InBrightestDay

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?

And @Sinfulwolf returns for Parts Seven and Eight. First off, thank you for the review! It was actually important for me to show how the National Guard is handling things this time around, in large part as a contrast to the first time. I don’t think JayDee ever described what happened after the military went into the First Rupture, but I kind of imagined that when they suddenly found themselves facing real monsters under glowing, bruise-colored clouds, there might have been an understandable level of panic. 75 years later, they know that real monsters are a legitimate possibility, and have been trained, to some extent anyway, for this eventuality. And thank you regarding the Crawler. When I was writing Part Five, I considered having something Sloth-based in the App Theo building, but at the time I figured that since Sloth is basically laziness, it would likely be some kind of hilariously slow-moving blob thing and Luzurial wouldn’t even have to kill it; she and the humans could just break into a light jog and it would never catch them. However, as the chapters went on, I had this idea for a creature that would essentially paralyze its prey, and went from there. Aside from the obvious slug design, the slicing bone plates that serve as the Crawler’s jaws are kind of Dunkleosteus-inspired. I’m glad the emotion came through, especially since this is basically the sex scene I’ve been building toward since Part One. As for why Kevin lasted so long, there are actually two possibilities. The first, and admittedly the one I had in my head, was that it’s partly due to the “boost” Luzurial gave him, which affected endurance in addition to strength, and partly due to whatever weird effect sex has on angels in this setting. I don’t fully understand it myself, but it seemed in Whore of Heaven that sex exhausted Luzurial in a way that combat never really would. It may also have to do with the idea that she is far more sensitive to sexual stimulation than a human would be (another thing I pulled from WoH, where she feels intense pleasure the first time she’s touched sexually, when by rights she should be afraid rather than aroused given the situation). Of course, there is another explanation, which JayDee proposed when I sent them the rough draft, namely that since we get “what happened last night” from Kevin’s PoV, we don’t know what Luzurial was actually thinking. Kevin mentions that he’s glad they stopped when they did because it was actually starting to hurt for him, so it’s entirely possible that Luzurial, either through facial expressions and body language or through telepathy, realized that she was starting to hurt Kevin a little bit, and called an end to the night’s activities, claiming she was too tired in order to keep Kevin from feeling like he’d failed her somehow. While I am the author, I’m not going to say that second explanation isn’t true, because frankly it makes a lot of sense. A big part of that is thanks to you and your feedback. I knew I was going to end up dealing with the cliche as soon as I started writing the story, but your criticism did cause me to spend even more time trying to mitigate it than I likely would have otherwise. Yeah, when I was writing it, I struggled at first with how Kevin, Abdul and Calista would end up inside the Rupture. I mean, they’re part of the main cast, so it didn’t feel right to just have them drop out of the story, but it kept coming back to “why would anyone let them go in there?” Eventually, I realized that there just wasn’t any scenario under which a bunch of soldiers and an archangel, all of whom have as their job “don’t let civilians/mortals get hurt”, would just allow three civilians into the combat zone. There was originally going to be a part of the dialogue exchange between Luzurial and Kevin where she just asked him point-blank if he had the training, experience or raw physical ability necessary to keep up with the soldiers, and he had to admit he didn’t. I never ended up writing that, and I’ll admit I’m not sure why. I guess I never consciously thought it out, but on some subconscious level felt that it wasn’t really necessary. Speaking of conscious thoughts versus subconscious ones… You know, one of the things I appreciate about getting feedback is it prompts me to think about character motivation in more detail than I do while writing, which can provide ideas I can use going forward. So, on Kevin’s motivation... I think there are three related but distinct mental concepts at play here. The first isn’t really based on sex or gender, but rather is the simple idea that when you love someone, you don’t want to see anything bad happen to them. Kevin