InBrightestDay

Not sure who this mystery writer is, but something tells me they enjoyed getting the chance to write that story. Call it a hunch. 😉

I’m sorry it took me a few days to get to this, but I discovered that @GeorgeGlass left a review for Meaningful Gifts! Thank you! 😊 It took me longer than anticipated to write it, even just considering this year, but I’m glad the extra time paid off! Thanks again! This in particular means a lot to me because it was one of the main focuses during the writing process. I don’t want to repeat what I said responding to JayDee too much, but the thing that kind of made this story, at least when it formed in my head, was that it’s the story of a life together. Lexi and Drew are siblings who, partly due to an unpleasant childhood, have been developing into a couple over the course of many years, so all of those little moments of deepening intimacy between them were an integral part of the story for me, and I’m really glad that worked for you. 😄 Yeah, I was trying to sketch out differences over the siblings, and when I wrote in Lexi drinking coffee as the mandatory Folgers Christmas commercial reference, it felt like a perfect opportunity to describe her little brother finding it gross. I’m really happy I finally got to show it to you all. Thanks for the review!

God we all missed you here, JayDee. It really must be said. 😄

I understand. I knew Manta was involved heavily in site-related matters, and you’ve always been around as well, whether you were formally working here or just struggling to survive your job (I’ve been there). My apologies for not also mentioning Bronx and @Melrick Thank you. I don’t know everyone here, and I don’t always talk, but this is also how I feel about this site. thank you for all that you’ve done for the site, and as with all the others, even if I don’t really say too much, please know how grateful I am for all of it. ❤️

I actually wanted to say a bit more here, not just to apologize for speaking up here before seeing if clearing the browsing history would help (I knew it fixed an issue with the age verification button, but arbitrarily assumed this problem was completely different), but also to say something I think goes unsaid a lot. I know @DemonGoddess and folks like @manta2g do a lot of work behind the scenes and may be stretched very thing, since donations can be scarce. I just wanted to say that I appreciate everything you all do, especially when something happens with the site and I’m suddenly anxious about what to do, as happened just now. I’ve never really interacted directly with either of you, but since I know that sysadmin can be a stressful job and can feel very unappreciated, I just wanted you to know that I don’t take you for granted, and that what you do for the site and for the people here means a lot to me.

I also did this just now, so that might have played a part. Sorry for being a bit behind everyone else. 😅

It works now! Thank you! ❤️

Admittedly it would be fun to repost stuff like After Party, Meaningful Gifts and Moonlit Snow after a certain amount of time has passed. 😄 Might be posted sometime in Spring (doesn’t exactly feel like a Spring story, but maybe that wouldn’t matter), assuming I don’t hold onto it until next Halloween.

Hi, everyone! So while I can sign in here on the forums, I’m experiencing a problem with signing in on the main site. I hadn’t logged in for a bit, and the site updated, and today when I typed my email and password in, a box popped up that reads “Please activate your account first. Check your email for the activation link.” The problem being...there is nothing in my inbox. I checked spam, and there’s nothing there either. Has anyone else experienced this problem since the update?

Oh my God this is the funniest dialogue, because it kind of does sound like a goblin name! Also, just a heads-up, I have started reading part 2, but I’m delaying reviewing a bit because I want to get a little work done on something of mine tonight. You will have a review soon, though! 🙂

😄 *Joker voice* I’m an agent of chaos… Actually I swear, most days in Florida are surprisingly normal. It’s just every once in a while...

I liked it in particular because it made it feel like a carnivorous plant or something similar, where once a prey animal is drawn in by the “lure”, it still takes a while for the trap to fully close, like the slow-moving tentacles of a sundew. The sudden drop would have worked too (more of a Venus flytrap vibe there), but I kind of like it better this way. This is a fair question, and it deserves the full answer I couldn’t condense enough for the review. So, this was a solid B, I would say. It was pretty good, but I think it could have been hotter. I wanted to lean especially into the positive, however, because I’ve read enough blowjobs in erotic fiction to know that most people write them in ways I don’t like at all. The standard erotic fic blowjob tends to go a certain way. 1. The motion is kind of frantic, like the woman is trying to win a prize for time (that would have been amusingly appropriate here, but the point stands). I tend to find sexual content more arousing when it starts out more relaxed and then kind of accelerates toward the climax. 2. There’s a sound effect that gets made, and it’s nearly always the exact same sound effect too: “Glurk! Glurk! Glurk!” Suffice it to say I am not aroused by the sound of a choking frog. 3. There’s always an emphasis on the amount of drool/spit coming off the blowjob, and it usually reaches the point where I honestly find it gross rather than hot. I know I’ve read seriously arousing blowjobs in erotic fics before, but they’re shockingly few and far between in my experience. I agree that there is room for you to improve, but I gave a positive mention there because I’ve seen way worse.

