fanfiction.net: oh

[greenjudy]

It's been so long since I've spent more than, say, fifty seconds looking at ff.net, that I had no idea what was there anymore. There's Turks!fiction in there, by actual writers.

I feel kind of dorky now.

Comments

[greenjudy]

That's where I've been posting stuff. The population there is growing, it's just that I had not quite realized what a complex conversation has been going on in ff.net all this time.

[joey112]

it's getting so you can find about anything somewhere. But there's a lot of fun in that.

[greenjudy]

I suppose that's true! I need to be less provincial...

[calalillith]

Eh? Why dorky..? :P

[greenjudy]

It's been a bastion of writing for FFVII. There are maybe 1100 FFVII pieces on Archive of Our Own (AO3); there are about 35,000 on ff.net. Granted, there are reams of nonsense, but ff.net also seems to have been home to some very good writers that I missed.

[licoricealsorts]

I like ff.net. Don't know why. The formatting is constrictive and the pages are't easy on the eye. Still, I am constantly scouring its lists, trying to identify those actual writers of Turkfic and putting them on author alert. I'm guessing that many young writers or writers new to fanfiction would post there first; AO3 seems a little harder to find for those who aren't in the know. That said, the quality of writing on AO3 is very high.

[greenjudy]

I am kind of used to AO3 at this point; maybe, with patience, we'll see more FFVII fiction accumulate there. It was just an eye-opener for me to take a closer look, and read some reviews.

I had no idea what kind of body of work you'd produced over there. Are you planning to export the rest of "Death" to AO3 at some point?

ff.net

[licoricealsorts]

I have been very, very fortunate in my wonderful reviewers at ff.net -they've given me a huge amount of useful concrit, as well as some delightful ego-stroking. (A spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down.) I stopped posting at AO3 when I decided that I would rather post the whole thing as a first draft at one site only, then work from the concrit to produce a final version which I would post at AO3 and LJ. I'm thinking of including illustrations, because both AO3 and LJ support this, but my drawing skills are nowhere near as good as I'd like them to be. I need more practice, but I have no time.

Re: ff.net

[redcherryamber]

Ooh - do you draw? Do you think most writers have a go? I've always 'illustrated' stories in notebooks as I write. I wish so much that I could translate head-images onto paper. When someone invents a brain-scanner that puts images from the mind into photoshop I'll be laughing!

[flecksofpoppy]

FF.net regularly makes me want to die, and then feel exhilarated. It really is the land of polar opposites. I have read some incredible fics on there that I haven't found anywhere else; I have also spent hours sifting through horrifying Reno/Rude or Tseng/Rufus fics in my desperate search for more that I haven't read, that use all the obvious, old, AWFUL cliches. Etc.

Frankly, I think the issue with FF.net is the disparity in age. I've noticed that with older fandoms, the writers are generally...well...older. And when I say older, I mean, like...adults, and not high school students. (Some can write; many cannot. I mean, I couldn't when I was 15. Good lord, I totally wrote FFVII when I was 15 and it SHAMES ME TO THIS DAY.) On the other hand, I've read some of the most incredible Turk fics I've ever seen on there. It's just...a matter of sifting. So much sifting. But there are diamonds in the rough...only it's like, sparkly shiny wonderful diamonds in a garbage dump that smells really bad.

[greenjudy]

(This reminds me of our old vow to produce a back-of-the-fridge FFVII challenge.)

I think I backed out of ff.net after a few too many eyeball-scarring reading experiences, but what I never encountered, because I wasn't around long enough, was the reviewing culture, which in many respects seems to be fantastic (as LAS notes, above). I'd like to see more reviewing like that go on at AO3.

I'm interested in your impression that FFVII writers might be on the older side. Do you think the Compilation has shifted the demographic? There seem to be a lot of Zack fans out there in their teens.

[flecksofpoppy]

Well, I think one reason that the reviews are decent on FF.net is because there are a lot of people on there, so the opportunity for good C&C is greater. Also, sometimes I think that people are more likely to comment on something if other users have as well. Some readers feel insecure about leaving comments. I don't have this problem; just a huge mouth, but I know that this is an issue for some people.

However, unrelated to quality of content, one huge reason that I spite FF.net is its formatting process. It makes want to die. Their user interface is so bad. But...it can't be denied that you get more readers, some really decent C&C and can find some amazing fics. I'll be the first to admit that--for real, one of my favorite, favorite, favorite Reno/Rude plate drop fics I've ever read was found on there. It shocked me so much after sifting through crap for hours that my heart nearly stopped

[pennies_4_eyes]

Notraffic has written some of my favorite Rude/Reno fics of all, so I had to chime in. :P