CloverReef

Edit: I wrote quite a long thing before deciding it was a bit thread derailing, so will move it to another topic.
On topic – I get why Scat is a major dealbreaker, but honestly WS can be pretty fun!
 
 

@Melrick I completely get it. I think to most writers it's hard to think of their characters as fictional and that's a really good thing. If they're real to the writer, they'll most likely seem real to the reader. Obviously there's no shame in not wanting a woman to experience the horrors of rape.
@KassX now you've gone and inspired me gol' dangit! I want to tackle all the tags in a single series with a single protagonist... Maybe make it open so people can add chapters. They probably won't but its fun to think about Lol.

@Desiderius Price I seriously admire that ability to tackle things that make you uncomfortable. I misread that at first and thought you were grossed out by Xeno, and that really shocked me! That’s one of my favourite tags, and everyone should be okay with the shit I like because that’s how the universe works, right? But then I read it again and now I am wiser. 
@Melrick Which ones put you off the most, if you don’t mind me asking?

Honestly, I wanna hear @Desiderius Price’s answer to this. For obvious reasons  
For me, though… Scat I -probably- wouldn’t touch either. But I do get covered in cat shit all day at work, so I’m getting pretty desensitized to the grossness factor. So who knows. Maybe if I get super ballsy? I think the ones I definitely wouldn’t want to write are… Loli, Minor1, and SI (Because having a character similar to me makes me super uncomfortable.). I’d probably shy away from bestiality too, but not anthro, so… who knows how blurry that line could get if I set my mind to it. 

I can have a sfw chapter. And for the minor ones, they can be brought in through subplots that he’s involved with! I don’t intend to go all out with sexy funtimes with all the tags. I don’t think I can do that. I wanna approach the tags in a variety of ways. 

Edit: Of course I wouldn’t put SFW in the tags though lol because that would be a lie. 

Yeah, SFW/Rape might not go over very well.

THE KINK ANTHOLOGY IS A GOOD IDEA. Just maybe… Not me should do it  I even considered sourcing oneshots from writers on the forum, but that’s quite an undertaking. Doing it all with one protagonist sounds like a real challenge too! 
Okay, Rape is one of my favorite plot devices, I guess I’m pretty comfortable with detaching myself from it 

@Melrick I completely get it. I think to most writers it's hard to think of their characters as fictional and that's a really good thing. If they're real to the writer, they'll most likely seem real to the reader. Obviously there's no shame in not wanting a woman to experience the horrors of rape.
@KassX now you've gone and inspired me gol' dangit! I want to tackle all the tags in a single series with a single protagonist... Maybe make it open so people can add chapters. They probably won't but its fun to think about Lol.

@CloverReef Scat is big one that really turns me off like a light switch.  I’m not really into WS either.  Rape I just can’t write about, although I’ve tried.  I end up feeling so sorry for the woman that I simply have her enjoy it instead.  There’s no point in telling myself that she’s not real, that I just made her up, because it doesn’t matter.  I guess because rape in the real word repulses me so much that I just can’t bring myself around to writing about it.

Ha! I love it. Minor1 is a toughie for me too; I try to be real specific that everyone involved is an adult or at least 15+ but I love, love, love it as a tragic backstory tm  Just don’t really find myself going into details with that one or trying to make it titillating. 
I never thought I’d be doing Nec or BP but here I am trying to figure out how long a corpse can maintain an erection. I blame @Arian-Sinclair for this  It’s new to me but kind of interesting to experiment with.
Anthro, Beast, really I was doing centaurs and werewolves and didn’t see a huge jump to straight-up animals.
XENO I would be doing so much Xeno if I had the right universe for it!!!
Seconded, TELL US 

@Desiderius Price I seriously admire that ability to tackle things that make you uncomfortable. I misread that at first and thought you were grossed out by Xeno, and that really shocked me! That’s one of my favourite tags, and everyone should be okay with the shit I like because that’s how the universe works, right? But then I read it again and now I am wiser. 
@Melrick Which ones put you off the most, if you don’t mind me asking?

Honestly, I wanna hear @Desiderius Price’s answer to this. For obvious reasons  
For me, though… Scat I -probably- wouldn’t touch either. But I do get covered in cat shit all day at work, so I’m getting pretty desensitized to the grossness factor. So who knows. Maybe if I get super ballsy? I think the ones I definitely wouldn’t want to write are… Loli, Minor1, and SI (Because having a character similar to me makes me super uncomfortable.). I’d probably shy away from bestiality too, but not anthro, so… who knows how blurry that line could get if I set my mind to it. 

I’m totally cracking up over it.  Given recent events, laughter is good    It totally jibes with the story too without violating the hard rules to the universe I’m creating.  Not sure when I’ll post because I don’t know all of the episodes in between yet.

@CloverReef  I found an even better way to get it into the story…. not telling the details, it’ll be funny
 

@CloverReef  I’m still trying to avoid SFW    Yeah, if I had aliens in the universe, it’d totally be in there.  Maybe even aliens with tentacles feeling up during the anal probes.   Hmmm… maybe I could…. a hallucination with aliens?  Think I might have a halloween story or similar
 

@Desiderius Price I seriously admire that ability to tackle things that make you uncomfortable. I misread that at first and thought you were grossed out by Xeno, and that really shocked me! That’s one of my favourite tags, and everyone should be okay with the shit I like because that’s how the universe works, right? But then I read it again and now I am wiser. 
@Melrick Which ones put you off the most, if you don’t mind me asking?

