Meta on Reccing

[kiki_eng]

So I feel really strange writing about reccing, but it's something I've been thinking about lately. I've been reading challenge and festival guidelines, which is what's sparking this post.

There's a new comm that I'm actually really excited about and interested to see how it develops and what its community looks like and I have all the excitement about this comm. It looks really, really cool. So, this is a community pimp and then some meta.

fan_flashworks is an all-fandoms multimedia flashworks challenge community. "The goal of this challenge is to produce all kinds of new fanwork, to encourage play, practice and experimentation." The guidelines page is really long and I've only skimmed and read sections of it at this point, but you should check it out because it is awesome. No, seriously. It is.

I really dig the guidelines. This is, in fact, a guidelines rec. They have a mission statement and a really wonderful quote. It helps, a lot, that I really like both of these things; I like what this comm is setting out to be: a place to foster creativity and creators. It is all kinds of friendly to people who are new. The guidelines are well-organised, and as I was skimming over them I was thinking one of the mods totally hung out at kradamadness, didn't they? sprat did and the guidelines are adapted from jerakeen's. It shows. A lot of the things that I really loved about kradamadness and its guidelines are carried over, including the friendliness and emphasis on and encouragement of different types of fanworks.

One of the sections that I have read in full is the guidelines for rec sets and something that threw me was that "you can’t recommend a fanwork if it has already been recommended in that round."* I can see the logic behind that rule and I'm not suggesting that it be changed, but I also think that it's really, really interesting.

[ETA: Update: fan_flashworks has removed this rule from their guidelines because they didn't feel it was in the spirit of their comm. (china_shop replied here in the comments.)]

I think that the rules and guidelines that get drawn up for challenges and communities and bigbangs, etc. are significant. I think that they work to set the tone of the community and that where there are breakdowns of different types of fanworks that those are really interesting. One of the things that I've seen meta about has been the role of artists in bigbangs, that a lot of these fests are very writer-centric in a way that's not friendly to artists.

There are opinions and biases at work when rules and guidelines get drawn up and, where there are breakdowns of different fanworks, I think those rules and guidelines say something about how different varieties of fanworks are perceived.

fan_flashworks' rule* about not re-reccing things in the same round would never have occurred to me. I think it ties in with a specific approach to reccing. I think that there's something in there about recs serving to promote works and I think that that's a rule that ties more into the role of recs as promotion rather than recs as fanworks themselves. ...and this is where I start to feel awkward writing this, because it's personal.

Most of the rec sets that I do consist of three to four works. They take me a while to put together. Some of the rec set of x works = fic of y words equivalencies don't work for me because of that. They're not compatible with the way I rec; it would be significantly easier for me to write a fic than a rec set with those requirements. This is what I mean when I write about the perception of different varieties of fanworks, because rules like that are directed at a specific idea of a rec set, and I think that there are people that those rules work for. I'm just not one of them.

I re-read or re-view (or whatever) a work before I rec it and as I write my rec. Sometimes writing that paragraph is incredibly difficult for me, and so when I read that no re-recs rule I imagine having just finished my rec set, refreshing the comm and finding out that someone else has recced one of the works I picked. My rec set is broken. No, seriously. Sometimes my rec set starts out around a theme and then gets incredibly specific so that finding a work to swap in for one would be- I might cry, okay? I mean, I am making light of the situation here but I can give you examples. *clutches at you*

I did china_shop's Fandom Appreciation Challenge last year. There was a lot of reccing involved. (It was hilarious. For me. Personally.)

• "Rec three vids, icon sets, podfics or other fanworks in your journal." turned into: write about falling into Disney RPF and Selena Gomez/Demi Lovato - link a picspam, a primer, and a manifesto for this pairing, include two fic recs.
  
  
• "On your journal, rec three stories, vids or other fanworks that are more than six months old." turned into: rec three more than six month old Star Trek (single) character-centric fics with a focus on culture and language.
  
  
• "Rec three crossover fics or stories outside your main fandom(s) on your journal." turned into: rec three yuletide fics that are "all about endings, post-story explorations that are firmly grounded in reality, and so all a little bittersweet".

I have a rec set for this coming March that started around a really loose theme, and so I sorted through fic and slowly narrowed done what I was reccing (I re-read things I decide not to rec, too), and as I did that the theme uniting the set got more specific, so there's this really awesome fic which has come out since I started the set that I'm not including in it because it doesn't fit the more specific theme that has sprung up. I'd have to go back to scratch to rec it, and so it's going to be part of a different set. So, because of the way I construct rec sets, swapping a work out of a finished set is really inconvenient for me, and that's true even at the selection stage, never mind the part where the works are in a specific order or the time spent figuring out what to write about a work.

