AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

[vagrantx]

I realized it was a flat-out horror story.

It is a horror story, yes, but it's also a bit of self flagellation. It started out as one of my old fantasies, but as I was toying with ideas and getting them onto paper I began to realize just how fucked up my head actually is. So I started pushing it. And pushing it. All the while thinking "Do I like this? No. Do I, though?" as it veered deeper and deeper into horror territory. Finally I hit Ctrl+A and backspace, started over, and wrote it with horror in mind. And ultimately I'm glad I did.

It's a pity about your story getting cut off in part one.

I've been thinking about that, but when AlinaX mentioned how the story breaking off mid sentence had its own brand of unintended subtlety I figured I'd leave it like that. By now it's not getting any heavy traffic, and part 2 is getting about the same amount, so I'd like to keep it as-is as a reminder of a frustrating-yet-funny situation.

-
Thank you for taking the time to read my story and write down your thoughts! It's greatly appreciated

 

[CalebZhass]

Quick shout out to @CalebZhass who's been great, we've been reading each others stuff for the past couple of weeks. Thanks Caleb!

Thank you for the kind words. The feeling is definitely mutual. Also I'm both curious and somewhat anxious to see what you come up with for your next story Curious as much of what you wrote so far is right up in my alley, anxious because... well... you know why.

Either way, just keep writing, you are good at it and it'd be a shame to let all those wonderfully twisted ideas not see the light of day.

 

[Omenainen]

I had forgotten MediocreAuthor and AlinaX had commented on Encased earlier! Duh. Shows what a great memory I have. I scrolled back to see and was amused to notice they had much more detailed comments than our “wow much great.” Maybe we should outsource the positive reviews

It might make sense for the commentary on one story to be in the approximate same part of this thread, but then I think it naturally will be for most of the time, because usually our backlog isn’t very long and the conversation isn’t very active.

Anyway, thanks again for taking part and offering your input @MediocreAuthor, @AlinaX and @TheRedChamber, the last also for reminding me that there was earlier discussion over this story.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

I had forgotten MediocreAuthor and AlinaX had commented on Encased earlier! Duh. Shows what a great memory I have. I scrolled back to see and was amused to notice they had much more detailed comments than our “wow much great.” Maybe we should outsource the positive reviews

It might make sense for the commentary on one story to be in the approximate same part of this thread, but then I think it naturally will be for most of the time, because usually our backlog isn’t very long and the conversation isn’t very active.

Anyway, thanks again for taking part and offering your input @MediocreAuthor, @AlinaX and @TheRedChamber, the last also for reminding me that there was earlier discussion over this story.

I personally have the distinct privilege of following along with this thread, seeing each review request, and judging on a case-by-case basis if I should read/review.

"Oh, that story doesn't interest me. I won't read"
"Oh, I don't have much to say about that story. I won't review."
"Oh, I read that story and have something poignant to say! REVIEW TIME!"

Thank you so much to @AwkwardMD and @Omenainen for reviewing all the stories presented, and not just the fun/easy ones.

 

[AwkwardMD]

@TheseLegs
Link

Let’s clear some things up off the bat. For one thing, let’s cast aside the idea you have inherently done something wrong. Passion’s Journey is an interesting premise that you have run with, and we love creativity. We’re here for it, and we’re proud of you.

The low score, somewhat higher now since your initial request, is a function of the layout of Literotica.com more than a reflection on your story. Lit’s categories have, over the years, caused a kind of calcification among the readers on the site. People have gravitated toward the ones they think will provide the content they are looking for. There are some unspoken (and, at times invisible) strictures and requirements that the voting audience will expect, and punish you for failing to provide.

In other words, what you wrote doesn’t cleanly line up with the expectations of the LW category, and readers have expressed this to you with their voting.

Now you’re at a crossroads. You’ve started blazing your trail, and that’s wonderful, and the longer you do it the more followers you’ll accumulate who like what you do on principle. It’ll be small at first and grow slowly… or you could spend time learning the rules and adhering to them. Making the content that the audiences expect. Finding ways to modify your vision to make it more compatible. There’s nothing wrong with this, and a lot of writers are very successful (by the metrics of the site) in appealing to larger numbers.

