Ravings of an emotionally unstable fan.

[merricatk]

So, I heard it through the grapevine that all of the yuletide stories are being moved to A3O. I don't move in that circle, so everything I know comes secondhand. I've only ever written one story that's on the yuletide website, a NYR story. It was a whim, and I was still thinking that fandom might work for me.

This was several years ago. There was nothing bad about the experience.

Since then I've come to a few realizations about myself. One of them is, I was born, and will probably die, an outsider. I don't fit. Sometimes, for short periods, with certain groups, I can be part of the in-crowd. But I always ask the wrong questions, the ones nobody else thinks of. I always cause trouble, and I need way too much down time from people, and I'm way, way too needy.

The movers and shakers of fandom don't want to answer my questions, they don't want to be bothered with my moodiness, and they certainly don't want to cater to my needs, which are emotional in nature.

They do want my stories. I've had more than one offer to archive my stories, and I've said yes more than once because of my neediness. I thought the offer to "work with me" on putting my stories online meant they wanted to spend some time with me. What I found out was that except of approving a layout and emailing the stories, I was now extraneous to the whole process. So I've put my stories back in my pocket and am (slowly) posting them on my LJ.

Now the yuletide stories are being moved to what I, in my infinite ignorance, consider to be a potentially more public venue, which I'm not comfortable with. (Why do I see it as being more public? Because it's supposed to be easier to find things there, because it has been so publicized and so has yuletide. Am I wrong about this? Everyone says so.)

It's also being run by movers and shakers--things always are; they're the ones who run things, they have the temperament for it, it's nothing against them. But I'm not comfortable with them. And I'm in a position of either letting them take my story and be quiet while put it wherever they want it--without, so far, them saying a word to me about it; or taking my story back and have people call me names.

Or I can orphan my story by taking my name off of it.

I wish they weren't using the word orphan. It's too poetic, it puts to sharp a point on the abandonment, it makes me feel terrible. I have abandonment issues. Call me a thief for taking my story back and I can deal with it. Say I'm making my story an orphan, I'll cry.

And I wish they weren't telling me again that I can go--just leave the story. Because I already know I'm extraneous, except for the stories.

I'm perfectly aware that I'm completely wrong about all of this, but being told how wrong I am is only going to push me harder into putting this story in my pocket, too. I'm perfectly aware that my feelings--and all this is nothing but my feelings--are indefensible. But I don't like it when the powerful people come and tell me how unreasonable I am not to want to do things their way. Not ask, just tell.

I can live with being disliked, considered a screwball, or an angry, shitty, classless, selfish jerkass, and I can live with people believing the lie that I'm doing this because I hate OTW and/or A3O. I can live with the whole rest of the world considering me irrational.

Comments

[amalthia]

I find it interesting that people worry about the more public archives like fanfiction.net and the A30, but I find as a reader the more stories an archive has the harder it is to actually find what I'm looking for so I'm not sure if the stories are really all that public? (which is another problem all together)

I think that's why I'm a bigger fan of the niche archives that cater to pairings, ships, or types of content like threesome archives or something.

I'm on board with what the OTW is trying to accomplish but I can see why not everyone else is comfortable with the idea. You're not the only author that likes to have more control over their work and presentation of their stories.

As for your one question about whether or not Yuletide is more public or the A30 archive? I think the longer a archive has been in place the more public it becomes so I thought everyone knew about the yuletide archive but now that all the yuletide stories are being moved I'm not sure it's going to be easy to find all the older yuletide stories. (I think that's the part that worries me) Plus I'm not sure what they are going to do with all the links.

I think the people running the archives (if they are anything like me) worry more about not losing the stories and sometimes it's hard to see the author's pov in the face of "saving the stories." There are so many stories that were lost when Voyager and X-Files archives went down. I think the only reason some weren't lost for good is that at some point I'd asked permission to archive them and the author said yes.

I also kind of feel like an outsider myself in that my views don't always mesh well with authors because I'm so focused on saving stories that I know I do have a hard time understanding why some authors prefer to have their stories in only one spot.

So I think maybe that's one place as to where the archivist for the A30 are coming from and it's incredibly hard to to have a one on one relationship with every author. I feel lucky if I get to know any of the authors whose works I archive. I find that by going to conventions I manage to make more friends that away than threw online communications.

I did have one question though, you said "The movers and shakers of fandom don't want to answer my questions, they don't want to be bothered with my moodiness, and they certainly don't want to cater to my needs, which are emotional in nature."

I'm confused because I've written to the OTW archive people a few times asking questions and I've gotten answers. I've sent in bug reports and asked about features that don't exist and each time I got a response. I'm not sure why they would not have responded to your questions. This is the first I've heard of a person's questions not being answered. But I never got the impression that they don't care about the authors. Many of their features are in place due to author's input.

For the record I'm not a volunteer for the OTW, nor am I a spokesperson. You brought up some interesting things in your post and I felt compelled to respond.

[merricatk.livejournal.com]

Thank you for responding--it's good to get another perspective. I can understand being focused on the stories, on not wanting to lose the literature of fandom. (I work for the library, and it upsets me that we've gotten rid of so much, that weeding is now pushed so hard.)

I'm sorry, when I was talking about the movers and shakers in fandom in general--the ones I've interacted with. And it's not that I have anything against them, it's just that my priorities always seem to be different from theirs. I like a lot of them, but I don't want to deal with them in an "official" capacity. The OTW people might be different, but since I'm not planning on participating, I have no experience with them. So it may well be an unfair generalization.

[amalthia]

Oh man, I find it tragic when I hear about Libraries getting rid of older titles and books to make more room for new ones. (which is why I'm sort of happy libraries are starting to offer ebooks) With ebooks weeding isn't as necessary though the more ebooks they get the more they have to spend on infrastructure so people can actually find what they are looking for and to support the bandwidth needs.

I finally got around to reading the thread you linked to and I now see what you're talking about! My impression is the old archive could not handle the popularity of the yuletide challenge so they had to find another venue. I'm a bit all over the place in fandom so I have friends who are in OTW and some that aren't associated at all/on the fence, as well as some that aren't big fans of the idea.

As an archivist I'm a fan of a centralized archive that's stable and less likely to disappear but as a writer I also like the idea of having some say as to where my stories will be hosted. Though Yuletide seems to have another set of rules people agreed to when they originally participated. Though I suspect the creators never anticipated the response the challenge got and their resources were overrun. And so everyone like you that had participated back before it became popular signed on expecting one thing and now it appears as though it has to change if the challenge will survive.

By reading all the facts I could see that the situation was bound to cause conflict because to me both sides have legit concerns. And I think they are trying their best to address them but with the hundreds of people involved I can't see any one solution that would actually please everyone. :(

Hugs

[merricatk.livejournal.com]

For about two years we had a director--excuse me, CEO*--who wanted us to be the McDonald's of public library systems. Old books out! 200 copies of Stephen King in! (I love Steve, but we don't need 200 copies of his latest, only to have 150 of them end up in the booksale by the end of the year.) Thank God she's gone, anyway.

Hugs right back!


*Any library that calls the person in charge a CEO needs to be watched carefully.

[amalthia]

Yikes, 200 copies! and CEO?? They do know Libraries are non-profit right? I'll have to keep your advice in mind as I come closer to finishing my Masters in Information and Library Science.