What We Read

Our Favorite Storysite Stories and What They Tell Us About Ourselves

by: Kelly Ann Rogers

 

Introduction

There have been many discussions on the cyberboard, about what kinds of stories are most popular with Storysite readers, and what this tells us about ourselves. On the one hand, some have argued that most readers are simply after something to get them off sexually, and are looking for what has been deftly dubbed "stroke fiction" (the first time I saw it, it was used by Tigger). There are plenty of stories like that. On the other hand, there is the rather large number of sweet stories, many of which feature young boys who are lovingly nurtured by their moms as they discover their own femininity. In addition, stories involving female domination and/or humiliation of some hapless male abound as well. But looking at the kinds of stories that are posted really only tells us about the writers who post on Storysite. What we have never really known is what the readers like.

As an aspiring author, I have wondered about this myself, but it wasn't really on my mind that night on August 7^th ,2001 when I decided to see if people were reading a story recently posted by one of my friends. I was startled to discover that it had garnered nearly 2000 hits in just a few short weeks. Yikes! I said to myself, if this keeps up, she’ll have 24,000 hits in a year. Could that really happen?

Intrigued by this possibility, I wandered around Storysite checking the hit totals on a number of new and old stories that I liked. Well, I was heartened to see that some of my favorite authors had relatively high hit totals (Crystal's Texas Gal and I Can't Go Home Like This were each over 7000), and that some newer authors, who had stories up for only a few months had very high hit rates (Several of A Happy Wife's deliciously naughty little delicacies were accumulating more than 2000 hits per month). Too make things confusing, however, I found that wonderful stories, like Jackie Pett's superbly rich "The Export" or Elaine's classic, The Importance of Being Juliette, which had been the most popular story on Fictionmania when that site was still recording hit counts, weren't among the most read stories, having garnered only 2140 and 2770 hits, respectively.

Well, I said, light bulbs flashing on inside my head, this cries out for some kind of analysis, and I'm just the girl to do it. You see, despite my clever disguise as a hapless TG authoress, I am really a scientist, and doing research is my natural response to anything that intrigues me. So I decided to see what a good hit total was and what kinds of stories people were reading most. I was starting to get excited! I could actually add some real data to those discussions on the cyberboard and turn them into something more than idle speculation.

Of course, you might well argue that idle speculation is way more fun than discussing facts. I mean, facts tie down your imagination, limit your creativity, and might even force you to discard favorite biases. Yuck! Who needs that! But despite all this, I found myself unable to resist my fact gathering inclinations. Instead, I could only sigh; I knew this would cost me many hours of hard work.

 

Methods

How, Kelly Ann, I hear you cry, did you perform this so-called analysis? Is there any reason we should trust what you say? Well girls, I submit for your consideration, my simple and shrewd, but startlingly boring approach. I did the unthinkable. I literally opened every single story on Storysite and checked its hit total. It’s true; I did it, and I have the sore right wrist to prove it.

But before I undertook my comprehensive analysis, I looked at a few dozen stories, which helped me to determine that 4500 total hits (no, no one has 24,000) or 500 hits per month for stories posted since December 2000 were both impressive numbers. (If a story had 500 hits per month starting in November 2000, it would have reached the 4500 total in any case.)

So, starting with A Happy Wife and ending with Zoe Burgess, I looked at every story from every author and recorded the name of each story that met either of those two criteria. After accumulating all these popular stories in barely legible script recorded with my favorite Waterman fountain pen in green ink (you didn’t really need to know that did you), I discovered that there were too many stories with more than 4500 hits for me to deal with.

Oh no! All that work down the drain! What was I to do? Well, the alternative wasn’t that difficult to decide on. I decided to analyze only those stories with more than 5000 hits. Who said scientists aren’t flexible?

While I did this, I was not drunk or otherwise chemically impaired (unless you want to consider the cumulative effects of an ill spent life), although I can understand why a reasonable person might question my sanity. I wondered about it myself as I opened up my 213^th story, then again at 783, 1322, etc.

Despite having a clear head when I did this, I must admit that I did do it by hand, as it were, so there might be a few mistakes. No, let me be more accurate. It is inevitable that I made some mistakes. It was a really boring job, as is much of science, which is why only people with strong obsessive-compulsive personalities succeed at it (and that, along with the fact that scientists must enjoy spending lots of time alone, is why so many scientists are so weird). Anyway, just based on the sheer number of stories I tried to look at, and the speed with which I tried to do it (it was boring, remember?), I figure I must have missed some stories with high hit totals, or recorded wrong hit totals, or made some other occasional mistakes. Who wouldn’t?

If you think you've found a mistake, I apologize. I'm especially concerned that I might have left someone off the list entirely because I skipped a story. But remember, to make this list a story had to have the requisite 5000 hits when I did the analysis on August 8 and 9 (that's right I looked at all those stories in two days), not when you are reading this. There were certainly a number of stories with hit totals in the four thousands that must have reached 5000 by now, but I can't include them because this analysis is a snapshot of the way things were on those two days. So if your story, or a friend's story, has more than 5000 hits now, don't call me and say, "Kelly Ann you blew it."

Even though this analysis isn’t perfect, it's almost certainly a real good approximation of reality. I feel confident in saying this because I did do some rechecking and found almost no errors in what I recorded. Unfortunately, this didn't tell me anything about what I might have missed, but did give me confidence in my accuracy in general.

After collecting all the data, I discovered that I really had to create two different lists of stories. The first, which I called Our Favorites, includes all the stories that had more than 5000 hits by August 9. The second, which I called Hot Wheels, includes those stories that had garnered more than 500 hits per month between December 2000 and August 2001. This list contains stories that didn’t yet have 4500 hits, but which were being read so quickly that they might well have before too long. I won’t be dealing with the Hot Wheel list here but I do hope to analyze it in the not too distant future (assuming this analysis generates any interest).

The result is that this is an analysis of Our Favorite stories based simply on a hit total of more than 5000 on August 8 & 9, 2001. For all those stories, I recorded hit counts, length, story rating, age, and category and key word descriptors. You know, all the information that appears on the author’s page that gives you access to the stories.

