InBrightestDay

You’ve definitely got me invested in the characters here! There is one thing about the story, but it’s not necessarily a criticism. The thing is, I’m in my early thirties, but sometimes reading this story makes me feel like a really old man. When you brought up that Tirsa was demisexual...I had legitimately never heard that term before. I had to Google it. Based on how the characters were talking about it like it was the most natural thing in the world, I felt like I was supposed to know what that was and that I was a grandpa character going “what’s that lingo the hip young kids are using these days?” Again, that’s not anything wrong with the story. I just felt kind of stupid.

That’s actually not quite what I meant. I think you might have read my Whore of Heaven reviews, and if you remember my Part Three review, then you’ll recall that when I read the story ten years ago, I got rather emotional and sad and felt incredibly bad for Luzurial. I emailed JayDee and asked, basically, if I could write her a happy ending. I was aware that asking to do a happy ending to a dark torture/rape story would likely prompt some eye rolling, but I felt like it would make me feel a little better if there was some timeline, some completely non-canon chain of events where things got better for her. That’s more what I meant by therapy. Now I was not expecting that when I finally got around to writing the story and sent the first four or five chapters to JayDee, that the response would be “This is canon now, by the way.” I absolutely understand (the Evil Government Agency is kind of annoying to me as well) and the majority of the PPD are good people. By the way, my phone’s autocomplete now recognizes Luzurial’s name. I didn’t think I was typing that many posts on my phone, but apparently...

Thank you so much! I basically wrote this as a form of therapy, so hearing that other people are enjoying it is always wonderful. If by tropey you mean cliched, well, I have been known to write like that from time to time, and I’m sorry about that. In-universe, the reason for the “shoot first” approach is down to two things. First, Chloe’s team is basically the PPD’s version of a SWAT team, so she assumes that if Hobbs gave her the assignment, then violence is called for. Second, in this universe, the last time an extradimensional creature showed up, it had preternatural powers and killed millions of people, so some of the guns blazing approach is due to fear of a repeat performance. Well, yes and no. On the one hand, Chloe & Co. are genuinely good people, and what happened in this chapter was down to a misunderstanding. On the other hand, the PPD is a law enforcement organization, and no law enforcement organization is free of corruption, especially when you’re dealing with something like demons… You ready to hear a true but really dumb story? I did research on what a long rifle shot would be, and originally that distance was way more than 200 meters, but then I realized that since all parties involved are on campus when this goes down, Gibbs probably wouldn’t be too far from his target, otherwise buildings and trees are going to get in the way. Now this is where any reasonable author would cut the line entirely, but I, not thinking this through, just altered the range value and left it like that. So yeah… I’m updating weekly, so Part Three will be up on February 4. You’re likely to run into more tropey stuff down the line, I’m afraid, but I do hope that the story continues to be enjoyable for you in spite of that!

Darn it, JayDee! Now I’m going to have to completely rewrite Part Three!

I realize I’m not the original author, but I always saw the outfit as a result of Luzurial’s naivete concerning sexuality. It’s not that she’s clueless about humanity in general (she’s not surprised by cars, guns, modern buildings, etc.) and she knows what sex is, but other stuff surrounding sex is kind of a blind spot for her. Given that, she knows that she shouldn’t be seen naked by mortals, but doesn’t realize that covering up a little of herself, but not enough, just makes her look hotter. That was my take on it, anyway.

Thank you! The age thing is partly my own religious beliefs and partly due to the mixture used in the story mine is a sequel to. In JayDee’s story, there are references to the past that imply a literal reading of Genesis (the Tower of Babel is mentioned, as is the Flood), but there are also references to a scientific cosmology (the heat death of the universe is implied), so I tried to keep that up. This lead to me using the scientific age of the universe (13.8 billion years) and then accounting for the fact that Luzurial (and therefore the rest of the angelic host) is stated to be older than spacetime, so I gave her an extra 200 million years, though as she says, it was difficult to count years back then. Thanks again for the review!

