The following contains biased, one-sided opinions of Keeper, which do not reflect the community as a whole. You are in no way whatsoever to base your opinions on mine. 

This would have:

1. My interpretation of tweets and how it should have been worded
2. My stand that authors are not overreacting, silly, stupid, etc. when they locked their stories.
3. Me explaining myself so that I don't cause misunderstanding and harm.

But before I proceed, you who should know that:

1. The fanfic video has been posted. But I have words. 

2. People think differently. What is okay with you may not be okay with others and vice versa. You have no right to expect others to think or act like you because they have justified reasons for doing so. It's okay for you to link your stories to EYK, we are not to assume that you are doing it for the fame. If you locked your stories, we are not to assume that you are overreacting, silly, stupid, and other demeaning adjectives. 

3. Having free access to fanfics doesn't mean you own them. As stated in the ToU, your use of the Site doesn't give you ownership of the site and everything in it. 

Let's proceed:

Exhibit #1

A. If you are asking someone for something that may or may not be theirs, you should tell them what you need it for. It's common courtesy.

B. If someone who has a history of "reviewing" professionally-made music videos and making parodies asks you for something that may or may not belong to you via a tweet, you are not silly for being wary or for being cautious. 

C. How hard is it to tweet their purpose? It takes less than 140 characters to tweet: "Send us your fics and we might feature them in our fanfic culture video."

Exhibit #2

A. It's nice that they put this up.

B. This second tweet, however, would not be necessary if they directly asked the authors. I get that by asking readers, they would have an idea of what is the most-liked fic. Featuring a popular fic with lots of readers would attract more viewers and potential subscribers to their paid videos. The problem with this tactic is that not all authors would give permission. If they want popular fics, they could have searched for recommendation blogs in tumblr or fic recommendation posts. I mean, if they are going to put up an info vid about fanfics, they should at least know of rec posts. Then, they ask the authors if they could use their fics in their video. Author says "yes", it's good. Author says "no", they move on. 

C. But what happened was that they asked everyone for fanfics. Everyone. Including those who don't own the stories. That's why this became messy. Because even if author said "no", they can't stop readers from recommending it - especially since they posted tweet #2. This resulted to authors hiding their stories and the readers getting angry. (So readers, when authors said no, it means no.)

And we come to exhibit #3, the main content of my first post in this issue that has caused a lot of misunderstanding:

A. If someone tweeted that they would ask permission, why would they contradict it with a retweet?

B. Given that you didn't expand the retweet or what Keeper saw got lost somewhere, and you are left staring at this reply, what does it mean? It says that we don't know how the internet works. So how does the internet work anyway? Answer: You don't have to ask permission before you take anything (exhibit #4 is an example). Simply, it's safer to leave your bag unattended in the streets of Dubai and in one of the trains in Taiwan, than sharing your work online.

Exhibit #4
http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/-10/

1. "We even got emails and tweets from people demanding that we must first ask permission before we use any fan fiction, as if they knew what we were going to do to begin with." 

A. Exactly. All the more reason why they should ask permission. They didn't tell us what it was for and that's why everyone demanded they ask permission first. Is that too much to ask?

B. But they replied with a link to exhibit #2. And I want to follow that one up with a link to exhibit #3.

2. "After that we realized there was clearly no point of putting up another tweet explaining our actual intentions since:
A) Angry people don’t seem to listen to what we say anyway. They just like being angry and wading through Outrage
B) This video was coming out soon and would just explain it all away."

A. The readers were angry because the authors locked their stories because of their tweet, which didn't explain anything.

B. They should clear up the misunderstanding they caused. Two tweets and they gave up. I went to their fb page the next day but they didn't post anything about the tweet. I switched to 'posts by others' and scrolled down, down... and saw one post regarding the issue. There was a comment. And they replied to that comment, explaining that they would make a fanfic culture video. Try looking for those tiny replies in their fb page and see for yourself how "available" that information was. Had they thought of sharing that piece of information in twitter or even posting it in their fb page? Since someone already asked, why didn't they see the need to post it in their page? Answer: Because we're angry. (Not everyone. Some are waiting for an explanation. But even if we were angry, they should still try.)

3. "So if you’re one of the people who freaked out at us over the implosion of the Kpop Fanfic world, do some research first before you come to conclusions from secondhand accounts."
We did actually. That's why most of the authors don't want their fanfics featured in their videos. 

4. "And for those of you that locked up your once totally public fanfic accounts, be freeeeee knowing that we have zero interest in making a video reviewing your fanfic writing skills. We simply wanted to share your work with other readers."
A. Not all eatyourkimchi viewers are readers or interested in fanfics. And clearly, most of the writers do not need their "help" in getting readers. Well some do, but that is why they should have asked authors to submit their own fanfics.

B. "Totally public fanfic accounts" (exhibit #3)

5. "Or, more importantly, if online privacy is important to you, take more steps to ensure your privacy and the protection of your work, or – well – just don’t post stuff online if you’re afraid of online commentary."

A. Exhibit #3

B. AFF writers posted it in AFF, our agent, and we have a Privacy Policy. We have features to make it hard for plagiarizers to copy our work. Third party content scrapers or fanfic downloaders are not allowed in the site. The problem is that there are people who are ignorant of these policies. 

C. We didn't just post in online. We posted it in AFF, where the community can give comments, feedbacks and criticism, within our ToU:

"You will not... submit any materials or communicate any information that is (a) is defamatory, abusive, harassing, threatening, or an invasion of a right of privacy of another person; (b) is bigoted, hateful, or racially or otherwise offensive; (c) is violent, vulgar, obscene, ographic or otherwise ually explicit; or (d) otherwise harms or can reasonably be expected to harm any person or entity;"

We posted it here to protect us from harm. So that we wouldn't have to deal with online commentary from strangers, not bound by our ToU.

Some writers don't care. Some writers want their stories featured in the video. Some writers don't want their stories featured in the video. We should respect their preferences.

Free access has limits especially when it comes to moral rights.

I should add that we should respect EYK as well, in spite of what they have done. Even if they did annoy me, some tweets were uncalled for. But I am not really up for defending them from angry writers/readers nor am I encouraging anyone with my posts to go bash them. 

This is my take on the whole issue that thankfully has ended. I hope that the relationship between writers and readers was not strained. 

I didn't hide my stories not because I trust my readers completely, not because I secretly wanted my fics to be featured, not because I don't care about EYK and their audience and their commentaries. It's obvious that I really care about the writers and their fanfics. I'm just lazy to do anything about my stories (all 43 of them), so I'll just post a blog about it. 

Or blogs.

- Keeper
(Aba kung di pa ba naman obvious, ewan ko na. Sa ligalig kong ito. Hahaha! Rated M for maligalig.) (If it's still not that obvious, I don't know now.)