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So, as I’m sure many have noticed, I’ve been busy trying to work myself to death for the past five years or so. So, in that time, I’ve worked ridiculous hours with very little time off, and often multiple shifts in a day. As a result, I was more than a little unproductive here. I retired the end of March, and spent the first fourish months doing nothing but sleep. Have one final test from my doctor on November 22nd, so should be done with all that shit for a bit as well by then. In the meantime, I am now checking all the email addresses I always did before, as I now have the time. Am easing back into the archive repair, minor hunting, and other things I did as well. Sorry for the absence, but, glad to be back

No prostate cancer for me! So that’s pretty good news to get just before Christmas.

Just as a heads-up for all our members and guests, we’ve been getting a number of dubious posts lately on the forum. We’re removing the posts, of course, but we don’t always get to them instantly. PLEASE exercise caution, and don’t click on any links you see in these posts. Trust me, there’s nothing good waiting for you at the other end. Practice safe surfing, okay?

We’re also banning the spam IPs, as fast as we can

The Monster Under The Bed x My Sleep Paralysis Demon (Those fucking squelching noises, I swear, it’s grim folks, grim).

What I said: “7 oz can of chipotles in adobo.” What the phone heard: “7 oz can of Chipotles in a dildo.” Even my grocery list is not safe.

I’m juggling a lot of stuff in my life right now, from watching shows people want me to watch (Frieren most recently) to trying to overcome fears about my appearance to sign up for a dating site, but I hope there are still some people around here. I feel bad that I don’t post things as often as I did when I showed up here...six and half years ago now. I may not be one of the OGs, but I’ve been here a while, haven’t I? 😄 The good news is that I actually have a new story in the works! I’ve finished the first chapter, and will keep working on it. I don’t really want to start posting it until I’m done, but it’s a sci-fi/adventure fanfic and I had a lot of fun with that first chapter. In broader terms, I hope people here are doing as well as they can. I know I don’t show up as often as I’d like, but I think about you guys a lot! 🙂

The saddest little face in the world…

For October, I’ve been quietly rolling out small bug fixes, most are just performance based. Two user side ones -Site based e-mails are now fixed (turns out this was not a code based bug, fixed as of this post) - Bold text has returned to stories. DG is going to be doing some proofreading and squishing typo gremlins.

Story info editing has been fixed.

So, with having BP issues, and having to get an echo cardiogram late November, I’ve been monitoring my food intake and what I eat, when I eat. I’ve also started exercising regularly. So instead of losing weight, I gained twelve pounds in the last 2 weeks. What the hell??😡

The great thing about writing Star Trek fanfic is that there’s almost nothing canon about Vulcan and Orion genitalia, so you can pretty much make their bits work however you want.

And they’re rude enough to only get it on when you’re in the bed right above them. *shakes head* No class at all… As for me, depending on what you consider “wrong,” I may have never written a right pairing. 😅 My established pairings have an extreme age difference, to put it mildly (18-20 year old man and immortal women centuries to eons old), and I’m working on a brother/sister incest pairing. As for why, it’s a bit difficult to explain. When it comes to the extreme age differences between human/nonhuman characters, there are published authors who write stuff like that (see the popular A Court of Thorns and Roses series), but to get down to why it appeals to me, I think it’s a fantasy I have as a man who’s always been unsure of himself, especially with women, and there is a fantasy of a shy, nervous young man being introduced to sex by a knowledgeable older woman. Kevin/Luzurial doesn’t exactly fit that mold since they’re both inexperienced regardless of age, but the other examples do, including the incest story (older sister/younger brother). The “why” on the incest pairings is somewhat more complex; I’ll return to that when I have time.

Never trust any book with a tagline or summary of this would make Lovecraft scared. Lovecraft is not a viable reference of fear. Man was afraid of Penguins, Air Conditioners and the Welsh.

Kids these days will never experience many of the rites of passage my generation valued more than gold. For instance: saving up your allowance for three weeks during the summer so you can buy one of those giant plastic Pixie Stix at the public pool’s canteen and downing the whole thing in one go to use it as a snorkel and spending the rest of the month with a burning feeling in the back of your throat that tastes like cherries, chlorine, and stale pee. …those lucky saps.

This day 6 years ago, I landed in New York, my first time in the US. Hard to believe it was that long ago. That trip was when I saw snow for the first time. That was very exciting. Although I soon realised what a pain in the arse it is.

