Loving Wives

[Lifestyle66]

Honestly, it's just being ignored:
View attachment 2612710
Basically, as you say, people are clicking into it, reading my "check the tags" warning, doing so and then clicking out again.

My previous entry to Loving Wives has 1,600+ votes.... but that has a male protagonist. Go figure.

Among the many comments I've read on mine and other LW stories, I've found that many readers want a story which contains a relatable character, someone in the story who might more closely fit their own identity. If a reader is a straight male, they're looking for at least one straight male character in the story to see how the rest of that story arc might affect them and how the author thinks they might react.

In my last story (similar theme as yours primarily about two women), it's faring about the same as yours. After over two months, it has a view-to-vote ratio of 120:1 (yours is 130:1). Many of the LW readers just don't follow through to read the whole story when they see it's not including one of their own relatable identities.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Those who manage the feat are an elite species, trailing adoring fans in their wake, memberships in all the right clubs, offers of sexual delight coming at them during every stroll down the street.*

True. The constant offers of sexual delight become bothersome.

 

[Imstillfun]

Among the many comments I've read on mine and other LW stories, I've found that many readers want a story which contains a relatable character, someone in the story who might more closely fit their own identity. If a reader is a straight male, they're looking for at least one straight male character in the story to see how the rest of that story arc might affect them and how the author thinks they might react.

In my last story (similar theme as yours primarily about two women), it's faring about the same as yours. After over two months, it has a view-to-vote ratio of 120:1 (yours is 130:1). Many of the LW readers just don't follow through to read the whole story when they see it's not including one of their own relatable identities.

I always thought that people liked to put themselves somewhere in the story. I always wondered why the BTB crowd related with the cuck rather than the other guy. My husband says he sees himself as a voyeur watching or as a side player orchestrating.

I never understand why 2 stories with almost the same plot get different #s of views. Yes, some of my stories may be formulaic.

 

[IWroteThis]

I always wondered why the BTB crowd related with the cuck rather than the other guy.

Why do so many people relate to the hero who starts out beaten down and crushed, only to rise up and prevail? Do you think it's the beaten down and crushed part, or the rise up and prevail? If you think it's the former, there's a Fetish category full of cuckold stories about just such characters for your enjoyment. If you think it's the latter, there are BTB (and various other HEA) stories in Loving Wives.

I'm guessing you have at least some knowledge of the Harry Potter universe, so ask yourself this: Do readers more often relate to the abused boy locked under the stairs or the spoiled cousin stomping on the stairs above him? Or, maybe it's neither of them, but the rich asshole who thinks he's an alpha because he's a pure blood?

 

[Imstillfun]

Why do so many people relate to the hero who starts out beaten down and crushed, only to rise up and prevail? Do you think it's the beaten down and crushed part, or the rise up and prevail? If you think it's the former, there's a Fetish category full of cuckold stories about just such characters for your enjoyment. If you think it's the latter, there are BTB (and various other HEA) stories in Loving Wives.

I'm guessing you have at least some knowledge of the Harry Potter universe, so ask yourself this: Do readers more often relate to the abused boy locked under the stairs or the spoiled cousin stomping on the stairs above him? Or, maybe it's neither of them, but the rich asshole who thinks he's an alpha because he's a pure blood?

Makes sense.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I always thought that people liked to put themselves somewhere in the story. I always wondered why the BTB crowd related with the cuck rather than the other guy. My husband says he sees himself as a voyeur watching or as a side player orchestrating.

I never understand why 2 stories with almost the same plot get different #s of views. Yes, some of my stories may be formulaic.

The 2 stories with different # of views is due to several factors:
Which day of the week did it go public?
How many readers were active the day it went public? (ie normal weekend versus a holiday weekend.)
The title and description?
Where it starts on the New or Category list (first or second story? Or the bottom of the page?)

As for the BTB crowd relating to the cuck, the BTB lovers 1-bomb a weak cuck or a swinger husband who willingly shares his wife. They "relate" to the husband, but only as far as the fact that they might have been a husband, and they HATE the way this one behaves.

When it comes to any category or audience, people tend to prefer stories leaning toward their own identity.

If I ask a lesbian to read one of my stories about a hetero couple and PIV sex, she might reply "Why would I read something I don't do or care about?" It's not necessarily a malicious reaction, merely indifferent. And ambushing the lesbian category by posting hetero PIV stories there will probably get the story downvoted with negative reactions from many of that audience.

EDIT: Readers are here to be entertained or enlightened about something THEY care about, not necessarily what any particular author wants to teach them.

 

[Rambling_Chantrix]

Honestly, it's just being ignored:
View attachment 2612710
Basically, as you say, people are clicking into it, reading my "check the tags" warning, doing so and then clicking out again.

My previous entry to Loving Wives has 1,600+ votes.... but that has a male protagonist. Go figure.

