Fanfiction.net/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



  • Why don't a lot people mark which characters are in the story at the bottom? Where it shows all the data like the word count.
  • One of my favorite authors wants to know how to get to her Fan Fiction.Net Inbox to check her PMs? How is this done?
    • She checks the e-mail that was registered into the FF.net database. They actually state that any PM's sent are sent to the user's email account.
    • A much easier way is to press the Log-In button on the top right corner. If you haven't logged in yet, do so, and it will lead you to the page with your inbox. If you're already logged in, it will take you there directly.
  • Why doesn't FanFiction.Net have any of the following?
    • RSS feeds for stories, in addition to writers.
    • An option to sort stories by review count. (Maybe view count, too - not sure if they count that.) This would help massively with finding worthwhile stories, though not as much as...
      • Sikon would like to disagree with the belief that view count and/or review count are indicative of quality. From my experience, slash tends to get more of both than Original Flavor, which is really what I browse FFN for.
        • Easily enough avoided. And I'd think there'd be at least a slight correlation - popularity has to happen somehow. It'd be closer to indicative than most of the other available statistics. And hey, they show review count anyway - why not offer sorting?
      • Gperson: The ability to rate stories numerically and thus allow for sorting based on how good people think stories are.
        • Like I said below, numerical ranking system.
      • fanfiction.net does tally view count, but that information is only available to the author (it would be useless to anybody else, since it's too easy to pad it). Anyway, if this frustrates you, you should totally try writing something for the website. There's nothing quite like being able to check the stats and seeing that the maximum number of people that read the whole way through (judging by the chapter with the lowest view count) is exactly 1.
        • Good news! Fanfiction.net apparently just added a feature that lets you see how many different people are reading your fics over a period of time. Now I can tell that it's not just one person constantly refreshing my chapters! And in the past two days, it's been in the double digits! Yay!
      • While this would be an amazing feature for readers it would be an utter disaster for fanfiction writers who aren't well-known already. With a sorting system like that in place virtually no one would ever bother to check out new stories since review sorting would be so convenient(and since they would by default have zero reviews they would not appear when sorted by reviews obviously).
        • Maybe if a review search had some kind of "reviews written per day posted" ratio, possibly compensating for chapters as well... meh. Either way, it's not going to work well, as proven by a later entry on this page. Do a search for the story with the most reviews, and you're going to find yourself reading "My Immortal".
        • Well, how do other media cope with "filters?" There's always word of mouth, and there are still going to be some people who hunt down new stories. The "My Immortal" problem simply can't be solved mechanically without numerical ranking.
          • Word of mouth exists in a manner of speaking. My preferred method of browsing for new stories is, when I find an author I like, to browse through their favorite stories and open a few that sound promising in tabs. Within the stories I like there... There's also Stephen Sokolow who at times does rather prolific fanfiction reviews, and who has a favorite list of over 200 stories, almost all of which I've liked. There's also a decent amount of cross-pollination between myself and my brother. He, to give another method, tends to just look for stories of over 100,000 words, figuring that if they're that big, they probably have had some time to get good. It doesn't always work.
        • The sad reality is that when you have a website as massive as fanfiction.net, creating filters based on perceived popularity will just remove another potential group of new readers for aspiring writers. It's already really hard to get any attention on the website (especially in popular sections such as Harry Potter, Naruto, Twilight, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII, etc., where new entries scroll off the top page in less than a day). There's also the fact that to get a large number of reviews, you either need to shamelessly plug it to death (kind of like what I'm doing now) or indulge in some type of publicity stunt. Or both. This ends up with the dilemma that people who don't want to wear out their welcome within the fandom ultimately won't get one in the first place as they toil in obscurity.
          • I don't even go to the site, but it sounds like it'd be cool if there were some kind of "Random Story" sidebar on every page with a link and a short blurb, and any author could add their stories to the rotation. And a search page with an option to sort results randomly.
    • A separate section of reviews, written for the readers' sake, as opposed to the current ones, which are written for the writer. If they added a numerical ranking system, this could open up so much in the way of "filters" and overall make it a much better browsing experience for readers.
