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You! 3: Wolf Moon – is my favorite ever chapter title referencing a t-shirt design

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InBrightestDay

Chapter 3, and right off the bat:

You’ve made it to the third chapter of possibly the worst story ever posted to the internet. Even worse than that one about Spyro and the raven.

I love the way you keep taking advantage of all the meta jokes the 2nd person perspective allows.

Thank you for reviewing chapter 3 as well! I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Of course, Sarsa’s story is fictional, out here in the real world the Spyro story is worse.

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It's also nice to see more of Lupa's vampiric abilities.  Vampires are probably one of the most variable of creatures in terms of how they're portrayed in fiction, and it's interesting to see that you kept the classic mist ability.  Given that Lupa assumes vampires are just a subspecies of humans (Homo sapiens noctis, perhaps?), I'd love to hear her explanation for how her body changes from a multicellular structure to a gas, or at least a cloud of cells, while maintaining consciousness.

I don’t think Lupa was ever an A student at science. If she’d read some psudoscience explanation for vampires she’d probably go for that “Yeah, us vampires have a form of quantum entanglething, we can spread out and come back. Also magnetism from the blood iron, maybe. What are you asking me for anyway, poindexter? Come here, let me give you a kiss on the neck…”

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Halloween? You’d thought the email came in June, the day after Sarsa left. Lupa continues,

“There’s been a lot of other crap going down. People are dying or corrupting all over and it’s down to her. She’s using the internet.”

Sarsa is a master of the sympathy pendulum, isn't she?  First I felt bad for her, then I didn't, then I did, now I don't...

Another sad thing is, when I wrote part one as a oneshot I’m pretty sure I intended her to be genuinely a victim who just wanted to write, and that it was all as it appeared. But the story didn’t want to go that way, and Fucking Halloween Party cemented her as the nasty kind of demon. Frankly, I think the clue was in the second person Mary Sues.

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Also...

Her usual solution to a problem is to fuck it so points for effort I guess.”

I don't really have anything to say about that; it's just funny.

Thank you! It’s cool when jokes land :DLupa’s exaggerating for comic effect, but honestly there’s nothing to say that Shannon didn’t look for a way to fuck her way past the wards first. 

“What if I build power by having a really big gangbang and overload the wards with it? Lupa could be fluffer!”

“I put them in my mouth, I’m draining them, mi amiga… I meant the blood! The blood!”

...I dunno. Something like that. Anyway, thanks again for reviewing part 3! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the story.

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You! 4

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InBrightestDay

Right off the bat, while Wolf Moon is a cool chapter title, I'm going to go ahead and say that You! 4: Got is pretty brilliant in its own way.

This one's actually rather different from the other chapters.  There are still jokes, but it has a more serious feel, more of a mystery to it.  Again, I like how you're taking advantage of the perspective, but here in a different way, playing up the reader's lack of information as the character's own.  That's pretty cool.

Thank you! I really am grateful for your thoughts on all the parts. It’s the one where you realise your memory is fucked so a play on ‘forgot’ seemed to work :) and I think I’d used all the good jokes so I had to fill in with more dramatic stuff. 

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Of course, on the funny side, I do have to mention this:

“What’s the hold up? Are you both waiting for the pre-dawn twilight to see if I sparkle as the sun comes up?”

Sometimes the obvious jokes are the ones that need to be made, and there's really no way a modern vampire character wouldn't make at least one Twilight joke at some point.

Heh, yeah, I’m sure it’s a a contractual requirement to include ‘em. Lupa totally sees herself as a wandering badass who happens to be on the side of the good guys out of the bond of friendship and not a sparkley lovey dovey vamp.

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Also...

“My memory seems pretty clear. I can remember before I was Kate. There was a hard winter and I sniffed around a tent off the trail in Wyoming, got bit by a metalhead who thought I was after her whiskey.”

So, if I'm reading this correctly, does that make Kate a wolfwere instead of a werewolf?  That's like a spider that was bitten by a radioactive human.

That’s the implication! but the next line is “You’re opening your mouth to ask if she’s serious as Lupa comes back to the room.”

So I’m not one of the users who massively maps out character backstories. There’s users here with databases that say what their main characters had for breakfast 10 years ago, me I just bashed outwhatever sounded good for whatever story. There’s multiple possibilites for Kate’s past, but I think honestly that what I was doing here was partly having her doing a straight faced joke to get her good mood back after flashing back to Sarsa’s story.

The past I favor for her more was that she got her abilities from an ancient wolf spirit, wounded and ‘dying’ from some supernatural battle. She showed some kindness to it and comforted it as it came to an end. In return she gained her wolf side the instincts and urges related to it, and also the ability to share it, like a modern source of lycanthropy different to the old European strains but with some similarities, like around the moon. But come the day I ever write the origin stories l might end up going for the joke version given above.

Thanks again! Just the one chapter to get through now. I hope it’s not too terrible. I was mostly out of ideas. Scraping the bottom of the barrel. It got so bad I thought I was writing The Simpsons.

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You!: 5, aka The One Where I Couldn’t Think Of A Title That Fit

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InBrightestDay

Chapter 5

Well, I can understand why you don't seem to like this chapter as much, but I don't think it's as bad as you seem to.  True, there are fewer jokes, but I feel like, given the darker tone of this chapter, more humor might not have worked.  Of course...

There's an awkward moment where you wonder if you can get away with pretending you had spoken to the actual angel.

...That doesn't mean there's nothing funny in this chapter!  There's a certain amusing (to me) irony that the main character, who turns out to be black and had that bit about Tarzan back in Chapter 1, immediately assumes that the white girl is the angel.

Thank you for ths review also! I went with that purely on rule of funny. And at least he noticed Kizzy’s serenity and probably started to assume before getting a faceful of Shannon being Shannon. 

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Granted, he may have just been assuming that the attractive girl was the angel.

Kizzy’s attractive – The sheriff in Blood on the Hay found her pretty enough – but she’s wearing a Star Trek t-shirt and Docs and all businss at that moment, while Shannon has the simple white dress, the halo-like hair and the stunning smile and the rest. Plus I did just think it was funny :)

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I also liked seeing the duality of Kizurial's character here.  The Trekkie stuff is cute, with stuff like her describing the magic as technobabble, but I really liked the moment where we get to really see her as a Seraph.

You have a moment’s sense of warmth, as if it were a summer’s day instead of a cold night. Suddenly, she’s in your mind, your soul, and images of hers are in yours. You stare into a cold dark void and know this was the time before light. The sheer age of the woman shakes your mind, but also within her: Peace. Love. Compassion. She was there before time began to tick.

I love that whole thing.  The image of the void before the Big Bang, her inhuman nature but also her basic goodness, just all of it.

Thank you! I think with Kizzy, I tended to view her as having been quite seperated from humanity before she came down on Earth and so she’s ended up ‘living’ her chosen disguise personality (which she presumably had some help constructing) more than. say, an Archangel might, while still being the Seraph underneath. I dunno, there’s probably other stuff where I contradicted that. I do that a lot.

Also, I really like how those lines came out too. Not my worst writing for sure!

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She was there even before the first marriage law story.

Also, that was funny.

Thank you!

 

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This chapter also touches on something I brought up in an earlier review, the concept of amnesia allowing the self to act in a different way.  What you are is not necessarily what you were, and if what you were is a monster, what do you choose to do now?

Yeah, I see what you’re getting at. I guess Tyrone made the right choice rather than trying to fight or run, or side with Sarsa, although Lupa might be somewhat less happy once her thirst subsides slightly. That’s why I! would start with her chapter.

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The only criticism I have is that the chapter really accelerates toward the end, so that I felt like we didn't have much time between the reveal of Tyrone's identity and his decision of self-sacrifice.  Now if the prompt stories had a word limit, then just ignore this

They had a word limit of 1000 words when I originally started doing the prompts, but this was removed later on. I stuck with it for You! partly for continuity and partly because I was having a great deal of trouble finishing anything and it felt like an achievable limit. Absolutely it could do with a longer and more detailed ending, especially as Tyrone would have enjoyed a few rounds with Shannon before dying, but I think I just about justified it by him deciding Sarsa needed to be sent to Hell quickly, and Lupa being really thirsty. I mean, not really, but close enough.

Thank you one final time for the reviews on You! I like how it turned out overall and so I’m glad you and others did too.

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25 minutes ago, JayDee said:

I think with Kizzy, I tended to view her as having been quite seperated from humanity before she came down on Earth and so she’s ended up ‘living’ her chosen disguise personality (which she presumably had some help constructing) more than. say, an Archangel might, while still being the Seraph underneath. I dunno, there’s probably other stuff where I contradicted that. I do that a lot.

Also, I really like how those lines came out too. Not my worst writing for sure!

I haven’t noticed any contradictions yet.  I mean, we really didn’t get much of a sense of her in TSPoED before the action started (which was by design, given the way that first chapter was structured), so it was only later on, specifically here, that we as an audience could start getting a sense of what her disguise personality really is.  The detachment thing really makes sense, again factoring in her lines in TSPoED, and she does seem very businesslike.  This chapter also explains what you mentioned earlier (off the forum), about her being willing to make harsh sacrifices for the greater good.

She’s a rather interesting character; in a way, it’s appropriate she’s into Star Trek, because she sometimes feels like an alien character, which makes sense.  Angels aren’t aliens in the extraterrestrial sense, but they very much are in the nonhuman sense.

35 minutes ago, JayDee said:

Thank you one final time for the reviews on You! I like how it turned out overall and so I’m glad you and others did too.

You are most welcome!  I’ve read one particularly good second person story before (it was a Resident Evil Ada-centric story over on fanfiction.net), but the second person PoV didn’t feel integral to the fic; it would have worked just as well in first or third person.  This is the first story I’ve read where the second person PoV is so thoroughly taken advantage of for both comedy and storytelling in general.

It may take me a couple of days to get to Fucking Halloween Party, just so you know.  I’m trying to make more headway on my story.

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If you don’t read Fucking Halloween Party any time soon it’s all good, it’s mostly just Shannon solving a problem by fucking it anyhow. If you’ve got the time and motivation to write, then write, I say!

