"Got Me Pegged" is officially my 24th famous story now. That means something new is joining it in my signature and as one of the three stories highlighted on my profile. "Good Will" will have been on my profile for a year in July. LOL

The newcomer is "Three Alarm". A handsome young fireman lights a three alarm fire in this Milf, and he has all the right equipment to tame it.

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/milf/three-alarm

Up and working for me again. Added the uncensored cover for the submission that will go into the queue tonight to my gallery, and attached the censored cover to an existing story that didn't have one. Which just got approved as I was typing this. LOL

No problem 😀 I gave it an hour or two in case it was planned downtime, but I was getting suspicious that it wasn't.

I'm guessing this is a known thing. In case it isn't...

Uploads are currently down — at least for me. Attempts to upload images to my media gallery appear to go through, but the image never shows up. Attempts to add a cover to an already approved story results in a "down for maintenance" error page when the upload of the image begins.

It's been almost two years since I ran my numbers, so I thought I'd see where things stand. As always, this is more or less for my own tracking purposes, though it could be a demonstration/warning for some of what happens if your production wanes into a feast and famine cycle like mine does. LOL

Famous Track 20k+

Got Me Pegged 23550->29558

Good Will 26915->28462

Three Alarm 26812->27534

Kitty in the Cream 26003->26910

Hard Times 25649->26518

Summer's Heat 25326->26211

Pole Skills 23832->26420

Sunny Daze 24870->25911

Jerk 24773 ->25816

Souvenir 24498->25508

Taste the Rainbow 23863->24801

Double Booked 22808->23731

Vicki Cleans Up 22520->23506

Son Stroke 21119->23428

And I'll Get a Pole 22193->23152

A Sale of Two Titties 21646->22370

Heart-Shaped Box 21810->22265

Side Hustle 21870

Divorcing My Vibe 20784->21594

Trade In 19693->20772

Her Flock 19701->20495

Hung by the Chimney 20684

Clean Up - Aisle Eight 19990->20462

Beholding Dawn 19685->20318

About to join the 20k club

Peppermint Patty 19944

Pick Up the Spare 19099->19836

Zero Qualms 19728

Adam's Aunt Ch. 02 19771

Bored Out 19726

Coming in Second 19265

Adam's Aunt Ch. 01 19097

Legendary Track ( 50k+ )

Dip in the Lake 67423->69391

A Fine Substitute 64147->66405

Mom's Second Chance 57589->61163

Mom's Stocking Stuffer 56492 -> 57118

Bet Your Bottom 49044->50925

Like Riding a Bike 48475->50742

Double Dip 46848->50260

"Got Me Pegged" took a huge leap because it has such a good position on the toplist, and it's also been featured on my profile now ever since "Nude Holly Day" went Legendary. "Pole Skills" is also well positioned on the toplist. "Son Stroke" simply benefits from the . "A Sale of Two Titties" hopped up one level in the ranking, but otherwise, everything has remained the same in the stories that were in the 20k club last time.

"Side Hustle" and "Hung by the Chimney" both made it above 19k and graduated to 20k since I last tracked. "Side Hustle" is well-positioned on the toplist. I guess "Hung by the Chimney" must have had a good Christmas the last couple of years. LOL Four other stories graduated from 19k to the 20k club.

New to the 19k club are "Peppermint Patty", "Zero Qualms", the first two chapters of "Adam's Aunt", "Bored Out", and "Coming in Second"

I decided to raise the bar on the final category to the halfway point of 50k, because that list might start getting a little bloated after a couple more updates with stories closing in on 40k. I'll probably bump the bar up by 10k every so often until it hits 80k as the lower limit to keep the list manageable, and frankly more useful to me. A couple of stories fell off the list with this change. Second Chance and Stocking Stuffer flip-flopped, but I'm pretty sure that's because I reversed their numbers last time. Assuming that I'm correct, I changed the previous track numbers to reflect that here.

