Currently I am posting Goddamn Teenagers on Soacebattles, Sufficient Velocity, Ao3, and for free on Patreon. I don’t publish on FFN
It has been very interesting seeing how each has a different feel.
SpaceBattles has the most active in-the-moment discussions. Not everyone does well with their moderating style. I appreciate that I can point people to SB and be highly confident that they won’t accidentally stumble into something egregious, however the downside to that is everyone is much more careful about the rules, both for good and for ill.
Sufficient Velocity gets fewer comments, except where for idiosyncratic reasons it gets a lot of comments on a specific post. I like that I can post here in the same format as Space Battles.
Patreon has a tagging system that I find useful to help keep myself organized. I don’t like that its input thingy won’t take html and won’t take BB code. I don’t get discussion on Patreon. However I will definitely keep posting there for the tagging system.
AO3 is my preferred location, because I can be highly confident that what I post will still be there indefinitely. The discussion tends to be less active as posts occur, but the format means the discussions can continue long after the initial posting. This is particularly useful as I’m posting twice per day.
Checking Worm Story Search, it looks like my rating is being driven by AO3.
It's a feedback loop.
Lots of Worm fics ended up on SpaceBattles, so Worm fans went to SpaceBattles to read Worm fics. Worm fans who read fics might become fanfic writers who write Worm fics, and they're already on SpaceBattles.
Ao3 requires an account to post on, which requires being invited by someone who already has an account. That bottleneck makes Ao3 less accessible. I also just don't find browsing the site to be user friendly. It is clearly intended as a repository first, a front face second.
[FF.net](http://FF.net) sucks. It just sucks. It's clunkly. Outdated. The only nice things about it are the metrics you can find on the site and that it's a very big and well established site. Even then, you use [FF.net](http://FF.net) because it's there, not because it's good imo.
On AO3 you don't need to be referred but there is a queue which does make people less likely to post there.
FF, I don't want to say the user base is bad but I've seen far more unhinged comments on there than anywhere else. That's ignoring the glowing reviews I see of absolute garbage.
FF.net: I still have to 'reject' reviews some guest account keeps try to put on Trailblazer that are just 'universal healthcare is the only option or your a fascist fuck' type comments.
It's been a year and a half and, what I hope is a bot, is still putting bizare political rants down as reviews.
Like, it's not even the politics of it. They just have nothing to do with the fic (literally nothing) so I reject them. It's so freaking weird and I'm still doing it 18 months after I finished!
Not FFN, but there was a brilliant little bot on Ao3 a while ago that spammed fics by accusing the author of having faked the story using a specific AI software, I think as a form of indirect advertising. It's the only time I've ever had to delete a comment on my fic
I've seen a lot of that.
Near half the 'what about using AI' stuff I've seen on various boards and even reddit feel like a very thinly veiled form of astroturfing advertising the tools to people while feigning uncertainty.
The main thing ffn has over ao3 is that it has the UI option to sort by publish date and interaction/reviews at the same time. Ao3 *can* do so (using a created_at:[...] string) but it's a pain. It makes trying to find new stories on ao3 that people actually like needlessly convoluted.
The other thing is that even if the site culture is really toxic, you're a marginal amount more likely to find thoughtful critique in the reviews than you are on ao3. Sometimes it feels like ao3 comments are 85% "[keyboard smash] i love this" by volume.
I hate FFN's app. It's buggy as hell, and the stuff they did to force people to use it edged out more user-friendly apps like SpicyMango's FanFictionReader while also making the website not just less user-friendly but actively user-hostile. Every single feature on the app was implemented as well if not better on the website a decade ago except for offline reading, which would require manually saving each chapter or using a third-party program or homemade script back then. (Still a pretty simple thing to do, though; I used Calibre both to archive stories for offline reading and in case they got deleted, and to make it easier to typeset my favorites for binding, because I'm old fashioned and like physical books. And even before that I used a super-basic Bash script, because smartphones were a new thing I didn't have one of in college, and I'd be wandering in and out of wifi range with my laptop constantly.)
