InBrightestDay
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Posts posted by InBrightestDay
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12 hours ago, JayDee said:
I meant in terms of content and themes rather than terrible grammatical constructions
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.
QuoteI’m sure readers would love to see Kevin smashing a necromancer’s box.
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.”
QuoteWhat’s weird is I have the ideas, it’s getting the phrasing down, constructing the sentences so they flow and hold the interest and read good.
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.
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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…
43 minutes ago, JayDee said:due to what must be the site’s highest tolerance for my barely readable bullshit.
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.
QuoteIn Slumberverse America, Box X you. Initially I was going to have the box require the old backwards speaking reh ckuf etc, but I felt that might actually need explaining within the story and there wasn’t the word count, so eventually I just decided the spell was dumbed down enough to only need ‘Box’ for the commands.
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.”
QuoteI figure another time I can have folks get the vampire/werewolf mixed up too “Lupa? So you must be the werewolf?”
“Oh sure! Yeah, when I was born they said ‘This kid? She’s gonna be a werewolf some day!’ Fuck you, I’m a bitch but I’m not a bitch.“
That would make sense! I think Thundercloud’s even mentioned it.
QuoteI wonder now if I can get the damn re-write done or if I’ll just end up doing another prompt fic.
Who knows? Sometimes ideas come to you when you’re not thinking about the story in question, at least not consciously.
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1 hour ago, GeorgeGlass said:
Wow, what’s it like there? I’m picturing damp stone walls, bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling...basically Drusselstein.
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.
QuoteI learned about yuki-onna from watching Rosario + Vampire. (I don’t watch a lot of anime, but now and then one sucks me in.) I thought the young yuki-onna Mizore was hot, and I liked the concept – sort of sirens of the snow.
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.
QuoteFull disclosure: I had to look up “psychopomp” at Dictionary.com.
Sorry! That was my fault; I should have just said “reapers” or “guides to the afterlife” or something.
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2 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:
I’m glad you weren’t so turned off by Guidelines et al that you stopped reading my stories all together.
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.
2 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:Because the story is sort of a tribute to the art of Glassfish, I wanted to include her in the story in some way, and making her the creator of the Beach seemed appropriate. (Also, the bit about the King of the Mists is a nod to the artist Fogbank, who mainly draws pics of lolis cavorting with adult men.)
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.
2 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:I like to mix different kinds of desires. Tony’s “nursing” on Cherisse is a sexual thing, but at the same time, it’s a reflection of his wish for a real mother figure, which Cherisse (and Annie) provide, in a way.
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.
2 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:I’m glad you enjoyed it and that you appreciate the spirit in which it was written. Thanks very much for the review!
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.
- FairySlayer and GeorgeGlass
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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…
QuoteLike I said then, It’s a very emotional piece. I really felt Azrael’s pain for his dear friend and that he’s still going back after billions of years every day just to be with her... That bit at the end made me tear up for sure, and it’s basically all my fault. He just goes, and he holds her hand, and hopes she knows he’s there.
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.
QuoteI suppose any folks who were upset about changing the ending of Whore of Heaven to fit with The Woman in the Statue at least now have this “What happened next” ending.
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.
QuoteI really like how you’ve now got Lailah in this rather than Uriel – not because I know you have plans for her, but because before Uriel was just kind of one dimensional. Someone else for Azrael to speak too, but not any more especially invested than any other angel who might have known and liked Luzurial. By doing it this way and getting to show the angels of Conception and Death together, and Lailah’s strong personal connection to humanity it really brings the character into it.
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.
QuoteThen, where before Uriel just has his last statement and doesn’t appear anymore, you’re able to use Lailah and Bernice to show that it’s not just angels upset by what’s happening. Totally adds another layer into it, and it’s nice to see Benice went somewhere decent after death I guess. Old ending to WoH or new, she’s still dead.
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.
QuoteMichael's "I KNOW!" badass wingbeat remains pretty awesome too.
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.
QuoteI guess everything in this story up to 140 trillion years later is canon compliant with The Woman in the Statue anyway? If you do get back to Lailah later on?
That is correct. As far as WitS and associated stories go, everything pre-timeskip is canon.
QuoteWas the idea to have the marble and gold pyramid as a landscape feature suggested by the little Egyptian girl as a character?
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).
QuoteThe freaking Angel of Death has to steel himself to see what’s being down to his friend. That’s how you know it’ll be bad
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.
QuoteThat ending through. The damn Seraphim! *Shakes fist!*
Yeah, that was a decision made by a rather detached one, I’d imagine, who wasn’t thinking with a lot of empathy.
