[Avery Leckrone]

Jen Jewell? At least, that’s the name he says…

[Avery Leckrone]

Okay… this feels like a lot of data to absorb, to be honest. The functionality seems to make sense; is there any way to make sure that mods won’t either neglect their responsibilities or show preferential treatment to certain users over others? I think this is something that ought to be addressed before it becomes an issue, as I’ve seen group admins (on other sites) show both of these failings.

[Avery Leckrone]

In an attempt to try and codify Sylph’s world a bit more, I’ve started creating profiles of the series-regulars. I posted Sylph’s Profile first, of course. Next of is Khalida Matsoukis, Sylph’s best friend.

Height: 5’7”
Weight: 155 lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Black
Ethnicity: Greek/Mediterranean

Appearance:
Physically, Khalida is nearly flawless. Although she is a dancer and exceptionally skilled in both ballet and contemporary dance, she does not have the traditional dancer’s proportions, having, instead, a somewhat longer torso than average and, generally, a slightly thicker body. Khalida weighs a bit more than her lean, slender appearance would suggest to the untrained eye, mainly because she already has a fair amount of lean muscle on her physique. Khalida’s skin is a rich chestnut color, and she ordinarily wears makeup, skillfully applied, to enhance her already intense natural beauty.

Personal Quote:
“All right, you two; do it right, this time, or I’ma whap the both of you!”

Background/History:
Khalida grew up in the same town as Wade Thomas and attended school a few years behind him. Growing up, she had something of a crush on the older boy, but the attraction was, at the time, unrequited as Wade barely seemed even to notice her.

As a child, Khalida was extremely curious about the physicality of her body and her parents encouraged her by putting her into private dance and gymnastics classes as soon as she was old enough. They also hired a personal trainer for her, and she proved to excel at most physical tasks.

Khalida was, in high school, something of a tomboy, and rarely bothered to spend much time on her appearance; as a result, few noticed just how beautiful she was beneath her skinned knees and grass-stained trousers. Added to that was the fact that Khalida preferred playing sports to being in the stands or cheerleading, and it is hardly surprising that she went until late in her junior year before an agent noticed her.

Khalida modeled and took additional private dance lessons throughout her senior year. At the end of her senior year, she was invited to give a dance recital overseas, in Greece, and stayed an additional six months learning about her family’s history. Upon her return from Greece, Khalida enrolled in the New York School of Art, majoring in dance and performance art.

Personality:
Khalida is cheerful and extroverted and generally likes hanging out with her friends. She has a bit of a competitive spirit, and enjoys pitting herself against difficult challenges, whether she proves capable of succeeding or not— although, to be fair, she prefers to win. She is fiercely loyal to her friends and will stand up for them and defend them even when they’re in the wrong, but she also won’t hesitate to tell them when they’re being stupid. Khalida has a fiery temper and will sometimes get in over her head as a result.

Khalida suffers from achluophobia and finds it extremely difficult to adjust to being in the dark in an unfamiliar place, a trait she shares with her best friend, Sylph.

Powers/Abilities:
Khalida is an incredibly skilled dancer, capable of holding her own against the best in the world. She has been described as being someone who is so in control of her body that she seems to be actively dancing even when she is at rest, and no motion that she makes appears to be accidental (although, to be fair, she has been known to succumb to the Rube Goldberg effect that seems to surround her best friend, Sylph, like a field of pure entropy).

Khalida is a good cook and specializes in Greek and Mediterranean food; she is a competent baker, although not spectacular. She is reasonably knowledgeable about the science of cooking, and can apply that knowledge to new dishes or culinary problems with little planning.

Khalida’s physical strength is very slightly in the superhuman range, making her considerably stronger than her physique would suggest. While she is nowhere close to Sylph’s power level, she is strong enough to deadlift about three-quarters of a ton without much difficulty. Because of her training as a dancer, she has tremendous endurance and can generally maintain her strength at near-peak levels for close to an hour at a time.

