Bit of a short one this month because you’ve all been on your best behaviour so there’s no major rules updates or anything, and I’ve been balls deep in writing copy at work so my poor brain is too fried to do a really rigourous Writer’s Desk segment. That said, here’s your newsletter for April 2026!

Around the Community

Some fairly pedestrian fare here, but we posted here about a week and a half ago about our traffic being in the bin. I know it’s the 1st of April, but weren’t joking about that – we just saw our worst month ever. If you’ve ever been curious about what our community traffic looks like, here’s what we get from Reddit.

https://preview.redd.it/pq5kllb23lsg1.png?width=908&format=png&auto=webp&s=b82039417762be67608b9eeda4e519702de7f1cb

What’s this mean for you? Not much, but we are asking that people adjust their expectations around what kind of traffic they expect on their posts. No, it’s not just us – other subreddits in our network are seeing similar shrinkage or lack of growth right now too. Things like bot farms getting blown up all over the world and regressive governments deciding we need to sell scans of our faces to equity firms just to read a dirty story are all likely contributing to people finding other ways to have fun.

Aside from that, we’ve had a pretty quiet month. I did want to offer my thanks to everyone who submitted prompts for the image prompt contest – it’s really helpful and cuts down on our workload immensely. We’re likely going to be a few days late on the contest album, but life does tend to get in the way of things here and there.

Oh AND! Wordcount Wednesdays are back! I think a weekly thread is a little much – we saw a heap of interest on the first ones but it’s slowed down a fair bit, so I’m going to move these to biweekly events and see if there’s still any appetite for them. If you haven’t popped into one yet, I really encourage you to come hang out! Some of our most social and talented folks hang out there and offer lots of lovely encouragement and advice. Here’s what they look like. Hope to catch you in there!

Top Authors

Some very exciting developments in the Top Author scene as we have the pleasure of awarding 4 first-time winners this month, and two regulars add well-deserved wins to their tallies too. In the non-contest category, we have:

1. u/AdjacentTales with Snowed in with Sophie. I have it on good authority that this one struck major chords with readers for the heat of its intimacy and playful character dialogue. Sometimes you just need what you need.
2. u/BothersomeStoat with A Close Shave. It’s generally not considered polite to play with your food, but I think we can forgive our characters in this case. This one was really nostalgic for me on a personal level for…reasons.
3. u/zombies-never-saydie with My best friend told me that she had never given a blowjob before, so I showed her how to deepthroat my cock. A classic premise delivered with blistering intensity, this one comes from an author who has realllllly been on the edge of a win for quite a while, so we’re pleased to see their efforts rewarded.

And for contest entries this month, we’re pleased to recognize the following writers:

1. u/Wh1keyS0ur_ with The Bride of the Deep. Consentacles fans rejoice, this one was an actual BANGER. Prepare to be thoroughly tickled as you’re dragged down and pulled into this masterpiece. Did you know that one of our mods actually runs r/tentai? It’s true!
2. u/sad-heat-592 returns to the leaderboard with You Started It. Kinda bratty? Desperate? If the title tags didn’t pull you in, take it from me – this one goes hard. You need to read it. Go now.
3. u/rotonoscope also claims a second win for He Spiced Things Up by Taking a Page Out of One of My Books. Aside from being really great all on its own, this one is a cool example of how creative folks can get with the contest – both sad-heat and roto used the same image for their contest entries and still managed to create narratives that were unique and grounded in the source material. Well done!

PS – u/StrikingEconomist753 and u/acorn_sweetleaf totally would have won again, but they’ve already achieved the Writer in Residence rank by winning 5 times, and we don’t have any other accolades to give them aside from a hearty pat on the back and/or firm handshake. If you’re not following these two yet, they’re genuinely the best of us. Go check them out.

The Writer’s Desk

A short one this week, but I wanted to touch on something that’s been near and dear to my heart lately, which is how to find joy in the act of creating and letting that be enough in itself.

We all like when our stories get massive reactions from our audience, and the folks that we like all pile into the comments to tell us how brilliant we are, and the hottest person on our follow list shoots us a DM to say how hot and bothered our story got them…but that doesn’t happen all the time.

A few weeks ago, I entered a piece of visual art into a competition. I’ve got a little studio and I like to noodle around a little bit, and over the years I’ve gotten pretty okay at what I do – I’ve won some small conventions and the like, and I really enjoy it. The actual contests are a great chance to rub shoulders with other creators and talk shop with people that I really respect for their craft. Disappointingly, I didn’t take any hardware home though, and I let it get under my skin a little bit.

But this brings me to something that I’m really trying to work on personally, which is humility. One, I didn’t *deserve* the win any more than anyone else there. Two, shame on me for letting something like a small accolade devalue the effort and passion I put into my project. And three, I did something I liked, and that’s kinda the whole-ass point.

I think we all try to write things that are a little bit safe around here at the moment. That’s totally okay if that’s just what we like! I mean, who doesn’t love MILFs or brats or sexy roommates? But I wonder if we’re doing it because we really want the “you’re doing great!” messages, and we’re too risk-averse to write what’s really simmering inside of us. Are we stifling our creativity a little just because our objective is the recognition and we know that the best way to get there is 1750 words, 2 characters, a blowjob, some cowgirl, and a creampie?

I kinda think we might be.

My challenge to you this month is to write something for you. Just you. Not your audience, not the contest, or the Top Author flair. Don’t write the trendy 3-position, five minute read. Write that weird shit. Don’t think about the people you hang out in DMs or Discord with finding out that you really like [thing that you keep under wraps in Incognito browser tabs]. Write something that you wish other people would write for you. And post it!

I did this recently, and nobody read it. Straight up. Two chapters of something I just wanted to think and daydream about enough to get a couple hundred words together for, and nobody read it. But I posted it! It had been worming around in my head for ages and I kept telling myself that nobody would like it and friends of mine would see it and, and, and…And I had fun writing something that I couldn’t wait to work on, and I pecked away at my keyboard with a big ol’ grin on my face for a couple hours.

So fuck those upvotes. Write the weird shit, have fun doing it, and try not to worry about all the things between you and having fun with your art again.