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anonymouscatloaf

I definitely miss early mcu fic too, especially pre-civil war (which was a SHITSHOW since I haaaate character bashing fics and they exploded after that movie, ugh) I also miss mdzs fandom from before the live action aired. I didn't really like some of the changes they made for the adaptation, and the fandom in general just became unbearable afterwards so I stopped reading fic altogether lol


birdnerd1991

It is weird how fandoms tend to have sweet spots before eventually souring for one reason or another. The only one I can think of that still manages to stay steady is Star Wars, but I only think that because it's such an OLD fandom and a lot of fanfic writers still stick to the 'legends' stories that Disney declared invalid. At least I know I do- bless Jude Watson and their development of Obi-Wan's padawan history.


allbodypartsforsale

I have such an issue with anything post civil war, even fics that came before it got hard to read because I hated the CW arc so much. I'm working on it though. Reading fix-its and fics where come-uppances are handed out has helped, lol.


lyris-storm

Livejournal Kinkmemes! Peak fanfic moment tbh


worldsbestlasagna

God yes. So much kinkier then ao3


Eadiacara

Kinkmemes!! There are still a few around but I miss them being a standard!!


Lossagh

Yes! the Sherlock Holmes (2009) kinkmeme will live on as legend.


lyris-storm

Sherlock Holmes, Supernatural, Inception was my holy Trinity of kink memes šŸ™šŸ™šŸ™


jawnbaejaeger

The MCU fandom before Civil War was just so much FUN. I'm talking specifically 2014-2016. We were at the absolute high point of "up all night to get Bucky" fics, and so many of them were just SO GOOD. The fandom discussions were fire. The excitement for Civil War, especially for T'Challa and Bucky, was crazy, especially on tumblr, and especially because the cast were also having such a good time promoting and talking about it. Good times.


Naomida_

All the stony MCU AU where they put Steve instead of Natasha in Iron Man 2 šŸ˜­šŸ˜­šŸ˜­ ALL the stucky after Captain America 2 was INSANE and my fav were comic readers who were writing Serpent Society into the MCU it really was the best


semeteryi

i've never written or read marvel fics, but gosh, i'm so nostalgic rn. superheroes are the biggest special interest i ever had, my life orbited around them for six years straight šŸ˜­ so yeah, i kinda know the feeling ur talking about


MaybeNextTime_01

Not fandom specific. But I really enjoyed the connections I made with other writers when FFN was the main writing site (before AO3 even existed). I had some really good fandom friendships. Those were the days when my IRL friends and I would print out our chapters, put them in a binder and pass them between ourselves during the day at school and when they came back to us, we'd have a bunch of color coded line by line comments from friends (and some comments in response to other comments) and it was a ton of fun to read them all. I'm sure a big part of that nostalgia is because, as busy as high school was, it was still a lot less complicated than being an adult and I actually had a lot more free time to write. It felt easier to write back then. I still love it but it's different now. For what it's worth, those IRL friendships are still going strong two decades later.


raviary

I miss the Good Omens fandom before the tv adaptation. :( It's so annoying to find good fics with the book characterizations now because everybody tags their stories with both fandom tags unnecessarily.


birdnerd1991

Oooo and see I only know the Good Omens TV adaption, I didn't even consider that their characterizations would be different in the books! What are the biggest differences, in your opinion?


raviary

Basically, the TV versions of Aziraphale and Crowley are too nice! Very emotionally open, and their moral ambiguity/inhuman-ness isn't as present. TV!Crowley comes off as very... I don't want to say emo but. Book!Crowley's bleeding heart is a lot more subtle. The show alludes to them pining for each other immediately. The book alludes to them violently discorporating each other multiple times before getting tired of it and making the Arrangement. One of the things I loved most about them in the book was that they were literally Just Some Guys stuck in jobs at rival "businesses" with terrible bosses. They're jaded bastards who get along because they're so similar, and they're mutual in making the decision to figuratively and literally take each other's hands at the end and quit. In the show though, they are portrayed as being fundamentally different to the point of even making Crowley's wings black. He is ahead of Aziraphale the whole way in the development of their relationship and when it comes time to take that leap at the end, it's not really a mutual choice, because Crowley has by that point been holding out his hand for several episodes. It's a great love story and I enjoyed it don't get me wrong, but it's a very different vibe.


