InBrightestDay's (Originals) Review Reply & Discussion Thread

[InBrightestDay]

Another review of WitS Part Nine, this time from @InvidiaRed

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“I have made mistakes,” she said, “but the very fact that we stopped here is because I am endeavoring to learn from them.  I cannot change the past, but I’ll do all that I can for a better future.”  Rising to her feet, the archangel assessed her own strength, opening and closing her hands and taking a few steps up the stairs.

“Are you ready?” Chloe asked.

“Yes,” she replied.  “Let us continue.”

My favorite bit <3

Thanks!  Luzurial has spent most of the story interacting with Kevin, Abdul and Calista, and I wanted to have some interaction between her and the agents, and this little beat in the stairwell served both to do that and give us a brief check up on how Luzurial is feeling.

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The fractual trap was good too.  Easily an infinity of agony to get trapped in one.

Thank you!  I was trying to think of magical traps that weren’t just “zaps you when you walk into it” type things, and I came up with two, one of which will come up in Part Ten, and the other of which was the fractal impalement trap.  The name comes from the fact that the secondary set of spikes emerge from the primary spikes at right angles, and then the tertiary spikes emerge from those at right angles, and the quaternaries from those and so on and so forth, a fractal pattern in other words.

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I can guess that Eparlegna is kinda putting all his eggs in a basket that's all or nothing. He needs to harvest faith doesn't he. Kinda makes him seem pathetic in a visceral sense.

Well, he’s doing a modified version of something he did in Whore of Heaven, not precisely harvesting faith, but sort of related.  You’ll see what he’s going for in the final chapter.

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Huzzah a Gungnir! Even if it missed unlike the legendary spear.

Hey, the cultist hit the LTV, and Gibbs hit the cultist, so while there were some misses, some shots were on target.   For the curious, as InvidiaRed has noticed, the Gungnir asynchronous coilgun is named after the spear wielded by Odin in Norse mythology.

Thanks again for the review!

Edited February 8, 2020 by InBrightestDay

[InBrightestDay]

And now we have what is becoming a tradition: a jumbo-sized review from @JayDee!
 

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You killed Gibbs! You bastard! After giving him that badass “Shoot a fucker through his own gun” bit, and “shoot an angel without realising what she was” bit In the earlier part.

…

It was really effective the way you did it, with the initial spearing in his leg, and then getting worse but just the sound of it from Calista’s POV. Chloe’s reaction afterwards, too, was really well written -came across super well.

Sorry about that, but thanks!  I had a lot of fun writing Gibbs, and I honestly didn’t really enjoy killing him off, but as for why, well, you said it perfectly yourself right here:

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honestly while seeing Gibbs go is sad I totally get why it comes here and that some of the others might not make it through – after all, this is humans fighting for humanity against the bad guy.

Pretty much.  Humanity is fighting a demon, and in Whore of Heaven you made it very clear how smart and powerful this demon is and how outmatched the people going up against him are.  I know this is 75 years later, and that I had a bunch of casualties in Chapter 8, but nonetheless I felt like it would make Eparlegna look nonthreatening if none of the PPD agents were killed.

Granted, I have failed to make him as threatening and clever as you did in Whore of Heaven, and that’s on me.  I wish I knew how to fix it, but I do have limits as a writer, and I seem to have hit them.

Still…

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It’s another crime of Eparlegna’s and I, like I suspect a lot of readers, am looking forward to him getting his just desserts.

Hopefully I can at least deliver on that!

Jumping back top some earlier things…

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That whole section with the driving at the building, Luzurial directing the bullet-dodges and then boom, shooting the fucker through his own gun is just great. Gibbs! Solid action opener! That one bit about the bullet “parted my hair” heh. Also “big enough jerks to make an angel sit in the back” double heh. Heh heh if you will.

I did rather enjoy writing a lot of that section, including the jokes (the angel sitting in the back thing is a favorite of mine) and the Gungnir shootout.  I wanted to give every character at least one cool thing to do in this story, so Gibbs has that bit where he shoots the hybrid through his own gun, Abdul torches the Charnel Spider with an oxymethane explosion, Kevin shoots Eparlegna in the balls, and while Calista sort of assisted with Kevin’s moment, she gets a bigger one here, crawling through the fractal impalement trap to disable it.  Chloe, Leary and Cole will all have moments in the final chapter (Chloe has one I’m particularly fond of) and of course Luzurial has multiple moments throughout the story.

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Fight with sledgehammer guy still comes across really well too – He never had a chance really, but that description showing the divine fire attack makes it really easy to envision, and of course takes a bunch of energy out of Luzurial, nudging that things aren’t just easy for her, though we hope the good guys win eventually, it isn’t going to be easy. She hasn’t an infinite power well. But she isn’t giving up either.

The fight with Tank Top is something that was kind of tough for me to write, because as you said, he really doesn’t stand a chance.  Even in her weakened state, Luzurial is stronger than he is, she can read his mind and while he may have a decade or so of training, she has eons of it.  The only way I could really think to have him hurt her was to have an environmental hazard throw her off slightly.  Still, it accomplished the main goal of the segment, which was to show her searing light attack and introduce the concept of divine fire, that Luzurial at full strength can release enough energy in a single attack to make a hydrogen bomb look small.

I’m not loading Chekhov’s gun or anything…

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Eparlegna making use of his resources – the very tall building to almost mock a wingless angel, the hell traps and servants to slow and weaken them on the way up – has some similarity to his previous planning, getting someone onto his ground and into his grasp without maybe as much planning as 75 years before

Yeah, that was what I was talking about earlier.  I know I’m not as good with the planning as you were in the first story.

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Seventy Five Floors, Seventy Five Years… nice echoed number, didn’t spot that before!

That’s one of those times where things just kind of work out by accident.  I had an idea of how tall the building was (300 meters), and I figured out how tall each story would be (4 meters) and just divided.  The fact that it came together like that was just one of those neat little bits of happenstance.

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Luzurial of course can see exactly what he’s doing – I get why she was a little short in response over her need to rest on the way up, but it absolutely makes sense. She is weighing necessary extra risk of delay against the alternatives and making a sound tactical decision. It’s heartbreaking when she explains about how she still thought she could save them, too. Maybe if the first story hadn’t been written by such a prick!

