Survey: how do you find older stories? · 1:44pm Apr 16th, 2018
There are times when I have very little idea where new Favorites are coming from.
Put bluntly: there are thousands of stories on this site, and I'm only saying 'thousands' because 'hundreds of thousands' felt like something which needed a slow approach. And every reader has their own tastes, which may change from day to day. Sometimes you're in the mood for a light comedy. A tragic romance. A tale with Rarity in it, or one without. People casually stroll into chat and openly request recommendations for a little pony x pony, preferably with clop.
There's all sorts of ways to use the site's search function: by genre, by characters, by most-viewed or best ratios. You can even combine a few factors to really help you narrow in. So if you truly feel like, say, a story with Scootaloo and Big Mac, set as a drama, which has less than three hundred views because Scootaloo and Big Mac may not be one of those natural character odd couples, you can probably do it.
And still... there are times when my Notifications bell goes red, and I just stare at it for a while. Wondering what happened.
When it comes to bringing in fresh readers, I have one minor advantage: the 'verse's TVTropes pages. There's probably been a few people who got here through a weird spin of the Random Media wheel. At least one, right? But not every story I've written has a tropes page. I'll spot someone whose very first exposure to my work is Dragon-Dog Day Afternoon and genuinely have no immediate concept for how they got there. And I'm sure the other writers in the group have been through the same thing, where one of their oldest pieces suddenly picks up a fresh like or comment -- nine months after the last one. Weird feeling, isn't it?
(By the way: never be reluctant to leave a fresh comment, regardless of the story's age. There's always something new to say, or a person who just found a puzzle piece which everyone else overlooked. It took actual years for a Triptych reader to openly realize Pinkie's father had made Rarity's jewel monolith.)
Maybe it was a referral from the Also Liked column from another story, or something from the Similar file. It's possible that something was (somehow) being discussed off-site and that reader followed a new link. There's pretty much no way to locate a Groups topic, much less someone just casually mentioning things to check out during flesh & blood meetings.
On a site where some people claim anything over seven months old (seven weeks, seven days, seven minutes...) is ancient, how do new readers somehow wind up at the older works, especially for those fresh on the site? Exactly what happens to have their views land there?
So I'm asking people to talk about how they personally locate older stories, all the myriad ways and means: searches, direct chats, random draw. Are there times when you're just in the mood for a given type of tale and look accordingly? Have you followed endless trails through the Also Liked section? Do you even notice a story's publication date?
When you dig into the site's archives... what kind of tools do you use?
Discuss. Or not.
Other reader's favourites libraries.
I like the idea of people passively recommending stories to me with absolutely zero pressure.
I look at my oh my freaking gods how long is it now to-read lists and pick something at random.
I started with the overall story rankings, more or less just looking at the most highly rated ones and working my way down, then looking at other stores by the same author, then that author's public libraries, so on and so forth. I also tend to keep an eye on the featured list, to similarly find authors new to me and do the same.
I don't pay much attention to publication dates beyond checking the most recent update if it's incomplete, as I don't usually read orphaned stories.
I only rarely actually browse the site anymore; I only read recommendations from TV Tropes and from authors I already know are good. When I feel like taking a chance, I dip into the recommended stories list on the front page.
I have a good three categories for story finding:
Most of the above and then some. The Similar and Also Liked columns can lead in interesting directions, especially when I'm already looking at older stories. Digging through my Read Later shelf can yield some fascinating archeological discoveries. Group addition notifications can be as much discovering lost treasures as adding new data to the file. If I enjoyed a more recent work from someone, I'm sure to see what else they've done to see if the trend holds out. I actually did a pair of author binges last week by following up on long-overdue Read Later entries.
And, of course, there's taking a look at what new followers and commenters have written. (That can be especially interesting. "Aw, someone liked my silly story about Celestia spending Hearth's Warming with a young Twilight and her family. Let's see what they've... Wow, that's a lot of porn.
")
I bookmark everything and sometimes sort by date approved. :B
Ok, so I started with search function before I even got an account, usually searching specific characters and most commonly comedy tag. Then I started noticing that some stories have big amount of likes so they were the obvious first choice to check out and from there went the "Also liked" and "Similar" sections. Mind you that doesn't mean I'll ignore story with few likes, always great to stumble on a hidden gem. If I would find an author that I really liked then I would go to the profile and read all or almost all stories I find there (today I am a bit lazy). In a way searching and reading stories was like surfing randomly through internet. I'd start from one story and then end up in some random direction.
