The readership for Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Supernatural is probably the lowest of anything on the site. Getting up to 5 votes is typical. Breaking 10 is good. Going higher than that is rare as hell.
The diminishing returns on multi-part stories makes posting those in these categories more or less not worth the effort. By the time you get to a third or fourth installment, you'll be lucky to get 1 or 2 votes. The 10k per submission limit means that you have to split up longer stories, and that has exactly the same diminishing returns as chapters.
Post them if you're proud of them, because there will be a few lonely souls who will enjoy them, but don't expect much in the way of readership.
If I use the plain text copy button with the exact same text already in the clipboard, the extra wide carriage returns vanish. Same if I copy it from Wordperfect, or Wordpad, or anything else, regardless of button.
Just no italics.
It isn't some weird setting in Word either, because the copied text looks perfectly normal there, as does any original document I start in Word. Text copied from Word to any other program works without a hitch. No weird, extra wide carriage returns.
It's a lose/lose situation. LOL
May as well pop this back into the recent topics to give people a reminder that the deadline is fast approaching.
Finally cleared my plate and winnowed through my ideas until I found one that I could fit into <6k words and tickled me. Bonus is that it fills one of my slots for categories I haven't written in yet. Could technically have moved an existing story there ( I could wipe out a lot of the new categories that way, actually ) but I'd rather hit them with new work.
Plus, so many of my old stories have the double-space bug that happened when the text processing changed. The thought of going through there and taking those spaces out is... ugh...
"Heroes Wear Masks" is in progress. The kicker is whether I can have it mostly done before this weekend is over. If it's not in the final stretch by then, it's going to be difficult to finish it, edit it, and get it in on time.
Loved the Incredibles as well. And Megamind. Looking forward to Incredibles 2 in my overly packed movie-going summer. Deadpool's next weekend.
I never even made it all the way through Fant4stic. I made the mistake of going to watch Amazing Spider-Man 2 in theaters even though I had barely found the first one tolerable. After that experience, the reek of Fant4stic — even for free — was too much to deal with. I shut it off in less than an hour and said, "Nope!"
I ended up watching the older one instead, out of pure spite.
At least Michael B. Jordan followed Chris Evans' lead and escaped to Marvel, where he was allowed to thoroughly redeem his association with that stinkburger. Two former Human Torches in an MCU without an FF yet.
I really should get around to watching Creed, too...
Probably not a good idea to cross-post links on any site. Competitors and all. Noticed your thread elsewhere, but never remembered to reply there.
If people are interested, I'm sure they'll PM you for any offsite links. As you've discovered, it's a hard kink to fulfill, so anyone who has it will be willing to go an extra mile for a taste.
No, but Spider-Man had Spider-Man 3 and the Garfield Franchise. Fans trusted Marvel, and didn't hold the previous films against the character. Casual movie-goers took a liking to Holland as well. He was a major selling point for Civil War, and I think the end of Infinity War demonstrates how much of an impact he's having on viewers.
I have the feeling they would use the same sort of introduction for the FF characters. Bring them in for a reasonably short guest spot in some other movie, see how people react, and then decide whether to green-light a full movie.
I'm old enough to remember thinking "Beetlejuice is frikkin' BATMAN! FAIL!" I ended up kicking myself for not going to see it in theaters when I got the chance to watch it on VHS. That's why I never balked at Jackman, or Affleck as Batman.
While we're on the subject of B-list and below — Black Panther. Never been able to sustain a comic run or make any real money, but the movie blew up big time both because it was a good movie, and hit with excellent timing as well.
It's still holding on to a top 10 spot in the box office, and it's already out on digital! It was up to #7 again the week Infinity War came out. Even with weak competition, that's a hell of an accomplishment.
I think I can trust Marvel Studios to make a good FF film.
Marvel's track record of taking obscure, not particularly fan-favorite characters and making fun, profitable movies around them is hard to ignore. Let's not forget that Iron Man was B-list before the first Iron Man movie came out. Guardians. Ant Man. Dr. Strange. If there's a good premise for the first family, Marvel will make it.
I can't imagine them not using Galactus and the like, even if they don't make a FF movie.
The most difficult thing they have in front of them if the merger goes through is recasting Wolverine. It's more or less a necessity, as introducing any mutants without Wolverine is asking for trouble. At the same time, it's going to be hard as hell to sell putting the claws on anyone other than Hugh Jackman.
Trying to replace RDJ as Tony Stark is going to be the same way, eventually.
1) Captain America: Winter Soldier
2) Guardians of the Galaxy
That was a really good year.
It gets really murky beyond that with Wonder Woman, Avengers, Tim Burton's Batman, Iron Man 1, Spider-Man 2, X-Men 2, Logan, Deadpool...
The next tier down isn't any more clear.
Then you get to the bottom of the heap. Amazing Spider-Man franchise, Batman V. Superman, Fant4stic Four...
I can rewatch the old Batman movies past 2, the two FF films, and X-Men origins. I will never subject myself to the Garfield Spider-Man, BvS, or Fant4stic again, even for free. I was mad that I wasted the time to watch those in the first place.
Have tons of nude/spicy photos of her, but most were never really "intimate" as she was a camgirl. We were doing photoshoots for her website. Even most of the private ones she initially took just for me ended up on the site eventually.
Obviously, sharing was never a problem. Sharing them without permission? That's just scumbaggery.
Think you're going to have a hard time with this one. Unlike the lesbian equivalent, that storyline has never been popular with authors. Now, both versions are risky because they're politically incorrect, so authors are even less likely to pursue the idea.
