InBrightestDay

I am seriously jealous, but also very proud! Congratulations on your first published book!

Oh, don’t worry, I think it absolutely works. The “first episode,” if you will, was just very similar. I don’t think you’re plagiarizing or anything. As you said, Jumanji uses the same “trapped in a game” idea. Got it. That’s probably a very good thing, given what they’ll now no doubt be facing inside the game. And by the time you do, I might just have reviewed Chapter 2! Seriously, just ask @Thundercloud; I’ve been reading his G.S.P. story veeery slowly for quite a while now. Oh, and as for this: I feel you. Every time one of those review alerts pops up on anything I’ve written, it’s an “Oh God I hope I didn’t upset them...” feeling.

It’s really cool seeing how you break down a story like that, and it’s something I’d like to do with one of my future stories. What does it mean, out of curiosity, to “orphan” your work?

I think I got a little too fixated on the “starbound” part of Starbound Glory. It’s pretty cool to see a story about the age of sail, though. It was really cool seeing the chain shot make an appearance. I always love seeing the specialized cannon ammunition, and chain shot in particular made a memorable appearance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (in the scene where the Black Pearl takes out the Interceptor’s main mast), so it was awesome seeing it here. And, of course, as Mythbusters showed, hitting a person with it has rather gory results. I think there’s some sort of ingrained “Oooooh” reaction whenever something bad happens to someone’s genitalia. It’s almost a reflex. That is the advantage of a collection of short stories; you don’t have to explain everything at once, and can expand on certain details as you go. It’s actually almost subversive. Charlotte spends almost the entire rest of the story as a total badass, composed and in control at all times, so seeing her make a bit of a goofy mistake here was pretty funny. It does also help to humanize her, and of course makes sense in context, since the beds on a ship, even in the captain’s cabin, are inevitably going to be rather small, making it easier for accidents like that to happen.

Okay, I had to show up just to call attention to that title! Although that one’s kind of amazing too, in an almost poetic way.

Sorry about that! I meant to read the next chapter more slowly, but then I found myself on break at work with nothing else to do and figured “Why not read some more?” and I ended up finishing the chapter in a day or two. Oh absolutely. I didn’t mean to suggest it wasn’t a team effort, just that Mindeye got the ball rolling. I loved Fang’s dialogue after she pushes through her fear (paraphrased): “I forgot how easy humans are to kill; these guys are so dead!” Yeah, you did a great job having dialogue that makes sense in hindsight and yet doesn’t give anything away the first time you read it. Speaking of which, I noticed one of your earlier review replies (on Chapter 6)… I see what you did there. Very true. A less-than-brilliant kid playing with powers beyond his comprehension can be just as dangerous as a supervillain. This fits with the “puzzle pieces I didn’t even realize you were adding” idea I mentioned with Carol. All of the clues make sense in hindsight, but at the time they don’t seem like anything important, since there are alternative explanations for all of them. Eagle having sex with Linda? We saw in earlier chapters that he’s kind of unscrupulous when it comes to sex, so it would make sense that he’d sleep with an adoring fan. Linda’s shocked reaction to seeing Jennifer in the park? Well, she is being approached by a naked woman, so shock is an understandable reaction. And yeah, the stuff with Carol is an example of this done fantastically. Congressman Winthers hiring a PI to track her and being angry when he doesn’t know where she is? Well, she was kidnapped recently, so any dad would be a little overprotective. Her poor performance in school? Guess she was a lazy student who relied on her father’s money and influence. The cuts on her wrists? She must have been very hurt by the death of her mother and acted out through self-harm. It’s only after the reveal of what her father was doing to her, possibly for years, that everything looks different. He’s not an overprotective dad, he’s an abuser who doesn’t want his victim to get out from under his thumb (or perhaps doesn’t want her telling anyone else about what’s happened to her). Performing badly in school is a classic symptom of an abused child. The cuts on her wrist could be self-harm relating to her abuse or she might have even attempted suicide because of her trauma. That’s why I called it a great twist, because all the foreshadowing you set up had obvious alternate explanations. The twist wasn’t obvious, and yet once revealed it made perfect sense. Speaking of Carol’s horrible family life… If this helps, I can handle a lot of horrible stuff happening to characters, provided said characters can recover. Carol went through something awful, but she has at least one friend now, as well as a contact in a superhero team, so even after those bad memories resurface, there’s hope for her life to improve. Firefly is currently in a bad place (yes, her masochistic tendencies are real, but the psionic effects have removed her ability to say no, and even masochists do want to say no from time to time), but this is a world with powerful psionics, including Linda, who can repair damage like that, so there is hope for her condition to be fixed. That’s really the key for me enjoying this story. Ah, okay. I had thought the maze was a metaphor for the damage that one psionic inflicted while trying to brainwash her, but Mindeye and Jennifer did kind of break the law when they did what they did with Carol, so it does make sense for Mindeye to attempt to keep anyone else from digging around in her brain.

