FanFiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own

A Comparison of Two Fanfiction Archives

Fanfiction is a widely popular hobby on the Internet today. Fanfiction has been around for decades, shared in fanzines or passed-around, type-written stories. But since the 1990s, there has been an explosion of fanfiction websites and archives online.

People share their fanfiction stories through online mailing lists, journaling and social media networks like LiveJournal and Tumblr, and archive websites. These archives can be small and focused on specific fandoms, such as Twilight, Star Trek, or Harry Potter, or they can be large and all-encompassing, open to almost any and all kinds of fanfiction.

Two of the largest and most well-known multi-fandom archives today are FanFiction.Net and Archive of Our Own. In this article, I will give a brief history of both as well as a comparison of their features, usability, and criticisms. There are certainly pros and cons to both archives, yet for a fanfiction author who wants to preserve their work and present it to a wider audience, using one—or both—of these archives may be worthwhile.

FanFiction.Net: The Internet's Largest Fanfiction Archive

Founding of FanFiction.Net

FanFiction.Net (FFN) was launched on October 15, 1998, by Los Angeles computer programmer Xing Li. Xing Li was not himself heavily involved in fandom but hosted the site on a server connected to his place of employment, where it was considered a test of the server's functionality.

FanFiction.Net quickly rose in popularity, being one of the few archives at the time open to just about any kind of fandom, not just a single specific universe, anime, or TV series. Originally, the archive was open to anyone over the age of 18 who wished to register for an account and allowed any storing rating from general audiences ("G") to explicit adult ("NC-17"). Stories about celebrities, including musicians, actors, and athletes (i.e., Real Person Fiction), were allowed, along with those stories written about television series, fictional books, comics, anime, and movies.

Advertising and Content Regulation

Eventually, the website needed to employ advertising in order to keep the server running due to increasing demand and use. However, registered members could pay for a premium account if they wanted to avoid ads and have access to other special functions. This function was not heavily embraced by users and was eventually abandoned in favor of advertising support only.

As the archive grew in popularity and size, certain types of content were officially banned, and other changes were implemented. In 2002, NC-17-rated stories were no longer allowed (although enforcement of this policy is up to users reporting stories; there are still many explicit-content fictions to be found on the site.) Real-person/celebrity fiction was disallowed in 2003.

Other topics such as songfic, choose-your-own-adventure, and non-fiction lists have also been banned through the years, although again, enforcement is spotty at best. The site has also disallowed fanfiction based on certain works after receiving requests from their creators, including authors such as:

• Anne Rice,
• P. N. Elrod,
• Laurell K. Hamilton,
• Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb,
• Raymond Feist, and
• Terry Goodkind.

In 2012, there was a widespread purge of adult content from the site, which had a widespread impact on fanfiction communities throughout the internet.

FanFiction.Net Today

The age limit for site registration is now 13. As of 2018, the site has over 10 million users and stories posted in over 40 languages. Its largest fandom is Harry Potter, with more than 800,000 stories posted in that category alone. Naruto is the second most popular fandom, with more than 425,000 stories.

FanFiction.Net also features active forums for users to discuss their fandoms; communities of moderated, hand-selected fiction; and a list of beta readers available to help authors improve their work. The site now has a mobile version, and RSS feeds one can subscribe to in order to see the latest works in particular fandoms, as well as apps for iPhone and Android.

5 Criticisms of FanFiction.Net

FanFiction.Net may be the largest fanfiction archive on the Internet, but it's not everyone's favorite site by a long shot. These are some of the common criticisms of the site.

1. It's difficult to find quality fiction amid all of the dreck.

As Sturgeon's Law proposes, 90% of everything is crap⁠—and that means there is an awful lot of crap on FanFiction.Net. Indeed, the site has long been known as "The Pit of Voles," derided as the home of some of the worst of the worst that fanfiction has to offer. Lack of proper spelling and punctuation, poor characterization, childish plotting, and blatant Mary Sues⁠—to many, this is what FanFiction.Net represents.

2. There are limitations on allowed content.

As the site grew to astronomical proportions and needed to start accepting advertising to stay afloat, it is not surprising that it had to start restricting content in order to be acceptable to non-adult-oriented advertisers. Yet that means that the site is technically useless to fanfiction authors who write about subjects or include content that is no longer allowed, such as bandfic or adult fanfiction.

Writers of adult fanfiction continued to post their stories on FanFiction.Net, however, as enforcement of these policies was poor at best. This changed in May 2012, when a widespread purge of adult-content stories began, angering many users of the site. Statistics on Fanlore suggest that over 17,000 Harry Potter stories alone were deleted during this purge, along with thousands in other top fandoms.

3. Sorting multiple-character/relationship fiction is difficult.

FanFiction.Net only allows one to sort/filter fiction within a fandom by two characters (Kirk and Spock in Star Trek). What if you are looking for stories featuring more characters or complicated relationships (yes, people do write Kirk/Spock/Uhura poly relationships, or perhaps love triangles such as Kirk/Uhura and Uhura/Spock)? With AO3's freeform tag system, it is much easier to label and look for such stories. On March 15, 2013, FanFiction.Net began to allow four characters to be assigned to a story, not just two.

4. The advertising is annoying.

Some users find the full-page ads one must skip over or wait to load on FanFiction.Net extremely annoying⁠—particularly those on slower Internet connections.

5. There's a lack of interest in punishing/banning plagiarist authors and plagiarism.

Plagiarism can be a major problem in fanfiction, as some think that because "all fanfiction is stealing," it's perfectly fine to steal another's words and claim them as one's own. That can be a fanfiction author stealing content word-for-word from a published author's work or from another fanfiction author (oftentimes only changing characters' names and minor details to publish a story in a different fandom.) When such incidents have occurred on FanFiction.Net, they have generally been ignored by the site administrators.

Archive of Our Own: A Multi-Fandom Nonprofit Fanfiction Archive

Founding of Archive of Our Own

Archive of Our Own (AO3) first launched in beta-testing on November 14, 2009. The archive is a project of the Organization for Transformative Works, a non-profit organization that promotes the legitimate and transformative nature of fan works, including fanfiction, fan vids, and fan art.