gwyn | Wearing my tiara

Somedays I guess I really have earned the Bitch Queen from Hell tiara. A while ago a person wrote to me about my Buffy novel Somniloquy, which was nice. Even if they don't say anything specific, feedback's a rarity for me so I cherish them, and I was very flattered that she asked if she could include it in a new archive she was building. But I don't like to be archived -- I had some seriously bad experiences with archives, including people stealing stories and archiving stories in bad condition, when I was in XF fandom. These days it's just safest, I feel, to have a blanket policy -- links okay, archive not.

The only place I've ever allowed anyone to archive the stories was at allaboutspike.com, mostly because I felt like the archiver (hey, L!) did a really good job and that she presented the material in a way that wouldn't encourage the kind of mistreatment that the XF stories got (and I realize that the Net's changed a hell of a lot since those incredibly early days, but I still don't trust it). And also, she didn't insist I put warnings and keywords and ratings, which I can't stand at all. Otherwise I politely decline, and tell people that links are okay, though. I mean, I'm as flattered as the next person when someone wants to rec or keep a story -- maybe even more so than the next person, because many of the next persons I know of are the best writers in fandom. ;-)

But I declined first, then got a mail thanking me for allowing her to archive my fic, so I sent another mail hoping to clarify my position, which I never got a response to. Then I finaly got a response today, but she was again thanking me for allowing her to archive, requesting I send future fics, and also, please put ratings and other things I hate on the fic. So I put my tiara on and sent a really curt, blunt mail saying to please remove my fic from the list of stories to archive. And reierating that links are okay, but archive is most emphatically not.

I really hate being in that prima donna diva position. I'm not trying to be a big snob about it, I just want to have some phony sense of control over things. Being able to decide where and when things get archived. I still have this itching feeling that I'm going to yank all my stories some day, just out of a sense of panic or dread or something. I never know why I have that feeling, but I do. Like I'm going to bail on fan writing or something. I won't, it's just that it gives me a (admittedly false) sense of control. And calling me a control freak is such an understatement it's like saying the Pope goes to church sometimes.

Now I feel like I've made an enemy of probably a nice person, and I'm going to get a rep as a total bitch monster, the same way I had a rep in XF fandom and slash fandom years ago. I'm definitely not the nicest person, I admit, but I hate being put in that position. I wish she would have at least acknowledged my earlier post, but she's sending out what looks like boilerplate mail, and so she's obviously not paying attention to me. I just know that when this archive goes live, my story will probably be there, and then I'll have to send a really nasty mail. Grrrr.