Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

Interesting - I hadn't considered how much my perspective might be locked on the turn of the millennium. Despite my age, I wasn't really niche-active until about 10 years later. But I wasn't niche-active until I was relationship-locked, so it would make sense that when writing characters who aren't settled down, it would revert to that.

I'm curious, though, if they're easy enough to distill: What are some of my late 90s/early 00s tells?

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

Interesting take! I'm not too sure there if that was saying that my characters tend to have this general assumption of an idyllic, socially-uniforming home life awaiting them when all the dust settles or not, but it's a curious thing to consider. It's generally the case, I suspect, that primary viewpoint characters will contain some facet of the author inside them, and perhaps their paradigm is part of it. Perhaps equally curiously, I'd intentionally attempted to model Claire on someone I know (zeitgeist-wise, anyway) who I don't think I share a world-view with.

In the end, though, if I make her a sympathetic character, she'll have to be at least part me, because who deserves more sympathy? ;) (and /s, etc.)

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

And oh sweet fiery hells -- I've just come back to check out the original exchange with Bitter, it turns out I'd missed the "don't" in front of "in danger of being dated"! I wrote that whole thing not merely wasting your time by lousy waffling, but doing it in a direct attack on your expressed *confidence* in your works being stylistically up to date and devoid of obsolete references! What a monument to tactless, misguided presumption!

...I will not see myself out and proceed to shoot myself in Minecraft.

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

And upon reflection, I did hold the meaning of "dated" to be "having a cozy, old timey feel", rather than "alluding to short-lived contemporary social phenomena inscrutable to the later readers".

I'm so, so sorry.

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

Hahah - I'm not worried about it at all. :)

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

*while expending every ounce of willpower to push back the burning shame*

However different your outlook may be from Clair's, I applaud your willingness to give the readers such a thorough experience of her inner world!

Given how many murderous seductresses you've written, it is highly intriguing to know there is some irreconcilable trait of hers standing out from the genre's staple predatory dark triad; then again, maybe the more grounded way this novel is written makes such dangerous qualities more believable, and proportionately harsher.

Rich Burlew's description of his evil overlord main antagonist comes to mind: "I mean, he's wholly and unapologetically evil, but more to the point, he's kind of a dick".

Or is it more of an introverted/outgoing kind of personality disparity?

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

> the genre's staple ...

When I've attempted to write straight fiction, I've always struggled to write characters with motivations compelling enough to DO something. Everyone ends up gusted about by the winds of fate. When I write vore, the predators have this complete disinhibition about meddling in the life (and death) of their prey - it's in their very nature.

I'm really fascinated by the idea of trying to bridge that gap; a character who is believable in their agency and the licenses they take. I think there's a real vibrancy there that ends up washing out of vore archetypes because they're so distanced from our experiences. They're like fairy tale villains - we just don't experience them in real life. But when you can really, really suspend disbelief and imagine these characters as real, the things they do and say can have a much more immediacy. That's my theory, anyway.

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

Agreed on the motivation angle! The way I see it, the most consistently pervasive function of various vore tropes is to create contexts that, like the providential winds you mentioned, push characters into each others' arms, bypassing the usual cautious assessment and posturing stage and the democratic compromising process following it on the road to forming a (albeit usually short-lived) relationship, and the genre also assigns and codes the roles in this quickened (and often one-sided) bonding from the get go. Naturally, the more realistic a vore scenario gets, the harder it is to justify those artificial shortcuts to carnal catharsis.

Involving furry characters in fiction functions similarly: most people have a vague, positive image of most non-vermin animals, be they pets, farm livestock, zoo exhibits or wildlife, and while the perception of animals is often anthropomorphized and infantilized to a fault, they also are exempt from a lot of public decency standards, and are expected to be dominated by both their conditioning and instincts. The byproduct of those crisscrossing perceptions is even putting a pair of cat ears on a character to mark their animal connection endows that character with much more leeway in terms of acceptable behavior, especially where it pertains to socializing and sexuality.

So naturally, furry vore is the obvious low hanging fruit of fringe erotica, and you are owed a lot of credit for rejecting the easy way in favor of something more complicated and eerily plausible!

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

To salvage the previously torn down disgraced comments:

This is a superbly compact exchange utilizing a quirky, but all too plausible awkward mode of remote communication, positively packed with subtle interplay of romantic curiosity and mutual playful admiration.

Near the end of the scene, when the heroine winds up outside the place she'd started in, with her gaze still locked onto the tinted window-obscured silhouette of her flirtatious person of interest is a right literary marvel in its own right.

The scene setting up the next chapter is just endearingly goofy and briskly dynamic, quick montage swing soundtrack, rhythmically ushering the reader out and towards more effervescent adventure!

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

I love montage scenes in writing. I usually come up with soundtracks in my head! But I'll refrain from mentioning any sources; I've already inflicted enough of my musical tastes elsewhere in the story.

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

Yes, the story's gotten me to sample The Smiths, thank you for that! Very appropriate for a summery interstate hair-down road trip.

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

Hah! I wasn't even thinking about that! It will get worse later...