2008: The Year of OMGDRAMA

2008 was...quite a year.

My personal highlights include being interviewed by Forum and, after several years of talking online, I finally got to meet Sievert when business brought him to my neck of the woods. We went out for lunch and it was the most bizarre thing to talk about our fetish through codewords and euphemisms in a public place. I wrote a new story ("The Corset") in a rush of inspiration, which felt good, and I got to announce Airy Tales after working on it behind the scenes for several months, so that felt very good.

I think the lowlight for me was being banned from Bambi's sites for differences of opinion that have already been amply discussed. It was also the year where we saw Bambi accused of horrible things that she didn't do...followed by everybody pointing fingers, which didn't help. Actually, between not having any useful information and not liking how people publicly made baseless accusations, that left me feeling helpless on multiple fronts.

On another down note, I tried to rebuild the Video Vault on YouTube, and got mysteriously shut down (even though other people have posted plenty of clips from my old site and they're fine). I tried to rally behind a friend on TopHeavy, and she was getting great votes...until suddenly her feedback went all negative in a matter of hours. I have my own suspicions on both of those, too, but since I can't prove either theory, I'm just taking the experiences for what they were and moving on.

Then again, we saw some interesting new folks emerge on the scene -- TaylorMadeClips and KinkyKingLatex really made a positive impact on our scene this year with (respectively) new videos and latexwear aimed at inflationists.

For me, the Story Of The Year award goes to "Nozzle" by heliumgirl77, hands down. I'm still impressed with the narrative skill on display there.

In 2009, I hope we have more of that and less drama. More creation; less politics. Less negative competition; more positive communication. I sound like a broken record, but the community is whatever we make it. And next year, as always, I'm determined to keep trying to make it a good thing.

The Corset: The follow-up

I am only slightly disappointed that my latest story only rated a 6.3 out of 10 at ExpansionStories.com. No, what I am really disappointed about is that out of 400 downloads, only six people rated it at all, and of those six, nobody bothered to explain why they rated it the way they did.

I really do want that kind of feedback. How can I figure out what that number means without a few words to support the score? Was it something that I didn't explain well that I could have done better, or just a matter of "it wasn't a pregnancy story" at a site where there are a lot of those highly rated?

Maybe I was wrong when I said good things about the site being a home for open feedback. Has the system broken down already, and it's just another story archive full of leechers?

The Corset - new story

I don't write stories often because I'm not inspired often. I sadly admit that to be inspired, I generally have to be intensely horny, leap on a vaguely novel idea, and then sustain that feeling until I type "the end." It requires a bit more discipline than I'm usually willing to exercise.

So...last night, the planets aligned and through the magic of delayed gratification I suddenly found myself writing a short story. I was somewhat embarassed to find that it was my first in something like three years. Time flies when you're busy doing other crap. It's called "The Corset" and I've posted it at Expansion Stories and DeviantArt, and it will show up at BodyInflation.org in time, too.

Feedback is always welcomed.