Khalida is a fairly average student, neither exceptionally gifted nor handicapped in any particular academic area. She is exceptionally socially aware and flourishes in classes that focus on creativity, charm, and charisma. She is less adept at deep academic enquiry, and is often inclined to base her thoughts and actions on gut instinct.

[Avery Leckrone]

I hate to say this, but is there anyway you could actually post a link to the facebook page? I’ve done searches for it and ended up in some odd (fortunately not disturbing) places…

[Avery Leckrone]

Well we won’t get around ads sooner or later. I’m currently having some free space where I can host Brawna 2.0 from as long as it’s in development. But once done, I would prefer a professional hoster as well as a domain. Who knows, maybe Lingster will hand us over the Brawna.org domain. But one way or an other, I would like to cover my expenses for hosting and the domain via ads for example. Of course an agreement could be made with disabling ads once the monthly expenses are covered. Via ads or donations….

I’m not really worried about seeing some ads; that’s a reality of the world, these days. I would, however, like to avoid, for example, the hardcore [spoiler]”xxx-cock-sucking-teenage-girl-on-daddy’s-big-xxx”[/spoiler] stuff that used to show up on yahoo masquerading as messages or files. If we could avoid that crap, I’d be grateful, because I can think of few ways to kill a new site faster.

[Avery Leckrone]

I have to be honest… I know a lot of people had issues with the submission process, but I never really did, that I remember. I had completely forgotten how much of a bear some people found it to be.

I will agree that the CAPTCHA was one of the most awful that I’ve ever encountered, but I would prefer that to the zillion-and-one hardcore porn spam ads that, for example, yahoo groups seem to always be plagued with.

[Avery Leckrone]

Conceptually, I like this idea a lot. A couple thoughts on implementation, though.

First: I think it would be a good idea to include some sort of rubric with explanations (and possibly exemplar texts) that show what each level is supposed to represent. It will still be somewhat subjective, of course, and more so because not everyone will read the criteria before passing judgement, but I think encouraging consistency will still be a benefit, overall.

Second: Don’t have so many levels. While we love to play around with fine gradations, there’s really no need for them. If you think of the system as being similar to grading, it could be something along the lines of: 5- Outstanding! 4- Above Average 3- Average 2- Below Average 1- Poor. If you then want the larger 0-10 scale for your graphic, your algorithm could average the values and produce half-values.

As for values for critiquing, I would propose: Originality, Organization, Consistency, Style, and Mechanics.

Originality refers to whether a story feels unique to the reader. Obviously, there are very few new ideas under the sun, but originality looks at whether or not the author took the elements of the story and combined them in a way that made them feel new and interesting to the reader.

Organization refers to the form of the story. This can be difficult to judge for chapter stories, as often important elements may not be introduced until later and other elements may not be touched on in every chapter, but the basic idea is that a story should have a clear beginning, middle, and ending. For short stories (and, I would argue, larger works, as well), the format is typically an introduction in which the main characters and the basic conflict are introduced, rising action in which difficulties are presented and complications are added, climax in which the maximum tension is achieved, falling action in which the main conflict is solved and the various complications are dealt with, and conclusions in which the story is wrapped up, possibly with the introduction or restatement of dangling plot threads to lead the reader into the next story or chapter in the arc.

Consistency basically means the ease with which a reader can immerse himself in the story. Stories do not need to follow the laws of mundane reality, but they should adhere to their own internal rules. When they don’t, they break our suspension of disbelief.

Style indicates how well the story kept to the categories it was represented by. If the story claims to be a GTS story, for example, then there ought to be at least one woman who is in the GTS range (and, depending on the number of categories provided, this may be even more restrictive- if the largest sized woman is only 8-feet and the option for mini-GTS exists, than labeling the story a GTS story would be misleading).

Finally, Mechanics indicates how easily the story could be parsed by readers. Stories should follow consistent rules of grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure. Stories should be broken into paragraphs and, if needed, chapters. Stories should not be presented as streams of consciousness (usually) or as walls of text, unless the goal of the author is to frighten away his audience.

