Every time i have tried to read the Announcing the Whodunnit Competition thread. I get a site down for maintenance message but can read any other thread.

Is there sonething scandalous in there we arent allowed to read. Has been like this for last few days

“I love how Halloween brings out the slutty side of everyone,” Julie giggled, her hand brushing her boyfriend Chad’s hardening cock.

“It must be because no one knows who we are behind the masks,” she whispered, dropping to her knees.

It was as spurts of cum filled her mouth that Chad appeared in the doorway.

“Julie.. is that you?” looking from the identically dressed masked cowboy to the slutty vampire.

The AUP policy was highlighted in another thread...

"Anything illegal and contrary to the laws of England, Wales and Ireland, including (but not limited to!) the promotion, suggestion or allusion to ********** ***, **** or any non consensual acts, hard drugs or any other kind of illegal activity."

How can you write a whodunnit story if you cant allude to any kind of illegal activity?

Are all the competition entries in contravention of the Acceptance Use Policy?

Hi John,

Any idea why the AUP has the laws of England, Wales and Ireland? It seems an unusual combination.

"Anything illegal and contrary to the laws of England, Wales and Ireland, including (but not limited to!) the promotion, suggestion or allusion to ********** ***, **** or any non consensual acts, hard drugs or any other kind of illegal activity."

If the AUP means UK law, I believe England and Wales share a common legal system. Scotland has its own laws and Northern Irish law is different again.

Ireland however has an entirely separate legal system as it hasnt been part of the UK for over 100 years.

I really like making the covers. It usen't to matter because you only saw the cover once you clicked the story after the author, genre, title or byline had brought you in but now the covers are seen on the storylists, a strong visual can entice. Though I have been put off clicking on stories where the cover puts me off before even reading the byline or genre.

So i guess good covers help, bad covers hinder. Theres no excuse for bad covers now the cover designer is so user friendly.

Looking back, i hate some of my old covers so might have to update them

So... what you're saying is its a bit pointless having a counter saying when someone was last online and it might be better to get rid of it?

No, some are platinum, some are not. And Platinum is supposed to show last online 2 hours ago while you are 'hidden online'. One of the platinum members that it says hasn't been online for days doesn't have the hidden option set. The one who it says hasn't been on in a month isn't platinum.

Yes, friends list... but it also says last online 3 days ago on their profile page too.

Theres another friend who was on last night but its saying she was last online 1 month ago.. so it's not an isolated case

Is this a glitch that the time someone was last online bears no connection to reality. I spoke to one friend last night but it says she was last online 3 days ago. This glitch seems to occur quire regularly.

Perhaps get rid of it if it cant be vaguely accurate?

Just to double clarify... it has to start with the crime and then the story is about revealing who did the crime.. is that correct??

It cant be about the planning and then execution of the crime?

Just in the past, some mods sent stories back cos they didnt gave a wish yet other stories didnt have a wish and there was all sorts of bad feeling at the results announcement so want to ensure there is no ambiguity here

I came to lush for the chat as some site i had been on had just been pulled.. endd up trying my hand at writing.. my first story was rejected and never saw the light of day.. i never considered myself a writer and just wrote the sort of stories that turned me on.. somehow along the way, i achieved all the goals MC1982 mentioned so perhaps my race is over and I've completed the game 🤷‍♀️

I feel the micro section has lost its way and is pretty much anything goes, which is sad as it used to be a challenge to tell a story in so few words.

Quote by JustForYou

The ' mechanics' of the subject area here probably do have a point at which most variables have been exhausted, The creativity around those mechanics? I think and hope not.

I agree. I love the build up, the scene setting, the world description, the why the are doing it. Sometimes I wonder if I need the 'insert cock A into pussy B' and 'insert cock A into Mouth B' bits which read as rather mechanical.

Like Kimmi, I enjoy the darker side of the street with questionable morals as it provides more plot potential than the Miles & Boom type stories that I've never been very good at. Or maybe I just love the conflict and the drama.

On a related note, what is the size limit per image.. for gifs primarily? Whenever I try to upload something bigger than 2 MB I get the 'down for maintainable' page or the 'can't be found, back to home page'

I'm a bit confused.. it says I have 4.8K comments and only 1.1K electorate..is the Comments badge counting every reply I've made to someone's comment on one of my stories as a comment?

That seems a bit silly.. do we need a counter on the number of comments?

The "down for maintainance" is rather misleading. Perhaps a "whoops that didnt work, go back and try again" might make more sense as that is what I do and it usually works 2nd time around

I voted to keep but but having heard the arguments I'm happy for it to be deleted.

It always struck me as an unnecessary category for the Omnium and a throwback to a gentler age before likes and coins became the obsession du jour.

I'll happily move my short novel to teen and perhaps reevaluate individual chapters later.

Keeping a lock reminds me of the vault.. an equally bizarre and now redundant idea.

Welcome to Fahrenheit 451.. novels? Right this way lol

I noticed the new look with the story cover showing on the home page and all the story pages. It looks great.

However I noticed some have a grey box. This seems to be any image which isn't the correct size 768 x 1200 pix or made using the cover editor.

Will all stories need to be reverified if I go in and fix them/resize them?

I thought we could have real life characters as long as they are long dead.. e.g. I wrote a story about a time traveller shagging the painter Degas in 19th century Paris. Other stories from other authors include long dead royalty and such like. I know fan fiction isn't allowed but if they've been dead so long they are out if copyright (70 years) isn't that OK?

I'm in Muff but considering moving across the country to Bastardstown.

