FanFiction.Net - Fanlore

FanFiction.Net

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Name: FanFiction.net aka FF.net and FFN
Date(s): October 15, 1998- present
Archivist:
Founder: Xing Li
Type: Fan Fiction Archive
Fandom: Multifandom
URL: http://fanfiction.net
Click here for articles related to this site on Fanlore.

Fanfiction.net is the largest fanfiction archive on the internet. It includes several thousand fandoms with several hundred new stories being uploaded daily.[1]

FF.Net allows readers to assemble lists of their favorite stories and authors, which function as public bookmarks and rec lists, similar to del.icio.us social bookmarking. It has also convenient story and author alert features to keep up with new chapters of WIPs and new stories from particular authors. Users can also collect stories in community lists based on the interests of the community maintainers, a function often similar to thematic lists which makes it easier for readers to deal with the large number of stories, especially in popular fandoms. Another useful feature is the stats page, where users can see how many people opened their story and where these readers come from.

FF.Net also allows readers to post reviews on stories, a community building feature that other automated archives lacked at the time when FFN was first established. FF.Net also has a public message board system.

Despite its huge popularity, FF.net has a reputation for hosting generally low-quality stories among members of many different fannish circles, including large portions of LiveJournal-based fandom, mailing list-based fandom, the Television Without Pity forums, and Godawful Fan Fiction. Because of this reputation, FFN is sometimes referred to as "the Pit of Voles"[2], "The Pit", or other derogatory nicknames. There even exists a hate community for the archive.[3]

Contents

Types of Fandoms

Total number of fandoms by media type
Total number of fandoms by media type[4]
Total number of fics by media type
Total number of fics by media type[5]

FF.Net is popular with fans from many different communities including anime fandom and media fandom. The top ten most popular fandoms are:[6]

Harry Potter alone accounts for nearly 14% of all the fics on FF.Net, with Naruto and Twilight making up 7% and 4% respectively.

Books

FF.Net users can specify whether they are writing for the book or movie version of a canon, but each fandom only appears in the index page for one media type. 80% of the fics in the book category are for Harry Potter, Twilight, and Lord of the Rings.

TV

No one fandom predominates in the TV section. There are similar numbers of fics for a wide variety of mainstream American tv shows. Doctor Who, Torchwood, Merlin, and Robin Hood BBC also have large sections. Series from other countries, including fan-favorite Canadian series, popular Asian dramas, and tokusatsu, are not especially well represented. (Many have at least several hundred fics, but these numbers are low considering the size of their fandoms outside of FF.Net.)

Anime

Naruto is the largest fandom in the anime category, but dozens of other popular anime series have sections with at least several thousand fics. Hence, while anime makes up only 19% of the fandoms on FF.Net, it accounts for 31% of the fic.

Movies

FF.Net lists many fandoms under their book format, so the movie category is relatively small. Some of the bigger fandoms in it are major franchises like Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and High School Musical. Some older or less famous movies like Newsies and Labyrinth also have large sections. Films from outside the US are not well represented.

Games

The Games category includes a wide variety of computer, video, and role playing games, but the majority of the fics are from games like the Final Fantasy franchise and Kingdom Hearts, which are associated with anime fandom.

Cartoons

Teen Titans and Avatar: The Last Airbender have particularly large sections.

Comics

Most of the comics fics are for US superhero comics, many of which also have separate sections for cartoons or live action movies. Some less mainstream comics also have large sections: The Jhonen Vasquez (author of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac) section accounts for about 5% of comics fic.

Plays/Musicals

RENT fic makes up 40% of this category, Wicked fic another 21%. Most of the fandoms are for Broadway productions, but Shakespeare also has a large section.

Misc

The Wrestling section is large. The Misc category also houses a variety of crossover sections and things like radio dramas and mythology.

Languages

The bulk of the fics on FF.Net are in English, but it also has fics in a variety of other languages. For example, in early 2010, the Harry Potter section had approximately 440,000 works in it. These break down by language as follows:[7]

  • 80% - English
  • 6% - Spanish
  • 6% - French
  • 3% - Portuguese
  • 3% - German
  • 1% - Other
    • >100 works - Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Indonesian, Chinese, and Finnish
    • >10 works - Danish, Turkish, Czech, Norwegian, Hebrew, Catalan, and Filipino
    • 0-10 works - Greek, Japanese, Romanaian, Bulgarian, Korean, Croatian, Scandinavian, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Latin

Naruto shows a similar pattern: around 85% of the fic is in English and only a handful of stories are in Japanese.

Controversies

Formatting problems

The uploading software of ff.net strips stories of certain elements, such as the asterisk (*) or double spacing. This forces fans to created creative line breaks, such as repeated pairing acronyms. Other fans post tutorials for inserting the desired characters into the text.[8]

Staff problems

Ff.net is notoriously understaffed.

(more details here)

RPF ban

Once upon a time FF.Net allowed fanfiction about real people. For example, in June 2001 there were more than 5,000 'N Sync stories on FF.Net.[9] In September 2002 ff.net announced that it would disallow music group and reality tv RPF (along with the NC-17 fic, see below) starting in April 12, 2003. Actor RPF wasn't allowed even before. (more details here)

NC-17 ban

In September 2002 FF.Net announced that it would disallow NC-17 rated stories starting April 2003, giving users time to prepare archiving those stories elsewhere, and one of the reactions was the creation of AdultFanFiction.Net[10] by other fans.

(more details here)

Songfic ban

Because of copyright worries Songfic was banned in 2005.

(more details here)

References

  1. ↑ Numbers based on freifraufischer's data. Accessed 6 December 2008.
  2. ↑ . According to the pottersues FAQ the term was coined in January 2002 in this blog post by Mooncalf/tsukikoushi. Accessed 2 November 2008.
  3. ↑ Anti Fanfiction.net on LiveJournal Accessed 15 September 2009.
  4. ↑ These figures are based on the index pages as of February 22, 2010.
  5. ↑ These figures are based on the index pages as of February 22, 2010. Percentages may be skewed by large fandoms like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Twilight having both their book and movie forms listed under books.
  6. ↑ This is based on the total number of fics shown on the index pages as of February 22, 2010. Numbers are approximate, but the large gap between #10 and #11 combined with the high volume of traffic on FF.Net and the length of time it has been open suggest that the top ten are unlikely to change rapidly (unlike on a smaller or newer site where an influx of users or a flavor-of-the-month fandom might have a radical effect). There is some effect from how franchises are listed, however: Final Fantasy, if counted as one fandom instead of many, would be larger than Kingdom Hearts. Various US superhero franchises are also split into their different tv series, movies, and comics, instead of being listed together.
  7. ↑ These figures were generated on February 23, 2010. The number of fics visible when viewing the fandom doesn't match the total listed on the index page, and new works are constantly uploaded, so the totals and percentages are approximate. Language names are taken from the FF.Net dropdown.
  8. ↑ Fanfiction.net Symbol Solution by Toboe LoneWolf on Geocities. Accessed 15 September 2009 via Wayback.
  9. ↑ See Talk:FanFiction.Net
  10. ↑ AdultFanfiction.Net
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