Again, this is my first time actually reading fan fiction, and I found it so good, I wanted more, if the quality is just as good.
As for the appeal of it, you’re right that low barrier to entry is big, since you already know the world and the characters. In this particular case though, the world is just so much fun, and the characters are also really well established and so it’s fun when the author plays around with what happens to them, based on his premise. (I don’t care about professionally published or not, though I do appreciate that Methods of Rationality is pretty professional in terms of quality of editing).
I did try reading Worm I think, quite a few years ago, and I think I stopped because it was just so long and kept going and the pace of it was so slow with chapters and chapters of the story just comprising one day. It just seemed like too massive of a project for me to take on at the time.
That does sound intriguing. I am an unabashed lover of the genre of “young people go to school together to learn X” genre of fiction, ever since Ender’s Game. There’s just something about that genre, I’ve never NOT loved it, as far as I can remember.
Last week after I posted that reddit thread, I did try reading the sequel to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is written by a different author, but continues the story right where the other one stops. But the author just isn’t as good. The writing is much poorer in comparison. Methods of Rationality, I noticed, makes a concerted effort to write in JK Rowling’s overall style, not just write within the same world. So the way that action scenes are described, the way any particular scene is set is very reminiscent of Rowling’s writing. But that sequel author had a birthday party, as an example, where Harry is having a conversation with someone, and then someone else joins in and as a reader I think “oh, I see that other person is here too”, and then someone else does something in the room and I think “oh I see, that other person is the room too?”, and then someone else does something and I think “what the hell kind of party is this? Who else is here? And why didn’t the author first establish the scene?” Again, it’s something Rowling always does, and the author of Methods of Rationality also does, so it’s jarring that this other author has a completely different style.