Well, Part Two is up, and we have new reviews! Fixed! I swear, that’s what I get for posting the chapter as soon as I rolled out of bed. To respond to something you said elsewhere, you needn’t worry; your “spoiler” reviews are not too spoilery. If they were spoiling future chapters, then we’d have to talk. The funny thing is that she was originally supposed to be an English major, and then I realized that I had to introduce this whole new theology/magic hybrid discipline, and it would make things a lot easier to just have her majoring in that. It also gave her a reason to get involved in the stuff that happens later on. Well, you said a human champion bested him and his followers, but you never said the champion couldn’t have help! Yeah, I kind of chuckled at the idea of her doing that, since for the moment everyone is still treating Luzurial as just another person. Had she been introduced to her as the Archangel Luzurial, Calista never would have done anything like that. The fourteen billion exchange was one of my favorite things to write, especially Kevin’s “Billion? Like...with a B?” And yeah, I thought it was kind of cool to play up just how old an angel would be in a universe that is as old as science tells us this one is. In these early chapters, I tried to write Chloe as someone who is both highly skilled and a little nervous, though the longer the story goes on the more she adjusts to the insanity going on here. Her shooting Luzurial mid-sentence, in particular, is a mix of trying to save the world...and nerves. This extradimensional being, which she still thinks may be dangerous, just started moving toward her, after all. I also kind of chuckled when I wrote Luzurial’s reaction. If a .49 caliber hypersonic round didn’t do more than bruise her, then a 9mm handgun round isn’t going to do anything. The “Ow” is more out of a slight annoyance than any actual pain.

Rock hard, even. Yeah, it is actually rather interesting. Greek art tends toward the ideal (the sculptures aren’t necessarily what the human body is but perhaps what it should be), and yet their deities display all the flaws of humanity. It’s a neat idea. Not sure if I like that joke. You might have laid an egg there. And of course there’s how he got Danae pregnant with Perseus. Zeus came to her in the form of a shower of gold...and many laughs were had in my high school literature class. Greece: writing adult fanfiction long before the internet.

That very thing happened to me this morning. I typed into the beginning of a chapter that the characters “are own by JayDee.” That should, of course, have been “are owned by JayDee,” and my only defense is that I was just waking up when I typed it. Anyway, I went back and fixed it. Ouch! Sorry about that. I always consider it my fault if I skip the codes and then get upset. I will definitely be sending you a PM about the story I’m interested in, though.

Part Two is up!

I forgot to mention it in the review, but my absolute favorite joke in the story is Tinarah’s “There is so much wrong with that I don’t even know where to start...” reaction to the exchange. I’m very sorry you went through that, but I am glad that your family was there for you and that you had a source of support.

Oh, I wasn’t trying to say that. Trust me, I don’t want to add to any stereotypes about my sex. I was just trying to think of why straight men would push straight women to “go bi”, and that was the only reason I could come up with. Yikes. It’s one thing if a bunch of straight people had been magically made gay, and the “cure” left actual gay people as they were and just reverted the straight people back to their original orientation, but if it “fixed” everyone, well...awkward. actually, with regards to sexual orientation and the politics that go with it, I really appreciate how nice Lian is so far. When the story was starting and the guys were giving Celeste shit, I became vaguely alarmed, since I’ve seen other stories with gay main characters make all the straight characters huge jerks, perhaps for the sake of a message of some kind. Seeing how much Lian appears to genuinely care for her friend was immensely reassuring. And yeah, having seen just how much cheating Adara seems to have been doing, Celeste’s anger feels extremely relatable. It’s still nerve-wracking for me too, actually. I never really know how well it’s working.

I posted the first chapter back on Monday, but better late than never! Author: InBrightestDay Title: The Woman in the Statue Summary: 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 recover, but she's not the only thing to return from the past. 75 years earlier, Los Angeles was visited by an evil born of Hell itself, and it's coming back. Feedback: Reviews and constructive criticism very much appreciated! The silence is more nerve-wracking than I thought it would be. Fandom: Original>Paranormal/Supernatural Warnings: Angst Contro H/C Humil MCD MF MiCD OC Oral Rape Tent Tort Violence Solo or chaptered story: Chaptered URL: http://original.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600109227 Review Reply thread: http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/topic/67631-inbrightestdays-originals-review-reply-discussion-thread/ Thanks for reading!

Funny you should say that, because there’s another illustration that made me think “Kids today, always throwing their trash in my pond...” I keep forgetting how many words are actually innuendos. That’s really all you can do. As I mentioned a page or two ago, some scenes just come together in my head, while others require me to stare at a blank word processor for quite some time. I thought you’d be out of those by now. Do you just have a big “Old Guro Stories” folder on your PC?