It would also be useful (to authors) if there were a small section for comments next to each section and a larger section for more general critiques below that, although that might be asking a bit much of reviewers.

As regards graphics, I’m generally inclined to agree. While I like in-text pictures (I think they give a well-written and well-formatted story the appearance of a magazine article), I can also see how the pictures would tend to interfere with the flow of the writing. I would propose having pictures be an option- not a requirement- for the beginning of each page, chapter, or section- however the story is broken up on the site.

[Avery Leckrone]

Chapter 06 marks my first attempt at shirt ripping. Overall, I think I didn’t do too badly, although there are those who would certainly have done a more spectacular job of it.

“Just one more, Joe!”

“hih… hih… hih…”

“Oh. my. God.”

“spot…

“spot…

“SPOT!”

Todd tore his eyes away from the impossible woman who was edging her way into the weight room long enough to grab the bar and help Joe rack the weight.

“Jesus, Todd,” Joe panted, sitting up from the bench and looking at his friend, “what’s the deal?”

Todd, normally a glib and charming young man, couldn’t even find words, so he just pointed. Joe looked. She was what Joe would politely describe as gi-normous. And he would be very polite, because she was easily big enough and, from the look of her, strong enough to squash him to so much paté without even trying. There had been some rumors when most of the new weightroom equipment had been installed yesterday, but it obviously fell far short of the mark. Joe, a star wrestler and one of the best lifters at NYU, had looked at the immense weights being installed and shook his head. He had been certain that there was no one who could possibly require such huge, oversized plates and bars. He had assumed it was some sort of practical joke or something. Now, he wasn’t at all sure.

Sylph was a big girl. She hadn’t been properly weighed for years, now, but she guessed that she weighed in somewhere close to three-quarters of a ton. Over the years, this had provided her with some rather novel problems, notably that her weight was too compact and dense for her to stand or move above the foundation level of most residential buildings. Her shoulders were so wide that she had to go through most doors sideways if she could fit at all. There were several places she could no longer enter at all without causing structural damage to the buildings because her chest was also incredibly deep. It wasn’t just that she was big, though. She had to be about the most perfectly balanced mass of meat he had ever seen. No one muscle group stood out as more inhumanly developed than any other, certainly there were no muscle groups that looked as if they received insufficient attention on her magnificent, vibrant form. In fact, the only thing about her that might be considered less than ideal was her height. Granted, anyone that massive would be vertically challenged, but Sylph was actually wider across her shoulders than she was tall.

Having managed to slip into the room without too much difficulty-she’s had to suck in her chest, but that was par for the course-Sylph looked around, ambled lightly over to the open part of the mat and started stretching. She was amazingly flexible. Despite having far more muscle than any other five people on the planet, she was far from muscle-bound. It was true, of course, that she couldn’t reach fully across her chest with either hand, but she could do full splits and lay her head on the floor or either quad (her knees were a little out of her reach at this point) and she could reach over her enormous deltoids and nearly to the small of her back. She stretched thoroughly and began doing a slow floor routine to warm up.

As she moved with deceptive grace through her routine, Joe and Todd went back to their workouts. Joe shook his head. “Man, how does someone get that huge?” he muttered through his teeth at his best friend.

“Serious case of ‘roids?” Todd suggested. He was moderately horrified, although Joe seemed, surprisingly, almost mesmerized.

“I don’t think so,” Joe grunted, pushing out another rep. “Look at her again. Her skin’s flawless.” Todd looked. Joe was right. She didn’t even have freckles or teenage acne scars. As he was looking, another couple people entered the gym. He recognized Wade right away, but the girl who came in right after simply took his breath away.

The new girl was only a little taller than Sylph, but amazingly trim and tight. Todd realized right away that she was carrying a little muscle in that amazing package, but it was deceptive because she was so well proportioned over all, like an off-season Gioia Mavi, maybe not quite as big. Her long, black hair was pulled back in a pony tail and her workout togs looked relatively new. Her huge black eyes got even bigger as she stared around the gym until she spotted Sylph. Her face broke into a dazzling smile, then, and Todd thought he might die happy right there. She started towards the (much) bigger girl, and Todd was contentedly watching the generous sway of her butt when Wade’s voice snapped him back to reality.

