Just in time for the holidays, we've got the next reviewing installment for your reading pleasure. And, like a Christmas dinner, this one's a bit meatier, as our lovely interviewee had quite a lot to say. I also threw in a couple of extra-special questions, since it's not every day you get to conduct an interview like this with one of our lovely mods. So, enough beating around the bush. Here to give us her thoughts on fics and reviewing is none other than...
JX Valentine!
How do you choose which fics to read and review? What about a fic keeps you interested and coming back for more?
It depends on the forum, actually. With Serebii (and other forums I frequent), I tend to click on
everything, especially if it’s new, because I like to keep up with what’s going on around the forum. So when I say I read everything (even if I don’t always review), I literally do mean I read
everything, haha. Or at least the first few chapters therein.
Which goes into the other question, actually. Two things keep me reading above everything else: your characters and your plot. If I think your characters are complex or if they seem like they’re in for a lot of character growth or if I just think they’re fascinating for some other reason, and I kinda want to see what happens to them, I’m definitely sticking to your story. Same with the plot, really. If I feel like it’s going somewhere (and that somewhere is
great), then you can bet I’ll want to keep up with it. I admit I’m very picky when it comes to this, which is why I say I read at least the first few chapters of everything; I tend to lose interest in fics pretty quickly (even ones that are otherwise popular in the fandom) if I personally feel like they don’t quite have that spark. That isn’t to say that they’re not good fics, of course—just that they might not be my cup of tea.
What do you like most about reviewing?
Reading in the first place, to be honest. So a moment ago, I’d mentioned that I read literally everything. How I do that is pretty simple: I sit down, open up an instance of Chrome, and just flippin’ open
everything I can grab in new tabs. I don’t even stop to think about what I’m clicking on, and as a result, I end up with this massive collection of tabs that I’m dedicated to reading before I can close them. It’s like giving yourself an entire tree full of Christmas surprises, pretty much. You never really know what you’ll end up reading until you open the tab and just kinda … start.
But more than that, it’s just so much fun to read through a fic and see what people do. At the risk of stating the obvious, no two authors are alike ever, even if they’re writing in the same genre, using the same characters, and sticking to the same basic template. Half of the act of reviewing is going through and discovering a lot of that uniqueness all over fandom.
What's your biggest challenge with reviewing?
Hoo,
actually sitting down and writing them. I’m terrible at taking notes for fics, so if I miss a lot of content, that means I have to rely on memory. That and sometimes, I’m reading quickly (because the above-mentioned method means I frequently bite off more than I can chew), so sometimes, I’m either afraid of missing important details or
actually guilty of missing important details. Going into a review with that constant nagging feeling that you’re not prepared is not a good mindset to have (...even though it’s one I know is on me and also easily fixable, haha). And then, of course, there’s the constant struggle of figuring out what to include in a review, haha.
Related to the above, seeing as you've judged contests in the past, how do you approach judging contest submissions? Is there anything you do different compared to a casual review?
I know this is going to sound horrible, but when you’re doing a review for a contest, it’s important to be concise. Whoever’s posting the results has to fit your review into one post with two or three others, plus an excerpt of the story (if not the whole story) in question, and Serebii’s character limit isn’t kind. (But even then, when I’ve judged contests elsewhere, I’d still keep it concise because, you know, people still have to
read what you have to say.)
One of the ways I keep that in mind is by
being more positive than I normally would be. The way I see it, even if we’re talking about
wildly different skill levels, y’all put your best feet forward when you commit to a contest. It’s not easy writing under a deadline, and presumably, you’re putting in extra effort to make your story stand out and be awesome. So when I review for a contest, I’m not doing so to help you improve or to give you feedback on how you’re doing (as I would with ordinary reviews); my end goal is instead to compare you to other people and see how you did in terms of storytelling
and following the prompts. If I point out something negative in a contest review, what I’m actually saying is, “This is the thing that might have cost you points, and I’m sorry about that.” Conversely, if I point out something positive, what I’m really saying is, “This is what earned you points. Good job!” That way, if I look back on my review and say, “Huh. I was mostly positive here,” I’ll know how to rank it later on.
In other words, I fully admit that while my regular reviews are aimed more at talking about the fic in question, when I’m reviewing for contests, I have the contest in mind first and foremost.
What made you choose to start the Reviewers' Leaderboard?