I feel a little ridiculous writing about this, because- look, I started reccing a little over four years ago because I didn't know what bookmarks were, I'm pretty sure. (I don't know how I managed that. It was a dark time. I don't want to talk about it.) At some point I figured out what they were and kept reccing anyway. Reccing is this thing that I do now and part of my fannish identity. It's also not something I've ever really gotten feedback on, I don't think, aside from the occasional "Yay! Recs! That thing that you have recced is so shiny! Thank you!" because, yeah, recs are about that thing that you're reccing being shiny.

Or, actually- let me try to explain this: feedback on recs is not like feedback on fic. (For me - I can't write about anyone else's experience.) I do not tend to get feedback that goes "Ooh. I really think you did a good job of identifying the themes of that fanwork; I really think you conveyed the appeal of that particular fanwork. Your paragraph about it had really good flow, too. Well done." The more specific feedback that I get tends to go "I like the mix of things you've recced" or "That last fic sounds cool; thanks for reccing it." Where I'm headed with this is that I have pretty much been developing as a reccer by myself. I do not think that reccers tend to comment on each others recs in the same way that fic writers do. Of course, I only found out that there is a noticeboard community for recs - recsrainbow - today. What do I know?**

My reccing style has been influenced by the work of other reccers in much the same way that my writing style has been influenced by the work of other writers. I'll read something and go, Hm. That's interesting. There is an element of Oh, hey. I see what you did there and I liked it. I wonder... There are also reccers who do things that are not my thing. For example, my recs don't tend to have that kind of evaluative review element to them that some other reccers' do, with star reviews or balanced critique. It's not how I rec, but it is really interesting to me.

I'm interested in other people's recs, and it is really neat when someone recs the same thing that I've recced, because they rec it differently than I do. Sometimes it's a lot different than mine was, because they're reccing in a different media than I am or have a very different reccing style than I do or related to the work differently than I did. Those variations are really interesting to me. It is perhaps significantly less interesting if you're not a reccer, or me - I wouldn't know.

I think that having multiple recs for the same work is valuable because they work to unite a wider and more varied audience with a work; different things about a work appeal to different people and different things will persuade different people to check out a work. I once scrolled past loads and loads of recs/bookmarks for a particular work on delicious with descriptions consisting of the author summary or the work's tropes or enthusiastic praise before I read something that made me want to read that story. I really liked it, but the things that I liked about that work and appealed to me weren't in the author's summary or those descriptions that I had been skimming over and moving on from. Different descriptions hook different people.

I don't think that a work having been recced before, even recently, means that it shouldn't be recced again. I get, though, that being repeatedly informed how awesome a work is can be really annoying, and I do think that linking to a wider variety of works is a good thing. While I feel the first part mainly as a reader of recs I also feel the second part as a reccer. I do think there's something there in highlighting good works that haven't gotten a lot of attention. Community and art and growth are a big part of how I view fandom and that kind of reccing ties in with that. I think that kind of reccing is worthwhile and should be encouraged.

I think that the no re-recs rule ties in with a view of recs as functional pieces, with recs as a service. That is what recs are about. Recs are functional pieces in a way that the bulk of fanwork isn't and that functionality is really important in recs. If I'm measuring the external success of a rec that I've made I'm focused more on feedback to the work's creator than I am on feedback to me. Reccing's kind of like a match-making service in that way.

I have mixed feelings about the rule because I can see good and bad in it. I worry a little about the emphasis on reccing as a service rather than a fanwork, but it's really tangled because reccing is both of these things. I think that it's maybe more interesting because fan_flashworks is set up to encourage new fan artists and "play, practice and experimentation". I have really mixed feelings about this, because I can't untangle that and I can't suss out the effect that that no re-recs rule will have on reccers or new reccers.

My development as a reccer hasn't been tied in with community and the way that I rec has changed as my view of recs has changed. I feel like it's been a very internal development, which I feel might be the case for the majority of reccers. I don't know. I can only write for myself. I can cite influences and account for changes in my style to some extent. Other reccers' work has played a role. So have challenges and projects that I've done. Doing a week of rec sets for a friend had an impact on my style. So did china_shop's Fandom Appreciation Challenge, where I had twenty-four hours to throw together a rec set and did that three times in four days. When I write that it was hilarious what I mean is that it was a challenge for me, not because reccing in any way falls out of my comfort zone or is unusual for me, but because of how I rec and because I'd never done it with that kind of strict timeline before. It was a good exercise for me, though the challenge wasn't really set up for that purpose and I had not expected to do that much reccing when I started participating. It was voluntary. There was no commitment. There were only ticky boxes. The ticky boxes were compelling.

I think that by the time I'd finished that third rec set I had a kind of look in my eyes, had said something to a friend like, "I'm a reccer. Why did I think it was a good idea to participate in a challenge involving reccing?", had a kind of fear of more recs and a complete determination to finish the challenge. This is why I think it was funny. I did it to myself and I was the only one that had expectations about what my recs should look like.

I'm still developing as a reccer, and a lot of that is an internal thing for me, so it feels really weird to be writing about rules and guidelines that are external, but I think it's something worth writing about, because those guidelines and rules do set the tone of a challenge or fest or community and I think that those challenges and fests and communities can have an impact on artistic development and I think that reccing is important and questions about style and functionality and art are interesting.

