Archive Of Our Own (A03) VS Fan Fiction.net (unpopular opinion) What's your views?

[Heatblizzard]

Both are fanfiction sites but serve very different crowds.
One is highly praised to the point it has a snooty fanbase where they look down upon anyone that thinks otherwise whom try other sites. The other tends to be a lot more casual and not care as long as it works for them.


FF.net while it has it's glitches and bad moments I find it FAR easier to find stories despite it dying. I don't know about Watt Pad as you are forced to register to even read so I cannot comment on how that site functions.

Live Journal looks like a cringy teenage blog.

AO3 on the other hand. Oh God it's a holy mess and needs pretty much an overhaul.

To find any full length fic you have to do a lot of hair tearing to quote Spike Jones Beetlebaum song
"Now they are tearing hair. There's hair all over the place There's hair all over the ring! I don't know who's hair it is oh it's mine! They are so close it's either a photo finish or an oil painting.
And the winner issssssssssssssssssssss...................Beeeeeeeeeeetlebaaaaaaaaum" 🙃

Fanfiction.net the race horse you thought was going to lose because people said it would but still has some umph left in it if you give it a try.



Most fan fic on A03 are written by people you really wouldn't want to meet in a dark ally and at least 1/3rd I wonder if they drive mysterious white vans with no logo doing only God knows what and you bettter hope to not come across them. If you do make sure you have 911 on speed dial and mace for personal protection! I wonder how many drive mysterious ice cream trucks with no company logo.



Now there ARE adventure length stories on A03 but the way the tagging system works good luck finding it as I tried their excluding system to exclude fics I don't want but many times they still show up anyways whether or not I apply the tags or remove them.

Fan Fiction.net I can find a full adventure length story in less then 1 minute flat with only a few clicks mainly navigating to the fandom itself.
Once I reach said fandom it's pretty much self explanatory and the community is far more open to comments where as A03 (Archive) acts like a snowflake safe space constantly having to double check what you say and even then there is no 100 percent guarantee the author won't explode at you in a fit.


On Reddit's own fanfiction sub authors are whining about 'mean readers' causing readers to have to constantly justify comments that otherwise are not harmful such as 'Will this story gets updated soon' is now a national crime.

Most of my life it was generally a curtesy and a good comment to let authors know they place value in their story and they think their story is worthy enough to be updated. Most authors would've leaped for joy at a simple comment saying the story deserves a lot. Now you are constantly waking on egg shells because authors having a bad day justifys them blowing up at the reader

It's not healthy if you have to constantly fear an attack by an author and/or their fanbase because of something taken the wrong way which the goal posts is constantly changing.

This toxic behavior NEEDS to stop on both sides. I know hate comments do exist but so far I see mostly authors overexaggerating and then making everyone else look evil.

Fan Fiction.net however most authors are open to suggestions and even asks readers how they want the story to go if there is a possibility of multiple endings. It was a lot more fun back then with interaction between reader and author. Many times the author would grow to write novels.


Fanfiction.net ALSO has a sister site Fiction Press for original stories ONLY.

Also I forgot to mention that A03 sometimes I see fanfics that look like they escaped fanfiction dot net.

[Heatblizzard]

Originally posted by chaotichild:

Originally posted by Heatblizzard:

If you do only say please and thank you (unless that too suddenly becomes offensive for whatever reason) as you cannot point anything out or asks questions especially if the fic even remotely starts pushing woke.

God. Honestly your rant was already off putting but it really made it worse when you mention "woke stuff".

You're problems aren't with the site it self but the users. So I don't know why you bother interacting with them if they bother you so much.

Also why are you ranting about fanfiction on steam?

Also I don't care if a story has woke in it if they are honest about it as I can skip it (which is literally 75 percent of fanfic) but if they do a total 180 in the middle of a story and act like it's natural that's where the line is crossed where a canon character is suddenly gay when they weren't with no foundation for it other then just cause the author said so then laws of reality are changed which is a slap to the real author.

Like suddenly hijackers passports survive a plane crash with legitimate names or VIN numbers survive a high powered bomb explosion and are somehow readable to authorities. Cmon not all of us were born in a barn!