The Rules have been updated:

► If you are awarded TGB ribbon—do not put it in your story's description, as this is against site rules.
— It will annoy Meeester if you do, and annoying Meeester is never a good thing.

So yeah—don't do it.

~BikerPon3

4286621

annying

4286637

In my defense, I pulled a 12 hour shift yesterday and I've had nowhere near enough sleep since...

4286642
I know how that feels...

4286621 Ah yes. Rules. My favouritest thing evarrrr.

My bad for putting that in the thread earlier. I was in the dark.

It's kind of a pity, though. I was strongly considering sticking my old TL ribbon on the story that earned it, but I didn't 'cause it took up too much space. Still, would've been nice, and I know a lot of other people who do it.

I guess it's to prevent people with small devices from having too much loading time or something.

4286703

As I recall, the official suggestion on that was putting "This is 100% Approved by Twilight's Library!" or the equivalent in the description, and putting the ribbon by the fanfic on your home page or in a blog or such. I know one or two people put it on their cover art, too.

Of course, the admins don't really enforce that rule with the ribbon much. It's mainly if they notice it and think about it, or if someone points it out, and unless you do something to irritate them, they'll probably just ask you to remove it. I think they are more concerned about blatant abuse with large images, animated gifs, etc. It's best not to risk it, though.

--arcum42

4286710 I imagine. In any case, I try not get noticed by the site mods too much. At least, not for bad things.

I love getting noticed for good things. I thrive on attention.

Speaking of attention, hello! How's the book club?

4286719

Admittedly, the only time the site mods talked to us about it was when SweetAI Belle pm'ed one of them about it when we were in the middle of switching things around to specifically say not to put them in the description, and that was largely a "don't worry about it" type conversation, as I recall.

The book club isn't very active, but it's running along with occasional fanfics added here and there. As long as things are still added, I'll consider it a success. I'm not trying to match the level of activity Twilight's Library had.

In fact, I very carefully set up everything to put very little pressure on the staff to add things, made it so they don't have to go through a queue reading things that they aren't interested in, and avoiding being overwhelmed with submissions. I was being very cautious not to repeat the mistakes that led to Twilight's Library collapsing.

I probably should try to stir up activity again a bit, though.

--arcum42

4286732 I did consider the whole 'pressure on staff' thing. I guess my method is to be prepared to tell people that our first priority is to find and collect stories of a certain standard, not provide assistance to authors. Although that's fun too. So long as stories are trickling out of the submissions folders, personally I don't mind if they're overflowing or not (but it's better if they don't).

If my ergonomics lecturers knew I was using lessons learned about stress levels on a fanfiction website, they'd probably eat me alive. Just don't tell the other approvers that my occasional PM's with terrible humour is a calculated move: it'll ruin the surprise.

Frankly, though, reviewing is my downtime. I don't read that much unless I do it here, which is possibly why people get surprised with how often I post the reviews. I guess that helps on my end, at least.

I was quite happy when I saw the book club was active. I only joined TL right before closing, and if I'm not much mistaken I was among the last to actually get in (courtesy of Winter_Solstice, who was incredibly diligent about emptying the folders despite whatever drama was going on). It was a very pleasant surprise to have people come around and hand me this ribbon out of nowhere.

4286759

Admittedly, I was trying to make sure everyone was tactful and gave a fair idea of why things were rejected, which added to it. Part of it, too, was that there were always more stories, and there were usually two or three main people processing them, and others would stop looking through the incoming folder because they didn't feel they could meet their standards, or couldn't keep up with the amount they were doing, etc.

Also, the larger we became, the more people were adding things, and the worse the average level of things submitted seemed to get. It would end up with a bunch of the worse fics sitting around waiting for someone to reject them.

We actually originally intended locking the incoming folder to be a one time thing, because we were having trouble keeping up, but of course, there were more people when we unlocked it and people had been waiting for it to unlock to submit things... You can probably see why I decided on no incoming folder whatsoever on the book club.