Generally speaking, adhering to the category rules and becoming a writer who is successful on Lit means developing a style that wouldn’t work anywhere else, but you are allowed to chase whatever version of success you desire. If that means sticking to your guns, then good for you. If that means learning the ins and outs of Loving Wives, and a focus on your audience, then also good for you! You should be chasing whatever form of happiness suits you best.

***

All that being said, there are some opportunities for improvement. The whole thing felt a bit… frictionless. The story is telling us that this couple is having trouble conceiving, and telling us that the wife is reluctant, but what’s on the page doesn’t line up with that. The wife seems more like she’s having a bad day, and goes along with everything very easily. I’ve known at least one couple that had trouble conceiving, and it was a very fraught subject for them to talk about.

A problem is only as ‘problem-y’ as it is difficult to overcome.

Let’s say you have character A. Character A goes into their bedroom and finds their shoes unlaced. “NOOO!” shouts Character A, because Character A does not know how to tie shoes. Who could have untied them? How has this happened?! Character A has been slipping them on and off for years now! They had a system! Now what are they going to do??

Then Character B comes in and ties them.

In this hypothetical, the immediacy of a solution undercuts how serious this is. Admittedly, I’ve picked a silly premise for a problem, but untied shoes have caused countless boo-boo’s and scraped knees over the years. If you fix it quickly, it wasn’t a real problem.

Infertility is a real problem. It can create very complex feelings of inadequacy, or conflict between couples. It shouldn’t be able to be solved super quickly. This is not to say that a good story (or even a short one) can’t include infertility as a theme, but good writing should reflect that weight.

Let’s substitute in child death. The wife isn’t upset because she’s potentially infertile, she’s upset because this couple just lost their daughter. Then the hero swoops in and says “Not to worry, I’ll just give you another one.” Would this fix her bad day? Would she just immediately be raring to go?

I know these two problems, infertility and child death, are not exactly equal, but making the problem a little more exaggerated helps us put into perspective how out of place the solution in this story is. The hero probably can’t fix this, and pretending he can for the sake of warm fuzzies is… unsatisfying.

Bear in mind that our advice is in the vein of helping you become a stronger writer. This is not necessarily always going to mean that following our advice will make for hotter erotica. That being said, I think that there is a version of this story where a couple struggling with infertility has a blowout threesome and throws caution to the wind out of frustration, and that sounds incredibly hot. It’s a very different kind of story, but I think it makes better use of the premise than what you have here.

There are a number of ways to take this kind of advice, but I’ll illuminate two of them. The first is to say “Yeah, okay, I can try to write something a little bit more emotional and see how that comes out. Take more time to lay the groundwork.” The second is to say “Yeah, okay, maybe writing a story with infertility is more than I really want to get into. I’ll take that into account when I write the next one, and choose a problem that’s a little more in line with the amount of friction I want to include.”

Put differently, I think this story, as written, would have made more sense and would have flowed more organically if the starting point of conflict wasn’t (potential) infertility. It all feels more in line with a bad day, or a bad day at work, or getting passed over for a promotion (which doesn’t exactly line up with your fantasy setting but you can probably see where I’m going with this).

There’s probably also something to be said about your use of a fantasy setting. Fantasy is great for exploring themes, but I think it’s working against you here. The fertile field of infidelity is seeded by religion and society. Extramarital sex, whose child is whose, these things matter greatly when you have laws that are very specific about who is allowed to inherit what (think England in the middle ages), but maybe doesn’t matter quite so much in a quasi-communist village where everyone shares pretty easily.

This story only works because of some underlying tropes. An infertile woman is no woman at all, and children are the source of a woman’s happiness, and extramarital sex is bad sex. I know these weren’t exactly the point of the story, but the story doesn’t work if you take away these assumptions and we are only making these assumptions because these are contemporary attitudes.

When using fantasy to explore a theme, it’s important to make sure the setting fits your theme. To be honest, I would have more readily accepted that the warrior is allowed to sleep with whatever woman he likes after performing a great deed, and then the story flows from there, than I did the infertility angle. That was a little jarring, and then even more so to be cast aside so easily.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I want to quibble with your comments on fantasy settings.

Fantasy is great for exploring themes, but I think it’s working against you here. The fertile field of infidelity is seeded by religion and society...

