The Writing of RolloJTomasi

This short essay was inspired by the thread What I wrote and why: Fairytale of New York, which was posted in The Author's Hangout by StillStunned.

Let's cut to the chase, RolloJTomasi is my alt. Alts are a sometimes fraught subject round here. People believe that they are involved in all sorts of nefarious activities, like carpet bombing rival authors, and surreptitiously boosting the ratings of your own stories. I'm sure that both happen. In fact I've suffered from the former issue myself (more on this later). However, alts are widespread, not specifically objected to by the site, and often entirely innocent. Probably the most frequent reason for an author creating an alt is to publish in multiple categories where there might otherwise be kink contention. For example, writing both Gay Male and Loving Wives stories could lead to reader confusion and even antipathy.

In the case of RolloJTomasi (which sounds awfully like a Sherlock Holmes fan-fic), my motivations were different. I went as far as telling Laurel what I was doing and why. I don't believe that I am breaching any confidences by stating that she said my actions were within site rules and indeed quite common. Let me start by explaining to you what I explained to her.

There were two main issues that I was looking to address. The first was something that any author with even the lowest of profiles has to adjust to, a "fan club," thanks to Duleigh for the nomenclature. Such clubs may be very small, they might even consist of just one person (or one person and their multiple alts, as referred to above), or they may be legion. It has been reported that a subset of the "fans" of Author A have sometimes targeted the portfolio of Author B, either in "support" of Author A, or because Author B has done something to offend them. Either way, an author's "fan club" is dedicated to the simple task of downvoting every single story that they post, regardless of quality.

I think for me, it was competition entries that were the final straw. These seem to inject "fan clubs" (and maybe also overly competitive authors) with steroids. Any work by their target author that has the temerity to rack up a decent rating must be aggressively pulled back into the pack. Sometimes this is not personal, they 1 bomb all authors, rather than just a lucky few.

Sweeps are the site's response to antisocial voting. For me, they seem to remove a fair number of malicious votes, but not all. However, speaking personally, sweeps became kinda depressing. Yes, my ratings would increase dramatically, maybe from 4.3x or 4.4x to 4.6x or 4.7x, but that just told me how many malicious votes I had received.

I'm not going to speculate too much on why I have acquired a "fan club." It happens to many authors, not just me. But I have one, as proved by sweep-related ratings leaps, as well as some other activities that I will not give the oxygen of publicity here. Given this reality, I began to wonder what sort of scores my work might attract if not saddled with the handicap of being written by, well, me.

I have also heard the hypothesis that publishing as a woman inflates an author's ratings. I always thought this was unlikely to be true, but it's maybe worth investigating.

The second major motivation was a hypothesis propounded to me by a Literotica member. I can't claim it was the most scientific of hypotheses, but at least it was easy to state, with its meaning accessible to a general audience. It reads like this:

"Any -- and I should stress this -- absolutely any success, or absolutely any positive feedback, I had ever achieved as a writer was solely -- again I should stress this -- absolutely solely to do with the 'fact' that readers fantasized about fucking me."

Now my initial reaction to this hypothesis was that it wasn't well-founded. But I don't believe in making claims that are not backed up by data. The ex-scientist in me began to think about how to gather such data, or at least indicative samples.

The obvious approach was one that could help me with both of my motivations. Create an alt that has none of the assumptions and baggage associated with EmilyMiller, and one which is sexless (both in the sense of being gender-neutral, and also not engaging in any of the sex-related discussions that I get involved in from time to time on the forums). This would allow me to explore and analyze both areas.

It was simple really, and hence I created RolloJTomasi (or RJT). No stated gender, no potentially alluring profile page, no pornstar as an avatar [not that I have had such in quite some time either], no interactions with the forums at all. I guess it's testimony to my success in this objective that RJT hasn't received a single PM in their time here. Not one. My real account had been inundated with inquiries after a similar amount of time. RJT can't have been objectified, as there is nothing about them to objectify.

Why the name? Well RolloTomasi was taken, so I inserted a middle initial randomly. As for Rollo Tomasi -- he's a character (never seen, but omnipresent) in the movie L.A. Confidential. A cypher created by one of the two MMCs to rationalize the murder of his cop father. Rollo Tomasi is an avatar for anonymous people who get away with things. It seemed appropriate.