I wasn’t saying “well that really turned me off,” just that I didn’t find it super hot. As I mentioned in the review, it didn’t cause me to stop reading the chapter (there was plenty of other hot stuff in the scene). The only part of the story thus far that made me wonder whether I should continue reading was some concern over consent, which was cleared up several chapters ago. So no, further uses of “daddy” might not be a turn-on for me, but they’re not going to prevent me from enjoying the story. I really hope I haven’t upset you two with my reviews. I wasn’t trying for that; all I was doing was giving my completely subjective responses to each chapter. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings. I want to point out again that this story is five chapters long so far, and the only chapter that alarmed me was Chapter 2, and that was due to me misunderstanding what was happening. Please don’t take any of my reactions as an indictment of your work. I’ve read stories that legitimately hurt me (emotionally, I mean), but I’ve never said that the authors shouldn’t have written them. I am a big believer in the idea that an author or authors should tell the story they want to. I also very much understand writing something for yourself but hoping someone else might enjoy it as well. So again, please don’t take this as me saying you two have done anything wrong, and know that I am genuinely enjoying the story.

That’s the thing about the internet: you can never really tell whether you’re being trolled or whether this is just some really weird fanfiction. If nothing else, the title’s kinda funny. Well, I’m never going to like snuff, but it was mercifully short, so it didn’t hurt as much as a longer torture/snuff scene would have. I was like a living pinball, bounced from this story to WoH, where I stuck for about a decade before being launched back out...okay, the pinball analogy doesn’t really work, but even so it is kind of strange how things work out sometimes. Fic works in mysterious ways...

Sorry for the misunderstanding! I felt bad leaving the reviews that fast myself, so I read your statement wrong partly out of guilt. I will definitely continue reading!

Apologies for doing all the reviews so quickly, but I wanted to get caught up before the next chapter was posted. Oh, age difference isn’t really a problem. I mean, my longest running story (which I have vowed to finish by the end of July!) features an eighteen year old boy paired with a fourteen billion year old woman, so compared to that Ray and Nina are practically the same age. The thing that made me uncomfortable during Chapter 2 was really just the question of how consensual this was. The whole reason the age of consent exists in the first place, after all, is that sometimes younger people are mentally more vulnerable to being forced or manipulated into sex, and I misunderstood what you were doing with Nina’s thought process and thought Ray might be coercing her into sex, which was where the Bad Touch feelings popped up. Of course… ...that was the key component I was missing, that it was Nina thinking “Wait, what am I doing?” rather than “Wait, what is he doing?” The subsequent chapters did a lot to change my mind on the pairing, and definitely reassured me that Ray is ultimately a good guy. Yeah. I’m definitely going to have to check out more of Melrick’s work in the future! I was just joking. When it comes to what one finds aesthetically pleasing, it’s all a matter of personal preference. Definitely. I imagine the titular awakenings are more Nina’s, as a pubescent girl just now experiencing sexual attraction for the first time, though it could to some extent apply to Ray, I suppose. Again, that was mostly intended as a joke, though my reaction was kind of like: Me: Okay, I’m genuinely starting to accept that this relationship could work. For this story, I think I’m getting over the “fourteen year old” thing. Ray: Even if she were 13… Me: Don’t push it, man. I think I will. In spite of my reaction to Chapter 2, I actually am rooting for these two now.

