(Apparently) My Top 5 Stories

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Taste is a funny thing. I think one of the hardest struggles I’ve had in my life is breaking down the instilled wisdom that there’s such a thing as a canon or a curriculum of Great Works that need to be experienced as some sort of prerequisite for being properly grounded in a genre or style or simply the concept of Art itself. I still find myself thinking of “the essential works” or “the best”, when really there is no such thing; you can learn about the artists who’ve influenced your favorites and maybe come away with a greater appreciation for them, and certainly there’s a consensus taste, but Art is ultimately subjective and it’s okay to like the things you like. (Certainly you’ll have a longer and more enjoyable conversation when you talk about them if you can explain why you like them, but you don’t need to justify your tastes.)

All of which is a long and extremely rambly way of saying, “Hey, that said, maybe there is something to this ‘wisdom of crowds’ thing, too, and here’s what the voting audience on Literotica currently says are my best stories!” (I’ll be linking to the Literotica versions this time, not the EMCSA, just in case you want to leave your own comments or votes.)

5. Access Babylon. This one surprises me a little. It comes in at a 4.7 on 125 votes, and while I’m certainly very happy with it (spoiler alert: there aren’t any on this list that I’m going to look at and say, “eh, that one honestly kind of sucked and I don’t know what people see in it”) it’s not really a “sexy” story, in the sense that I’d imagine people to go to an erotica website to read. It’s very much influenced by absurdist cyberpunk classics like ‘Headcrash’ and ‘Dark Star’, and there’s a lot of weird humor and semi-dystopian milSF peppered in the worldbuilding. But I’m certainly willing to have it listed as one of my best, because I’m proud of being able to do a weird semi-dystopian absurdist milSF cyberpunk funny sex story.

4. Smoke From an Old Flame. God, am I glad this is on there. Because I practically fucking sweated blood writing this 9600-word prolonged sexual marathon; I actually started it before my hiatus, and I’m not exaggerating when I suggest that one of the reasons I had such a lengthy pause was that I simply couldn’t keep at it. And when I first posted it, I remember the only real review it got was, “Eh. It’s really all just sex. That’s kind of boring.” Seeing that it got a 4.72 average on 102 votes is a little bit vindicating. (There is a sequel, “Smoke From a Distant Fire”, which is no less concentrated in its focus on sex but is a bit shorter. I keep thinking I’m going to write a story about them taking a cruise together and call it “Smoke on the Water”.)

3. Fascination. There was a time I never thought this would be dethroned as my all-time best. It almost still hasn’t been – Literotica lists it as #3 under Rating, but it and the one above it has 4.74, so whatever difference there is, it must be under a hundredth of a point. And “Fascination” has a lot more people voting (682!) So I think that even though this isn’t the top, it’s probably the most reliably enjoyed. And I can understand why! The two characters are likeable, the progress from “we’re just having a little fun with this mesmerizing gem we found” to “we are having wild, irrepressible lesbian sex on the floor after brainwashing each other into uncontrollable, fetishistic obsession with altering each other’s minds and bodies” is smooth and flows logically, and there’s a lot of sex as well as a lot of hypnosis and post-hypnotic tricks/convincers, which are almost as much fun for hypnokinksters as the sex. It’s just a good model of the kind of thing you’re into if you’re into mind control.

2. Graded on a Curve. And this one is a really good example of what you’re into if you’re into fantasy mind control. It ticks a lot of boxes for people who want to imagine themselves either as a sinister brainwasher or as a helpless victim; the fiction that Professor Tate has created for Sandi hits the sweet spot of being just plausible enough for her hypnotized brain to accept, just obvious enough to outsiders as a product of a post-hypnotic suggestion, and guaranteed to keep her coming back for more and more conditioning (and the conditioning is sexy in and of itself). It’s also sitting at 4.74, on 247 votes, and I expect it’ll keep its spot for a long time to come.

1. Play With Me. I’ve said in the past that some of my best stories are also the ones that are the hardest to write, and this is a prime example. It’s literally 4100 words of someone lying perfectly still and quivering. I really don’t think I can stress enough how hard it is to write a story about the experience of being teased; you have to pace it very slowly to truly capture the ecstatic torment the protagonist experiences as their pleasure is drawn out to agonizing lengths, but at the same time, literally nothing is happening for that entire stretch except for a light buzz or a tickle (or a paint brush stroking their skin, not to tease an upcoming story about body painting that nobody will see for a year). It is incredibly difficult to capture that balance between the internal narrative that focuses on every detail and the external narrative in which very few events occur, and seeing that 80 people gave this a consensus 4.75 is really gratifying.

So if you’ve found me through some other means (Hi, Tumblr! Hi, Twitter!) and you’re wondering where to start with the short stories that have been my bread and butter, these five stories are a good place to start. And if you find yourself reading through my Literotica catalog and want to leave votes or comments, I appreciate them immensely and will read them all! Thanks!