So I've made my way through all 100+ pages of Animorphs fanfic on fanfiction.net

From Fanlore
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Meta
Title: So I’ve made my way through all 100+ pages of Animorphs fanfic on fanfiction.net
Creator: lorenfangor
Date(s): Aug 13, 2021
Followup discussion posted 2021-2023
Medium: online, Tumblr
Fandom: Animorphs
Topic: Animorphs fandom history on FFN
External Links: https://www.tumblr.com/roach-works/672222783547359232
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

So I’ve made my way through all 100+ pages of Animorphs fanfic on fanfiction.net is an untitled essay posted to tumblr by lorenfangor. It noted fandom trends that jumped out to lorenfangor as they surveyed Fanfiction.Net's entire Animorphs section as it existed in August 2021, as well as noting how the fandom had seemed to change over the years. The essay also encouraged animorphs fans to archive fanfics and preserve fandom history.

The Essay

so I’ve made my way through all 100+ pages of Animorphs fanfic on fanfiction.net and guys, somebody has to archive this before it disappears, but also, it’s wild to look back on how the fandom has changed

introductory post, full text here, Archived version

Summary of points:

  • Mostly short fics (1-3k words)
  • the lack of smut (speculated to be due to FFN's purges)
  • Noted trends in character and ship popularity, and how these changed after the publication of the final book (in which Rachel died)
  • also trends in *how* those characters and ships were written:
Rachel got more popular after her death than she was before, and “Rachel Lives” fics were the most popular kind of series continuation
basically nobody was invested in “Jake and Cassie repair their relationship” AUs, which I think is fascinating because of how many prolific authors there were writing J/C

  • femslash more popular than m/m slash
  • noted rise of particular m/m ships in popularity, tying back to specific fics
  • many examples of formerly-popular but now rarely-seen genres of fic:
“Extinct” genres of fic like the “music video” are heavily represented here
Songfics and poetry are everywhere (So many “In the End” songfics about post-54 Jake…)

  • (mostly, lack of) crossovers
  • listing some particularly weird/bad/out-there fic ideas they encountered across this search. followup link

Responses

  • Memories of other trends within the Animorphs Fandom:
I mean, are all of the author insert fandom war fics still there? There was a period where we had a big fandom war but it wasn’t even over ships or anything in particular as far as I remember, we would just write fics about us being at war with each other. I feel like this pre-dated BNF as a term, I think we all used V.I.W. (Very Important Writer), of which I think Forlay and DMP were the stars. I think this was honestly like 1997.

friendshiptothemax, Aug 13, 2021 [1]

I saw cliche fics way more than the author insert war stuff but I think I remember seeing at least a few of those? I would love an explanation for the cliche fics, that feels like an in-joke that existed offsite.

Forlay’s got a lot of stuff still up but if they had a separate site (which, did they? I was a bit too young for the Internet in 97 so I’m looking back on Before My Time fandom history; the only reason I wonder in the first place is because of some notes and comments in summaries) I’m not sure what happened to it. FFN archives start in 98/99, though, so the author wars might predate this site by a bit.

DMP as a name is new to me unless it’s an acronym! I would love to know what they wrote.

lorenfangor, Aug 13, 2021 [1]

  • Memories of user's personal contributions to and experiences in animorphs fandom (including some that lorenfangor discussed in their post):
Holy shit lol the Jake/Marco was me

I can't believe that was twenty years ago what the fuck

kleenexwoman, 2 January 2022 [2]

the first fanfic I ever wrote was animorphs, in 1998 or so, just me as a nine-year-old using Jake's relationship with his yeerk-infested brother as a way to process my sense of loss as my older brother entered his late teens and stopped wanting to hang around his little siblings. I never published it, but I did print it out and give a copy to a classmate to apologize for being mean to him on the playground, and we've now been friends for over twenty years.

monkeychewtoy, 2 January 2022 [2] k

  • Including memories of smut (and other fandom favorite genres):
My first animorphs fics predated ffn and were hosted on webrings and personal sites. There was absolutely smut. I don't recall a lot of that ever being on ffn in the first place, but given that the NC-17 purge happened fairly early on in ffn's history (pre-2004 or so? I wasn't on it until after so i can't remember exactly, I just noticed when fan forums started talking about it), that was probably self reinforcing.

Most Animorph fic was only just migrating onto ffn a few years before that. We held on to our sites and webrings until the bitter end. Most of what those held never made it to anywhere else. I probably wrote dozens of Ani-fics, I never put them anywhere else (they only exist now in a case of old floppy discs I have somewhere). A lot has been lost.

But trust me. There was Animorphs smut. It was largely written by 12-18 year olds, since the series was new and that was the majority readership, and sometimes the content was just alluded to but considered to contain sexual references anyway, but it was there.

Mostly though, the fics were tragic. Heartbreakingly tragic. Soulrendingly tragic. We knew even then that this was not a series of happy endings. Even in future-fics where the war was won and everyone had kids, terrible things happened. True Animorphs porn was capital T tragedy lol

thaylepo, 3 October 2021 [3]

#can confirm that there used to be smut on ffn before they banned it#fandom#animorphs[4]

  • Noting/reccing crossovers on other websites:
There is one TV crossover that you must have missed.

The truly incredible, My Little Pony: Morphing is Magic

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/28546/my-little-pony-morphing-is-magic

chin-chillax, 31 December 2021 [5]

  • Followup to lorenfangor's final points about "how the fandom has changed"
The Animorphs fandom has delved much deeper in the alien cultures, yet in some ways I feel like we’ve moved away from the weirdness of teenagers who can turn into any animal. Random grows and evolves. I love every route it’s taken in the past and will in the future.

zarohk, 31 December 2021 [6]

References

  1. ^ a b reblogs by friendshiptothemax and lorenfangor, Archived version posted 13 October 2021
  2. ^ a b Reblogs by kleenexwoman and monkeychewtoy, Archived version posted 2 January 2022.
  3. ^ reblog by thaylepo, 3 October 2021, Archived version
  4. ^ reblog by butts-for-days posted 1 January 2022.
  5. ^ reblog by chin-chillax, Archived version
  6. ^ reblog by zarohk, Archived version. Posted 31 December 2021
Retrieved from "https://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=So_I%27ve_made_my_way_through_all_100%2B_pages_of_Animorphs_fanfic_on_fanfiction.net&oldid=2660625"