peruses the fine selection of spirits behind the bar

Could you whip me up a Frozen Pink Panties please? Gin, pink lemonade, ice cream and frozen strawberries. Might as well start as I mean to go on...

It's only been two minutes. Is that fashionably on time enough?

Ah yeah, forgot to mention the blindfold. That's an underrated and powerful tool. Good catch, Kimmi.

Aso, an interesting point about the dominating / workplace thing. From my rudimentary observations, many super headstrong and successful people with busy careers sometimes appreciate the exact opposite in the bedroom and like to relinquish control. Maybe a balance thing?

That brings an intriguing dynamic where a comparatively meeker personality can assume the Alpha role in the bedroom, which can be a rush for both parties. Good story/character fodder as there's built in tension. See my Tabby series as an example.

Take this with an ocean of salt as I've never done anything close to this in real life but, imo, you hit it with one word: trust.

That to me is the root of BDSM and is what I have tended to write about in many (many!) stories here. Forget the whips and chains and masks and dom/sub power, it's that willingness to surrender control of your pleasure to someone else, and have them take that trust and turn it into an instrument for exploring boundaries.

Look at it this way: with no props, you can give the recipient a single word that they can use to escape at any time. Then you can tell them to stretch out and hold onto the headboard or position themselves in a particular way and have carte blanche over their mind and body for as long as either of you can muster. There's no physical bondage going on: the recipient is willing and could choose to leave at any moment by uttering a single word, yet doesn't, because they have afforded complete trust in the other person to take them places they could never reach alone.

Having "no restraints" is then a test of wills. How much can the giver give to drive the receiver out of their mind with lust/need, without them feeling the need to back out? How much the recipient can endure or beg is the feedback that guides the giver, to fuel the action and take both parties where they need to be. Adding the physical restraints can enhance the excitement of the experience because then the options are even more limited and the sense of helplessness could be enhanced, but it's by no means a requirement for successful BDSM play (again, imo: willing to be corrected by those who have actually tried it). Being shackled in your own mind by a supportive and trusted partner is equally as powerful as being shackled by rope or handcuffs.

Further to this, one incredibly important point is that placing trust in someone for any length of time is physically and mentally demanding. So a period of nurturing afterwards by the giver - of rebuilding the recipient's psyche and comforting them for as long as they need - is vital for a symbiotic experience.

As long as there's the opt-out (control given to the recipient) and the post-experience grounding, any physical instruments in between are entirely at the discretion of your imagination.

Hope that helps a bit.

Made me chuckle as I clicked through this, even it is sadly true for many sites:

How I Experience Web Today

Well done to everyone who entered, placed or stands on the podium. I read almost all of them and the incredible creativity on display matched the rather wide brief. So many great entries.

Congratulations to everyone involved: the judges, site admins and of course anyone who had the courage to enter and showcase their talents. Marvellous.

Had a quick dabble in the Microfiction category and put together 100 words about a woman and her Little Misstakes.

Hope you like it.

Thoroughly well deserved. This is a stormingly creepy tale. I loved it.

What a great thread. I love making covers. A few of mine I'm pleased with, in no particular order:

Skewpoint

Fantastic Breasts and Where To Bind Them

Holy Trinity

Thought I'd try my hand at a straightforward office story as a sequel to "All Work And Play". So I dialled up the intensity as these two fiery, cheating colleagues toyed with one another after hours. The result? "Business With Pleasure".

I hope you enjoy it.

Yeah, the addon can be disabled but it's a pain to have to remember to do that each time, especially if I've already filled out other form fields. IIRC the page needs refreshing for the switch off to take effect, but it's been a while since I bothered so that might have changed.

Easier to uninstall it. Which I have. It was becoming too invasive in terms of screen real estate for my liking.

Quote by Georgia_27_8
Enter for new line, shift+enter to send... is an improvement

I agree. The Send button should send, everywhere. Enter is a typed character and should make a newline, everywhere. Shift+Enter (on devices that support it) is a handy shortcut for Send and is a definite action (as opposed to a possibly accidental keystroke) so is way better UX overall.

On tiny screens, you're far less likely to hit the dedicated Send button by mistake than an Enter, which is down near the punctuation popup on this virtual keyboard I'm using, so is easy to clip with a wayward finger tap.

Rule #1 in user interface design is do what users expect: no surprises.

Quote by IMPÜRETHOUGHTS
When in forums, stories section(page) or while reading a users story, you get the "lite" mailbox.

Nailed it, thank you. The menu options are slightly different depending on what page you're on and lead to different endpoints. Cos that's not confusing at all.

I was always clicking the envelope from the forum, which was then giving me the lite popup mailbox. Elsewhere I get the full experience with the (better, imo) Enter-for-newline behaviour.

Ack. Sorry. Didn't spot that the endpoint was a private forum. My bad. I've edited my post to remove the link and paste the contents so it's visible.

