BashfulScribe

It’s legitimately super cool that I get to repost my stuff to this site. I’ve gotten a few new and old followers in contact with me (in some cases in contact with me again) and I legitimately have the erasure incident to thank for that. Life is funny sometimes.

Well then that sounds like an outer agent got my password somehow. No biggie. I’ve revamped my security on this site so I’ll just hope it doesn’t happen again.

@pittwitch I’m not sure if this is significant, but I’ve also noticed that my profile was wiped clean, so basically apart from this forum, my account was completely sterilized, not a trace of my existence left aside from my account still just existing. Given this I can assume either some kind of serve error wiped all of my past activity (can that happen?) or someone who somehow got access to my password wanted to give me what-for.

Quit writing.

Will do! I sent an email to BronxWench (an absolutely delightful person, by the by) and they mentioned (as well as the fact that staff didn’t do this) that in the past, it wasn’t uncommon for family members or friends to access accounts of writers and erase their stories for one reason or another. My computer is very private so I highly doubt this was done by an IRL friend. My current guess is that my account was ‘hacked’ and some person from the internet with malicious intent got rid of my stories. Honestly, not the end of the world. I’ll just be changing my password and reupload them. I guess it could also be a server hiccup or something technical, because if someone had access to my account, they could have done way worse things (like intentionally break the rules under my name or something, not to give people ideas). Like I said though, this isn’t the end of the world. Who knows, maybe repuloading my stories will breathe new life into this forum. AFF is still a great host site for this, so I am most definitely not leaving.

Welp, it looks like my stories have been removed from this site, for… reasons. I should probably look into this.

I’ve decided to omit my blog’s weekly post from appearing in this forum, as it talks quite critically of other authors here and I don’t want to misconstrue anything as saying one author’s work is less valid than another, which it could come across as. At least, if I posted it here specifically.

Yeah your output rate is fucking terrible

Around a month ago, I got an amazing email from someone that detailed their growth from hating sexuality to embracing it, and the kind of stories they enjoyed. They also outlined that they believed a bunch of sex stories and sex authors just get entangled in their own fantasies of either knowing all about sex or being a great writer and showing it off. Apparently, they liked Panopticon because it wasn’t that. Whether I agree with that assertion or not is immaterial, I don’t get to choose how readers interpret my stories, but I was incredibly flattered by this. Like I’ve said before, erotica that focuses heavily on plot has a niche appeal to it, and while I’m glad I tried something new, I almost feel like I did a disservice to this emailer by making, two pieces later, Amy’s Fantasy. As I mentioned, Amy’s Fantasy was my first attempt at making an erotica story that more closely resembled a stroke story. Hell, I might even do a second attempt at it, I have a few ideas. That said, something that strikes me as interesting, a fact I can’t avoid, is that Amy’s Fantasy was my least ever commented on story. Not most disliked, not least read, but least commented on. Within a day or so of Panopticon, I got a few emails about it. Every chapter of BMS or GBM has illicited response. Amy’s Fantasy has been out for almost two weeks now, and interestingly, I’ve gotten one comment on it from a kind reader from Literotica, telling me that they got off to it. I reaped what I sowed, I guess. I’ve made comments before on how stroke stories get the most expected comments and plot-based stories didn’t. I don’t know why I expected this story to be any different. Of course, there are other factors at play – I chose to plug my Patreon instead of my email whenever I could, it’s a one-off story that built no hype unlike a chaptered story, it’s relatively shorter than all of my other works, etc. Nevertheless, I’m glad I tried something similar to a stroke story, because looking at its effect on the world, I think I’m better off writing plot-based things. As mentioned, Amy’s Fantasy was based off of real-life flirting I engaged in with someone, and I wonder if perhaps that was a factor. When I was writing BMS specifically, there were a number of times I was completely turned off but had to write a sex scene. Sometimes I even inserted <THEY BOINK> in the file then tell myself to go back and actually write the sex scene later. I hope they don’t mind, but I’m going to quote that emailer’s note about bad smut in their own words: I’m not going to lie, I could see that applied to Amy’s Fantasy very easily given its backstory. It was my own fantasy, and it was based on a sexting conversation I had, so maybe there was even me trying to be a good sexter for her that got left in the story. The whole need to be clever thing… well, I think we can all agree that was already a problem with me. I wonder if I need to actively dislike writing sex in my stories in order to get them to a level of quality that my following desires and/or deserves. After all, I disliked writing it the most when I was at my most popular. Of course, the response to this story wasn’t bad, in fact a good number of people seemed to really like it, and I’m glad. Mainly this is just me spitballing. If you have opinions, I’d definitely like to hear them, in the comments or at basfulscribe@gmail.com. Again, I love every email sent to me, including those scathing me for bad writing or whatnot. Despite what I now believe has been a story slightly worse than my usual output, I’m not going to give up because of that – instead I’m going to take what I learned from the experience and hopefully turn it into better writing.