I like how you give these shoutouts to lesser known superheroes in the story, like the Wolfsbane references with Fang and now Hyper referencing Super Sabre. I don’t pick up on all of them, of course, but it’s neat for people who are really into the more obscure Marvel characters. That’s a good point. I’d kind of forgot about it, but you did mention back in the first chapter that the GSP was formed to combat the monsters, so yeah, stealth wasn’t as important when designing the equipment. Even for an F/F scene, I’d imagine she could basically turn her hands into living vibrators. It definitely has me feeling a lot of things (I was kind of horrified by what I thought had happened), but like I said, I don’t want to respond yet, since this might not be what I think it is. On to the next chapter!

Maybe the blankness was like writing “...” Like they read the story and were like “Well, this...I...you...I just...what?”

The governor of Alabama is Kay Ivey, which doesn’t really sound like...oh, I get it, because holly is a plant and ivy is also...yeah, I see what you mean. So Heuchler means...oh, that’s good. I would not have thought to look that up. The doctor’s name is kind of funny too, like naming a Japanese cop “Officer Keisatsukan.” Ah, so more of a generic Deep South gag than an indicator of him being a monster. I’ll fully admit I stole the Ugly Bastard joke from Gigguk. I was actually thinking about Lailah’s PoV anyway, because ever since the law went up, I was wondering what the Angel of Conception would think of it. I mean, on the one hand, if she attaches souls to embryos at conception, she’s probably not usually happy when an abortion happens (since I’d imagine she has to take the soul back and bind it to another embryo), but on the other hand, she’d no doubt be well aware that free will, the ability to choose, is one of the most important traits the Creator gave mortals, so it would likely be as complex an issue for her as it is for us. But when I read this story, I was thinking like she would be watching all the souls passing from her to their human mothers, and knowing each one. The Angel Lailah: “Twins, tall for babies and with black hair, to be born to Li Fang in Hangzhou, China. A beautiful little girl, red haired and with a light dusting of freckles across her cheeks, to be born to Beverly Hayden in Gloucester, England. A sweet little boy, brown of hair and eyes, to be born to Senator Billy Bob...wait, what? Humans can do that now? I don’t...wait, she’s involved? No, no that tracks.” On the other hand, I am sorely, sorely tempted to use that “begone, THOT” thing, so we’ll see how this goes.

I guess some terms haven’t spread too far outside the US. So, “cuck” is still short for “cuckold,” but in recent years, specifically on the political right, the word has come to refer not only to a man whose girlfriend or wife is cheating on him, but to a man so weak and pathetic that he deserves to have someone else (a real man) steal his woman from him. The idea, generally, is that the cucks are physically weak, emotionally sensitive/vulnerable or somewhat submissive in their relationships with their female partners, and that what these women really want is a dominant alpha male (usually one who’s physically strong as well, but that’s not necessary so long as he has a dominant personality), even if they don’t know it yet. Mike is thus a cuck because he’s short of stature, not muscular and, I’m guessing, because he doesn’t really participate in the fight against the demon and lets Lupa handle it. The fact that she’s stronger than he is, faster than he is, more durable than he is and has more experience with this kind of stuff than he does is basically irrelevant. Remember on my thread the cultural conditioning I mentioned that’s part of why Kevin feels he has to go into the Second Rupture with Luzurial? This is basically it.

