I can count the number of useful items I’ve received on such sites on one hand. These communities consist of people endlessly pimping themselves to dead air, people who write trash literature (like fanfic and mature content), whiners who whine endlessly about the lack of traffic, or successful writers who slum it to make themselves look like gods.

The webfic community as a whole is perverse and incestuous. Last one first. People claim all day long that they are not part of a mutual back-scratching clan, but really, they are. The reason? No-one is interested in submitting negative reviews of webfic, because of the amount of prose you have to read; what happens is that only positive reviews are submitted, and so you end up the highly questionable result of “everybody loves everything”. It’s worth noting, however, that most authors don’t bother with forums, and probably for good reason. I can’t say that their reasons are mine, but in the end, it’s more bother and stress than it’s worth. I should have listened to them.

Perverse? Just go over to weblit.us and browse the introduction thread. You’ll quickly find some pretty sick stuff. And if that’s not enough, just check out what’s the most popular series at any one of the main three — they are inevitably “mature content”. So much for writing anything south of PG-13. In the webfic world, you must be a pervert to be popular.

Now why was I banned? It’s the usual “taunt him with a stick until he bites” scenario. I had it up to here with “successful” writers coming on the forum and talking about how many readers they had, holding it up as being normative, and then trashing the rest of us for not being like them. Finally, I told one person in no uncertain terms that she was cruel (and wondered aloud what other tortures she enjoyed handing out). Another person made the case for moral relativity, so I told her that’s what she was doing. I’ll banned, sure, but the incalculable damage that both of these “successful” people inflict upon struggling writers and weary souls, is not taken into account. That never surprises me. “Mommy, Jack hit me!” “Ok Jack, you’re in trouble.” The kid who taunts Jack for hours, of course, gets away with not even a word of reprimand.

Anyways, I’m over it. Good riddance to webfic communities — all of them.

• Episodes split up into pages
• A static front page
• Much more aggressive de-spamming. If you don’t say something that makes me think you actually read the episode(s), I’m going to assume you’re a spammer and delete your comment. Frankly, I’ve had enough of people posting general comments with links back to whatever they’re trying to hawk. You will now have to officially take it somewhere else.
• General experiments with layout and colors — be warned!

Lastly, I really don’t know how to make this site appear well for those on mobile phones, except for those phones that use either Safari or miniOpera. The RSS feeds list the entire episode, though, so that’s your best bet.

Thanks for stopping in and I hope you find something worth reading.

I’m going to keep plowing through and get things back to a more reasonable schedule. It will be worth your wait — I promise.

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