Memories light the corner of my mind

[jlh]

rubydebrazier has this theory of HP fanfic reading patterns. She says fandom is like being in a bathosphere:
Your first fanfic is something innocuous and mostly action-oriented
Then you start reading romance fics, and uncover your inner shipper
Then you read fics with a hint of sex
Then you read fics with some nice fluffy NC-17ness
Then you read something a little more hardcore
Pretty soon you're searching ff.net for PWP in your favorite pairing (this was, of course, back in the day)
And before you know it, Daisy Chain!Draco doesn't even shock you anymore.

It would surprise few of you (certainly not evil_erato, who gave me the link to DC!D in the first place) to know that I actually started at the bottom and worked my way up. Thanks to the lovely vanityfair, I have finally found that elusive very first HP fanfic I ever read.

Yes, friends, it was at nifty.org, and it was called Harry Potter and the Slytherin Ass. It is rife with misspellings (including "Shamus"), Dean is mysteriously absent, it actually takes place in first year (which is sort of squicky), and it's more fanfic of the movie than of the book. I read it and thought, oh, there MUST be some straight HP smut, mustn't there? (Oh, how little I knew.) Only, not at nifty.org, of course. So I started searching for H/H smut (yes, I was a pumpkin pie shipper from canon) and wound up at Astronomy Tower. This was in November of 2001. I immediately read everything at AT that wasn't R/Hr (which shows you how much of an oldbie I was at FA). It was months later before I started trolling ff.net looking for NC17--and in doing so, found my One True Beloved Fic, Of Linen, which at the time was NC17 for the drug use.

Read away, but hey, don't blame me. It was merely the horse what brung me.

Comments

[legomymalfoy.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes! That's exactly how it got me. First HP fic ever was "The Chaser" which was H/G *wince* - this was about July/Aug 2001. Went from there to the "Paradise" series, IP and the Trilogy. By then, it was too late; I'd been sucked in.

[ballyharnon.livejournal.com]

aww! *feels all warm and fuzzy* you're so sweet to randomly plug me!

you know what you should do? is you should write an ending to The Story Formerly Known As Clubbing (http://members.cox.net/ballyharnon/ga). because as i was making the website, i realized that the new version is better, and that the endings that other people have written rock much ass and should not be left out of it. *nods decicively* and you shall write an ending to it, for the author of thy One True Beloved Fic hath said so.

and stuff. ^_^

[evil-erato.livejournal.com]

Oh my - nifty.org? Hee! I went and read the fic, and I have to say the spells were the best part: "Flippus Buttus", "Strippus todias", "Rigioso doggio", and of course, my favorite - "Cockus gigantus viagras". *snicker*

You've come a long way baby ;)

[marysiak.livejournal.com]

Has only read the first line of the Slytherin Ass story and is already both dead and utterly grossed out.

[marysiak.livejournal.com]

Has finished. Oh God, and I thought the first HP porn I read was bad. That was hideous. There must be a true hell for writers like that somewhere, not the nice hell we are all going to end up in. I refuse to share my hell with writing like that.

[gehenna1.livejournal.com]

maybe part of their hell is that they don't get to hang out in your hell? *is elitist about her damnation*

[gehenna1.livejournal.com]

I like the bathescope theory because in it, I live RIGHT BY THE SHORE and sometimes dabble in oceanography but do not swim. :)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Me too. You know, when I read it again yesterday I honestly hadn't read it in a year, and I was amazed at how bad it is. I think I just read it the first time because it was HP and I was trolling around nifty at the time.

But yeah, not my hell, thanks.