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11 hours ago, JayDee said:
And, yes, the fact that Kizzy was set up with a foster parent who would constantly remind her of what had happened may well have been intentional. I’ve kind of got an idea it was the ol’ Angel of Death himself she had help her construct her human identity.
Kizurial: “You do realize who Shondra Jackson is, do you not?”
Azrael: “...No. Not at all. Should I?”
QuoteThe two universes have a lot of the same people, and some only on one or the other and roughly similar overall histories – both have Americas with Los Angles etc. The other universe had the brutal impossible to ignore public assault of Eparlegna, this one gets the creeping horror of Sarsa. There’s a Kate on both Earths, but Lupa’s parents never met on the Whore of Heaven Earth, and yet history tends to find ways to happen much the same anyway in the long run.
That’s actually kind of a staple of parallel realities; they can be extremely similar, save for a few small changes.
QuoteLupa’s “It’s a mystery” in reply to Shannon’s musing about her nature was also meant to be a little funny (along with Shannon possibly purposely missing the point). Swing and a miss I guess
Actually that is pretty funny. I just somehow didn’t see it while reading.
QuoteI feel it also helps suggest that there was a proper reason for Shannon’s drives and inclinations rather than The Creator just messing with her.
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.
Quoteand the fact that she knows her creator is not sadistic (it’s a fictional universe, can’t apply it to this real world
I kid! I kid! Well, kinda...)
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.
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Okay, I have to point this out.
On 4/7/2019 at 3:45 AM, JayDee said:When a story is longer on the front page unless someone is trawling back through and the summary or codes catch their eye, or they specifically come to my profile and same, it’ll get a lot less hits and with the tiny percentage of hits that leave reviews anyway (like, one story has 121K hits and 18 reviews) the odds of getting more feel pretty unlikely.
And then…
6 hours ago, JayDee said:with a lot of my stories being quite niche aimed (ie the snuff) another author’s as likely to alight on something pretty horrible and never return, as they are to see something like this! There’s probably most nasty stuff on my profile than nice
QuoteBM230
Big fan, I enjoy most of your stories, but this is my personal favorite.
Man, it’s almost like you planned that.
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12 hours ago, Sinfulwolf said:
Heh. I did enjoy that line. I couldn’t not put it in once I thought of it.
Whenever I have that thought (“Well, I can’t not put this in now,”) it’s usually a terrible joke.
QuoteI certainly had fun with it, and developing the backstory in my mind. I had actually thought about having the fight done in the Halloween short before settling on the fantasy stuff that I did.
...for something that really is bordering on the edge of fantasy (Full on fantasy to me cause I know the backstory).
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.
QuoteAnd the drooling well… I included that cause too often media shows sleeping women as these perfect little creatures of beauty. I thought a nice little drool bit might really bring it down to reality.
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.
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21 hours ago, JayDee said:
She’s the one got him to turn into a chicken!
See, this right here is what happens when I only read the summary instead of the actual fanfic.
QuoteInBrightestDay has an idea for a crossover at some point set after The Woman in the Statue which ought to be fun if it ever gets written.
That’s likely to be several stories down the road, assuming it gets written at all. As I mentioned to you in our email discussion, if the villain’s plan works the result will be the apocalypse. And I don’t mean the destruction of Earth, I mean the actual apocalypse.
I’m just saying, you start with The Avengers and then make your way to Infinity War/Endgame. Also, I’ll need another story or two to introduce Lailah to readers, so that the borrowed plot point will hurt. Also, the fact that there’s a borrowed plot point is why it’ll likely never get written.
QuoteAnd then there’s an entirely non-canon “Shanon/Kevin/Luzurial” threesome we joked about, where Kevin gives the heartwarming tale of how they came to fall in love and respect and cherish each other, and Shannon’s so overcome with happiness for them she can barely ask dirty questions about how they first got to the boning.
I’d almost forgotten about that.
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2 hours ago, JayDee said:
Quite a way to go to beat the 9587 views Naruto the Cluck managed just by using the beaten-to-death “Hinata cuckolds Naruto” trope.
You may also have gotten some out of the weirdness factor of making Naruto a chicken. I mean, my sympathies, but no wonder Hinata stepped out on him.
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This is cool. What would blog posts be about?
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4 hours ago, Guest TimeWise said:
Also not trying to nitpick too much with the name stuff, Luzurial is a great name. It’s just something I looked into extensively at one point, so it sprang out at me. I’d still say that Luzuriel would work better, since it actually would work as well as Luzurial: if Uriel is ‘light of God’, the -el being ‘of God’, and Luz also means light, then Luzurial would break down to Luz (light) uri (light) al (unknown suffix), whereas Luzuriel would be Luz (light) uri (light) el (of God).