“Hey, Todd- quit perving on my friends, would you?” Wade was a couple years ahead of Todd, having graduated two years ago, but they’d been friends on the basketball court, and he could easily get away with this sort of teasing.

“Why, you got claims on her?”

“Which one?”

“New girl, not the ‘roidazon.”

Wade frowned slightly. “Man, Todd, you can be such a jerk, sometimes.”

“What?” Todd looked at Wade and realized that he was actually upset. “What’d I say?”

Wade shook his head disgustedly. “The big girl over there is Sylph. She’s really nice, and it wouldn’t hurt you to try and see past surface appearances sometimes.” Todd opened his mouth to retort, but Wade continued without stopping. “The other girl is Kalida. We kind of grew up together, but I never really knew her that well.”

“Dude. Sorry. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you liked her,” Todd commented, nodding at Sylph again. Wade decided to let it go.

“Well, I’ll admit, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed…” Wade smiled.

“Like you could!” Wade shook his head and punched Todd on the arm.

“So you really know that other girl?”

“Yeah. We were at the opposite ends of our high school, but I kind of remember her. I think I actually tutored her in math a couple of times, but I don’t think she remembers me real well.”

“So… could you introduce us?” Todd included Joe in his question, and Joe got up from his bar and came over, shaking out his arms.

“I’ll make sure dipstick, here, keeps the filter on his brain/mouth connection,” Joe offered, “but I’d really like to meet them, too.”

At the other end of the gym, the girls greeted each other again and Sylph helped Kalida figure out how to stretch out for weight training. It was made a lot easier by Kalida’s natural grace and athleticism, but it was still pretty obvious to Sylph that Kalida had never really seriously seen the inside of a weight room. As they stretched out, Kalida kept looking over her shoulder at the men clustered by the bench press.

“Sylph,” she hissed, “they’re staring at us!”

Sylph glanced at them and grinned. “Of course they are. You, girl, are probably the most smoking hot example of womanhood that any of them have ever seen.”

Kalida blushed red clear to her roots. “I thought they were staring at you.”

“Oh, they were. Until you came in, that is. You’re what they call a showstopper!”

“Can’t you make them stop?” Kalida grimaced uncomfortably.

“I doubt it. I didn’t bring any burlap or sackcloth to cover you in,” Sylph teased. “You might as well get used to it. You’re studying dance, remember. What do you think is going to happen when you go out on stage?”

“That’s different!” Sylph cocked an eyebrow and Kalida deflated a bit. “You mean it doesn’t bother you at all?”

“To be looked at like a piece of meat on the rack? Of course it does, but that’s just the way men are. You either get used to it or you turn into a hermit. Didn’t you get this in high school, at all?”

“Not me. I was tall, but I really didn’t fill out until after I went to Greece. Mostly, I was just the knobby-kneed hockey player from room 3B.”

Sylph looked skeptical, but didn’t say anything as the men were on their way over.

Wade stepped forward, first, and made the introductions. “Joe, Todd, I’d like you to meet Sylph and Kalida. And vice versa,” he smiled. Todd reached forward to shake hands with both girls before turning his attention to Kalida.

“It’s really nice to meet you,” he began. “I think I may be inspired to use a really corny pickup line, but only if you say you don’t mind.”

Kalida blushed again and dimpled shyly at the tall young man. Todd wasn’t bad looking, with his sandy brown hair and lively blue eyes, and he had a way of talking and moving that just seemed able to disarm the most tense situation. “You can use it, but I’m bound to tell you no,” Kalida answered teasingly.

Todd gave a huge, comical sigh and immediately turned his charm on Sylph. “Can you talk to her, dear lady? I’m afraid her reticence has unmanned me utterly!”

