Random things I want to add based on my admittedly-hazy memory:
- elaborate ascii headers/footers/dividers on fic, which were mostly txt files (or bare-bones text-only pages to save archive space) I think?
- faking ages to get access to the adult stuff (which could get complicated depending on what country you were from and what country the admin(s) were from). This sometimes involved emailing an age statement to the owner of a mailing list and them deciding whether or not to trust you (or how much they actually gave a fuck) before giving you the password to an archive or authenticating your whatever to access the whosit, I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked. Because I was fifteen at the time. Of course.
- There were people who were very adamantly ‘gay stuff is okay in fanfic but immoral IRL.’ Don’t ask me how that worked out logically, but it was a thing.
- DO NOT FORGET THE BEFORE-TIMES when there was no google and there were scattered archives everywhere, from ‘archive of [specific mailing list]’ to authors’ personal archives to pairing- or fandom-specific archives and the way you found a lot of them was like hoping aol or yahoo search would turn up something new? But on the other hand you had a fair number of folks who were twitchy about having webcrawlies being able to find their porn because fanfic was already kind of side-eyed and porny stuff even moreso.
- there were archivists who actively trawled mailing lists and authors archives and such to compile their own interest-specific archives, sometimes asking the authors if they could host a fic… and sometimes NOT asking. Cue: wank.
- OR you navigated WEBRINGS (which are like tumblr ‘networks’ I think? I don’t grok tumblr networks but ya’ll have fun with them, I’ll be over here in my rocking chair mmk) where there was essentially a master list of websites catering to a specific interest, sometimes with details but sometimes it was just a name and a link so you had no idea what you were clicking on half the time, you just knew it fell under category [thing the webring was about].
(…tbh, this was probably how I found out about slash, because of some X-Files or Pretender or maybe early SG1 webring, I don’t even know. I just saw “[fandomname] slash archive” and was desperate for new fic in [fandom] and hey presto “boys?? kissing?? GIRLS? KISSING?!! YOU CAN DO THAT? Ship things that don’t match what canon would expect you to ship?? oops now I have an exponentially greater amount of ships than I did before”)(given that description, it was probably stargate because there was a LOT of pretty to go around okay)
- let me TELL you about the recurring firestorm of wank that would rush through every goddamned fandom for at least a 5- to 10-year period there where someone would be like “all same-gender shippy stuff needs an NC-17 warning because that stuff is not okay for kids” and other folks would be like “can we not equate handholding to explicit PIV intercourse solely based on the genders of the participants” and holy jesus it was the EXACT same ugly nausea-inducing merry-go-round in at least six of my fandoms, which is why I am zero percent impressed with ‘family’ networks caving to that bullpockey because My People already hashed that out, get with the times, thanks.
- fanfic archives without search functions, where everything was just listed by date posted and sorted by pairing IF YOU WERE LUCKY. One sentence summaries with no tags, no warnings, sometimes no ratings. Sometimes no lengths (see above regarding length measured by filesize). Because everything was coded in early html and some folks just didn’t want to (or knew how to) code all that. This is why I give money to ao3, people. I REMEMBER THE BEFORETIMES.
- oh, and finding That Reccer whose tastes ran similar to your own and posted like 10+ recs a week? Like Santa and Baby Jesus came down from on high and showered glitter all over you before kissing you gently on the forehead and then disappearing in a double rainbow. (You think recs help you filter wheat from chaff NOW, it was all the moreso when you had to do all this hunting just to find stuff TO sort though)
- yes this was also before lj and wordpress and basically any kind of rich text editor-enabled blogging platform. Hand-coded html pages hosted on geocities with terrible font color choices and pixellated blinky tiled gif backgrounds, aw yus.
>midlevel-bofq jazzhands<
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
origamiaround
blakekathryn
