Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

Ringing suspense from the first ominous relelation of Foursi's affliction and to the very end! And the poor man doesn't get a break after that! The most hounded, and accidentally bravest man that has never walked the earth!

Again, leaving the savoring for later, skipping to the torture rack of minor textual regrets!

* * *

"in my little shelf" -- I get that it's supposed to be like a perforated shelf-like basket for the soap that you could nestle in, but "on the shelf" is just begging to be there instead

"Money got in the way of that(.)"

"and to the west, the last of the light in the sky was a burnt orange color over the Adriatic, which was dotted with the occasional fishing boat" -- reads like nice song lyrics, but as bumpy as a ride over a cobblestone road, I would suggest something like "and to the west, the setting sun colored the sky over the Adriatic burned orange, with the occasional fishing boat marking the blurry horizon", except actually good instead (I think this is me at my most unnecessarily cruel)

"Navigating foot traffic and the rare car squeezing past us on the opposite side, (our car) rolled across cobbles and ancient sea-town roads onto the almost-island of Sveti Stefan" -- I'm uncertain about "onto", as well, it seems to suggest that either the car is Queen Becky-sized, or Sveti Stefan is displayed on the world map to scale; "onto the soil of the almost-island" or "rolled on to" would have both been better for my taste

"but once she (had) had her fill of watching my effort"



I'm worried I might have overlooked something in my hurry and amid the office distractions, so I'll comb the last two chapters again later. And of course I'll come back to give all my excited observations.

Thanks for another smashing story, and kudos on tackling the challenge with such gusto!

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

Hehehe. Most people say, 'I'll sleep when I'm dead!', but he got all his sleep banked up in advance.

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

Sorry, after that little bit of confusion I was unsure in my turn you were addressing my comment with this, but now I see it's in reaction to Foursi having been through hell and then some! His affinity for naps is a very adorable trait, indeed!

Posted by XDDX 4 years ago Report

What happened to Foursi in the end?
What happens to him? Whaa!

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

I think Foursi eventually found a computer and wrote this story! ;)

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

A fittingly excellent conclusion to this feast for the inner voice and and the inner eye, i.e. imagination!

The warm summer breeze of anticipated well-deserved celebration of pleasure was set up perfectly, as was the sudden icy change in the weather through the middle.

The dream drone and terminal velocity bit was sweet and precious, and the description of Becca's caRAWR -- a volcano of evocative power, and a bit of a detour through a different genre of erotica. The black-on-black pattern reappearing later in the chapter as the darker outlines in near darkness was brilliant. And groovy horseless carriages seems to be one of the subtler hallmarks of yours, as I'm reminded of Amber and Daphne's means of transportation.

Luscious description of the exclusive faraway locale, too! Very apt for the finale: homey, yet alien and isolated.

All inventions and trick you'd come up for the platterside dinner and the final brief wine glass incarceration were a marvelous blend of routine and natural, and bizarrely outlandish being viewed from Foursi's perspective.

A little artistic bragging aside on the public perceptions about the workings of the mouth cavity versus the actual anatomical restrictiveness thereof was really fun coming from the character's narrative point of view, and all very true -- I certainly did a bit of sensory examination and experimentation of my own while reading the pertinent parts.

The mouthplay routine as described was also beautifully juicy and imaginative. And routine was key to making the turn for the somber so sharp, as up to that moment Foursi had been basically nodding along in half-lidded contentment.

It is interesting how Becca's last fateful decision and acting it out could have been considered, in all entirety of its plotting and execution, an expression of overflowing affection and a tender coup-de-grace, if not for the specifics of the mismatched couple's relationship: as the tyrant of the relationship, she needed to make it authoritative and violating, and he would have been satisfied if it'd been predictable, not pushing his boundaries, he needed for it to come from the left field and rake across his nerves and heartstrings. At least that's how I interpreted it, extrapolating Foursi's expressed eagerness for such overclocking back in chapter three.