She’s netted a few creepy illustrations too. I now kind of want to see this in a story. Maybe the same one where Kizzy & Co. end up after a mission (which I guess would make it “a seraph, a succubus, a vampire and a werewolf walk into a pub”) It could actually work pretty well right now. Given the government shutdown, there are people literally pooping in the woods in some of our national parks.

So...remember this? I just realized that as a hemisphere, the height of a dome is equal to its radius, not its diameter, so in order for Luzurial’s head not to be brushing the roof of the dome, the radius of the thing has to be something like 2 meters (about 6 feet 7 inches), which means the diameter is 4 meters (a hair over 13 feet) at the ground level. I apologize for the math-based stupidity from earlier. I’ve gotten better at it over the years, but sometimes basic aspects of geometry still escape me. In case you’re curious, if I’m doing this right, it would mean that assuming Luzurial is 6 feet (1.829 m) tall, then the wings sprout from her shoulders, which according to what I could find online are about 82.1% of the way up your body (1.501 m in her case). At a height of 1.501 m, the diameter of the barrier should be 8 feet 8 inches (2.642 m), so with that 15 foot wingspan, she’d be able to spread them more than halfway, which should allow her to beat them somewhat, though obviously not at full strength, but would also allow her to press them against the walls of the dome. Assuming I didn’t just screw up the math again, that is.

Wait, stop the presses...Weezer still exists?

It’s not the kind of thing I could use for a Halloween Party anyway. I sent it to you via PM so that you might understand. I’m not blaming you or anything; I know the line was meant to make me laugh.

Oh, okay. I guess a lot of guys want someone who’ll get into a threesome with another woman. That might actually be what I was thinking of; it was some story where homosexuality was made mandatory (or close to it, at any rate) in an attempt to curb overpopulation. Probably my favorite thing with regards to Celeste’s breakup, which I forgot to mention in the review, is this priceless line. It’s like “I’m cool; I’m calm. I’m a mature adult and we both went our separate ways and I wish her well and I hope her relationship crashes and burns!” It indicates that Celeste might have some anger issues, but I still thought the mood swing was kind of funny. I know the feeling. I remember the first time I ever had to write a sex scene. It was terrifying.

Honestly, I kinda wish you’d stopped at two. The third one was only supposed to be funny, I’m sure, but remember how the lamia muse talks to me too? Well, that apparently inspired her, and she deposited a very upsetting image into my mind. I wrote it as an excerpt...then put it in a spoiler, so that no one would see it by accident...then grew afraid that you would think it brilliant and put it into Whore of Heaven (because, hey, Luzurial will technically survive it; what’s a little more agonizing pain?), so I deleted it completely. I gotta stop taking that bitch’s calls...

Is there a review reply thread for this, out of curiosity? Edit: Never mind. I really should have looked for it before I opened my big fat mouth.

In case you’re curious, assuming Shannon is 162.56 cm or 5’4” (about average female height in the US), this would give her a wingspan of 4.064 m (13 feet 4 inches). Kizzy’s wings may be wildly different due to the whole Seraph thing. At 243.8 cm (8 feet) tall, Eparlegna ends up with an appropriately threatening 6.096 m (20 foot) wingspan. Yeah, I guess that’s true. Good feelings back. Jokes. God damn it, JayDee… I didn’t laugh, but I only cringed a little. Detached enough that I actually chuckled. That’s the power of Mel Brooks. I hate you. I hate you so much. No, I’ll keep talking. But I will look for you. I will find you. And I will slap you. I just need to keep remembering this.

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… 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!” I mention that because… 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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… You know, that actually sounds kind of cool.

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. 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. 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.

Thanks for the review! I’m glad the story is moving at a good pace for you so far, and hopefully I can keep it up. Exposition is a difficult thing, and I tried to find places where characters could naturally end up bringing it up. Chloe’s nervousness at possibly being in trouble with IA, which often prompts people to go motormouth, was one way to do that, and I tried to manage some similar situations in other chapters. As for the erotic elements, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there’s not a lot of sex in this story. There’s a slowly developing bond between Kevin and Luzurial, which does eventually pay off, but given what she’s been through, I felt like having anything happen early on would come across like him taking advantage of her. There is also a scene in Part Three involving a minor character (notice the “Tent” tag on this story), but I’m not sure how well I managed to write it. Again, thank you so much for your support thus far, and in spite of how light on sex the story generally is, I hope you continue to enjoy it!