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As a reader, it depends on how the chapter flows. I've read very long chapters, and liked them just fine, and the same goes for short chapters. It really depends on how the chapter itself READS overall.

I personally don't like posting a chapter with less than a thousand words--unless it's in response to a challenge or is one of my drabbles. I think drabbles are my biggest challenge; describing a scene so that it draws people in with such a limited amount of words is difficult for me, because I. Like. Words. All of my actual chaptered stories, I try to keep a minimum of a few thousand words. Some are longer. Some are a lot longer. As a reader, I'm pretty much the same in preference. I love longer chapters, longer stories, the intricacies and details that can be revealed in a well-written work. Knowing this about myself makes me more aware that I need to branch out periodically, though, and so occasionally I find myself reading short stories, drabbles, and poems. Some are absolute gems--like the drabble collection A Karakura Ghost Story by black.k.kat on FF. And some writers are just worth reading, whatever the length of story or whoever it's focused around. DG and Kurahieiritr are right: the length of a chapter should probably depend the most on the story flow, style, syntax, and how it reads--both as a standalone chapter and as part of the whole.

The chapters for my Transformers Prime story really do average over 20k words and I get a lot of great reviews, no one has ever complained about them being too long. I know that long stories can be intimidating but I don't think that you should dismiss a story just because its long. I think you should check it out, and if the writing is good it will keep you so engrossed that you will be wishing it were longer. DG, I realize you must be immensely busy and its cool if you don't want to, but if you could get around to reading Transformers Prime the Truth Revealed; I would really appreciate your opinion. It's a love story between Jack and Arcee, with lots of original concepts I'm adding to the Transformers universe. There is smut but its woven into the story... mostly. Chapter 4 the smut is mostly for the readers but I'm trying to make sure that it doesn't detract from the story. If you do check it out please keep in mind that I don't have a bata and so there are likely to be some spelling errors, but not many.

I still need to update my own Recommended Reading and Favorite Authors. I'm very bad at remembering to do that but I've managed to get a couple of things up, from the vast list I have bookmarked. One thing about Originals is that sometimes our authors pull stories because they are either publishing that story, or their publisher has asked that they take down any online published works. In cases like that, I applaud them and wish them much success.

Guest, I agree wholeheartedly. They should have moderated their site better over the last ten years. If a parent assumes that the content of an "M" story on FFN is going to be comparable to an "M" game on the Wii/Xbox/DS/PS3 then they're completely shocked and appalled when they find that the content is actually "MA" and that their 15/16 year old has just been exposed to graphic sexual or violent content - sometimes ranging into extremely graphic (and frighteningly accurate) depictions of rape. FFN moderation has been laughable in the past decade, but hopefully they're turning that around, and this is just a starting point for them.

OPEN to all forms of expression by and for adults!

To some extend it comes from the fact that our name is 'Adult Fan Fiction' but I think Bronx said it best. Some of my favorite stories on here have no sex or it's just hinted at. That's not to say that we don't have a ton of smut (cause well we do) but there is no restriction that stories HAVE to have smut

As I've said, I began writing over on FFN, and was pointed to AFF to read a fic or two. I also had a few friends from FFN who'd published more explicit work here, and when I wrote my first MA work, this is where it went up. I'm in the process of cleaning up and posting a fic here that's not at all smut. I've done a batch of oneshots that are no sex. We're about writing, and the freedom to write what you want to write. Adult fiction can engage the mind and challenge preconceptions without always being smut. Having said that, the smut can be fun as well.

Wow! I am so not suprised. I joined up in '03 and refrained from scribbling smut on FFN and just threw it up here. And the only reason I kept uploading on FFN was because of the feedback (glad I'm not the only one thinking this). FFN forums could be a bitch warzone and I stopped posting when I got "screamed" at by an emo poster who took something I wrote out of context. I should say tone, because I was cracking a joke when the emotard mistook it for rudeness. And yes Twatlight and Fifty Shades of Shite has ruined the publishing industry, fiction, and fanfiction (after all, Fifty Shades started out as a Twatlight fanfic).