I am just some person who has read too damn much fanfic. I really wish there was a way I could annotate my favorite stories on here. Maybe there's an essay or something that will eventually emerge. I bet you would just love that.

I might try to write a story one day, if I get the courage, probably in the Zelda milieu. Preliminary results have been horrific, but then again, one must write the bad out of oneself.

You know what I haven't found? A really good long form OoT/MM story, like 50 chapters of angst or something with a fluffy ending. There's plenty of good BoTW material, and TP seems to have a huge amount of wonderful stories, but I haven't hit the OoT story that captures my attention in the same way. Send me an IM if you think of one.

General Guidelines for Finding Good Fanfic

It took me quite a while when I got into fanfic to find really good stories, like the 10% Sturgeon's Law stuff, separated from the chaff. I did find, however, that there are some ways to do this. I tend to like slightly more mature fanfics, with at least some conflict between the characters, and some romance, so keep that in mind if I do actually decide to annotate my favs.

Sometimes the stories with the most reviews are the best. I have noticed that reviews, as opposed to favorites or follows, tend to be a better predictor personally for a good story. This is not always true, though (obviously, because then I wouldn't use the word "some"). A good bet, though, when looking through a new fandom is to sort by most reviews.

Sometimes you have to dig. Some of my favorite stories are from alternate sources: favorites of people whose stories you enjoy, parts of curated collections, and just random crap you stumble upon when you filter by 'M' and select that pairing between "Link" and "Impa". There is some seriously good stuff at the fringes.

The action is at 'T' and 'M'. By 'action' I don't mean nookie necessarily; I'm thinking mature situations that can reflect the difficult things you run into in real life. These tend to be the most interesting to moi, and if you're looking for something romance and angst oriented, these are going to be more difficult to achieve at 'K' ratings. It's still possible, but making sure you check the 'M' rated updates is de regeur for me at this point, especially since the defaults here don't include them.

Check Multiple sites. Some material is cross-posted, but much of is not. This site tends to have longer running stories with more depth, and AO tends to have shorter ones with less content restrictions. Check both if you really want everything.

1k words is tough, 100 chapters is too. Having a story that is too short can be difficult to get into, especially in the fields I appreciate, although it is possible. Having 100 chapters can be intimidating, although I have to confess that several of my favorite stories are quite long. There's several where the main romance doesn't even really kick off until Chapters 99-100! I gather what I am saying here is just be judicious with your time - there's a ton to read, but some of the real biggies are good. Don't be intimidated.

Canon is good to stick to, until it isn't. Many people get their serious dander up if a story doesn't stick strictly to canon. This can be difficult if the fandom is vague (I am looking at you LoZ). The truly good stories I have read have taken the source fandom and transcended it: OC's that don't supplant the main protagonists but complement them and fill out the story, events that did not happen in canon but are internally consistent, exotic interpretations of in-game material. The way I look at it, if you stretch and break canon and I don't care because it's consistent with your story and interpretation, then that is a huge win. Many of my favorites fall in this category.

Save what you like. These sites are transitory, and full of free material. This means that if the author decides to pull your favorite story and take it off the site, it's like dropping your car keys in the lava: they're just gone, man. There's so much good stuff no longer on the site. Save early and often, like you should be doing at work you slacker.