Thoughts on NoTalentHack's essay "Loving Loving Wives"

[joy_of_cooking]

Nice job @NoTalentHack.

I'm hardly the most challenging audience for your essay. I don't read LW. I wouldn't have the knowledge to notice if you get things wrong.

But in another way I'm the perfect audience for your essay. I thought it was a cesspool of unexamined misogyny and emotionally stunted revenge fantasies and outright stupidity. I had no interest in that category...and now I do.

You told me a compelling story about LW and its readers, and an enticing one. Now I want to write an LW story!

Oh, but there's the rub. You see, I don't know how to write a LW story in the style you describe, a story built on the emotional experience of love and betrayal and loss and longing and anger. These aren't things I know about.

Luckily for me, you've included a reading list. So I guess I'll be working my way through those stories, and then we'll see if I'm feeling up to it.

The prospect of real feedback from readers is quite the lure, as I think you knew it would be.

Here's a link for anyone who hasn't seen it yet: Loving Loving Wives

 

[TheRedChamber]

As I commented, there's nothing there particularly surprising for anyone who reader NTH's posts on AH regularly, but it certainly is nice to have a definitive and persuasive version of the philosophy in essay form.

Who knows? I may even venture back into LW again myself one day, even though I no longer need to to complete my 'write one story in every category' goal.

 

[AchtungNight]

Never again for me. Though I might still write a similar themed story in another category.

 

[SimonDoom]

It's an excellent essay. I highly recommend it. And I say that even though my orientation toward this category differs from his. I have no interest in stories that depict marital infidelity in a dramatic, somber way, whether they are "reconciliation at all cost" stories or "revenge against the cheating wife" stories. I like "hot wife" stories, the kinds of stories that the category originally was meant for but that so many current LW readers dismiss as "cuck shit."

Too often, the discussions in this forum about kinks and categories boil down to people doing nothing more than standing on their biases and their own personally driven narratives and insisting upon the wrongness of anyone who doesn't share their biases. I find those discussions to be extremely tedious, and it's annoying how fact-free they are. NTH has made an earnest and good-faith effort to dive into the details and history of this category and present it in a reasonably dispassionate, but positive, way. At the end of the essay, he's linked to recommended stories that illustrate what he's writing about.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Never again for me. Though I might still write a similar themed story in another category.

Hey, like I said in the essay, it ain’t for everyone. But you gave it a good faith try, and that’s awesome.

 

[EroticCupcake]

Will definitely check it out.

 

[NoTalentHack]

It's an excellent essay. I highly recommend it. And I say that even though my orientation toward this category differs from his. I have no interest in stories that depict marital infidelity in a dramatic, somber way, whether they are "reconciliation at all cost" stories or "revenge against the cheating wife" stories. I like "hot wife" stories, the kinds of stories that the category originally was meant for but that so many current LW readers dismiss as "cuck shit."

Too often, the discussions in this forum about kinks and categories boil down to people doing nothing more than standing on their biases and their own personally driven narratives and insisting upon the wrongness of anyone who doesn't share their biases. I find those discussions to be extremely tedious, and it's annoying how fact-free they are. NTH has made an earnest and good-faith effort to dive into the details and history of this category and present it in a reasonably dispassionate, but positive, way. At the end of the essay, he's linked to recommended stories that illustrate what he's writing about.

Thank you! One thing to be clear about, though, is that not all of those are the type of thing I was talking about. A few could be considered burns, of sorts, although not of the violent kind, but even those are more focused on the "picking himself and dusting himself off" aspect more than anything. And the readers in the comments are posting some good ones, too, including ones I'd never read before from writers who only ever put one thing out there.

Oh, and for once, I'll actually be responding in the comments to questions people are asking, so there will be some minor codas.

 

[Fatdog25]

I follow NTH for his work outside of LW. I read the essay because I'm relatively new here. I was looking for a basic understanding of the category and I believe that is what he delivered.

As I said in my comment, it's not my kink. Now that he's cleared that up, I'll stick to writing my HEA stories.

