If there's anywhere an em dash might be appropriate to replace another bit of punctuation, when used properly with no spaces before or after, the word count treats is as a hyphenated word and saves you one.
Cheating, yes. But when the word count is cheating you in the first place, you're just evening the score ;)
That will stop the PM spam, and the limitations on posting URLs in the forum stymies them there, but I suspect they'll immediately pivot to story comment spam, which many are already doing.
That's a bit of a stickier situation. Blocking all comments containing URL strings ( not forgetting things like Bitly ) with a filter would impede them, and make most of their spamming attempts there pointless, at least. Give at least some of the mods the ability to add to the filter list via a secure control panel, so you and Gav don't have to be the only ones maintaining that filter. Mods in different time zones from you would be optimal, since that will make it more likely someone with the ability to add new URL shortening link strings to the filter will be able to act soon after one shows up.
Limitations on adding a website/twitter/facebook to your profile would also be a good idea. Maybe require a certain number of forum posts or a published story/poem before you can add any of those links to your profile. Anyone who publishes probably isn't a spammer, and anyone who isn't going to publish will have to interact for a while before they can add it. ( If this isn't already in place. It's been so long that I don't remember LOL ) Also block URL strings with the filter in the other profile fields. That will help prevent sleeper accounts that seem innocuous until a couple of weeks later when they fill their profile with spam links. ( Again, if not already in place )
You might even consider filtering strings such as onlyfans and manyvids, but odds are that letter replacement tricks will make that such a game of whack-a-mole that it wouldn't be worth the effort.
Just what popped in my head as I was reading the post.
Probably the easiest way to report these, and for the powers that be to deal with them, is to report them from the report profile button. That should give them a direct link to the user, so they don't have to search. Click through from the spam pm/comment to the spammer's profile, and report.
Yes, but only when she initiates it. I've never once asked for it, but I'm certainly not against saying yes when she asks if I want to, or just takes matters into her own hands, so to speak.
You might try a search for "cuckquean" and "cuckqueen" ( the latter being a common but less accepted version )
It's been on its last legs for better than a decade. I'm honestly shocked someone has been paying the bills for as long as they have.
I've used other languages here and there. It depends entirely upon whether you expect the reader to know what they're saying, whether its relevant to the story at that moment, and many other things.
If the whole conversation is going to be in another language, set up the transition, and then just type everything in English. Maybe with a spice word or two thrown in there where the sentence structure gives the reader a reasonable understanding of what the word means, if not the exact definition. Transition back out if they go back to English. The online translators do fairly well going from another language to English, so someone can copy/paste and get full context if they wish.
Online translators don't do so well going the other way. They're too literal, and there's a better than average chance that fluent speakers are going to cringe at the technically correct, but completely abnormal word/phrase. Ask a native speaker if it's at all possible. Toss the question out on Twitter/here or something. You never know, you might get lucky.
You can drop a word or phrase in there and have the POV character define it in narrative or dialogue as well, where appropriate.
As often as not, I use tone, body language, etc. and let the non-speaker get the gist of what's going on without actually understanding much of what was said. You don't need to know exactly what someone is saying when they're shouting at/seducing you in another language. You get the drift.
In the case where it's a reveal later on, you treat it like any other reveal. Use the non-English phrase where you want it, and then pay it off at the appropriate moment. The story mods here are reading the full story, unlike most sites that skim due to not having enough people to do it. They're going to understand its a literary device when they get to the reveal, and not ding you for using it that way.
Time to wipe out every story with casual sex and unprotected sex. Who would deny that those are both highly risky activities that shouldn't be encouraged by making them seem exciting?
You can't protect dumb/mentally unstable people from themselves.
If it bothers you enough, then take it down. You're the only one who can determine whether you feel comfortable having a piece out there in your name.
That being said, this whole "responsibility for what we write" thing really sticks in my craw. It's fantasy. It's not some sort of authorial endorsement of how any character behaves just because you write it. Characters can only have a certain set of acceptable flaws now?
Somebody is going to be offended by everything under the sun. It's as impossible to avoid that as it is to please everyone.
And people who commit heinous acts are responsible for those acts. Otherwise, we'd best get around to locking up the surviving Beatles because a whakko-loon with a swastika cut into his forehead thought "Helter Skelter" was speaking to him.
Something I do all the time that seems to be uncommon is interludes/cool-downs during sex scenes. People get too overheated after an orgasm and need a drink, but that doesn't mean the night is over. Girls head for the bathroom after sex. Little things like that. It's more than just a mention. It usually involves some conversation, maybe some laughter, and sometimes even a plot thread or two.
I'm reasonably positive that the Popular and Viewed tabs on the category pages used to have more than one page. Latest and Recommended still do, but clicking "Next" on Popular or Viewed just reloads the first page. Same happens on the front page, now that I've tested that.