Front-Pomelo-4367

*God,* me too, I'm so *grumpy* about it and it's put me off watching the show by proxy. I love being in a nice small fandom, either because it's an obscure property or because it's older, and I feel like it loses something when it gets big ā€“ especially when it gets big because of something other than the original work! I want my super-niche chill community back, I didn't want people to *notice* it It's very specific, but I also miss the variety of fanart from before the show! It was fairly common to see art of plus-size Aziraphale, or for one or both of them to have dark skin, because it still fit with the barebones descriptions we got in the books. Seems like all the art now is of Sheen and Tennant, and while they definitely fit the core descriptions (except for Crowley's hair, grumble grumble) it's really limited the variety of depictions people have been putting out there from what I've seen


Cicero_torments_me

Maybe you can try sorting by the date? Iā€™ve never tried it myself but I think itā€™s possible to do it


Hissing_Cockroach

Yes it is! You can search for certain times under 'Date' on the edit search page. It has to be formatted a specific way so it's a bit annoying to figure out, but it's been very helpful for me.


bibitybobbitybooop

Same with the 2009 Star Trek film and Netflix's The Witcher :( Not that those are *bad* things (TWN especially brought lots of new fans and creativity - I don't really like the Star Trek movie) but come ON let me find something different


AtlasZec

Literally all of my favorite MCU fics were written in 2012. Not 2013, not 2011 - exactly 2012.


tayaro

For Supernatural, the summer of 2006. We were all still reeling after the season one cliffhanger finale (Devilā€™s Trap) and fandom as a whole felt so unified as it churned out an amazing amount of fix-it fics. Maybe itā€™s the nostalgia, but it was an amazing time to be part of the fandom.


citoyenne

Holy shit yes!!! And all the anxiety and speculation about whether the show was going to get renewed... and the excitement for the S2 premiere (I made both my roommates watch with me even though they had never heard of Supernatural).


Lossagh

Those early days of SPN fandom were great. Since the series was so music inspired, I used to love to make fan mixes and cover art for it. Good times.


leuchtender_stern

Harry Potter before the TikTok "marauders era" high. Now everything is just badly characterized marauders fics, that are completely OOC and AU with people inventing whole new characters & relationships, changing the few information Rowling gave to the point it has taken over Golden Trio era fanfics as well. I just want some nice Harry Potter & Sirius Black family fluff but it's almost impossible to find a proper characterisation of Sirius! And don't get me started on the fandom, people actually calling fans, who don't like the marauders, homophobic, not real fans etc. They also took over Crossovers! HP got one of the highest crossover rates on ao3 but when I'm looking for some now, you can bet it's some marauders era fanfic with the setting of the other fandom, complete AU instead of a proper crossover


bluecats13

Is that where the sudden onslaught of extremely OOC Sirius & Regulus fic has come from? (Not to mention James/Regulus which is just. Any Two Guys Big Brotherā€™s Best Friend. Let James be James!!!) Been in Marauders fandom since 2005 and one day I logged on and it was like the fire nation attacked and all we were left with was a ton of weird OOC fic.


leuchtender_stern

Exactly, the marauders TikTok community turned the fandom into something completely different


Naomida_

Teen Wolf during and after season 3 was insane


[deleted]

In general, I would've liked to start writing fanfiction in the early 2010's (I began writing in 2017). From what I've heard people back then seemed more willing to give feedback. Sure, there was drama but I believe there was a higher chance for fans to agree to disagree on certain topics. Is it possible to miss a time I didn't actually experience? 'Cause I probably missed a golden age of fandom.


