Ariana_Pearce

Wow! For a few months I lurked here without registering, dismayed by the absence of activity in AFF's forum. Thanks to all of you for dispelling my ambivalence! Hit counts: of course they matter. At this point they are my only cue as to whether my story posts are shouting into an empty room. I started this thread with the observation that the counts are easily gamed. But everyone knows it, and since the story listings can't be sorted on "popularity," there is really no point in fooling around with one's browser to run the numbers up. True, some do regardless, for whatever reason, but the malefactors stand right out, don't they?! Philosophically I stand with those who write primarily for their own enjoyment. I write long books with sprawling plotlines, because that is what I like to read. I also very much prefer books and stories that begin and end. Mine do. I even carry that rubric into the interior of the books: each chapter closes with a purpose served, and I even try to finish a salient thought with each scene, whenever possible. Not because I believe all books should be written this way, but simply because that is my personal preference, and I am writing for myself. That said, I also crave feedback. Of course it is lovely to know that people are reading. By the same token, I know that it is impossible to satisfy everyone. I am appreciative of those who stop at the first paragraph, having given it a try.

Incidentally... GeorgeGlass, I've poked into a few of your stories during my lurking phase. Thus I have contributed meaningfully to your largely worthless hit counts! This does not constitute a review, because I am gutless, but at some point I might have more to say. BronxWench, I've just read your piece called, "Brownstone." Wonderfully adept and effective prose. Strong imagery and meticulous settings. Clearly you are a New Yorker who sees and writes with all six senses. This, too, is not a review.

I enjoy giving reviews nearly as much as receiving them, and I enjoy reader discussions even more. But I'm new. Still observing. Don't know anyone. I'll have to read some of the other contributors' work for awhile. The facilities for reviews and discussions are excellent here, but they seem to be underutilized. Are the readers too few? Are the readers too skittish and bashful? Or are the writers too thin-skinned and argumentative? Personally if I got a review that said "^R$& u suck fawn blow me," I'd be thrilled. Some would perhaps call it spam or trolling, but I have a different take on it: That kind of review says that some reader took five minutes out of his day to try the first paragraph of my trash, and he wasted another minute of his life to tell me that my pathetic drivel isn't worth another minute of his time. That's more than most readers will give an author in this day and age. I'd take it over silence gladly.

Well I've posted three stories. I haven't been here long, and I don't have any reviews yet. But I already have six stars! Bully for me!

I suspect the hit counter would be abused much more if stories could be sorted by "popularity." Conversely, the rating indicator and reviews are likely more reliable here precisely because one cannot sort by "peer review quality," and thus there is no point in trying to manipulate them. To some, the lack of the ability to sort on these indicators would perhaps seem like a limitation, but as a newcomer I see the "limitation" as a definite positive. I have seen too many sites where the authors spend more time gaming the ratings than writing. Here, new stories and recently updated stories are easy to find. They don't get buried, as happens elsewhere.

I am not requesting additional fonts; just getting a feel for the constraints and how to adapt my documents to work within them. I am impressed by the flexibility of the text editing functions here and with the great job that the Archive system does with pastes from MS Word and PDF.

This is not so much a plug for my fiction as a pretext for saying hello. So, hello! Unlikely Antichrist is original fiction. A big trilogy. All three books are finished, and I will post them here, scene by scene, for as long as the thread has readers.* Author: Ariana_Pearce (my AFF profile) Link: http://original.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600107902 Length: Four chapters posted. More to come. Summary: From the ashes of America's long slow decline arise child prodigies and young industrialists who form the world's first trillion dollar corporation and shake the foundations of the earth. Love, war, nanotechnology, and sprawling drama in three books. Feedback: I crave it. Positive or negative. I also welcome any and all constructive discussion on the books! Fandom: Original contemporary romance. Warnings: M/F, Minor2. There is some sexually explicit backstory, involving characters as young as fifteen, but these novels are not erotica. The plot and characters develop slowly. This trilogy is not for everyone, but if you enjoy being hooked by long, sprawling novels with romance, near-future high tech, and political intrigue, you'll love being hooked by this. ______________ *I'm not looking for attention, ratings, reviews, or any of that (though they are welcome). The hit count is all that I'll be looking at. If people are reading, I'll feed their addiction.

I am still experimenting with the text editor in the Archive area, and I've worked out procedures for just about all of the formatting requirements demanded by the books that I plan to post there. Paragraph indentation - check Free verse - check Shaped verse - almost, still some stuff to solve... example: chess r k b q K b k r p p p p p p p p x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x p p p p p p p p r k b q K b k r balance ever precedes calamity Crazy Unicode - still a mess... examples:A mathematical street name in one of the books: ¬Ǝa (translation: Not Exists Avenue) A symbolic chapter name: Ǝ۞ ╞ { C21¬Hτ→(ʱ/dU)a→(dU/ʱ)m→1/∞ } (translation: there exists heaven) Obscure font support... Webdings, for example, which might require image insertions....Anyhoo, all the testing caused some artificial boosting of my story counts. I ran up quite a tab in bogus hits before I noticed it. So I apologize for that. I should complete the testing by the end of the next session. Then I'll start posting for real. Thanks again...

First, I am new here and still feeling my way around. If there is some unwritten rule of etiquette that precludes newcomers from chiming in critically on the very first post, moderators please delete this. That said, I am new here but not a newbie. I come from many places. I've posted a couple test pieces on the Archives under Original/General. Planning to do much more. And in the course of tinkering I discovered something curious: If one clicks into a story, hits the back button, and clicks into it again, one can watch the "Hits" go up in real time. Thus it appears not to be IP-sensitive or SessionID-sensitive. This makes the Hit count easy to manipulate. The moment I realized it was happening, I stopped clicking into my own story tests, because I want my hit counts to be real! But a narcissist with a lot of time on her hands could bump her posts up into the thousands quite easily. I should also say that I had Javascript disabled at the time. I do not know whether this behavior occurs under normal conditions or if Javascript must be turned off, for the manipulation to occur. In closing I'll say this is a wonderful website, and I am pleased to have found it.