The End of the Ravishment Academy

[JTCK]

The linking is structured like this:
<url=https:##ravishmentacademy.com/viewtopic.php?t=549>The Most Delectable Game</url>
To make it work, square brackets should be used instead of angled and slashes instead of octothorps. It gets one

The Most Delectable Game

Selecting the Full Editor and Preview option when responding gives one a plethora of options, including URL insertion -- the 'chain' gif in the top level of pictograms.

Thank you very much. I edited my post and it worked.

[JTCK]

If there happened to be a surge of interest between now and October would it be considered to keep open?

Sure, if the community suddenly proved me wrong then I would rethink my decision.
(...)
So to come back to your original question: Yes, if activity suddenly and persistently increased I might change my mind. But don't be active to save the forum. As much as I can't carry it alone, you can't either. This is not a motivation that will last. Be active to support the home invasion authors that are here and let them know through your feedback that you want more of that stuff. Even from a purely selfish perspective of wanting more home invasion stories, this is the best thing you can do.

Of course, that’s what we’d all love to see. But honestly, I’m not feeling very hopeful…

I also wonder if the people who just drop by from time to time to read a story even notice this whole discussion. Sure, it’s right there at the top of the page, but it looks like another contest. And it says: The site will be closed due to lack of interest.
Maybe we could reword that to due to lack of participation instead?

And if we really want to get people motivated, maybe we shouldn’t frame it as a straight-up announcement that this is going to happen, but rather as a call to action—something like: Last chance to save the forum!

[Corvid]

Juggling what to say.

I cannot say a word to fault someone for deciding that running a forum like this one was too much work for too little payoff. I'm grateful that someone would choose to run such a site at all. It is difficult to run something like this for discussing something as relatively non-controversial as, say, popular movies, without it becoming a feeding ground for trolls, shit-posters, cross-promoters, and the scummiest kind of advertisers imaginable.

You gave us something good, at personal cost, for free. I'm not going to pretend that my meager writing is so thoroughly awesome that you should be honored and cowed at the prospect of getting to continue to host it. Thank you for doing it as well and as long as you have.

I am aware that I have allowed myself, during my brief time here, to be one of those people who didn't offer as much feedback as I might have. There are... reasons... excuses. I mentioned that I was participating in the story contest in part to try to get back into writing; my ability to concentrate has been evasive as a hummingbird since a couple of unfortunate health misadventures and family crises, over the past few years. It feels good to write again, and I even kind of appreciate the deadlines and limits to prod my zombie'd brain into focus and action. And then to read, for an hour or more, without my hummingbird wanting to go check out YouTube videos. And then to offer feedback...? Oof! Homework!

...Which is dumb, because I've been quite glad for the feedback my own stories have gotten. Perhaps I'm having flashbacks to being offered a friend's story and thinking, "Oh, god, I'm writing something negative about nearly every paragraph; I can't return this, he'll think I'm an asshole." Or another person who offered me editing, but became a bit incensed that my word suggestions (I'm a native English speaker, he was not) were not in accord with his thinking. Tougher, still, when giving feedback on erotica. Is the problem really with the pacing? Or just that the payout for the set-up simply wasn't quite my cup of tea, even as others are raving about it?

More broadly, reading and writing rape-focused erotica puts people in a rather vulnerable place, which is perhaps ironic given the power dynamics in place in many of the stories. If I say that I didn't like one aspect, is the writer going to provide something more pleasing? Or simply stop writing all together? If I say I like something, am I encouraging the author, or setting myself up for judgement, having happened upon a third rail, a pariah among outcasts?

And is everything I write turning into fodder for some angry grad student's screed about "rape culture and the Internet"? Or some over-eager Internet vigilante's next round of doxing? Or a government watch-list? Maybe I'll just be quiet, over here...

I'm hardly any kind of expert on SEO. I will say that *I* only heard about Ravishment Academy because it was mentioned to me by a friend on Discord. There's been a lot of, "This site is down, oh well... This site is down, oh well... This site has gone private and paywalled without so much as a murmur to any of its previous authors, gee thanks... This site seems like a zombie shell of its former self, with some of its branches seeming like they might be infested with malware..." over the past few years.

It's a hard time to be a site focused on rape erotica, right now, and a hard time to be someone who likes such things. There's an active effort to suppress non-consensual fiction going on as I write, as anyone who's following the controversies surrounding the Steam gaming service and its payment processors can attest. One begins to feel a bit like one has been invited to play "Whack-a-Mole"... as a mole. Every bit of extra energy that goes toward finding, and re-finding, and re-re-finding what you enjoy is energy that doesn't go to feedback... or calling payment processors to tell them to mind their own business... or reading... or writing... or going one more time through the arguments that, no, you don't want to see anyone raped in real life...

I'm fatigued, and I'm not trying to run a website.

All I can say is that I will try to lurk less and post more, that I hope someone can be found who is willing to continue this little outpost in the darkness, and that I think more time may, yet, allow Ravishment Academy to find a larger "core" to keep things humming... Ever aware of that nasty trade-off of "big enough to be robust, fun, and invigorating" and "not big enough to attract sanctimonious churls, internet vigilantes, and those who want to post sketchy links to malware and crypto sites."