    • A Harry Potter X-Overs section. It is the series that everything gets crossed over with sooner or later.
      • They recently revamped the system to make crossovers easier to find. Stories can now occupy two canons at once.
    • I would be happy if they just added some filter to exclude content. Would make it easier to find Gen Fic.
      • Or to avoid seeing fics involving characters you REALLY do not like.
    • A lot of amazing fics/writers are left undiscovered, and that includes ones who write the banes of the Fanfiction community...you really have to dig and be lucky to find decent fiction, and at least twice as hard to find the gems.
    • Beta Readers that:
    1. Have actually read/watched the work in question.
    2. Work on a timely basis.
    3. Offer actual criticism.
    4. Aren't just trying to get advance dibs on the latest smut.
      • Squealing Sandry would like to point out that there ARE good Betas, herself included. She works rapidly, thoroughly, and is willing to do real-time chat sessions to make sure she understand exactly what you want out of your story. She doesn't like smut, and is noted for being very good and honest, yet positive, about critiques and criticisms. The main problem is whether or not I've read/seen the work in question, since there are far too many for me to have seen everything... but what I have seen, I can help with.
  • Why is it that My Immortal has 11,000 reviews, more than any other story I've seen on FF.Net? Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past has 8,000, Shinji and Warhammer40k 522, Hearts of Ice 239, Hybrid Theory 236, Mega Man X: Whispers In Time 128, Destiny's Child 89...why are people spending so much time and energy telling the author of a 22,000-word story just how bad it is and drawing ever more attention to it?
    • Do the words "Trainwreck Syndrome" mean anything to you? (One must wonder how that's not a trope yet...)
    • My Immortal is a great meme. Whether one finds it funny because of the narm, annoyed/angry because of the bad quality, or, God forbid, actually likes the wretched thing at face value, it is a fanfic that compels people to share it with others in a "Oh my God, look at this" sense. Of course, that means many more readers, which means many more reviews from people who react emotionally to it.
  • Why is it so dman hard to find anyone on Fanfiction.net who cave actually give some constructive feedback? Seriously, so far, this troper has yet to receive any actual constructive feedback for it nor my other stories in The Pit. The low review count in general isn't really helping matters for me. In fact, I'm feeling a bit discouraged, as if no one's really interested in my stories...
    • Some of us don't leave feedback unless we've something meaningful to say. For This troper, I either leave nothing or I give you an 18-page long review pointing out discernible strengths and weaknesses. Also, as a note. When selective readers find good fanfiction, sometimes they feel like they have nothing to say.
      • Or know how to phrase it. Or, heck, even know why they like it. That's how it's usually with me, anyway. I might get it eventually if I ramble for an hour, but that wouldn't really help anyone.
    • It does seem unfair, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the truth is, non-shipping stories don't get as many hits as the shipping ones. This troper has been there, too. (8000 total chapter reads in almost two years.) However, this is not a sign that you should give up, especially considering that your oldest story is less than two months old. My first story took half a year to get four reviews. My second? Over a year. Neither had particularly comprehensive reviews. My third story, for over a year, had nothing but reviews that claimed that it should have gotten more reviews. My fourth story was the first one to get ongoing feedback and a few critiques. The fifth one? Completely niche, but it gained a few fans and C2s. And by that time, the sixth one was considered good enough to make it to Fan Fic Recommendations. The moral of the story? Keep writing. This is especially effective if, like me, you enjoy coming up with premises and outlines for your stories and are more interested in putting them out there than getting instant fame. (It helps that I've gotten enough favorites along the way to feel appreciated, and have never needed to feel like a talented writer.)
      • I have been on the site for five and a half years, and the most hits I have gotten on a story is just over 4,000 for an 18 chapter story. My highest review count is under 20. One of the stories I wrote at the beginning still has under 40 hits. (Granted, I've written for 2 4-digit canons, and 2 3-digit canons mainly) And five of my stories (which is admittedly under 10%) have never been reviewed. A couple more were only reviewed by my sister. But (with the exception of two love-it-or-hate-it and three mediocre stories) most of the reviews I have gotten are positive. While writing for Fire Emblem, I managed to get a fan to stick with me through thick and thin (she read most of my stories, despite most of them containing Ike, and her hating him). And, of course, I get several reviews telling me how they just hate key premise of what I just wrote (pairings, format, etc.) but liked my writing anyway. And there's nothing I like better than seeing someone tell me that my story made them laugh, and what about it they liked.
