I think it was wonderful of Helen to credit where the inspiration came from - you don't see enough of that in fanfiction writing, where people say "XYZ's story made me think and this is what I came up with". I'd love to see more of that. And with so few BDSM stories set in this fandom, I think that the comparison would have been automatically drawn even if she hadn't mentioned Xanthe's story. It's not the author's fault if several people have taken "homage" to mean "critique/fix-it" when commenting on this story.

And I'm certainly not saying that everyone has to love Xanthe's story, because we all have different tastes - I, personally, can't read a highly-touted WIP in this fandom because it pushes squick-buttons of my own, but I wouldn't diss that story.