I initially planned to keep publishing as RJT, but I find a double life exhausting, also -- without revealing too much about what I found -- the process has brought me some perspective, and even some inner peace. So here I am unmasking the miscreant.

I haven't decided whether to leave my RJT stories where they are, or to republish them myself. Watch this space.

Now, before launching into results, let's set a...

RJT had posted eleven stories at the time of this article (there most likely won't be any more). So I wanted to take my most recent eleven EmilyMiller stories and use these as a baseline. However, in order to compare like with like, I excluded all my 750 word stories, two other WIWAWs, and Traffic 2, which was co-authored. This left me with the following:

Data harvested around 8am EST on 04/02/2024

🔥 indicates a rating of 4.5 or higher

1. Bouncing Back Ch. 02 🔥

❤️ 4 📊 2.9k ⭐️ 4.57 / 58 💬 20

Cathy grapples with her feelings for Sarah and her husband.

03/08/2024 in Lesbian Sex Stories

2. A Family Ritual

❤️ 12 📊 27.2k ⭐️ 4.10 / 219 💬 31

Turning 18 is a rite of passage, especially for Tiffany.

02/24/2024 in Incest/Taboo Stories

3. The Undoing of Emma 🔥

❤️ 0 📊 2.4k ⭐️ 4.74 / 23 💬 36

Emmoreth becomes a pawn in Hell's political battles.

01/30/2024 in Sci-Fi & Fantasy Stories

4. A Good Girl Gone Bad Ch. 03: Gaped 🔥

❤️ 10 📊 6.5k ⭐️ 4.71 / 38 💬 17

Her friends help Ella achieve two anal ambitions.

01/25/2024 in Fetish Stories

5. Bouncing Back Ch. 01 🔥

❤️ 11 📊 7.1k ⭐️ 4.72 / 135 💬 35

Cathy meets a young woman who reawakens lost feelings.

01/21/2024 in Lesbian Sex Stories

6. Cressie Craves Cream-Pies

❤️ 8 📊 11.2k ⭐️ 4.37 / 67 💬 24

3,000 words of pure and unadulterated filth with a bad girl.

01/20/2024 in Group Sex Stories

7. Lily's First Valentine's 🔥

❤️ 4 📊 13.5k ⭐️ 4.64 / 83 💬 17

An ex-angel takes some novel approaches to gift shopping.

01/12/2024 in Sci-Fi & Fantasy Stories

Incidentally LFV is an example of a comp story that got battered down to 4.4x pre-sweep

8. A Holiday Wish 🔥

❤️ 10 📊 5.2k ⭐️ 4.63 / 217 💬 47

A Sexy Seasonal Fairytale.

12/24/2023 in Romance Stories

9. A Good Girl Gone Bad Ch. 02: Bound 🔥

❤️ 9 📊 6.1k ⭐️ 4.67 / 39 💬 19

Ella's plan to fulfill a fantasy almost goes awry.

11/23/2023 in Fetish Stories

10. Cocksuckers

❤️ 4 📊 12.9k ⭐️ 4.39 / 79 💬 18

Emma & Lily record their seasons greetings.

11/19/2023 in Humor & Satire Stories

11. At A Good Girl Gone Bad Ch. 01: Ella 🔥

❤️ 20 📊 8.9k ⭐️ 4.66 / 96 💬 38

Ella finds what she has been looking for in a surprising way.

11/12/2023 in Fetish Stories

These have a simple average rating of 4.57 and a weighted average rating of 4.50.

You could argue that my poorly-received attempt at an I/T story, A Family Ritual, dominates the numbers too much. If I replace it with the next story off the rank -- the final chapter of Teaching Eden, which has stats as follows:

12. Teaching Eden Ch. 05: The Prodigal 🔥

❤️ 4 📊 2.4k ⭐️ 4.64 / 44 💬 13

Do Eden and Michele have a future?

10/29/2023 in Exhibitionist & Voyeur Stories

-- then both averages increase and converge to 4.61. I'm happy to use the higher figure as a baseline, though I think it is perhaps a little flattering. As I've excluded lower rated stories and replaced them with higher rated ones, it feels a bit like cherry-picking.