Quote by techgoddess

Readers won’t commit to more than 10K at a time. I should know…my attention span is short.

Micro word limits aren’t ignored. The word counter you see is different from the word counter mods see.

I just don’t see the need to eliminate a category that has more pages of stories than many of the other genres. If writers choose to put their stories there and don’t feel like they are getting enough attention, they can change their genre. But, personally, I’ve been happy with my feedback on Mac and Grace stories. If something isn’t broken, why are we trying to fix it? Eliminate it as a requirement for Omnium if it’s such a big deal. But many writers write multi-part stories with only a few parts to satisfy checking off that box. I don’t see this as an issue.

Exactly. If too many categories is an issue, put facesitting back into oral sex, put strapons back into toys, put uniforns and medical back into occupations.

If its about making the Omnium easier, remove it as a requirement and give them an Omnium Lite badge.

Red.. A shiraz, or a Merlot..or a Cabernet Sauvignon.. or a Bordeaux.. or just wet... and in a glass.. or a bottle, I'm not fussy

I always found the Novel category nonsensical as you can put a stand alone story of 2k words in it and leave it at that, so it's not a novel. There have even been top 10 competition entries labelled as novels which were just a stand alone story.

Looking back through the Novels category, there are quite a number where even with chapters the whole lot doesn't amount to more than one decent length story.

I also agree it's a miscellaneous category.

But I would also say that there is a proliferation of other categories which are nonsensical too. What is the point of Occupations.. it is as scattergun as novels. Do people camp out there?

I do think readers attention spans have decreased. I don't know how many have the patience to read 15, 20 chapters or more. I certainly saw my readership drop off as the chapters continued.

For it to really mean something, it should be like a series award, it gets awarded and moved into that category when the novel is finished, not when you've submitted chapter 1 but that's not going to work so I voted to keep it as is.

But if he isn't closing the first sentence with a quotation mark, why would he open the second sentence with one?

I find having an opening quotation mark and no closing quotation mark on every sentance very confusing and wrong looking.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

P.S. I know I'm being simplistic in my bell curve analogy because there's no sensible way to grade content from bad to excellent, and there are different types of content (reference, factual, literature, poetry, journals, magazines, science fiction, romance, etc) all with different parameters and usages. But the fact remains that, however the AI is trained and slices and dices the entirety of human content, each slice/genre will statistically contain well-written and not-so-well-written content. The engine gobbles it all up and doesn't know which is which, then regurgitates the average when it's asked to help. People who are below average will get a boost, people who are above average will have their work diminished if they let it meddle. And the result when the "new" works are published is likely to include more content centred around the median for the engines to consume...

It's like kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. Stiffle individuality and difference until everything is the same. What a depressing thought.

Quote by Seeker4

That's really how these tools should be used and I don't think that's a problem. Frankly, though, these tools are not perfect and I rigorously use the "Ignore" option when I know they are wrong. One worry I have with these tools is that they enforce a particular set of rules and styles when language is, and should be, more fluid than that. They can discourage artistic license and developing one's own style in favour of a bland homogenization of language (which is also my concern about AI writing tools, really).

Exactly Seeker. The few times I looked at Grammerly it wanted to rephrase sentences in such a way it distorted the meaning i was trying to convey.

I write in Hiberno-English which AI bots of whatever colour or creed don't understand. At least when the mods send a story back I can try to argue the case as to why it is acceptable writing.

End of the day, this is a site for amateur writers, it's not the Booker Prize.

The whole use of recommending AI apps intrigues me.

There's a thread in this section of the forum about not using AI and Jen states that Lush is for writers who learn the rules of grammar and horne their craft yet gramercly and Quillbot are being pushed... despite Quillbot being described as

" an online tool that helps people reword and rewrite sentences, paragraphs, and even whole documents. It uses advanced artificial intelligence algorithms. The tool can help improve your writing skills by suggesting more natural and polished language.

In addition to being able to paraphrase, QuillBot also has a built-in thesaurus, a grammar checker, and a summarization tool that can help users improve their writing."

I don't think Quillbot should be used any more than chatGBT. If an AI app is going to rewrite sentences to make it read better, then it's part author. Perhaps anyone using Quillbot should name it as an additional author?

I've found a huge inconsistency in the moderation. I read stories with glaring typos in the one liner or throughout the story and then some of my stories get sent back for ridiculous reasons. But this is completely understandable as we have mods from different languages and cultures. I had one story returned because I said the girl was middle class and the American mod thought I meant middle school which was underage.

Anyway, just send it to Sprite for resubmission is what I took from this thread.

I find the comma police can be over zealous though to the point where its hardly worth resubmitting.

I've never come across grammerly only allowing 3 corrections but I find gramerly wants to offer corrections that changes the nuance and meaning of the sentence. Grammerly seems obsessed with commas.

Quote by FMGM101

Hi How do I create a chapter for my story?

Create a series at the bottom of the submission page.. then when you write the 2nd chapter, type in the series name.. if they go in the wrong order you can reorder them from your own stories page

Quote by Ensorceled

I already had coffee over at the blue site, but I'll grab a donut or two here. You guys have better pastry chefs than the blue site!

Anyway, Kimmie and a few others were pushing me in the comments section to enter my tiny little story in the comp, so I fleshed it it out and did. Don't let the pretentious title of Leviathan fool you. It's short and hopefully hot.

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/flash-erotica/shard-211-leviathan

Sorry for only showing up when I want to pimp a story. That's rude, and I will try to do better. I'm just not around here much anymore.

Cheers everyone!

Yay.. glad you entered