Further to my post above...

Just after I wrote that post, a system update occurred. Now there's no Mailbox link from beneath your avatar, just Messages which takes you to the same endpoint as the Envelope icon. So the only access is to the 'lite' mailbox, which means now there's no ability to use Enter for newlines in messages, as it posts immediately.

Drat.

Scrolling back through a message history works for me now. Thank you, developers!

Quote by lynnwitt
There is evidently a different definition of "month" at work here that what I'd expect

It's a bug, as noted upthread in an addendum by DanAdmin. They're on it.

Quote by Buz
Using a phone, l can no longer do a type return in a private message. If l do, it ends and send the pm.

Yes and no. Depends how you visit the mailbox.

If you tap the envelope at the top and use the 'lite' IM system, enter sends immediately.

If you tap your avatar->Mailbox and select a conversation partner, enter will add a newline. You need to explicitly tap Send to deliver the message or hit Shift+Enter on your keyboard, as Kistin says.

Not sure why it's implemented this way as it's slightly confusing UX but it is nice to have the option. Presumably the Envelope route is for 'quick IM' and the Mailbox route is designed for longer chats. Now I'm used to it, I quite like the choice.

Thanks for the tip, Kee. Have installed the LanguageTool browser extension so I'll give it a whirl.

Grammarly is getting on my tits with its invasive floating bar that covers the entire lower right corner of each box, and the fact that if I paste a story doc into Lush it takes forever to scan it, locking up the browser while it does so.

Managing disk space usage is fine, and necessary. What often happens is we'll chat back and forth about a story, float ideas, decide on a direction or some plot points, go away write a bit for a month or so, then come back and chat some more to compare notes, add more to the story, swap revisions, return here to chat some more, etc. At various stages I'll refer to the early parts of the conversation as there might be something great we said that would be wonderful to include as the project progressed. If that is lost, it's tough to remember what was said 4 or 5 months prior.

Having to star each individual message as it comes in, and star each reply is a bit cumbersome. What would be neater is to be able to hold multiple conversations about stuff with a particular person, and star topics. So, a bit like email subjects but presented in a chat-kind-of-way. Or maybe keep it as a single stream of messages, but be able to tag a particular message as the start of a 'topic' so it can be found later.

I appreciate people might still tend to just have one endless conversation with a person and star that, which would eat disk space. However, equally, if starred messages never get deleted, I could star every individual message and it would still take up the same disk space as if I'd starred the conversation. Presumably your disk strategy relies on people forgetting to star messages, or not starring them. Otherwise you'll be in a pickle!

As long as I know that 60 days is the limit for unstarred content, I've got no problem copying out message threads and stashing them offline somewhere if there's a particular thread I want to keep. The issue is that it's a real slow process to do so at the moment; made more frustrating by the fact that only the last handful (30?) messages are available, as it's not possible to scroll back further. So every 30 messages I would have to remember to copy and paste.

If/when we are allowed to scroll back in time through a thread, it's still not ideal. Say, 45 days into a conversation I decide there's a bunch of great stuff I need to keep. This would be the process:

1. Click person's name

2. Scroll back until I hit the stop point.

3. Wait for the next batch of messages to lazy load.

4. Scroll back until I hit the stop point.

5. Wait for the next batch of messages to lazy load.

6. ... repeat over and over until I reach the first message I want to keep...

7. Drag to select all messages.

8. Copy and paste.

If we're only going to be permitted to keep 60 days worth of messages per person, it would be cool if there was a facility to download the conversation. Perhaps click a Download link, choose start/end dates (default end date: now, default start date: first available message in thread) and then save them as a text file. Perhaps:

===============

WannabeWordsmith (2022/02/18 13:51:28)

Blah blah message content

Griffers (2022/02/18 13:52:01)

Blah blah message content

WannabeWordsmith (2022/02/18 13:52:41)

lol

2022/02/18 13:52:53

Blah blah more WW message content

Griffers (2022/02/18 13:53:31)

Blah blah message content

...

===============

Dunno. If there was some built in facility to easily download blocks of messages, you might find over time that people would star fewer messages, which would help disk space overall.

Further, do I understand that messages are ditched after 60 days? If so, why? (besides the obvious disk space saving).

Does this mean if I want to keep a conversation about a collaboration that spans 6 months or more - because these things often take time as real life work schedules interfere - that I needs to either star every single message as they are added to the conversation, or copy and paste them out periodically into an external text editor?

I'm seeing the same as AngelWorthy. Doesn't matter if on mobile or desktop.

STR

1. Click avatar->Mailbox OR envelope.

2. Pick a person with an active conversation that was started after the switchover to the new message system.

3. Scroll up.

Expected result

Lazy load messages in batches, in reverse time order, all the way back.

Actual result

A handful of messages are shown (maybe 30?) from the last few minutes/hours/days depending on frequency of interaction. Scrolling stops at the top with "Messages older than 2 months will be removed unless you star them."

