Reccing Fic

[lunabee34]

[Poll #1578098]

ETA: I had this whole post to go with this poll and then I accidentally hit return before I could insert that text. *headdesk* So, you know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on reccing--what makes a good one, how important they are to your fannish experience, what irritates you about reccing, and what you'd like to see more of in rec posts.

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I don't go on strangers' recs that often, because that would mean I would have to search them out and I am really lazy when it comes to looking for fic. But I do occasionally read stuff based on recs I find on network/friendsfriends or whatever.

I don't care about pairing or rating or warnings at all, either in recs or headers, so I really just want to know a brief summary and why the reccer thinks it's rec-worthy.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I don't really care about ratings or warnings either; pairings matter to me, so I usually want to know that upfront.

I read a great deal based on stranger's recs. I frequently google certain pairings or tropes for recs and I've gotten really good results with that. Right now, I'm working my way through Painless J's HP recs, and I don't know that fan from Adam.

I love your reviews. I like that they are very honest, and they always give me a good idea of whether I'll like what you're reviewing. We don't necessarily share the same fic tastes, but you do a good job of pointing out what works for you (or doesn't) and I can usually extrapolate from there.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Also, I don't think my own recs (whether fic or books or manga) are that great. I'm surprised and glad that people find them helpful, but I wish I had the patience and eloquence to write better ones. I always get frustrated and want to get it done with, though.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean. This post was prompted by getting a couple of really nice comments on my latest rec post. People seem to like and find my recs helpful, but I don't think they're anything all that special. Recs are, for me personally, a way to keep a list of fics I liked and will want to read again. I never rec anything that I liked but not enough to re-read. So, often my recs posts are pretty short (just a sentence or two about each fic) notes almost to myself more than anything else. Sometimes I get really into depth, but usually not. And then I go read somebody like thefourthvine who does these awesome and interesting and funny recs of fics and I'm all, "I wanna write kickass recs posts!" LOL

I think yours are really good--you go into a lot more detail than I do usually.

[trobadora]

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in fandom who really doesn't care about recs at all. My tastes are fairly specific, and hardly ever align with the fannish mainstream in any given fandom, and while I read recs when they turn up on my flist, I read them for clues about the fic. Spoilers, as it were.

Well, I do use recs to find fic sometimes, but seriously only to find fic I might otherwise have missed, not because it's being recced.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Which probably makes my recs not all that useful for you. LOL

Sort of like Travis says upthread somewhere, I often get into this "must get bookmarks off computer mode" and so try to toss of the post quickly without going into a lot of detail.

Your comment also reminds me that I meant to ask if people had ever *not* read a fic because it was being recced everywhere and they thought it might not live up to the hype.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

For me, the reason recs are really vital is that I simply do not have the patience to scroll through communities or archives looking for fic. It irritates me and chances are if I have to do that, I will soon give up on reading fic at all.

Also for me what matters is the summary, something to give me an idea of what sort of story it is (ratings, warnings, pairing, etc. do not convey any information that gives me a clue as to whether it might interest me). And since authors often don't put a summary at all, if I'm reading from a rec, there's usually a little more hint as to what the story is about.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Well, I do use recs to find fic sometimes, but seriously only to find fic I might otherwise have missed, not because it's being recced.

That's generally how recs work for me -- I use them a lot, but mostly as a list of fic to possibly read. I do read the reccer commentary and find it helpful, but mostly because it gives me an idea of what to expect from the story. Unless it was rec'd by someone whose tastes I know align closely with my own, I don't otherwise consider a reccer's endorsement/anti-endorsement a particular indication of whether I'm likely to like it. I do rely heavily on recs to introduce me to fic I wouldn't otherwise have seen, however, especially in small fandoms (for example, I find most of my FMA fic via recs, because I'm not really active in that fandom but I do read in it) or for pairings that I don't usually read.

ETA: Also, a fic rec usually provides at least one level of quality filtering -- even if it turns out to be not to my taste, I can usually be confident that if someone liked it enough to rec it, then it won't be littered with spelling, grammar and canon errors. Usually. *g*

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

Like I said on your last post, it's always amazing to me to find stories that I haven't read yet, and the only way that happens is by someone leading me to them. I read pretty voraciously, but if someone else thinks it's good, it probably isn't going to have many of the really annoying issues that stories which aren't properly vetted.

Of course, there are limitations; recs from people who I love that are for fandoms or pairings that I'm just not interested in aren't going to mean a thing to me. But friends telling me, "I think you'll love this" is enough to make me think very generously of whatever it is they've found.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way. It's what I used to love about club_joss and sga_talk. I was never ever gonna read an all human AU Spuffy on my own, but when the comm wanted to read it, man was I glad because it was a damn good story. Yay for nautibitz!

