Curious what fics or elements of fandom people remember as being really big that either don't exist anymore, or that nobody that's been in the fandom for say last five years would consider nothing but a teetering dinosaur.

I remember back before Daphne had her own tag on ffnet, and you had to just hit up Slytherin Harry stories or search HPDG and hope for the best. There was a time when the oldest tagged story there, Veritaserum Surprise, was a top 25% of existing Daphne fics. Everything was pretty terrible.

I remember a fic called The Machine which isn't online anymore and which was awful but every Daphne fan had read it because it was over 20k. It featured Harry coming back after either 4th or 5th year being so disgusted with everything that he 'surprise' became A Machine... ie, he 'showed no emotions' and just sat in the library all day reading all the books. Daphne sat beside him at some point and starting talking to him which he ignored. But she was 'wearing him down'. Literally thousands of words of Harry ignoring a girl in the library.

There were the days of shit flinging between various ships in the fandom. Primarily I remember Portkey and SIYE.

As much as most of it sucked quality-wise, fanficiton was much more creative before book six came out. Without horcruxes, people came up with all sort of wild ideas as to how Harry might defeat Voldemort. Granted, a lot of them ended up involving training montages inside of trunks, but there were a lot of interesting ideas even if they were poorly executed.

Book six also killed off fem!Blaise. Some of you might find this bizarre, but even though literally the only Blaise anyone knows is Blaise Pascal, a sizeable chunk of fandom went with fem!Blaise who was usually a proto-Daphne. Went there myself. Good times.

I remember Winky being a bigger deal in most indie Harry fics. Do people still bother with Harry getting house elves? There was a time when it felt like every other fic treated Winky as this free powerful that Crouch threw into the ether and Harry picks up because why not. In a way, Winky was what Kreacher became in book 7.

Everyone in the Harmony world paired Ron with Luna if they liked Ron, or Neville with Luna if Ron was actually the next Hitler and tried to rape Hermione. Maybe they still do, but I suspect they writein Rolf nowadays.

I feel like ice-princess Daphne existed prior to Jeconais, but my memory canon is that his was the first to really popularize the trope. At least in a way that people weren't embarrassed to admit they read.

Indie Harry was HUGE on the idea that all magic could be good or bad. There was always an argument that was more or less copy pasted into every single indie Harry story. Wingardium Leviosa could be used to hurl someone off a building. Avada Kedavra used properly was magical euthanasia. I'm not kidding almost word-for-word this conversation took place between Harry and <mentor>.

 

Considering how poorly the vast majority of fanfictions read I think it's safe to assume that most of the fanfiction community hadn't yet made it through basic algebra.

 

Azkaban Harry was a surprisingly big thing, with even its own DLP section, I guess that betrayal and revenge is like crack to teenage readers. In fact, it was one of those fics that led me to the English side of HP fandom. Back when I was a wee lad, tricked by some fake book six into joining the fandom, I spent my days drowning in the sappy romantic fics that inundated the local fan site (though there was this one rad fic where everyone used swords and had auras and had anime-like special powers). Until one day, from the foreign and exotic lands of fanfiction.net came an unauthorized translation of, iirc, Earl of the North. What is this!? Harry paired with Bellatrix (who is actually a misunderstood babe)? Inheritance of magical titles? Betrayal?

That had been an enormous breath of fresh air for me, but the scrub that was translating it hadn't caught up with the original. So, armed with a trusty dictionary/translator software I trundled along the rest with my bare hands. After finishing what was available and having tasted The Edge, I was changed forever, I needed MORE. And in my search, I eventually found a certain bastion of Independent, Dark and Azkaban fanfiction of the time.

Not only that, but, usually alongside the Morals of Magic™, the classical Indy Harry also presents with that one long ass tirade and explanation on how Dumbledore, the Weasleys and everyone else the author dislike sucks and is secretly evil all along. Though I guess since this shit is still common as fuck it's not something that needs reminiscence.

And while we may mock on how it seemed that nobody realized Blaise was a boy's name, at least her characterization was more varied than the latecomer Daphne. Though nowadays, were I to read a fem!Blaise, I probably wouldn't be able to avoid picturing her as a dark skinned guy every once in a while.

 

For some reason, I always equate Azkaban fics as being Harry/Bellatrix/Tonks.

The formula usually being that Harry was accused of murder or whatever, Ron and Hermione would burn his possession and snap Hedwig's neck, and then Harry was banished to Azkaban.

Then a few years later everyone would realize they needed Harry, they'd all get on a boat and apparently the Aurors hadn't been reporting that in the interim Harry had taken over the island and made it into a personal fiefdom. Probably because the Auror in charge of Azkaban was Tonks, who was now in a three way relationship with a boy who was around 13 when she met him, and her aunt.

