Image 66458/2 from boombob.ru

Today Agapeta exists since two years and a half. The readership is steadily growing: nearly ten thousand views in 2015, a little more than twenty thousand in 2016, then more than fourteen thousand in the first six months of 2017 (fifteen thousand on July the 5th). The number of subscribers increases with regularity. Several blogs have included Agapeta in their blogroll, and many communications on various boards link to its posts.

The four best countries are always, in decreasing order: the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Germany. The page “Links” has always been the most visited. After it, the most viewed posts have been (in order) my classical “Components of Love,” followed by “The tyrannical censorship of ISPs,” then “Martial: Epigrams on Erotion.” For the six first months of 2017, it has been “Links,” then “The tyrannical censorship of ISPs,” “Nicolas Boileau : Amitié Fidèle” and “Eva, fille adorable et robot défectueux.”

The number of legitimate comments decreased in 2017. However, “troll” comments have risen fast. The first came on February 13, 2016, and it is now a weekly occurrence, sometimes several trolls a week. Anyway, the great majority of comments have always been spam.

The category group Agapetae, which contained the single category Fleurs de Passion, got a second one, Désirs Ailés; both are devoted to my poems, all in French (although being familiar with English since many years, it is not my mother tongue, so I don’t feel able to write poetry in that language). While Fleurs de Passion deals with passionate love, Désirs Ailés is devoted to more sophisticated experiments with language, for instance shocks between words with opposite meanings.

On January 19, 2017, I received my first suggestion for contents to include: Ruff Gleeson presented me the poem “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” by John Crowe Ransom, and indeed I published a post about it on January 28. I encourage readers to step forward and make proposals of posts.

Complete decadence

I found on WordPress the blog Phoos, with the claim “completely decadent” in its banner, its complete title being “Phoos: a contemporary take on sexuality in art, film, and photography.” Indeed it deals mostly with eroticism in the arts. I appreciated in particular the post “Vania Zouravliov’s Beautiful Decadence” devoted to the erotic drawings by that Russian artist.

Stu Mead – All of Me / Look Mom (2008) – from stumead.com

Too daring?

Some friends told me of the risk they saw that Agapeta could one day be suspended by WordPress, officially for ToS violation, in fact for being too daring or too controversial in its subjects and its images. I will mention here a few posts on WordPress blogs, which are much more daring. I am not talking of the numerous blogs presenting in an abstract form very controversial ideas, but rather more explicit ones.

The artist Stu Mead, born in 1955, painted erotic scenes, many of them involving pubescent girls. Some of these works were reproduced in three posts on American Gallery 21st Century; the earliest of the three had appeared in the predecessor blog American Gallery, getting very hostile comments. More recently, La Conchiglia di Venere also posted a selection of these paintings, some of them very daring, and got a damning short comment for it.

Luna Zax’s Story Blog, devoted to erotic stories, has been dormant since May 2011. In 2007 and 2008 it ran a story in 7 parts, “Luna and her Niece,” describing explicitly a sexual encounter between a woman and her 7-year-old niece: see episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. Despite a standard disclaimer repeated at the begin of each episode, the author seems to enjoy what she wrote.

Cristian Mihai’s obsession

I found a very interesting post by Cristian Mihai, titled “Imagination and obsession” and dated January 29, 2017. He explains how to stretch imagination to its most extreme ends in order to reach what we desire most. Start imagining what you want, its smell, sound and touch, and how it could change your life. Then get obsesssed with it. This will put you into motion, fighting obstacles, and make you attentive to any opportunity, leading you on the way to success. However, you should understand that achieving your goal will not be as beautiful as you hoped it. Thus, you should enjoy the long journey towards your goal, the process of progressively reaching it, not the goal itself.