Get your story storied, and if it takes days or weks or months I’m sure the ending will be sensational when it comes. I really hope it gets a lot of reads and reviews because the chapters I’ve read so far were really really good and you deserve that recognition.

I was thinking of other lines around Kizzy’s nerdy fandoms, say if Shannon was filling in Lupa on Luzurial more some time,

“Do you know how pure you have to be to be known as ‘The Pure,’ in Heaven? Like, really pure. I bet even Kizzy fiddles her expenses.”

“Huh?”

“You ever notice how many times she goes to look for evil threats to humanity at science fiction conventions?”

“I went with her that one time. Those neckbeards were evil. ‘Know how many wandering hands I had to break in that crowd? Anyway, there some some asshole she was tracking. Drew or something.”

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On 1/9/2019 at 12:42 PM, JayDee said:

If you’ve got the time and motivation to write, then write, I say!

Ironically, it's the reverse.  I have a connecting scene to write before we go into the barrier, where Kevin, Abdul and Calista all basically say “we’re main characters too, and we can’t just stay here while you do all the cool stuff!”

Or it might be more about how Kevin would be worried sick if he waited outside, etc.  It’s definitely one of those things, though.  Well, for whatever reason, I’m having trouble making the words flow, so I must sit and stare intimidatingly at my laptop until words appear on the screen.

On 1/9/2019 at 12:42 PM, JayDee said:

if it takes days or weks or months I’m sure the ending will be sensational when it comes.

Oh, it won’t take months.  Given that both our stories happen or start on January 1, there is no way I’m not posting Part One before the end of this month.

On 1/9/2019 at 12:42 PM, JayDee said:

I was thinking of other lines around Kizzy’s nerdy fandoms, say if Shannon was filling in Lupa on Luzurial more some time,

“Do you know how pure you have to be to be known as ‘The Pure,’ in Heaven? Like, really pure.

That actually raises a rather interesting question about the definition of the word “pure” in these circumstances.  One stereotypically assumes it refers to either celibacy or abstinence from drinking or something like that, but another way to look at it is in terms of a sense of focus.  After all, the definition of “pure” often has to do with something not being mixed with anything else, so this may instead refer to dedication to cause or to the degree to which her protective responsibility/compassion drives her character.

Not that Shannon would read it that way, of course.

On 1/9/2019 at 12:42 PM, JayDee said:

I bet even Kizzy fiddles her expenses.”

“Huh?”

“You ever notice how many times she goes to look for evil threats to humanity at science fiction conventions?” 

“Listen to me, Shannon.  Innocent lives are at stake if I don’t make it to Comic Con.”

On 1/9/2019 at 12:42 PM, JayDee said:

“I went with her that one time. Those neckbeards were evil. ‘Know how many wandering hands I had to break in that crowd? Anyway, there some some asshole she was tracking. Drew or something.”

Well, there’s a crossover.  Also, the image of Kizzy and Lupa walking through the con, with a hand coming out of nowhere to grope Lupa and her nonchalantly breaking it without slowing down is hilarious.

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8 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Ironically, it's the reverse.  I have a connecting scene to write before we go into the barrier, where Kevin, Abdul and Calista all basically say “we’re main characters too, and we can’t just stay here while you do all the cool stuff!”

Or it might be more about how Kevin would be worried sick if he waited outside, etc.  It’s definitely one of those things, though.  Well, for whatever reason, I’m having trouble making the words flow, so I must sit and stare intimidatingly at my laptop until words appear on the screen. 

Good luck! It’s a real pain when that happens, but I am sure based on what you have done so far that when it is done it’ll be sensation.

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Oh, it won’t take months.  Given that both our stories happen or start on January 1, there is no way I’m not posting Part One before the end of this month.

I just hope folks love it as much as I do!

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That actually raises a rather interesting question about the definition of the word “pure” in these circumstances.  One stereotypically assumes it refers to either celibacy or abstinence from drinking or something like that, but another way to look at it is in terms of a sense of focus.  After all, the definition of “pure” often has to do with something not being mixed with anything else, so this may instead refer to dedication to cause or to the degree to which her protective responsibility/compassion drives her character.

Not that Shannon would read it that way, of course.

Nah, she’d take the muckiest view she could. Filthy mind that girl.

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“Listen to me, Shannon.  Innocent lives are at stake if I don’t make it to Comic Con.”

Haha, exactly! 

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Well, there’s a crossover.  Also, the image of Kizzy and Lupa walking through the con, with a hand coming out of nowhere to grope Lupa and her nonchalantly breaking it without slowing down is hilarious.

Thank you! Heck, just imagine the cracks and anguished screams that keep breaking out through the crowd as unwashed young perverts realise they’ll be dating the other hand for a while. But Lupa is a little bit of a hypocrite as she would be quite happy to do certain things to those hairy throats without getting full un-coerced consent. 

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Fucking Halloween Party was great fun to write! Still worth a read for folks who want some slightly spooky succubus sex without the kind of horrific death found in some of my stories. Nobody even gets a nosebleed. Someone does get a finger up the ass, but overall it’s a positive learning experience.

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InBrightestDay

Well, I've made some progress on my story, so I figured I'd swing by and review this.

Thank you for the review! I am also happy to hear your getting some progress down after the screen glaring.

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So first, just in general, I really anjoyed this one.  It has kind of a mystery going with the who and why of the spellcasting (also, my Solve The Problem idea for my story feels far more reasonable when a human spellcaster can level a city block).  I also liked getting to know Shannon in detail for the first time.  She really is a good person at heart, and it's especially sweet how she helps Steve out, although I do feel bad for what's going to happen to Steve when that webcam footage is released.

It might never get released! I mean, purely on the unliklihood of me never getting around to the story. At worst it’s “I’m really sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings. Yes, I did get a blowjob but I never dreamed someone as awesome as you was interested in me when I did, please don’t dump me… ” at best it’s “You want a threesome with her involved? Well, I mean, I love you, Jen, but if you really want it I guess we can try and find her…”

I am glad ya liked it though, it’s pretty feel good right? Shannon as a succubus would probably only have ensnared souls that were going to Hell anyway. She was never the cruellest of the fallen. Had things been a little different she may never have fallen at all.

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Also...

“Ahh, shit, ahhhh... You... you’re going to come before me, Snow White!”

“No way, like, oooh... Captain Blackdick.”

I'm not checking to confirm this, but I just know that somewhere on the internet there is either a pirate porno with that exact title, or that has a character with that name.  There's no way no one has taken advantage of that pun yet.

I did have a look and there’s like 33 hits on google, and I don’t honestly know if the porn guy was before the original writing of the story (rather than the current loading date) or not. A little bit of interracial that was entirely good natured anyhow. They had fun! Hopefully the good cap’n met a decent guy afterwards and was really happy.

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Shannon felt a pang of nostalgia for the long years in Hell, though the place reeked of sanity and consent.

I love that line.

Thanks! It seemed better than my first thought of looking at the BDSM gear, rolling her eyes and muttering ‘amateurs’. Introducing a sex dungeon in a story and only using it for background would probably enrage Chekov, mind.

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The fluid inside was a mixture of unpleasantness and diet cola.

And that one.

Thanks again! Just think how strong the spell would have been if she’d been able to source some IRN-BRU. (This joke only applies for the people of Scotland.)

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It's interesting to see the multiple layers of what Astrid thinks the spell is going to do, as opposed to what it actually will.  First it was a simple love spell, and then it was supposedly going to turn her into a succubus, all of which hides that the thing is really just a bomb.  Also noticeable is how all the comedic elements of Sarsa are downplayed (there's only a brief mention of her fanfiction, and the accidental True Name use is explained as a mistake), so she seems far more threatening here.

Yeah, Sarsa’s just her pen name! (There was a bottle of Sarsaparilla in the room when she came up with it.), but she wanted You to believe you had power over her. “Writers are liars,” as Neil Gaiman wrote in The Sandman, although he may have been lying. Poor old Astrid, and all she did was mock the fanfic. So, you can imagine that COD troll was not likely to be having a romantic handholding date after his flame. Rumor has it they found bits of him in 18 states. Including Kansas. And those bits were all still alive. 

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The first thing I’ll do in my new form is tear off your wings!

*flinch* Two reviews into the future...

I guess one thing with a story like this is that for 99%+ of the readers who choose something like it they’re unlikely to have previously chosen Whore of Heaven and so it wouldn’t any flashback moments for them, it’s just a threat with the dramatic irony of knowing she’s not a real angel. For the less-than 1% of you who did read both, well, flinching isn’t unreasonable :)

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Also, given how comical and sweet Shannon is most of the time, the brief moment where she goes full succubus is actually pretty intimidating.  I also kind of like the idea that there are beautiful sections of Hell.  Granted, they're probably not beautiful for the people there, but for the demons, at any rate.

Shannon’s one of the all round nicest characters I ever came up with but I guess at the end of day she’s still one of the fallen who rebelled against the throne and was cast down into Hell. That’d intimidate most people, especially on a first date.

The thing with beauty is that it can always in the eye of the beholder. There are those who absolutely love the aesthetics of death. And for the others, well, say you’re soaring high over the plains and forests, the cities and lakes, you can find beauty in what you see as long as you don’t look too closely.  Maybe. I think I probably just thought it was a nice image.

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Finally, while it's super nonexclusive...Shannon's got a girlfriend!

Yeah! Well, as long as Astrid doesn’t mind that total lack of monogamy or occasional cock thing. To be honest, those might be deal breakers.

Thanks for your feedback on this! It was a fun one to write and I remain pretty happy with it so It’s cool to hear you liked it.

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7 hours ago, JayDee said:

I am also happy to hear your getting some progress down after the screen glaring.

I eventually realized I was just going to have to feel my way through the scene, experimenting a bit and trying different lines to see what worked best.  It’s not as comfortable as when a scene just comes together in my mind, but sometimes it’s necessary.

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

it’s pretty feel good right? Shannon as a succubus would probably only have ensnared souls that were going to Hell anyway. She was never the cruellest of the fallen.