It did receive 5 ️ from me. Very well thought out essay.

 

[Constories]

Oh, but there's the rub. You see, I don't know how to write a LW story in the style you describe, a story built on the emotional experience of love and betrayal and loss and longing and anger. These aren't things I know about.

I'd argue that knowing about those things intimately isn't required.

I wrote Range Cold having never been cheated on, (and having never cheated myself), and while not everyone liked it, it was undeniably popular.

You said you don't know about the emotional experience of love, betrayal, loss, longing, and anger... But I don't believe you.

You obviously don't know them in the context of your marriage, (thank goodness) but I'm sure you've loved before. You've been betrayed at some point. You've been angry and you've longed for things... and I'm sure you've experienced loss too.

I know this because you're human. We've all had these experiences (or else we've been HUGELY sheltered to a terrifying degree)

Just take what you already know, and extrapolate it to a marriage. How would you feel IF your wife cheated? You may not know for sure, but I bet you have some pretty good ideas.

I have never been cheated on by a husband/boyfriend or whatever... But Elizabeth was. And she figured out what that meant for her, and what she was going to do about it.

---

Thanks again for the shout out, @NoTalentHack

 

[demander]

I really never new about this writer's forum. I put out stories and see what happens. I have this comment. It's fun to publish in LW. But I write the stories mostly for me. The LW ratings and comments are pretty predictable. And they're fun to read, mostly. However, they shouldn't be taken too seriously. D

 

[SimonDoom]

Thank you! One thing to be clear about, though, is that not all of those are the type of thing I was talking about. A few could be considered burns, of sorts, although not of the violent kind, but even those are more focused on the "picking himself and dusting himself off" aspect more than anything.

I appreciate that, and I didn't mean to oversimplify your description of the LW landscape. I think you do a very good job of describing its complexity, and its evolution.

I don't find the dramatic LW stories at all interesting. That's not a moral judgment; it's just a matter of personal taste. The stories leave me flat. But as you describe very well, they hit a nerve with many readers, and there's no group of readers in all of Literotica that is more engaged or interactive as this group, and they can't all just be written off as "incels."

 

[Rob_Royale]

Very well done, but could have been made more concise.
My first foray into the category was well received but my next one will not be I'm sure.

 

[AG31]

Here's a link for anyone who hasn't seen it yet: Loving Loving Wives

Thanks for posting this!!

 

[MillieDynamite]

The article was well thought out, well written, and explains quite a bit about the swimming hole in question. I'm still hesitant to dip my toe into the waters. It's like the old maps with areas marked, There be Monsters Here.

 

[Constories]

The article was well thought out, well written, and explains quite a bit about the swimming hole in question. I'm still hesitant to dip my toe into the waters. It's like the old maps with areas marked, There be Monsters Here.

I was expecting a harsh reaction too, but I didn't get one! (Basically) everyone was really nice, with only a handful of meanness

 

[madelinemasoch]

Quoting from the essay:

6. The readers who stick around start to look for similar stories, but they don't really find them anywhere else, so Literotica and Loving Wives it is! Hey... When did all these cuck stories start showing up here? Get the fuck out of our category!

The irony: it wasn't their category in the first place. The essay says so:

LW was originally intended as a place for folks indulging in an infidelity kink, in particular a female infidelity kink. Historically, if the focus was more on the group sex aspect, for example, and some of the participants happened to be married women, it would probably do better in Group Sex. However, if the focus was instead on one of the characters being a married woman and how she was doing all these things a married woman shouldn't, it did better in Loving Wives.

Reminds me of a certain Western imperialist government in the Middle East.

Also quoting from the essay:

Meanwhile, the guys wanting to read the stories that show them a world where the husband's divorce is everything their real world one wasn't are angry that people are posting stories that seem almost designed to trigger them, and they drop one star ratings all over those stories. This is especially true in the case of forced cuckolding stories, which often include threats of children being taken away, financial ruination, and enforced chastity, and which read like a PTSD nightmare to these guys. This emotional reaction helps to explain, if not excuse, the number of commenters who wander into other sections of the site and 1-bomb stories with even a hint of infidelity and leave comments like "1* cuck shit."

