The Official (Most likely) 2024 Literotica April Fool's Day Contest Support Thread!!!

I'll take a look at your Fenchurch Chronicles.
If you read Enchantress, Story #5 is not numbered, it's simply called Happy Hogswatch! and was an entry for the Winter Holiday contest.
Thanks Duleigh: I think any further discussion on this would be better as a DM unless you think otherwise. I must admit my style is probably a bit 'breathless' and a better author would have used more words and paced the narrative, but I'm not minded to do a rewrite to do that.
 
Fooling Priory has been published today in the I/T category for my entry.

I actually wrote two different stories to enter, and this felt like the better one. I've been away from home for a while so haven't had time to really write much, and I don't feel like this is my best work, but we'll see how the responses go. I will probably publish the other in due course. But I'd rather enter something than nothing!
 
Wow, my entry 'To Fool a Nerd and a Geek' has been published already! 2 hours but already 379 reads :) , 8/4.75 😁 and two favourites 😎, but no comments 😐!
I don't expect to win, but that initial reaction feels likes winning to me 😀. Cue the Unibombers!
 
At this rate, my contribution - Midvinterblot - is unlikely to accumulate enough votes to qualify as a proper entry. Guess that's what I get for uploading it about two weeks after the start of the competition period, plus choosing the Erotic Horror category, plus making it rather long and abnormally strange. Still glad that I finished it, of course, as I can now move on to other creations that I've been eager to dive into properly. But a valuable lesson; If you're picking one of the least popular categories, AND you're making a strange tale with a stranger title, probably try to have it finished as the competition starts already - on the first possible upload date! :oops:
 
At this rate, my contribution - Midvinterblot - is unlikely to accumulate enough votes to qualify as a proper entry. Guess that's what I get for uploading it about two weeks after the start of the competition period, plus choosing the Erotic Horror category, plus making it rather long and abnormally strange. Still glad that I finished it, of course, as I can now move on to other creations that I've been eager to dive into properly. But a valuable lesson; If you're picking one of the least popular categories, AND you're making a strange tale with a stranger title, probably try to have it finished as the competition starts already - on the first possible upload date! :oops:
Devinter, don't give up hope, 🤞 my story only went live five hours ago and has 24 votes, but knowing my luck it will stick at that till March 23rd 😉.
 
@Devinter - the erotic horror category is tough. Two of my contest stories are Erotic Horror and readership has been sparse even thought one was the best erotic horror story of 2022. The other did quite well in the Halloween contest but readership is sparce people just don't touch erotic horror. How can erotic horror fail on Halloween???
 
My one venture into Erotic Horror shows up in the category's Top Stories as scoring 4.71 from 35 votes. In my dashboard, it's 4.87 from 31 votes. I know that the lists lag behind the actual data, but it's been that way for months.

But yes, I'd probably not submit EH for a contest. I'm working on a SF/F for the Winter Holidays contest, and I don't expect to get the required 25 votes.

@Devinter the good news is that you're still on the New Stories list, and quite high up too. :)
 
I entered a SF/F story for the winter holidays, Happy Hogswatch! I'm really proud of that story, it truly captures the spirit of Terry Pratchett with a few things that I added. I never worked so hard on a story in my life. It still has a good score, not winning good but good. But the readership was low, I barely made the 25 votes in time for the final judging.
 
@Devinter - the erotic horror category is tough. Two of my contest stories are Erotic Horror and readership has been sparse even thought one was the best erotic horror story of 2022. The other did quite well in the Halloween contest but readership is sparce people just don't touch erotic horror. How can erotic horror fail on Halloween???

Wow. It doesn't even strike gold for Halloween? That saddens me.

@Devinter the good news is that you're still on the New Stories list, and quite high up too. :)

That gives me some sliver of hope, I suppose. But it has been up for several days and has just over 2k views and 2 comments. Surprisingly - and interestingly - it is the story that has earned me the most private Feedback in the shortest amount of time, however. Got multiple emails in record time (7!) of people asking me if certain aspects of the story meant what they thought it meant. So that was fun. ☺️ I should probably have ended with a short "This story is for a contest so please leave a vote" line at the end. That might have solved my problem.
 
Wow. It doesn't even strike gold for Halloween? That saddens me.
Tore me up too! I usually stick with Romance and Erotic Couplings. Most of my stories are about committed couples so that seems to strike a cord with my readers
"This story is for a contest so please leave a vote"
It cannot hurt to try. I'm not sure if it ever garnered anything when I tried it. I doubt that trolls do anything more than flip to the last page so they can toss their bombs.
 