As for the age of story I think I am only reluctant when it comes to 2012-13 since those stories usually come from time when most authors were still learning. Though it can be fun to see early works of some author and compare to more modern works. Also another fun thing about old stories are the outdated fanons so there is also an archaeological feeling where you uncover the past era of fandom.
Just mentioning this here because it has no other place:
Two or three times a year, one of my local dollar stories will have a movie blowout. This will consist of both new DVDs and Blu-Rays, gathered from sources which are desperate to get rid of stock at something far below closeout prices. Oddly, the quality level for such sale titles don't average out to RUN AWAY!: there can be horrors on those shelves and the majority of offerings tend to be direct-to-disc releases -- but if you get there early enough, it's possible to pick a few nuggets out of the dross. Earlier blowouts had me locate the anime version of Metropolis and a copy of Matchstick Men.
But no car at the moment, which means I don't get in there as often as I normally would. So I missed the most recent sale.
If only everyone else had.
Because last night, I was the arguable victim of a dump-and-run. Someone knocked on my door, then fled. And when I opened that door, I found something far worse than a flaming bag of dog feces. I found a dollar store bag and a note. The note suggested that it was far past time for me to add the contents to my shelves, and may have implied that I should watch it right away. The lack of human presence suggested familiarity with the penalty for that suggestion.
You're probably wondering what was in the bag.
gstatic.com/tv/thumb/dvdboxart/14047/p14047_d_v8_aa.jpg
In all its glory.
So someone's gonna die...
Occasional I find them in the recommendations tab on some stories. If it somehow related to a story I am reading. Other times I am checking out the public favorites tab of an author I like to see what they have enjoyed.
I typically search by Slice of Life, then sometimes click on a page number well into the past.
But over the years I have occasionally forgotten to click all those little buttons...
So I have been going through my Favourites list and following authors.
Because if a story is good enough to be fav'd, then the author is good enough to follow.
TvTropes at first, and then my read later and if l like anything else from that author l'll usually fave another one of their stories
The first story of yours that I found was "Six Ponies and One Corpse", of all things. I stumbled upon the rest of your stuff separately, but I remember finding that one in a suggestion box at the end of another story.
When looking for something new to read I go by word count. The bigger the better 100k words or more. Not to say small stories are bad, but big stories require a lot of time and effort to write (normaly). This effort usually pays out in dividends in a overall good read. If I enjoy the story I then I read the other stuff the author wrote. I believe the first story I read of yours was mark of appeal ( it was not finished at the time), I liked it, so I read the rest of your works.
I also click on the "suggest for you" stuff at the bottom of the page, but word count is my go to method.
4841465 Don't do it.
I started with Slice of Life, guardsponies, Big Mac, and Princess Luna back in the day, usually sorted by length and limited to completed stories. Coming into FimFiction from Fallout: Equestria, I looked for longer works and then hopped around with authors' back catalogs as easy filler. For the longest time, I avoided in progress stories (including yours) but eventually ran out of things I wanted to read (my Read Later list is really more of a "seems like it might be interesting, but I can't be bothered" list). I ended that period of my fanfiction life when I switched to reading incomplete works by favorite authors on the assumption they'd be finished in short order. In your case, I read A Mark of Appeal (thinking it'd be finished in another chapter or two) before I even started Tryptch.
These days, I peruse the Featured area to see if anything catches my eye, rely on reviews like SA, or hope that the authors I follow have posted something new.
Edit: Oh, completely forgot to mention. "It took actual years for a Triptych reader to openly realize Pinkie's father had made Rarity's jewel monolith."
Wait, what now? (I never picked up on that and haven't a clue where that tidbit was implied/stated.
4841508
I just got it from that as well; I assume there's a bit of ranting about a cache going missing. Given the setup, though, I wouldn't be surprised if that's show workable.
I generally prowl the new box, but I also tend to delve back into the author's archives if I enjoyed something, and futz about with the similar bits.
Authors enjoyed favores, browsing by a narrow select genre, or trying to link to a favorite story for a discord friend, and having to search for it (and finding something new.)