knows terrible stuff has happened to Luzurial; she’s told him about it, so he hates contemplating it happening all over again, and he thinks that maybe if she had someone else with her, it might not happen. He’s not even entirely wrong. As Eparlegna pointed out to Luzurial during Whore of Heaven, if she hadn’t come to Earth alone, another angel could have released her from the holy circle or just killed him outright, since he only had one trap set, but because no one else was there to help, well… What Kevin isn’t thinking about is that Luzurial isn’t alone this time. She has Chloe and her team, along with literally an entire battalion of soldiers with her. However, this comes down to the second idea at play. Simply put, I think on some level Kevin still feels guilty over what happened to Luzurial in Room 502. He knows she allowed herself to be violated for the second time in order to protect him, and he knows that wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t go into the room. Luzurial brushed it off at the time (partly because she knows what it’s like to accidentally make a situation worse and partly because he cleaned up his own mess), but I think to an extent Kevin wants to redeem himself. Finally, there’s the idea you touched on. You said you figured Kevin thinks Luzurial is a soft woman he must protect as a man, and that he just doesn’t admit it. I think it’s not that he doesn’t admit it; I honestly think he doesn’t realize it. Consciously, Kevin is very much aware of how much stronger and more durable than him Luzurial is (given his repeated references to the car-catching thing, he obviously finds her superpowers attractive). However, there is an aspect of how boys are raised, at least in my country, that I think affects how he acts. Specifically, when you’re a man, there’s this idea that gets planted during childhood and reinforced throughout your life (again, this may just be an American thing), that if you don’t try to help a woman, then you’re being a jerk. If you see a woman lifting something heavy and you don’t try to help lift it, you’re a jerk. If a woman is in a dangerous situation (a combat situation, let’s say) and you don’t try to help her, you’re a jerk (the word “coward” may also be thrown around). The problem is that, since this is subconscious, you’ll act on the idea even when a conscious examination of the situation would tell you that she doesn’t need your help. Even if the woman lifting the heavy object is considerably stronger than you are, you’re still going to try and help her, not because you think she’s weak, but because you’re not thinking about it at all. Even if the woman in the dangerous situation is a female soldier or police officer, you’re still going to feel compelled to help because again, you’re not thinking she’s incompetent, you’re just not thinking. I think this applies, at least somewhat, to why Kevin wants to go into the Second Rupture with Luzurial. He doesn’t think she’s weaker than he is, in fact he consciously knows it’s totally the opposite, but the subconscious drive is very strong. I should note that there’s one situation where this doesn’t apply in the story, which is the moment when Kevin decides he’s definitely going into the App Theo building with Luzurial. There, it’s not a subconscious drive, but a conscious decision brought on by the fact that he just watched her have a PTSD flashback outside. Given that, he decides that maybe she could use some help. even if the help just consists of knowing that she has someone by her side. This could actually be kind of useful for the finale, since Kevin will have some time during his Dude in Distress moment to think about things, and he might find himself ruminating on this very subject. Finally, Chloe did send the list of names to her superior, but my original idea was that when the barrier went up, there was a bit of a communication error, and while there was inter-service cooperation between the PPD and the National Guard (what with Chloe and company being assigned to go in with the battalion and to liaise with Col. Castellano), in the confusion the list of names never made it from SAC Macmillan to the National Guard. Is that stupid? Well...very possibly. Sorry about that. As for the SUV being shot at, I seriously almost wrote that, but I wasn’t sure whether or not that would be more or less realistic than them not shooting at it. I kinda flipped the coin there and, well, it didn’t turn out so well for me. Sorry again. Thank you. It will be a while before we see Part Nine, since I’m still writing that one (all of the other chapters were already completed, and I just edited or re-wrote parts of them). Hopefully it will be decent overall when I finally submit it!