Data harvested around 11am EST on 04/08/2024

🔥 indicates a rating of 4.5 or higher

1. A New York Fuck 🔥

❤️ 20 📊 12.6k ⭐️ 4.69 / 151 💬 11

A college senior flies to meet an older man in the city.

03/01/2024 in Mature Stories

2. While There Is Hope - Ch. 01 🔥

❤️ 7 📊 2.8k ⭐️ 4.64 / 158 💬 4

A woman walks out in front of a car and a mystery unfolds.

03/10/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

3. While There Is Hope Ch. 02 🔥

❤️ 3 📊 1.8k ⭐️ 4.75 / 116 💬 2

Hope wakes in a strange room and has to deal with her trauma.

03/13/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

4. While There Is Hope Ch. 03 🔥

❤️ 4 📊 1.9k ⭐️ 4.68 / 97 💬 2

Hope relives a dream that became a nightmare two years ago.

03/16/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

5. While There Is Hope Ch. 04 🔥

❤️ 1 📊 1.4k ⭐️ 4.65 / 84 💬 2

Hope and Bill agree an arrangement. Her father plots.

03/21/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

6. While There Is Hope Ch. 05 🔥

❤️ 0 📊 1.3k ⭐️ 4.70 / 87 💬 2

Hope and Bill make a discovery, and tail a car.

03/23/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

7. While There Is Hope Ch. 06 🔥

❤️ 0 📊 1.1k ⭐️ 4.68 / 69 💬 1

Hope & Bill make good use of a water tower, then head for LA.

03/29/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

8. While There Is Hope Ch. 07 🔥

❤️ 3 📊 993 ⭐️ 4.71 / 55 💬 2

Her father's plan goes terribly wrong for Hope.

04/04/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

9. While There Is Hope Ch. 08 🔥

❤️ 1 📊 855 ⭐️ 4.57 / 51 💬 0

Ashley falls in love, with consequences for all around her.

04/05/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

10. While There Is Hope Ch. 09 🔥

❤️ 0 📊 1.0k ⭐️ 4.62 / 55 💬 0

The aftermath of the ambush dominates everyone's lives.

04/06/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

11. While There Is Hope Ch. 10 🔥

❤️ 0 📊 771 ⭐️ 4.72 / 64 💬 1

Epilogue.

04/07/2024 in Novels and Novellas Stories

These have a simple average of 4.67 and a weighted average of 4.68. These are 0.06 and 0.07 greater than the benchmark.

I present a series of caveats around these figures at the end, but one thing is worth noting here. It's entirely feasible that -- given that EmilyMiller and RJT are publishing in different categories -- the difference between their ratings is due to differences in how categories are rated. In order to examine this area, I asked 8letters if I could borrow some of his data.

I won't show all my [rather complicated] workings here, but, using his average ratings by category, the weighted expected rating for my eleven EmilyMiller stories is 4.51 and that for my RJT ones is 4.56. This suggests that RJT was indeed writing in a kinder basket of categories (ones where the average rating is higher than for EmilyMiller), but it only explains 0.05 of the differences. Reducing the gap from between 0.06 and 0.07 to between 0.01 and 0.02. RJT's stories are still rated slightly higher.

In the above, please also recall that I have probably somewhat inflated the ratings of my EmilyMiller stories by removing a few (for a variety of reasons) that would have pulled the average down from 4.61.

Let me stress that I am not trying to be statistically robust, there are too many variables for that (see both above and the Caveats section). Instead, what I'm considering is how well my RJT data supports the observations and hypotheses above.

First "fan clubs." RJT is too new an author and has never posted on the forums and so they haven't as yet acquired a "fan club." It's too simplistic to state that my "fan club" has suppressed my ratings by around 0.01 -- 0.02 points, for example turning a naturally 4.51 rated story into a 4.49 one (or -- more positively -- that my very highest rated story should be at the 4.81 level rather than its current one). But the data certainly suggests that some rating suppression takes place (as it does with all authors with any kind of profile).

Next the hypothesis that women writers get an easier ride and higher ratings than men. Well, again I can't be definitive, but the [genderless] RJT data suggests the opposite. Contrary to anecdote, there is indeed possibly (I stress possibly) a slight "tax" associated with being a female author (it's just as likely that the tentatively observed "tax" relates specifically to being me). At the very least, the data suggests that there is no clear advantage to being a woman writer. So much for forum lore.