Therein lies a problem, a few problems actually. First, authors are not consistent in how they rate stories. One story with forced castration in it was rated G, while others were rated X or XXX. I found some stories with R ratings far more erotic or kinky than some with X ratings that described sex in ways that didn’t turn me on at all.

Second, authors are not consistent in how the describe their stories. Some have listed 6-10 categories and key words, but others only one or two. Janet Stickney, who always takes the time to list a good array of categories and key words, doesn't always use them consistently. She has the descriptor "appliances attached" on some stories in which the transformation includes birdseed breast forms, real breast forms, or both, but she has left it off other stories that also include these appliances. I don't mean to pick on Janet, who generally does an exemplary job of rating and describing her stories (Hey! She’s written 130 stories; she’s entitled to an oversight or two), but this kind of inconsistency by one author is small compared to the inconsistencies that occur from one author to the next.

Be that as it may, this information (rating, categories, key words, etc) is just what potential readers have available to them when they decide to open a story for the first time. So, you could argue that what we are really looking at here are the ratings, categories, key words, etc., that most attract readers. It isn't that simple, especially for authors with more than one story posted, and I will revisit this issue in more detail in the discussion section, below.

Then, believe it or not, I read (or at least skimmed ones I had already read) all of these stories so I could get a feel for their content, quality, and what I will call their "good heartedness," or lack thereof. When you look at Tables 7 and 8 you will notice that in the description box there are a series of letters. These indicate whether the story included several key elements that interested me in particular. Thus, in addition to the authors’ descriptions, I classified stories as FD (Female domination), Hum (humiliation), S (sex), SE (sexual exploitation), BDSM (you know), Sw (sweet), and GH (good hearted). No, I will not tell you how long this took, but you no longer need to wonder why I haven’t yet finished the all-but-finished final part of New Job (but keep your eyes peeled, it’s coming soon). And if you are now sure I'm crazy, I won't argue with you.

 

Results

So, now that you know why I did what I did, and more or less how I did it, you can only be wondering what I found, right? Of course right, so here it is. But because it's a little long, I will present the results of my analysis in two parts. The first part will be an examination of characteristics of Our Favorite stories as a group. That is, it will be a summary that describes the entire set of stories based on length, rating, age, etc. The second part will be a look at the individual stories in a slightly more detailed way. If you're dying to see which stories are the most popular, the lists are in Part II.

 

Part 1: General Characteristics of Our Favorite stories

When I finished my two-day analysis on August 9, 2001 there were 1920 stories on Storysite. (Oh, did I forget to tell you? I rounded off all the numbers to the nearest five. Since I was sure I was going to make some mistakes, being perfectly accurate with the numbers I did have seemed pointless. There were actually 1917 stories posted by August 9.) Of that total, only 130 stories (6.8%) had more than 4500 hits. For whatever it’s worth, my estimate is that any story with more than 4000 hits is easily in the top 10% most read stories at Storysite.

Still, I couldn't deal with 130 stories; I did have to eat and sleep even if I ignored my work, family, dog, etc., so I made a new cutoff at 5000. There were 76 stories with more than 5000 hits, 4% of the 1917 posted stories. The rest if this analysis is based on those 76 stories.

 

A. Story Length

Of those 76 stories, 42 (55%) were less than (<)50K in length and 34 (45%) were larger than (>)50K. I made this distinction in the length of the stories because I believed length affects hit rate, at least to some extent. In fact, the data support this. The nine most read stories were all <50K in length, and six of those were <20K. The number two story, with more than 11,000 hits, was A Happy Wife’s homily on chastity belts, Under His Skirt, which weighed in at a wee 8K. But if hit total is any indication, she made every one of those bytes count.

The number one and three stories, Britney's Alexis and Ashley's Fitting Punishment, are both only 17K and share the distinction of being illustrated with scrumptious drawings. For some reason I couldn't find the hit meter on Sissy Demi's The Bad Little School Boy, which is illustrated in much the same style as Alexis and Fitting Punishment, so it's not on my list. But because the other two illustrated stories are so irresistible to readers, I have little doubt that Bad Little School Boy has gotten tons of hits as well.

The 50K cutoff was not entirely arbitrary. At first, I had divided the stories into incremental blocks of 25K, but I didn't learn much from making so many categories, so I collapsed everything into two groups of short and long stories, with 50K being the dividing line.

Of the stories longer than 50K, 14 (18% of the total 76) were >100K and only 3 (4%) were longer than >200K. Just for context, when printed out single spaced, but with double spaces between paragraphs, my 202K story, The Boy Nanny, runs 60 pages in 12 point New Times Roman font. I’ll leave the math for stories of other lengths to you. But it’ll be a lot easier if you round 202 to 200.

But, I had a problem with my analysis. I didn’t know what to do with stories posted in multiple parts, like Crystal's Texas Gal or Bethany Jacques', That Red Dress Started It. In the end, I only looked at the first chapter of these multipart stories. The result was that some very long stories, like That Red Dress, which is currently 220K, or Dawn Dewinter's Anything for a Moped, which finally weighed in at a muscular 1.165 MB, ended up in the <50K category because the first chapters were only 23K and 28K in length, respectively.

It might be better to create a separate category for multipart stories, but they are difficult to analyze no matter how you look at them because readership falls off after first part. But even though it is difficult to know what the hit counts for these longer works mean, it seemed wrong to leave the widely read first chapters out, so I left them in (I guess I didn’t have a problem after all). This is a weakness of this analysis, but it only affected a few stories. If anyone has a good idea about how to deal with this issue, please have a go at it.

 

B. Story Ratings

Fifty four (71%) of the most popular stories on Storysite were rated, G, M, or R and did not contain explicit descriptions of sex (which isn't to say that some of them weren't really sexy, kinky, or both). Twenty one (28%) of our favorite 76 stories were rated X or XXX. Of those, 10 (13%) were rated X and 11 (14%) XXX

I personally find this rather heartening because I expected stroke fiction stories to dominate the most-read list. But our community, although certainly interested in sexuality (duh), is clearly eager for good stories that do not depend upon explicit sex to drive the story line. In fact seven (9%) of our favorite stories were classified as sweet or sentimental by the authors. I classified twice as many that way.