    • At the same time, as one of my reviewers told me, the fastest way to get people to read your stories is to read theirs. The Favorite Stories and Authors links engulf just as many readers as a wick on this site. And so do reviews.
    • As much as I'd love to leave concrit? First, as I mentioned above I don't always know how to phrase things (not being native in English doesn't help). Second, you never know if leaving concrit will be safe. Some will thank you, some will ignore it, some will go batshit crazy because by "concrit" they actually meant "praise me". And before anyone ask, no, "I want concrit" doesn't always mean the person actually wants it. Trust me on this.
      • ^ This. I personally work with an additional barrier--I'm in my 30s and tend to be very blunt-spoken, and I don't want to scare some poor kid away from writing because I miscalculated the level of criticism they could mentally take. I'd beta if my preferred fandoms (and overall tastes) weren't so far off the mainstream.
    • I'm terrible at leaving reviews, and I've been working on my one fanfic epic for a decade that has accumulated maybe seventy five reviews in all of that time. But, with the sites it's posted on, at least I can see who may have visited, if it's on their favourite list, etc, etc. That's what I end up doing with fics I like; I favourite them. So if the author doesn't get reviews from me, at least they see I enjoyed the story and read it.
    • I don't know about everyone else, but I don't give concrit unless the author specifically asks for it or says that it's welcome. I'm not a huge fan of unsolicited advice, so I don't give it. Even if that wasn't the case, I've heard too many stories about reviewers who got dogpiled by the author and their friends because when the author begged for reviews, what s/he really expected was across-the-board gushing praise. The thing is, a number of fanfic authors are just as egotistical, obnoxious and diva-like as any celebrity only without the fame (and talent in many cases), and those voices drown out those of more humble who really are looking for concrit.
    • Agreed, in my current story (here for incredibly shameless plug) I've got about 7 reviews, and only one offers any actual help to me as it pointed out a few grammatical errors, but even that didn't tell me of the quality of the story itself. I want criticism as I say in Author's Notes, and I don't mind if people are harsh, I just want to know what I'm doing badly so I can improve my work so everyone can have a better reading experience.
    • This totally came up when I tried to write a story for a contest on Deviant ART. I don't even remember why I brought it up at the time, but I mentioned in a reply to a review of said story that comments on Deviant ART are far more detailed than reviews on FF.net, and the reviewer agreed.
    • In regards to the people who say "keep writing", I have to ask...what if the story you're working in is, in your eyes, your "magnum opus" or at least the story you want read the most? And what if you're writing it at a time when you AREN'T a well-known writer? What would the chances be of other people reading the fic you want the most views and reviews for if it's not until quite a while after you've finished it? Oh, and this doesn't apply to me yet, but I'm hoping to eventually get well-known, but I am a bit worried.
      • Magnum Opus Dissonance exists even for the casual writer, and any attempt to prevent it will be an uphill battle if the work can't draw the readers on its own merits.
  • This may belong in the Deviant ART Just Bugs Me, but shut up, it's an important point. Why is it that comments on Deviant ART fanfiction tend to be more structured than the ones on Fanfiction.net fanfiction?
    • Possibly because you have to be marginally less of an idiot to find fanfic on devART. It's harder to locate the fanfic on dA than on the Pit, so only those who actually care about it are going to make it there, and they're more likely to write useful comments.
  • The "Parodies For Sale" crap on fanfiction.net. The authors are just showing how lazy they are by not only "ripping off" another popular work but also they don't want to write out their idea and want someone else to do it for them. Secondly, THEY DO NOT BELONG IN THE MAIN STORY SECTIONS OF THE SITE! All they are is a cast list and a short summary for each story idea and they belong in the forums, not with the other "fan fictions."