Absolutely.  Shannon almost feels like an angel with a very active libido.

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

Had things been a little different she may never have fallen at all.

I’m guessing that libido was part of the problem, though, given that nobody had started asking questions about the whole celibacy thing yet.

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

Introducing a sex dungeon in a story and only using it for background would probably enrage Chekov, mind.

Well, there’s something to be said for not trying to write something you’re unfamiliar with.  With stuff like BDSM, after all, there’s always the risk of writing it wrong and making people who are actually into it roll their eyes.

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

Just think how strong the spell would have been if she’d been able to source some IRN-BRU. (This joke only applies for the people of Scotland.)

Speaking of which, while your American slang is usually spot-on, I did notice this:

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Night was falling at the usual early hour in late October, but she carried no torch.

Admittedly, you could have been referring to a stick with fire on the end of it, but if you mean the electric variety, over here we call those flashlights.  An odd term, I’ll admit, but I think it has something to do with their early use by the military for Morse code.

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

Yeah, Sarsa’s just her pen name! (There was a bottle of Sarsaparilla in the room when she came up with it.)

I’m genuinely curious.  When you came up with Sarsa’s name, was that where it came from?

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

I guess one thing with a story like this is that for 99%+ of the readers who choose something like it they’re unlikely to have previously chosen Whore of Heaven and so it wouldn’t any flashback moments for them, it’s just a threat with the dramatic irony of knowing she’s not a real angel. For the less-than 1% of you who did read both, well, flinching isn’t unreasonable :)

I’m an oddity in that regard, I know.  Had I just discovered your work now, I probably would have just scanned down to Twinpregnation, thought of you as the guy who wrote the sibling romance story and never gone anywhere near Whore of Heaven.  But it was ten years ago, so…

On an amusing side note, I just polished up the “confession” scene and added a bit where Kevin and Luzurial just hold each other for a little while after she stops crying.  I’m going to say that didn’t have anything to do with what I was reading, but by the time these reviews are done, there’s a chance I’ll have to go back and delete a bunch of superfluous hugs from my story.

Luzurial: Not that this isn’t nice, but why do you keep doing it?

Kevin: I don’t know; I just keep getting this feeling that you really need a hug.

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

The thing with beauty is that it can always in the eye of the beholder. There are those who absolutely love the aesthetics of death. And for the others, well, say you’re soaring high over the plains and forests, the cities and lakes, you can find beauty in what you see as long as you don’t look too closely.  Maybe. I think I probably just thought it was a nice image.

Actually I had this rather interesting thought, which I’m going to use if you don’t mind, that some sections of Hell may have been built up to emulate the paradise the demons were cast from, like on some level they miss home and are trying to create something kind of like it.

7 hours ago, JayDee said:

Thanks for your feedback on this! It was a fun one to write and I remain pretty happy with it so It’s cool to hear you liked it.

No problem!  It was a lot of fun to read! :)

Edited by InBrightestDay
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13 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

I eventually realized I was just going to have to feel my way through the scene, experimenting a bit and trying different lines to see what worked best.  It’s not as comfortable as when a scene just comes together in my mind, but sometimes it’s necessary.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. And then when you’ve finally got through all the blood, sweat and tears of getting it just right you have to write a summary to draw in the readers.

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Absolutely.  Shannon almost feels like an angel with a very active libido.

I’m guessing that libido was part of the problem, though, given that nobody had started asking questions about the whole celibacy thing yet.

And that could be a hell of a conversation with Kizzy some day.

“I just wish we were allowed to screw back in the old days, you know? I was totally happy there apart from that even though I was like, the humblest of the host.”

“What do you mean?”

“Duh. That fucking celibacy command that came down from you Seraphim. The Creator gave Luzurial a rack like that, and then said hands off. It’s the deal with the tree in the garden and Eve loving figs all over again.”

“That.. that wasn’t… My friend, I tell you truthfully I never knew of any order given for celibacy. Though there was always one of the cherubim who debated most strongly in favor of it, no argument would have made us issue any order contrary to the Creator’s creation.”

Later

“Hey, Kiz, why’s Shannon eating a big tub of ice cream and crying?”

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Well, there’s something to be said for not trying to write something you’re unfamiliar with.  With stuff like BDSM, after all, there’s always the risk of writing it wrong and making people who are actually into it roll their eyes.

My badly written BDSM really hurt the masochists. So they demanded I write more.

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Speaking of which, while your American slang is usually spot-on, I did notice this:

Night was falling at the usual early hour in late October, but she carried no torch.

Admittedly, you could have been referring to a stick with fire on the end of it, but if you mean the electric variety, over here we call those flashlights.  An odd term, I’ll admit, but I think it has something to do with their early use by the military for Morse code.

Thanks for raising this! I always appreciate little pointers like this. For this one example I think I’ll keep it as it is because it has a faint echo of the phrase “carrying a torch for someone” and she isn’t carrying one. I have to make my own fun. I think I did know the term Flashlight from all the media I consume, but always worry about mistyping it as Fleshlight.

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I’m genuinely curious.  When you came up with Sarsa’s name, was that where it came from?

Yeah, Sarsa’s lack of imagination does mirror my own. I think I may have seen the bottle in a room in Fallout New Vegas.

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I’m an oddity in that regard, I know.  Had I just discovered your work now, I probably would have just scanned down to Twinpregnation, thought of you as the guy who wrote the sibling romance story and never gone anywhere near Whore of Heaven.  But it was ten years ago, so…

On an amusing side note, I just polished up the “confession” scene and added a bit where Kevin and Luzurial just hold each other for a little while after she stops crying.  I’m going to say that didn’t have anything to do with what I was reading, but by the time these reviews are done, there’s a chance I’ll have to go back and delete a bunch of superfluous hugs from my story.

Luzurial: Not that this isn’t nice, but why do you keep doing it?

Kevin: I don’t know; I just keep getting this feeling that you really need a hug.

Chances are none of them are really superfluous! Plus the interractions you’ve written for them are so natural and realistic – that’s one of the many reasons I think folks who give it a chance on AFF will love it. I mean, some right bastard of a writer put her though absolute hell so a little comfort is no bad thing.

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Actually I had this rather interesting thought, which I’m going to use if you don’t mind, that some sections of Hell may have been built up to emulate the paradise the demons were cast from, like on some level they miss home and are trying to create something kind of like it.

No doubt with billions of years they’d have done a bit of redecorating! I suspect it would be more the demons of Shannon’s attitudes rather than the likes of Eparlegna.

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No problem!  It was a lot of fun to read!

Even so, I thank you for the reading and the feedback. And also for writing the superior-in-every-way sequel to Whore of Heaven.

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12 hours ago, JayDee said:

And then when you’ve finally got through all the blood, sweat and tears of getting it just right you have to write a summary to draw in the readers.

Yeah, I’ve actually been working on that.  I keep alternating between the brief “what is this?” summary (Kevin’s never liked that creepy statue in the park...) and what I call the “paperback” summary, that is, something like what you’d see on the back of a novel.

Kevin’s never liked that creepy statue in the park.  It’s sad, it’s disturbing and, as he finds out one day, it’s not a statue at all.  The woman he finds inside is enigmatic, beautiful...and hurt in ways far beyond the physical.  Taking her home, Kevin attempts to help her heal, but she’s not the only thing to come back from the past.

That’s my best attempt so far, anyway.

12 hours ago, JayDee said:

The Creator gave Luzurial a rack like that, and then said hands off.

Was Shannon having some thoughts about her commanding officer?

12 hours ago, JayDee said:

“Hey, Kiz, why’s Shannon eating a big tub of ice cream and crying?”

Kate: At this point I’m worried she’s going to end up drunk-dialing Astrid.

Lupa: Can succubi get drunk?

Shannon: I’m gonna find out!

12 hours ago, JayDee said:

My badly written BDSM really hurt the masochists. So they demanded I write more.

:lol:

12 hours ago, JayDee said:

I think I did know the term Flashlight from all the media I consume, but always worry about mistyping it as Fleshlight.

Well, that is where the Fleshlight people got the name from.

12 hours ago, JayDee said:

And also for writing the superior-in-every-way sequel to Whore of Heaven.

I appreciate the compliment, but don’t go overboard here.  I lack your talent for economical storytelling, for one thing (thus far, in terms of word count, The Woman in the Statue is five times the length of Whore of Heaven, and I’m not done yet.  Granted, I could also blame that on the action scenes, but some of it is definitely down to me getting somewhat more verbose.
 

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I am also happy to hear your getting some progress

...just noticed that. I do know the difference, I swear.

 

Oh, don’t worry about that.  As it happens, I made the reverse typo (“Had I just discovered you’re work now...”); I just managed to fix it quickly.

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12 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Yeah, I’ve actually been working on that.  I keep alternating between the brief “what is this?” summary (Kevin’s never liked that creepy statue in the park...) and what I call the “paperback” summary, that is, something like what you’d see on the back of a novel.

Kevin’s never liked that creepy statue in the park.  It’s sad, it’s disturbing and, as he finds out one day, it’s not a statue at all.  The woman he finds inside is enigmatic, beautiful...and hurt in ways far beyond the physical.  Taking her home, Kevin attempts to help her heal, but she’s not the only thing to come back from the past.

That’s my best attempt so far, anyway.

I think that’s pretty good. It’s got some good emphasis on what is the meat of the story, the recovery of Luzurial and her relationship with Kevin. It feels – and this is just my reaction at reading it – that maybe the end could be punched up in some way, to have a greater sense of foreboding or threat if that makes sense. I’m sure it’d be fine as it is though.

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Was Shannon having some thoughts about her commanding officer?

I mean, it’s Shannon. She wasn’t always a succubus but she sure was always Shannon (Edit: Although she had a different name!). No doubt such thoughts were contributing factors in her fall, particularly if someone else already on Lucifer’s side in the early days of plotting noticed an unguarded admiring glance, a flush of skin or a lip bite, or even came across her top secret carefully hidden “Things I’d like to do with Luzurial” ‘diary’.

