2019 Halloween Anthology Party Review Responses!

[Tcr]

Welcome, ghouls, goblins, banshees, and succubi.  Here is the review responses from our 2019 Halloween Party Anthology.  All the sweets one can ask for!

A link to the anthology for the crazy brave! 

http://original.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600109450

[Tcr]

Well, to christen it, here's some replies:

From InBrightestDay:

This was a fun little idea!  I love seeing all these deities from different mythologies interacting.  It's cool how all the souls they're using as chips are tied to their respective cultures (Agamemnon and Paris for Pluto/Hades, Hitler's as close to a Norse bad guy as Hel can get, and Cortes is...well, let's just say him being reaped by an Aztec death god is pretty amusing).

It's also kind of an interesting idea that the Greek and Roman gods all have like Dissociative Identity Disorder now, as I'm assuming that what applies to Pluto/Hades would also apply to Jupiter/Zeus, Venus/Aphrodite, Mercury/Hermes, etc.

And of course, the action scene.  I was really puzzled at first, since that little bit of domestic terrorism felt kind of random, but then you clarified that the death gods had their game here because this was going to happen: dinner and a show.  Also, this is purely personal, but I love scenes where somebody picks on a defenseless victim only to discover that their target is not defenseless at all.

Final note, it was pretty funny to see Mictlantecuhtli (I can see why you shortened that to "Mic") go completely over the top on his kill, dancing around and demanding more blood.  From what I know, the Aztecs did have a habit of getting a little...enthusiastic about stuff like that.

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This was a fun little idea!  I love seeing all these deities from different mythologies interacting.  It's cool how all the souls they're using as chips are tied to their respective cultures (Agamemnon and Paris for Pluto/Hades, Hitler's as close to a Norse bad guy as Hel can get, and Cortes is...well, let's just say him being reaped by an Aztec death god is pretty amusing).

It's also kind of an interesting idea that the Greek and Roman gods all have like Dissociative Identity Disorder now, as I'm assuming that what applies to Pluto/Hades would also apply to Jupiter/Zeus, Venus/Aphrodite, Mercury/Hermes, etc.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.  It was definitely an intriguing idea to write anf I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Even if I got a little stuck halfway through.  Lol.

As for the Greek/Roman pantheon, yeah, I feel in this work, they would all have Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Especially since they are mostly the same with only a few differences.

(As for Mic reaping Cortez...  Let's just say I had the thought and it was too good to pass up...  lol).

And of course, the action scene.  I was really puzzled at first, since that little bit of domestic terrorism felt kind of random, but then you clarified that the death gods had their game here because this was going to happen: dinner and a show.  Also, this is purely personal, but I love scenes where somebody picks on a defenseless victim only to discover that their target is not defenseless at all.

(I owe a big thanks to SinfulWolf for this one, lol.  She made the suggestion and I kind of ran with it, worked it in after the fact.  Lol). That said, after I did work it in, I deleted some mentions earlier, too.  I kind of wanted things to just seem like it was just a poker game.  Lol, until shit hits the fan.

Final note, it was pretty funny to see Mictlantecuhtli (I can see why you shortened that to "Mic") go completely over the top on his kill, dancing around and demanding more blood.  From what I know, the Aztecs did have a habit of getting a little...enthusiastic about stuff like that.

Yeah.  Lol.  I liked writing him after shit hits the fan, because I tried to keep the Gods/Goddesses tied at least partially to the culture and the mythology they were from.  Glad it shone through .

[InBrightestDay]

8 hours ago, Tcr said:

(As for Mic reaping Cortez...  Let's just say I had the thought and it was too good to pass up...  lol).

Oh, absolutely.  It’s like if Hitler wound up on the wrong end of the Archangel Samael (probably the main angel of death in Judaism).

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I kind of wanted things to just seem like it was just a poker game.  Lol, until shit hits the fan.

