InBrightestDay

Thanks for deep dive into mythology.

I think that in general your writing style InvidiaRed is not quite compatible with my reading preferences.

When the story does not explain quite what is happening and I need to take a break and research why I recognize a particular name to understand what is happening then my reading focus is lost. When it is nordic mythology that I sort of remember, but not quite... then effect is even worse.

Nothing wrong with your style in itself, but it is not my preference. So keep working...but I will probably be a rare reader.

Ahh! So it was Jay the woodworker! Well, that does clear that up. I shoulda read the replies here before writing my review
George Lucas: “Let us never speak of the holiday special again.”

I remember how you read just enough of Mike’s debut to decide you really hated that fucker, and then finding out he went on to have a scale model of Luzurial’s suffering in his bedroom, well… yeah. Dropping him was right!
Heh, I’m going to go add a link at the end there, something like “to see his luck run out check out The Woman in the Statue!”

Second is a review by Symbalistic!
Thank you so much!   Honestly it was quite an effort to finally get the thing done.  I knew what I wanted to happen, but as I got closer and closer to the end, I kept getting more and more nervous about disappointing everyone, as the ending is a place where a story can easily faceplant (and I won’t name any stories here, but I’ve seen it happen multiple times).  That made it harder for me to just sit down and write, a far cry from how easy and exciting it was when I started the story, but at long last I got it done!
As for being able to “see” things, I think that comes from the fact that I’m naturally a very visual person, so when I do descriptions sight is usually the first sense I think about.  I’m glad to hear it works for you.
Thank you so much for reading this far, and I hope you enjoy the ending!

Alright, so I was holding off on these until I got the final chapter (which then became final chapters) done, but there are two more reviews for WitS Chapter 10!  First up is @Thundercloud!
That really is why I kept pulling these things apart.  There were a lot of elements set up earlier in the story, and they all had to be paid off.
Also, in general, I just want to say dang it, Thundercloud!  You come up with all these cool suggestions, and by the time I read them I was too deep into writing the finale to use them!  I know this obviously isn’t your fault but curse you!  CURSE YOOOU!!!
*Ahem*
Of course, there is one thing I can address…
Oh, the matter prism is definitely coming into play, just not the way it looked like it was.  I’ll let you find out about that in Chapter 11…
I’m really glad that went over as well as it did.  I was, as you might have noticed in the Author’s Note, rather worried about that.  It helps that by way of Pandemic Head, JayDee actually provided even more reasons for him to get pushed through a window.  I think this might also offer some long-delayed justice for the ending of Mike Rapes a Dyke, as there you mentioned…
Well, Lily didn’t get revenge personally, but as JayDee said of Mike at the end of MRaD: “Eventually his luck ran out, but that’s another story.”
Turns out that’s the story of the day he antagonized the wrong rape survivor.

Ooh!  Ooh!  I can be useful!
You actually can do that.  If you go to the archives, and sign in, then go to “My Control Panel” and to “Originals Story Manager”.  On the story manager page, it should have “Stories Written” at the top, but then if you scroll down (you have a ton of stories, so it may take a while for you), you should then come to “Stories Co-Written” and finally “Story Contributions”.
That last one is where you can edit the chapters you’ve added to anthologies like this one.  I’ve used it to edit Moonlit Snow after spotting a typo.

Ooh!  Ooh!  I can be useful!
You actually can do that.  If you go to the archives, and sign in, then go to “My Control Panel” and to “Originals Story Manager”.  On the story manager page, it should have “Stories Written” at the top, but then if you scroll down (you have a ton of stories, so it may take a while for you), you should then come to “Stories Co-Written” and finally “Story Contributions”.
That last one is where you can edit the chapters you’ve added to anthologies like this one.  I’ve used it to edit Moonlit Snow after spotting a typo.

