I loved the gif - totally sums up how I felt too when I discovered slash!

I came into it through Twilight. I had read the books and then on another website I was using, came across a thread talking about Twilight fanfiction. I lurked a fair bit on the thread, reading the fics they recced before getting up the courage to say hello. And I'm so thankful I did as they have ended up being a fantastic group of friends :). I found slash when someone recced an Edward/Jasper fic, and I was like 'Yes! This is what's been missing!'

From there, someone else moved into Harry Potter fic and I (apparently) said something along the lines of it just wouldn't feel right to read Harry/Draco - hahahaha, now look at me! They are my OTP!

I remember the first one I read. It wasn't particularly smutty but the depth of emotion in it and the relationship Harry and Draco had drew me in immediately and I had to go hunt out more, bringing me to LJ. I pretty much left Twilight after that, simply because HP is so much richer, because of the world JKR created for it. There are so many different ways to write HP fanfic, so many different pairings, that you can find something new each time.

I remember, years and years ago, seeing an item on the news about Star Trek fanfiction and how writers were putting Kirk and Spock together in a relationship. I think at the time I thought 'huh, okay', but I never imagined I might end up being part of it all :D

it just wouldn't feel right to read Harry/Draco

:D

Fanfiction does things to you!!!! I swear! *nods* I get it though, the HP world is magical, and I don't mean just about the spells, the fandom is so welcoming and kind, it's easy to make your home here.

And that gif! I know, right??? OGM, YES. THAT. Like, where was this my whole life?

:D I'm so glad stayed with us here. <3

I started out reading genfic and het. I started with Labyrinth and Princess Bride fanfic, I don't even remember how, back in the mid-/late-90s. I didn't really get that fanfic was a thing until later.

I started reading hp fanfic about the time I started reading hp, which would have been just about the time book 4 released. Again, I went primarily to gen/het because that seemed what was most readily available.

As for slash, I had a friend send me In The Shadow of His Wings back when it was just a few chapters and I was all like "what do you mean Harry and Draco?" And she was like "NO READ THIS TRUST ME" And I did so I did and the rest is history.

I've fallen out of fandom, gone years not really reading, even dabbled in other fandoms for a few months at a time, but I can't imagine spending the time reading, writing or enjoying another ship or fandom as much.

I remember being so eager for the next book after GoF and OotP, but then later on part of me wasn't in any rush because I didn't want the magic to end. I think back then I didn't realise the magic never would. <3

But it was in that gap, between 4 and 5 that I found fanfiction too. I found slash right after het, probably that same week. :D I was so hooked! lol But my OTP back then was Harry/Ron. I was (AM!) such a Ron lover. :)

But I did have a time off fandom, back when my mum died, I was away for a couple of years.

I came back and I found the beauty of Harry/Draco and yeah, magic all over again.

I remember quite vividly that it was 2005. I was on a German internet community called Animexx (Anime was really popular at that time, I guess that's where it came from. It still exists though, that site) and it was basically a forum but also kind of like a German alternative for DeviantArt. So I posted my earliest crap there and stumbled upon a German artist named SlippedDee. I came across her comic called (translated from German) "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Love~Yaoi~" (http://tomodachi.chan.de/doujinshi/9601/21417/) (I can't show you the best stuff because you need to be logged in to see adult-only content.)
(http://de.tinypic.com?ref=1z6famx)

It was like a gate opening for me. I had no idea that a thing like that existed, that people did art about HP characters that aren't really together in the books.
I continued to stumble through the site and found first H/D fanfictions (that pairing had instantly caught my interest). All in German but I immediately fell in love.

After I read my first HP book in English, though (with great effort I tell you, I wasn't good at English back then, needed a dicitionary at all times) I noticed that the German fandom couldn't really give me what I needed, that there was something lacking in the fics. For me, German just didn't seem suited to gay fiction. We don't have any graceful words for anything sex related, therefore every sex story always seemed incredibly corny or disgusting to me. So when I finally understood English better I began to appreciate how fiction was written in that language. I would start to read H/D fiction everyday. I was often sitting in school, being all fidgety, because I wanted to go home and continue the story that I had to stop reading the evening before.

