Man, how have you not washed your eyes out with acid... but seriously, not everyone has enough spare time on their hands to be so liberal with their selections.

 

I find that my time is wasted less reading terrible stuff than vainly searching for good fics. The fact that occasionally I find something decent is a plus.

 

I agree with this philosophy, of digging through dirt to find a proverbial "Diamond in the Rough," but I simply can't have such wide search terms. I keep a search for over sixty thousand words, with the same settings as you. I find that this reduces the amount of fanfiction that was abandoned early on, or fanfiction that is smut for the sake of smut. But, if you are able to stomach it, go right ahead.

I am unsure of whether or not a direct question breaks etiquette on this site, but I wanted to know if you had any personal favorites that you found between that twenty to sixty thousand range? Or is it just in case of finding treasure in its infancy?

 

I look in the DLP library and on the hpfanfiction subreddit. There are different posts on the subreddit on topics like Harry in Dumstrang which help me find fics I may not have come across before.

 

Nothing recently. A few that are interesting but not enough for me to add a follow. If they update a time or two more and I see them they may be there though.

 

Check many sites...

It is as long as it sounds but to find a completed fic which is great, I search through DLP/Reddit/an archive of our own to look for reviews and suggestions on different fics. If someone knows a better way please contact me. Thanks.

 

I also browse using ff.net's default filters.

Filters

Sort : Publish Date/Update Date
Rating: All
Length: Greater than 100k
World: All
Language: English
Genre: All

Characters: Depends on my mood.I normally read only stories with protagonists as main characters( Harry Potter for HP fanfics, Naruto for Naruto fanfics, Shirou for Fate/Stay Night fanfics and so on).

Without Filters

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy, Romance(i can suffer all of these in small quantities but not in excess)
Characters: I normally try to filter out slash stories using this option. Eg Draco and Severus for HP fanfictions.

 

Amythyr: If you want to exclude many character or genres simultaneously, I'd recommend using Scryer: scryer.darklordpotter.net

It generally has a lot more flexibility in setting restrictions based on ff.net's story data.

 

I personally look for reccomended fics on the harry potter fanfiction reddit.

 

I dont. Please help

 

I would recommend the James Potter series by G. N. Lippert.

Then we have "Being Gilderoy Lockhart". Love that one, about this dude reading the second book and waking up in the body of the relentless self-promoter and must hide the truth while getting to bottom of this. Love how the author emphasize how the characters do not always resemble the movie actors. ;-)

Also, on "Archives on our own", search: "Only a boy" or "Merlin Evans".

It's a mix between the tv show Merlin and the HP universe, and I was doubtful, but it's well written and I enjoy it, and speaking as a cynic, that's saying something.

 

How does one find good fics on AO3?

Just sorting by hits or kudos produces something that will once be used as the primary reason the aliens decided to destroy instead of befriend us.

 

By word of mouth, mostly.

On the other hand the filter system, while not intuitive, can be quite versatile. Here are a couple of resources:

http://erindizmo.tumblr.com/post/65292624924/7-step-tutorial-on-how-to-filter-out-characters

http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/349

 

You don't. The site is pretty much cancer, and the tagging system is ridiculous. I've literally looked through an entire fandom on there, a couple thousand fics, and have found nothing of note.

 

On that I do very much agree,
It's not a great system, and I do miss many great fics. It's just a method I have for cutting down on the range of stories I have to trial out is all.
HP is far from the only fandom I read, as I read anything attached to an fandom I've read/watched and I have read/watched a metric F***ton. So I don't have the time/patience to look through everything available when there a hundreds of thousands of fics to screen in this fandom alone

 

Huh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The tagging system allows you to select for characters/ideas/themes you want to read about while simultaneously filtering out those you don't. It does seem that not a lot of people know about the latter feature. It makes it fairly easy avoid stuff like slash, mpreg, and some of the weirder adult content out there. It's also easy to set arbitrary limits to do with word counts, kudos, etc. Sorting by bookmarks is similar to sorting by favourites, so there's that, too. I've found some good stuff by using a combination of techniques that aren't immediately obvious, but there are some guides out there to help you learn to refine your search. Overall, provided you take the effort to learn how it works, I find the system at ao3 superior to ff.net.

