Complete With a Water Slide

Welcome to Caroline's unasked for advice to how to make people read your friending meme comment and maybe add you as a friend.

First of all, it's important to remember that friending memes can get pretty large. Take the one going on at fandomsecrets, it has reached 10 pages right now. That's a lot of comments and people are not going to take the time to read every single comment. They will skim it and look for key-words that are relevant to their interest. So make sure that your key-words are put where they should be put.

So here's a few tips on how to make people read your meme reply (or at least make sure that people don't just skip it entirely):

1) Make sure that you use the correct format. Most of the time the mod will supply you with a form they want you to fill out. FILL IT OUT CORRECTLY! Don't start writing inside the tags! Don't remove the tagging all together! (Why on earth would you take the time to remove something that will make you comment easier to read?) When I see someone not filling out the form correctly I skip it automatically. You have a LJ, that should mean that you understand how the formatting works! And sorry, I don't want a friend that doesn't understand such basic things. What does that say about you? Maybe that means that you don't know how to cut your entries either? And that's just annoying. So: Use the correct format! Anything else makes you look stupid and unprofessional.

2) Use correct spelling and grammar, show that you know how to use the space-bar. Read over your comment. Make sure that you have capitalized everything that needs to be capitalized. Make sure that you don't start writing right after the colon. (This is a huge pet peeve of mine. Space it people!)Present yourself as a normal human-being who knows how to correctly read and write. I don't want stupid people on my f-list, I'm sorry. Give off the impression that your posts will be written correctly and that they will not be hard to read.

3) Be brief, but not too short. No one wants to read through a giant block of text, but writing too little might be damaging too. Make sure that you tell everything that might be interesting about you and your journal, but don't go on for forever. Cue words are quite alright. Answer all the questions. And try not to sound boring. Don't ask us to check out your profile/icons! Everything that's important should be noted in the comment. People are lazy and just won't spend that extra time on you.

4) Write down you main fandoms first. Don't falsely advertise. Make sure that the fandoms you write down are actually fandoms that interests you right now. We all like a lot of things, but don't write that you like Sherlock Holmes, when all you have ever done is watch the movie and written one or two posts about it. Don't say you like something, but never really talk about it. People are interested in knowing what you talk about in your journal right now! They want to know what to expect should they add you.

5) Use a snazzy, eye-catching icon. People like shiny things and might slow down to look at it.

6) GIFS ARE YOUR FRIENDS! Always add a gif, or a funny picture in the other section. A funny gif has a hundred more times chance to make people slow down and look at your post than any of the above tips. If they recognize the gif they might be interested in seeing what else you like, and a friendship might be born. Add two if you have them.

DISCLAIMER: I do not guarantee that this will work for you. But it has for me. (Especially number six. If you ignore everything else that I've said, at least follow number six!) Also, if you follow this it will make you less annoying and the internetz generally like people who are not annoying!

I have gotten to a stage where I honestly don't care if people review my fics. Isn't that amazing? As long as a few of my friends who I know will enjoy it reviews, I don't give a shit about anyone else. My four latest fics haven't gotten that many reviews, and it honestly doesn't bother me. I am so pleased with the result and I had so much fun writing them, and I know that they are original and not like anything else out there, and that's all I need.

I am slightly puzzled at this, because I've always been a review-whore at heart. But this is a very nice feeling. I feel more calm, and I write a fic because I want to write it. And I'm finally writing the fics I want to write and I'm not second guessing anything. It's an amazing feeling. And I'm totally blaming the Three Sentence Fic-A-Thon! That was the most brilliant idea I've ever had.

On the subject of my newest fic; All Manner of Things (Shall Be Well): I got an anonymous review over at ffnet. It was a nice review but she asked a question and I really wish I had a way to answer her.

(I say her because I always default to she in fandom. Rule 30 of the internet rules says: There's no girls on the internet. I'd like there to be a Rule 30b: There are no men in fandom.)

She asked and I quote: It was well written and I enjoyed it! =)
I'm just sort of wondering why Edmund-- or er, Edlyn - was a girl..? haha I
think the story could have worked perfectly well with him staying as a boy.
But not like it really matters, great piece as usual!

Now that's a fair enough question and I really wish she'd left contact information so I could answer her. My answer would have been this:

The reason Edmund wasn't a boy in this was because I wanted to explore what would be different if he was a girl. That's the whole point of genderbend, exploring how a character would be different had he grown up a girl.

Take Edlyn; The fact that she grew up a girl made her closer to Lucy. Edmund fought with Peter, while Edlyn fought mostly with Lucy. Edlyn needed to prove herself to Peter, to prove that she was just as good as any boy. While growing up Edlyn felt a bit ignored being the middle sister. Edlyn is more darker than Edmund, she embraced the shadows and the spy work easier than Edmund. I enjoy exploring the differences.

Also because I LIKE writing genderfucked characters. So there!