Finally, the hypothesis that every shred of success that I have had with my stories is totally explained by men desiring me. Well RJT is genderless. RJT has no salacious profile. RJT doesn't discuss their IRL sex life on AH (current and historical). RJT has never posted on any forum, let alone been flirty on them. RJT has neither sent, nor received a single PM. And yet...

RJT's stories all have the coveted red H. The simple and weighted average of RJT's ratings are both better than those posted under my own name, even adjusting for category. There are still asterisks against all these observations, they are not totally robust (again see the Caveats section), but it's very hard to say that the RJT data supports this second hypothesis. It seems my meager success is not proven to be due to objectification. There must instead have been some non-data-related reason for this hypothesis having been propounded.

I'm far from surprised by these results, tentative and indicative-only as they may be. The hypotheses propounded never seemed to be based in fact, instead relating more to how the propounders would like things to be; convenient untruths maybe.

I'm more than aware that, by drawing attention to myself (something I'm often accused of devoting my life to -- though generally as a form of projection on the part of the accusers), I'm likely to be inviting rating suppressing votes on my main account and on RJT's. It would actually be kind of funny if RJT's ratings plummeted, it would do nothing but confirm my other observations.

The thing is, I care much less than I once did. Once upon a time, I took bad ratings very personally. I don't really anymore. Some of this is getting used to Literotica and its idiosyncrasies and irritations. Some of it is feeling more comfortable in my own skin as a writer. Some of it is being happier and more stable in my personal life.

But some of it also relates to the outcomes of this little experiment. It's confirmed a few things. First that ratings are basically totally decoupled from the worth of stories and entirely open to manipulation and abuse. This is not big news obviously. Second that my writing has intrinsic merit and that is not going to change, even if my fifty plus red Hs all get bombed into oblivion.

Finally, it's nice to at least get some indication that the quality of my storytelling stands up without the prop of my forum personality. And that any limited success I have had is despite my public profile, not because of it.

All of the above gives me a rather Zen outlook. I doubt that this sense of equanimity will be punctured by even a legion of 1 bombs. That's a nice sort of feeling to have.

Caveats

If we consider the hypotheses presented in Motivations #1 and #2 above, I'm not seeking to either definitely disprove these, or to prove the opposite. More data would be required to do either, and ideally RJT would also publish stories in a wider range of categories. What I am seeking to do instead is to see if my limited data is consistent with the two hypotheses or not.

Back to categories, most of RJT's stories are in Novels & Novellas, a category I have not written in before, so that is a potential red flag.

Ten of the eleven RJT stories are chapters. However, six of the eleven EmilyMiller stories are also chapters, and three more are stand-alone stories, which are part of larger series (specifically my Angels & Demons stories), so I think this aspect is reasonably comparable.

Only one of the RJT stories was written contemporaneously to the EmilyMiller ones. However, both sets of stories are sufficiently close together that me improving as a writer seems unlikely to be a major factor.

My eleven benchmark stories have an aggregate of about 80k views. The same figure for the RJT ones is the rather lower 27k views (mostly related to Novels & Novellas being a low traffic category), so this is a quite large difference between the datasets. Another red flag.

However, my eleven benchmark stories attracted 882 votes, whereas the RJT ones had 987 votes. So the numbers of votes cast are more comparable than the views. Again, this may be a facet of Novels & Novellas. I'm not sufficiently au fait with the category to say more.

It is worth noting that my main account has over 700 followers, who get notified when I publish a new story. RJT has just over 40. This is a much lower figure and it is fair to say that -- as most followers would have a positive view of an author's work -- EmilyMiller has a significant advantage over RJT in this area.

RJT doesn't have a Xitter account -- let alone one frequently featured by Literotica on that platform, so this is another disadvantage.

I told two Lit friends about RJT, and another worked it out. But, given the volume of votes against each RJT story (see above), I don't think that this was a material factor.

I write stories in Word365 on my iPhone. I did all the calculations for this essay in Excel365 on my iPhone as well. Given how fiddly Excel365 is, the chances that I got something wrong at some point are quite high. I doubt however I made so big an error as to wholly undermine the results.

Finally, the assumption that rating is a valid metric, correlated to literary worth, is at best flawed. However, it's really all we have to go on, so I'm using it here.