Feedback on a story of reluctance and manipulation

[LessThanAWord]

The Revisit

I've had positive experiences when leaving myself open to feedback here before. But this is my first post in the NC/Reluctance category (I think it counts more as dubious consent) and I would love to hear from fans of the genre how it landed for them. It's the longest story I've written, too.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I say this in the most complimentary way possible: that was disturbing. You paint a vivid picture of a woman carried away by her own dark desires and suffering the consequences.

I'm not going to give you more detailed feedback because I don't want to re-read it that carefully. I'm glad you wrote that content warning, including the specific mention of DARVO. Dominic does exactly that. I'm only sorry you included the few humanizing touches you did. E.g., you wrote,

There was plenty of avoidance in the half hour to come. Neither wanted to look the other in the eye, or talk about what had happened, or the implications of what would happen thereafter.

For my personal ideological reasons, I would have preferred Dominic to be more of a monster. But that's not technical feedback. That's just me wishing you wrote a different story.

 

[LessThanAWord]

I say this in the most complimentary way possible: that was disturbing. You paint a vivid picture of a woman carried away by her own dark desires and suffering the consequences.

I'm not going to give you more detailed feedback because I don't want to re-read it that carefully. I'm glad you wrote that content warning, including the specific mention of DARVO. Dominic does exactly that. I'm only sorry you included the few humanizing touches you did. E.g., you wrote,



For my personal ideological reasons, I would have preferred Dominic to be more of a monster. But that's not technical feedback. That's just me wishing you wrote a different story.

Thank you for this, this is compelling feedback - I'm glad I wrote that content warning too. I'm still toying with deleting the whole thing because, as you say, it's disturbing.

As far as Dominic's relative monstrousness goes, I hear you. For me personally it would be reassuring to have that distance from the other characters' humanity, but like you pointed out, it would have been a different story. I wanted to write a bully I would have found legitimately aggravating in real life: petulant, oppositional, gratuitous, thin-skinned, someone who makes you deal with their feelings while they put yours on the line. Someone who wants to be unignorable. Insecure and impatient enough to do damage, possibly oblivious to that potential.

That's a monster to me, but it's also the core of my worry about putting the story out there: that this could be a more relatable, less escapist, conflict than, say, literal monsters.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I'm still toying with deleting the whole thing because, as you say, it's disturbing.

Definitely don't delete it. It's good writing. You nailed Dominic. I hope someone more into dubcon comes along to give you some feedback. Maybe @MediocreAuthor ?

 

[MediocreAuthor]

Definitely don't delete it. It's good writing. You nailed Dominic. I hope someone more into dubcon comes along to give you some feedback. Maybe @MediocreAuthor ?

Thanks for the vote of confidence, @joy_of_cooking

I'm still toying with deleting the whole thing because, as you say, it's disturbing.

Okay, so first things first, this was very well written. I see no reason to consider deleting it. On a technical level, it is fantastic.

That said, all of my gripes will be very personal.

I am working on a collab with another author, and we realized something about each other. His "likable" male doms were too mean for my taste, and my villainous doms were too cruel for his taste. That's fine, it's all down to taste. I write some truly horrifying villains (hey, Bogart ) but all of my "relatable" MMC's have some degree of sympathy to them. And my villains are all headed for trouble. I want to see them suffer. Their hubris will only last so long before they are punished (for the most part)

Dominic (nice pun lol) is a shameless villain which I'm perfectly fine with. But I also wanted to see him suffer. Of course, that isn't the story you wrote, so it isn't a mistake... it just hampered my enjoyment, personally.

Caleb was surprisingly accepting of something that he seemed to not enjoy in the slightest, which struck me as strange. Some guys love that kinda thing, but he didn't seem to like it, but he went along with it? Again, not an error, but NMK, so it hampered my enjoyment.

Last gripe... I've never stuffed a hockey stick in my pussy (I don't think I've ever even touch a hockey stick to my recollection) but in my mind, that seems really uncomfortable and unerotic. Maybe I'm dead wrong, but in my mind, that seems like it'd hurt. Maybe not? What do I know?

I will say that if joy_of_cooking had not asked, I never would have read this story... but that's a good thing. You had all the proper tags and content warnings to keep me away.

I gave it 5 stars for being very well written. (And the sex which did match my kinks was A+)

Ultimately though, the general story was not for me, personally.

