Pet peeves, things to work on as authors

While I agree with you about the whole 'over 18' thing being just thrown into stories can be distracting, there's a social dynamic that is only really achievable in high school (even if its late and legal-age high school). People can go through their whole lives trying to recapture those short years, or even specifically their senior year. The dynamic also includes parents as authority figures, forbidden use of alcohol, and just the high school vibe.

I think that as long as its made clear that its a senior-oriented event or coupling, preferably late in the year, and at least one of the main sexual participants is explicitly over 18 (personally I'll often include the main character's age before the story even begins, in the first chapter line, getting it out of the way of narration), then not everyone's age needs to be spelled out. After all, in a little disclaimer on the bottom of each page, it says all characters are 18 or over so as long as people don't deliberately push it, its fine for legal age to be implied rather than constantly voiced.

Personally I think that as often as characters are exactly 18 because of the 'har har barely legal hawt!' aspect of the age of 18 (not that I mind that either), again it's often just as much about capturing the spirit of high school or living under parental authority in the story.

Just my 2 cents. I do understand your complaint - age-naming kind of falls into line with listing body size stats, although not as bad,in that it can unnecessarily break up narration, especially when its done roughly.

Your point about certain dynamics being morally dubious with or without 'hey, over 18! Over 18 guyz!' is certainly a good point, but... Laws. They are what they are, and I for one definitely don't want more restrictions on writing so I'll take the hypocrisy gladly.

 

Related to the above: I´m baffled by stories about Step-Siblings.
I do understand making step-mom stories, because everyone has a mom and writing about a Stepmother kind of circumvents the weirdness a bit (along with the fantasy of cucking your own dad, I suppose...If you like that kind of thing...).
I kind of feel like the whole Siscon thing is more of an only-child´s fetish, so I don´t see why people don´t just write about full blood siblings, if they´re already writing an incest-story...

 

Mmm.

Well, I would argue against sibcest being, broadly, an 'only child's fetish'... Just as you say everyone has a mother yet there's many genuine full-blooded momcest stories out there, the same can happen with people that may have a real sister or brother.

Speaking for myself, I frequently write and fantasize into incest scenarios... But my actual family members do NOT factor into those fantasies. Icky, to me, though I know many people do fantasize about their real family members, and I don't frequent porn sites to judge fantasies.

Anyway back to my point - step sibling scenarios, to my mind, have a certain realistic appeal that isn't often talked about in polite circles.

There *is* a taboo there, no question.

And then, realistically, you have two young people, (potentially) at the height of their sex drives, (potentially) at a point of extreme youthful attractiveness (with both or just one), without the adult context of life and risk, willing to take chances as young people do. And they are thrown together, living together, showering and sleeping in close proximity. They learn each other's secrets, see things that only people living under the same roof see, have tensions and conflicts that only arise in close, living proximity. All without the actual barrier of blood ties to keep their hormones in check.

Maybe they knew each other before. Maybe they had crushes on each other, or an unspoken romance and then Oh Shit! Mom and dad just got married. Now they live together...

Maybe one's a creep, and the other is suddenly thrust into a scenario where they have to be around that unsavory personality, deal with voyeurism or one-sided lust or panty theft or...

Whew! I'm getting a little worked up here. Calm it down, Loeman.

Yes, the taboo isn't as strong as blood incest. But the varying scenarios, the often unspoken but entirely realistic attractions or repulsions, the close proximity and thrown in a little spice of taboo can all be there.

Step-siblings can be a compelling scenario, for a variety of reasons, and not just as a not-incest-incest cop-out (not that that has to be an awful thing either).

Plus, for what its worth, as has kind of been discussed, it's easier to get 18 year old step siblings in high school together without them being twins, for that high school incest fun.

 

Concerning the various proposals about better tags on stories and the effect a chapter that has a kink that isn't yours can have, I'd like to point a few things.

All are only my thoughts and opinions, I try not to judge people.

-to those that scream "What is wrong with you?" when reading something they don't like, remember that for a large part of the world population you are a pervert for simply reading or writing on this website.