Bug? Intentional?
Mine revived a little while ago.
Curiously, when I initially came to post this, the forum was down instead. LOL
All's well now.
LOL Smalltimers.
A combine and log skidder. ( both for the purposes of pulling out stuck trucks, so kind of borrowing rather than stealing, though I doubt the people having to fix them after we hotwired them saw it that way ) More gasoline from gravity tanks than I can possibly enumerate. I could pick locks when I was around 12. Mastered the art of switching price tags back before scanners were a thing in flyover country. $50 Transformers for $5.99. ( Which I sold on Ebay years later for over $100 ) Ungodly amounts of change from vending machines. Nobody seemed to know how to properly operate a coin return lever, and it was like a slot machine every time I pulled one. Tons of fishing tackle and camping equipment. Lots of beer from garage fridges. Giant wrenches from mine cranes ( which we had this girl paint with scenes for a few bucks and sold for a premium as folk art decorations ) Boatloads of antiques from the 3-story abandoned orphanage in town. Unearthly amounts of copper wiring and piping from abandoned houses in the sticks. ( Set the wiring on fire and burn off the insulation before delivering to the scrap yard ) Trees. ( The sawmill paid big bucks for 8 foot sections of hardwood trees without taper and knots )
That's not counting all the scams we were running, and the legitimate ventures like catching snapping turtles when the fish weren't biting and keeping them in buckets of clean water that you changed until all the sludge was out of their system. Folks would pay good money for a turtle in a bucket of clean water.
Probably been more than 30 years since I pinched anything other than a slice of pizza from the supervisor's office, but we were rather enterprising when we were kids.
I was about to say "In this name, no." Then I remembered that I actually have done it. I reference "Barn Owl Treasures" in "Hooters", which is who the protagonist in "Pickin' an' Grinnin'" works for.
As Les, you could sort of say I do it with things like bringing in previous characters for cameo roles in later stories in the Magic of the Wood series, or cameos by characters who will eventually have their own stories later on. Sort of Easter Egg lite, because those stories could almost be considered chapters of a longer story, except there's no ultimate ending for the whole thing. Likewise, people might notice that the powers, abilities, appearances, etc. of creatures in Magic of the Wood, The Fey Folk, and the Ancient Peoples series' mesh up, because I consider them all part of the same world. They've never directly referenced each other, but it's more Easter Egg lite.
Now, as Dark, I do it all the time. I'm working on one now that is a full Easter basket of references to previous stories, because it's a history story that's early in my timeline, and takes place in a region where a lot of previous stories also took place. I reveal the genesis of the school where Danica and Devan learned magic. He happens across their parents ( unnamed ) as randy youths. He runs into Devan's older confidant from the story "Kampar's Wand" as a promiscuous young woman. ( The only thing that's changed by the time Devan meets her is the "young" part ) The main characters are going to the same region from that story as well. Anybody who's read my Arts Ardane stories should see the parallels. ( They aren't here. Most of them are very early work, and the mainline story they're most connected to has too many dark elements to pass muster here, so they would feel out of place without that context. )
That's common throughout those stories. Sometimes it's a little deeper dive into a minor character when they were younger, or a glimpse into where they ended up years later. They're all connected in the same world, within a 1 or 2 generation timeframe, in the same general region, so there's plenty of opportunities to drop in Easter Eggs, and sometimes sprinkle a little seasoning of deeper insight as well.
Started on Lit, and still there. Added SOL on the advice of Danielle Kitten, and still there. I actually found Lush while doing traffic comparisons of text erotica sites on Alexa before Amazon put almost everything behind a pay wall. Those are the big 3 as far as traffic.
I personally feel they also provide all the versatility an erotica author needs to provide a home to any idea that might cross their mind. SOL's single content restriction means that more or less anything goes, so there's a home for ideas too extreme for the other two. Work shorter than 5k words ( including poetry ) simply doesn't perform very well on the other sites, while on Lush, it gets reasonable readership in comparison to 5-10k word stories, and outperforms even longer work. SOL's tag-based navigation and Lush's expanded categories both serve to prevent opposing camps from developing within categories as they do on Lit and trying to run each other off... *cough* Loving Wives *cough* or dominate a category so thoroughly that the second facet of the category is virtually eradicated ( & , which are separate here, preventing that from happening ) Lit's contests are major traffic draws, and there's just no comparison to the traffic overall.
Having all three sites in your utility belt means that you don't need to make your idea conform to any one site's content restrictions or readership preferences, which can stifle your creativity. Run with your idea, and then home it where it is within content bounds and will get a response that rewards the effort you put forth. Every site will organically end up with exclusive content from you, meaning your more devoted fans often end up contributing to all three sites as well, in at least some small way.
Brilliant, I really should.
Congratulations!