Hello there! My name is electreXcessive, and I’ve been hearing a lot more about EqD and how they’re all ‘horrible people’ and their reviewing processes are biased and ‘full of bullshit’. Now, let it be stated here, at the beginning this piece, that I am in no way affiliated with Equestria Daily, nor do I side with them on recent controversies. I’m merely going to be observing patterns and phenomenon that I’ve seen with an air of objectivity, and hopefully try to bring a little enlightenment to the situation.

Let’s start with the accusation. Equestria Daily’s pre-reader team is biased, and rejects fics based on personal preference rather than the actual quality of the writing. There also seems to be this deeply ingrained ideal within authors who’ve been rejected that the pre-readers simply make up petty, bullshit reason to reject their otherwise perfectly flawless fics. I will not deny that this may in fact happen in some cases. I’ve had some unpleasant experiences with EqD pre-readers in the past, but that is in no way an appropriate reason to judge the majority of them based on the minority.

Let’s be honest here, guys. The pre-readers at EqD actually do put a lot of effort into reading fics and selecting which ones will be accepted and rejected. Oftentimes it’s a thankless job as well, so it’s important to treat both sides of the argument with the equal respect that they deserve. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be using my own rejection letters as evidence, so take that as you will. Now, to start off, let’s take a look at a review by the EqD pre-reader Pascoite, as written for the WRITE group.

Greetings, electreXcessive! Here begins the review you requested from WRITE:

His muscles ached from laying in uncomfortable positions for the entire day.

Lay/lie confusion. A common problem.

His eyesight seem to flicker inwards and outwards, causing him to nearly go cross-eyed from the strain being put on them from staring into the dark screen.

Verb form error. I have no idea what eyesight flickering "inwards and outwards" is supposed to mean. And you just mentioned two sentences ago that it was a "slightly dark screen," so this is at once repetitive and contradictory.

Visible droplets of sweat

I suppose that's better than audible droplets of sweat... Srsly, that word accomplishes nothing.

Pixelated rain fell all around and the ominous noise of pseudo thunder rang through his mind

Don't forget to separate your clauses with a comma. You have separate subject verb pairs (Pixelated rain ... , and ... thunder rang ...) And hyphenate your compound modifiers (pseudo-thunder). Though it's odd to describe it as such; the game may well use a real sound sample of thunder.

giving him a sense of finality

You've already pretty bluntly told me a couple of times how he feels. It's a little lacking in subtlety. This is also the 4th instance of some form of "final" in your first 2 paragraphs. Watch the word repetition.

You’ve come at last noble warrior

Missing the comma to end your quote, and missing a comma for direct address. When one character address another by name, title, or reference, it's separated with one or two commas.

spitting each word with pure hatred

Yeah, that's telly. Here's my tasty copypasta on the subject:
It’s better to imply emotional context than to state it outright. Telling can be likened to reading the script instead of watching the play. Showing gets the reader to identify with the character and deduce the emotion for himself, which necessarily forms a connection between them. If the emotion is stated plainly, it’s a cold fact with little meaning to the reader. Consider an actor. Does he simply walk out on stage and declare, “I’m sad”? That would give you the information you need, but it’s not very interesting. Instead, he might slump his shoulders, have bloodshot eyes, fidget, get distracted easily, etc. We’re already hardwired to perceive others’ emotion that way, so doing it in writing makes it more natural. By getting the reader to interpret these signs, the author has made him put himself in the character’s mindset, which creates a connection between them. This includes any sort of conclusion the narrator might make for the reader, including use of such words as “obvious,” “clear,” “surprising,” etc., depending on the situation, of course. The author should place himself as an observer in the scene and present only what he can perceive; we want the evidence, not the judgment. Of course, there are times that telling can be acceptable or even good. Showing is more crucial during scenes that are critical to the plot or when emotions run high, but in an out-of-the-way remark of little importance, it wouldn’t do much harm. It’s up to the author to determine whether it’s an instance where the information is enough, or whether he wants the reader to feel something along with the character. Another good use is when writing something that is supposed to sound like children’s literature. The biggest red flags for telling are outright naming of emotions (sad), -ly adverb form (happily), and prepositional phrase form (in excitement). The last one in particular is almost always redundant with an action it follows and can often be cut without harming anything. Tools for showing include body language, dialogue, thoughts, reactions, facial expression, and actions, and a good mix should be used to avoid relying too much on any one of them.

Button yelled at the screen of his Joyboy, totally engrossed in his gaming experience

Watch the placement of participles. If they open a clause, they're presumed to refer to the subject; otherwise, they like to modify the nearest object. Thus, it appears that the Joyboy is totally engrossed. We can apply a bit of logic to sort things out, and in some cases, that's good enough, but it's worth keeping in mind, because inattention will eventually lead to ambiguity or outright misdirection.