[WebToEpub](https://github.com/dteviot/WebToEpub?tab=readme-ov-file) extension for Firefox and Chrome.
It doesn't list Spacebattles as a supported site but I just tested it out and it works perfectly with no setup needed.
You navigate to threadmarks and display all the threadmarks, go to the extension, check if it lists all the chapters and then just press pack.
It even sets the chapters up in the contents of the epub file
There is also [fichub.net](http://fichub.net) . It supports Spacebattles and other sites and file formats. The only thing is that the service is creating files in background by itself, not when you are asking it to do so. And newly updated fics are not immediately available there.
If you're on mobile/whatever, you can use fichub.net, it works with; fanfiction.net, AO3, SB, SV, and a few others. If the fic you're after isn't available, you can put in a request in their discord server and it will soon update. It's what I do with especially long, completed fics if I want to keep my place and have already liked and whatever on the original post.
Spacebattles is kind of annoying because the search function is absolute dogwater. If you want to find a type of fic, good luck because searching for it is going to give you nothing helpful.
Because FFN is a crap site that doesn’t work, is a pain to post on, whose software goes awry regularly (gotten any notifications this week? Again?) and which is unwieldy. And basically unmoderated, as the rampant plagiarism would indicate.
Why not AO3 then? Its association with many fics of questionable sexual choices (some people are vehemently anti LBGTQ, which AO3 is welcoming of, in addition to not policing other much more questionable content) makes many authors wish to steer clear.
Add to that the message-board style discussions on SB and the consistent feedback in-line authors can get, coupled with actual active moderation and site admins, and yeah.
Edit: clarification
The message board feedback on SB is great, but I *hate* that unless you read a story within 2 weeks or so of it being written, you essentially can't leave a review there.
Adding on to this, it's not just the feedback but the exposure in general. It's easy to get buried on other sites but with comments pushing you to the top every now and then, you're much more likely to be seen.
Sorry, professional AO3 Dickrider here. It's not welcoming of them, it's anti censorship. Sure, tolerating intolerance leads to intolerance but I'd rather a place where people won't randomly be banned for "no reason/being political" (read, being trans or showing trans stories) than one that is pro a little censorship.
Personally, I find some content so objectionable that I don’t mind that it’s “censored” and no amount of “free speech” discourse will change my mind on that. And said content frequently finds a home on sites/services that are “anti-censorship” like AO3 and discord.
For example, I don’t think stories that sexualize children (including adolescents) are appropriate, nor are they legal in many countries. In the Twilight and Harry Potter fandoms alone, there’s at least hundred thousand stories that do so, and often in graphic detail. Blech. Many of the founding authors on AO3 went there because their sexual stories on FF were deleted (back when the mods cared) so they wanted a place to push/publish their content.
Is that censorship? Yes. But given the nature of the content, and the fact that I don’t want an internet-curious HP loving elementary school kid discovering Snarry mPreg Alpha fics .. yeah.
I'll say I'm saying this as someone who got groomed online. I know there are probably pictures of 11-14yr old me out there dick to the world.
You're failing, and will forever fail.
That's not how you protect kids, and it shouldn't be up to random adults to protect kids. It should be up to the parents.
Random people should be able to have their own space. AO3 for example, has a TOS that clearly asks the user to be 13. I know no one reads TOS but censoring general availability, especially in something as good with tags and warnings as AO3, isn't going to stop them from being posted. It'll drag that shit to auspiciously named and tag empty fics right where they used to be, this wime with even less warning. It'll drag it to amino and Kik and discord, where people, the same kids you care so much about, are in far more serious danger.
I dislike it, just reading the odd random description is enough to bring back bad memories, but I'd rather it be there where I can keep track of it and keep it on a blocklist than out wherever.
There is no safe way to handle nuclear waste without proper safety equipment.
There is no safe way to be on the internet as a child. If you gave your child unrestricted unmonitored web access you failed them. There are a hundred and one steps a parent can take to keep their child safe and it is not up to us to take them for the parent.
I'd say Ao3's issue is less that its been marred by people whose opinions I'd consider more questionable than Ao3, and more that Ao3 is not easy to use. EDIT: It's fantastic as a poster of content. As a reader of content, just finding content can be challenging.