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Kate: At this point I’m worried she’s going to end up drunk-dialing Astrid.

Lupa: Can succubi get drunk?

Shannon: I’m gonna find out!

:D

“I’ll have slippery nipples, a mouthful of angel’s tit, a slow comfortable screw against the wall, sex on the beach, slam a red-headed slut and a white russian, and then I’ll go out and have some cocktails.”

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Well, that is where the Fleshlight people got the name from.

Bob: “Guys guys! Imagine if you could fuck your flashlight!”

Jake (who already has one handle first up his ass): “That’s so unrealistic, Bob.”

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I appreciate the compliment, but don’t go overboard here.  I lack your talent for economical storytelling, for one thing (thus far, in terms of word count, The Woman in the Statue is five times the length of Whore of Heaven, and I’m not done yet.  Granted, I could also blame that on the action scenes, but some of it is definitely down to me getting somewhat more verbose.

They’re completely different things really. Mine was a PWP rapefic that was as long as it needed to be to fit in the cruelty and terrible cop jokes; basically mine was just porn. Yours is much more like a proper novel with some erotic elements and so the increased detail, the character interactions and disucssions, and background descriptions, the alternate events happening away from Luzurial, all add immeasurably to the experience. Yours is literature.

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Oh, don’t worry about that.  As it happens, I made the reverse typo (“Had I just discovered you’re work now...”); I just managed to fix it quickly.

I feel I probably should spellcheck forum posts, but I always just never bother. I’m lazy, me.

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13 hours ago, JayDee said:

It’s got some good emphasis on what is the meat of the story, the recovery of Luzurial and her relationship with Kevin.

I actually just had to write that because I didn’t want to spoil anything, so I couldn’t really say who Luzurial was or anything like that, and similarly to Part One, I ended up making the summary Kevin’s PoV.

13 hours ago, JayDee said:

It feels – and this is just my reaction at reading it – that maybe the end could be punched up in some way, to have a greater sense of foreboding or threat if that makes sense.

It absolutely makes sense, and I’ll try to give more of a sense of threat to the end of it there.

13 hours ago, JayDee said:

They’re completely different things really. Mine was a PWP rapefic that was as long as it needed to be to fit in the cruelty and terrible cop jokes; basically mine was just porn. Yours is much more like a proper novel with some erotic elements and so the increased detail, the character interactions and disucssions, and background descriptions, the alternate events happening away from Luzurial, all add immeasurably to the experience. Yours is literature. 

Oooooh that is such a compliment that I am seriously tempted to take it.  I’m trying not to get a swelled head, though, given that Luzurial would no doubt have some words for me about Pride.

13 hours ago, JayDee said:

I feel I probably should spellcheck forum posts, but I always just never bother. I’m lazy, me.

The spellcheck here has some odd standards concerning contractions.  Didn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, etc. all come up as misspelled, and yet you’re, they’re, it’s and don’t do not register that way.

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20 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Oooooh that is such a compliment that I am seriously tempted to take it.  I’m trying not to get a swelled head, though, given that Luzurial would no doubt have some words for me about Pride.

There’s a few writers on here who are definitely far cross that line seperating them from the cheap nasty pornographers like me. They’re putting out seriously talented writing. I was going to start naming names but then I’d miss someone out and it’d be awkward. Also as at least three or four of them are site staff it would look like I was asskissing. But the point is, your current work reminds me of that level.

Thank you also for your reviews on the two parts of Miharu Sarutobi Must Resist! – I really appreciate them, and I am not just saying that. Thanks for letting me know about the times it made you laugh – really went for a jokey tone in a few places so I’m glad it came across well!

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InBrightestDay

I ended up reading this because at the time I thought it fit into the stories involving Kizzy's Pack/Kizzy's Angels/The Slumber Party Super Team.  It doesn't, but now that I'm here...

Yeah, sorry about that, me not being entirely clear. Ol’ Eparlegna’s just there in the flashbacks. Maybe I ought to go for a more pompous setting name like “The Books of Kizurial.” Otherwise I’m just gonna steal slumber-verse from you :p

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So, the first thing I noticed:

This was Miharu’s first solo hunt, here in the land of the round eyed barbarians.

You know, when I saw the Bigotry tag and a Japanese protagonist, I kind of figured that would mean bigotry against said protagonist.  Guess it runs both ways.

Equal opportunity bigotry! It’s still un-PC but everyone gets a fair share.

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“I have been sent here to prevent the escape of the demon Dreneparssa and send him back to hell.”

Dreneparssa backward is...the first time this story made me laugh.

Thank you! I think Dreneparssa was the last backwards demon name I came up with. Guy’s a total dork!

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I expect Black Leaf will be along to play next!”

“Who is Black Leaf? Who is Drew?”

“You know! Black Leaf the thief!

I see mine was not the only D&D group for whom Dark Dungeons was a rite of passage. 

I’ve seen a whole bunch of chick tracts over the years, and I realise this isn’t entirely the point, but some of them are hilarious. I don’t know that I got all of the intended value from them to be honest. Weirdly enough there’s a Chick Tracts section on AFF, with a Dark Dungeons fanfic.

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At any rate, things proceed along fairly normally until we meet Drew.

I am the COD GOD!

There's why I thought this was the guy from the second chapter of You!

Makes sense! They’re both just mean spirited offensive stereotypes of COD players. I’d forgotten I’d used the COD GOD wording twice tho’ The fact that I’ve written stories around Valve point’n’shoot games like Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2 and Left 4 Dead but portray dickish COD players twice over may suggest a certain amount of anti-COD bigotry. Probably correctly.

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When the magical trap is triggered, your Dark Dungeons reference caused me to immediately think "The Thief, Black Leaf, did not find the poison trap, and I declare her dead."  This is completely irrelevant to the review, but I had to mention it.

Heh, maybe Miharu got a saving throw or something.

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Also, I never thought I'd ask a question about the genital anatomy of demons, but...

The crown was a rounded spike, with a slit that she could easily have fitted two of her index fingers into.

I'd previously assumed that "spike" thing was literal, you know, to cause maximum pain and tear holes in the uterus, but "rounded spike" just sounds like an ordinary penis.

The crown’s more like the way a glass coke bottle narrows towards the end, but with rounding at the tip like you see on the top of some metal fences. Drew’s a bit less hardcore than his Daddy.

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below the high ceiling, small windows looked out into the yard, while rough hewn rock walls danced with the flames of the infernal boiler that supplied the house’s electricity.

Second time the story made me laugh.  There's something inherently funny about using hellfire to power your house.  I mean, is that considered green energy?  There's zero carbon footprint, but the screams of the damned probably count as noise pollution...

It still makes less noise than that one the family had in Home Alone! You got to get some benefits out of being a demon. Like how Shannon has literally never had to buy a drink for herself in any bar or club.

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“Ha ha ha! Noob demon Huntress! I am Dreneparssa, son of Eparlegna... and Janet.

Third and fourth times the story made me laugh, first because of the delivery and then because how did that happen?  Was Eparlegna just having an off day?  Was he morbidly curious about what consensual sex felt like?

I think he was just impressed by her enthusiasm and willingness to be taken hard over and over. She might even have been the one who summoned him in the first place to unleash him on others and played to his pride enough that he left her basically what she was when he first met her – mentally screwy but physically ok. Perhaps Luzurial would have got an easier ride after all if she’d submitted immediately.

He might have just recently eaten a group of ravers off their heads on MDMA or something.

The less likely but possibly funnier possibility is that another considerably less intimidating demon was engaging in a bit of ID theft/demon catfishing and pretending to be Eparlegna. Such things likely wouldn’t go down well with the old bastard, but nobody said demons were all smart in this setting. Case in point of less than top intellectual brilliance: Drew.

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“Lick my Jap’s eye,” he demanded

Ah, there's the bigotry.

as casually racist as most evil creatures and many FPS gamers.

Truth, unfortunately.

When you’re playing a game and half the rest of the team have swastika symbols in non WW2 games and shout racist abuse every time they get killed… yup that’s FPS online play.

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You know, by rights, this should be causing some uncomfortable flashbacks, and yet somehow I don't feel nearly as bad for Miharu as I do for Luzurial.

I expect all the jokes, and the fact that Drew is considerably less threatening and actually pretty pathetic probably account for it – As you said further up the review –

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I also love how the hypothetically terrifying rape demon is somehow completely unintimidating, and that his dark and terrible plan, should he escape, is to not be mocked by cool kids and have pretty girls not ignore him.

A bit less than Eparlegna’s wish to see the entire world in his dominion with an angel bound in a statue and suffering for all eternity for opposing him.

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The taste was indescribable. Worse even than Western food.

I can't imagine why...

Drew’s demon junk actually tastes better than Wendys chicken nuggets.

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Chapter 2

A very dark bit of humor arises from the statement that Drew has read guides about pleasuring a woman, presumably studying very hard for the one day he'd get a chance to free himself, and yet he's still utterly clueless about it.  What should be a rather sexy outing full of seduction instead becomes, as I said, darkly amusing because Dreneparssa's quest for the elusive female orgasm includes a lot of beating his partner, which is generally not conducive to a climax.

The guy’s a moron! Plus, he has anger control issues, and when he couldn’t get her off he kept attacking her with force which then made it worse. So an asshole as well as a moron. Well, that or all the guides he read had been written for “how to please an extreme masochist” topics. 

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She laid back, thought of Japan, and she did not come.

Miharu Sarutobi is Ian Fleming's James Bond, complete with her own brand of the cultural chauvinism.

Miharu: And don’t you forget it, baka!. Now get me a Asahi while I play the new Final Fantasy!

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Miharu looked up to see the woman she had met in the garden coming down the stairs with a basket of washing.

Fifth time the story made me laugh, because of course the washer and dryer are in the hellmouth.

It’s okay except on a full moon and then the washing comes out dirtier than it went in.

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“Mom! Please! I’m busy here,

Laugh number six...

And Janet just carries on regardless :)

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When your Dad took me upon the desecrated altar I was coming in seconds. He barely had time to get a tentacle up my ass and pull my wimple off.