My English improved so fast that my teacher actually took me aside and asked me how I'd done it. I lied and said I'd read lots of English books.
Next day she used me as an example in front of class how reading English literature was important. It was embarrassing but she wasn't really lying, was she? :D

The rest is history I guess, I'd never thought I would still read Harry/Draco today. It's a bit weird having one OTP for almost 10 years now, without ever reading anything else :D

Edited 2014-04-22 03:17 pm (UTC)

Haha, I love that story about your teacher XD

It's the same in my language. I've never searched for fanfiction in Norwegian, and I don't even know if it exists, but I can't imagine it being anything other than embarrasing and horrible.

I love that your teacher noticed how improved your English was - and you were 100% honest, you were reading lots of English books, they just weren't published books :) I always tell parents to not worry so much about *what* their kids are reading, worry if they *aren't* reading.

LOL! It's the same with me and with Spanish fanfiction. I never got the hang of it, specially the sex scenes. :D

But yes, fanfiction sort of takes over your life!

I don't think it's weird having the same OTP so long, all your life, even. :D It's romantic. <3

Haha, I love your gif -- quite explanatory! Fun idea with this post!

I actually came into fandom through reading the Mortal Instruments, which is a bit embarassing because I've come to understand that Cassandra Clare is some kind of persona non grata in fandom (even if I don't really know the story there). I read the books a few years ago because I like reading YA-fiction every now and then and I got them recommended. Then early last year I saw mentioned somewhere that she had started out writing Harry Potter fan fiction and was intrigued because I've really really loved Harry Potter ever since I first started reading them at age 11. I'd never really heard much about fanfiction before that.

So I tried searching the internet for the Draco Triolgy (which turned out to be difficult because they'd mostly been taken down), and on the way I discovered ffnet and started reading there randomly. I read both HP and MI fanfiction in the beginning and it was actually through MI I discovered slash. There were a lot of Alec/Magnus fics which wasn't so strange since they're gay in the books and after a while I came over some rather smutty ones and found out that it was surprisingly hot. And then one of the authors I'd read A/M fics from had written some Drarry-fics as well. I just went with it and loved it. (I think this (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4135153/1/BloodBound) was my first one I think, a rather smutty vampire!fic. I haven't read it since the start, so I can't guarantee the quality of it...)

So I started searching up fics with Draco and Harry because I found out I liked them best and they were much more engaging than A/M. (I read a lot of Dramione at first as well, but I tired of them quickly.) Somewhere along the way I stumbled upon Cheryl Dyson's fics there (which I loved to bits!!!) and she'd linked to LJ on her profile so I started lurking here instead and never looked back. In the end I figured I should pull myself together and join in and here I am :D

(I actually never finished the last installment of the Draco Triology because the characters and their lack of communication started grating on my nerves...)

I never understood the Cassandra Clare issue. But it seems like it was huge. I never read that trilogy or anything, but I've heard about it, vaguely. ^^

But I remember the days when Slash came with huge bold warnings. :D

Omg! So Cheryl brought you to livejournal! <333 One more thing we have to thank her for. *cling*

I really wish that I could remember the very first slash story I read - it would've been on FF which is where I did all my reading/posting before I discovered all you'se wonderful folks over here. I must have found it fairly quickly after discovering fanfiction. I wrote my first story in July/early August, someone told me I had written 'fanfiction'.

I joined FF on August 28, 2011 in order to post my story and started reading what other people had written. Looking at my alerts/favorites: I put an alert on a Remus/Sirius story on September 1, 2011. So it took me exactly three days to find slash? Sounds about right. I posted my first Harry/Draco story on September 23, 2011. So in less than four weeks after discovering fanfiction, I was hooked onto slash, and 600,000 written words later, I'm still hooked.

