Meet The ZNN Team! Part 1: The Abyss Gazers! (aka Pre-Readers)

Hello and welcome everyone!  We are in the final stretch of the Road to One Million pageviews, so to prepare for that momentous occasion, I think it’s time you met the team who help make ZNN the amazing site that it is!  Along the way I will be giving you all a look backstage, so to speak, providing you with a brief explanation of the various roles on the team.  After that will be pictures and descriptions of the many mammals who work within those roles.  Hopefully by the end of all this, you’ll have a better understanding of just what makes ZNN tick!

Let’s begin, shall we?

When I first started ZNN, I would read every story submitted myself.  This worked fine for a little while, but soon I reached the point where I simply no longer had the time to do that.  So, I recruited one of my friends to help, and the role of Abyss Gazer was born.

Otherwise known as pre-readers, the Abyss Gazers spend their days staring into the unending pit of imagination and insanity known as “fanfiction”.  Their job involves reading every story that gets submitted to ZNN and checking it for content, grammar, spelling, and any NSFW material.  If it fails these standards and the Abyss Gazer who read it feels it can still be salvaged, we contact the author and ask if they can make the appropriate changes.

All the character images were made by both Sendrax and Quirky-Middle-Child.  Meet the Abyss Gazers yourself after the break!


[Edited because I forgot we did have a picture for N00bTankz.  Sorry about that!]



The first Abyss Gazer, who helped me coin the term, was Tomlocke.

Tom and I have known each other for years, so I knew of his seemingly unnatural tolerance for… let’s just say, “sub-standard” fanfiction.  He was able to handle anything I asked him to check, and I trusted his judgement if a fic was good enough to post.  He was surprised to find there were more well-written stories than he had anticipated, so he stayed on to continue gazing into the abyss.
But even Tom has his limits.  As things progressed, we had too many fanfics for the two of us to handle.  There began to be a backlog of fics that needed pre-reading- a backlog we are still sifting through today.  We needed more help.
Enter Nota999, Berserker88Namicle, and N00btankz.

These four are all exceptional authors, having written such stories as The CampaignBorn to be Wilde, and Freaking Out.  They have demonstrated exceptional skill discerning good stories from those that are either bad or boring, and have proven to be exceptionally helpful at reducing our backlog.  We still have quite a way to go, but more and more stories are being checked and read every day!
We will occasionally have other authors help, such as PullTogether (who wrote several stories that ripped my heart to shreds), but they are mainly there as backup in case things go horribly wrong and we need more hands on deck.  Plus they’re cool people, so we enjoy their company.
And there you have it!  Those are the Abyss Gazers!  Join us Monday when we introduce the ZNN Translation Team!

13 Comments

  1. T-minus 44,712 pageviews.
    >First, bottom right-hand corner Andy made me die laughing. The meme community will probably soon know the wrath of this image (I like to call it: Gazelle-Struck)

    >Secondly, I love the illustrations of everyone. It adds a lot to the backstory.

    >Finally, I LOVE THIS. It's like a flipping-sweet-cheese-and-crackers-draw/write/fic-my-znn-life.
    make vid of dis on utube. plz

  2. Wooo I'm cool!

    I do feel guilty for lagging in the reading department, but I keep getting sucked into writing new things somehow. Also pfft, the Judy Jumps in Headfirst story is just a comedy, unlike everything else I've written so far 😛

  3. Looking good! Unfortunately I have not been doing much reading seeing that I am writing during the time I usually might be reading lol.

  4. Very interesting band here, I came across this site when you were at around 500,000 views! I want to thank each and every one of you for helping me though a pretty rough time in my life. Thank you for making the internet world a better place!

    • We're all about workplace diversity here at ZNN!

      And thank you so much. You have no idea how happy it makes me to learn that, by creating this crazy site, I've been able to help some people. Let's continue to make the world a better place, you and me in our own unique ways, one step at a time!

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