Interesting. I wonder if there's a place for "how close" counters for those badges that are numerical achievements. Can't see a place on the story list or profile that would be helpful, since you don't have badges show up on the profile pages if you haven't achieved them.

Maybe it could be incorporated on the Badges landing page. So as well as the check mark to show which ones you've been awarded and the counter of how many members have it, some of them could say "nnn to reach achievement" or something?

E.g. number of views needed to reach Prolific. How close your highest viewed story is to becoming Legendary. How many categories you have left to write in to achieve Omnium (bonus points for a link that lists the ones you haven't written in yet). And so on.

I'll ask if something along those lines is a possible future enhancement. Might slow the page down too much.

Quote by deviantsusie

My interactions doesn’t list anything newer than 4 days ago despite notifications saying people liked stories when I log either

Yeah there's some weirdness here. Each time you add a comment to a story, it flips the post order of page 1 (and sometimes 2, depending on how many items are on it) of the Interactions panel. It starts out reverse order, as it should be with most recent first, then I think it flips to show the oldest post first of "today" or the last 24hrs or something.

Subsequent pages pick up the trail properly in reverse posted order. It's only the most recent posts that are affected.

So many cool stories in the competition so far. Recent entries that blew my socks off include Down The Rabbit Hole and The Key. But they're by no means the only ones. Please keep your naughty tales coming. I want more... MORE!

Plenty of time until the deadline...

Not updated this in a while. Been a busy few months but I managed to squeeze in a story for the BDSM Unleashed competition. If you like your femmes on the domme side then you'll be swept up with my tale which uses the acronym to form its title. Being Driven Slowly Mad is an edge of the seat relentless ride, so buckle up.

The incredibly talented MollyDoll agreed to work with me on a teen/older man story which we spent ages agonising over. In the end we split it into two chapters so if you fancy being hugely teased then give Blank Canvas 1 and Chapter2 a spin.

Thank you and have a fabulous weekend.

Quote by AmuseBouche
I look up to Sprite, Mr. Wordsmith, Jen, Liz, Encorceled, and FirstBlush

If you look up to me and I look up to you, does that create some infinite feedback loop that will ultimately destroy space and time as we know it? 🤔

We have a winner! Congratulations to Tanjae who is the 70th person to Like our story and that's the number I scribbled down last week.

Why 70? Well, why not? It's one better than a sixty-nine. 🤣

Thank you so much, everyone, for reading. I'll release the story conclusion to the moderation queue tonight, so look out for it when the good mods get a free moment from the seemingly neverending task of moderating stories to bring you the highest quality erotica on the interweb.

Hope you all enjoy part 2, and both Molly and I thank you so much for reading our story. We loved writing it.

Thank you, that's incredibly generous of you. And thank you so much for reading, even though it's not usually your genre.

Not long now before part 2 is released. Getting super close to the required number of Likes. Keep them coming!

Here's some more art inspired by the story for you to enjoy...

Quote by Georgia_27_8
have heard it happening to a few other members using various Apple products with the Safari browser.

And android users with non-mainstream browsers.

raises paw

MollyDoll and I have written a teen / older-man story called Blank Canvas. It's receiving some great feedback already, which we're super pleased about.

Many of the comments have mentioned eagerly awaiting part two - the conclusion. It's written and ready to be released, and if you're eager to see it sooner, you can help.

How?

I thought of a number. I wrote it down. When part 1 of the story receives that many Likes+Favourites, I'll push the sequel to the moderation queue. In addition, the reader who tips the Score counter to match the value I've written here will win 25 Lush Coins from me.

If you've already read it, thank you so much. If you enjoyed it then please spread the word and encourage others to read it too. The more people who read and like, the sooner the sequel will appear.

Is this thinly-disguised begging? Or even a ransom? Errr, yes. So here's some artwork inspired by the story, to distract you...

Yes, I echo the above. And also, graphical emoji don't translate well into a screen reader or other assistive tech experience, as MollyDoll said.

Some might argue that "colon close parenthesis" isn't very meaningful either, but at least screen reading software has a chance of interpreting ASCII sequences and converting them to something meaningful when reading them aloud.

That is not the case with graphical symbols which, on a technical level, tend to occupy the upper ends of the Unicode character space, or be custom graphics for particular applications, and may be interpreted as garbled multi-byte sequences depending on the user's locale.

It's all a bit of a mess, so we err on the side of caution. Text-only emoticons please and, like all literary devices, sparingly.

I've almost caught up with all the entries. And what a filthy, depraved bunch you are! In the best possible way, of course.

A small handful left to read in the current crop, which I'm hoping to get to soon. Looking forward to more, so get those keys a-clattering and submit your tales of dark desire for everyone to enjoy.

As well as Jaymal that Carlton mentioned, I think Frank_Lee and browncoffee and tams_back_yay and Ensorceled and AmuseBouche and Liz all nail plot, character and incredible heat.

Plus I'm sure a bunch more authors I can't reliably recall after a can or two of cider.

Some fabulous stories so far, and still weeks to go till the deadline. Get your imaginations whirring and send in your best, hottest, filthiest BDSM fantasies.

Hope mine gets approved. Would love to hear what you think of it once the mods have checked it for my, probably dozens of, mistakes despite my endless passes at it.

Quote by PurdyPeaches
may I publish my comp entry with a supernatural core, but containing the comp-required BDSM elements in the BDSM category

Wot Seeker4 says. You choose the category based on what you think is the dominant story theme, and use tags for the other elements. The goal is for people to find content they want by browsing categories and tags, so we're cool with whatever you select, outside of IF, as long as it broadly fits the story theme.

