Kevin,
Sorry to hear about the sunset of your product. I imagine it’s upsetting, but as you mentioned, the community is strong. There is no reason AOL deserves to have such a loyal, well-connected user base, let alone have the ability to kill a good product just because Conroy couldn’t sell enough Ads on there.
I want to suggest for you to launch an evolved story-telling Web site, that is so much better than Ficlets. As the curator of Ficlets, I suggest leaving it up to users to pick the new name of it, and incorporate their suggestions for the evolved version of it.
A great tool to collect user-input, prioritize it and communicate with the fanbase is to use UserVoice. (http://www.uservoice.com/). It’s free and from my experience, most people get the concept of it.
I would love to see AOL send you a DMCA/IP violation claim. I doubt it though, the legal folks are probably too busy scrambling to offer pro-bono legal help in VA.
I wish the project and you all the best.
~Joe