It's been too long since I felt this way
12/18: 
kate_nepveu asked, how/where do you find stuff to rec, especially in high-volume fandoms?
It used to be easier, when LJ and LJ comms were more active, and there was more stuff to pick and choose from right on my flist. Not to mention, I had a lot of my favorite authors already on my flist, in various fandoms, and they would also rec things, and there would be themed recs lists in comms etc. Those days are gone and they're not coming back. (I mean, I still have a lot of my favorite writers on my flists, but either they're not writing in my fandoms or they're posting strictly to AO3, so it's not the same.)
I mean, obviously, I still read fic by people on my flists and tumblr dash (always the first source), and I harvest recs from my flist on both DW and LJ, and on my network both places, and from my tumblr dash, but there's not nearly as many recs as there used to be. Or possibly there are, but I've tumblr saviored some things, so I don't see them if they're all jumbled together. *snerk*
Of course, while I am mainly in a large, high-volume fandom right now -- Avengers -- since I don't read the juggernaut m/m pairings, and I also am not particularly interested in reading about Loki or Coulson, there's a lot less volume to worry about. I check the Steve/Bucky tag on AO3 daily for completed works, and probably check the same tag on Pinboard about twice a week, since there's usually only 2-3 new complete stories a week. *sobs* (I do not, repeat, do not track tags on tumblr. It just seems like a smarter way to tumblr.)
I also check the Steve/Natasha and Steve/Bucky/Natasha tags in both places (and occasionally the Steve/Bucky/Peggy tag and the Bucky/Natasha tag), and the Steve/Darcy tag on AO3 about once a week, but that last one is full of so many incomplete stories or stories that are part of long series that I don't find much there I'm interested in reading. I occasionally check the Clint/Natasha or Clint/Darcy tags, as well. (Now that I can filter more easily, I should go back to checking the Steve/Peggy and Tony/Pepper tags, but that was such an exercise in futility for me for a long time, and I haven't been able to bring myself to do it again.)
I check by date since I don't believe hits, kudos, or comment counts are necessarily indicators of stories I will actually like (and in fact, the opposite is sometimes true), and also because in most of the pairings I'm interested in, it's not hard to keep up. I also filter out incomplete works because I learned that lesson a long time ago.
(I don't subscribe to tags, because I like to do things in my own time and also because I don't know if filters work with subscriptions; a list of fic that's tagged Steve/Bucky or Steve/Peggy but is actually about Steve/Tony is not of use to me. I occasionally remember to subscribe to authors so I don't have to always remember to check their works pages to see if they've done something new, but not nearly as often as I should.)
I use my Pinboard network, as well, though my fannish interests barely overlap with many of those folks anymore - e.g., there is a lot of hockey RPF and Teen Wolf fic I have to scroll past because I'm just not interested in 99% of it (well, I am not interested in 100% of hockey RPF, unless it's Henrik Lundqvist/me, which nobody is writing, but I do read the occasional non-Sterek, or Sterek-only-in-the-background TW fic), though I do read the occasional story there - and I've had to acclimate myself to other people's tagging habits (I really shouldn't complain about that because I don't tag by pairing either, though I try to indicate the pairing in the blurb; there are some pairings I can deal with in the background even if I don't care about them, but there are some that are a DNW even in a one-line mention, so I like to know!) and their preferences. There are people whose taste aligns fantastically with mine, and there are people whose recs work for me because I know I won't like 95% of what they do!
I do occasionally check places like fancake, and crack_van was sometimes a source of good stuff, but the problem with liking a less popular pairing in a large fandom is that it either doesn't get included in recs at all, or every story recced is one you've already read.
The one unfortunate aspect of this is that I don't get to read a lot of gen unless it's recced (or it appears on my flist/dash/pinboard network) because that is one tag I just can't force myself to sort through. It's not like in SPN where there was a comm dedicated to it. I mean, I'm sure there probably is an Avengers-gen comm? But I don't join comms (or post fic to them) anymore, because of anxiety reasons.
I've never read only from recs lists, but except in extreme cases (i.e., Max/Alec, Katara/Zuko #it's a sickness), I don't wander into the wilds of FF.net without a rec first. So I guess my reading is confined to the DW/LJ/Tumblr/AO3 spheres of fandom. I do manage to find things to rec most months, though, and people do seem to find my recs useful, so it seems to work out all right for me.
Um, that is probably more than you wanted to know? But the main thing is I guess that it helps to be really focused on one or two pairings that aren't quite as popular? I mean, I did the same thing in HP fandom when it was in its heyday on LJ, but because that was so big, it was easy to tailor everything to my interests, because except for the newsletters and crack_broom, most comms were pairing or character-focused, so it was easy to get a steady diet of Sirius/Remus and James/Lily without having to sort through an overwhelming amount of stuff I wasn't interested in. (And enough of my flist at the time was in HP, so if I wanted the occasional Harry/Draco or Ron/Neville or whatever, I could find it pretty easily.)