Apologies if this is annoying, as you almost certainly guessed this from reading the topic, but just in case, you weren’t aware, @GeorgeGlass, I have posted a review of your holiday story. Again, not trying to be annoying; it’s strictly a just-in-case thing. 😅

Well, I responded to Invidia’s review first because of how brief it was, but by far the most detailed review of Meaningful Gifts comes from @JayDee! So perhaps there is no such thing as bad publicity. 😄 Also, many people with incest kinks were awakened that day… Honestly, I hadn’t really considered that until you pointed it out, but it is rather appropriate. I am honestly proud of how the finished product turned out, so, much like Lexi and Drew’s relationship development, this story might have happened exactly when it was meant to. 😊 That was a tricky, but I felt really important part of the story. Meaningful Gifts is a kind of incest story I rarely see. Usually in these stories the sibling relationship starts off completely normal, and then something happens that causes it to shift. I can see why this premise is used, as it works with the basic storytelling structure of the status quo and its disruption by the inciting incident of the plot. However, this was a different approach, about a brother and sister who have been inching toward an incestuous relationship for the majority of their lives, a journey of a thousand tiny steps instead of one or two huge leaps. Thus, it became very much the story of a life together, so the flashbacks were snapshots of this long, gradual evolution of their relationship toward something romantic. I was particularly fond of what you mentioned regarding the bed, because it wasn’t precisely sexual, but instead about this sense of deep emotional intimacy, and how much the siblings have come to enjoy and draw comfort from each other’s physical touch without even really thinking about it, how that started as a way to comfort each other in childhood and now became this deeply cozy form of intimacy. The messed up childhood was part of that, explaining why Lexi and Drew have always been intensely close. Their parents were never outright abusive, but at the same time they were a source of anxiety and stress, which meant the siblings had each other’s backs for most of their lives, leading to an abnormally close bond which just continued to grow, even after they got way from their parents. Thank you! 😊 That was a very late addition, actually, emerging when I was trying to structure the dialogue exchange there in the epilogue, but I think it’s very appropriate. Even if that final step into the sexual dimension of their relationship happened very organically, I like this idea that when they realized it was happening, both siblings needed to consider it and make sure it was what they really wanted before they went further. Me too! There are a few little callbacks like that, but that was the most prominent, and is probably my favorite. In the vein of the general vibe I was going for, it felt both kind of sweet and hot. Ok, so amusingly, the choker had been around for a while, but the chemise was something that only materialized in my head in December. When designing the actual gift-giving scene, I’d known for a long time, like at least a year, about Drew’s “for my soulmate” card, and then later settled on him giving his sister some kind of necklace, something that you could give a sibling, but that feels more romantic given the context of the card. I hadn’t thought a ton about Lexi’s half of the scene, until December when I suddenly panicked because it hit me: Oh shit, what did she get for him? It had to be something more explicitly for a romantic partner, since Lexi was more confident about this in general, and was also going to be the one to guide her little brother through sex, but I wasn’t sure. I finally thought “What if it’s something she wears for him?” and lo and behold, there were holiday sales going that allowed some manner of slip or sexy nightgown to be bought within the financial constraints I’d established for the siblings. I used a photo of a real item I saw available online as reference for Lexi’s chemise. I do have to go back to the choker for a moment, though, because that is one that is very up my alley. I’m not sure why, but when thinking for writing erotic fiction, there is something extremely hot to me about a woman wearing nothing but a necklace, and the contrast of the black lace band against her fair skin was really striking and hot. Glad it worked for more people than just me! 😄 Aaand she won’t be the last tall, well-endowed woman I write! Much appreciated on the point of sensuality, though. I wanted this to be...well, as you said: That is my favorite kind of sex scene, and it’s also fairly rare in terms of what I’ve found in my reading: spicy and sweet. It was very appropriate here, given the emotional context it takes place in. It’s also a reason I’m thankful that this took a little longer to write than it would have otherwise, because I feel like I only got it right during my second attempt at the scene. It is interesting to think about this in the context of another story I must get to some day. There are important differences, but this almost served like a training run for The Spider House. Yua is also a tall, full-chested woman who is deeply sensual a lot of the time, Cody comes from an unpleasant home and their first time together is likely to have some similarities to this. Hopefully I haven’t set a bar so high that TSH can’t measure up! Honestly, I am! I did have to go back and edit a few things even after posting it, but they were mostly minor tweaks here and there. By and large, I’m pretty proud of this one. 😊

Ah, congratulations! I’d imagine it’s a satisfying thing to finally bring that story series to a close. Interesting. So this isn’t a continuation of Duncan and Company’s story, but is linked to Interregnum instead. The start of a new Holiday Canon?