Non-Rec: Go Rec Yourself

[isabellerecs]

Day 8 - Fandom Snowflake Challenge

In your own space, post self-recs for at least three fanworks that you created.

Well crud, I am feeling at a distinct disadvantage with today's challenge for I am neither a fan-writer nor fan-artist. Up until now I've only had one type of fan-offering to bring to the table (yesterday was my first foray into making icons and I enjoyed it so after snowflake I think I will be revisiting that) so for today's challenge all I can rec is what I've got.

Fanfiction Recommendations by Isabelle Disraeli - I built a recommendations website/blog on WordPress. I created all of the graphics that I use there, the fandom and pairing banners as well as special banners for holidays, femslash, and other special tags. It has been a labor of love, and I suppose it could count as a fanwork in the broadest sense.

That's it, that's all I got. :D

Comments

[scripsi]

I think it definitely must be considered a fanwork!

[g_uava]

Love your Wordpress! It's so pretty and personalized and makes me a bit reluctant to click on the links and leave the site :')

[isabellerecs]

<3<3<3 Thank you!

[isabellerecs]

*pinks* Ah, thank you so much for saying so. :D

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, recs definitely count! (You can do recs/recslists for bingo squares at most of the bingo comms I know, so they get counted all the time!)

[melagan]

I think your site is very very cool and much appreciated. :)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

You did the thing! (I'm reading one of the recced stories, so, it worked, right?)

For that challenge being inadvertently harder, you got this.

[sylvaine]

Recs absolutely count as fannish work, and so does doing all of that coding and those graphics! It's so cool; I'm so impressed!

[all_choseny]

You're rec's are awesome and it makes it easy to find! Thank you for your dedication :D

[isabellerecs]

\o/ Yah! (I didn't know that about the bingo comms, hmmm I will have to keep that in mind. :))

[isabellerecs]

Thank you, it so kind of you to say so. :D

[isabellerecs]

That's awesome, I hope you like it! :D I love knowing that folks find it helpful. \o/

[sperrywink]

Oh that is a brilliant fanwork! A rec site that comprehensive is a dream find. Thank you for sharing!

I see you have Kiss Kiss Bang Bang there. I forgot all about how delightful that movie was.

[isabellerecs]

Thank you so much! I must confess that no coding was necessary as WP has some pretty cool editing software available even for free accounts, and that helped a great deal. (I love your Hobbit squad icon, too cute. :))

[isabellerecs]

*blushes* Thanks so much! :D

[isabellerecs]

*blushes* Thank you so much!

Oh yes, pre-Iron Man RDJ is so much fun and then on top of that a badass, gay Val Kilmer. :D It is a tiny fandom, but I love it so.

[respoftw]

Oh my god, KIss KIss Bang Bang fic? I hadn’t even thought of going looking for that! And everyone is right, this is definitely legitimate fanworks!

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I did!
I also LoCed.

[sl_walker]

Wow, that's a spectacular amount of work!

[corvidology]

It's a beautiful site and I definitely think it should be considered fanwork.

[musyc]

The intensely-detailed reccer has always been a goldmine to me. I thought about setting up a recs blog myself, but I'm not a person who's good about explaining why I liked a particular thing. (Imagine me just waving my hands and going KITTENS! or WORD CHOICE! or PRETTY! That's about the extent of my analysis skills.) So someone who takes the time to set out the details like that? It's a banquet. That sort of work is very appreciated.

[spikedluv]

That absolutely counts!!!

[isabellerecs]

You should check it out, it's good stuff. :D I think I accidently came upon it on a recs site myself. ;)

[isabellerecs]

Aw, thank you! :D

[isabellerecs]

Thank you so much! :D

[isabellerecs]

<3<3<3

[isabellerecs]

Thank you so much! It was definitely a learning curve, and I can see a difference in my first recs to what I did later. To be fair, there are times that I just "KITTENS!" or "HOT!!" or just generally flail about textually because I loved it but nothing really wants to come out. ;) But it is so nice to feel appreciated. *pinks*

[isabellerecs]

This is driving me nuts, what's "LoCed"? I feel so silly, but I'm coming up blank.

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, yes. I've done a few recs list for hc_bingo in particular, and one of their regular Amnesty challenges (usually March, I think?) is a reccing one. But I know that genprompt_bingo definitely accepts them as well, and I think the others do too.

Plus, icons!

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Letter of Commented. (From when we emailed comments.)

You're not silly I'm just Old. ;) (I'm not old, just Internet Old.)

[isabellerecs]

Oh okay, that's cool! :D (I definitely feel like a weird Internet Middle-Aged :P somewhere in the in between.)

[musyc]

I just want to reiterate here. I don't know how familiar you might have been with reccing culture on LJ back in the day but the people who did rec lists (whether general or themed) were so very appreciated. ESPECIALLY those who took the time, like you do, to give more details than a link. I'm grateful to someone who bothers to list fandoms, pairings, and ratings on fics they rec, much less someone who goes into the nitty-gritty. And TAGS. So wonderful.

The culture of reccing has really fallen off in the past several years, and I'm sad for that. There used to be a huge market in making recs - newsletters and comms and personal lists - and it made things easier to find. (I mean, the newsletters I follow won't even link to a fic unless it has two or three detailed recs, which are few and far between these days!)

So yeah, rambling, but doing recs is definitely a fanwork (and a lot of work it is). It's a service that is really, really underpraised.

[isabellerecs]

*strokes nonexistent beard thoughtfully* I'll have to look through some bingo comms then. :)

Icon bingos, or just icons in general?

[thisbluespirit]

Icons for bingos, and icons generally! ;-)

Btw, I meant to say, your site really is a work of art. All those pretty graphics!

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Does that mean you only vaguely recall the dial up cooing?

[isabellerecs]

Oh no, I vividly remember those dulcet tones. ;) Though I think my dad upgraded us to "broadband" when I was in my mid to late teens (early 00's). But I was a semi-professional lurker in those days, so a lot of the early stuff like emailing comments wasn't something I ever experienced. :D

[isabellerecs]

Oh, thank you! :D *blushes*

[isabellerecs]

Wow, I needed a little bit to gather my words because . . . this means so much to me. I can't even tell you how much.

I was very familiar with LJ's rec'ing and it was that that had inspired me to do a rec site. I was on Epic Recs in '14, not quite dead but very slow, and I looked around and thought "I could do this, maybe not as detailed but I could." With LJ dying, I ended up on Tumblr. I followed a whole bunch of other rec blogs but they all seemed more concerned with who topped than with saying anything about the story (pet peeve, sorry). But even those have become scarce to nonexistent. I do hope that with the new energy here, that kind of rec'ing might make a comeback!

Oh tags, I love the tagging on WP it's so easy and one can tag to their heart's content (which for me is a lot). Organization and accessibility are important to me, I want people to be able to find what they're looking for as well as stumble upon things they never thought to look for (that's the library worker in me ;)).

I'll not feign modesty and pretend like it isn't a lot of work (because it is, you should see my spreadsheets), but oh, a comment like yours makes it all worth it because it feels like I'm accomplishing what I set out to do. Thank you a thousand times. <3<3<3

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

It was a late LoC that drew me back to the floating world, as I'd been left adrift.