I think the approach you went with definitely still works.  It’s just one of those things you understand better if you read the story a second time.  It does make me wonder about Hel hitting on the receptionist, though.

[CloverReef]

Responding to reviews from Inbrightestday and JayDee~

@InBrightestDay

I loved your review. It's been a while since I wrote this fic, so I totally forgot the research I did and the lil things I incorporated, so having them pointed out was a whole lot of fun. I'm also super glad a little characterization got through. I've been dying to use Rowan for something longer, and this was my first toe-dip outside of my character pool box of studs. 

Thank you so much for this awesome review!

@JayDee

Woo! Anything I write getting described as dark and gory makes me unbelievably happy. Especially after the uber vanilla challenge fic I did last month. One day I'll post that here... maybe... "Kinda had to imagine a Serbian Guy Fieri as the mayor of Fucktown." That made me laugh because FUCK YES. Now I'm gonna imagine that too. Thanks a lot. Also, I'm working my way up to that sex dwarf thing. I'm fucking determined to get Rowan laid. 

Thank you very much, JD! 

[InBrightestDay]

1 hour ago, CloverReef said:

Thank you so much for this awesome review! 

Thank you for the story!

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"Kinda had to imagine a Serbian Guy Fieri as the mayor of Fucktown." That made me laugh because FUCK YES. Now I'm gonna imagine that too.

There are times I desperately want to see a quote posted somewhere, completely free of context, just to see how people react.  One of these is now officially...

Phone: “Rowan?  Where are you?”

Rowan: “I’m in FUCKTOWN and Guy Fieri’s the mayor!”

Edited October 24, 2019 by InBrightestDay

[JayDee]

14 hours ago, CloverReef said:

@JayDee

Woo! Anything I write getting described as dark and gory makes me unbelievably happy. Especially after the uber vanilla challenge fic I did last month. One day I'll post that here... maybe... "Kinda had to imagine a Serbian Guy Fieri as the mayor of Fucktown." That made me laugh because FUCK YES. Now I'm gonna imagine that too. Thanks a lot. Also, I'm working my way up to that sex dwarf thing. I'm fucking determined to get Rowan laid. 

Thank you very much, JD! 

You know it’s gory when a dwarf has so much blood on him he can play the greased up deaf guy road in a room of horny Serbians! Also them descriptions of the pained noses. Ay!

And, yes, Rowan deserves a little action! Get someone to throw the little guy a good fuck.

[InBrightestDay]

After Party gets its very first review!

From @JayDee

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I don’t know why you were concerned about the theme or the tone! Takes place on Halloween? Check. Has a really creepy opening? Check Extremely supernatural character with inhuman eyes to further creep out readers? Also check!

I was primarily worried because of the emphasis placed on the genuinely loving relationship between the two.  I noticed everyone else doing stories about death and violence, and here I posted the only Yua and Cody story (yes, there will be at least two more of them) where Yua doesn’t kill anyone.  True, she does threaten to do it, but Cody talks her down.

The character design for Yua owes a lot to some art of this particular type of yōkai, and also to the real world spider at the center of the myth, Nephila clavata.  Her silk being golden in color, for instance, or the black and yellow colors on her spider legs.  Even the robe she wears is colored the way the female N. clavata’s abdomen is (blue and gold bands, and there’s a red portion of the underside).  Her eyes are part of that as well.  While I couldn’t find images of the eye arrangement on N. clavata, I did find close-up photographs of the eyes of N. pilipes, a related species, which is where I got the “two pairs in front, a third pair on the sides” arrangement.

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It’s also really well written like all the stuff you do, and tells an interesting little story of their evening with a few hints of things in the past – where Cody used to live, for example – that definitely whets the appetite for when you do a full multi-part story with the characters.

I was going to put this in an Author’s Note, as I do so often, (until I saw that there were no ANs on any of the other Halloween stories, so I didn’t write one), but how Cody and Yua met is the subject of a story in the works (I have a scene or two written), called The Spider House.  That story features Yua in a far more menacing light.

