Can you help your Uncle Eddie (A question - not a story)

[EddieDavidson]

Let me start with a caveat and some background.

I have always been a huge advocate of free speech - especially as it relates to mature content FOR mature, consenting adults.

I have *NEVER* been an advocate of human trafficking, child exploitation, etc.

I started my journey on computers shortly after watching Wargames starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy in the 1980s. I went out and got a 300 baud acoustic modem. If you don't know what that speed is - imagine a gigabyte a second is a river, and 300 baud is the trickle of your pee after you are about to finish taking a piss.

Anyway, I gravitated early to fido_net and BBS culture predating the world wide web. The internet existed but not as you know it now, and it wouldn't for many years. Fido_net had erotic fiction and the same assholes trying to shut it down as it does now.

I felt the same then, as i feel about it now. Steven Speilberg doesn't advocate soldiers getting their heads blown off, and isn't telling you to be a nazi just because he makes a movie about them - even if they look like they are winning in some scenes.

Horror and murder mystery authors write about death - and people getting away with crime. Few people would think that they need to be censored because people might read the stories and do what they do. Stephen King may write about horrorible shit in graphic detail - and while he is creepy as fuck, it's fiction for an audience of people who enjoy it.

I may not enjoy it - but I've never wanted to deny it to anyone who does. That's really the hallmark of my philosophy and it's never changed, waivered or even been something I questioned.

Recently, the news seems worse than ever. 400 kids with measles in America because of stupidity, 1600 losing their lives in an earthquake, thousands being laid off with an overnight email, etc. So, my problem is really not that big of a problem in the grand scheme - but I feel the need to write to live.

The site that has been my home to post my stories (SOL) now stands for "Shit out of Luck" because of an unfortunate whisper campaign. Trolls and assholes have told the hosting company it features stuff that violates the TOS. We live in the age of the private equity firm/parent company and so those companies would rather err on the side of caution and hassled my main story site.

Over the years, I've dabbled in other sites - mostly to broaden my audience and not to replace SOL.

Literotica is a good example. it is a confusing design with lots of problems and not conducive to serial posting of stories. I recently checked out Inkett and Wattpad, and I don't think they are a good fit because they want to sell slick memberships, and my stories are too niche. I once posted on RavishU but I could never figure out their standards, and AO3 (an Archive of our own) but it's fanfiction focused and most of my stories are genre focused instead. I don't really understand the interface/tags very well and can't figure out how to find the kind of stories that I enjoy - so I doubt people could find me.

This site is really the only one I've been on consistently in the last 10 years besides SOL. It reminds me of old school BBS forums (in a good way) and works much as they did to the end user. When I first got here - everyone was positive and encouraging and then I got trolled by two total b-holes, and now most people won't even engage with me. I also don't write stories that really "fit" 100% the narrow focus of this site.

I have 68 stories that survived the purge at SOL, and of those only about 40 are probably visible to end users. I am overwhelmed at the idea of starting over. However, I need to find a new home. At least, until SOL figures it out.

I don't really follow the news that much about porn sites, but as I understand it - big sites like Redtube get hassled by politicians in search of a problem to solve. I don't think the general populace actually wants our porn limited. Everyone enjoys it - most people who say they don't is a liar or a sociopath. They may not get it on the internet, but even my sweet old granny had her soap operas and harlequin romance novels to flip her switch.

It's probably just a matter of time before the pendulum swings back in other direction and SOL gets freedom again.

However, in the meantime, maybe you can help me out. I know this is a story forum and I never see discussion posts but can I ask a favor - guide me to a site to be my new home?

CRITERIA:

I have a little over 1,000 followers on SOL who at one time thought my stories were good enough to follow - meaning I have a decent audience. If I start over on a site like Inkett, I'll probably be buried. Ideally, I'd have a built in audience - meaning that the site is focused or has focuses for the things that I write.

As you know, I don't just write ENF/CMNF stories (embarrassed nude female, clothed male/nude female). I write pony girl, fetish, bdsm, domestic discipline, and sometimes science fiction or bestiality, but rarely. I don't like to be limited to a specific type of fetish. If I think the characters would do it - they do it. I don't give a fuck if my reader has a narrow and limited idea of what turns them on. If Stephen King only wrote stories about cars that come alive and burn people that richly deserve it because his readers only like that - he'd be bored shitless.

So, the site must have allow for a broad range of fetish/sexual content and make it easier for people into that to find me.