Next up, one from @InvidiaRed Thank you! I actually revised that somewhat between the first draft and the one I uploaded. I think in the original it was just “but she would not give up,” but I really felt like it could be phrased better, and I’m glad it worked out! I wrote that bit where Luzurial throws the machete into the Crawler, and almost immediately thought “Cue ‘Is She with You?’” Couple that with the fact that Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is my superhero crush and I had to make that joke.

Part Eight is now up, and we have two reviews already! First up, @JayDee Thank you! It’s kind of strange for me too, getting this close to the end. Although, while I won’t spoil anything, should the ending go over well enough, there may be what I’m calling the Holiday Special. Presented, one assumes, by Rankin/Bass; the sex is going to look really awkward in that limited stop motion of theirs. I think it’s just one of those moments, sort of like “There’s an angel eating pizza on our sofa,” where the characters get to acknowledge how amazingly weird their circumstances are. As did Abdul, obviously (“That joke was gold and you know it!”), though I really liked writing Kevin’s immediate reaction: “We can’t be friends anymore, Abdul.” A similar gag might (emphasis on might) appear elsewhere in the story’s universe. “Ambruratem...is that Egyptian?” “No.” Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this in the Author’s Note, but for anyone reading this now, Private Flynn may or may not be (but probably is) related to the Flynns of Twinpregnation and Mike Rapes a Dyke. Interestingly, digging back through the reviews on Twinpregnation, I discovered that The K-Team originally made an appearance, which would put all of those stories in that universe. Granted, that was an earlier draft, so I don’t need to feel like I screwed up, or at least that’s the story I’m going with! In a deleted scene (as in “I got partway through and then deleted it”) Private Flynn was almost going to be captured by a sin creature I was calling the Shrieker, a roughly avian horror with a sonic attack. This was to end up with Luzurial fending off a biting attack by grabbing its jaws and holding them open, and then Gibbs was going to pull a Gungnir headshot while she was holding it. However, I cut that scene short because… ...That was the important part. I realized that detailing the battle was just distracting from what I feel is the core of the scene, which is the decision Luzurial makes here. I wanted that line, specifically the “trust us” bit, to be emotional, because that’s not just Chloe asking Luzurial to trust her team and the battalion they’re with, it’s Chloe asking the archangel to trust humanity. The following moment where Luzurial elects not to craft the virtue creatures is where she chooses to do exactly that. Well, in-universe, it’s literal: the task that was entrusted to her by God, the duty that defines her, is the protection of Earth and its people. Out-of-universe, if you want to go down this rabbit hole...Luzurial exists because someone wanted to see a beautiful angel get raped and tortured by a demon. She’s here because I felt absolutely terrible for her, but the reason I felt absolutely terrible for her is because of what you just said. I felt awful for Luzurial because I do admire her character, her compassion, her courage, all of it, and because it felt so profoundly unjust for her to spend the next 120 trillion to 30 tredecillion years alone and in agony because of a well-meaning mistake. That wasn’t what she deserved. What she deserved was to be standing right where she is, between the mortals she cares for and the evil that threatens them. Apologies to those who really liked the original ending of Whore of Heaven, by the way; this is just my opinion. Thanks. I was always going to have an LAPD PoV character there, but then it occurred to me that instead of spending time creating someone new, I could just bring back one of the detectives from Part One. I can’t remember if that was an intentional reversal of what happened to Bernice, but if it is, then it worked better than I had anticipated. Bernice dies when she’s shot in the head by one of the hybrids because she’s trying to help Luzurial (given what happens to the other prisoners, though, not helping Luzurial wouldn’t have saved her). Lilia kills a hybrid by shooting her through the head, in large part because Luzurial helps her. It’s almost like, in some small way, the archangel gets to pay Bernice back for her efforts all those years ago. Not that I did that on purpose, mind you, but sometimes you have to take a moment to appreciate when things just fall into place like that. They’re flattering lies, though. Well, for the moment, anyway. You never know, though...

Part Eight has been posted!

Eh, it’s nothin’ much. The Romans crucified this Jewish carpenter a few thousand years ago, and since there was this thing getting said about him being “King of the Jews” they stuck a crown of thorns on him. Executing that guy...might have backfired a little. In all seriousness, while the crown of thorns isn’t as famous as the cross, for Christians it’s heavily tied to the crucifixion/passion story, so it’s very much linked to the idea of suffering for the sake of others. Here the symbolism is inverted, with others suffering for the King, hence my cringey reaction. True enough. Something I forgot to mention in the review itself is that I like how the religion was corrupted here, since it went from worship of the deity to something more of a cult of personality, with people worshiping the King instead of the goddess he was supposed to be an intermediary for. There really needs to be a facepalm emoji here, but this will have to suffice: I really should have figured out that the drought might have just been a coincidence. Oh well, this is why the forum exists, so I can ask the authors about this stuff! One last thing I forgot to say in the review: I like that you had a snake deity that was benevolent. Snakes, like bugs, often get a bad rap and appear frequently as bad guys in fantasy settings (the Yuan-ti from Dungeons & Dragons, the snake god Yig from the Cthulhu Mythos, etc.), but I’ve always thought they were really cool animals. While they do make for cool villains, it’s nice to see them as good guys here.

I’d imagine that in her true form she probably doesn’t have primary sex characteristics, so asexual would be my description. Awkward moment. Still, we know from You! that her personality isn’t changed so much as to be unrecognizable, so it’s character development rather than derailment, thankfully. I’m afraid to ask, but a part of me really wants to. True, but the first step to becoming a better person is realizing you have a problem, and this is probably as direct a way of showing him that as possible. I don’t think it’s pretentious at all. This is the place where you can fully explain, as you said, your thoughts on the story and the ideas behind it, and I’m always glad to hear them.

Oh, it went quite well, alright. I am very interested and yet legitimately have no idea what happened here. Don’t worry about it. Like I said, her perspective on the rebels might have gone out of whack for a moment due to the HOLY MOTHER OF GOD WHAT HAPPENED that they just saw outside. Absolutely. This really drew me in, and I’ve added your story to my “currently reading” list on my archive profile, so hopefully anyone who goes through said profile will be encouraged to check it out. Even if they don’t, I’ll keep coming back.