Joe punched him on the shoulder and smirked. “Ignore the clown, Sylph. It’s good to meet you. What are you two coming to NYU for?”

“Well, she’s here for dance,” Sylph said, indicating Kalida, “and I’m studying visual arts.”

Joe gaped at her. “You didn’t get those,” he said, lightly touching Sylph’s mammoth bicep, “pushing a paintbrush.”

Sylph’s laugh was like the tinkle of tiny silver bells. “No,” she admitted, “I got these by pushing a lot of lead and iron around, the same way you did.”

After chatting for a few minutes, Sylph indicated that they ought to get back to their workouts.

“Um, I usually make dinner in my suite,” Kalida offered, “if you guys aren’t too busy, why don’t you stop by and we can talk more then.”

Joe and Todd exchanged glances. “I’d like to,” Joe admitted, “but I really can’t. My girlfriend is in town and I promised to have dinner with her and her friends.”

“Nothing stopping me, though,” Todd grinned sunnily. “I’ll be there.”

While they were talking, the NYU Violets they’d met at lunch came in and warmed up, then started over to the free weights. Sylph got both Wade and Kalida started on some simple exercises, demonstrating the proper way to handle the weights, then went over to greet the football players.

Kalida was somewhat surprised to discover that she was actually lifting heavier than Wade, but Wade didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all, so she decided to keep it up. For his part, Wade was impressed by how much Kalida could handle and handle well. He knew a lot of guys who couldn’t bench or curl nearly as much as Kalida was doing now. Wade knew that he could single rep most of the weights Kalida was doing, but that was about it. He watched, entranced, as her shapely arms clenched and tightened into visible biceps and triceps- not huge, but not exactly small, either, and, he was certain, very firm.

There was a shout from the squats rack, where one of the linemen had loaded a bar nearly full and then tried to lift it. He’d gotten it off the pegs- barely- but the weight had been probably a good two hundred pounds in excess of his best lift, and his spotter missed the grab. Fortunately, Sylph was standing nearby and quickly reached out with her left hand and snagged the falling bar with barely a quaver.

“What did you think you were doing?” she demanded, visibly upset.

His spotter, Mike Pendergast, the quarterback they’d met at lunch, answered for him as the lineman gulped air with wide eyes. “That’s Damon. He was trying to show off, of course.”

“What, for me?” Sylph looked disgusted, now. “I don’t even do curls with this weight anymore.”

Mike shook his head, sadly. “Some guys just want you to know they’re strong, you know? I think Damon’s kind of taken with you.”

“Oh, good grief. Look,” she called, raising the weight up high at the end of her arm, “I know none of you are as strong as me. Don’t work out to impress me, work out for yourselves.”

She racked the weight and began to walk away.

“Hey, wait a second,” Damon called after her. Sylph turned and waited. “Just how strong are you?”

“Honestly? I don’t really know anymore,” she shrugged. “They don’t really make commercial weights in tons.”

“Then how do you work out? And why?”

Sylph considered. “Mostly, these days, I work out to keep my flexibility and conditioning. I don’t really lift heavy for me very much, except in isolating specific muscles, and then I use those bad boys over there,” she explained, pointing at the enormous weights stacked in one corner of the room.

“Are you serious?”

“No one could lift those!”

“You gotta show us!”

Several of the other linemen had gathered around and were egging her on. Finally, Sylph sighed and walked over to a huge curl bar. She nodded. “Okay, but just once. Than y’all have to go back to your own workouts, okay?”

Wade nudged Kalida as Sylph started loading up the bar. He didn’t even try to guess how much weight was on it- it looked like more than a ton, and she kept adding more. The footballers were already impressed as they made out that the plates she was handling so easily weighed 500 pounds each, and she was up to six on a side. Setting the locks in place, Sylph looked around her and realized she had the attention of everybody in the gym, now.

“Okay. Everybody stand back. I’ve never actually tried this much before,” she said. A couple of the linemen nudged each other and looked curious or relieved as they wondered if Sylph’s prodigious musculature actually had a limit.

