Myr

It does not currently, but I've asked the programmer to look at it.  (it used to use whomever posted as the notification author and that caused all sorts of issues when staff posted something... such as premium or anthologies)
 

It has been removed.
 
Nope.
Nope.  Too many people with second thoughts and no way to undo their actions.

Yes it is a bug.  And yes, it's because of the 'not quite a chapter' nature of the prologue.
I've reported the bug to the programmer.

Ah.  to quote Steve Jobs... "You're holding it wrong!"

I'm guessing you were in landscape mode on a tablet.  It was just wide enough to trigger desktop mode, but not wide enough to display the full image and not narrow enough to turn it off. I reduced the number of pictures so that it should display properly (or not at all) on all devices.

1.  It is working normally.
2. The first link looks like a link to the Gallery page that hosts the image. The second is the direct link to where the image is stored.  (The image is stored on a third party cloud service (Amazon Web Services)). Either link should work. First one gives you the formatted gallery link. 
Second gives you the image directly. (I shrunk it for this post)

Which link you'd like to use depends on your purpose of posting.
3. I think it is a security setting with your iPad.  either VPN, or something about third-party or cross-site image loading. 
Sometimes the issue is on our end where something gets cached incorrectly, but that typically clears in a few hours.  This is pretty rare on a post. I usually see it garbling up a blog header image.
If someone has an iPad, can you weigh in? I think we had a case recently that was similar.

Well, first, don't look at page count.  That varies too wildly depending on how much dialog you use.  Use word count instead.
3000 to 5000 words per chapter is generally good for novel. 
In Word, word count is displayed on the bottom left, right next to page count.

It is, but it requires uploading them into the Gallery first.
Unfortunately though, having looked at the pictures you bring up, we are prevented from allowing images that Google considers porn.  (Yes, I know that Google is loaded with porn, but the Do Only Evil corporation gets to do what it wants while it dictates to everyone else).  Your image samples in "Leaping into the Quarry" would be considered porn by our masters at Google and thus are not allowed.
So, if you can live with that restriction, it's pretty easy to add images to stories. You seem to use a tasteful amount, as that is the other guideline.
Myr

Inserting a picture and adding a link to it by pressing the link button is still an option.

Yes, though custom images like you see on mine and Northie's are a special feature for promoted author groups. (Promising, classic, signature)
 

There seems to be a language issue...
This is a sidebar widget.  You're screenshot has two of them.

 
The Strikethrough icon appears in the editor anyplace where the width of the editor is larger than mobile/tablet devices.

If it is not appearing on a full side editor, it is an issue on your end.  I've verified it works fine on chrome on Android both phone and tablet.

The buttons in the editor are dependent on the size of your screen. Desktop gets the full amount, mobile gets the least with tablet in the middle.  You can force your smaller device to show more by ticking the 'desktop' button in your mobile browser.

I'm seeing as well as @Marty
Try clearing your cache in your browser.

We are processing stuff in the background. It's a temporary issue.

You could just use the filters on the Story Archive...  For example, the tag for "were-creatures":
https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/?filter_tags=15
That should be a starting point, at least.

There was a backlog overnight as the system was processing a lot of stuff in the background.  It should be fine going forward... so if you see similar issue after this post, then reply with a link.

This problem should be corrected now.

The filter bar on the story pages is not folding down properly on mobile.

This bug has been reported to our programmer and we've been waiting for a response.

I'm not experiencing that and there is not enough information to attempt to reproduce.
What browser are you using? What OS? Where exactly are you experiencing the issue (include links)? Can you include a screenshot of what you mean? Also, trying clearing your cache in your browser to make sure you don't have a corrupted file in there.  Does the problem still exist after clearing cache and reloading the site?

My bad. I had to make adjustment to the sidebar widget that I missed in the initial upgrade.  It should be all set now
 

The system made some changes to default actions. One of those is that it prunes followers after 1 year of not signing onto the site.

@Timothy M. This was fixed during the update.
https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/author/?member=18045&

After a discussion with the GA support team, we have changed ALL reactions to be +1.  This is not retroactive. (I can't trigger the recount system as that would recount everything and likely remove from everyone's total due to removed content/members/etc.)
@Headstall@Timothy M.

I think the text size option gets stored in the cookie and that can sync across mobile devices.  You can clear that just for GA by the following:
On Samsung Tablet in Chrome - Settings -> Site Settings -> Data Stored. (Find Gay Authors)  https://gayauthors.org -> Usage.  Then hit the trash icon. 
You will be logged out.  Then once you log back into the site, you should be back to normal.

This is a caching issue.  Either on the server side, your side or both.  It clears itself regularly though. Hopefully fixed in the next update to the forums that is due in the near future.

No, sorry.  It was something we left out to reduce the complexity of the interface.  (people still complain things are too confusing)