Appropriate story categories

lululuvsblack

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does anyone ever have problems with stories being categorised in the wrong place to find their audience?

i write in the crossdressers category. all my three stories (and others i have begun or planned) involve guys who are sissies who love dressing in sexy lingerie. my most recent, however, involved a man and his adopted (adult) son. i submitted this too to the crossdressers category, but, presumably because of the taboo semi-incestuous nature of the central relationship, it has been put in the incest category.

i don't mind this. the incest-y angle is what makes the story particularly naughty and an extra kink. however, a lot of the initial feedback seems to suggest it might be in the wrong category.

comments say things like

Firstly sex with adopted son can not possibly be incest.

Then there is the gay relationship and sissy play as well.

Why not add this to one of the many category options that you have here on the Lit?

Adopted!!!!! Not incest!!!!! Other than that, all things considered, the story was a piece of crap.

is this in the wrong category? it obviously says in the title, description and tags that it has a sissy male-male theme.
 
You're not wrong that it probably would have been better received in the crossdresser category. Readers here have a rigid view of what stories qualify for their favored genre and aren't shy about saying so. You tried to post where you wanted it but the power that be (Laurel) decided otherwise as she sometimes does. You could try to resubmit the story while mentioning in notes why you think it should be moved to crossdresser and hope Laurel will agree to move there.
 
does anyone ever have problems with stories being categorised in the wrong place to find their audience?

i write in the crossdressers category. all my three stories (and others i have begun or planned) involve guys who are sissies who love dressing in sexy lingerie. my most recent, however, involved a man and his adopted (adult) son. i submitted this too to the crossdressers category, but, presumably because of the taboo semi-incestuous nature of the central relationship, it has been put in the incest category.

i don't mind this. the incest-y angle is what makes the story particularly naughty and an extra kink. however, a lot of the initial feedback seems to suggest it might be in the wrong category.

comments say things like

is this in the wrong category? it obviously says in the title, description and tags that it has a sissy male-male theme.

I had a similar problem with one of my stories 'Whore: n,' - when I submitted it, I scoured the options for a good category, and the most appropriate would have been 'Non-Erotic' but I swear, that was not given as an option. I chose Romance, and put a note with the submission that I couldn't find an appropriate category, but the Mod changed it to Erotic Couplings. Given that it's about the regrets of a wife who cheated, destroying her husband's trust in her, leading her to self-mutulation and a suicide attempt hardly seems Romantic or Erotic.

I suggest that you go with the main focus of the story, and sometimes it's confusing. If there is only M/M action, you will usually be welcomed in Gay Male, even if they crossdress, but any homosexual action outside of the legitimate LGBT categories is often met with derision (don't poke the straight folks).

I have one in my queue that is engineered to have a few chapters: It really fits the Bisexual category, but the jump-off chapter has only separate lesbian and gay male sex sessions. I think I'll just have to make it longer and include a bisexual session, but I like the way the first chapter ends as it is.

Some people in any genre do get snarky about things being mis-categorized.

Best of luck to you. Love your avatar, sweetie.:kiss:
 
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does anyone ever have problems with stories being categorised in the wrong place to find their audience?

I had a very similar thing happen with my first story. The best friend's daughter called the protagonist "Uncle" so it got put in Incest/Taboo. I had originally wanted it in Group Sex. A couple of commenters complained that it was miscategorized. A couple pointed out that it was still taboo, even if it wasn't incest. I would imagine that the same could be said of your story. The incest readers don't seem to care about that distinction though.

If I write a sequel to that story, I'm seriously considering writing "Taboo, not incest" in the summary line. Or maybe as an author's note above the story.

I did PM Laurel about changing the category, and it took a couple of days, but she did respond with instructions. I'll forward a copy of what she sent me to you by PM.
 
Male-male doesn't belong in the incest category no matter what the relationship between them is. Either GM or crossdressing. I think that must have just been a glitch and if you contact Laurel via PM, I think it will be moved.
 
This essay includes explanations of the various categories:

https://www.literotica.com/s/how-to-break-the-literotica-toplist

The problem with this is that OP tried to post in crossdressing genre and was overruled. I understand that Laurel has the final decision and it can be appealed but even if it gets moved later it will no longer be considered a new story making it less likely for readers of the favored genre to see. I'm sure Laurel puts it where she thinks best but she is also scanning 50-100 stories a day so perhaps she sometimes doesn't put in best category. Also if a story meets the criteria for more than one genre it should be left up to the writer to decide. The writer has a better chance of knowing their audience or what audience they are trying to reach. If for example someone writes a story that has lesbian and BDSM let the writer decide which genre. The only time writer should be overruled is if they miscategorize, say wanting it in lesbian but story contains no all female sex and not even a lesbian in story. We are all supposed to be adults so let us decide where our story goes. If we find the readers have rigid ideas about category then we can decide to continue posting there or not but I don't think most writers need the site to protect us from unreasonable reader expectations.
 
