Proper 2023 Retrospective and Regularly Recurring Instigation

[madelinemasoch]

I am going into 2024 with a new array of ideas and a new palette of stylistic devices. I have a literary goal to make things more gritty, dark, realistic, serious, and emotional.

In 2023, I was far more prolific than in 2022 when I started. Forgive me for getting older slower than our fellow forum members, but one year feels like it made a big difference in my life. In the coming months, all of my readers will see a new side of me. The gist of it is that I'm trying to write better stories... provided I can keep my head together without blowing it off in the new year. These new and better stories will read more as literature than as porno scripts.

I have decided that my scope had previously been too narrow last year. I would like to branch off into other topics, stylistic choices, content choices, and plotlines. I am going to give Eleanor new roles/personas/images/masks to wear/glittering appearances. I am going to do all of this in my own way, free of restriction from outside the site or within. There will be a new MadelineMasoch this year. It will essentially be like you can separate pre-2024 work from post-2024 work, as two different versions of the same author. It's like a band having a new album cycle. Or probably more like a lineup change, to be honest.

Now, I was previously told in a rejection slip on the site for the original version of Dark Love that the site promotes "healthy fantasy exploration." Thinking back on this now, I'm wondering, what if that's not the reason why I'm writing a particular story? Not everything I write is a fantasy I had personally. Not even every idea I visualize is a sexual fantasy that I, personally "get off" to, even if that idea is in its nature sexual.

Now, before you begin, the issue with that story was the scene where Thomas Sweetworth holds a gun to his chin while Mary (his wife) is cheating on him with Landon (Sabrina, the FMC's, husband). He doesn't shoot himself, because Landon smacks it to the floor before he can. However, this was still deemed too violent/extreme/dark for the site. That's the only piece of content I had to change for them to accept it. I didn't write that scene because it was a sexual fantasy I wanted to explore; I wrote the scene because that's what the character would do, and I found the image not arousing, but interesting; Wife's lover saves husband from killing himself in the midst of the act. Very thick action. I didn't even eroticize the failed suicide "attempt", it just happened on the page, and that was still too far for the site to accept.

The point is, I'm pursuing ideas more in the direction of Dark Love and Eleanor Winter, more for the literary aspects. Simultaneously I have noticed that other authors on the site do not approach their writing in the same way, particularly in terms of tone, thematics, and sentence structure, but more relevantly in terms of the sex. A lot of authors are innocently typing out and publishing their sexual fantasies and wish-fulfillment of their dreams. I am not doing that when I sit down to write, because even in my wish-fulfillment fantasy, problems arise for the characters and I'm putting them through trouble. Let me restate that I am striving for more literature than porn. Perhaps a better way of putting this would actually be more eroticism than pornography is what I'm going for. Characters have to have an arc of development and go through problems/impediments to their desires and even in my case to their happiness, or else it's just not interesting.

My point is, when my motivations for publishing at all are so variably different from simply "exploring sexual fantasies healthily", and are never ever limited to that, am I going to run into problems? This isn't because of category because it doesn't depend on category, it's the site in general with its content guidelines. How do I get away with certain depictions? Time will tell, but I know I can count on certain people's advice and help on here, regardless of how belligerent I may sometimes appear.

 

[alohadave]

My point is, when my motivations for publishing at all are so variably different from simply "exploring sexual fantasies healthily", and are never ever limited to that, am I going to run into problems? This isn't because of category because it doesn't depend on category, it's the site in general with its content guidelines. How do I get away with certain depictions? Time will tell, but I know I can count on certain people's advice and help on here, regardless of how belligerent I may sometimes appear.

Maybe this isn't the place for those particular stories. There are lots of sites that are less restrictive on what they allow.

Like you don't post artistic nude pictures on facebook, but flickr has no problem with them.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My point is, when my motivations for publishing at all are so variably different from simply "exploring sexual fantasies healthily", and are never ever limited to that, am I going to run into problems? This isn't because of category because it doesn't depend on category, it's the site in general with its content guidelines. How do I get away with certain depictions? Time will tell, but I know I can count on certain people's advice and help on here, regardless of how belligerent I may sometimes appear.

Dressing something up as "literary" or "meaningful" is irrelevant if the content breaches the site's content policies. A content breach is a content breach, no matter how well you write it.

You shouldn't try to "get away" with anything - write within the policy boundaries, get your content published. Easy. The policies are clear enough, I think.

Just remember, Vladimir Nabakov wouldn't have been able to publish Lolita here. Not because its not good, but because it would breach a site policy.

 

[AlinaX]

Write the story you want to write, but site rules will present challenges that you will need to find ways around. Perhaps a despairing husband, instead of putting a gun to his head, picks up a woman off the street and fucks her brutally in the same bed his wife should be in... After which he bursts into tears - and she nicks some jewellery, which causes other problems later on.

