[ SECRET POST #2960 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2960 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Better early than late!

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #423.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[intrigueing]

Well, uh, I would be pretty upset - not inconsolable, but a lot more than "mildly annoyed" - if every copy of a particular book or movie or short story I really loved evaporated from the world. So why wouldn't I feel just as upset about a really excellent fanfic getting erased?

They're stories. Some fanfics are among the best stories I've ever read in my life, some have meant as much to me as published stories -- some even more, when they addressed subjects or played out in ways that would never make it into publishing. I don't know what kind of dreck you read, but my favorite fanfics are not "disposable." Nor are they "transient." Not in the least. Not any more so than a so-called "real" story. (Now, fanfics this valuable are pretty damn rare, but they exist.)

I guess I don't really understand how being sad at the idea of never being able to re-read, talk about, or share a story - any story - you loved, and which changed the way you look at things, and to know no one else will ever experience what you experienced, show you have no functional coping skills? There's a huge distance between feeling sad and having a huge emotional meltdown.

Now, if you're upset that random 3K word "how they met" story got deleted because omg that was slightly better than the 10 other 3K word "how they met" stories in the fandom, or random kinkmeme fill #5 that was a single scene of gimmicky porn of a type that gets written several times in every fandom ever got deleted because damn, you fapped to that every night, that's unhealthy. But that's not the sum total of fanfic.

[(Anonymous)]

But fanfics are transient. That's the nature of digital media in general - it doesn't have the same permanence that hard copies have. If the author decides to delete their story, or the archive it's on goes down permanently, or there's some sort of server hiccup that wipes a load of data, that's it. It's gone. That's why you should really save a copy of anything you have an emotional attachment to.

(Disposable, however, is snobbish garbage...although to be perfectly honest, your last paragraph comes off in a fairly similar light. Someone's favorite trashy fic can be really comforting, and if you're allowed to be upset if your favorite epic gets deleted, they're allowed to be equally upset if their fic equivalent of a ratty old bad-day sweater gets junked.)

[intrigueing]

You're absolutely right, I guess I was trying to look more agreeable or something by partially agreeing with the ayrt. I apologize for that. It was insulting and uncalled for, and the ayrt's comment was pure bullshit and didnt deserve even partial agreement.

However, I don't think that fanfic is transient just because the medium is transient, any more than an unpublished manuscript that could be chucked in the trash, or a story passed down orally that could be forgotten, is transient. Many fanfics last decades, since the 60s and 70s, some transferred to the internet from hardcopies that are actually still in print.