Thundercloud

I am in need of a beta reader for my story Carmen Elisa Need to Die in the originals section (http://original.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600109195).
Story Codes: Bi Fingering MF Violence TF FD Toys Anal MiCD Bond
Three chapters is posted so far out five planned, average chapter length is 12k words. I have chapter 4 on my harddrive...but self editing is a drag.
I much rather trade beta service with somebody else. Anyone that can be of assistance?

I can totally understand your concerns.
I totally agree that magic item is downright nasty and very much out scale with what Lynn could reasonably be handling. Basically it is artifact level power item that is granted in an exchange that does seem to scale reasonably from what the heroes know.

It could also be worth to mentioning that if we look behind the scenes of things the cursed bracelet cannot actually touch soul of the victim so it is not entirely true that it destroy the original person totally. For the rest of the lifetime of the victim they will be passive watchers of what their body experience but eventually they will get free when the body dies.
The difficulties of suddenly becoming basically all powerful is very much the theme I was out to cover with this character so I am actually quite satisfied with you finding it unnerving.
Very true.
They not mentioning Firefly is a neglect from my writing skills. The characters are assuming is that if they can find the means to deal with the tricky case of Eagle then Firefly will be trivial to fix since the brotherhood did not use so much “violence” for her brainwashing so her is a simple case. It seems I failed to actually make the characters spell this out. I will work this into the dialogue at some suiting point.
Her refusing to acknowledge her Carol parts is very much meant as a mechanics to cope with the trauma and you would be wise to not trust the characters point of view totally in this. If I ever get round to write a G.S.P. sequel I should really make sure to add a scene where Carol is shown to have truly recovered.   
Without spoiling too much I can also mention that there is plot reveal in final chapter that might put a different viewpoint on the Carol and Jennifer relation.
I very much enjoyed coming up with Mindeye’s new power...not very useful for a super hero but great fun if are a secret agent.
Yes, I am not alone! I find so very frustrating when super hero stories does not understand this.
I have seen One Punch Man and enjoyed it lots...but my story is actually older than the 2015 anime so I got there first. On the other hand I really understand your reference.
Great that you are working on your own story...I am very much looking forward to it.

Yep, we are moving towards the end game now where the big bad is actually to make his/her first appearance in the story.
In real life body circulate poison in the blood steam very quickly. The reason it goes slower here is basically that the demon is spending lots of energy on making sure the poison stays contained until they have figured something out. Could perhaps be cool to mention that in some way, will need to give it a thought.
It has mentioned earlier in the story that the demons are immune to psionics (or rather their defensive levels are so high that even Avalanche is out of luck)...kind of a large limitation to how much use Avalanche can be. That is pretty much why Cyclone never bothered to recruit a Psionic to his team and why his team is so helpless in this encounter. Btw...if we are speaking about overpowered characters I think it is very possible to issue a complaint towards Fang...
Like mentioned in my previous review response it is a neglect from my side that I don’t mention Linda having fixed Firefly.
Yep...that hole in the suit will surely raise some eyebrows.
Thank you for writing these wonderful reviews with so many good comments. I have toyed with reusing the werewolf mythology in some future story but never really found a suiting catch to tie it all together. So many story ideas and so little time.

Just for the record the problem is not that hotmail/outlook does not deliver the email but that Microsofts system does a preflight test to scan for malware. In desktop outlook you can see all links get changed by the ATP Safe Link feature, for hotmail and similar online services you can in the source code of the email see security diagnostics added in the header information from the preflight scan. If you have control of the outlook server it is possible to disable the policy that makes the email server to do the preflight test, butthe likelihood that AFF users have that kind of admin power is negligible.

Anyway your password reset feature seems to monitor if somebody has visited the password reset page and not if person wanting a reset press an update button or similar and this will not work if ATP Safe Link is active no matter what Nexcess does. The AFF software would need to be modified if you want solve the issue. I work as system developer so I speak with some authority here even if I have not read your source code so it is an educated guess.
A good sanity check would be to check if the archive stores the password in plain text or ifthe passwords are encrypted as something called “a hash”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function
If you have the passwords stored with a hash function like SHA-2 or better it does not matter as much if the password information are stolen since they cannot be decrypted. If you use a weak hash-function like MD5 or SHA-1 (or even worse plain text) then the passwords are exposed since there are standard methods to reverse the hash and learn what password each account has.

Came here since InBrightestDay ping:ed me...actually got kind of interested in your story but I think I need to watch more of the real anime show first since it is on my list to watch and don’t want to spoil it.
Considering the average length of my chapters I think you have a fairly good speed and each review seriously deliver.
Lucky for you that the review alerts works...I have not got it to work so I need to log in of AFF to learn if I have a review. That is a drag.