I figured as much. After all, other characters have never called her anything more than curvy. Apparently in spite of never doing 2 player before, he’s pretty good with his Wii. I REGRET NOTHING!!! You got plenty of them! I just didn’t want to quote everything that made me laugh, as the review was kind of long as it was. Depressingly, I don’t think that’s necessary to explain it. Gaming, especially of the competitive variety (multiplayer matches and such), seems to be like a dog whistle to assholes, at least from what I’ve read. I admittedly don’t really do a lot of online play. In fact, I have two Call of Duty games (Black Ops and Black Ops II) and as unthinkable as it may seem, I own those for the single player campaign, meaning that I have handily avoided the bullshit that goes on in stereotypical CoD multiplayer. So, for anyone who understandably didn’t get my hilarious snake identification joke, when I read “red and black and yellow banded,” being from Florida I immediately thought of the eastern coral snake (Micrurus fulvius), which looks like this: It’s an incredibly beautiful animal that uses bright colors to warn potential predators that it’s venomous (a phenomenon called “aposematic coloration”). For the record, it’s also really mellow and nonaggressive. I ran into one of these things in the wild once (my class was out in the woods looking for samples for Mycology class and suddenly I discovered this thing about four feet from me) and it didn’t hiss or curl up or anything; it just lazily slithered past me. Of course, now that I’ve said that, I should add that just because it’s mellow does not mean that its patience is infinite. Inevitably a news story will appear about some idiot who saw how chill this snake is and tried picking it up, at which point it reminded said idiot that it is, in fact, dangerously venomous. For the love of God, do not try the patience of a wild animal. Consider this your snake PSA for the day. What was I talking about? Oh, right! So, since animals learn to recognize the banded colors of the coral snake, several species of harmless snakes have evolved color patterns that look similar in the hopes that potential predators will be fooled (a phenomenon called “Batesian mimicry”). The most famous of these is no doubt the milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum), but I knew that if I said “milk snake” in that review, JayDee was going to make some joke about milking somebody’s snake, so instead I went with the scarlet kingsnake (Lampropeltis elapsoides), which looks like this: So there you go, just in case anybody had forgotten that I was a Bio major. Yeah, I think that has to do with both how it’s easier on the artist and how it kind of evokes lush, tropical vegetation (a lot of these snake monsters tend to be from the jungle). That’s a really cool idea, the cheetah as opposed to the wolf (and wolves are known for being able to run long distances).

Oh, well, in that case my tolerance does have a limit. Don’t expect to get reviews from me on any of your snuff fics, for instance. Abdul: “I’m surprised Luzurial let you smash that woman’s box.” Kevin: “Hey, she approved of me smashing...” *facepalm* “...oh, son of a-” Abdul: “Tell me, was it difficult with that tiny hammer of yours?” Kevin: “The hammer was not tiny! It was a perfectly average, normal-size hammer! Luzurial can back me up on this.” Luzurial: “I will not be drawn into these shenanigans.” Calista: “Listening to this conversation is so much more entertaining than the New Years’ celebration.” I know exactly what that’s like. I can get images in my head, but the problem is that they usually arrive in visual form, like a movie, so I have to try to translate them into words.

Before I get into this, I’d just like to tell you that I was signed on writing a reply on another thread when you posted this. I happened to have headphones on, but had Youtube paused. The point of all this is that I was jumpscared by a notification. Anyway… You haven’t seen barely readable bullshit. I don’t want to name names, but I’ve read some stuff that is riddled with typos to the point of it being genuinely distracting. Well, while the use of Hsilgne would have fit with other demonic casting, it’s entirely possible that spells designed for mortal use might, once cast, respond to commands in the user’s own language. Also, it would have lost the comedic value. Seriously, that made me laugh so hard I kind of want to reference it in the Holiday Special now. *As Luzurial is dealing with the Dread Tree* Necromancer: “No! I can’t let you stop me.” *places backup weapon* “Box...” Kevin: *smashes box with a hammer* “I don’t know exactly what that was going to do, but I’mma just preemptively say fuck that noise.” That would make sense! I think Thundercloud’s even mentioned it. Who knows? Sometimes ideas come to you when you’re not thinking about the story in question, at least not consciously.

Well, I had to look that up, but tragically no. It actually looked like a small apartment in Florida with lights that never seemed bright enough, and a dog who had a creeping sense of separation anxiety. Ain’t nobody debating the hotness of Mizore! Though I will say there’s something kind of funny about calling a spirit associated with snow “hot.” As for the yuki-onna themselves, I’ve done a bit of research into them, along with other yokai, for a story I’m writing (no idea if I’ll pull it off, but I’m shooting for “creepy romance”), and there are a lot of different depictions depending, it seems, on what region of Japan you’re in. Sometimes yuki-onna are terrifying (some stories have them stealing children or eating children’s livers), sometimes they’re just kind of sad, and sometimes they’re both (the aforementioned Snow Bride story), so authors have a lot of leeway in terms of how to portray them. Sorry! That was my fault; I should have just said “reapers” or “guides to the afterlife” or something.

