HunterOpera

Mostly. Had a little bit of surgery and am recovering from the last of it, so that’s fun. I think Taming of the Screw and Unarmored Knights are next, but I’m thinking of setting up a Patreon for them (one of the reasons they weren’t posted here; I’m not sure of the rules when it comes to Patreon and I don’t want to step on any toes). I’d still be releasing everything, but maybe putting it on a delay – I need to be able to justify doing this in the face of everything else I’m doing. What do you think? I think so, yes. PnP kind of jumped the gun on me, but I still know where it ends and there’s a thing I want to do with it that ties into the aforementioned Irkalla project. Is the brainstorming for FMC over in your thread or do you have a discord set up? I should catch up.

Oh, Madame Masque is a lying liar who lies. She has no intention of letting Kate go – the entire point is to keep dangling hope in front of her, making her think that there’s a point where she’ll be let go if she’s just good enough, but Masque is never going to let her go and has a life model decoy set loose to take over Kate’s life. There’s no way out for Kate and no reclaiming her independence. I think I might have been a little too subtle about that.

Thank you. It’s currently on the back burner – I have an end game in mind for it, and I agree that capturing someone and letting their potential slide is mostly wasteful (read Lara Swift is Colonialized or Tomb Raider: Natla’s Revenge where breaking Lara and wasting her potential is part of the fun). I’ve got a couple of other projects going right now, so we’ll see what the future holds.

Regarding Reins of the Tomb Raider, SailorNemesis said:  Parts of this were sexy and had merit but the ending was just silly. You also promised at the start Lara would not `get out of this' and while she ended up in a sort of slavery it was pretty far from her pony days so that's a let-down. It seems to me the only purpose of bringing in Sam/Himiko was to rescue Lara and that really betrays the whole broken/owned concept. Lame ending Yeah, I agree. About the time of the race, I got it in my head to do something larger and make a more expansive story. It was supposed to connect to a couple other realities / stories and spawn an eventual endpoint, Shadow over the Tomb Raider, that ultimately would have seen Lara recaught and captured after being betrayed by Himiko / Sam. Before that, the original ending had Lara escaping in London but the psychological damage she’d suffered made her escape short-lived, and she was quickly found and handed back to Drasha, the rest of her life being spent in the care of James as his beast of burden and eventual house pet. James would have eventually married Himiko / Sam for political reasons, a thing that would have given Lara hope, then terror, and then, finally acceptance at the feet of a corrupt aristocrat and a pseudo-goddess. The story got away from me, then real-life got in the way of the projected sequel, then the project mutated, and now I’m working on something equally absurd. I ended up writing a few fics based on Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sinfest, another Metroid thing, a few chapters of an American McGee’s Alice story, an X-Men thing centered on Kate Pryde and the Vivendi that went kinda dark, a Ghost Spider fic that went Masque’d Hawk levels of dark, and a post-Hogwarts Hermione Granger story with a subtle bad end, but then that all got co-opted into a bizarre thing that I’m about two-thirds done (see cover below, artwork by meeps123 and used with permission). I’ve been using Hentai Foundry and DeviantArt as a point of contact because I don’t want to violate the ToS here, but I should have some things ready in time for Christmas (and, thankfully, I now have a couple editors making sure I don’t overshoot myself). Also, just because: huge fan of your work.