My new shortest story is up! It’s called Amy’s Fantasy. You can find it here: http://original.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600109047 Someone else from here requested via email that I should repost blogs from my website here, but they’re kinda long and droning. That said, if people want them to be posted here, I absolutely can, and unless I get serious objections, will start that next week. In the meantime, I’ll be trying to return here daily and answer any and all questions, comments etc.

Oh right, this exists. Uh… Several new things up. My first short story, Panopticon, is also up. Whoopee.

I’m still trying to catch up in my reading as opposed to caught up to chapter 85, but I will agree with the guest directly above me that Jack changes and it becomes a lot more self-centric. I also will say that the transition kind of makes sense to me. A good number of these events happening centered around the protagonist will give them an inflated sense of self-importance, and I get the feeling that his own self-deprecation is starting to feel like his own justification. Like, ‘no, I’m not an unlikeable guy, all this crap is happening to me, plus I don’t believe in my abilities and have some confidence issues. That means I must not be pretentious, right?’ It could be coincidental and this could be the most backhanded praise I ever gave but that’s how it seems to me. The other characters thing is a genuine criticism though – they aren’t fully there but other characters feel like more and more of an accessory to what’s going on. Not to Jack, there are some points when, say, Alan and Amanda etc are in focus, but whenever a character isn’t the ‘star of their episode,’ it feels a little less real as people to have them there. My criticism can be summed up with ‘less Walking Dead, more Game of Thrones,’ though I would never compare your writing to The Walking Dead in any other capacity. Gives the show too much credit. <insert compliment about how you’re a good writer to soften the blow of my criticism> I’m looking forward to fully catching up on the story and being able to read alongside your other viewers. It’s been too long.

I’m sorry that it hurt. In a weird way, I’m glad that the message got across. Not everyone knows the pain of having an event like that in your life, and at the very least I’m glad to see that if I went for it, it wasn’t a wasted effort. Also, props for letting your feelings be known and highlighting why without posting any real spoilers. Working on chapter 19 presently.

It's been a long week. Tiring. Rough for my self-esteem. I have to adjust to the best of my ability to my new life and surroundings. I feel silly complaining at all considering on a whole I'm still insanely privileged, but there you go. I think this blog will be a short one. There's not much to say. I'll have more for you next week. I made leaps and bounds in chapter 17 yesterday. I wrote 4000+ words just in one sitting. That's getting rare for me. I understand that chapter 16 was far from my best, or so I'm told. I take this in stride, and I hope that 17 makes up for it. I personally think it does. So far, I feel decently confident with it. That's really all I got. Not all of my blog posts have some deeper meaning or go on for days. I'd rather put that energy into writing what you're all here for, the story. I'll talk to you all later, and the chapter's coming out relatively soon. Originally posted on my new website, www.bashfulscribe.com. It would mean the world to me if you checked it out.