Eight (24%) of the >50K stories were rated X or XXX and 13 (31%) of the <50K stories had this rating. Although it is difficult to draw firm conclusions with such small numbers, X and XXX rated stories did appear to be rather more prevalent in the <50K group than in the >50K group.

The data on ratings suggests that two kinds of stories are popular. The smaller group, about one quarter of the total, presents sex, humiliation, and other sexually kinky themes as a main focus for the story. The rest, by contrast, are not focused on sex, per se. Although sex may be mentioned or alluded to in these stories, it is not described.

 

C. Age

Of the top 76 stories, 29 (38%) were about teens or preteens and 47 (62%) were about adults. Seventeen of the >50K stories (50%) were about teens or preteens and 12 (29%) of the <50K stories were about teens or preteens. I guess we like to read about younger incarnations of ourselves. Who wouldn’t? We were all so much cuter then, at least I was.

 

Table 1

Rating and Age

	>50 K			<50K
Rating	>6000	>5000	Total	>6000	>5000	Total	Grand Totals
G	1	5	6	3	2	5	11
M	4	4	8	2	4	6	14
R	3	8	11	8	10	18	29
X	4	1	5	4	2	6	11
XXX	2	2	4	5	2	7	11
Age
Preteen	2	3	5	1		1	6
Teen	3	9	12	9	2	11	23
College (19-26)	6	2	8	7	8	15	23
Adult	3	6	9	5	10	15	24

 

D. Story Categories and Key Words

This is when things start to get complicated. How does one make sense of a list of nearly four-dozen descriptive terms? Well, the first thing I did was to combine these two groups of descriptors into one list. Then, I divided this longer list up into a few small sets of categories to facilitate analysis (Tables 2-6). Some of the descriptors appear on two lists because they logically fit on both. My sets of terms described:

1. Why the protagonist was transformed

2. Methods of transformation

3. What happened to the protagonist once he was transformed (or while it was happening)

4. Feminine accouterments

5. Training and punishment items.

Only a few terms (images, sweet/sentimental, miscellaneous stories) didn’t fit into these categories.

 

Why the protagonist was transformed

One of the biggest problems TG authors face is how to get the main protagonist into skirts in the first place. While there are certainly stories in which he is simply kidnapped and altered, I must assume we don’t find those particularly satisfying because only a couple of stories like that are on the list or our favorites. No, we want a reason for the transformation and four stand out.

At the top of the list (43%) are those poor fellows who just happen to run into a dominant woman who decides the poor dear would be better off as a girl, for whatever reason (Oh honey! You make me so hot in that slinky dress, and those five-inch heels just make me dripping wet). There's no denying it, female domination is a robust theme that has a prominent role in TG fiction.

Then there are those bad boys who must be tamed (13%; Hey! Let's put 'im in petticoats; that oughta chill 'im out.). We also have the "unlucky" boys or men who simply get caught dressed by a significant other, who then decides keeping him dressed is a good idea (24%; Honey, why didn't you tell me; now I don't have to hire a maid!). And there are those foolish guys who make unwise deals or bets or take stupid dares (25%; Oh, sweetie, just wear these breast forms for tonight and I'll let you have your way with me… as many times as you want. The glue? Silly! That comes right off in the shower.).

But the truth is, no matter what the specific reason for a transformation might be, finding stories that have done this plausibly is not easy, even among our most favorite stories, and it would appear that the popularity of these stories has much more to do with what happens after the precipitating event than the event itself.

 

Table 2

Why the protagonist was transformed

Length	>50K			<50K
Hits	>6000K	>5000K	Total	>6000K	>5000K	Total	Grand Total
Bad Boy to Good Girl	3	2	5	4	1	5	10
Caught with Consequences	2	3	5	9	4	13	18
Deals, bets, dares	4	3	7	5	7	12	19
Femdom	7	4	11	13	9	22	33
Sexual Punishment	4		4	2	2	4	8
Crime Punishment	2	1	3		1	1	4
Totals			35			57	92

 

Methods of transformation

So, sweetie, we caught you. I bet you're wondering what we're gonna do to you now, don’t you? Well, one thing that's not going to happen in our favorite stories is that you won't be transformed by some science fiction device (0 stories) or by magic (1 story). In addition, you won't end up in some imaginary "universe" (Spells R Us, Bikini Beach, etc). No, you are much more likely to be transformed the old-fashioned way, using clothes (79%), breast forms (31%), and hormones (23%). Losing your penis and/or having a vagina installed aren't very likely either. Those teeny changes were mentioned in less than 10% of our favorite stories.

So, our favorite stories take place in a world that would be pretty much recognizable to any of us. It doesn't even contain much hypnosis or other mind-altering techniques (3%). But our world seems to be full of women who will force us to transform. Depending on your needs, you may or may not find that reassuring.

 

Table 3

Methods of transformation

Length	>50 K			< 50K
Hits	>6000	>5000	Total	>6000	>5000	Total	Grand Totals
Appliances	3	5	8	10	5	15	23
Breast implants	3	3	6	4	3	7	13
Castration	2		2	2	2	4	6
Chemical change	2	2	4	1	1	2	6
CD/TV	9	18	27	18	15	33	60
Femdom	6	4	10	13	9	24	34
Hormones	9	7	16	5	3	8	24
Mind altered	1	1	2				2
Magical Transformations					1	1	1
Physically force/blackmail	4	2	6	5	3	8	14
The Operation	1	3	4	2	1	3	7
Totals			85			105	190

 

What happened to the protagonist once he was transformed to she

Well honeybunch, you're in hot water now. You look so femmy sitting there. Whatever shall we do with you? I know! Let's.....

Let's what? Well, we like to try different things. Our favorite stories include 14 different categories, although some of them overlap. But two fates are more likely than any others, either you will become a fetching little schoolgirl (21%) or a sexy maid (19%). There is also a good shot that you will end up in a real fancy dress (24%), either to wear to the prom (Oh sweetie, your date is sooo hunky) or to a wedding, where you will be either a bridesmaid (Oh sweetie, the groomsmen are sooo hunky), or the bride (Ooooh sweetie! He's sooo handsome. I'll bet you can't wait to get into your bridal bed tonight. What's that? You're a virgin back there? Not for long!.)

