Symbolism

[MillieDynamite]

Funny fact, there is a line in both the book and the movie Love Story "Thou shall not bullshit thy father." My adoptive father has said that to me, I don't know, thousands of times, maybe. I originally thought it was original, and then he gave me the book Love Story, and there it was in black and white, written by Mr. Segal. Oh, well, it was just a small bubble that burst. LOL, My favorite quote from the movie is "Love means never having to say you're sorry," as spoken in the movie What's up Doc, by Barbara Streisand, where Ryan O'Neil responds, "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard." Sums up my feelings on the book and movie Love Story as well.

 

[gunhilltrain]

USAF I didn't fly but you can follow my duty stations if you read my stories. First commandment of writing anything:
"Thou shall write what thou knowest"

My Winter Holiday story A Krissymas Karole, I attempted to make the top of the first page look like Charles Dickens first page of his print edition of A Christmas Carol, but they chopped the first line, so the very first line of the story says:

In Prose​

That's it. It looks dumber than hell. How many votes did I lose because of that? Then they did the exact same thing to Chapter 11 of We're A Wonderful Wife. Again, it's just a title line, but why did they chop it off? I kind of lost my temper and haven't heard back. But she didn't mind me taking over the 750 word support thread.

I don't know; how did you make in look like Dickens? You probably would need a font that matched his book, but that's practically impossible to do here. And you didn't actually use his content I guess, so I'm baffled. It doesn't make sense that they would consider that plagiarism. Maybe they get sloppy/slap-happy* with all of the submissions they are handling and all of the writers they deal with.

Now that you mention it, I remember you talking about your Air Force experiences.

* I meant that in the sense of being "dazed and stupefied." Have they gone twenty years without vacations?

 

[RejectReality]

Guess which of these middle chapters has a blue W, and when it was applied. ( Ignoring that I obviously forgot to update the views for 15 there at one point )



The one with the W consistently gets at least half again as many views as the chapters on either side. Because they're all middle chapters, it doesn't really amount to a hill o' beans, but a self-contained story getting that sort of highlighting is undoubtedly going to result in lots more attention.

Here's another one. Both published about a month apart in the same category.

Title/Category/Pub. Date/Score/Views/Votes/Comments/Favs/Lists

Rear-Ended Anal 12/13/2019 4.53 87879 778 8 87 119

Rim Fire Anal 11/7/2019 4.75 358039 3354 51 601 790

Granted, Rim Fire is a much better story, has a boost from buzz words in the description, and doesn't suffer from dub-con giving people the heebie jeebies, but I'd say the W has something to do with how it's performed nevertheless.

(( LOL The forum still has functionality built in to take tables pasted into a post and apply bbcode to display them as tables, but the table bbcode no longer works ))

 

[Duleigh]

how did you make in look like Dickens?

Once upon a time I wanted to be a printer, (moveable type, composition sticks, composing stones, hand operated presses) and in part of my training we studied the history of printing and page layout. Victorian title pages were simple, yet they tried to be as stylish as possible given the limited resources the average print shop had. Just centering up a page title was a lot of extra work. Also, A Christmas Carol, having a musical title, was written using musical references. It didn't have chapters, it had Staves which is a verse or stanza of a poem or song lyric, which I used in my story (which no one caught) So, my homage to Mr. Dickens was this a title page that copied his exactly:

A KRISSMAS KAROLE

In Prose.

Being

A Ghost Story of Christmas.
_________________________​

After our mods stuck their fingers into my story what literotica readers saw was this senseless piece of drivel:

In Prose.

Being

A Ghost Story of Christmas.​

 

[NoJo]

I had , I think 4 stories that were editor's picks. Once I cracked the formula for getting Laurel wet, I moved on to other styles. Go figure it out yourselves.

Here's a clue:

Laurel reads a TON of stories very day.

 

[Djmac1031]

I currently have 48 stories published.

All but 6 of them have the Red H. And only one of them is rated below a 4. Loving Wives, go figure.

I feel no shame in saying that pleases me, but there's also no ego about it, and I certainly do not feel it makes me, or my stories, any better than anyone else.

All it really tells me is my stories have found an audience, and that for the most part, that audience enjoys them.

I also have to keep in mind the reason many of mine have the red H is my small but loyal readership for my Jenna series, which makes up the bulk of my published stories.

Generally small viewer numbers compared to single, complete stories, but those who read them rate them high enough to earn the H.

Doesn't make them Pulitzer Prize winners lol.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I also have to keep in mind the reason many of mine have the red H is my small but loyal readership for my Jenna series, which makes up the bulk of my published stories.