I am not tech savvy - not really. I have done really well with AI and photoshop to make cool pictures, but make it easy for me to post. Here, I start a new thread and hit reply. At SOL, I publish and can easily manage and update my stories.

At Literotica, you have to navigate some arcane system of tags and then wait while some moderator reads your story and decides if it's good enough. At Inkett, the interface is easy, but it took a month before my first story got 'published'. It was probably buried because despite checking, I never saw it in their updates, and it only ever had 30 readers.

I need it to be easy. AO3 is a little complicated for me.

I can host pictures - somehow.

On this site, I can link to pictures somewhere else. I don't make too many, but enough to punctuate my stories. I enjoy making AI art with lots of my own touches more than I do writing lately.

However, ideally this site that I land at would let me upload the pictures somehow. SOL makes it fairly easy - you have to add a tag and upload the picture with the story.

Inkett was even easier, you can add the picture right in the interface.

Ideally, I'd have a place where I don't have to do attachments or a third party host and link to it.

No/limited trolls;

One downside to this site, is that trolls can still reply/interrupt my story midway and then bunny trail with debates about whether or not my story is "Boring" or not and that is not ideal. I love reader engagement and constructive feedback, but this site kind of invites it inline to the story -which is not ideal. I'd rather have a forum to discuss the stories, or do it by private mail, etc.

The moderators here have done an OUTSTANDING job of limiting the trolls to the point that now it hasn't happened - but all it would take for the two past trolls is to create new accounts and come right back and start up again. ideally, this new site would give me some control over who can and cannot engage with my posts.

At SOL, you can't turn off voting (which sucks, because the voting metric is broken) so that's a negative, but you can turn off comments at the end of the story. You could also block certain people who left nastygrams from engaging with that story or any story of yours. There is a forum separate of the stories to post for a variety of topics including discussing stories. So for the most part it's ideal - except for the broken voting mechanic.

I won't go into the details, but less than 1% of the readers vote, and most of them are polarized to the extreme outliers of either "this sucks, so I vote a 1" or "it's great, so I vote a 10" and you end up with a 5.6 coming from mostly trolls who can create multiple accounts to downbomb a story out of the gate if it features femdom or female led relationships. Conversely, my girl scout story took flack from people who thought it was too mysgonist but that being said - i could live with voting if I had everything else.

I would be willing to pay money to host - like have a little blog designed to publish my own stories or a forum like this.

I just don't know how anyone would ever find it, or how to administrate one. However, that may be the easiest solution. it has to be hosted by a company that doesn't give a fuck/advocates free speech and/or is located in some place where they believe in self-governing and self policing. I won't post anything that I think is illegal. I don't even post ages in my stories. However, I want maximum freedom.


Do you know of a site(s) that allows broad fetishes/story types, easy to publish/easy to find me, open/light content, that isn't the wild west of trolls (4chan types)?

I will still post here - but I try to limit myself to ENF/CMNF stories.

[mars357]

Given your criteria, you'd need an explicitly loli-friendly and fetish friendly site.

A big and pretty decent one is All the Fallen.

A smaller, but really, really maximally skewed towards freedom would be Roriwalrus.

Neither is primarily a story site however. Happy to see what others suggest.

Not sure if giving direct links here is allowed, but use duck duck go search and you should be able to find both easily.

[EddieDavidson]

Thanks.

I ended up messing around with Wordpress, because I read that I could make a PhpBB forum with it and I used Bluehost, but it was kind of a bust for me.

I ended up going with a different hosting service, and created a rudimentary forum.

I plan to add a file share and gallery later, but for now I was thinking maybe I could just start slowly adding my stories here as I complete them.

https://www.eddiedavidsonstories.com

I am not a web admin - so this is my first attempt to make something functional. The goal is to create a library for my stories, but I would still post here. In retrospect, I may have been able to use a free forum site because ultimately I think that's all I really wanted.

[mars357]

Looks promising!

[shmeckle]

The webmaster Lazeez just posted an update about the change -- https://storiesonline.net/d/s1/t13288/relief. It looks like they may have found another hosting service which is less draconian about story content.

Glad to hear it, too. Much like this forum, SOL has always been a haven for authors who don't want to make their stories conform to more restrictive rules. (I'm looking at you, Literotica.)

A separate website where you can post your own stories still seems like a good idea. Just in case something like this happens again.