Gladly! Hopefully something there will work.
One addition i’d not yet read when i posted:
Army Wives (Chapter 1 with intro)(“Gallery” chapter TOC)
This is the antithesis of the happy-go-lucky “Tee hee, I’m getting fatter and everything is perfect and nothing ever goes wrong” fantasy tendency of many stories (including my own) in the FLS genre. It is the most gritty, realistic take on addictive extreme overeating to attempt to cope with unresolved emotional/trauma issues i’ve yet encountered. Unfortunately the first couple of chapters are fairly sloppily edited/proofread, which nearly turned me off to the story. A a Fishery Acodomy member needing to read the story through to give it a fair chance in the voting, i pushed forward.
It is a long story, not yet finished last i checked. Army Wives is a Fishery Awards 2022 winner in the categories Best Original Story and Best Writing.
Despite being age-appropriate for paper Dimensions, i only ever saw two issues (given away at the NAAFA L.A. 1998 convention). Everything you describe certainly carried over to the 1990s online stories. Must have been discomposing (or if not that, annoying) to see it in print.
Ignoring a piece of garbage i put out in 1996 that all too well fits what we were discussing above, my first actually released story was late May 2020: Unforgettable Cruise (here on Dims)(highest fidelity version on my site). It was my then-newest story, written about the still-new COVID-19 pandemic, using all the writing skills i’d developed over the preceding decade spending a majority of time writing this sort of fiction. I threw everything i had into that story. Cleverly (and with a little help from chance), i had a breakpoint part-way through the long story arc, for a possible dramatic ending.
Started releasing… crickets. Nothing. No interest. (sigh)
Within days of starting the serialized release, a certain Minneapolis policeman ended the life of a certain citizen of color, and the world changed suddenly and dramatically yet again. My story to that point had been based heavily on real world events, set mostly in the real world universe other than my fictitious cruise line and cruise ship and its somewhat unusual itinerary. As an author categorized as “white” with a cast of characters mostly the same, i could not think of any reasonable way to continue the story. Couldn’t ignore what happened with George Floyd and the powerful, extended aftermath, and it seemed So Very Wrong to keep the story centered on my characters when in the real world it felt so important for my and others’ attention to be focused elsewhere.
So i killed it at the breakpoint and moved on. It’s the most dramatic ending i’ve yet written, but overall the story only really was starting to build up momentum when it hit the wall. (It amuses me greatly to this day that i wrote in indirect shout-outs to at least one then-popular person on all of Dimensions, Fantasy Feeder, and Curvage, and not one of those people noticed. Then again, my superpower is being invisible in plain sight.)
It was wonderful, and obviously i do that too. In fact, here’s part 2 of the last section:
Your vampire story’s release story resonates hard beyond what i wrote above. The most enthusiastic responses i’ve received so far haven’t been my mainline fatlovesex stories, but my mutant stories.
For reasons far too long to explain, having to do with researching one of my then-being-written stories, i came across the Spanish visual artist Modulokss (two ending s es everywhere except his account on DeviantArt, where it’s one ending s). Something about his drawings of severely mutated and (most often) highly hypersexualized people (and i use that last word loosely) atop stock photos drew me in.
A couple of image series had stories to go along with them. I quite liked the concept of Udder Girl, but her existing fragmentary, incomplete story in broken English, not so much. For sure i give Modulokss a pass on the English as it’s not his primary language, but the thing is that wasn’t his writing, mostly. He’d secured the services of a series of supposedly English-writing friends. Talk (write) about “plot holes big enough to fit my super size ass through”, the original text for Udder Girl had holes so gaping, we could line up the butts of every Dims member of every size and maybe still not fill them! There was no there there, in many cases. Indeed, after awhile the story just dropped off entirely with no ending, but the pictures continued.
Feeling a surge of motivation, i took the original text, repaired it, filled in the gaps, made it coherent, and extended it… past the end of the original images. I did all this on my own, having no idea what the original artist might think, or if he’d even respond. Contacted him, sent it in: Modulokss loved it! We discussed releasing it, and it became my second released story (of this millennium, and that one from last millennium doesn’t count). Others in the mutant community also loved my full novelization of Udder Girl, to the point where i started getting requests for co-writes, people sending in ideas, etc.
So yes, i absolutely relate to having a stronger response from a community other than what i might consider my home community.
Honestly, i almost did not post in this thread at all, because i don’t feel even a fraction of as well-read as you or others posting. I was an honors student and have no known reading comprehension difficulties, yet somehow i’ve never been the sort of avid reader you clearly seem to be, and many others are. Never read Harry Potter, nor anything else you named. Movies?: don’t even ask. When people say “Have you seen–” i cut them off right there, because i already know the answer is No. Unless we go back decades: High Fidelity, A Mighty Wind, This Is Spinal Tap—never mind the list, this is a reading/books thread.
The point is: other people seem to somehow find/have/make the time to:
* See movies
* Watch TV-like programming
* Read books
and that just Does Not Happen in my life. And it’s not like i’m working an intense job that suck up my time—i’ve been unemployed since near the end of the last millennium. Throw on top of that that i rarely go out anywhere and do things (other than walks and bicycle ride loops from home returning to home), and there’s precious little for me to contribute on sites like this, or anywhere else, really.
Maybe making over-long posts like this one, repurposing online images, and turning in telephone call spammers is where my time goes.
Thank you Donna for starting this thread. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed so far, and in advance for those who will contribute in the future.
