On Fimfiction, I've been looking through the list of users with the most stories in preparation for the next Ponyfic Roundup. There are people in the top 100 I've never even heard of, but there are also some really prominent writers in there. It's certainly possible to be both very good and very prolific. As it happens, there's a run in the 50s of six authors whose works I've read at least a few of: RainbowBob, Pascoite, naturalbornderpy, PresentPerfect, Georg and BronyWriter. You could have a pretty reasonable time with an anthology of fics by that half-dozen.
On a more general fanfic note, remember that book I posted about a couple of days ago? Well, Cecilia Aragon of the University of Washington has published this article in Technology Review about her research into fanfic with Katie Davis and four students. The three fandoms they looked at were Harry Potter, Doctor Who... and MLP:FiM. The book they produced was actually published in July 2019 (Writers in the Secret Garden: Fanfiction, Youth and New Forms of Mentoring) but I don't recall hearing of it until now. The Technology Review article itself is thin on actual MLP coverage, unfortunately.
Finally, let me be parochial for a moment and say that the first Worcester Shires ponymeet of 2020 will take place in a week's time, on Saturday 11 January. I'm pleased to report that our little group is still going strong as we approach our seventh birthday in early May! Which seems like a nice place to end this miscellany. :)
I'm in good company! :D Yaknow, because I have two accounts and both include anthologies, my actual story count is probably closer to 200 than 100. :B
ReplyDeleteAnd I guarantee a lot of those 100+ unknowns are clopfic writers.
Probably, but there was no way I was going to get into the thicket of alt accounts given the different levels of acknowledgement (down to none at all) that various writers pay theirs!
DeleteAnd yes, you're right -- but there are very few clopfic writers who've never published anything else. So I've decided not to read any M-rated stuff for the next PR. I don't have any rooted objection to most clopfic (except foalcon) but I read so little that it probably didn't make sense to go out of my way to find some for this.