The Complete Works of Maya, Lost to Most of Humanity

[oceaxe]

I just learned that Sarah Rees Brennan, formerly known as Maya and Mistful, has not only taken her fics down and requested that those who have downloaded her master fic file not share it with others, but she has reportedly deleted her own stories from her hard drive

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[oceaxe]

I appreciate Mahaliem's analogy, but it's not so much that I feel she's going to regret that she deleted those stories. She may, but she may not. I described the situation to my boyfriend thus: Imagine Francis Ford Coppola decided, for a valid but undisclosed reason, that he did not want The Godfather to be sold in stores anymore, nor did he want copies rented or passed around via filesharing. People who owned a copy of the movies could watch them as many times as they wanted, but could not invite people over to watch. Then, it is revealed that he has destroyed the original film stock and he himself will never view the film again. How, I asked, would that make him feel? His face fell. He said, sounding surprised, that he wouldn't like that at all. We explored why that would be... after all, he could still see the movie. The movie didn't change.

We both flailed around for awhile, and finally he formulated this:

The stories, and the movies, made us feel strong emotions. The creators' apparent (and in once case, completely theoretical) rejection of their work in some way invalidates those emotions.

Robyn Hitchcock wrote a beautiful song titled Autumn Is Your Last Chance.

I walk through the heather
Underneath the sky
The leaves have never looked as good
As now they're going to die
But I know why

I smile in the heather
Where we used to stroll
The dew on the cobwebs
Shines like gold
But I don't care
If it shines all year
'Cause you're not there and
I don't care and
You're not there

That song strikes very close to me, to certain feelings and experiences I have had. The song has made me feel less alone. Or rather, it's made me feel that others have been alone in the same way, the same desperately hopeless way, and that knowledge makes me feel less alienated and tragic.

There's a live version of him playing the song, and he prefaces it by saying something derogatory about the song, something to the effect that he no longer sympathizes with the person who wrote those lyrics. It was like a slap in the face.

I guess maybe I feel like Falstaff, hearing that Prince Hal has to put childish things away and go be king now.