  • FFN needs to add a 'character block' filter. In my main fandom, my favourite character is Guy, my favourite pairing Guy/Girl 1, but the vast majority of fic is Guy/Girl 2 whom I cannot stand being paired up with Guy because of a multitude of reasons not limited to the fact that 99% of the fic written for that pairing is completely garbage. I basically have no way at all to find any Gen or character centric fics that aren't a pairing, because the filter for just "Guy" brings up every single fic for Guy/Girl 2.
  • FFN apparently banning second person point of view stories. Since when is this an invalid POV choice? I can understand the script fic ban, but 2nd person POV?
    • I know, right?! I once read this 2nd person one-shot and it was really good! They kind of suck you right into the action, so how are they bad enough to be banned? Is it because, in Real Life they aren't a very popular form/looked down upon form of writing?
      • Possibly FFN thought that they were too similar to, or they were abused to become Real Person Fics? Also one good story does not a pattern make.
    • Second-person is not banned on FFN. "Interactive stories" are banned (like choose-your-own-adventures and "Truth-or-Dare" fics). The guidelines merely note that many interactive stories are written in the second person. It doesn't mean to say that that point of view itself is banned.
  • On ff.net: I wish that we could sort stories by how many chapters they have. I mean, along with a word count thingy. That way I could look for a one-shot I had read before- or only look for one-shot things. I'm I the only one that feels this way? (P.S. I tried looking on this page for this already, but didn't see it, so if people have already pointed it out...)
    • They have word count, in a folder called Length, it's between the folder for whatever language you choosen for the fic and if said fandom have characters folders, otherwise status folder for in-progress / completed stories
  • I'm I the only one that has wishes that I could search for drabbles- kind of like as if they were a genre? ^^;
    • You are not alone, I would love that.
  • Does anyone know why certain section breaks (such as [line break] --- [line break]) in the chapters stopped working on FFN? It really breaks the flow of some of my stories that had multiple locations and groups of characters within each chapter, and makes them harder to read due to suddenly switching perspectives with no warning. And, with the exception of one that I found out about right after posting, they all worked before.
    • The problem's been around for a long time, though it may have come and gone. The best thing I can suggest is to extract your fic to an onsite document and replace the missing page breaks with the site's own provided horizontal lines. It's an irritating process, but it solves the problem and it's hard to mourn the tragic loss of three hyphens.
    • Ah, well at least this explains all the re-uploads and complaints about formatting I've seen in profiles as of late. At one point I thought there'd been stealth updates...
  • People on ff.net can be INCREDIBLY touchy and hypocritical. In a review, I told one girl to stop trying to act so "hood" because it was hilariously painful to watch her make a fool out of herself (and no, this wasn't just me being a bitch; she honest to God tried to rap me and a few other people out on her profile. I shit you not.). A few hours later, I got a PM from one of her friends calling me a racist and then turning right around and making a load of racial slurs back at me, most of which I can't repeat in civilized company even under the guise of a joke. I was so perplexed at this that I literally sat and stared at the screen for a few minutes, before bursting out laughing. But still. What's with all the hypocrisy, huh?
    • Gonna say what I said to someone else a while up: it's not just a FF.net thing, it's a people thing. Some people are touchy, hypocritical assholes. You're going to have to see a lot of touchy assholes in your life.
    • I will also say this: if the person you are talking to seems to be putting on a guise of some sort (pretending to be someone that they aren't or trying to hard to fit into a mold they don't really fit in), chances are they are the same kind of people who won't act mature. Especially if these people are telling their friends to go yell at their critics for them, instead of doing it themselves. And of course, the immature people will have immature friends. The best I can say is stay away from these kinds of people as much as possible, and if you find something like that again, just assume they are a lost cause and ignore them.
  • Why are reviewers on Fanfiction.net so Genre Blind when it comes to Troll Fics? It seems trolls don't even have to try to hide the fact that they are trolling anymore, as reviewers will always take them seriously and either try to provide constructive critique, or rant on and on about how horrible it was. I mean, I realize that some people have trouble with spelling and grammar, but if over half the words in a story are misspelled, it's most likely intentional. Not to mention that the subject matter often used in the fics. Yes, I get that some people write that stuff seriously, but there's a point where any doubt that the author is a troll is removed.