This is sort of meant to build on the stargazing scene from Chapter 7, where she and Kevin are talking and it comes up that she can’t unmake her mistakes, but she can learn from them.  Here, she’s doing her best to ensure that she’s fully regained her energy after burning a hole through Tank Top down in the lobby, as she can’t afford to be at anything less than her best when she runs into Eparlegna on the top floor.  The bit with the women she hoped she could save is just another of my attempts to take the character you wrote in WoH and try to build on her using the experience she went through.

And the person who wrote the original story isn’t such a prick.  Why, they let me write this thing!

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Kevin and Eparlegna’s meeting on the rooftop. Two really cool things 1) the still-living heads on spikes of the people in the building who pissed him off and 2) free standing pillars for no apparent reason. Both very Eparlegna and also got some call backs in to Whore of Heaven.

I wanted to get at least a little of the horror stuff you did in Whore of Heaven into my story, and the tortured heads of those who defied him spiked around his throne was my attempt at that.  It’s not as scary as I wanted it to be.  Maybe in the future, after I finish the story, I can enhance the description somewhat.

The pillars are an in-universe callback to WoH.  Eparlegna is trying to weaken and/or kill the mortals coming up to him, but he wants Luzurial to reach him, and as such he’s deliberately made things a little familiar for her, to bring back memories of old times.

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The holy women in the spike pen below – I never explored closely what they were really thinking/feeling with Whore of Heaven. I think you do a much, much better job of it here allowing them to feel more like characters even with the ones who are barely described than anything I did.

You were employing very economical storytelling, and as such you kept things to really three PoVs: the narration, Eparlegna and Luzurial, with very minor bits from Shondra, Molly and Bernice.  You could have created a minor character to represent the caged women, but unlike those other three, she wouldn’t have had anything to do, so her presence would have felt superfluous.  I had the advantage of a pre-established character who was going to do something in the scene, and since she was going to be sitting in the pen for a bit before the PPD agents and Luzurial showed up, it made sense for her to interact with the other women.

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Once Luzurial turns up and the “messenger” moment, that is subtle but really cool.

This is one of those moments I wish I had a good way to translate things reliably.  See, Freyde (from the Yiddish freid, meaning “joy”) was somewhat nervous, so Luzurial says “Fear not, daughter of Abraham.  All will be well,” in Yiddish, the idea being that, as an angel, Luzurial speaks all languages.  Thing is, I don’t know anyone who speaks Yiddish, so I didn’t really have a way to translate that.  Google translate is good for one or two words, but for entire sentences you want a human being.

I was still pretty proud of the way Freyde and the other holy women react after that, the tears and the mix of nervousness, awe and humility at being in the presence of someone like Luzurial.

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Luzurial healing Calista, too, I guess “technically” she could have left her until after the fight and conserved more energy but I feel like this is one of those times where she wouldn’t even hesitate. That nasty little detail of what Calista’s remaining unhealed part of the damage looked like was gruesome, but fits in with the flash frying – like how the pain goes as the nerve endings are destroyed earlier.

That was exactly the idea.  Thermite burns really hot, so much so that people handling it on TV always have reflective suits to protect them when they’re anywhere near the stuff.  This close to it, the radiant heat is enough to burn the skin right off parts of Calista’s body, hence why Luzurial has to rush over and heal her before she can freak out looking at her arms and hands.  I’m actually not sure Luzurial even could have left her until after the fight, given how bad the burns were.

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The Fractal Impalement Trap (and, awesome band name too) is, for all that it killed Gibbs, a genuinely brilliant idea. Spikes grow ‘til they stop, then more, then more, then more sprouting out. It’s slowly sadistic enough to really to appeal to a right bastard like Eparlegna, and the whole scene of them caught and losing Gibbs plays out brilliantly.

Thank you!  I was trying to figure out what “the traps of Hell” you mentioned in Whore of Heaven would look like, and I hit upon the idea of a basic spike trap, but I wanted to make it somewhat more magical, and that was when the idea of spikes sprouting out of other spikes until there was no open air left came up.  It did seem like something that would be designed in Hell, something that could, perhaps, be more efficient in how quickly it kills, but is designed to make those caught in it suffer more.

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Thank you for writing part 9, and indeed thank you again for writing parts 1 – 8. It has been a great journey and with the last part so close I’m gonna enjoy seeing it.

Thank you for yet another awesome review!  I hope I don’t let you down.

Edited February 10, 2020 by InBrightestDay

[JayDee]

15 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Pretty much.  Humanity is fighting a demon, and in Whore of Heaven you made it very clear how smart and powerful this demon is and how outmatched the people going up against him are.  I know this is 75 years later, and that I had a bunch of casualties in Chapter 8, but nonetheless I felt like it would make Eparlegna look nonthreatening if none of the PPD agents were killed.

Granted, I have failed to make him as threatening and clever as you did in Whore of Heaven, and that’s on me.  I wish I knew how to fix it, but I do have limits as a writer, and I seem to have hit them.

He is waaaay more threatening. He has minions who are threatening in their own right, too! Like that cold-blooed Cassie and asshole ackerman. Plus he’s got a nice tower for some Sauron echoes.

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Yeah, that was what I was talking about earlier.  I know I’m not as good with the planning as you were in the first story.

Disagree – first story is chock full of plot holes and stupidity. This one really hangs together well and makes a ton of sense. Eparlegna’s previous scheme was likely centuries in the planning, so whatever he’s doing now he’s had maybe 75 years to think about and a few days to get going while back out. You’ve probably got him doing the best he can with the resources, especially with the longer he leaves it, the more chance there is of another humanity champion getting him by surprise.

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And the person who wrote the original story isn’t such a prick.  Why, they let me write this thing!

Yeah, but they’re also actively promoting more “Naruto turned into chicken” stories.

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I wanted to get at least a little of the horror stuff you did in Whore of Heaven into my story, and the tortured heads of those who defied him spiked around his throne was my attempt at that.  It’s not as scary as I wanted it to be.  Maybe in the future, after I finish the story, I can enhance the description somewhat.

