[ SECRET POST #4481 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4481 ⌋

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

01.



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02.
[The Hobbit]


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03.
[Tim Burton's Dumbo]


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04.
[Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born]


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05.
[Giles Coren, writer and TV presenter]


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06.
[The Dragon Prince]


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07.
[Quicksand on Netflix]

















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 43 secrets from Secret Submission Post #642.
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

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/lQfrqN0.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Does the option to download fics on ao3 bug you too?

[ayebydan]

for me personally, yes. I'm not a fan of it but I figure I'm the one writing fanfic so I bite my tongue and deal. I still find it just....odd.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't mind when others print my stuff off but I do get a little miffed over the idea that some people apparently download fics and edit them to their own preferences, as I've been made aware of from past FS secrets. There's nothing inherently wrong with it but no writer wants to know that their work is being actively fucked with in some way by a total stranger.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh it doesn't really bother me, personally, never even occurred to me it might annoy some people. I don't think it's really 'fucking with' my work to change names or something. It's a lot less than, say, taking other people's characters and putting them in situations the original author never considered, or might not even wish to consider ... like fanfiction ...

[ninety6tears]

I don't get mad at people for potentially doing things like this but it's not an unreasonable anxiety/annoyance when you fix that little thing that you didn't realize was inaccurate or stupid until a day after you posted and you just know there are people out there who keep tabs open instead of bookmarking, etc.

[ayebydan]

Agreed. In this wifi and data age just why?

[nightscale]

As someone who does download fic to read later let me give you something to maybe help you feel better? If I download a fic to re-read whenever I want, it means that I loved it so much I want to be able to read it whenever, and can and will regularly enough.

But you can also feel bugged by it OP, that's completely valid. I just thought I'd give you a slightly more positive perspective on it.

[(Anonymous)]

In the mid to late 90's, only with dial up, I would save fic (I think it started out with Star Trek TNG . The print it out for later to read. This was also the time before AOL charged only a monthly fee, which is how I maxed out my mom's card. Oops.

I saved the fics but I never edited them. Over time the fics dwelled into MST3K esque (the concept might sound weird at first but really it worked!). I just saved them all so I would something to go back to in case they were deleted.

Actually I still have all of these documents I've saved. From the late 90's and probably until sometime after Torchwood ended. Then after that, my interest faded in reading fan fiction.

[(Anonymous)]

I do the same sometimes and also used to be bothered by this a little. Then once I edited a very old fic to remove a scene that in retrospect I really hated, and someone commented to tell me they missed that scene and used the Wayback Machine to access the pre-edit version of the fic and get it back. So... can't win, I guess, even if people don't print it off once it's online it's already out of my control ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[silverr]

I make small stealth edits after posting as well, and because of that I always put, at the end of each fic or chapter, a line in small type (double SMALL tags) listing both the date the story or chapter was first posted, as well as the most recent revision date. Partly it's for me, to make certain that I keep what's on FFnet synced with Ao3 (or teaspoon or wherever), and also so that any reader who cares can have the most recent version.

[(Anonymous)]

This entire thread for OP's secret is intriguing in its highlighting of different interpretations of writer's wishes/rights as well as the reader's wishes/rights too. It's been interesting to read everyone's viewpoints. I really like FS for this reason - seeing different sides. I often learn new things here.

[(Anonymous)]

As a fanfic writer myself, I think some of y'all take yourselves way too seriously.

[(Anonymous)]

I came to this thread to mildly agree because all my friends are very much in the NEVER DELETE camp, but omg I didn't expect the comments here, spinning hard in the other direction o.O

I deleted about a third of my ao3 last year because it was shitty, and that's cool and I don't feel bad about it (I didn't delete anything I'd made as a gift, for example, even if I now feel it's shitty) but I know there are some people who have the works downloaded and welp, I can't do anything about that. That's the internet.

I mean I still have drawings my bff did in elementary school because I thought (still think) she's just amazingly talented. She'd cringe to see them, but they still mean something to me. I try to think about it like that.

Okay.

[(Anonymous)]

The only way to keep that full control is not to share your fic in the first place. And if it ever gets too upsetting, that's something you can consider.

As a fic writer, I just assume people will do with my fic what they want (things that are similar to like, maybe, writing other stuff based on the characters and situations I created).

And if you regularly delete whole fics or drastically change scenes in a rewrite, I would think that many readers who liked your fic to begin with and wanted to reread what they liked would download.

[(Anonymous)]

In my youth, we had a saying. "The internet is forever."

We let it guide our posting habits or lived to regret it. But we didn't blame or resent other people for doing what people inevitably do when you put something out there in the big wild west of the internet.

[greghousesgf]

the only issue I would have with this is some of my fics (especially I Want To Ride it All Night Long) have links to music that is supposed to be heard in the context of the story and if printed won't work. Other than that I wish my writing was popular enough that people wanted to print it.