Ooh!  Ooh!  I can be useful!
You actually can do that.  If you go to the archives, and sign in, then go to “My Control Panel” and to “Originals Story Manager”.  On the story manager page, it should have “Stories Written” at the top, but then if you scroll down (you have a ton of stories, so it may take a while for you), you should then come to “Stories Co-Written” and finally “Story Contributions”.
That last one is where you can edit the chapters you’ve added to anthologies like this one.  I’ve used it to edit Moonlit Snow after spotting a typo.

From Thundercloud on November 01, 2020 @Thundercloud
Thanks for the review and detailed thoughts! I’d settle for one or two a year like this too In a sense I have been working on this for ages – the original flashfic version (Which started with Bradley and a drunken, lecherous, asshole, version of Tommy supposedly arriving at a reststop to buy drugs but really so Bradley could murder Tommy for his demon master) must be five or six years old, but I didn’t like how it came out. InBrightestDay suggested it would work better with Kate than Lupa and I’d say that’s absolutely right, so with the basic plot worked out over ages of thought it was a simpler thing to smash it out for Halloween. Although, due to leaving the final draft so late some errors slipped through. Like that evenhanded one. And
Hahahaha, aw fuck. Yeah, the line “ He looked over Tommy instead;” should abolutely be “He looked over Reuban instead;“ I mean, he’s not gonna check out his own ass. Definitely a downside of the system here we cannot edit added chapters on the multi-story things. Ain’t fair to keep bugging George to do it. I’ve edited the original rtf anyway Glad you liked Reuban. He’s a good looking guy!
Thank you!
My one regret is leaving it so late I didn’t have a week or so to wait and re-read before posting.
Ronnie’s gone all bambi’s-first-steps legs on Reuban there, so it made sense to have him holding her up. Glad it all worked for ya!
Thanks again!
“There’s something strange about this girl…” *Sees the unshaven arms and legs* “Dear god! A Hippie!”
Can never have enough gory werewolf stories! They might not contact her about the case – no doubt they’ll find a reason to contact her about other things if they’re less professional :p
Thank you! It is very kind of you

Part Eleven is up!
One more week and this thing will be done.

From Thundercloud on November 01, 2020
 
Tricked by InvidiaRed
This is the kind of story when you start reading and more once have to pause when you realize that there is yet another cross reference to another story you have assumed is unrelated...and then you start to smile and move on. Thank you, You are far too kind.

Maybe it would have worked better if I had the other stories in more recent memory, but even though I found most events understandable there was a couple references that left me scratching my head in confusion. When there was talk about Hel in the context of a wife and the references to Hel's mother I did not get it at all. Melinoe is a a two fold goddess much like Hel is. She is a goddess of nightmares, madness, The restless dead of whom did not receive proper rites. It was important to hightlight the bickering of poker buddies even if Mic was being cruel.
Ooof. I’ll try to clear it up as I consider Holiday canon to be Powdered Sugar first, Then Temporary and finally Tricked.

As for the parts that I understood I liked the interplay at the ranch. One of the thoughts I had while reading Death Always wins was that some of the tension was lost when not much was at stake for the participants. This story surely delivered something quite different. The missing associate for the devil, the bitchering between the gods and the combat meant this was a good read.

The ending with Uber driver was very funny...and then afterward there is an extra scene with somebody named Duncan that the others were talking about earlier (and I think you had the character in a story last christmas).

Duncan seem to have been in battle...or something that he does not remember...is the battle at ranch house???...and he shall do a quest that seem totally unrelated to everything so far. Incarnation shenanigans,  Simply put for the day of Halloween Angrboda a past incarnation had free reign after Duncan was infested by a underworld parasite.

I suppose there is series of stories you are supposed to read to understand what is happening, but for me it just left me wondering and confused. Had it ended with the Uber drive and no resolution on what happened at the ranch house it would have made sense from narrative point of view but now we got something that feel like the beginning of new (and promising) story.

