Another new bug

[iwatchus]

I still say no bad words about Laural. I'm just on a hiatus from posting here because I don't feel like figuring out why the stories won't post. But then again, I've never been one of the cool kids.

I am still trying to be positive about the site, but it's hard when they screwed up displaying my story in such a way to make it almost unreadable. I would much rather have my story in purgatory -- I just suffered through one there for two months while staying positive. My last two bits of feedback on the story were roughly, I liked the story but it got too confusing at the end. Did you forget to put in section breaks?

No they were there but the site could not do the only fucking thing it has to absolutely do. RENDER THE DAMNED STORY AS THEY GOT IT! The one fucking unforgivable sin in my mind. I care about my ratings and I hate the 1-bombers, but I can live with that. It's infuriating to sit and wait to see if a story will ever appear. But I'm the only one who gets to screw up my story. I do enough of that myself without having the site screwup the single thing it needs to get right.

I am very close to going nuclear. What's next? Randomly not displaying paragraphs in the middle of your stories? Why should any of us risk letting them show some mangled form of our writing?

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Which story? "The Lumberjacks" seems to have "+++++" breaks on pages 1 and 2, but not 3. Is that not what's intended? They're centered correctly in my browser.

--Annie

 

[iwatchus]

Which story? "The Lumberjacks" seems to have "+++++" breaks on pages 1 and 2, but not 3. Is that not what's intended? They're centered correctly in my browser.

--Annie

It's Snow Fall In Love, my main Winter Event story (was not going to W this time anyway, but that's on me). If you use the next buttons to go through the story (it's 8 lit pages long) about half of the section breaks are missing. At least one of them is predictable and I have given the reproducing case to Manu in a bug report and a DM.

If anyone is curious, if you navigate using the bar at the bottom on a page to page 7 and look for the paragraph that simply says Pop!. there should be a break right above it. You will see it appear if you refresh the page.

Many of the section breaks represent a shift in time or place. That shift is still discernible without the section break, but it becomes unsettling to read when the time line suddenly shifts without warning.

 

[Voboy]

I am still trying to be positive about the site, but it's hard when they screwed up displaying my story in such a way to make it almost unreadable. I would much rather have my story in purgatory -- I just suffered through one there for two months while staying positive. My last two bits of feedback on the story were roughly, I liked the story but it got too confusing at the end. Did you forget to put in section breaks?

No they were there but the site could not do the only fucking thing it has to absolutely do. RENDER THE DAMNED STORY AS THEY GOT IT! The one fucking unforgivable sin in my mind. I care about my ratings and I hate the 1-bombers, but I can live with that. It's infuriating to sit and wait to see if a story will ever appear. But I'm the only one who gets to screw up my story. I do enough of that myself without having the site screwup the single thing it needs to get right.

I am very close to going nuclear. What's next? Randomly not displaying paragraphs in the middle of your stories? Why should any of us risk letting them show some mangled form of our writing?

People are telling you (smarter folk than I, that is) that this is likely a temporary glitch that, while annoying and probably ominous, is not going to last forever. Based on what I understand from them, you have no need to remove your stories: they are not permanently ruined. But taking them down will cause them permanent damage, in terms of the reactions they've already earned.

I empathize with you. But I don't know what you "going nuclear" will accomplish. I don't see it as helpful in any way, either in terms of your stories or the site itself.

Good luck to you.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Break should be there. And, refreshed:

 

[iwatchus]

People are telling you (smarter folk than I, that is) that this is likely a temporary glitch that, while annoying and probably ominous, is not going to last forever. Based on what I understand from them, you have no need to remove your stories: they are not permanently ruined. But taking them down will cause them permanent damage, in terms of the reactions they've already earned.

I empathize with you. But I don't know what you "going nuclear" will accomplish. I don't see it as helpful in any way, either in terms of your stories or the site itself.

Good luck to you.

I'm trying to give the site a chance to prove this is a temporary glitch, but faithfully rendering the stories is the one thing I absolutely insist on. I really respect what they have managed to do here and the community they built.

But when faith is broken, it can be very hard to rebuild. In marriages or partnerships. Although it is an immensely unequal partnership, it is still one. When any of us submit a story, we trust that the story will be displayed as written. I question right now whether that trust is warranted.

 

[iwatchus]

And nothing they can do now can ever change the opinions of that story (or me) by anyone who read the broken version of the story. I know two people bothered to tell me about it. How many people just assumed I screwed up the writing that badly? I will never know. Am I willing to risk that for other stories? That's what I need to decide. To be honest, I think it's what all of what all of us should be considering.

 

[YmaOHyd]

The biggest thing we have to draw eyeballs here are our reputations. It sucks when your name gets put on good work that someone else has made sloppy.

There's more breaks missing. When I loaded page 1, all three were there. On page 2, only one of the four displayed correctly prior to a refresh. None of the four on page 3 loaded correctly the first time. Four of eight where there on page 4. Zero of eight appeared on the first page load of page 5. Zero of five appeared on the first load of page 6. One of six appeared on page 7. And one of seven appeared on page 8. Total, there are 43 section breaks, each with a discontinuity in time and place. Nine of them displayed correctly.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

The source of that page appears to be a single very long line. I wonder if that's confusing some browsers in and of itself.

