His Recipe For Love submitted · 11:07am Nov 1st, 2015
For obvious reasons I meant this to be a Halloween story, but its unexpected complexity and length (it came out to 11,334 words, published in one long chapter because I wanted this to be the sort of story that built up inexorably toward its climax like a dark symphony, but divided into 12 subchapters of varying lengths because I did not want to confront readers with a conceptual wall of text) meant that I could not complete it until around 2:45 pm on the morning of November 1st. I'm sure that the morning's sober light will show me typos to comb out of it; I've rarely written at such length with such rapidity before. At 11,334 words, this is a novelette, and I wrote some 8000 words of it today.
It's different from what I usually write. It has a clear Villain Protagonist, who is in love with an even worse Villain (of the trio of Aventurine, Harmonia and Honesty, Aventurine is defintely the nicest of them -- in TVTropes terms, he is quite Affably Evil. He (like all the Cupcake Bakers, really) believes that what they're doing is justified by their noble goal. And he has one very sympathetic trait -- he is very much in love with his wife Harmonia. Really, were they not cannibalistic necromantic alchemists, Aventurine and Harmonia would be obvious Science Heroes.
It's unusual in that it has highly-explicit sex. The horror wouldn't work as well without it. Unlike most clopfics, it's intensely philosophical, and has a lot of worldbuilding, and adventure including a rousing good battle scene. One of the things that makes me a bit sad is that I know that it won't be read by some whom I deeply like and respect on this site, because it's X-rated; and also that a lot of the people who do read it will wonder why I put all that philosophy and worldbuilding and adventure into a clopfic.
I think it's emotionally-disturbing. It's meant to be emotionally-disturbing. It's an exploration of Protagonist Centered Morality, and what's wrong with it, and I think it rather nicely demonstrates how one automatically tends to sympathize with any first-person narrator, especially when he speaks in present tense.
Anyway, it's in the Approval Queue, and should be showing up soon, though those of you who've filtered out M-rated fics won't be able to see it. If you want to read it, just turn off that part of your filter temporarily to do so.
Comments on the story, or on this blog post, are of course greatly welcome.
I look forward to it with interest.
Well, as disturbing as this story will be (for the inherent moral myopia, and the fact that it's a clop fic), I'll definitely read it. You're a fantastic author, and it'll be a cold day in hell before I pass up one of your stories, no matter how disgusting the premise sounds!
Looks to have been approved. I got the alert, but the alert itself is apparently blocked by the mature filter when checked in the feed. I would consider reading it for the intellectual content, but I don't think I'd be able to get past my disgust with sex(It's pretty much "Ew, nekkid").
3513819
Sex isn't actually the main problem with this story, though there are two explicit and one additional mentioned sex scene (then again, all sex shown is resolutely marital). It's gore. And one very sick perversion.
3513823 I'm actually much less disgusted by gore than by sex. Then again, most of the "Gorey" things I've seen have been limited to depictions of combat. I have read "Cupcakes" though, which gets to the point of ceasing to be shocking.
3513857
This is actually the version of "Cupcakes" that's true in the Shadow Wars Storyverse. The villain isn't Pinkie, but her many-times-great-grandmother Harmonia. It's passed into Nightmare Night legend as the tale of "Horror Pie and the Cannibal Cupcakes."
3513819 I read the story and skimmed over three or four of the most sexually-graphic paragraphs. If you feel up to that, and if your "eww" reaction won't pollute the rest of the story, I think you'll find the intellectual content well worth reading.
I think the problem with trying to avoid Protagonist Centered Morality is that it becomes to easy to slip into Antagonist Centered Morality where it doesn't matter if the villain is a mass murdering dictator, if the hero doesn't remain a paragon he's just as bad as the villain
Looking forward to it. I somewhat warily admit to being curious to see how the sex scenes are handled, as I HAVE wondered about using it myself in stories when needed (which is the important aspect).
And as far as 'clop stories' go, I thought that idea was that if it has anything to the plot besides two or more hopefully warm bodies shagging, then it's not a clopfic? I mean, no one watches Myra Breckenridge or Caligula for the plot. Actually, I think no one watches either of them, period. BBut you know what I mean.