One of the things I’ve dedicated myself to after I was given the shiny mod badge was finding ways to boost activity around the forum. I was modded in 2014, and back then, we were going through a bit of a dry spell. There was a lot of awkwardness where people would form knots of friends and just sort of review each other, it was difficult to get reviewed if you were new, and let’s not even talk about activity on the AC. So when I first got started, I was all about trying out new ideas in order to change the culture around Serebii little by little so that, slowly but surely, people will connect to one another and attract new blood, so to speak. Some ideas worked better than others, to put it lightly.
That’s one half of the story, anyway. The
other half is that earlier this year, I had joined the Nuzlocke forums, and I was just blown away by how active, inclusive, and community-like it was. It was, in short, everything I wanted Serebii to be, at the risk of sounding like an advertisement for them. So I spent some time around them, not only getting to know
them (I mean, of course I want to be a part of every community I encounter, because a lot of them are full of awesome people) but also trying to figure out what helped them so I can bring a few ideas back to Serebii. One of their biggest philosophies is that you can’t just post a fic and be done with it, nor can you just talk to your other writers and call that a community. Rather, you have to be ready to give back as much as possible. You have to be willing to sit down and read what other people post because it’s a creative community, and that’s supposed to be the other half of the main focus of it. That and showing interest in other people’s work—in the stuff that they put part of themselves into and have fun doing—is just as important as taking an interest in anything else about them, especially for a fanfic community.
And one of the ways they do this is by, you guessed it, keeping track of how many reviews everyone does. But their leaderboard is a bit different than ours. For one, they don’t really offer prizes (we do, just because our community is so different and has been the way it is for longer than the Nuzlocke forums have even existed), and for another, they don’t actually publicize their full leaderboard (just the top three scores on their Discord). But for them, it was less about the competition of it and more about jumpstarting that philosophy of altruism.
So in short, you could say I created the leaderboard in order to bring about positive change in Serebii’s community. Ultimately, it’s supposed to encourage people to not only be more active but also more interested in the forum as a whole. I just happened to get the idea from a community that’s very,
very much about the exact philosophy I’ve been trying to encourage in the forum for ages, and hey, if it worked for
them, you know what I mean?
How did you get into writing?
I’ve been telling stories pretty much as far back as I can remember; I just never really knew you could write them down until my family got a computer when I was five. My parents worked a lot when I was a kid (we weren’t poor, but we weren’t poor
because of how much they worked), so I was often left at home with my older brother to do my own thing. Sometimes, you know, that meant creating elaborate stories with your tiny Barbie collection about princesses rescuing each other or witches teaching their apprentices. Or, later on when your family gets a computer, writing stories about families stranded on deserted islands in Microsoft Paint. (I had no idea what Microsoft Works was back then.)
So as a kid, I just sort of …
liked telling stories, one way or another. I started writing properly in elementary school, when I’d turn vocab assignments into elaborate stories about a girl detective tracking down some missing cereal (it was stolen by her arch-nemesis, a dude with a mustache!) or slice-of-life picture books about a talking snail in a world populated only by snails (I … can’t remember why). And, well, it’s the fact that people
liked those stories that made me keep writing them. Other kids actually
wanted to read about the next adventure of Alex the Girl Detective and whatnot, so I just kept going until I’d get bored and move on to the next thing.
But when it comes to fanfiction, I didn’t really discover that until I started getting into the internet as a preteen in the 90s. My first exposure to that were early, pre- and early-Geocities websites featuring fics about Sailor Moon going to Canada, Brock falling in love with Sailor Saturn, Jessie and James going to Hell and Heaven (respectively and in the same fic), and so on. When I finally caught on that, yeah, fanfiction was a thing (if you’re a fan of Sailor Moon, don’t tell me you never fell for Sailor Earth), it just sort of blew my mind that you could
do that, so I started writing stories about self-inserts of my friends and me going on pokémon journeys before, you know, launching off into the “**** it; I’ll write what I want,” self-indulgent, fantasy/sci-fi stuff I tend to write. I remember my first completed work that was actually popular was basically Whose Line Is It Anyway? but with the main Pokémon cast, and it all pretty much went downhill from there. So long story short, I thank the early internet for teaching me that fanfic can be whatever you merry well want it to be. Including an entire fic about the love between Brock and Sailor Saturn. (
That’s still one of my favorites, by the way. Hilarious “I’m such a baka” lines and all. Read it if only to get a sense of how amazing the early fandom was.)
What do you enjoy most about writing?
For me, it’s pretty much escapism. I like being able to explore whatever fun ideas come to mind, in my own private space. On that note, I admit I don’t publish a
lot of what I write—just stuff I think would be fun to share. The rest is about as self-indulgent as you’d imagine, and it’s just a lot of fun and
incredibly freeing to just get whatever I want down on paper.
