So let's just imagine for the sake of argument

[bellatrys]

...that a small bunch of fans got together and put together their own fanfic archive - it has been known to happen, now and again - volunteering their time and using a donation model to pay for bandwidth and server space and it gets a number of submissions and a bit of a name among all the other fanfic archives out there, but it's not a household

Comments

[voxwoman]

Good thing this is all hypothetical, then, isn't it?

(Lavender Mafia? Boy, I've been out of the loop.)

Something else you may be interested in reading

[voxwoman]

linked from another blog:
(about the dearth of women and persons of color in the OpEd stables - perhaps we can help you get syndicated? Anything we can do?)

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/16/10396/

Dunno - I think we have to wait for them to Die & Rot (TM)

[bellatrys]

or else make our own media, which we are doing in re the blogosphere (and in fandom, new online 'zines like the new Fantasy Magazine that Tempest et al are running, and others that are out there.)

Re: Dunno - I think we have to wait for them to Die & Rot (TM)

[voxwoman]

Yes, well there is this lovely blogosphere... But I was thinking more in terms of you being able to support yourself (in better style than your "day job") doing, well, you know, writing.

There is nothing I enjoy more than seeing people become successful (and financially independent of "the Man") doing what they love.

[ann_leckie]

That knocking sound you've been hearing is me.

Me repeatedly banging my head on my desk. For a while there it seemed like each morning brought a newly frustrating and insane development.

I just find it so unfair - and so *exemplary* of the Wall of Silence problem

[bellatrys]

to have people saying "but Sanders has always been like this, if you were on the old Helix boards before he deleted them or if you were at the Nebulas in aught whenever etc etc you would have seen LOTS of this behavior" - well, yah, and if Dr. Asaro had hung out on liberal humour blogs like World o Crap then Theodore Beale probably wouldn't have been invited to judge the Nebulas either - we don't all belong to the same groups, and if insiders don't talk then how are the rest of us supposed to know? I will cut slack to those intimidated or afraid of further harrassment, but so much of this reminds me of so many institutional sex scandals in recent years...

I mean, I don't have anything publishable, since I have only completed fanfics and political Allegories and humorous satires, but if I had, I wouldn't have known not to submit to Helix either, before this past week.

Re: I just find it so unfair - and so *exemplary* of the Wall of Silence problem

[jonquil]

Theodore Beale probably wouldn't have been invited to judge the Nebulas either

OMGWTF?!??!!?!??!??!

Wow.

Re: I just find it so unfair - and so *exemplary* of the Wall of Silence problem

[fledgist]

I'm missing something here, I think.

[jonquil]

Oh, HELL.

My hearty sympathies to all involved. (Maybe even PP, who seems to have been doing a reasonable job in his/her/its archive-maintaining persona.)

we stay FAR away from the wretched hive of Freepers, scum and villainy

For the win.

[jonquil]

I am confused. Is all of this an allegory for the Helix situation, or is it a parallel event?

This is just an allegory btw

[bellatrys]

inspired by the Helix situation, but also by the contrasts between fanfic mores and pro publishing mores again.

I seriously can't imagine anyone thinking they could *socially* get away with refusing to take down stories in fandom - altho' I think that Sanders' reneging on the $40 bribe demand is a good thing overall, since now there won't be the whole ethical conflict and stratification among authors over "do I/don't I?" - "Why are you still there? Why did you give in to blackmail and pay him for being a jerk?" messiness.

Re: This is just an allegory btw

[jonquil]

Rock, meet head. Gotcha.

Although, stripped of the allegory, it remains true that Sanders seems to have been doing a reasonably good job until unmasked.

[randwolf]

To play devil's advocate, I'm not so sure this is a positive thing, this retroactive "I don't like you any more, unpublish my work." For one thing, it appears the "TOS" included indefinite publishing rights to begin with--authors used to print 'zines just didn't expect it to be an issue. And there's going to be a lot of just-readers who wonder why the stuff they liked just--disappeared.

We're in a different world than the old publication world. A lot of editors and publishers were--are--cranks of some sort. Even if they weren't cranks, a lot of them were opinionated and controversial. In the old sf world one pretty much had to be opinionated and controversial to want to stay. But once a piece of work was published, that didn't matter so much--it was out there. And maybe later people decided they didn't want to work with the editor or publisher any more, but the work was still out there. The way work can disappear these days gives me the cold clammies.

[nenya_kanadka]

At least two of the Helix authors have duplicated their stories on their own websites, whether or not they've asked Helix to take down the copies there. It's true that work can be "unpublished" online very easily--but it can also be mirrored elsewhere very easily. I imagine most authors want their stuff to be up *somewhere*--though if there isn't any (polite, sane) notice up in place of the retracted stories at Helix, that might be a problem for the reader. Whether said readers, coming in all unawares of the current imbroglio at a later date, will attribute this to the author or the archive, I don't know.

[anna_wing]

Well, but work has always vanished. Most works vanish rather fast, whether they're produced on paper or pixels. Three-quarters of the fiction section of my personal library is out of print, usually only a few years after printing. And as for earlier works... well, even Google will only get you so far, as my efforts to get hold of affordable copies of Hope Mirrlees other novels (for pure curiosity's sake) have taught me. I may be reduced to parking myself in the Cambridge University Library one day and reading theirs.

In this particular case, I can quite understand authors not wishing to be publicly associated with behaviour that goes distinctly beyond the merely opinionated and controversial, even within his own national culture. The association has become a discreditable one, not just a matter of personal dislike.