InBrightestDay

Well, going from nervousness over my handling of Kevin and Luzurial’s relationship to a wonderful review from pippychick is some serious Mood Whiplash. Thank you so much! So JayDee knows about this, but recall how you said during your review of Whore of Heaven how you have to feel things to write the stories you write? Well, I work exactly like that too, very possibly moreso. I’m kind of sensitive emotionally (which is why I asked for permission to write this story) and I actually made myself cry while writing this sequence, with Luzurial’s PTSD flashback and her breaking down crying in the bathroom. I was hoping I would manage to communicate at least some of the emotions I was feeling, so I’m glad it worked at least partially. I feel like it would be a pretty crappy hurt/comfort fic if I didn’t acknowledge just how badly hurt she is (not just physically) by the end of the first story. I hope that what I’ve written going forward works for you. Well, not exactly what happened to Shondra and Molly, but there are bad things in store for Cassie and Hobbs. Speaking of which, now that you’ve reached this point, it’s time for another Names That Mean Something. “Adrian” doesn’t really mean anything as far as the story is concerned, but “Hobbs” is an English surname derived from the medieval given name Hob. Hob is a medieval short form of Robert, but “Old Hob” is a nickname for Satan, so you know...bad guy name. Funny you should say that, because Barbara is like a microcosm of what happens to characters in Whore of Heaven. She mostly resembles Luzurial, in that she’s an admirable female character committed to doing good who makes an honest mistake (Luzurial disobeys orders; Barbara assumes a dirty cop will surrender when caught instead of lashing out), suffers sexual violation, and then has something horrifically violent happen to her. She’s also linked to Yolanda Dawson, since the horrifically violent thing is that Eparlegna eats her alive. Very, very slowly, complete with hell magic to keep her alive until her disembodied head was swallowed. At the very least, an eighteen meter dragon takes larger bites than an eight foot demon, so it took a little under ten minutes for her to be eaten (I think Yolanda was eaten over the course of an hour). I knew I forgot something! Well, I wanted to have a big, climactic battle at the end of the story, so… I did research. Literally, I looked for things both here and on Literotica with the “tentacles” or “tent” tag and then tried to analyze what the authors were doing in the scene. Some of them were pretty bad, but others were pretty good, and I did take some pointers for writing this one. Gundam fanfiction. That’s what I wrote over on fanfiction.net (and if I ever get my act together, I have more of that to write!), and it allowed me to practice writing prose as well as action scenes (the Gundam shows are space operas, so there’s lots of directed energy weapons and things blowing up). Thank you so, so much! I may very well faceplant before reaching the end. As I mentioned in previous posts (I won’t spoil anything in this one) I’ve tried to gradually build up the relationship between Kevin and Luzurial in a way that doesn’t make him look like a creep or make her look weak, but my ability to mitigate the cliches is not guaranteed. I hope it remains entertaining to read for you nonetheless.

