What I Choose to Read

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.

I’ve decided to write this down so I don’t have to repeat myself.

There have been several of you fans who have requested me to give an opinion of your written works of several fandoms, besides MLP:FiM.

And sadly, I’ve had to turn a few of you down.

Not that I’m a mean person or anything, mind you, but given the volume of works which I go through every DAY, I find it necessary to screen through what updates and requests I get on the fanfiction sites I subscribe to.

First and foremost, please understand that I used to be an English teacher. A full-all-encompassing teacher, meaning that I taught grammar, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, reading comprehension, phonics, literature, and yes, composition, levels K-12.

So don’t be surprised if my first line of screening has to do with how you handle the English language.

I’ve seen stories that have a really, REALLY good premise, but the spelling, punctuation, and grammar are just SO horrible that it’s a chore AND a pain to go through. I mean, some of you write as if you were in the first or second grade of elementary school, and I can’t help but wonder how on earth did your story ever make it onto this server.

It’s a real tragedy how many of you have NO idea what’s the difference between “to” and “too”, “breathe” and “breath”, “throne” and “thrown”, “break” and “brake”, or much less where commas and periods are supposed to go. It’s also very painful to see how many of you rely BLINDLY on the MSWord spell checker and auto-correct features without even bothering to see if the word it chooses is the one that fits the context of the sentence.

So, without wanting to be mean to anyone:

If the short summary is riddled with spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, I will ignore the story.

If the long summary is riddled with spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, I will ignore the story.

If the first chapter is riddled with spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, I will ignore the story.

If the responses to the reviews are riddled with spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, I will ignore the story.

If you try to pass off a non-poetry story that has ~1,000 words spread out over 20 chapters, I will ignore the story.

Now, I can safely say that most of you live in an English speaking country and I’m SURE you have/had access to SOME form of formal education, so all of you there have NO excuse in submitting such atrocities to the English language.

And even if your first language is NOT English, you STILL have no excuse. There are plenty of good people here who are kind enough to offer their time and effort to edit your story and correct all the errors they can catch.

I’ll never forget what MY English teacher told me when I was in high school (in the US): “If you don’t take the time to write correctly and according to the rules that you’ve learned, you are showing disregard, selfishness, contempt, and willful maliciousness to others around you by forcing them to conform to YOUR rules of how you THINK English should be written. And in the worst of cases, you are showing everyone that you are DUMB. Yes, DUMB, as in that you don’t know how to speak, or that you REFUSE to speak correctly.”

Quite harsh there, but you can be sure that everyone in our English class took that to heart.

So, that’s the first screening I place on stories. If your story fits in any of the above categories, honey, sorry. Don’t expect me to read it.

Also:

No Human(s) in Equestria or Anthros. This is in solidarity with Lauren Faust, who at the start of the show said that there would be NO humans whatsoever in ANY of the episodes. However, I’m willing to make an exception IF and ONLY IF the story is VERY good, and if it’s recommended directly by someone else. So far, the HiE fanfics which I’ve considered worthy of reading are “Anthropology” by JasonTheHuman, “Coma” by RedSketor, “The Great Brony Migration” by Laichonius, “Journey to my Imagination” by DeiStar, “A Voice Among the Strangers” by LucidTech, “Arrow 18 Mission Logs” by AdmiralTigerclaw, “The Rise of Darth Vulcan” by RealityCheck, “The Last Human: A Tale of the Pre-Classical Era” by PatchworkPoltergeist, “My Little Dashie” by ROBCakeran53, and 25 more which you can find on my favourites list.

This also includes stories based on Equestria Girls, sorry.

No crossovers. Now, I’m sure that quite a good number of these are very well written, but I have the unfortunate problem of NOT being familiar with most of the series that are being crossed-over, especially the animé series and most modern video games. When that happens, the author basically just introduces the crossing characters as if the reader automatically knows who they are and what they do, so there I’m completely in the dark and it’s impossible for me to enjoy the story. So, unless I’m familiar with the other series, I’ll have to skip it.

The exceptions to this so far are “The DisQord Continuum” by ZoidbergIsBestPony (Star Trek crossover), “The Incredible Hulk: Hero or Monster?” by GodDragonDevil, “Halo: On the Wings of Angels” by Gyvon (I have never seen nor played the game, I read it ONLY because it’s VERY well written), and a few others.

Also, do NOT send me links to YouTube or Wikipedia so that I can “familiarise” myself with the other series in order for me to read your crossover. If you think that one webpage is going to make me an overnight expert of that series you like, then you have some SERIOUS issues.

Gore/Dark/Tragedy/Clop: I’d be a hypocrite if I ignored ALL of these stories, given that I have one or two that include some of those topics, but the stories would have to include them with moderation and not be a complete bloodbath. I won’t automatically skip them, mind you, but they’d better be well written.

I have to post all of this because there have been authors who have DEMANDED that I read their stories, or even worse, that I WRITE them a story, for no reason, and out of the blue, of their favourite series. It’s been getting VERY annoying explaining all of this to those people, and even MORE annoying when they start getting rude and telling me I’m a mean person, a bigot, or what have you, so hopefully this will clear the air as to why I read what I read and why I DON’T read what I DON’T read.

¡Zacatepóngolas!

Until next time, remember:

I AM THE J.A.M. (a.k.a. Numbuh i: "Just because I'm imaginary doesn't mean I don't exist")

Good evening.

[WARP!!!]