 

Table 4

What happened to the protagonist once she was transformed

Length	>50 K			<50K
Hits	>6000	>5000	Total	>6000	>5000	Total	Grand Totals
Age Regression	1		1				1
Bad Boy to Good Girl	3	2	5	4	1	5	10
Bridesmaid	1	1	2	1		1	3
Cheerleader	2	1	3	1	1	2	5
Cultural Change		1	1				1
Diapers or Little Girls	1	1	2	1	1	2	4
Girl's school		1	1				1
Maids	3		3	7	5	12	15
Pregnant/Having a Baby		1	1				1
Prom or fancy dance		1	1	3	1	4	5
School girl	2	5	7	6	3	9	16
Shemales	2	1	3		1	1	4
Stuck	3		3	2	3	5	8
Wedding dress/ married	4	4	8	2	1	3	11
Totals			41			44	85

 

Feminine accouterments

There are some things we girls just have to wear or have done to our bodies. You know just what they are, don't you dearie? First, of course, we must get your hair (39%) and fingernails (29%) done, and I want those nails nice and long sweetie, so you have to learn how to use your fingers all over again.

Then, we're going to lace you into a nice tight corset (39%). What's that, you think 21" is too tight? Cynetta says it's too loose! But don't worry; we'll loosen it to 22" at bedtime. Oh! Don't pout, this should be the happiest day of your life; you're getting just what you’ve always wanted!

In fact, now that your corset and breast forms (31%) have your figure just where we want it until the hormones (31%) kick in and get you ready for breast implants (16%), I think you're ready for nice pair of heels (27%). They'll do so much for your legs and the way you walk. No hon, a two-inch block heel like I'm wearing simply will not do. For a dolly like you, I think four or five inch spikes would be a minimum. What do you think? Oh, how silly of me, you're a girl now, who cares what you think!

 

Table 5

Feminine accouterments

Length	>50 K			<50K
Hits	>6000	>5000	Total	>6000	>5000	Total	Grand Totals
Appliances	3	5	8	10	5	15	23
Breast implants	3	3	6	4	3	7	13
Corsets	7	7	14	8	8	16	30
Hair or hair salon	6	11	17	7	5	12	29
Long Fingernails	3	7	10	5	8	13	23
Petticoats	4	1	5	2	1	3	8
Very High Heels	6	5	11	4	6	10	21
Totals			71			66	147

 

Training/punishment items

By and large, our favorite stories have little punishment. But darling, you have been so difficult! I'm very unhappy with the way things are going. I'm afraid a little training is in order. I know, you think figure training with your nice snug corset (39%) is plenty. What's that dear, you say it's not snug; it's way tight? Oh you silly girl, you know you shouldn't complain. Yes, you really do need to learn some important lessons. Of course that's why I’ve you tied up like that, you silly. A night in bondage (21%) should give you some real quality time to consider your new life. I hope you can come to the right conclusions about what you want to be, because I don't want to have to use this butt plug (12%), and I really would prefer if the chastity belt (9%) just stays in the closet. I really don't like the way it shows under your tight skirts. What's that? You don't like it either. I know honey. But why do you look so scared, just think about it tonight while you're hanging there, and then you can tell me what you want to do in the morning. I'm sure you'll make the right decision. Nighty night, sweetie.

 

Table 6

Training/ Punishments items

Length	>50 K			<50K
Hits	>6000	>5000	Total	>6000	>5000	Total	Grand Totals
Bizarre Body Mods	1	1	2				2
Bondage	4	4	8	2	7	9	17
Body Suits					1	1	1
Butt plugs/ Dildos	1	2	3	4	3	7	10
Chastity belt	1	1	2	2	3	5	7
Corset	7	7	14	8	8	16	30
Extreme Body Piercing	1	1	2	2	3	5	7
Totals			28			43	71

 

Part II: Individual Story Analysis

Here are my lists of the most read stories on Storysite. I would like to offer my hearty congratulations to those writers who made the list. I will admit that I have a bias towards longer stories, so those are presented first.

To Julie, A Happy Wife, Janet Stickney, Constance Grant, Bethany Jacques, Patricia Ann Anderson, Crystal Sprite, Vickie Tern, Sara Rever Evielle, Karen Summerfield, Darlene le Queene, and Anyport, all of whom placed two or more stories on the list, all I can say is Wow!

And I need to give a couple of really big WOWS!!!

The first big WOW goes to Julie. Not only did Julie have a total of six stories on our favorites list (can she read our minds?), but she had three stories in the top six of the >50K category. Does she hit our nail on the head or what? Julie has managed to mix female domination into essentially good-hearted stories that don’t have explicit sex. These are sweet, rich stories that make a really tasty, though not at all heavy meal.

The second big WOW goes to A Happy Wife, who had six stories in the <50K category. Not only that, but she has the two most read stories that don’t contain images. A Happy Wife’s stories are all very short, succinct, and they hit us where we…., well where we… keep our dirty little secret desires. Not only that, but she creates tasty morsels of stories that are not much bigger than a Baby Ruth bar, but are certainly just as sweet, chewy, and crunchy. Wow indeed!

And to you readers out there, if you have not yet taken the time to read the stories on this list, check 'em out.

 

Table 7A

Stories longer than 50K with more than 6000 hits as of August 9, 2001

	Author	Title	Hit Total	Length	Rating	Description
1	Kelly	The Submissive	7965	124	XXX	Intense adult B&D; FD, BDSM, SE, Hum
2	Julie	Maid of the Ms.	7940	87	R	Sweet adult Femdom FD, Hum, GH
3	Crystal Sprite	I Can't Go Home Like This	7890	170	G	Sweet teen transformation Sw, GH
4	Julie	Cindy Sue	7880	117	M	Classic bad boy to good girl; FD, Hum
5	Crystal Sprite	Texas Gal	7305	250	M	sweet preteen transformation, FD, Sw, GH
6	Julie	Prissy	6890	118	M	Classic bad boy to good girl; FD, Sw, GH
7	Kelly Ann Rogers	Boy Nanny	6690	202	X	Forced transformation, sweet outcome; FD, Hum, GH
8	Vickie Tern	JayCee	6460	251	X	Teen "forced" to go where he wants to go; FD, GH
9	Ann Browning	Three Year Itch	6425	89	R	Fed up with selfish husband, Wife, transforms him; FD,GH
10	Bethany Jacques    & Sara Rever Evielle	An Unusual Sort of Wedding	6400	170	X	The sexual adventures of a audacious TV and his wife, hot stuff; S, CD
11	Janet Stickney	Nobody Will Believe It	6180	71	R	Conned into dressing, lucky guy discovers the inner woman; GH
12	Virginia Kane	Exquisite Excursion	6110	112	XXX	Mom tricks son into dresses; FD, S
13	Rachael Ann	The Transformation of Slave Girl Rachael	6080	123	X	Willing submissive is transformed to sex slave; FD, Hum, SE, BDSM
14	Rachel Ann Cooper	Attitude Adjustment	6050	122	M	Sneaky, but loving wife transforms macho hubby GH