It was toward the end. I really don’t like doing rape stuff; I’m more into the “give your partner as many orgasms as you can and then cuddle until you fall asleep” kind of sex. However, in the case of Eparlegna, this is just kind of what the character does, and I figured he’d use the opportunity both to hurt Luzurial some more (because it’s fun) and to hurt Kevin by making him watch (because he annoyed Eparlegna). Yeah, it’s tricky finding the right balance. On the one hand, I’m an extremely visual person, so I tend to really paint a picture of the monster. On the other hand, as you said, describing the monster means stalling the action for a bit. Thank you! I rather enjoyed writing the Wrath creature chase; I almost felt like I was writing a Jurassic Park scene or something. Oh, and I didn’t mention this before, but the hissing shriek the Wrath construct makes is actually a videogame sound. If you’ve ever played Gears of War, it’s that noise Berserkers make when they charge you. Well...yes and no. You might want to get a drink or something, as this may take a while. So this is an issue I walked into with eyes open. I've known about it for quite a while now. Heck, JayDee even made a joke about it in the very first post of their Originals review reply thread. Granted, my actual degree is in Biology (and I wasn’t asking whether they were “against God” but rather whether Whore of Heaven was intended as an anti-religion piece; I didn’t want to write anything that would contradict the original story’s themes/message), but the point remains. I never intended for Luzurial to come across as a weak character, merely vulnerable in a specific area. She's a combat veteran with superhuman strength and durability, as well as the experience of a military career that stretches back fourteen billion years. However, she is vulnerable specifically when it comes to the issue of sexuality. In Whore of Heaven, it's established that angels are required to be celibate (or at least they think they're required to be celibate), so while she clearly knows what sex is, Luzurial has a degree of naivete on the subject that I always found deeply sympathetic. Over the course of the story, she is attacked and shamed repeatedly, specifically using sex (and her body's involuntary reactions to it) as a weapon against her. By the time we meet her in The Woman in the Statue, she's also spent 75 years inside of the coating, during which time, when she can form coherent thoughts through her pain, all she's really been able to think about is everything she did wrong, second guessing every single decision she made that led her to where she is now. Given all of this, by the time she's freed, Luzurial's self-esteem is pretty badly damaged. I have no doubt she could heal on her own, but it always helps to have a support system. Kevin, in spite of his one actiony moment here in Part Six, is not really capable of helping in battle, so the only thing he can offer her is to be that support system. This is particularly important concerning what I mentioned back when I was responding to your review of Part Four, namely, that Luzurial has elements of her experience that she considers her Dark Secret. In this case, the Dark Secret is the multiple orgasms she experienced during the sexual assault back in Whore of Heaven. Now, she hasn't actually done anything wrong (arousal and orgasm are involuntary physical reactions), but due to the perceived ban on angels ever knowing physical pleasure, she considers this a sort of shame. Some of my research also indicated that sometimes rape survivors feel ashamed, especially if they cooperated with the rapist in any way, which Luzurial eventually did. Taking all of this into consideration, I felt like on this one issue, it would help to have someone else, someone she trusts by now, actually able to tell her that she is not at fault for this, because I'm not sure it's something she would realize on her own for quite a long time. Of course, the fact remains that ultimately Kevin is a male character helping a female character feel better, and that was never far from my mind. As JayDee can attest, I was quite nervous when I sent them the draft for Part Seven, specifically over this issue. In Part Seven, I tried (though I won't guarantee that I succeeded) to mitigate it by giving Luzurial intiative. When Luzurial tells Kevin about what was done to her 75 years earlier, it's when she decides to. When their relationship turns physical (I figure everyone knew that was going to happen), it's her idea. In hindsight, I suppose I could have dodged this bullet rather neatly by making Kevin into Kelly and having this be an F/F story instead of an M/F story, but ultimately het stuff is just what I write (maybe just because it's my own sexual orientation), and I only just thought of this option now, after having posted two thirds of the story. So, like I said, yes and no. Yes, this is a story about a female character who's been hurt, and a male character who wants to help her heal, and since it is to some extent a romance love is part of that. However, I am endeavoring not to make the female character look weak (she's definitely not had the last of her badass action hero moments, and in Part Nine Kevin even gets to be kind of a Damsel in Distress). Everyone is vulnerable from time to time (I'm very much counting myself here) and I don't think it says anything bad about you if you lean on someone else, or as Kevin puts it in Part Seven "Just because you're a total badass doesn't mean you're not allowed to cry." Hopefully that made some level of sense. I know it was kind of rambly.

I’d imagine the cloak makes it hard to discern gender anyway. No rush. (very minor spoiler) No amnesia, but she does have to give him a little durability boost. She’s super strong, after all, so sex with her would be rather hazardous otherwise!

Actually, while there’s some level of pettiness to it, I don’t know that that’s all there is. Kizzy is doing some real good here. She’s in the process of redeeming a fallen angel in the form of Shannon, has likely kept Kate from harming any innocents, has headed a team that’s foiled or interfered with any number of schemes (as Sarsa could attest) and, in human form, has an additional effect that’s difficult to quantify. Every person whose life she touches, everyone whose day she makes just a little bit better is someone who will find it just a little easier to choose Good over Evil. Killing Kizurial isn’t just a spiteful punishment of Shannon; the Duchess is playing the Long Game. And she’s petty as fuck. Seems reasonable. Agents of Heaven and Hell might interact from time to time on Earth (or elsewhere on the material plane) in ways other than outright combat (that would draw far too much attention), and information may pass back and forth if only by accident. Succubi seem like a natural fit for this role, since their preferred tool, seduction, requires a keen understanding of how to communicate with and read people. No, that makes perfect sense, and I actually misunderstood what you were saying in the Author’s Note. See, I wasn’t saying you should write “Go read this stuff!” What happened was that when I heard you say “You, um, you probably don’t want to read it,” I didn’t realize that was you saying “Warning: if you read, you may see this shit in your nightmares,” but instead thought it was you beating up on yourself as a writer again.

