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

[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.