Speaking of this meme, I have gotten some fantastic answers from other people! Yesterday,
ignipes made what might be my favorite post of the year: on the subject of Steve and Bucky. YES. THIS. #OTP: NOT WITHOUT YOU. ♥♥♥
Though it has some stiff competition from
cesperanza's response to my request for Josh & Donna in the Santos administration, which was to write me an amazing story: The People's Servants. ♥♥♥
And
kaydeefalls made a lovely post about the awesomeness that is Avatar: The Last Airbender. ♥♥♥
I love this meme so much! *g*
In other news, my yuletide went off to beta last night, and I already have notes on changes to make, though I'm waiting to hear from the second beta before I do anything. But it's still in viable posting shape if, say, the archive opened tomorrow. I mean, it's not as good as it could be, but I wouldn't have to hang my head in shame or anything.
I have one more story I want to write before Christmas (which is in a week. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? WHAT IS TIME?), and also a couple of treats planned (though for the first time, I think maybe the treats I want to write will be even less popular than my original story? Which I have to say, is probably not a big ticket item either.). Writing! HOW DOES IT WORK?
Lastly, book meme:
What I just finished reading
Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code Maker's War 1941-45 by Leo Marks, about the codebreakers in the SOE during WWII. What I said last week ("It's very interesting and Marks is a hilariously deadpan narrator, even though I can't keep all the agents' codenames straight and I don't really understand the actual coding/decoding. I mean, I get the general idea, but beyond that, I kind of just let it wash over me.") stands, and though it does get kind of repetitive, I was invested in Marks' relationship with Yeo-Thomas ("Our Tommy") enough that I had to keep reading to find out if he made it home. Okay, technically, once he got sent to a concentration camp, I stopped reading and wiki'd whether he'd survived, since I knew Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo had not. Spoiler: he did. Where is the movie about THAT guy? He had quite the interesting career. (and I still want a big shiny miniseries about Noor Inayat Khan, too. And one for Nancy Wake.) I also wanted to know what really happened in Holland. I guess there's probably another book somewhere that explains that. I should probably try to find one.
What I'm reading now
The Secrets of Station X: How the Bletchley Park codebreakers helped win the war by Michael Smith, which isn't nearly as charming as Marks' book, but is still interesting.
What I'm reading next
I have the Noor Inayat Khan book and also a Nancy Wake biography, so it could be either of those.
And now my bosses are taking me out for a holiday lunch, so I will sign off.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/624262.html.
people have commented there.
kate_nepveu asked, how/where do you find stuff to rec, especially in high-volume fandoms?
It used to be easier, when LJ and LJ comms were more active, and there was more stuff to pick and choose from right on my flist. Not to mention, I had a lot of my favorite authors already on my flist, in various fandoms, and they would also rec things, and there would be themed recs lists in comms etc. Those days are gone and they're not coming back. (I mean, I still have a lot of my favorite writers on my flists, but either they're not writing in my fandoms or they're posting strictly to AO3, so it's not the same.)
I mean, obviously, I still read fic by people on my flists and tumblr dash (always the first source), and I harvest recs from my flist on both DW and LJ, and on my network both places, and from my tumblr dash, but there's not nearly as many recs as there used to be. Or possibly there are, but I've tumblr saviored some things, so I don't see them if they're all jumbled together. *snerk*
Of course, while I am mainly in a large, high-volume fandom right now -- Avengers -- since I don't read the juggernaut m/m pairings, and I also am not particularly interested in reading about Loki or Coulson, there's a lot less volume to worry about. I check the Steve/Bucky tag on AO3 daily for completed works, and probably check the same tag on Pinboard about twice a week, since there's usually only 2-3 new complete stories a week. *sobs* (I do not, repeat, do not track tags on tumblr. It just seems like a smarter way to tumblr.)
I also check the Steve/Natasha and Steve/Bucky/Natasha tags in both places (and occasionally the Steve/Bucky/Peggy tag and the Bucky/Natasha tag), and the Steve/Darcy tag on AO3 about once a week, but that last one is full of so many incomplete stories or stories that are part of long series that I don't find much there I'm interested in reading. I occasionally check the Clint/Natasha or Clint/Darcy tags, as well. (Now that I can filter more easily, I should go back to checking the Steve/Peggy and Tony/Pepper tags, but that was such an exercise in futility for me for a long time, and I haven't been able to bring myself to do it again.)
I check by date since I don't believe hits, kudos, or comment counts are necessarily indicators of stories I will actually like (and in fact, the opposite is sometimes true), and also because in most of the pairings I'm interested in, it's not hard to keep up. I also filter out incomplete works because I learned that lesson a long time ago.
(I don't subscribe to tags, because I like to do things in my own time and also because I don't know if filters work with subscriptions; a list of fic that's tagged Steve/Bucky or Steve/Peggy but is actually about Steve/Tony is not of use to me. I occasionally remember to subscribe to authors so I don't have to always remember to check their works pages to see if they've done something new, but not nearly as often as I should.)