 

Wow, I had been under this impression that I had been missing something, writing DC nonsense on a different account as I was. Honestly I wasn't even at that for as long as some people have been writing, but that was more or less my entire introduction to fanfiction. I suppose I shouldn't be too glad that there was this long period of history where all the works were silly, as opposed to just ninety percent of them, but at least this means I don't have much catching up to do.
For the record my introduction to the Harry Potter fanfiction universe was A Second Chance at Life, though that was a few years after it came out, only to have the author just drop the sequel at some point, which was where I think a much more annoyed version of myself decided to never drop anything that I had published. If we're looking into historical perspectives, I'd like to know if there's some way of telling whether abandoning stories has become more or less common; it seemed like it was all over the place only just a few years ago.
My elder brother, who introduced me to Harry Potter fanfiction seemed to recommend quite a few stories in which the titular character 'can actually think' which was a criticism of the canon version at the time, if an unfair one. He also liked HPMOR, whatever that tells you.

 

When I first got into fanfic, I thought the absolute COOLEST thing in the world was Harry growing his hair long and pulling it back because he's now proud of his scar, getting rid of his glasses (either through magical means or just contacts, idk), taking up a jogging regime around the lake, and just being some super dope dude. All the women wanted him, all the men wanted to be with him, etc etc.

I must've read at least 10 fics where some variation of this happens, but I can't actually remember the ending of either of them. Perhaps they were all abandoned, or perhaps he just defeated Voldemort in the absolute lamest way and I just didn't bother to read it.

I think exercise Harry has mostly been phased out at this point, and the wish fulfillment aspect has changed as well. Now instead living vicariously through a Harry who's in shape and popular with women, we live vicariously through a Harry who get's super strong with his magic.
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I never understood why authors would make James and Lily neglectful. Even if one son is more important to wizarding society because he killed Voldemort, they shouldn't love the other son less, right? Like what kind of parents are they?

 

I don't really remember that pairing being a common thing, perhaps a difference in our formative fictions from the Azkaban genre (if we can call it that way).

Yeah, it had little variance even in comparison to its Independent peer, but there were plenty of cheap satisfactions to be found. There was the coming back after a conga line of betrayal and suffering, returning to either the pleas or fears of the traitors. There was the rebirth from the ashes, becoming more powerful through a mean that felt more deserving than the usual training montage or innate power level/inheritance (though similarly idiotic). And of course, returning with a hot older woman (or two).

I think an interesting bit was that, aside from a few revenge porn ones, the quintessential Azkaban fic would have Harry become dark but not evil (another obnoxious thing related with the previously mentioned "there is no good or bad magic"). And his "revenge" tended to be just rubbing the traitors' faces on how wrong they were. The authors always made sure to keep Harry's moral high ground, with the justification for Bellatrix crimes being the Ur-example to this (poor imperioused Bella). Something that made her vastly less interesting as a character.

And since @Sorrows mentioned the WBHL fics, perhaps one could even call those the heirs of Azkaban. There's the same suffering and neglect from false tales, only to later slap the assholes with the Truth. I guess it speaks to the teenage desire to be a wronged tragic figure in opposition to everyone else, that just don't get it, and finally show them all.

 

It isn't fandom specific, but since the adult content ban on Tumblr, I've seen it suggested that fandom returns to the lemon/lime tags for smut, usually followed by younger writers/artists asking WTF that means.

 

I'm definitely not of an age that I can honestly say I remember much of the Before Time, when the books and the films hadn't all come out yet, but I do remember that ~poetic~ ship names were huuuuge in a bunch of fandoms.

Like, I was into Pokemon for a while, and there was this gigantic list of what each possible pairing was called. I think Ash/Gary was Rivalshipping or Palletshipping or whatever. And this list went on for hundreds of entries, all with their unique name that was somehow "meaningful".

The same thing also got its claws into HP fandom for a while. There's of course "Harmony" and its followers, Harmonians: those poor delusional fuckers that thought Harry and Hermione were/are a good pairing. When Luna gets into the mix (which was weirdly popular for a significant stretch of time?) it's called Lunar Harmony. Sirius and Remus getting together was called "Wolfstar" (among other things).

Nowadays, we mostly use portmanteaus, if we use ship names at all: Harry/Daphne, when not just called that, is sometimes "Haphne", but just as likely to be HP/DG or just H/D. That's definitely a change for the better, IMO.

 

Terrible, Mary Sue wish-fulfillment stories which made me quit reading HP fanfiction for years until I discovered DLP.

 

Severitus fics, Severus Snape as Harry's father as an optional element. Like Azkaban fics, they were a staple of the fandom for a good while. DLP even had a Severitus category when I joined along with that Azkaban category.

Much of this came about from the one-on-one teaching of esoteric magic (Occlumancy) by an admitted dark wizard, Snape's perennial desire for the Defense of the Dark Arts teaching gig, and the revelations that Snape and Lily were close friends as children and later at Hogwarts. It just seemed that Snape had a lot to offer Harry by way of training and mindset if you wanted an edgier protagonist.