He was so engrossed, that he didn’t notice his mother walk into his room, carry all of his clean folded laundry on her back.

Unnecessary comma, and another verb form error.

with a small bit of concern in her voice

The telling... It hurts...

She eyed him curiously, noting his tensed muscles and spasming face.

Note that this is information only his mom could know. It's told from her perspective. You'd been in Button's POV, so why the shift to her? You can change perspectives, but it has to be done smoothly, and only when necessary. Is this vital information? Is her POV the only way to relate it? Could you instead extract the same information through his perception of her appearance and actions?

Uhuh. Sure mom. I-I’ll get right to that... At some point.

Usually spelled "uh-huh," and you have an odd habit of capitalizing after ellipses when a new sentence isn't required.

His character-a stereotypical knight in shining armor- was locked in pitched combat with the final boss of the game.

Use a proper em-dash (Alt+0151 = —), and your spacing around dashes is inconsistent here. With an em dash, don't use any. And, oh boy, another instance of "final."

Blows were traded as he hacked and slashed at the monstrous beast, slowly whittling down his massive health bar as hellfire and brimstone rained around him.

Passive voice is an especially bad choice for an action scene, and it's clunky to have two like constructs in the same sentence, as in your two "as" clauses.

Great Claymore Ultraslayer

Ugh. I hope that's not really something you're borrowing from an existing game. A Claymore is a specific sword—there wouldn't be variations on it.

a particularly nasty spell, the spell impacting the ground

More repetition.

the beasts arm

Missing apostrophe.
Okay, I'm finding a lot of the same things. It's up to you to find the rest. I'm only going to point out new issues from here on.

Can’t do that right now mom.

When using it as a term of address, capitalize Mom.

to the magically kingdom

Typo

With that

Phrases like this and "at that point" are horribly self-referential to the narration.

He looked at himself in the mirror, leaning his left eye towards its reflective service

I'm pretty sure you meant "surface."

Them memories

Srsly?

tooth brush

toothbrush

absent mindedly

absentmindedly. C'mon. Enough with the typos.

stray air

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

Mechanics:
I have no pearls of wisdom to offer here, because there aren't really any subtleties of language to discuss. This is simple and straightforward: All of those things that I mentioned multiple times above? Those are your consistent problems.
A bit more on word repetition though—have some word counts:
begin/began/start: 8. Doesn't seem like much, huh? The problem here is that any action begins. It's implied. The only reason to call attention to it is if the beginning is abrupt or the action never finishes for some reason.
just: 10. I'm actually impressed it's that low. Good job.
Various forms of "to be": Upwards of 50. That's not awful. But it's not great, either. They may all be benign, but it can indicate that you use too much passive voice (I did find a couple of obtrusive examples) or you're not choosing enough active verbs (this was an issue). These verbs are inherently boring. Sometimes you can't help using them, or the alternative is awkward. But you should strive to minimize these. It's much more interesting to read about what happens, not what merely is.

Style and Characterization:
Normally, I'll tackle these topics separately, but they're rather intertwined here. The characters themselves are fine, insofar as there isn't an established personality for either that you need to emulate. That said, I didn't get much from either one, and that's mostly a result of the overly telly language. Showing forces me into a character's viewpoint and makes me feel what he feels. It makes me understand the character and care about him. Without that, all I have is a slate that remains blank. This is especially important in a story this short, where we have such little time to get to know your characters. It needs to be more than "things happened." Though I haven't said much, this is actually a tall order.

Plot:
Here's where there's some more meat. Let's summarize what happens: Button plays a game, his mom feels a little guilty about making him stop, for some reason we get a brief ponified history of early gaming systems, and she plays a game while he goes to sleep. Not a bad slice-of-life moment, but that's not a story. It's a scene. A story needs to have a driving force behind it, typically some sort of conflict or process of character discovery. Conflict is much more common, and the easier one to do. There needs to be something at stake. What's eating at one or more of the characters? What are they going to do about it? What will happen if they fail? Or on the character development side, what challenge does the character face? How does he deal with it, and how is he changed by the experience? What has he learned about himself? There's really neither present here, and coming up with some way of including one or both will necessarily involve significantly rethinking the story. It really comes down to what you want this story to be. A light moment without any teeth to it? Yeah, fix this up, and you'll have that. A complete story that makes a point and draws an emotional response from the reader? It's going to take some work to get it there.