Regarding Pride and Politics, TheDragon1989 said:  Well, we've definitely got some more information on Alista's plans here, and it is a better plan than I thought. Subtle, and easy enough to back out of up to a point if it doesn't look like it's going to work (up to a point). For what it's worth, I can't really see it working on Samus, especially now that Alista's given her quite a bit of information on how the tools work. Of course, that could easily be intentional on your part, and I entirely believe that Alista believes her plan will work, which is probably more important. And perhaps that's enough to overcome my issues with her motivation. Certainly, the risk-reward ratio is looking considerably more favourable for her now. It's still not quite there for me, but I think that is more me than anything else. Random little thing: I'm a little confused as to why Samus would be so surprised by the use of slavery, or even much of the methods. I assume this would have to be largely public knowledge, simply by the scale of the operation. It's the sort of thing I would imagine that a competent bounty hunter would know, either through research or simply her ship's computer bringing up information when she entered the system. Minor thing, though. In short: well-delivered exposition that's interesting from a character and smutty perspective, while pushing the plot forward that little bit. I'm just a nitpicker. Nah, the thing about slavery is a good point and I should have made it clearer in the text. It’s one of the reasons I write this stuff is to see where the holes in my writing are. There’s a couple of Metroid comics out there – the Captain N ones which are silly but is where I took Brannigan and Dare from, the Origins comic that is her childhood and early days working with the Galactic Federation, and Samus and Joey, which is just kind of fun. All three of them have text that state that there are parts of the Galactic Federation that have slavery in them, but that it is frowned upon and generally looked upon as a bad thing in civilized society. Samus knows little about it because she doesn’t spend much time in pro-slavery systems (why would she? she’d find the practice horrible) and never thought it would apply to her (and we’ve seen how that’s worked out). She knows about the process only in the most general of terms; the specifics were never something she bothered to look into, the same way people don’t look into things they find disgusting or don’t think have any relevance to them. So, yeah, it’s not that Samus is surprised so much as she’s horrified, disturbed, and trying to convey that to Alista – that parts of her Empire, even before Olsar hijacked it – were very, very wrong. Alista is wrestling with the concept because people tend to normalize whatever circumstances they grow up in. I’m not sure how or if I should explore that going forward, except… wait, got it. Thank you. This is going to be fun to play with.

Thanks, man. My problem with enslaving everyone is that, even battered as she is, Samus wouldn’t want to enslave anyone – she’s a hero. Wholesale slaughter, sure, but slavery is not her thing. The ending I have in mind, though, leads to another story entirely – I’m working towards something here that might be cool and we’ll see if I can pull it off. This means much more slavery to come, and Alista, well, she’ll get hers.

I aim for character motivations that make sense, so we’ll be getting a little bit more into Alista and where she’s coming from as this arc goes on. She’s not thinking rationally – she’s being led by her trauma and justifying some pretty terrible things to herself and taking advantage of things that no one else realizes she knows or is capable of because Braca is an idiot. This should become much clearer as time goes on, so hopefully I can keep her voice strong and motivations clear in the text. Interesting – I would read that story, though I don’t think Samus would tolerate any kind of actual torture. Good people don’t, and Samus is a good person. And just by logistics it would be a hard battle that Samus would not have a good chance of winning. Even without the collar, Samus would have a hard time fighting off the Tavleks without any gear, and even if she stole some she’d still eventually be overpowered by circumstances. The entirety Kanvian resources would be turned on her and, without any idea of the scope of those resources and with none of her own she would eventually be taken down, Alista’s tampering would be discovered, and that would be the Bad End. As for the ending… it won’t be coming out of left field, but it is going to lead directly into a sequel story and the seeds for it were set early. I’m aiming for one of those things where people are surprised but it’s obvious in hindsight, and other than that I will say nothing except that I have a plan and everything to going according to it. Getting into the psychology of Samus herself, I think she’s a big believer in retribution; I see her motivations being similar to that of Batman in that the core of her is more protection than vengeance and making sure that no one else suffers what she did. I think she builds more than she tears down, but that she is very good at tearing things down and has no real scale for escalation. When she decides she’s going to war she follows the total war concept and burns down worlds, and it’s one of the things that makes her a terrifying adversary. Anyways, off to edit Utena and work on the third thing. Back soon.