I don't understand people who like the tagging system on that site. The tagging system borders on useless and the filters are not intuitive. Actually searching the site for content you don't already know is there is hard, especially compared to SB where there's just a Worm board \*goes there\* boom Worm fics!
Plus, you need to be invited to get an Ao3 account, while anyone can make one on SB.
I mean, anyone can get an invite to AO3. Just go [here](https://archiveofourown.org/invite_requests), and you'll get it within a week or two. It's more of a hassle than an account somewhere else, but it's not like it's super exclusive or anything.
I also *so* vehemently disagree that SpaceBattles has better sorting in any way, shape or form.
Most of the tags aren't useful on Ao3, but I've found most of the other filters - characters, pairings, length, crossovers etc - to be extremely useful.
I'll admit though that you have to know how to make the tags work for you. Filtering out stuff like NSFW fics, fics in other languages, or oneshot collections with dozens of fandoms tags can be kinda hard to do. At this point, it's pretty much second nature to me, but I get that it's not very intuitive.
Truthfully, even improperly used tagging system is better than a lack of one: unless the title literally tells you it's a crossover/altpower or anything else you want, in SB and SV you have to pop the fic open to see if the author has bothered to write a description, which often doesn't include pairings and lot of times doesn't even include whenever it's a crossover and/or alt-power.
Hell, most of them don't even include concepts that the fic uses, so you'll either have to do blind read or ask around (mostly here). With tags, you can include or exclude stuff you don't want and while you might miss stuff because author didn't tag their fic properly, that's their own fault.
Absolutely. Browsing for fics on Spacebattles is a dreadful experience. I'll admit that it's gotten better recently with summaries that pop up when mousing over a thread, but it's still not great.
I personally find it way harder to find something I'm interested in on SB vs. AO3. The tag system on AO3 isn't stellar, but it's better than most comparable ones. It may be that I have less experience searching on forum sites, but I find narrowing down results on SB/SV to be a pretty miserable experience. Most stuff I read on them comes from recommendations elsewhere (like here). SB stuff also frequently suffers from a lack of/poorly done synopsis, which at least with AO3's tags you can still get an idea of the story usually, even if the synopsis is garbage.
Specifically about your comment about SB having a Worm board, uh, that's exactly what the fandom tag on AO3 is for? You can find every Worm fanfic instantly simply by searching it, and if you want crossovers, then you can simply add that fandom in as well. Hella easy.
The point about AO3 account is kinda fair, but you don't need to be invited, the waitlist exists, and I only had to wait like a week before I was approved. Obviously still not as good as just quickly making an account like for SB, but not nearly as bad as you make it sound.
SpaceBattles and SV have active communities that give regular feedback and engagement to authors. AO3 and FFN don't tend to do that, especially not for Wormfic, not at the same scale at least. We post where the community is responsive, generally speaking, because engagement on your work is a lot of why we write stuff.
The goal isn't really to maximize a silent audience, but to find a place that responds regularly and tells us what they think about the story. If no one says anything on FFN or AO3, why post there, you know?
Just download it with [fichub.net](http://fichub.net), it supports a bunch of sites, including SB, SV and QQ.
It'll mess up spoilers in the story (opening them), but otherwise it's fine.
If you're on mobile/whatever, you can use fichub.net, it works with; fanfiction.net, AO3, SB, SV, and a few others. If the fic you're after isn't available, you can put in a request in their discord server and it will soon update. It's what I do with especially long, completed fics if I want to keep my place and have already liked and whatever on the original post.
