#and like hey. if folks do pass it around between themselves bc they're actively seeking it out i'm also cool with THAT hypothetical!

[decepti-thots]

I absolutely understand this feeling, and yes, I have been on this side of it myself to an extent: a beloved old fic lost to time, etc etc. Hell, I've done a lot of amateur archive-old-fandom-shit work for this very reason, things that disappeared due to linkrot and changing platform usage trends and the like, stuff which I think privately collecting to create a snapshot of a period of fannish culture otherwise fading from memory... well I find it really valuable, for sure. (Obviously. I haven't spent dozens of hours trawling for this stuff because I think it's worthless, haha.)

On the other hand, I want to give an explanation to readers and the like as to how it is creators can know this is the case for so many people, and still delete stuff without it really influencing their decision making. I have deleted so many fanworks in my time. Ones I know people wanted to read again, and missed, because they (kindly!) contacted me saying so, and asking if I'd reconsider. In some cases I sent out private copies, in some cases I declined out of personal preference.

Here's the thing. They wanted to see it, but sometimes, I didn't want them to, and at the end of the day I didn't feel I "owed" it to them at the expense of my own contentment. I write for me, and while it is lovely when other people also enjoy it, readers who get demanding about being "entitled" to keep things that I decide no longer bring me joy are not persuasive. Having things up that nagged at my anxiety because I no longer wanted them publicly available made me not want to write new things. Feeling mildly second-hand embarrassed every time someone earnestly commented and praised something I cheerfully thought was really bad that I wrote ages ago, and then feeling bad about rolling my eyes at their sincere enjoyment... well yeah, it wasn't something encouraging me to continue creating. I found that keeping stuff up I hated and constantly fretted about made me want to interact with fandom less, write less, contribute less. When I deleted stuff I no longer wanted to be easily and immediately linked to my name or even found at all if possible, I breathed easier, and creating new stuff got fun again.

I knew people wanted to see it. That's why I deleted it. Because I felt like people seeing my "tree rings" was invasive and unwelcoming at a certain point, and I didn't want them to. It's nothing personal, and usually if people asked for copies of stuff to reread in private and I had 'em, I said yes. But for a lot of people what they do creatively is really linked to their self-presentation and identity, it's a part of themselves they have put out there, and it is good and healthy to practice curating that presentation and identity as a personal, deliberate decision! My relationship to my creative output became so much healthier when I realised it was under my control and for me to prune and curate, and while I know some people get very upset they unfortunately lose easy access to stuff they might otherwise love to read, know that it quite possibly put that creators' anxieties to bed and had quite the opposite effect on those folks.

Sidenote: this is why saving fanworks (for private use) that you love is a really good idea. If you read a fic you like, download the .pdf and keep it. If they delete it, you will not have lost it. Reblog art you love on tumblr and tag it for indexing; save art to your harddrive. AO3 especially has this feature built in and if you love a fic, you should 100% be downloading that shit! It's a great feature. Use it liberally, haha.

it genuinely makes me sad and kinda upset when someone purges all their old art off the internet like. barring harmful content what if someone liked that. What if someone would have. And now nobody will ever know and it's just gone. even people's old invader zim askblogs or whatever getting deleted feels like a micro alexandria to me and that's just something I made up. I wasn't even thinking of a specific one it just stresses me out. Is this the autism I don't get why nobody else seems to freak internally abt it like I do. I see artists whose blogs I've never even looked at go like "man so glad I deleted all my old stuff it's so clean" or saying they throw out art from when they were kids I'm like. how are you not hurling. How is that not distressing that is literally your tree rings why would you do that. I want to see what's out there. people want to see it I promise someone out there likes it

...don't they??? Does everyone get quietly irrationally upset by this as me, or is this just hyperfixation/autism/some amalgam of the two. I'm not a hoarder or obsessive compulsive or anything like that so i wonder..

Anyways. reblog if you had a favorite amateur youtube animator in your childhood whose channel got nuked without a trace one day that you still think about.