The Future of the Ravishment Academy

[HumiliationInc]

Of course that is not actually what that law is for, they want ids so they can go after people who say the wrong thing online, and to chill free speech.

And also to enforce heteronormativity.

[SeekerDT]

Hi all, seeker here, with a DT at the end... it seems someone else here captured the seeker ID before I registered.
Hello to the old friends from RU and RC, and for those who may not know me, I was part of the alumni of RU 2019/20.
Fortunately because Claire reached out, I looked in on RA and the debates leading to the current management shift.
I must say that my writing time is done. I'm not back to write more DevTech stories, but rather to give a perspective on how valuable a community such as this is.
Claire, thank you for creating this space. Your energy and dedication is beyond measure. People like us who write non-mainstream erotic stories need a safe space to engage others with the same kinks, without judgement.
You mentioned in one of your previous posts that this was becoming like Literotica or AO3... because people were not commenting. That it so far from the truth. Those are anything but safe spaces. They are full of trolls and people trying to out do each other.
With RA you have recreated that space that those of us with unconventional kinks can come together and share our perspectives and stories. We don't all need to like what we read, but we all respect the other for expressing themselves in words.
We need these small hidden parts of the internet, because they let insecure new voices be heard, in a way that the 'big' spaces drown out.
Before I wrote my first story I reached out to someone who I thought was the most incredible writer of erotic fiction. She was an RU moderator. Her handle was brokenwing... those of you who know her writing, will realise how intimidated I was. But she came back and was just supportive and encouraging for me to write what I needed to. And through that, I had the courage to write 'An Office Encounter', and the rest is DevTech history (for those who know my stories). That is what places like this enable. I would never have started my writing journey anywhere else.
For myriad reasons I lost all my stories (theft and crashes) but Claire's access to RU has allowed me to get them back. For that I am grateful. There was a part of me that said that it was fate, and that my time of writing was done, so everything was lost. But now I have my full works. I know there are some who would like these reposted, and I am tempted as the DevTech saga was unique in our world. But I must emphasise that I would only consider posting on corners of the internet like this.
Claire, that is why what you have created is so valuable.
I will go further to say that sites like this are a haven for the abused, in a way the others are not. My personal engagements with some of the most prolific and articulate female writers on RU led me to understand the cathartic nature of their stories. It needs places like this to ensure that opportunity remains, because the wider internet does not.
I understand why you are fatigued and disillusioned. I would be too. It's interesting that when I started writing, it was all about me... what I needed to say. Comments were nice, but not critical. But over time I wanted the affirmation, like a TickTok whore- It's one of the reasons I stopped writing... when I realied I was writing for others. But that was gratification comments.
What you have tried to create here Claire is a community of practice. I like that concept. There was an element of that in RU 2019. But you need the lurkers to see and engage over time, as well. I was one of them for a decade before I found the courage to engage (through brokenwing's support). So spaces like these are critical for our community, in so many ways.
There is something really powerful about what Claire was trying here. It feels almost like a 'book club'. I wonder if one approach is to have the public facing aspect to draw people in, while having an inner sanctum of those who have either written or commented on 20 stories allowed into something more meaningful where the engaged comments happen. As always its a handful of us who engage actively, and maybe that's not for general consumption.
I must say that despite having been part of a comment culture five years ago, the detail and intensity of commentary here is intimidating. Not everyone is able to participate at this level, so taking the more erudite engagement out of the public domain may be more inclusive.
I know this is a long comment on a thread that has been closed, but I wanted to voice a perspective for RapeU and Vela, having been in this world for a while in different manifestations.
As an acknowledgement of what you are doing for our future, and a recognition of one of our incredible heros, I will revise the last story that brokenwing and I wrote together, to post it here. I believe it is my best writing, extracted by my writing partner. This is the only place on the internet that deserves to host this story and uploading it here reflects my belief in the future of sites like this.
Thank you Claire for making this all possible
seeker

[RapeU]

I will go further to say that sites like this are a haven for the abused, in a way the others are not. My personal engagements with some of the most prolific and articulate female writers on RU led me to understand the cathartic nature of their stories. It needs places like this to ensure that opportunity remains, because the wider internet does not.

