The Transformation Story Archive (TSA) was a website

archiving An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

amateur fiction featuring a personal physical

transformation Transformation may refer to: Science and mathematics In biology and medicine * Metamorphosis, the biological process of changing physical form after birth or hatching * Malignant transformation, the process of cells becoming cancerous * Tran ...

or its aftermath. The archive was created by

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n web designer Thomas Hassan, who intended it to be a premier showcase for transformation-themed fiction and a showcase for amateur authors. The TSA was operating at least as early as May 1995, leading to claims of being the earliest Internet archive for fiction of this genre.

Included content

Although a wide variety of metamorphoses were considered suitable content for inclusion,

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

and furry wish-fulfillment stories predominated. The archive's community also created or fostered a large number of

shared universe A shared universe or shared world is a fictional universe from a set of creative works where more than one writer (or other artist) independently contributes a work that can stand alone but fits into the joint development of the storyline, chara ...

fiction settings, in part due to a prohibition against traditional

fanfiction Fan fiction or fanfiction (also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF) is fictional writing written in an amateur capacity by fans, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, setti ...

. One of the biggest of these, ''Tales from the Blind Pig'', was represented by hundreds of stories contributed by dozens of authors over the life of the archive. Some stories on the archive contained controversial themes, such as age regression or overtly

sexual content In media discourse, sexual content is material depicting sexual behavior. The sexual behavior involved may be explicit, implicit sexual behavior such as flirting, or include sexual language and euphemisms. Sexual content is a large factor in m ...

History

During its heyday, the TSA inspired the creation of countless similar sites, often with narrower focuses. Its high volume of amateur fiction also led to its inclusion in lists of

ezine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer magaz ...

s, although it was never actually structured in that manner. In 1997, eSCENE, an annual award anthology for works first published in ezines, invited nominations from the TSA, and considered 17 such stories, the most from any single source. Fiction written in the TSA's shared universes have at times also been accepted in unrelated online anthologies. Its content has been cited as inspiration or influence by others in the genres the archive included, from the

USENET Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

community that pioneered modern therianthropy to creators of

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be c ...

s such as ''Zebra Girl''.

Accusations

The success of the TSA accounted for a significant portion of the Internet traffic of its non-profit server in Vienna, run by hosting service public netbase/t0. A shift to the right in Austrian politics worked against the site and its host, however.

Austrian Freedom Party The Freedom Party of Austria (german: Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Austria. It was led by Norbert Hofer from September 2019 to 1 June 2021.Staff (1 June 2021"Au ...

(FPÖ) leader

Jörg Haider Jörg Haider (; 26 January 1950 – 11 October 2008) was an Austrian politician. He was Governor of Carinthia on two occasions, the long-time leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and later Chairman of the Alliance for the Future of ...

selected "

degenerate art Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...

" as one target for his party's political capital. By July 1998, this included accusations of the acceptance and facilitation of

child pornography Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a ...

against public netbase/t0. Initially, the FPÖ explicitly alleged links between public netbase/t0 and a separate hosting service from the

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, but the sexual content of the TSA and its age-alteration themes was implicitly included when allegations continued after that connection was refuted. When the results of these attacks stripped its host of public funding and free access, the TSA hastily relocated to an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

server, assisted by several mirror servers.

Server relocation

However, the TSA would never recover as a community from the server relocation. The shift from Austrian to North American hosting led to the departure of Hassan from the project; he went on to join Austrian software developer Public Voice Lab, eventually earning a seat on their board. Posting of new content to the archive finally stopped in July 2003 and the archive's users have largely moved to other websites or dropped from public view, although the site remains available as of October 2022. Much of the content has been redistributed, both during and after the TSA's active existence, however. Its sister-project mailing list continued under separate administration long after the stagnation of the actual web archive, and an ezine continued for some years, hosted on the current TSA server (and still there for archival purposes). And, despite its long inactivity, the TSA remains on most lists of sources for furry, transgender, or metamorphosis-themed fiction, and still receives occasional mention in wider indexes of online fiction sites.

References

{{reflist

External links

Transformation Story ArchiveTransformation Story Archive mirrorTransformation Stories, Art, Talk
- Online magazine Internet properties established in 1995 Austrian literature websites Fiction about shapeshifting Defunct websites