Ff.net does have an advantage over ao3 in its vastly larger archive of stories, at least concerning fandoms like Harry Potter and Naruto, so it has many works that you won't find on ao3. Its search tools are very limited, though DLP's scryer makes up for some of the drawbacks. And because of the periodic purges on ff.net, there is a lot less adult content you have to wade through (though I don't really approve of censorship).

When I don't feel like searching through the archives myself, I tend to use the same sort of method to find good fics, regardless of the site I'm on. If I read a work I like, I look at the author's favourites list/bookmarks, and comb through them. I also look for rec lists online, though it can be tough to find someone whose tastes resemble mine. And of course, there are sites like the one we're on currently.

 

There are a few fandoms more prevalent on ao3 and I've noticed that there are more crossovers on there, though finding scryer was amazing before that I'd just wade through everything on FFN limiting based on words whenever I wanted to read something long or couldn't find anything of worth so widened the parameters.
Honestly Ao3's just a hassle and only 1/3 can I find a long story that's worth a look through to be honest though er I'll have to use that filter feature Lucia mentioned. Thanks!
I tend to stick to FFN or Ao3 unless it's specifically mentioned on some other site and eh sometimes a drabble on tumblr's just there and I'm bored oh and last and mostly least HPfanfiction reddit I vastly prefer the worm fanfic reddit and wish it was more like that

 

I disagree entirely. AO3's search function is only useful when the user's on the site aren't complete retards. Unfortunately, they are.

The tagging system is completely fucked. The shitshow that is AO3 is what convinced me the folks running fanfiction.net know what they're doing - or at least understand that the average human is a complete idiot.

I'm going to give you an example of how the AO3 search and tagging function is rendered completely useless by the idiots that use the site. Let's say I want to search for stories where Harry Potter is the main character. So, I select the Harry Potter character tag.

The problem?

Every single story that features Harry Potter in any way, shape, or form, lists Harry Potter as a character. Even if he's just mentioned. They list him anyway. If you give people free range to use useless, unnecessary tags, they will. And as such, good stories get buried. Do good stories exist on AO3? I don't know, because I can't get past the first page before my eyes start burning from having to look at so many goddamn tags.

On the opposite side of the coin, fanfiction.net has no tags aside from those provided, and limits the amount you can use. You have four characters slots to fill. If I select Harry Potter as a character, Harry Potter is going to feature prominently as a character in all the stories I see, because the author doesn't have the room to choose characters that are barely used at all.

As a result, even if most people on fanfiction.net are idiots, they can't turn the site into an unintuitive mess. Scyer, obviously, makes it even easier to navigate.

 

I agree, I have had that issue before. But, continuing using your example, if there are pairings involving Harry that you like, it's easy enough to get around this issue by searching for those instead. For example, if I wanted to read about Harry and Daphne, or Harry and Fleur, I'd enter '"Harry Potter/Daphne Greengrass" OR "Harry Potter/Fleur Delacour"' under 'search within results'. If I want to read gen, that's where I encounter a problem.

The tagging system is a mess, but I still prefer it to the system at ff.net. One of the reasons I prefer it is that I can search for ideas and themes, not just characters and pairings. For instance, if I wanted to read works involving time travel, then I can do that by searching for that tag. If I wanted to read about MoD!Harry, I can do that too. If a story includes a shit ton of tags, then I avoid it. Of course, the system isn't idiot proof, but I like the advantages offered by it nevertheless.

Now let's compare this to ff.net. I am provided 4 character slots, and those are the only 'tags' I can use to sort through the several hundred thousand works I find in the Naruto or HP fandoms. In the HP fandom, there are 204k stories listing Harry Potter as a main character alone. Do I want to slog through all of those? No. And I might try to use DLP's scryer to search for more specific story elements, but authors have a limited amount of space and don't include most of them in the summary. Want to search for a time travel fic? I'd be lucky to have an author mention 'time travel' in a work's summary.

One might say that the tagging system at ao3 is too versatile, but the search tools at ff.net aren't versatile enough. Both have its advantages and disadvantages.

 

There are a few different ways I find good fics. One is looking through an authors favorites, or sometimes better, a list of recommended fics on their profile. Lately I have had more luck this way.

I also look through the DLP library and ff.net community.

If I'm bored or have time, I will sift through fanfiction.net. It can be tedious, but if you set the filters a bit more selectively you can usually find something that is (at least) entertaining.