Overall:
First, I have to question why you'd submit a story to Equestria Daily before getting it reviewed. Asking for the review at all hints at a very different confidence level than risking a strike, so not sure what you were thinking there.
I didn't trip up on odd word choices and clumsy phrasings, so kudos on missing those common pitfalls. Just learn to fix up the telling and the consistent mechanical issues you had, and finally decide what you want this to be: a light moment or a story that says something. Be aware that Equestria Daily is very unlikely to accept the former.
Keep writing and have fun with it!

Now, Pascoite does several things particularly well in this review. I think the most important thing is that he provided examples, and he provided solutions. Not once did he just bring up a point and say ‘this is bad and you should feel bad, stop writing’. Each time, he provided a direct example of the problem that I was having, and what I could do to the fix said issue.

Yes. He may have come off as a bit egotistical or rude at times, but for the most part what he had to say had value. I found many mistakes in my writing that I would not have noticed before without this review, such as him pointing out how often I use passive voice or some form of ‘to be’. It’s obvious from this review that reviewer actual knows what he’s talking about. So why then do we actually assume that they don’t, and they’re just making up reasons for rejection? Well, let’s take a look at a review that’s a little more recent than that one, shall we?

Thank you for submitting your story to Equestria Daily. Unfortunately, I am unable to recommend it for posting. This is your first strike.

Reasons for rejection:

• Narrator seems meanspirited and keeps mentioning irrelevant details about Scootaloo’s tragic past. It feels like the narrator is making fun of her. This isn’t funny; it’s actually a bit offensive, and definitely turned me off of reading the story. What does Scootaloo’s mother cheating on her father have to do with the premise of the story, which is Scootaloo playing Call of Duty?

I’d be happy to answer any questions. Just reply to this email if you want to reach me.

— Pre-reader [redacted]

Notes

The synopsis author's note should be moved to an author's note at the end of chapter 1 because otherwise you spend more wordcount in the Long Description giving an author's note than describing the story.

Show, don’t tell. The adverb is a cheap shortcut and doesn’t give us anything specific to visualize.
> Scootaloo walked excitedly

Unnecessary comma
> her quaint, little home

Redundant "to its fullest extent"
> enjoying it to its fullest extent.

Dry, telly
> Today she would finally get to see the special gift from her father, a stallion whom she didn't really get to see often anymore.

That phrase "she crossed her hooves that" doesn't really work
> She crossed her hooves that she’d get a working pair of wings

Um, what? Whose narrative voice is that, and why are they being such a killjoy? This is completely unnecessary and unfunny, unless you expect the reader to go "haha, Scootaloo can't fly and never will". That's a pretty meanspirited way to start a story.
> since she was too young and naive to understand that she would never experience the ultimate thrill of flight.

Irrelevant fandom reference, and a bit of a viewpoint slip. Would Scootaloo really be thinking this right now?
> Many ponies actually assumed that she didn't even have a father, or that he was abusive if he did exist.

Irrelevant backstory. And really, would Scootaloo be thinking about this right now? Personally, I can't see it. This seems more like the author just wants things to suck for Scootaloo.
> Her mother had run away with another stallion, but Scootaloo knew she didn't need ponies like that in her life anyway.

Again, what's up with the narrator? Again, this is irrelevant and seems meanspirited. This is a recurring issue, and it's bad enough to make me reject the story.
> Many were especially surprised that he existed and that was a unicorn as well. How did a unicorn and earth pony create a baby pegasus? They didn’t, and in reality her mother had cheated on her father and he wasn’t really her father, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her.

Additional resources

You can also submit your story for review at a group such as /fic/, WRITE, The Equestrian Critics Society, School For New Writers, or trade reviews with some members of Authors Helping Authors.

Now this review is a lot less detailed than the one given by Pascoite. For one, the reviewer gives points of valid criticism. They provide the examples. What they don’t provide, however, is a solution for the problem, which is where things start to take a dip. The thing about this is that because no solutions are given, it seems like the pre-reader is ‘picking and choosing’ what the problems of the story are. It’s that old adage of ‘if you point out a problem, you’d better have a solution’, and without a solution, it gives the review a sort of complanitory/biased air against the story.

This does not mean, however, that all of the pre-reader’s points should be instantly invalidated. The reviewer may simply believe that by pointing out the problems, the author will be able to easily find and correct the problems on their own, in their own way. This leads us to the current EqD system, however, and why some people may feel that EqD reviews are indeed ‘bullshit’.

Dear Author:

I'm [redacted], and I cannot recommend your story for posting at this time.