You know, I’ve been thinking about this story on and off for a decade, and somehow I literally never noticed that.
QuoteActually, if my memory serves me, the -el suffix was borrowed from the ancient Chaldean religions, who had a creator God named El.
That’s possible. “Elohim” is definitely an imported word, but El or some variant thereof is ridiculously common in ancient Semitic languages (Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian), and is even used as a proper name for a deity in multiple ancient religions, so it’s hard for me to pin down where it was imported from.
QuoteI also have to say, I don’t think the ‘light light’ aspect of Luzurial’s name is a bad thing, either: I actually think that is kinda cool and reflects her character of “the Pure.’ She’s not just light, but light to the next intensity, light of surpassing purity, light squared.
Well, that made me feel better for not catching it, at least.
QuoteAnyhow, I’ll stop geeking out with angel etymology now, sorry!
Not a problem at all! I’m a Bio major, so I’m still on a learning curve when it comes to all of this stuff, and discussions like this are a good way to learn.
Besides, you have not seen geeking out yet. When I was discussing Part Six with JayDee, I mentioned that, just out of idle curiosity, I had calculated how much energy Luzurial would need to produce to melt that aluminum tentacle in the Room 502 sequence, complete with estimating the diameter and subsequent volume of the tentacle, its mass based on the density of aluminum, and then using the specific heat and enthalpy of fusion of aluminum to figure out what it would take to bring it from room temperature to melting point and then force the phase change. it’s about 18 megajoules, in case you’re curious.
QuoteShe’s a cool character and it’s a great story.
Thank you again!
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TimeWise has now set a record for the fastest anyone has ever read The Woman in the Statue, because he’s at least on Part Six, and may have gotten caught up completely.
QuoteFrom ANON - TimeWise on March 31, 2019
This has continued to be very well-written story. Again, I really commend you on your dialogue: not everyone can capture the feeling of actual conversations, and I think you do very well at that. It helps to keep things immersive and impactful.
Very good work on the id constructs, too. Each one was interesting, genuinely threatening, and well described. Also interesting because of their method of creation: it really makes me wonder what my own id construct would look like. Do we really know what our own worst sins are? And what they might look like brought horribly to life?
That was one of the cool aspects of JayDee’s original story. We only see one incarnate sin (a Lust-based tentacle monster), but I like the idea that every human generates one, and that no two monsters are exactly the same. As for the designs, some of my inspiration came from stuff like the video game The Evil Within, as well as from nature. The Charnel Spider, for instance (which appears to be a fan favorite), is at least partly based on a species of assassin bug that wears the carcasses of its prey as a form of disguise. I took that idea and melded it with the Envy “coveting body parts” idea.
QuoteLazurial is a great character, and I've enjoyed getting to know her. I think you've done a pretty great job depicting a person whose immense wisdom and knowledge are tempered by a kind of innocence, and whose emotional fragility is tempered by her resolve and force of will.
That was part of why I felt so bad for her reading Whore of Heaven, aside from simply the emotional stuff that comes with her being an archangel. She’s flawed and yet deeply noble. She’s intelligent and has the experience of a life billions of years long (my favorite scene to write with her was the “happiest memory” scene from back in Part Three) and yet her naivete regarding sexuality drew intense sympathy from me. Her emotional fragility is actually something new, the result of the torture and rape she was subjected to in WoH, but even after all she’s been through, her focus on protecting her mortal charges has never wavered.
Amusingly, at the beginning of Whore of Heaven Luzurial the Pure was actually a lot like your angel Selsehtiriel the Plucky (for those who haven’t read Conversion, she doesn’t have that title in-story, but I thought it fit
).
QuoteThe interplay between her and Kevin is sweet and fairly believable, and it is nice to see her getting some level of comfort and help in dealing with the horrible things she's been through. Although if I were her therapist, I'd prescribe cracking Eparlegna like a wulnut for real therapeutic relief. I know, easier said than done, but it gives me something to look forward to. It was a great moment when he got shot in the balls.
I’m very glad you like her interactions with Kevin. The angel/human romance is one of the central aspects of the story, so I really tried to make the emotions work.
On Eparlegna getting shot in the groin, I’m not entirely sure where that idea came from, but there is something innately satisfying about a serial rapist getting hit in the nuts, and I like the idea that in large part it’s down to his own arrogance. He knows the bullet will sting, but he figures that since it can’t kill him he can just ignore it, not thinking that perhaps being stung in certain places will be worse than being stung in others…
As for cracking Eparlegna like a walnut, we’ll get there eventually.
