Event Bulbagarden Reviewing Secret Santa 2020

[Beth Pavell]

December is now upon us, and that means a month of holiday celebrations! This year, we'd like to celebrate our community's writers by reprising our now-usual (Happily successful) review exchange. In the spirit of giving, those who participate will both give and receive reviews and other creative gifts; there's also some hefty Review League points up for grabs, too! A gift from us moderators to you.

It's a great season for stories, and what makes a story better than to give and receive?

Are you interested in participating? It's as simple as signing up, awaiting your assignments and then reading and reviewing!

We're not asking for folks who participate to build the most comprehensive review possible (though that is certainly welcome, and certainly lucrative in terms of Review League points), we're simply trying to encourage an increase in the reviewing culture. What does a review mean for you? A full story read, in which you comment on each chapter, the way characters grow and change and how they interact with the plot? Or something simple, where you comment on a chapter or two in greater detail? However you review other stories any other time of the year is how we would like you to review those that you are assigned. This isn't meant to be a stressful event, but a fun event for all!

Not confident in your reviewing skills, or not much of a reviewer in the first place? That's fine! We have an old article in the Workshop Academy dedicated to helping people form a review! Or you can check out reviews left by other people to see how they do it for inspiration on how to form your own critiques of your assigned story. The Golden Rule is to try to give the kind of review you would like to receive. This is a reciprocal event, so please be aware that participants reviewing in bad faith may be disqualified from future events.

Reviews can be posted any time between 20th December and 17th January. Reviews made as part of the official review exchange are worth double points in the Review League! In addition, if you'd like to attach an extra gift to the review, such as a banner, a piece of fan art, a musical piece inspired by the story or even a short work of your own featuring the story's characters, that extra bit of effort is worth a hefty bonus of 10 Review League points!

However, reviews that are posted after the 17th January deadline are not eligible for bonus Review League points.

Interested in participating? You can sign up to enter here! What we'll need:

Author name:
Primary work:
Secondary work:
Am I willing to read MATURE rated fics?:
Which chapter(s) I would like the reviewer to focus on:
Any other notes for the reviewer:

If we have enough participants and the maths works out, we may be able to arrange for another story of yours to be reviewed as well! You'd still only get two reviews out of this event, but they would be split between your primary and secondary works. If you are only interested in reviews for one story, please leave the secondary work section blank.

When submitting your works, tell us how long they are. We'll try to distribute stories in a manner that's comparative between story lengths, with fairness in mind. Similarly, if you're willing to tackle a longer story (think of the potential bonus points for a larger review!), specify that with your author name as well!

You'll notice there's an option to ask for the reviewer to focus on particular chapters. The idea is that for those of you with longer stories, you can ask for the attention to be on a particular arc or point in the story you'd most like feedback on. You can also leave some notes, such as a plot summary for the reviewer, too, if you like.

Signups close on December 15th.

We hope to see lots of participation here! 'Tis the season!

 

[Juliko]

Oooh! Oh! Me! Me! I wanna do this again!

Author name: Juliko
Primary work: Pokemon: A Marvelous Journey
Secondary work: Rudolph The Red Nosed Deerling (Haven't updated it in a while though. I ought to get back to it)
Am I willing to read MATURE rated fics?: Yes, as long as they don't contain questionable sexual content.
Which chapter(s) I would like the reviewer to focus on: Anything
Any other notes for the reviewer: Nothing, really. Go nuts!

 

[namohysip]

Oh why not.

Author name: Namohysip
Primary work: Hands of Creation (High priority)
Secondary work: Death is Lonely (complete)
Am I willing to read MATURE rated fics?: Yee
Which chapter(s) I would like the reviewer to focus on: I understand that HoC is extremely long, so all I can say is the further in you get the better, as I've got ample feedback for the early chapters and am already in the process of rewriting the earliest couple of them. Even an overall review of what you'd read so far would be great! As for Death is Lonely, I suppose any chapter. The whole thing is complete and is around 20k words, so essentially a short novella in length.
Any other notes for the reviewer: Nothing in particular beyond what I said above. I'm mostly focused on reader thoughts and story beat progression / expectations. I know the prose of the early chapters are a little rough, and I've edited a lot of them to hell and back at this point, but as I constantly improve as a writer I can't feasibly go back all the time to fix it. Story pacing, however, is always good to know and learn from.