Regarding For Love, Perhaps, SailorNemesis said: The sex was well written. I am a big Utena fan. Unlike Samus who I enjoy seeing broken I prefer Utena to triumph and I hope she is able to redeem Anthy. But I will enjoy the ride for now. Oh, hey, man, long time. How you doin’? I’m a huge Utena fan and have been for a while. This is a project I’ve wanted to hit for a long time and I’ve been working the angles and trying to figure out the best way to tell this story. Given how much I like working with continuity and lore, it’s a pretty safe bet that Utena is going to come out on top and Anthy will be redeemed, but we’ve got a ways to go before we get there because, well, me. That’s kind of my narrative. I’m a little irritated at myself because I neglected the shadow girls, but we’ll see about working them in maybe every other chapter. Anyways, yeah. Second chapter in that tale is done and undergoing editing right now, should be up tomorrow.

Regarding Pride and Politics, TheDragon1989 said:  Well, that certainly answers a few questions I had. Probably a more believable direction than I would have taken the story in, too. I still don't quite buy Alista's motivation, though. Not for getting revenge on her brother and his underlings - that makes perfect sense. Rather, for trying to take control of Samus. Especially for her, having just seen what Samus can do even unarmed and outnumbered. It just seems too risky in the context. The same, of course, could be said for Olsar capturing Samus in the first place, but he at least had personal motivation to justify the risk. Alista doesn't seem to have any personal issue with Samus, so it just seems a lot of risk for little reward. Perhaps the motivation will make more sense when Alista's plan comes into full effect. And I'm sure it will be entertaining, anyway. Regardless, this was still a good chapter that advances the plot nicely, while giving another example of Samus' treatment in captivity. It all paints a picture. Also, Braca's a complete idiot if he can't figure out roughly what's going on, though that's probably the idea. Either that, or he's feigning ignorance to save his own hide. Keep up the good work. I can't wait to see where this goes. We aim for realism in the totally made up fictitious worlds in which we write. I thought I was being flippant when I wrote that and then the coffee kicked in; I think one of the most important things any story can have is internal consistency. The world presented needs to be a closed system that makes sense in and of itself, I think, otherwise there’s nothing for the person taking in the story in grasp onto. There needs to be a sense of order and pattern that our minds recognize, and when something doesn’t fit within that framework there’s a visceral reaction of rejection (hence the fanbase revolting at Other M or the end of Mass Effect 3). So, yes. Thank you, coffee. We’ll be getting into the mire of Alista’s motivation in the arc to come – this next section of story definitely belongs to her. I think I mentioned here or elsewhere that we had the prologue, the breaking arc, the broken arc, and now the Alista arc. She’s got some serious damage based around what happened to her and her untreated trauma is going to run its course. She’s not Samus Aran or a hero, and even before what happened to her happened she was passively okay more than actively good. I’m kind of looking forward to delving into her psyche a bit, particularly as a compare and contrast with Samus, and I think I’ve got a good idea of where this is going and we’ll return to that on Monday. And, of course, we strive to be entertaining, so I’m glad you continue to dig this tale. Braca is… we’ll get to Braca. He’s a special little snowflake. I’m curious as to where you would have taken the story – where did you think it was going? Where do you think it’s going to go? And thank you for reading and responding.

Regarding Pride and Politics, TheDragon1989 said:  Another great chapter. Probably the best 'standard' smut in the story so far, with the right amount of detail to make it brisk but evocative. Of course, the aftermath was immensely satisfying as well. With that said, I hope we get more information on why the plan was timed in the way it was, because it seems to me that there would have been more straightforward ways from Alista's perspective. Minor issue, of course, and one that you may well explain in the next chapter anyway. Regardless, I imagine things aren't going to be entirely straightforward for Samus going forward. Thank you. I really wanted a sense of rage in that whole “say my name” thing, and I hope that turned out well. It’s a cathartic moment for Samus that I hope the reader shares, and its also a turning point in the story – looking back, I’d say there was a prologue, the breaking arc, the villain’s enjoyment arc, and now the Alista arc. The chapter that was just posted should give some insight into what Alista is thinking and the next one will go into more detail. Her plan and thoughts will unfold along with her arc – why give anything away if I don’t have to? – before bringing it back around to what I hope is a surprising conclusion. And you guessed right. This story isn’t done yet, though we are approaching the finale.

I think that’s kind of the point of Westworld – the quest for fidelity parallelling the growth of a new kind of intelligence. I cannot wait for season three.

