![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptChallenge #8 asks us to recommend the fanworks of others.
The art of recommendation is one that I am intimately familiar with, as any collection that grows beyond the size of a person's ability to consume all of it will need ways for a seeker to find what they want most, or what will be most informative. The Archive of Our Own accomplishes the feat of breaking the collection up into manageable chunks through an extensive tagging and search capability, such that as a person discovers what tags they enjoy (and equally, if not more, importantly, what tags they detest) they can refine the collection down to a more manageable size. This, to some degree, relies on shared definitions and understandings about what's being presented, so there will always be error bars around what a particular tag means, but as someone gains experience and understanding, they can filter more effectively until they have a small enough subset of the available works that they can reasonably be assured they will enjoy whatever appears there. (Librarians do this all the time! The longer you stay with a particular librarian or library worker for your recommendations, the better they get at getting it right, to the point where they can theoretically start anticipating which things you'll want. And in a far less creepy manner than the algorithms that do the same thing to serve you ads.)
People also compile lists of recommendations based around themes, authors, tropes, length of work, and many other criteria, which they present either to friends or to the public to select from. I note with interest that the "promote yourself and sing your praises" challenge usually resulted in "here are fanworks I have created that you / I enjoy." I realize that the point is to be more fannishly active, but it was a remarkably high percentage of people whose posts were self-recs as the way of doing it. There are probably some fascinating questions to tease out about works as units of participation, and what about transformative works fandom specifically that has created works as the default unit of participation, even though transformative works fandom also appreciates readers of works, kudos, comments, beta-reading, people who construct recommendation lists, and other fan labor as well. Someone with a better social sciences background than I have can have at it / has already had at it.
Rec lists are as idiosyncratic as the person making the recommendation, and can tell you a lot about what that person enjoys and whether their tastes are compatible with yours. While the fragmentation of the space that LiveJournal occupied has people scrambling some to try and find unified singular places to get good recommendations from, there's still plenty of reccing going on, especially for Yuletide, the annual small-number-of-works festival that produces very fine work in very tiny fandoms year in and year out.
So, here are the recommendations that I have for you.
The art of recommendation is one that I am intimately familiar with, as any collection that grows beyond the size of a person's ability to consume all of it will need ways for a seeker to find what they want most, or what will be most informative. The Archive of Our Own accomplishes the feat of breaking the collection up into manageable chunks through an extensive tagging and search capability, such that as a person discovers what tags they enjoy (and equally, if not more, importantly, what tags they detest) they can refine the collection down to a more manageable size. This, to some degree, relies on shared definitions and understandings about what's being presented, so there will always be error bars around what a particular tag means, but as someone gains experience and understanding, they can filter more effectively until they have a small enough subset of the available works that they can reasonably be assured they will enjoy whatever appears there. (Librarians do this all the time! The longer you stay with a particular librarian or library worker for your recommendations, the better they get at getting it right, to the point where they can theoretically start anticipating which things you'll want. And in a far less creepy manner than the algorithms that do the same thing to serve you ads.)
People also compile lists of recommendations based around themes, authors, tropes, length of work, and many other criteria, which they present either to friends or to the public to select from. I note with interest that the "promote yourself and sing your praises" challenge usually resulted in "here are fanworks I have created that you / I enjoy." I realize that the point is to be more fannishly active, but it was a remarkably high percentage of people whose posts were self-recs as the way of doing it. There are probably some fascinating questions to tease out about works as units of participation, and what about transformative works fandom specifically that has created works as the default unit of participation, even though transformative works fandom also appreciates readers of works, kudos, comments, beta-reading, people who construct recommendation lists, and other fan labor as well. Someone with a better social sciences background than I have can have at it / has already had at it.
Rec lists are as idiosyncratic as the person making the recommendation, and can tell you a lot about what that person enjoys and whether their tastes are compatible with yours. While the fragmentation of the space that LiveJournal occupied has people scrambling some to try and find unified singular places to get good recommendations from, there's still plenty of reccing going on, especially for Yuletide, the annual small-number-of-works festival that produces very fine work in very tiny fandoms year in and year out.
So, here are the recommendations that I have for you.
- I use my AO3 bookmarks specifically for recommendations, so there are two dozen possibilities there that you might enjoy across a large swath of possible fandoms.
- I have always enjoyed it when receiving art gifts for exchanges from laughingpineapple, and they also do words works, but of the art gifts I have received for exchanges, they have detailed work and they are worthy of being wallpapers of their own right. As the Wood Is Still, But It Is Certain I Am Loved Of All Ladies, Only You Excepted, and Hold Off The Dreams have been lovely.
- I was recently reminded that a work that takes advantage of metatextual elements is often rather fun to read. Bright Darkness by
used_songs joins the cast of Torchwood and some pilgrims on the way to a religious shrine, for example. One of the ones I really enjoyed seeing the metatext work on was Guard Your Eggshell Heart, by