The pillars are an in-universe callback to WoH.  Eparlegna is trying to weaken and/or kill the mortals coming up to him, but he wants Luzurial to reach him, and as such he’s deliberately made things a little familiar for her, to bring back memories of old times.

Obviously too last minute now with the last part probably mostly written, but if I’d thought of it earlier I’d have said one way to bring some flashbacks would be for him to drag that pair of cops back out of Hell to either taunt Luzurial (Ghost pops out of stairwell wall, “Hey, remember when you came with my fist up your ass?” ) or molest Kevin – Ray Stantz style ectoplasm blowies! – so Luzurial gets him back… soiled.

Obviously you’d have said no, but the mental images would be in your head! See! monster…

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You were employing very economical storytelling, and as such you kept things to really three PoVs: the narration, Eparlegna and Luzurial, with very minor bits from Shondra, Molly and Bernice.  You could have created a minor character to represent the caged women, but unlike those other three, she wouldn’t have had anything to do, so her presence would have felt superfluous.  I had the advantage of a pre-established character who was going to do something in the scene, and since she was going to be sitting in the pen for a bit before the PPD agents and Luzurial showed up, it made sense for her to interact with the other women.

This makes a lot of sense!

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I was still pretty proud of the way Freyde and the other holy women react after that, the tears and the mix of nervousness, awe and humility at being in the presence of someone like Luzurial.

It does work for sure. I admit to being curious as to their reaction if they realised Kevin was boning her…

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Thank you for yet another awesome review!  I hope I don’t let you down.

Nobody ever lets me down as much as I let myself down, but I am sure you won’t!

[InBrightestDay]

Well, you can tell I’ve been away fro a while when I forget to check the email address I set up to use with this site, and as such miss a review notification!   Many thanks to @Thundercloud for sending me a PM to let me know about this.  Anyway, on to his review!

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Chapter 9 is very good new part of the story. You could make the argument that this chapter has very little of the mundane interaction between the lead characters that makes the story great. On the other hand it is fitting that the story ends with serious fighting and you make great use of the scenes to show how characters make use of their expertise to prove their worth.

Thanks!  We are indeed in the endgame now, which is why things are more action-focused, but I did try to balance it a little and have some level of conversation going on, like with Luzurial and the agents in the stairwell.  I was, however, very intent on making sure everyone gets something to do.

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Great scene with Gungnir shoot out. It is kind of funny since if the bad guys had packed some less powerful weapons they could had blasted the LTF to tiny bits but since they only had Gungnir as long range weapon the heroes get delays to close the distance.

I should have made this clearer, but the LTV is actually somewhat armored, with ballistic material for the windshield and light armor on the outer surface.  It’s just that the Gungnir was designed to pierce armor, hence the hypersonic round made of a dense material (tungsten carbide).  You are right, however, in that they could have shot out the tires to slow the vehicle down or something like that, but I guess the allure of the giant gun made them focus on using that.

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One thing that got me kind of confused is that Gibbs shoot hits the floor after pierching the enemy...seems to suggest that lobby is lower than the road towards the tower. Up to that point I assmed the tower to be surrounded by flat ground and all bullets would be horrizontal.

The tower is surrounded by flat ground, you’re not wrong about that.  However, Gibbs is sticking up out of a hatch in the LTV’s roof, so he’s up higher than the cultist shooting at him from the ground.  His Gungnir round thus comes in at a downward angle.

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I really enjoyed the fight with sledgehammer guy and the bad ass way she wins the fight open for the IMO best quote of the chapter "No, she just works for him.”

Yeah, that was one of my favorite lines to write.  We’ve seen Luzurial be cool and we’ve seen her be sympathetic, but angels in the sacred texts are usually described as being terrifying, and I wanted a moment where she gets to be that way.  I was thinking of reaction lines after that, and when one of them was something like “Oh my God” or “Jesus Christ” that was when the response popped into my head, and I loved it so much there was no way it wasn’t going in there.  Burning a hole through the cultist also led into the discussion of divine fire itself…

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The scene when they discuss Luzurial not using her special power 75 years ago was good and IMO fix some of plot holes in the original story. It all ties perfectly with the later scene when she is saving the female hostages. The wording about her as a messenger and reactions from the captures women was very nice.

Credit must be given to JD here.  That line about Luzurial’s eyes glowing, but then her regaining control of herself, made me so curious about just how powerful she is that it led to this idea.  I’m also glad that you liked the moment between the caged women and her.  It is a bit of symmetry, how she couldn’t do anything to help the women 75 years earlier, but now she can, and I liked writing their reactions as well, all sort of forgetting everything for a moment and clustering around the angel.  Freyde’s reaction in particular, when Luzurial reassured her in Yiddish, was sort of a microcosm of what all of them are feeling.

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Great that you managed to make use of my suggestion about special power for a certain individual.

Well thank you for suggesting that power!   I remember when you first brought the idea up, I was like “Oh, man, this is a cool idea, but it seems so weird just to use it as a one-off,” and then I realized “Well, then I’ll just have it pop up again!”

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In any case the bad ass save done here was really tense and written in a cool way.

Thank you!  I wanted Calista to have something to do here instead of just being a hostage, and then when I was coming up with the trap I had this image pop into my head from my childhood.  See, I grew up on Don Bluth movies, one of which was The Land Before Time.  In that film, in the scene where the T. rex first appears, there’s a part where Littlefoot and Cera hide from it in a thicket of...some plant with thorns, and believe it or not, I had that image, of the tunnel of thorns, in my head while writing Calista’s crawl to disable the trap, except that in this case the thorns are growing in toward you.

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I really look forward to reading the rest of the story.

Thanks!  Hopefully it ends up being a fun read!

[Thundercloud]

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Well, you can tell I’ve been away fro a while when I forget to check the email address I set up to use with this site, and as such miss a review notification!

Lucky you that actually get review notifications. Myself I have seen forum notifications to my gmail account but never any review notification at all.

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Thanks!  We are indeed in the endgame now, which is why things are more action-focused, but I did try to balance it a little and have some level of conversation going on, like with Luzurial and the agents in the stairwell.  I was, however, very intent on making sure everyone gets something to do.

It was a very good conversation in the stairwell...but still not quite the same as soul searching talk with the main characters in the previous chapters.