Well that’s the curious point. Would a thruple qualify as a pairing? The same story I have Dawn/Buffy/Faith. A few other types of pairings too but they’re not out yet. In the Riverdale fandom, I have a pairing coming up involving Cheryl/Betty. Although they aren’t exclusive.

Oh, my. Can you still call it a pairing when there are 4+ people involved? Because if you can, than my Star Vs. the Forces of Evil pairing is Marco/Star/Jackie/Janna/Princess Arms/Kelly/Hekapoo/Brittney/Higgs/Starfan13. No, seriously, I wrote that one.

I don’t know that historically I’ve done much in the wrong pairing. However, I have a couple stories, one of which is posted here. My “wrong pairing” has been in the Buffy fandom I wrote a story that includes Dawn/Buffy/Faith/Joyce. Not necessarily a pairing but I have done gangbang stories obviously which could theoretically be a “wrong pairing”. There are a couple stories in which things got seriously dark but they aren’t really anywhere for people to read at the moment.

I know it is a first world problem, my life is not in danger and no one is trying to kidnap me off the street, but dealing with FAFSA under this regime is beyond frustrating! Are we great yet?

My take is that brilliant non-linear stories you here talk about get their fame from being good despite not being linear. A possible comparison is the Westworld tv-show season 1 that had a big reveal when you realized what you had been watching. In season 2 they wanted to repeat the trick and made things just as non-linear and in the end it was barely watchable. I have avoided the later seasons like plague. My point is that for every successful non-linear storytelling there are many more trainwreck attempts. Doing non-linear storytelling that manage to capture the reader is seriously difficult.

Earlier tonight, I fed one of my non-fanfiction short stories through Pro Writing Aid’s “chapter critique” to see how it measures up against my fanfiction. I never thought I’d see the day when AI would smut-shame me. Yep. Seriously. “…some might find the level of detail in the sex scenes excessive.” What if I don’t wanna associate with that sort of person, huh? Fade to black is for wishy-washy people and FFN, not my filthy shapeshifter plowfest. Stay in your lane or bend over.

Happy Birthday!

Simple, have a quick conversation chapter one of the sequel. “Where’s Joe?” “Six years in prison, because when they say NO PARKING, the really mean NO PARKING.” or “Got transferred to far, far, away.” or “He learned why there’s safety bars on woodchippers. Coroner estimated they recovered 60% of the remains.” And if you want the villain to be a surprise, have his whereabouts accounted/dismissed for in this conversation too.

Would really like a portkey out of here. Or a timeturner?

It doesn't sound like a problem to me. In my experience, people care about the consistency of characters, more than anything else. As long as you retain the consistency of your characters, there should be few, if any, objections about the path they follow and it's outcome. Of course, people would have a problem with a path or ending, that seems out of line with what is considered reasonable for the world in which your story takes place. But that really goes without saying, usually. So, if the ending is one that you believe your characters would naturally arrive at, then that ending should be fine.

Apotheosis One women decides to go all in on Christmas Eve. Ascension is an all or nothing game. Succeed and the godhood is thine… Fail and being utterly erased from existence Tags: Pending

Everyone is welcome to the winter festivies

Ay Yo! Beat me to it lol.

Quotation marks and parentheses will stay disabled in those for the time being due to site security. Colon and semicolon I'll try to enable this weekend. Also you can minic " with '' if need be.

@GeorgeGlass could you check if you can edit other fields? It will help narrow down wherr to look for the bug.

Yeah, I just had 3 different things happen at the same time and it was extremely frustrating. There are a couple weird things in the past few weeks. If I could post under my own profile, I would have posted that way. But for whatever reason I don’t have that here. But I’m not necessarily as upset about that. I just needed a place to say it where I wouldn’t get problems.

anyone have any advice on how to break a HORRIBLE, long standing writer’s block? 🙃

Just now, I saw something absolutely smoking hot on the internet. I mean, she was a seriously sexy beast—the kind of beauty I see in my dreams and drool over in centerfolds, regardless of whether I’m in public. If I encountered her on the street, I would absolutely embarrass myself, stare like a loon, and profess my undying adoration to her. A wolf-whistle, three muttered “damns,” and a couple of impressed tongue-clicks later, my husband gave in. Cold sighed, rolled his eyes, and grumbled, “just show me the car.” He knows me so well. 😆 It was, in fact, a classic muscle car—a ‘67 Oldsmobile Tornado. In my defense the lines on this bad girl are what wet dreams are made of, and I pity Cold for his lack of taste. It’s a sad way to live.