DemonGoddess has been working double shifts for over a year now at her RL job, something she’s posted about in the site news. Given that we’re all volunteers, RL jobs are what keeps roofs over our heads, and as such, take precedence. However, the rest of us have been here, and working steadily at our respective functions. The recaptcha issue is recent, and will be taken care of.
 
What particular site activities have been dead? I’ve been working on the site daily in the archive, and it’s far from dead. The forum’s been active, and people are posting. DemonGoddess might not update the news monthly as she did when she worked more normal hours, but trust me, AFF’s quite alive, thank you ever so much. Of course, if you’re interested in volunteering to help with the site, feel free to PM me.

As one of the archive moderators for the past few years, thank you for your support and your wonderful post!
As one of the writers on the site, albeit sporadically these days, AFF’s been a haven for me as well, and I’m grateful for it every day.

As the forum moderator, I want to thank you, very much for your kind words, and I am so happy that the sites have been a help in troubled times. 
I decided to pin your post for the time being, so it will remain at the top of the forum, so our hardworking archive moderators, our admin and the rest of the crew can see it. 
Thank you, again, for such lovely words. 
 
Willow Darkling, forum moderator. 

I won’t be able to join in due to my internet persona being dead and buried at a crossroads with a Hawthorn Stake stuck through it.
It wasn’t even a vampire.
Have fun though y’all.

Oh, that is so making me think about a plot I never found the impetus to use. ::glares at the little ankle-gnawing plot bunny:: Taverns in the woods have so much potential, speaking as a not-quite-reformed D&D player. Mysterious cloaked figure sends adventurers out in search of trysts rather than treasure...

Wow, that’s the dream for a first person writer. I’ve been doing it for less time and only just started running into problems. Definitely seeing that strong characters are going to make the difference – underdeveloped characters kill 1st POV. For the benefit of your poor betas, I hope you finished that story, lol. 
I LOVE THIS. That’s really smart. I usually have a lot going on so it’s a real challenge to balance events with character voices but my reasoning is people come for the story and stay for the characters, hell, look at all those TV shows that should have been cancelled years ago but are still going strong, usually because no one wants to let go of the characters. 
Loooool, I only write originals fml I have to do all the work all the time
I like this quote from your siggy:  “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” -- E. L. Doctorow I think 1st POV is the most obvious manifestation of this  But damn, 1st person is so rewarding when you get in the groove and you feel like you’re nailing it, but it’s an utter misery if you feel even a little off with the voice. The anxiety is real, lol. Thanks so much for chiming in, I loved your analysis! 

Well (took me almost a day to see this, but it’s in my wheelhouse) for almost ten years I wrote almost exclusively rotating 1st person rotating POV. I liked it because I could control clues to both the reader and the characters.  That first cast had really strong personalities, I bet I could write a new scene with their unlabelled POVs and my long-suffering beta could still identify which character was speaking even after five years. A half million words.
And that strong personality is the most important thing. These characters had different moralities and ethics, people skills, slang/formal language usage, faith/lack thereof, careers/specialties- especially if illegal, goals. That’s before you even consider traumas and obsessions and backstories.
Pick a specific actor/part for their line delivery, think how different Robin Williams was for the genie and in Dead Poet Society. Make a familiar character/person to be the core basis and add setting based stuff.  Yes, this is all characterization, but that last bit that makes the character gel and become unique and memorable. It binds the fictional universes together, because without chars, the story is just a checklist of events. (stories like that are so painful)
This is why stories heavy in OCs are a challenge, the new characters haven’t differentiated enough to be interesting. I had mental baseball caps I put on the change gears to another character in that first series. I don’t know how I made them the first time, so newer ones are seconds. You need that strong personality and look at the scene/events from their bias and needs. They look out your eyes at the scene you made.  You could joke that I have multiple personalities: assassins, paladin, shadewalker, healer, Sith, and Jedi. It would not be that off, and waiting in line causes odd commentary...
Later series weren’t quite as strong. And I’m struggling in my current big story. Original flash stories and other shorts just don’t have as strong personalities they focus on revelation/plot.

Oh no, I’m fascinated by stuff like that! Sure it’s problematic to always depict the mentally ill as psychopaths and killers, but horrors and thrillers are rife with problematic shit. Someone should definitely do something about that. In the meantime I’m gonna keep watching because horror movies are awesome. All that’s just to say no, I haven’t seen Split yet, but I intend to! 
Don’t worry about offending me. One of my favourite movies from my childhood is a transphobic piece of trash that in theory enrages me, but in practice, a total guilty pleasure. Yay Sleepaway Camp. 

Mental illness is a very personal experience. It might actually be good that you don’t come into it with a complete education on it because it can be easy to write their symptoms too textbook. I’d just suggest watching a couple documentaries maybe if you feel too lacking. Otherwise, I grew up around paranoid schizophrenic and bipolar family members and have done a ton of research on my own, so feel free to PM me if you have any questions.