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I think this is the first ever sex scene I’ve read between a spider-woman and, well, anything. It’s certainly a bit of a different fetish! The webbing bondage worked really well too. I especially enjoyed the way Cody was purposely trying to be firm near the start to distract Yua, and how she went along with the game. I do get that it is somewhat less creepy when the monster and the mate are clearly caring deeply for each other, but for folks who don’t like spiders much I’m sure that creep factor sticks throughout.

I suppose she does stay creepy if you’re arachnophobic.  As for the bondage aspect, I had to do some research, similar to the tentacle scene in WitS.  A lot of it I couldn’t use, since due to Cody’s past, I knew Yua would never cause him physical pain during their games.  The one thing I figured I could use was this thing called a Wartenberg wheel, which was once a medical diagnostic tool (to measure nervous sensitivity), but is no longer employed in that capacity, and these days apparently tends to be used for BDSM (even the Wikipedia article mentions it, amusingly enough).  It’s got these little metal spikes that sort of prickle on the skin, and I figured Yua could simulate that feeling by very gently using the tips of her claws.

And yeah, Yua’s so powerful that Cody can’t really make her do anything, so he figures he’ll just get her to play with him, and that’ll distract her long enough that she’ll calm down.  And at 683 years of age, she knows exactly what he’s doing...but she also knows she’ll enjoy it, so she just rolls with it.

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The explanation of Yua’s diet over the previous couple years, which does show that she might seriously go after the girl if she was hungry and felt she had a good reason. How ‘bout those unlucky armed robbers, huh? I guess in this case it would be ‘web doctrine’ instead of ‘castle doctrine’

Yua and Cody owe a bit to Abby and Owen from Let Me In (or, if you prefer, Eli and Oskar from Let the Right One In), but unlike Abby, who is understandably unhappy with what she has to do to survive, Yua is more fundamentally inhuman, in the way yōkai generally are.  So yes, Yua can absolutely be dangerous when provoked.

As for those armed robbers...you might be seeing them soon.

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The line about how Yua sends Cody off with a soft kiss and a gentle ruffling of his hair when he’s engaging with regular folks, which feels both sweet but also feels like it emphasises the sheer age difference between them.

Yua and Cody are probably the most physically affectionate of the couples in my stories, but the age difference absolutely plays a role here, at least on Yua’s end.  While she clearly sees him as old enough to qualify as her mate, there’s something almost maternal about the way she treats him a lot of the time.

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Yua actually joining him at the party makes me wonder how other party goers would react – but then I figured the folks who know him have probably seen them together in town at some point or other and just assume she’s a bit introverted.

That’s the idea.  When I say Yua stays a step removed from people, I mainly mean that she doesn’t really make friends (like a real spider, she’s content to spend a lot of time by herself).  She does go into town with Cody sometimes, so people who know him know he has this older wife, but they don’t really know anything else.  I figure she showed up at the outskirts of the party, long enough to see Cody being approached and the exchange with Shannon, and then she went back to the house.

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Generally the revelation that the scene is a kind of game they’ve been playing and are getting into, (learning their BDSM games together but making sure there’s safety – the extra support webbing against strain, the safe word etc

Some of that came from an exchange I had with @BronxWench early on in the writing process. She gave me the idea of Yua giving Cody some level of praise for, in this case, controlling himself during the game.  I probably should have had Yua make sure Cody remembered the safe word before the game started, but I felt like that would give away the fact that this is a game with rules and all, so I worked on the assumption that Yua trusts Cody to remember it when they start, and only at the end does she check, just to make sure.  I didn’t mention it, but the idea is that when they decided to start playing the game, they would have discussed what was going to happen so that Cody never got too scared.

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but that Cody really likes his normal ‘human’ snuggles in bed -but asking to spend the night in the web was all warm fuzzies too.