Edited 2014-04-22 05:22 pm (UTC)

Good God! You were quick in finding slash. Though I admit, I must had found it in the same week as I found fanfiction, though I didn't know it was 'fanfiction' at the time.

I was hooked onto slash, and 600,000 written words later, I'm still hooked.

*bows* You're amazing. And half of those are from one of my favourite fics, too. <3

I posted about this myself a while ago HERE and it's so lovely to hear your story about finding slash - that gif is perfect :DDDD

*HUGS*

I read this comment and I went, "what, when did this happen?" Then I saw the date, it was while I was in the hospital, no wonder I miss it.

You write the best meta. <333333

My first fandom was... I don't know because I've been a fangirl ever since I started to remember things (my mum's doing lol). Maybe it was Candy Candy when I was three or four...? ="=a

I used to draw doujinshi (Japanese fancomic) and fanarts until I was in uni. I knew about fanfiction since I was in school, but I started to really read them when I got into La Corda d'Oro in 2009. I started with het, but then I was slowly converted lol. My first slash was Ryoutaro/Len from la Corda d'Oro, and I began to be fully commited to slash when I got into Kyou Kara Maou. After that I jumped from fandom to fandom, devoured BLCDs (Japanese m/m NC17 drama CDs) like there was no tomorrow, translate m/m doujinshi, and then fell in love with H/D.

So I was terribly late in this fandom hahaha, but that just means there are already so many fics and I'm in heaven now ;D

Edited 2014-04-22 06:22 pm (UTC)

So you've got plenty of experience in fandom, since 3 or 4. XD

I've never managed to get myself into a different fandom. HP is pretty much my life. For a while though I flirted with RPS, Manic Street Preachers. :D Mostly as a joke, sort of, writing silly fics with a friend privately back and forth. It was fun!

But yes, there's so much in HP to keep one busy. ;)

Hey!!! Thank you for sharing! I love how you discovered fanfiction! I just wished I had discovered it earlier! This is how I got in touch with it and it was a year ago! (happy slashy birthday to me! :D) http://sophie-french.livejournal.com/10240.html

But before that... I've always been obsessed with m/m things. I don't know where it comes from, but I think it all started around the time there was a film called "Les Nuits Fauves" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Nights that everybody was raving about because it was subversive and well, hot. It also was the time when people would talk about AIDS a lot, and Freddie Mercury had just died and so on.
I remember buying the book and there were gay erotic scenes and wow. It was (goes to check the year)1992 so I was barely fifteen.
After that, I started writing slash stories in my head and they evolved over the years. I even wrote them down at one point but can't put my hands on the files (and it already was in English if I'm not mistaken.) Then I discovered Gay erotica on the internet and learned a lot of stuff! lol. And from time to time, among the numerous PWP, I stumbled on very good, very long, relationship-y kind of stories that I would literally fall in love with. There was an author I particularly liked who wrote very nice, heartfelt, hot stories.

Never in my wildest imagination had I thought there was such things as fandoms... Nor that people were perverting Harry Potter, lol! I so wish I had discovered it earlier! But hey, better late than never!

Anyway, I came into the fandom because of Harry/Draco and they'll always remain my OTP. I just love them too much! :D

Nor that people were perverting Harry Potter

LOL who would think, right??? XD

Happy slashversary, Sophie! You first came into fandom and right away run into some of the best stories out there!