[I'm glad my continuous poking and nudging and shoving fics upon you is not irritating. LOL I can't always "OMG, this is tailor-made for you" but I've got a handful of people that I know well enough that I can usually gauge whether they'd dig seomthing and you're one of them.]

[ariadne83]

Ordinarily I would have answered no to whether I use strangers' recs but for the past week I've been making use of the spn anon_meme to decide which bigbang fics I want to bother with. It's partly because over there I can get multiple reviews of the SAME story, which helps me assess whether or not the reccer and I share story-element wish lists. But the main reason is that I'm not very involved in the fandom, so I don't know any reccers (same goes for Dr. Who).

The reason I don't often bother with strangers' recs is that I have no idea whether the things they're looking for mesh with mine. In the good old days that wouldn't have bothered me, because I just read anything and everything and backbuttoned if I didn't like it. Now I have to be more circumspect with my time because my attention span reduced dramatically when I started taking meds. Pairings/warnings are more important for me now too, for the same reason: I don't want to waste my time on something I probably won't enjoy. If it's written by someone I trust, or there are multiple recs on my flist, I'll try reading something outside my comfort zone, but otherwise I'll just scroll on by.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I've been going through Big Bang myself. Just started yesterday. I saw that post on the anon meme; that would be a really good way to get multiple points of view on the fics (as long as you discount people who are obviously not commenting on the fic itself but have some personal grudge against the writer). I didn't really delve very deeply into the post. How useful is the anon meme turning out to be? What's the ratio of "I don't like Castiel. Why is this story about him? *whine*" and "I hate Author; she's so stooopid" to "this story doesn't work for me because it shifts tenses every five minutes?" (BTW, did you read the otherwise entertaining story that did just that? *headdesk* So irritating!)

I'm with you on not having enough time. I'm all for anything that maximizes the enjoyment I get out of fandom and not wasting my time is one of those things.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I use friends' recs in this way: they help me decide if I'm going to cross into a fandom I hardly know. (Other things can make me do that, like knowing the author, but if it's a fandom and an author I don't know at all, a rec is what's going to get me reading it.) But I don't actually read very many recommenders; generally, I prefer to do my own first-pass filtering, and rely on once-off and casual recs for great things I've missed.

(I also, if I am getting into a fandom late, will look for the Obsessive Monofannish Recommender in that fandom - someone who has a list of EVERY GOOD STORY SO FAR POSTED, so I can catch up easily. But these days I am much more apt to get into a fandom early on or not at all, and also the Obsessive Monofannish Recommender is only needed for fandom-eating fandoms, and we haven't had one of those that I wanted in on in a while. So while I used to rely heavily on the OMR, I haven't used one in a long time.)

Cupidsbow is an awfully good recommender, though.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Yes!! the OMR!!!!

I'm thinking of viciouswishes for Jossverse and Viciouscat's Die Hard Masterlist (http://viciouscats.wordpress.com/category/master-lists/die-hard-master-lists/). Those are such excellent resources. And most OMR lists are imminently google-able which make them doubly useful for me.

I love your rec posts; they make me wanna be a better reccer. LOL

[ella-bane.livejournal.com]

The most important element to me in any recommendation is the reccer's thoughts on the fic. I want to know why the fic is worth reading.

In HP fandom, my go to reccer was painless_j. She told me why, and she told me in detail. Also, her likes/dislikes dovetailed with mine.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I googled HP recs about four months ago and found her extensive list of recs and have been working my way through them slowly. Painless J is a good reccer. My tastes don't always dovetail with hers (I'm not a huge fan of Harry is a student/Snape is a teacher), but I've like about 80% of the stories she's recced that I've read so far. I think that's a pretty impressive percentage.

[pocketmouse]

I sometimes go by strangers' recs, usually on friendsfriends or networks on delicious. Usually at this point I'm just skimming for anything with a summary that seems interesting.

I'll read a stranger's recs if they're thoughtful and well-written. It depends on what I'm in the mood for, really.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I've got some good reccers on my flist and there's always the instarec that most of fandom seems to do, so I get a fair amount of recs on the flist in a week.

[garnigal.livejournal.com]

It's really important to me to know if it's a WIP or complete.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

You know I haven't thought of that. I almost never rec WIPs (or read them) so if I do rec a WIP it's usually an abandoned one and I say so in the rec. Maybe I should add a disclaimer or something so people know all the stories are complete?