Thank you!  That exchange (“Can I just sleep up here with you?”  “Of course you may.”) was actually an idea I had before I knew what the sex scene was going to be like at all.  I figure that sometimes Yua and Cody both sleep in the bed, with her looking completely human, and sometimes they sleep apart, with him in the bed and her, in her natural giant spider form, up in the web.  I imagine that both of them sleeping in the web like this is a rare and special thing.

Thank you so much for the review!

Edited October 25, 2019 by InBrightestDay

[JayDee]

9 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

As for those armed robbers...you might be seeing them soon.

...I’m sorry but I draw the line at sifting through giant spider poop.

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That’s the idea.  When I say Yua stays a step removed from people, I mainly mean that she doesn’t really make friends (like a real spider, she’s content to spend a lot of time by herself).  She does go into town with Cody sometimes, so people who know him know he has this older wife, but they don’t really know anything else.  I figure she showed up at the outskirts of the party, long enough to see Cody being approached and the exchange with Shannon, and then she went back to the house.

Just long enough to outdrink everyone with the beer bong!

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I suppose she does stay creepy if you’re arachnophobic. 

Even if you’re not, that many legs is definitely a bit of a brain squirm! And those eyes!

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And at 683 years of age,

Seven years time. Yua’s birthday. There’s a knock on the door. It’s Shannon, from the party. She just says:

“Nice.”

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she knows exactly what he’s doing...but she also knows she’ll enjoy it, so she just rolls with it.

And that’s another great thing you have with their rerlationship I figure. They have a real understanding. Similar to how she probably really didn’t need to confirm he remembered the safe word because It seems like with her experience and that close bond she’d stil be able to tell he wanted things to stop.

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Thank you so much for the review!

Thanks so much for writing a story and taking part! Us non contributing readers are basically leeches. Leeches, I say! (Well, just me then. No offence to the busy/un-motiviated folks!)

[GeorgeGlass]

Re: “Day of the Deadly”

From InBrightestDay on October 25, 2019

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Man, this Coco sequel got dark.

LOL! That may be the funniest first line of a review I’ve ever read.

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Obviously I'm kidding, but seriously, that idea's kind of stuck in my head now.

Cartel Member: "Who are you!?"

Héctor: "In the Land of the Dead, they call me..." *cocks gun dramatically* "Chorizo."

 

Turns out the underworld is a real sausage party.

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Okay, for real though, this was great.  It's a nice little action story, and I especially loved this little moment:

“If this is going to work, I have to shoot one guard, then reload and shoot the other one before he sounds the alarm.”

How long will it take you to do that?

“We’re gonna find out.”

That is simultaneously funny and badass.

 

That was a spur-of-the-moment dialogue choice. I know that an expert can reload a bolt-action rifle in less than 3 seconds, but I wasn’t sure whether Enrique, who has presumably been practicing with semiautomatics, would actually be able to do it that fast. So I decided not to try to put a time frame on it.

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Other moments I liked were the "You really need...to start...working out more." and the little moment right before the sex scene where Enrique realizes that he's missing something…

The whole “man in a woman’s body” thing was something I’d never written before, so a lot of amusing thoughts like that came up. It was still pretty awkward to write sometimes, because I was like, “Marta grabbed him...grabbed her...grabbed them?”

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Speaking of which, that was an interesting take on the sex scene itself, sort of an M/F scene by way of F/F, and since brother and sister are sharing a body at the time...I don't know what you'd tag that.

I didn’t either. Ultimately, I just chose sex over gender.

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Also, I love how creepy the ending is  We don't have much time to get to know Hector Lopez, but we don't really need it.  Dude's the leader of a murderous drug cartel, and he comes across as seriously intimidating, especially since earlier in the story it was rumored that he took a week to kill someone, and then we just get that reveal at the end that the rumors were true.

This being a Halloween/Day of the Dead story, I felt like I had to include at least one horror element. 

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All in all, a seriously fun read.  Thanks for sharing it!

Thanks for reviewing it!