So, a story that doesn't have anything special going for it such as a recommended read, editor's pick, or solid toplist position is picking up somewhere around 400 views a year. Famous/Legendary seems to have a genuine impact on reads, because those manage closer to 1k views a year with my recent publication frequency. I don't know if that's because they show up as recommendations more often, or simply because they have a special list on the front page. Double Dip has an Editor's Pick in addition to the famous badge, and it went up quite a bit more than most others this year, so maybe those front page lists have an impact, and it's taking a double bite.

I'm in the process of attaching covers to all of my stories, so we'll see if that has any effect eventually, when I fall into a famine phase again. Right now, while I'm actively posting in feast mode, there's a lot more activity on old stories than would happen when I'm languishing in famine land.

What to recommend, in keeping true to the forum section... Ah! One of my favorite series!

"Magic of the Wood" is a generational tale of magic, love, and preservation of the world's natural bounty featuring beautiful dryads, naiads, and other nymphs. The story begins in "Steward of the Wood" as we see Daniel grow up and come to own the woods where his imaginary friend once played with him as a child. Now an adult, he learns that his friend is not imaginary, and there's a whole world of magic out there that he was completely unaware of. She's the beautiful dryad Xantina, and from their union will arise generations of their progeny who will forever more be the stewards of the wood.

https://www.lushstories.com/profile/RejectReality/stories/series/magic-of-the-wood

Quote by wxt55uk

When I originally made this suggestion, I thought it was a simple one and that there would be many authors in favour of the suggestion. Not for the first time, I was wrong. 🙄🤣

However, being the practical man, I looked at it this way... If the All-Time Favourite list isn't extended (or purged). Then one day it will become irrelevant as the numbers will be so high it will become meaningless to new authors. Eventually, the list will be full of retired authors with numbers far higher than anyone here can count. 😳

Having said that. I do believe there have been some interesting points raised on this thread. I do hope we get to see some other site improvement suggestions raised. After all, there are loads of talented, creative people here. 😊

People would have said Mysteria was impossible to catch up to a couple of years ago as well. Once an author is no longer active, their work is going to fade into the archives, and the accumulation of likes will slow down, allowing others who are active to surpass them.

I suspect many new people aren't even aware that the list exists to be discouraged by it. LOL It's not exactly prominently featured.

To be fair, I was off-kilter because I was coming at the process from an unfamiliar angle. I may have missed a prompt.

Just going to do the rest of them ( however many years that takes ) the way I'm familiar with.

Ah, okay. Whew! I'm used to the normal editing process where you get the prompt to publish it. It just went "poof!" when doing it from the cover prompt, and I had no idea what happened to it. I'm going to go the normal route with the rest of them to avoid the extra step of having to go to the drafts folder.

I'm starting to work slowly through my stories without attached covers to rectify that. I did the first one last night, and I used the "add a cover" prompt on the story to do so, since I was on that page anyway. All seemed to be well, and I see the cover when I select the "covers" tab on my story list, but the story itself has completely vanished from my list. "Good Will", which is linked below in my signature, if that helps.

I'm used to the story still showing up in my list as pending moderation when I edit something, and having it vanish is distressing me a little, since it was very close to famous status.

So, if a moderator could make sure it's in the queue and not vanished into the ether, I'd appreciate it.

You Serious? just crossed the threshold to become my 23rd famous story. Since the last time I checked, the new addition has really jumped the queue, and is even ahead of Good Will, which was already in my signature and featured on my profile. Next up in the climb toward famous is:

Got Me Pegged.

Give it a read and push it one view closer!

If you lock it and people have to jump through hoops to use it, you're essentially removing it.

...And opening yourself up to confused questioning/bitching from people who don't understand why certain people seem to have special privileges to use the category if anybody bothers.

Authors already posted there should be warned well in advance of such a change so they can make a decision about moving any work there as well. Putting a gate across the gravel road leading to what's already a backwater will turn it into even more of a void where words go to die.

The only purpose I can see for it is long stories that do a lot of kink-hopping where containing said kinks in individual chapters isn't optimal/feasible. Even then, with the way readers consume content here, you're leaving a lot of readership on the table. You'd get more eyes and engagement by splitting a chapter with two wildly different kinks into two parts and posting them to appropriate categories, even if said chapters are extremely short.

