All the best Stucky writers have been up and deleting their blogs/AO3 pages/all online references to their work lately, like they’re ashamed of their fanfic and don’t want anyone in the “real world” to see it after they’ve moved on. You’re not planning on ghosting us anytime soon, right? I don’t think my heart could take it.

leveragehunters:

No, my Anonymous friend, I’m not
planning on deleting anything, and can’t imagine I’d ever delete my stuff off
AO3. But as much as I appreciate the praise embedded in your question, I have
to respond to the rest of it because it makes me very uncomfortable.

I’m sure you didn’t intend to
be, but I feel it’s desperately unkind to label these fandom authors—who have given us
so much joy and laughter and angst and tears and hours of reading pleasure,
asking nothing in return but a comment here and there—as being ashamed. Given the timing of this ask and
your mention of the real world, I can’t help but infer that you’re alluding to
a particular author which, if you are, is tremendously unkind, given how much they’ve given us over the
years, including a warning so we could download and keep their stories.

There’s a lot of reasons why
someone might leave fandom, and a lot of reasons people might prefer to leave no trace behind, and they’re not about shame. People move on, people
change, people’s lives go in different and new directions, things happen in
people’s lives that send them away from fandom, or away from writing, and there
will be as many reasons for that as there are people who move on. To use myself
as an example: years ago I walked away from my old fandom for very personal, non-fandom
related reasons, and I deleted everything simply because it hurt too much to leave it (some fics on a fandom specific archive survived because I’d lost the password and email). It had nothing, nothing, to do with shame.

Making the jump from fandom
author to published author is another reason someone might remove their fics or
fandom blogs, because I can imagine many reasons why someone in that position wouldn’t
want their real name to be linked to their fandom works. I’ll never be in that
position (I’ve negative desire to be a published author), I know next to
nothing about publishing, but off the top of my head: contractual, agreement
short of contractual, an intention to revisit plot or story, desire for clear
demarcation between your writing lives, or the fact that, however much we might
wish it otherwise, in some authorial and media circles fanfiction is still a thing to be
mocked—if there’s an inextricable link between your real name and your fandom
works, you could very well be inviting those works to some day be used against
you. The only way to break that inextricable link would be to remove the works
completely.

In the end none of those reasons
matter. It doesn’t matter why. A
fandom author’s reasons for removing their work, or deleting their blog, or
wanting to ensure their real world identity can’t, or can no longer, be linked
to their fandom identity are completely irrelevant. They are none of our
business. And to label these authors, these people (because they are people, with full rich lives and
identities outside of the fandom sliver we see), who’ve given so much to
fandom, as ashamed of their fandom
past is terrible. 

Losing stories you love is sad, it’s heartwrenching—I know,
there’s stories gone from AO3 that I’ll miss forever, but I still remember them, how
they made me feel and why I loved them. So please, my dear Anonymous, focus on that. Remember that. Remember
everything these authors have given you, every minute of joy, and be kinder.