Dissecting a Succubus - "The Good, the Bad, and the Monstrous Beauty" (Patreon)

Time for another succubus dissection as I do the author's commentary thing for the last short story I put out – "The Good, The Bad, and the Monstrous Beauty".  Although in this case, it wasn't exactly a "short" story, in that it clocked in at over 11K words!  As always, there will be spoilers, so go and read the story first.  You should be able to pick it up in the previous post.

I broke a few rules (or rather, what I consider to be rules) writing this one, but I'll move that to a follow-up post where we can get a bit spicy.  Or you can tell me I fucked up and should have done it the right way.  I have no clue whether I made the right call, so I'd like a bit of discussion on that one.

But for now, I'll just do the standard inspiration and behind-scenes stuff on the characters.

The original idea was having two rivals come into conflict over a girl, only for the girl to reveal herself to be a succubus.  The fetish aspect was having the protagonist stuck in a magical 'bed' and be forced to watch the succubus drain the other guy.  Then the succubus would hop on top and do the same to him.

The magical blob-bed thing is something I've had floating in my ideas file for a while, although I think the original idea was a H-space story where the 'beds' are used to hold healthy men in place while 'starter' succubi get their first sex drain in (I'll probably still write that at some point).  From a fetish perspective, it's a supernatural version of being tied/handcuffed to a bed.  

I imagined the scene where the succubus first reveals herself as a three-way stand-off, like the classic scene in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", but in a crumbling inner-city car park rather than a dustbowl.  Once I had that, I had both a starting point and a title.

As a writing hint, don't be afraid to fuck around with sequencing and shuffle time segments around.  Stories don't have to be told linearly.  Personally, I really like in medias res starts as a hook to grab the reader right from the first paragraph.  Grab the reader's interest first.  That gives you some breathing room to drop in the background required to build up the characters.

(Just how much background is up for debate, but I'll cover that in the second post about rule-breaking.)

On to the characters.

I originally intended Neil to be one of my typical 'good guys' and Vernon to be a more typical 'bad guy'.  The thing I had the most trouble deciding on was how the three-way stand-off was precipitated, and that's probably the weakest aspect of the story.  I think the original idea was to have Neil leave with Seraphina and then be attacked later by a Vernon - partly as a mugging, partly out of jealousy.

Doing it the other way around allowed me to blur the 'good' and 'bad' guys, which then made their alliance (doomed as it was) at the end plausible.

Wakozi asked in the comments if I set up Neil as one of my 'good guys' that aren't, and eventually end up being deserved succubus chow.  Nope, he's a good guy that ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.  This isn't a morality tale as such.

To be honest, it's more a 'me being a bit of a cunt' story.

I've written stories like this before – usually with Nicole, sometimes with others – where the good guy gets good sex with a hot succubus and doesn't lose their life and soul.  As I was writing the sex scene, I realised the story was dropping into that groove and decided to play it up to catch you off guard.  Seraphina is mostly definitely not a Nicole!

I always want to keep my readers on their toes.  I think some degree of unpredictability is important, especially with stories where some of the thrill comes from not knowing whether the protagonist survives.

There are risks with this.  After "Star Wars: The Last Jedi", 'subverting expectations' has become a bit of a meme for when it goes wrong, but I think I'll cover that in the breaking rules piece (which might become multiple posts – they're interesting topics from a writing perspective).

I'm aware my audience is split between people that like to read about the delectably evil succubus/monster girl getting her fatal snu-snu on, and the people that prefer the nicer stories where the good guy just gets his brains fucked out and survives (just about) with his life and soul intact.

If you like the evil ones, hopefully Seraphina hit the spot.

If you like the Nicole ones, well... this one was a gut punch.  A necessary one.  Predictability is bad.  The good ends aren't as satisfying if they're obvious from a mile off.  So, while this story might not have been to your taste, in theory it should make the other stories where the protagonist does survive all the more sweeter.

Of course, this is if we assume Seraphina did suck out all of poor Neil's juices.  As she said, succubi are the most delightfully duplicitous of creatures.

And yep, I'll be going over ambiguous endings as well.  ;)

-manyeyedhydra