*this is also a kradamadness rule
**I have, actually, left specific feedback on recs before. Maybe about three times. I do not feel that this is statistically significant.

Comments

[readbystarlight]

That's actually really interesting Meta. As someone who has always liked the idea of reccing but never felt really comfortable with it, its interesting to hear the process you have and all of the thought and effort put into your recs (I'm still working on commenting on the fic I read).
Though I've enjoyed reccing a few things at fancake which was fun but kinda nerve racking since I was refreshing right before I posted so that I wouldn't overlap with someone else.
I kinda understand where your coming from with the no double reccing,especially when they're trying to foster creativity and community I can see people being more hesitant with their recs if they're afraid of accidentally doing it (I so would be) .
(Also your thing about ticky boxes is so true!)
Really interesting Meta :) (and I have plans to read thingy, life has gotten away from me at the moment I have plans to retake it soon!)

[kiki_eng]

Why don't you feel comfortable with reccing?

Reccing is actually something that's strongly tied in with me getting better at leaving comments because, while I started them as a bookmarking alternative and had a similar relationship to them as I do with social bookmarking now, I eventually made up a rule for myself that if I was reccing something in my journal I had to comment on it (There are weird exceptions to this, including the part where I don't have a deviantart account and so can't comment on that site and if this is how I find out that there is in fact a way to comment as a non-member... good? but at the same time AGH, deviantart! Anyway.) and that kind of having a project relating to commenting has made me better at it, and I do think a lot of commenting is just being in the habit of doing it. I mean, I still have strong lurking tendencies, but I am better at commenting than I was.

Yeah, I do the refresh-right-before-posting thing with fancake and bestthingever, too. It's never happened to me, though, that the thing I was just about to rec was just recced. I really like both of those comms, partially because it's just a really nice break from how I usually do recs; it's really different.

It's interesting to get your take on it. (In The Department of Updates: fan_flashworks' mods have removed that rule from their guidelines because they didn't feel it was in the spirit of their comm.)

Do not worry about the thingy. I mean, I am interested in your reaction to the thingy and have questions, but they can wait: retake life.

(As a complete aside: your capitalisation of "meta" is- the word I'm looking for might be "compelling". It looks very officious.)

[readbystarlight]

I suppose I'm not all that comfortable with it because for the longest time my journal was just to subscribe to comms and no one but a couple friends who weren't that active had it. So it felt weird reccing,who would read it anyway. Now there is you and a couple others (also I wrote fic it was exciting) .
I've tried multipule times to star reccing regularly maybe it's time to make another attempt :) you make good arguments and perhaps it'll prompt me to comment more.
I need to run around more (its a busy week) but the reason it's capitalized (and perhaps spelling and grammar are a bit off) is that I'm on my phone! So sometimes it decides words like Meta need to be capitalized and I don't actually notice :) it's convenient to reply when I get it but not exactly the best medium for writing.

[kiki_eng]

Your early adventures into reccing sound really different from mine in some ways. It's interesting.

Yeah, there are all kinds of different ways to get into reccing and to rec and I am very willing to talk/write about that, apparently, if you want someone to bounce ideas around with or whatever. [Also: art: you could art? :)]

:) I keep forgetting that you are living in the future.

[china_shop]

Oh, this is so interesting -- a great insight into the reccing process (or, well, a reccing process) and a very timely reminder that recs are fanworks in and of themselves.

You're quite right that the "no re-reccing" rule runs counter to respecting recs as fanworks in their own right. *facepalm* Sorry! That was thoughtlessness rather than intent on our part, and I'm going to remove the rule. I know you weren't asking us to; I'm doing so because the rule isn't in the spirit of the comm -- we really do want it to be a place that values all different fanworks. We screwed up here, and I need to put it right, for you and for other reccers.

(As an aside, eeeeeeeee! I'm utterly delighted to see your references to the Fandom Appreciation Challenge and to read about your experiences with it! \o/ \o/ \o/)

In short: Sorry, I'll fix it. And thank you! :-)

[kiki_eng]

:) Yeah, I think there are a lot of different ways to do recs.

I do think that a no re-recs rule is a mixed thing and reccing is complicated. I didn't write this intending for it to be a persuasive piece in that way, but I am really excited and happy about the rule change. readbystarlight made a comment upstream that reminded me how nerve-wracking posting to a comm can be, especially if you're new, and I think having one less thing to worry about in that scenario is a good thing.

Thank you for reading and responding to me so thoughtfully.

[The Fandom Appreciation Challenge is really delightful. (I like it!) It was challenging and a lot of fun for me.]

[sprat]

I'm awake now, and wanted to thank you for making this excellent post and especially the suggestion for changing the rules to allow re-reccing. That's an aspect of reccing neither of us had even considered, so it was great to have your perspective. <3

(Also hey, hey fellow kradamadness-er! Nice to see you in this neck of fandom.)

