Hi!

I would best of all like all of my items deleted, please! Many times, I asked Mel (and her silent partner / immediate successor) to delete my stories from her archive; my requests were ignored. I learned to stop asking, and to stop looking in that direction, because it upset me so much. Mel and her silent partner didn't precisely get my stories with my permission to start; they lifted my stories, and many others' stories, from the old FTP Site, which, yes, did have my permission from 1996. The history gets more complex after that, for sure, as human interactions always do, but that's how it began, as I remember it, in '97 or '98, whenever it was that Mel and her silent partner first put up that site.

It was so long ago, and the internet was so different, and I was so very young.

If that desired removal is not possible, then the next best would be to please remove my name from all the things. Depending on the file set-up, I hope that find-and-replace would help make that not too difficult, given the surname. Again, if deletion can't be done, then if it's available to replace my entire name -- first and last and also my college-issued email address -- with "Brightknightie," that would be the next best option, and would happily free me up to stop trying to manage the "split pseudonym" driven by the presence of my name elsewhere, as I've done for well over a decade now, and I could finally consolidate under the one pseudonym. (Failing that, then the next choice after that would be the capitalized initial in place of the surname.)

I have been trying, on and off, to remove my surname from fannish items and recover control of my stories for at least two decades. Often, I get very discouraged, and shut my eyes to it and hope it all just goes away... as it almost, finally, did? That is not an effective strategy, obviously, but it is one way of handling emotional stress. And during periods when I'm safely employed, and the files in question aren't ranking high on the search engines, then it's less worrisome, and feels less urgent -- until the day of a layoff or other misfortune.

I haven't read the email lists regularly since the early '00s. I've stayed subscribed mainly from affection and nostalgia, and to promote the fest. There have been times when I have skimmed digests, but mostly I haven't in a long time.

I'm still in touch with a number of folks from those days who left the email lists by '00. I am not the only one who had complex layers of interactions with Mel and her silent partner.

Thank you!