Sylph reached down and took a deep breath. She grabbed the bar in a palms-up grip and, panting now, straightened her legs. Her shorts, tight before, simply exploded as her glutes and quads went from huge, directly through mindblowing, and stopped squarely in the middle of oh-my-God, but Sylph didn’t stop. Slowly, with the bar bending nearly to the floor on each end, she stood up straight. Her top, which Wade thought had been loose before, suddenly became glued to her deltoids and lats, and her biceps instantly filled sleeves that could have made the waist band for an enormously fat woman’s dress. Eyes closed now, Sylph lifted the weight straight out in front of her, bracing with her left leg to keep from over balancing.

“Right or left?” she gasped, holding the weight straight out from her body in her quavering arms.

“What?” asked Damon.

“Right… or… left?” she gritted out between clenched teeth. Her trapezius muscles threatened to swallow her pretty head and her pecs seemed to add whole inches as she strained to keep the weight steady.

“Uh…” Damon hesitated, then shouted, “Left! Do the left!”

Ever so faintly, Sylph actually smiled. Shifting her grip, everybody heard it as her shirt began to split from the collar down to the small of her back. Next, she released her right arm and reached behind herself to help her maintain her balance. Finally, she slowly, agonizingly, curled the weight directly in front of her using only the strength of her left biceps. The sleeve on her left arm shredded and hung in loose tatters around an arm now grown to incomprehensible proportions. Bearing down, now sucking air in short, awkward gulps, Sylph began to strain once more. Her face became a mask of concentration, veins on her forehead standing out against her normally pretty face. The sound of ripping material sounded once again as her left shoulder expanded to absorb the insane pressures being applied against it. Turning her wrist and scowling, Sylph shook her head, flinging sweat in a wide arc. Finally, after what seemed like minutes with no movement, the weight began once more to shift. It moved up. Sylph roared, an amazingly loud sound coming from a woman who seemed to be at the very end of her endurance, and finally powered the bar straight up. Her entire chest blew up like an exploding bomb, blasting the remains of her shirt into little more then memories. Eyes open again, Sylph held the weight there while she caught her breath, then slowly, gently, brought the weight back down to the floor.

Slowly at first, then with growing intensity, the gym shook with the applause of the collected ballplayers and Sylph’s friends.

“Um, Kalida?” Sylph muttered.

“Yeah?” the smaller girl asked, still in shock.

“Do you think you could go back to my room for me?”

“Yeah, sure. Why?”

“I’m kind of nearly nekkid,” Sylph said, blushing, “and I didn’t bring any spare clothes.”

[Avery Leckrone]

I don’t know about anyone else, but, personally I don’t mind waiting a bit longer if it means getting a quality platform.

[Avery Leckrone]

After giving myself some time to think about this, I’d like to lend my support, as well. I can’t promise to be more of a regular contributor than I was to the previous iteration of Brawna- my work environment makes it unlikely that I’ll be able to do much of any sort of FMG/amazon-fetish-based story there, and I’m rarely motivated to write in that style when I’m at home- but I will at least repost all of my old stories and any new things that feel like they’d be an appropriate match.

If it’s not too ambitious and/or too forward, there are a couple things I’d like to see supported in the new version. The first thing is something that the old version had, which I felt made the site navigation much easier than any of the comparable sites that cater to the amazon/FMG fetish: categories. Having categories that allow browsers to search for material based on the size, strength, style, etc. of the amazon, as well as the content of the story made the general pleasurableness (is that a word? If it ain’t, it oughtta be) of exploring the site pretty unique. I can’t begin to count the number of times I found stories that I’d never heard of simply because I had a general theme in mind…

The other thing I would like to see would be in-story graphics and video support, similar to what we have here on Amaz0ns- I’ve begun rereleasing my Sylph stories, and one of the things I’ve really enjoyed doing is making pictures to go with them; having the option to include a picture with each story or, if the artist has the skills, even a video, could make for some really great submissions.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for working to get this going!

[Author]

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