I’m trying to keep up with reading/reviewing several stories right now, but I should get to Chapter 2 tomorrow. Oh, it absolutely works! The “hack” choice in particular does, the more violent connotation has a sort of subconscious uncomfortable effect on the reader (it did on me, at any rate). And you’re right about having an immediate mental image that your conscious mind rejects; it’s cool to know you were doing that on purpose. Sorry for how long it took for me to say anything about this, by the way. I literally just checked the TV forum today!

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Applied Theology is basically Defense Against the Dark Arts for a non-Harry Potter setting. The idea of all the different faiths coming together is me being kind of an optimist. I know it’s just as likely we’d start infighting (and I’m sure there was some of that in the setting), but I’d like to think that if an actual legitimately-from-Hell demon was rampaging across America, that everyone would be like “Ok, that’s the bad guy; we should all work together.” Well, she got a little banged up from the hypersonic Gungnir round, but nothing too severe by her standards. I actually figured it was kind of important that bullets without proper inscriptions shouldn’t work. After all, if bullets work on extradimensional beings, then the Army really shouldn’t have had too much trouble with Eparlegna back in 2007. That was something I kind of inferred from Whore of Heaven. She came to Earth to help, after all, even after orders came down from the top (like, the very top) that she wasn’t supposed to. One could interpret this as sheer arrogance, and some level of Pride is certainly present, but the way she stops to help survivors in LA, the way she hesitates to free herself because it would harm the caged women, even though their souls would be safe...all of that suggested to me that her main motivation for trying to intervene was that she cares very deeply about humans, and doesn’t want to see any unnecessary suffering. So, for The Woman in the Statue, I assumed that she is very, very closely bonded to her mortal charges, and really does love this world she was assigned to protect. If I were simply writing a Warm Fuzzies piece, that would probably happen...but of course I’m writing a story with action and monsters and whatnot, so she’s not going to have a lot of time to do that. Lilia Martinez is actually a good cop, and she’ll pop up again for a cameo in Part Eight, but there are bad cops, and you’ll run into a few in the next two chapters. Funny thing: I wasn’t even doing that consciously. Looking back on it, I realized that I gave height measurements for all our main characters (Luzurial, Kevin, Abdul, Calista and Chloe) just as part of their description. The good news is that that tapers off as we get farther into the story. There’s one more character in Part Four who gets height measurements in cm. After that, things, generally monsters, do get sizes, but it’s rounded to the nearest half a meter (i.e. “approaching two and a half meters tall”, etc.) or whole meter. The use of centimeters is due to me having the US using the metric system by this point, because it’s THE FUTURE!!! (there should be an echo on that). Actually, that’s how you know I’m writing fantasy: not the archangel character, the demonic invasion or the magic, no, the most unrealistic part of the setting is that the US switched to metric. SONOFABITCH! *five minutes later* Fixed! Thank you for pointing that out.

The irony of the situation is that this is kind of the same thing that happened back in 2008 when I read Whore of Heaven, got all depressed and wrote to JayDee asking if I could write what, ten years later, would become The Woman in the Statue. I literally asked if WoH was intended as an anti-religion piece, not because I was mad, but because I didn’t want to write a sequel that would contradict the original story’s message.

