One disadvantage of that method is that the stories it gives you will mostly stay local to one fandom, unless you’re lucky enough to spot a talented multifandom author, and those are pretty rare. (Eliezer is one, though, which helps.) Good if you’re only looking for Harry Potter fic, bad if you’re looking for good writing and aren’t too concerned about milieu.
Another possible disadvantage is that you might end up with a reading list full of remarkably weird kinks: favorites lists tend to be weighted towards unique tastes. This is probably less of an issue on ff.net with its content policies, but something to keep in mind if you spend a lot of time sifting through (e.g.) AO3 or LJ.
Good points. Out of familiarity, I tend to stick to Harry Potter fanfic, so I don’t find that so problematic. (Although all in all, it could be a problem, case in point, note that Luminosity (A rationalist Twilight fanfic by Alicorn, which by the way is an amazing story, even if (like me) you have not read the Twilight books and have no intention of doing so) is an example of a very good non-Harry Potter fanfic that I read that I did not get to by this method. (I got to it from talk here on Less Wrong.) )(Although, that said, I could have gotten to it this way, as EY did add it to his favorite stories list.)
I stick to fanfiction.net for the most part, so as you said, the weird kinks thing doesn’t really affect me. (And I doubt I would want to read much of the weird kinks stuff in the first place.) But you do make a good point in saying that this strategy works only within a certain context, and yes, you should be aware of its limitations. (As you pointed out.)
Frankly, I read Luminosity because of how much everyone raves about it here, and it didn’t appeal to me at all. Put it down after a dozen or so chapters.
I think my biggest problem is that I’m not a fan of stories as pure vehicles for teaching. Teaching on the side is fine, but trying to embed large amounts of rationalist pedagogy in the middle of a story, to the point where it takes over, is frankly a good way to ruin a story. HPMOR manages to be good despite it, as far as I’m concerned, not because of it. But all Luminosity had was rationalist classroom teaching and Twilight—there’s better venues for both(Sequences and landfills, respectively), and it has none of the insane humour or early plot that brought me into HPMOR.
The plot gets thicker further in. It does take a while to ramp up; if I didn’t hate editing things I’d go compress the first half of Luminosity considerably to get it off the ground sooner. The didacticism falls away almost completely later on, which was mostly accidental on my part but you might find more pleasant.
Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. I often find that I seem to use parentheses far to much, and in this post it just went to an extreme, to the point were I lost track of what level of parentheses I was in.
Looking for fics with a theme you like (such as whodunnits or backstory vignettes or hurt/comfort or wingfic where the characters are American high schoolers) can locate good authors in any fandom, which you can then use as sources for search inside the fandom.
You can also pick original works you like in the first place and see what the most popular fics thereof are like.
One disadvantage of that method is that the stories it gives you will mostly stay local to one fandom, unless you’re lucky enough to spot a talented multifandom author, and those are pretty rare. (Eliezer is one, though, which helps.) Good if you’re only looking for Harry Potter fic, bad if you’re looking for good writing and aren’t too concerned about milieu.
Another possible disadvantage is that you might end up with a reading list full of remarkably weird kinks: favorites lists tend to be weighted towards unique tastes. This is probably less of an issue on ff.net with its content policies, but something to keep in mind if you spend a lot of time sifting through (e.g.) AO3 or LJ.
Good points. Out of familiarity, I tend to stick to Harry Potter fanfic, so I don’t find that so problematic. (Although all in all, it could be a problem, case in point, note that Luminosity (A rationalist Twilight fanfic by Alicorn, which by the way is an amazing story, even if (like me) you have not read the Twilight books and have no intention of doing so) is an example of a very good non-Harry Potter fanfic that I read that I did not get to by this method. (I got to it from talk here on Less Wrong.) )(Although, that said, I could have gotten to it this way, as EY did add it to his favorite stories list.)
I stick to fanfiction.net for the most part, so as you said, the weird kinks thing doesn’t really affect me. (And I doubt I would want to read much of the weird kinks stuff in the first place.) But you do make a good point in saying that this strategy works only within a certain context, and yes, you should be aware of its limitations. (As you pointed out.)
Frankly, I read Luminosity because of how much everyone raves about it here, and it didn’t appeal to me at all. Put it down after a dozen or so chapters.
I think my biggest problem is that I’m not a fan of stories as pure vehicles for teaching. Teaching on the side is fine, but trying to embed large amounts of rationalist pedagogy in the middle of a story, to the point where it takes over, is frankly a good way to ruin a story. HPMOR manages to be good despite it, as far as I’m concerned, not because of it. But all Luminosity had was rationalist classroom teaching and Twilight—there’s better venues for both(Sequences and landfills, respectively), and it has none of the insane humour or early plot that brought me into HPMOR.
The plot gets thicker further in. It does take a while to ramp up; if I didn’t hate editing things I’d go compress the first half of Luminosity considerably to get it off the ground sooner. The didacticism falls away almost completely later on, which was mostly accidental on my part but you might find more pleasant.
Noted. No promise I ever get back to it, though.
You’re missing a close-parenthesis.
Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. I often find that I seem to use parentheses far to much, and in this post it just went to an extreme, to the point were I lost track of what level of parentheses I was in.
You should use an editor with brace-matching.
Looking for fics with a theme you like (such as whodunnits or backstory vignettes or hurt/comfort or wingfic where the characters are American high schoolers) can locate good authors in any fandom, which you can then use as sources for search inside the fandom.
You can also pick original works you like in the first place and see what the most popular fics thereof are like.