 

[LessThanAWord]

@MediocreAuthor thank you so much for reading, and your rating, and your thoughts! I want to make it clear that I'm writing clarification/perspective here, not arguing. Your takes on this are valid and valued.

Is the case of physical sex acts, this author rarely writes something they haven't witnessed up close, with the exception of the fucking of giant plants. No further comment as to the inherent comfort or eroticism of said acts. People do stuff and what they take from it is dependent on them, and their context.

For Caleb, this is a banality of evil thing. In his rationale, he's letting Elisabeth take the lead, following where her enjoyment and tolerance seem to go. In his reality, he's another dude who will let bad situations spiral rather than interfere or raise the alarm. It's inconvenient to him to stop the sex or truly hold his friend to account. I can see that it didn't necessarily land, but that's where my head is at with him: accessory, enabler, minimizer. Someone who enjoys being the good guy as long as it doesn't really cost him anything in terms of personal convenience.

I appreciate the desire to see the villain suffer. In Dominic's case I think this is the most intense encounter he will have in a tedious and lonely life of winding people up and making an ass of himself. There is room for a sequel where he gets stepped on, I guess - I've been thinking about that. But I wanted the fundamental ugliness, the wrongness that she gets off on, to be the guilt and debasement of giving a guy like him any pleasure at all, and holding him to account or payback within this framing felt like it might diminish that.

So when I mentioned wanting to delete it, it's not the quality of writing so much as: is any of that coming across? I don't necessarily want my porn to be a moral treatise, _but_ in a sense, this one is. Not in the sense that I'm arguing what should or shouldn't transpire in a just world, but that these two villains each have qualities that I think make injustices possible. Many versions of these two dudes are out there in the world, disappointing everybody. As a piece of porn, things descend more readily into fantastical, orgasmic sex, and the protagonist of that is Elisabeth, her orgasms, her arousal. The moral landscape it draws on for its, well, horror, is less magical. Again, banality. But if that isn't landing, a good portion of that is on me, and that's where I get insecure.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

@MediocreAuthor thank you so much for reading, and your rating, and your thoughts! I want to make it clear that I'm writing clarification/perspective here, not arguing. Your takes on this are valid and valued.

Is the case of physical sex acts, this author rarely writes something they haven't witnessed up close, with the exception of the fucking of giant plants. No further comment as to the inherent comfort or eroticism of said acts. People do stuff and what they take from it is dependent on them, and their context.

For Caleb, this is a banality of evil thing. In his rationale, he's letting Elisabeth take the lead, following where her enjoyment and tolerance seem to go. In his reality, he's another dude who will let bad situations spiral rather than interfere or raise the alarm. It's inconvenient to him to stop the sex or truly hold his friend to account. I can see that it didn't necessarily land, but that's where my head is at with him: accessory, enabler, minimizer. Someone who enjoys being the good guy as long as it doesn't really cost him anything in terms of personal convenience.

I appreciate the desire to see the villain suffer. In Dominic's case I think this is the most intense encounter he will have in a tedious and lonely life of winding people up and making an ass of himself. There is room for a sequel where he gets stepped on, I guess - I've been thinking about that. But I wanted the fundamental ugliness, the wrongness that she gets off on, to be the guilt and debasement of giving a guy like him any pleasure at all, and holding him to account or payback within this framing felt like it might diminish that.

So when I mentioned wanting to delete it, it's not the quality of writing so much as: is any of that coming across? I don't necessarily want my porn to be a moral treatise, _but_ in a sense, this one is. Not in the sense that I'm arguing what should or shouldn't transpire in a just world, but that these two villains each have qualities that I think make injustices possible. Many versions of these two dudes are out there in the world, disappointing everybody. As a piece of porn, things descend more readily into fantastical, orgasmic sex, and the protagonist of that is Elisabeth, her orgasms, her arousal. The moral landscape it draws on for its, well, horror, is less magical. Again, banality. But if that isn't landing, a good portion of that is on me, and that's where I get insecure.

To me, personally, upon first reading, my assumption was that you enjoyed the actions of the characters, even if you didn't condone them.

BUT... I have absolutely been on the receiving end of a similar assumption. I've been accused of wanting to torture women because of the wickedness of the villains in my mind control series.

So I totally understand your position. In my case, I detest my villains and their actions... But I did choose to eroticize their actions, so I must bear that blame, just like you.

Again, my saving grace, (in my own mind at least) is that my villains are headed for trouble, which makes the journey more bearable for me, personally.