My first slash experience was with Twilight. My daughter was a huge fan of the books and introduced me to the fan fiction. I started out pretty vanilla reading stories that came up on the Twilight message board and through the links to fan fiction.. . .I then went for a ride on the wild side and started reading slash Edward/Jasper stories. I got to be friends with an author who wrote a slash story that got to be a pretty big deal in the fandom so much so that she yanked the story, revamped it and has published it commercially --- anyway, once I crossed over to slash I stopped reading Twilight het (although a good Jasper/Bella story still holds appeal).
I got into H/S and H/D because some of the Twilight authors crossed over and haven't been back since. I haven't read any HP het. I don't know why although I think it has to do with the fact that I never got the Hermoine/Ron pairing or the Harry/Ginny pairings. I haven't read too many other HP slash pairings and I think it is because I just can't wrap my mind around HP/TR or Voldemort and can't see Severus with anybody but Harry (although Severus and Draco do make sense and I have read a couple of H/L stories that are pretty hot.)

That's so cool! Though your daughter. Do you think she's a slasher, too? ^^

I've read only a few het stories, and okay, I admit, most of them, okay! All of them are kinky as hell. :D But my mind lives in the slash so these days I'm more comfortable with that. Like, I'm starting reading a fic, and my default settling is that this and that character are gay. LOL

There are pairing that hold little appeal to me, but I've learned to never say never. :D

I stumbled into fan fiction with Twilight...I loved the books and wanted more. Eventually I found the Twitarded blog and there I met several friends (that are still friends to this day.) Eventually, one of those friends pointed me in the Jasper/Edward direction and I went "WOW!" (I've had my hand in a couple of J/E fics and two little oneshots I've written are both J/E.)

Another friend gave me a gentle nudge in the H/D direction and I was resistant at first. I was like, "Ew...Harry? No!" She then gave me several links and I fell in love with Draco.

And I'm still in love with the snarky little ponce!

Ohhh, is that why your name starts with 'twi'? I always thought it was something related to the twins! :D

I think that snarky little pest stole the hearts of an entire generation. ;)

Yup...that's where the twi comes from. :D The "Weasel" part, however, has been a nickname of mine for years. I am referred to as "Aunt Wease" my one of my nieces.

Ohhhh. Hey, you made something super cute out of those two words. :D

I think my first actual fanfiction experience must have been just after GoF. I remember looking for Harry Potter online and finding this story where everybody cried and at the time I thought it was fairly dreadful but I was willing to take what I could!

Years later, when I went to uni (just after the release of OotP) one of the girls in my halls was into Stargate and HP fandom. She introduced me to the concept of shipping and fanfiction and then I was away! I stuck to Marauders era, gen, H/G and R/Hr. I thought that slash was dreadful, although the only example I had was a time-travel Marauders era fic where it was Harry and not James who had saved Snape from werewolf!Remus. It was Snarry and kept referring to Snape as Harry's 'greasy little lover' or something equally terrible. I wrote a lot of fanfiction and became pretty active in fandom.

After graduating I fell out of fandom a bit and by the time I got back into it all the canon pairings bored me. I read the Draco trilogy because everyone did, and some of Mistful's writing and discovered that Harry/Draco was way more fun and that there was so much excellent H/D writing out there. And so much hotness! I haven't been much of a presence in fandom since university (10 years ago now, ohmigod) but I'm trying to access my creative writing side a bit more recently. So here I am.

I love how everyone starts off and then discovers slash and then POW. It's just so much more compelling for me, and way hotter to read!

I was willing to take what I could!

I KNOW! I read all sorts when I first started digging into fanfiction. :D But since I discovered slash pretty much in the same breath as fanfiction, I was never truly invested in canon pairings, aside from, you know, them being canon. When it came to fanfiction, my OTPs have always been slash. :D

I actually wrote fanfiction before I ever read any. YIKES. I got roped into going to a HP conference before I'd read any fanfic, or participated in any of the fandom really. I just had a RL friend who was really into Snape/Hermione and I didn't really want anything to do with that and was too lazy to find my own, so I didn't read any. Slash wasn't even something I could wrap my mind around at the time, nor was erotica--haha, I know, right? I wrote a story for the conference as they were putting together a little book. YIKES AGAIN... it was about Ron's Bachelor Party and it was ridiculous and I'm glad it's not online anywhere...