Point taken. However, my stories wouldn't qualify as "forced cuckolding" according to this. My femdom characters have no need to use emotional blackmail or any other type of blackmail to enforce their authority. Eleanor doesn't even use chastity cages, and I've never written a story where there's kids to be taken away. Even in the parts of CC where there are chastity cages, there isn't a threat that "you have to wear it and put up with being a cuckold or else you're breaking up." It's more like, "because I, a beautiful woman, said so." The triggers listed aren't used in my stories, and they still get 1-bombed. They also are not written to trigger anyone's genuine trauma responses. I wouldn't do that...

But that's the thing: they find an audience, but not necessarily a big one. The larger community will pooh pooh the unwelcome content, dragging down the rating, no matter how technically skilled it might be.

Learned this one first hand with Dark Love.

There is no more demanding section on the site, and I mean that both in terms of your craft and the readers' expectations. You will get better if you write there, or you'll get eaten alive. Hell, you'll still get eaten alive, but if they see you not improving as a writer over time, or worse, declining? Oh, they'll definitely let you know.

They might let NoTalentHack know, if that should ever happen to him, because they really like him. But someone like me? The LW commenters didn't really seem to give me the time of day when I posted there. One commenter said it was hard to follow and they gave up after a Lit page and a half, which is right before the imagery in the story gets really macabre and vibey. We've discussed the gross-out part of that story, which also contributed to this, but goddamn, I just don't think those readers trust me enough to give me an honest and well-thought out constructive comment, even one that was critical. I don't give them the sauce they expect when they go to the category. Somebody else does, so they can just go over there, but you'd think an open mind would be somewhere to be found... I don't know if these men really care about women being cheated on, but that's literally happening to Sabrina in Dark Love, so you'd think at least some of them could empathize with her sadness, anxiety, and insecurity, but those who commented didn't read that far into the story to notice. Point being, I don't always treat cheating like a fetish.

I guess I say all this to say that the quality of the comments you get in LW appears to depend in large part upon the content that you choose to include in your story. This wasn't directly stated in the essay, but the evidence is NTH's comments section and my own, compared to each other. It's only evidence of the above statement. I don't think this is evidence that either one of us is a better writer than the other.

Or you can drop them in Loving Wives and get told everything wrong and right about what you've made, all the way from characterization and plot on down to grammar and spelling.

Readers don't always give you a fair shake in LW. There's no way I'm some fantastic outlier in this. I've seen a lack of constructive feedback in other people's comments sections there, too. This just simply is not as sure a guarantee as the essay implies.

And bear in mind, I didn't use hard cuckolding according to the essay's definition. It isn't soft either. Medium cuckolding? There's no blackmail in my writings. There's no "you have to stay and be a cuckold or else." Not in my LW writings, at all. The closest I went to this is Finn and Mason's failed escape attempt, which ultimately failed because they got on their knees for the femdom and not because they didn't make it to the door. Even after Mason got kneed in the balls, he could've distracted her, gained his bearings, and booked it out the door. But he didn't. In a deceptive way, I've displayed consensual submission as "forced." I guess I'm just some kinda pervert.

But yeah, nobody's gonna get their kids taken away or their finances ruined or their chastity cage keys broken off on the inside of the cage in my stories. Definitely not in LW. The response stays the same, though. Am I an edge case? It's entirely plausible, but I doubt I'm the only one.

 

[yowser]

A thoughtful discussion, nicely done. LW certainly is the oddest piece of real estate here, and the buyers either know exactly what they want (and hate everything else) or are game and just overwhelmed by the rest of the scramble at the open house.

I have enjoyed writing there (my first effort was accidental, a GS piece that Laurel put in LW - the wife involved was off-screen and completely missing, but I suppose had enough of a role for the decision - this of course puzzled me [and one commenter said 'wrong category, you dolt'] but the other well-rehashed facets of LW proved handy - lots of readers if not great scores).

