Thank you Questionable Questing, for being there for us in this troubling time as the A03 in down

[ChaosSlimeKing]

First part is Just a general Thank you to QQ for still being up in the horrible times that we are in. Had recently just found some good fics on A03 too, profound sadness.

Second part is what really surprises me, in that in the little social media that I watch, most people don't even mention QQ or even SpaceBattles as an alternative to A03. I see plenty of mentioning the OG Fanfiction net, heck I even saw that parasite Wattapad try to get some new users only to get dog piled with "HOW DARE YOU STAND WHERE THEY STOOD!" I even saw some people mention Webnovel.

but

I've seen not one post in the wild mentioning QQ, Spacebattles, or even Sufficient Velocity, which is a funny yet confusing.

Thoughts?

 

[ProtagNeptune]

Maybe because QuestionableQuesting, Sufficient Velocity, and SpaceBattles are forums?

 

[Monsterboy]

Wattpad is shit. It's borderline impossible to find anything, filters and such are far worse compared to AO3 (esp. length), browsing is like using newreddit, etc. It's just a terribad UX. Not to mention tagging last I checked wasn't normalized like on AO3, so you'd get like one guy tagging a Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic PMMM, or puella, or the full name, and them all showing up seperately, this happens on SB and such too, but because it suggests the most popular tag (might write pue -> full title), it means the tagging is more consistent. Wattpad is also essentially a containment site.

For why the big three aren't mentioned? Mostly because AO3 had basically all the ex-fanfiction.net (and tumblr I guess) users, there are far more people on there than on SB, SV, and QQ combined. I mean, at least whenever the site asks for donations they get what they asked for in like, a day. Both SB and SV are repulsive to your average AO3 user because, face it, there's alot of erotic, romantic, edgelord, wishfufillment, and merely just mature stories that many write that simply wouldn't pass the censors (especially the hard no underage romance rules beyond handholding basically, when most anime/romance in fanfics tend to be underaged), they simply clash with the general SB/SV sensitivies too strongly to ever move there.

QQ just doesn't come up because of our lack of notoriety, and the inability to view most fics without an account. Otherwise it's a decent, though not a complete replacement. Can't beat the AO3 browing and filtering experience.

 

[queermunist]

Forums are just a different kind of fanfic experience than hosting sites like AO3 or FF.net - it's like how manuscripts used to contain all the writings of everyone that came before. Scholars would scribble in the margins of ancient texts all the time, and their contributions helped expand and evolve the original work. The forum experience is somewhat collaborative, even if the fanfic author is still the chief editor and team leader of the project. If you comment on a work, you're (in a really small way but still) a contributor!

 

[Renko]

Thoughts?

Click to shrink...

My only problem with Ao3 is how it doesn't seem to have the right tags for me to search the kind of stories that I want.

Either because those stories are not popular enough to warrant a proper tag or the writers of said stories don't even use the right tags.