Will this get my story rejected?

[8letters]

“I have some Chive-like pictures from Megan, but I’m trying to not think about her this summer, remember?”

“Chive-like?”

“There’s a website, The Chive. Keep calm and chive on. They have lots of selfies of beautiful women. Sexy, but not embarrassing. Megan took some selfies like that and sent them to me.”
:
I went to The Chive website and checked out the pictures there.

If so, any suggestions for what to do instead?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Is the site you mention real? If it is, change the name to something fictitious and put a note on the submission telling Laurel that the website mentioned is not a real site. Or call it Literotica.

 

[sr71plt]

If so, any suggestions for what to do instead?

It might. I just got a rejection turnover of mentioning a Web site's name (not linked or including a URL). But in my case, it was a fake Web site. In your case it is a real one, so, yes, it might initially at least be rejected--if the reference was seen in the loose editorial scan submissions are getting.

 

[RejectReality]

If it's a real website of what I would call a semi-adult nature ( you say sexy selfies ) and Laurel notices it, then there's a good chance it might get rejected.

You can get away with saying Google, or Facebook, or Twitter, etc., but when you get down to anything of remotely adult nature or any existing site where it could be construed as advertising for the site...

And anything written out in URL structure or even with a dot-com at the end has a high probability of being rejected immediately.

Excluding links to pages on Literotica, of course. Those are allowed as real, clickable links.

My suggestion is not to name it at all. You lose the little bit of "What?" banter, but "sexy selfie" site gets the point across.

 

[Handley_Page]

Yes, there is a chive and it has a lot of interest; not just pretty girls.

 

[jehoram]

I'd just change the name of the website to something fictional, and in the "notes" section, I'd tell Laurel that the site is indeed fictional. That might work.

Making the site fictional wouldn't disturb the flow of the story at all, methinks.

 

[sr71plt]

I'd just change the name of the website to something fictional, and in the "notes" section, I'd tell Laurel that the site is indeed fictional. That might work.

Making the site fictional wouldn't disturb the flow of the story at all, methinks.

In the notes section, you might also state that there are no links or URLs given. That might stave off a false rejection.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If so, any suggestions for what to do instead?

I don't know whether it would get rejected. I think one of my stories made mention of things happening on Facebook, and that didn't cause any problems.

But moderation policy aside, IMHO the example you've given feels awkward - kind of like watching a movie where the hero suddenly turns to the camera to tell us how much he wants an icy-cold Coke.

Unless you need to establish the website for something else in your story, I'd be inclined to compress it to something like this: "Megan sent me some hot selfies, but I’m trying to not think about her this summer, remember?”

 

[LesLumens]

I don't know whether it would get rejected. I think one of my stories made mention of things happening on Facebook, and that didn't cause any problems.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Vine, etc. are a completely different animal from your average website. They're already everywhere, and it's difficult to imagine anyone is trying to advertise for them by mentioning them in a story. They're also something Lit isn't afraid to be associated with. They're too big and established to go completely rogue.

Lesser known sites may not be the same case, and even if they're okay now, that could change in the future. The same applies to even fake URLs, because someone could buy that domain name and build a site filled with malware at some later date.

The simplest policy to avoid that is to reject any unknown site url, and it's the way I would go if I were Lit.