[kiki_eng]

:) Thanks for reading and responding to it so thoughtfully and swiftly. I edited the post earlier today to note that rule change.

[Hi back! It's exciting to see people outside of it. (I, um, was trying to come up with an appropriate kradamadness-type greeting and came up with: *turns into a soulbonded werefox* I feel that that would be awkward but also amusing.)]

[sprat]

(I, um, was trying to come up with an appropriate kradamadness-type greeting and came up with: *turns into a soulbonded werefox* I feel that that would be awkward but also amusing.)

Ahaha, yes. ♥

/accidentally an essay

[nemonclature]

First off, this is really interesting, thank you for writing, I'd never considered reccing from a meta standpoint before.

I started reccing as a way for me to track fics I'd read and liked, because I have a slightly OCD tendency to DELETE ALL THE BOOKMARKS after a while. This slowly changed until I was reccing almost entirely as a way to share fics with other readers, (which is why I love recs_rainbow as a signal boost, and I wish more reccers were centralised there so it could be an even better resource.)

There's little to no interaction in my recs. I'm very bad at commenting and I rarely get comments back, I think I've had a grand total of two. Despite that, I'm still doing it with other people in mind. When I rec something I'm anticipating someone else coming along and falling in love with whatever it is I fell in love with. So in a way it's actually the most community based aspect of my fannish activities. (Compared with fics and graphics, which tend to be made for me first, and other people second.)

Reccing is a different and almost 'behind the scenes' element of fandom, and that is a shame. I can only speak from my experience, but I almost exclusively read fics found via other people's recs nowadays. I very, very rarely dive into a fandom 'unprotected'. I'd be lost without my reccers. ;)

One of the things I love doing is getting to know the style of a new reccer, finding out what meshes with your interests and what doesn't. I love the feeling of finding a reccer who's mind totally aligns with yours and you know you can hit up pretty much anything they rec and you'll love it.

I have a bunch of people I follow solely for reccing purposes, in fact I'm pretty sure I started following you for just that purpose! (Then I realised all your posts were awesome) But I've never given feedback on a rec. Admittedly I've never expected feedback on mine, but I love that your post is making me think about that. Maybe there's needs to be a fannish space for this 'horizontal' communication -- not writer-reccer, but reccer-reccer.

As for re-reccing, it's a question I struggled with when I started reading other people's reclists. I've never considered my recs to be fanworks in their own right,* but in the end I decided that my recs are signal boosts. Re-reccing is justified because it gets fics to people who might not have seen them otherwise.

-----
*In terms of 'a rec = a fanwork', I'm not disagreeing completely, I do think there's a difference between the kind of recs I make (a couple of sentences) and the kind of recs on for example epic_recs, or thefourthvine, which are multiple paragraphs and a lot more in depth. Also I think something like a themed list of recs is, again, a separate animal, because there's a lot more thought and effort put into creating something like that.

Re: /accidentally an essay

[kiki_eng]

The idea of reccing as a kind of organisational quirk is really interesting to me and- I am going to essay right back at you here. (I am sorry about this.) I have a kind of sketchy theory, as of about midnight last night:

Reccing can be divided into three parts: archiving, communication, and textual response. (The act of reccing something in a recorded medium is archival; it creates an artefact. Recommending something is an act of communication. A rec is a response to a text; it represents a value judgement.) Different recs and different reccers emphasise those three different aspects differently.

recs_rainbow is really interesting to me. The concept hadn't occurred to me, and I was scanning through the first page and went nemo_recs... nemo recs? Really? Yes. I did not know that. I don't know how I missed that, except that I am apparently constantly surprised when I find out that people have separate reccing journals or communities. My recs aren't separate from my other posts and some of the things that I have tagged as recs are not rec sets but more casual posts that happen to have a rec in them, so the recs_rainbow thing is interesting because it does have that separation stressed. It makes sense for the comm.

Despite that, I'm still doing it with other people in mind. When I rec something I'm anticipating someone else coming along and falling in love with whatever it is I fell in love with.
Yeah, this. I'm really aware when I rec that my not getting any response back doesn't mean that people aren't reading it, and the bit where I have a recs tag in my journal and there is a certain amount of search-ability that is useful to people besides myself. Reccing journals and pages were incredibly useful to me when I was first getting into Fandom. I don't use reccing journals and pages as much anymore; they're not a primary tool for finding fanworks for me these days. I tend to use tags a lot, which, where those tags are on social bookmarking sites, I am still using recs, but because of the way that the information is presented to me and the diversity in how people approach those sites it feels a lot less filtered, and- with you talking about getting to know the style of a reccer: that's not something that I do through tags because I'm not picking out reccers as distinct individuals so much when I read them. Those nuances aren't something that I'm going to pick up on unless I specifically seek out their page.