It was a very pleasant surprise to have people come around and hand me this ribbon out of nowhere.

I'd imagine. I was very glad of Winter Solstice processing the last of the folder too, because otherwise I was going to do it myself, and I obviously had a lot of other things on my mind at the time...

--arcum42

4286807 see, I purposefully read the rules and then choose not to submit my story to TL. As the rules made it clear a Humanized story with occasional gratuitous sex would have yo be a lot better than anything I could produce to get in. And i felt that made sense. Why ask for someone to take a weedwacker to their own face? Ya know?

Good to hear you're managing your sanity. Good luck!

4286807 We actually got rid of the self-submissions folder ourselves. As you can see, we have a very shiny thread with some pretty basic requirements, most important of which is 'present a reason to read your story', and I make a point of not adding any story that doesn't comply to the pending review folder.

We'll see if it works. Still, I think it's a testament to how well the idea seems to be working that so far, that the normal submissions folder is overflowing, not the self-submissions one.

the worse the average level of things submitted seemed to get

I know the feeling. I don't mind reviewing stuff that's substandard (it's actually strangely therapeutic), but I do mind when it becomes predictable. I had a horrible time going through one author's stories who had submitted nine at once before we implemented the thread idea. It's in no way her fault (she was just submitting her stuff, and who's to stop her?) but it made for some very mind-numbing and worst of all, repetitive reviewing. It was highly frustrating.

4286841

That would be a bit of a double-whammy from both the human side and the clop side, wouldn't it? Ah well, one thing with the book club is I made the standards almost totally subjective, so it's more a matter of if one of the scouts thinks it's good enough to get in, though porn still needs to have merit as a story.

I actually think part of the trouble is people did want a weedwhacker to the face. We were giving enough good feedback during rejection that people were submitting things they didn't think would make it to get the feedback.

Good to hear you're managing your sanity. Good luck!

Thanks.

4286842
I do think threads work better, though my forms request rather more information, and I do it for both regular submissions and self-submissions. Of course, I'm not guaranteeing we'll even look at things in our two threads.

I know the feeling. I don't mind reviewing stuff that's substandard (it's actually strangely therapeutic), but I do mind when it becomes predictable. I had a horrible time going through one author's stories who had submitted nine at once before we implemented the thread idea. It's in no way her fault (she was just submitting her stuff, and who's to stop her?) but it made for some very mind-numbing and worst of all, repetitive reviewing. It was highly frustrating.

That's pretty much how it was getting, and the more you slogged through, the higher your standards got. In fact, I recall I wasn't willing to try and read more than a couple at a time for a good while because I would get so nit-picky after a while that I couldn't enjoy them. I was more than a little burned out on it by the time everything went down myself, and there was a point that I'd have gladly handed over running Twilight's Library to someone else, except that the two people I'd have trusted with it had resigned...

--arcum42

4286866

I'd have gladly handed over running Twilight's Library to someone else, except that the two people I'd have trusted with it had resigned...

Well, in all fairness, if you didn't want the job, it's hard to expect other people to want it instead.

Besides, I ain't giving up. I get to meet new people, read new stories that come to me, and feel halfway important. What's not to love?

In any case, if ever you (or anyone else you know) wants to get back into reviewing on a more regular basis, you know where we live, and this is how we roll.

With animated puppy gifs. An absolutely necessary reviewing tool.

4286841 I'll have to get around to reading that soon. It's been waiting for far too long already.

4286875

Well, in all fairness, if you didn't want the job, it's hard to expect other people to want it instead.

Quite true.

Besides, I ain't giving up. I get to meet new people, read new stories that come to me, and feel halfway important. What's not to love?

Glad you feel that way about it now, and I hope it doesn't change. I've seen a few too many submission based groups die in the past. I still regret the demise of the Gem Hunters group. I always actually wanted other similar groups to succeed. They just all tended to end up failing for one reason or another.

