Feedback on a lesbian story

[LaRascasse]

After a long time, I've finally got something up on Lit. I hope you like it.

Let me know what you think of anything in the story - plot, pacing, characters etc. Criticism is welcome.

https://www.literotica.com/s/brutal-comfort

 

[LaRascasse]

Bump in case anyone is interested.

 

[Bramblethorn]

She lay on her side, watching the lava lamp. It was a gift from her lover, because she enjoyed giving her things for no reason.

One of the reasons I tend to write F/F in first person is that it avoids the Dreaded Lesbian Pronoun Problem. If I stop and squint at this sentence I can figure out who's "her" and who's "she" but it could flow better.

It also confuses the mood. You're telling this bit from Blair's perspective so you want the reader to feel her mood. But at this early point in the story we don't know what the deal is with Blair's lover, so this sentence makes me think "aww, if I'm Blair I'm feeling happy right now", which isn't where it's meant to be going.

If it were me I'd tweak it to something like "It was a gift from her lover, who had enjoyed giving her things for no reason."

Or perhaps: "...who enjoyed giving her things for no reason. Who had enjoyed giving her things for no reason."

General comments: I know we've discussed this sort of thing before and some of it comes down to different tastes, but there were several points in this story that had me going "wait, is that even possible?" and tabbing out to fact-check stuff. Smoking three cigarettes in three minutes; going for four days crying constantly without food or water; lawyer and psychiatrist who don't seem to have heard of physician-patient confidentiality obligations. That gets very distracting for me.

Apologies for not being able to comment further, but I'm afraid this week has enough tragedy in it already that I'm not really in the right place for a trademarked LR Heartbreak Special...

 

[hadruprider]

I read the first page but I'm afraid I couldn't get any further. It's so relentlessly miserable ! Maybe some people would like this but it's not for me. To me, the misery kills off any eroticism.
There is also the problem that Bramble mentions, which I have found myself when trying to write lesbian stuff - in the one sex scene on the first page, I was confused over who was licking who. To get around this you either have to use names all the time, or as Bramble suggests write in the first person.

 

[CyranoJ]

It was engaging enough to carry me past any niggling issues of realism or pronoun choice, so you can put me in the "thumbs up" column*. Good characterization can make up for any number of sins, and Heather is a really interesting character whose sense of inner conflict and mixture of compassion and ruthlessness you manage really well.

I confess didn't find the erotic material in the story to be particularly standout, which I think is less due to the bleak subject matter killing the eroticism than we just have different tastes for what kind of pacing and structure makes a sex scene hot. But I still quite enjoyed the story despite that. Well done.

(* Not that Bramble in particular doesn't make a couple of good points that could use some tightening with an edit, but I won't belabor that aspect of things.)