Me angsting about lists - feel free to ignore my navel-gazing

[snowgall]

So as many of you may know, I've previously posted lists of "Best Drarry Fics of the Year" for 2007-2014. In fact, those were some of the very first posts I ever made to this blog. It's more-or-less why I started this blog, as I was all in a tizzy about properly dating fanfics, and I felt that organizing rec lists by year of publication was one way to make some use of the data I had been gathering up to that point.

I still feel that way, and I still like making rec lists, but this year it will be SO HARD. When I posted all of those other lists, I was really new to fandom. I hardly knew anybody, especially not authors! Making the lists was an objective exercise for mostly my own enjoyment. But now I know so many lovely people in the HP fandom. Which means creating and posting my list for 2015 makes me feel incredibly anxious and concerned about which fics might get left off.

Because oh my god, some fics will get left off! By my count, I've recced 93 Drarry fics this year, between my LJ blog and hd_storyroom. And the number of fics I included in each of my previous "Best of the Year" lists was always less than 30! Part of the reason is that I simply read more fics in 2015 than I have in any previous years, which means I know of so many more good ones to rec. So my 2015 list will be longer than my previous ones, but I don't want it to be ridiculous. I think I've settled on ~36 fics I want to have on the list, and that's about as low as I can go.

So this is a long-winded way of saying that I'll be posting my list later tonight or tomorrow, and there will be lots of good fics that aren't included, and I already feel awful about that. In the end the list is just an arbitrary thing based on one person's no doubt flawed opinion. It says nothing about the quality of any fics not on it.

Comments

[gracerene]

I agree w/ Eidheann that "My Favorite Fics in 2015" sounds much more personal and subjective than "Best Fics of 2015" which has sort of an implication of objectivity. Perhaps a wording change might make you feel better about it? Totally up to you, and I totally know what you mean. It's defintiely different reccing in a fandom once you get to know authors more personally. But I think everybody is pretty cool about realizing that not reccing something does not at all mean you don't like it. Especially when you are trying to keep the # of the fics on your rec list around a certain #.

Super curious to see your choices!

[snowgall]

It's ironic, but it's precisely *because* "My Favorites" sounds more personal and subjective that I don't use it :/ I explained some of my logic in my response to eidheann_writes above. And my reasons are probably not going to gain me any sympathy :(

But having made this choice, I have to live with it, even though it does make me anxious!

[gracerene]

Interesting. I search for rec lists for every new fandom I enter (which is quite a lot) and I've never once used the word "best" in my searches. Since I know I'm looking for fic recs for a specific pairing or fandom, I usually just say "drarry recs" or "merthur recs". I never would have thought to use best of, precisely because in my mind that seems much more objective and professional, which I don't at all associate with fandom or recs. Honestly, I would have thought saying "2015 Drarry Recs" would yield the most results based on my own searching patterns, but I guess I'm doing it different than the results you're seeing. But nothing wrong with trying to boost the visibility of your lists.

[snowgall]

Yeah, I'm sure everyone has a different searching default. It's not like I have done definitive research on search terms for fanfiction :) Mostly I'm basing this on impressions from what I see in google analytics coupled with knowledge from other advertising realms. And I agree that "Drarry recs" etc. are also probably big search terms. I think it's important to have as many reasonable (descriptive) keywords in your title and text as you can for these reasons (if you want your blog to come up on searches, that is).

Thanks for the reassurance ♥