I'm pretty well versed in what male-male material doesn't go in some of the categories other than GM or crossdressing and haven't before seen that Laurel's preferences are different from what I've seen. I'm pretty confident that if the OP queries Laurel about this via the PM system, the story will be moved from the incest category.
 
I don't know. I've seen odd moves lately where even the slightest hint of incest is overruling past norms. Sci-Fi&Fantasy & Non-Human used to be more or less exempt, even when it was a theme running through the whole story, but I've seen them moved of late. I can't think of the other category I saw moved, but it was just as eyebrow-raising to me.

In both cases, attempts to reverse the category change were unsuccessful.

My two best guesses are that there are significant numbers of complaints coming in about incest outside the category, or Laurel is attempting to diversify the category.

I don't think the latter is possible. That category is set in stone. The readership is too vast and set in their narrow definition of what belongs there to change their minds.

Regardless, if you include any incest or pseudo-incest content in a story or chapter of one, you'd best be prepared for it to be moved to the incest category, and for the likely acidic reaction you'll receive if it's not the only theme ( unlikely, if you categorized it differently to begin with ) or doesn't meet the readership's narrow definition of what's "true incest".
 
Not male-male incest, I don't think. I'm sure Laurel has the good sense to know that male-male dropped into the incest category is going to be crucified there.
 
My experience is that incest readers, while very numerous, can be finicky. I've seen some criticisms where they thought the story incorporated non-incest fetishy elements, like exhibitionism, and recently I had a reader get upset because the mom character put a finger in her bum. No anal! he said.

I would think cross-dressing readers would be fairly tolerant and would put up with gay male elements better than incest readers. But I haven't published stories in those categories so I don't know for certain.
 
My experience is that incest readers, while very numerous, can be finicky. I've seen some criticisms where they thought the story incorporated non-incest fetishy elements, like exhibitionism, and recently I had a reader get upset because the mom character put a finger in her bum. No anal! he said.

I would think cross-dressing readers would be fairly tolerant and would put up with gay male elements better than incest readers. But I haven't published stories in those categories so I don't know for certain.

It's amazing the things readers will nit-pick at. I have a mostly hetero story (with some lesbianism, which seems to be largely acceptable across categories) in Group Sex, but it had a sexually repressed marriage where the wife took control and cum-kissed the husband, and then later made her husband drink other men's cum from her asshole and kiss her again, and one guy ranted that it should be in the Gay Male category.

As a proponent of both crossdressing and gay male writing and reading, both concepts seem to cross over very comfortably. I've toyed with the incest idea, just because it's so naughty (I have never had any designs on any of my own family memmbers... Eww). It seems like if you're in that category you shouldn't bitch about what anybody wants to put in there: incest purists? Really?
 
I know ownership has the final say but I had two stories placed in incest that didn't belong there. One had a brother in law/sister in law coupling while in the other it was a stepson/stepmother tryst. While neither was savaged so I'm not worried about the category neither should really be in incest. Don't know if Laurel is trying to diversify as suggested but I just don't see the point in ownership placing a story in a different category than writer asked for if the story contains the genre they want it placed in. Even if Laurel thinks a story is more incest than BDSM or whatever let the creator of the content decide.
 
This continues to be a problem. There was talk long ago about developments where additional categories or lists of standard tags could be added, which seems like the most sensible solution to me. But it seems changes happen veeery slow on Literotica. (Which in honesty is annoying, but understandable given that this is a free site without much adds.)
 
i didn't really mind it being moved to incest/taboo as the adopted father-son relationship is kind of that. obviously i wrote it with the idea that that would be titillating due to ig being taboo. but then getting all the negative feedback suggesting its in the wrong category made me think otherwise. i guess i can kind of understand if literotica does have a blanket policy on incest overruling all other kinks in being something that other readers might be grossed out by. i just don't know what more i can do than the very obvious spelling out in the story title, description and tags that this was an adoptive father-son sissy crossdressing story. why would someone be annoyed at the content having seen that description?
 
When you're dealing with purists, they don't care about warnings or alerts. Your story didn't meet their narrow definition of what belongs in the category, so it was attacked.

Incest is a trump. The thing is that some categories used to be excepted.

I assumed this was mainly because the readers of said categories were used to, and accepting of, a broad range of sexual situations ( Sci-Fi&Fantasy, Non Human, etc. ) or have a sexual focus that draws a lot of ire when placed in stories of another category. ( GM, CD&TS, etc. )

That doesn't appear to be the case any longer.
 
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