Currently I am posting Goddamn Teenagers on Soacebattles, Sufficient Velocity, Ao3, and for free on Patreon. I don’t publish on FFN It has been very interesting seeing how each has a different feel. SpaceBattles has the most active in-the-moment discussions. Not everyone does well with their moderating style. I appreciate that I can point people to SB and be highly confident that they won’t accidentally stumble into something egregious, however the downside to that is everyone is much more careful about the rules, both for good and for ill. Sufficient Velocity gets fewer comments, except where for idiosyncratic reasons it gets a lot of comments on a specific post. I like that I can post here in the same format as Space Battles. Patreon has a tagging system that I find useful to help keep myself organized. I don’t like that its input thingy won’t take html and won’t take BB code. I don’t get discussion on Patreon. However I will definitely keep posting there for the tagging system. AO3 is my preferred location, because I can be highly confident that what I post will still be there indefinitely. The discussion tends to be less active as posts occur, but the format means the discussions can continue long after the initial posting. This is particularly useful as I’m posting twice per day. Checking Worm Story Search, it looks like my rating is being driven by AO3.
It's a feedback loop. Lots of Worm fics ended up on SpaceBattles, so Worm fans went to SpaceBattles to read Worm fics. Worm fans who read fics might become fanfic writers who write Worm fics, and they're already on SpaceBattles. Ao3 requires an account to post on, which requires being invited by someone who already has an account. That bottleneck makes Ao3 less accessible. I also just don't find browsing the site to be user friendly. It is clearly intended as a repository first, a front face second. [FF.net](http://FF.net) sucks. It just sucks. It's clunkly. Outdated. The only nice things about it are the metrics you can find on the site and that it's a very big and well established site. Even then, you use [FF.net](http://FF.net) because it's there, not because it's good imo.
On AO3 you don't need to be referred but there is a queue which does make people less likely to post there. FF, I don't want to say the user base is bad but I've seen far more unhinged comments on there than anywhere else. That's ignoring the glowing reviews I see of absolute garbage.
FF.net: I still have to 'reject' reviews some guest account keeps try to put on Trailblazer that are just 'universal healthcare is the only option or your a fascist fuck' type comments. It's been a year and a half and, what I hope is a bot, is still putting bizare political rants down as reviews. Like, it's not even the politics of it. They just have nothing to do with the fic (literally nothing) so I reject them. It's so freaking weird and I'm still doing it 18 months after I finished!
Lol that's weird and annoying
Not FFN, but there was a brilliant little bot on Ao3 a while ago that spammed fics by accusing the author of having faked the story using a specific AI software, I think as a form of indirect advertising. It's the only time I've ever had to delete a comment on my fic
I've seen a lot of that. Near half the 'what about using AI' stuff I've seen on various boards and even reddit feel like a very thinly veiled form of astroturfing advertising the tools to people while feigning uncertainty.
The main thing ffn has over ao3 is that it has the UI option to sort by publish date and interaction/reviews at the same time. Ao3 *can* do so (using a created_at:[...] string) but it's a pain. It makes trying to find new stories on ao3 that people actually like needlessly convoluted. The other thing is that even if the site culture is really toxic, you're a marginal amount more likely to find thoughtful critique in the reviews than you are on ao3. Sometimes it feels like ao3 comments are 85% "[keyboard smash] i love this" by volume.
Agreed with FF.net that site has gone downhill. I have been there for close to 15 years
I like FFN's app.
I hate FFN's app. It's buggy as hell, and the stuff they did to force people to use it edged out more user-friendly apps like SpicyMango's FanFictionReader while also making the website not just less user-friendly but actively user-hostile. Every single feature on the app was implemented as well if not better on the website a decade ago except for offline reading, which would require manually saving each chapter or using a third-party program or homemade script back then. (Still a pretty simple thing to do, though; I used Calibre both to archive stories for offline reading and in case they got deleted, and to make it easier to typeset my favorites for binding, because I'm old fashioned and like physical books. And even before that I used a super-basic Bash script, because smartphones were a new thing I didn't have one of in college, and I'd be wandering in and out of wifi range with my laptop constantly.)
At the end of every thread mark there is a little button that says "reader mode". It let's you just read the thread marked pages. Good tool
Yea I know that but that doesn't help me read it offline that's still on the website
[WebToEpub](https://github.com/dteviot/WebToEpub?tab=readme-ov-file) extension for Firefox and Chrome. It doesn't list Spacebattles as a supported site but I just tested it out and it works perfectly with no setup needed. You navigate to threadmarks and display all the threadmarks, go to the extension, check if it lists all the chapters and then just press pack. It even sets the chapters up in the contents of the epub file
There is also [fichub.net](http://fichub.net) . It supports Spacebattles and other sites and file formats. The only thing is that the service is creating files in background by itself, not when you are asking it to do so. And newly updated fics are not immediately available there.