I was wondering if another factor might be memory/grudge. I put up two LW stories recently and the first got like several times the reads/votes of the second.

 

[consistentlyrepudiated]

Why do so many people relate to the hero who starts out beaten down and crushed, only to rise up and prevail? Do you think it's the beaten down and crushed part, or the rise up and prevail?

Good questions. Deciphering the headspace of hapless souls trapped in the oblivion of a porn site is a tall order. But if I analyze their favorite narratives--where eighty percent of the plot is a meticulously detailed portrait of the protagonist’s via dolorosa and the happy resolution is squeezed into the final page--I’d say they pose as moral crusaders, howling for justice and closure, but scratch the surface and it's just masochism in a trench coat

They’re looking for victims to project onto so they can gorge on all that delicious self-pity and rejection--that slow-burn humiliation. The catharsis at the end is a smokescreen, a thin layer of moral frosting that lets them feast on the pain without admitting it turns them on.

 

[TheIntrepidBoyager]

I don't think the situation is really that difficult to understand (or that narrow).

You first have to understand that Loving Wives is not a category in the same sense as most of the others. It's more like Audio and Illustrated, in that it is a melting pot of all of the normal categories, with a singular key distinction. While those two are quite self-explanatory, the key to Loving Wives is not directly in the name. Instead, that key is a wedding ring.

Yep, that's the sole difference. Now, a lot of people disagree with me, but I think a very important question is, what difference does the ring make if the presence of the ring makes no difference? To be blunt, the category as described has no logical purpose. No, the very existence of the category, at a minimum, implies that the real key is the drama created by the presence of that ring, creating a distinction between those stories and ones otherwise of the same type in other categories. From there, it's a logical conclusion that a wife cheating and causing marital conflict is, in fact, a Loving Wives story.

Now, to go a bit further, every type of story in Loving Wives that lacks marital drama can also be found in other categories. What is unique to Loving Wives is that marital drama.

So, since Loving Wives is where those marital drama stories are posted, it's also only natural that the readers who want to read that type of stories are going to hang out there. And, since it's really the only place for those stories, those readers are going to fight against anybody who wants to push them out.

Imagine the mom/son and father/daughter factions trying to kick each other out of Taboo/Incest. Or, MFF and MMF trying to boot the other from Group Sex. That's what's actively happening in Loving Wives.

You open with a condescending statement and then spend five paragraphs explaining to me what you said isn't difficult to understand.

 

[IWroteThis]

You open with a condescending statement and then spend five paragraphs explaining to me what you said isn't difficult to understand.

Well, the length of the explanation and the difficulty in understanding something are not directly correlated. In fact, it's often the case that they are inversely correlated, as a more robust explanation can be easier to understand than an abbreviated one.

 

[Syzoth]

I had a story go live there on Saturday. Seven 1* votes in the first 15 minutes - it was 13k words, so no way they'd read it. They just saw the tags and bombed it. It's hovering around 3 at the minute

But you don't post in LW for the scores, so **shrugs**

(To be honest, this one I mostly put in Loving Wives because a) @PennyThompson dared me to and b) to warn my normal readers than this wouldn't be a normal THBGato story - I was basically using the category to foreshadow things would soon be turning to shit.)

Actually, I've posted many stories in LW. Just not recently. You can check my profile.

But, yea... I just checked the recent postings, abs it seems to be a lot of review and rating bombings again. That's too bad...

 

[Syzoth]

Dont know when you looked but its back to the usual sub-3 scores on most stories right now.

I see that now... that's too bad.

 

[Shady_Lady]

I have to say this thread has reassured me.

I was wondering if it was just me who gets downvoted every time I post a story in the troll pit of Loving Wives.

I have read the definition again and again, Loving Wives - Married extra-marital fun: swinging, sharing & more. Yet it doesn't matter how accurately I hit that definition down, it goes.

I have written 188 stories on Literotica, and most receive a reasonable score, unless, of course, they are in Loving Wives.

I think going forward I will simply avoid that category and shoehorn it into somewhere else.

 

[IWroteThis]

I have to say this thread has reassured me.

I was wondering if it was just me who gets downvoted every time I post a story in the troll pit of Loving Wives.

I have read the definition again and again, Loving Wives - Married extra-marital fun: swinging, sharing & more. Yet it doesn't matter how accurately I hit that definition down, it goes.

I have written 188 stories on Literotica, and most receive a reasonable score, unless, of course, they are in Loving Wives.

I think going forward I will simply avoid that category and shoehorn it into somewhere else.

Actually, there is no need to shoehorn your story into somewhere else, unless it doesn't belong on Literotica at all. You see, Loving Wives is like Audio and Illustrated. It's a combination of all of the other categories, just with a key factor. However, the key factor in Loving Wives does not mandate the story being placed in Loving Wives, like happens with Audio and Illustrated.