Huh.  Apparently he did just want to know what consensual sex felt like.  Also, he has tentacles now, I'm guessing because this story has a Japanese protagonist.

If Shannon can manifest a cock for a story where there’s a gay guy who likes bottoming, Eparlegna can manifest some tentacles for background flavor in a story with a Japanese character! Although thinking about it, I’m sure I was intending that they were a variant on the old stone tentacles used for restraint in Whore of Heaven, only being used much more actively - maybe formed from the flesh of other victims or just something else. He’d still be the one directing them after all, and presumably he can choose to get sensory feedback even if they aren’t attached to him.

Well, that, or it really is another demon pretending to be him. Could explain why Drew is such a loser.

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I'm going to have to stop writing down everything that made me laugh, but other stuff of note would be Drew thinking that anal's "kind of gay", as well as the fact that the demon mark is apparently tied to Half-Life (perhaps that's why Half-Life 3 isn't out yet) and the "He hoped Mom had baked some cake" line.

Finally, there's something amusing about the fact that after being foiled, the dark and terrible revenge of Dreneparssa is basically mildly annoying to Miharu, and she's taken the Xbox from him.  She probably spends lots of time telling him how much better Japanese games are to

At the point Drew’s thinking anal is kind of gay even his demon half is basically face palming. :D I am 90% sure that the whole “Miharu hating and despising anal, and then coming from it and ending up having a lot” was one of the basic elements requested by Devil_PS for the story.

After about six months he is totally her bitch, and Janet’s probably hacked off because she’s got another damn teen living in her basement, she never got to unleash Drew on Mrs Jenkins, and none of the demons are answering her booty call summonings anymore.

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Overall, while rape stories are generally not my thing, this one was humorous enough to mitigate it, and was pretty entertaining, if not arousing, to read

Thank you once again! I’m glad you didn’t end up suffering through something too terrible expecting more slumber-verse shenanigans at least. A few good laughs probably makes it much more worthwhile.

There’s one 1000 word prompt story I haven’t posted with Lupa under a silence spell and Shannon, (Mentioned in this post!) where I decided that I didn’t like Lupa’s characterisation as being happy at killing. I much prefer her as snarky or outright bitchy and happy to bruise flesh and break bones, but not happy killing people at all (as opposed to, say, Kate, who’ll kill and chew on anyone who deserves it like good ol’ Jeb). I might one day post it as a “non canon” or “imaginary story!” to steal from DC silver age, or maybe even try and re-write it to feature Kate instead of Lupa. Reason I am mentioning it is just to throw out there if you’d like me to send it to you to read, with it being slumber-verse related? If not, no worries!

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1 hour ago, JayDee said:

I’ve seen a whole bunch of chick tracts over the years, and I realise this isn’t entirely the point, but some of them are hilarious.

Reading them is a weird experience for me.  For Christians, Chick is like our racist uncle or something, so generally they’re deeply embarrassing to read, but sometimes they’re so bad they’re hilarious, and Dark Dungeons is definitely one of those.

1 hour ago, JayDee said:

It still makes less noise than that one the family had in Home Alone!

That image actually came to mind; the McCallisters’ basement kind of did feel like a hellmouth.

1 hour ago, JayDee said:

Perhaps Luzurial would have got an easier ride after all if she’d submitted immediately.

Almost certainly, but that’s the Catch 22 of that story.  If Luzurial had done that, she wouldn’t be the likable character that she is, which is actually what I was getting at with the “I can’t imagine why...” comment.  Under essentially the same circumstances (oral rape), Luzurial was crying at that point, and her thought process could probably be summed up as “please make it stop,” while Miharu’s is more like “this shouldn’t be possible, but it tastes even worse than the food of the white savages!”  One of those draws immediate sympathy, while the other...doesn’t.  Couple that with the generally lighter tone and Drew’s inherent loser status and there you go.

1 hour ago, JayDee said:

There’s one 1000 word prompt story I haven’t posted with Lupa under a silence spell and Shannon, (Mentioned in this post!) where I decided that I didn’t like Lupa’s characterisation as being happy at killing. I much prefer her as snarky or outright bitchy and happy to bruise flesh and break bones, but not happy killing people at all (as opposed to, say, Kate, who’ll kill and chew on anyone who deserves it like good ol’ Jeb). I might one day post it as a “non canon” or “imaginary story!” to steal from DC silver age, or maybe even try and re-write it to feature Kate instead of Lupa. Reason I am mentioning it is just to throw out there if you’d like me to send it to you to read, with it being slumber-verse related? If not, no worries!

I mean, if you ever want someone else to take a look at the story (just for perspective), I’d be happy to do so.  I’ve really appreciated your feedback with my story, after all.

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6 minutes ago, InBrightestDay said:

Reading them is a weird experience for me.  For Christians, Chick is like our racist uncle or something, so generally they’re deeply embarrassing to read, but sometimes they’re so bad they’re hilarious, and Dark Dungeons is definitely one of those.

The Green Angels one was great too, with rock music manager Lew Siffer and “Here’s your wedding gift… some AIDS!” 

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That image actually came to mind; the McCallisters’ basement kind of did feel like a hellmouth.

Kevin overcomes his fears and fights bad guys! A timeless tale.

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Almost certainly, but that’s the Catch 22 of that story.  If Luzurial had done that, she wouldn’t be the likable character that she is, which is actually what I was getting at with the “I can’t imagine why...” comment.  Under essentially the same circumstances (oral rape), Luzurial was crying at that point, and her thought process could probably be summed up as “please make it stop,” while Miharu’s is more like “this shouldn’t be possible, but it tastes even worse than the food of the white savages!”  One of those draws immediate sympathy, while the other...doesn’t.

Put like that it’s hard to argue with! Miharu ended up with a happier ending too. Although, I guess lot of the stories I wrote where the characters straight up died had happier endings than Luzurial did.

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I mean, if you ever want someone else to take a look at the story (just for perspective), I’d be happy to do so.  I’ve really appreciated your feedback with my story, after all.

Thank you! I’ll have another look through the old draft for any terrible errors I missed (besides the characterisation and plot) and send it over.

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2 hours ago, JayDee said:

The Green Angels one was great too, with rock music manager Lew Siffer and “Here’s your wedding gift… some AIDS!”

I also like how the chart in the back of one panel lists “Hard Rock” as everything from 1961-1971, which includes Elvis and the Beatles.  So “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “Let It Be” are Hard Rock.  One wonders what he would have thought of Metallica.

2 hours ago, JayDee said:

Put like that it’s hard to argue with! Miharu ended up with a happier ending too. Although, I guess lot of the stories I wrote where the characters straight up died had happier endings than Luzurial did.

Yeah, it’s kind of ironic that I read the story trying to avoid one where the female lead dies, and walked into I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.  On the other hand, that bonded to me to Luzurial right quick.  As a discussion of Hurt/Comfort fics once said:

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And nothing makes us identify – feel with – another person as immediately as empathy for their pain.

Speaking of which, while it’s going to be about a week, for my next reviews, I’m just going to address this to the Archangel Luzurial, P.O. Box #77, Chandler Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California 90023:

:hug:

2 hours ago, JayDee said:

I’ll have another look through the old draft for any terrible errors I missed (besides the characterisation and plot) and send it over.

Got it, and I’ll get back to you shortly. :)

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17 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

I also like how the chart in the back of one panel lists “Hard Rock” as everything from 1961-1971, which includes Elvis and the Beatles.  So “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “Let It Be” are Hard Rock.  One wonders what he would have thought of Metallica. 

“We’re gonna rock rock rock rock with the ROCK!” The Green Angels’ lyricist was really earning the big bucks.

I suspect he might not have been a fan of Metallica :)

“Well, this rock music can’t get any worse after Black Sabbath.”

*Hears The God That Failed*

“I was wrong.”

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Yeah, it’s kind of ironic that I read the story trying to avoid one where the female lead dies, and walked into I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.  On the other hand, that bonded to me to Luzurial right quick.  As a discussion of Hurt/Comfort fics once said: 

And nothing makes us identify – feel with – another person as immediately as empathy for their pain.

Speaking of which, while it’s going to be about a week, for my next reviews, I’m just going to address this to the Archangel Luzurial, P.O. Box #77, Chandler Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California 90023: 

:hug:

This here is one sweet gooey WAFFy post. Which I’ll ruin with flashbacks to the old I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream point and click game. I never got around to reading the story; I should do that sometime, it is meant to be an absolute classic.

The next reviews being for Whore of Heaven I suspect where I will not take offence if you have some harsh words about Luzurial’s treatment. :)

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Got it, and I’ll get back to you shortly. :)

I thank you for your time! I have replied also :)

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Twinpregnation review – I’m so glad I noticed a while back my settings had somehow reset to no anonymous reviews so I could change ‘em and start getting anon reviews again.

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ANON

Very nice story. Author wasn't boring with unnecessary details.  True to its title,  the focus remained on clearly describing what was going on and kept the story moving on to a wonderful conclusion! ****

Thank you ANON! I’m really happy you liked this story and thought the conclusion was wonderful! I appreciate you taking the time to leave the review. I’ll take a **** review, especially as my local takeaway only has a ** health rating. There actually was a bunch of unnecessary details originally, but I stripped them out following the initial reviews for this version that concentrates on twins and ‘pregnation. Thank you again.

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Whore of Heaven has been on AFF since 2007-10-28, has over 10K hits and until today had a grand total of three reviews. That doubled today with a review for each of the three parts from InBrightestDay who is currently writing the incredibly superior sequel, The Woman in the Statue, which has managed already three reviews in 24 hours. I hope you all go read it because it’s amazing stuff. On to the reviews!

Firstly, so I don’t repeat myself too much, thank you for writing these reviews of the parts, thank you for the compliments on my writing, thank you for the pointing out of the stuff that’s worthy of criticism (such as my not thinking properly about binding circle barrier dimensions). It’s probably the most detailed overall review I’ve ever had for a story (some of Jack’s could come close in the old days). We all like getting reviews even the “Great! write more!” but rarely do we get the really detailed analysis. I think a lot of writers here would be crossing their fingers you get around to reading and reviewing their stories!