Side note

a. Searching for messages sometimes reveals older messages but clicking them doesn't load the conversation around that point to see the results in context.

b. If you search for something and then amend your search term without clicking 'x' first "Sorry, there was an error" is often shown.

c. There's no indication that the search is actually _doing_ anything. User feedback would be handy in terms of an animation or something.

Quote by BullOne
People had to comment on order to leave a vote

We had this in Lush 1 and it was irritating beyond reason, imo. I'd read story, love it, leave a comment, then click to vote... and a comment box would appear forcing me to leave a second comment. Grrrr.

As hard as it is to accept, some people would rather read and nothing more. Or Vote/Like and move on without commenting. Yes, it's potentially annoying if someone drops a 1 and doesn't say why, but forcing them to comment isn't going to change that. The only effect it'll have is people won't vote at all.

Quote by BullOne
I could see who had read / voted for my story, so I could ask for feedback

We also had this in Lush 1 up until about 5 or 6 years ago and it caused problems, which is why anonymous voting was introduced. Badgering people for feedback (or going on the warpath if they 1-bombed you) wasn't worth the hassle of having the feature.

Sorry if that's not the answer you're after but I doubt these features will return here. I may be wrong so it's good to gauge opinion from other members.

Big congratulations to the top three, top ten and the honourable mentions. I think I read pretty much all of the stories in this competition and there were some superb twists on the theme throughout - shame more couldn't be squeezed into the top ten somehow. Mags absolutely nailed the atmosphere in her story for me, and since hers is set in a crowded bar, it seems fitting the tab in Rumps is on her

Well done everyone who entered. You all rock for bravely putting your work up for the tough judging decisions.

Thanks for the report. Bit odd that they're not working for you.

The tags work like this:

1. Start typing a tag in the Tags box on the story submission/edit page. Note that (annoyingly) on mobile it will default to upper case first character, which won't match anything, as all tags are lower case by convention here.

2. The drop down lists matches.Scroll to find the one you want and click it.

3. If the one you want isn't there, double check your spelling. If it's still not there, select the "Create 'your tag'" entry at the bottom of the list. What sometimes happens for tags with popular words (like 'pussy') is that the select list isn't long enough to show them all. In that case, just use the "Create" option at the bottom and, if it matches one that's already in use but isn't shown, it'll assign it to your story.

4. Repeat, up to a maximum of 10 tags.

At the moment the tags are still a bit of a mess. There are ones with hashtags at the start (ugh), ones with random punctuation like apostrophes or quotes or full stops at the start or end, misspellings, etc. Pretty much everything.

I've been going through the last few days and tidying them up as I spot them but it's slow and laborious with the tools we have available at the moment. Hopefully we'll get some more powerful tag admin tools in future.

I'd also love it if the tagger would remove hash characters and full stops automatically, and treat a comma-separated list that's typed in as separate tags. Maybe one day.

In the meantime, it would help massively if everyone avoided tags with odd punctuation characters in them, as it helps us to weed them out by hand.

Thank you.

You can make links as follows:

1) copy the destination link into the clipboard buffer.

2) write your forum post.

3) select the portion of the text you want to make into a link.

4) paste.

It's not ideal nor intuitive (though it's clever) because you can't seem to edit the link afterwards, short of deleting the text and starting again, but it's better than an ugly link.

Yes it is. One author is still the main author but the story appears on both authors' Stories lists.

When you submit your story (https://www.lushstories.com/stories/create), there's a box at the bottom for Contributing authors. Just pop their Lush username in that box (it's case sensitive at the moment, so make sure you get it right!).

Quote by StarBelliedBoy
I highly recommend the Lovense Gush

Noted. What a great product name!

Oooh, look, Lovense are having another sale today exactly the same as yesterday's.

The platform is stuffed to the gills with attention-seeking idiots. Occasionally, someone will post a challenge video and invite everyone to copy it. This could be anything from jiggling their ass to a chunk of mumble rap, doing a synchronised (or otherwise) dance, trying to suck up a glass of juice through a toilet roll tube, or (very) occasionally something clever.

The best by far was the Grace Kelly challenge where someone built up 6 layered harmony parts of the Mika track. There have been some terrible attempts at it, of course, but also some absolute belters who nailed it (e.g. https://www.tiktok.com/@malindamusic/video/6991921362721918214 and https://www.tiktok.com/@nanisimo90/video/7007759223928982789).

Ryan Reynolds famously revived the challenge. That's seriously the top challenge of a handful of videos that are any good. The rest is utter, utter dross.

Quote by PJH
If you get a notification of a 'like' for instance, it ends up in the comments section

Yes. And longer term, I think that idea will be carried over to a similar page that has a filterable set of activity that your friends and followed peeps are up to. So notifications or PMs about events become a fallback or nicety, rather than a necessity.