NoTalentHack
Corrupting Influence
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2022
- Posts
- 1,910
A story was published this morning in LW called An Evening at Crystal Lake with the description "Married couple, horror-themed photoshoot, and a stranger..." by a first-time writer (at least on this site/account) named @vhs_kitten. I've mentioned before that wife sharing isn't one of my kinks, but I adored this story. It was sexy, funny, well-written, and uniquely Loving Wives. Why? Because the whole thing could have gone MUCH differently, and the possibility of it going differently made for a much more intriguing story.
It's only about a 4K read, so I highly recommend taking a look if you have time. If not TL;DR: Husband and wife photographer/model decide to do a horror-themed photo shoot for their portfolios. They contact a guy to be Jason from Friday the 13th, and he shows up to the cabin by the lake they've rented for the shoot, and... things happen. Sexy things, for those concerned, not violence/drama, and it's a funny, happy story for the most part.
But.
During the whole thing, there's an air to it that maybe it's not going to end so nicely. The guy playing Jason shows up in full costume with FX prosthetics and doesn't speak. He has a sharp machete. The writer places a big emphasis on how accurate the costume is, how imposing the guy is, etc. The location, although vhs_kitten doesn't explicitly say it, has a number of design elements of one of the classic F13 movies, down to the lone overhead light on the dock. The FMC smokes a joint to get into character. Just tons of nice detail that, until it takes a turn towards the overtly sexual, could signify something wholly different.
It would have worked fine in any other category it might have fit in: EC, Group, maybe E/V. If the story had gone in a bad direction instead--if the husband objected, or if the guy actually had been Jason--it would have done wonderfully in Fetish, NC/R or Erotic Horror.
But putting it into any of those categories would be giving the game away; nothing "bad" ever happens in the former categories, and "bad" things are the default for the latter ones, Fetish excepted. Making the story ambiguous at the beginning (and even, to an extent, all the way through, until "Jason" speaks at the very end), would only work so well, because of that.
Because it's in LW, though, the "safety net" of the other categories is gone. Not knowing the direction makes it a better story, and, I'd argue, a sexier one, because when it turns out that it is just a stranger in a costume having a fun time with a willing wife and husband, there's that sense of relief there, too: you're glad it's just three people having fun.
The best LW stories, IMHO, are like that: anything could happen. But anything could only happen because anything (within reason) does in that category; outright murder after the sex almost certainly wouldn't have flown, for example, and would have either not made it past moderation or would have seen it reported almost immediately. However, I could easily see a dozen different versions of that story that belong in there, all with wildly different outcomes. And the best bit is? The reader wouldn't have known which until they got to the end, just like in this case.
It's my favorite story I've read this month, and possibly this year, even though it's not my kink, precisely because it does use the category's ambiguity to the best effect I've seen in a long time.
It's only about a 4K read, so I highly recommend taking a look if you have time. If not TL;DR: Husband and wife photographer/model decide to do a horror-themed photo shoot for their portfolios. They contact a guy to be Jason from Friday the 13th, and he shows up to the cabin by the lake they've rented for the shoot, and... things happen. Sexy things, for those concerned, not violence/drama, and it's a funny, happy story for the most part.
But.
During the whole thing, there's an air to it that maybe it's not going to end so nicely. The guy playing Jason shows up in full costume with FX prosthetics and doesn't speak. He has a sharp machete. The writer places a big emphasis on how accurate the costume is, how imposing the guy is, etc. The location, although vhs_kitten doesn't explicitly say it, has a number of design elements of one of the classic F13 movies, down to the lone overhead light on the dock. The FMC smokes a joint to get into character. Just tons of nice detail that, until it takes a turn towards the overtly sexual, could signify something wholly different.
It would have worked fine in any other category it might have fit in: EC, Group, maybe E/V. If the story had gone in a bad direction instead--if the husband objected, or if the guy actually had been Jason--it would have done wonderfully in Fetish, NC/R or Erotic Horror.
But putting it into any of those categories would be giving the game away; nothing "bad" ever happens in the former categories, and "bad" things are the default for the latter ones, Fetish excepted. Making the story ambiguous at the beginning (and even, to an extent, all the way through, until "Jason" speaks at the very end), would only work so well, because of that.
Because it's in LW, though, the "safety net" of the other categories is gone. Not knowing the direction makes it a better story, and, I'd argue, a sexier one, because when it turns out that it is just a stranger in a costume having a fun time with a willing wife and husband, there's that sense of relief there, too: you're glad it's just three people having fun.
The best LW stories, IMHO, are like that: anything could happen. But anything could only happen because anything (within reason) does in that category; outright murder after the sex almost certainly wouldn't have flown, for example, and would have either not made it past moderation or would have seen it reported almost immediately. However, I could easily see a dozen different versions of that story that belong in there, all with wildly different outcomes. And the best bit is? The reader wouldn't have known which until they got to the end, just like in this case.
It's my favorite story I've read this month, and possibly this year, even though it's not my kink, precisely because it does use the category's ambiguity to the best effect I've seen in a long time.