From InBrightestDay on October 27, 2020
 
Tricked
What have you done, Invidia!?  You've crossed over that which was never meant to cross over!  You've opened the seals and we're all doomed!  DOOMED I TELL YOU!!!
*Ahem.* Muhahaha!How could I resist? The doorway was clearly unattended and now through the archway they come! Dun Dun DUH!!!!
Ok, so I started this review wondering whether or not you'd cleared this with tcr, seeing as this is clearly a direct sequel to Death Always Wins, albeit with some rather noticeable changes, one of which is that you have it in your Powdered Sugar setting (which admittedly was inspired by tcr's story, but wasn't a direct continuation).  Then the story went in a direction that raised several questions, leading me to the assumption that this is the setup for a Duncan adventure (Duncan himself appears to have blacked out after the end of Temporary and then woken up here), and then…  (OOF!, Its not a direct continuation and events do significantly differ. I did message them so its all good. Gods are public domain.
Duncan's on a road trip to find Yua.
This is deeply flattering, and it would be very cool to see Duncan and Yua interact, but also might cause some potential problems depending on how it relates to the other stories.  I am very interested in seeing where it goes, mind you. (Holiday canon can matter just as much or as little as a holiday episode haha its own separate little timeline).
Uh...sorry this wasn't more of an actual review of the story itself!  I kind of got distracted when Yua was namedropped. (I did also reference The Woman In The Statue. It impressed me highly)
  The story itself feels more like the first act of something larger, which works in the sense that it makes people interested, but at the same time has the inevitable side effect of storylines here ending on cliffhangers (like whatever's going on with Lucifer at the end there. (Big J was his Uber driver, Luci played the fool this Halloween tricked so many times and he didn’t even realize it. Hel usurped him as the hero of the story)
One of Duncan’s previous incarnations was solidly revealed. Angrboða herself. The Norse Mother of Monsters and Wolf Mother) More importantly their personalities are vastly different. They do however share a hostility to Aesir in general and an irrational hatred of angels) Its also the reason why Lucifer couldn’t reap her. Yes, She is dead but essentially she’s but a single thread in a massive spider’s web. Or a single link in a chain.
It shouldn’t have been possible since she’s definitively dead and Duncan is multiple incarnations removed from her the rules however are significantly different on Halloween.
Someone actually did guess correctly that his other incarnation was none other than Dagda’s Doom- Cethlann

I’ve finished my story and opened up the Halloween Party to all! (I’ve added the link to the top post.) Folks can add their stories when ready, and please post your title and tags here so I can add them to the Introduction page.
Oh, and here are mine:
Unleash, by George Glass
Warnings: Inc, M/F, MiCD, Violence
Summary: Seeking the courage to escape their abusive father, three teens try a new street drug that can empower you to act on your deepest desires. But what if your deepest desire isn’t what you think it is?

I asked if I could get the Nintendo Seal of Approval on mine. Went all the way to Kyoto. Thirty seconds later they sent Toad. Got the shit kicked out of me by a three foot tall ambulatory mushroom. Barely made it out alive.
So, yeah, only 70% done here and no guarantees. I need to re-write the ending and try to make the one sex scene at least slightly appealing. No joke, it may be unintentionally the least erotic thing I’ve ever written.  And I did Spyro porn.

I am serious. And you can call me Shirley if you want.
Luzurial: “75 years ago I rolled a lot of nat 1s.”
She’d be an amoral attorney down in California. Probably mostly defending Janet.
“This allegation that my client unleashed a tentacle monster on the school swim meet after some of the athletes bullied her son is preposterous. They were probably just using drugs!”
Let him crossdress for a christmas story. Cole in stockings isn’t always a bad thing. Just me then…
Chekov’s needle!
If Great vengeance and furious anger isn’t in the job description then it ought to be.
CS Lewis: “Except Susan, though. ‘cos fuck her.”
No, I see it, you have that pretty much all the way through.
Not long now… I’m sure it’ll be great! I wish I had your ability to finish stories people want to read!