I love Westworld way too much.

Thanks, man. I thought it would be cute to let Samus explore her avian side a little, but this is going in a much different place than Reins. Samus is a very different character and this is a very different story. I’ll be curious to see what you think as this moves forward.

Regarding Pride and Politics, TheDragon1989 said:  Aww, I was hoping Samus would last a little longer than that, but let's see where it goes. Long-time reader, first-time commenter here, just dropping a line to say that this is my favourite story on the site, and I'm so glad to see you continuing it. The scenarios in this story are imaginative and evocative, but you've also been able to make the characters interesting to read about. There's not much erotica where anyone would care about the plot, but this is one of those rare stories. What I particularly like about this story, however, is the pacing. Each chapter and situation proceeds logically into the next, and each scene seems to find a way to degrade Samus further (this is in contrast to The Bergman Affair, which did feel a little like setpieces connected by a plot, rather than part of a single story). You've also been careful not to repeat yourself. Many less restrained writers would likely have had a fair few gang-bangs by now, but that would make things less interesting. It even makes sense in this story for the villains to be getting a bit overconfident, because of how thorough the breaking process has been, and by an almost compulsive need to humiliate Samus further. In the interests of honesty, I would like to offer a few minor criticisms. First, I think Samus would be far more resistant to the physical torture that Sallis dishes out early on. If there's one Samus should be able to handle, it's pain. I think you could have justified Samus giving in to Sallis' demands as simply being rationalisation - it doesn't mean anything at the time, and it's only later, hearing her own voice, that it really begins to break her. Second, I think your descriptions have been a bit sparse in the newer chapters. I would love to have seen more details for the stables. Are they medieval in nature, or more futuristic/alien? Little things like that could have made the situation even more vivid. These are minor problems. I still love this story, and can't wait to see how it all plays out. Ah, Samus isn’t done quite yet. This week’s updates should drive that home nicely… I’m going through the edit of the new chapter now and should have it up in the next hour or so. I’m glad you're digging this story; there was a lot of time figuring out the characters and their world and how this would all play out before pen was put to paper, so it’s nice to have confirmation that this is working the way I wanted it to. There’s an entire design treatment and images that were collected and ordered, and some things have changed as the story has progressed (Alista has become much more interesting, for example, than how I originally imagined her). I’ve always been a believer in plot and character making what matters matter, and in this case it’s the smut – if I can make you care about who’s doing what, I think it leaves a larger impression for what’s happening from one scene to the next. Pride was always meant to be a tighter story than Bergman, which is kind of a sprawling mess of a thing. It was also my first attempt at writing smut in more than a decade and I hadn’t really considered how to keep it under control; it spread and went everywhere, as opposed to what I think is a much smaller and more intimate story. The villains here are right villains, too – Olsar and Salis and Bekhesh and Braca are all terrible people who have stumbled into one another and their individual strengths cover their individual weaknesses while feeding their worst excesses. They’re not interested in gang bangs, by and large, more than they are interested in ownership. They’re driven by greed more than anything else, and this leads them to degrading and demeaning the people under their power. I think that’s coming out in the writing, but we’ll see how the next few chapters go. I think you’re dead on when it comes to Samus and pain – I doubt there’s anything Salis could do that would really hurt her in ways she’s not already familiar with, but pleasure is just as effective a means of torture. Add drugs and subliminal programming into the mix and you end up with one thoroughly frazzled Hunter. I like the idea of an empty capitulation coming back to bite one in the ass, however, and Alista might end up inflicting something very close to that and it’s a concept I will be exploring in a future story. One of my bigger problems, I think, is finding a good balance for detail and brevity. I tend to err towards the latter when I’ve come back to a story after a hiatus and towards the former when I’ve been enmeshed in a single story too long. I think I’m back in a good place now, but let me know as the next few chapters are published. If I go back and do a Reins style re-write, I’ll definitely add more description to what came before. And thanks for the review: this is very much the sort of thing I write these stories for.