Given the sheer, insane volume of your work, I really figured I shouldn’t stop looking through it just because I didn’t like some of the stories. Heck, there can be stories in the same series that net different reactions from me. That’s pretty neat. I caught a mention of “beach glass” and “fish” at the beginning of the story, but it never occurred to me that the deities were based on actual people. I actually just assumed the King of the Mists was a reference to your loli stories. At the risk of sounding weird...well weirder, that’s actually exactly what I like about “nursing” like that: beyond the purely sexual aspect, it’s a warm, soothing form of intimate contact, for both partners. I’m a big fan of gentle affection (hugs, cuddling), and nursing has always felt like part of that, an act that bridges erotic and emotional intimacy. That’s just in general. As you said, it’s even more powerful in the context of the story, given Tony’s parental neglect and Annie and Cherisse’s maternal attitudes. So yeah...sorry if that was weird. No problem! There’s another story of yours I’ll be reviewing fairly soon. It’s going to be a few days, though, since I won’t have internet for a few days, and while I wrote this post on my phone, I really don’t like writing reviews on it.

The Least I Can Do is...kind of an odd thing. In 2008, I read JayDee’s story Whore of Heaven in the mistaken belief that it not being snuff meant that the female lead, the Archangel Luzurial, would be okay in the end. What she ended up as was the opposite of okay. Instead of being angry or grossed out (I can handle gore fairly well), I was just really sad for her, to the point that I emailed JayDee and asked if I could write a non-canon sequel where things got better for her. Ten years later, that ended up as the giant modern fantasy story The Woman in the Statue, which JayDee enjoyed enough that it actually became canon (and which I will finish some day!). However, as I started posting WitS, I decided I’d post reviews for Whore of Heaven, mostly because reviewing is always the nice thing to do on AFF, and because it felt wrong not to leave reviews for the thing I was currently writing a sequel to. I figured that, having already read it, it wouldn’t be as upsetting the second time around. I was wrong. So I spent at least a week depressed after rereading WoH, and during that week, I went home from work one night, sat down at my computer and this story just kind of happened. I didn’t post it initially, but Azrael visiting his friend is something JayDee mentioned a couple times in other stories, and lately The Least I Can Do, or at least the subject matter, has popped up in conversations recently, so I finally decided to post it. Speaking of @JayDee… Part of what changed from the rough draft I sent you months back is the timeline. For those only reading now, the timeskip originally went to “8 billion years later,” shortly after the Sun would have finished casting off its outer layers and becoming a white dwarf. But then, while discussing my Whore of Heaven reviews, JayDee clarified that no angels were actually meant to have released Luzurial, but that she was only supposed to be freed when the coating disintegrated due to entropy. This meant the time for her release went from 120 trillion years in the future (after the last stars burn out) to an absolute minimum of 2 trillion trillion trillion years in the future, and given how mean-spirited the original ending of WoH was, I figure it’s better to assume maximum proton half-life, which means it would take 30 million trillion trillion trillion years for all matter to break down. That’s why the timeskip moved to 140 trillion years in, to reflect that even after all the stars have burned out, she’s still there, still suffering in ways the human mind can’t even comprehend, and not only is her entire previous life a nigh-invisible speck compared to how long she’s spent being tortured, but even the amount of time she’s spent being tortured so far is itself a nigh-invisible speck compared to how much agony she has to look forward to. Of course, that’s also why I have Azrael visiting and holding her hand. It doesn’t alleviate her suffering, and she might not even be able to sense anything other than pain, but he just wants her to know she isn’t alone. I suppose it might serve as a bit of a consolation prize. I even twisted the knife further with the condemnatory tone of the Seraphim’s orders not to release her, drawing on stuff you said in the past for vintage JayDee flavor. I kind of debated who would be talking to Azrael. Originally it was the Archangel Uriel, and for a while it was the Archangel Samael, just to suggest how bad what’s happening is. In addition to being an angel of death, Samael serves as Ha-Satan (“the accuser,” not to be confused with Heylel/Lucifer), responsible for arguing against humanity; he’s sometimes referred to as a prosecuting attorney. I imagine this requires him to be super detached, so if something was making him uncomfortable, it had to be bad. Ultimately, though, I put Lailah in there for two reasons. First, because I liked the “bookends” idea, that as Angel of Conception she’s kind of the opposite of Azrael and Samael. Second, I liked the idea of her little interaction with Bernice. I mean, woman died trying to attack a demon to rescue an angel, in the process displaying the most moral courage and basic decency of anyone present. She’s probably going somewhere nice. I figured that once she got there, her first concern would probably still be what was happening to Luzurial, and even knowing that she’s a cop and that breaking the rules would not be something she approves of, I imagine she would still feel grateful for Luzurial trying to help and wouldn’t want to see her suffer. And I did like Lailah’s interaction with her. Bernice is Jewish, after all, so she may have heard childhood stories about Lailah and it’s kind of surreal meeting her (it’s surreal meeting Michael as well, but there Bernice is more focused on getting help, so the weirdness of the situation is pushed into the background), and Lailah of course is in full Mom mode, trying to comfort an upset child. Yeah, I kind of liked that too. The idea is that he’s just as upset about not being allowed to help Luzurial as everyone else is, and given the amount of power he’s channeling, just a little bit getting released is basically an explosive shockwave. That is correct. As far as WitS and associated stories go, everything pre-timeskip is canon. That’s actually an interesting idea, that perhaps new things are added to Heaven by mortals who go there, but in this case that pyramid was meant to be an older feature. I was thinking that the structures built by angels would be really ancient architecture, and the pyramid I had envisioned was sort of a hybrid of Egyptian and Mesoamerican architecture, with the overall smooth sides looking like an Egyptian pyramid, but with inlaid steps like an Aztec pyramid. The gold and marble were just colors I sort of liked. I have another short story I want to write, set during the Fall (would likely go in the Bible section due to that) and with Lailah as the PoV character, with Luzurial, Gabriel and others showing up as well, where the story starts with fighting on the side of the pyramid, complete with some of the attacks flying back and forth melting bits of it (it’s been fixed by TLICD). Yeah, I kind of wanted the idea that Azrael is a little jaded to the death going on on Earth, but when Lailah suggests that something worse is happening, that creeps him out. Yeah, that was a decision made by a rather detached one, I’d imagine, who wasn’t thinking with a lot of empathy.