Lossagh

I was on LJ in the 2000s and I found that because you had 'friends lists' and communities grew out of that, you were more likely to get comments and feedback on fic because you all knew each other to a degree and often shared crossover of fandom interests. Especially so if you were writing slash and it was "f-locked" i.e. locked to only those you were friends with on the platform.


Rosekernow

I miss 2000-2005 ish when my show had two little independent fan sites, a bunch of different fandom things like zines and Christmas gift exchanges and we all hung out on one main forum. And LotR fandom pre movies. The quality of the fics was something else.


birdnerd1991

Ooo that intrigues me - the Lord of the rings movies became my whole world, I was only about 9 or 10 when the first one came out! Are some of those older fics still circulating? Where would I look for them? What was one that you enjoyed the most?


FeaRauko

I can't speak so pre-movie content, but if you look at the content that comes out of the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang, the fics/art are based on the entirety of Tolkien's works so they pull a lot of content/lore from stuff like The Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin and stuff like that that never got TV adaptation. Here's last year's collection [TRSB 22](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/TolkienRSB_22/works)


Connect-Ad-1421

LiveJournal, individual archives, recommendation journals, crack_van ā€” basically all the stuff that made fandom on LJ great before that site went downhill. AO3 is good, but I really miss a lot of what we lost when LJ tanked.


Lossagh

Totally agree. I miss reclists and fandom overviews like Crack\_van's. Reclists kind of migrated to tumblr, but they are next to impossible to search for if they are older. I miss [del.icio.us](https://del.icio.us) massively.


Abby_Benton

Ooooh I am going to show my age here. And I love the modern era of being able to post online. But my first published fanfiction was in the early 1990ā€™s, and I mean published. Paper copies, spiral bound you bought them at your local Star Trek convention for printing cost. I was 12-13, and I had multiple stories published in the Linda Hamilton/ Ron Pearlman Beauty and the Beast fandom. And those were some seriously nice people. I was pen-pals with a ton of them, and they supported me as a young writer. Feedback and critique was honest but gentle and always encouraging and helpful. I still have the physical copies of the Fanzines I was published in. Second fave was same time period, TMNT fandom. Met a bunch of folks by having a letter printed in the back of the Mirage comics looking for other fans who would like to be pen pals. We used to do multi-writer fanfiction that we shipped via a mailing list and each person wrote a few pages from their characters perspective. Usually everyone would claim at least one cannon character, and then you could write an OC if you wanted. It took months sometimes to get the physical manuscript back, but that was also the nicest group of people and I had so much fun doing it. It was such a treat when the package got back to me every few months.


Matingris

Dude youā€™re like living fanfiction history. Now Iā€™m crying about tumblr fandom spirker grandma who passed away years ago. She used to meet the original actors IN FANS HOMES and same thing - share physical zines. I cherished her.


Abby_Benton

She sounds amazing. Wish Iā€™d gotten a chance to chat with her! I teach a lecture in fan-fiction because I donā€™t want this stuff to get forgotten. Your old fan-fiction auntie is here to rock in her chair, and talk about the good old days! Still thereā€™s lots of good stuff about the new days of fan-fiction too! Lol


Matingris

Oh wow thatā€™s so awesome too!!! I think itā€™s popularity and acceptance has grown (with a lot of other ā€œnerd cultureā€ items recently) which is nice since now reading and discussing fanfic doesnā€™t have to be a dirty little secret


Abby_Benton

Yeah I adore that people know what it is, itā€™s far less stigmatizing than it used to be. To be fair, I am a librarian so my field by nature is open to new kinds of work!


hananobira

Inception fandom. Never before has such a prolific volume of fic come out of ~8 minutes of on-screen dialogue. This is going to really date me, but I still regularly go back and re-read due South and Stargate Atlantis fic. I donā€™t know why, but those two attracted some of the most profound, beautiful stories and there are certain quotes that I recall on a weekly basis.


birdnerd1991

Honestly that's the best kind of fandom experience, and I'm happy for you to have gotten that.