Then its to check the complete/update frequency/author viewers (leery at certain number values above x) and if time permitting, try and read such.
Honestly don't really go looking for much fic besides the usual suspects these days since I've become so lazy. Back in the day I would just read whatever, and most of the time I never checked the post date unless it was a topic like immortal Twilight that was significantly altered by canon events post-publication or timely in some other way. Those could still be interesting thought exercises, though, seeing what people thought of before canon came in and closed other doors.
Kinda melancholy now to think of how exciting it was back in the day to refresh the front page and see all these stories that could be cool to read. Nowadays not much on the front page or feature box is all that interesting to me. That's my own fault though. Just can't work up the drive to really watch the latest two seasons.
For me, unless it's a particular author I'm specifically looking for more work of, generally either just stumbling across the story one way or another or finding it in someone's library when I'm looking for things they like (based on the idea that if I like something about them or their work, I may also like things about the works they like), I think.
When I first started reading and had no points of reference, I just sorted by top rating and picked and chose from there, and also read recommendations from a friend. From there, I started finding stuff through TVTropes, and from there the endless trail of Also Liked. That last one was my major go-to for quite a while, before I got to the point where most of the stories in a given story's recommendations would either be ones I had read or passed on. After that, most of my reading came from digging around in groups and character tags, and occasionally browsing an entire author's collection for something interesting (I mostly do this for authors with really unique or interesting styles). I haven't read as many oneshots since fimfiction 4.0 came out, though. The removal of the ability to see the history of how many stories you read every day kind of killed the fun of bingereading for me. Nowadays, I mostly just read megalongfics based on recommendations from my friends, though I do check any Favorites shelves my stories get added to and sometimes read things from there.
My first stop is and has always been the front page because when I didn't have an account it was the easiest way for me to keep track of things. I also have this thing where when I find a new author I binge all of their stories, starting from the oldest. After that comes the slow trawl through my Read It Later shelf looking for old stuff that's not still marked 'incomplete'.
Other than that occasionally an old 'fic will be added to one of the groups I'm following and I'll find it that way, most common one to find is a longfic that's just finished/made the requirement for the longfics group.
Then there's the stories that I read before I got an account that I couldn't find immediately and forgot about which suddenly spring to mind when I'm reading some other 'fic, leading to me scrambling to find then reread them.
As for the stories themselves I generally look for the oldest and longest stories I can find, doesn't matter if the first chapter or even the first ten chapters read like they were written by an ape with a paintbrush as long as the story remains engaging.
TvTropes has a huge list of recommendations. That's where I started when I made my account.
Thse days, usually by nothing more than "author has written good story, see what else they have written" and sometimes find the odd story from someone who I read very regularly that I just missed the first time.
I've found a lot of your older stories through TVTropes, which does help a lot in finding other decent fanfics. Sometimes I sort by wordcount, and that brings me to older stories. Or I do look through author pages.
4841497
It's too late; his fate has been sealed.
Way back in 2011 I had a script that scraped story posts from ED and built a database that I used to keep track of things I'd read and new updates and the like. Effectively it did what this site does, but then the site was built and was way more convenient than doing it myself, so I signed up pretty quickly.
Here, I browsed by top rating with whatever character/genre tags seemed interesting and would just add pretty much everything that had a remotely interesting description to the read later list, then picked something from that which fit whatever my mood was when I wanted to read. I read a *lot* of the content on this site at that point and I still really miss the ability to filter already read stories from searches that got removed in, what, 2013 or so? To the point that I wrote a userscript that hid read stories and filtered out tags I wasn't interested in from the search list. It wasn't a perfect replacement, but it got the job done. As an aside, someone else (probably the only other person) who used that script actually recently asked me to update it since it'd been broken since the last site update. There's a link in my one and only blog post if anyone else wants it.
Anyway, I think it's actually been a few years since I used the browse function. A quick glance suggests that top stories I haven't read start around mid-2014. I mostly find new stuff from authors I follow posting blogs recommending other authors.
As for Estee in particular, amusingly enough I think I found Triptych through a negative comment complaining about CDA. The comment was upset enough that obviously I instantly went and read the first CDA post. I don't really like the Human tag, so while I didn't have any particular problem with the story, I think that's still the only CDA story I've read. But, I seem to recall finding the writing compelling enough that I still wanted to check out the rest of the catalogue, and so here we are.