By far my largest views/comments,etc. in my 84 stories come from one LW series, so I am grateful for that.

I would only add that for whatever reason, a fair percentage of LW readership (or maybe just the most vocal) have the greatest difficulty with the fact/fiction divide. Maybe I should take it as a compliment that I made 'realistic" characters, but one of mine caught all sorts of abuse for folks with this difficulty. I was glad to get a couple counter-commenters who said:

'Loosen up guys. It's just a story and a damn good one at that. Nobody's real wife got fucked. If you're so damn moral, what are you doing on a porn site? 5*'

and

'ps...my sympathies for the commenter who can't separate erotic fiction from reality. Lighten up, Buddie.'

And of course that is something else you have to deal with if you want to post there. Some will take your tale literally. (Another commenter on my big story had trashed me as a 'vile, disgusting, cheating slut of a whore wife' (I paraphrase, and cannot get the exact wording since the comment got deleted, not by me) but then came back later with 'Woops! Just checked your profile. Sorry about the "Lady"

At least it demonstrated to me that as a male writer, I could create a convincing first person POV female 'voice.'

Thanks for this.

 

[madelinemasoch]

I would only add that for whatever reason, a fair percentage of LW readership (or maybe just the most vocal) have the greatest difficulty with the fact/fiction divide

And of course that is something else you have to deal with if you want to post there. Some will take your tale literally. (Another commenter on my big story had trashed me as a 'vile, disgusting, cheating slut of a whore wife' (I paraphrase, and cannot get the exact wording since the comment got deleted, not by me) but then came back later with 'Woops! Just checked your profile. Sorry about the "Lady"

I can sympathize, and not even within the bounds of LW. For whatever reason commenters and even fellow forum members are very quick to cast me as my FMC. Or at least they presume I as an author endorse all of her actions as morally righteous (I don't). It's like they're deliberately reading to try to discern authorial intent (while entirely missing the mark) or to diagnose me with a mental illness.

If you pay attention to Whackdoodle and his ilk in my comments section, you'd think not only my FMC but me in real life are hateful, racist, misandrist, narcissistic, psychopathic, sadistic, unhinged, deranged, rapist-terrorist-murderers in the making.

 

[intim8]

Great article. Not a category I've ever delved into, either as a reader or writer, but I've heard the horror stories.

It got me thinking though. I just finished a near-final draft story, and I'm trying to figure out a category for it, since it could be any of several. A couple thing's he hit in the article fit it though, one in particular way too well. But still, it doesn't fit what it seems like the category should be. On the gripping hand, one of the main points of the article was that the category isn't what it seems like it should be.

 

[intim8]

Oh, and for once, I'll actually be responding in the comments to questions people are asking, so there will be some minor codas

One of the things I hate most about this site is how you can't do comment threads on stories, can't do replies, and don't get notified if someone else comments. Unless I'm missing something.

 

[Constories]

I guess I say all this to say that the quality of the comments you get in LW appears to depend in large part upon the content that you choose to include in your story. This wasn't directly stated in the essay, but the evidence is NTH's comments section and my own, compared to each other. It's only evidence of the above statement. I don't think this is evidence that either one of us is a better writer than the other.

Readers don't always give you a fair shake in LW. There's no way I'm some fantastic outlier in this. I've seen a lack of constructive feedback in other people's comments sections there, too. This just simply is not as sure a guarantee as the essay implies.

I'm actually super confused.

A quick glance at your bibliography page showed me that basically all your stories were in BDSM. Am I missing something? Did they get moved after the fact?

 

[madelinemasoch]

I'm actually super confused.

A quick glance at your bibliography page showed me that basically all your stories were in BDSM. Am I missing something? Did they get moved after the fact?

In that paragraph I'm referring to my sole LW submission, Dark Love.

I apologize the original post may be confusing because I also reference the comments on my BDSM stuff. But for that comparison, Dark Love is all you need.