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

The thing I find most important about a rec is why the reccer liked it, or how it made them feel. I don't care about plot or rating in a rec, and I don't need a paste of the author's summary. In fact, I find this singularly useless in a rec - I already get the author's summary from the author; it makes me crazy when people save things on delicious and only use the author's summary, because how can i know why they liked it just from that? I need to know the fandom, and what characters it's about (there are pairings and characters I avoid), but even that I can get when I click on the link and see the headers. I hate those long lists of links with no commentary, because unless I already know the person and their taste, that gives me absolutely no reason to click on the story.

Strangers' recs aren't weighted as much to me because I don't know them or their taste or judgement, so until I've actually vetted their recs, I take them with a grain of salt. I mean, even the recs of people I know and trust don't always work for me, but the chance of that is magnified if I don't know the reccer's taste already.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense. I like when reccers pull out a favorite quote or two, but it does seem pretty redundant to just c&p the author's summary. I just saw a rec post on my flist this morning and the reccer gave the author's summary but then told why she liked the fic and thought we should read it. That worked for me.

I find delicious very difficult to use. I know I am like the only person in fandom who doesn't love delicious but I don't. It's hard to look at or something; IDK. *throws hands up* I have searched delicious for fic before (most recently for Golden Girls fic where I found a lovely Dean/Blanche comment fic in your journal *g*), but I prefer looking at rec posts in journals or on websites.

[nev-longbottom.livejournal.com]

Rec posts without summaries drive me nuts. Must I really open 30 tabs to find out if any of the stories have a plot I'd find engaging?

but what I do enjoy seeing is what a reccer valued in a fic. What make this story glimmer out of all the rest and why those values matter to the reccer.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think what I'm hearing from most people is that a combination of summary and reccer commentary is really the best mix. Most people want to know at least a little about what happens in the story and most people want to know why the reader thinks it's a must read.

This really helps me think about how I make my own recs.

[melusina]

I like to see length as well, so I know whether the story is one I can click over to and start reading or one I need to save for later. (Just general, not a specific word count.)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Several other people have mentioned this and I know I don't always mention length. I'll make a more concerted effort to do so.

[spikedluv]

I skipped the poll because my answers are probably kind of weird. *g*

I love recs, especially when entering a new fandom. Or a large fandom where there is a lot of crap fic. For example, when I was reading SPN/J2, I wouldn't read too much that wasn't rec'd on my f-list (or written by someone on my f-list).

When I just got into AI8, I knew there was a ton of fic, so I started with two rec lists that had been mentioned to me. I don't have to personally know the person rec'ing, but it helps if a lot of people find their recs useful and I can presume that I will enjoy most (if not all) of the fic on their list.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Naw, bb. You're not weird! :)

You know, your comment makes me think of Spander and what a daunting thing that would be to try to slog through without something like the rec list on bloodclaim.

[ladyjestyr.livejournal.com]

(Here via kyuuketsukirui)

Basically, I'm pretty picky about fic - particularly the quality of the writing, rather than details like pairing or plot or whatever. So I like recs lists, in general, because I find trying to wade through unfiltered masses of fic to be pretty draining. When I'm reading someone else's recs, if they're not known to me then I generally look for enough information in their recs to decide whether I trust their decisions about whether something's well-written or not.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

That makes a lot of sense.

I generally value good writing (for whatever value of good writing) but some tropes hit me so hard that I'm willing to forgo the good grammar for the sake of the story. (and beats me if I can tell you when that's gonna be; half the time I'm hitting the back button and the other half I'm riveted and I haven't been able to articulate exactly what it is that keeps me reading a "bad" story.)

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

This usually comes up if the story's got a decent summary, but I really do want to know who the fic is about. I also like to know length, in a ballpark way, and why the reccer is reccing.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Length is something I do not consistently mention. It's inherent in descriptors like drabble, ficlet, and big bang, but other than that I don't really mention it often.

*adds to list of reccing components*

[antepathy.livejournal.com]

If I don't know the reccer (therefore not sure if our tastes are the same) I really need to get a hint as to what they think is important in the fic--are they looking for the same things I am? (In-canon characterization, round characters, depth, etc). In a sense a good rec to me tells me almost as much about the reccer as the fic.

There's someone I know who CANNOT post a fic rec without either comparing it to HER story (hers is always, of course, better but we're supposed to read this until she has another chapter for us) or takes potshots at hypocritical things--she's terrible with grammar, and one rec went off on the author's grammar. She's awful with canon, and she called someone else's pairing OoC. That...tells me way more about her than the fic, and not in the good way! Not only are her recs useless for deciding if I want to read a fic, they have actually turned me off reading HER story!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

YES!!!!!!!!

[I realize you can't see me fist pump and then clink glasses with Tracie, but OMG, yes!]

I have not seen an example as egregious as the one you cite here, but when people rec or review, I totally learn more about the reccer than the author of the story recced.

Excellent, excellent point!