I have got such emails for the email that is attached to thethundercloud acount that I lost access to, but not anything to email connected to my new thundercloud account. This support the idea that its not a recent hack but using the email for previous leak of passwords.
 

Food for thought...one problem in a classic fantasy setting is that much of tension is for heroes must prevail since they are the only ones who understand the danger...if they can phone in reinforcement you make it much harder to create tension. Not impossible but quite a lot harder. A bit similar to fact that many movies are set in past to avoid having to explain why the heroes does not just coordinate with their phones when they wonder what the others are doing.

In my fantasy roleplaying game I decided to work around the problem by having flowing water, ley lines and similar phenoms interefere with long range communication, divination etc.  I also included some specific locations where special artifacts of the building size had been set up could overcome the limitations. All in all I think it worked quite well at giving me the option to have long range communication working when required for the narrative, but to avoid it becoming too common.

 

I can live with any reading speed you prefer. It was just funny that I decided I had to much work time and should skip checking AFF for few days since it is long since I had a review and suddenly there are two full length reviews that I missed. Not answering reviews in a timely fashion feels so very rude...
You might be interested to know that there is one of later chapters that investigate Fang more in detail and gives more context to her fear.
I had lots of fun writing that reply...in truth it takes significant time to write good replies without spoiling too much of the future plot.
Very good analysis.
Good to know. Speaking of my other stories….I think you really want to stay clear of the ADM story and Carmen Elisa Need to Die that have characters that suffers a lot with very little hope afterwards...on the other hand With the Mirror Came.. might actually be a better fit for you than I thought earlier. It is the kind of story where the bad guy with high probability will win at the end, but on the other hand the bad guy is not after death and destruction. The lead character is over the story subjected to a lot of stuff...but she is also part of one of the best love couples I ever has written so there is clearly hope in the story. 

Actually I also have some new stuff in pipeline that I think you might find interesting. Just need to manage to finish the damn editing...not having a beta makes things take so horrible much time.
I understand the confusion. I spent like a ton of time to figure out the rules for the psionic system and how it interact with people in the setting but at the end trying to explain that to the reader would kind of ruin the flow of the story so most of it never made it into print. Some kind of explanation about maze trap sound merited...I add it to list of things to look at when I have time to give the story a makeover.

Great that you enjoyed the chapter and thank you for the review.
I thought this was a good point of include the world building aspect of why the forces of Heaven are not around so to say. There is really lots of talk about demons in the story and barely a mentioning of angels and this might come across as weird to some readers. Having the demon revealing her ignorance give an explanation why Jennifer has not really thought about the theological implications of the demon attacks.
Patric improving...*chuckles*...but people can be dangerous in different ways.
LOL, yep that is pretty much how the scene reads. If I get around to write a future story about this setting I should have Mindeye really have psionic tech support as occupation.

If you really consider what happened in the previous encounter between Linda and Eagle where she overload the G.S.P. protective gear and compel him to have sex I think the news that she have mental powers is possible to anticipate, but I also suspect I make it kind of hard to spot since I work hard in the previous chapters to make Linda seem like a very minor character.
Very karmic indeed.
You have literally have made my day perfect. When you asked me by PM if the story was safe to read considering you liked the story hook but was a bit worried about the story codes I had to think hard exactly about this scene that is very very far from feel good. Not that I can promise the rest of the story is a pure safe read, but this was the actual scene that I was not sure how you would view. Good that it got exactly the right response.

About the maze thing...the maze is not locking her memories away but is actually the psionic defense Mindeye put there to protect what he had done to her mind. Psionics cannot have slaves that knows all their secrets and is an open book to other psionics. The solution is to put traps there that will be dangerous for eavesdroppers. These are in the setting called logical mazes and trick the intruder to become lost inside the maze. The only reason Linda manage to get free from the trap is her great mental strength. The reason why Carol does not have access to her memories is more basic suppressed memories due to trauma like it work in the real world.

I look in the other directions for a few days...aka working overtime on my real job...and bam...there is suddenly two new reviews posted since I visited AFF last time!

