InBrightestDay

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.

See, this right here is what happens when I only read the summary instead of the actual fanfic. 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. I’d almost forgotten about that.

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.

This is cool. What would blog posts be about?

You know, I’ve been thinking about this story on and off for a decade, and somehow I literally never noticed that. 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. Well, that made me feel better for not catching it, at least. 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. Thank you again!

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. 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. 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 ). 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. 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!

Well, that name was chosen for the best reasons: ironic reasons! Besides, not all angel names end in -el, Lailah and Sandalphon being examples.

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. 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... 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. 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!

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. 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.

Oh, JayDee, that’s ridiculous and you know it. There’s no reason to assume the elites will be inbred. 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. 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.

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.

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.

I suppose… Alright… @T_B, if I do this, do you have any other instructions?

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.

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.

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. That could also work.

And @Thundercloud reviews Part Eight! So you and JayDee both had that thought independently. Because of this, I have officially mentioned it inthe Author’s Note, and it may become canon as of the end of Part Nine. Thank you. As you said, the idea was that humanity has been gaming out how we might respond in the event of another attack like this, but I really wanted Luzurial to be valuable for more than just combat, specifically as a source of information here. As for keeping the students outside until they’re dragged in, it’s almost funny how long I spent trying different dialogue exchanges, trying to figure out how Kevin, Abdul and Calista were going to be let into the Rupture zone, before realizing that the reason none of the dialogue exchanges worked for me was because the whole idea didn’t work; the National Guard would have to be freaking insane, not to mention that the students barely survived the Applied Theology building, so Luzurial wouldn’t be keen on bringing them into something even worse. I really like that idea! We know the hybrids are stronger than normal humans, but there’s no reason to assume they wouldn’t have other abilities, perhaps granted by Eparlegna for specific purposes, and this would allow me to explain how he worked his way past a lot of the soldiers without resorting to a communication SNAFU. Thank you again! I really enjoyed writing that. In the street scene, yeah, the incarnate sins are just monsters being fought by the military, but I do like to take the opportunity to remind readers that these things are literally condensed evil, and that should mean that a lot of them are downright terrifying. Thanks for the review!

Speaking of angel names, the Principality Tegwen. Google reveals that Tegwen is a name based in… I see why you were thinking of her having a Welsh accent. And the tall angel, Temira...Temira is apparently a Hebrew name that literally means “tall.” This works for the angel, obviously, but I really wonder who gives a human child a name like this. I mean, how do you know if your kid’s going to be tall enough for that to make sense?