If it's to be removed, there should be a significant transition period where authors can choose to move their works into appropriate categories themselves. Only after authors have been given at least a month to make the appropriate edits and category changes based upon their knowledge of the work should it be relegated to what will certainly be a deeply flawed process of a third party scattering the chapters.

Frankly, there should be a message sent to anyone who has submissions in the category warning them of the coming change as well, and/or a block should be assigned to the main landing pages announcing big changes. The forum is a poor location to announce significant changes. It has never been particularly active and has become less relevant as time has passed.

While I'm on that subject, if you want any level of actual feedback about changes, things like this thread should be pointed out on the main landing pages as well.

Quote by joe71

Wow, incredible to have that many stories in the Famous category, and now one Legendary. Fantastic work.

I have very, very far to go, with just two ... er, "half-famous?" stories above 15k, and two more now past 10k ("local celebrity," maybe?). Several more approaching 10k, including one at 9997 right now ... anyone wanna give Handy Men a nudge?

Quote by HornyBill

I only have one story in the "Famous" category.

Bill and Vicki

I waited a long time before I began writing on a regular basis, and I hope that more of my stories reach that level. (Alas, they have a long way to go.)

Most of them are around a decade old when they cross the line. I've had a couple that were lightning in a bottle from prior to the transition to Lush 2.0, but for most it's a combination of looooong periods of time and the higher view counts prior to 2.0.

They're almost all Milf stories as well. That's constantly on the popular category list on the front page for a reason.

My fantasy stuff might hit Famous in the year 2300. LOL

"Nude Holly Day" has just passed the 100k mark to become my 2nd Legendary story. 🍺 So now "Good Will" takes its place in my signature and on my profile page as the next closest submission to Famous status.

When the computer at the thrift shop catches a virus and goes down, Renee is blessed to have her neighbor's son Will dispatched to set things right again. As it so happens, the computer isn't the only thing going down when her handsome and hung young neighbor arrives.

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/milf/good-will

Indiana as well. Just as easy to get around as anything else with region restrictions. VPN and set your location to the nearest state that doesn't have a ban.

I'm only referring to stories that are genuinely multi-part where there are lots of things left unresolved at the end of each part until the final one ties a bow in the last dangling plot thread. If you're writing connected stories that each have a beginning, middle, and end, that's a completely different thing. Post away and let the feedback fuel you.

For most of mine in this pen name, the sex is the resolution of the "plot". There could be more that comes after, but the major tension is getting laid in the first place.

I was a little disappointed that the follow-up to Luna Launch fizzled, ( or rather that I felt it was going to take too many parts to get to the broader idea I had in mind. The second part actually got finished. It's just unpublished. ) but it doesn't bother me as a standalone. There's enough resolution that while readers may want more, but they don't need more. You'll never actually get to see him and her dad go fishing, but he got Luna's blessing to do it. Plot thread resolved.

There are a hundred dangling plot threads in Sisters of the Mists. That one bothers me.

Just a word of warning. No matter how much you're invested in a story and how well it's going, you never know when life is going to kick you in the coconuts somehow and grind you to a screeching halt. I've got a story elsewhere that I started posting in July of 2007. It's book 2 of what's my core fantasy series that most of the other high fantasy work branches out from. I had a tragedy in my life that's intimately connected to that story and the main character on the day Ch. 12 came out in Feb. 2008, and I've only managed to put out 8 chapters in the years since. It bothers me pretty much every time I log in to have it hanging out there.

If you can manage the discipline, don't post one word until you've penned "the end" on the final chapter. Some of my stuff doesn't come out until years after I originally start it because of that, but that's so much better for me than having an incomplete story hanging over my head in public. At least when it's still sitting on my hard drive, I'm the only person I'm disappointing.