Mostly I started with TV Tropes recs, then other stories by whichever of those authors were good, with occasional jumps to new authors based on recommendations from blog posts of the authors I'm already following or "this story was inspired by this other guy's story".
Yes, you really do have that power. Use it wisely.
You name it, I probably do it, but the most likely sources are my RiL list, PresentPerfect's reviews, Singularity Dream's Big Ultra Master Review List -- one of the fandom's great unsung achievements, curiosity about what a commenter on my own story/blog has written... or me being silly. For example, I once wrote a review compilation in which all the fics featured spoons -- not including Ms Silver. It was good fun, and the varying age of the stories added an extra dimension.
The most likely archives for me to trawl back through are the RCL, Chris's blog and EqD, in that order. There's also the most powerful one of all: "I liked this author before". After all, anyone joining up here now (and it still happens, if not to the degree it did five years ago) and only reading new fics would never see The Descendant's work, which would be a terrible thing indeed. Unlike many, I don't really use TV Tropes for ponyfic-finding purposes. This is largely because when I do, I don't have the self-control to avoid all the spoilers.
For older completed stories, yeah, the good ol' Also Liked column generally does it for me. On special occasions, I go to the author's page and hit up the Stories section. (Full disclosure: So far, you're the only one I've done that for, and the special occasion was that fanart idea post. So you got something out of it, if not actual fanart.)
For stories in general, I look over every column on the front page.
I have three main sources for new stories these days:
1) Story was recommended by EQD, Seattle's Angels, One Man's Pony Ramblings, etc. This one is by far the most common way I find new stories these days.
2) Story was added to a group I watch.
3) Browsing older works by someone who wrote story I liked.
Note that for the first two categories, older stories may well show up there long after they were written. Most reviewers have really long to-be-read lists (don't we all). And as for groups, well, I know I personally have been browsing through my favorites, spotted an old story, and thought "hey, this really should be in group X". I'm sure others have done that as well.
I don't really use the search tools to hunt for new things to read because, as I hinted above, my to-be-read list is already more than large enough.
get an author recommendation, depending on style, I got through them one by one starting from oldest.
4841447
Mine is at...
...1800. Spread across 3 or 4 different shelves.
If an author has a story hit the feature box that I really like I'll look at what else they've written
The similar stories box and word of mouth.
I can't stand to browse the site anymore because, out of sheer stubbornness, I refuse to turn mature off and thus get bombarded with stuff that hits the squick threshold.
4841967
Only 1583 at present, at least on the main list(s). I have other lists like "audios to listen to", that have some overlap.
4841452
These are mine as well. Although sometimes I'll do something like a search for "Dresden".
The dreaded 'Read It Later' list. I really do try to catch up with them all, but with new stories that I keep wanting to read, it's an uphill battle. I still have 'On a Cross and Arrow' on my list from 2011
I have a multitude of methods.
I run across some stories via Seattle's Angels. Other stories come my way via Titanium Dragon's Read it Later Reviews: I read a story that happened to have been featured in the RIL reviews, I see TD's comment that he had featured the story in an RIL Review, I read the article and find other stories that interest me.
And sometimes I hear tell of a story randomly, either in a comment or otherwise white surfing the 'Net.
And sometimes, I use this site's search function if I have an idea of what kind of story I want to read (e.g., sci-fi, crossover, something with Celestia or Luna and NOT the Mane Six, etc.)
And other comments here might also reveal other methods that I also use but don't recall at present.
Basically, by going through the favorites of authors whose output I like, and people whose blog posts or comments I have enjoyed, and seeing if they have any interesting stuff there that I haven't noticed. Works very well on art sites such as dA, too!
4842072
You should absolutely read it. Unfortunately the sequel is still incomplete. Connor says it's not abandoned, though.
i find new stories at random, though nowadays i have little time to read with, so i tend to binge all the stuff I'm behind on at once and stop once caught up. as a result i don't really find new stories except by chance once I'm done
From other peoples lists and Library's, the rest come from some occasional browsing where anything that sounds mildly interesting gets added to the read later pile.