So, simply ignore the wedding rings and look at what happens in your story.

 

[lc69hunter]

I am an avid reader, and commenter, in the LW space. A lot of newer writers try and stuff every kink in the world into one story. A simple LW story, and they stuff IR in, anal in, chastity, humiliation and cruelty in, whether they are part of the plot, or not. If they are not integral to the plot, I will click right back out of the story, as, if I want that, I will go to the relevant area of Lit, to read them.

On the BTB side, the highest rated ones have a stupid plot. A brain dead wife announcing she is going to do something, and the husband running away and hiding, not like a man, but a little boy whose bully has stolen his ball. Those are an automatic 2 from me, as I don't give 1's

 

[yowser]

What has always puzzled me about the category (which includes all the other aspects generally mentioned) is how 'unerotic' the offerings are overall. The 'hotwife' sub-genre probably comes closest, maybe some of the cuckold tales (although I don't usually read them) but clearly the focus of most readers (and writers) are not sexual interests or arousals but themes of betrayal.

I'd love to have a well-calibrated 'arousal-meter' on readership there compared to other categories (blood pressure comparisons wouldn't do the trick, which would be off the scale in LW compared to the rest, for different reasons.)

I'm always just so pleased to find a decent LW story, whatever the plot, with a strong sexual component, very rare.

 

[Annabelle1990]

I wrote my first story in Loving Wives. The third and final chapter will be published tomorrow according to my 'pending' box. I may well publish to a different group when I write the next story. I didn't get a ton of bad comments, but I totally got bombed with bad ratings. I was dumb enough to think that was a group for women who love their husbands. And I do love my husband.

 

[yowser]

I was dumb enough to think that was a group for women who love their husbands. And I do love my husband.

You are hardly alone, and many of us took the category's description at face value. My goodness, how experience teaches.

 

[Annabelle1990]

You are hardly alone, and many of us took the category's description at face value. My goodness, how experience teaches.

It's their loss if they drive people away. I can post elsewhere. Several groups fit.

 

[metropolinational]

And I do love my husband.

The LW readers will be the judges of that, and let you know...

 

[CalBishForNow]

What has always puzzled me about the category (which includes all the other aspects generally mentioned) is how 'unerotic' the offerings are overall. The 'hotwife' sub-genre probably comes closest, maybe some of the cuckold tales (although I don't usually read them) but clearly the focus of most readers (and writers) are not sexual interests or arousals but themes of betrayal.

Yeah, it drives me nuts. I came here as a reader years ago for stroke material, if I may be so crass, and I happen to like the hotwife/swinger/stag&vixen sort of plot, occasionally maybe a little light cuckoldry, but for every one story like that, LW has at least 5 stories that are revenge porn rather than the other kind.

Most of my stories are the kind of thing I like to read. I just try not to worry about the ratings.

 

[PennyThompson]

I happen to like the hotwife/swinger/stag&vixen sort of plot, occasionally maybe a little light cuckoldry, but for every one story like that, LW has at least 5 stories that are revenge porn rather than the other kind.

Probably better to search for those themes as tags rather than to fish through LW...

I think a good solution would be to split LW into two categories, "Hotwife & Swinging" and "Infidelity & Betrayal," or something like that. Two very different audiences with very different interests.

Lit split Transgender and Crossdressing into two separate categories last year, so there is precedent!

 

[IWroteThis]

Yeah, it drives me nuts. I came here as a reader years ago for stroke material, if I may be so crass, and I happen to like the hotwife/swinger/stag&vixen sort of plot, occasionally maybe a little light cuckoldry, but for every one story like that, LW has at least 5 stories that are revenge porn rather than the other kind.

Most of my stories are the kind of thing I like to read. I just try not to worry about the ratings.

That's fine, but not everybody comes to Literotica for a quick stroke. If they did, 750-word stories would be a lot more popular and nobody would ever reach the end of any 10K+ stories. Some of us just want a bit more eroticism in our stories. Call it edging if you need a sex term to understand it.

Also, especially in the Loving Wives category, some people are looking for a different type of release. Catharsis is a powerful and important thing. Just like how so many people enjoy underdog or resilience stories outside of erotica, many people enjoy them with sexual elements included in the initial beat down.

 

[PennyThompson]

not everybody comes to Literotica for a quick stroke. If they did, 750-word stories would be a lot more popular and nobody would ever reach the end of any 10K+ stories.

Skill issue, imo

 

[Imstillfun]

Yeah, it drives me nuts. I came here as a reader years ago for stroke material, if I may be so crass, and I happen to like the hotwife/swinger/stag&vixen sort of plot, occasionally maybe a little light cuckoldry, but for every one story like that, LW has at least 5 stories that are revenge porn rather than the other kind.

Most of my stories are the kind of thing I like to read. I just try not to worry about the ratings.

I agree, My stories are our jack off material.