In any case, if ever you (or anyone else you know) wants to get back into reviewing on a more regular basis, you know where we live, and this is how we roll.

I'll certainly keep it in mind, and you've already got Winter Solstice. And if things start to go haywire, I'll still be in this group, and can offer whatever advice I have at the time...

--arcum42

4286890 Never even heard of those blokes. My account isn't even a full year old, maybe they went out of business before I got here?

The way I see it, so long as we have Biker, who's great at keeping things running, and myself, we'll be fine. I keep an eye on a lot of other reviewing groups for any potential story approvers, and I even headhunt them from time to time (as Winter can testify to). Charles and MOTM are both really solid reviewers, even if MOTM was a bit green when he began. And Winter is, as you know, damn effective, not to mention fast and regular.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with my team, and I even have places to go to get more if things get dire. I keep in touch with them regularly enough, reply to their reviews from time to time, exchange information, opinions, and sometimes just chat. I like to keep our standards subjective (so long as they're not too subjective) so each review can be done differently. The only thing I don't negotiate on is explaining our decisions, which keeps things transparent.

I even have a provider of memes pop up from time to time. He's been away for a bit though. His specialty is spiderman.

With an environment like this, I'm pretty optimistic. And even if it does collapse, well, we'd have had a good run.

4286866 I can totally understand why people asked for the weedwacker though. It took me a good four months of doing the best I could without any editors before a few fans finally offered their services. Now I have a decent team helping me, but I still enjoy additional feedback whenever I am lucky enough to get it.

4286875
4286890 Hap's confused, he doesn't know that you're a part of Elric's group, thus let me show you how we really roll

See, now that's how I roll

And Hap, don't risk what little sanity [or whiskey] you have left rushing though your current 900k story just to get to mine. I don't want to have to clean up your brains with a mop after it dribbles out of your ear.

4286910 I'm not rushing! I actually have to take a lot of time on it considering that I'm heavily (and I mean heavily) biased against SoarinDash. If I rush through it, people'll think I'm drunk on power!

I mean, what is the point?! If I wanted to ship Dash x Generic Male I'd have self-inserted! At least I'd have gotten some fun out of that!

It doesn't help that the first one doesn't seem to be a clear cut case of either immediate accept or immediate reject. There's stuff it's doing right and stuff it's doing wrong, and obviously my bias is playing the stuff it does wrong right up. I was hoping it'd be an instant reject case, but no such luck, it seems Calm Wind actually half knew what he was doing!

Damn him for being a competent author!

4286901

It has been a while, so possibly.

And it does sound like you have things under control. Communication is a key thing, and not one I'm necessarily the best at.

4286910
Oh, I understand it. It certainly didn't help things, though.

And I'm not just a member of Elric's group, I founded his group.

Elric makes the best reaction pictures, doesn't he?

And actually, I've probably sent more pm's to him than anyone else on this site...

--arcum42

4286914 On the plus side, you get to read a story that is at least written at a competent enough level to not make you reach for a shot every time they accidentally type weather instead of whether.

4286918 Haha, yeah, I remember. I didn't even known you from TL. I only met you because of Elric. All hail elric, king of the 80's music.

4286919 (Implying I don't reach for shots anyway)

It's always over the yardarm somewhere!

It's an odd one, actually. I have the hardest time reviewing older stories (2012 and prior) because the climate was very different. I feel these days originality has become crucial, considering people want to distinguish themselves from other stories. More 'generic' stories (like this one, which is a very straightforwards Wonderbolt-romance) wouldn't even be given a chance these days.

But this is the only climate I'm used to. My first story was a wild stab at originality, and it's something I've been aiming for ever since. Heck, my first comment praised it's originality, but back in the day, everything was original. I'm always torn between reviewing something to today's standards, or bear in mind that there was a different goal in mind back two, three years ago.