[InBrightestDay]

6 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:

LOL! That may be the funniest first line of a review I’ve ever read. 

*nods* My work here is done.

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Turns out the underworld is a real sausage party. 

There is only one correct response to that.

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That was a spur-of-the-moment dialogue choice. I know that an expert can reload a bolt-action rifle in less than 3 seconds, but I wasn’t sure whether Enrique, who has presumably been practicing with semiautomatics, would actually be able to do it that fast. So I decided not to try to put a time frame on it.

I like the thought process, and the end result almost has an Indiana Jones vibe, which is awesome.

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I didn’t either. Ultimately, I just chose sex over gender.

Oh, that wasn’t quite what I meant; I agree that F/F was the way to go there.  It’s just that there’s a pair of siblings here bonded as intimately as possible during a sex scene.  I personally wouldn’t know whether to add the incest tag or not.  I think you made the right call, since the siblings aren’t having sex with each other, but I do go back and forth a little bit.

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Thanks for reviewing it!

No problem!   I decided early on that I was going to review all the entries in this anthology (except mine, of course, as that would get harshly self-critical pretty fast), and as I worked my way through I was genuinely curious as to what your contribution would be.  This was a nice surprise!

[InBrightestDay]

After Party gets another review!  This one comes from the awesome @CloverReef

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Awww that was such a sweet, creepy, but mostly sweet... or mostly creepy? Halloween fic.

This may sound a bit odd, but thank you for that!  I definitely wanted sweet, but I was worried that I lost creepy in the process, so I’m glad to hear that I did get both feelings in the story.

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You crafted it perfectly. In the sense that every word, every detail had a story-driving purpose. There were no info dumps, and yet there were brief glimpses into who these characters were, even who Yua was before she was Cody's wife.

Don’t count on me to do that crafting thing as well in any other story!  As for the brief glimpses, that was very much intentional.  See, this was originally supposed to be a sequel.  I mentioned this in my response to JayDee, but I have a planned story called The Spider House, which is going to be about how eighteen year old Cody is forced one day to go near the neighborhood haunted house.  It’s covered in webs and the forest around it is crawling with spiders, so the local folks all just call it the Spider House.  To Cody’s surprise, a beautiful woman named Yua lives in the Spider House, and the two begin to bond.

After Party was originally just catching up with Yua and Cody two years later, but when I had the mad impulse to throw this into the Halloween Party, I realized I couldn’t depend on readers knowing who these characters were.  Still, I didn’t want to spoil too much of The Spider House in the process.  Obviously I spoiled that Yua is a creature from Japanese mythology, but aside from that I tried to keep things vague: that Cody had a rough life and that Yua rescued him, but not what was rough and how she did so.  I’m glad that actually paid off.

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So it started off super creepy. You painted the atmosphere well with all those spider webs. I loved that. It made the story feel so Halloweeny right from the start. The build up was tense. I usually keep notepad open to keep notes of my thoughts while I read a fic so I can smoosh em all together into a review when I'm done, but I was so absorbed, I didn't do that here.

I loved writing that whole thing.  I was shooting for fear of the unknown, and I felt like Yua was at her creepiest there in the beginning, when we know she’s some kind of spider-themed creature but we don’t yet know what she looks like, we can only hear her voice and see the web shift and hear the wood creak as she moves around.  Hearing that you got so absorbed that you forgot to take notes is an amazing compliment.

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The sex was hot. Like surprisingly hot. Like I didn't expect to like it because, you know, you gotta have a decent command of nuance and porn writing skillz to make something like Yua hot to people who wouldn't normally find her hot, but you damn well did it.

And this is also an amazing compliment!  I was very nervous about the sex scene, as I always am when I write them.  It’s only the third one I’ve ever written (well, the third one involving the main characters; there’s a tentacle scene involving a minor character in another story), and the first time I’ve ever written anything involving bondage.  It’s also my first try at a dominant/submissive relationship, but given that Yua is a giant, intelligent spider, and given the (arachnophobe warning: link leads to spider pic) size and power difference between female spiders and their male counterparts (yes, those are N. clavata males and a female in that photo), female dominance seemed like the right way to go for the character.