This story only works because of some underlying tropes...the story doesn’t work if you take away these assumptions and we are only making these assumptions because these are contemporary attitudes.

When using fantasy to explore a theme, it’s important to make sure the setting fits your theme.

I think you're saying that it was hard to reconcile the fantasy setting with some of the underlying tropes that give infidelity its narrative power?

I did not have this problem. It's pretty easy for me to imagine a place with itinerant warriors who tattoo their girlfriends' names on their backs and also women who really want to bear their husbands' biological children.

Extramarital sex, whose child is whose, these things matter greatly when you have laws that are very specific about who is allowed to inherit what (think England in the middle ages), but maybe doesn’t matter quite so much in a quasi-communist village where everyone shares pretty easily.

This just seems...unimaginative?

Maybe in a quasi-communist village, legitimate children matter more because they're the only legacy a man can claim.

And maybe in alternate-universe medieval England, infidelity doesn't matter at all because legitimacy is matrilineal. The Mosuo apparently have such a system in our world: property passes down the mother's line, men parent their sisters' children, and people's biological parents typically do not cohabitate.

This story only works because of some underlying tropes. An infertile woman is no woman at all, and children are the source of a woman’s happiness, and extramarital sex is bad sex. I know these weren’t exactly the point of the story, but the story doesn’t work if you take away these assumptions and we are only making these assumptions because these are contemporary attitudes.

I have multiple problems with this claim:

First, these are contemporary attitudes, but they are far from only contemporary attitudes. It's not like the plot here rests on an unstated assumption that the IRS deducts fifty cents a mile for work-related travel in a private vehicle.

Second, I can imagine many ways for this story to work without these assumptions. My first thought was that Ramo and Khei would want children for labor. It sounds like they live in a low-tech rural place ("village", "torches," etc.) but not one in a particularly hostile environment. Little kids can do a lot in such places. They can't program computers or navigate pack ice or persistence-hunt deer, but they can pick berries or weed gardens or herd sheep. People without such help might find themselves in a hard situation, maybe dependent on the charity of friends and more distant family, maybe worse, especially later in life.

And finally, there are multiple references to Ramo having been injured somehow and them suspecting him to be the infertile one. So maybe the story itself has already tossed out the infertile woman business. E.g.,

"If this is my fault..."

"We don't know that!"

"We don't know, but it's worth a try, I think."

"That wasn't your fault! Those things are dangerous!"

"it's fifty-fifty chances, right? Probably better if what I understand about Ramo's injury is true."

I do, by the way, completely agree with your points about things feeling too easy.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Maybe I should say something constructive instead of just ripping on @AwkwardMD's review?

@TheseLegs, here were some of my problems with your story:

Regardless of whether you plan to hew to the categories of Lit, I think you would do both yourself and your readers a favor to publish in the category that best fits what you write. For this story, I think that would be fetish rather than LW. The constant talk of fertility and impregnation reads much more like a pregnancy kink than extramarital sex. E.g.,

"Mm," Khei moaned. "The semen in this dick is so strong, so potent."

Khei screamed ecstatically. "It's inside me, Ramo! His seed is living inside me!"

"Khei, you feel so good inside. Fertile."

I also found a number of snippets that didn't ring true. You can write stories where people don't act like the reader's contemporaries would, but it takes more justification. You really have to convince them that such behavior makes sense in this setting. It's much harder than selling them on dragons or magic or spaceships.

E.g., here's a snippet where Ramo had a delicate, unconventional, and possibly immoral proposal that Khei surely wouldn't accept without his permission. Yet instead of discussing it with her privately first, he sends a total stranger to spring the question on her without him. Maybe that's normal for this place, but I wasn't ready to believe it.

"We don't know, but it's worth a try, I think. It might be unconventional..."

"Unconventional?" Khei scoffed. "Ramo, I can't be unfaithful to you. I love you."

"I love you, too, Khei, and that's why I'm prepared to do anything." He waited patiently for her to meet his eyes again, and he squeezed her hand tighter. "It isn't cheating. It isn't being unfaithful; I'll be right there with you. And Evan, he wants to help us."

Similarly, here they're having what appears to be an intimate and emotional conversation in the middle of a three-way with a total stranger listening. Again, maybe that's how they would do it, but I wasn't ready for it.

