Happy Birthday Sara! Welcome Violet! And also, Happy New Year everyone! I haven't been in for a while, so I hope you all had a good festive season. Our Christmas was not as wet as hoped, but not too sticky either, and I finally put together some bookshelves, so once we get them properly fixed to the wall we can unpack the last boxes from moving house over 18 months ago.
Thank you so much for the plug Annie! I am really proud of that story, but it is so niche it needs all the help it can get for the handful of people who will enjoy it to read it. I actually started on chapter 3 today, and will try very hard to get it submitted by the end of the month.
And pears of anguish... I remember them from a museum of the Spanish Inquisition, and they managed to stand out as particularly vile even against that stiff competition. I also came across the toys based on them, they were not what I was looking for.
I'll have a nightcap. Goodnight all.
I'm currently kicking myself for not having given my story for the current competition the title I just thought of. I know changing the title of a story changes the URL - would doing that on a competition piece bugger up the link on the comp page? I've noticed some links between stories by other users have been broken by the story URL changing. And would it still be a valid entry in the competition (if done prior to closing date)?
Personally, the ones that look like body parts creep me out, but I'm a big fan of the Fleshlight Go Torque (I think it's called). It doesn't look like any kind of body part, but feels really good. So good than when my first one got too old, I bought another. Specifically, I got the "ice" as it is transparent, so if/when you use it together, it's a bit more intimate because you can (kind of) see.
I've never felt the need to try other brands, but they may exist and be fine. For a stocking filler the Tenga Eggs are fun, too, also not anatomical in design.
Anyway, I hope that helps, I think it would be a great gift. Just remind him to wash it thoroughly after use!
Sorry to bump an old thread, but my question is related so it seems silly to start a new one. Can I just clarify something about editing in the lush editor? The last thing I want to do is unnecessarily increase the load for our hardworking mods, but I inadvertently did so just after midnight - sorry Rachel, and thanks for re-approving it anyway!
1. Is copying and pasting from within the story okay? e.g. moving a word or two, either by copy/paste or highlight and drag (I did a few of those)
2. If 1 is okay, is C&P of phrases from external sources okay? I pasted maybe fifteen words total I'd tired elsewhere.
3. Is clicking on the source button and then making changes there okay or does that show everything after the first such edit as being new? e.g. changing all the ""e;" to "“" and "”"
Some edits to an old story earlier, showed as entirely red, as if I'd copy and pasted all my edits from somewhere else. I definitely did not do that as I have read previously it doesn't highlight only the changes when you do. I rarely have time to do my editing in one chunk, so I do my edits in Word on my phone with track changes turned on so they're highlighted in red, then manually re-type them in the Lush editor when I have an evening free. I do get lazy though and C&P phrases if they're more than a couple of words...
The really weird thing is that when I just checked, it's not the whole story that shows as new text, or even everything from the first edit that I did using one of the methods listed above. It's everything from the very first change, in this case, changing a comma to a semicolon, which I am 99% sure I didn't do with a copy and paste, so whatever I did wrong made everything I did wrong.
Anyway, I want to make sure I don't do it again, and thought it might be helpful to post it here for that one other person who wants to fix commas in ten-year-old stories and change "tits" to "boobies" because the alliteration amuses them...)
493. Pretend That We're Dead - L7
Dead or a word beginning with D is next.
Where Dead Angels Lie - Dissection
Semen in male characters mouths and on their faces. Even in gay porn it seems to end up on chests more often than the face.
I try to play inverting stereotypes a bit - e.g. in my first cross-dressing story I had a heterosexual couple swap clothes, rather than just the guy putting on a skirt.
I've started having transgender characters, but I try to avoid stereotypes - my Rainbows competition story had a gay transman, there are only about 8 other stories with the ftm or transman tags on here last time I checked...
I have also started putting more thought into naming my characters - before I just chose random names of people I knew and put them on random characters, but the above character I named after a real transmale colonel in Emiliano Zapata's army during the Mexican Revolution, and all the characters in my current series have significant names - the meaning, or the same as figures in the black metal scene, or historic anti-fascist partisans, etc. I especially made sure my characters from non-English backgrounds have real names reasonably popular in those cultures for realism.
I also throw in random references to heavy metal, either explicitly in dialogue or hiding song titles in descriptions, mostly for my own amusement.
Oh, and the second part of my current series has some bodily fluids I've never read in an erotic story before - and I hope I never will, unless it is also used for the horror effect! I'm not saying what they are so as to not spoil the shock value, but even Grusha, he of the copious snot and cum farting in his stories, said he found it disgusting and depraved (he did also say he was enraptured, in case the other adjectives are not what you're after in a story).
Congratulations all! I managed to read the top three and they were excellent, so well deserved.
I hope to catch up on some of those I missed - I will say the (very) late entry "The Whims of Witches" by LJLongo was wonderful if you missed it.
I give 5s, because I have limited time to read, and often have to do so in short bursts, so if a story has held my attention as far as the scoring bit at the bottom, I figure it deserves it. I try to tell the author at least one thing I liked in it, although I'm not always great at working out what. 
" which is what I was going for, so I hope it gives you a giggle if nothing else. For best results, press play below the moment you finish reading:
