The now fully official Author’s Hangout Halloween 2025 competition support thread

[MelissaBaby]

I just did a review of my ratings, and 7 of my 11 published stories (only 1 in the contest) lost votes and every one of them went up in score. A couple pretty significantly. I lost 5 votes on my contest entry (Haunted Brothel of Mound City), but my score only increased by .04 to 4.77. On another of my stories, I lost 3 votes and went up .16 (4.57). So, the sweeps obviously don't just hit contest stories. Will be interesting to see where things stand tomorrow night

True. My Crime and Punishment story, Abby In The White City, got a huge boost today, the around 4.70 to 4.87.

 

[Actingup]

What would be a good name for an international prize for erotica? Maybe the "Roddies", if we say "erotica" with an American accent?

Please could we agree that a French accent would be better for the announcements? Or Icelandic, or Irish? Or Ecuadorian?

 

[TheLobster]

My Halloween story has also benefitted from a sweep and is now back at 4.8:



...Well, okay, that's my last year's Halloween story. But still!

 

[StillStunned]

And the winners have been announced! https://www.literotica.com/stories/contest.php/halloween-2025

Congratulations to @Nellymcboatface, @BrokenSpokes and @Aoife_from_Ulster! And well done to everyone who wrote and/or read a story!

 

[StillStunned]

I'm not sure when this was announced, but looking at the scores a second ago, they were 4.96, 4.95 and 4.91.

 

[Nellymcboatface]

Congratulations to

@BrokenSpokes and @Aoife_from_Ulster

plus all the other contributing writers.

we'll be reading these stories well into the new year with the fabulous entry this year.

Thanks to all the readers too, what a marathon !

 

[Voboy]

Congrats, winners! Well-deserved!

For the rest of you? It was a good contest, though sometimes a strange one. Lol.

 

[Erozetta]

Congrats!



The front page needs a minor update on the winners announcement:

Please read and enjoy all the excellent summer-themed contest entries! <-- The link goes to the correct Halloween page, but the wording is a little... wrong.

 

[Eisenloewe]

So close! But I had a 2-bomb survive the sweep, which kept me at a tantalizing 4.89. Congrats to the winners! It was quite a field this year!

I'm not sure when this was announced, but looking at the scores a second ago, they were 4.96, 4.95 and 4.91.

Same.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Congratulations to the winners and to all who took part. This has been The Halloween 2025 Competition . On to Winter Holidays, hosted by @Duleigh

UPDATE: 2025 Winter Holdiays is @ChloeTzang - 2026 is Duleigh

https://www.com/stories/contest.php/halloween-2025

 

[Duleigh]

View attachment 2574446

Congratulations to the winners and to all who took part. This has been The Halloween 2025 Competition . On to Winter Holidays, hosted by @Duleigh

https://www.com/stories/contest.php/halloween-2025

Awww, how sweet. You finally got your sister to sit for a portrait with you. (She was always dad's favorite)

Chloe started a thread, if she doesn't mind, I'll start a new one.

 

[EmilyMiller]

though sometimes a strange one

It was the fucking Twilight Zone!

 

[Trionyx]

1) For all the gnashing of teeth, an EH story did well.
2) The average length of the winning stories was 33k.
3) Congratulations to the three winners and to all who suffered through the technical glitches of the past few weeks.

 

[EmilyMiller]

2) The average length of the winning stories was 33k.

Length is important (we all knew, right?) It both deters the casual reader and - for technical reasons I won’t go into - makes at least unsophisticated one bombs more likely to get swept. And it seems some readers reward the clear effort in putting more words down. I’m sure there are exceptions where beautifully crafted and crystalline short stories have done well, but the trend does seem to suggest that novellas do better.

UPDATE: And it’s more work for sophisticated trolls to smart bomb a long work, which might deter all but the most hate-filled.

 

[Actingup]

I'm not sure when this was announced, but looking at the scores a second ago, they were 4.96, 4.95 and 4.91.

Congratulations! These are huge scores. I see that Nelly and Broken's stories have already been bombed a bit, but hopefully they will recover a bit of ground, in the next sweeps if not for anything else.

The sweeps were really interesting. Eight of my stories changed in score. My 'Change Management', languishing in Erotic Horror, suddenly lost about 10% of its 87 votes and moved from 4.39 to 4.67, from which I conclude that there were some obvious bombs picked up by the algorithm and some really horrible, withered people with scaly faces live in erotic horror (and will never escape). Conversely, I had a more recent non-Halloween story in Loving Wives that was also swept but only moved from 4.17 to 4.19 - perhaps suggesting the LW voters tend to be more tough but fair with a lower proportion of bombers amongst a crowd that tend to give a high number of views and votes. That's my theory, anyway.

Edit: And thank you, @EmilyMiller, for some fantastic thread hosting. I know that you tend to get hit a bit with the old Japanese proverb, 'The protruding nail will be hammered down', but your larger than life, half demonic and yet somehow cute and endearing efforts are greatly appreciated.

 

[WittyUserName]

Congrats to the winners!

 

[EmilyMiller]

Congratulations! These are huge scores. I see that Nelly and Broken's stories have already been bombed a bit, but hopefully they will recover a bit of ground, in the next sweeps if not for anything else.

The sweeps were really interesting. Eight of my stories changed in score. My 'Change Management', languishing in Erotic Horror, suddenly lost about 10% of its 87 votes and moved from 4.39 to 4.67, from which I conclude that there were some obvious bombs picked up by the algorithm and some really horrible, withered people with scaly faces live in erotic horror (and will never escape). Conversely, I had a more recent non-Halloween story in Loving Wives that was also swept but only moved from 4.17 to 4.19 - perhaps suggesting the LW voters tend to be more tough but fair with a lower proportion of bombers amongst a crowd that tend to give a high number of views and votes. That's my theory, anyway.

The sweeps seemed as patchy and idiosyncratic as everything else around here recently. Some people appeared to have had positive uplifts acrosss their portfolio. Others I speak to saw no change at all, despite obvious tactical voting.

For me, only my Halloween story experienced an uplift (4.21 -> 4.72 - so yeah to the scaly faced in EH). But it then got three pre-result bombs in a row which didn’t get swept.

Maybe the SQL ran out of resources half way through and only part of the databases got swept. Wouldn’t surprise me given all the other technical issues of late. Maybe the trolls are figuring out how to beat the system .

It was a truly weird comp for many reasons.

 

[EmilyMiller]

And thank you, @EmilyMiller, for some fantastic thread hosting. I know that you tend to get hit a bit with the old Japanese proverb, 'The protruding nail will be hammered down', but your larger than life, half demonic and yet somehow cute and endearing efforts are greatly appreciated.

Thanks - the proverb is very apt. But we had a lot of stories published and a lot of engagement. Which given the other site issues I’m gonna call a win

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

Congratulations to Nellymcboatface, BrokenSpokes, and Aoife_from_Ulster on their win and to all who entered. I haven't had a lot of time but have enjoyed the few stories that I've read.

I'd mentioned somewhat low views earlier in the thread and a number of writers agreed. My story overcame an initial 1-bomb within minutes of publishing; it depressed the score during the critical first 24-hours (when on the category new list and most views are received), so I suspect that may have depressed the number of readers from the usually reliable category list in addition to the effect of the large number of entries on the contest listing. That I forgot to add the rest of my tags may have also contributed.

Whatever the causes, this story ended up as my contest entry with my fewest-ever number of views though the overall reactions of actual readers were very good and the story's rating finished about where I'd hoped. Thanks to all who read and left feedback in whatever form.

Finally, thanks to Emily for some fun pics and excellent interactive thread event hosting.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Whatever the causes, this story ended up as my contest entry with my fewest-ever number of views though the overall reactions of actual readers were very good

Yup - as I say, weird comp.

Finally, thanks to Emily for some fun pics and excellent interactive thread event hosting.

Thank you

 

[Erozetta]

Mine went from 4.74 with 87 votes to a 4.84 with 80 then immediately got another three tossed on it and a couple of fives not long after. But I also got a lot of comments and discussion around mine elsewhere, so I'm quite happy with it. Particularly because it was a very short story.

As far as other stories, I have one that had no vote change, but the score went up .06 points. The rest lost a vote here or there but no significant score change.

final score indicated the equivalent of 69 (5 star) votes, 12 (4 star) votes, and 2 (3 star) votes on just under 7k views and a story that was just under 7k words

 

[MelissaBaby]

The sweeps seemed as patchy and idiosyncratic as everything else around here recently. Some people appeared to have had positive uplifts acrosss their portfolio. Others I speak to saw no change at all, despite obvious tactical voting.

For me, only my Halloween story experienced an uplift (4.21 -> 4.72 - so yeah to the scaly faced in EH). But it then got three pre-result bombs in a row which didn’t get swept.

Maybe the SQL ran out of resources half way through and only part of the databases got swept. Wouldn’t surprise me given all the other technical issues of late. Maybe the trolls are figuring out how to beat the system .

It was a truly weird comp for many reasons.

I got swept in the afternoon and saw a decent boost in my score. Within an hour or so I received two obvious one bombs. If there was a later sweep, it did not remove them.

If they had been, I still would have only been around 4.7, out of contention, which is fine, because the wins were well deserved.

 

[EmilyMiller]

If there was a later sweep, it did not remove them.

If there was a second sweep, I didn’t see any evidence of it. The one sweep I saw seemed kinda erratic and not as deep (or maybe as widespread) as normal. Then it was for some other folk .

And, as you say, there were obvious unswept bombs after the sweep and before the winners were announced.

Maybe it’s just another part of the tech stack that is creaking and cracking under the strain. It didn’t feel at all like normal.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I got swept in the afternoon and saw a decent boost in my score. Within an hour or so I received two obvious one bombs. If there was a later sweep, it did not remove them.

My experience was the same. I was never challenging, but that doesn’t stop people making damned sure that remains the case.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Let’s hope for a more stable technical lanscape for Winter Holidays, shall we?