My Sob Story for the Week

[The Pairing Guy]

I'm afraid you misunderstood how much weight I was putting on the fact that my reader friends don't like smut. I take it as common knowledge that most adult readers don't like smut, and just threw out my own experience for personal flavor.

Somewhat off the subject, I'm starting to notice a curious trend about bulletin boards. If someone posts something like that without evidence, people generally leave it with "Of course, yes, that's obvious." But when something equally obvious is posted with some piece of evidence, someone inevitably jumps on it, "That's not proof, you've got no real evidence for that." So it's better to not state your evidence unless you absolutely have to.

Most people surround themselves with friends that think like they think, so it's hardly a compelling argument.

You're going to have to explain this to me, because I think this is exactly what makes it a compelling argument. If most people like smut, shouldn't I be able to find people like that to be my friends? Why is it that the only people I can find as friends are people who think it's deplorable for me to even read smut, never mind write it and extol its virtues?

But, the reviews I get here actually sound more mature. Most of what I get on ff.net is 'continue' or 'I liked it'. I've also gotten more flames on ff.net than aff based on homophobia.

This is probably due to the type of stuff you write. I like reading the reviews on both sites, and loathe though I am to admit it, if anything the reviews on FF.net are more mature. The two sites are about equal as far as reviewing goes, I think.

They should have created a sister site so the people whose works got deleted didn't feel like they were being cast out as something undesirable.

Probably by the time FF.net was big enough to create a sister site, AFF already existed so there was no real point in having one. Isn't AFF almost as old as FF.net?

Here is a fact: more people read my hard core work here than my softer fics on ff.net. Hell, the fic I have with the most hits is an anthology based on nothing but sex. Now, I can't speculate what that fact means without delving further into readership and other statistics, but it is a fact.

I don't see how you could know that's a fact, since AFF only reports hits, not unique visitors. And there's two major problems with hit counts.

One, people re-read sex scenes a lot more than other fiction. A reader who likes your AFF fic can be expected to revisit it at least 20 times. Surely you've noticed that the more chapters of a fic that have sex scenes, the more hits? This is because people revisit the chapters with sex in them and not the others. I do this myself. On FF.net, once you've read a story, you've read it. Even if it's one of your favorites, you'll probably only poke at it now and then. So at a rough estimate, 1 hit on FF.net is equal to 80 hits on AFF.

Two, FF.net has a different reader/writer ratio than AFF. A person doesn't come to AFF unless he likes reading the stuff. On FF.net you get kids who type something up during a lull in homework and post it just for kicks or because they think they'll be an instant star, and never give a thought to reading other people's stuff. This creates more fics to divert the attention of FF.net's pool of readers. On AFF you've got fewer readers, but they're chasing a MUCH smaller pool of fics.

When you say that everyone who visits this site just likes smut and are perverts, you sound like a troll and you're not exactly making anyone see your point of view by parading your beliefs as fact when you have no real proof at all. I don't hate ff.net and I don't hate aff, I like and dislike things from both sites, but you just sound like ff.net is so great and aff is some porno site that caters to degenerates. Not exactly winning over any sympathy here. Did you really think that bashing a site that you're currently visiting is going to get a bunch people saying 'mm, hm, you know what, you're right!' We're here for a reason, and so are you. If you think that aff is just for perverts, then what are you doing here anyway?

Because as I've already said, I'm a pervert and proud of it. And somehow I thought that the bulletin board for a website where over 90% of the fics are smut was a safe haven for perverts. I didn't realize that purveyors of such fic are unwelcome here and that the very word "pervert" is considered shameful.

I never bashed the site; I was making up a hypothetical scenario where someone on FF.net bashed the site. On the contrary, I said that this site is good enough that we don't need to bash FF.net to make ourselves feel good about AFF.

If I "have no real proof at all", then would you kindly point me to the non-smut/Darkfic tales in the Golden Sun and Riviera sections? I would like to read them.

I'm gonna play the bigger man and walk away from this.

The bigger man never says "I'm the bigger man." Just so you know.

There's no point winning the same argument twice.

I don't call distorting the other person's statements and making textbook argument flaws(look up "the silent majority") to be "winning the argument".

On a final note, from the April 2008 AFF update: "We're confident that these will vastly improve everyone's AFF experience, and, hopefully, keep it as cheap as the smut we strive to perpetuate." So excuse me for thinking AFF is a site for smut just because the people who own the place say that it is.

[MorbidFantasy]

The bigger man never says "I'm the bigger man." Just so you know.

No no no, you got me all wrong. When I say I'm the bigger man, I wasn't refering to some form of self righteous ingratiation where I've somehow forgiven you for your utter lack of respect towards your fellow peers and your similar lack of gray matter betwix the ears. When I say I'm the bigger man, I was refering to my penis.