QuoteLooking forward to the next chapter!
I’m not sure how long that’s going to take, but I’ll make sure to let folks know when I’m getting close!
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TimeWise is an author over on Literotica, and has a story called Conversion (a mixture of medieval fantasy and horror). I asked if I could namedrop a character from that story, and he expressed interest in my story. I warned him about some of the content, which was apparently fine, so here we are.
QuoteFrom ANON - TimeWise on March 31, 2019
An excellent beginning to the story! The writing style is engaging and really drew me in: there is enough detail to catch the imagination without dragging, and the dialogue flows well. I also like the humor worked into scenes, as it helps balance out the dark material. Kevin is relatable and sympathetic, and of course I feel for poor Luzurial and want whoever did this to her obliterated with extreme prejudice.
Thank you! The humor was kind of my way of acknowledging how ridiculous the circumstances can be, and it keeps popping up. As for payback for what happened to Luzurial, that’s going to take a while, but come Part Nine, whenever I manage that...
QuoteAlthough as a side-note, I would mention that properly speaking, her name should be Luzuriel. The -el suffix meant 'shining one' or angel in other words. So the archangel Michael's name was Micha, and he is an angel, so Micha-el. Thus, it would be Luzuri-el (without the hyphen, I'm just spelling it out). I know that you are borrowing the character from another story, so not even really your choice, but I just wanted to mention it.
I asked about that actually, way back in the day. According to @JayDee, the author of the original story, Luzurial’s name is based on the Spanish word luz, meaning “light,” and a deliberate misspelling of the Archangel Uriel’s name. As far as I can tell from online research (read: half an hour on Wikipedia and various name etymology sites), the suffix “-el” is a short form of “Elohim,” which is one of the Hebrew names for God, so Michael translates to “who is like God” and Gabriel to “God is my strength” or “hero of God” (I’m not sure what the order is supposed to be). Uriel, on the other hand, translates to either “light of God” or “God is my light” (again, not sure what the order is), and as a result Luzuriel would look right, but would actually be somewhat redundant.
QuoteI also liked how grounded the story is, despite the supernatural occurances. This really helps keep things feeling real. Every time I'd wonder about something practical, like "but should she be bathing if she has stitches?" the characters and the story would answer the question. Great stuff and I'm looking forward to more.
Thank you! You know, that moment in particular is an example of me catching a problem and trying to make a bug into a feature. I started writing the scene and, given the substance matting her hair, figured she would want that off of her body now, so I figured it would be nice for her to have a bath. Then I realized you generally don’t let people with stitches do that, and figured it might be a good way to show off one of her powers, specifically her regeneration.
Thanks again for the review!
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1 hour ago, Tcr said:
On one side, I know that to many people, it makes Celeste selfish and, as such, unsympathetic as she is actively putting people in danger knowing her condition. On the other, to some, I know it would be sympathetic; a flawed character in the way that people could associate with. In the end, I kind of went for what worked for the story (even if, to some, she becomes disliked and hated).
I think what you’ve crafted here is a flawed but genuinely sympathetic character. PTSD is nothing to be ashamed of, but all the way back in the first few chapters, we got a sense of how she was raised, and...well, this may sound weird, but while Celeste is a woman, I can’t help but feel that what she’s dealing with is something very close to the idea of toxic masculinity.
What I mean by that is that she has a problem, a completely understandable problem given what she’s been through, and she feels the weight of it at all times, given that in Chapter 2 you established that she periodically has suicidal thoughts...and yet she can’t really deal with it because of how she’s been raised. When her mother tries to tell her that her family is there for her, Celeste assumes that they’ll just tell her to “get over it”, and mentions that her father would just tell her that “Lauriers don’t cry.” This is the kind of stuff men get stuck with (or expect to get stuck with) in modern culture: suck it up, get over it, take it like a man, men don’t cry, etc.
Obviously, this version of it isn’t tied to sex or gender, so it’s not toxic masculinity per se, but I suspect something to do with her family’s tradition of military service. She’s been raised to be stoic when what she clearly needs is to let those emotions out. Given this, I don’t think she’s consciously being selfish; I think she’s been raised to think that her mental problems are something she’s just supposed to power through, which is why she’s forcing herself into combat again: she thinks the best way to fix herself is to get back on the horse, so to speak, bottle her problems up and hope they go away. She needs help, but she thinks it’s wrong somehow to even reach for it. That, to me, is the really heartbreaking aspect of the character.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong. It’s happened before.