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

I should have made this clearer, but the LTV is actually somewhat armored, with ballistic material for the windshield and light armor on the outer surface.  It’s just that the Gungnir was designed to pierce armor, hence the hypersonic round made of a dense material (tungsten carbide). 

No worries there…I was kind of assuming they were driving a military vehicle and not just some random SUV,

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

You are right, however, in that they could have shot out the tires to slow the vehicle down or something like that, but I guess the allure of the giant gun made them focus on using that.

A future version of a gatling gun when they wanted to step out of the vehicle would also have been quite effective. Maybe those kind of weapons are banned in the future. If you google gatling gun one of first hits if it legal own such weapon...insane if you ask me.

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

The tower is surrounded by flat ground, you’re not wrong about that.  However, Gibbs is sticking up out of a hatch in the LTV’s roof, so he’s up higher than the cultist shooting at him from the ground.  His Gungnir round thus comes in at a downward angle.

I am too lazy to do the numbers...but if we assume the height of the LTV is limited compared to how close they parked the LTV to hostiles shooting at them the base of the triangle should be huge since they hit the upper body on a shot that was mostly horizontal. Of course nothing wrong with them using the LTV to park very close...but then Gibbs shot become less impressive if it was just a point blank shot. The shot hitting the lower part of the wall behind the shooter would be cool and keep Gibbs shot as more fantastical.

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Yeah, that was one of my favorite lines to write.  We’ve seen Luzurial be cool and we’ve seen her be sympathetic, but angels in the sacred texts are usually described as being terrifying, and I wanted a moment where she gets to be that way.  I was thinking of reaction lines after that, and when one of them was something like “Oh my God” or “Jesus Christ” that was when the response popped into my head, and I loved it so much there was no way it wasn’t going in there.  Burning a hole through the cultist also led into the discussion of divine fire itself…

Credit must be given to JD here.  That line about Luzurial’s eyes glowing, but then her regaining control of herself, made me so curious about just how powerful she is that it led to this idea. 

I saw your talk with JD about it and my comment is that by now it is starting to become habit that you explain what JD should have meant with his scenes.

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

I’m also glad that you liked the moment between the caged women and her.  It is a bit of symmetry, how she couldn’t do anything to help the women 75 years earlier, but now she can, and I liked writing their reactions as well, all sort of forgetting everything for a moment and clustering around the angel.  Freyde’s reaction in particular, when Luzurial reassured her in Yiddish, was sort of a microcosm of what all of them are feeling.

The more sinister author would have had Luzurial sacrificing the captured since she has learned she sometimes must make hard choices….but that is not kind of story you are telling.

Reminds me of a LARP scenario when a friend was “this plot will make the players have to make a choice between killing an innocent elf and making progress in the fighting the big bad”...the veteran players was like “oh...we have already done this mistakes and it cost us a quarter ofthe world’s elven population…off with her head”. Took the friend that had written the plot very by surprise.

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Well thank you for suggesting that power!   I remember when you first brought the idea up, I was like “Oh, man, this is a cool idea, but it seems so weird just to use it as a one-off,” and then I realized “Well, then I’ll just have it pop up again!”

Glad I could help.

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Thank you!  I wanted Calista to have something to do here instead of just being a hostage, and then when I was coming up with the trap I had this image pop into my head from my childhood.  See, I grew up on Don Bluth movies, one of which was The Land Before Time.  In that film, in the scene where the T. rex first appears, there’s a part where Littlefoot and Cera hide from it in a thicket of...some plant with thorns, and believe it or not, I had that image, of the tunnel of thorns, in my head while writing Calista’s crawl to disable the trap, except that in this case the thorns are growing in toward you.

I loved that movie when I was kid.

[JayDee]

17 hours ago, Thundercloud said:

I saw your talk with JD about it and my comment is that by now it is starting to become habit that you explain what JD should have meant with his scenes.

@InBrightestDay is doing a good job of retroactively polishing my story.

[Thundercloud]

On 2/18/2020 at 4:56 PM, JayDee said:

@InBrightestDay is doing a good job of retroactively polishing my story.

I think the reason the The Woman in the Statue is so good is very much since @InBrightestDay is always looking for deeper reasons for everything that happens in a story. From another point view it seems to me like your writing builds a lot on style...cool events will make a story even if you have not bothered to deeply analyze the reasons why the cool event would happen in the first place. Thing to remember are that there loads of authors out there who don’t manage to do neither cool scenes or deeper plot despite them trying.

[InBrightestDay]

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InBrightestDay is doing a good job of retroactively polishing my story.

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I think the reason the The Woman in the Statue is so good is very much since InBrightestDay is always looking for deeper reasons for everything that happens in a story.

Thank you guys so much!   I do always try to think about why things happen in a story and use that going forward, and I think Thundercloud has a good point about JayDee’s sheer style.

[InBrightestDay]

And we have a new review for WitS Chapter 9 from @Sinfulwolf!

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A very intense chapter, very fitting as we close towards the finale. And very cool to take small concepts from the original tale and expand on them here. It's very well done, with some good emotional moments that didn't take away from the frantic intensity of it all. 

Looking forward to the conclusion to see how this story ends.

Thank you!  What you just described was very much what I was aiming for, wanting to keep the emotional core of the story intact, but still keep the pace up so that it felt like we were moving into the finale.  As for the bit of Whore of Heaven I expanded upon...well, you’ll see next chapter.

Working on the conclusion (like, I was writing it, paused to reply to this, and will now go back to writing it), so hopefully the tale remains enjoyable!

Edited March 7, 2020 by InBrightestDay

[JayDee]

“All good things must come to an end”

Technically a general quote, but I’m totally thinking of Q saying it.

[InBrightestDay]

Social Distancing is a story written for @kagome26isawsome’s prompt concerning COVID-19.  Basically, she proposed that some of us write stories about how our characters would be dealing with the pandemic.  Since Elis and Lady Aldreda live in a medieval fantasy world and The Woman in the Statue is set in the future, that left Yua and Cody.  Since jorōgumo like Yua can’t get sick (at least in my version of things; it’s possible yōkai may fall ill in myths I haven’t read), the only one at risk would be her human mate, Cody.  Now, at first, I was going to make this a fun/hot story where Yua shows the boy exactly how much fun it can be to be trapped inside the house with a woman who’s got seduction down to an art and has 683 years of experience...but then things changed.  I can’t explain exactly why, but it started getting more serious, focusing on what it means to be an immortal in a relationship with a human.

