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?