 

[AG31]

Maybe this isn't the place for those particular stories. There are lots of sites that are less restrictive on what they allow.

Like you don't post artistic nude pictures on facebook, but flickr has no problem with them.

@madelinemasoch

I hope you keep publishing whatever your write until you hit some sort of wall. When you do, let us know what triggered it, if you can figure it out.

I don't find Literotica particularly restrictive (compared to, say, Lush Stories). And I do believe that we can't control what pushes our buttons and that erotica is not the real world. The same rules shouldn't apply.

'the site promotes "healthy fantasy exploration." '
I'd like to know how they define "healthy." I do think exploring one's fantasies is healthy. But I don't think there's a future in trying to apply that qualification to content, with the exception of the age restriction.

Here's the restriction related to death. I don't see that your story fell under this description, which is why I'm hoping you'll report other rejections based on content to us here.

• Sexualized death, “vore”, or “snuff” fiction. Characters are allowed to kill or die in stories, but the death should not be intended as sexually titillating.

 

[AG31]

You shouldn't try to "get away" with anything - write within the policy boundaries, get your content published. Easy. The policies are clear enough, I think.

Here is the restriction regarding death. It doesn't seem to fit MM's description. Maybe she's not being clear, but I don't find this situation "clear enough."

• Sexualized death, “vore”, or “snuff” fiction. Characters are allowed to kill or die in stories, but the death should not be intended as sexually titillating.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Here is the restriction regarding death. It doesn't seem to fit MM's description. Maybe she's not being clear, but I don't find this situation "clear enough."

• Sexualized death, “vore”, or “snuff” fiction. Characters are allowed to kill or die in stories, but the death should not be intended as sexually titillating.

Yeah, no, even the original version didn't sexualize anybody's death, potential or otherwise. I don't think the character of Mary even sexualizes the death of her first husband, just feels "closer" to him while having sex for ambiguous reasons. It's an interesting character because it's ambiguous why she's doing this and how it connects to her grief.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Here is the restriction regarding death. It doesn't seem to fit MM's description. Maybe she's not being clear, but I don't find this situation "clear enough."

• Sexualized death, “vore”, or “snuff” fiction. Characters are allowed to kill or die in stories, but the death should not be intended as sexually titillating.

How is this not clear, in any context? You can't have an eroticised, sexualised depiction of death, not on Lit. That's a "full stop" kind of statement to me. Any notion that it's not "clear enough" is, in my book, an attempt to blur the line, to push past it. Does the site need to draw pictures? I don't think so.

The way to handle sex and death in any story for Lit is the same way as you depict a child in a story - make sure the sex and the death (child) are decoupled in time and space so they are two unrelated descriptive events. "In separate rooms and five-hundred words away," is how I put it.

"He shot her" is fine, with enough added description to make a plot point, but five-hundred words of gratuitous description of his cock in the bullet wound goes over the line.

There could almost be a Rule 101 for this kind of thing: "If you don't know when to stop, it's too late, you've already gone over the line. Back up, wind it back, skate the edge if you think you must, but know where to stop."

 

[AG31]

How is this not clear, in any context? You can't have an eroticised, sexualised depiction of death, not on Lit. That's a "full stop" kind of statement to me. Any notion that it's not "clear enough" is, in my book, an attempt to blur the line, to push past it. Does the site need to draw pictures? I don't think so.

The way to handle sex and death in any story for Lit is the same way as you depict a child in a story - make sure the sex and the death (child) are decoupled in time and space so they are two unrelated descriptive events. "In separate rooms and five-hundred words away," is how I put it.

"He shot her" is fine, with enough added description to make a plot point, but five-hundred words of gratuitous description of his cock in the bullet wound goes over the line.

There could almost be a Rule 101 for this kind of thing: "If you don't know when to stop, it's too late, you've already gone over the line. Back up, wind it back, skate the edge if you think you must, but know where to stop."

Yeah, but MM's story, as she reports it, doesn't seem to fit. So why was it rejected?

 

[madelinemasoch]

Yeah, but MM's story, as she reports it, doesn't seem to fit. So why was it rejected?

It could be that you can't even have suicidal behavior in the proximity of a sex act, in which case I think the rule should be rewritten to read as broad as it is enforced.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It could be that you can't even have suicidal behavior in the proximity of a sex act, in which case I think the rule should be rewritten to read as broad as it is enforced.

Why should a long-standing policy be changed merely because you want to push against it? Maybe your content is too extreme for this site?

 

[madelinemasoch]

Why should a long-standing policy be changed merely because you want to push against it? Maybe your content is too extreme for this site?