[(Anonymous)]

I would love for someone to edit my fics just because they wanted to, upload then and credit me--just so I can enjoy a different version of my stories lol, it would almost be flattering in a way imho

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Haha wow I didn't think this would generate so much conversation, but I'm really enjoying seeing everyone's thoughts :D

[philstar22]

I'd be shocked if anyone actually downloaded any of my fics ever, and honestly I'd be thrilled. I'm just happy there is at least one person enjoying them.

[(Anonymous)]

I find this thread incredibly fascinating. I'd always made the assumption that fic writers who posted to AO3 were cool with people downloading their fic since that's a known feature of the site. I never felt weird about downloading fic from AO3 since, again, that's an option everyone is aware of.

If I find I fic I really love on LJ/DW/ff.net/etc and I want to save it, I'll usually ask for permission from the writer since those sites don't have a dl feature. I've done this about a dozen times and every writer I've asked has given me the go-ahead to dl their fic. One writer even sent me a word doc with their fic so I didn't have to copy-paste it myself. I don't have to ask for permission to dl their fic just like they don't have to give it, but as a writer myself, I just think it's a nice thing to do. (I'm actually quite flattered if people like my work enough to save it, even if I end up hating the fic somewhere down the line. It's nice to know it resonated enough with someone for them to want to reread it at some point.)

However, as I said above, I've never asked on AO3 because I just (apparently falsely) assumed AO3 writers were cool with people saving their stuff. After reading this thread, I may have to rethink that.

[(Anonymous)]

As a consumer of fic, I'm thankful there's the option to download it otherwise I'd lose so many fics I've enjoyed over the years. If I love a fic so much that I'm compelled to save it, then it really makes me happy. So please consider finding some solace in that, OP. You made someone really happy and as long as they're just keeping the fic to themselves rather than reposting it, then what's the harm?

I draw fanart, which naturally ages much worse than fanfic ever could, so I can understand artists deleting their work and cringing at it and the idea of people downloadin it, but I don't really understand how a fic writer can feel the same?

[(Anonymous)]

For everyone concerned about not being able to completely delete their embarrassingly shitty old fic from existence because of the chance someone might have downloaded it: if it was so shitty, what are the chances, really, that someone downloaded it? What are the chances that they kept it?

[(Anonymous)]

Since everyone is assuming that the main reason for deleting/not wanting your fic still around is because you’re embarrassed about it, I just wanted to throw in another perspective on “readers rights”. It’s like working the customer service desk except you don’t get paid and nobody is buying anything, they just expect to get what they want all the time and if you don’t give it to them then it’s just not good enough.

I had been in fandom nearly ten years, I started back when I did have endless hours to write fic because I didn’t have real life responsibilities to deal with. Fast forward a few years and I have a full time job and I’m getting pressured to update faster or write more or participate in this fest or whatever. And if I didn’t keep up my fandom output, then the “friends” I had made in that fandom would either lose interest because they weren’t getting what they wanted or turn downright nasty. And that was before the days of entitled people demanding these things in anon comments on AO3. And until a certain point I would spend all my free time trying to keep up with what these people demanded even though the only communication I had ever gotten from them was a comment harassing me because I hadn’t updated in a month.

It wasn’t until the anti culture and people getting doxxed and harmful shit like death threats became part of fandom that I realized fandom isn’t worth it anymore. I looked around and I had a thousand or so fanfics to show for ten years and my own mental health in tatters (and it took that to see how wrecked my mental health was because of these “readers” and their “rights”).

So I deleted everything. Because you know what, no, there is no such thing as readers rights. I can’t stop people keeping copies, if they have, in the same way that you can’t make people be respectful. But strip away characters and shipping and what those fic were was my time, ten years of it, wasted. So it should be my choice to pull them. And if your knee jerk reaction is that you have more of a claim on what the writer does with their fic than they do, you are delusional. Given that most people dine and dash these days, all you’ve contributed to this relationship is a fraction of the time it took the writer to produce it, purely for your enjoyment. If you don’t read it, ok the writer might be bummed out if they write purely for the number on the hit counter but if all writers get alienated and jaded and sick of being beholden to readers and stop writing, there will be no fic for you to enjoy/stake your claim over.

The best analogy I have is — there’s somewhere I shop that if you have a loyalty card, on your birthday you get a free own brand chocolate bar. I was once behind a woman tearing apart a shop worker because that free chocolate bar wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted a bigger one/a branded one. It’s a free chocolate bar. If you don’t like the free thing, don’t have the free thing. Unless you are paying for it, you are not owed anything just because you are blessing that shop worker/fic writer with your presence. I wish I had realized that sooner, before fandom got to the state it has now.

(And for the record, while I’m blissfully jaded about fandom/entitled people in general, I’m much happier out of it, have a great circle of friends that I don’t need to bribe to keep, and I got a promotion at work. I just need to find something other than fandom secrets and ONTD to scroll mindlessly while I wait for my alarm to go off. Though writing this out was great closure.)

[(Anonymous)]

...then don't post it anywhere.