What do you find most challenging about writing?
Oof, probably actually sitting down to write. Now that I’m a Responsible Adult™, I spend a lot of time writing … for work. Or I’m editing
for work. So by the time I sit down to write, what I
actually want to do is play videogames or binge-watch YouTube videos. But I also know that I’m hella susceptible to self-loathing, which is to say I’ll kick myself hard if all I ever do is come up with these ideas and say to myself constantly, “I’ll write someday.” It’s not even about writing for an audience or anything. It’s more like, I know the idea will be
so much fun to write, so why am I not writing it?
My secret, though? Setting aside time every evening. It doesn’t have to be an hour, it doesn’t have to be good enough to publish, and I don’t have to write until I hit a set goal. It can just be twenty solid minutes of writing, and that’s it. But I do that every single day, either using pen and paper or on a computer, because the last thing I want to do is get in the habit of
not writing. That’s honestly the best way to kill your motivation: procrastinating on writing until all of a sudden, the act of writing becomes a
chore that’s too intimidating to tackle.
As a writer, what type of feedback do you find most helpful from reviewers?
(Bundling this with the other question, about how reviews helped me improve, because in a lot of ways, they’re the same question.)
Lemme give you an example. The most useful feedback I’ve ever gotten on Electric Sheep was when Cutlerine said I repeated stuff a
lot. Realizing that hit me hard because
I never saw it myself. Like, I’d read over my work umpteen times. I was certain I was thorough. And here, Cutlerine pointed out something that was not only correct but also
something I hadn’t even noticed myself.
And that’s really it, to be honest. For me, the most helpful kind of reviewing isn’t the kind where a reviewer rips a fic apart, looking for minor grammatical issues, or where a reviewer tries to act like they’re teaching writing to a fellow writer, as odd as that might sound. It’s the kind where you offer your perspective on what you read, regardless of whether or not you think it would help or whether or not it was bad or good. The thing about your perspective is that
it isn’t the writer’s, so there’s a very,
very good chance that you’ll point out something that’s obvious to
you but not so much the author. And that perspective is a million times more valuable than a review that intends on teaching me a thing or few about writing
or kiss my ***, for that matter. For one thing, those kinds of reviews have taught me to look at my writing from the perspective of someone who isn’t me or to write under the assumption that someone who isn’t me is going to be reading. And let me tell you, that has improved my language skills
like whoa.
What writing projects are you currently focused on? And do you have any future plans?
At the moment, my foremost project is
Electric Sheep, which I should hopefully wrap up in 2018 (although there is a definite second book to that in the works too). I also run an ask sideblog on Tumblr, or a blog where people send in questions, and I answer them in-character. (I can’t say which ask blog it is because I’d prefer keeping my identity as its mun a secret from its followers, but let’s just say that if you know me, you’d know
exactly who it’s for.)
Beyond that, I’m also still working on Anima Ex Machina … but not the form you see in my sig. I’ve been toying with doing a Nuzlocked version of it recently because I realized that I really
enjoy writing Nuzlocke fics (if anything, because it’s easy to keep track of when stuff should happen), so that might be a thing if I ever get around to playing the game I want to tackle for it. And while we’re at it, I’m also working my way through the gameplay stage of a
third Nuzlocke fic that doesn’t have anything to do with Bill whatsoever (gasp! shock!) and everything to do with
this.
What advice to you have for someone looking to contribute to the fanfic community, whether it’s on Serebii or somewhere else?
Be altruistic.
Now, that might sound like straightforward advice. Review and care about other people’s works. Seems simple enough, yeah? But … it’s really more than that. I’ve been around for a
while, on different communities, and the one thing that kills forums of any kind faster than anything else is apathy. And apathy can take many different forms. It can be a general inability to care (you know, what everyone thinks apathy is), or it could be that awkward state of being in which people only care about the select few or only care about themselves. Either way, if you fall into the trap that is apathy towards your community, what you end up doing is losing focus on reaching out and working to make things better. You end up procrastinating on giving back because you end up so focused on yourself (either beating yourself up for not doing better or agonizing over whether or not you’ll be seen as intelligent or what-have-you) that you spend more time promising that you’ll do something good and less time, you know,
actually doing something good.
