To Import or Not to Import

[binary_sunset]

 I'm in a bit of an odd predicament. Ya boi has been in fandom for nearly a decade (I just checked FFn and my account turned 10 back in January... holy shit).

I'm toying with the idea of importing all my old Hetalia and Death Note fics to AO3 under my old Pseud, but it just feels really weird.

While I still really love the fandoms (I rewatched Death Note a little while ago and it's still *chef's kiss* and I still have a habit of picturing countries as Hetalia characters while learning about history), I don't really feel like those fics are... mine, you know? I've changed so much since middle school and freshman year of high school. It would feel so weird to have my current work next to stuff I wrote so long ago. Like, when I first started writing fan fiction, I didn't even know I liked girls and I hadn't bothered to question my gender.

But I feel like I've been sort of reclaiming my "cringy" interests lately (hence the Death Note rewatch, de-anoning my CMBYN RPF, and my desperate search for the Hetalia dub), so shouldn't I also reclaim this? I wrote it and it has a right to be seen. And FFn could genuinely go under or delete my inactive account whenever it wants. And I don't have any of it archived either. The Death Note stuff was written exclusively on a computer whose hard drive has been lost to time immemorial, and I wrote most of my Hetalia fics on my phone before I got a real laptop. As worthless as I might think these works to be, should I let them just disappear into the ether when young me worked so hard on them?

There's a part of me that wants to put it on AO3, but I don't really want it associated with my current pseud. It feels like a relic of a person who no longer exists. This sort of... half-formed Tori I guess is the only way to put it. That odd transition time between the Tori that exists now and the aborted personality that I would've had were it not for my presence on the internet and my queerness. 

Fellow fandom olds, what do you do with your old material that you're no longer proud of? Do you have any advice for me? Should I just stop overthinking everything and post the damn things?

Comments

[all_choseny]

One thing I suggest you don't do is delete them. I am good for deleting things that I think "suck." Maybe you can go back and do some edits. Now that you've got some years removed from those fics, you can see them with a different eye. Maybe if you see an area where you've improved in, you can fix those parts.

[binary_sunset]

Oh goodness, I would never dream of deleting them! They're like these perfect time capsules of who I was back then. They're trash, but they're also my trash!

The problem with revising them is that I'd have to do SO much revision. It's all stuff that I wrote when I was very young. And most of them I just don't have very much of an interest in fixing. Although, now that I think about it, there's a few that I probably could write some decent stuff using it as inspiration. It would be a massive undertaking, though, so I'd probably save it for the summer when I'll have more time.

[all_choseny]

Yeah, I have to stop deleting stuff. Even if it is bad. Maybe you can put it under a collection and talk about your growth as a writer.

[luthienberen]

Hello from a fellow fandom old! I am in the same boat. A lot of my old stuff is either on FF.NET or on Harry Potter/ adultfan.net archives which went down and aren't posted anywhere else.

To upload on A03 is sensible and a record but the stuff is slightly cringey...yet...

I spoke to my dear friend and the advice struck gold with me. She advised me to upload them with no revisions or minimal spelling editing, and just a note saying this was written a long time ago and anything else I wished. My friend noted people still like reading my fic due to bookmarks and so on, so they still hold value.

That touched a cord with me and well, my old fic are still important to me too. They helped me grow and be where I am today.

Also on A03 you can backdate your fic! So I have decided to upload my old fic.

...I hope my ramblings helped put a different perspective on the matter and helps you consider your oprions! :)

[binary_sunset]

What a good friend! Most of my friends are new to fandom (as in, just started writing fic a couple years ago), so I'm glad to see that someone has some great insight into this!

And you're totally correct. Even if people don't really read my fic anymore (which is fine, it's very old at this point and chillin on a mostly-dead website), people still liked them initially and they still had value to me when they were first written and they still have value to me now. How often do you get perfect time capsules of your younger self, after all? Some of my old old old fics are so wonderfully dated, it's almost charming.

AO3 does an event every April called "april showers" where you "shower" the Archive in you old stuff, so I think I'll post it then. Who knows? Maybe I'll reread it and find some old gems.

[luthienberen]

I have been fortunate that my dear friend and I have essentially grown through fandom together, we may have taken different branches (fandoms), but together we have worn the roadways and enjoyed ourselves :)

"...time capsules of your younger self..." A perfect description :) I uploaded one of my old fanfics to A03 because a fan asked me where they could read the story, (due to FF.NET restriction on explicit fic I had taken it down and it was no longer available elsewhere).