I strongly believe reader loyalty is behind every one of my 68 red H's. The readers may not be large in numbers, but they certainly stand behind my stories with their votes and feedback.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Once upon a time I wanted to be a printer, (moveable type, composition sticks, composing stones, hand operated presses) and in part of my training we studied the history of printing and page layout. Victorian title pages were simple, yet they tried to be as stylish as possible given the limited resources the average print shop had. Just centering up a page title was a lot of extra work. Also, A Christmas Carol, having a musical title, was written using musical references. It didn't have chapters, it had Staves which is a verse or stanza of a poem or song lyric, which I used in my story (which no one caught) So, my homage to Mr. Dickens was this a title page that copied his exactly:

A KRISSMAS KAROLE

In Prose.

Being

A Ghost Story of Christmas.
_________________________​

After our mods stuck their fingers into my story what literotica readers saw was this senseless piece of drivel:

In Prose.

Being

A Ghost Story of Christmas.​

I studied that kind of hand typesetting process (with the hand printing presses) in junior high school around 1968. We only had one font in the cases and we didn't have enough of the lower case letter "e." That was all that was available for printing training. I think the only reason it was taught that way was that vocational training in the New York public school system was completely disorganized and obsolete back then. The school itself was not vocational, just the district school, and the courses were kind of "fillers" in the regular program.

I'm still going with the theory than Laurel has become "punch drunk" with overwork. She creating this site and now maybe she's trapped by it.

Indulge me if I post a photo of the school later.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Guess which of these middle chapters has a blue W, and when it was applied. ( Ignoring that I obviously forgot to update the views for 15 there at one point )

[snip]

That looks pretty consistent with my experience for my solitary W. (Anjali's Red Scarf, Chapter 10.)

As of 8/8/22 (some time during the voting period): Chapter 9 had 4789 views, Chapter 10 had 4644, Chapter 11 had 5001. So up to that point they were all getting pretty much the same number of views, which is what I'd expect for late but not last chapters; anybody reading #10 probably got there by way of #9 and will probably continue to #11.

16/08/22 (shortly after contests closed, with Red Scarf #10 scoring a W by the narrowest of margins): #9 4819 views, #10 5430, #11 5027.

02/01/23: #9 5360 reads, #10 8852, #11 5580. So over a period where the neighbouring chapters picked up about 500 views each, the one with the W picked up more than 3000.

For stories that are already getting a high readership, an extra 3k views in five months might not be large enough to notice, but for mine it definitely does. How "sticky" those extra readers are is another question; I'm not sure coming into that story at chapter 10 would be very rewarding, and going by the numbers not many of them did go back to chapter 9 or forward to 11.

 

[Djmac1031]

I strongly believe reader loyalty is behind every one of my 68 red H's. The readers may not be large in numbers, but they certainly stand behind my stories with their votes and feedback.

Exactly.

My highest voted story is 988 votes.

In an age where silly cat videos get a million hits, that's not a huge number. But to me, it's still pretty impressive, and encouraging, to think that almost a thousand people not only read my story, but enjoyed it enough to leave a rating.

Most of my stories have far less votes, but that doesn't really matter.

Whether it's ten, a hundred, or a thousand readers, I'm just happy to have reached them.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

My highest voted story is 988 votes

I don't think anything expresses the loyalty more than what I am seeing with my January story, "1990".

It's only been viewed by 441 people so far, but it has 311 votes, 15 comments, and I have received 13 e-mails with feedback on it. More importantly, I have seen almost 13,000 new views on the other stories in the same universe since it was published, and over fifty new followers.

Others may have alternative ways to gauge reader loyalty, and I would be interested in seeing them.

 

[KeithD]

Here's a clue:

Laurel reads a TON of stories very day.

No, she doesn't--and there's no physical way she could read all, or many, of the submissions she receives each day. I think that's why fewer green Es have been awarded in recent years. So many come in that she doesn't have time to read many of them.

 

[GrantBricksly]

I do not have a W or an E. But I do have some H's

I cannot speak to the impact of any of them, as I haven't had the H's long enough to see the difference.

What I can speak to, is my hopes as a writer, and my experience as a reader.

As a writer, I strive for that H, as well as that W. Why? Because it means I have managed to please my readers. Yes there are all the biases and such..but If I can manage a good enough score despite biases...then all the better.

As a reader, the first thing I look for is the title. Then the description. Once I find what I am looking for, I read. If I like what I read, the next thing I do is check out the author page, to see what else they've written, and yea, the H's and W's catch my eyes, and as long as the stories they are attached too are within my tastes, I'm more likely to read those.

