GeorgeGlass

This is complete speculation, but what the heck: I'd say that unlike Gaelic and Elvish, Japanese is a language to which a lot of your readers--that is, anime fans--have had at least some exposure but in which most of them probably lack substantial expertise. And fans of anything have a tendency to argue vehemently over things that they have just a little bit of knowledge about.

Wow--I remember watching The Secrets of Isis, but I had forgotten its name. What a reference! Love the commissioned pics. Padoga draws GF characters really well; I've got him on my watch list, too. Seems like Evil Fairy is worth listening to (despite the evil--or maybe because of it). Her "Riley's Replacement" has been on my list of stories I've been meaning to read for like a year now. As for Ark II...I thought we as a generation had mutually agreed never to speak of it again.

I saw #1 more than 20 years ago at an SF convention. I don't remember the name of it, but I can provide a couple more details (which I'm hoping I remember accurately) that may help you in your search. --There were 3 guys with bomb collars. They were all convicted criminals who were being forced to stop a criminal or terrorist plot as a sort of "community service." The collars were to prevent them from trying to escape. --The story involved a tower that was so tall, it needed a kind of gyroscope-like system on one of its upper floors to keep it stable. Also, I second Muhabba's speculation that #4 is AKIRA.

Thanks! I know, I disappointed some folks by leaving that out. See my response to Jomahawk and SWK's reviews (above) for an explanation.

Jomahawk and SWK: Your reviews touched on similar points, so I'm going to reply to them simultaneously. Thank you very much, guys. The ending is surprising in part because the story is told entirely from Suzy's extremely limited and distorted point of view. As I tried to illustrate through her thoughts and fantasies, her expectations are heavily colored by her twisted view of the world. One of the hallmark traits of a psychopath (or whatever they're called these days; I've lost track) is a lack of empathy. Although psychopaths can be great charmers and manipulators of people, they can't really see things from another person's perspective. Thus, Suzy assumes that everyone thinks more or less the way she does, and that any differences between their behavior and hers are merely the result of societal brainwashing, weakness, or stupidity. Suzy doesn't understand love or generosity, so she assumes that they doesn't really exist; love is just an attractive disguise for lust, and generosity always has strings attached. Thus, it never occurs to her that Candace might have feelings for Jeremy strong enough to overbalance Suzy's ability to intimidate her, or that Phineas and Ferb would help Candace simply because she asked. And Suzy's ideas about Jeremy's sexuality are largely a projection of her own savage erotic urges. As a result, Candace didn't even have to be that good an actress--she just had to play along with Suzy's expectations. The most effective lies are often those that the listener wants to believe. I gave a lot of thought to the point at which the story should end, and I seriously considered depicting some or all of Suzy's revenge-rape. And I will confess that the main reason why I denied you, the reader, that gratification is that I didn't know how to write that scene. Specifically, I didn't know what would be going through Suzy's mind, and because the whole story is written from Suzy's viewpoint, that was a dealbreaker. It wouldn't be satisfying if Suzy were in denial of the whole thing or had some sort of dissociative experience, and leaving her swearing horrible revenge against Candace would undermine Candace's victory. Besides, closing the door on the villain as they scream "NOOOOOO!" is such a classic story-ending device, I couldn't pass up the chance to use it. Again, the story is meant to be read entirely from Suzy's perspective, and she wouldn't know what Candace was up to after she left the shed. Besides, the shed is plenty soundproof thanks to Suzy's corrugated-cardboard "decorations" (which is meant to make Suzy's defeat all the sweeter, given that she is effectively caught in her own trap). I meant to imply (but didn't, really) that Candace and the dogs would be watching each other's backs from then on. Thanks again, guys. I am glad you both liked this one so much. Other P&F stories are in the works, of course, but I'm not sure yet which one will be sucking up valuable bandwidth next. And, of course, there's a mess of original stories in progress, too. (I generally have 10 to 20 stories--I kid you not--in various stages of development at any given time.) With respect and gratitude, George

Normally, the length of my response to a review is roughly proportional to the length of the review itself, because I generally respond to each point the reviewer makes. In this case, however, there's really no substantive response I can make to your comments that wouldn't constitute a massive spoiler. So I'll just say this: Thanks for the review, and stay tuned!

I don't love her! She kicked me in the face!

That's the most important thing, anyway. And its usefulness will be enhanced by the fact that AFF uses standardized tags instead of just having people type in their own, like some sites do (so that you get different results if you search "M/F," "male/female," or "male_female"). That was a wise move on someone's part.

Re: "F**k Perfect" Thanks! I was going to end the story a few lines earlier, but that ending seemed too predictable, and I didn't want the story to take itself too seriously. Thank you! This story was a little tough to write, because most of my stories are not about unrelated human adults having conventional, consensual sex in the privacy of their own homes. But maybe I'll try it again some time.

One thing I've learned from posting stories on AFF is that self-censorship is counterproductive, at least in terms of attracting readership. For every awful thing you include in a story, you lose one reader and gain three others.

I did say "the only famous female horror writer I can think of." And by "famous", I meant "famous enough that even I have heard of them." Truth is, I don't think I've read a horror novel in at least a decade. Becoming an editor killed much of my desire to read in my spare time. Why it didn't also kill my desire to write, I'm not sure, except that writing fiction feels a lot different from correcting grammatical errors and fixing awkwardly constructed tables in scientific papers.

