And so falls the prince. I do like this chapter. One Shiny confronted the other slaves and realized he couldn’t help them. Then it was Shinning’s mind and memory being rewritten. I think that was nice. Very good chapter to end. To be honest thought I wish it wasn’t the end. I hope maybe there will be another chapter with an adult Spike. But if not this was a good way to end this story.

Hrm. I hope you don’t mind if I go off on a tangent here, but I had an interesting thought. This chapter didn’t quite do it for me like the others did, and I think I know why.

The previous chapters were from Sombra’s POV, so as a reader I identified with him over the other stallions; I wanted him to succeed in his goals, and because we barely saw or heard of the stallions before they were enslaved I didn’t have time to empathize with them much – they were just toys to be broken in by their master, and therefore, hot domination smut fuel.

But this chapter was from Shiney’s POV, and we also spent a lot more time with him, in his mind, before any naughty stuff began – getting to know his wants and goals, empathizing with him. As a result, his inevitable corruption here felt less like a victory or climax (pun half-intended), and more like a tragedy – our hero lost, everything is bad now. As a result, it just wasn’t, for lack of a better word, hot for me.

I thought it was an interesting example of how the same subject matter can be either arousing or depressing depending on how it’s framed. To be clear, I didn’t dislike this one or anything, it’s a good chapter. Just not one I can quite, er, enjoy like with the previous ones.