Given my predilection for CRPGs set in the D&D/Forgotten Realms ‘verse, probably my favorite “wrong” pairing was a series of fan fictions with Sand x Torio (Neverwinter Nights 2). That was definitely off the normal radar, but honestly, so well written that it worked. Then there was a mod written for Baldur’s Gate/Shadows of Amn, where the PC gets to romance their nemesis from the original game, their half-brother Sarevok, who spent the entire original game trying to kill the PC so he could absorb the power of their father, the dead god of murder, Bhaal. It was a major enemies to lovers twist, but again, well written enough to work. I’m not sure I’ve ever managed to write anything so spectacularly wrong and yet as perfect as those two… *sighs*

Yikes.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite (age-appropriate and modern) books described a place as “a screen door town.” The explanation was that every time something happened, no matter how trivial or innocuous, every screen door up and down the street would open and slam shut twice in a ripple effect—once when the occupants came out to snoop, and again when, having discovered it was unimportant, they went back inside. Last year, Cold and I moved into “a lawnmower neighborhood”—meaning every day, there’s at least one person outside mowing somewhere on the block, and most days, their neighbors join in whether or not they need to mow, and the ripple travels further and further until everyone in earshot is mowing. Cold and I sleep during the day and we can only deal with the lawn very early or on his days off, so the constant mowing is a sore point. Well, earlier today, I heard the mowing start up again while I was trying to drudge through beta-reading a chapter from someone who might not have proofread first. As close as the mower sounded, I figured it must be that one neighbor who has an overpowered mower and an undersized lawn. I suffered through reading the same sentence half a dozen times, then stormed into the kitchen to get some tea and wait it out. When I heard Cold come through the door, I started ranting about “whatever asshole is mowing this time can kiss my ass” and a few things otherwise. Then I saw him and I froze. My husband was sweaty and covered in grass clippings. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Asshole. I mowed your lawn. Prepare to give me butt.”

Try setting your theme (option in footer) to AFF NEW, which is the redone theme, if you don’t mind dark themes Bravo 6.

The technical limit would be a @manta2g or @DemonGoddess type of question, and it’d be in bytes, not words. I know we’ve had some of the annual halloween/holiday round-robin submissions where it’s 50k max for the rules, but that’s more of a reader tolerance limit IMO. In comparison, AO3 limits it to 500k characters, and FFN limits your documents to 5MB (and will stop adding to the word count at 65k words).

Another idea, maybe this is what you’re going for. First chapter is a scene of that party (or whatever it is), with your last lines being “This is their stories.” And your next chapter be like “A year before that party, the awkward Name was sitting in the library.” Making it abundantly clear to the (typical) reader what you’re up to here, because as you noted, readers generally expect chronological (or near chronological) order.

It’s still backstory if it’s “for context.” Maybe better done as separate oneshots, or an episodic serial? Out-of-order is going to confuse the reader IMO, (and in my case, myself too.) This is especially true if there’s something where a character dies, and now you’re talking if they’re alive. Another slight exception here is when I’m doing multiple POVs, so I want to cover character “A” in a dedicated chapter, and “B” in the next (but, the events should be sufficiently disassociated/separate for that to make sense). To me, the strong “out-of-order” means there’s a structural issue to the story, maybe you’re starting in the wrong spot/incident? Hope I’m making sense here.

There are many unmentioned benefits to marrying your best friend…benefits such as them bringing you a cat to cuddle because said cat got too comfy in their lap and ripped a loud, wet, nasty fart. Yep, it was Heiferlump. Also yes, Cold did run away cackling afterward. Boys.

I’m not exactly a master author myself, but that said my advice is that to get everything across you need depth. For that, you need more than just 1 chapter. Which, unfortunately for you, means more work.

Ah, okay. Well, I’m glad you’re using the medium of fanfic to take the story in a direction that the show probably won’t.

@InvidiaRed, I left a comment on your story.

Since I doofishly posted the story in the archives before anyone had an actual story to put in it, I just added the URLs of the last few Winter Holidays to it.

I’ve put in some changes, please give it some more testing to see if there is improvement. Thanks some things don’t show as bugs due to my user perms, so user testing is very appreciated.

Apostrophe… it’s ASCII number is 39.

That’s exactly right, BW. You can only be logged in on ONE device at a time.

I don't know... I think Deadman 'really fell off' as they say... I'm kidding of course; Just remember you aren't beholden to anyone when it comes to your own life. Hope you feel better later.