I really appreciate these very well written reviews that you provide for every chapter. It is good that my earlier guess that you would enjoy the story seemed well founded. You are approaching what I consider to be the better parts of the story.
Thank you, the bad guys that return is very much a deliberate act made possible since I planned it in advance.
I would argue that it also is a team effort even if Mindeye is the one that makes the sacrifice that allow them to turn the battle. Blade getting Fang to finally start to come over her gun shyness so she can participate in battle also plays a pretty big part. Fighting a furious werewolf that is immune to psionic powers is narrow rooms...not the favorite things to do if you are psionic that used to disable attackers with your telepathy.
The super hero team is meant to have super powers that fits together for the battle task. The Firefly and Thundercloud combo is one of many reasons the government decided to recruit them to the team.
Yep, Firefly is really on the suffering end. It will eventually get better.
Great that you liked it. I can completely understand where you are coming from with bit about enjoying it. A bit like lots of real world asian porn that I cannot stand since they far too often show girls that is not enjoying the sex for most of the sex scene and is forced to stuff they don’t like. I understand most porn participants does it for the money and just act but if there is not passion but sex without passion is just dumb violence to my ears.
I am actually quite pleased for the dialogue in that original sexscene. Linda recognize her sister but cannot understand how she can have turned into a sexual bombshell and this give Patric the time window needed to order Jennifer to have sex with her and Linda does not get enough time to say enough for Jennifer to realize what she is doing.

When Linda talks with Eagle about Jennifer being Blade in a later chapter she talks about her mother dismissing the idea that Jennifer is Blade, but Linda actually avoids revealing she knows the truth since that would require her to reveal her embarrassing encounter with her sister. .
The aptitude part of the test is meant to allow the government to filter out candidates that have a personality that does not work in a team and does not have right kind of hero quality. Exactly what the agents are measuring is not something I spent much time to define...but heroes like the marvel hero Captain America would max out on the aptitude test. Fang and Jennifer run into trouble here because it is impossible to create a test without including bias from the culture ofthe person creating the test and Fang and Jennifer are not really sharing the same kind of culture as ordinary people due to their special background. Their aggressiveness is of course part of this but only a part of it.

The Super Sabre reference is actually quite obscure. I reada comic arc as teenager when the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants manage to secure position as a government sponsored “superhero” team named Freedom Force. This group of “reformed” villains does some minor good deeds here and there, but mostly they serve as enemy team for X-men and the Avengers when the plot need an extra fight. Super Sabre is a mercenary that joins the team to escape prison. Over time lots of villains and minor super heroes serve in the Freedom Force, but eventually the government scrap the initiative and replace it with X-Factor. When I needed powers for a opposing team for the G.S.P. story Super Sabre came to mind.
As for inspiration for the others the character I can mention a few.
Mesh draws inspiration from Bureau 13...a very horrible computer game...but I liked the battle suit that the heroes fail to make use of in any sensible fashion. I think there is roleplaying game that is the source material of the world setting, but my irritation about the stupid game killed my interest.
Entrope’s power draws inspiration from the X-men hero Bishop mixed with the villain Sebastian Shaw.
Bio is basically inspired by the Marvel character Madame Hydra even though the Marvel character has no real powers but uses technology to do stuff.
Cyclone’s flight was inspired by X-men character Banshee...but I later realized that there of course is a Marvel villain named Cyclone with the same powers as my character.
As for Firefly the inspiration is Marvels Firestar...except I learned about the character in animated series where her power was very nerfed down and not over the top flexible like in the comics. I have later learnt that Firefly actually in the comic use the alias Firefly for a timeperiod. :-)
Thundercloud is kind of based on Captain Brittain in  Excalibur (that super hero really have very different power depending on comic) with the removal of the flight power and different vulnerabilities.
It might be good to have the heroes highlight this point at some point in the story. I will see if I can find some scene where it does not intrude on the actual action.
Very true. :-)
Yep..quite horror materialto that scene. Thundercloud is not as his best there...but basically back in the days he offered to skip his by then very successful superhero career and the comforts of civilization to be with her. She rejected him since she wanted more to become a super hero more than to be with him...in fact she preferred to be a young superhero even if that meant Thundercloud would be old or dead when they learned to control her powers. Given this background and she suddenly being a villain for no obvious reason when she returns...not the best day for Thundercloud.

The inspiration of Hyper is actually a little known character named Super Sabre  from the Marvel comics. He could create sonic booms by running quickly but not Flash-style insane power feats that basically means only speedsters can compete.
I so very much agree about the need of putting a silencer on the communicator...the reason they neglected this is probably that the super hero group was thought to be fighting aliens and the government really never thought about them going sneaky stuff.
Very accurate analysis.
Thank you...I have been considering using Hyper in a follow up story since she is fun to use in sex scenes.
It is a matter of time. One reason it goes slowly is that most of the team have still not understood how powerful healing Blade really have. After this chapter everyone expect Eagle and Mindeye is really aware of it.
It meant to be kind of ambient. Neither Thundercloud or Mernosh comes out looking good from it. It will be interesting to hear what you think when the wider context of what happened to Mernosh is revealed in a later chapter.
That is mistake on my part, thanks for bringing it to my attention. The idea for fang to use a weird word falls flat on that I am quite certain she also talks about leader of pack.

