If you’re primarily a reader in fandom and haven’t done much or any writing, this might be a question you have asked before. When you love stories, it can be difficult to imagine why someone would ever want to delete one - especially one that’s a favourite of yours.
I’m going to start a list below, and I invite other authors to share any reasons I might not think of off the top of my head.
1. general embarrassment - this could be related to the author’s writing competency then versus now, the tropes they had chosen and no longer like, the author’s current feelings about a former fandom, or a dozen other things.
2. harassment - if an author is experiencing harassment, deleting their story is one way to avoid it. This may also happen if an author sees other authors receiving harassment and abuse and they want to avoid experiencing the same thing.
3. identity protection - the author might have deleted the story to protect their own identity or the identity of someone they wrote into the story.
4. cleaning online accounts - the author might use the same handle on more than one site and not want to have their fic associated with their instagram or twitter etc.
5. publishing - some authors remove their works from fanfic sites if they are planning to rewrite it and submit it to a publisher by “filing off the serial numbers” and removing the fandom references so that it looks more like an original work than a transformative one.
6. guilt - the author hasn’t updated the story in [whatever period of time] and the fact that it exists out there, incomplete, is a huge source of guilt. They know they won’t ever finish it, and they’d rather delete than deal with the constant internal nagging.
7. the author just doesn’t like it anymore.
I’m a white person. I had a fanfic with a black main character. I went to a panel on how to be an ally to the black community. A white guy attending asked about writing resources for writing black characters in fanfic. The woman answering questions shushed him and said that black people no longer want white people to write black characters, only pay black people to write black characters, so I deleted the fanfic.
I have unsuccessfully attempted to find a black fanfic author I can pay to write a fic about the character I like. It is actually illegal because it violates copyright and can’t be justified as fair use when it becomes commercial. Commissioning fanfic with actual money can’t be discussed in the open very much. Fanfic sites will crack down on people asking about it so they don’t get shut down. I have seen a few tumblr accounts advertising it, but they don’t write for the same fandom. I posted something in a private forum for the fandom, but it’s heavily white-centric, and the only black person there said she didn’t write fanfic.
I currently believe the activist did not understand what fanfic was and that it’s written by people for free and posted online for everyone in an expansive community, not submitted to a publishing house to crowd out other authors and make money. She probably heard his question as “What are some resources to help me learn how to write books with black main characters?”, mistaking fanfic for a literary genre and thinking he should buy black authors’ “fanfic” books, and she shushed him before gaining a full understanding of the question. This was at a con, and she was previously talking about cosplay and X-Men, so I assumed she knew what fanfic was, but I currently think she missed that part of fandom.
I don’t know if this invalidates the reason for deleting it or not. I do know that it means her instruction on what to do instead doesn’t work. Perhaps she would not have advised against it in the first place if she understood that black people could not be legally paid to write and that it’s only a labor of love. If I was aware of the confusion at the time, I might have just orphaned it. Nevertheless, the given instruction is clear. I actually care about being a good ally, so I will follow the instruction given to the extent of not writing black characters. Fanfic being a labor of love doesn’t erase white authors’ racism, and I don’t want to contribute to problems.
[Image description: an ao3 author’s note that says “I was supposed to write 15 page uni essay on mental illnesses so instead I wrote this. But let’s be honest it’s almost the same thing.” End image description]
