Summary: Once upon a time, there was a girl named Shidou, whose name meant the beautiful violet wisteria. She had long wanted to become a beta-reader in the fanfiction world, but has always been too shy and indecisive to act upon her desire. As her body grew in age and yet her mind stayed young, she finally decided that she would give it a try to all or nothing; all in all, life is short, and she is only nearing the end of hers, not going back…

Hello there~ My name is Shidou and it's nice to meet you!

I am very thankful that you are reading my profile and I hope you'd be interested in having me as your beta-reader!

If you've clicked in because of the summary, OMG I'm so sorry that I've tricked you to think that this is actually a non-fiction story, but I am also very happy that I've actually wrote some alluring summary lines *tears*. Please read on though, if you want to get to know this girl named Shidou in Ch.2 😊

*** Chapter 1 is not a story/fanfiction. It is purely a profile post. So don't get "tricked" and read on if you are not interested 😉 ***

*** Chapter 4: the original chapter by RedVengence ***

*** Chapter 7: my edited work of Ch.4 ***

*** The rest of the chapters: I did fulfil Shidou's short story described in the summary starting at Ch.2, so you may skip ahead if you are interested! ***

English isn't my first language. Yes, you read that right. It isn't.

However, I find that this can actually be my advantage! I have learnt grammar by the rules and read dictionaries to understand exactly what the "words" mean. I have also taken creative writing classes in which we learnt about dictions, styles, and different writing genres. It is from that learning style that I become more aware and particular with how writers write.

I am a reader, not a writer. Yes, you read that right. I am not.

I LOVE reading, but I myself does not have an ounce of creative juice in me to write. Therefore, I have always admired authors here with so much ideas and interesting plots. Reading fanficions is truly an eye-opening experience for me.

I have been a reader here at FF net for over 15 years now and have decided to (finally!) do something about my urge to help authors correct some easily-caught mistakes. You know, just an extra pair of eyes? I'm no where near "great" or even "good" at writing, especially since English isn't my first language. However, I am confident that my preliminary edit will make good stories better and enhance reader experiences. All in all, I am an "experienced" reader LOL

Strength: Spelling and diction (choice of words) are my callings!

Any basic errors (e.g. confusion between there/their/they're, peek/peak/pique) sore my eyes when I see them, not to mention that it confuses me if a sentence is not written properly. I might not understand what you're trying to say if there is a serious case of grammatical and spelling errors (thanks to English being my second language lol). I will have to double, triple, or even quadruple take on that to really understand. On that note, basic sentence structure and simple grammar corrections are ok for me as well.

Weaknesses: I'm not very good at correcting awkward sentences. I can point them out but can't really correct them. I myself am not very concise either.

Let's just say English seems to be a more ambiguous language compared to my first language. When I was in school, there were multiple times when I explained what I was thinking or the situation to my English teacher (who is native and majored in English) and asked them how to present that properly in English without having inconsistent grammar or awkward sentences. They thought hard. And finally told me that, "Yes, there are ways to say them properly, but it's nothing simple and not short." And told me to just stick with simple tenses. They say it's weird to think like I do in English anyway LOLLL

Preferred Fandom: Anime! I only read anime FFs and I'm good with most popular anime fandoms. I love Saiyuki, DRRR, and Shingeki the best (yes I'm pretty old lol). I've also read many from Kuroshitsuji, K, Bleach, Free! Iwatobi, Psycho-pass, 07 ghost, Kuroko no Basuke etc. The rest I'll have to see. Did I mentioned that my fav OTP are GyojoXHakkai and ShizuoXIzaya? *hint hint*

Not My Cup Of Tea: Umm...when the pairing I ship is reversed? I usually have a pretty strong opinion on who tops/bottoms and that you can only found out when you talk to me xD Or~ If you take a look at my fav'ed stories you'd get an idea 😉

And I get pretty specific on Yaoi stories. I can "fangirl squeal" all night annoying the heck out of my family, but if I don't think the anime's original "route" is to go for yaoi pairings (like Bleach and Naruto), I tend to avoid that to respect the original author and story background. But... everything has exceptions lol. All depends on if the story is convincing enough or not :P

Other comments: I am trilingual in English, Japanese, and Chinese. Beta in these languages (or just asking for vocab advises/dialogue translations) are also welcomed!

Well that's about it!

I used to be a student when I started to want to beta, but I'm now (sadly) a white-collar worker (wails) who OT all the time and have no life. So I don't think I have time to beta more than once a week or biweekly.

As a mature (lol wut) adult, I am very responsible to deadline and quality work once I take up the job to beta your story. However, and I'm also getting old (aka exhausted to replying msgs and not really catching up to the newest, latest social media). Soooo you might have to contact me via whatever I have handy~ Let's talk first!

よろしくお願いいたしますね～

紫藤 Shidou

PS: I'm posting my profile here just to fulfill the ridiculous (imo) beta-reader qualification #2.

================== Don't mind me rambling at this point now lol ====================

As I said, I'm not a writer, and neither do I think I need to have written much to be able to edit/beta-read for others. So, "Must have published at least 5 stories on the site OR have published entries totaling at least 6000 words." is a little harsh on lil'old me, isn't it?

Why do they not count the review entries I've put in or the number of words there in total? I checked out my last 300 reviews (I have more than 300, just FF only stores history up to 300 entries). It totalled up to 18,487 words which spanned 55 pages on Words Times New Roman font 12 single-spaced.

It was also precisely because of that requirement that I'd hesitated/procrastinated so long to sign-up for becoming a beta reader. Did you know that this huge ass of profile only summed up to 1133 words? How am I supposed to get to 6000 words? Hmph! No fair!

So I've decided to put together this elaborate reader profile so be my "first" story and covers the first thousand word.

Next I'm going to post one of my volunteered beta work, that should take up the rest of the word requirement plus showing an example of my portfolio.

Though please note, since the fandoms that I'm interested in are already so old, many of those writers are already unreachable/only comes back from time to time. Therefore, I shamelessly (I'm sorry! I'm REALLY sorry!) borrowed their work to beta and post here. I hope they would understand as a fellow fan of our beloved fandom, I have no intention to pirate their work or steal their credit where it is due. Once again, I am NOT a creative person and could never have come up with those excellent storylines by myself. I own nothing except my grammatical knowledge TAT.

Update: I've since came back and edited some of my profile description, so the word count doesn't match up anymore... but you get what I meant lol