Weird stuff you've researched?

[Erozetta]

Maybe it's been asked before, but what weird stuff had you researched when writing a story?

My latest story delves into modern witchcraft, beekeeping and making fudge, things I knew nothing about and had to research for weeks. It occurs to me I've looked into a lot of odd stuff for stories, none of which I ever expected to. An incomplete list:

Gypsum processing
Laryngitis
Demon summoning rituals
Jewelry-making
Living homeless
Compersion
Moose mating habits
Lobster suppers in tourist towns
Hypothermia
Dissociative identity disorder
Parrot rescue centers
The banjo and famous banjo artists
Hippie culture and lingo
Old and new methods of stealing cars
Chainsaw mills and log cabin construction
How to clean fish

What are some odd things you've researched for your stories?

You just mentioned three of my favorite things as being in one story. I'm gonna need a link.

And I've italicized the things on your list I have experience with.


Rabbit holes I've fallen down:

• Serial killers - methodology, common traits, typical mistakes, patterns, etc.
• Candiru (I suggest not googling it if you don't already know what it is.)
• Decomposition rates at various temperatures and the insect colonies at different rates of decay/different geographic areas.
• FBI procedures around tracking/interacting with serial killers.
• Force required to penetrate the skin with a blunted knife.
• Effects of a gunshot at very close range (such as the gun going off right by the ear.)
• Wolf mating habits.
• Lakes
• Waterfalls
• Hot springs
• Herbs and plants that can be used to kill someone
• Drugs - everything I could find, particularly combinations that often result in a bad experience.
• Vampire myths
• Theology
• Sewing pattern making (not great at this yet, but story research led to a hobby.)
• Soap making (same, also led to a hobby.)
• Spiders
• Snakes
• Venom collection
• Butterflies and why/how people collect them
• Demons and angels
• Fantasy creatures
• D&D
• Painting - particularly watercolors
• Various mental health issues adjacent to my own, looking for overlap and similarities to play off of.

Not all of these were for erotica, but the majority were.

 

[iwatchus]

I was looking up renaissance depictions of hell yesterday afternoon for my WIP. Not that weird I guess, but not my usual afternoon on line either.

 

[SyleusSnow]

You just mentioned three of my favorite things as being in one story. I'm gonna need a link.

It's my latest story: Bee Witched.

 

[Erozetta]

It's my latest story: Bee Witched.

Bookmarked.

Might take me a bit to get to it, as I have a few projects going, but it's definitely high up on my interest list.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

• Gang tattoos.
• Blood splatter forensics.
• Biohacking.
• Cybernetic prosthesis.
• The history of crucifixion.
• Kabbalah.
• Tarot reading.
• Different zodiacs around cultures.
• History of the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy.
• Usual xploits from vulnerable OSs (had a Cyberpunk story that relied upon a worldwide crisis due to the world having one OS for everything, which ended up being harsh in hindsight with the smarteverything).
• Fake dental braces.
• The sexual anatomy and breeding of canines (what started as werewolf erotica ended up being a very interesting rabbit hole that made me understand why so many people are interested in crossing dog breeds).
• Cockfighting.
• Common sayings and swears in Russian (which in retrospect feels a bit redundant).
• Aphelion.
• Polaris.
• Different types of ships.
• Ranks among pirate crews.
• Cryptography.
• How to breed chickens.

That's all I can remember now. Most went to police procedurals and Cyberpunk stories. I don't recall using any of this for my published erotica.

 

[SyleusSnow]

I was looking up renaissance depictions of hell yesterday afternoon for my WIP. Not that weird I guess, but not my usual afternoon on line either.

Bosch? Giotto? Botticelli's map of hell?

I could never quite get through Dante's Inferno. Instead, I learned about that version of Hell through Niven and Pournelle's Inferno.. a science fiction writer winds up in an updated Dante's hell.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

19th-century varnishes

Not to kink shame, but I'm almost afraid to ask how this could possibly be applicable to a porn story

Look, if you can't appreciate the allure of varnish, that's on you.

The story revolved around art forgery. Some painters loved varnishing because they felt it saturated the hues. Varnishes from the 19th century often contained sugar. Sugar attracted flies. When flies would land to feed, they'd leave behind droppings. Analysis of the droppings helped to determine whether the painting in the story was genuine.

 

[Gamblnluck]

For just a few paragraphs, I had to watch videos of shrimp boats. Little details helped the story. Like how the outriggers are stuck in an upright position on the way out the channel and the boat tends to rock, then lowered to increase stability.

In another story, I had Indian characters. I wound up doing a lot of reading about some of the jewelry worn. And what they call their transgender population etc.

Makes it a little fun to add a little realism into the story.

 

[RyanCastle9]

- the importance of prepositional verbs in Lugandan
- commonly confused aspects of statistical analysis
- Wuxia
- the experience of ADHD
- Kiwi slang
- Flamenco guitar techniques
- human tower building
- the layout of the Manchester University students' union building

I want to know more about Manchester Students Union…. I’ve worked there some times… what was that story?

 

[FrancesScott]

what weird stuff had you researched when writing a story?

It’s not weird at all really. But I spent a while looking at YT vids of people signing ASL for More Than Words, in which the FMC is deaf. I also tried to get a sense of the deaf community, but it was obviously harder to get that right in the time I had available.

I ended up describing hand actions accompanied with the meaning, and then just the hand actions the second time around, hoping the reader remembered (and maybe learned something).

It’s a sensitive area, and I’m not sure how true to the subject matter I was. But I tried to be positive / respectful. I didn’t want it to just be Children of a Lesser God II.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

None of the above. A couple of questions about a little blue pill here in the AH.

I might have an impending question for Kitty or a similar life author, but I haven't decided yet.