They hang together so well I’m not going to do the “Quote a paragraph, respond, quote, respond” thing but instead respond to each one beneath the review.

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InBrightestDay

Well, here we are: the reason I'm here in the first place.

Before we begin, and for anyone else reading this review, know that this is going to be something a little different: a review by someone NOT in the target audience for this story.  Ten years ago, I read one of JayDee's other stories out of curiosity, backed out when I realized it was headed for Snuff territory (sorry, but I can't remember what the story was), but realized that I liked the author's writing style, so I looked for a non-Snuff story.  Scanning the tags, I realized this wasn't going to be Snuff.  The Rape and Torture tags told me that the main character was going to go through some traumatic stuff, but she wouldn't die, so I figured that meant she would be okay in the end.  That sounds stupid, but I was very naive at the time with regards to what you could find on the internet.

Okay, back to the "talking to the author" format, and here we go.

Part 1

The horror elements in the beginning are very well executed, and I like the way it starts out with the perspective of the people on the ground, with the fear of the unknown, the way that satellites pass into this shadow barrier and vanish, and the little detail of psychics physically harmed by what they're sensing, so great is the feedback.  The whole introduction has a very Lovecraftian feel, and even the image of the barrier, rising up into the clouds like some monolithic structure, is almost like the kind of thing you'd see in a modern alien invasion movie.

Next, we meet our female lead, Luzurial.  I've said before that you have a talent for rapidly establishing characters I like and root for, and that's on full display here.  Luzurial doesn't say a single word for quite some time, but her character is established long before, both through narration and through action.  I like that you used each of those two techniques to convey its own set of information.  Through narration, we learn Luzurial's appearance and her history, which is something we could never establish through actions alone.  Instead, actions serve to tell us about her personality.  We learn through narration that she's an archangel, a distinguished veteran, strongest of the host (aside from a few specially empowered angels), and that she's disobeying orders to help us.

The narration refers to "the arrogant host", and given that she left without their blessing, one might assume Luzurial to be the most prideful and haughty of the entire group, but I've never really read the character like that.  The Pride on display is the same kind you see in every cop or military movie, where the main characters are told to stay away from the case or not go in to rescue the hostages or something similar, but they're going in anyway and they figure the Chief/Commander will be okay with it after the dust settles (or that the loss of their careers is worth it for what they'll accomplish).  instead of seeming insufferably arrogant and deserving to be punished, Luzurial comes across as someone doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

The descriptive narration has some particularly good bits, like her sword holding "an edge like sunlight on spider-silk", which is a visual description of its sharpness so effective I wish I had come up with it.  The "see" format that makes up her visual description (i.e. "See her brown eyes, which glint with the wisdom and experience of all the time that ever there was.") is very nice too, sounding almost like some kind of ancient text.

At this point, while we've established a more tempered motivation for her actions, a mixture of Pride and compassion, her status as an immortal angel could potentially still make her rather difficult to relate to.  But then she starts making mistakes, and the character acquires more humanity.  From the moment she first lands Luzurial begins doing things that are, technically speaking, tactical errors, but every mistake she makes served to endear her to me further.  She stops to create beings of virtue, to help the survivors in the city defend themselves, weakening herself in the process.  It's a mistake; she should be saving her strength, but the act speaks to her compassion; it shows that she can't fly past a woman being raped and do nothing.  Her attempt to talk Eparlegna into leaving is another interesting display of character, since it implies either a strong sense of honor or a desire to avoid any further bloodshed even after what he's done.  Once she's trapped, she hesitates to free herself, in spite of the fact that the women she would kill in the process are good people and thus not at risk of damnation.  It seems odd, but recall that while death may not be a problem for these women, dying is a frightening and, in this case, painful process, and Luzurial doesn't want to force it on anyone she doesn't absolutely have to.

Finally, there's this moment, a moment that could be read as arrogance, but in light of her other actions instead becomes deeply sympathetic:

Eparlegna had overpowered her as if she were the humblest angel of the host, and now she was sure to suffer hellish tortures for her failure.  She felt human tears welling up within her, but fought them down. The Archangel Luzurial did not show weakness before the fallen! Her defiance would give hope to those captured humans who watched from the pens. She could take whatever cruelty the demon had to give, and come back to claim his head in the name of the Creator! He would be cast down to the greatest darkness of all!

The mention of "human tears" is particularly effective, as it reminds us that in spite of all that's been said about Luzurial as some sort of "other" being, she's still very much a person, and her feelings are extremely relatable and sympathetic.  How many of us haven't, at some point, done something that made us look and feel really stupid?  Her bit about her defiance and the caged humans is what I was referring to earlier.  It could be read as an arrogant presumption of how inspiring she looks, but to me it always seemed more like Luzurial making the best of a bad situation.  She can't escape now that her hands are bound, but perhaps she can offer hope in her endurance of torture, and wait for an opportunity to improve the situation.

Eparlegna is also established very well.  He's a fairly basic villain, a sadist with world domination in mind, but that works well in terms of horror.  Complex villains are great, but the simple ones can be just as effective, especially in shorter stories.  Having read more of your stories, I can say that he comes across very differently from other villains of yours that I've seen.  There's nothing sympathetic about him like Sarsa, nor is he a comic loser like Drew.  This line:

You can feel my seed on your skin, would you not rather have it in your womb?

Would be hilarious if it came from Drew ("Yeah, sure, the stuff just gave you first degree burns on your tits, but you KNOW you want it inside you, babe!").  Coming from Eparlegna, it's not funny in the least, especially as we just saw him scorch a woman's internal organs just like that.  Even an actual joke...

We both came alone! Perhaps later… we will come together?

...comes across not as a facepalm, but instead as a genuinely menacing threat.

Following on from this, the chapter, the entire story, really, has a very well-accomplished sense of slowly building dread.  It never lets up and winds tighter and tighter as things progress.  When Luzurial steps into the binding circle, it winds tighter.  When the tentacles grab her wrists and she can no longer escape, it winds tighter.  I suppose for the target audience, this was more a sense of sexual anticipation, but for me this was fear.  The tags attached to the story told me that awful things would happen to Luzurial, so when I realized, by the end of the chapter, that I thoroughly sympathized with her and was absolutely rooting for her, my feelings were...decidedly mixed.

The one thing I'll say in criticism of this chapter is that the size of the holy circle seems a bit inconsistent.  Luzurial's first attempt at freeing herself involves trying to just break the barrier by stretching her wings, which implies that the dome is much smaller than her wingspan.  When her wrists are bound, though, she tries to break free by taking off...which means she has enough space to beat her wings.  This isn't necessarily a mistake, since the dome may be wide enough for her to spread her wings enough to flap them (i.e. the dome is ten feet wide and she has a fifteen foot wingspan), but perhaps that first time she was stretching them up to push against the ROOF of the thing, which given the shape of a dome would be much closer.

I've had a few reviews from people not in the target audience for a story before. Like (almost?) every review on Nymphadora Necrophilia. I guess it was my only angel story, she didn't die, what's not to like?

Reading your review of Luzurial's introduction makes her seem way cooler than she does in the story. It makes the writing sound great too! I read a review like this, it makes me want to read the story!

The narration is definitely a little... misleading in places. Sloppy. Especially when it gets into the stuff that's Eparlegna's opinion but just gets narrated. Look, you try giving him orders to say and do things... That comparison to the cop/soldier type going against orders because it's the right thing to do - I guess we've all seen that storyline before but it has never previously occurred to me how much Luzurial embodies the trope. Wows.

I just don't seem to manage to come up with good sounding phrases like that so much anymore. There was that brief bit about Kizzy at the end of You! which I guess as atmospherically the same.

Some of the mistakes she makes, well, they're enforced by genre aren't they?  But stopping to give life the representations of virtue, to fight the monsters, that was something that I guess felt right at the time. She is compassion!

I suspect that if I was trying to write something like this today, Eparlegna would probably sound a lot more like Drew. Only less of a nerd.

The end of the chapter has things looking pretty bleak so for anybody on Luzurial's side the hope that things will get better would be a strong one. But, this is a 2007 JayDee fic and we all know what that means! That said, part 2 is probably considerably less bleak than it could be.

Mal said in another thread "Your story, Whore of Heaven is one of my favorite erotic works and that it was part of the inspiration for me to peruse my own erotic writings. (FYI, I have a penchant for seeing the beautiful and the pure corrupted and or humiliated…)" so I guess that's as good a description as any of what the target audience got out of it overall (yup, another AFF user is better at writing than me!)

Good points around the size of the circle. I'll claim that it was being in some way manipulated off page by Eparlegna. No? Ok, well I'll go for the dome idea then. That's pretty cool image anyway. It's funny, when I got the first email from you a decade ago it seems I leaped to the conclusion that you were a theologian, kind of a modern Peter Abelard (uh... pre-castration). I was on to a wrong'n there!

 

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InBrightestDay

Part 2

Concerning porn fics, there is always a question one must ask: can I fap to this?

This chapter is the closest I ever got to saying "yes" with this story.  The sense of slowly building dread is still there, and it keeps escalating, but it should be noted that Luzurial isn't in a lot of pain here (the anal fisting sounds painful, but it's nothing compared to what's coming), and under pretty much any other circumstances the lesbian three-way would be pretty hot.  It is still pretty hot seeing Luzurial experience her first orgasm, complete with squirting, but ultimately the effect is less enjoyable than it could be because of the emphasis on her shame and humiliation.

Again, I realize that for the target audience that probably made it even hotter; this is just my reaction.

This part also contains the only time during this story that actually made me laugh.

Cop humor

That's funny because it has two possible interpretations.  The first is that the dispassionate, third person narrator just facepalmed at that joke.  The second is that that was Luzurial's PoV, and she was like "something terrible is about to happen to me, but I can still take time to appreciate how shitty that pun is."