 

[kintsugi]

Author name: kintsugi
Primary work: the envy of eden
Secondary work: n/a
Am I willing to read MATURE rated fics?: yes
Which chapter(s) I would like the reviewer to focus on: You would be best served starting from the beginning; there is already enough timeline shenanigans as-is.
Any other notes for the reviewer: Has some very spicy takes on pokemon ethics! I am very happy to discuss/hear thoughts; I'm pretty interested in hearing all opinions on how I handle this.

 

[Fan of Jarrus]

I will do this.

Author name: Skalesgon
Primary work: TEEN: - A Blazing Final Battle
Secondary work: MATURE: - Galar’s Darkest Hour (To be merged) (Uncompleted)
Am I willing to read MATURE rated fics?: Ones without sexual stuff.
Which chapter(s) I would like the reviewer to focus on: Chapters 1 and 2 of GDH.
Any other notes for the reviewer: I like the reader's thoughts on dialog and descriptions.

 

[Cresselia92]

Oi! Let’s get to it!

Author name: Cresselia92

Primary work: The Meaning of Power

Secondary work: N/A, but I will crosspost a oneshot here fairly soon.

Am I willing to read MATURE rated fics?: No. Also, I don’t want anything too graphic, like extreme violence or blood.

Which chapter(s) I would like the reviewer to focus on: Well, I have only one chapter in TMoP so far and the other thing I will post is a oneshot, so it’s whatever. ^^

Any other notes for the reviewer: Nothing that I can think of. They’re both accessible stories, with TMoP having the “quirk” of using Japanese names for stuff (which I’ll appropriately translate through the hover texts).

 

[Ryoma Maser]

Guess I'll do this again for the third year now. I need to catch up on reviewing things anyways.

Author name: Ryoma Maser

Primary work: Orre: The Desert

Secondary work: The World May End, but Grief Never Does (A Mother 3 One-Shot), my summer one-shot just a warning there is topics of suicide in there.

Am I willing to read MATURE rated fics?: Sure, some topics are off for me but I imagine most won't show up.

Which chapter(s) I would like the reviewer to focus on: None, especially for the latter since it's a one-shot.

Any other notes for the reviewer: Hoping to get a new chapter for Orre: The Desert soon and really hoping to get some major edits for the secondary work since I'm finally done with school and exams so I can work on it.

Anyways hope everyone enjoys the event and finds a new story they like.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Alright, let's do this! (Again!)

Author name: InfiniteBakuphoon
Primary work: Mirror Adventures: A Tragedy of False Smiles (AU revolving around mirrored/opposite personalities, based on XY037)
Secondary work: Broken (AU based on the third Pokémon movie "Spell of the Unown")
Am I willing to read MATURE rated fics?: Yes.
Which chapter(s) I would like the reviewer to focus on: I would love reviews covering my stories in their entirety, but given my tendency to write chapters that are very long (10,000+ words each), I can understand if this would be rather daunting or otherwise unfeasible. So realistically, feel free to review as much or as little as you'd like.
Any other notes for the reviewer: Mirror Adventures is a multi-chapter story currently clocking in at around 20,000 words split between two chapters, while Broken is a 900-word one-shot. Both are major projects with much more planned, and there is a strong chance that at least one of them will receive a significant update during the review period, specifically a chapter update with major story developments and a potentially very high word count. That said, nothing that has already been posted will see significant edits (beyond spelling/grammar corrections and the like). In any case, I don't want anyone to feel pressured or obligated to review said updates if they're already working on a review for existing chapters or if they already have one finished, so... please don't feel pressured or obligated! Just do whatever you want to do, or whatever you're most comfortable doing.

That said, if reviewing absolutely everything is something that you'd be interested in doing, then I'd recommend waiting until after Monday, December 28th for an update before writing your review; if one doesn't show up by that time, then there most likely won't be one at all before the January 17th deadline. Thank you!

 

[Beth Pavell]

Entries are now closed - participants, keep an eye out tomorrow for your assignments