But during the conference I got my mind opened quite a lot. By the end of the conference I was toying with my first slash story-- Snape/James of all things--a bit of a Brokeback Mountain mashup--and was incredibly curious about slash. We stayed an extra day in New Orleans after the conference and my RL friend tied me to the computer and wouldn't let me out of the hotel room until I'd read Homefry Nazi (Snape/Harry) and Cheat (Snape/Lupin). I was smitten. ♥♥

Then I came home and devoured fanfic--mostly Ron and Hermione at the beginning because I had met a writer at the conference and fell in love with her Ron after... but when Deathly Hallows came out, I found Best Mates and that was it for me for a long time. I had my H/R for fluffy whatnot and my Snupin for the angst and that was all I needed for a really long time.

Still haven't come around to the Harry/Draco, but I think they're okay without me. ;) I'm just glad you took a detour there somewhere for some Best Mates love as I can't imagine living without you about as much as I couldn't imagine living without slash. UNACCEPTABLE!

♥♥♥♥

Edited 2014-04-22 11:50 pm (UTC)

I can absolutely see you being that creative without reading any. ♥

And I can perfectly understand why your friend tried you to the computer to read some slashy stuff. :D It's like it changes one's life!

I did find slash reading H/D, but once I found about Harry/Ron, that was it for me. Those years I wouldn't read anything else. It was all about Harry/Ron. And then things slowed down in our ship, right? I had some issues, my mum passed and was away for a long time. I think I came back to fandom through the crack_broom and I found a friend's H/D recs there (she wasn't a friend then), and I decided to give it a go. Fell hard for this pairing, and yeah, I've made a home here.

But some of the most beautiful memories I have of my 'fandom life' was Terminus. And meeting you; the best thing in the world. You're my landmark. ♥♥♥


I love that icon! :D Oh! Remember Kerry's icon "my fandom has subtext/buttsex? LOL Good times!

Love this! It's wonderful to read your story and everyone else's.

My intro to slash was totally offline. I was in middle school and a few friends got really into LoTR. Every day at lunch it was all "blah, blah gay hobbits" "yada yada elf-fucking" and I just assumed the books were just (strangely, anachronistically) full of same-sex love for the first few weeks. Then realized these friends were writing and trading this stuff and started asking lots of questions and they told me all about the wilds of the internet. I never got into LoTR but figured it couldn't be the only thing there were stories about. I was right! And there was Xena femmeslash and Buffy slash and some Buffy/Spike shipping (the moment when your fanfic OTP becomes canon is a special moment. I remember it vividly.) But my fic-reading tapered off pre-college and there was about a 10-ish year hiatus.

Then one day I caught my bff/then-roommate guiltily reading HP fic. I don't think she expected me to respond with "OMG I had forgotten about this!!! Point me to the good stuff!" She did, but was more of a Harry/Tonks or Harmony shipper, and while the fics were good and I could see how it worked in those scenarios and I LOVED being back in the HP universe, the pairings didn't click for me. Largely because fanfic had (with the spuffy exception) always been gay, and that's what I wanted, what felt like my fic home.

I was drawn into Snarry first. I liked Snape's snark/intelligence/taciturn-ness against Harry's optimism and that they had this shared experience of going through the war, but I'm not a fan of chan and bought that Harry would respect and appreciate Snape, but not really that they would end up boning. But then there were Snarry authors who also wrote Draco/Harry and I started to wonder. I was a little skeptical at first but was also on a major femmequixotic kick, had read all her Snarry and Snaco on Skyehawke and would follow her writing anywhere, so gave it a shot. And it was like the heavens opened! All the things I loved and wanted from the dynamic but without the chan and the snape-specific baggage, and everywhere I looked there was so much good writing and smut (your gif...yes. exactly.) and all these tropes and variations on the theme and so many more stories to be told and it just seemed like an amazing wonderland. And it still does!