Thanks 😊

Looking back at my old tracking, there's such a stark difference in the speed at which views accumulate now. The numbers I get now when I'm active are about what I used to get when I'd been absent for a year or so. Anything that wasn't already in the 20k+ range prior to the switch to 2.0 will probably never get to famous. Even the stuff that's there is going to take a decade. LOL

My suspicion is that they've improved the bot filtering. It's a good thing to have the number better represent human readers if that's the case, but it makes the old standards for famous and legendary wildly out of step with the current reality. It's all a mater of "are you on the top of a top stories list for a significant portion of a month and/or a medalist from the previous month?" now. If the answer is no, those views ain't going nowhere.

Selfie Stuck finally crosses the threshold to become my 22nd Famous story. The next one in line needs a little over 1500 reads, and that's about twice as much as Selfie Stuck needed a year ago. LOL The views now are so low that these awards probably seem utterly unattainable to anyone who doesn't have stories that have been here for years.

Replacing Selfie Stuck and joining Nude Holly Day ( which is slowly creeping toward Legendary ) as a highlighted story on my profile is "You Serious?" His girlfriend wants him to bang her bestie in this naughty little tale. Give it a read and one more step toward Famous.

Quote by wxt55uk

Though I will give poetry a go to achieve my omnium badge (though it might just be a collection of words). 🙄

My personal opinion is that poetry is a completely different discipline from writing stories, and if this had been LushPoetry, I would never have been here. So I do sympathise with those who will not complete this badge because of its conclusion.

Suggestion to LS stakeholders, could there be a form of the omnium badge that doesn't include poetry?

Exactly. Poetry isn't remotely the same as prose. There's an actual prose category excluded because it gives people the heebie-jeebies, but a completely different form of writing is required. Makes no sense — especially in light of the unclear description it's had for years.

I calculate approximately a cold day in hell's chance of that changing, because there's not going to be an overwhelming outcry to exclude it like there was for IF when the category was reluctantly reinstated. It is what it is. Off the to-do list it goes.

I'm not going to put out something I'm not satisfied with just to fill a category. No poetry I write could meet my bare minimum standards — let alone something I'm proud to display. It usually takes me days to write a handful of rhyming couplet stanzas for a witchcraft spell in one of my fantasy stories, and those have zero meaning.

I was fooled all these years by the description saying "Published a story across all our categories". I assumed it meant story categories only. That really does need to be changed in some way to reflect the requirement for poetry to attain the badge.

Whelp, if poetry is necessary, I can stop wasting my time keeping track. Pity, because I was only a few story categories off, and had stories started for all of them.

I've at least found a workaround. If I Shift+Refresh, that at least works for the page I'm on. It at least makes browsing with Chrome possible, if somewhat frustrating.

Wouldn't dare trust it for something like submission where page changes and saving data is a requirement.

Another little tidbit. Every once in a blue moon when I come to the site via Chrome, the top banner loads. Whenever it does, everything works as expected. Every other time, it looks like this:

And that's when virtually nothing works. The online author section is also blank. The stats at the end of stories are blank. I can still use everything when editing my profile, but drop downs for top stories and authors don't function.

Seems as if certain scripts aren't loading for me 99% of the time. The fact that it does work ( as it did last night for a visit moving page to page for a few minutes without problems ) on rare occasions indicates it's not a blocked domain or some browser setting.

Thought I'd mention it as it might be information that could point to a certain script group or server housing them that's linked to the problem I'm experiencing in desktop Chrome.

A couple of months ago, I started experiencing an issue. When using Chrome or Edge on my desktop, clicking on my notification bell or message icon will not work unless I'm on the activity page. Clicking either does nothing while on any other page of the site. When on the activity page, I can view my notifications. Clicking the message icon results in a blank page, but at least it does something.

I discovered yesterday that I'm also unable to use the dropdown menus on the top author/story pages. They will change, but none of the selections take effect.

Adblock and popup block are disabled for the site. I double checked that even though that shouldn't be the issue since I can do things on the activity page.

Chrome is my normal browser, but upon testing, I discovered the same problems happen in Edge. Upon testing Firefox, everything works as expected. Everything also works just fine in Chrome on my phone.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Is there some new domain I need to whitelist? I suppose I could get used to defaulting to Firefox for Lush. I use it for one of my other pen names elsewhere anyway. If there's a fix, I'd much prefer that.

