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When I first found BigCloset, it seems like it was full of stories I wanted to read and that -- to be candid -- made me feel more whole.
Nowadays, when I come here, I scan the list of stories, and half the time none of them make me even want to look at them. And I leave with a sense of restlessness, that there's something I'm looking for that I'm not finding, but I don't know what it is.
So I ask myself: has BigCloset changed? Or have I?
As always, I've been compulsively examining myself. Sometimes I think it's to figure out how to make it not hurt so much, or at least so I'll know what hurts. Other times I think it's just so I won't find myself so frighteningly confusing. Sometimes I think I've found something that makes it all make sense. Unfortunately, by the next day, it turns out to be -- or at least seems to be -- gibberish. Like the kid who tries to build towers out of blocks, but it always falls down sooner or later.
Maybe I've changed, but if so, I don't know in what way; I don't ever have a clear enough picture of who I used to be to tell.
Comments
BCTS is more than just the front page
Greetings,
BCTS is a wonderful archive of stories waiting to be discovered. Some for the first time to a reader and some to return to re-read to recapture that satisfaction that you had the first time you read it. Your favorite Authors may have an entire catalog of back stories for you to read. There may be authors who are new to you in the archive who have an entire body of work for you to discover.
At times Big Closet classics are posted to the front page to bring attention again to those stories and Authors. If you want to see more of the stories that you used to see on the front page, you can vote with a comment on those older stories or via pm to their authors. I see names of authors who used to post in times past returning to the front page.
BCTS is a labor of love but it takes financial support for this platform to remain a place where payment is not required as a gateway to read stories.
If you can afford to support BCTS there are a number of venues where you can both support BCTS and discover new stories besides the BCTS front page. There are a number of premium stories from the authors you remember which you may not have read available from the BCTS Hatbox.
Erin herself has several serial stories currently running and an archive of complete stories available by becoming a patron of Erin's Patreon.
But the best way that I know to support BCTS is through reading Doppler Press Stories published on Amazon for the benefit of BCTS. Amazon has a wonderful program that a lot of the Doppler Press published books participate called Kindle Unlimited that once you've paid your monthly membership fee you can read those stories in the program for free.
All in all you as a reader have at your disposal a very powerful means of getting more new stories from the authors that you enjoy reading. Flood them with kindness with the praise you feel for their writing by commenting on their older stories that you really enjoyed reading.
If there are authors that you enjoyed in the past with current stories on the front page, flood them with with kindness and praise to encourage them to finish current stories. And every day there are new authors writing stories and practicing their craft.
The authors that you loved to read in the past had to learn their craft by being new authors at some point. Give new authors a chance by sampling their first tries at being an author and praise the ones who show promise in your eyes by commenting. You never know what you are missing out on if you don't give them a chance.
I believe that BCTS with all of it's incarnations combined of the present is every bit the same friendly place to write and read TG stories. Everything has to grow and expand to survive or it just dies. BCTS has grown and expanded beyond the front page in order for BCTS to be here now and in the future.
There are story gems waiting to be discovered in the archives that you will never know unless you look in the archives for them.
Jo Dora Webster
One Change
It seems to me as if we have many more long, multipart stories than we used to have.
-- Daphne Xu
Today's sampling
Sunday's sampling as of this comment's writing had 5 serials and 4 short stories. The point I made bears repeating. Heap praise through commenting on short story authors stories and you'll get more short stories posted to the front page.
An author has an even greater way of influencing the balance of short stories to serials. If you want more stories up there write them and post them.
Please don't just passively react to what you see, proactively act to put things on the front page to get the balance that you want to read. The front page of the future is based on your action today.
Jo Dora Webster
it fluctuates
There seem to be times when I can't find the time to read everything I'm interested in here and other times none of the new material appeals to me. I believe it's probably a function of how broad the field of tg fiction is and the varying interests and skill levels of the authors.
function of the readers and writers
By Readers giving comments and Writers writing and posting more of what they want to read, they can directly influence what is on the front page.
Vote with your actions! The BCTS front page is new every day. It is solely a product of what readers and writers make of it
Jo Dora Webster
Author's style and the tales they tell change over time
It's a combination of reader filling up his or her need of Bobby Shy goes to the dance and becomes Billie Sue. Which can be told in a thousand different ways, but still. And then the authors who wrote the exceptional tale all of us wanted to read and then their next succession of stories are the same tale told with different names, places, etc. The readers have a comfort zone they like for the stories they read to fit in. The authors have a comfort zone they write in. Not a problem if one is publishing novels once a year. Short stories every week? Comfort zone gets worn out from reader to author.
Miss Webster, every person evolves through life. We no longer play jacks or jump rope, or most of us don't. As you said, maybe your taste in stories has changed? If you remember any of the authors you enjoyed, go back and see if they still resonate as you read their stories.
Hugs Miss Webster
Barb
Life is a gift, treasure it.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
My point exactly! Grow or die!
Hi Barb,
In order to survive everything must grow or die. The point is that you get more of what you support or produce. It produces better results to be proactive rather than reactive. If an old author isn't doing it for you anymore there are plenty of new authors posting things from a new perspective.