 

Table 7B

Stories longer than 50K with more than 5000 hits

	Author	Title	Hit Total	Length	Rating	Description
15	Sandra	Labyrinth	5990	64	R	Loving mom helps transform TS son into daughter Sw, GH
16	Kelly Davidson	The Reluctant Performer	5940	80	R	Kind adults help scared crossdressing teen find herself; FD, Sw, GH
17	Sarah R Evielle      & Bethany Jacques	Ian and Me	5935	91	X	Tarty TV gets her man; CD, S
18	Constance Grant	Lesson for Cathy	5740	73	M	Teen gets his revenge on the girl who bullied him into skirts
19	Bethany Jacques	A Suitable Case for Treatment	5700	92	G	Fighting couple switch genders as part of marriage therapy; CD, GH
20	Kresha Matay	Teased into Crossdressing	5610	64	M	CDing teen becomes his mother's new daughter & they both love it. Sw, GH
21	Suzi Page	Robin’s Heart	5600	109	R	Loving wife transforms husband; he thinks that's just fine Sw, GH
22	Janet Stickney	How Much of a Girl Do I Want to Be	5575	60	R	A teen crossdresser discovers his inner girl with the help of his mom and a new boyfriend; Sw, GH
23	Constance Grant	Mary Walsh’s Own Story	5530	80	R	A love story; FD, GH
24	Caitlin Rose	A Fantasy	5520	180	G	Preteen boy learns the art of hair care, and then the art of being a girl; FD, Sw, GH
25	Carolyn Collins	The Halloween Party	5455	113	XXX	Young teen dressed as a girl for Halloween has lots of sex; FD, CD, S
26	Julie	Karen	5360	53	G	Teenage girls turn cute young boy into their real life doll; FD, Sw, GH
27	Karen Elizabeth L	Christy	5340	75	R	Wife encourages hubby to cross over. He loves it and ends up going all the way; GH
28	Janet Stickney	A New Waitress	5250	52	G	A lost bet allows discovery of the inner girl; Sw GH
29	Karen A Summerfield	Jennipher Blakeley	5210	72	R	Loving Sis helps CDing brother come out; FD, GH
30	Ilean Anne Jerques	But, but, but	5200	103	XXX	Sisters teach teenage brat brother about being a woman; FD, S, GH
31	Janet Stickney	Sixteen and Just a Girl	5200	93	R	Loving parents and friend help boy transition; Sw, GH
32	Laura Brooks	The Makeover	5180	75	M	Couple learn how to keep love in their marriage after she discovers his crossdressing; CD, Sw GH
33	Julie & Amanda	Mandy	5140	53	G	Teen forced fem, not nice; FD
34	Serena Lawhead	Abbi’s Punishment	5130	74	R	Angry revenge; FD, Hum

 

Table 8A

Stories shorter than 50K with more than 6000 hits

	Author	Title	Hit Total	Length	Rating	Description
1	Britney	Alexis	12,5000	17	G	Teen girl takes revenge on bratty brother; FD, Hum
2	A Happy Wife	Under his skirt	11, 255	8	R	Wife controls Miss Hubby with chastity belt; FD, Hum
3	Ashley	Fitting punishment	11,140	17	R	Sister transforms helpless brother; FD, Hum
4	A Happy Wife	A trainer	10,200	9	R	How to train your hubette; FD
5	Patricia Anne Anderson	Caught and transformed	9540	18	XXX	Forced fem, humiliation, sexual degradation; FD, Hum, SE
6	Cissy Gaye	How Kim humiliated me into drag	9225	18	R	Forced fem; FD, CD, Hum
7	Darlene le Queene	Sissy Salon	9010	40	XXX	A sissy’s dream of forced fem, mild humiliation, and sex; FD, Hum, SE
8	Deb Rachel     & Elaine	Caught	8280	8	R	Mom and Sis transform CDing teen boy; light FD, GH
9	Patricia Anne Anderson	Forever Female	8250	29	XXX	Girlfriend transforms him, gets him laid, & he's a female forever; FD, Hum, SE
10	Darlene le Queene	Mother's Love Doll	7720	38	X	Son is transformed, humiliated, degraded; FD, Hum, SE
11	Patricia Anne Anderson	Maid to Please	7400	20	XXX	Caught, husband is transformed into sex slave/maid; FD, Hum, SE
12	Emily Ross	Put Him in Dresses	7255	42	G	Wife transforms hubby to maid; takes new lover FD
13	Petra Pan	Young Boys Don't Wear Those	6885	13	X	Young boy naively castrates himself to become a girl
14	Amber Palmer	The Scrap Book	6795	14	R	Young teen introduces himself to the pleasures of crossdressing; CD, Sw, GH
15	Kimberli N McCarthy	Holli, Tiffany and Me	6765	34	X	Teen dresses for party; ends up sucking off best friend; CD, S
15	Janet Stickney	A New Little Girl	6765	33	G	Bad boy to good girl with help of loving mom; Sw GH
17	Karen Flynn	Guys Will Be Girls	6760	31	X	Teenagers, girls' clothes, and sex; CD, S
18	A Happy Wife	A Woman's Thoughts about…	6640	6	R	Forced fem/control; FD, Hum, SE
19	Allison	An Exciting Night	6520	21	XXX	Teen is dressed, kissed, raped, and castrated FD, CD, SE
20	Dawn DeWinter	Anything for a Moped	6390	28	R	Teen agrees to CD for a bet with mom; FD, CD, GH
21	Kacey Chance	Payback	6160	28	M	Girlfriend turns him into a pretty maid; FD
22	Sissy Demi	The Sitter	6120	33	M	The sitter turns bratty boy into baby girl FD, CD, Hum