I know that this wasn't written as a tragedy, but it has a moment that just about every tragedy does: the spark of hope that's introduced and then extinguished.  In this case, that comes in the form of Bernice, the only person with the moral courage not to let someone be tortured in front of her.  I might perhaps criticize that we don't get to see Luzurial's reaction to her death, perhaps a small moment of gratitude for the one mortal brave enough to stand up for her.

There is something sort of interesting about the contrast between the two cops' personal histories and how they act with Luzurial.  Molly is an actual murderer, while Shondra's never crossed that particular line, yet Shondra's the one causing real pain to Luzurial, while what Molly is doing doesn't hurt at all (unwanted cunnilingus is still sexual assault, but at least it's not physically painful)

There's actually a joke I'm surprised you didn't go for.  Considering that they call Luzurial an illegal immigrant and Shondra tortures her by jamming a fist into her, I'm honestly surprised there wasn't a cavity search joke.

I can't really say I would have laughed, but I'm kind of surprised it isn't there.

Also...

She raised her head, and he gazed into the suddenly glowing maelstrom of her eyes. The framing tangle of her golden hair reflected the glow, while the purple-red clouds high overhead cast everything else in their own sickly swirling colours.

Oh, shit is about to get real.

The glow faded from Luzurial's eyes

Or not.  I'll have to remember that, though...

she pulled together the shreds of her dignity and courage, and spat down into Molly's face.

It might not have worked, but I still smiled when she did that, because yes, that was the right way to react to being assaulted and tortured: spit in that bitch's face.

As before, Luzurial remains an admirable character.  She's just been raped, mocked and feels unjustified shame for her own body's reaction (in spite of her age, her naivete where sex is concerned also engenders sympathy), and yet her focus is exactly where it should be: she refuses Eparlegna's offer again, never willing to put humanity at more risk, and focuses on remaining strong for the caged women.  The moment is intensely bittersweet, because this is all really just a setup for really hurting her in the next chapter, but it doesn't change the fact that what she's doing is the right thing.

You know, if you don’t mind a bit of lesbian sex which isn’t consensual you might actually like my story Shokan Lust. Just stop reading before the final chapter where a dude gets flayed. But I’m told up until then it is quite fappable. (One reviewer – “ The sex is appealing, arousing, and sensual.” so eh).

Absolutely though, I think including the sense that this powerful beautiful Archangel is helpless and humiliated was a big part of the appeal for readers who liked this section and the story as a whole. It plays right into the power play elements of the rape fantasy too. I think going back to Luzurial’s character that it wouldn’t be possible for this kind of thing to happen to her and for her not to feel humiliated at that stafe. I totally get that it this theme for everyone though. Or even for most people.

I have no idea if I intended for that Cop Humor to be from Luzurial’s POV, but with the next sentence detailing her looking back with defiance it actually does work well. Equally, though, it could be an actual bit of “What the fuck did I just write?” self-insert, but if so it’s definitely bad it came after terrible punning and not, say, the birthing scene.

 Yeah, absolutely great point about Bernice; Luzurial should have taken the time to remember that one mortal who’d died for her. It would even have fit in the theme of the story because with the way she was feeling it could have served as another jab; another person dead that she might blame herself for. Bad miss on my part.

I think the reason for why Molly is doing the more sexual stuff is that she looks at Luzurial and finds her hot as fuck while Shondra is less impressed. It’s been a long time, but I suspect that’s what I thought. Molly’s taking advantage of the power she has to possess Luzurial in the way she couldn’t normally. Plus, the effect of taking power from Eparlegna for Shondra has maybe left her feeling much more sadistic than usual, while for Molly she gets the same power but she’s already a killer so for her “it was Monday.”

...crap, really should have had a cavity search joke. “We’re looking for smuggled manna!” There ya go. Or just an anal fisting joke, “Open wide and say Ave Maria!”

I still don’t really remember what the deal with the eyes glowing was. Loss of sexual control and that maybe. I’m sure you’ll make it properly mean something awesome in The Woman in the Statue!

I like that face spit too. Glad it turned out cool! Molly would not be finding a warm welcome in heaven at that point, that’s for sure. And then, well, part 3. Where things get a little disturbed...

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InBrightestDay

Part 3

For the target audience, this is where this story pays off, finally delivering on everything it's promised through the previous chapters.  For me, though...

I've made a number of joking and semi-joking references to this story (having unpleasant flashbacks, sending Luzurial hugs, etc.).  I'm generally afraid to talk about how emotional I got over a story on the internet; I worry I'll become an instant target for mockery, for being a wuss and so on.  I generally put up at least a token shield of humor.

But I'm going to go for total honesty here.  No more comic exaggerations or other defenses.

This chapter hurts.  Luzurial reaches Woobie status when the chains are driven through her palms and that just intensifies through the rest of the chapter.  There's a technique you use here (it's been used all through the story, but it's really impactful here), where you describe how tough and strong and, frankly, badass Luzurial is while she's in agony, like how you mention, as the skin is being flayed from her back with a fiery bullwhip, that the sheer pain of each strike would have killed a human outright, and that she endures ten of them before she starts to scream.  There are also little descriptions of cool abilities she has that, by rights, ought to free her, like focusing all her inner light onto the chains, heating them up so much that they glow white and the burning metal sears her flesh.

I'm not sure what effect these moments had on the target audience, but for me the emotional torque was pretty brutal.

Her brown eyes were dark. Eparlegna sensed the remains of her power within her, guttering like a candle. Her scalded body was vibrantly red, unable to heal itself from the full extent of the torment.

I don't really have any analysis of this line or anything.  It just makes me sad.

It also occurred to me while rereading this that there was layer of cruelty in the orgasm denial torture that I hadn't noticed before.  The part that contains the "guttering like a candle" line shows that Eparlegna doesn't need Luzurial's cooperation to impregnate her, so why does he go to all the effort of making her beg?  As far as I can tell, it's just so that she'll feel ashamed of herself afterward; so that she will suffer just that little bit more.

"You are my whore. I am your master. Say it."

"I... am your whore. You are my Master."

The words trembled with emotion, a terrible mixture of lust and total, soul consuming, despair

"Your name is whore. You will never have another. You have never had another. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Master."

"What do you want whore?"

"Fuck me, Master! Give me release!"

Eparlegna gave his Archangel slut her desire. Her tore her hymen with consent and filled the Archangel's virgin channel with his demon spike. She wrapped her arms and legs around him as he brutally fucked her.

For the target audience, that's probably the hottest moment in the entire story, but for me it's absolutely heartbreaking, partly because it represents the complete disintegration of Luzurial's self esteem, but in no small part because that's just such a human reaction, simply wanting to not hurt anymore, just for a little bit.  My heart went out to Luzurial so many times during this chapter (any time she's crying from how much pain she's experiencing, really), but that's definitely one of the more wrenching moments.

In addition, I should mention that the first time I read this story, I didn't cry.  I was surprised, because I'm kind of sensitive like that, and I came close a few times, but when I reread it, I did tear up, because when I read this line...

"Please... creator... have mercy... if not on me, on humanity. Do not let this creature be spawned of my body and his."

...I realized what the wording implied.  If you reverse the order of those words (if it's "if not on humanity, on me"), then it sounds selfish, but with the order they're in now, it hammers in that even as she's experiencing pain so intense that she genuinely thinks it will kill her, when she has every right to beg for relief, she phrases that prayer so that her relief is a secondary concern.  Even now, Luzurial's primary focus is the safety of the mortals she came here to protect.  Even after being tortured, raped and made to call herself a whore, she hasn't really lost who she is or why she's here, because she is a good person.

Finally, there's the ending.  For those of you reading this in the future, just realize that the story originally ended with "Every second hurt like eternity."  I said in my review of The Slumber Party of Evil Doom that I can't agree that Luzurial deserves what happens to her, and I'm going to have to reiterate it here.  The line about the stars growing cold implies the heat death of the universe, and since star formation should be able to continue for about 100 trillion years, that's the minimum time she has to spend locked away, every single moment agony beyond human comprehension.  This is the kind of thing the damned go through, but they have to earn it.  The serial killers, the child predators, the genocidal monsters, they all earn it.

Luzurial may be on Earth, but she has been condemned to effectively eternal torture worthy of Hell...because she came here to help us.  Pride is a sin, but given what we've seen in the rest of the story, there's no way she earned this.

Now, I want to clarify that in spite of how this may look, this is not a negative review.  I can't say what this story did for its target audience, but it made me want someone to break open the statue, hug her and tell her everything was going to be okay.  I can count on one hand the number of fictional characters I've felt as bad for as I do for Luzurial, and that takes talent, a talent for establishing the character and for communicating her sadness, her humiliation and her pain.

So while I can't say this story is fun to read, and I'm not rushing to put it in my Recommended Reading section the way I did with You!, I do believe that your gifts as a writer are on display here.

I think a lot of the audience were fapping in part 2 but for Part 3 the target got a lot narrower. It’s the kind of thing folks would say gets a bit too hardcore in places, especially as those wounds started piling up. There’s a much bigger audience for rape and humiliation than for the kind of no-human-could-survive-this guro that tends to get a showing in part 3.

I guess Luzurial does still come across as really tough here, and at the same time Eparlegna comes across as a total bastard. He’s got an actual Archangel at his mercy for the first time ever. Probably the first time there’s something living that can withstand all the cruelty he can give out, and that’s before you get into whatever he’s still bearing grudge for when some other angel threw him from heaven during the fall. Unlike, say, Shannon who probably just managed to turn back to Luzurial before she was thrown from the light of the creator and managed “Hey, no hard feelings! Call me sometime! Don’t be a stranger!” So yeah, Eparlegna really layering on the cruelty. She’s badly weakened, he doesn’t need to hurt her more, but, fuck it, when’s he going to get another chance?  

Hmm... yeah, those abilities probably could have freed her in just about any other genre. The really talented writers of this stuff – your Deathstalker types – will actually come up with proper ways to explain that sort of thing. In truth I was never that great.