    • OHMYGODTHIS. One of my biggest pet peeves of all time is when someone can't spot a troll. All you are doing is giving them exactly what they want! Sorry, but no real person TiPees Lieke tiS. If yuo acuatly haf 2 go ouut off your wai 2 tipe teh wayy tey r, tey aintt reel.
    • Poe's Law. Even an egregious troll will be taken seriously if enough writers in a particular fandom are illiterate or bizarre enough and expect to be taken seriously.
  • Why is FF.net so inefficient to deal with trolls and story-stealers?
    • Read the introduction to the guidelines: "Fanfiction.Net does not filter content... we trust the author's judgement". If no one bothers to report the rule-breakers, then they get away with breaking the rules. Since many people genuinely enjoy Troll Fic, they don't want it removed, and so they don't report it. Unless the question is why is the policy there, in which case it's probably the same reason that we don't have a strict policy; it's more fun without one.
    • But that's the point, even if we report the stories, they don't do anything.
  • Why does Fanfiction.Net make you read the guidelines every week even if there hasn't been a change in over two years for posting new stories, but let you add new chapters without looking at it for two months?
    • Two months? I thought it was one day.
    • No. The small time limit is for posting new stories. Posting new chapters you can do without looking at the guidelines. I'm asking why that arbitrary distinction is there. Two months was just how long it took me to complete my last multi-chap story, which I never had to check the guidelines ONCE during.
  • I've seen this is many a shipping fic's summaries: "Alice blah blah blah blah. Bob blah blah. AliceXBob. No AliceXCarl!" Oh, really? I thought your fic clearly marked as AliceXBob would contain nothing but Alice and Carl making out! Silly me!
  • Why does fanfiction.net not allow people to sort stories on a profile by rating? They allow virtually every other way, excluding genre and character which makes sense because they are likely to have two different selections.
    • Oh God, I'd love to have a rating system, or something like a recommend feature. But to be honest, FF.net seems to be run with a very, very hands-off approach, so it seems unlikely that they would do that. Either way, though, I'd love to see something like that to help cut through the huge number of fanfics out there, especially for certain fandoms.
      • I second the love for a rating/recommendation system simply for the convenience of being able to find what you want when you want it, especially if you had the option of hiding low-rated fics. However, since the population of FF.Net has a large number of rather young and immature users, a ratings system would end up being essentially useless. Badficcers would demand high ratings from readers the way they currently demand x-number of reviews before they'll post the next chapter and they would get back at people giving them bad reviews by gathering their friends/sycophants and going to the reviewers' pages to give their stories bad ratings. A ratings system wouldn't end up reflecting quality in this case, but artificially inflated or deflated popularity. And that's before you figure in the people who would give My Immortal-esque trollfics high ratings just for the lulz or because they think it's So Bad It's Good.
    • I (the person who left the original inquiry) was talking about content ratings. K, K+, T, and M. And how even though the story lists them specifically, you can't organize by them on a profile. On the main site, you can filter them, so that's okay.
  • What is even the point of a site like adultfanfiction.net when fanfiction.net has a huge library of porn anyway?
    • Technically, fanfiction.net is not supposed to contain porn, but it does anyway, because people pretend it should be rated M when it should really be the higher rating (I think it's called MA even though that's confusing). No one reports them, though, because the people who like to read it... like to read it, and the people who don't like to read it ignore it. adultfanfiction.net, therefore, is for people who follow the rules and write porn.
      • As of June 2012 the owners of ffn have started another purge of MA fics and will presumably try to remove any story that could even possibly be construed as 'MA'. So the actual reason is that the admins of FFN never bothered to enforce their rules, for so long (10 years) that no-one seriously followed them.
  • For once, I'm not annoyed with anything; I just have a curious question. Let's say that a new book series called "The Adventures of Alice and Bob" becomes a hit. Someone writes a fanfic for it. Then another, and another. When does FF.net decide to give the Adventures of Alice and Bob fics their own listing in the Books section? I'd really like to know!
    • Go to "Help" at the top right corner of the screen and it will tell you how to request a new category.
      • Doesn't always work. Okay, this is a characters rather than a category example, but I sent FF.net a list of the Iji characters ages ago and it's still not up.