And thus we come to our first review from @InvidiaRed!

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You really capture that distinct inhuman nature. Yes, she is possesive but she's doesn't want to lose the one she loves.She's distinctly not human but absolutely not an unthinking monster.

Yeah, the idea was that she isn’t smotheringly possessive all the time, but that the disease has made her even more protective of Cody than she normally is.  I do enjoy writing Yua because of the inhuman aspect of the character.  Luzurial is inhuman, but only in the technical sense, since her morality is essentially the same as ours.  Yua is a giant spider that can look like a beautiful woman when she wants to, and as such her perspective is very different.

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“You have no idea how lonely immortality can be.”  Made me shiver but is my favorite. Since it reminds of something similar that Duncan says chapters from now.

I swear I wasn’t stealing your dialogue from the future!   No, in all seriousness, the characters are different (a jorōgumo and a death god) but they share in that same bittersweet experience of loving someone you know you’ll outlive.  That line of dialogue in particular is one I’ll be using in The Spider House, which is to be the formal introduction of Yua and Cody and how they became a couple.  It’s what I’ll be working on after I finish the last chapter of WitS.

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<3 As always this story is a delight.

Thank you!

[InvidiaRed]

I swear I wasn’t stealing your dialogue from the future!   No, in all seriousness, the characters are different (a jorōgumo and a death god) but they share in that same bittersweet experience of loving someone you know you’ll outlive.  That line of dialogue in particular is one I’ll be using in The Spider House, which is to be the formal introduction of Yua and Cody and how they became a couple.  It’s what I’ll be working on after I finish the last chapter of WitS.

Duncan and Yua would get along. Well at least until she figures out his ties to the underworld. Though I do see a funny moment when and if she ever asks his age and he tells her he’s 299,317 years older than her. Haha.

That bittersweetness is related to why he incarnates and changes names.

[InBrightestDay]

6 hours ago, InvidiaRed said:

Duncan and Yua would get along. Well at least until she figures out his ties to the underworld.

Or he takes a disliking to her diet.  Then again, given his job, he might not object to that.

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Though I do see a funny moment when and if she ever asks his age and he tells her he’s 299,317 years older than her. Haha.

That could be pretty funny.

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That bittersweetness is related to why he incarnates and changes names.

An interesting thought; makes me wonder exactly what the connection is.

And now we have a second review, courtesy of @JayDee.

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I definitely enjoyed this – some lovely bits of description of the forest, and especially Yua’s gently imposing herself between Cody and the bear, and the bear deciding it don’t want none if she’s got eight legs. Smart bear. That moment where she brushes the hair from his face with a spider leg and he’s completely comfortable with it is just awesome. So sweet!

Thank you!  This sort of emerged from something in After Party, where Cody feels safer as soon as he enters Yua’s area of the forest.  I liked the idea that since jorōgumo are nature spirits of a sort, that the animals might be able to sense her innate magic and react to that.  The spiders react by converging on the area, and the bear reacts to Yua the same way a coyote would react to the bear, backing down from a more dangerous predator.

Brushing the leaf out of Cody’s hair was actually a late addition.  I realized that while we’d seen Yua in her true form in Parlor Games, we’d never really seen her interact with Cody in that form, so I wanted to do a little of the affectionate stuff she does in her human or in-between forms here in her giant spider form.

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I think the emotional side works too. Can really feel Cody’s frustration at his curtailed liberty, but also Yua’s somewhat fear over it. Him snapping over the pet thing, then apologising felt pretty real.

I think it’s kind of messing Cody up for a few reasons.  Part of it is that it’s recently become emblematic of her being, in his mind, overprotective, but the other part is that Yua refers to Cody as her pet human as part of the roleplay they engage in during their bondage games.  There’s an emotional association there, to being powerless in an arousing way, and it’s kind of messing with his head to have this getting tied to being powerless in a frustrating way.  Still, he doesn’t mean to hurt Yua any more than she means to hurt him.

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Does Yua ever play The Who’s Boris the Spider?

*Listens*  You know, you probably could play that pretty well on the shamisen…

The two instruments I mentioned Yua being highly skilled with are generally associated with this particular type of yōkai.  The biwa is what jorōgumo are described as playing in the stories I could find, but for whatever reason, they’re frequently depicted in art with a shamisen.  I went with the shamisen here first because the biwa will be featured in The Spider House, and second as a reference to Kubo and the Two Strings.  For those who haven’t seen the movie, the main character, Kubo, plays a shamisen (it’s how he works his magic), and the end credits feature a cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” that features shamisen as well as some other Japanese instruments.

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Another bit I liked was the detail on them doing the couples hanging out stuff, with Yua’s possessiveness over Cody that he’s aware of, but also it seems he’s got her convinced that nobody’s gonna take him away because she’s not getting aggressively angry over it.

As I said in the author’s note, I don’t know if this is canonical, but I did nonetheless want it to be canon compliant, so I wrote it taking into account the conversation Yua and Cody had at the end of After Party, so she still gets jealous, but there isn’t a risk of her eating other women anymore.  Well, not as much of one, anyway.

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Now, if that Shannon girl from the party blew back into town…

“He’s mine!”

“…threesome?”

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Finally, the ending, well Cody finding some things to like in that particular story is no surprise to me with what you’ve said, but it’s also another lovely moment. You finish it with a brilliant little couple reading a story. No sex scene needed! I mean, except to get frickin' AFF perverts intererested, The other peverts I mean.

So for those who don’t know, while I didn’t do this intentionally, I did realize while coming up with the story of The Spider House that it rather resembled the story of Let the Right One In (or the American remake Let Me In), albeit TSH is a shorter, simpler story.  I decided to reference that with the reading scene, and I liked the idea of what Cody is trying to get across to Yua there; how he sees the story.  LtROI is both a horror story and a love story, but Cody is focused on the fact that it’s about a boy who falls in love with a monster, and the monster loves him back.