I use my Pinboard network, as well, though my fannish interests barely overlap with many of those folks anymore - e.g., there is a lot of hockey RPF and Teen Wolf fic I have to scroll past because I'm just not interested in 99% of it (well, I am not interested in 100% of hockey RPF, unless it's Henrik Lundqvist/me, which nobody is writing, but I do read the occasional non-Sterek, or Sterek-only-in-the-background TW fic), though I do read the occasional story there - and I've had to acclimate myself to other people's tagging habits (I really shouldn't complain about that because I don't tag by pairing either, though I try to indicate the pairing in the blurb; there are some pairings I can deal with in the background even if I don't care about them, but there are some that are a DNW even in a one-line mention, so I like to know!) and their preferences. There are people whose taste aligns fantastically with mine, and there are people whose recs work for me because I know I won't like 95% of what they do!
I do occasionally check places like fancake, and crack_van was sometimes a source of good stuff, but the problem with liking a less popular pairing in a large fandom is that it either doesn't get included in recs at all, or every story recced is one you've already read.
The one unfortunate aspect of this is that I don't get to read a lot of gen unless it's recced (or it appears on my flist/dash/pinboard network) because that is one tag I just can't force myself to sort through. It's not like in SPN where there was a comm dedicated to it. I mean, I'm sure there probably is an Avengers-gen comm? But I don't join comms (or post fic to them) anymore, because of anxiety reasons.
I've never read only from recs lists, but except in extreme cases (i.e., Max/Alec, Katara/Zuko #it's a sickness), I don't wander into the wilds of FF.net without a rec first. So I guess my reading is confined to the DW/LJ/Tumblr/AO3 spheres of fandom. I do manage to find things to rec most months, though, and people do seem to find my recs useful, so it seems to work out all right for me.
Um, that is probably more than you wanted to know? But the main thing is I guess that it helps to be really focused on one or two pairings that aren't quite as popular? I mean, I did the same thing in HP fandom when it was in its heyday on LJ, but because that was so big, it was easy to tailor everything to my interests, because except for the newsletters and crack_broom, most comms were pairing or character-focused, so it was easy to get a steady diet of Sirius/Remus and James/Lily without having to sort through an overwhelming amount of stuff I wasn't interested in. (And enough of my flist at the time was in HP, so if I wanted the occasional Harry/Draco or Ron/Neville or whatever, I could find it pretty easily.)
Speaking of this meme, I have gotten some fantastic answers from other people! Yesterday,
ignipes made what might be my favorite post of the year: on the subject of Steve and Bucky. YES. THIS. #OTP: NOT WITHOUT YOU. ♥♥♥
Though it has some stiff competition from
cesperanza's response to my request for Josh & Donna in the Santos administration, which was to write me an amazing story: The People's Servants. ♥♥♥
And
kaydeefalls made a lovely post about the awesomeness that is Avatar: The Last Airbender. ♥♥♥
I love this meme so much! *g*
In other news, my yuletide went off to beta last night, and I already have notes on changes to make, though I'm waiting to hear from the second beta before I do anything. But it's still in viable posting shape if, say, the archive opened tomorrow. I mean, it's not as good as it could be, but I wouldn't have to hang my head in shame or anything.
I have one more story I want to write before Christmas (which is in a week. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? WHAT IS TIME?), and also a couple of treats planned (though for the first time, I think maybe the treats I want to write will be even less popular than my original story? Which I have to say, is probably not a big ticket item either.). Writing! HOW DOES IT WORK?
Lastly, book meme:
What I just finished reading
Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code Maker's War 1941-45 by Leo Marks, about the codebreakers in the SOE during WWII. What I said last week ("It's very interesting and Marks is a hilariously deadpan narrator, even though I can't keep all the agents' codenames straight and I don't really understand the actual coding/decoding. I mean, I get the general idea, but beyond that, I kind of just let it wash over me.") stands, and though it does get kind of repetitive, I was invested in Marks' relationship with Yeo-Thomas ("Our Tommy") enough that I had to keep reading to find out if he made it home. Okay, technically, once he got sent to a concentration camp, I stopped reading and wiki'd whether he'd survived, since I knew Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo had not. Spoiler: he did. Where is the movie about THAT guy? He had quite the interesting career. (and I still want a big shiny miniseries about Noor Inayat Khan, too. And one for Nancy Wake.) I also wanted to know what really happened in Holland. I guess there's probably another book somewhere that explains that. I should probably try to find one.
What I'm reading now
The Secrets of Station X: How the Bletchley Park codebreakers helped win the war by Michael Smith, which isn't nearly as charming as Marks' book, but is still interesting.
What I'm reading next
I have the Noor Inayat Khan book and also a Nancy Wake biography, so it could be either of those.
And now my bosses are taking me out for a holiday lunch, so I will sign off.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/624262.html.
people have commented there.