Introductory note: some of you may wonder whether this post was inspired by a recent event involving a ponyfic author deleting their account – not just removing their stories but making it seem as though said account had never existed. The answer is: not really; I didn't know this author and have never reviewed one of their fics. Plus, I've been thinking about this post for a while. However, it was the aforementioned issue that prompted me to publish it now.
Fandoms are ephemeral, and online fandoms – which is most of them – even more so. In music, for example, MandoPony chose a while back to make some of his MLP tracks inaccessible – not merely unlisted, but privated/deleted entirely. Some are still available on his Bandcamp account, but others – one notable example being the villain!Sunset song "Shimmer On" – now only exist online because of unofficial reuploads by others.
I do understand that many artists have moved on from Pony by now, and that at least a few have found a YouTube account full of brony music a minus in the eyes of industry figures. I think it was Makkon – once a very prominent fandom musician but probably now barely known by most newer fans – who said that yes, this very thing had happened to him. He chose to put his old music into a couple of compilation videos (1, 2) but others have deleted such things entirely.
I support the right of artists to control what happens to their works online. Those works belong to them, not to us. And here in Europe, at least, the law is increasingly getting involved, with people now having a (qualified) "right to be forgotten" and new data protection rules imminent that will mean more such rights – for example, forums will not be able to refuse a request to delete a departing member's account without good reason.
But that doesn't mean I can't be sad about it. Imagine if Kkat chose to delete all traces of Fallout: Equestria, leaving only scattered unofficial copies, or if Forest Rain chose to block public access to "Great to be Different". These are works that have transcended their original purpose and become significant parts of brony cultural history. (A pompous phrase, I know.) So when we lose those, we lose a part of ourselves, too.
It's not all doom and gloom. A number of fan-made songs use Creative Commons licences, which are irrevocable. As such, people will always be able to redistribute Aviators' "Friendship" within the terms of CC by-nc-sa 3.0. Some DeviantArt pictures also use CC licenses, though I do wonder occasionally whether a few artists who do this truly appreciate that they can't then require people to ask permission before using them.
A tiny number of stories apart, Creative Commons releases don't really happen in ponyfic – perhaps because, for the most part, authors don't own the characters or settings they write about in the first place. (Mind you, that applies to fanart, too.) Together with the fact that the overwhelming majority are only publicly accessible on Fimfiction, this means that Pony fanfic may be the most vulnerable major area of all to loss in the future.
Imagine if Fimfiction suddenly went under, either because it couldn't make ends meet or just because knighty got fed up with it. We'd lose a great deal, very quickly, and most of it would never come back. (Yes, I know about the likes of Fimarchive and Fimfetch, but most casual fans don't.) I think about this and I wonder: for new G4 fans in 2028 or 2038 – and they will exist, just as new G1 fans do right now in 2018 – what shards of our extraordinary fandom will they find still accessible?
And now you can see why I used the "musing" tag on this, rather than "essay" – it wasn't exactly rigorously planned out!
If I may have a word on this, I feel this fandom started declining ever since the beginning of S2, when Lauren Faust Left. Before I get into the details let's reason about one Simple thing: What is a "fan"? A person who genuinely enjoys a production. And many People from the brony fandom seem to do all but that For anything non concerning the S1 of the show. Many of them actually Left as the time passed, but some remained only to ruin the Fun of the ones who still love the show, and that's a behavior I just can't stand. If you try to ruin the Fun of someone only because you don't have fun with a production anymore you're a very squallid person (Note: Logan I'm not referring to you, if you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm talking About peole like Alexander Throndson or Nightmare Muffin. People who get on My nerves). Unfortunately as the time passed, even People who loved thee show Beyond the S1 have Fallen to those DEMONS' hate and anger, and became like that and that made me so sad... Especially since several of those People were friends of mine or People I respected...
