SpaceBattles

Forum · Message Board
Name:	SpaceBattles
Date(s):	1998-present
Moderated:	Yes
Founder(s):	Johan Alm
Type:	Message board
Fandom:	Televised sci-fi, Familiar of Zero, Worm, others
URL:	https://forums.spacebattles.com
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

SpaceBattles.com is a message board, an offshoot of SpaceBattles, a site created in 1996 by Johan Alm to display CGI fan movies, generally involving conflict between spaceships from various science fiction franchises. An original guestbook feature meant to allow viewers to provide feedback soon was overwhelmed by arguments and debates about the accuracy of the battles depicted in said fan movies. As a result of this, 1998 saw the creation of a forum that remains in operation to this day, and which over the years has become a major hub for several fandoms.

Site Culture

Fanfic on SB

SB is known for fanfic fandom of a type somewhat different from the big hubs. Anecdotally, more cis men frequent SB, and the fic is more likely to be gen adventure epics. Het and femslash are also popular. M/M is rare.

One fan describes SB and its spinoffs this way:

There are a few different sites which already focus on less-shipping-centered fanfiction. In particular, Spacebattles Creative Writing, Sufficient Velocity Creative Writing, or Questionable Questing are all fanfic sites that are much less focused on shipping compared to most of the fandom internet. This trio of sites started with SpaceBattles, with the other two being splitters for various complicated reasons (well, the SB-SV thing is complicated and fraught, QQ exists mostly because people wanted somewhere the SB/SV userbase could host and discuss explicitly sexual NSFW writing).

The most prevalent fandom in those three sites is definitely Worm, but there are lots of other fandoms as well. Fanfics tend to be sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, action, comedy, and similar genres, with almost no romance-as-the-main-plot compared to say AO3 or FF.net - and what romance and romance-subplots there is there, tends to be way less M/M and more M/F or F/F.

A lot of people crosspost - you can host fics across all of them if you want to, and since they're all based on the same underlying XenForo software the formatting for each is easy enough to copy across. If you are looking to post your own work, you could try both SV and SB and see which you like better. SV and SB are pretty comparable, I'd give a slight edge to SB's culture over SV maybe, and I think SB has slightly more traffic and users. SV has a slightly more active quests and questing community, though, if you're into that. QQ has a lot less discussion and posters, but if you want a similar userbase and want to post or discuss things that would violate the SFW rules of SB/SV, it's the option with the most similar userbase. I wouldn't use QQ as the only hosting for anything that would inherently abide by the rules of SB/SV.

Further reading

• Spacebattles broke Wormfic, here's how: by u/Pachycephalosauria, a 2019 essay proposing that the use of SpaceBattles caused some of the cliches in Worm fandom