Tragically, “porn writing skillz” is not something I can tell my family about or put on a job application.

As far as making Yua erotic and beautiful in her in-between form, it was sort of a balancing act.  Jorōgumo (the specific type of yōkai that Yua is) have been depicted many different ways.  One of the more common depictions is the “drider” type (like a centaur, but with a spider instead of a horse for the lower body), but I didn’t want to go that far in the monster direction.  I liked the other common type of jorōgumo illustration, a woman with spider legs sprouting from her back, and used that as the base, adding a few more spider characteristics like the six eyes and the claws on her fingertips.  I think the eyes were what I was most worried about turning people off, and JayDee does seem to have felt a little squirmy over those!

I think something that helped was the sensory deprivation aspect of the bondage.  Since the story is told from Cody’s PoV, once Yua webs over his eyes, we experience the world through what he can hear and feel, so it’s really just like he’s with a normal woman, with only occasional reminders that she’s anything else.

The one idea that I came up with in the scene that I was kind of proud of was the idea of Yua talking while her lips were touching Cody.  I thought the idea of feeling her lips brush against his skin as she spoke, or her, as I wrote it, caressing him with her breath, was kind of hot.

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Oh, and before I go, what a friggin waste of a good Rick Grimes costume!

Hey, the only part she destroyed was the shirt!

[InBrightestDay]

@GeorgeGlass reviews After Party!

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Well, I guess if you're a male sub who's into bondage, a spider woman is pretty much your perfect mate.

Cody enjoys the game sometimes.  Like the story says, he’s glad they don’t do that every time they have sex, since he enjoys their more normal time in bed.  He is naturally more gentle and submissive, though.

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I liked some of the phrasing in this story, like "alien sense of morality" and "aging with the grace of Hollywood royalty."

The “Hollywood royalty” thing was me trying to find a good way to describe just how well she wears her (apparent) age.  I’m glad it worked!

The alien sense of morality is something from the myths I really wanted to incorporate.  I never defined this term in-story, but yōkai is a word that describes a wide variety of magical creatures from Japanese mythology.  The word is often translated into English as “demons”, but that’s horribly inaccurate.  Yōkai come in many forms, but the closest western equivalent to them is probably the Fair Folk from European and Celtic myth, primarily because, like fairies, yōkai have a very strong sense of morality, but it’s different from the kind humans have.

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And the sweetly romantic ending was a nice twist, considering that this story could just as easily have ended -- okay, could even more easily have ended -- with Cody as dinner.

I was painfully aware of that stereotype, and definitely wanted to avoid it.  It seems like in any story featuring a spider woman of some kind (jorōgumo or otherwise), she always has to be preparing to kill and/or eat the male character or something like that.

Yes, sexual cannibalism (the technical term for when the female of a species eats the male during or after mating) is well-documented in spiders, to the point that several Latrodectus species have actually gotten their name from it (widow spiders), but even among those species it doesn’t occur 100% of the time.  The frequency of sexual cannibalism depends on a number of factors, including how aggressive the female is, how well fed she is in general, specific nutrients in her diet and, I swear I’m not making this up, foreplay.

So yeah, I got a little fed up with how ubiquitous this idea was, and wanted a story where the spider woman is genuinely threatening and creepy, but it turns out that while she’s a threat to other people, she isn’t one to the male lead, and that was the genesis of this couple.

Yua is a jorōgumo just like you’d read about in the old tales, a seductive, flesh-eating monster...and yet in spite of everything you’d expect, she adores this boy she’s chosen as her mate.  It makes her a somewhat more interesting character to me.