QuoteLol. I'm glad you laughed at them. I certainly wanted to avoid the "direct" approach. And, while flaming dogshit is not in my vernacular, "well, fuck me with a spoon" is definitely one of mine when it comes to being surprised.
No joke, I burst out laughing at “fuck me with a spoon,” which was somewhat awkward since I was reading this chapter on my phone at a local pizza place.
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1 hour ago, JayDee said:
I think by the time it rolls around extreme climate change coupled with the current drive towards putting even more of the world into poverty for the benefit for the few will see much of the remaining population barely surviving as intentionally poorly educated serfs for a tiny inbred elite in the remaining habitable areas.
Oh, JayDee, that’s ridiculous and you know it.
There’s no reason to assume the elites will be inbred.
QuoteI may be less optimistic.
Well, color me surprised.
In all seriousness, my view of the future fluctuates from day to day, so some days I’m completely with you, and some days, when I don’t want to get so depressed that my family gets scared, I feel like I have to hope that things can get better instead of worse.
QuoteWould it work if they’re taking a similar attitude to civillians breaking inside the Rupture (which happened the first time around as well in the confusion, and possibly also due to sheer numbers overwhelming part of the line that didn’t fire on civillians, due to folks desperate to try and reach/save loved ones) – most of the National Guard guys don’t know who Kevin and Co or Brendan are, so they would just see an SUV smashing through to get inside, Brendan’s gun likely not visible through the windows, and have only a non-lethal option allowed against non-demons/id constructs… we don’t know how effecitve it is against an SUV, and so could only report it up the line that some poor dumb bastards had gotten through?
This was kind of what I was thinking when I wrote it: that they’d definitely fire on anything coming out of the barrier, but may not fire on someone going in. Having said that, Sinfulwolf has actual military experience, so if she tells me I did something stupid with regards to the military, well, I’m going to assume that I did.
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3 hours ago, Thundercloud said:
Actually speaking about that...who actually sent the list in the first place? Until the latest chapter I thought that Kevin sent the list to Chloe based on Luzurials mindreading, but now it was suddenly the reverse. It makes sense that Kevin still has the list on his phone and need to check it since he has not memorized the names, but the current double messages about who wrote the list is confusing.
Luzurial knew that there were ten agents total, and that they reported to Hobbs, so that’s what Kevin sent to Chloe (the cultists didn’t all know each other’s names, so Luzurial couldn’t pull that info from mind reading). Chloe and Cole then worked out who the remaining agents were and sent that list to Kevin.
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21 minutes ago, Sinfulwolf said:
Well… we’ll see.
I’ll admit, I may be overly optimistic. I know it’s difficult to change behaviors ingrained since childhood, and that discussion of gender relations can be difficult to even have because the issue is so sensitive. All I can say is that I can see the effort being made, so I think there is some cause for hope.
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Quote
You could always try it and see how it turned out!
I suppose…
Alright… @T_B, if I do this, do you have any other instructions?
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2 hours ago, Sinfulwolf said:
It’s part of his character for sure, but it’s also a little sad that nothing’s gunna change much in the next 75 years in regards to viewing women as the one’s that always need protecting on all those levels.
Part of this is also just my fault. You know how I’ve mentioned in the Author’s Notes and here that my talents as an author are very limited? Well, the reason masculinity hasn’t changed as much as it should have for this story is down in large part to my weakness at writing a future society with a different culture as opposed to just different technology.
By the time 2082 rolls around in the real world, I think we’re likely to be in a much better place on that front.
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I really hope someone takes this challenge (not sure if I could actually do it justice), because I’m a big fan of older sister/younger brother stories and also like mother/son ones.
Again, I would write this, but I don’t really know if I could do the sex well enough.
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12 hours ago, JayDee said:
“Servant, this makes you look like someone else who has authority to be there.”
“Thank you master.”
“Whatever you do, don’t go out there and introduce yourself under the name they’re looking for instead.”
Later
“I’m Brendan… ah crap.”
I kid I kid! I’m sure you’ll do fine.
I was thinking more along the lines of re-writing the section so he doesn’t use his actual name until he already has his captives in the car.
QuoteIf you stuck with the comms SNAFU you could always make it deliberately down to someone sympathetic to Eparlegna’s aims in the National Guard being the one to get the message and not pass it on. gotta be some there same as in the PPD.
That could also work.
JayDee's (Originals) review reply, story discussion and additional notes thread
in General
Posted
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).