So, if the title wasn’t a dead enough giveaway, I like to fancy myself an adequate editor/proofreader. I know no one’s perfect so mistakes are bound to happen to even the best of writers, and helping find and fix those mistakes is something I’m good at, that I enjoy doing as a hobby, that I would love to turn into a profession one day and, were I a pony, I might even go so far as to call my special talent.

With that being said, I have encountered a recurring issue that still bugs me:

“Hey, can you edit something for me? Thx, bye!”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people request my help, and then give me next to no information. I can’t very well make a decision if I don’t have any information to work off, and needing to ask for it when the time zones between us could lead to responses being hours apart only wasted both our times.

Whenever I look for an editor, specifically for MLP fanfics, I always make sure to include:

- The title of the story
- The rating (E, T, M, PG.13, ect.)
- The genre (Romance, Thriller, Dark, ect)
- What characters will be featured
- A brief synopsis/blurb about my story
- Any additional notes of interest, like if gore or sex are included at some point or maybe the word count or estimate length if I have one, possible pairings if it’s romance, whatever.

This way, the editor in question can get back to me as soon as possible with a definite “Yes” or “No” as opposed to fishing for information that should have been presented from the get go.

It’s like going to a job interview and thinking you can only give them a resume after they’ve hired you, or the reverse where they only tell you what the job will entail and how much you’ll be paid after you agree to it.

With that being said, there’s a more cynical part of me that occasional tosses around the idea that there are actually people that think if I agree to help them before they tell me, then I can’t back out and have no choice but to proofread their mature clop fic featuring a incestual three-way between Twilight, Shining Armor and their mother. (*1)

You'll be issued a coupon for a carton of Brain Bleach at the door. While I still have your attention though...

If there’s one thing that fandoms love to do, pony or otherwise, it’s crossover their favourite franchise with their other favourite franchises.

Maybe it’s a story where a pony finds a lantern ring and joins the Green Lantern Corps, teaming up with Hal Jordan or Guy Gardner to fight Manhunters on the far reaches of the galaxy, or a world where history progressed differently and Ash Ketchum the Jedi battles the forces of the Empire and does combat with his once friend Gary Oak, now known as Darth Vader.

In any case, it’s generally a good rule of thumb to look for someone more than a little familiar with both series in question, which would allow then to not only pick out the inconsistencies and mistakes between the canon of the two series, but also makes it easier for them to understand.

Yes, generally most readers of crossovers don’t have to be familiar with all the series of a crossover to enjoy it. They might even end up being introduced to a new series, like how I finally played Mass Effect after reading a MLP/Mass Effect fic. But for an editor, if they have no idea what’s going on plot wise, terms are being thrown around that sound like another language entire, and references are being made to the source material pass right over their heads, things can get more than a little confusing.

To give some context, once I was asked to proofread a MLP/Zoids fic. My knowledge of Zoids is close to a decade old and based off a single series I saw in the early 2000s, which showed the eponymous Zoids as massive mechanical animals that can be freely piloted by humans and compete in battles for sport while refereed by a “Judge”, which is a robot launched from a satellite floating in orbit, and, despite possibly being of human manufacturing, the Zoids possess some form of limited/animalist intelligence as opposed to being simple crafts. Even after I turned him down once, he still tried to convince me that someone with little to no knowledge of Zoids could still follow along, but I knew that more than one Zoid series had been released since my childhood, so I still turned him down regardless.

It would be like if I went up to someone who has never watched a single Mobile Suit Gundam series in their life, or at the least can count the number of episodes they have seen on both hands, and ask them to give me a detailed description of the difference between the Aegis, the Kampfer Amazing and the Exia Repair. (*2)

(*1) Mark my words, I have no doubt that this fic actually exists in some dark recess of the Internet and it’s the very reason the mature filter exists on Fimfiction.

(*2) Which I can do by the way, since I am by chance a Gundam geek