Thank you! I suppose now is as good a time as any to bring up some of the names of the characters. Not everyone’s name means something of course, but some of them do. Kevin is derived (eventually) from the old Irish name Cóemgein, which starts with the Gaelic word cóem, which means “kind” or “gentle”. He has some issues, including the odd flash of anger, but he’s very gentle with Luzurial. Abdul is kind of a cheat, in that it’s a Pakistani name derived from the Arabic words Abd al, which just mean “servant of the”, but I was kind of going for a reference to the Arabic name Abd Allah, or “servant of God”. Sirki is a Pakistani name referring to a leather worker, which means it’s kind of the equivalent of “Tanner” or something. Chloe is an English name meaning “green shoot” in Greek. ‘Cause, you know...she’s new. Liu is a Chinese surname meaning “kill” or “destroy”, which sounds pretty bad, but it fits her role on what is basically a preternatural SWAT team. Luzurial, according to JayDee, is derived from the Spanish luz, meaning light, as well as a deliberately misspelled version of the Archangel Uriel’s name. It’s good that it’s misspelled, since Uriel translates from the Hebrew as “light of God” (or possibly “God is my light”), so Luzuriel would be kind of redundant. Well, she’s far more resilient than a human would be, and she’s definitely doing amazingly well considering what she’s been through, but there will be issues, which will become rather obvious in Part Three. I should note that she’s healing far more slowly than she used to. I tried to base as much of The Woman in the Statue as possible on what we saw in Whore of Heaven, and one of the things I noticed was that Luzurial’s healing, along things like her durability and strength, are affected by her mental and emotional state. There’s a baseline, of course (she doesn’t just stop healing at any point), but given her trauma, what would in the past have healed in less than a minute instead takes hours. Obviously, as she gets better, that will accelerate. That also owes its genesis to Whore of Heaven, where it’s mentioned that humanity went forth with new knowledge of and defenses against, but also new dealings with, the forces of Hell, so I figured some criminals might attempt to make deals with demons, and a branch of law enforcement would arise to deal with that. There’s actually a deleted scene (as in I literally wrote it and then deleted it because I didn’t think it was necessary) in Part Eight where Luzurial is part of a briefing and a National Guard soldier pulls a “And where were you for the last seventy five years?” at which point Chloe tells him exactly where Luzurial was for the last 75 years. Cue guilt trip. Chloe: Listen, Major Dumbass… Major: It’s “Dumas.” Chloe: Not right now it isn’t. Well thank you so much for the review! I basically wrote this to help me feel better after reading Whore of Heaven all those years ago (JayDee can tell you all about it, but I tend to call this story “my little therapy project”), and I had no idea how it would go over here, so thank you for the support!

Uh...yes! Yes, that was the plan all along! It was totally me saving it for a future chapter, and not a good idea I’m going to steal now and put into a future chapter! Just kidding; I’ll definitely give you credit for that. Obviously, Kevin and Luzurial are the story’s Official Couple, and I wanted that to feel like the relationship had actually developed over time. Part Six here is one place where that definitely comes to the fore. They’ll be spending a few days at the motel in the next chapter, and as one might expect, things will progress further. Thanks! Abdul and Calista definitely did some MacGyvering to defeat the Charnel Spider, and I was worried that Kevin just baiting the Wrath creature into killing itself would be kind of an anticlimax, but as you said, it does take into account that since the creature is all mindless rage, it should be fairly easy to trick. I hadn’t thought of that specifically, but there was definitely supposed to be some comedy to the elevator bit, what with everyone but Luzurial pushing the Down button and the doors just refusing to close. And yeah, it would have been really funny if Eparlegna had managed to get into the shaft and cut the cable...only to discover that things have changed a little in the last three quarters of a century.

Don’t feel bad about not responding to that first review. I still haven’t gotten around to reading and reviewing Chapter 2, and it’s been a month! Oh, and I realize you guys were discussing this earlier, but if I may offer my two cents here… First, on behalf of religious people, I’m sorry for any unpleasant experiences you’ve had. I know this doesn’t make up for it, but know that we’re not all dicks. So, on Luzurial’s suffering being her reason for existing, I don’t know that that’s clear. Cars eventually break down, and the manufacturer knows this will inevitably happen, but that’s not why the car is made. Luzurial is mentioned as being valued for her wisdom and having distinguished herself in battle, so she has touched the lives of her fellow angels and protected the universe (or at least the Earth) before, and I don’t see any reason that couldn’t be her purpose. Her rape and torture are things that happen to her, but it doesn’t seem right (to me, anyway) to imagine she exists specifically to be raped and tortured. With regards to divine omniscience, what pippychick describes is a valid criticism of the deterministic interpretation (the future is set in stone), but there is another way to look at it. A vital part of Christian dogma, and I think it also applies to Judaism and Islam, is that humans (and any other forms of sapient life that may exist) have free will, the ability to choose. God is believed to value free will so intensely that He allows it even though many make the choice to do terrible things, so I’ve never been comfortable with determinism, which removes free will from the equation. Another interpretation, however, is that omniscience means that God knows every possible outcome, all of the billions of billions of possible futures made by all the interacting choices of billions of sapient individuals. However, while all the possible results of all our possible choices may be seen, at the critical inflection point, our choices matter. In other words, it’s not “these horrible things will happen,” but rather “these horrible things may happen, but the choice is yours.” Bringing this back to Whore of Heaven, God would know all the outcomes of everyone’s possible choices, including the chain of events based on the choices made (Luzurial’s choice to intervene, her choice to help the survivors, her choice to try to talk to Eparlegna, her choice to try to spare the caged women, his choice to torture her, Shondra and Molly’s choice to serve him, etc.). All of these things are known ahead of time, but they are not fate; until the choices are made, they are only possible outcomes. Or, to put it way more simply, the future is foreseen, but it is not foregone. I hope I haven’t annoyed or offended either of you. I’ve told JayDee about this elsewhere, but I don’t have anything against atheists. In fact, randomly enough, most of my friends in high school were atheists, and now it’s a fairly even mix. I don’t think you’re getting in trouble for not believing in God. Honestly, I think that what really matters is that you live your life trying to do what you genuinely believe to be right. Again, no offense was intended, pippychick, and I hope I haven’t irritated you. I’m not trying to convert anyone; I just wanted to discuss another potential way of looking at the omniscience idea.