Food for thought...one problem in a classic fantasy setting is that much of tension is for heroes must prevail since they are the only ones who understand the danger...if they can phone in reinforcement you make it much harder to create tension. Not impossible but quite a lot harder. A bit similar to fact that many movies are set in past to avoid having to explain why the heroes does not just coordinate with their phones when they wonder what the others are doing.

In my fantasy roleplaying game I decided to work around the problem by having flowing water, ley lines and similar phenoms interefere with long range communication, divination etc.  I also included some specific locations where special artifacts of the building size had been set up could overcome the limitations. All in all I think it worked quite well at giving me the option to have long range communication working when required for the narrative, but to avoid it becoming too common.

 

If it is important that the gender is uncertain then I propose it is best to show that the watcher is uncertain of the gender and not hope the reader gets this.

If it is important that the gender is uncertain then I propose it is best to show that the watcher is uncertain of the gender and not hope the reader gets this.

One possible answer might be that having a story on the most recent page improves the chances for getting attention to your own writing and build a fanbase. Ifthe stolen story at the same time pushes another author from the most recent page then you get double benefit. 

I would not say AFF suffers much from this, other story sites with rating systems to promote top content are much more vulnerable to manipulation.

A random idea would be that some kind of penalty so that discovered plagiarism gets the rest of the stories of the author penalized so they end further down on the recent page could be effective to make plagiarism less attractive to authors with low morale. I does of course not know if your technical platform support this so this is just a random idea about how you could lessen the workload for moderation.

The chapter is very much meant to be emotional and to raise the stakes for the hero team. There is an obvious tension from the superheroes not making any progress with finding the source of the attacks on the city and only stopping attacks already in process, but it gets more interesting when this chapter add the plot element that there are groups that want to shut down the operation for other reasons.
Yes, there is much more to happen around the dilemma Eagle has ended in. Actually the situation is also a bit more complicated than what it first looks like. The sister talks about their mother not being convinced to avoid saying what she really thinks herself.

As for it to be wonderful to meet the family there is intended to be parallel here with the scene at the end of the chapter.  Interacting with people that you don’t remember yourself might not be the best thing that can happen.
That is very much the intention with the Firefly character, no matter how good she is as superhero she can never escape the gossip since she is too sexy to be taken seriously by the media. Same goes for the opposing superhero team plot...would media really stay on the superheroes side if there is a possible story about the underdog that is not state funded.
Good that it gave the intended reaction, but I want to point out that Mindeye is also not totally wrong about there being large parts of Carol there. The upcoming story will reveal that there are serious differences between the characters even while Carol might have inherited some skills from Jennifer they are not the same.  
Jennifer would have agreed totally about that. It is a play with identities here where the cover persona does things Jennifer herself would not do herself if she was in charge of action.
He is literally doing a jump from the air plane in motion and using its momentum to smash into the house. Hitting a few threes on the way inside is just a plus side to avoid that he smash the house too much. The actual action he does here is kind of rash actually since his entry could literally murder just about anyone in the house except Jennifer. He is too worried about his love interest to follow superhero protocol. I suppose there off screen is a scene where the management have quite a lot to say to Thundercloud about this. I don’t actually recall exactly why I skipped this scene, but it not quite obvious how such a scene would end.
Nice you liked it. Myself I really like the different perspectives as the other superheroes take time  disposing the mindless smaller demons while Blade’s demon think the leader of the demons is just critter she can execute.

I liked you using Janet in this way.  The dialogue at the scene with Kizzy and Janet at the end seemed like a very fitting ending of the story.
Someday I should read the story about Sarsa...so much stuff to read and write and so little time...
It sounds like you had a bad day when you read it because I did think that it was very good. When I mentioned the title it was very much because I did not find much else to comment about.
I do not agree with Lupa cooling as a problem for the scene...I think it was a great way to both remind the reader and Mike what is really happening inthe middle of the sex. Using Mike’s perspective was also a good choice from my point of view.