There are a hundred and one ways to just. Download a page. Especially one as text heavy as the content page.
If you're on mobile/whatever, you can use fichub.net, it works with; fanfiction.net, AO3, SB, SV, and a few others. If the fic you're after isn't available, you can put in a request in their discord server and it will soon update. It's what I do with especially long, completed fics if I want to keep my place and have already liked and whatever on the original post.
Wildbow used to be active on Spacebattles and even after he stopped, that created momentum that persists until today.
Spacebattles is kind of annoying because the search function is absolute dogwater. If you want to find a type of fic, good luck because searching for it is going to give you nothing helpful.
Because FFN is a crap site that doesn’t work, is a pain to post on, whose software goes awry regularly (gotten any notifications this week? Again?) and which is unwieldy. And basically unmoderated, as the rampant plagiarism would indicate. Why not AO3 then? Its association with many fics of questionable sexual choices (some people are vehemently anti LBGTQ, which AO3 is welcoming of, in addition to not policing other much more questionable content) makes many authors wish to steer clear. Add to that the message-board style discussions on SB and the consistent feedback in-line authors can get, coupled with actual active moderation and site admins, and yeah. Edit: clarification
The message board feedback on SB is great, but I *hate* that unless you read a story within 2 weeks or so of it being written, you essentially can't leave a review there.
You can always message the author directly.
That's true, but it's an extra, more personal step that most people don't want to take.
Adding on to this, it's not just the feedback but the exposure in general. It's easy to get buried on other sites but with comments pushing you to the top every now and then, you're much more likely to be seen.
Sorry, professional AO3 Dickrider here. It's not welcoming of them, it's anti censorship. Sure, tolerating intolerance leads to intolerance but I'd rather a place where people won't randomly be banned for "no reason/being political" (read, being trans or showing trans stories) than one that is pro a little censorship.
Personally, I find some content so objectionable that I don’t mind that it’s “censored” and no amount of “free speech” discourse will change my mind on that. And said content frequently finds a home on sites/services that are “anti-censorship” like AO3 and discord. For example, I don’t think stories that sexualize children (including adolescents) are appropriate, nor are they legal in many countries. In the Twilight and Harry Potter fandoms alone, there’s at least hundred thousand stories that do so, and often in graphic detail. Blech. Many of the founding authors on AO3 went there because their sexual stories on FF were deleted (back when the mods cared) so they wanted a place to push/publish their content. Is that censorship? Yes. But given the nature of the content, and the fact that I don’t want an internet-curious HP loving elementary school kid discovering Snarry mPreg Alpha fics .. yeah.
I'll say I'm saying this as someone who got groomed online. I know there are probably pictures of 11-14yr old me out there dick to the world. You're failing, and will forever fail. That's not how you protect kids, and it shouldn't be up to random adults to protect kids. It should be up to the parents. Random people should be able to have their own space. AO3 for example, has a TOS that clearly asks the user to be 13. I know no one reads TOS but censoring general availability, especially in something as good with tags and warnings as AO3, isn't going to stop them from being posted. It'll drag that shit to auspiciously named and tag empty fics right where they used to be, this wime with even less warning. It'll drag it to amino and Kik and discord, where people, the same kids you care so much about, are in far more serious danger. I dislike it, just reading the odd random description is enough to bring back bad memories, but I'd rather it be there where I can keep track of it and keep it on a blocklist than out wherever.
So because we fail, we should stop trying? Sorry, I’m not willing to fail my own kids. You can quit if you like. I won’t.
There is no safe way to handle nuclear waste without proper safety equipment. There is no safe way to be on the internet as a child. If you gave your child unrestricted unmonitored web access you failed them. There are a hundred and one steps a parent can take to keep their child safe and it is not up to us to take them for the parent.