Whoops, I was going to post here when my story went up and I totally spaced. It's called "In The Box." It's a loving wives story told from the perspective of a cop with some pretty arch views towards gender roles. Naturally, he gets what's coming to him when he's forced to observe his own wife being treated with the kind of sexual attention she wants from him that he would never give.

In-universe, the prank is on the wife, who is brought into the interrogation room under the impression that she's in some kind of trouble. In a more meta sense, the prank is on the audience. Any time a story with a cuckolding theme goes up in loving wives, there are people who will seek it out specifically because it upsets them. I wrote this character as if he were one of those people, with the way he believes men should behave and his view of marriage as a sort of ownership. I figured, let the hit dogs holler.

Anyway, this isn't part of the story, but I choose to believe that the wife overcomes the brainwashing of 1950s style marriage and leaves her husband. He's no good. Writing him was a nasty piece of work, so I might have to flip it around and do something sweet for my next project. That'll probably be for the Geek Pride event.
 
Even if you don't enter, you can still vote.
It’s not a level playing field. Too many shenanigans around comp entry voting. It’s like the normal crap on steroids. Another reason to avoid them, they seem to bring out the worst in people.
Ask @Devinter whether he needs a hand.
I’m sure he’d love a hand, the question is where?

Emily
 
Not gonna participate. No good ideas and I have comp fatigue.

Good luck to those who submit something 😊.

Emily
Not a big field but this contest attracts more trolls than stories. It looks like they all had to go build a new Alt so they could take a second pass at us.
 
Emily - Re-Trollicide: I'm sure AI* could do something. Whilst people are entilted to their views I had (a normal) story with 16 votes go from HOT to COLD due to a single 1 vote (none of the others had from my analysis been below 3) so it could be argued that Anonomous votes out of the story's normal range (after 10 votes) could be culled. i.e. if previous votes had ranged from 3 to 5 a 1 is odd and similarly if votes are 1 to 3 a 5 is also odd. [Even all 4/5 would query 2 and 1/2 would query 4] (I don't doubt that along with UniBombers, there are those who would log out to drop a 5 on their struggling story).
*statistical machine learning, artificial but not intelligent
 
Emily - Re-Trollicide: I'm sure AI* could do something. Whilst people are entilted to their views I had (a normal) story with 16 votes go from HOT to COLD due to a single 1 vote (none of the others had from my analysis been below 3) so it could be argued that Anonomous votes out of the story's normal range (after 10 votes) could be culled. i.e. if previous votes had ranged from 3 to 5 a 1 is odd and similarly if votes are 1 to 3 a 5 is also odd. [Even all 4/5 would query 2 and 1/2 would query 4] (I don't doubt that along with UniBombers, there are those who would log out to drop a 5 on their struggling story).
*statistical machine learning, artificial but not intelligent
It happens to all but a select few. I guess some writers have enough fans to swamp the trolls, or they have managed to never offend anyone at all and so don’t attract their ire.

The rest of us? I was browsing a thread that came up as a suggestion. It was from - I think - 2018, long before I was here. And people were complaining about exactly the same things. Without voting being tied to an account and there being penalties for malicious actions, it will always be open to abuse.

I’d like to see an end to anonymous voting and the author being notified about votes and their scores - e.g. “LoneMasturbator gave your story a 4” - like you get notified about favorites or comments. A control panel showing data about voting would also be cool. But it won’t happen.

Nothing will change, so best to just make peace with it. Some people are assholes, that’s just life. Thankfully most aren’t.

Emily
 
The rest of us? I was browsing a thread that came up as a suggestion. It was from - I think - 2018, long before I was here. And people were complaining about exactly the same things. Without voting being tied to an account and there being penalties for malicious actions, it will always be open to abuse.
It was like that in 2006 when I posted my first story. It kind of drove me away. I returned in 2008 and it was just as bad.
There's no way to fumigate the internet from the infestation of trolls but I like the idea of anonymous votes and author notification.

Until then all we can do is wait until the 29th when Laurel gets her vote.
 
AARRRGGHHH!!!

I added a twist to the end of my I/T story, which hasn't been widely accepted and I think has impacted my overall score.

At 2am I figured out what I should have done to please the I/T crowd. Duleigh, can you please ask the Enchantress to wind back time so I can make the edit? Thanks.
 
AARRRGGHHH!!!

I added a twist to the end of my I/T story, which hasn't been widely accepted and I think has impacted my overall score.

At 2am I figured out what I should have done to please the I/T crowd. Duleigh, can you please ask the Enchantress to wind back time so I can make the edit? Thanks.
I would but then the time trolls will be waiting. We are surrounded and under attack.
 
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