Also, just saying that you’ll give back isn’t enough, and relying on a handful of people to push you into action isn’t enough either. You have to be proactive. You have to push
yourself. And you have to do it expecting nothing in return. Don’t do it for the reviews. You will end up either disappointed or burned out that way. And don’t do it to be an upstanding member of the community, either. I guarantee no one cares (and those who do are gullible enough to fall for clear brown-nosing). Instead, do it because you want to support your community. Do it because you want to support good writers. Do it because you know that putting in a bit of hard work will make a place more fun in the long run, or because you want to welcome new people by creating discussion and focusing on them, or because this person hasn’t been reviewed and you want to change that and make them feel like someone actually gives a **** about what they’re writing.
Or to make things a bit clearer, do it because you can remember what it’s like to be that kid, putting out your work. Do it because you remember how vulnerable that feels for the first time, how uncertain and insecure you might have been at first. Do it because you were that kid once, just sitting there, simultaneously afraid that your work will be torn apart but also incredibly, painfully jealous of the people who get five reviews per chapter seemingly effortlessly, even though you (may or sure as hell may not) say it. Do it because you remember the feeling of getting reviewed for the first time or watching someone light up at what you’ve written for the hundreth. And do it because you connect to someone else and want to pass along something
about that connection to them, even if just to reassure them that you’re
there.
But in the end … do it. Like, if you want to contribute … contribute, and do it altruistically. Because if you don’t do it, there is a very,
very good chance that no one else will, and that is
exactly how a crapton of other communities I’ve seen over the years just shriveled up and died.
Finally, any fic recommendations you’d like to offer?
I’m going to do my best to avoid recommending stuff other people have recced, but on Serebii, practically everything Cutlerine has written in the past few years is gold. (I’d say everything,
period, but I know how Cutlerine feels about earlier works.) In particular, my personal favorite (that hasn’t been recced yet, anyway) is still
A Leash of Foxes because of how unique it is. And also a bit because I’m secretly a sucker for Westerns. Wish more people did ‘em, ngl.
Time and Tide is
also excellent too, only because it involves pirates, post-apocalyptic swashbuckling adventurers, and Archie and Maxie bickering like a hella dead married couple, not because it’s delightfully Old West. It’s
great.
Also on my favorite authors list around the forum, we’ve got
Dramatic Melody, whose one-shots are usually top-not character studies (just like … pick one—any of DM’s one shots—as the quality is consistent and A+), and Firebrand, who usually tackles unusual subjects packed with a lot of action. (I mean, there’s The Amazing Hawlucha Man, but personally, I liked the high fantasy-style, almost Game-of-Thrones-ish
Halvarsaga, which is literally vikings with pokémon. But yeah, Hawlucha Man is awesome too. Read if only for the adorable birb that is Hierro.) Also, there’s Sike Saner’s work, particularly
Communication, which is a heartrending fic about the life and times of a glalie. This is an excellent introduction to all things Sike, so start here, then move to The Origin of Storms and finally The Worldslayers. It’s a lot of fun. You won’t regret it. 8)
Other fics to keep an eye on?
PMD: Guiding Light by Ambyssin, which is a
delightful romp full of lore and the best worst characters ever.
Element by roule, which is Japan but with pokémon and an idol who thinks nearly attacking someone is a great way to say hello.
Ionization by PhalanxSigil, which is a Sinnoh journey fic featuring a former Team Plasma (not a typo) grunt who has more than a thing or two to learn.
Off-site, I’m also fond of
Motherflipping Oak, who is like the Dramatic Melody of FFN. There’s also
Leto, who
also writes fun character studies and one-shots … only her work predates forums so hard that the best link I could find of hers is on
Tripod. Moving away from character studies (of the heartbreaking or otherwise cute variety), I highly recommend
Pokémon Rebirth for animeverse or fakemon fans, as its longest work is a journeyfic set in a fan region that’s got so much detail to it it straight-up built its own
encyclopedia to house it all, while its side stories feature the likes of Tracey and Team Rocket in fun little adventures. Conversely, if you want your heart broken, try
Iveechan’s Guilty by Design, which is unfinished but
still good. Finally, I’ve also gotten super into Nuzlocke fics, as a lot of them are fantastically creative. Some of my favorites:
C’est la Vie,
Looking Backward,
Agency,
American Pie, and
Hybrid.
XxX
Phew. Well, I think that just about covers it. And plenty of suggestions to work off of, too. I'm not entirely sure who'll be interviewing a top scorer from December. So, in the meantime, I'd like to thank Nerdy and Jax for the opportunity to try this out. I hope you guys have enjoyed it so far. Best of luck to everyone taking part in the leaderboard in 2018. And, of course, Merry Christmas and happy new year!