Hmm ... it's a single line in the browser "Reveal Source" tab, and in a graphical editor, but not in vim. I'm going to say. LF vs CRLF, I presume. Even in vim, though, there's one enormous line at the top.

I think @Manu's **********-writing PHP (to make a guess) could use a tuneup.

By the way, @iwatchus: good story.

--Rocco, called in to provide tech support

 

[YmaOHyd]

It's weird that it's not just the +++++ that's missing; it's the whole line it appears on and either the one before or after. If it were just the characters, there'd be some indication of a break. Two whole lines going poof means it's single-spaced as if it were a direct continuation of what comes before.

 

[iwatchus]

By the way, @iwatchus: good story.

Thank you, I think this is my best written story yet (but not my best story), which is why it bothers me so much. (Although my writing is still not good enough in a few cases to pull off the story the way it should be, but I'm still learning.)

 

[IWroteThis]

Cite an example of an asterisk breaking HTML?

I can't give you one off the top of my head, as the only way I would know that it was specifically an asterisk broke something was if that something was mine and I was the one to fix it. That said, it's irrelevant whether or not I know a specific case of it happening, as HTML is not the only language involved here.

The conversion from plain text to HTML is not done manually. If it was, the preview screen would take a heck of a lot longer to appear. So, the code that does that has to be able to handle it, as the asterisk is a special character in whatever programming language is used. Then, there's the database that everything is stored in. There's going to be some version of SQL involved in adding and retrieving that data, in which the asterisk is a special character.

So, as I said to start with, asterisks are special characters and can break things.

 

[bigBiggerBIGGEST]

I saw this thread after I posted my own, but I figure I'd add to the chat with an issue I've noticed very recently:
https://forum.literotica.com/threads/story-keeps-getting-sent-back-due-to-odd-characters.1645795/

 

[TheLobster]

The source of that page appears to be a single very long line. I wonder if that's confusing some browsers in and of itself.

No, everyone on the internet does that. There is no point sending extraneous whitespace, like line breaks, when the syntax of the languages that build the web (HTML, CSS, Javascript) ignore the vast majority of spaces.

There is even a name for this process, of taking a normally readable source code and smashing it into "compressed" form that's still readable to programs. It's called minification.

There's going to be some version of SQL involved in adding and retrieving that data, in which the asterisk is a special character.

If Literotica ever gets this kind of bugs, then that's game over for the site.

brb trying to submit a story that reads ; DELETE TABLE stories;

 

[TheRedLantern]

brb trying to submit a story that reads ; DELETE TABLE stories;

I try not to be pedantic, but I can't avoid getting triggered here:

DROP TABLE stories;
or
DELETE FROM stories;
or
DELETE FROM STORIES WHERE 1=1;
(some engines require a where clause in DELETE statements

 

[TheLobster]

I try not to be pedantic, but I can't avoid getting triggered here:

DROP TABLE stories;
or
DELETE FROM stories;
or
DELETE FROM STORIES WHERE 1=1;
(some engines require a where clause in DELETE statements

 

[TheRedLantern]

The only reason I've made it this far in life is because my eyesight is so bad I have to cross the street to see the math problem.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

My dear padawan, while your reaction to this problem is somewhat extreme, I get it. We should all remember how much more we were invested when it was still all fresh. Shrugging comes with time.

But once again, it's not the glitch that's the problem. There are always going to be some issues with stories, with publishing, with the technical side... It's the total absence of communication that's the unforgivable.

Even after everything you've done reporting the problem, you've no idea whether your report has been seen and acknowledged, and whether anyone is doing something to fix it. You can only wring your hands and wait... and hope.

 

[Jorunn]

It seems like lately, Lit is a Formula 1 race car, sputtering a bit, but has to keep itself in the race because it cannot make a pit stop. So a mechanic leaps aboard and tries to fix the engine while the car is still being driven.

 

[alohadave]

I wonder if the change to the front page image is coincident with the bugs.

If Literotica ever gets this kind of bugs, then that's game over for the site.

brb trying to submit a story that reads ; DELETE TABLE stories;

Little Bobby Tables would be so proud.

 

[AwkwardMD]

It seems like lately, Lit is a Formula 1 race car, sputtering a bit, but has to keep itself in the race because it cannot make a pit stop. So a mechanic leaps aboard and tries to fix the engine while the car is still being driven.

Apt

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I think @Manu's **********-writing PHP (to make a guess) could use a tuneup.

I didn't realize that this forum blocked the word "J a v a S c r i p t". Interesting.

Apt

Did you just accuse Literotica of being destructive malware?
https://thehackernews.com/2025/11/apt24-deploys-badaudio-in-years-long.html

--Rocco

 

[AwkwardMD]

Ahti, god of the sea,
grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I didn't realize that this forum blocked the word "J a v a S c r i p t". Interesting.


Did you just accuse Literotica of being destructive malware?
https://thehackernews.com/2025/11/apt24-deploys-badaudio-in-years-long.html

--Rocco

I think this site, warts and all, is the best thing since sliced bread. I am 1000% biased, but I try to be honest about that so my faith in it is not misunderstood for privileged knowledge (although I do have a little of that too).

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I just tested the story in a browser that has never accessed Literotica before, and Page 7 displayed correctly, FWIW.

(I was trying to capture errors in the browser console, but there were none.)

--Rocco