clo_again

I was just reading (read: procrastinating from writing) Versaphile's post about importing old fic to AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/5644.

I'm massively anti-deleting fanfic - I feel that once something has been released to run wild on the internet, you have no idea really who's read it or what impact that had on them, even if it's yours, even if it has your name on it; once it's posted, it should stay available somewhere forever. On the flipside, I've always been firmly set on not importing my old fic to AO3 because most of it I feel needs more editing than I'm happy doing, or was written when I still had no clue what I was doing other than bashing out words in a vague succession of sense, or is frankly (imho) terrible. All my old stuff is sitting around on clofic or in a much neater indexed collection on Insanejournal and that's fine. It isn't as if I'm locking it in a drawer; if anyone wants it, my username is the same everywhere.

But then- reading Versaphile talk about archiving fandom history and how important it is made me think that's irresponsible. Likewise the level of outrage I went through listening to a podcast discussing tennis slash last year, with a panel of four tennis ficcers who flat out stated that tennis slash "started around 2007 with Nadal/Federer" (hahahahaha I guess we all hallucinated all that Roddick/Federer fic that happened 2004-onwards, or that there was at least one person writing Roddick/Ferrero before that which no longer exists because the original tennis fic comm got deleted) implies that maybe fandom history is already getting fuzzy. Like all the teenies on tumblr who keep LOLing at oldtimers for including disclaimers on fic and then can't believe it when the oldtimers turn around and tell them The Epic Saga of Anne Rice's Lawyers.

So I don't know. Maybe I should see how much editing some of the longer things would need so I can post them with only moderate-to-crippling shame.

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(Also, HEY, HEY I'M STILL HERE, HAI LJ. It's my fourteenth LJ anniversay on October 8th. Every year I say I should do something and every year I wake up in November and go "...ah shit, maybe next year.")