One thing that could very well damn me in the long run has been made obvious in these two-and-a-half years I've spent writing: I'm not good at social media in any form. My private Facebook account is clunky and barely existent, my twitter is empty and small, and my attempts to make a forum have been laughable. I was never really interested in getting a Twitter until I started writing anonymously. Sometimes I even wish that judgments made in the professional world didn't exist so I could do away with the fake, regrettably pretentious pseudonym and be free to make my online persona a little more... personal. I sometimes feel fake writing a tweet, or even a chapter. Blogs feel very real though, so I guess I'm grateful. I finished the first scene of chapter 17 this week. I'm a little behind, seeing as I need to have something tangible done by next week to fit my quota. Although if this week turns out to be hell, I'll excuse it as long as I release something in November. The scenes are getting a little difficult to write, as mentioned in the previous blog. Now that the characters aren't mysterious or leaving more to be desired, writing them can get a little daunting. Which leads to a questionable point in my story. Many readers feel to an extent dissatisfied with how I portrayed May in recent chapters. I was tempted to not bring this up at all, since I firmly believe a story should be able to justify itself. After all, if I have to explain a character's motive for it to make sense, I'll need to be over the shoulder of every single reader. Not exactly feasible. That said, I would like to make a few points about the current situation involving May in particular. A lot of erotic writing is safe. When it involves teenagers, the grand majority of stories I've seen are 'underdog' tales, wherein the usually male protagonist goes from a shy nobody to a stud. To an extent, a large amount of teen erotica is just this. It's either growing or discovery, those are the two major themes. Being More Social is totally about growing. That being said, a lot of authors don't really like to show their protagonists not always growing. They start off pathetic and always get better with no potholes in the road to success. I like to take that formula and shake it up. No one attains perfection, God knows I haven't. So in this 'underdog' tale, the lead protagonist becomes less shy, yes. He also makes stupid decisions constantly. He keeps getting dragged down to earth. He's hard on himself, but the world to him revolves around him. Sometimes he's an absolute asshole - a cheater, an outspoken moron, a wimp. The same goes for the people in his life, sometimes the people he was led to believe were good people. Enter May. Sexual assault exists. Sexual assault with males being the victim exists. If you're into rape as a hypothetical fetish, you do you, but when it's played out in reality it's not sexy. So what the hell was Mr. BS thinking when he included sexual assault in his story? It wasn't sexy. But frankly, it wasn't meant to be. Sometimes I don't want people to get off to my chapters at all. I'm trying to experiment a little, and the point of the last few chapters wasn't so much sex as it was wondering what the hell it must be like to be in Adam's shoes. If people didn't like it, hopefully it was because it disrupted the flow of the story, not because it wasn't well written. If it was the latter, that's unfortunate, but if it's the former, that means you care about the character. Much like in *SPOILER* chapter five or six or whenever when Nicole's brother is introduced, but this time was different. In that instance, readers felt like they were Adam, wanting to help Nicole but not knowing what to say/do. They sympathized from afar. If I did this right, chapters fifteen and sixteen forced people to empathize with Adam, but I'm going to hope that very few of my readers were in his situation. Something bad happened to the main character, and it's difficult to know how to feel about it. So people lash out. They lash out at May, and to an extent, they lash out at me. I love that. They care so much about the characters, they're angry when their world is upset. That's the ultimate compliment to a writer, when a world feels so real that when something truly terrible happens, they're angry. People want to know why I couldn't have just left May as the sweet barely attainable love interest. Largely I'd say because if that person genuinely exists to you, you just didn't know them well enough. Everyone's an asshole to some degree, especially in high school. Every one of my characters is an asshole in some way. I'd hope that you, yes you the reader, disagreed with at least one decision every major character made at one point. That means I'm writing high schoolers correctly. Now if the sequence of events came out of nowhere or it was badly written, that's another story entirely. Fun fact, except for spelling errors I don't even edit my chapters anymore, because I want to get my raw account of what happened on the page. Once I finish the story I'll edit the whole thing, but until then, this whole thing is first edition. Maybe I'm writing these few chapters poorly, who knows. I would just rather write them poorly and try to be me than to write them in a way that pleases everyone, but it isn't the type of story I want to write. Does that make sense? I'm planning a few extra goodies for the website that'll come in December. Nothing too amazing, don't get excited, but I hope you'll enjoy them. As well I'll be working on chapter 17 right after posting this. Like I said, my bare minimum quota is a chapter a month, and I've learned my lesson with taking my community for granted. You may not agree with my writing decisions sometimes, but hey, you're reading this. That counts for something, and I'm grateful you're here. Originally posted on my new website, www.bashfulscribe.com. It would mean the world to me if you checked it out.