 

[MillieDynamite]

No, she doesn't--and there's no physical way she could read all, or many, of the submissions she receives each day. I think that's why fewer green Es have been awarded in recent years. So many come in that she doesn't have time to read many of them.

I fully agree with you, Keith. Why should she even be expected to do so? The W is from competitions, so while coveted, I'm not expecting to get it and am not disappointed I haven't gotten one. The E, on the other hand, has much luck involved in it. Your story must catch her eye. When Laurel reads it, she has to like it. More than liking it, she has to love it. In her own mind, Laural must justify giving that E to someone. There are a lot of ifs in the process.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I was going to say something snarky to Millie and thought better of it! I can be a good girl.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Funny fact, there is a line in both the book and the movie Love Story "Thou shall not bullshit thy father." My adoptive father has said that to me, I don't know, thousands of times, maybe. I originally thought it was original, and then he gave me the book Love Story, and there it was in black and white, written by Mr. Segal.

What a horrific -

- oh. Erich Segal. The other Mr. Segal writing romance, that doesn't bear thinking about.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

What a horrific -

- oh. Erich Segal. The other Mr. Segal writing romance, that doesn't bear thinking about.

Which other Segal? Lora Segal writes mostly children's books but dabbles in many genres. Or could you mean George Segal or Steven Seagal? I don't know of any other famous Segal's and Seagal writing anything good would surprise the shit out of me.

 

[RejectReality]

I can't see the name Steven Seagal without thinking of Steve N' Seagulls. If you've never seen them...

 

[Bramblethorn]

Which other Segal? Lora Segal writes mostly children's books but dabbles in many genres. Or could you mean George Segal or Steven Seagal? I don't know of any other famous Segal's and Seagal writing anything good would surprise the shit out of me.

That was the joke, yes, somewhat spoiled by me forgetting the extra 'a' in his name.

From what I hear, his idea of romance mostly involves pressuring female co-stars to "audition" for nude scenes that weren't in the script :-/

 

[MillieDynamite]

That was the joke, yes, somewhat spoiled by me forgetting the extra 'a' in his name.

From what I hear, his idea of romance mostly involves pressuring female co-stars to "audition" for nude scenes that weren't in the script :-/

Yeah, at least two dozen accusations, about 8 or 10 lawsuits, most of which seem to have been settled out of court as the complaints missed fillings or dropped suits. His Russia's problem now and he's an ass fuck buddy of Putting.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

That was the joke, yes, somewhat spoiled by me forgetting the extra 'a' in his name.

From what I hear, his idea of romance mostly involves pressuring female co-stars to "audition" for nude scenes that weren't in the script :-/

Big ole stupid half a Jew Russian dumb-ass. Him not you.

 

[lovecraft68]

The Blue W, in my experience, SIGNIFICANTLY increases views and comments in the short and medium term. In the immediate term, it often attracts downvotes if it's a contest win, though not if it's a monthly win.

This might not be a "Blue W Effect;" it might stem from the announcement of the Blue W being prominently displayed on the front page of the site, with a link to the story.

Good point because all of my contest placings took some hits right after the announcement, but both the monthly and annual I placed in have been left alone.

I've seen some stories here that have W's and the score is in the 4.5's. They're older and have probably been sniped down lower and lower over the years.

 

[lovecraft68]

Yeah, at least two dozen accusations, about 8 or 10 lawsuits, most of which seem to have been settled out of court as the complaints missed fillings or dropped suits. His Russia's problem now and he's an ass fuck buddy of Putting.

Too bad no one ever has a problem with Mr rape enabler himself Tarantino. Admitted he knew what Harvey was doing and didn't say a word.
But I guess when asshats in Hollywood and its fans think its trendy to like your movies, its all good. Hypocrites.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Too bad no one ever has a problem with Mr rape enabler himself Tarantino. Admitted he knew what Harvey was doing and didn't say a word.
But I guess when asshats in Hollywood and its fans think its trendy to like your movies, its all good. Hypocrites.

I like a couple of his films, well 4 of them, but I don't like him at all. Not that I have met him, I haven't and don't want to.

 

[lovecraft68]

I like a couple of his films, well 4 of them, but I don't like him at all. Not that I have met him, I haven't and don't want to.

TBH I never got the couple of his films I saw. Pulp Fiction's popularity eluded me, and even his vignette in Sin City I didn't care for. Other than that I've seen nothing, will see nothing and wouldn't shit in his mouth if someone paid me.