 

[NoTalentHack]

~~~

Sorry, I originally did a quote post, but I didn't want to take it all point by point.

What I will say is that you have one post in LW, and you admit that you put it there specifically to tweak their noses. As you rightly pointed out above, that's a lesson learned. I mean, I didn't even make it a page in because of the content, like you said; it was--and I know it's your fetish, so this is purely opinion--incredibly gross to me, and I expect to most folks that aren't into scat. Hell, you even included "Fag cuck shit" in the intro, specifically to piss people off.

Of course the readers in there weren't going to engage honestly with your work if you're not engaging honestly with them. Why would they? Beyond that, your story got less than 6K views in a month, because I doubt anyone who wasn't either into your fetish or actively hatereading it made it through that opening part. You didn't get honest criticism because of the content because no one (or almost no one) was reading the content.

Your complaints about how you were mistreated in your sole story in LW read like someone saying, "No one asked me to dance, and all because I screamed 'Fuck off and die!' at everyone who approached me. How unfair!"

From other recent stories with a "cuckolding" tag in LW:

Love, love, love this story! Your descriptions are exquisite, and the potential entanglements going forward are massive! While I fully appreciate the voyeur storyline, I’m hoping for some great displeasure and confrontations moving forward! Oh, and I have not forgotten about the green dress, and the stain that she had to have removed from it! A very easy 5* from me! Thanks for writing!

I hope you will not allow Gael to win. Could you please let us know how many chapter's are planned? Looking forward to the conclusion!

Nice little story, definitely should be more adventures for those two. Only one thing, was her name Jennifer or Sarah?

The author has created an incredible character in Katie, a woman almost instinctively knows how to control men with her brain and amazing body to maximize her sexual pleasure. She has organized and managed her growing stable of lovers to keep them in a state of lustful obedience, each eager for their next chance to have sex with her. Can't wait for the next chapter in this amazing slut's story.

You warned us that this was a cuckold story that could be from your imagination so I'll take a guess that this was mostly imagination but sadly with too much to left to the imagination. If the kinky husband gave his sexy wife a hall pass he would want to give and get the details of his wife's adventure and those details were left out. I prefer to go by the adage of The Devil is in the Details.

It's not a problem with LW. It's a problem with, specifically, your story. And to be even more specific, for your disdain for the readers in the category. I look forward to seeing your next story that goes in there, since you've said you're going to be submitting one in the future. I still expect it to do poorly because you're including too many kinks, but I also expect it will get a fair shake. Not a fairer shake; a fair one. Because your first one got as fair a shake as it deserved, given that it all but spit in the reader's face for most of the first page.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Of course the readers in there weren't going to engage honestly with your work if you're not engaging honestly with them. Why would they?

Dude, it's really not that hard to figure out what I'm all about even based on that story alone. How is that not honest engagement? I didn't trick anybody–the tags are all there. I didn't begin with a lead that makes the reader think the story is gonna be something else. I deliberately began in the most disturbing way possible. If anything, I'm being excessively honest!

Beyond that, your story got less than 6K views in a month, because I doubt anyone who wasn't either into your fetish or actively hatereading it made it through that opening part. You didn't get honest criticism because of the content because no one (or almost no one) was reading the content.

If they didn't make it through the opening, it wasn't because of anything except the content. I thought we agreed on that. I don't see why you can't acknowledge the point that the quality of the comments you get in LW appears to depend in large part upon the content that you choose to include in your story, especially considering these are content choices that you don't make as a writer. It wouldn't be an L for you to take if you conceded that point to me. I'm not talking in broad genre strokes: I'm not saying every cuckold story in LW doesn't get insightful comments. I'm talking about specific content choices, akin to the ones you designated as hard cuckolding in the essay, and the other ones I used in DL.

Your complaints about how you were mistreated in your sole story in LW read like someone saying, "No one asked me to dance, and all because I screamed 'Fuck off and die!' at everyone who approached me. How unfair!"