      • I've found it can take months for the emails to get sorted through.
  • On the page for posting stories, there's a section where you can include "Character 1" and "Character 2" in the description. Obviously, this is intended to denote pairings- but why isn't that more clear? I've seen more than a few people take it to mean "the two characters that are most important in the story- resulting in a Calvin and Hobbes fic being rendered as CalvinxCalvin's Dad.
    • No, that section is meant to denote the most important characters in the story. It's so that when searching for fics you can filter by character, which is extremely helpful in large archives (in fact, originally only the largest fandoms got the "honor" of being able to specify which characters appear in a fic, as it was considered unneeded for smaller ones.). It's only written as "Character 1/Character 2" for visual consistency (like how the fic's genres are written as "Genre 1/Genre 2").
  • Here's a REAL headscratcher... why don't more people on fanfiction trope?!? I mean, I leave so many easter eggs for tropers in my work, and no one is ever like TV Tropes FTW... even the ones whom I pm or review and vice versa. I've even actively recommended it to people, and they don't even acknowledge that I've mentioned it! And, seriously, this site would help a lot of new writers... I know I would NOT be good if I hadn't already been a fan of this site. Really... or is this just me? Is anyone else annoyed at how unnoticed this amazing site is, especially for a website all about fiction, where this site would really assist them in writing said fiction... no one even cares! That's the tearjerker of today's society people... (Rant complete).
    • It's possible that many of them do know about this site, but just see no reason to flaunt it. I'm a writer on FFN, and I almost never reference TV Tropes unless it's really relevant to what I'm trying to do, both because I don't want to confuse anyone who isn't familiar with the site and because I often find that it just isn't relevant.
  • *Somewhat related to above post about taking trolls seriously* What irks is me is when people take the plot of porn seriously or complain about the pointlessness of the kinks being used in fanfiction on the site. I came across one review that elaborated on how there was nothing to the fanfic being reviewed but pointless gore, and then asking the author what she intended the readers to gain from reading it. The fanfic in question was guro porn. The 'pointless gore' was the point. It doesn't matter if a kink is 'relevent' or not. Lemons aren't (usually) written so that one can admire the plot's complexety or they're characterization; they're written as fap material. The 'plot' is just a nice little frmae for one to hang the turn-ons in.
    • There are quite a few gornfics and lemons available. If they want readers, the writers should be able to provide a good answer to the question "what does your work offer that others don't?" Also consider how writers of far less bizarre fics are equally criticized if the story amounts to nothing more than Author Appeal Wish Fulfillment.
  • Related to many above questions, but this one is a direct question about it: Why doesn't fanfiction have a recomendation or 'tagging' system? I mean, say I read a story, that is full of really bad spelling, characterization, plotting, etc. I should be able to, in the review, give it a 'low' rating and mark it with tags such as 'bad spelling, OOC, terrible plot', etc. Or say, I read a story about my favourite character going on an adventure, getting a load of development and awesome moments while sticking to the cannon, and basically makes me cry with joy. I should be able to give it a high rating and mark it with things such as 'Awesome, Sticks to the cannon, well written'. Then, people looking for a particular story can either scan for these tags, or as suggested earlier, block certain tags. It would make it easier to find lengthy adventure fics that don't bash one or more of my favourite characters or feature a ship I find painful that itsn't marked on the summary. The filtering system is based on what the author says, but that doesn't mean we're going to like the things it doesn't mention.
    • Because that system is too easy to abuse, and people will say their favorite Troll Fics are perfectly IC, respect the canon, and even that one Leet Speak chapter has perfect English.
  • Wanna know what's weird? The fact that if you try to put in something like: "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!", and when you have it on the website, the scream or whatever is shown as simply: "!" It's so odd I actually lampshaded it in a story I'm putting up there.
  • I always wonder why FF.net doesn't have a feature where you can download a fanfic in some format (ex. .PDF or for Kindle .MOBI or whatever Nook reads). I've seen this feature at another fanfic site and I find it far more useful than to ACTUALLY go on FF.net on my Gen2 Kindle Keyboard, where the internet function is an experimental feature and barely passes for use and eats up the battery life twice as fast.
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