By the time book seven came about with its redeemed Snape thing, the trope had largely run its course.

 

I remember having to search fem!blaise and daphne in the search box to find anything. Sometimes you also had to search normal blaise to find fics by authors who never specified, which was probably half of them. As for Daphne fics, it seems like tons of them have been removed over the years. Like, my original Daphne fic is one of the 100 oldest Daphne fics on FFN, and I vaguely recall there being like 350 fics before I posted it.

Also the summary - HP/DG. Follow Harry as he tries to broaden his horizons beyond Dumbledore's control. A new look on GoF. slight!Dumblebashing. Ron!bashing elemental magic, nonstandard!animagus forms. Sirius is free! independant!powerful!Harry 99.9% complete

I feel like that's not just a summary of my story, but of every story from 2005 to 2011.

 

This is still a thing in some fandoms, RWBY most notably. There's even a helpfup OT3/OTOrgy chart, the degenerates.

My early fandom days were spent in things like Inuyasha, Eragon, and Wheel of Time. When I moved over to HP, that was in the early days of Harry/Fem!Blaise(Sup JoeHundredAire). Make a Wish from Rorschach's Blot was pretty big. Summer of Change from Lorddwar was the defining Harry/Tonks fic that created half the tropes we all hate today, from secret agent unspeakables to Tonks' true form and goblin friends for knowing their names. There was a spate of time travel fics for a bit that I think S'Tarkan is mostly responsible for. Lots of going back and pwning the Dursleys and running rings around Dumb-as-a-door. Ooh, the Molyshorts era. Lots of Harry/Narcissa/Bellatrix fics, sometimes Tonks too for flavor.

I'll second the "machine" age, there were fics named "Hollow" or talking about "masks" bad Naruto fic style. There was a flash in the pan of Het male veela fics(that we even participated in) that eventually became creature!Harry fics that were 99% slash. Every single ship had its own dedicated site and community. Portkey and SIYE, but also sites for Harry/Severus, Harry/Draco, Harry/Luna, Hermione/Snape, Neville/Luna, on and on. There were at least 50 pairing specific sites. There were at least as many character specific sites for people as obscure as Marcus Flint. Lemons/smut all ended up on Ficwad or restrictedsection. TheFanfictionForum was a big influence though mostly in the anime fandoms. Spacebattles had an equally popular rival, stardestroyer.net which has been a graveyard for a decade. ff.net only had a few characters available for any fandom. There was an
explosion in characters that doubled the number you could filter by, and since then they've included pairing filters and every named character in nearly every fandom.

Back then, authors were a lot more willing to go crazy in terms of AU. These days it's relatively minor AU's imo, but back then you had full on universe overhauls. A Second Chance at Life was one, as was our own Queens of Darkness, Ladies of Light by Thalarian. Huge, sweeping overhauls that completely changed the world, magic, characters, etc. Prince of a Dark Kingdom, even, at the tail end of that era.

Anime used to dominate fanfiction with things like Ranma and Evangelion in the mailing list age, and Cardcaptor Sakura, Inuyasha, and Rurouni Kenshin after. Sites like Mediaminer were still relevant. Ditto on the Lime/Lemon bit. I remember surreptitiously googling for limes with the idea that I'd get in less trouble if I were caught looking at softcore written smut instead of the really raunchy lemons.

That's most of what I remember from the early to mid-2000's, at least in my fanfiction journey.

 

Whoa talk about a flashback. I never read any but I remember being amazed that there was a community around Marcus Flint/Katie Bell.

 

My best friend in middle school shipped Draco/Ginny. Don't think that's been a thing since the mid 2000s? McGonagall/Dumbledore was practically a given for a long time, and that's definitely not still a thing. Poorly formatted songfics; banning these was the best thing ff.net ever did. A few years later, H/Hr tent fics everywhere after the Deathly Hallows movie. And wasn't Scabior a big thing?

 

Time Travel fics used to be a huge thing. Then we got wastelands of time and it was kinda like...how do you improve on perfection.

 

The thing that sticks with me the most from the early days is back before the crossover section existed / became accepted and you could be thousands of words in and suddenly realize you had been reading an anime crossover the whole time. I remember a WBWL fic that turned out about 20 chapters in to be a crossover with Diablo of all things. I feel like authors were a lot more willing to take the leap and try to integrate two worlds together rather than dump one character into another world back in the day, though I don't blame authors for giving up on it, it's near impossible to do right.

 

Yes, the only good execution of this whole world integration thing that I can think of right now is the Denarian series from Shezza and damn that series is already over a decade old. Good stuff though!

 

I didn't start reading fanfiction until 2008, so naturally I wasn't party to any of this, but if you have a few hours to spare, this is an interesting account of stuff going down in the Fictionalley/Livejournal segment of the fandom from 2001-2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20130203000224/http://www.journalfen.net/users/charlottelennox/784.html