JAAAYDEEEEE!!!
*sigh* You know I’m going to have to try and work that into the PRD story, right?  Abdul will probably start the joke about stockings full of-
Cole: “Don’t do it, man!  Just don’t do it.”
And for the second review, from @InvidiaRed
Thank you!
So this is what I was talking about in my reply to JayDee’s review.  Something I’ve noticed about Eparlegna’s dialogue is that it’s a mix of more archaic, almost formal speech, like what one would expect out of an angel or demon, and modern vernacular.  The pattern was established by one of his first lines in Whore of Heaven, actually, when Luzurial orders him to leave Earth.
It established that, for all that he views humanity as inferior and will torture and kill them just to amuse himself, Eparlegna nonetheless likes elements of our culture and uses them to spice up his vocabulary.  It made perfect sense to me that he’d quote a good Darth Vader line.
Of course, as you said, the fact that he’s doing that doesn’t actually reflect terribly well on him.
You know, for all that it directly provokes him into killing her, I can’t help but feel that a not-insignificant part of why he kills her is that Cassie just struck a nerve, similar to Kevin’s Sick BurnTM in the lecture hall.  And yeah, finally having someone outright say “You’re going to lose” is always kind of awesome.
 
Thank you so much!  As I mentioned in the author’s note, I was concerned that, while I found “archangel pushes serial rapist out of a building” to be amusing, it might feel a bit...off.  I tried to compensate for that by trying to show Luzurial’s thought process leading up to it, and how disgusted and utterly incensed she is by this guy, and just how vile all of his rapes and abuse are, even when measured against the horror outside.  JayDee actually really helped here by writing Pandemic Head.  Having Michael still doing horrific things, like keeping his cousin’s severed head alive and prisoner indicates that he’s still a threat, and that it’s likely that his “at least one rape a year” pattern has likely slowed with old age, but probably hasn’t stopped.
 
Much like JayDee’s reaction, it seems.  Evidently what she does here is coming across as some level of righteous fury, an evil man coming up against something far more dangerous than he could imagine.
Thank you so much for the review, and I’ll see you again soon!

JAAAYDEEEEE!!!
*sigh* You know I’m going to have to try and work that into the PRD story, right?  Abdul will probably start the joke about stockings full of-
Cole: “Don’t do it, man!  Just don’t do it.”
And for the second review, from @InvidiaRed
Thank you!
So this is what I was talking about in my reply to JayDee’s review.  Something I’ve noticed about Eparlegna’s dialogue is that it’s a mix of more archaic, almost formal speech, like what one would expect out of an angel or demon, and modern vernacular.  The pattern was established by one of his first lines in Whore of Heaven, actually, when Luzurial orders him to leave Earth.
It established that, for all that he views humanity as inferior and will torture and kill them just to amuse himself, Eparlegna nonetheless likes elements of our culture and uses them to spice up his vocabulary.  It made perfect sense to me that he’d quote a good Darth Vader line.
Of course, as you said, the fact that he’s doing that doesn’t actually reflect terribly well on him.
You know, for all that it directly provokes him into killing her, I can’t help but feel that a not-insignificant part of why he kills her is that Cassie just struck a nerve, similar to Kevin’s Sick BurnTM in the lecture hall.  And yeah, finally having someone outright say “You’re going to lose” is always kind of awesome.
 
Thank you so much!  As I mentioned in the author’s note, I was concerned that, while I found “archangel pushes serial rapist out of a building” to be amusing, it might feel a bit...off.  I tried to compensate for that by trying to show Luzurial’s thought process leading up to it, and how disgusted and utterly incensed she is by this guy, and just how vile all of his rapes and abuse are, even when measured against the horror outside.  JayDee actually really helped here by writing Pandemic Head.  Having Michael still doing horrific things, like keeping his cousin’s severed head alive and prisoner indicates that he’s still a threat, and that it’s likely that his “at least one rape a year” pattern has likely slowed with old age, but probably hasn’t stopped.
 
Much like JayDee’s reaction, it seems.  Evidently what she does here is coming across as some level of righteous fury, an evil man coming up against something far more dangerous than he could imagine.
Thank you so much for the review, and I’ll see you again soon!

