How did you discover fanfiction/Where did you start?

Hi guys, I was just wondering how you guys found out about fanfiction! I thought maybe some of you have some funny stories you would like to share 😊

My first fanfiction was in the Vampire Diaries fandom. It was 2011, I was 11/12 years old and saw a photo edit of Elena and Damon getting married. At the time, I didn‘t know it was an edit and thought it was a behind the scenes picture from the next season, so I googled „Elena und Damon Hochzeit (eng. Wedding)“ in hopes to find out more. I landed on, what I naively thought in my child brain, was A WHOLE SCRIPT/DESCRIPTION of what would happen in the next season, including wedding and all! Imagine my surprise when the next season aired about a year later and absolutely none of these things happened. I was so devastated 😂 I went back to the site in hopes for an explanation to what I had read, thought it was brilliant, and made my way through the fandoms and from fanfiktion.de to Wattpad to fanfiction.net to Livejournal and FINALLY to AO3 ❤️

With time, I got some of my friends into it as well, but I feel like I was the only person at the time that knew what it was, and even I only found out about it by accident. Maybe it was because of the time, maybe it was because I was quite young or maybe because they just weren‘t as popular in Germany? I have no idea, but I do feel like fanfiction became a bit more mainstream, which I personally enjoy quite a lot, because it means more content and less awkward explanations ☺️ What are your stories and starter sites/fandoms? ❤️