Why

[auronlu]

Over the years, some of my favorite writers — who wrote the fanfics that I’d go back and find and read again, over and over — have deleted their journals, deleted all their fanfics.

And I feel guilty for hoarding the few bits I’d downloaded to listen to because of my vision problems, and now I’m like OMFG iPad never ever die because it’s got THOSE fics on it, and I don’t want to lose them, but I feel guilty for keeping them because the writer had some reason for deleting all those wonderful stories.

I’d hunted down eBook editing apps just so I could give them fancy custom covers instead of the default covers.

And it just…

Why?

Why do people remove huge swathes of their fanfic? I still have one single piece saved from the lost canon of cupcakemonster, and now I have a few more treasures, but iBooks is being stupid and only letting me back up the eBooks I’ve purchased, not ePubs I’ve downloaded from AO3.

I hate losing the stories I love. But they belong to the author, not me. And copyright includes the right to erase them.

It makes me sad, like mummy cartonnage made of paper scraps from Alexandria, like half-remembered snatches of song of the High-Elves who have set sail.

Comments

[sarasa_cat]

I have removed huge swathes of fanfic as have some people I know. Here's why:

0. Some people want to rewrite the fic so they take it down ... and never put it back up again (while chasing other plot bunnies, living life)

1. Some people need to keep their professional life and their fandom contributions completely separate for a variety of reasons (that can be very complex). When the wall threatens to come down (or does comes down), they delete.

2. Some people realize that they want certain fanfics to go "out of print" because they no longer "endorse" the views in that fic. For instance, they realize the fic contains deeply problematic elements played straight and they don't want to be responsible for creating more problem in an already problematic media world.

3. Some people are in the process of going pro, they have a distinct writing style, and they might also consider expying some of their fanfic so they don't want to (or legally cannot) plagiarize themselves.

4. Some people are absolutely disgusted with the fandom and want no further association with it.

5. Some people just want to start over again for a variety of other reasons.

...

I've pulled most of my fic down for reasons 1+3, but I did pull one down for reason 0 and, sadly, never got around to putting it back up despite having the majority of the 20,000 word story almost ready to go (for a few years now).

[auronlu]

Okay, all these reasons make sense and help.

I am selfish; some were fics that I refer people to as great fics and/or excellent headcanon that tackles this or that problem in the game, and...shoot, nevermind, the apocrypha text is gone.

But mostly I'm just afraid of losing them. Out in the mundane world, I desperately need to update my iPad's system before the switch to system 7 so that I can avoid system 7, but I don't entirely trust it not to wipe out the ePubs I'd downloaded from AO3. And those are my ONLY COPIES.

[sarasa_cat]

I use Good Reader (http://www.goodiware.com/goodreader.html) because it gives the user far more control over how they organize their digital library. I think it is possible to import from the iOS Books program but I have always been skeptical of Apple's desire to control media so I started off with a third party reader right from the beginning.

Definitely look into Good Reader and see if the internet knows of ways to slurp the user-imported books out of iBooks so you can back up all the good stuff from fandom.

.

As for the larger problem, even though AO3 has the option to orphan a work, I haven't yet seen anyone do that. I've had Very Bad Luck with my stories left in archives controlled by the hands of other human beings who randomly decided the works were orphaned and under their control. They then decided to syndicate my stories (and did!) without my permission. It was completely strange because these stories were being republished in an online magazine completely outside of their original context with no links back to the headcanon universe they were a part of, and no reference to the citations that need to go with the works when published outside of a fansite** ... it was really strange and very, very problematic. (I and a few others managed to get it all taken down with a very loud cease and desist.)

** The majority of what I write for fandom is blatant pastiche or style exercises although most readers don't catch it (although it becomes obvious when it's something popular like the opening scene of Fight Club). The pastiche falls into a grey area, the style exercises -- a classic "rewrite this story you wrote using the style of Author XYZ" which is a standard writing exercise in a workshop -- runs the risk of becoming double plagiarism when that story is PUBLISHED without my permission much less author XYZ's knowledge in some magazine. *HEADDESK* (fucking idiot children who did this). I'm not the only person who does this. I know many fanfic authors who purposefully use fanfic for writing exercises and style exercises just like this and then they write their original fiction more "seriously." So, when this happens, the fanfic really isn't meant to be shared in a permanent space, much like how my art sketchbooks are just sketchbooks.

