This one is a little bit silly but could be fun. Waititnow Add more customize of main characters name. bobbydavros It would be nice for the variable system to provide a way to use the reader's favorite words for penis and vagina in the story (if they've supplied them in their profile). After reading these two post I got to thinking. What if the reader could customize a story so that they could pick words that could be replaced. They could pick words such as if John is the main character they could go in and set John = Dave so that every time the name John would appear it now says Dave. Jane sucked John's big cock could become Amy sucked Johns Humongous manhood. It would have to of course be limited to just the word in question so as that something like "He pulled out his Johnson wouldn't become something like he pulled out his Daveson.
That second one would be a nightmare for the writer. I mean it is pretty easy to do, but it would just be time consuming and in some contexts the word cock is a better fit the dick and so on and so forth. Letting the reader mess with stuff like that completely undermines the efforts of the writer.
You can already do the that I'm pretty sure. Just define the variable and write it in as MC's Penis name 1 name 2 or whatever MC's penis size, etc. It's just not generally an idea that's going to add to the story. But there's nothing stopping the 'name' variable being used for another story piece.
I've never bothered to actually push it, but I'm pretty sure there's already no cap on how many customized variables we can have - casual exploration just led me to 32 and more were still allowed. The question is: Why have that many prompts? How massive is your story that you have this many main characters around at almost all times? And anyone who's using it for things like features - such as hair color, height, build... ...genitals, etc. - is creating a repetitive wording that requires the most bland, impersonal narration just so the prompted values can be obeyed no matter the input. Carrying prompted values isn't a bad idea, but the biggest hindrance is that not everyone sets up their prompts the same way. The site would have to have carry a list of preapproved common prompts and have them selected in the middle of story creation. By itself this isn't too hard, provided we're discussing a new site. We are not a new site. Updating current stories would be trickier and a bit invasive. Plus, there are stories that have both male and female protagonists that draw from the same prompt, and thus have some users who change names based on which version they pursue (due in no small part to them preferring use of their own name and not everyone having an androgynous name). And this says nothing of the CHYOO era stories that haven't updated their prompts. Overall, it seems like too much work. A story-by-story log seems to be the more effecient alternative. Though I can't say how this would impact the site's performance or comment on the programming (both overall and comparitively), we wouldn't be going through and investing much work into abandoned stories that may never get a new submission just to ensure they comply with our new system in the event they do get a submission, and we'd still be eliminating the need to type any values repeatedly into the stories we frequent.
I'm not talking about the writers adding prompts for the reader but giving the reader the power to create their own variables for a story through simple word replacement tool that would replace any word in the story that the reader wanted. It would require no extra work on the writers end. I imagine it mostly be used for names so the reader could place themselves in the story even if the writer did not add that option. It is a silly concept but I thought it worth a mention if for nothing else a laugh.
It destroys the writers creativity of choosing their own adventure for the sake of the readers adventure. Which is more important in the end?
The way i see it: I do not see any value in this idea. (Sorry!) Sounds more like an idea for a separate mini website, where you can paste text (or URLs) and have certain patterns replaced by something else. Of course the reader has the option to use tools available to him, to display text with other fonts, bigger, smaller, and the like. But I agree that a story should be displayed with the content intended by the author. And the content of the story, the words that are written in it, is created by the author and should be displayed as such. And if the author doesn't want to use customization variables to replace names, then that's the way it is.
However I have something else to add: Say you have it set to change "Carl" to "David" ["Carl, why are we standing in a pool of blood?" "Because I murdered the pizza guy and turned him into bacon." "Caaaaarllll!"] Would wind up: ["David, why are we standing in a pool of blood?" "Because I murdered the pizza guy and turned him into bacon." "Caaaaarllll!"] I think you see the problem...
Yep, that's a problem. I don't see a workaround though. In fact, for a story i have dropped, i had planned to add nicknames to the usual customizable names for the very same reason.
What if you have a story where someone duplicated themselves. This scene would make perfect sense having two people named carl or david. You could also see two John Does.
Without duplications, you can simply have two characters with the same first name, or references to a celebrity or non character person with the same name. Taking the previous exemple "I want a burger let's go to David's junior." Also , nicknames. Change John to Albert and get called Johnny the girlfriend... And that's not even counting the names that could be part of other words. Dan to Alan "ALANGER MR ROBINSON!!!" so nope, nope, nope, nope, nope
