The Dead Messenger

Amy's having a slow day when a John picks her up off a street corner.  He takes her to a motel and they start to have fun... but he isn't a normal John, he's been hired to send a message, and unfortunately Amy doesn't need to be alive to pass it on.

Caution: While there is plenty of consensual sex to begin, but it turns sharply as the story progresses.

Based solely on the description and the conversation in Discord, might this not need the "sm" code?

Eric Storm

Possibly...  I didn't add it because it's not really part of the sex act itself.  There is definitely pain involved, just not really part of the sex.

I can add it.

Up to you.  I haven't read the story, so I was speaking only from what I'd heard through conversation.

Eric Storm

not sure why you have 4 line breaks between each paragraph.

beyond that.. Interesting 1st Person, Second Person POV.. not sure I have seen that before.

Overall a very disturbing and dark story. But as a reader once told me.. While it's not my cup of tea, you caused an emotional reaction and as such.. that's good writing.

(posted from Chapter 1)

I think the formatting is a bit of an oddity...  This was posted as text instead of HTML so I think that's part of it.  (I think my original had one line break between each, but the site makes each of those a paragraph...  but that's just a guess.  I should probably fix it)

Thanks for the comments.  It is certainly meant to be a visceral story.

The larger-than-normal paragraph separations are, indeed, due to the conversion from text to HTML.  However, after looking at the code, I can't determine why it's as large as it is.  The code tells it to turn a "standard" line break (represented as \r\n), into an HTML line break (represented as <br>\n)  The original text contains two standard line breaks (that is, "\r\n \r\n" ) between paragraphs.  For some reason, the script is turning that into FOUR sets of <br>\n.  It shouldn't be doing that, but I have no idea why it is, so I can't fix it.

Lesson for the day:  While we allow plaintext uploads, they usually look like shit, so submit things in HTML format.

Eric Storm

Eric Storm wrote:

The larger-than-normal paragraph separations are, indeed, due to the conversion from text to HTML.  However, after looking at the code, I can't determine why it's as large as it is.  The code tells it to turn a "standard" line break (represented as \r\n), into an HTML line break (represented as <br>\n)  The original text contains two standard line breaks (that is, "\r\n \r\n" ) between paragraphs.  For some reason, the script is turning that into FOUR sets of <br>\n.  It shouldn't be doing that, but I have no idea why it is, so I can't fix it.

Lesson for the day:  While we allow plaintext uploads, they usually look like shit, so submit things in HTML format.

Eric Storm

My guess is that the parser is turning each line break into a "paragraph break."  (or this specifically new line =><br>\n<br>\n)   Because the <p> marker has margins and such put in place by browsers, it takes care of the spacing, but in TEXT you have to add an extra line to make it "pretty."  So the parser assumes it needs to make the text "pretty" and adds the extra "line break."  So if you submitted each paragraphs as a single line in text and just one line break between lines, it would show up exactly as expected.  But when submitting "pretty" text to the parser, it simple adds double "return" for each new line.

(Text parsers are an evil thing that have to set rules based on unformatted contents.)
However LESSON LEARNED I will submit via HTML from now on.

That's not how the parser works.  I should know: I wrote it.  The parser makes (or is supposed to make) a one-to-one conversion: it switches out each "\r\n" combo, or an individual \r or \n, for exactly one "<br>".  It doesn't make any guesses as to why you put a line break in your plaintext at all.  I specifically did not convert to the <p> tag because I was aware that you might not have wanted a paragraph break: sometimes you really do just want to start a new line.  (For instance, when doing poetry.)

Like I said, I have no idea why it's putting in additional <br>s.  There seems to be no logical reason in the code for it to do so.

All of which is why I strongly recommend uploading as HTML. 

Eric Storm