Edited March 27, 2020 by InBrightestDay

[JayDee]

15 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Thank you!  This sort of emerged from something in After Party, where Cody feels safer as soon as he enters Yua’s area of the forest.  I liked the idea that since jorōgumo are nature spirits of a sort, that the animals might be able to sense her innate magic and react to that.  The spiders react by converging on the area, and the bear reacts to Yua the same way a coyote would react to the bear, backing down from a more dangerous predator.

 

And taking the nature spirit further you could say that Cody felt the call of nature from Yua.

...sorry.

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Brushing the leaf out of Cody’s hair was actually a late addition.  I realized that while we’d seen Yua in her true form in Parlor Games, we’d never really seen her interact with Cody in that form, so I wanted to do a little of the affectionate stuff she does in her human or in-between forms here in her giant spider form.

Definitely worked. Does he spend much time hugging her in spider form?

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I think it’s kind of messing Cody up for a few reasons.  Part of it is that it’s recently become emblematic of her being, in his mind, overprotective, but the other part is that Yua refers to Cody as her pet human as part of the roleplay they engage in during their bondage games.  There’s an emotional association there, to being powerless in an arousing way, and it’s kind of messing with his head to have this getting tied to being powerless in a frustrating way.  Still, he doesn’t mean to hurt Yua any more than she means to hurt him.

Healthy relationship really. Folks have issues develop and work through them.

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*Listens*  You know, you probably could play that pretty well on the shamisen…

The two instruments I mentioned Yua being highly skilled with are generally associated with this particular type of yōkai.  The biwa is what jorōgumo are described as playing in the stories I could find, but for whatever reason, they’re frequently depicted in art with a shamisen.  I went with the shamisen here first because the biwa will be featured in The Spider House, and second as a reference to Kubo and the Two Strings.  For those who haven’t seen the movie, the main character, Kubo, plays a shamisen (it’s how he works his magic), and the end credits feature a cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” that features shamisen as well as some other Japanese instruments.

Always get to learn something new with one of your stories!

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As I said in the author’s note, I don’t know if this is canonical, but I did nonetheless want it to be canon compliant, so I wrote it taking into account the conversation Yua and Cody had at the end of After Party, so she still gets jealous, but there isn’t a risk of her eating other women anymore.  Well, not as much of one, anyway.

Can always be an echo of canon/partly canon anyway, like The Least I Can Do before the timeskip!

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So for those who don’t know, while I didn’t do this intentionally, I did realize while coming up with the story of The Spider House that it rather resembled the story of Let the Right One In (or the American remake Let Me In), albeit TSH is a shorter, simpler story.  I decided to reference that with the reading scene, and I liked the idea of what Cody is trying to get across to Yua there; how he sees the story.  LtROI is both a horror story and a love story, but Cody is focused on the fact that it’s about a boy who falls in love with a monster, and the monster loves him back.

 

“I had a german boyfriend 70 years ago”

“Ah! Let the reich one in.”

[InvidiaRed]

18 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Or he takes a disliking to her diet.  Then again, given his job, he might not object to that.

Considering she hunts the dregs of society. She’d probably have the possibility to earn a boon. She is a required part of the ecosystem.  Now I got it in my head they should definitely meet.

[JayDee]

So here I am, nudging in on @InBrightestDay’s review reply thread to reply on a review on the co-written story Parlor Games!

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@InvidiaRed

Absolutely delightful. Its refreshing to see what could have became of that particular legend of the entangling bride. Aka whore spider.

Thanks for reviewing! All of the spider legend stuff is firmly from InBrightestDay. Still… Whore Spider?

*Sound of running feet, then Shannon from the After Party story gunning engine back to California...*

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Suprised she didn't summon fire breathing spiders( That's actually one of the tamer bits of japenese folklore)  Her hunting was exquiste you could feel the gradual fear.

Yep! All InBrigthestDay that. When I first saw all the atmosphere the dude had brought in I was blown away. It went from a weak-ass home invasion of some teen girls (admittedly stretching the definition of teen for a couple of them. And also girl. But fuck it, so does pornhub caption writers) into a real horror fest. He done good!

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Auntie Pearl defintely has quite the story and I'm sure you'll find a way to tell it. Glad that Todd survived and finally got back to safety.

Definitey wouldn’t mind telling the story of the werewolf she saw bite a dude’s hand off and how she got to be there. Well, kind of a werewolf. Maybe a wolfgirl. One of those.

Todd would have survived originally, but I liked how InBrightestDay used it to show how Cody was helping Yua to be more moral in her meals, and asking her to let him go. Gave some more drama to it I thought! Glad to see you liked that he survived :)

Thanks again for reviewing! @InBrightestDay – it is your review reply thread so over to you :)

[InBrightestDay]

1 hour ago, JayDee said:

@InBrightestDay – it is your review reply thread so over to you 

Well, alrighty then!

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All of the spider legend stuff is firmly from InBrightestDay. Still… Whore Spider?

Japanese is an interesting language, specifically in its written form.  Different characters (kanji) can be pronounced the same, due to the limited number of sounds the human vocal apparatus can make, but mean very different things.  The word “jorōgumo” is thus written in two different ways.  The first way, 女郎蜘蛛, translates as “whore spider”.  Given that they are succubus-like spider monsters, it’s accurate enough, but a bit on the nose if you ask me.  The second way, 絡新婦, translates as something like “binding bride.”

In fact, the second way of writing it is actually where I got the name for the character.  Yua is a Japanese feminine name that comes from 結 (yu) meaning “to tie/bind” and 愛 (a) meaning “love/affection”.  Her last name, Hayashi, is written as 林 and means “forest”.

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Suprised she didn't summon fire breathing spiders( That's actually one of the tamer bits of japenese folklore)

I’ve thought about it, but have yet to employ the fire-breathing spiders in any of the stories; maybe later in something with more action.  Basically, all of those spiders that congregate in her vicinity, drawn to her natural magic?  Those aren’t just for show; she can control them, and in The Spider House I have a particularly nasty scene where she uses them Willard style.

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Her hunting was exquiste you could feel the gradual fear.

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All InBrigthestDay that. When I first saw all the atmosphere the dude had brought in I was blown away. It went from a weak-ass home invasion of some teen girls

While it’s true that I did write a lot (though not all) of what happens inside the house from scratch, that was only because that was where JayDee’s excerpt ended.