The sadness. I’m sorry about this. It’s one of those things... with writing stories like this I always wanted to really ensure they were only read by people who would enjoy the extreme content. I stuck on the story codes and the disclaimer/warnings and hoped for best. I didn’t really want to make folks sad (I’m considerably less bothered about angry.) On the other hand if it hadn’t got as bleak as it does I suspect we wouldn’t be getting to see The Woman in the Statue, and it perhaps wouldn’t have stuck in your mind for so long.

Your name is whore. And there’s an explanation for anybody wondering about her first words in The Woman in the Statue. Really just playing to the title there which I took from a song (with credit). That’s another thing I’d be a lot less likely to do today, just use a song title for a story. Even citing the song it just feels pretty cheap. And it makes it way harder to search for references to the story elsewhere of course.

I mean I thought the hottest moment in the story was when she has that first orgasm denied and then Molly gives it to her, and sure, she’s squirting an inhuman amount and Molly comes too and then Shondra’s just like ‘Are you seeing this shit?’ But, yeah, that huge penetration with her wrapping around him desperate to come again to have a break from her pain, well, a lot of the readers may have found it pretty hot if they’re into this stuff. Given the overwhelming silence of 3 reviews in 10K hits though it seems just as likely a lot more scanned through and thought it was shit and never spoke of it again.

That’s Eparlegna’s completely bogus definition of consent there. Sloppy writing on my part.

See, there’s a lot more places in The Woman in the Statue where I teared the fuck up so maybe I’m the real wuss!

You’re right there - She never really forgot why she came to Earth or who or what she was. She was there to help and she begged for them to be spared... I suppose there is a bit of tragedy in that if she or another angel had never gone down Eparlegna would still have been defeated, but perhaps more quickly without his stronger Angel-born form.

The implication of waiting until the heat-death of the universe was absolutely intended. It was going to take the triumph of entropy to break her shell. Looking back at it I can’t argue she didn’t deserve it. Overall it may well be the worst thing I’ve ever written happening to a character, with the only defence being that this level of cruelty is absolutely in line for Eparlegna, though rarely would he be able to actually do it someone – a human would simply have died before much time had passed, even one powered up probably wouldn’t last that long.

I didn’t take it as a negative review. I took it as a fair review that doesn’t sugar coat the nastiness, or the missed opportunities. Again I’m kind of glad I did manage to make you feel so bad for her, because as a result we get your masterpiece sequel. I’d pretty much forgotten the Rec Reading section (I need to go stick some of BronxWench’s stories there now they’re back up!) but I put a link to The Woman in the Statue in mine today. Thanks for the promo for You!

I thank you again for the praise, the compliments, the constructive criticism and the analysis. I think with me mostly dried up for writing AFF will instead have a far brighter and powerful creative light shining here with yourself. Best of luck in the future!

Let’s finish on a song –

 

 

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10 hours ago, JayDee said:

I think a lot of writers here would be crossing their fingers you get around to reading and reviewing their stories!

I’ll try, but I’m not going to be able to pull off detailed analysis of everything I read (heck, I wasn’t able to do that with a lot of your stuff).  But given how much of an impact this story had on me, I kind of wanted to try to explain why it makes me feel the things it makes me feel.  Furthermore, you’ve said that you wrote Luzurial as a one-dimensional character, and I keep feeling like I wouldn’t have bonded so tightly to a one-dimensional character, so the first chapter review is in large part a sort of essay on why Luzurial endeared herself to me as much as she did.  TL;DR, you drew, at the worst, a two-dimensional sketch that implies a three dimensional character.

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

I just don't seem to manage to come up with good sounding phrases like that so much anymore. There was that brief bit about Kizzy at the end of You! which I guess as atmospherically the same.

In my experience, it’s not really something you can force.  I had certain descriptions pop into my head that sounded kind of neat (the “coruscating wall of red fire” from the Room 502 fight, the clouds “painting the city purple-red with unholy luminescence” in Part Eight, and the phrase “sheathed in a nimbus of incandescent plasma” from Part Nine, which I haven’t even gotten to yet) and I try to write them down, or at least remember them long enough to do so.

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

I suspect that if I was trying to write something like this today, Eparlegna would probably sound a lot more like Drew. Only less of a nerd.

I forgot to mention this in the reviews, but in Part Two when he did the “Alas poor Yolanda” bit, I actually rolled my eyes.  Eparlegna’s more threatening than Dreneparssa will ever be, but they’re definitely related.

The size of the circle was really only something I ended up focusing on because I was trying really hard to look for clues on Luzurial’s wingspan.  There was the realistically huge Argentavis magnificens/Pelagornis sandersi wingspan of 5.09 to 7.4 meters (17-24 feet), but the wings aren’t supposed to be realistically huge, which is why I was trying to figure out the holy circle for a minimum size.  Minimum diameter on the circle is probably something like 2 meters (6.56 feet), since the dome has to have some room above her head, and it would explain how the confinement was so tight she couldn’t dodge the chains in Part Three...but then her wings end up looking absurdly small rather than absurdly huge.

I ended up going with a figure where each wing is 1.25 times her height, giving her a wingspan of 4.57 meters (15 feet), which led me to think that perhaps the dome was somewhere in the vicinity of 3 meters (about 10 feet) in diameter.

And no, I’m not at that point in the story yet.  I just wanted to figure this out ahead of time.

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11 hours ago, JayDee said:

You know, if you don’t mind a bit of lesbian sex which isn’t consensual you might actually like my story Shokan Lust. Just stop reading before the final chapter where a dude gets flayed. But I’m told up until then it is quite fappable. (One reviewer – “ The sex is appealing, arousing, and sensual.” so eh).

I’ve got another story or two of yours I want to review, but after that I may check it out.

In regards to the “birthing” scene, I wrote this moment in The Woman in the Statue

Quote

[Kevin] told himself that she was okay; that she would heal.  He repeated it to himself like a mantra.

No joke, that’s literally based on my thoughts as I read the birthing scene all those years ago: “She’s okay, she can heal, she’s okay, she can heal, she’s okay she can heal she’s okay she can heal she’sokayshecanheal!” :cry:

I mention that because…

11 hours ago, JayDee said:

Equally, though, it could be an actual bit of “What the fuck did I just write?” self-insert, but if so it’s definitely bad it came after terrible punning and not, say, the birthing scene.

If you had made a joke after the birthing scene, I would have reached through the computer and slapped you.  Don’t tell me it’s physically impossible; I’d have found a way.

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

Hmm... yeah, those abilities probably could have freed her in just about any other genre. The really talented writers of this stuff – your Deathstalker types – will actually come up with proper ways to explain that sort of thing. In truth I was never that great.

You keep saying that, but consider this.  First, you explained why her abilities didn’t work; the chains are enchanted, so they can be heated up to 6,000 kelvins without vaporizing (6,000 K – glowing white – is almost twice the boiling point of iron), and even as they start to do so, they can be renewed.  It feels unfair and sad for me, but damnit, the target audience came here to see this woman be raped; she can’t be allowed to escape in a badass manner!

Second, no offense to Deathstalker, but he is not above doing something like this.  The fic of his I read where I first discovered what “snuff” meant had Jill Valentine getting shot in the head while involved in a gangbang with three Umbrella mercenaries.  “Why was she involved in a gangbang with three UBCS members?” one might ask.  Well, upon discovering that the cable car needs parts, instead of saying (paraphrased) “Well, I guess we need to go scavenging for parts now,” like she does during this exact scene in Resident Evil 3, Jill says (paraphrased) “Well, I guess we’re all going to die soon.  You guys want to fuck?”

OoC strikes when you most expect it.

So yeah, this is just part of the genre.

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

The sadness. I’m sorry about this. It’s one of those things... with writing stories like this I always wanted to really ensure they were only read by people who would enjoy the extreme content. I stuck on the story codes and the disclaimer/warnings and hoped for best. I didn’t really want to make folks sad (I’m considerably less bothered about angry.)

Hey, it’s not your fault.  Tags can be vague (MCD might mean Snuff, or it might just be that the main villain dies), and there are some things the author can’t tell you without explicitly spoiling the ending, which is generally bad form.

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

On the other hand if it hadn’t got as bleak as it does I suspect we wouldn’t be getting to see The Woman in the Statue, and it perhaps wouldn’t have stuck in your mind for so long.

That’s probably true.  If we got to see the day when she was finally freed, or when that coating finally disintegrated (more on that later), I still would have felt very bad for Luzurial, but with some reassurance that she would be okay, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to write my little therapy project.

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

See, there’s a lot more places in The Woman in the Statue where I teared the fuck up so maybe I’m the real wuss!

:huh: I know I made you cry once (the car scene), but that was the only one I was aware of.  You’re going to have to call these moments out in the reviews.

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

You’re right there - She never really forgot why she came to Earth or who or what she was. She was there to help and she begged for them to be spared... I suppose there is a bit of tragedy in that if she or another angel had never gone down Eparlegna would still have been defeated, but perhaps more quickly without his stronger Angel-born form.

That aspect of the tragedy was not lost on me; it adds quite a bit to how much I feel for her.  Similar to how we’ve all done something that made us look and feel really stupid, I think we’ve all tried to fix a problem at some point and accidentally worsened it.  I even had Luzurial mention that in Part Six, when Kevin tries to apologize for...interfering.

Quote

“You endeavored to help, but made the situation worse,” she said.  Her eyes watered again.  “I know that feeling all too well.”

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

The implication of waiting until the heat-death of the universe was absolutely intended. It was going to take the triumph of entropy to break her shell.

Oooooooh that might have just made it so much worse  You see, I figured she was suffering horribly in there until star formation stopped and they all burned out, and then Judgment Day happened and some of her friends let her out, but if entropy does it, if the coating just disintegrates naturally...that would require the nucleons to break down, which assuming minimum proton half-life would take 2 trillion trillion trillion  years (2 x 1036).  I can only assume that after none of her friends let her out and that happened, she would probably spend at least the next half a billion years curled into a fetal position crying.

I need to go write in Kevin giving her another hug now…

10 hours ago, JayDee said:

Let’s finish on a song –

You know, that actually sounds kind of cool.

Edited by InBrightestDay
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