As stated above, there is a strict limit of 10 stories for this list. This limit is an effort to limit how long it takes between a request and the actual review.
- Known Authors: Also known as the Stalker’s List. I keep a record of all the authors I’ve read before. Every week I pull two names from that record (one from the top and one of my choosing) to go into this list. (This one is usually the most filled list by far.)
Links
The Review Schedule:
- The hard and soft schedules can both be found here. Note that only the next five blogs of the hard schedule will be visible.
- The Long Story schedules for individual years can also be found here in their own separate tabs.
- The “Reserve” tab contains a record of all the authors I’ve currently read, which I pull from weekly to populate my Known Authors list.
- The “Records” tab is much more dense in design, and is used by me to populate the Hard Schedule tab. For those of you familiar with spreadsheets: it’s the data source for the hard schedule.
The Reading Schedule
This one is largely for my own benefit, but feel free to come here to see exactly what I plan to read and when. Short and Medium Stories are scheduled up to six weeks prior to reading. Long stories are scheduled up to the latest hard-scheduled review blog. Stories and dates are also color-coded to help see when a story’s review is due.The Archive
A comprehensive list of every FIMFiction story I’ve reviewed, with links to both the stories and their reviews. Feel free to use the Find feature (Hint: Ctrl+F) to look for a specific story, be it to read an old review or check if I’ve already reviewed something you want to request!
- Scroll down a little and to the right to find a list of stats!
- As of this blog’s release, I’m currently in the process of adding wordcounts, something I neglected to do for years.
- The top and right bits are for my own use, allowing me to quickly create a list of stories/reviews by a given author, created solely so that I can quickly fill out the “Previous Stories” segment in the review blogs.
Review Bans
Would you rather I not review your stories? Want to be inoculated from the chance of your story appearing in my RiL list? That can be arranged.
- Authors may request that their library never be reviewed. I will accept the request and add them to a list of authors to not be read.
- Review Bans are all encompassing, meaning your entire library will be off limits.
- Any request made by someone to review the work of a banned author will be rejected by default.
- Authors are not allowed to ban only select stories from review. Either I can read your entire library or I can't read any of it. I won't allow authors to use me to cherry-pick their "best" stories and sweep the rest under the rug.
Bans are permanent on my side, but the author can contact me to rescind the ban at any time.
- You may only ban-then-rescind once. If you decide to rescind a ban, you cannot re-ban afterwards. That would open the door for authors to effectively limit what I can and can't review from their library by abusing the request system, and I won't allow that. Make your decision, live with the consequences.
- Requesting I read your story after asking for a review ban will count as rescinding the ban.
That’s all I’ve got for now! Again, if anyone has a question or would like something else added above, feel free to comment about it.
Need some editing done? Working on a story and not sure how it’s shaping up? I’m now doing editing and critique commissions! Check here for more information and PM me if interested.
Always love reading your reviews, so happy you've decided to give this a shot. Best of luck!!
Had a feeling you'd be taking this offer for a spin, bud!
I'm super excited to see where it takes you.
For me, there's almost nothing here I didn't already know, though some of the finer details around story types and the story lists were somewhat fresh to me. In particular, how documented and tracked your process was for pulling stories from authors you've read from before. In hindsight, given your organisational prowess, it's not remotely surprising.
Can't wait to see this blog be evergreen in views and comments with the site-shared future review blogs all linking to it!
Here's hoping this goes well for everyone involved, you most especially.
Congratulations!! I hope everything goes smoothly for you - it would be amazing to have front-page reviews like that again! Very much looking forward to the new era :)
love getting these more technical peeks behind the curtain :D best of luck with everything, and looking forward to this new "era" of ur reviews!
Only a fool asks for reviews of their story. We only want praises and headpats
Now here's a question: will this be a fresh set, or a continuation of your usual? And will your list for the public-facing be separate from your existing one? (Most notably, are you going to double back over your ~2800 stories that have already been covered or is it all going to be fresh material?)
Comprehensive! :D
Here's hoping this goes well. Might be a good breath of fresh air for the site.
Good luck!
Good luck
I lurk in the lines between
Oof, choosing some of my older ones for that upcoming Gardez-dump.
Love this idea! Fimfiction's historically set itself apart with the quality of its fics compared to other sites. Your efforts to approach them with a serious and critical eye deserves praise :)
Intreating I look forward to this
5782548
I think you misunderstand. As of right now, all reviews will be public-facing. The private one is only going to be my regular non-review blog.
But to answer your questions, I don't intend to change the numbering scheme. The next blog will be CCCLVIII. I weighed the possibility of starting it over, but A) I don't want to rebrand, and B) letting people see from the get-go that I've already got 357 review blogs under my belt (not counting SA blogs and the old Monday blogs) will make it clear to first-timers that I'm what you might call an "established institution". Plus it would be a shame to restart the count when I could instead be seeing how high I can get the number!
As for doubling back, no, I don't intend to do that. I've got an archive, they can check that if they want. I did the double-back and re-review thing when I switched from the Monday to the Thursday blogs, and that took years. Now? I'd probably die before I finished. That being said, if someone wanted me to re-read and old story for review just to get it on the public-facing one, I might be willing to entertain it as a request.
5782556
I try.
5782577
Well, I wanted to get stories from a range of dates, rather than focusing on any one time period.
5782546
There are a great many fools on FIMFiction, then!
5782574
In between the lines
We believe that they can't see
A twist in the dark
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Thanks for the encouragement, guys! Gotta admit, I'm feeling pretty good about it now that I've finally made the decision.
Awww yiss I see one of my stories coming up. Very excited, your reviews always make my day.
Huh. Kind of expected to see a rule of "no requesting your own stories", otherwise this seems like it might pose a bit of a flood risk, if you know what I mean, even if there's nothing forcing you to actually take such requests. Not that a rule like that would be hard to work around, of course, but still, little surprised.
Regardless, look forward to reading more reviews in the future.
5783931
At least part of my reviews are done to help writers see what they may be doing wrong with their own works (or at least what I perceive as wrong), so I'm perfectly fine with people asking for a review of their own material. They just need to be aware of the caveat: negative reviews are possible.
As for "flooding", that's why I decided to start a limit of ten reviews, which is new as of me being in the news feed. I had no limit in the past, but I knew that being in the public eye might cause problems. I figured the limit would at least give everyone a chance, if they're observant/fast enough.
5783944
Huh. You know, while I don't think I can bring myself to be gauche* enough to actually request a review, the fact that you won't hold back actually makes it more tempting. It's definitely something to keep in mind, at least.
*a word that I don't think I've ever seen used unironically, and certainly never used unironically, but I really can't think of a better word to describe it, so... first time for everything, I guess.
UPDATE JUNE 4TH, 2024:
Because someone asked, I've added rules regarding how authors can request being placed on a review ban list, thereby protecting them from being reviewed in the future.