Regarding Pride and Politics, MF said:  Solid updates from my long amissed degenerate brethren. This is definitely motivating me to rouse myself from post thanksgiving food-coma and put in some work. Good to see you back Hunter. It’s good to be back… IRL kept me busy but I’ve got some time now. Let’s see how much of this I can get done, and maybe start another couple of projects. How you doin’?

Regarding Fade Away, Fukushu-sha said: I'm surprised that this hasn't been more popular with how well written a story it is. The narrative and the build-up are the best things about it for me, I would say. You certainly know how to get the reader invested, and I feel that as I'm reading you've really put thought into the beginning- the journey- and end. Not that it's over yet, but it seems that way for me reading it. I may re-read it once it's over. Very good story. Thanks, man. I really dig the Dragon Age lore and relate to Hawke on a totemic level; there’s pretty much no other fictional character that I identify as much with, and I think DA2 was criminally underrated (and also rushed. Thanks, EA). I think this story was a risk for attention just by having it be Hawke-centric – the lukewarm reaction DA2 got, in general, kept Hawke from being as big a character as Bioware might have hoped, I think, and too many people avoid the character when it comes to fanart and the like. My story is niche for a niche, and I think that sort of limits the people that might give it a look, but I wanted to write it and thought it would be an interesting character study and here we are. The next chapter is the last one for this tale of Hawke’s adventures; I have another couple in mind. We’ll see if I actually have time to do them. One is a continuation of this story, and the other a tale of the romance between Hawke, Fenris, and Anders and is pretty much my headcanon on their journey. Just snippets from within the game mixed with some healthy kink. I’m not sure if you’ve read any of my other work, but I tend to do these stories more as character studies than as straight smut and work as much with the established lore as possible. I’ve been told a few times that the Bergman Affair, for example, has taught people more about Metroid than the actual games have, which is kind of flattering. Is there anything in particular about this story that sticks out for you, good or bad? What part of the journey has been your favorite, or was there anything you could do without or wish I’d elaborated more on? Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think about the ending.