[GeorgeGlass]

11 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

The alien sense of morality is something from the myths I really wanted to incorporate.  I never defined this term in-story, but yōkai is a word that describes a wide variety of magical creatures from Japanese mythology.  The word is often translated into English as “demons”, but that’s horribly inaccurate.  Yōkai come in many forms, but the closest western equivalent to them is probably the Fair Folk from European and Celtic myth, primarily because, like fairies, yōkai have a very strong sense of morality, but it’s different from the kind humans have.

I learned a bit about yōkai from watching Rosario + Vampire. There was even a spider woman in one episode. I guess anime can be culturally enriching.

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I was painfully aware of that stereotype, and definitely wanted to avoid it.  It seems like in any story featuring a spider woman of some kind (jorōgumo or otherwise), she always has to be preparing to kill and/or eat the male character or something like that.

 

IMO, looking at the obvious thing to do and then doing the opposite is often the key to great storytelling.

[JayDee]

I’ve only got one more to read and review and I will absolutely be reading and reviewing it!

[InBrightestDay]

19 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:

I learned a bit about yōkai from watching Rosario + Vampire. There was even a spider woman in one episode. I guess anime can be culturally enriching.

As I recall Mizore is how you learned about yuki-onna.  And yeah, a bit of research shows that Keito is a sadistic minor villain from the show, and is indeed a jorōgumo.  She even kind of looks like how I described Yua’s in-between form (a woman with black and yellow spider legs sprouting from her torso).  Hers sprout from her abdominal muscles, which is a look I considered, but I felt like it would be potentially gross for the readers to imagine.  Granted, that was no doubt the intended effect with Keito.

I did actually find a sympathetic jorōgumo story after I left that last post.  It seems episode 7 of Dororo features a jorōgumo who, after narrowly escaping combat with the protagonist, is rescued by an unsuspecting human whom she eventually falls in love with.  Also, while Rachnera from Daily Life with Monster Girl isn’t a jorōgumo, she is technically a non-bad spider woman.  I wasn’t counting her before since DLwMG is primarily a comedy.

And yes, anime can absolutely be culturally enriching, especially the series that introduce mythology or aspects of Japanese culture!

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IMO, looking at the obvious thing to do and then doing the opposite is often the key to great storytelling.

Thanks!

[GeorgeGlass]

From JayDee on October 31, 2019

Day of the Deadly by George Glass

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Hey, gotta read one of them on October 31st!

You could have even waited until November 1st.

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Loved this one! Romance, action, actually convincing Spanish phrases! 

I've been doing lessons on Duolingo. I tried not to overdo it with the Spanish, though; a little adds flavor, but too much seems pretentious.

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It’s got it all. The sex was hot and I can see how it totally could have incest overtones but actually came across as a guy having one last fling with his girl. 

That's really what I was going for. 

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I also loved all the Day of the Dead details- like, I had no idea about it being much more of a regional thing, but it totally makes sense because that’s pretty much the case for traditions all over.

I did a little research. Now that Dia de Muertos is a national holiday in Mexico, everybody there celebrates it to some extent, but it seems to be the southerners who originated it.

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Spoiler-heavy comments

I thought it was really cool how Enrique came back during that swig of his favorite drink and finished it off. It was just a great touch!

 

Thanks! I've seen ofrendas that included cans or bottles of the departed's favorite beverage, and when I first began to conceive of this story, Graciela chugging one was the first image that came into my head. 

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Cool ending. Gonna get unpleasant for that dude, although even there there’s a stab of sympathy for him since he was decent enough to back off when they claimed to be going to raise a glass.

I figured Fish couldn't just be a total mustache-twirler; he had to have a little humanity to him.

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Seemed like if you were gonna have revenge against a cartel this kind of way, getting in and out without being identified, was definitely the right way to do it. Back in the day Zorro needed to wear a mask too…

Enrique is used to doing things that way. Actual Mexican Marines who do anti-drug ops wear masks so the cartel types won't know who they are and have their families killed.

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The oral sex was really fuckin’ hot, man.