Her Cut to the Chase just passed 30K to become #21 in my famous story list Five months since the last update. As always, this is as much for my records as anything else.

Famous Track 20k+

Selfie Stuck 26036 -> 28728 -> 29136

Good Will 25554 -> 26651 -> 26915

Three Alarm 25716 -> 26621 -> 26812

You Serious? 24387 -> 26184

Kitty in the Cream 24592 ->25720 -> 26003

Hard Times 24203 -> 25332 -> 25649

Summer's Heat 23868 -> 25057 -> 25326

Sunny Daze 23075 -> 24527 -> 24870

Jerk 23427 ->24392 -> 24773

Souvenir 22819 -> 24208 -> 24498

Taste the Rainbow 22254 ->23580 -> 23863

Pole Skills 22393 -> 23832

Double Booked 21505 ->22549 -> 22808

Got Me Pegged 21019 -> 23550

Vicki Cleans Up 20907 -> 22200 -> 22520

And I'll Get a Pole 20246 -> 21959 -> 22193

Heart-Shaped Box 20959 -> 21656 -> 21810

A Sale of Two Titties 20602 -> 21445 -> 21646

Son Stroke 19908 -> 21119

Divorcing My Vibe 19704 -> 20555 _> 20784

About to join the 20k club

Clean Up - Aisle Eight 19131 -> 19818 -> 19990

Her Flock 19337 -> 19701

Trade In 19261 -> 19693

Beholding Dawn 19462 -> 19685

Pick Up the Spare 19099

Legendary Track ( 40k+ )

Nude Holly Day 89902 -> 97188 -> 98828

Dip in the Lake 63562 -> 66550 -> 67423

A Fine Substitute 60614 -> 64147

Mom's Stocking Stuffer 49914 -> 57589

Mom's Second Chance 49577 -> 56492

Bet Your Bottom 47347 -> 49044

Like Riding a Bike 45980 -> 48475

Double Dip 45519 -> 46848

Quite Neighborly 42546 -> 43212

Her Own Skin 41368 -> 42174

"You Serious" took a big hop in the rankings because it's in decent position on the threesome toplist. "Pole Skills" did a leapfrog because it's decently positioned on the Milf list. "Got Me Pegged" hopped a couple of places because it's well placed in the strap-on list. ( Noticing a pattern here? ) "Son Stroke" just got a little extra juice from being to leapfrog.

"Her Flock" jumped two places, but still hasn't graduated to the 20k club. "Pick Up the Spare" made it into the 19k club.

No change in the Legendary rankings, but "Nude Holly Day" is down to less than 200 views away.

Thankfully, searching by title has improved greatly, and I was easily able to put the next famous candidate "Selfie Stuck" in a highlight position on my profile. Synopsis: When his hot young student manages to get hold of his phone number and sends him nude selfies, she puts herself in a position to blackmail him, so he's truly stuck — and fucked.

Alrighty then. Problem solved. Adding an additional 50 pixels of width to my template is hardly an issue. Still looks a little muddy, but nowhere near as bad as when it's being stretched in both dimensions.

While we're on the subject of image presentation, why are signature images being resized larger than the originals and out of proportion, causing the images to look muddy? Reducing the displayed size I can understand, but what reason is there for making them larger?

Actual image from my server vs. the way it's displayed in my sig below:

It's the same as every other forum on the internet. If you revive an old thread because it's pertinent to your question, people complain about thread necromancy. If you start a new topic, people complain about rehashing the same question over and over again.

The ability to ignore it if they have nothing other than that to contribute seems to be beyond many folks.

Maybe should have skipped the bible in that list. It may not be in all of them, but nearly every KJ version that I've seen has several declarations in all caps. The I AM verse is the first one that pops into mind. Not the only traditionally published work I've seen where bold/all caps is used to denote the voice of a deity either.

Doesn't really apply to the complaint at hand, but...