Is this a generational gap thing? Did '90s fanfic readers habitually save everything that looked like it might be interesting, before broadband started spreading?
Pretty much, yes. We didn't have archive.org or groups.google.com to give us copies of anything that might disappear back then.

As for fanfic suggestions... Honestly, I'm surprised Ayiekie and Epsilon haven't provided their lists yet. (They're the two who wrote Hybrid Theory, which was mentioned earlier. Although, to keep them from getting seriously swelled egos, I feel obliged to point out they also wrote Ran Wars.)

Genma's Daughter and its sequals is another excellent, if completely non-canonical, story arc.

Anybody know where to find Girl Days? My link to it is dead...

--
Rob Kelk

"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life."
- Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007