esoterrifica:

annethequene:

goddammitstacey:

tehnakki:

star-anise:

feministsirius:

are-are-kay:

– between 1999 (PoA) and 2003ish (OotP) there were so many cool/ridiculous things about fandom that have been effectively lost to time and canon and i miss some of these things… for example

-literally 80% of everyone thought that Lily was gonna be a slytherin before it was specified. we LOVED it man, like, oh my god, what was harry gonna do when he figured out his own awesome mother was a slytherin who had defied voldemort

– the old fandom wank with cassie claire and all that shit was amazing guys look it up. (that’s the old fanfic author who writes the series about draco and ginny being in love, city of bones, now)

-oh my god the neverending war between the harry/hermione harry/ginny & draco/hermione shippers was AMAZING

-everyone used ff.net & LJ. then they all used fictionalley. these were the dark times before Ao3

-SIRIUS AND REMUS WERE BENT AS FRICK FOR EACHOTHER. FANDOM WENT INSANE
IN THE MEMBRANE AT THE ‘JOINT CHRISTMAS PRESENT’ do you old timey
wolfstar shippers remember that??!??!! good times. we were all CERTAIN
jkr  put that in there on purpose to give us some lgbtq representation
we had so much faith in her

-in fact we thought about a BILLION characters were lgbtq+ and a ton of us were sure that jkr was gonna make harry some non-straight sexuality because of his confused grief-fumbling with cho. we had a LOT of faith in jkr and we were convinced she was gonna bring the represenation

-speaking of that, pretty much the only character we were sure was hetero was dumbledore. he was in love with Prof McG. awwwww. i mean grindelwald

-POC harry headcanons abounded… this era is where i got my headcanon that harry’s dad’s family in from India and i’ve kept it ever since

-seamus was hot an’ got around a lot

– lucius malfoy was the literal best humorfic character ever. and he always was fucking hilarious which was pretty sweet

-lots of snape/lucius shipping which i didn’t care about but again made for hilarious humorfic stuff

-snape was pretty much camp as fuck. of course this all got ruined now that he’s the ultimate whiny friendzone guy (which i still resent the FUCK out of btw i wanted him and lily to be a brotp that split when he got super racist and she started shagging his bully but who cares what i wanted) and he was soooo well dressed. and din’t look a bit like alan rickman. in fact, every one of the marauders era people was pretty much in their thirties. snape in vera wang. snape in designer women’s apparel. rockin that shit to the nth degree. SNAPE I MISS THE OLD SNAPE

-fuck how could i forget about campy voldemort (dragon tamer era, man-bag toting voldemort) he was the BEST- and we all had no idea what he was really gonna end up LOOKING like when PoA came out so the speculations were HILARIOUS

-everyone forgot that the canon series was currently taking place in the early 1990s and in fanfic we stuffed everyone into awful late 90s/early 2000s fashion. god it was so bad. this is where ‘draco in leather pants’ comes from but really it was like ‘draco and harry and everyone else except ron is from N’sync now and they dress just like that and everyone got their hair frosted yesterday”

-slytherins were Not All Bad but they were all Extremely Sexually Knowledgeable

-blaise zabini was often a girl

-Percy Weasley was a character that a lot of people actually cared about and remembered

-it was the best of times and the cheesiest of times, it was a land before horcruxes, it was a time without ‘always’, it was ‘the war is gonna be SO MINDBLOWINGLY HUGE AND GO ON FOR LIKE, LONGER THAN LoTR’ and ‘well, at least sirius and remus can take comfort in one another’…. it was the age of guns n’ handcuffs, it was the age of ‘marriage spells are forever’… it was good times, guys ♥

I miss OG Harry Potter fandom, RIP

That era of Harry Potter fandom was like a tree with a branch of every kind of fruit grafted onto it.  The fanfic was so awesome and so intense because we had this huge setup and unanswered questions and then years to sit and stew in it.  People weren’t just answering “who’s gonna fuck who” (THOUGH THEY DID DO THAT) they were answering the huge questions about life and death and cultures and societies and war and oh god, it was so amazing.

Also, “Seamus/Somebody” was a real ship people really shipped and requested fic for.  Like “I DON’T CARE WHO SEAMUS FUCKS, AS LONG AS HE DOES IT.”

Oh my god those were the good days. And Wizard Rock was a huge thing, and it and talking about the Wizarding World and what it would be like to be an Auror or a Wizard medic.

THIS WAS MY JAM OKAY??

All of this! My first real lesson into the power of collective creativity came when witnessing all the hardcore, BEAUTIFUL speculation on why Voldemort had tried to kill Harry as a baby. Dazzling, thought-provoking, nuanced reasoning behind each option put forward! A fandom with thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of members coming together to solve one of the most pressing mysteries of our generation.

And then the utter disbelief at the eventual reveal because SERIOUSLY?? Four fucking years and we’re gifted “it was a prophecy” like the fandom didn’t discard that option as too lazy within three seconds of collective speculation??

Ahem. Yes. Bless. God I loved the pre-ootp HP fandom days.

please tell me your favorite why-voldy-tried-to-off-harold theories immediately

OMG, OG HP fandom was THE SHIT. I LIVED on complicated, angsty war fic that spanned decades. Spies and turncoats and fucked up love stories where everyone is trying to carve out a niche for themselves in a world that makes so little sense. The Weasley twins adapting their joke inventions into dark and incredibly deadly magical weapons. Bill and Luna working together to break codes and curses – racing against the clock and counter-intelligence to stop traces on Apparating and targeted attacks against Muggleborn families. Children of wizarding dynasties turning against Deatheater doctrine, operating as sleeper agents in Voldemort’s camp, feeding information to the Order, desperately trying to steer the fighting away from their parents and siblings, praying that they won’t ever have to face either side’s wands directly. Voldemort returning to the body of a young Tom Riddle, seducing his followers with sex and power and the real evidence of immortality. People on the run. Wizarding POWs. Psychological torture, magical experimentation, doomed time travel, brief and protracted battles that leave smoking craters and grotesque remains of human transfigurations. Harry getting increasingly brittle and angry and cold and deadly under training from Sirius and Snape. Ron crafting battle strategies, proving himself a greater tactician than Dumbledore, constantly muttering about shifting frontlines and worrying that Harry will shatter before it’s all over. Ginny, always in the vanguard, so powerful, so focused, and so tormented because she can still feel Tom beckoning to her from inside her head and sometimes she thinks it would just be easier to give in. And Hermione as the Order’s most ruthless general, adjunct to military research, and chief interrogator – most terrifying because she’s not quite terrified anymore, ignoring the whispers, riding the line between Defense and Dark Magic, wand hand always ready.

THIS WAS AND WILL ALWAYS BE MY JAM