 

 

Table 8B

Stories shorter than 50K with more than 5000 hits

	Author	Title	Hit total	Length	Rating	Description
23	Amanda Walker	You Can	5975	6	M	Dressing for charity; CD, GH
24	Karen A Summerfield	In Her Shoes	5940	34	G (X)	Wife transforms boorish hubby to sexy woman FD, Hum,
25	Sissy Slut Sue	The Training of a Sissy Whore	5690	31	XXX	He’s submissive, transformed and ready for sex; FD, Hum, SM, SE
26	A Happy Housewife	The Help	5660	6	R	Wife turns hubby to maid: FD, Hum,
27	Constance Grant	Humiliation	5605	26	R	Transformed and humiliated by his boss; CD, Hum
28	A Happy Housewife	Restructuring of my Husband	5570	22	R	Wife trains hubby with chastity belt; FD Hum
29	Constance Grant	Serendipity	5530	25	R	Wife dresses hubby & the marriage thrives; CD, GH
30	Anyport	Amanda’s Little Woman	5405	31	R	Wife gets hubby to go almost all the way; CD, GH
31	Susan	Sissy	5405	16	M	Nasty boy turned into a little girl & humiliated; FD, Hum, CD
32	Vickie Tern	Flowers	5340	33	R	Why a wife decides to accept CDing hubby: CD, Hum
33	Bethany Jacques	That Red Dress Started It	5315	23	X	An asexual beginning to a longer X-rated story
34	Julie	Co-ed-ucation	5290	43	R	College girls teach lecherous boy what it means to be a girl; FD, CD, Hum
35	Cathy T	A Day at Work, Dressed	5280	45	G	Just what it sounds like; CD, GH
35	Kimberly Kennedy	Housewife	5280	18	M	Student gets turned into fat housewife for a while; CD, Hum
37	Anyport	Supply and Demand	5225	31	XXX	Kidnapped and transformed to be sold as sex slave; FD, Hum, BDSM
38	A Happy Housewife	Check up	5220	10	R	Hubby hears about his future; FD, Hum
39	Cissy Gaye	Just Another Humiliated Pathetic Loser	5160	22	M	Lost bet leads to CDing, mild humiliation; FD, CD, Hum
39	Tanya	A Tale of Tanya	5160	25	X	Discovered by his roommate, CD becomes his lover; CD, S
41	Amanda Mcree	Meredith Reborn	5125	23	R	CD gets wish and becomes a woman; GH
42	Jannine	A Chick With a Dick	5115	11	R	Slightly dirty story of a shemale; CD, S

 

Authors with more than one story in the top 75
Julie	6		Crystal Sprite	2
A Happy Wife	6		Vickie Tern	2
Janet Stickney	5		Sara Rever Evielle	2
Constance Grant	4		Karen Summerfield	2
Bethany Jacques	4		Darlene le Queene	2
Patricia A Anderson	3		Anyport	2

 

 

Differences between stories longer and shorter than 50K.

Remember I told you that I thought there was a difference between shorter and longer stories? Well, I was right (and no, I hadn’t analyzed the data before I said it, it was just my impression). Briefly put, longer stories are much more likely to be sweet and good hearted, whereas shorter stories are much more likely to have themes that include female domination, humiliation, and sexual exploitation. You can see for yourself in Table 9.

 

Table 9

Kelly Ann’s own categories

	#Femdom	Humiliation	Sex	Sexual Exploitation	*Cross Dressing	BDSM	Sweet	Good- Hearted	Total Stories
>50K	19	6	5	2	5	2	13	24	34
<50K	26	24	4	9	16	3	2	8	42

# I classified the stories as Femdom myself for this table. The total is higher than in Table 2 where the authors' classifications were used. As I noted above, not all the authors were careful or complete in categorizing their stories.

* Crossdressing here indicates that it was a major theme of the story, as opposed to simply being part of the story. For example, all of Janet Stickney's girls crossdress, but the theme of Janet's stories is how the protagonist comes to accept her inner femininity, not simply how she comes to be dressed en femme and what she does while dressed. In Cathy T's, A Day at Work Dressed, by contrast, the whole point of the story is getting dressed en femme.

Before we go any further, I have to admit that some of these classifications are somewhat qualitative. I had to decide whether a story contained sexual exploitation, was sweet, or was good hearted. Actually, sexual exploitation was rather easy; it's one person forcing another to have sex to dominate, humiliate, or otherwise diminish him (yes, it's always the poor transformee who ends up being exploited).

Sweet was a little harder to define, but sweet stories take a romantic view of things (although they were not necessarily about love) and to show things in an agreeable, delightful, charming and gratifying way. It's even harder to describe what makes a story good hearted. But for me, these stories elevated their characters rather than diminishing them, the characters were treated with respect and compassion by the author, and even when there was adversity, things turned out well in the end. When you finish reading a good-hearted story, you sigh contentedly and say, "that's so nice." I should also note that good hearted was not a default condition. Stories had to actively demonstrate their good-hearted nature to receive that classification. I understand this definition is not entirely satisfying. Unfortunately, I have to fall back on the same approach Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart used in trying to define pornography, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material [pornography] . . . but I know it when I see it." Hey, if that’s good enough for a Supreme Court ruling, it's good enough for me.

Anyway, if you are willing to accept that I might be able to at least semi-reliably spot a good-hearted story when I see it and distinguish it from one that is not so nice, then there are some obvious distinctions we can draw from this analysis.

First, I rated 43% of the stories as good hearted (all the sweet stories are also good-hearted), but there was a big distinction between stories >50K and those <50K in length. Stories >50K are much more likely than stories <50K to be good-hearted (73% vs. 19%) or for that matter, sweet/sentimental (39% vs.5%).