"I thought you were going to be mad," he admitted. "This is my fault for..."

"That wasn't your fault! Those things are dangerous!" She cried out loud, squeezing the warrior as the big hard dick swirled inside her. She recovered panting, squeezing tight that hard cock slammed into her. "I should have saved you better than that," she said.

These just don't ring true to me.

Evan's sacred duty also seems impractical:

"I'm a warrior," he said. "I have a sacred duty to help people. Just tell me what the problem is, I'm sure I can help."

Does he feel honor-bound to help anyone who needs help and can make that need known to him? How does he not end up drafted into some warlord's army, or slaving away in a struggling farmer's fields?

To be fair, I'm probably an outlier when it comes to thinking through the implications of people's world-building decisions and trying to make them fit together in a plausible way. A lot of readers are going to read the passages above and go, ah, here's some exposition, there's a mcguffin, all good! But if you want to write better (by my personal standards) this is an area you could choose to improve.

Let me know if any of that helps.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I want to quibble with your comments on fantasy settings.

I realized (after talking to my wife) that there's a weaker version of your claim, not that the fantasy setting detracts from the story but that the fantasy setting doesn't accomplish anything, because you could have set it in medieval England and gotten the same dynamics around infidelity and legitimacy and so on.

I also disagree with the weaker version. What a fantasy setting buys you here is the ability to pick and choose what to include. If you set it in medieval England you might get someone in the comments who really wants to tell you everything you got wrong about medieval England that you never even mentioned but unfortunately completely breaks your story. More fantasy settings, less pedantry, happier readers and writers alike.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I realized (after talking to my wife) that there's a weaker version of your claim, not that the fantasy setting detracts from the story but that the fantasy setting doesn't accomplish anything, because you could have set it in medieval England and gotten the same dynamics around infidelity and legitimacy and so on.

I also disagree with the weaker version. What a fantasy setting buys you here is the ability to pick and choose what to include. If you set it in medieval England you might get someone in the comments who really wants to tell you everything you got wrong about medieval England that you never even mentioned but unfortunately completely breaks your story. More fantasy settings, less pedantry, happier readers and writers alike.

This is what I was saying. That the choice of a fantasy setting gained nothing. This could just as easily have been a story about a famous basketball player at a high school reunion. Someone people are in awe of for their physical gifts. If every element of the story translates directly, without really altering much beyond the wording you use to frame things, then you've done all that work to set up a fantasy setting for nothing. All of the underlying assumptions that you could use fantasy to explore are fundamentally unchanged from a contemporary setting.

Maybe it was too strong a word choice to say it was "working against you," but it is a net loss in terms of effort put in and reward earned.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

All of the underlying assumptions that you could use fantasy to explore are fundamentally unchanged from a contemporary setting.

I know you disagree with the use of infertility as the driving motivation (and so do I) but as written, a key dynamic in the story was that they didn't have fertility care.

It would be weird for a couple to show up to their high school reunion, spot a former classmate turned famous basketball player, and decide on the spot to solve their fertility woes by having a three-way with him.

Maybe you could make them poor in the U.S., or in a less developed country? But if that's the alternative, I too would choose a fantasy setting. Too easy to offend people, too hard to get the details right.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I know you disagree with the use of infertility as the driving motivation (and so do I) but as written, a key dynamic in the story was that they didn't have fertility care.

It would be weird for a couple to show up to their high school reunion, spot a former classmate turned famous basketball player, and decide on the spot to solve their fertility woes by having a three-way with him.

Maybe you could make them poor in the U.S., or in a less developed country? But if that's the alternative, I too would choose a fantasy setting. Too easy to offend people, too hard to get the details right.

I mean, my experience with fertility care (I knew a couple who went through several rounds of IVF) was that it was obscenely expensive. Prohibitively so, if you aren't upper-middle class.



To me, this constitutes being out of reach for enough people that it's just not a viable option to the population at large.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Okay, maybe. I don't really know the cost of fertility care in the US. I was mostly going off an American friend's comment that her IUI was a few hundred dollars.

 

[vagrantx]

I mean, my experience with fertility care (I knew a couple who went through several rounds of IVF) was that it was obscenely expensive. Prohibitively so, if you aren't upper-middle class. ((15-30k USD))

Jesus frickin' christ. I don't have a ball in this game of discussion, but I just had to chime in here.