Even old authors may do better with the right encouragement.
The main point is to not sit on the sideline and lament. Be a part of the solution!
I like the 4H motto: Make the best better!
You don't do that unless you take an active part in what happens.
Jo Dora Webster
Make your own garden in BCTS
I live very close to the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. It's got this wonderful open space when you first walk in -- there's a cafe, an NPR radio studio, and a few bookshelves with the latest arrivals on display.
I hope that no one judges the library by the recent arrivals. For me, the *real* library is all the rest: the books in the stacks, the eBooks, the interlibrary loans...
The metaphor is pretty obvious.
At the library, I don't usually read the latest arrivals. There are too many books that I've wanted to read. I have an actual list.
The same is true here at BCTS. I do often read the random solos. I love them. And when one of my favorite authors pop up on the front page, I usually read them. But honestly, I have enough trouble keeping up with the stories I've bookmarked.
The front page is the shallow end of BCTS. All the stories you loved, that made you feel whole, are still here, along with other stories by the same authors. And even more stories by authors your favorite authors admire.
Just for starters, have you read The State Does Not Make Mistakes and Being Christina Chase?
If you want other recommendations, there was a recent blog entry asking for Stories You Reread.
I think it's not only possible but easy to make your own garden, so to speak, here in BCTS, surrounded by the stories that nourish you.
I hope you'll find again the BCTS you're missing now.
- io
Your own Garden and the State
Hi, not being critical - just humorous.........
After reading it, I think the title "The State Does Not Make Mistakes" is missing one word, "infrequently"..
Just for a laugh - good story though.
God Bless
POOKA
Hey Asche!
Story themes seem to run in spurts. Magic may prevail for several months, then there will be a run of super powers. That mag be followed for awhile by dom/sub or forced fem. Then romance themes may take over. What goes around comes around, your preferred story topics will again be the topic of the month. It isn't planned, it just happens.
Try going through the older stories to find what you like. At one point I was sidelined due to a quad bypass. Not finding enough new material to fill my time I went all the way back to the first story posted and read my way forward. Of course I didn't read all of them, but it certainly gave me a large pool of unread material to pick through. Or you can sort through the keywords and pick a topic you are interested in. Magic, or long hair, Bikini Beach, SRU, JulieO, Angela Rasch, whatever catches your interest. There's a lot of good stories there.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
What Ails Thee?
I have to say that I read your comment, only because I am still coming to grips with Big Closet which I only started contributing to this year.
But it seems to me that there is real angst in your words, and there are many concerned voices who have already replied to try to help.
I suppose that the only thing I can do is to suggest that you try to find the source of your hurt and confusion, before looking for what makes you feel whole.
If you are on the TG spectrum like some of us, then you may find your place in uplifting tales of successful transition, or you may want to retreat into the total fantasy of magic.
What yo should know it that there is volume and variety here, so if you are looking for something, you should be able to find it at BCTS.
Maryanne
The source of my hurt and confusion
I think I kind of know. Or at least at the moment I think I do. I often feel like I'm not the same person from one moment to the next, so I can't say if I'd say the same thing a day or two from now.
What keeps coming up in therapy is this intense feeling of abandonment -- that I am utterly alone in the universe, as if I had been orphaned at birth or abandoned on a hillside, the way they say they did it in ancient Greece. I'm coming to accept that I was emotionally abandoned and emotionally abused and chronically invalidated and gaslit starting before I could talk (while constantly told by everyone how wonderful my family was), and survived by dissociating as much as I could. It has left me with a rather intractable form of Complex PTSD, intractable because I have no memory of anyone I felt safe with when I was growing up.
When my mother died, I found I felt no grief for the mother I had, only grief for the mother I wished I'd had -- one who would have cared what I felt and was going through enough to pull herself out of her self-involvement and help and support me during what ended up being the most hellish years of my life. It has left me with this aching longing for someone who I could trust to be there for me when I fall down, but also with the ingrained belief that that is impossible for one such as me, and with no ability to trust anyone enough to actually reach out to build such a relationship. And as I get older, I'm less and less able to distract myself from it with work or activities. When I was transitioning, the joy and adventure of it all was frequently enough to drown out the hole in me, but now living as a woman is too familiar for me to think about it all that much.
So the stories that I now go to for comfort and validation are the ones where the main character is in an abusive or unsupportive family and gets taken in by someone or someones who accept them for who they are (rather than for who they are "supposed" to be) and comfort and support and validate them. By now, the trans elements are no longer remarkable, any more than making a sandwich is. Some of the stories I read and re-read are Bobby's Rainy Day Adventure, Kerrie's Run, and sometimes my own story Foster Mother, but some days it hurts too much for me to get any comfort from them.
(Sorry to kind of dump all this on you all, I've been having a hard couple of weeks. And I suspect it will get a lot harder before it gets better.)
Perhaps "Happy Stories" ...
A few months back, Dorothy Colleen blogged that she was in need of/looking for happy stories. A number of people responded, including me. I saved the link, so here it is. If it's even partly what you are looking for, you'll be reading for days ...
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog-entry/85152/i-need-happy....
Enjoy!