Recs organization

[doranwen]

I realized I had a question about how to organize recs and thought "where can I ask it?" Of course, the answer was "at fictional_fans". :)

If you're looking through a recs list for a fandom, one which is more than just a tiny handful of fics, how do you want to see the fics ordered? By the main ship(s)? By where it occurs in canon? Does it depend on what the canon is? (For instance, I could imagine fic recs for a TV show might be more useful organized by where each appears in the show, compared to those for a film.) Do you like to see both ways, depending on what you're looking for? (e.g. anything that features your favorite ship vs. fics set within the first season only because you've not seen the rest yet) (I presumed that within those two categorization methods, one would organize the fics by author and then title.)

See, I'd set up my master recs post by fandom, and the posts for each fandom large enough to get its own post (or more than one), I organized by ship. The biggest one (which required four separate posts to get them all in) being a series of movies where at least half the fics are shippy for a single pairing, I figured that made the most sense. But my fic database *does* let me tag fics for their position in canon (and I do that for each fic), so it's quite possible for me to set up posts organized by "times" such as "pre-film 1", "post-film 1", "during film 2", "AU", "distant past", "future", "multi", "indeterminate", etc. Whether I *should* do so or not was the question I could not answer, because I don't know whether people would want to browse fics that way.

Note that for a post organized by time in canon, all fics would also be marked with which major ships were present, they just wouldn't be *grouped* together by ship. The reverse would not be true, however - at least, I haven't marked times for individual fics in any post yet. I *could*, though. (Possibly relevant - of the other four fandoms which got their own posts, two are TV shows, one's a film, and one's a film and book combo where the two mediums were similar enough that I combined them into one post.)

So I welcome your input. (If you never read recs posts at all, I'd also be curious to know why.)

Comments

[china_shop]

At various times I've wanted a catalogue of fanworks organised by their place in canon for my fandoms, but that's more a comprehensive "what works exist for this episode?" rather than a recs list. For recs, I'm more interested in pairing, length and what you liked about it. /my 2 cents

Yay recs! :-)

[doranwen]

Hmm, I guess you'd call mine sort of halfway between a catalog of fanworks and a recs list. I mark the fics I liked re-reading ("favorites") and the ones I thought were exceptionally well-written (which isn't the same thing as favorites!), so that makes it sort of a recs list, but the lists are a catalog of everything I have in my db for the fandom(s) in question.

I get overwhelmed when people want a lot of specifics on why I like this or that - because I like So Many! How does one do that for several *hundred* fics? (I've got 265 fics marked favorites in my database right now - and there's only 1700-ish fics in there. Sooooo many more fandoms to get to, and so many other projects I need to work on, alas.) I could do a post of only favorites *and* exceptionally well-written, but I do mean that "exceptionally" - many that don't have it are quite well-written, they just don't have that extra "wow" factor to me. I wouldn't want to try to fine-tune the quality rating beyond that, as that can be a YMMV thing so much. So that's why I just use an icon to mark the favorites and exceptionally well-written fics (and WIPs, while I'm at it, so people can avoid if they don't want to read unfinished stuff), and otherwise it's just a catalog/semi-comprehensive list. (I wouldn't say it's completely comprehensive, because my fanfic db is limited to the stuff I wanted to save. There are ships and themes I won't touch and those don't get saved or recorded anywhere - it *is* MY database, after all, lol. But I figure a lot of what I liked others might like too, hence making these posts.)

I do like recs requests (because then I can tailor to exactly what the person might like to read), but I haven't really gotten any (unless you count a friend of mine who likes to know whenever I've got new emotional h/c fics added, and I just give those to her on Discord) - and I suspect that's because I'm not into a lot of the popular fandoms, and no one knows about my DW. *shrug* I do have at least one or two people I know of who've found my Matrix lists useful, so I figure that's good.

I probably ought to make some posts of "my favorite emotional h/c fics" or "my favorite canon divergence fics", etc. That way there is a "here's part of why I like this fic" and limiting to favorites only makes it more of a recs list.

Several people here have commented that they do like fics organized by "what works exist for this installment/episode" so I will make some posts for that as well. I reorganized my master recs post to allow for multiple posts of the same fics for a canon. Then people can choose to visit whichever post they wish, by how they're organized.

Thanks for your feedback! :D