The Doctor Who Fanfic Review Interview: Inkfire

Interviews by Fans
Title:	The Doctor Who Fanfic Review Interview: Inkfire
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	Inkfire
Date(s):	May 31, 2015
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Doctor Who
External Links:	Inkfire Part One, Archived version Inkfire Part Two, Archived version
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The Doctor Who Fanfic Review Interview: Inkfire was posted at The Doctor Who Fanfic Review on May 31, 2015.

See: The Doctor Who Fanfic Review Interview Series.

Some Excerpts

TDWFR: We just discovered The Reviews Lounge on FF.net, of which you are a member. It is a great concept that people work together to review quality, under-reviewed fics. You have taken a pledge to review every fic you read. Has this been a challenging commitment to live out? What have been some benefits? Have you found some great new fics and become a better reviewer?

Inkfire: Oh, good place to start. ;) The Reviews Lounge, Too is a great place. It is all too rare today that people actually take the time to leave really thought-out feedback, or indeed any at all—particularly on FF.net. When I started on the RLt, I already found it pretty normal and natural to review every fic I read (save for those I didn’t enjoy and for which had no constructive criticism to provide), but my reviews were really, really shorter—I often didn’t really know how to express why I’d loved a specific work so much, or else I would just quote a ton of lines that had stood out to me! Participating in the RLt, particularly some specific review-centred events they hosted, has really made me work on this and improve a great deal.Commenting on everything I read isn’t much of a challenge, and really I would say that’s only common politeness, not taking people’s hard work for granted—the in-depth feedback, however, is a challenge indeed. Well, I have a bit of an obsessive personality if I’m being honest, so I get intense about this kind of thing. ^_^ It has had some funny consequences—like bringing a stress factor into reading very long and very well-written fics, because part of my mind is just worrying all along about the amount of work the review is going to be. On a few instances it has led me to not reviewing altogether for some, that I’d just write off as “indulgement reads” because I just really lacked the necessary brainpower—but I do try my very best to avoid this =P Through the RLt, Iʼve found a few really good fics indeed, but for the most part it led me to broaden my horizons and read stuff from other fandoms that I know very little about, just for the quality of the writing. I used to think I wouldnʼt get anything about those when going in without context, but it can be very enjoyable anyway—at the moment I do focus on my own fandoms and favourite characters/ships, because for the reasons I mentioned earlier I just canʼt pour that much time and effort into reviewing every work there is, but I can also read works from other fandoms if a friend or a writer I admire has written them. As for the benefits, they have been great—first, letʼs be honest, itʼs always very rewarding to see authors be thoroughly delighted by oneʼs comments and insight. I like being liked, as anyone would, and I like making others happy as well ;) It also triggered some excellent discussions, as in-depth comments bring in some in-depth responses and the debates can go on and on. It brings friendships, eventually. Thereʼs a great sense of satisfaction on every level, and I would say itʼs well worth the effort.

TDWFR: You have archives on Teaspoon and an Open Mind, Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net. We don’t want to make you pick your favourite child or anything but what features do you like of each site?

Inkfire: I started fandom on FF.net, and have spent about three years posting exclusively there—thatʼs actually half of my fandom life. ;) For that reason, it remains special to me as pretty much the place where it all began. FF.net has a lot of traffic and naturally a huge range of fics, it goes from drop-dead stellar to… *coughs* Well, anyway. The same goes for feedback—you have the great, deeply thought-out reviews, the one-liners, the odd random one that makes you scratch your head, the serial favourite-er, the person who sends you an alert for a complete work rather than typing “Nice work!”, and the silent audience. (Some people check their stats for that but I just never bothered…) Iʼd say one has to find their niche. I did that through joining a few forums, which brought some great friendships and discussions and opportunities to discover the works of people I shared interests with, as well of a way of thinking about writing and fandom, pretty much. So Iʼve always had my nice little corner on FF.net, and been pretty satisfied with the feedback I got, the writers I discovered and the acquaintances I made. This changed somewhat when I moved from HP to Doctor Who, where I didnʼt really find any forums that were active and not RPF-centred. Around the same time, a friend suggested I join LiveJournal, and also gave me the idea of joining AO3 and Teaspoon since I was following her work there. I soon became really attached to the LJ community, which replaced forums as a means of getting to know new people, both as writers and on a personal level. I also started exclusively following writers instead of randomly searching for fics. For that reason, I couldnʼt really compare the search features on FF.net, AO3 and Teaspoon, or the average quality—though I know AO3 and Teaspoon are smaller and Teaspoon seems more closely moderated, so they donʼt get the downsides of very wide traffic I mentioned for FF.net. All fics Iʼve read on AO3 and Teaspoon ranged from pretty good to astonishing levels of greatness, but those are people I mostly already knew to be good—I didnʼt really go poking blindly into what was out there. I just consider they have pretty good content and leave it as that. As for comments, for all websites my best feedback has often come from friends who just put that much effort into it, but Iʼve had a few good reviews come out of the blue on all sides as well.As a conclusion… well, Teaspoon is an archive just for our fandom! That has got to be precious. :)

TDWFR: You’re also active on the Livejournal Who-Fic Contest where you have won a number of their challenges. This looks like a great opportunity to grow in skill as a writer and also engage in some friendly competition. What do you like about being part of these challenges?

Inkfire: Iʼve always really enjoyed challenges—and needed them, quite often. My skills lie in insight and description/capturing a specific moment, more than plots and coming up with creative ideas, so I often had moments when I didnʼt really know what to write. Prompts give you a starting point, yet theyʼre not very limiting, and writing for a required length is also an interesting exercise. (who-contest has a minimum word count for one-shot challenges and a maximum for drabble challenges, but during my Harry Potter days Iʼve done a number that had to be 100 or 500 words exactly, or else a multiple of 100. It was really hard at first, but the work of editing the piece to the exact required length turned out to be really enlightening about what is and is not necessary and how to go straight to the point and be effective—also, after a while one would just automatically adjust their thinking to the space they had.)Also, who-contest always has some lovely and varied entries, from very talented members, and they are also friendly and great to interact with—whatʼs not to love? ;) And I hadnʼt done that many competitions before, but that is also interesting and exciting—though it can be hard to pick favourites to vote for when the fics are very different and have different assets.