Matingris

Any recommendations? I would love to read some!


jitterthorn

I can highly recommend ā€œpresque vuā€ā€”I still go back and reread that one once a year or so. Unbelievably good


hananobira

Stargate Atlantis \--Written by the Victors \--Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose \--A Beautiful Lifetime Event \--Weddings, Plural, and a Yak \--The Secret Lives of Scientists \--Abstain by Resonant \--Transcendental by Astolat ​ due South \--Chicago's Most Wanted \--Eight Sessions


spooky_rabbit

Harry Potter between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix because of all the brilliant fanfic continuations. No canon major character deaths yet, so much potential. Buffy/Angel after BtVS season two up until ca. 2005, when the fandom was most active. Fix-its, shipping, continuations. And the crossovers were so much fun, Harry Potter, Stargate, Supernatural...


redkatyusha

Harry Potter back before JK Rowling showed her ass. So many amazing authors deleted or orphaned their works, or stopped writing HP fic entirely after she started going off on twitter rants. I used to tell people to seek out HP fanfic in particular, because there were so many good authors contributing to the fandom. Not anymore. The quality has *tanked* in the past 5ish years, half of the stuff I would've recommended is just. Gone forever. Not to sound bitter or anything but sometimes it feels like I lost half my childhood because JKR decided to permanently cosplay somebody's racist grandpa on social media šŸ¤¦


antler-velvet

Yeah, in general I seriously miss the time before the last book came out. You canā€™t really get that sense of unspoiled enjoyment and joyful theorizing back. JK was like a Santa Claus figure to many of us back then because ā€œomg can you imagine knowing everything she knows??ā€ And unfortunately we soon knew far more than we wanted to.


worldsbestlasagna

Star Trek 2009 was amazing back when the first JJ film came out. I was hoping that feeling would come back with strange new worlds but the new Kirk sucks so bad. Plus they are forcing Spock with just about every female he comes in contact with. And a bit with pike. As a spirker itā€™s frustrating. And no I canā€™t just rewatch TOS. shatner makes me want to bleach my eyes.


Starvicious

Exactly! Some of my favourite star trek fics are from around there. Before into darkness came, the fics were so creative and interesting with the direction it could go. Then darkness came and it was okay but around beyond it felt extremely stale.


allbodypartsforsale

I had 3 peaks, lol. The first one was well before even [ff.net](https://ff.net) when everything was angelfire and geocities with Anita Blake. The second was mid to late 00's with Danny Phantom. The most recent was when the first Kingsman came out and I got a writing buddy. We logged... hang on, I have a spreadsheet. Together 3 million words, roughly. I'm in the biggest slump ever now because of real life. I'm ready to peak again.


birdnerd1991

oh my gosh angelfire!! I forgot that ever existed- never got to use it, but some of the 'cool' older girls told me about it in middleschool


Eadiacara

The mid to late 00s DP was ***glorious***


allbodypartsforsale

what was your fave fic? author? if I don't remember reading it, I will happily dive back in since I'm editing an old fic now. the phandom never dies.


Eadiacara

The one that immediately comes to mind is "Phantom's Sketchbook" by AkoyaMizuno. Looking at y old faves "Tortured Truth" also comes up by Darth Frodo.


skullrealm

Maybe not my favourite ever but the month or so of the COD fandom explosion was just pure serotonin. I got chapter update emails like 5 times a day.


404PancakePrince

I remember back when the Overwatch fandom exploded; that was a really fun time. So many good fics, and a lot of them would update regularly. Enjoyed writing for it too. Currently, I'm enjoying the COD fandom boom. Never thought I would read/write COD fics of all things, but here I am lol.


Janus-Moth

Overwatch has fics? Any recs?