Putting myself in the authors mode...I think that one thing in this scene that worked to your disadvantage compared to Halloween scenes is the fact that you have them doing this because they are overcome with sex magic instead of them having the hots for each other and due to this have a problem in raising the arousal level atthe final part of the sex. Lupa’s climax is great but the coldness of her body and their insecurities intrude rather quickly. Don’t get me wrong, the insecurity and the character development is part of what makes this a great story where the outcome feel earned, but maybe it are those kind things that makes you feel this was not as good as it could have been. Just some random thoughts from a fellow erotic author. 

I caught that and it was pretty cool written, only downside is that it kind of strongly hinted the whole team would be coming.
Very true, but the downside is out of character behavior or alternate reality versions. Going the original route saves you from having to explain weird behavior from the fanfic  character or annoy readers when characters does weird stuff. 

I think what is fitting depends very much on the story. Like you should not fight your muses, but to follow them...if staying with the flashfic format makes you more productive then do that.

Could you use your tiny hammer of yours, or did you need to use another tool?
On a more serious note...JayDee...you really need to not let bad thoughts about your writing skills drag you down. Looking at what I have read from you there is clearly a difference in improved quality over time. Not everything you write these days might be brilliant, but it very far ahead of most fanfic writers out there and most importantly far better than your fics around here that you seem embarrassed about.

Just a random idea...if writing longer pieces is hard you maybe could try to use the flashfic format to get a draft out, but not be bound by length when you make adjustments after feedback from betas. If you need more beta readers I am sure we can work something out...
 

Could you use your tiny hammer of yours, or did you need to use another tool?
On a more serious note...JayDee...you really need to not let bad thoughts about your writing skills drag you down. Looking at what I have read from you there is clearly a difference in improved quality over time. Not everything you write these days might be brilliant, but it very far ahead of most fanfic writers out there and most importantly far better than your fics around here that you seem embarrassed about.

Just a random idea...if writing longer pieces is hard you maybe could try to use the flashfic format to get a draft out, but not be bound by length when you make adjustments after feedback from betas. If you need more beta readers I am sure we can work something out...
 

Maybe it should be more about Kate trying to figure out why she was named Lupa...she should be the one who care about such I think.

I suppose Lupa has cut contact with her parents due to her undead nature and if they never told her the background of the name you could have Kate decide to go on a mission on herself to find out the background of the name.

It may sound weird that Lupa does not know the reason for her name, but I actually think it is fairly realistic. My wife has a very unique name but her parents have no recollection of why they choose this name...weirdly they can explain the middle name that is fairly mundane but somehow they forgot the story about the unusual name.

Please note that I don’t necessarily mean the off scene chapter 3 as a bad thing, but I thought it worth to mention since a casual reader might not realize you will return to the slumber party.

Speaking about something else...why did you decide that Lupa would be the vampire and not the werewolf?
When you do Lupas story you need to do something about the name...

The original story is actually very far from being a PWP, but sadly not finished since Mmmmm stopped writing before he was done. For instance the assault on the elven city that some of the bad guys are talking about in my story is actually a very important plot point in the main story.

Anyway I spent a few years trying to nag the author to return to the story, but it seemed he suffered from a lack of trust in his own writing abilities after stumbling into a writers block. A real shame I was really looking forward to read about Lish to returning to the underdark while looking for a counter to Anor Dan Masin.
Thank you so much, this is one of the demon rape scenes I have written that I am most satisfied with.
The use of the tail in you story with a very damaging spikes was actually one of the reasons I decided to dust off Tales of Deception and post it on AFF.  I am not a fan of the damaging spikes and decided that needed to reread my story to clear my head of the imaginary from your story…
Yes poor Mala...how that character would end was one of the things that was given by the original authors story but you never got know the character so I had to work backwards to figure out what kind of character it was.
I originally planned to write a sequel based around the wedding ring...but the intention was to write it after ADM was finished. Sadly I never got around to ask for permission to use the borrowed character in a sequel before the author dropped out of writing.
Good to hear. I had a hunch that you would find it interesting. If nothing else it is often interesting to compare notes about how to do demon rapes interesting.

I agree about the odds of getting reviews from regular visitors, but I think the probabilities for getting reviews from other authors are better and these are more inclined to go investigate an authors profile than regular readers. Afterall I four months back had not visited AFF like in a decade and now I think I have checked quite a few of your fics….I did not scroll through pages from the front screen to find them.
I would say that trying to reform a demon is a pretty sure way to make sure he is in for some shit. It seem plausible that that he might succeed eventually, but you have a enormous opportunity for coming up with stories when he alternate between failing and failing hard. 
The trouble is really that I have all these ideas for good scenes, but times fly by with me unable to get time to do proper writing.
Sounds like great fun.