That would be great. Making them searchable (and excludable, if there are certain tags people want to avoid) would be terrific, too, if it can be done.

No, I don't think so either. I think you mentioned that the plan for the revamp includes a one-click method of favoriting stories and authors. The number of faves might be a slightly more meaningful metric than the ratings, because people will mostly fave stories that they think they will want to read again. Will the number of faves appear somewhere?

I'm not sure there's a difference. It occurs to me that the only famous female horror writer I can think of is Mary Shelley. Maybe it's time for another one.

Re: "F**k Perfect" Thank you! It is indeed a one-shot, but I can't dismiss the possibility that I'll want to write about these characters some more in the future.

Re: "Daddy's Rules" This may sound odd, but I find it somewhat comforting that some people react this way to "Daddy's Rules" and those of my other stories that are in a similar vein. This is really strong stuff, and I'd feel a little weird if every single reader reacted with "Oh, that was lovely." Even though I'm the author, there are plenty of moments when even I don't want to be looking at a story like this. And I certainly wouldn't want anything like it to happen in real life. If the father were a real human being, I would like to think that I'd bash his head in with a two-by-four and escort his family to a shelter. As you say, it was your choice to look at the story, and it's tagged well enough that you had ample warning about the contents. But at least it gave you a better idea of what your preferences are when it comes to erotic literature. And thank you for the comments about the quality of the writing. (If it's not too arrogant to say so, I'd like to think that you would not have had such a visceral reaction if the story had been less well written.) If the mere sight of my name doesn't make you physically ill, I have a lot of other stories that you might like much, much better. As for your being a "dum raft guide," I'm willing to bet that your life is more interesting than mine for at least 8 hours a day. Thanks for taking the time to review.

Being one who occasionally writes original PWP stories, I think part of what makes them fun to write (only part, mind you) is describing the characters as well as you can in as few words as possible so that you can get right into the action. When it comes to stories with plot, though... ...I agree completely. As a reader, I don't like starting a story and being firehosed with information in the first chapter. I want to get information when it becomes relevant to the story. And I don't want to catch more than a glimpse of Jaws until I'm way the heck out to sea and Quint has smashed the radio. As writer, I have the same philosophy as Pak. But I'm really nonlinear about writing; in fact, I'll often start with the "big reveal" scene(s) first and then write the rest of the story around them. Continuing with the Jaws theme (and pretending that the screenplay was wholly original and not based on Peter Benchley's rather depressing novel), I probably would have started with "This was no boating accident," jumped forward to "Smile, you son of a bitch!", gone back and written the ferry scene near the beginning, and so forth until all the blanks were filled in.

Um, thanks, I guess?

I was going to mention Warrant's de facto strip-club anthem "Cherry Pie," but I just learned that it's from 1990. Likewise, Concrete Blonde's "Mexican Moon" (possibly the sexiest gettin'-it on-song I know) is from 1993. So the only useful suggestion I have is Animotion's "Obsession."

I like the insipid rate thingy, myself. It provides information about how well readers like the story that hits and reviews don't necessarily capture.

The only reviews I delete are those that point out specific technical problems that I have since corrected (eg, when an admin notes that I need to add a tag, or when someone tells me that the formatting of the story is screwed up). Apart from that, I keep them all, even the ones that are irrelevant (eg, "When are you going to write another story about _____?"). Of course, I've never had someone attack me personally in a review, so I'm not sure what I'd do with a review like that. Frankly, I think I might feel validated if someone called me a sicko or a pervert or something in a review, because even I think that some of my stories warrant that. The closest I've come is a review from someone who said that my story "Side Effects" made him want to throw up. I didn't delete that review, partly because it's useful as a warning to potential readers about the strong content of the story, and partly because the person confessed that even though he found the story really upsetting, he also couldn't stop reading it.

And I take it as such. Thank you! Suzy's need to compete with Candace to be Jeremy's "favorite girl" has always struck me as creepily incestuous, so this story seemed like a plausible extrapolation from her behavior on the show. And, of course, I'm having fun imagining all the sick stuff that goes on in her head. (I seem to have a fetish about women as sex offenders; it's a recurrent theme in a lot of my original stories, most notably "Side Effects" and "Cruel Nature.") Thanks. Belladonna ("beautiful woman" in Italian), also known as deadly nightshade, is known in folklore as a favorite poison of witches. Rumor has it Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar, used belladonna to kill him and maybe other people, too. So it seemed an appropriate name for a female dog trained by a female sociopath. The deadline for a story contest I want to enter is coming up in a few days, so I really need to finish that story (which I'll post here on AFF, of course). That said, given my lousy attention span, I'm sure I won't be able to help but spend at least a little of that time on "Little Blonde Monster," too. That you are--if for no other reason than that you're my only self-proclaimed fan. Thank you! I do my best to bring the madness.

Re: "Caitlyn's Punishment" What, no cherry on top? I honestly can't make any promises as to when the third and final chapter will be posted. I literally have about 20 other stories going, and then, of course, there's life.

Thank you! All it takes is practice and someone to offer constructive criticism. As I note at the beginning, my other P&F stories have a very different tone from this one. If you want something more in this kind of vein, you might look at some of my original stories. Hey, length isn't everything. There's also girth. Thank you!

You know, when you say that, it sounds like a compliment. Seriously. Try as he might, Dr. Doofenschmirtz isn't even close to her level of evil. Hmm, but what if her place is a throne? Or a corner office? Good to be back, and thank you!