Why Chapter 16 is offline and being reuploaded - FULL SPOILERS

Hey folks.

This is regarding Chapter 16 - The Only Way Out for those who have already read it. I want to be honest.

I am not kidding above, this will speak frankly and contain full spoilers. If you have not read, do not go further.

This is rather long, I apologise. But I cannot say this in short terms.

Due to the time, many people may not have seen this happen. But the chapter has dramatically changed based upon my own personal feelings and thoughts.

I won’t mince words. In Chapter 16, near to the end…in punishment for running away with Coral to save Lilac Rose, Shackles condemns Murky to working a shift as a sex slave. As they say, rape is rape. A character was raped and there are no ifs, buts or maybes about that. It’s a belief I personally share.

This has now been removed. Not because anyone complained, not because I felt it was disrespectful, not because I felt it didn’t have a lot of merit as a shocking moment that offered plenty of character thought. I removed it and changed the chapter (It still ends the same way, so don’t worry!) because I did not feel this was the route I wanted to take.

In essence, it overrode what I really wanted this chapter to be.

Chapter 16 is an intensely personal chapter for me. The issue of suicide is…immensely, close to me. Suffice to say I have lost someone very close in my family. I knew before I even started this story that I wanted to face those demons that I still felt I hadn’t reacted fully to. That I wanted to bring those emotions to bear and challenge myself as a writer to project that into a story to make people care for a character.

In a way, the story has been building to this since Chapter 1. You all remember Chapter 2’s moment on the control tower. Writing Chapter 16 and including this theme, knowing what I’ve felt…it wasn’t easy. My editor will confirm, more than once I had to pause and just take a break or feel shaken confronting it. But I wanted to offer my perspective. You might have heard it from Coral Eve.

Murky coming to that point was taking the deepest and most severe emotion I know and putting it onto paper.

Unfortunately, I felt the need to justify why he went that far. He finds out that Littlepip didn’t escape. Great, that puts him on a hopeless track. He faces hell every day. Yes, a form to really leave him at wits end.

But then I felt he needed something to push him over the figurative edge before the literal one. This came from a very old idea I’d had before FOE finished and before PH had Chapter 33. Originally, it was going to be “The Slave Master” (No name, this was before Shackles even had a personality in planning) that did this to him. A personal and brutally frightening concept. At the time, it felt unexpected and shocking to my planning mind. But as Shackles grew into a character he didn’t seem the sort to do that to him at all, especially with the whole father/son thing. However that element to push him to wits end still existed in planning.

I asked my editors about it, I added it in to see if it would work…but in the end it was me that made the decision that it worked. To see this chapter about a poor slave’s eventual push toward attempted suicide strike the deepest chord with people yet and leave a harsh scar that no-one would forget to drive on the rage for Brimstone to dish out next chapter. To make people reeeeally hate Shackles and the slavers for what they did to Murky.

But that was the problem. The rape became the big focus of the Chapter and inevitably to be the story after that. The most personal chapter I’d ever written, taking heartfelt emotion and it became secondary to the “big moment” involving that hateful act of rape, even while not being seen.

This wasn’t what Chapter 16 was to be. I have lain awake until 7AM because I could not help but think that I made a mistake. That I had lost the impact I truly sought. In a flurry of decision, I got up and spoke to whoever was online. I must thank Warbalist, Leatherduster and Darcy for being there to at least talk to, including Darcy saying he didn’t mind the chapter being spoiled if it meant I could bounce ideas off him.

In the end I realised…the rape, while capable to work with, did not have a place in the story. The idea that I had used such a thing without considering it as integral as the issue I wanted to work with offended myself. I could do better than this. Do better with less to create more.

The decision I came to was to change the chapter. That has now been done, it will be back on FimFic as soon as DW is back online tomorrow.

To those who have already read Chapter 16…I urge you to perhaps check it out from the moment when Murky is thrown before Shackles. It’s only a few pages at the end that needed changed (batr a couple word changes in the opening question) but just to keep you up to date.

It’s not a massive change other than to change it from him being sent there to simply being told he will be sent there. The knowledge that Pip didn’t escape, the brutal days and now being told he is to be sold into Sooty’s form of selling bodies is what pushes him. They stripped all hope and then were going to take the only thing he had left. His dignity.

This fits with the chapter quote from Rent a lot better too.

It also pertains to him arguing with Brimstone more, that by Brimstone saving him…it’s condemning him to being sent to be, well…raped. This produces a much more interesting element than it was previously.

I know I’ve lost the “first wave” feedback reactions genuinelly. But there’s many I know who haven’t read yet. I eagerly await to see what they think of the new Chapter 16.

I cannot possibly express in enough words how sorry I am to have had to do this. To provide such a “high” point of emotion and events to happen to poor Murky and then retcon it. But I just honestly do not feel that was the way forward for the story.

Chapter 17 won’t change at all bar a few sentences. There aren’t any worries. But I felt I owed you all to be candid and transparent.

Let us go onward with this story, as it was meant to be.

- Iain Stewart, Fuzzy

Comments

[Rust]

Good on you, mate. It speaks volumes that you'd think so deeply about the concepts you put into your work.

[Sypher]

I'm really sorry to hear about your family member.