I mentioned this in the author’s note, but JayDee sent me this as a snippet with the K-Team, but they weren’t sure it fit those characters.  I suggested that maybe that was because the K-Team usually deals with explicitly magical stuff, so bad people weren’t really up their alley.  I then had the thought of using Cody and Yua, re-wrote the snippet to use that and sent it back to JayDee, who really liked it.  In the piece they sent me, “teats” was Shannon, and when Ricky does the pizza box thing, it was Kate at the door and Kizzy who told her to bring their visitors in.  After that, Kate took Ricky and Chad down to the basement (where she would go full wolf and eat them) while Kizzy and (I think) Shannon were going to keep Todd company in the living room and make sure he wasn’t hurt.

JayDee’s excerpt also had a bit where Kate was eager to go down to the basement with the two guys, and they figured she had some home invasion fantasies that were way off.  It felt like a natural fit for Yua as well, so I was absolutely going to keep that.  I had to invent the new stuff with Yua in her true form snagging Chad and hauling him up into the web.  However, this is where we come back to JayDee, because...

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Auntie Pearl defintely has quite the story and I'm sure you'll find a way to tell it. Glad that Todd survived and finally got back to safety.

When I did the re-write, it ended on more of a horror note, with Yua looming threateningly over Todd, giving him that creepy smile and saying “Run home, little boy,” and him bolting out into the woods in terror.  I confessed, however, that I did feel kind of bad for him, since I wasn’t sure if he could find his way to someone who would help him.  JayDee then wrote that entire epilogue, inventing Auntie Pearl in the process, who turned out to be a super fun character who could definitely have her own story.

Edited March 31, 2020 by InBrightestDay

[JayDee]

7 minutes ago, InBrightestDay said:

I’ve thought about it, but have yet to employ the fire-breathing spiders in any of the stories; maybe later in something with more action. 

So not just,

“Do you have anything to light the BBQ with?”

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After that, Kate took Ricky and Chad down to the basement (where she would go full wolf and eat them) while Kizzy and (I think) Shannon were going to keep Todd company in the living room and make sure he wasn’t hurt.

Shannon went to the basement too ‘cos they were really into her and she was quite happy to fuck ‘em both and they didn’t have anything that could hurt her anyway. I think Kate had promised to “eat both their asses” in case of literal words, so that left Lupa and Kizzy upstairs and Kizzy was gonna read Todd a nice story and Lupa was gonna try not to swear a lot, or roll her eyes at the nice story. I think. Anyway, this version with Yua going from woman to spider to spider-woman on them works waaaay better!

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JayDee then wrote that entire epilogue, inventing Auntie Pearl in the process, who turned out to be a super fun character who could definitely have her own story.

I guess I did, at that. Thanks!

[InvidiaRed]

2 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

I’ve thought about it, but have yet to employ the fire-breathing spiders in any of the stories; maybe later in something with more action.  Basically, all of those spiders that congregate in her vicinity, drawn to her natural magic?  Those aren’t just for show; she can control them, and in The Spider House I have a particularly nasty scene where she uses them Willard style

Can’t wait

[JayDee]

Back once again into @InBrightestDay’s thread with a review reply to that joint effort Parlor Games!

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@Thundercloud

I actually read this story a while ago but life intruded before I got around to write the review. Good thing since this made me read it a second time and I liked it even more on the second read.

Thanks for the review! I’m glad you’ve had a second crack at it as InBrightestDay has some super cool horror atmosphere in there.

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At the first read some parts of the setup made me think about Of Mice and Men due to how Todd not getting what was really happening. Honestly that probably tell more about how little I recall about the plot of that story. I refreshed my memory before the second reading and this story is most certainly not a rippoff and a good story on its own.

I finally read Of Mice and Men during the last few months. Can absolutely see some similar characteristics there, I suspect that story set the template that sheer pop culture exposure has led to similar characters feeling alike. At least Cody didn’t shoot Todd in the head. Would probably have been a little out of character.

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The build is good as the reader learn more and more about how sinister the bad guys are and how they are fooling Todd into helping them doing bad stuff. The twist when they run into Cody and Yua and things start to get difficult for the bad guys is very good...when it turns to real horror I smiled a lot. My only complaint would be that it is kind of hard to tell if you should recommend the After Party story or this story as the first Cody and Yua story. The second story you read will obviously be less surprising since you kind know what to expect. Considering this is AFF and this is No Sex story I would probably go with the other story even if this is a good story on its own.

This is definitely more one for InBrightestDay to answer – but I guess I’d say After Party would be the best one to start folks with, with it being purely InBrightestDay’s take on ‘em and, yeah, the fact that the other one has a buncha sex definitely has some AFF appeal. Yua not turning out to be a yaoi fangirl and getting the guys to blowbang Cody probably a good thing really. Also out of character for a start.

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I think that part of the story I enjoyed most was Cody's attempt to help Todd at the end and running into problem about to explain things. It sounds like the woman at the end would be worthy a story of her own. Her final line was a great way to end the story.

Thanks!

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Considering the outcome I cannot help to wonder what would happen if you teamed up and wrote something erotic, I can kind of understand why you did not want this particular story to contain actual sex, but cannot help to wonder if this story could not have worked great with the bad guys go voyeur on Cody and Yua having sex before the horror starts.

That coulda worked! InBrightestDay’s current collaboration with another author has had some smoking hot bits so it would probably have been mostly his guidance on the sex stuff anyway – I mean, with it being his characters he’s got a better feel of what they do to each other.

Thank you again for the view, very much appreciated

[InBrightestDay]

So, now for my reply!

Revealing my own literary ignorance, I’ve never actually read Of Mice and Men.  I do really need to get around to that at some point.

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My only complaint would be that it is kind of hard to tell if you should recommend the After Party story or this story as the first Cody and Yua story. The second story you read will obviously be less surprising since you kind know what to expect. Considering this is AFF and this is No Sex story I would probably go with the other story even if this is a good story on its own.