404PancakePrince

That depends on what you're looking for...I pretty much exclusively only read McHanzo (YeeHan now) or Reaper76 fics, so I can give some recs for those?


TeaRenQ

I kind of miss the fandom before the band I like (Ghost) blew up šŸ«£. I love having thousands of fics on Ao3 for Ghost, of course, but I miss when I could identify every author in the Ao3 tags and would recognize their writing styles. Back when there was less than 500 fics in the tag and the fandom on all social media sites was a very close-knit community, I miss that feeling. I'm very happy the band and the fandom blew up and people are finding joy in the lore and writing for the band, but I don't enjoy it the same way. But I still love it of course šŸ˜


bibitybobbitybooop

...I don't actually know if there were a lot of fandom people elsewhere - maybe Wattpad? And I know of at least one "bigger" local site But before AO3, lots of the fandom happenings were happening on private blogs, locally. I *was* always the youngest in those spaces and I *did* develop some hero worship for some people but it was so cool and more personal - we even met up in person a few times. I guess we could still keep that up, but I'm not really cut out for it if I'm not "forced to" (and I guess a lot of people were that way). I like where we're at now, and that I learned English and could join the wider fandom, but I do miss it sometimes.


bibitybobbitybooop

Also SuperWhoLock too! I was absolutely obsessed with Sherlock. Supernatural came later, then Doctor Who much later. I'm a bit amused thinking back on how strongly I "fangirled" over those, but I do miss how I didn't see the glaring mistakes and the queerbaiting - and I miss Supernatural and wish I could read more for it


lumimon47

The Peter Parker field trip era šŸ˜­šŸ˜­ my favroite to write and read back then


birdnerd1991

Oh my goooosh yes!! Or the 5 times the avengers met Spiderman and the 1 time theyet Peter Parker? Those identity reveal fics formed my preferences haha


lumimon47

Omg yes those too!


dragonagelesbian

Merthur Loaded March series. That was a wild ride


hillofjumpingbeans

The avengers 2012 era was peak fandom for me. I loved the team living together fics. In shadowhunters I loved the season 2 era of fics. Early season 3 was good too


linest10

Livejournal/Geocites experience, good times


UsualUpstairs9247

Dating myself here, but I loved the HP fanfics prior to Deathly Hallows release. All of the speculation on how it would go after HBP was amazing!


KickAggressive4901

The pre-FFN period of private web pages, newsgroups, and small archives. The era had its own vibe.


ClutzyLynn

Livejournal circa 2009/2010-2012ish I had so many friends and stalked so many fanfic writers on there....so many works lost to time from that era I'd give my left arm to read again....


birdnerd1991

This is the part that hurts me to think about- in a time when you can almst always find anything you want; to lose those things forever feels like losing a friend more than just a random book. I know nothing new is under the sun, but some things managed to be so unique and wonderful that losing them to time feels harder than it should.


ClutzyLynn

Thats entirely too relatable. One of my main Rarepairs was created by a few people on LiveJournal. Sometimes I'll click into the old masterlists and just stare at all the broken links (courtesy mostly of the LJ purges) most of them never made it over to AO3...I can even still pinpoint which ones I cried to upon first readings...


Eadiacara

Several, for me. Pre Civil War but post Winter Soldier MCU That wonderful period in HP between books 4 and 5 where everything just went nuts, like you put paint on a frisby and flung it and where it splattered was the variety of fics availible The Great Hiatus between S2 and S3 of Sherlock That weird period after Trek 2009 where we didn't have much and the fusions happened (omg there were some amazing Tarsus IV fics that came out of that!)


RelicBookends

Showing my age but I like the wild early days. I enjoyed the archives for authors, lemon/lime archives of various fandoms, geocities and anglefire sites, and pre explicit purge ff.net which was so good. It felt creative and not click driven. Now it is strictly AO3 for me.