Highlighting this part because I agree that people who were abused and even reformed abusers need a safe mental health space. RB had a "real rape thread" for such a thing, but not everyone felt comfortable on RB due to the culture there, especially towards the decline of the board in the last decade.

There's a way for this board to have that space privately. Claire was working on it and I can continue working towards this goal. We would need a trusted active moderator for that specific purpose though.

[JTCK]

Hi all, seeker here, with a DT at the end... it seems someone else here captured the seeker ID before I registered.
Hello to the old friends from RU and RC, and for those who may not know me, I was part of the alumni of RU 2019/20.

Hello Seeker,
I can’t remember if I ever commented on one of your stories on RU – in any case, they are very high on my list of stories I regret not having saved. A very warm welcome here!
If you were to repost more of your old stories, I’d be thrilled!

[Claire]

@SeekerDT I'm really glad you found your way here. It's really nice to read your kind words. To be honest, I don't think I've read any of your stories yet, but just from the fact how often your name has come up despite you being no longer active tells me that the community loses something with you no longer writing new stories.

I think I agree with many things you said in your post. I absolutely believe that there should be a place for people with our kink to engage without judgment. And yes, I also believe that even in its current state the forum is not as bad as Literotica or AO3 yet.

I really wanted to provide this space for people. A place where people can go and engage with other adults about their kink. I alway had the 20 year old guy or girl in mind who still struggled with their interest in rape fantasy. And when a curious Google search would lead them here, I wanted them to see adults talk about this in a serious manner. And I don't mean that the conversation can't be humorous, that there can't be dark jokes accompanying our journey here. But I wished that this insecure 20 year old would not just see stories with at most three comments on them that essentially only say "Oh yeah, destroy that bitch!" accompanied by a drooling smiley. I like that we have thoughtful comments and discussion topics over ethics and the role of humor in stories. I think it is important what image the comments and discussion topics project to a new user stumbling over the forum.

I also always wanted to be available for the community and set a positive example. On RavishU, neither the owner Lois, nor the other admins, nor any of the moderators participated in any way in the community itself. I know that this was different in the past, but when I registered there in October last year, I think it took me a month to even figure out who Lois was. I would like to believe that people who visit the forum here notice pretty quickly who I am and that I respond when contacted and try to help with whatever issue they might have.

I made this point in great detail before, so I'll keep it brief here. Our community will never prevail for as long as people keep treating the forum like a porn streaming site. And one issue that I haven't talked about before but that I believe to be related to this larger point is this: Treating the forum like a porn streaming site brings with it a mentality of ungratefulness and entitlement from large parts of the community. And I know that some people will dislike me saying this so bluntly. But I want to share a few experiences I've made since I started running the forum.

When the forum launched, we had people in chat who asked @Vela Nanashi and me whether it would be possible to add a dice roller to the chat for role play purposes. Just for context, I personally have little interest in roleplaying and - please correct me @Vela Nanashi if I'm misremembering this - Vela is totally fine roleplaying without any RPG mechanics added to the mix that would require dice. Nevertheless, we promised to look into this. It took us about 7 weeks to get that done. Basically none of the people asking us for the dice roller did anything to help us get the forum going. But when it took us more than 2 weeks to get this done, some of them - not all! - started to complain in chat about what took us so long to get the dice roller finished. It didn't occur to them that we were very busy generating that modicum of activity on the forum necessary to keep the place going for at least a little while. They felt entitled to us spending our time adding a dice roller function to the chat while they couldn't bring themselves to spend 15 minutes of their time to read, comment and rate a short story Vela, I or anybody for that matter had posted on the forum.

We had a person here who didn't engage with the stories of others, posted some of their own stories but didn't respond to any of the really good feedback they got. Despite their general lack of support for the forum, I helped them regularly in chat and updated the index of their story for them. When they had a bit of a personal crisis because they couldn't get a hold of their partner, Vela and I sat with them in chat metaphorically holding their hand. When they were unable to send a PM, I spent one or two hours in chat talking them through the issue (turns out, they didn't add a recipient for their message and phpBB doesn't show a good error message when you try sending a message without a recipient...). Despite all this, they left the forum a few days later saying they "didn't feel welcome" because there is a rule forbidding snuff stories.