I think that there are a lot of different ways to rec, and I think that I keep writing that, but I think the commonalities are really interesting. There are the reccers where stumbling on their stuff is a lot like accidentally walking into a library and everything is really well-indexed and there's a display about unicorns (or something), and there are reccers that sit down and tell you a story and happily talk about their day and mention that they are making a cup of tea in a sociable way, and others that dissect the work and offer all kinds of commentary and analysis and it is like a really excellent book club or lecture hall or periodical of come kind. There's variation! All kinds of variation! And that's really exciting!

...but, all of them are leaving a record, all of them are doing that publicly and so there's a social aspect to that, and all of them are offering some kind of evaluation of the work.

I've been thinking about how I make rec sets and how that tends to be about connections between works for me, because that is apparently how my brain works, and I am really strongly remembering exercises and evaluations that I did in grade school. I have suspicions about things, and I am also flashing a little to Bloom's Taxonomy and thinking of how this reccing business ties in with English courses and it's interesting. I mean, tagging something as "bdsm" is potentially identifying a theme in a work. Reccing is an evaluation. There is analysis that happens when you write something like "this vid has good flow".

...and then you are communicating that to people, and I am going to leave my terrible thesis alone.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's really interesting to get a different perspective and I'm still processing a lot. Thank you.

[nemonclature]

I totally agree with everything you say about different reccing styles. It's completely awesome and I adore the diversity (and I love the imagery, LOL unicorns).

Searchability and usefulness. Ack. This is the thing I am struggling with now. I've implemented new tags in nemo_recs that are an attempt to reflect what I would like to have when searching for fics. (Because you can't help but give people the kind of stuff you'd like to see recced, which is part of the interesting public//personal balance reccing has going on.) Basically, themed recs are my pet love too, and so I want to be able to find them and provide them. (kink_finders and fancake are a Godsend btw.) But then I'm thinking maybe one big post of lots with recs is bad? Because the tags don't take you directly to the fic, you have to ctrl+F. But then I like big lists of recs, because I tend to tab-open stuff, bookmark about 50 fics, then work through them at my own pace. (Again, reccing style reflecting personal preferences.) So then maybe I should archive at delicious as well? But then my OCD side says if you're going to do that, you have to archive ALL your archives, as in every single rec you've ever made. And then my sensible side says fuck that shit.

And that basically turned into an unloading of my reccing angst, sorry >_<.

[kiki_eng]

*nods* I really like fancake. I feel like I haven't really figured out my relationship with kink_finders yet, though? I like it, I just haven't entirely figured out how I want to interact with it.

Searchability and usefulness is a thing. I need to break down my misc tag into more descriptive categories, not necessarily doing away with it, but pulling out types of works and giving them their own category.

I know that it's possible to do directional shortcuts within journal entries and to have those display while on the entry page. You could make indexes for your posts if you wanted? I've definitely used ctrlF within rec pages before and I've never thought anything of needing to do that.

The reccing angst is interesting. It's neat to read about someone else's decisions and process.

[nemonclature]

I'd be interested to know your thoughts on kink_finders, if you don't mind sharing. For me, I mostly wish I could rec more, but a lot of my kinks tend towards the thematic rather than 'kinky' so I don't always have fics to share.

Directional shortcuts, do you mean links to cut tags?

[kiki_eng]

I'm not sure that I'm really capable of articulating my thoughts about kink_finders and why I'm not sure how I want to interact with it. Probably once I am I will have figured that out.

Yes! I mean links to cut tags.

[nemonclature]

Re: kink finders. Fair enough, If you do manage, I'd be interested to know. Like you said, it's always fun to learn about other people's processes.

And thanks for the cut-tag idea, I shall have to think about how I can use them!

[sophia_sol]

<3 Excuse me while I just sit here and stare at your shiny brain for a while. This is an excellent and fascinating post, especially since I do the reccing thing (and love doing it) but have never actually thought much about it as a fanwork in its own right!

I feel like I have all these thoughts inspired by reading your meta but nothing actually articulateable so I'll leave it here.

[kiki_eng]

I'd be interested to read(/whatever) your thoughts on this.

(Also: Hi! You are in post-move recovery now, I take it?)

[sophia_sol]

Okay, let's see if I can articulate anything then!

I started doing the reccing thing because -- well, frankly, because of thefourthvine, I'm pretty sure. I've been a massive fan of her recs for a long long time. And yet despite that, and despite the fact that her recs are very very clearly a fanwork in their own right, I never quite managed to think of them in that way. But the combination of seeing how awesome thefourthvine's recs were, and knowing that I have a ridiculously in-depth collection of bookmarks, I figured I should make use of my obsessive bookmarking for the Good Of All.

But it's weird, because thefourthvine is definitely the reccer whose work I am most familiar with, but it's a style of reccing I'm not really capable of doing despite how much I admire it and her. So when reccing I always feel hopelessly inadequate in comparison to her. Even though I know other styles are totally a fine and acceptable thing!