Surely you can’t be serious.
Alright, well, two reviews for The Woman in the Statue Chapter 10!  First one comes from the always awesome @JayDee!
Thank you!  What you mentioned there is, in fact, one reason this finale got so much longer.  Originally, we’d get to the bottom of the tower where the Gungnir shootout took place, and then we would cut to Luzurial arriving at the top floor.  And then I was like “in how many D&D games do you just skip all the way to the top of the bad guy’s tower?  No no, that is not how this is done!  As such, the heroes working their way up the tower became a story element all its own.
Has Karen Van Dijk appeared in any of the stories?  I can’t remember.
I don’t know if I’d planned how Cassie was going to die all the way back when she first appeared in Chapter 3, but by the time we hit Chapter 4, I knew it was going to be that her doubts just pushed Eparlegna a little too far.  In anticipation of that, I kept bringing up that she’s the one with the most misgivings.  Not that she has moral objections to what they’re doing, just that she doesn’t trust that Eparlegna is as in control as he thinks he is.  In that sense, she’s both right and wrong.  He is underestimating the heroes, but he also does have a plan.
I’ll get into this in InvidiaRed’s review response, but the Darth Vader line is definitely a result of trying to keep him in line with your portrayal.
When I was coming up with traps, I had the idea for the fractal impalement trap, which was the sort of visceral horror, but I wanted something else too, something a little more magical and out there, and the matter prism seemed like a good idea.
Leary catching the use of the wrong term for Chloe was part of my drive to give every character something cool to do.  Unfortunately I ended up cutting Cole’s moment, as it was tied to a plot point that I realized was redundant, but hopefully I can give him one in a future story.
I had way more fun with that little scene than I thought I was going to.  I had planned for it to be a simple shootout, but then I realized they would need cover as they entered the room, and realized that even in her weakened strength, Luzurial can just rip the door out of the wall.  Abdul’s “There’s something you don’t see every day.” definitely made me chuckle a little.
I’m glad you liked the line I gave Eparlegna.  It can be a challenge to write his dialogue, so it’s always a relief when I hear that I got it right.  Kevin’s line is just me realizing that he has to say something after watching a woman burn alive from the inside out, and in this case he may be so stunned that he doesn’t consider whether or not it would be wise to say anything, and just vocalizes the first thing to come to his mind, which is something vaguely snarky.
Oh, that needle’s coming back next chapter, believe you me.
I appreciate the support for Luzurial’s actions there.  As I said, I threw the idea out there because I found it funny, I remember you liked it, and then I got worried about whether or not it was a good idea in the first place.  Thank you again!
Thank you for that as well!  The theology of WitS has always been sort of based on The Last Battle.  Essentially, you don’t have to be religious to do good things, and it’s how you live your life and how you affect other people that matters.
I don’t know that MRaD has the worst title of any of your...stories...well, ok, I can’t come up with a challenger at the moment, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one!  The stuff Cadence did is probably why Luzurial left her there under the bed.  She’ll be fine, as fine as a head in a box can be, anyway, and after all the stuff she’s done or tried to do, making her wait longer is perhaps a light sentence.
 
Heh.  That is indeed true concerning her superiors.  The “slight delay” idea is one that also made me grin, just thinking that she would know exactly how long it would take, and encouraging him, like “You’ve got less than ten seconds to live.  Maaaybe think about some of the stuff you’ve done.  Regretting any of that yet?”
Thank you for the review, and I’ll see you again...ok, fair warning, the final chapter may come out Tuesday instead of Monday.  At any rate, see you later!

Good Luck. We’re all counting on you.

I’m aware that I have received two absolutely wonderful reviews for the latest chapter of WitS, and have yet to respond to them.  I am currently working on the final chapter, which is why I haven’t responded.  I promise that within the next day or two I will respond to both JayDee and InvidiaRed.  Many thanks to both of you!

Part Ten is up!

Part Ten is up!

I...might have one ready by the end of the month, but given WitS, I seriously doubt it.  I will, however, review all of your submissions!

I...might have one ready by the end of the month, but given WitS, I seriously doubt it.  I will, however, review all of your submissions!

I...might have one ready by the end of the month, but given WitS, I seriously doubt it.  I will, however, review all of your submissions!