My personal recommendation would be for After Party to come first.  I think the tension in the first part of After Party at least partly comes from not knowing who or what Yua is, and the spoiler might lessen that early fear.  Parlor Games, I think, works perfectly after being spoiled, just in a different way.  Knowing who Cody and Yua are, in my opinion, makes for a kind of anticipation when the brothers show up at the house, with the audience knowing fully just how screwed these people are, and it might even make some lines (Yua’s “I wasn’t expecting to have a meal delivered”) considerably funnier.

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I think that part of the story I enjoyed most was Cody's attempt to help Todd at the end and running into problem about to explain things. It sounds like the woman at the end would be worthy a story of her own. Her final line was a great way to end the story.

That was all @JayDee.  I mentioned I felt kind of bad for Todd after Yua sent him running, and JayDee came up with this epilogue showing how Cody helps him get to safety.  Completely agreed on Auntie Pearl, who’s a wonderfully colorful character.

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Considering the outcome I cannot help to wonder what would happen if you teamed up and wrote something erotic, I can kind of understand why you did not want this particular story to contain actual sex, but cannot help to wonder if this story could not have worked great with the bad guys go voyeur on Cody and Yua having sex before the horror starts.

 

6 hours ago, JayDee said:

That coulda worked! InBrightestDay’s current collaboration with another author has had some smoking hot bits so it would probably have been mostly his guidance on the sex stuff anyway – I mean, with it being his characters he’s got a better feel of what they do to each other. 

They’ve probably done some stuff on the couch before, so it would have been possible for Chad and Ricky to look in the window and find them making out or engaged in foreplay (I figure they’d probably move to the bed, or Yua would haul him up into the web, before things went too far).

As for teaming up with JayDee to do something erotic, I did have an idea recently.  Not sure if I should do it, but it would be set after WitS (I know; I’ll be working on that tonight ), as well as its immediate sequel New Year’s Visitation, and it would involve revisiting an old joke JayDee and I shared one time, only maybe a little bit more serious this time around…

At any rate, thank you so much for the review!

[JayDee]

10 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

As for teaming up with JayDee to do something erotic, I did have an idea recently.  Not sure if I should do it, but it would be set after WitS (I know; I’ll be working on that tonight ), as well as its immediate sequel New Year’s Visitation, and it would involve revisiting an old joke JayDee and I shared one time, only maybe a little bit more serious this time around…

You bring the serious I’ll bring the levity!

[Thundercloud]

On 7/3/2020 at 6:41 PM, JayDee said:

Back once again into @InBrightestDay’s thread with a review reply to that joint effort Parlor Games!

Thanks for the review! I’m glad you’ve had a second crack at it as InBrightestDay has some super cool horror atmosphere in there.

Yep, it is very cool atmosphere.

On 7/3/2020 at 6:41 PM, JayDee said:

I finally read Of Mice and Men during the last few months. Can absolutely see some similar characteristics there, I suspect that story set the template that sheer pop culture exposure has led to similar characters feeling alike. At least Cody didn’t shoot Todd in the head. Would probably have been a little out of character.

Quite out of character I would say. Your point about Steinbeck’s story as template is spot on. I can most certainly see why it continue to draw attention.

A detail I have been thinking about is that when Steinbeck recieved the Nobel price they did not talk specifically about Of Mice and Men but instead talked about Travels with Charley that is about a roadtrop around US that Steinbeck did. Never encountered anyone that has read that story.

On 7/3/2020 at 6:41 PM, JayDee said:

That coulda worked! InBrightestDay’s current collaboration with another author has had some smoking hot bits so it would probably have been mostly his guidance on the sex stuff anyway – I mean, with it being his characters he’s got a better feel of what they do to each other.

Yep, it is quite more easy with your own characters.

On 7/3/2020 at 6:41 PM, JayDee said:

Thank you again for the view, very much appreciated

Thank you for the story.

[Thundercloud]

20 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

So, now for my reply!

Revealing my own literary ignorance, I’ve never actually read Of Mice and Men.  I do really need to get around to that at some point.

That’s good idea. It is a sad story, but Steinbeck is very good at describing people so I would say it is great read.

20 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

My personal recommendation would be for After Party to come first.  I think the tension in the first part of After Party at least partly comes from not knowing who or what Yua is, and the spoiler might lessen that early fear.  Parlor Games, I think, works perfectly after being spoiled, just in a different way.  Knowing who Cody and Yua are, in my opinion, makes for a kind of anticipation when the brothers show up at the house, with the audience knowing fully just how screwed these people are, and it might even make some lines (Yua’s “I wasn’t expecting to have a meal delivered”) considerably funnier.

I agree with your recommendation.

20 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

That was all @JayDee.  I mentioned I felt kind of bad for Todd after Yua sent him running, and JayDee came up with this epilogue showing how Cody helps him get to safety.  Completely agreed on Auntie Pearl, who’s a wonderfully colorful character.

It does sounds like good partnership then since I could not tell who had written the ending of the story. Pearl talking about previous experiences that might refer to we-know-who was of course kind of a hint.

20 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

They’ve probably done some stuff on the couch before, so it would have been possible for Chad and Ricky to look in the window and find them making out or engaged in foreplay (I figure they’d probably move to the bed, or Yua would haul him up into the web, before things went too far).

Yep, there are plenty of possibilities. Her going from foreplay to there-will-be-food could easy play well with delusions of the invaders of them soon to have a good time.

20 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

As for teaming up with JayDee to do something erotic, I did have an idea recently.  Not sure if I should do it, but it would be set after WitS (I know; I’ll be working on that tonight ), as well as its immediate sequel New Year’s Visitation, and it would involve revisiting an old joke JayDee and I shared one time, only maybe a little bit more serious this time around…

I look forward to it.

20 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

At any rate, thank you so much for the review!

Thanks for the story and I am so looking forward to the Woman in the Statue ending.

[JayDee]

21 hours ago, Thundercloud said:

A detail I have been thinking about is that when Steinbeck recieved the Nobel price they did not talk specifically about Of Mice and Men but instead talked about Travels with Charley that is about a roadtrop around US that Steinbeck did. Never encountered anyone that has read that story.

I’ve only read one from him, but I’ll probably read more when I get the chance – and I tend to like those oldstyle books with all the little social history details thrown in so if I come across Travels with Charley I’ll give it a crack!