But otherwise decent (if not good) people do torture people they have power over when under orders from respected authorities within their culture. There’s a societal disconnect that informs a base morality, even if that morality is abhorrent. Being able to question the society one is born into is important and risky and is pretty much the only way to keep a society from falling in on itself; people need to move towards a greater and measured inclusion, I think. The SS and NKVD were/are promoted by their societies for the cruelty, yes, and their society celebrates their cruelty, but they are still just people that are being allowed and encouraged to engage in cruel acts. There’s also the average Nazi soldier who just thought he was doing what was right for his country or family and let fascism take hold – I think the only real defense against that sort of evil if a constant and measured degree of self-analysis based on as much truth as possible, and a healthy degree of self-doubt and skepticism. And to be clear, I think Drasha is a terrible person, regardless of whether or not she’s enforcing the laws of her land. The Parmistan presented in Reins is not a good place; but I do think that laws and rules can help keep terrible people from doing terrible things, and keep decent people from doing terrible things. I think I wrote earlier in this thread - or possibly another – that only bad people rape. The villains in my stories are not people I agree with, and Drasha is one of the worst (albeit most creative). When I was re-reading Reins during the edit for the edition that’s on sale, it occurred to me that she and the other Parmistani people get away with their crimes. This is going to cause a sequel when I’ve had enough time to consider how that’s going to work; I’ve got something in mind but I need to give it time to develop. I don’t need to imagine being the victim of that sort of thing. Bergman had a variety of villains, most of whom were female – Melissa being the main antagonist. Melissa was repeating a cycle of abuse that had been inflicted upon her and made worse by her physical and intellectual maturity and mental and emotional immaturity. She was a victim who made other people victims. Madeline was a decent person who was doing terrible things out of racism on a secret facility run by human supremacists for the purpose of undermining the established galactic government. Contrast that with Chairman Keaton, who was a terrible person from a terrible species who kept his impulses in check and did good things and made many world better because he was able to overcome the conditioning of his youth. Contrast that again with Vogl, who wanted power for power’s sake and was willing to do whatever it took to gain more power, but without a clear reason as to why he wanted it. Hell, look at Samus and compare and contrast her with Brannigan. Brannigan acted out of glory and fell into depression when he lost his ability at glory. Samus, by contrast, I think works the same way that Batman does, where the core of her is a strong desire to never let happen to anyone else what happened to her. She wants to protect people. She is the Hunter because she hunts down those that do terrible things to good people, and she inspires people to be better than they are. She’s a hero in the truest sense of that word. In that sense, I think Bergman is probably the best of the stories I’ve written specifically because it does deal with the hero’s aftermath of trauma. Samus escapes and beats down her captors, then sees to it that they get the therapy and care they need to be rehabilitated. Torturing them isn’t going to make them better; Melissa and Damara have already suffered enough, and hurting them more is just going to break them further and make them worse people. Madeline and Sakamoto both need to be taught that aliens are bad and that humans aren’t the best, they’re just part of a larger tapestry that makes up a greater society. They all need to be shown that there’s a better way to be, or what’s the point? There’s enough terrible shit going on and cruelties that are encouraged and celebrated, but we are trying to have a society here; why not make it a better one? In the interest of #metoo, let us move away from fiction for a moment. The stories I write are make-believe, and I had an interest in kink long before what happened to me happened. I come by it honestly. The stories are an escape, a fantasy meant for people that are into the fiction of rape and the destruction of character rather than the reality. What should be the punishment for, say, those two kids that raped that girl in Ohio? For Brock Turner? For anyone that gets away with being a terrible person because of affluenza? For whatever reason people are getting away with being terrible in real life, and that’s currently being challenged and that is the best thing. The Brock Turners of the world lack empathy and don’t see why what they do is wrong, and they need to be educated until they do. Olsar definitely falls into that description, and, spoiler warning: he is going to die for the terrible things he’s done. His entire crew is. It’s not going to make Samus or Alista feel better. It’s not going to erase what happened to them, and Alista is not a hero and is going to fall into the same cycle that Samus is going to break. But we’ll get to that. So, turnabout being fair play – what do you think should be the punishment for Drasha-level cruelty? How do you think it can be made better? Do you hold an individual responsible for the actions of a society, or do you hold the society responsible as well? Do you fail to acknowledge the abuse an abuser has suffered in that punishment? What makes you better than an abuser in that case? What makes you think that punishing a person who is already suffering and lashing out from their place of hurt is going to make them a better person instead of widening the wound within them? How do you fix this? How do you make it better for the victims and their families? Because, again, telling you from experience, it never really goes away. You never stop hating and you never stop being angry. There is no level of punishment that is ever going to make it okay, but there if there is a chance to keep it from happening to anyone else, that chance should be taken. Emotional wounds are still wounds and we are so much more than merely physical beings. I think it’s time our society started acting like it, and I think we’re heading in that direction. Yay, us. Your thoughts?

Regarding Pride and Politics, salarta said: Glad to see you back in action! Good setup for a new phase of story here. If this were a crossover story I'd suggest FFX-2 "Rikku," who I've always felt looked like she was trying to say she was part-chocobo with that costume. I know exactly the costume you mean, and, yeah, I definitely liked the cheesecake aspects of FFX-2. I’ve stolen those characters for games I’ve run way too many times. It’s good to be back; I’ve got a bit of time before the next contract kicks in and some things I want to experiment with and some stories I need to finish and others I want to tell, so we’ll see if I can get some more done before real life consumes everything again. Glad you like the set-up; I’m looking forward to the payoff of this section, as Alista launches her own conspiracy and drags Samus along for the ride. I’m hoping this works as well as I’m hoping it will, but, well, we’ll see.

