You know you're a fandom old when you remember Bulbagarden as BMGF (Bulbasaur's Mysterious Garden Forums, it was dark blue with Erika and a Bulbasaur...) and Serebii forums as SPPf (when it was a lighter green, not so grey as the main site... although I did not know what it was short for)!
As an 11-12 year old, I felt I joined the fandom late (it was around 2004!), so a lot of the dedicated Team Rocket fansites... were already dead! Just hanging around as archives... Salon Roquet, Ii Kanjii, Frogs VS Roses, Sentimental Value, Before the Shadows Fade... I was so happy that Team Rocket Asylum, TRs-Rockin, and TeamRocket-Video were still up. I submitted artwork! I used TRHQ2... I remember the dark blue theme with the Persian pencil lineart (different crop than later)...
Jez's Rocket-Fics was still up and a lot of my art was saved there! ^^ I used to help moderate the forums...
There were also more infamous fansites due to either very dodgy humour even if it was totally sfw (Zelda's Rare Candy Shop, which only two other people online seem to recall?! Think something like Pokemopolis in its earlier days, but written by a Rocketshipper, and no full episode synopses, but something akin to those wrongrocketshipping [Rocketshipping that's just wrong] screenshots out of context threads on TRHQ2...) and some that genuinely did host nsfw/adult content (DarkRoses? Although they also hosted some clean/sfw doujinshi, but only one featuring TR, so that was the only one I read, pffft, I remembered a very sweet KojiMusa one, the page with Kojiro's back riddled with scars from Rumika's whip stayed with me. I adopted it into my personal headcanon.)
Haruna who did write some doujinshi had a lovely fansite back then (I recall everything I saw on there was clean!), was it Rocket Channel...? It was a Japanese site.
Back then, there was a bit of an issue where folks would try to force gender non-conforming characters into more stereotypical manly man and weak waif woman roles even if it's VERY OOC, though, as if a man and a woman can't be shipped together unless you force them to fit societal expectations and rigid gender roles. Same reason I never cared for a certain then-popular (now quite maligned, even though she really wasn't the only fan doing this to the characters back then!) fic writer. The other issue was the fics were mostly long and sprawling. I read a single early what-you-didn't-see type fic I did enjoy about Meowth's feelings for Togepi (he raised it, after all! ;_;), but everything else didn't appeal. That variety was dubbed R*cketshipper, there was a counter variety called Q****rshippers (I don't wanna use this term, even if it's not seen as much of a slur these days) who insisted on... James being the pretty princess and Jessie being the knight in shining armor, but this one could easily end up OOC in the opposite extreme (James canonically hates shopping and loathes ballroom dancing, Jessie LIVES for that fairy tale princess stuff even if she also can be a dashing soldier, please don't flatten their characters to fit the opposite gender stereotypes!)...
We're all just Rocketshippers these days, but we had a lot of names back then.
Here's one you won't find on the fanlore article! Pokemopolis was a bit too mean against the ship because they were firmly of the JIG [James Is Gay] camp and had their forums censor "Rocketshipper" as "dirty, dirty liar"... xD;;;;
