Is there any appetite here for a thread to get into more in-depth constructive criticism of some of the stories here? I was reading the comments of a story today that had a critique and it seemed to me that this might be a more organized format for technical criticism like that.

Could also just take a book club format where we all read one short story a week or longer story a month?

Any interest?

Wise words!

Ok, that sounds like a healthy thing!

Just be mindful that you might be getting into things she’s not comfortable talking about with other people (or at least with you), so make the talk comfortable and safe. Set boundaries and ask her if there are specific things she doesn’t want to talk about then and there. And be honest with her, but starting things off asking if she’s into death feedism is probably going to end poorly.

Important question — who brought up the topic of “expanding your sexuality” or what you talked about the other day?

If you brought it up and it ended in hard feelings on her side, i might not push this issue right now. She’s defensive. It won’t go well. Definitely don’t ambush her with it.

I would do it very bluntly and clinically, in detail. Choosing the place and time is important, too. Right before church would be a good time, or during a nice dinner out.

Seriously, though - it depends on your partner? How would you bring up any other kind of delicate information with them? Don’t ambush them or bring it up first thing in the morning while they’re drinking coffee. I wouldn’t do it in bed, either. If it goes badly you’re associating the bedroom with negative feelings. Say “hey, we spoke the other day about being more open with each other about sexual wants/needs. I would like to talk more about this. Would you like to come over and have a drink and talk?”

Then don’t be weird about it. They’re your partner, you already have an idea of what their preferences are, what they like. What’s an aspect of your kink that you think they might be into? If the answer is “nothing at all”, uh. I have bad news for you. I mean you could still try, but just don’t expect someone else to force their sexuality to match yours.

But maybe there’s an angle — “I know you’re sensitive about this part of your body, but I love it and if you’re trying to make yourself thinner for me, you don’t have to”, or maybe she likes being pampered or spoiled and that’s a comfortable place for her. Maybe she just likes good food and you could talk about how sensual good food can be. Food play in bed is fairly vanilla, and could be a good way to start. Or maybe you could say that it would turn you on when every time she ate it made her think of you, a secret love language.

But I wouldn’t use a lot of (any) fetish lingo or say you want to force feed her or to talk about how big you want her to be. Unless that’s her thing. You know her I don’t.

With my current partner I did something like what I talked about, they thought it was funny more than sexy, indulged me for a little while but decided it wasn’t their kink and that was the end of it. You can’t force it.

Good luck.

Edit— the part about not ambushing them is super important. This is a while back, but my partner told me, in a heartfelt way, that they wanted to lose weight and basically asked my permission. Which was incredibly kind and understanding of them. But they wanted to make sure that it wasn’t going to cause issues, and of course I said it wouldn’t. However, the first time they chose to do it was right before bed, when I wasn’t expecting it. And I felt a little ambushed. Even if I had a major objection (I didn’t) I would have felt like I had to agree with them because I was put on the spot. The second time they asked just to confirm was first thing in the morning when I was drinking coffee and half awake. Don’t do that to your partner, especially in this situation. Plan a time to talk, make sure she knows it’s about a sex topic, make sure it’s a time that works for both of you and isn’t stressy because of other reasons. Give her a fair chance to hear you and think about it. And don’t push her for an answer.

Thanks!

Do you have to remove a lot of stories?

One other point on this and I’ll shut up, and it’s just a philosophical one, not at all a complaint:

If I’m going to read a novel, I want to read it on paper (or a kindle) where I can bookmark it and thumb through and, often, see the illustrations, and it’s a pleasant and comfortable reading experience. If I’m going to read a short story, it might be in a book, or it might be in a magazine with color pictures and more complicated desktop publishing. My first choice to read a novel, though, would not be on a website. For example, on this website, you can’t bookmark and pick up where you left off and you can only skip chapters 5 at a time. For a 100 chapter book, that can be tough. And it’s still great to read stories here because of the creative community, but it’s fundamentally reading a book on a website, not on paper.

HOWEVER…. It’s a website! There’s so much that you can do on a website that you can’t do on the printed page. I would embrace that! It would be up to the author to use multimedia tastefully and effectively, but that’s no different from words (there are plenty of stories on this site and others that are not everyone’s taste!). That’s the power of a website, though. A horror story that has some spooky illustrations, but one’s a gif and it’s a jump scare. A link to a YouTube page with a soundtrack. A convincing mock-up of a texting conversation (my most recent chapter has this and the version I have to put on FF is not very convincing!). There are a million things possible that utilize the format to make a story more immersive.

I really don’t think that this is common on other creative fiction sites, either (at least not erotica). I think most stick to traditional print tropes. Giving the creative people here a big toolbox would set FF apart from the others.

And already, FF offers things that other erotica lit websites don’t. I use my Pics page to store illustrations. I could do videos, too, if I wanted. Or even use the gainers section to track my characters, or something like that. The options are there. But it’s in the nature of this website to want more, right? Let’s keep growing.

Ok, that’s great. You might want to reconsider bold and color. I think you’ll find that many published novels make use of them. Particularly boldface and underline. Those aren’t uncommon at all (underline is proper formatting for names of books, etc). Giving storytellers a full toolbox allows for more creative storytelling.

For the title text, I meant that if you are looking at the stories on a mobile device, the cover picture covers up the name of the story. Maybe it’s just an iOS thing, but you should check it. I can show a picture if you like. This isn’t a problem on desktop.