In Sweden, your first three attempts at IVF are (almost) free. You pay the standard in-patient fee, which is about 10 dollars. (no, not thousand. Ten. The same as a banana.)

If those three attempts don't take, you can go to a private practice, where the price is about 3-4k usd per attempt.

The Mosuo

And thank you for this little tidbit of information. It was a very interesting wiki-article read!

 

[StillStunned]

In Sweden, your first three attempts at IVF are (almost) free. You pay the standard in-patient fee, which is about 10 dollars. (no, not thousand. Ten. The same as a banana.)

Today I learned that bananas are *really* expensive in Sweden.

 

[vagrantx]

Today I learned that bananas are *really* expensive in Sweden.

Today I learned that this crazy cat hasn't taken the time to watch one of the funniest shows of all time! Fix!

 

[AwkwardMD]

Okay, maybe. I don't really know the cost of fertility care in the US. I was mostly going off an American friend's comment that her IUI was a few hundred dollars.

It's probably also worth pointing out that my American bias made me look at (potential) infertility as an insurmountable problem, and thus not a good fit for a light hearted threeway. It's so expensive here, and so that topic triggers a certain response from me that I can't control. It's a part of where I live, and that colors my interpretation in a way that's hard to see until we talk about these things collectively.

Some readers will be like me and take it differently, and some readers are lucky and Swedish and will not. It's hard to fault readers for societal understandings beyond their control, but it does maybe benefit to be aware of how those things might land.

Obviously, a lot has been made in recent years of American Hegemony, and how important we think we are (spoiler, we're not). The way that you get around playing to one side or the other, to get around the readers local interpretations, is by establishing your own cultural norms by having a rich fantasy setting with it's own internal logic. Don't rely on modern cultural norms to do the legwork for you.

Again: this is advice that trends toward strong writing and not necessarily toward erotica. It's certainly possible to do both, but sometimes you have to make decisions about where your priorities are. Sacrifices must be made.

 

[AlexBailey]

It's probably also worth pointing out that my American bias made me look at (potential) infertility as an insurmountable problem, and thus not a good fit for a light hearted threeway. It's so expensive here, and so that topic triggers a certain response from me that I can't control. It's a part of where I live, and that colors my interpretation in a way that's hard to see until we talk about these things collectively.

Some readers will be like me and take it differently, and some readers are lucky and Swedish and will not. It's hard to fault readers for societal understandings beyond their control, but it does maybe benefit to be aware of how those things might land.

Obviously, a lot has been made in recent years of American Hegemony, and how important we think we are (spoiler, we're not). The way that you get around playing to one side or the other, to get around the readers local interpretations, is by establishing your own cultural norms by having a rich fantasy setting with it's own internal logic. Don't rely on modern cultural norms to do the legwork for you.

Again: this is advice that trends toward strong writing and not necessarily toward erotica. It's certainly possible to do both, but sometimes you have to make decisions about where your priorities are. Sacrifices must be made.

Not to get political, but here in the US one state has determined that an embryo is a human life and in doing so has exposed fertility clinics to the mortal responsibility of caring for each embryo as if it were a child.

There are now no invitro fertility services available in Alabama. If this legal ruling goes nation wide the solution in this story may become a much more common way to handle the issue of couples infertility- at least when it’s due to health issues for the male.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I kind of want to write a story where a couple does IVF in Alabama and then gets handed a cooler. "These are your remaining embryos we didn't implant. Please be aware that their destruction is considered homicide. I'm afraid we cannot recommend any storage services."

Or, worse,

"John, what's this urn?"

"Uh, my parents."

"And this cooler?"

"My...siblings, I guess?"

 

[JGittes]

Okay, maybe. I don't really know the cost of fertility care in the US. I was mostly going off an American friend's comment that her IUI was a few hundred dollars.

Two different procedures.

The inexpensive one is the classic 'turkey baster' Intrauterine Insemination, where motile donor sperm is inserted into the uterus at the time of maximum fertilization potential. I've tried it a couple of times in the US (didn't take) and it was not all that expensive. As I recall the cost of donor sperm was greater than the physicians time.

