Why Do Authors Delete Their Own Stories? · 9:29pm Nov 6th, 2015
One thing that really irritates me is when I favorite a story, then I come back sometime later and find the story has been deleted. It hasn't happened much with my fimfiction account, but I also have a fanfiction dot net account and it happens a lot there. Here are a few examples of stories now lost forever that are still fresh in my mind.
"Only A Game" was a Matrix story. The Merovingian hires an ordinary civilian woman as a servant, and we see some of the events of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions through her eyes. At the end, after Agent Smith is defeated, the woman, believing the Merovingian to be an inattentive and abusive husband (which he is), convinces Persephone to run away with her. What made this story amazing was that the woman never learns about the Matrix or the fact that many of the characters around her are not human (she only met one Agent Smith and lost consciousness when he absorbed her), yet the love story between her and Persephone still managed to be heartfelt and believable. It was the first story I ever favorited on fanfiction. Then the author eventually decided to be a troll and changed all his stories so each page, title, description, and even his profile, only say one word: "derp".
I forgot this story's name, but basically, Kal-El's spaceship landed in Ancient Egypt. He still gets taken in by a kindly farming couple, who consider him a gift from the gods. He grows up to be a hero and ends up meeting and facing Egyptian variants of his friends and rogues gallery (ie. Lois is a noblewoman's daughter and Lex Luthor is an evil warlord). It wasn't even complete and it got deleted a few hours after I favorited it.
"A Certain Pokemon Index" still exists in a sense, but barely. It was a fusion fic combining Pokemon with A Certain Magical Index. Touma Kamijou starts his pokemon journey, but with no starter pokemon, armed only with his Imagine Breaker (a right hand that negates supernatural abilities). He's shocked when he (and only he) perceives and interacts with certain pokemon as girls wearing pokemon costumes (for example, a Pikachu is Mikoto Misaka in a Pikachu costume); at the same time, they are shocked that he can understand what they are saying. I guess the best comparison is the show Wilfred, where a man perceives and interacts with his girlfriend's dog as a man in a dog costume, yet everyone else sees him as an ordinary dog and can't hear his words. Touma struggles to make sense of this, but gradually wins the girls onto his team (he's a Chick Magnet in any universe), while also fighting the forces of evil. Eventually, the author announced that she didn't want to work on the story anymore, then deleted all but the first chapter. I messaged her and begged her to at least restore the other chapters, even if she didn't want to update it anymore, but she refused.
"Life After Death" was a Bleach/Akame ga Kill crossover. The various characters who get killed in Akame ga Kill arrive in Soul Society and are trained to be Shinigami. What I really liked was Ichigo Kurosaki's friendship with Sheele. It got deleted after a chapter that ended on a cliffhanger. When I asked the author why he deleted it, he trolled me by claiming he had no idea what "Life After Death" was. When I persisted, he claimed it must have been so boring that he completely lost interest in it and forgot about it. Jerk.
"A Certain Magical Tournament" was a Fairy Tail/A Certain Magical Index crossover. Touma Kamijou and Mikoto Misaka wake up and find themselves in Fiore, so they join Fairy Tail and pull their weight in the guild while trying to figure out how to get home. For some reason, the author deleted all but the first chapter, and that first chapter now only has its first sentence. The author has ignored messages asking what happened to the story.
I forgot the name of this story, but it was a Dante's Inferno (the video game)/League of Legends crossover. After Dante defeats Lucifer and seemingly escapes Hell, he instead wakes up in the League of Legends world. Having retained his weapons and abilities, he teams up with Miss Fortune to survive this world and figure out what is going on.
0ccam's Razor, the author of various awesome Yu-Gi-Oh! series like Shadowchasers and Yu-Gi-Oh! The Thousand Year Door, used to have a lot more fics. He had a series called Yu-Gi-Oh! Junior, which detailed the adventures of Yugi, Joey, Tea, and Tristan's children, a Yu-Gi-Oh!/Codename: Kids Next Door crossover, and two Codename: Kids Next Door/The Powerpuff Girls crossovers. He deleted them after announcing to his fans that he was ashamed of them, despite a lot of his fans, including me, saying we loved them.
"Team TOMI" was a RWBY/A Certain Magical Index crossover. Touma Kamijou, Othinus (who is human instead of a goddess), Mikoto Misaka, and Index have grown up on Remnant and eventually join Beacon Academy to become Hunters and Huntresses, befriending Team CFVY. It was set a year before Team RWBY joined Beacon, implying Team TOMI would eventually change canon events. One thing I really liked was that the fic's version of Touma was not oblivious to love and was aware he was in a harem, and his tendency to always try to solve problems by himself was addressed and somewhat corrected. In this fic's case, it's understandable (though still annoying) that it was deleted because other than me, almost every review was extremely negative.
"A RWBY Zanpakuto" was a RWBY/Bleach crossover. It was a fusion fic set in the Bleach universe. On the day Ichigo regained his Shinigami powers thanks to Urahara, instead of gaining Zangetsu, he surprisingly gains four zanpakuto: the four weapons of Team RWBY, with the girls as their spirits. Baragetsu (Crescent Rose)/Ruby represents his Shinigami powers, Myrtenaster/Weiss represents his Quincy powers, Kakeru Himeru (Gambol Shroud)/Blake represents his Hollow powers, and Ember Celica/Yang represents his Fullbring abilities. There are other changes, like how Nemu Kurotsuchi has Penny Polendina's looks and mannerisms. With these changes, the plot of the Soul Society arc and beyond is different. And despite Ichigo's improved powers, he wasn't a God Mode Sue and still had to work hard for his victories and lost several times. Several characters were a lot smarter and more pragmatic than their canon versions. I recently found out it still exists on a certain Russian site (the story is in English), but the author on fanfiction.net has completely ignored my messages asking why she deleted it from fanfiction.net. Edit: Now it doesn't exist on the Russian site either.
On this site, RenegadeAlias deleted his story Nightmare Lulamooon (where Trixie finds Nightmare Moon's discarded helmet and gets possessed by it), claiming it was to prevent readers from confusing it with his fic Nightmare Trip, ignoring a lot of us trying to tell him that would not be necessary, that we were smart enough to tell them apart.
On this site, an author formerly known as Socks recently changed their name to Apathy, released a blog saying they were tired of this site, then started deleting their stories one by one. The author eventually changed back to Socks and admitted they kind of overreacted to something, but now only has one story.
Please share your tales of stories being deleted, and maybe your thoughts on why authors would do this.
1) Could be a hacker who got onto their account.
2) Could be that they became DISILLUSIONED with the story.
3) Their tastes changed and they no longer wanted to be associated with the story.
4) Someone backed them into a corner and demanded it be taken down.
3860418 Thank you for your insight. Has this ever happened with stories you liked?
3860463
Can't think of any I truly LOVED. There was an Coroline adaption with Apple Bloom in the staring role though.
3860506 I see. That would have been fun to read.
On this site GentlemanPonyographer specialized in writing clopfics that included strong plot and love, and were wholesome and entertaining. Today, the author suddenly deleted all their stories.
“The Heroic Saiyan” was a crossover where the Shirou Emiya from Fate/Extra reincarnates into the body of Kakarot from Dragon Ball on the day he is sent to Earth. Since he has memories of his previous life, Kakarot, who keeps his name, has Shirou’s powers on top of his own, and he makes a lot of smarter decisions. Yesterday, I decided to reread it but found it deleted.