Thank you! Cunnilingus isn't my strongest subject, so it's gratifying to hear that.

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Great contribution. Hell, all of them were!

Y’all did good this year folks.

 

I do believe we did. *takes the others’ hands and bows*
 

[Guest Star Wars player 1]

Hi, it’s me, I just wanted to say hi and ask how you’ve been doing, also if you didn’t know, I left a comment on your review page for ‘Enter the Sandboy’ I won’t say anything to spoil it, so when you have the time, you can check it out  anyway, hope you’re doing well and hope to hear from you soon, bye and have a good night.

[InBrightestDay]

We all have new reviews from @Thundercloud!

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After Party. I have been looking forward for this story for quite a while after I heard InBrigthestDays talking about it and it was well worth the read. The descriptions as Cody approach the house was a very good and set the tone well. I am suddenly very keen on rewatching Inuyasha...

Thanks!  I wanted the initial approach to the house to slowly build a vaguely creepy atmosphere.

Are there jorōgumo in Inuyasha, or is it just the mention of yōkai in general?

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Anyway the actions as he enters the house had me thrilled and the scene both succeed with being creepy and very sexy. I would say the ending was a perfect plot twist and I say please write more like this, this was awesome.

I’m so glad that worked out.  I had a lot of fun writing the initial segment where it’s dark and Yua is just this creepy voice from the darkness, and we know something is moving around up there, but we can’t see her.

As for the sexy part, I’d never written any bondage before, so it was kind of tough to do.  BDSM often involves some level of physical pain, but I figured that while Cody is submissive, he is not a masochist, and in fact if Yua caused him any real pain it might bring up bad memories of the house he came from, so the closest I got to pain was that little prickling thing she does with her claws.

Out of curiosity, what did you mean about the plot twist at the end?

As for more like this, there is another story that features Yua and Cody called Parlor Games, but that doesn’t have any sex in it.  There is eventually going to be a considerably bigger story with these two where we find out how they met, and as I’ll be shooting for erotic horror/dark romance there, that one will have sexual content.

Edited November 29, 2019 by InBrightestDay

[Thundercloud]

17 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

We all have new reviews from @Thundercloud!

Quite a lot of reviews actually...it felt unfair to just read your story so I read all but one (InvidiaRed  unfortunately have writing style that does not work for me).

17 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Are there jorōgumo in Inuyasha, or is it just the mention of yōkai in general?

I cannot claim to keep tab of all yōkai in that massive series so I don’t recall if there are any standard jorōgumo. Does not seem impossible that they take out such a monster since there is quite a lot of small yōkai they eradicate , but the reason I started  thinking about this show is that it in the final battle it is revealed that the main enemy, that by the way is a male, is in truth a spidermonster.

It could also be worth to mention that the bad guy manifest crazy many powers over the series that is not spider related, so it is bad fit if you are looking for jorōgumo anime, but it is a very worthwhile anime/manga in my opinion. At least if you have the time to watch approximately 200 episodes...

17 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

As for the sexy part, I’d never written any bondage before, so it was kind of tough to do.  BDSM often involves some level of physical pain, but I figured that while Cody is submissive, he is not a masochist, and in fact if Yua caused him any real pain it might bring up bad memories of the house he came from, so the closest I got to pain was that little prickling thing she does with her claws.

Seems like a smart move...BDSM is often seem as mysterious and kink of kinks so to say when viewed from mainstream society. In reality I would say it only works in eroticas if the characters are compatible. Bondage like you did it with a hint of danger is often just as effective.

17 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Out of curiosity, what did you mean about the plot twist at the end?

That this is a game they have been playing before.

17 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

As for more like this, there is another story that features Yua and Cody called Parlor Games, but that doesn’t have any sex in it.  There is eventually going to be a considerably bigger story with these two where we find out how they met, and as I’ll be shooting for erotic horror/dark romance there, that one will have sexual content.

I will see when I get time to read it. Lots of stories to read...