Poll: Pairings

[jane-elliot.livejournal.com]

(First time posting a poll -- this might take a few edits.)

One of the goals here at Epic Recs is to continually improve the comm to make it more a more functional, fun, and entertaining place. Thus, as part of Recapalooza we'll be tossing out a few polls as well as a survey (coming soon). Hopefully we'll learn something new and exciting that will result in positive changes to the community as a whole.

ETA: Of course, I managed a typo in the very first poll and of course you can't actually edit them. Thus a clarification: for the first question, it should be which pairing(s) do you read most often and/or are you most interested in. More than one response is acceptable (even encouraged!)

[Poll #1564679]

Comments

[qbic1.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this poll; it really made me think about what I like to read and why I follow epic_recs so religiously. I do have a request, though. When sending a rec, it would be very helpful if the show/manga/book - i.e. fandom - the rec is from is listed in the tags when the original rec is sent. About half the recs I receive in my mail box, don't have the tag in the email. But the tag appears when I get over to epic_recs. I know this sound catty - truly it is not intended that way. But I receive in excess of 300 non-work related emails a day. And I'm trying desperately to decrease the amount I have follow the links. I know I can't be the only one ... lol.

Thank you so much.

[jane-elliot.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the other reccers, but I pretty much always opt to add tags after the fact because then I can pick them from a list rather than risk making a typo and/or dropping a comma on the tag line of the post itself (which actually happens quite often -- every couple of months I have to go through and fix a handful of tags where something went wrong). That said, I'll make an effort to put in the fandom tag before posting recs in the future and I'll pass the suggestion on to the other reccers as well.

(Though, I have to admit that I'm a bit confused: wouldn't both the tag and the body of the rec both be in the e-mail? Because if the fandom isn't listed in the rec itself, that is something I definitely need to know about so I can bring it to the attention of the individual reccer.)

Thanks for the suggestion!

[qbic1.livejournal.com]

You would think so but it doesn't happen that way. The actually email we receive for a rec looks like this:

Hi qbic1,

There is a new entry by jane_elliot titled "The Royal Prat and the Cave of Destiny by who_la_hoop (NC-17)" in epic_recs!

You can:

View the entry
Read the recent entries in epic_recs

That's all the info we get until we view the entry. Using April as an example, 25 posts from epic_rec went out yet only 7 had fandom tags. I love epic_rec. But every fandom isn't my cup of tea. (Although you've got me reading quite a few things I never thought I try ... my M7 & House addiction can be traced right back to you. lol)

Thanks for trying, though. I appreciate it. And all the hard work you do to make epic_recs so wonderful. Happy 1000.

[meishali.livejournal.com]

Hi, I did all the tagging (except for Jane's recs) until recently, but because individual rec'er post their own recs, I could only tag them after the fact. Now the individual rec'ers tag their own stories (THANK YOU, GUYS!), so theoretically, tags can be added at posting.

I personally don't tag when I post because I'd end up making a lot of mistakes, but I will try to tag at least the fandom from now on. *If I keep on forgetting, just give me a shout*

[muffiewrites.livejournal.com]

I just want to say that I read popular pairings because that's the pairings I find the most long fic in. It's the popular thing. I'm not a pairing-vigilante by any means. I'm a development person. The story must sufficiently develop a climate for me to believe the pairing works. I'm not going to yell Emperor Palpatine would never fall in love with Princess Leia!, but I'm not going to believe it unless the fic writer does some serious, heavy duty work on the story line. And well, I'd be pretty skeeved by it, because the emperor was seriously gross when she was an adult.

[jane-elliot.livejournal.com]

The vast majority of the fics I read are popular pairings. For one, there's usually a reason why the pairings are popular:) Plus, I read so much that if I limited myself to rare pairings I would have long since run out of fic.

That said, I do enjoy rare pairings fics, mainly *because* authors who write rare pairings often put more time and effort into character development and making the pairing believable. Though there are definitely some exceptions (Chuck authors, I'm looking at you).

[silviakundera.livejournal.com]

I love the slash, but I'd definitely welcome more het, gen, and femslash if they have good characterization and are very long. (that's the main factor that draws me to this rec community vs. all the others -- I hate combing through rec lists to find the long ones. So the less short fic, the better. other than that, I just want to be served up good stories.) *g*

p.s. and I feel like het pregnant fic should have a warning just like mpreg does--but that's just me. LOL.

Thanks for all your hard work on this comm!

[jane-elliot.livejournal.com]

Amen. I actually started Epic Recs after a particularly frustrating day of combing through rec comms, none of which actually included *length* in any of the information they offered. Plus, I see vastly more recs for short stories than long out there; I don't know if it's because other reccers honestly prefer really short fic or if it's because it's much easier to invest five minutes to rec a tiny fic than five hours to rec an epic. At any rate, I feel your pain:)

I can't speak for the other reccers, but I'm making an active effort to read more gen and het (I've always been up for femmeslash, but finding long femmeslash is like finding a needle in a field of haystacks). Thus you should see more of both soon.

(And I agree re: pregnancy; I warn for it myself.)

[lothy.livejournal.com]

I'm not really a "slash fan" as such, though I doubt that's exactly news to you! I'll read it if the story's good enough but I don't specifically search it out... save for certain pairings, most of which are sadly not major ones in fandom (yet - come on, NCIS LA). But I love het, femslash and gen. Basically anything with women.

And my tastes run more to rare pairings in many fandoms. Though in slash-heavy fandoms that's probably related to my wish for stories featuring women.

[jane-elliot.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge fan of strong women and rare pairings. If nothing else, you should see more of the former in my recs (I'm actively searching!) though I find the latter to be pretty hit or miss (mainly because, while I like rare pairings, I only like rare pairings if I like both of the characters involved and often the pairing is rare because one or the other character is too hateful to want to read. Which leads to dark fic. Or short short stories. Or both. Is it Friday yet?)

[lothy.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, because I find that quite often it's the popular pairings that have the dislikeable characters. HP fandom for instance with the popularity of various Death Eater characters and their offspring. Which fandoms do you dislike the rare-pairing characters in?

[jane-elliot.livejournal.com]

I suck at giving example but taking Harry Potter as a starting point: any story with Voldemort in the pairing. Any story with Dumbledore in the pairing (I don't like Dumbledore bashing, but I also don't really like Dumbledore). Any pairing featuring the twins, Bellatrix, the Dursleys, etc.

[lothy.livejournal.com]

Yeah.... but Draco Malfoy is in two of the most popular pairings and he's basically an immature bully.

And there's so many other great characters in rare pairings too. Luna would be my favourite.

[jane-elliot.livejournal.com]

But with Draco and Snape there are hints of possible good mixed in with all of the bad, which appeals to writers who like bad boys:) The twins and Dumbledore, on the other hand, are both portrayed as good characters who mostly behave in dislikeable ways (people who have suffered through practical jokes usually don't find practical jokers very amusing) and thus are not terribly appealing (at least for me).

I have to admit, Luna has never done much for me. Then again, by the time I stopped reading in book six, none of the characters really did much for me:)