Got it. It’ll be fixed by tonight.

You obviously haven’t checked the reviews page for The Price recently. I haven’t read the second chapter yet, but I will get around to it at some point. and @pippychick, you do not need to read The Woman in the Statue if you don’t want to. As wonderful as it would be to find out you enjoy it, if you really love how incredibly mean-spirited that original ending is, I don’t want to ruin something you enjoyed (in fact, I actually warned JayDee that by making my story canon, he might piss off people who loved the original ending). Feel free to pretend WitS doesn’t exist.

I don’t know if I said this last time, and I know it’s been years and all, but for whatever this is worth, I am so sorry for what you went through. No one deserves that. I am glad that I managed to be somewhat accurate with Luzurial’s reaction, though, and that is exactly what Eparlegna wants: for her to feel worthless. It’s one of the reasons I wrote the car scene the way I did. It’s actually a reflection of, or an answer to, the dialogue just before the final rape in Whore of Heaven; I even mirrored some of the wordplay deliberately. In that scene, Eparlegna tells her that she is a whore and he is her master, and that a whore is all she has ever been and all she will ever be. Here, well, Kevin gets to tell her what she needs to hear, and what he knows is true: that she is not a whore; that she is something beautiful and amazing, and that nothing Eparlegna does to her can ever take that away. Thanks! I’m not entirely sure where the idea for the Wrath construct came from. I just suddenly had the idea for an eyeless, skinned polar bear-type thing. Of course, I also threw in a Megatherium-style body for the giant claws and the tail. It seemed appropriate. The Charnel Spider is wearing human body parts rather than being made of them, but it certainly has the look of a Necromorph. As for the series, I personally enjoyed Dead Space 3, though definitely more as an action game than as a horror one. I definitely understand why a lot of people didn’t like it, though.