I should've been more clear. My original story didn't break the policy as written. If they want to enforce the policy more broadly than it is written, then they should write the policy the way that they want to enforce it.

 

[AG31]

Why should a long-standing policy be changed merely because you want to push against it? Maybe your content is too extreme for this site?

You keep posting as if the problem she's complaining about is that she doesn't like the policy. I read it as the policy is fine, she just doesn't think her story violated it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You keep posting as if the problem she's complaining about is that she doesn't like the policy. I read it as the policy is fine, she just doesn't think her story violated it.

Gun in mouth threatening suicide, while two people are having sex immediately nearby, and one of the protagonists knocks the gun away - you really can't see there's an explicit connection been made between sex and death? Are you serious?

Just because Madeline says it's "interesting" to her, but not "erotic" doesn't give it some kind of tautological exemption.

"Just happened to be on the same page" is genius, real genius, but you two can't be real, saying, "But I think it was okay, so it is okay." Obviously not, according to Laurel.

To answer @madelinemasoch's original question, yes, I do think you're going to have problems with your 2024 content if you can't see/won't accept the site's content policy statements. Just because you say, "Oh, but it's going to have some grand literary purpose" doesn't get you a hall pass.

But we'll see how you go, won't we? Your debate's not with me, it'll be with Laurel. You sought input from AH members - this one thinks your example went over the line. On a personal level, I'm saddened that someone's world view is so bleak. Your content is not only depressing, it's disturbing. Your demons must haunt you at night.

 

[AG31]

On a personal level, I'm saddened that someone's world view is so bleak. Your content is not only depressing, it's disturbing. Your demons must haunt you at night.

Are you saddened or judgemental?

 

[AG31]

Gun in mouth threatening suicide, while two people are having sex immediately nearby, and one of the protagonists knocks the gun away - you really can't see there's an explicit connection been made between sex and death? Are you serious?

i don't see anyone deriving sexual stimulation from someone dying.

But we'll see how you go, won't we? Your debate's not with me, it'll be with Laurel. You sought input from AH members - this one thinks your example went over the line. On a personal level, I'm saddened that someone's world view is so bleak. Your content is not only depressing, it's disturbing. Your demons must haunt you at night.

I think one of the special good things about erotica is that it gives people a platform on which to accept whatever is going on in their brains/psyches. We can be extremely judgemental about people's actions. But it does no good to condemn them for what complex dynamics turn them on. Erotica lets people accept themselves.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Are you saddened or judgemental?

Saddened. I like Madeline, even if I can't handle her content, and I do admire her single-minded tenacity. If she meant nothing, I wouldn't bother responding - she can make of that what she will.

 

[ElectricBlue]

i don't see anyone deriving sexual stimulation from someone dying.

You might not, but ask yourself why the site bans snuff and vore. You might want to read up on some of the real-life cases.

 

[AG31]

You might not, but ask yourself why the site bans snuff and vore. You might want to read up on some of the real-life cases.

I just did a little research, and it seems like it's really early in Australia. Are you connected to Lit all the time?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I just did a little research, and it seems like it's really early in Australia. Are you connected to Lit all the time?

It's early morning, just had breakfast, and still drinking my first coffee. I've been up for a couple of hours. I'm stalling, not wanting to go back to work.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Obviously, I haven't seen Madeline's story. There have been other similar cases though. There was one a while back featuring a hitman who shot someone during sex. The focus was on him doing the job rather than the deed and so arguably it wasn't titilating. It was rejected and then went through when the assassination took place moments later.

From what I've seen I suspect that "Characters should not die during sexual activity or in sexualized situations" might be a better statement of the actual rule. Whether something is titillating or not can be arguable, so the above would be clearer. Even that doesn't match Madeline's story though as the characters didn't go through with the deed.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Saddened. I like Madeline, even if I can't handle her content, and I do admire her single-minded tenacity. If she meant nothing, I wouldn't bother responding - she can make of that what she will.

Thank you for that. The fact is, due to my own life experiences, it's not hard for me to put myself back into that place of desperation. I think that's why it comes out in the ideas. You're not my therapist though, so I'll leave it at that. I wish you the best.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thank you for that. The fact is, due to my own life experiences, it's not hard for me to put myself back into that place of desperation. I think that's why it comes out in the ideas. You're not my therapist though, so I'll leave it at that. I wish you the best.

Likewise

 

[KeithD]

I'm all for writing the story you want first and looking for a place to publish it later.

 

[AG31]

I'm all for writing the story you want first and looking for a place to publish it later.

As far as I can tell, this is a fine place for @madelinemasoch to publish, despite occasional inexplicable corrections by admins.