That's a little bit of an extreme comparison when it's simply not the case that nobody liked it. Oneagainst said they liked it. Even you basically said that the tone of my voice when I screamed it was nice, when you said before that the technical skill wasn't lacking.

It's not a problem with LW. It's a problem with, specifically, your story. And to be even more specific, for your disdain for the readers in the category. I look forward to seeing your next story that goes in there, since you've said you're going to be submitting one in the future. I still expect it to do poorly because you're including too many kinks, but I also expect it will get a fair shake. Not a fairer shake; a fair one. Because your first one got as fair a shake as it deserved, given that it all but spit in the reader's face for most of the first page.

The statement I made had both factors involved, the commenting readership and the content of the story, in relation to each other. You'd rather place all of the weight on the latter factor. Here's the thing: I didn't start this fire; I didn't make the readership the way they are. Their life experiences which I am not privy to did. I didn't invite them to leave hate comments... if anything, what I did with that first section was invite them to leave me alone if they didn't like it, and click away. I didn't write the entire thing to spit in anyone's face. It wasn't even an issue for everyone.

All in all, it seems like you're actually agreeing with what I said in that last sentence. You're just using different words to describe how it works: you make certain content choices, you miss out on good comments.

And no, I don't have a scat kink. I'm just blessed with low disgust sensitivity, and it's the most blatant way to portray dominance possible.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I stand by what I said. You put stuff that belongs in trump categories outside of a trump category and got a bad reaction. That's completely missing the point of what I said in the essay, to the point where it almost seems willful.

If you write about relationship drama, or sharing, or swapping or, yes, cuck stuff, you'll get a fair shake. Not a good score, necessarily, but a fair shake. And if you put incest, or scat, or gay male, or any of the other trump category stuff, you'll still get a fair shake, even if it seems unfair to you. It's a fair shake, because you'll get the reception that anyone, no matter how well they write, would get if they put trump category stuff in non-trump categories. It's no different than if you put a rape scene (even one of the site-approved type) in Romance; you've chosen to put something in there that's absolutely going to turn most readers of the category off, and you get to take your lumps.

Your next story, the one where you were trying to decide where to put it and chose Loving Wives, the one that is about "interracial BBC femdom cuckoldry feminization?" There are at least two, maybe three other categories it would do better in, but you don't want to hear the word "Fetish" as though it's a bad thing. At the very least, it would probably be right at home in interracial. Instead, you're going to put it in LW, even though it's chock full of kinks beyond cuckoldry, and it's probably going to get pasted, and you'll be back in here saying how awful LW is when it's no. It's just that you keep putting extreme stories where they don't belong.

I don't care if BNWO is "a popular porn genre on the internet," although I doubt that it's quite as popular as you think that is; that screams "echo chamber fallacy" to me. However, it's not a popular genre on this site outside of Interracial and (maybe) Fetish, but you're still trying to shove it in a genre that doesn't want it. And that even goes for people that are into plain Jane cuckoldry, or even BBC cuckoldry; they don't want ti there, either. You're simultaneously saying, "fuck what you like," and "why doesn't anyone get what I'm going for?"

Meet your readers where they want to be met. That place, at least for the stories you've written so far, is not in LW. I've written Incest; I wouldn't drop an incest story in LW, except as a villain plot, because even in the case where the reader likes incest stories, they don't want them in their LW stories. Same thing with NC/R; it's good for villain plots in there, and that's about it. I've written SF/F; I wouldn't drop a lightsaber duel in LW. I've written Anal, but it's clear that it's not very popular in there, either, so I only include it when I have a good reason to.

Your fetishes are fetishes, no matter how much you personally like them. I like things that I don't put in stories in LW, because they don't belong there. You should learn the same restraint, instead of treating it as though it's some massive injustice and/or that it invalidates the original point of what I wrote.

I'm not taking an L, because there's no L to take. I'm talking about chess, and then you're complaining that you can't draw a straight flush, so obviously the game is rigged.