Hey gang, there's between 7,000 to 10,000 Zutara fics on fanfiction.net.
"But wait," you ask, "I went to check and I put in Zuko and Katara and pairing and it's only 1.7k?"
WRONG! Remember, SHIT IS OLD, YO. ๐ญ๐ฟ
The "Pairing" checkbox was implemented in the 2010s. All the Zutara fanfic written during the show and in the years immediately after it didn't have that. And it didn't get automatically added.
Back in the day, we old people would select the Characters A and B, then select Genre "Romance". That's where all the good 2000s and 2010s Zutara fanfic lives! I'm talking some stuff that is novel-length, beloved pairing classics, most of which will probably not be posted to AO3 anytime soon.
So if you only search by "Pairing" checkbox, you're going to get about 1.7k Zutara fics. But if you unselect that and choose the "Romance" genre, you'll get more than 7k. And if you include every genre then fanfics with Katara and Zuko as the primary characters is more than 10k.
There's so much more fanfic than you guys realize!! Like y'all probably haven't even read Stormbenders and omg the effect of that story on the shipdom in 2008 was seismic.
It's so fun. Unfortunately the UI for FF.net it's still pretty bad so you might want to just download the thing. But you guys are really missing out if you haven't gone to where most of the fanfic was when the show was airing. (The same is pretty much true of most fandoms from the 2000s.)