-all of this is fiction, squiggly lines on a screen, electrons on a microchip, nothing happens to anyone if you write horrible things because those people don't exist.

On to the tag issue.

-The tag system is not really intuitive on this site, I think that a set list of tags on kink, sex act and a few other themes would work better than to let people write whatever they like. I write on the mobile version and adding tags is a real pain in the ass.

-I read somewhere the proposal of letting people tag other people chapters, and I think it would be obvious to anyone having spent one hour online how bad this could quickly become.

-there is the issue of some spoiler effect and of segregation.

More detail on last point. I read Nemo when ask that all non con should be in non con theme. Those stories aren't written in one go but as dozens if not hundreds of chapters, spread on months or even years.

Non Con is his pet peeve buy what about others, where do you put a story about a teenage gay vampire that mind controls his white dad to get him raped by a big black dude while two lesbians recite jokes. (extreme and ridiculous example that could go as teen, gay, fantasy, mind control, incest, non con, interracial, lesbians and humor.)

What frighten me if all chapters were correctly tagged is that someone would look at a story with 1000 chapters, see Non Consent and decide on this alone that the story as a whole is not for him because at chapter 78 of the 36th branch of the story there is a chapter where some one has a nightmare about being raped added by an author that only added that single chapter.

Gay sex, diapers, feet and many other things don't do anything for me, but there are stories with a few chapters of these (or whole branches that are among my favorites.) I just read what I like and ignore the rest.

On most stories of this site separate branches could almost be separate stories, the site spares us the need to post 7 stories with the same beginning. Being so absolute as to refuse to read or write in something with multiple branches because a single chapter displeases you is something that I cannot understand even if I accept the choice of others.

The nature of the interactive stories allows branches about nearly everything to grow from the initial seed, I think that being offended once in a while by something you don't like is a fair price to pay for being able to read and discover all the rest.

 

I couldn't agree more, as far as I'm concerned the main problem I have with the tag system as it stands now is that you can have several tags for the same thing depending on how the writer chose to write it. For instance, if you want to search a story with lesbians, you can use "lesbian", "lesbians", "Lesbian", "lesbian girls", "yuri", "girl on girl", etc. not mentioning typos.

For the "tag out" option, I think the best solution might be to have a set of tags associated to your account depending on what you want or don't want to read, and the site would highlight or put a warning on the concerned chapters rather than the story itself.

 

Okay, I recognize Your Mileage May Vary on this one, but: Stories that start with a dozen protagonist character options. Good gravy.

In the vast majority of cases, this just doesn't work. The best case scenario is that the author fleshes out two or three characters to the point that they actually reach a few conclusions. Far more likely is that the story starts shallow in all its paths, remains shallow in all its paths, the author loses interest, and the story vanishes to the bottom of the pile, barely having become more than a cluster of fragments.

And almost inevitably, it seems to come with the assumption on the part of the author that others will find their basic premise so enthralling that they'll do the work of plotting out the other branches for them. Please, do not make that assumption. It's difficult enough to find authors willing to contribute to a popular, long-running story that perfectly matches up with their personal sexual likes and dislikes; unless one is willing to put in the work of recruiting and planning with others willing to work on someone else's story from the get go, a new story "encouraging" other people to do the author's work for them is likely to be greeted with the sound of crickets in response.

In short: "Hi! Do you want to invest your time and energy in contributing to someone else's story in a sub-genre that's widely recognized as likely to peter out from the get-go?"

"...Okay, are you willing to read the story in its current, limited, bare-bones existence, and offer feedback?"

"...Would you be willing to just read it?"

"...Hello?"

 

I feel you. I feel you deeply, this one can be really annoying.
On the other hand, you don´t want to be too linear, and starting off with two or more characters can be a good way to incentivize this.
When I start up a new story, I usually check the story map, to see which threads are dead on arrival and which actually go somewhere.
I´m a man of simple tastes, so as long as I get one good sex-scene out of it, I don´t really mind if it´s shallow, but clicking through threads that goes nowhere and don´t even give me anything to fap to really boils my piss...

 

What an evocative and original turn of phrase: do you mind if I use it in a story some time?