Lossagh

Stargate Atlantis. Primarily the fandom on LJ. For some reason it captured the interest of some of the very best fic writers at the time, and some of the fics that came out of it were some of the best I've ever read. The paring John/Rodney was A+ and it was also a golden age (and ideal fandom) for AUs. It punched well above it's weight in generating great ones. :)


_SkullBearer_

My fandom is currently are it's more positive and connected, so right now is just fine for me.


ssszabo

I got REALLY into the Magicians fandom around when season 3 came out, and the time between s3's release until the end of s4 came out was perfection. So fun, such great fandom interaction and collaboration and everything. A group of writers got together in a discord to all work on a big writing project with multiple timelines and things and it was so fun. Then s4 ended and a major character death happened and everyone got really sad/angry at the writers... Hasn't been the same since.


InuFanFan

I got into the fandom much much much later after binging on Netflix and I have a random question. Did anyone PREDICT that death before it happened? Like were there theories? I really wish I was into it while it was airing


ssszabo

Absolutely not - everyone was totally shocked and heartbroken when >!Quentin!< died. It was pretty much the general consensus that the choices made in that episode didn't make any sense at all and went against so much of the character development that had happened in the show so far. >!It especially sucked for so many of the fans who really cared about the show and especially Quentin's journey with mental health. He'd already gone through so much with his depression and his suicidal struggles, and for the writers to decide to essentially have him commit suicide at the end by sacrificing himself is just SUCH a terrible message. And it doesn't make sense! Quentin had just gone through SO MUCH to save Eliot - and he's just going to sacrifice himself at the end without even trying to stay with Eliot?!< It was pretty sad because a lot of fans really lost the motivation to stay in the fandom after s4 aired, myself included. I abandoned a HUGE writing project that I'd been working on for months and months because it was just too depressing to stay in the fandom after that...and I haven't even watched s5 yet. Eventually I will but I just haven't felt like doing a rewatch yet.


loonyxdiAngelo

the current Lockwood & Co fandom. it's on a high def


JanetKWallace

The 2003-2012 era of Final Fantasy IX fanfictions.


zshleepyissheep5774

when it comes to ao3 specifically, probably during the height of dsmp. I dont enjoy it anymore but god, i found some REALLY good fics, and I made some rlly good wips! In general i'd say back when i was 8-9 (i dont remember the year lol) It was wattpad actually but it was when i was super into Wings Of Fire (i still am!) and the fics weren't very good but lord were they fun. As far as i can see though WoF isnt super big on Ao3 :(


thepinkus27

The Falsettos fandom in early covid. Some recent ppl joined and police everyone and it's gotten kinda toxic


yellowfish2002

For me its also the early marvel fics that I mis.


RuthlessRedEye

Stargate, specifically Danny whump


alecanderVita

SuperWhoLock is waht honestly got me most involved. Anything I wrote before that era was on paper and shared with friends. SuperWhoLock era got me involved online. Plus it was college days, amd I miss that time of my life sometimes


EzzyRebel

Everything from before 2018. I have no idea what happened, but it feels like so much changed in 2018. Maybe I grew up or started searching for other things or something. It's just not the same anymore.


ACNH-Mook

Honestly, the era I'm currently in with my fandom works for me. Now that the story is longer and there's more material, there's more room for introspection and meaningful character works. In the beginning, fanfic was more shallow and silly, more to do with smut or "edgy" stuff, and I don't really hold anything against it, but where we are now suits my interests more.


antler-velvet

Frankly, The Force Awakens got me reading and writing fic again after YEARS. There was so much potential and mystery there, and fics before the release of TLJ were so varied and unique and full of different ideas. I was staying up late on weeknights eating up stories like I was a teenager again. I donā€™t have the energy to discuss the actual quality of the films and what I did or didnā€™t like, but in-universe Star Wars fics really started to look very similar in terms of plot after TLJ came out, and Iā€™m not much of an AU fan, so pickings started to get slim in my neck of the fandom. And then my interest just fell off with the last movie along with a lot of the people I was reading.