Second, 39% of the stories involved humiliation, and are most of those are not good hearted (although two stories fell into both categories, which means either that I'm nuts, or that the humiliation was a small part of the story – yeah, that must be it – I couldn't be nuts, could I?). Again there was a clear distinction between the >50K stories and the shorter ones. Stories >50K are much less likely than stories <50K to contain themes of female domination (54% vs. 62%), humiliation (15% vs. 57%), and sexual exploitation (3% vs. 21%). Stories in which crossdressing was a major theme (e.g., Amanda Walker's Dressing for Charity) are also more likely to <50K (15% vs. 38%).

The importance of this analysis is that "good-hearted" and "humiliation" do not appear on the list of terms an author can select to be part of her story description, but they seem to be important themes in the stories we most like. It is also likely that female domination is a more important theme than an analysis of the authors classifications would suggest.

 

Discussion

"Kelly Ann!" I hear you cry, "what could all this possibly mean?" Well, the main benefit I derive from being passionate enough to do all this work is that I get to be the first one to comment on it. After you read what I have to say, you can sit back, look at the data, and draw your own conclusions. If you come up with something interesting, or think I totally blew it, or whatever, please post your own comments on the cyberboard for others to read, email them to me, or do both.

 

Storysite readers are not a homogeneous population.

The first major conclusion I draw from this analysis is that there are probably several distinct populations of Storysite readers. One group, seemingly the largest, likes good-hearted stories that don’t contain explicit sex. I rated 43% of the top 76 (and 73% of the >50K) stories as good hearted, and nearly three quarters of Our Favorite stories are rated G, M, or R.

Having read all of the top 76 stories within a month of writing this, I now feel convinced that one group of readers is seeking out stories that are generous in spirit, and in which the characters are uplifted rather than degraded, no matter what happens to them. That's says good things about us, I think.

Of course Storysite contains a good number of sexually explicit stories and other stories that contain sexually kinky or fetishistic material. A second group of Storysite readers (which almost certainly overlaps with the first group) favors these stories.

Needless to say, any definition of kinky or fetishistic has to be squishy. To begin with, anything a T-girl does, including just being herself, is considered kinky by at least 95% of the world. From my own T-girl perspective, however, simply dressing, or having consensual sex with either a man or a woman while dressed is normal for us.

It doesn't get kinky for me until things like forced bondage, sadomasochism, extremely fetishistic clothing (20 inch corsets, 6 inch heels), or forced sex of any kind come into play. Kelly’s The Submissive, Darlene Le Queene’s Sissy Salon, and Karen Ann Summerfield’s In He Shoes are kinky. Nothing by Julie or Janet Stickney comes close, and the two sexually explicit stories by Bethany Jacques and Sarah Rever Evielle, An Unusual Sort of Wedding and Ian and Me, aren’t kinky by my definition.

That a subset of Storysite readers is looking for stories with strong sexual themes, including explicit descriptions of sexual activity, sexual exploitation, and sexually kinky and fetishistic activities shouldn't be too surprising. We are, after all, a community united by our jumbled views of our own genders and sexual natures, and one that to a large degree once had or currently has a sexually fetishistic relationship with women's clothing (what heady days those were). Of course many of us are looking for stories that contain sex; many of us are preoccupied with our own sexuality, and if nothing else, one safe way to try out different sexual and gender roles is to read about them. Besides, the web is filled with people looking for sexual material and is the perfect medium for those who would prefer to obtain it anonymously.

There may be other subpopulations of Storysite readers, but the good-hearted stories on the one hand, and the sexual ones on the other are obvious.

 

Female Domination and Humiliation

My third conclusion from this analysis is that a large part of the TG community finds the theme of female domination irresistibly attractive. But the femdom theme is a not a simple one and can come in many guises, from the most loving to the most degrading.

Someone could probably write a long book analyzing this aspect of the TG personality, but I will avoid speculating here. We would be naïve, however, to deny that the idea of being forced to dress by a dominant woman (or much less frequently, a man) is an important psychodynamic element for many of us. This is reflected by the fact that between 45% and 60% of Our Favorite stories were classified as Femdom, depending on whether you use the authors classifications or mine. These stories remain attractive even though we ourselves, or others in our community disparage the idea of female domination as a cop out (after all, being forced to dress takes the responsibility for a "perverted" act from you and places it on someone else), neurotic failure, or personality defect.

Female domination's evil cousin, humiliation occurs or is a theme in 39% of stories. Again, I will not speculate about the psychological roots of the need many of us feel to experience humiliation, even if it is on vicariously, but it is clear that it is something many of us want to read about, and there are authors out there who need to write about it.

 

Story Categories that didn't make the list

Some story categories are as obvious by their absence from Our Favorite's list as others are by their presence. Stories that involve magic, science fiction, mind alterations, or which occur in other times (past or present) don't appear on the favorites list. These subgenre's of storytelling apparently have smaller numbers of readers who favor them than those who want to read about more or less realistic transformations (although we seem to permit hormones and surgery to do almost magical things) in the here and now.

 

What about the sample?

Although I am comfortable with the conclusions I presented above, there are some limitations to the data that should be considered. First, you might say that the 76-story sample, while very time consuming for one person to deal with, really isn't very big. It represents only 4% of all the stories posted on Storysite. Would we get a different picture of things if I had analyzed say, the top 10% of stories?

One thing that argues that we might is the fact that five authors account for one third of the top 75 stories (Julie, 6; A Happy Wife, 6; Janet Stickney, 5; Constance Grant, 4: Bethany Jacques, 4), so their stories could skew the results. Of this group, only Constance Grant's stories represent a really mixed bag. Julie and Janet write mostly good-hearted stories (although Julie's contain clear female domination), and A Happy Wife's stories are explicitly about female domination. Interestingly, all of these stories are rated R, M, or G.

Perhaps if I had analyzed more authors, we would we see a different kinds of stories. Maybe one day I'll look at the list of stories that got between 4500-5000 hits (there are 54 of them) and broaden the database. If you want to do it let me know, I'll send the list to you. For now, however, I think it is important to note that most scientists would be delighted with a 4% sample from any population, and since this analysis is actually about the most popular stories, analyzing the most popular stories did seem the way to go.

 

What about quality?

Another problem with this analysis is that it had no way to deal with quality. Although it is hard to resist urge to conclude that at least some of the top stories must be well written, it is perfectly clear once you have read them all, that some are not.