I know I've definitely been influenced in the format of my reccing by a number of people -- like, what information is important to include? Wordcount, pairing, fandom, and how to organize it so that it reads easily. When I started reccing I wasn't very good at that, and it took deliberate thought and analysis to figure out how to do it better. Which I guess is about the functionality of recs.

The content, though -- you say you don't like to do the evaluative stuff in your recs, and find it interesting when other people do. I don't do it myself but I kind of want to -- but I don't, because I worry about being unfair to fics that I just don't have as much to say about even if they're really good. IDK, I'm still working out exactly what I want to say in the content of my recs.

I have had a friend comment, though, how much she enjoys my recs and the way I do them, so that makes me very very happy, and is kind of inspiring to keep doing it. But even if I never got any comments I think I'd still keep doing it at least occasionally, because it's FUN. Although I feel weird doing it sometimes because I feel like I can accidentally show off too much of myself in my recs. People talk about fic they write being embarrassingly revelatory of their kinks and things, but I find my recs actually feel more like that than the fics I write. Which is interesting!

Anyways, I think at this point I'm just Saying Stuff about recs and not actually responding directly to your post but WHATEVER.

(I AM FINALLY ALL UNPACKED. FINALLY. *collapses*)

[kiki_eng]

Your bookmarks are awesome. I was looking for a bandom story for some reason and hadn't bookmarked it when I read it, so ended up using your bookmarks to find it. (They are very shiny.)

thefourthvine's, yeah, definitely someone who gets brought up when you start talking about recs or recs as fanworks, because her recs are very obviously fanworks and she does have a very distinct style. I think she and norah were the first reccers that I was really aware of/liked and I definitely picked stuff up from them, though my recs are pretty different from theirs. With thefourthvine's style- like, I do not think of my recs as being terribly interesting, but in terms of how I have been influenced by her style or sitting down and thinking about applying that to my own recs, what happens is that I'll try something a little different or ask myself questions like "how can I rec interestingly?" (and oh, I have ideas.)

Formatting is something that's come really slowly for me, and I've been influenced by other reccers there and also my reading habits. The things that I've looked for or wanted to know going into a story have changed, as has the way I think about reccing and rec.

I feel like I can accidentally show off too much of myself in my recs. People talk about fic they write being embarrassingly revelatory of their kinks and things, but I find my recs actually feel more like that than the fics I write.
:D I think that once you've got a volume of work things start adding up. If you have kink/trope bookmarks the numbers breakdown of those can be telling, or you can pick up themes in someone's work, or even just where the details in a fic are really good. I think that they're kind of differently revealing, and I get what you're saying about recs, because my journal is me- filtered, but it's still me, whereas fic has more things happening at once and there's a separation between the characters and the writer and there are lots of different things for a writer to draw from.

Recs are ridiculously fun sometimes. I have one in my drafts that's listy and capslocky and has curse words in it, and I am having a lot of fun with it, basically. ...but yeah, I rec because I like it. (Reccing is exciting! Thanks for articulating about it!)

Yay for being unpacked! *applauds*

[sophia_sol]

<3 thank you! It always makes me happy when someone tells me they've found my bookmarks useful.

how can I rec interestingly

Ohhh that is a VERY GOOD QUESTION to ask oneself and definitely one I'll need to practice using! Because yes!

If you have kink/trope bookmarks the numbers breakdown of those can be telling

Ahahaha yes very true. It is kind of embarrassing how many fake boyfriend fics I have bookmarked, for instance! And in fact I have one or two tags for things I find too embarrassing that are private tags, and other things that I have just been not tagging for because too embarrassing and I haven't yet gotten around to making private tags for them. Yes. NOT THAT I THINK ABOUT THIS OR ANYTHING.

I think that in general when I write I don't tend to go straight for some of my iddiest things, because I'm kind of embarrassed by it, and ditto when talking about stuff in posts on my journal, but when I'm reading it's not a problem in the same way because I'm not the one saying it. So when I do recs of fic I REALLY LOVE, it's plastering my id all over the place for people to see. Of course, perhaps these get disguised among the really excellent but non-id-hitting fics that I also rec? So it's probably not as embarrassing as I sometimes think. *shrugs*

(aaaand now I want to do a rec set about fake boyfriends.)

[kiki_eng]

And in fact I have one or two tags for things I find too embarrassing that are private tags
Hah, yeah. Sometimes I'll bookmark something and I just... feel very transparent and there are things where there's a private/public divide, and it's interesting.

I think, with the whole feeling of being overly revealing, that a lot of the time what feels revealing to you isn't something that other people are going to pick up on.

(*supports fake relationship rec set*)

[sophia_sol]

D: D: D: I HAVE TOO MANY PRETEND RELATIONSHIPS BOOKMARKED. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO NARROW THEM DOWN? *weeps*

[kiki_eng]

Clearly you will have to read them all again?

[sophia_sol]

There are forty-seven of them! They total up to hundreds of thousands of words! I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS.