As with my Originals review reply thread, this is currently for a single story, but who knows? Maybe I’ll have more stories in this category in the future.

Kizurial: “You do realize who Shondra Jackson is, do you not?” Azrael: “...No. Not at all. Should I?” That’s actually kind of a staple of parallel realities; they can be extremely similar, save for a few small changes. Actually that is pretty funny. I just somehow didn’t see it while reading. Time for me to get nerdy. There’s a Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition supplement called the Book of Exalted Deeds, and it was a supplement for noble heroes, just as its counterpart, the Book of Vile Darkness, was for DMs to design particularly nasty villains (that second one gets a little edgelordy at points). At any rate, the reason I bring it up is that BoED contains some minor Good deities, and one of them is Lastai, “the goddess of pleasure, love and passion.” Lastai teaches that sexual pleasure is meant to be enjoyed, but with none of the malign elements that evil beings might add on. While there are sins associated with sex (adultery, abuse, rape) sex itself isn’t sinful, and I imagine that Chastia and others like her may have been meant to be more like Lastai: envoys of sexual intimacy as an expression of love and affection without any form of abuse or cruelty. It would explain both Shannon’s intense enjoyment of sex and her bubbly personality and kindness to those around her. I mean, I get it, nobody knows anything about God; faith wouldn’t be a thing if everyone just knew, but I do think that a sadistic monotheistic deity, while potentially consistent with the letter of the sacred texts, is inconsistent with their spirit.

Okay, I have to point this out. And then… Man, it’s almost like you planned that.

Whenever I have that thought (“Well, I can’t not put this in now,”) it’s usually a terrible joke. You’re making me really curious about this. If you ever do end up writing about the fight, I’m going to have to check it out. I get what you mean. Women in movies and TV tend to roll out of bed with makeup on, or somehow have hair that stays perfectly styled while sleeping. I also rather liked it because, well, it’s something I’ve done: wake up, realize I was drooling in my sleep and then hope nobody saw it. It feels very relatable.