Please edit your work with an eye to the following:

. Comma mis-use
. Lack of conflict. Everything is passive. There's minimal interaction with anything, other than Twilight and her own thoughts.
. Lack of detail. Describe the environment and it's occupants. In places, this might as well take place in a white and featureless box.
. Confusion. You're attempting a plot-twist here, and I can see what you're trying to do... but it's coming out as mostly unresolved. I'm assuming that Twilight's mother is dead, and that Twilight herself keeps mailing Smarty Pants to her as a stand-in gift? At the least, I'm glad you used an AU tag, as this is so far from what Twilight's family has been shown to be that it's required.

Your reviewer,

[redacted]

Do you notice the difference here? Notice the way that I didn’t have to provide a horizontal break because the review itself was so short? There’s one major difference here that really impacts and changes the way that this review is interpreted. Nothing is given aside from the issues. There are no examples provided, and not solutions provided to problems, just ‘random’ points that don’t necessarily have merit because there is nothing backing them up.

The problem here is that something was lost in the translation from review to bulleted list. It takes a recognition and skill in order to take specific points of error and point them out. Even more to provide solutions to these issues. Everyone, however, can make a bulleted list, and put anything that they’d like on it. These bulleted lists are used to provide efficiency and provide the authors with a quicker feedback time and the pre-readers with an ease of burden.

Because there are no supporting statements, however, it makes the review seem less objective and more subjective. Twilight’s only interacting with her own thoughts? So what? Plenty of stories on EqD are entirely taking place within a character’s conscious. Lack of detail as if in a white box? Well, there’s a freaking fic called ‘White Box’, so that must be bullshit, right? Right?

The answer is that it’s not bullshit. It’s an issue of miscommunication on the sides of both parties. The author could easily message this pre-reader for further clarification of the issues on the story. And yet they never do. In this case, it might be because this particular reviewer didn’t point out that this was an option that was actually available. That’s what it comes down to in this whole argument. Miscommunication on both sides.

If EqD pre-readers were to provide just one concrete example of an error, and a brief explination, that could easily clear up most of the issues had with reviews. This would provide a point of reference for the submitter to understand clearly, and give the review more credibility. As it stands, however, this is not the case. Though the current review system may not be the best in terms of quality, the reviews handed out certainly aren’t ‘bullshit’.

That’s my take on the matter. What’s yours? I’d like to hear it.

2207229

Seriously why is it so hard for people to just stop giving a fuck about EQD?
Is it really so bad? They are a bunch of assholes? I need to know why they are so stuck up. I will get to the bottom of whether or not they are as bad as people say they are. Waaa my fic didn't get on EQD. Yay my fic got on EQD!
It is nothing but some random bullshit site with a bunch of prereaders that think way too highly of themselves that I have never visited and never will that has features on it and the only reason people seem to care about it is because they have nothing better to do.

These are also my feelings on the featured section of this site.

2207283
I was really just making this in response to a bunch of stuff I've seen lately. I couldn't give less of a shit about EqD. I don't think I've ever visited their site aside from occasionally submitting fics.

2207283 I will take Fimfiction's Feature Box 10 times over EqD 's best and least biased prereader.

It’s an issue of miscommunication on the sides of both parties. The author could easily message this pre-reader for further clarification of the issues on the story.

Well slap my ass and call me Sally, there's a rational and well thought out post, along with explanations and reasoning.

2207352
I know, right? Who ever heard of such a thing?

2207352>>2207457 Rationality is stupid. Only idiots would ever use it.

2207352 LIES!

Good job, OP. This is the most productive thing I've seen posted here in weeks.

2207283 Because EqD is more or less baby's first publisher, only it escapes the traditional "baby's first" formula by actually being a difficult feat and therefore preparing people who want to get serious with writing for the darker days in the future when publishers won't be even this generous. That's why I'd strive to get featured on EqD. Because I actually do want to get serious with my writing someday (In spite of what my ID may suggest), and this place is a pretty decent training ground. Though, there's always the promise of a Colbert Bump, too. And we all want more views on our stories, don't we?

2207571

And we all want more views on our stories, don't we?

Not really, I couldn't care less how many people view my stories, it is just fanfiction, I don't delude myself into thinking any shitty fanfics I write here will actually translate into real life skill.

2207229

I don't feel that it's an EQD prereader's job to go through your fic and give you solutions to the problems in there. That could potentially take up a lot of a time and would be asking a lot of a prereader. I believe that that responsibility is down to the author. If (s)he wanted to message the prereader and ask for solutions and the prereader is happy to give some, then that's fine. However, to suggest that they should be providing solutions?

Well... they're EQD prereaders, not personal editors.

2207634 Now, that's just plain pessimism.

2207656
Ah, but you twist my words. I never demanded that EqD provide solutions or said that they should. I merely pointed out a potential cause to the problem and a possible remedy.