As for the hockey stick, thank you for not going into more detail. I will DEFINITELY take your word for it. It sounds uncomfortable, but lots of crazy things do, until you try them, I suppose. I for one, make stuff up all the time in my stories (I've never swapped bodies with my husband, or turned my hair into tentacles, or been under mind control). So I thought perhaps you were inventing ideas as well... If not, then more power to you.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I see now where you were going.

Caleb did come across. You did a good job of showing how feebly he stood up to Dominic earlier, so I understood exactly the kind of "well she's not saying no..." mentality he displayed during the later sex. Plus a little side of freezing up in unfamiliar situations. I could easily imagine myself in his shoes. It's to his credit that he nopes out later.

Dominic, less so. Again, I don't think you should delete this. But if you want to write similar things in the future, I'll say that I didn't get the loneliness and tedium. I guess Elizabeth tells us how pathetic he is, but of course she would. I didn't get the sense that he was dissatisfied with his own life. (Or maybe the point was that he wasn't, consciously, even though his life was empty of all normal joy and human connection?) Anyway, maybe say more about that that next time.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

I don't necessarily want my porn to be a moral treatise, _but_ in a sense, this one is. Not in the sense that I'm arguing what should or shouldn't transpire in a just world, but that these two villains each have qualities that I think make injustices possible. Many versions of these two dudes are out there in the world, disappointing everybody.

[Edit: ugh part of my text got messed up.]
[Edit: fixed]

Surely we all know this, but we haven't spoken on it yet, so I thought I'd bring it up. Elizabeth is not blameless in this entire scenario. She has to deal with a portion of the blame.

I'm sure you realize that, but it was something that frustrated me as I read. Of course, Elizabeth was damaged; as an individual, she is certainly dealing with a great deal of lasting psychological trauma, but that didn't excuse her own actions... which were indeed self sabotaging and selfish, to varying degrees.

Now, this is an erotic tale, so storylines and character actions always ride a delicate line. In general, readers wants a (somewhat) believable story, but also we want erotism.

Everytime Elizabeth insisted that she needed to continue to prevent Domenic from winning, I was wishing that she would come to her senses and realize that he was already winning regardless. But she wasn't guided entirely by naivety; her raging libido was pushing her as well.

If she was simply confused (as silly as that would seem) I would consider her more of a victim. But she was also guided by her lust, and as such, she must bear a degree of culpability for her own actions.

 

[Priscilla_June]

It was an incredibly engaging story! You should be very proud of it. Honestly dark stories are stories that still need to be told. Don’t feel shame in it. Great work!

 

[SeraphNocturne]

I’ll check it out when I get a moment.

 

[RoperTrace]

Thank you for this, this is compelling feedback - I'm glad I wrote that content warning too. I'm still toying with deleting the whole thing because, as you say, it's disturbing.

As far as Dominic's relative monstrousness goes, I hear you. For me personally it would be reassuring to have that distance from the other characters' humanity, but like you pointed out, it would have been a different story. I wanted to write a bully I would have found legitimately aggravating in real life: petulant, oppositional, gratuitous, thin-skinned, someone who makes you deal with their feelings while they put yours on the line. Someone who wants to be unignorable. Insecure and impatient enough to do damage, possibly oblivious to that potential.

That's a monster to me, but it's also the core of my worry about putting the story out there: that this could be a more relatable, less escapist, conflict than, say, literal monsters.

Don't do that, unless it causes you to lose sleep over it. My most disturbing story was also in the Non-consent category, and I got both hate comments(& emails) and compliments that it really disturbed some people. It is also my most-read story. So I say leave it up(if you want to). I wished now that I had the foresight to put a warning at the beginning too.

 

[darkride]

I came to this forum to create a thread about the same topic of manipulation/coercion after receiving some criticism about a story I am currently posting. (Wont go into details out of respect to the OP)

Reading the above has put my mind at ease, as yes - we all have stories to tell, and some may be a little darker than others.

Moving forward however I have decided that I will start tagging the chapters with manipulation / coercion so that those who don't want to read such content can avoid it, as I'm sure some people could find it "triggering"...

@LessThanAWord - In a similar vein, I would suggest as long as you have tagged the story appropriately, then it's up to the reader to decide. (Although yes - you'll still get complaints (!), but at least you tagged it...)

 

[K155]

Link please, I can't find it!

 

[LessThanAWord]

Link please, I can't find it!

Link is in OP