As others have said: Communicate. Find out if he has a reason.
My wife was seriously into bedroom submission, bondage, and roleplay. She was anything but submissive outside the bedroom. LOL It was nothing I'd ever done before, ( sexually ) and even though she'd talked about it, when she edged that way the first time for real, I balked.
I'm a D&D nerd from way back who played all sorts of twisted and evil characters, so it's not as if I had nothing to draw from. I had a lot, in fact. We'd even done some phone roleplay along those lines. The thought of hurting her in any way for real, even knowing she wanted it, was just alien to me.
It was awkward and a killjoy in the moment, but I told her what was eating at me. We sat, talked, and got the mood back in a few minutes.
The way she got things started a few days after that talk was some light spanking. That's nowhere near as aggressive as choking and hair-pulling. Once I was comfortable enough with that to spank her hard enough to scratch that itch, she edged a little more with the hair pulling. Eventually, I got to where I could give her exactly what she wanted sometimes, and enjoy it myself. I had to be in the right mood, but it was there often enough to scratch that itch.
Talk about it, and maybe aim for spanking first.
I write too much fantasy for voice recognition to write for me. It chokes on all those weird fantasy names and terms. I write in Wordperfect, because that's what my primary editor uses, which makes it easier for both of us.
I'm an "edit as you go" type. I have much of the story planned out beforehand, and muse through scenes while at work. Whenever I pause for some reason, I tend to read back through either the whole story, or the last several scenes, depending upon how long the story is. I end up making corrections and tweaks during this process. By the time I type the last line of the first draft, there's little but minor tweaks left. If something isn't working for some reason, I don't make it to that last line until it is.
Optimally, I leave the story to simmer for at least a couple of days after completing the first draft and write other things, to get the story out of my head. Then I change the font size and face to something radically different from what I write in, and read through the whole story.
Once that's done, I run it through the grammar checkers in both Wordperfect and Word. There's enough difference in the way they work that I tend to catch things in both runs.
Some stories get run through an online grammar/style tool. I used to run everything through it, but they changed the free-to-use version to a severely limited word count, which dilutes what I primarily used it for — repeated words and phrases. If I'm ever back in a place where I have the disposable cash to utilize the commercial version, I probably will, because it was quite helpful in catching my repetitions.
Some stories, such as my Magic of the Wood stories, have first readers who give me impressions and thoughts on the storyline and characters. I make changes based upon those impressions, pass it back to my first reader, see what they think of the modifications, and may again make tweaks until we're reasonably happy with the results.
I may repeat the editing steps above, if there have been significant enough changes following the first reader process.
Then I run everything through text-to-speech. I almost always catch something every other step has missed when I do this. Clumsy turns of phrase and typos stick out like sore thumbs when a voice is reading them back to you.
Finally, I pass it off to my editor. Most of the time, he has only minor tweaks that I completely agree with, and this is the final step. I let him know it's going live as suggested. Occasionally, we may pass the document back and forth a couple of times, but it doesn't happen often. My goal is to send the cleanest copy possible, to limit the amount of time necessary to review it.
To me, editing is as much a part of the process as getting the words out of my brain into the computer.
Hmm.... Got nothing yet. I think all my processing power is still locked up in the stories I need to move from my brain to the computer.
I'll turn the muse loose on this one again once I finish, "Coming In Third".
It's way more popular than people think. Watch the "popular searches" box on the front page. See if you ever notice "pregnant" not being in that list.
That being said, I don't think it needs a category either. It's not particularly popular with authors, and readers seem to have no problem finding the stories by tag.
Note to those who do write stories featuring pregnancy, make sure you use the word "pregnant" as one of your tags. That's the variation people are searching for, so that's what's going to get you maximum readership.
( New topic here 3.5 seconds after the first dormant friends clean-up runs )
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FRIENDS??!!?!?!!!!
LOL In other words, I wouldn't actually purge dormant profiles ( even if they never got beyond the default avatar stage ) unless it's necessary for site health reasons.
It might be worth considering a solution where the purge of friend lists is user initiated as well. Make it a dashboard tool rather than a regularly running, site-wide task.
Check the forum header. Not the LUSH header where your Lush menu is, but right below it.
On the far left, it should say "Logged in as" and you shouldn't see "Login" on the far right of this bar.
If you're not logged into the forum ( regardless of whether you're logged into Lush ) just click the Login link, and all will be well. The Guest status with vanish from your posts, and the quote/reply buttons will reappear if they're missing.
Linking forum software to main site code is often an incredible pain in the ass, and when you're making infrastructure changes, it's easy for linking code to burp.
I never clicked it previously, but the "My Profile" link on the forum bar doesn't work. Thought I'd bring it up if this link previously worked, and the recent changes have caused it to malfunction.
Just a quick "heads up": The contest page for the previous "Boobies" competition hasn't been updated with the winners.
I'm about to become part of the problem. LOL I have a new Monster Sex story off for editing, and I'm through the first couple of stages of editing my contest story as well.
The review of submissions on most sites is little more than a quick scan, so with each story receiving a careful review here, it's absolutely praise-worthy that the turnaround time stays as low as it is.
That's halfway between the Reagan administration (the Commodore 64 era) and now. 5 years before the first smart phone!
is when someone sends me a PM soliciting friends for someone else, or I get a request from someone, look, and the profile says NO MEN.
Rough, time consuming start to the new year. My autistic son just turned 18, and I'm buried in paperwork for guardianship, social security, etc.