And of course, just to make my life that much harder, this is a 2012 story. Greaaat.

4286921

Yep. As I recall, in the old Twist group, which doesn't exist any more, the two of us started spamming the off-topic thread with Twist pictures, and then posting youtube videos of music, mostly from the 80's, to each other. Eventually we took it to pm, and ended up as friends after that. It's not surprising he enlisted my help in creating the current Twist group...

4286925
Heh, yeah, I joined in April of 2012 myself. Things were rather different. For one thing, that was what, the middle of season two?

Edit: April 19th, 2012? Interesting.

--arcum42

4286925
4286931 That is exactly why I'm so interested in feedback for my story. I am taking a premise taht has been overdone [r63 Dusk Shine] and another [harem style relationships] and trying to force them both into what I consider a more mature and "realistic" story based off the plot of the series. It's created a lot of fun, for me at least I'm constantly getting messages about how others have done the same idea, but when I ask the person about some of my alterations and they try reading the damn thing, I've mostly gotten good feedback. Heck, except for a recent downvote bomb I received last week, I've only had two people I can remember give me any tangible feedback on why they were downvoting me. *shrugs* Oh well! [again, weed wacker effect >.>;; Even if Hap hates my story, at least I'll get feedback!]

And Don't remind me of the twist group. Elric pointed me to it and I lost a day going through old threads there.

4286931 I'm 2014 myself. Late joiner. Just before the beginning of s4, I think (but my memory isn't exactly up to scratch).

Took me longer to join fanfiction. Frankly, I didn't like the idea of it, but when one is starved for pone...

Ended up liking it. It really is weird reading older stories though: you can see the difference in both content, style, how popular they are, and even standards. It's freaky.

4286938

Took me longer to join fanfiction. Frankly, I didn't like the idea of it, but when one is starved for pone...

That's weird—I also joined in 2014, and had the exact same attitude towards fanfiction. Then I started reading it out of boredom one day and the rest's history.

4286936 True. I do does the feedbackz.

R63 confuses me, though. Even if the character's personality remains exactly the same, being a different gender changes how it works. I mean, Rainbow Dash being tomboyish doesn't mean the same thing if she's a guy, since we behave differently. It has a different connotation, whether it's deserved or not.

Then again, the only time I read r63 was some porn I had to review.

Fun times.

4286943 My sister used to read a lot of fanfiction (not pone though). You learn to have a healthy fear of it when you hear about Iron Man x Captain America, especially when it's described by someone who doesn't like shipping.

She's actually an author on Fanfiction.net. She's done Fairy Tail, if I'm not much mistaken. In any case, that was my first introduction to fanfics, and I did not like what I saw.

Ironically, I despised the idea of shipping too. Kind of did a 180 there.

4286944 Dusk and Twilight are not exact clones with different genitalia in my story, just a person who is nearly the same, raised nearly the same and with nearly the same life. But because he is a different person, he finds different solutions. My best example would be my version of Applebuck Season, were Dusk walks out to help the apples with their harvest while calculating how long it will take them to complete the harvest and reading a book on apple groves all at the same time. When things go from bad to worse, he also takes action, unlike Twilight who just kept trying to talk AJ into accepting help.

opps spoilers. Oh well!

4286949 Yeah, I gather, but it's got some very nitpicky nuances. Hence confusing.

4286936

Combining overdone premises in new and interesting ways or with a twist can work pretty well. My most popular and still ongoing story does some of that. Homeless Scootaloo is pretty common, as is redeeming Diamond Tiara. Having Diamond become homeless early on is still fairly original, and most people don't do a slow redemption the way I am. I make an effort to keep her still having a totally warped, bad world view and spoiled and selfish while being sympathetic. It's a lot of fun to write, really.

Totally agree on the Twist group, and that'd be the new one, since the original got deleted by the founder eventually.