Regarding Pride and Politics, DrkVrtx said: That's one way to put Samus back in touch with her avian roots. Getting a familiar vibe here with the hunt as some of the trials you put Lara through, but I wonder how the Hunter will take to it instead. Oh, I’m going in a very different direction with this. Lara was alone in Parmistan and had no way out; Samus, at least, has a nominal ally and Samus Aran is a very different person than Lara Croft. It also doesn’t help the people hunting her that they don’t really know who she is, and that’s not going to go well for them when they find out. I just finished writing that section of story yesterday, and I should be able to put it out later this week. Looking forward to seeing what people think.

I’m quite pleased with how Parmistan turned out in general. I took the name and some ideas from an old terrible movie called Gymkata but added in some twisted Roman mythology and tried to figure out why and how a place like that would function in the real world while still be enticing to a variety of modern world character. I think I did a good job. Drasha is inventive and horrible, I think, but the real trick of her comes from two places: she comes across as scary competent, and within the legalities of her own culture she is in the right. That’s the scary thing about laws; sometimes they are morally or ethically wrong. Within the context of Parmistan there is no reason to catch Drasha, because she benefits from being in the right on a systemic level. She is an officer of the law punishing a criminal within the guidelines set out by her state, even if her state is morally and ethically in the wrong on an absolute scale. She’s evil without knowing it. She’s Delores Umbridge, the sort of petty banal evil that benefits from having a government on her side, a bully that honestly believes that she is in the right because that’s what she’s been taught and the world she’s lived in all her life. I’m an old school role-playing geek who grew up with Palladium before Dungeons and Dragons. My first pen-and-paper game was Transdimensional TMNT; a spinoff of a game called Heroes Unlimited. I mention this because one of the splat books for that game, Villains Unlimited, had an excellent guide on villain psychology. Villains don’t think of themselves as villains, they don’t see themselves as evil. They have goals that they think are noble and are the heroes of their own stories, even as the people around them suffer and die because of their actions. They are in the wrong, and making them understand that is the first step in actually making them better. Because here’s the thing: unless you’re going to kill them outright, punishing a villain doesn’t work. All you’re doing is feeding into their hero complex by making them think that they’re suffering for their good and true thoughts. Given this, the first thing you need to do to destroy someone like Drasha is instill a sense of empathy within her. She needs to understand why what she’s doing is wrong, that Lara or any of her other many victims are people in and of themselves. At that point, guilt and sympathy are punishment enough and you can try to rebuild a person like Drasha into someone better. Drasha is lawful and wants to be part of a society. She’s conservative in her outlook, nationalistic and confident that her country and actions are the best in the world. She’s never had cause to doubt. Giving her a greater understanding of her actions would force her to understand the consequences of those actions and lead her, I think, to trying to make a systemic change towards a more moral or ethical place. I think we have to be better, and we have to help other people be better. In short, Drasha is a symptom and her society is the cause. Wouldn’t you rather deal with the problem at its source and keep more Drashas from ever existing?

That seems to be a popular opinion. I created a monster.

Well, thanks, man. Glad you dug the remaster. And glad you’re digging everything else. Bondage in general has interested me since I was a kid, and when writing about it I wanted to dig into the psychology of character and do some lore dives with the writing I was doing, cuz that’s where my interest lies. It was also a challenge; when I started Bergman I’d only done a handful of smut scenes in my other work and they sucked; it was a cousin who challenged me to try writing pure smut and see what happens, and people like MordbindFantasy and theDaiLi and others that gave me a blueprint for the depth you see and that I aspire to. A big part of the inescapable thing for body and mind, I think, is wrapped up in the ideas of agency and choice. Because of this, I need villains to be the ones inflicting this stuff on heroes, and I wanted heroes who could take it while also exploring the overarching concept that even the strongest individuals can fall when alone, but we are stronger when united. The Metroid universe is fun because it is so expansive and the concepts it explores fly in the face of everything else Nintendo does, to say nothing of Samus being such a badass. It helps. There’s a whole Metroid wiki over at wikitroid if you wanna go deep into the lore, though I like to think Bergman and Pride do a pretty good job exploring at least some of it. There’ll be more Pride and Politics later this week – I just wanna wrap up Fade Away first.