The expensive one is in Vitro Fertilization, which removes an egg, fertilizes it outside the donor's body, and reimplants it back into the donor's uterus.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Don't rely on modern cultural norms to do the legwork for you.

Or if you do, spell those cultural norms out a bit.

I don't go out of my way to spell it out, but I think (some) people who read my contemporary stories set in Australia, would be able to figure out, "Wait, this doesn't quite sound like America, maybe the vibe is different where this writer lives." If it's important to the story, which on occasion it is.

Certainly, if I was to write something that revolves around IVF, I'd do the homework and put in enough references to say, this is how it works in Australia.

 

[Omenainen]

This is the same point I often raise with making cultural references. Name dropping a movie or a song, or a celebrity, or whatever, most likely leaves me out because I’m not in the same cultural environment with any of you. Instead of relying on the reader having the same emotional reaction to, say, a love song, authors would do better describing the reaction in their characters. That’s an opportunity for character building, and ensures all the readers are on the same page.

 

[Bazzle]

This is the same point I often raise with making cultural references. Name dropping a movie or a song, or a celebrity, or whatever, most likely leaves me out because I’m not in the same cultural environment with any of you. Instead of relying on the reader having the same emotional reaction to, say, a love song, authors would do better describing the reaction in their characters. That’s an opportunity for character building, and ensures all the readers are on the same page.

I know I am always in danger of putting in obscure British z list celebs as reference points...which doesn't work.

I tried to put the lyrics of Barbie Girl by Aqua in my 750 word story...no one noticed. Hey ho.

 

[TheseLegs]

Hi, @AwkwardMD. I just wanted to thank you for reading my story and giving your thoughts on it. You've given me a lot to think about, and I do agree with some of your criticism, such as things being to 'easy'. I very much did intend this to be a sort of breaking point for the couple who have been trying for a long time and who are both unhappy and frustrated about it, so my failure in that regard is also well noted. I think my biggest failure here, though, was insufficient explanation. The tropes you mention as being necessary for the story to work are so far from my own beliefs, intentions, and what (I thought) I wrote that they hadn't really occurred to me. I often ask myself what level of world-building detail is necessary for the sex stories that spun off my sci-fi novels and I tended toward bare minimum for the purpose of the plot, but if things are so open to interpretation to allow for yours, the answer is clearly 'more'.

Thanks again.

 

[TheseLegs]

Dear @joy_of_cooking

Thank you for reading, and your comments. Your specificity was very helpful and you also gave me a lot to think about.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Hi, @AwkwardMD. I just wanted to thank you for reading my story and giving your thoughts on it. You've given me a lot to think about, and I do agree with some of your criticism, such as things being to 'easy'. I very much did intend this to be a sort of breaking point for the couple who have been trying for a long time and who are both unhappy and frustrated about it, so my failure in that regard is also well noted. I think my biggest failure here, though, was insufficient explanation. The tropes you mention as being necessary for the story to work are so far from my own beliefs, intentions, and what (I thought) I wrote that they hadn't really occurred to me. I often ask myself what level of world-building detail is necessary for the sex stories that spun off my sci-fi novels and I tended toward bare minimum for the purpose of the plot, but if things are so open to interpretation to allow for yours, the answer is clearly 'more'.

Thanks again.

A couple of addendums:

For one thing, it seems like what you've written are a related series of standalone stories. There are some drawbacks to this, because it means that any subtle worldbuilding you did over there does not translate for readers over here. It definitely doesn't translate for me, who is just reading the one that you asked about.

Standalones tend to do better, on the whole, on Lit, over sequentially chaptered stories. Those have steep drop offs in reader retention over subsequent chapters, and your goal was to make the whole thing as accessible as possible.

It's not for us to tell you what the best approach is (although I will tell you that now, with experience, I tend toward writing longer, singular works that encompass everything I have to say on a particular story). You are an author in your own right, and you have the capacity to define what your art looks like.

The other thing is that many authors on Lit are perfectly comfortable with a wide variety of interpretations among their readers. They feel like readers can and should be able to reach whatever conclusions they want, and that is outside the authors purview. This concept is known as The Death Of The Author.

That's not us. We believe that we can and should make use of our skillsets to get across the story we want, being purposeful, but our way is not the only way. The more you grow, the more you'll find your groove.