Thorn Wilde

This is an important point. There's nothing new under the sun; it's just a question of how we tell our stories. Originality rarely lies in the premise or the basic themes of the tale. It's in the details, the voice, the tone, and so on. That's how you set your story apart from other stories that, if you strip away all the trimmings, are the same story underneath.

I agree about the club forums. They don't seem to be organised in any discernible way at all, neither alphabetically nor by update or club or content.

Maybe that's why there's so much sexual assault that goes unacknowledged and unreported in the gay community. You say no one would have reacted like Daniel, well I personally know people who would, and have. One thing is fantasising about it. Having it happen is quite another.

I wish to add that, as a reader, I've often relied on the sidebar. Precisely because of the community focus of the site, I'm more likely to just revert to the forum front page, glance at the sidebar, and click if I see an interesting title, than I am to go to the stories page and actively look. I'm sure I'm not the only person who does this. I don't see how this change is beneficial to anyone. If you could demonstrate that it is, maybe I'd be more at ease with it, but to me it looks a lot like change just for change's sake. EDIT: Also, if you want to see how readership has dwindled, just look at the amount of likes on the weekly top stories now compared to earlier. Cause there are regularly stories with one like on that list, including right now.

I don't think it's very healthy to end up in a relationship with your rapist. Do you?

I get that, but I think this will have a detrimental effect on author exposure (I know of several authors on the site other than myself who feel like they're getting fewer reads than they used to already and I can't see this change helping), and surely the forums are for registered users and not guests in the first place, but I suppose it's not up to any of us. The community is absolutely important, and part of what many of us enjoy so much about GA, but it shouldn't be at expense of the stories and authors, should it?

I think it was better as it was. People are less likely to click through to see more than to just click whatever's right there. This way, new chapters may only be visible on the forum front page for half an hour when lots of people are posting. This is a site for stories, isn't it? Doesn't seem to make much sense to make the stories less visible. Edited to add: With how long the club forums thing is now, there's plenty of space in the side bar for a longer story updates list. If anything, you could make it longer.

You should be!

I really enjoyed the way you described Ronnie's powers growing and manifesting. The energy travelling along tendrils. It was a very cool visual, really brought the scene to life. Good job!

Dude, same! And I keep creating new ones... I cannot count how many Skyrim characters I've had (and yet, I'm pretty sure I've yet to play an argonian), I've started at least a dozen play-throughs of Fallout 4 (but only finished the main quest once), I've played every race in Dragon Age Origins and Inquisition, and have played the Mass Effect trilogy all the way through seven times with different Shepards with different classes, genders, backstories and moral alignments. It's like an obsession. lol

This is perfectly true, but the potential ambiguity of English is never made better by poor grammar either.

I've written a three-way just once, I think, and that's the most I've had at once... It's in the Hubris story for Devon. I think I pulled it off pretty well. I think the clue is not to get too hung up on who did what to whom, which can easily end up a little bit mechanical, and focus more on feelings and sensory impressions. If you're actually in a situation like that, you're not gonna be thinking too much about what exactly your partners are doing to each other and more about what you're doing and what's being done to you (this assuming a limited third person or first person POV). I want to write more polyamory, which may mean more multiple partner sex scenes, but I also find myself writing fewer sex scenes than I used to. Hah! This reminds me of Sykes' Law (as written by the author Sam Sykes, world's greatest shitposter, in a blog post many many years ago, and now paraphrased by yours truly). 'If you read closely enough, you'll be able to spot the exact point in the prose where the author started touching themself.'

You say you lean toward clarity, but that wasn't clear at all. Like I said, you put three people in the sentence. Raven, she, and John. Now, 'Raven and John have been best friends since third grade' is perfectly fine. It was the 'since meeting' part that made the sentence not make sense. As for how you write vs how you speak, in dialogue I'm all for writing like you talk. But in the prose itself, you really should follow basic rules of grammar and punctuation, unless you have a very good and compelling reason not to that furthers your narrative artistically (Cloud Atlas, A Clockwork Orange, and Flowers for Algernon are examples of titles that purposefully did this, and to great effect). Edited to add: I believe in writing the story you want to write, the way you want to write it, and I'm not one to enforce hard rules about how to tell a story. But it should be told in a way that the readers can understand, and that's why we have spelling, grammar, and punctuation rules and conventions; so that we can communicate our message to people in a way that they understand. That's the whole purpose of language.

Probably not. What punctuation rules there are are much younger than the language itself.

That's not grammatically correct. First of all, you've changed the tense from past to present, by using 'have' rather than 'had'. Also, 'Raven' is the object of the first half, with 'she and John' being the implied subjects of both halves, so you've put three people in that sentence rather than two. EDIT: It would in theory be understandable if you wrote 'John and she' rather than 'she and John', but it's still ambiguous.

Oh, that's an excellent museum! Been there several times.

Now that is a very bad sentence. It's true that a lot of 'had's can (and should) be eliminated by simply changing the sentence structure. In the case of the sentence above, I'd cut half of it and just write, 'John and Raven had met in the third grade and become instant besties,' for instance. It can also be a good idea to restructure or rephrase sentences with 'was' in them. A good way to make things more interesting. Either way, though, the key is variety. If every sentence in a paragraph is 'subject, verb, object', things get boring fast, for instance. While punctuation definitely counts, punctuation rules in English are actually extremely complex, convoluted, and inconsistent, especially where commas are concerned. There are vast varieties of styles that use commas differently (Oxford comma or not is only one of many points where people wildly disagree) and no hardcore rules for them. You can ask three different editors who are equally experienced, educated, and knowledgeable and get three completely different answers about comma placement.

Congrats on clearing the mod queue! And this is getting very exciting. Hellfire, huh? Interesting... Also, I loved your descriptions of the museum. Detailed enough to set the scene nicely, but not so much you lose focus on the story. Nicely done!

What a sweet and beautiful poem! I'm glad you two had a nice time.

I mean, hands-free orgasm is a real thing, but it has less to do with your lover's skill than with, well, physiology. Some can, some can't. Either way, I do think this version was an improvement. You're doing a great job reworking this.

Good chapter! You do a great job of expressing the frustration Ronnie feels, I think. Keep it up!

Against Me! - True Trans Soul Rebel

Ooh, exciting! Can't wait to see what more you two create together.

Sometimes 'had' is necessary; past perfect is often needed when writing a story in past tense, and then 'had' is essential. That's just good grammar.

Sounds really tasty. Definitely need to try making it...