ReplyDeleteYou want to Know what I think? Very well: S4-S8 (so far and minus the S6)>>>>>>S1-S3. Of the older season the only ones who stands up with the most recent ones is the S2, and of the new ones the only one I find weak is the S6. The S1 is STRONGLY overrated, it has many weak episodes (even more than the S6, at least For me), and even the good ones IMO can't match For the strong ones we had in later Seasons (only about 7 eps of that season can stand newer ones), and the only reason People overidolatrize it is because Lauren Faust directed it. Those People are NOT MLP fans, only morons who decided to Watch a show just because a name behind it.
Long story short: Loving just one entry of a show doesn't make you a fan, and many People of the brony fandom are not fans like they claim, and that's make debatable the status of the brony fandom being and actual FANdom... No matter what kind of art they produce... This is ny take on the matter...
The problem of course isn't the right to be forgotten, but the desire to. Careless people who don't realize their own value, taking down work with no warning to those who appreciated it. Or, in the case of Mando (fandom chaser that he is), lacking the wherewithal to separate the fan from the professional, which should not be hard to do these days.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a bit of both, really. I know it's fairly uncommon, but there have been occasional people who really do need to take down their stuff – Peak Freak is an obvious example. HoofBitingActionOverload nearly did it much more recently. And I know of one other writer (no names, but not a well-known one) who deleted a story I'd enjoyed. I didn't ask them to, but they sent me a PM explaining a mental health issue.
DeleteI nearly chose someone else other than Mando, precisely because he's not seen in the best light by some people, but I needed a song that a) had been deleted, b) that many people remembered, and c) that was by an artist many would know. I was going to use PinkiePieSwear, but while I was writing this he made his YT account visible again. Looks like he's gone all the way now, though: try it now and you get full-on "This account does not exist".
And now PPS's account is accessible again. Not only that, the videos are back public, "Flutterwonder" and all. No idea what's going on there.
DeleteWhile I can't speak for everyone, I'll always have a soft spot for FiM. It introduced me to the character who has since become my favourite animated character of all time - and it's not likely that she'll ever be beaten now.
ReplyDeleteI've got a few plans for fanfics, too; and although I've only finished one and got a second in progress, I can keep going for a while yet. I doubt I'll be the only one, either. With the impact the show has had on so many people, I'm sure that fanfics will be around for a long time to come. And even if FiMFiction does go (and I really hope it doesn't), I'm sure another site will appear. The fandom will shrink over time, yes: but it will never die.
Oh, I'm pretty sure I'll never lose affection for FiM. I very rarely do with series I love, even if I eventually come to spend less time on them.
DeleteThere's definitely the loss of history to worry about whenever someone takes old pony works down, and that really is a shame. It's good to see how the fandom has developed through the years, and that requires having a starting point and some landmarks to navigate by.
ReplyDeleteBut on the whole, I'm apathetic about the issue. The fandom seems to be dying down anyway. Statistics on the FIMFiction website suggest it's passed its prime, and the exciting experiments are going to become rarer and rarer. So it goes.
On my part, I'm not deleting my account unless my life depends on it. Until that unlikely time, I have no intention of slowing down, because I'm still catching up to ideas I had as far back as Seasons One and Two.
Much as I lost wholesale interest in the show after Season Five, if anything I'm more determined now to write - ponyfic and original fic - than I was during those early years.
It's certainly on the downslope, no question about that. Myself, I'll be happy if we eventually take our place as one part of the wider MLP fandom along with everything from G1 onwards. I'm doubtless biased due to my love of the explicitly multi-gen UK PonyCon, but to me that would be the best longer-term outcome.
DeleteMy history with other fandoms suggests that, while the time I spend on it will probably decrease substantially eventually, I'm most unlikely ever to leave it behind entirely. After all, I still check in occasionally on the Watership Down fanfic scene, and I haven't written anything for that fandom for 15 years now!
I think the significant point for me will come when I decide to stop writing this blog, at least on a regular basis. I don't intend to delete it – after all, the aforementioned Watership Down fanfic still exists – but it will draw a line under a chunk of my online life.
Mind you, I do still have plenty of interest in the current show, so I can't see this happening until G4 is finally over and done with, at the earliest.