Every day at lunch it was all "blah, blah gay hobbits" "yada yada elf-fucking" and I just assumed the books were just (strangely, anachronistically) full of same-sex love for the first few weeks.

LOL! It's hard to explain slash logic to someone when they don't know about fandom in the first place. I tried with a friend, and she couldn't get pass the "but they aren't gay."

And it was like the heavens opened!

That's what I'm talking about, this moment of illumination when you go, "yes, yes, this is the real deal." Happy moment. <3

I was lucky, I think, because that first slash fic I read, it was very good, back then it was one of the best, and to this day, I re read it and I still find it's one of the hottest I've read, very well done, kept them IC and made it work. I think HP, as a fandom, has an amazing fanfic/fanart quality. We're really bless with all the talent and the lovely people being part of it.

I did a post about this a little while ago. I actually don't quite remember how I found out that fanfiction was a thing. I get obsessed with stuff very easily and I think I was just sort of poking around online for people talking about it/pictures/more information and stumbled into it that way. Gundam Wing was the first fandom I was very involved in and I started reading slash for that because that's the VAST majority of what was being written for it, so I just sort of went with it, lol. And then Harry Potter happened, and Harry and Draco stole my heart, and here I am!

::glomps you::

I saw writ's post just when I made mine. It seems this was going on while I was sick in the hospital. ^^ Man, you are away a week and you miss HISTORY HAPPENING. :D

I'm so happy you made your way to Harry Potter. *clings*

I'm glad you're here too!! ::clings back::

why Hermione wanted to hang out with him instead of Harry and Ron

I love Dramione. I don't love it when the trio break up because of it, though. Same goes for H/D, though, really.

LOVE your intro to fanfic.

ALSO, haha, web rings! That takes me back.

Edited 2014-04-23 06:36 pm (UTC)

Yeah, the trio is such a unit, it's hard for me to think they'd break over, almost anything, really. *nods*

The web-rings! I remember those days, a lot of people have websites, now we have journals. :D

It all began for me summer of 2002. I, too, camped out in the HP Yahoo groups, where I loved to wax poetic about my love of the character Harry Potter and actor Alan Rickman.

I discovered the wonderful world of fan fic a few months later and immediately began scouring the file sections of every HP group I could find for gen fic. Then I discovered Snape/Hermione and fell in complete love! That lasted a month or two, then I started reading Snape fic with him being Harry's guardian, protector, etc. I couldn't get enough of those fics.

By this time I'd found ff.net and that is when I discovered the beauty and genius of bookmarks!. Seriously, it was the bookmark/favorite option that enabled me to read as many fics as my little heart desired. Sadly, as soon as I read a fic, I removed it from my list. This makes me so very sad :-(

I think I began my LJ in the fall of 2003.

It was a month or two after my ff.net discovery and after I'd begun writing my first fan fic that I discovered what slash was. I began wondering what it would be like for Snape and Harry to be in a relationship, but it seemed SO WRONG! One day I decided to take a chance and see for myself what people were doing with Snape and Harry. My first reading of a slash fic was actually a Snape/Lupin, but I'm assuming it did very little for me. The Snape/Harry won me over immediately.

After devouring ff.net I searched the web for fan fic and discovered the best fan fic ever written, If You Are Prepared! To date, that is my best fan fic discovery ever. Then I found the original Walking the Plank ... Best fanfic site ever!

I eventually started reading and writing Harry/Draco and loved those two together!

I've pretty much ceased being an active participant in the HP fandom, but I'll never close that door completely.

Oh man, that was like watching a movie, from one place to the other. I did the same journey, from yahoo to ffnet to livejournal.

I actually livejournal through a random post asking for recs, and woot! More communities here!

But the files at the yahoo groups kept alive and going when I most needed it. :D

*hugs* I know you haven't been around, but the door is always open! <3333 Thank you for sharing your story with me. :)