I actually teared up writing “Please touch me.” I did some research on what rape survivors go through, and something that came up is that often they don’t want to be touched, but that’s not a universal reaction. I thought it would be pretty emotional if Kevin had read the same thing and was trying to keep a respectful distance, all while what Luzurial really wants is a hug. The eyes were my personal favorite part. In Whore of Heaven you describe the demon’s eyes somehow radiating both red light and darkness. It took me a while, but I finally managed to visualize that. I figured it was kind of like old footage of nuclear bomb tests. In order to actually see the fireball, the aperture on the camera clamps way down when the explosion happens and darkens everything, so instead of the whole screen going white, we see an orange to red fireball that appears to suck the light out of the entire area. That became my model for how Eparlegna’s eyes worked. I mean, have you ever tried walking up stairs backwards? It’s not easy, especially when you’re distracted by fear. Yeah, he knows he shouldn’t, but in the end he just can’t not ask. Kevin’s temper is kind of his advantage here. Eparlegna is terrifying, but as he keeps saying stuff that degrades and insults Luzurial, Kevin’s affection for her prompts anger and it starts to burn through the fear. There’s just this running thing about Eparlegna and Lucifer. Their styles just kind of clash… Oh, I knew even when I was writing it that I was not topping the Charnel Spider for sheer creep factor. Nonetheless, I’m kind of fond of the Wrath creature. The fact that it basically kills itself is kind of based on the idea of anger very often being self-destructive. That line is simultaneously cool and sad to me. On the one hand, I just like the way it reads, and she just melted aluminum with her bare hands, which is just objectively badass. On the other hand, it shows that even when she’s enjoying having accomplished something, she still sees herself as broken, as a lesser person after what Eparlegna did to her in the last story. Necessitated by the genre I suppose. The target audience for Whore of Heaven did not come here to see a badass female action hero...you know...being badass. I’m curious, did you? During Flaying Solo, I mean. I recall you said during Whore of Heaven it was a fairly detached process. Kevin avoiding touching Luzurial’s wing stumps actually pops up a few times in the story. I never explained his thought process on that, but I figure that he doesn’t know if touching them will cause her physical pain, and figures it will likely remind her of her past trauma, so he tries to avoid doing it. That’s actually the Punctuated Pounding trope (minds out of the gutter, people), albeit with bullets instead of fisticuffs. I actually went back and forth about whether to keep that line or not, but in the end, I realized that it didn’t matter whether or not Kevin should say it, because the fact of the matter is that he would say it. As for Eparlegna’s mean-spirited “imagine her going back to Heaven looking like this,” bit, that’s a direct callback to your story, where, while anally raping Luzurial, he asks her to imagine standing before God and telling Him what she “let” Eparlegna do to her. It’s just another little bit of his sadism, shaming her for something that’s not her fault. Fun fact, before I actually sent you the first draft, in my very first concept for the chapter, he was actually going to chase the group out of the building and they’d have to escape by driving into a tunnel. It would even have had a funny little moment with Chloe Liu talking to other PPD agents (“You lost it? How did you lose an eighteen meter dragon!?”), but I also realized that it would have started the endgame too early, and wouldn’t have allowed the breather that Part Seven provides. The car scene was originally planned to be from Kevin’s point of view, and then I realized how much better it would work from Luzurial’s, specifically if I implemented the mind reading ability as a way for her to see the truth. It’s definitely a big step in their developing relationship, since he’s now seen her at her lowest point and, unlike what past experience has taught her to (wrongly) expect, it doesn’t change his opinion of her at all. It’s where the terminology changes a bit too, and Kevin picks up the designation of “her special mortal.”

I should have remembered to mention this three hours ago, but Part Six is up!

Will do. Do you want me to do this with all four reviews or just the one for Chapter 4?

I don’t mean to make this sound worse than it was. Trust me, if you actually found out why I was depressed, you’d probably think it was hilarious. I figured he called someone, and eventually word got to Adara. It makes sense, don’t get me wrong, but I still thought it was funny.

I’m so sorry; I wasn’t even thinking about that! From now on, I’ll try to do a spoiler-free review and then a disclaimer before the more detailed review starts. again, my apologies. You’re right. What happened was that I Googled Clarke’s First Law, and the very first thing that came up read: So for some reason, Google threw the Third Law in front of the First Law, confusing me.

I should have known! Well, the last of the reviews for Part Five is in. Thank you so much! I really liked playing around with the different creature designs. The Charnel Spider might be my favorite, but there are a few more (Wrath, Sloth and Gluttony will be making appearances). Yeah, I tried to pull back a little on the gore, but this is a sequel to Whore of Heaven, so it would be wrong to get rid of it entirely. The students impaled in their seats, as if attending a lecture, is a reference to WoH, where it’s mentioned that many of Eparlegna’s mutilated victims were left posed in grotesque parodies of life. That’s a very good point, though as you point out actually integrating it is something of a challenge due to pacing. I’ll see if I can work it in without messing things up. Well, based on how positive the feedback was here, I think I can safely say I’ll never match this high point. Seriously, people, I’m pretty sure it’s all downhill from here. I can only hope that downhill is still entertaining. Next time, well, just in case you forgot what this is a sequel to...

Well, she did. I said “Not until you tell me if LAILAH’S GONNA BE OKAY!” and slammed the car door in her face. I then realized she couldn’t answer me through the door, but it wouldn’t have looked very cool if I had then gently opened the door and said “So, about that...” So I just called an Uber. In all seriousness, though: Yeah, that. We technically saw her in the Chastia scrap, but I wouldn’t have recognized her as “The Duchess” were it not for the report scrap. I imagine “your Dark Grace” is more a form of address she employs exclusively in Hell. It kind of gives away that you’re the bad guy if you use it on Earth. Don’t worry, you didn’t mess up; all her statements are technically true. She just leaves a few important things out. Kate: Kizzy, why do you keep watching that part where Kirk’s shirt gets torn off? Kizzy: I am uncertain. I must study this mystery. I don’t think that’s actually an issue. Your idea for the sex scene would involve some stuff from the Duchess’s PoV, so as Jude leaves, she might be thinking about precisely what that weapon would do to her enemy. Haslet, in British English, refers not to edible viscera as such (as it does in American English), but rather to a sort of pork meatloaf with herbs. Given that you gave her an accent from somewhere in the UK, perhaps she’s actually familiar with the food, and is imagining exactly how easily that blade will slice through preternaturally tough angelic flesh, just like a soft loaf of haslet...

