Sunday 3 June 2012

Fanfic tears itself apart.


My letter to fanfic went unanswered. But it is still posted here if you want to read it.


I had loaded it as a one shot to fanfiction.net. After almost 60 reviews in less than two hours, they stopped allowing reviews to be posted and then in the next ten minutes, it was deleted completely.

No warning. No request to amend it. No response. No email to me, in any way shape or form.

That is EXACTLY the kind of behaviour from the site that I was complaining about.

Every one of those reviews was supportive and a few listed their own experiences with recent deletions. Most people were unaware that this story purge was going on. All they knew was that their favourites were disappearing and they did not know why. Fanfic.net, as per usual, had not put any message on the homepage.

People told me their fics were deleted for using words like: sex, badass, shit and leather & lace in the summary. (I know… right?)  I tweeted this and now have a Fleetwood Mac fan-group following me. Leather & Lace is a song title of theirs. Ugh, the ramifications… lmao.

In most cases, they did not receive a message from the site. In a few, the message came AFTER the deletion. Good luck with amending that fic now. Others, who have messaged the site for months about missing chapters and errors accessing their stories with zero response, then had another whole fic deleted. Again, with no message from the site. They have deleted their profiles and walked away.

M rated fics are allowed on the site. Personally, I am Australian and a movie released in the US as R rated is often M rated here, with no editing, so maybe I am little more liberal.

This purge covers all fandoms and is not targeting just Twilight fanfic, or just wolf centred Twilight fanfic. I wish this purge could be of awful fics; or appalling grammar but you have to learn somewhere. Or maybe the Bible MA fics? Yes, they exist. As one friend said, ‘how is it offensive to have Jake and Bella having sex, when Jesus can blow Judas?’ I agree.

This is madness, fanfic and there is no method in it.

Other sites are benefiting from this. Thewriterscoffeeshop is gloating on twitter about the influx of new members. The membership of jacobblackNpack http://jacobblack-n-pack.ning.com/ has rocketed up. The waiting list to get onto an ‘Archive of our own’ is over ten thousand. I’ll say that again: ten thousand people, waiting patiently to be allowed to join up and read fics unmolested.

But the most interesting thing is that it seems the group calling themselves LawlClan Critic Group ARE children.

Evidently, they consider it a badge of honour to have stories and authors removed. This is how they get their jollies. So my argument that they were not contributing to advertising revenue was correct. Go me. One reviewer said she had perused the forum and attempted to engage them and get some of the reasoning behind what they were doing. They made arguments such as, "Laws are there. Do you go against them and expect no consequences?" Maybe so, but they are not Judge Judy and executioner (to quote the movie Hotfuzz). She said she was also harangued for referring to them as "clan" as opposed to "Clan" (?).

This is who we're dealing with.

This isn’t only about the witch hunt of M authors; it is also about the administrative chaos and knee jerk reactions from the site.

Please, please fanfiction.net, employ a decent press officer. Fix the site problems, stop the witch-hunts. Put in some decent checks for age. Half the porn is written by underage authors. Cry to the world all the names of published authors who got their start in fanfiction. The Meg Cabot, Cassandra Clare, and EL James of this world.

Be proud of yourself.

But this?

This is like standing and watching as Fanfiction.net tears itself apart.

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