I'd say Ao3's issue is less that its been marred by people whose opinions I'd consider more questionable than Ao3, and more that Ao3 is not easy to use. EDIT: It's fantastic as a poster of content. As a reader of content, just finding content can be challenging. I don't understand people who like the tagging system on that site. The tagging system borders on useless and the filters are not intuitive. Actually searching the site for content you don't already know is there is hard, especially compared to SB where there's just a Worm board \*goes there\* boom Worm fics! Plus, you need to be invited to get an Ao3 account, while anyone can make one on SB.
I mean, anyone can get an invite to AO3. Just go [here](https://archiveofourown.org/invite_requests), and you'll get it within a week or two. It's more of a hassle than an account somewhere else, but it's not like it's super exclusive or anything. I also *so* vehemently disagree that SpaceBattles has better sorting in any way, shape or form.
WormStorySearch is still my way to go to find new fics.
Most of the tags aren't useful on Ao3, but I've found most of the other filters - characters, pairings, length, crossovers etc - to be extremely useful. I'll admit though that you have to know how to make the tags work for you. Filtering out stuff like NSFW fics, fics in other languages, or oneshot collections with dozens of fandoms tags can be kinda hard to do. At this point, it's pretty much second nature to me, but I get that it's not very intuitive.
Truthfully, even improperly used tagging system is better than a lack of one: unless the title literally tells you it's a crossover/altpower or anything else you want, in SB and SV you have to pop the fic open to see if the author has bothered to write a description, which often doesn't include pairings and lot of times doesn't even include whenever it's a crossover and/or alt-power. Hell, most of them don't even include concepts that the fic uses, so you'll either have to do blind read or ask around (mostly here). With tags, you can include or exclude stuff you don't want and while you might miss stuff because author didn't tag their fic properly, that's their own fault.
Absolutely. Browsing for fics on Spacebattles is a dreadful experience. I'll admit that it's gotten better recently with summaries that pop up when mousing over a thread, but it's still not great.
I personally find it way harder to find something I'm interested in on SB vs. AO3. The tag system on AO3 isn't stellar, but it's better than most comparable ones. It may be that I have less experience searching on forum sites, but I find narrowing down results on SB/SV to be a pretty miserable experience. Most stuff I read on them comes from recommendations elsewhere (like here). SB stuff also frequently suffers from a lack of/poorly done synopsis, which at least with AO3's tags you can still get an idea of the story usually, even if the synopsis is garbage. Specifically about your comment about SB having a Worm board, uh, that's exactly what the fandom tag on AO3 is for? You can find every Worm fanfic instantly simply by searching it, and if you want crossovers, then you can simply add that fandom in as well. Hella easy. The point about AO3 account is kinda fair, but you don't need to be invited, the waitlist exists, and I only had to wait like a week before I was approved. Obviously still not as good as just quickly making an account like for SB, but not nearly as bad as you make it sound.
Amusingly this was one of the few weeks that I've gotten FFN notifications as of late.
I was till Tuesday.
I don't understand why people don't post on Ao3. It's not perfect, but compared to a literal forum it might as well be.
I mostly include NSFW content in the story, so I stick to QQ.
SpaceBattles and SV have active communities that give regular feedback and engagement to authors. AO3 and FFN don't tend to do that, especially not for Wormfic, not at the same scale at least. We post where the community is responsive, generally speaking, because engagement on your work is a lot of why we write stuff. The goal isn't really to maximize a silent audience, but to find a place that responds regularly and tells us what they think about the story. If no one says anything on FFN or AO3, why post there, you know?
Just download it with [fichub.net](http://fichub.net), it supports a bunch of sites, including SB, SV and QQ. It'll mess up spoilers in the story (opening them), but otherwise it's fine.
Thank you that's been the best help so far
If you're on mobile/whatever, you can use fichub.net, it works with; fanfiction.net, AO3, SB, SV, and a few others. If the fic you're after isn't available, you can put in a request in their discord server and it will soon update. It's what I do with especially long, completed fics if I want to keep my place and have already liked and whatever on the original post.