The quality issue is important because some of the best writers on Storysite don’t appear on the list. Elaine, Tigger, and Jackie Pett come immediately to mind. Elaine's, The Importance of Being Juliette, had been the most popular story on Fictionmania when its counters were still up, but as of August 9, 2001, Juliette had not yet reached even 3000 hits on Storysite. You could argue that no period stories (past, future, or alternative universe) made the top 76 list, and Juliette is clearly set in the Victorian past. OK, but what about Elaine's Elaine and me, a touching love story set in the real world? It didn't make the list either.

If you read armchair reviews, you already know that I admire Jackie Pett's writing. She tells great stories and has a wonderful feel for characters and setting. None of her stories made the list. Similarly, Tigger's Seasons stories are widely recognized as genre masterpieces because they are beautifully constructed, psychologically insightful, have excellent characterization, and are fun to read. They feature some of our favorite themes, including female domination and humiliation, but are generally good-hearted and typically have happy endings. For whatever reason, readers don't read them on Storysite.

You could argue that these writers had posted their stories on other sites long before Storysite came into existence, so they couldn’t draw a large readership on Storysite simply because many Storysite visitors have already read these stories elsewhere. This explanation made sense to me too until I saw that Vickie Tern's JayCee and her Flowers, which have been posted on Fictionmania and other sites for years, are number 8 on the >50K list and 32 <50k list, respectively. Patricia Anne Anderson's and Rachel Cooper's stories have also been posted elsewhere for years, but they're favorites here as well.

 

How do we decide what to read?

The issue of quality leads right into the next question about the data. What does it actually tell us about why readers select certain stories? It would seem that there are only a few things a reader can consider while deciding what to read. The first is to look at stuff on the What's New page. This must be an important factor because some stories get thousands of hits in just a month or two after being posted.

It is also important because Crystal recently reported that there were three times as many page openings in July of 2001 than there were in July 2000, just a year previously. So if newer readers are opening new stories, rather than searching the archives for older ones, then stories added in the last year should have the advantage over those posted more than one year ago. In fact, nearly half the stories in the top 76 have been posted in the last 12 months, including nine that were posted in 2001.

The second is to know and like the author. That could easily explain the popularity of Julie's, Janet Stickney's, and A Happy Wife's stories. Having read one that I liked, of course I'm going to open a new one when it appears. And this works both ways in time. Not only will I read a favored author's new stories, but I'll go back and check out her older ones as well. Certainly, the fact that there are twelve authors who appear on the list more than once suggests that people read authors they know and like.

The third is by categories and key words. There are certain things I look for in a story and other things that pretty much turn me off. I love femdom, for example, but I'm not much of a fan of magic or science fiction. I'll hardly ever read anything less than 30K, and because I like to see character development, I often download long stories, even if they are about magic. Stories simply about sex are not high on my priority list, although you often have to open them to figure out what they will be like. I assume most readers have their own particular list of categories and key words they search for as well.

Behavior like this would predict that if an author selected the right cluster of descriptors, she would almost inevitably have a very popular story. But this just isn't the case. Going back to Janet Stickney's work again, we can see that she has dozens of stories with nearly identical sets of descriptors, but the hit totals for these stories are all over the place, and it's beyond me how people decide to read one of Janet’s stories but not another.

What I really want to believe is that it's the story itself. The proper cluster of descriptors combined with a good story will lead to lots of readers. If this were the mainstream publishing world, that would be a good explanation because in the non-web world (now there’s a bizarre concept) there are things like book reviews and advertising to alert readers to good stories. But we don't have those things in cyberville and it's hard to imagine how readers become aware of good stories, except perhaps by looking at hits and readers comments, although those are usually not too illuminating either. You rarely see comments about stories on the cyberboard, and because so many of the readers appear to be anonymous, it's hard to imagine a huge grapevine out there discussing the hot new Storysite stories. I’m certainly not on it. So it's hard to attribute any popularity a story might have to its quality, however you might define quality.

Maybe high hit totals reflect repeat visits by satisfied readers. I've certainly reread A Happy Wife's stories more than once (Okay, I've read some of them more than a half dozen times). Heck, I opened many of the stories listed here three or four times each before I got clever enough to simply download them all.

So the bottom line is that I'm clueless about why some stories succeed while apparently similar ones do not. The most likely reason, I guess, is a bunch of reasons put together, and perhaps not the same bunch for each successful story. Among the ones that seem most important to me are: 1) knowing the author, 2) readers checking the What’s New page instead of searching the archives, 3) being about female domination (and, more importantly, listing it as a category), 4) not having explicit sex, and somehow, 5) being a good hearted story with an uplifting theme. What do you think?

Three more issues deserve mention. The first is multipart stories. How do you evaluate the popularity of a story whose first chapter gets 6000 hits, its second 4000 and its last 2000? I just don't know, but there weren't so many of them on the list that it would matter very much. On the other hand, perhaps a list of multipart stories is a good idea because it is so hard to evaluate them against stories posted all at once.

Second, we have to consider what hit totals really mean in the context of how one might decide what to read or determine what a successful story is. One the one hand, I would argue that a successful story is one that pleases its author. The level of feedback to authors is so low that anyone writing for feedback will quickly become disillusioned.

On the other, I can't tell you how pleased I am that my first story ranks so high on the hit list (even if it only has one reader's comment, and that appeared after I complained on the cyberboard that I hadn't received any comments), and that my second is garnering hits as quickly as it is. It is a treat to know that people are at least opening something that I wrote.

But should we say that Boy Nanny, for example, is better than either Elaine's The Importance of Being Juliette or Jackie Pett's The Export? I certainly wouldn't, even though Boy Nanny has more hits than these other two together. No, what this analysis tells us is that one must evaluate stories in their own contexts. Outstanding stories about magic, science fiction, Victorian times, age regression and other categories will apparently never get hit totals like those set more or less in the present day world. But that says nothing about their quality.

Finally, and despite all the time I spent on this, I have to say that I still don't understand why some stories become popular while others don't, especially stories by new authors. All we have to go on when we look at stories is that they've recently been published and their rating, categories and key words. Yet these apparently are not enough to predict on their own what will be read. What would predict that is beyond me, and perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.

 

 

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© 2001 by Kelly Ann Rogers. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.