2207229\

Providing an example for grammatical error / spelling error is good. Easy too, since you can just c&p the section with the error whilst you're reading it. Would help a lot.
Not difficult.

The difficult part is with themes, characterization, etc. Then again, those are more subjective.

2207679
I prefer realism.

2207722 Pessimists often do.

2207727
No, pessimists have no evidence for their "negativity", I have clear cut solid examples of why what I say is true.
You can read my fics if you don't believe me that they suck.

2207746 There's nothing in the definition of pessimism that says the disposition is based on no evidence. It's the nature to look at the negative side of things, and nothing more. It looks like you're mistaking defeatism for a sense of enlightenment or self-awareness.

2207692
You've made a fair point about the problem with our current reviewing standards, and it's one I've tried to make as well. When we started talking about how we could adjust our process to lessen the burden on pre-readers, I was in favor of moving to form-letter rejections and completely cutting out all of the kind of things you quoted. It's not a great solution or one that won't cause a fair bit of controversy, but the general expectation (that we as pre-readers are entirely responsible for perpetuating) is that we provide some measure of editing service with each rejection, and that's simply not tenable given the number of submissions we receive, nor has it been for a long time. Editing a story is an incredibly lengthy and complex process, and trying to go halfway on it, as you've accurately pointed out, just leads to confusion.

2208026
Aye. I see what you mean, mate. It's a job that eats up tons of free time and seems to only get you flak. Only natural that you'd wanna lessen some of the burdens. Funnily enough, I was going to work on an equation that assumes how much time it would take to clear the current submission queue for fics with an assumption that no new fics were submitted in that time. (Impossible, I know.)

Yeah, there's definitely a give and take regarding the amount of feedback we give. In the system we have now, all you're guaranteed is the short bullet list one. In fact, that's all that was ever guaranteed, but now that's encouraged as the standard, except in cases where the story is close enough to making it that giving detailed feedback doesn't take much space. What's the trade-off, then? Speed. A long review may take a couple of hours to write up, while a bullet list take just minutes, and time was becoming a severe issue. Our queue had ballooned to about 240 stories, and we (and the poll posted on EqD agreed) that going to a shorter review format in the interest of getting through the stories faster was worth it. Wait times had approached two months, and now they're down to about three or four weeks. There are still a few PRs who prefer to give longer-form reviews, but that can be frustrating as well, since it appears that fewer than half of the authors use that feedback. The other main point about short-form reviews is that EqD is not a reviewing service, though some of the PRs volunteer to be (including me). We refer authors to groups such as WRITE so that writers will seek help from the people who do make reviewing their purpose and will be able to use the PR feedback as a starting point. In fairness, the review of mine you quoted was not provided through EqD; I would not have been snarky at all, if that were the case. Even so, I try to gauge that to the author's experience level. You've got a number of stories under your belt, so I thought you wouldn't mind, but if I came across as rude, I apologize.

2208863
Oh, don't worry about it. I used your review specifically because it was a pre-reader in a free review non-eqd setting. And don't worry about having offended me at all. I respect you deeply as a an author, and I appreciate the advice you gave me. It's helped me start working on my 'to be' problem. Been reading and studying some of your fics to see how certain genres are done correctly as well. Hope ya don't mind!

2207229 One problem I see with this is, you kinda make it sound like miscommunication is the only reason for people's issues with EqD prereaders as a whole.

2207692

Forgive me, that sounded like I was accusing you of suggesting that. I was more referring to the expectations authors in general place upon the prereaders of EQD.

2207229

They aren't obligated to write a full review, they don't have time. Anyway, the problems that I noticed with the reviews are opinionated things like criticizing a story for being mean-spirited or focusing on internal conflict, though I haven't read any of those stories so they may in fact be valid criticism.

2207229
You're comparing apples to oranges, Elec. WRITE gives reviews, EqD accepts or denies posting to the site, depending on the story. The purposes here are entirely different and therefore make the comparison rather lacking.

2218782

though I haven't read any of those stories so they may in fact be valid criticism.

Then why would you even go on about how "problematic" portions of the review might have been? If you don't know the context, don't go criticizing someone's review. Geez.

2238934
Actually, not really. The purpose was not to say why EqD should give review or whatever that strange mindset is. It was to point out different styles of commenting on stories and what different perceptions they can give off. So it's actually a perfectly viable comparison. Also, you're a few days late there bud.

2238936

I don't need to read a specific piece to identify criticism as being subjective in nature. In most circumstances criticizing a story for such things is just retarded, but I did admit that there MAY be a point here and thus my criticism of the criticism is poor. I was actually saying how the review wasn't that bad.