 

[SyleusSnow]

It’s not weird at all really. But I spent a while looking at YT vids of people signing ASL for More Than Words, in which the FMC is deaf. I also tried to get a sense of the deaf community, but it was obviously harder to get that right in the time I had available.

I ended up describing hand actions accompanied with the meaning, and then just the hand actions the second time around, hoping the reader remembered (and maybe learned something).

It’s a sensitive area, and I’m not sure how true to the subject matter I was. But I tried to be positive / respectful. I didn’t want it to just be Children of a Lesser God II.

It is sensitive. I tried tackling a story with a Deaf / Hard of hearing character and when researching found there was a lot to it and didn't feel like I could do it justice without having someone in that community to bounce it off of.

I did learn, to my surprise, that there's no one global sign language. Pretty much every country has its own (ASL, BSL, LSF...), and there are regional variants within countries. They are mostly distinct languages and are not mutually intelligible, from my limited understanding.

 

[iwatchus]

Bosch? Giotto? Botticelli's map of hell?

I could never quite get through Dante's Inferno. Instead, I learned about that version of Hell through Niven and Pournelle's Inferno.. a science fiction writer winds up in an updated Dante's hell.

I ended up settling for Fra Angelico's Last Judgement. My MMC is an art history major, so it is what he was thinking about when he needed to imagine someone burning in hell. It just seemed to fit my image of what he wanted.

 

[Writer61]

In the last two weeks:

• holiday resorts starting with the letter U
• travel time from London to a holiday resort starting with U
• nice places to live in London
• yoga retreats
• roles on a film crew

 

[MrPixel]

• holiday resorts starting with the letter U
• travel time from London to a holiday resort starting with U

Or, possibly, five-letter words starting with T and R.

Oh. Never mind. That was yesterday's Wordle.

 

[NuclearFairy]

It is sensitive. I tried tackling a story with a Deaf / Hard of hearing character and when researching found there was a lot to it and didn't feel like I could do it justice without having someone in that community to bounce it off of.

I did learn, to my surprise, that there's no one global sign language. Pretty much every country has its own (ASL, BSL, LSF...), and there are regional variants within countries. They are mostly distinct languages and are not mutually intelligible, from my limited understanding.

I once watched a documentary on language and deafness where they started an ASL school in South America and it took them months to figure out that the reason the kids weren't picking up the ASL the teachers were trying to teach them is that the second they got a bunch of deaf kids together, they started figuring out how to talk with each other. So instead the teachers had to learn their sign language.

Also, not all hard of hearing people are part of a community. Because being part of a community would require being close enough to one and being outgoing enough to bother.

 

[FrancesScott]

I did learn, to my surprise, that there's no one global sign language. Pretty much every country has its own (ASL, BSL, LSF...), and there are regional variants within countries. They are mostly distinct languages and are not mutually intelligible, from my limited understanding.

Yeah - I did ASL for rather obvious reasons.

A lot of what I did was putting the MMC in the role of fumbling for an understanding of how best to communicate and ending up unintentionally causing offense.

I sort of turned it around, the deaf woman was confident and well-adjusted, the non-deaf guy was a bit of an insecure and tentative mess. But I think the end product was kind of sweet.

 

[FrancesScott]

Yeah - I did ASL for rather obvious reasons.

A lot of what I did was putting the MMC in the role of fumbling for an understanding of how best to communicate and ending up unintentionally causing offense.

I sort of turned it around, the deaf woman was confident and well-adjusted, the non-deaf guy was a bit of an insecure and tentative mess. But I think the end product was kind of sweet.

The general theme was that he thought the woman was more than worth the effort of trying to figure out communications. And she ended up being just that. She was also very forgiving of his missteps along the way and appreciated that he was really trying.

It was also an exercise in physical appeal morphing into something more precisely because the FMCs reality was totally different to what the MMC had assumed.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I sort of turned it around, the deaf woman was confident and well-adjusted,

I had to go read up on Marlee Maitlin.

 

[yano2mch]

I conducted actual interviews in the Literotica Chat rooms about why people enjoyed monster erotica in order to write a fictional research thesis about the motivations of monsterfucking

That's funny. While being a bit of a furry myself, monsterfucking would be the power dynamics, being in power or at mercy, and just raw sex. (probably)


My own research i looked up different penis types and shapes... Totally for academic reasons, and not because i was playing a lamia with two dicks...

 

[FrancesScott]

I had to go read up on Marlee Maitlin.

In COALG - which I like as a piece of cinema (haven’t seen the play) Marlee’s character was a little tropey IMO. The wild misfit, a shrew tamed by the gallant, sensitive teacher (for a while anyway). The ending when he agreed to try to stop shaping her to be who he wanted her to be went someway to mitigating that of course.

But Martin’s performance had real fire and sensitivity in it.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Not exactly "weird," but I spend many hours on Google Maps researching locales to the street detail level, and travel distances and times. The greater environment the characters operate in is, I guess, one of the main characters.

In fact, just yesterday I wrote a 1300-word scene based on an unexpected discovery doing map research.

I've had that happen as well. Messing around on Street View and you notice something and the Plot Bunny is off to the races.

 

[Writer61]

Or, possibly, five-letter words starting with T and R.

Oh. Never mind. That was yesterday's Wordle.

I got that one without external assistance.

 

[AchtungNight]

- Various celebrities and their lifestyles so that I can make fun of or eroticize them.

- The layout of Tienamen Square in Beijing.

- How to give someone a visual health check before you have sex with them.

- Antiterrorist military operations.

- The Kama Sutra.

 

[THBGato]

I want to know more about Manchester Students Union…. I’ve worked there some times… what was that story?

https://literotica.com/s/i-have-made-love -Iñ "I have made love" was set there. I'd never been, but wanted to make sure what I was describing made sense.