What now?

[tinturtle]

Having finished my Million-Word Fanfic Challenge, I need to decide what reading game to play for the rest of the year. Any suggestions?

Absent another idea, I'm thinking about another round of the Million-Word Challenge, but using the initial letter of the author's name to allocate points rather than the first letter of the title. What do you all think?

Comments

[timemidae]

Hmm, maybe a journey through time with some number of fics published each year within a given range? I’m always interested to see what meta trends emerge over time in and across fandoms and it could be fun to do some sampling.

[tinturtle]

Yes, that could be cool. On the other hand, I don't know how to determine when most of the available fics were written. There is one Pros archive that provides original publication dates for all the fics it hosts, but that's the only really reliable source I know. AO3 has dates, but they are usually the dates of posting; most old fics that are added are not backdated. MFU Archive has dates for only a minority of fics. Chrome and Gunmetal and File 40, as well as the other dedicated Pros sources, don't have this information at all. I suppose some stories are mentioned at Fanlore, either in their own entries or in the tables of contents of zines, but again, that's going to be hit and miss.

I'll think about whether enough information is available to make this idea work for me. It's not without precedent. byslantedlight is doing by-year fic bingo as her reading game this year. She's focusing on Pros, so she has the advantage of the archive I mentioned, and she also reads fic in zines, which can usually be dated.

(ETA: I forgot FFN. Oops. Dates given at there are likely to be dates posting, as well. I'm not sure if backdating is even an option at that site.)