Plus I mean if I want to be really thorough I need to go back through my past fandoms from before I bookmarked tropes and reread EVERY SINGLE FIC so I can find all the pretend couples fics, because seriously I cannot do this without at least one SGA fic included aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh

[kiki_eng]

*bites lip* Yeah, I went and checked your bookmarks, and before I did that I was like, fifty, if she has under fifty this is totally standard/doable. (Fandom: it may or may not have done something to me.)

Clearly it will build character.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah the reason I only have 47 is because I only started bookmarking for tropes within the last, like, year or so (there's some that are technically dated to before that, but that's because I reread the fic and updated the tags).

(WHYYYY DID I NOT START TAGGING FOR TROPES MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO. IT IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE.)

Character. yes. That is what it will build. And you are right, fifty is quite doable as these things go! I'm just a distressingly big fan of instant gratification. /o\

[kiki_eng]

Yeah, my bookmarks are disorganised. I just, it's all very well and good to say "tag for tropes", but you have to identify things as tropes first, and there's also, okay, this fic has this thing in it. I'll never want to find it because of that, though, so it doesn't matter *twenty similar bookmarks later* oh, hey, maybe this is a thing I'm interested in. (Some day I may fix this.)

Yes, character. Exactly.

[sophia_sol]

Exactly! I finally figured out (like, YEARS too late) that one thing I want to tag for is, like -- argh, see, the problem is there isn't even a good handy short-form. But like, fics that have to do with WATER or SEALIFE or things like that: Marine biologists! Squid! Going swimming! that kind of thing. There's a surprising amount of it out there once you start noticing it, but it took me way too long to notice! These days I tag it "waterrelatedstuff" but it's not the catchiest of tags.

Or I'll be like, oh, this fic has a person working as ~insert job here~, that's odd, I'm never going to run into that again, and by the third time I've read a fic involving that job I can no longer remember what the first one was anymore to go back and add the tag....

Or I forget that I've used particular tags in the past and come up with NEW tags for exactly the same thing!

Or it's something I've been meaning to tag for for ages, and I finally give up and start tagging for it on one fic that uses that trope, but the next time I run across it I forget that I finally did start tagging, and keep to my habit of thinking vaguely I ought to make a tag for that someday and not tag for it at all.

Or -- yeah.

[kiki_eng]

Yeah, there's stuff that I am still figuring out how to label. It only haunts me a little bit.

I love that there is accountant fic. That pleases me.

In the magical world in which my bookmarks are organised in that kind of ideal way there is a chart and things are mapped out on it and duplicate tags do not get created in that place and things are good. I think that I need to get to a point where I'm actually investing time in gardening my own organisational system, and basically - mine is still broken because of delicious and I need to just sit down and fix it. I can find things, but it is inefficient. *plots*

[sophia_sol]

Accountant fic, yes! DAMNIT that's another thing I really ought to have been tagging for. I've been having idle thoughts that maybe I should just tag for ALLL the jobs that show up in fics, whether or not I think they'll ever show up again, but that's kind of daunting in terms of keeping my bookmarks organized. It would make me want to do an overhaul of my tagging system so that tropes and jobs and other-random-descriptive-things are no longer all filed under the same category of tags. And until Pinboard has better tag-editing capabilities that's not something I can really countenance making myself do....

I wish I lived in that magical world you describe! It sounds lively. I should garden my system a bit more too, but...it is hard work and I am so easily distracted. I mean, I am STILL working on fixing all my author-tags after moving to pinboard ages ago. SOMEDAY SOON I WILL FINISH THAT.

You know, sometimes I look at how obsessive I am about my bookmark organization -- just look at how long a conversation we're having about it! -- and am amazed, because irl I tend to not be the most organized of people. IDEK! This kind of organization is IMPORTANT to me!

[kiki_eng]

Bookmarking is information management, and them being bookmarks of fanworks - it's like regular books, and - I know where all my books are, okay? (I think you mentioned that you were arranging your bookshelves on moving?) I have a vids folder on my computer, too. It's organised. So it's kind of an extension of that for me, even though they need a massive overhaul. (There will be a massive overhaul.)

[sophia_sol]

Ohhh you make a VERY GOOD POINT! ♥ Because YES my books are organized (and it is currently hurting my soul that because of lack of shelfspace I cannot organize them the way I truly want to), and my vids are organized and my documents are organized and my tabs are organized (albeit the tabs in ways that are not useful to anyone but me...), and so forth!

[asimaiyat]

So it's like making a mix tape. That's really neat. :)

[kiki_eng]

:) That's an analogy that really works for me, because the way I approach music has a number of similarities with how I approach fanworks. (I suspect there's a really big range of approaches with both of those things for people.)

That's interesting. Thank you.

here via china_shop

[secretsolitaire]

This is really interesting! I do a lot of reccing myself -- I can't write or draw, so recs are my primary way of contributing to fandom. And yet I hadn't really thought of them as fanworks in and of themselves, even though as you say, they do take ages to write sometimes!