When I organized the Ravished in a Flash tournament, some people used the given theme for their match as the title for their story. When I pointed out that I didn't find this to be a particularly creative choice for the story title, they claimed that they thought they had to use the theme as the title despite the contest thread not even hinting at that. But even after I pointed that out to them, they proceeded to blame me for their inability to understand the diffeeremce between a theme and a title. Nobody in the community spoke up on my behalf and told them that it is not my fault if they confuse the terms theme and title.

I've looked up a lost story in the RavishU backup for an author and commented several times on their stories. They couldn't bring themselves to rate a story of mine they had read and liked on RavishU.

There is a person here who is actively refusing to rate and comment on stories of mine I had already posted on RavishU despite liking them a lot back then.

After I posted the announcements that I would no longer run the forum, a new user registered and asked me whether I could look up @SeekerDT's stories for them. Essentially they said: "Hi, I'm a lurker. I saw the most recent announcement about the forum potentially closing soon. Before it does, can you spent a few hours of your time looking up Seeker's stories that you don't hold the rights to and send them to me? I would really appreciate it if you could make lurking for me even easier than it already is."

And I think I just realized that when it comes to the contests on the forum, not only are congratulations for the winner rare, I can't also remember a single time that somebody thanked me for organizing these contests. And yes, organizing them, matching opponents for the tournament, writing announcements, being here on time when a contest transitions from writing to voting, etc. All of those things cost time and effort on my part.

And that is just my personal experience. You can also see how little the community cares to congratulate contest winners or new Accomplished Writers for their achievement.

Finally, look at the reaction to this announcement. The last two announcements got a lot of responses. But the moment an announcement comes along with the message that the forum will continue, all the energy evaporates and the response is much more subdued. In this thread, I think three people have expressed their gratitude to @RapeU for taking over. The number of people who have shown their gratitude to him by reading something he wrote and commenting on it is 0. And doing that would be very easy. He has published plenty of stories here, quite a few of them labeled as short that can be read in less than 20 minutes. Even if you ignore that he will soon be the host, he was one of the most active members even before that. But after chapter 1 of his Magnum Opus the community has mostly ignored this most recent story of his.

And just to be clear: @RapeU is the father of a small child with severe health issues, and a teacher at a school (he revealed that himself here or I wouldn't say it). If for whatever reason his real identity is revealed, then running this forum could potentially cost him his job if some parents are concerned that a man who hosts a rape fantasy plattform teaches their children. He's taking a real risk here for the community, in addition to the financial cost, the legal responsibility and the organizational effort that comes with running the forum. And he's doing that primarily because nobody else was willing to step up, not because he was itching to be in charge.

Bottom line: This community has a severe issue with taking the time and effort of its authors but also the time, effort, financial cost and the legal and financial risks for the people running the plattform for granted. And I can only encourage those who breathed a sigh of relief when they read that @RapeU would take over from me to be more aware of that.

[JTCK]

@SeekerDT I'm really glad you found your way here. It's really nice to read your kind words. To be honest, I don't think I've read any of your stories yet, but just from the fact how often your name has come up despite you being no longer active tells me that the community loses something with you no longer writing new stories.

You truly missed out on something remarkable! @SeekerDT created an entire universe centered around a dark and immensely powerful organization—filled with formidable men and plenty of hot noncon scenes. What stands out most vividly in my memory are scenes where women were forced to humiliate themselves and beg to be abused...
The writing itself was superb, with recurring characters, intricate intrigues within the organization, and so much more.
I would be genuinely curious to see how his stories would be received here, especially by what I consider to be a rather discerning readership—and in particular, how they might appeal to you personally.

As for the rest of your sorrowful post: what more can I say? I am truly sorry that such great effort did not bring about the success you had hoped for…

[Claire]

You truly missed out on something remarkable! @SeekerDT created an entire universe centered around a dark and immensely powerful organization—filled with formidable men and plenty of hot noncon scenes. What stands out most vividly in my memory are scenes where women were forced to humiliate themselves and beg to be abused...
The writing itself was superb, with recurring characters, intricate intrigues within the organization, and so much more.
I would be genuinely curious to see how his stories would be received here, especially by what I consider to be a rather discerning readership—and in particular, how they might appeal to you personally.

Well, I will definitely give his Perfect story a look! But I will try to find the motivation to write a story for the Rashomon contest first.

[Vile8r]

@Claire I sent you a PM.