And honestly, even that might not do it.

I did actually consider showing the Spider carving parts off of a corpse, but I don’t think that would have made it any clearer. At the time, I didn’t think it mattered if the audience knew what sin it was during the chase, but I thought they might be curious afterward, hence the Author’s Note. “They’ve finally switched over” is exactly what I was going for. Aside from the occasional bit of future tech (nano-sutures at the hospital, the Gungnir asynchronous coilgun, the presence of holograms) the only other thing I changed from the modern day was to assume that the US had finally adopted the metric system. Thank you! This was pretty fun to write, so I’m glad it was enjoyable.

I’m actually glad people liked the Pride joke. I wasn’t sure whether to go with it or not. You know, it never occurred to me that Luzurial stabbing it through the head would look like one of those, but I guess that is kind of what happened, isn’t it? Well, they’ll both have their turn to blink. Kevin’s going to discover that he really shouldn’t taunt a demon, but by the end of the next chapter he’ll get a pretty good moment of his own. Thank you! I was actually pretty happy when I came up with the idea. I was trying to think of new sin creatures, but the only deadly sins that readily suggest monsters are Lust, Wrath and Gluttony (the latter two of which will get showings in this story as well). I wanted to use one of the other ones, and was wracking my brain trying to think of what Envy might be (trying not to go all Fullmetal Alchemist and have it be a shapeshifter) when the “stealing body parts” idea came to me. The creature’s arthropod form comes from a type of assassin bug that attaches its victims to its exoskeleton as a form of disguise.

Part Five is up and we have new reviews! It could be called “Not So Deadly Sin.” Thanks! To elaborate, the background monster, Grabby Hands there, is Greed. Luzurial creates incarnate virtues, the same way Eparlegna creates incarnate sins, so I thought that perhaps those virtues might specifically oppose the sins, thus being drawn from the seven Christian virtues. In this case, the virtue that opposes Greed is Charity, which, theologically speaking, is not so much giving money away as it is acting on love for your fellow human beings. Dogs are often used as exemplars of selfless love, so I gave charity a canine or lupine form. First off, we’re technically working in a shared universe, so as far as the stories go, what’s mine is yours. Second, I’d be perfectly happy for you to include her. I don’t know if she’ll ever get to personally show up in one of my stories, so it would be nice to see her...doing well, let’s just say. I’ve gone back and forth over her mythological role as Angel of Conception, but that wouldn’t matter for your story anyway, given when it takes place. It’s a cheap joke, I know, but I couldn’t keep from writing it in. For those not in the know, in Jewish folklore, Lailah and Gabriel actually work together. According to the lore, there’s a tree in the Garden of Eden called the Tree of Souls, from which new human souls are produced. The souls fall from the tree into something called the Treasury of Souls, Gabriel draws one out and Lailah bonds the soul to a human embryo and then watches over it until birth, which is why she’s often referred to as the Angel of Conception. Again, this is folklore, not hard canon; it’s not in Jewish church sermons or anything. In that sense, it’s kind of like the Celestial Hierarchy. I keep going back and forth over whether or not to include the conception thing into this story’s universe, but I liked the idea that those two work together, and that they might be attracted to one another, albeit unable to act upon their feelings due a perceived ban on physical intimacy. Thank you for the suggestion! First off, “There’s no way I’m coming out of this vent! That’s exactly what the penis worm wants!” is my favorite joke in the entire chapter. Second, the thought did occur to me that if the thing was attempting to get at Calista in the vent, that it might actually be her personal sin creature, which does make one wonder what her sex life with Abdul is like. Thank you again. The ring was actually an attempt at visually indicating that the monster isn’t made of human body parts, but is instead going around carving them off of people and wearing them. I figured jewelry was a good indicator for that. I really wanted everyone in our main group to get at least one really cool or important thing to do, so Abdul gets to apply his Chemistry knowledge with the methane bomb, and while Calista has a supporting role (well, aside from saving Abdul by beaning the Charnel Spider with her phone), it’s a vital one, allowing for those bullets to become useful.

Just added Part Five!