Palantean Writer

Ha - okay, that's all interesting stuff. Thanks, by the way, everyone here for responding with such useful, constructive stuff. As it so happens, there's been a few incorrect assumptions here - I've no intention of making this an Amazon thing, it's actually just meant to be a way of guaranteeing that you get a review, rather than submitting your work to a free review service and hoping they decide you'll get one or two. It's about getting the feedback and learning what someone else thinks of it. The service is paid to put you in control of the fact that you actually get a review. Personally, I've worked hard to get reviews for my own works but not always got them, so I'm putting out feelers to find out if being able to just pay for a review would be a wanted service. I've had a lot of skepticism in return, but I think I can still make something useful. I'm going to put together a team of people for this, hence there'll be a range of preferences for what each reviewer wants to read, so I can give match each story to a reviewer I think is likely to actually enjoy reading it. If it turns out not to be wanted, then that's fine. But I'm going to make a go of this and see where it goes. Thanks again for your constructive comments, everyone! Oh, and if anyone else has more to add, please do, because I'll check back over the next few days.

Hi guys, I'm thinking of opening a reviews service and have a few questions for you guys. The basic idea is that you can pay to have your story (or art, or Youtube video, or music, or whatever else you can think of) reviewed. I can offer substantial reviews of at least 200 words, and will have a team working with me so you can have several reviews of the same piece of artwork if you so choose. Can anyone help me out by telling me what you think? - What do you think of such a service? - What would you be prepared to pay for it? So... any thoughts?

Hi guys, I'm just wondering. We writers know it's hard to get reviews here, especially detailed ones that are clearly personalised to the exact stories we've posted up (ie., more specific than just, 'plz rite moar'. I'm just wondering: if you could get the reviews you crave, what sorts would you want: Glowing praise and encouragement? Constructive criticism? A mix of both? Short and sweet reviews? Long reviews? (and what does 'long' mean to you?) Lots of reviews from one-time reviewers? A series of reviews from the same reviewer who keeps coming back? Do you like having a breakdown of your spelling and grammatical errors in reviews, or does it annoy you when that happens? What else do you look for in reviews? Just wonderin'!

Heh heh, yes it is those four! I'm working out at the moment how Earth-like to make it and how alien to make it, but I've more or less settled on going back about 10 - 20 years in terms of Earthian(?) attitudes to homosexuality.

Ah, fantastic, shadow. Thanks for the input. Well, all four of my characters are around the age of 20. One camps it up, another is a wiry hardcase and the other two tend to keep their sexualities to themselves anyway. One, a skinny, nerdy lad, came out near the end of school at 18 and came out to his colleagues in a generic council-type office. The last one has remained publicly closeted (if that makes sense) just to lead a quiet life. I hope the above doesn't reduce my characters to terribly dull-sounding cliches or give too little information to be of any use, but I hope that's enough information to make getting an idea of how much homophobia they might deal with more defineable. Oh, and they live in a medium-sized city with a fairly enthusiastic arty/nightlife/eccentric population. Nothing mad, it's just quite a desirable place to be, without being achingly decadent like, say, LA.

Hi all. I'm keen to know for the sake of adding at least reasonably realistic homophobic stuff into the background of a gay story - how often do gay men suffer homophobic attacks? Is it only about once every six months, or just about every time you step out your front door? Does it make a difference whether you're camp or not, your build, urban/rural environments? Do you get mostly verbal stuff but the occasional physical attack, is most of what you hear casual and not directed, or is a lot of it directed? Not that I'd want to include an awful lot of homophobia in my story, but I'm wondering how much goes on out there and to keep the level that my characters have to put up with to a realistic degree. Thanks in advance.

You, my man, are a champion! *sticks out hand for you to shake*

Just out of interest, Shadowknight, how do you define 'treating the other man like a woman?

The orgasm is the bit where you really get to be flowery, so it's almost surprising that a writer would opt out of describing it in full, electifying detail. I love writing the orgasm part of sex scenes - no matter how many times I write it, there always seems to be more room for fresh description. It's a shame more don't.

What I'm talking about more is when you're just trying to get on with your life being a lesbian, men coming up with inane sayings like, 'I'm all for gay marriage if both chicks are hot' and the like is annoying. I'm not talking about porn per se, but men not wanting to see a distinction between porn and real life and bothering lesbians about it. Perhaps. But maybe it depends on the amount of time said person has to put up with such misrepresentation. If it's often then it's going to get a bit much. Fair play.

A few of you might have noticed that I haven't updated this in a while. I'm afraid I'm a bit short of time so need to drop this as a project. However, the point of it was - and is - to get as many people as possible reviewing each other, so if anyone want so jump in and do their bit, by all means do it. Even if you only do it for a little while it means that we're making more of a culture of review-sharing. All the best, everyone.

I think anyone from the end of school age onwards is well aware of the widespread phenomenon of men liking the idea of lesbians getting it on. But personally, I've only ever experienced the opposite (girls/women being attracted to male gay sex) on the internet. One doesn't seem to hear it that way 'round in non-internet life. What we tend to hear from the lesbian contingent regarding men wanting to see what they get up to is often expressed as a kind of tired exasperation. No, they don't want to get it together with your girlfriend, no they're not all skinny, hot bimbos and guess what? A lesbian relationship actually involves a complex set of human emotions, too. Just like het relationships. And they're right: men should deal with this, grow up and move on. It must be soul-destroying when people see you as doing what comes naturally for their titillation. Now, finally to my point: if this is how boys and men treat lesbians, I wonder how accurately we're representing male gay sex here. I'm presupposing (and I suspect I'm right: someone tell me if I'm wrong, please) that most of the MXM writers here are female, and I realise many of us write it simply because we find it hot. But do we offend any gay males who come here and read it?

How can you call yourself a respectable member of this forum if you won't pack your testicles in ice for the sake of a complete stranger's research? Eh? How can you?

If you put an ice cube to most parts of the body, that body part will chill. Then, when you take the ice cube away, either the body will overcompensate or your sense of contrasting temperatures mean that that same part feels hotter than usual, a short while after the ice cube is removed. However, I suspect there's a body part that flouts this trend - the testicles. Is this the case? What I'm thinking is that the testicles rise and fall to change their proximity to the body in order to maintain a regular temperature. So if you did the ice trick with testicles, would they get that sense of extra warmth described above as other body parts do, or would that not occur?

I've tried to tell my other half that I write, but he's really not interested. Totally apathetic to it. At first I mentioned just the non-adult stuff that I'd written and he reacted with surprise... and then apathy. I get very self-conscious about my stories when talking to someone in person about them, so I tried mentioning it to him again a little while later hoping that he'd realise I was quite enjoying it. I was hoping for moral support so as to grow my confidence, so I tried telling him the whole plotline of one of my stories. At the end he simply shrugged and said, 'It's another world', meaning the world of writership. He's a great boyfriend apart from this. Although now he's aware that I write a lot and enjoy it, I find that I'm almost leading a double life because of his lack of interest. I haven't mentioned that I write slash. I have, however, mentioned that writing short stories will be a way to crack into the magazines etc. and be the first step to getting published. Then I mentioned that the Cliterati section of Scarlet magazine buys adult stories, which I intended as a hint that I might write some. He raised his eyebrows at that but there's been no more mention of it since. So while I'm not keeping it a secret per se, it's pretty much an enforced secret because he just doesn't seem to care about my artistic output. I think that's a shame, but I don't think it's worth pushing past this point. I'll just carry on writing and if I end up making a profit from it, I'll end up making a profit. Gah...