4286938
Exactly three years to the day, I guess, for me.

I'd actually read a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction before mlp, and Ranma 1/2 fanfiction before that, (and occasional Star Trek) so that element of things was old hat to me. I'd already been following the web comic "Skin Horse", and knowing one of the two authors was writing fanfiction and was a good author (Skywriter) gave me the final incentive to start watching the show, really. It wasn't too long afterwards that I joined.

Then I was bookmarking so much fanfiction that it was getting pretty unorganized, since bookshelves didn't exist then, so I made a group to organize all the good fanfiction I'd been reading earlier. We were talking about that group earlier.

4286943
I originally turned to fanfiction because of a shortage of things to read. I used to read a different book every single day. I've slowed down since then, but you can imagine how starved for things to read I got.

--arcum42

4286948

Iron Man x Captain America

That sounds...terrifying.

I turned to fanfiction once I'd run out of pony content. There's only so many times you can re-watch the episodes before you want more pastel horse adventures.

4286959 I used to be like that, even before I joined the fandom. When things were slow at work I'd just read a book. Some of them were even romance novels, (hence why I'm okay with shipping) though I'd never admit it to my colleagues.

4286959 In HapHazred story, Scootaloo adopt Rainbow.

Or at least, that's what I'm currently working on.

4286960 I was satisfied with the daily drawfriend on EQ for a while, but the fanfiction tab was always nagging me. Eventually, I gave it a shot, kinda halfway liked it, and eventually found a ridiculous comedy that featured, interestingly enough, a joke where Applejack was interested in Rainbow Dash. It was played for laughs and never went anywhere, but you could say that was my very first exposure to AppleDash. A joke.

Took me longer to get bored by the (eventually) repeating stories revolving the pairing. That's when I decided that if you wanted something done right... you had best write a story where Rainbow had a pathological fear of Applejack.

Unlike what I expected, it wasn't an instant hit (shocking). I'm viciously competitive, however, and had my next one out within the month, which is the least favourite of my stories to date. And it's been a slow climb from there.

4286967

Science Fiction and fantasy is what I tend to read for preference, and I started out with Ray Bradbury and the like. Reading things like Heinlein's novels, where he ships everyone in sight, and the Valdamar series, where everyone rides telepathic horses and slash shipping abounds, probably prepared me pretty well for this fandom.

I did start reading horror and detective novels while looking for things to read, and some of the fantasy and sci-fi has heavy romance elements. At least one of the authors I read writes romance under a pseudonym.

4286975
Who adopts Diamond is still a mystery to the readers (though not to me, obviously), but at the moment she's living in the cutie mark crusader clubhouse with Scootaloo, and is learning how to deal with being homeless from her. (It also has a notice saying it's non-compliant with season 4 and beyond...)

My first story was exploring Twilight never getting to spend time with Celestia since moving to Ponyville, and her efforts to be more like her mentor. Not a big success. 62:1 two years later isn't bad, though.

--arcum42

4286975 I ended up clicking on the EQD fics tab out of curiosity when reading the episode followups. Some of them tend to be just as entertaining as the episodes themselves.

4286989 Everything I read these days is mostly pony related. I probably spend an unhealthy amount of time on FiMFiction if I'm honest...

4286989 I'd say that's decent. Mine is around 30-something:6.

My best stories are entries to the EFNW contest that's going on just now. Even got a message saying I was in the final round, which made me pretty pleased.

Long stories are the bane of my existence. My lifestyle doesn't really accomodate me sitting down for long periods of time (even now, for the duration of this conversation, I've moved around loads to manage different things, and this is a day off) and I get distracted when reading/writing long stuff, but I used to read a fair bit. Mostly either light-hearted childrens novels or ultra-serious science fiction, but I never enjoyed those as much. These days, I only read books when I travel, and they're usually mystery stories.

4287002

Yeah, actual novels are getting few and far between, and a lot of my pony reading got replaced with writing, forum things, and vectoring and coloring things, plus occasional computer games and such. I definitely spend an unhealthy amount of time on fimfiction.