About Foursi's own version of Merlin's disease, I'd like to mention that the mechanics of it, although introduced fairly abruptly after the fact, reminded me of how my favored stories tend to end, polar opposites though they are to the genre of your preference: there's this progressing process that gradually makes the prey more vulnerable, helpless, and consequently more appealing to the predator, with some undesired over the top mark inevitably coming up in the future, and the sweet spot way before that and just around the corner. In this story it's the shrinking, and weight gain in my case, and it's funny how the character in the prey role can grow in either direction to achieve that effect in different genres.

On the epilogue, it has the same venerable narrative tone and purpose as the great horror and sci-fi stories of their respective golden ages, it's cryptic, suitably crisply anticlimactic, humorous to break from the (admittedly, enjoyable in its bittersweetness) sense of doom and despair at the end of Foursi's stay in the BDSM Vore Heaven. Awaking from the concussion-induced dream would be a more grounded interpretation, of course, although a part of me loves also the idea of the narrator coming to in the same reality when all the events of the story have just happened, so a couple of hours from putting the final touch on her meal, Becca would receive an international call from her erstwhile significant other, and explode into a fury at having been robbed of that closure. But no one is so cruel as to put her through that kind of treachery.

Thank you for sharing this story! I still feel a little awkward having been embroiled in the intimate whirlwind of these two, but it's still a very entertaining, technically superb and sincere piece of writing, a bold experiment as well as a high watermark for your longsuffering little guy stories!

You are still very, very money! And may you remain that way.

Until your next literary splash!

* * *

The last time I'll present my corrections in this format.

"Eurozone" is counterintuitively not capitalized, apparently

"chime"

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

> groovy horseless carriages seems to be one of the subtler hallmarks of yours

Cars and clothing are two things I've found myself focusing on. I seem to have a hangup on elements of manufactured social presentation, the way things can both simultaneously display us and define us, like masks we use as facial molds.

Sveti Stefan is a real place! I've not been there, but I spent a few hours driving around the streets in google street view. It seemed like the perfect place for such a thing.

> It is interesting how Becca's last fateful decision and acting it out could have been considered, in all entirety of its plotting and execution, an expression of overflowing affection and a tender coup-de-grace ... About Foursi's own version of Merlin's disease

Perhaps it's like the crab- or whale-convergence, where things begin to look the same when they need to occupy the same niche, no matter where they come from. In this case the niche is a predator who is being painted with the loose boundaries of ethical norms (Not a capricious murderer, but if he's going to die anyway...) but still motivated by the desire and hunger instinct rather than pure reason, so it's an emotional, impulsive thing. Or maybe I'm just trying to squeeze your stuff into my mold. ;)

> Becca would receive an international call from her erstwhile significant other, and explode into a fury at having been robbed of that closure

Exactly! That closure has already been somewhat deflated, but I didn't want to rob her or the story of it entirely.

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

Self-expression by proxy is a really sweet tool for characterization, yeah. Not everyone has a good enough grip on specific language of those two personality mirrors, though, so you have to clue the reader in with subjective summations like "it screamed 80's" or "it looked like a beast".

Those two paragraphs made different points -- one was about the ending being subtextually desirable for both characters due to their respective quirks while the text framed it as a conflict, and the other was about the prey-disembowering story mechanisms -- but your twisting those two together was a very welcome thought exercise, all the same! And it was me who started the mold squeezing by claiming to have found a conceptual parallel to the ominous shrinking.

Agreed that desire as the prime motivator must be retained for any hint of erotic drive and psychological accuracy to remain in the vore situation, as well as a transgressive violation of dignity, autonomy and the will to live. And the impressive thing about us humans is we can suffer all those violations, and yet derive thrill and joy out of it, at least in the moment.

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

Oh, and I did find out about Sveti Stefan when I was reading the story It's a veritable toy town, constantly lathed at by the hungry sea! And the name was conspicuously specific to have been made up, anyway, especially for someone who is unfairly familiar with the Eastern European and Slavic naming conventions.

One last thing: this chapter has been sorted into your new gallery subfolder, but not the rest? The Previous button leads to "Bureaucat" from here. I assume it's a work in progress to sort all that out, just pointing out!

Best of luck in your future pursuits! It's been a privilege reading your new material and discussing it with you!

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

Thank you! It's been a privilege having your commentary. And thanks for the mention on foldering. That is corrected now.