Thoughts on Fanfiction Sites
This topic is meant to discuss not only fanfiction sites, but also preferences when it comes to each site you've visited. Each site has its pros and cons, and I thought it'd be good to have healthy critiques on them. What do you like, and what do you dislike, and why?
This is not meant to bash any sites, but rather to help highlight features and blindspots.
Hmmm I started reading on AO3 relatively early in the site's lifetime (around 2012?) and found the tagging system to be a godsend. I've tried other sites every now and again since, but AO3 has ruined me for them permanently because the tags, for me, are so convenient for finding what I want, and the UI is smooth. Also, the summaries on AO3 make it easy to avoid writers that, er, need to spend a LOT of time on basic sentence structure/spelling before being able to create a readable piece. I'm not against those people posting stories or practicing, but I do like being able to know I'm not going to like it before clicking.
I have to agree with you on the tagging; I like knowing what I'm getting into before I read and find a surprise I don't like. And I think that it's a mile above FFN when it comes to listing characters.
On the flip side, I think tags on AO3 are a double-edged sword, because you'll see works that have a wall of tags. Another thing is that you may have multiple pairings with the same characters, and you won't necessarily know what the endgame pairing is until you either read it or it's explicitly tagged.
The side menu where you can tailor your experience is really useful, but I don't like how it doesn't automatically save your preferences. Recently, they introduced the option to mute users, but not when it comes to individual works or tags. If they added the ability to mute tags, it would trim the list of works that you see without doing it on a user-by-user basis.
I've been a member of FFN since 2004 (?!) so yeah, I've got a thing or two to say about it.
First, the site has barely changed. There have been a few relatively minor cosmetic improvements, but overall, it's very similar to what it was like almost 20 years ago.
Second, it's run by corporate interests that want to make money, and it shows. Good luck getting support from them if needed (this has always been true). They also put profit over the needs of their users, which (among other things) is why they technically don't allow MA content. Granted, many of us post it anyway, but there have been a number of mass purges over the years. I believe one of those was responsible for the founding of AO3, which is a much better site for multiple reasons.
Speaking of purges…
I started publishing my first fanfiction there in 2004, which was a Lord of the Rings story. I ended up being targeted by another user, who was offended by something I wrote and reported me for explicit content. There was no explicit content in that story, but FFN deleted it without bothering to check if the report was legitimate. I was devastated, mostly due to all the readers/reviews I lost.
This inspired me to do two things:
- I always keep email notifications on for my reviews, and I save every damn one of them I receive. That experience taught me how important it was to have a backup – I might still use that site, but I'll never trust it again.
- That experience is also responsible (if indirectly) for the existence of this site. Why? Because when that happened, I said "fuck it", and decided to create my own fanfiction archive. I was fairly new to web design, but I learned through trial and error. I ran the biggest Lord of the Rings fanfiction site on the internet from 2004-2011, which was an amazing experience.
Through that, I also realized that I loved running fansites in general. I've had a number of others over the years, leading right up to this one.
So yeah, I'm kind of glad the FFN staff were dicks to me almost 20 years ago. If they hadn't been, we wouldn't even be here. 🙂
The purges are the reason I started uploading to AO3 in the first place; I needed some sense of security in the event that my work was deemed offensive, even though the FFN version is going to be more toned down than the AO3 version during Act III.
Quote from The Gestalt Prince on February 21, 2023, 6:43 pm… even though the FFN version is going to be more toned down than the AO3 version during Act III.
Yeah, that's why I'm reading it on AO3. I need allllll the adult content!
Another thing I prefer about AO3: being able to respond publicly to reviews.
This is such a nice feature, both for interacting with readers and them being able to interact with each other. It creates much more of a community feel, which I've never really had on FFN.
100% agree on the ability to reply to comments. I think there's a trade-off with that; FFN only allows PMs, while AO3 only allows public replies.
Generally I vastly prefer using Ao3. But there is one major advantage FFN provides over Ao3.
Ao3's tagging system makes it utterly impossible to search for character-centric stories. It does not have main character tags or similar. Searching for the "Severus Snape" tag will give countless false positives because Snape is a teacher at Hogwarts. So when I look for Snape-centric fics on Ao3, I've resorted to a set of different search queries, each with a shipping tag that I consider acceptable in Snape-centric fics. Specifically, SS&HP (platonic), SSLE, SSHG (with an exclusion rule for teacher/student) and SSOC.
Quote from FIQ on February 21, 2023, 8:41 pmGenerally I vastly prefer using Ao3. But there is one major advantage FFN provides over Ao3.
Ao3's tagging system makes it utterly impossible to search for character-centric stories. It does not have main character tags or similar. Searching for the "Severus Snape" tag will give countless false positives because Snape is a teacher at Hogwarts. So when I look for Snape-centric fics on Ao3, I've resorted to a set of different search queries, each with a shipping tag that I consider acceptable in Snape-centric fics. Specifically, SS&HP (platonic), SSLE, SSHG (with an exclusion rule for teacher/student) and SSOC.
I completely forgot about that. Yeah, FFN is way better in terms of that. If AO3 added a "main character/main relationship" section for tagging, it would be loads better.
I think another thing that I prefer on FFN as opposed to AO3 is the analytics section. For AO3, it shows a very basic amount of information, based on total amounts of views and likes, while FFN allows you to break it down by days to see how the audience grows over time.