MorbidFantasy pretty much nailed it – I cleaned up the grammar, added a couple of chapters, reworked some things and extended others. Think of it as a Director’s Cut.

Thanks, man. And, yeah – I sucked at writing smut until I started looking at it as just another sort of conflict, a means by which characters can measure will and identity. It changed everything for me and made for much better writing. Rape is bad, but the fantasy can be fun provided it remains a fantasy and everyone involved knows that it is just that, a fantasy. Consent is pretty much the most important thing across the board, which is why I like tags and things: it lets you know what you’re getting into, and I don’t think anyone should go into anything blind. It also mystifies me when people read the tags and then get upset by the content – I try to be as clear as possible about what I’m writing at any given moment. The trick of Samus’ personality is an annoying one because Nintendo has an issue with the Metroid franchise in that it's massive everywhere except Japan. The first one did gangbusters, but while the reveal that Samus was a girl was like “wow, Samus is a girl~!” everywhere else, the Japanese audience responded with “wow… Samus is a girl...”, because Samus doesn’t fit the cute or submissive image that misogyny expects of her. Their culture allows for strong female characters only in certain respects, and while that is changing it’s been a problem for Metroid because Nintendo places massive stock on Japanese sales. Other M was the big push to change that, to change Samus’ personality and make an impact on the Japanese market, but it failed to do so while also pissing off everyone else. It did get me writing the Bergman Affair, though, so it wasn’t all bad…? The thing is that we make a lot of character assumptions based on inference, and when something flies against that canon it tends to get rejected. Westworld did a brilliant job of showcasing that within in the mind of the individual, but Other M and products like the Han Solo film show what happens when those inferred assumptions are challenged. If you’re not going to work within the established parameters of a character, create a new character. And glad you liked the remastered Reins. I’ve started thinking about a follow-up with Lara, Sam, and Drasha, but there’s a few stories I want to finish first. We’ll see what the new year brings.

Regarding Pride and Politics, GoldGoth said: I'm writing this review just to say people into this kind of stuff really scare me. I'm with one of the previous reviewers, Samus would not be broken. The only reason something like this could happen to her is because she allows it, so I really hope for a happy ending. This woman has been through enough. It’s okay to find this scary and the people that are into it likewise. There’s kink, but this story – taken on its own – isn’t that. Non-con is rape, pure and simple. As a fantasy, it’s one thing and there’s going to be people that enjoy it for that, the same way people enjoy role-play and kink, but rape isn’t okay. The people doing it in this story are villains, about the most terrible people I can think of. Olsar himself is a callow coward, Salis is terrible, the others… the protagonists in this story are awful people. And it can be hard to tell who is enjoying it as fantasy and who is enjoying it as a reality, and it’s important to know it’s intended as the former and a condemnation of the latter. Pride is different than Bergman in that it’s not playing with Metroid tropes so much as just the concept of Samus herself – I’m aiming for a legend vs reality subtext and wanting to discuss questions of political perception and corruption. It has more in common with Reins than anything else I’ve written, and Reins touches on the Tomb Raider lore without doing the deep dive that something like Bergman was. Still, Samus the person has been broken in the past and could be broken again, and it’s one of the things that makes her interesting: Samus Aran is a fully realized character. She’s fascinating (Other M aside) because of it, but any single person can be broken down by trauma or technique. Here’s another couple things, and a reason that some rape survivors read and write fics like this one: there’s comfort in knowing that you’re not alone, and comfort in knowing that you can come back from being broken. Samus destroyed her enemies in Bergman and she’s going to destroy them here. The arc I was working on when life got in the way was where that started, Samus coming back to herself and getting ready to wreck a terrible revenge on the criminals who have done terrible things to her and everyone else. She’s a savior on a galactic level and the enemies in this story make the galaxy worse just be existing, corrupting whole solar systems and making billions of lives worse to slate their own greed and lust. They deserve what’s coming to them. I also want to make sure: are the tags showing up? Why do people read this if the tags are and they don’t like what’s in the tags? I’m genuinely curious on that front.