One year ago, Cereal Velocity freaked out at how many fanfics I was sending him to review, and after exploding from the overflow, a new organization arose from his ashes to judge every story submitted to the site! With the massive influx of them constantly bombarding the EQD email castle, these guys are real troopers. I once saw one of them take on twelve "Rainbow Dash loses her wings" stories with just a cheap iron dagger and a broken table leg. It was a glorious sight!
Check out their
From the Pre-readers:
“Fic or Death?” “Death, please.”
Hey everyone! As you probably noticed from the banner, today is a special day here at the EQD offices. A year ago today, Seth actually delegated work to somebody else and created the pre-reader group. Quite a few of the originals are still with us today, but over the past year we’ve gotten new faces, watched others go, and swapped vacation shifts amongst those that remain.
General users may not know much about us; if you don’t know what a pre-reader is, you can find more info here. The short version is that we read all of the fanfiction that gets sent to Equestria Daily and pick out the best, a job that has cost us some sanity and all of our free time. Thanks to the work of a brave few, we’re developing ways to help writers submit stories and communicate with us easily and clearly. These improvements help us get at the really good stories that keep us from going barking mad, and it’s certainly brought us a long way from scribbling your reviews in marker.
For a pre-reader, there’s a special pride in seeing a story you passed hit the front page and do well. We each have favorites on and off the blog, but with the highs come the lows. Part of the job is finding balance between good writing and popular content; some past imbalances have been downright sinful. That said, ask any of us and we’ll tell you that the once-in-a-blue-moon fic that comes through fully polished and unique makes it worth every second.
This makes it sound as if we get a lot of bad fanfiction, which is Mostly True™. However, god-awful unsalvageable fics are only a nuisance for the few seconds it takes to write a reply and send them to the sun. What breaks our hearts are the stories we get every day that are just above average or even “good”, and we have to turn them down for not quite being at the best level. It’s like getting every place but 1st at the Equestrian Rodeo: no prize money, but we still love you.
Point is, we’vebeaten back the fires of hell lovingly read and adored tolerated every fanfiction so far, and aren’t quitting any time soon. So give us your Warhammers, your Dash × Everything ships, your Sonic OCs and Mary Sues. Take away Dash’s wings and make some cupcakes jokes, then end the fic with “20% cooler”. We can take your worst, because finding your best is always worth it ohgoddontactuallydoanyofthat.
On that note, we thank you, not only for fics that make us fist-pump, but also fics that get rejected twice before they get to go up. Hell, thank you for the ones that never quite reach that point but are still worth a read (if this applies to you, you may very well have us among your watchers). Watching a fic grow and improve over the second/third/fourth iteration is both intriguing and educational. So along with your best and your worst, give us your ‘not-sures’ and ‘maybes’ and ‘I-hope-sos’. If we didn’t want to read them and watch them become the best they can be, we wouldn’t be here.
The pone community is awesome and we are honored to contribute to it like we do, but we can’t do it without authors to write and fans to read. So keep on being awesome andstop liking fics we don’t like.
AndRoseluck Lyra Vinyl Scratch is best background pony.
Hey everyone! As you probably noticed from the banner, today is a special day here at the EQD offices. A year ago today, Seth actually delegated work to somebody else and created the pre-reader group. Quite a few of the originals are still with us today, but over the past year we’ve gotten new faces, watched others go, and swapped vacation shifts amongst those that remain.
General users may not know much about us; if you don’t know what a pre-reader is, you can find more info here. The short version is that we read all of the fanfiction that gets sent to Equestria Daily and pick out the best, a job that has cost us some sanity and all of our free time. Thanks to the work of a brave few, we’re developing ways to help writers submit stories and communicate with us easily and clearly. These improvements help us get at the really good stories that keep us from going barking mad, and it’s certainly brought us a long way from scribbling your reviews in marker.
For a pre-reader, there’s a special pride in seeing a story you passed hit the front page and do well. We each have favorites on and off the blog, but with the highs come the lows. Part of the job is finding balance between good writing and popular content; some past imbalances have been downright sinful. That said, ask any of us and we’ll tell you that the once-in-a-blue-moon fic that comes through fully polished and unique makes it worth every second.
This makes it sound as if we get a lot of bad fanfiction, which is Mostly True™. However, god-awful unsalvageable fics are only a nuisance for the few seconds it takes to write a reply and send them to the sun. What breaks our hearts are the stories we get every day that are just above average or even “good”, and we have to turn them down for not quite being at the best level. It’s like getting every place but 1st at the Equestrian Rodeo: no prize money, but we still love you.
Point is, we’ve
On that note, we thank you, not only for fics that make us fist-pump, but also fics that get rejected twice before they get to go up. Hell, thank you for the ones that never quite reach that point but are still worth a read (if this applies to you, you may very well have us among your watchers). Watching a fic grow and improve over the second/third/fourth iteration is both intriguing and educational. So along with your best and your worst, give us your ‘not-sures’ and ‘maybes’ and ‘I-hope-sos’. If we didn’t want to read them and watch them become the best they can be, we wouldn’t be here.
The pone community is awesome and we are honored to contribute to it like we do, but we can’t do it without authors to write and fans to read. So keep on being awesome and
And