I don't see much of an issue with solicitation for coins. Just 'cos you've got coin to splash around doesn't necessarily mean you're a better writer or you're someone people want to partner with. Some of the authors here are better than E. L. James and she's got loads of money to splash around 'cos she's popular, not good.

Lush coins were introduced primarily for the purpose of sharing the love of writing, so if they're used for contractual collabs, so be it. Healthy competition is good.

If this were to go ahead, we would be very strict on one entry per author, regardless if they were collaborator or main author. Our back end systems need to play catch up before that, though, because we wouldn't necessarily know who the 'other' person was until we got to the end of the story. We could really do with an indicator that someone has already entered.

I asked about adding collab authors at the head of the story a while ago and it's on the development list, as far as I know.

Quote by Seeker4
an interesting comp might to have one for just collaborations.

Funnily enough, that's been on the list knocking around backstage for some time. Keeps getting eclipsed by other ideas, Maybe one day...

Quote by TroublesomeBard
Is a couple trying and basically failing to do BSDM on genre?

I think so. But the British School of Dentistry and Mouthguards might disagree. 🤣

Quote by KimmiBeGood
Paddles, whips, and chains, oh my!

Power, willingness, and capitulation, oh my!

Quote by PurdyPeaches
each story is unrelated to the others in character and story except for they all have a secret within them.

Nothing wrong with that. They're all related by theme. And they're not the same story arc told in chapters. The series link can be used in two main ways:

1. To link chapters of a story together.

2. To link stories that are thematically related.

Quote by CallmeJayne

Whoops! You were doing so well. Then you just had to open another can of worms, didn't you?😊

Yep. Just giving people options for storytelling scope. We've had a few successful authors use Flash for "concepts" or thematic work. They explore an idea and use several different worlds or characters to explore some topic, with each piece being a standalone sub-1k powerhouse. Nothing wrong with that.

The only thing we don't want is 38 chapters of "How I Accidentally Fucked My Mom" told in 1k chunks.

Quote by JamesMerton1960
I had hoped that it would be possible to series link these stories because they will all be built around a central character

Nothing wrong with that in Flash. As long as it's not chapter 1, 2, 3, etc then you're good to go.

Quote by JamesMerton1960
The only reason for choosing the flash erotica category was to circumvent a rule that said all submissions had to be over 1000 words

I'm not aware of such a rule. It's not advisable, unless you're a skilled author who can build an entire and complete narrative in under 1k words. But it's not a rule.

If the only reason you chose Flash was because of short story length then might I suggest you either expand the scope to give readers more to sink their teeth into (maybe a few related escapades in one submission?) or stick with the Flash category and make it as engaging as possible within the word limit.

Quote by JamesMerton1960

Thank you, I appreciate your suggestion. I have just had the story rejected again, this time because apparently you cannot series link the flash-erotica category.

That is correct if the story is in chapters. The art of Flash is to tell a complete story in less than 1000 words. If you are merely telling a portion of a story in a series of small chapters, then it is not flash fiction.

Moving the story to a category that fits its genre will be fine to link as a series. Although stories that are very short chapters may not have a decent enough level of detail to immerse readers, so in that case combining chapters is sometimes more appropriate to give readers a good flavor of the erotica.

The only time that series linking is permitted in flash fiction is if the stories occupy the same world/topic, or characters, but are not direct follow ons.

Quote by JamesMerton1960
When I first started writing for the site. I used to use dialogue in my stories but stopped because moderators insisted that I use he said/she said at the end of every line of dialogue. This inflexibility made the stories boring, repetitive and almost unreadable.

What the heck are you talking about? None of the moderators would ever insist on forced attribution, as long as it was clear who was talking. If they have, please PM me the discussion so I can get my spanking paddle out! I can't remember the last time I used attribution for dialogue. I'm talking years, probably. Sizzling dialogue is king.

The moderators have consistently asked you to review and apply standard English punctuation rules to avoid run-on sentences and comma splices, which aid clarity. These rules for sentence structure have nothing to do with which side of the pond you sit. And Grammarly et al are hopeless at detecting them. In fact, grammar checkers across the board are a guide at best.

Please read our Writing Tips, specifically the one about run-on sentences and comb your story for them. You'll have much more success at having it published that way.

Quote by Georgia_27_8
I've spent most of the day getting pissed off with weird, extra limbs being generated

Yeah it's annoying. And the deep irony: the act of me publishing that abomination above provides more fodder for the search engines to feed to the training algorithms, thus making them worse lol.

Quote by Georgia_27_8
i have been self-learning how to edit hair

Rather you than me!

I've just been trying a different service that claims to render multiple actors. Less than inspiring results so far. Especially when it renders people without legs or their ass on backwards or, in this case, well, words fail me.

I think this is referred to as AI Fail..

With the engine I tried, this was the best type of thing it could do. Yeah, weird fingers and lips, and it looks as if their legs are disappearing into the table top. And in both cases it ignored my request to make each models' hair take on different properties. Colour was all I could alter.

Final post from me for now. This first one was made using the Busty Brits engine! Love how it's brightened the highlights like it's a candid taken with a cheap close up flash.

The next one was an attempt at a similar model as the brunette in the bar in the post above, but as she's getting ready in the hotel bathroom:

And finally, experimenting to see how well the Realistic engines cope with water:

Pretty decent results all round.

More from a series of covers I was trying to create for a (future) bar scene story...

Aside from the AI engines almost universally screwing up fingers/hands, the models are often rendered cross-eyed if you ask the brief to look back over their shoulder, as in the last image. A shame really, as it would be a diamond pic otherwise.

I'm quite the fan of this one that I created from a brief involving 'street' and 'curvy' and 'cutoffs'. The hood is a bit messed up but the rest is mint.