4287003
Yeah, I've certainly had worse. I haven't done bad on the whole. My most downvoted story was "Twilight Sparkle Meets Peaches" with 43:17, and that was largely because of the glut of stories at the time with titles similar to "Twilight Sparkle Eats Peaches". Cubic Zirconia, though, the Diamond Tiara one, is currently at 539:10, and I'm still wondering how that happened...

With me, part of it is that I spend a fair amount of time on the bus. Trouble is that these days I surf the web with my wifi hotspot instead of reading a book. I can understand the problem with long stories. That's one reason why a collection of short stories like "R is for Rocket, S is for Space" or "The Martian Chronicles" can be good.

And I do occasionally read childrens novels. The Dark is Rising, Wrinkle In Time, and so on. Occasional mysteries as well. I actually like fantasy or occult detective novels if I can find them. The Adept, the Vampire Files, "Garret, PI"...

--arcum42

4287035 My worst story, in my opinion, is not my most downvoted. My second story was written while I was in a really bad mood, and it shows. I was more interested in doing something clever than something enjoyable, and given my talent at writing at the time, I probably failed at both.

My most downvoted (78:11) is one of my half decent ones, actually. It's the price you pay for shipping. It got a bit more exposure than a lot of my other romance stories because it got to the EQD for the valentines thing with the long name. Unlike my least favourite, it's actually fun to read, or at least, was fun to write.

4287056

My worst story would be the one I wasn't happy with, revised a dozen times, and eventually got so sick of that I never published it. It was called "Raindrops On Roses", and I suppose was a romance, if anything.

Of the ones I published, I'm not that happy with "On a Rainy Day", but it's at 73:4. People occasionally remind me of things they liked in it, but I feel meh about it aside from a few clever things I did on it.

My least read one, now, was "Dark and Deep", which is 33:4. The funny thing is that its one I've very happy with. I set out to write a fairy tale, and one of the old type that often do not have happy endings. I feel I succeeded, doing horrible things to Dinky, who was my main character, along the way. I even did the pretentious thing of having a quote from an old folk song in a quote box at the beginning of the story.

--arcum42

4287089 Dayum that's pretentious. I like it.

My least read out of my more recent ones (aside from a group collab I had the honour of publishing) is only at 150 views, but made it to 39:2. Put a whole lot of effort into that one too, and it's one of the ones that I entered into the EFNW contest.

Fairy tales? I'm currently on the border of Germany (when I'm not studying in Britain): we have amusement parks for fairy tales.

My favourite was of a boy who kept on staring at the sky. His mother told him he shouldn't, because he couldn't see where he was going. He didn't listen, fell into puddle and drowned.

That's it. That's the whole story.

Oh, and uh, spoilers.

4287123

Yeah, I did too. This is literally the quote box it starts with.

I had Dinky's mother list off several rules before she left home. IIRC, she broke them all. It was strongly influenced by a song called "Mr. Fox's Garden" as well as Mr. Fox, though Reynardine was an influence too. I even went so far as to have "Be bold, be bold" written as a motto in there.

The boy drowning sounds about right. That was the style of thing I had in mind. Trouble, of course, is not everyone appreciates old fairy tales of that sort.

--arcum42

4287138 I can't say I'm an appreciator of fine fairy tales. Between appreciating science, engineering, writing, art, and just about everything else under the sun, I seem to have ran out of time for stories of young german lads turning into balloons and floating off, before dying.

That was another one, btw. I spoiled that one too, apparently. (I'm on a roll)

Goodness, this thread has derailed. I blame you, of course.

Anyway, I have to go and learn about electromechanics some more. See you around.

4287155

I certainly know the feeling. I end up doing a bit of everything myself as well...

And by all means, blame me. I can be a champion thread derailer at times, hence my tale of Twist and 80's music and Elric.

I'd best get some sleep myself. Catch you around.

--arcum42