Crystal’s and FictionMania
Okay, so it looks like things have come to an ending with both Crystal’s StorySite and FictionMania. Both have stopped accepting new submissions, and in some cases have turned off critical functions such as forum posting.
I have to say in some ways I’m relieved. People can calm down now and allow things to settle some. But it is up in the air as to whether Crystal’s StorySite will continue as it is. FictionMania has made their position clear (in their own way.)
For those of you who aren’t current on the flamewar, basically it comes to one person’s stories.
The author has somewhat (backhandedly) apologized for starting this problem. Other authors attempted to convince Crystal to remove the story from her site since they didn’t want the reputation of StorySite being ruined by the inclusion of this kind of story. Some of the rallying cries were “let trash like this be in the trailerpark of FictionMania”.
As you might expect, this caused an uproar on both sites. Three days later, we have an admin of StorySite who had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t handle the pressure, turn off the server containing new stories and most of the critical update functions for StorySite, another site which basically says “I don’t care what is up here”.
I just saw “official” word from Crystal saying that she was appalled and not sure if StorySite would continue. Not by the story that started it all, mind you, but by the debate and flamewar that occurred on her site’s forum. The ability to post there has been turned off.
You can still see the stories there if you removed any reference to “two or 2″ from the URLs, but everything is several years old there. Some authors have requested for their stories to be removed from these sites, so that they are not associated with child pornography (which the originating story definitely is).
So now we have a few alternatives. Go to a pay site like TGFiction, stay with sites like BigCloset and TopShelf and Stardust, create your own archive of stories and post them all there. And this is a very sad state of affairs indeed.
I’m sad things have come to this. I’m sad that problems have caused this fracture. My offer to host stories for authors who are leaving those sites still stands. This will remain a free site. I will even build a new site, complete with URL to host others stories if there is enough call for this.
I’m not really happy about all this, but there’s not a lot I can do. I’ve made my opinion plain as I can, and I stand by it.
