Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

Thoroughly lovely! The matron saints of respectable chick-lit are still squinting suspiciously at the unfolding events from their palace balconies, but the first approving nods and smiles have been sighted already, peaking in intensity at the gorgeous descriptions of the white House Black. Too bad the local audiences aren't being drawn in by the faint promise of vore theming, though.

The heated negotiations continue, and come to precipitous halt that is barreled through by the heroine after having been caught momentarily off-balance at a critical juncture!

The sizzling acid burn of a rejection-flavored missed opportunity is conveyed so, so well in here! The personality-savvy strategizing about her overnight logistics are likewise an awesome internal performance!

The love talks, besides fitting in nicely with the winding down date experience, circumspectly encompass the subject, although don't get into distilling the definition of the thing -- not yet, at least; but then, the many composing strings of love are commonly assumed to be intuitively and intimately defined by every person, and discussing fictional and commercialized stereotypes are how people zero in on what that means to them. Can't wait for the characters to revisit this discussion!

It's occurred to me that structurally, in love stories the love interest serves as the antagonist, fueling the conflict for as long as the relationship remains unconsummated; the villainy of romantic recalcitrance! Love and war, right? But other times, it's just two perfectly attracted companions, and the foe to be conquered are those crossing stars of social circumstance, or romantic rivals.

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

Thanks! I would not call portraying social negotiations a strength of mine, so I hope it did come through with enough vibrancy not to make this the chapter where people put things aside.

And yes! The will-they/won't-they of a relationship generally seems like the main struggle of paint-by-numbers romance, and to some degree whatever is keeping them apart is almost the secondary conflict. I have to remind myself frequently that anyone being honest with themselves knows how these stories will end (just as we know the hero will survive action movies), and an ending otherwise would be problematic. It's not the suspense of the outcome that keeps people reading, but the depth of the problem and novelty of the solution.

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

Howdunit, as opposed to Whodunit, aye! There might be a more bittersweet and tragic resolution of the heroes amicably deciding to part ways, or be dragged apart by the outer pressures after having lived the perfect strangers blissful scenario (which nothing ever will top, anyway), "Here's looking at you, kid!"-style, or a prudent protagonist realizing the ongoing romance is extremely engaging, but too chaotic to maintain for long, or involving too much risk, so it's not that predetermined.

And teen romance at least will usually feature at least a love triangle, if not a more complex geometric figure, or simply a series of boys for the heroine to sample, compare and ultimately choose from, but you seem to have done away with any promise or ambiguity with that choice of a title. Wasn't there a comic book superhero called Atom Crusher, or similar, by the way?

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

There may have been several such; in the Cyberpunk game of recent news, there's a character with that name. I'd like to say that my use of it didn't stem from that and comes from a series of band names from a character in another story (Adam and the Bombs, Adam Smasher, Adam Splitter, etc.) but I'd be at least partially lying.

Posted by Astronommy 4 years ago Report

A precious scoop of 4ofSwords lore, thank you! Found a bunch of punny Adam-themed music band names and WWE fighter aliases over brief search, and I've also stumbled upon the other site where the uploading of this story is taking place! May you reap a generous harvest there!