And whatever happens by October, @Claire , thank you for taking it this far.

[Claire]

@Corvid I think I understand a lot of your self-doubts. I'm not entirely sure how people perceive my presence as an admin but I prefer analyzing and planning stuff much more than making announcements and moderating. I really don't like being the center of attention.

I also get the worry that your feedback might come across as too negative. I usually try to offer both, comments about things I liked and things I would have done different. I also try to distinguish between certain elements just not appealing to me and what might make a story better in the eyes of most people. I got a couple of sensitive reactions over time, but for the most part I found people to be appreciative of criticism if it is worded respectfully. I think most people actually don't mind a bit of criticism as long as you don't rip apart their work. And I at least try to be conscious of the fact that somebody might have put their heart and soul into their writing. Ultimately, I think a friendly tone is more important here than being a harsh critic. We're all just amateur authors writing for fun, hoping that some others might enjoy what we wrote. If somebody tried to write something here with the intention of publishing and selling it, then a harder, even nitpicky lens would make sense. But I think for our purposes, a more lenient perspective is more appropriate.

I appreciate the kind words and the thougtful response!

[Vela Nanashi]

Corvid, love your reply here, also when it comes to comments for me, I tend to like to know what emotions I evoked, and I tend to try to say when something evokes emotions in me in stories, what I find interesting etc, and I also do provide spelling and grammar things when I spot them, and really won't mind if others do that for me too. We all sometimes type the wrong word, or typo in general, or have our brain skip a word or something as we write, in particular if we end up having some other human disturb us during our writing. Also I really just appreciate even simple comments, but I appreciate more detailed ones a bit more, but anything is better than silence, even harsh "this is stupid" or "I hate this" lol, I evoked emotions then so that is good

Now of course what I like is not that highly overlapping with what most people like on this forum, so what I write is not interesting to everyone, and what most people write is probably also outside what I really like, most of the time, but that is fine, we can't all read every story, but if I read a story I try to say something at least

[HistBuff]

I fully understand Claire's decision and her sense of doing a lot of work for little payoff. I myself began to post erotica back in late 2019 and I saw the very last of an earlier culture where RavishU was a thriving, active forum. As of 2022, I began to feel astonished over the fact that I had massively improved as a writer with a far better command of English (which is NOT my first language) and yet I had so much less feedback than two years prior. There was a massive shift there. Due to the nature of rape erotica, people are naturally shy to openly comment, and different factors have made this worse in the last couple of years. The vast majority of my readers are lurkers and I had to constantly remind myself that there were hundreds upon hundreds of readers who were silently enjoying my stories... perhaps even one of my young coworkers was secretly indulging in my stories; I have no proof of this whatsoever, but I love to think that as it motivates me.

One can get easily sucked into fiction writing. I would binge-write. In 2021-2024, it was not uncommon for me to write 10,000 words in one sitting. I was eager to post chapters. More often than not, those chapters were rushed and raw, which was good in a way since gang rapes are usually chaotic in nature, but in other regards, writing quality did suffer. I own a French book of style filled with examples of authors such as Victor Hugo or Flaubert who would write the same page ten times over before feeling remotely happy with their work. Flaubert's Salammbô remains one of the most beautifully painted novels I ever read. It is no accident. You just don't write like this on a first draft, not even on the fifth or seventh one. It may be of interest for this forum to note that there is a brief rape depiction in Salammbô when Matho remembers raping a Roman girl during the sack of a villa in Sicily; it is briefly glanced on, but it's there all the same.

My health also suffered, as the human body was never designed to spend 18 hours a day sitting in front of a computer. I also have a day job that requires me to sit in front of a computer. Now I just had a painful bout of health problems that prompted me to stop writing for a while and spend less time in this un-athletic position that lengthens glutes into a state of unacceptable weakness. I'm just back from that spell of illness and changing my habits. Right now I'm watching a gangster movie here and there and reading two novels, Immortal Sergeant by John Brophy and Das Buch der vergessenen Artisten by Vera Buck. I'm also back to weightlifting to promote better circulation, and I mean active weightlifting with a much more demanding program, like when I was competing.

If I write again, I'll be a lot less active. It will be only one story at a time, and with a very quiet pace... if I come back. Right now, I feel a sense of emptiness. I've been pouring my sexual fantasies at too furious a pace and forgotten the natural workings of my soul. It's easy and cheap to write a story where B gets raped by C, A, and X W Z. It's a lot more challenging to write a piece of art where some characters do get raped. The latter is fulfilling, while the former leaves me with a sense of bleak emptiness.

HistBuff

[Claire]

@HistBuff I hope you're health issues get better soon. And I'm glad you decided to share the bad news not just with me via PM but also with the rest of the community. You will be missed!

[Vela Nanashi]

I hope you get well soon @HistBuff it is rough when one can't do what one enjoys doing, to the extent one wants to.