[monsterboy]

There's got to be some way of unofficially hacking that.

Here's one example that might help?

[sarasa_cat]

I wouldn't feel guilty keeping them.

Those fics are like out of print books. I have a bunch of out-of-print books in my horde.

The only thing that would be wrong is for you to electronically distribute those out-of-print fanfics.

[owlmoose]

I endorse this comment in its entirety.

[sarasa_cat]

And your icon makes it official. ;D

[owlmoose]

You'd think I have strong opinions about copyright and shared culture or something.

[sarasa_cat]

Only now did it occurred to me that you don't just have *one* librarian icon but, instead, an actual set of "LIBRARY FANDOM" icons!!! \o/

(wow. library fandom! this concept makes me smile.)

[heavenscalyx]

I wonder if I ought to just collect my longer fics in downloadable form the way I did for Archimage. I'm still stupidly proud of both Another Incineration and Friends and Strangers. And I've got a few decent shorter Utena fics. It might make it easier for those to circulate around the Internet and land in various archives.

[samuraiter]

(Incidentally, I have a clear memory of when the major Utena archive was about to be taken down, and several friends told me to go there and archive everything while I still could. Glad I did.)

[auronlu]

You should. And clearly I need to HUNT DOWN the rest of them, as I have only read Archimage, and for that matter Archimage should be sitting on my iBook shelf.

Although it's one of those stories for which the Siri-voice is totally inadequate. Thank goodness for NaturalReader. (The more my eyes go screwy, the more I treasure fanfic which can be read aloud, mispronuniciations and all.)

[heavenscalyx]

They're both on my website (http://www.broomstick.org/utena) and on Archive of Our Own (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jude/pseuds/Jude). I thought you'd read at least Another Incineration, my big-ass Talia fic.

[melchar]

I have also copied/saved some fanfics that I really truly loved - just because there have been others I -didn't- save that went away. Yes, I know it's selfish of me, but ... cool fanfics that might disappear forever!

[monsterboy]

I feel that just as people have valid reasons to take them down, others have valid reasons to keep them. One person's trash is another person's treasure, and-- just because an author disowns their work doesn't also mean you can't feel attached to it and want to keep it.

Idk, I see it as the same thing as-- say a published author becomes disgusted with one of their books and purposely allows it to go out of print. Are you a bad person for attempting to buy that book used? I don't think anyone would say so, yet somehow we treat things differently when they're written by non-pros.

People may have reasons to remove their work from the internet. But I don't think personally owning a story, or wishing it hadn't been removed or could be sent to you privately somehow, does any harm.

And I say this as someone who's removed stories (for reason 3 above) and someone who saves them.

[samuraiter]

I share the same 'out-of-print book' mentality as several of the posters above, though I would add a (really unfortunate) reason to the list that vieralynn posted above:

6.) The author is no longer in their right mind.

A surprising number of 'ficcers I knew from the pre-FFN '90s kinda ... lost it. And stopped writing. In a variety of ways. Some disappeared without a trace, leaving everything unfinished. Some took down their works in a frothing, out-of-character rage. Some had bizarre, strangely public meltdowns and were never the same afterwards. It was all deeply unsettling, and it perpetually bothers me that it happened to what was generally a wonderful, deeply dedicated group of people.

For myself, I would add another reason.

7.) Diminishing returns. Either no one is reading, or the amount of effort required to continue the story is unequal to the amount of attention it receives.

For the stories I have taken down, I generally have nebulous plans for revising and reposting them for archival purposes, but these do not always come to fruition.

[wallwalker]

Agreeing with vieralynn and samuraiter - these are both very valid reasons.

And I do have to add another:

8) Technical difficulties.

Although it's less a reason than it is a contributing factor, for me. (Case in point: When I deleted my fandom LJ, I saved all of the ficbits and fandom meta in a word file on my flash drive, intending to save it on my new shiny laptop and maybe repost some of it later. Guess what happened to the flash drive, and a huge quantity of other WIPs with it?)

[saharasnow]

I was almost ready to remove some of mine, if I ever gets to it Orz. Sometimes I do wish to remove all the fics, because I feel they don't represent how/what I write now anymore.

[auronlu]

Aww. Well, we do change. But some of them are quite beautiful.