So I went and posted this really old fic and only did some minor spelling and grammar edits otherwise nothing was changed. It was as you said, charming in its own way and also wonderful knowing one reader at least still found pleasure in my very old tale!

I wish you well in uploading of your old fic! Oh, I have missed the April Showers event on A03. What a splendid way to introduce old fanfiction to the Archive.

[silverusagi]

If you want to put it on AO3, you don't have to do it under your current name. Create a new account if you want.

Then if you ever feel like 'claiming' the old fics, you can put a note on both profiles linking to each other.

[binary_sunset]

Oh, that's not a bad idea!

[eloquated]

I've been wondering the same thing myself! I just passed the 18th anniversary of my first fic (had to check ao3 to see!) and most of them are truly terrible. And Im not ashamed, because I was just a kid, and we all start somewhere! But I don't necessarily want them link to my current pseud.

For the time being, I'm just leaving them on ff.n, as they are. And if people find them? Cool! If they don't? Also cool. I don't really feel the need to do anything else with them, though... they're just something I can look back on and laugh at!

[binary_sunset]

The way I see it, it's good to have backups. I don't really have any backups of my work from back then. But if you have all your old stuff stored somewhere safe, you're probably okay!

[silverusagi]

I mean, you could also just save all of them to your hard drive or email drafts or whatever so that you have them somewhere. Then if FFN ever goes away, you can still do whatever you want with the fics.

[binary_sunset]

Fair. Unfortunately, there's no way to download or copy/paste directly from FFn, which is a pain in the ass.

[silverusagi]

Huh. I wasn't aware of that. That's really weird. (It also shows how long it's been since I was on FFN, because I have definitely copied a fic from there.) But you can still do a right click, then 'save page as' if you just want a backup.

And if you want to go the long, pain in the ass route, you can view the page source and copy the HTML.

[cerberusia]

I've been in fandom 13 years now, and there's stuff that's up on my FFnet account that I just never bothered to copy to AO3. My rule was, if it's either:

a) so old I don't even have the file any more; and /or

b) so juvenile I can't even bear to re-read it;

then I decided it was preferable to leave it where it was. That's about twenty short (<1000 words) ficlets that aren't going to make the move across.

I certainly wouldn't delete them, because people do enjoy them and even now I get the occasional comment on them; but they're of such dubious quality and so unreflective of my current fandom interests and writing skill that I don't think I would be adding to the gaiety of nations by reposting them.

Though, looking over them, I realise that I never posted any of my Tribe fic to AO3! I think I might just remedy that...

[binary_sunset]

That makes perfect sense! I'm in control here, so it's good for me to know that I don't have to move everything over. (Also AO3 can't import directly from FFn bc they post all their text content as image files now, which is really stupid and frustrating, so I'll definitely have to pick and choose so I won't be wading through fic for years on end).

There's definitely a few things that I want to keep archived, like my first finished multichapter fic and a few of the gift fics I wrote for my friends, but I think it makes sense just to leave some of it where it is.

edit: I also realise I have no idea what Tribe is. Can you enlighten me?

[cerberusia]

Yeah, it's nice to know that juvenilia is floating around somewhere, and if you ever do want to import it at a later date, you can.

I had no idea about FFnet posting all their text context as image files, wtf. I haven't been back since 2012, and this isn't making me want to upload anything more recent!

The Tribe was a postapocalyptic UK/NZ production aimed at teenagers back in the early 2000s. The Virus has wiped out all the adults, so now teenagers have to survive in the remains of the city, in the tribes of the title. Lots of facepaint, braids, and weird clothing. Very fun. I wrote a reasonable amount of fic for it and used to run the annual fic exchange back on LJ before the fandom truly died out. It still has a special place in my heart.

[piningneedletea]

I'm seconding the suggestion of creating a new AO3 account to post them.

Alternatively, I think there's still the option to post the fic to AO3 and then, like, sever it from your account? So that the fic is online and archived but the name of the author shows only as "orphaned" or "unknown" or such?

I completely admit this is a "Do as I say, not as I do" situation since my old fics are still lolling only on FP.net and have been for, uh, over 14 years... o.o