So... im reading fanfiction. And,

[Aotrs Commander]

I have been reading a lot of fanfic over the last few years... It's free, and most importantly, allows me to read new things without having to buy an endless stream of books I then have to store...!

Mostly I read Naruto, Harry Potter and now MLP, with a bit of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha to boot; the former three are all pretty big fandoms (the first two are by far and away the largest on fanfic.net). This means the signal-to-noise ration is somewhat better. Though in the cases of Naruto and HP, I tend to constrian looking only at 10k plus fics (and then seeing if the author has done anything else.) That at least mititaes some of the tripe, and all the half-fics started with one or two chapters that never go anywhere. (The price of loosing some of the shorter, better one-shots was fair trade off in that case, and you can often pick them up from the authors you're reading, or even their favourites.)

Sadly, in the case of Naruto, the overall qualitiy of writing has gone down in the last year or two, and only a handful of my preferred writer have moved to other generas (i.e. pony...!) The rest just appeared to have moved on in life, and without any (skilled) new blood to take their place.

Currently, though, as I'm well into the pony fix, I'm using mainly Fimfiction and EQD as my sources (the latter has fairly stiff quality control); fanfic is of a more variable quality. (Also, I have to say, after ten years of using the site - I started on Pokemon fics, back in the day - I'm not enamoured of the recent style changes to the front end, personally.)

There's been some grand stuff, though, through the years.

Of course, the usual disappointment is that a fair chunk of the best stuff is done by authors that never finish or lose interest, while the mediocre stuff carries on to completion.



I think some of the length issues (if you want to complain about there being stories that are too long!) is due to the internet format. Without printing or selling costs, there's no need to be as harsh with editing (self or otherwise), which is, I would guess, the hard part of professional writing. (In a similar manner to how webcomics have the infinite canvas effect.)



My own contributions run to one Adam West-style Naruto parody and a brief Pokedex over the course of ten years. (Plus a few umpteen hundred words on my headcanon on ME£'s ending which there is a remote possibility I might finish one day; though with the ending DLC finally out and completed, I'm not sure I can work up the enthusiasm. Trouble is, I have lots of ideas of snippets of things, but I can never get enough - or work-up enough energy to actually write the down. The day they have thought-to-text interface is the day my writing will prolifierate!)