I think that the no re-recs rule ties in with a view of recs as functional pieces, with recs as a service. That is what recs are about. Recs are functional pieces in a way that the bulk of fanwork isn't and that functionality is really important in recs. If I'm measuring the external success of a rec that I've made I'm focused more on feedback to the work's creator than I am on feedback to me. Reccing's kind of like a match-making service in that way.

Yes, this is how I have always looked at recs. I kind of think of myself as a curator that helps people find goodies. I love seeing people comment on stories/art after I rec them. It's always nice when they leave a comment on my recs too to say that they found something new, but you're right, that doesn't always happen. I get fewer comments on rec posts than on just about any other kind of post that I make (real life stuff, stupid polls, etc.). Which is not a huge deal -- I know that some people only comment on the recced work, and there are lurkers who don't comment anywhere who are reading too.

Re: here via china_shop

[kiki_eng]

Yeah, I definitely look at recs as being a way for me to give back to the community.

It's really neat to hear from another reccer. The curator analogy is interesting (I don't think I'm a curator; I'm not sure what my reccing style would make me.) as is reading about your experience with comments on different types of journal posts.

[mergatrude]

Oh, I really enjoyed this post (linked by china_shop), as I have in the past attempted to Be A Reccer. I like how you describe your process and how you value reccing as a fanwork. Thank you!

[kiki_eng]

:) Thanks for letting me know.

I have in the past attempted to Be A Reccer
If you don't mind me asking, do you know why it didn't take, or? (I am also very curious about your punctuational choices, because "Be A Reccer" sounds a lot like times in the past where I have been told to be a tree or feel the love, and, maybe a little oddly, I have a clearer idea of what those two things mean. So, I'm curious what you mean by that.)

[mergatrude]

I think it's mostly self-consciousness: attempting to find more to say that doesn't sound either ridiculous or laying it on too thick, or how to say what I had problems with in a story without it sounding like concrit or dissing (because everyone brings their own baggage along).

I love good recs and people who take the time and effort to say why they think others might like a story or vid are such an important part of fandom. But I'm also hypersensitive to the looming threat of wank.

This is also my difficulty with leaving decent feedback, or indeed commenting on people's posts. One day I may grow up a little, or else learn not worry excessively that people will misinterpret what I'm saying.

[kiki_eng]

Yeah, I think figuring out how to say things is a big part of why recs sometimes take me a long time to write and why they can be challenging, and I think sometimes my recs fall short of what I want them to be? ...and in that way it is like writing fic or arting.

I have a really distinct memory of the feeling I had when I posted a rec that definitely had ridiculous potential. It was something like, Okay, so I'm wearing green face paint. I'm going to go talk to that person. I will act casual and everything will be okay, and if it isn't, then, well. I will deal with that, somehow.

I don't remember any of the specifics of that rec, so things went okay. (I'm kind of pro-ridiculousness and stylistic experimentation.) I think there is a thing with starting out and just having to power through that.

I tend to think of recs as being pretty low-risk on the wank front, but I also don't do star ranking and that kind of reviewing.

I think that communication is part of a rec, and I think that's another learned thing, and I am still learning.

[schneefink]

This is fascinating! I did some reccing for last month's SGA Fandom Appreciation Challenge and it was very interesting. One of the reasons why it's hard for me to rec is because I want to do rec sets, but they're not easy for me to do, so I was happy to see you talk about that. Another reason is that it's sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what I love about a story and how to convey it to people who might be interested. (A third reason is that I get discouraged when nobody comments on the fanworks I've recced.)
And about re-reccing, I love reading very different recs for the same fanwork, for example on fanlore: it's almost always about different aspects and make me pay attention to different things :)

[kiki_eng]

Oh, neat! I didn't know there was an SGA version.

:) I really like the way fanlore does that. I like the way that that links up fannish activities and the broader sense of fandom you can get with that, too.

[wenchpixie]

Via Snowflake :)


As someone who is almost 100% a consumer of reccs (I have, occasionally, recc'd something, but it's either a flaily mess of nonsense immediately after consuming the fanwork myself or a hard, hard response to a challenge) this is SUCH an interesting meta to me - I SO appreciate reccs, they're primarily how I get into a fandom and how I cope with being in a fandom at all when life gets stressful.

So: thank you for taking the time to think about and make reccs, even if you're not doing it in a fandom I'm reading right now, I still appreciate it so much, and thank you for linking this post, it's given me a lot to think on :)

[kiki_eng]

Hello, again. :)

Flaily recs can be incredibly awesome, I have to say; enthusiasm's fantastic. I really love that there's this whole spectrum of different ways people rec and such a a variety of things that people are appreciative of. (♥ diversity)

Thank you for commenting! :)

[china_shop]

*waves* I was rummaging through some old links and found this again, and it was just as thoughtful and interesting this time around. It makes me want to practise reccing, hmm... :-)

[kiki_eng]

*waves back* Thanks!

I recommend practising reccing. It is a fun activity. :)