tailsopony
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I have glanced it over (not interested in porn, per usual), and closer to the end it seems to become a good introspection into Sombra's sigma mindset, from a woman's perspective, no less. Great stuff! Absolutely adore your dedication to the character work
12082062
That is certainly not the review I expected from this monster, but thank you! Lol. I do try very hard to have consistent characters with specific mindsets and goals. Even when it's porn.
What a ride
12082096
I mean, some body got a hell of a ride. Hope you enjoyed it. Lol. Thanks for the comment!
12082269
I have a few other twibra stories. Although, I was considering continuing this one as more of a dramedy / porn thing where the the two of them try to pass off their relationship as something normal while Twilight tries to figure out what's happened while she's gone and everybody else is... Very off put.
Thanks for the comment! Anything you particularly liked or disliked?
**Edit I'm not crazy! There was a comment here! The person's account was deleted apparently. Spooky...
I won't lie, the kinky shadow rapist being thrown for a loop by Twilight's pony-isms got a chuckle out of me.
12082663
Yeah, one of the general themes is how alien they are to each other. Lol. Thanks for the comment!
Honestly this was a damn good read Tailsopony, I'd definitely like to see a continuation/sequel here of them going forward!
12082928
Thanks for the comment! Not sure how motivated I am. lol. This one did not perform well. After two days, you are the first commenter that both (apparently) read the whole story and had something specific to say. I work for comments, so I might shelve this while I work on my other nightmares. Even my editor didn't want to read the whole thing, so I'm not sure this was a winning formula. I did some weird things with the pacing (intentionally), and I think it really threw everybody for a loop.
Even after so many years, it's really great to see stories like this from you tailsopony .
I remember when I first read CV:C, it left me shocked for quite a while, but looking back now, I can definitely say that that is my favorite story from you.
It didn't started that way, but I found myself looking back, and checking, re-reading it and I don't do it often with 'old' pieces..
That story just lurked it's way into my head..
I did just play a little bit with that title in my head, like how wicked but absolutely terrifying that would have been, if you have made a kind of universe, I mean there were a few opportunities to use that Competent Villain theme, like with the Nightmare, Discord, even a Sombra world, or one with Starlight...
It just..... knowing just work over the years, it definitely a big what if - as I thought about it. :)
Nevertheless though, I am really happy you are still making qualy stories like this last one.
Thank you for this all! :)
12082949
A shame then as I found it quite good, but some things don't work for everyone after all. I found the relationship that came about to be quite interesting and definitely could/would like to see the hilarity/awkward situations that would arise from Twilight's return with said new relationship.
This was fucking hot. As someone who's into BDSM i think I'd like to explore your imagination more :)
12082968
Yeah, the ending relationship they have is the only serious motivator I have for writing more of this. It was one of the things that inspired me for it originally, actually. Having a desperately horny Twilight who's hungry to entertain a "still evil but also pussy whipped" Sombra while trying to pass this off to the rest of Equestria as a "normal" relationship was really funny to me. I dunno. I'm not trashing the concept, just putting it on the shelf. It could make a really good dark comedy, but it would almost certainly have to be insensitive and offensive.
12082960
Thanks for the comment! I wouldn't say this is a quality story, but it's something I did put a lot of work into at least.
As for CV:C, yeah, the original plan was to make it a series where the bad guys won. That's still my fetish, as you can see, so while I don't have CV:S, I have t least three stories with villain Sombra x Twilight? lol. Unfortunately, google docs locked me out of all my drafts back then (2014? 2013? I don't remember...) and I lost a lot of that stuff, which really dropped me cold on my old stories. I should have kept local copies, and now do, but all that stuff is gone forever... I've tried re-writing the CV:C ending a few times, but it just doesn't feel the same. Also, my original set up for it was maybe a bit too wild and silly. But that was a thing of the times! The changelings, for instance, have powerpuff girl names... Blossom was the one with AJ, Buttercup was the one with RD, and Bubbles was the one with Fluttershy. Those three were going to help with a small... revolution... that ended up making everything worse/better. lol.
12082980
I have a lot of stories. Check them out! I still think chapter 4 in my first story here is one of the best BDSM scenes I've written, even if the writing style itself is a bit clumsier. Thanks for the comment!
12082981
The best kind of dark comedy to make in my humble opinion! With that being the case I am definitely hoping that the idea doesn’t stay on the shelf for too long and will be keeping a look out for it in the future.
Since you mention you work for comments (can relate) I'll offer a nice, beefy one, hope it isn't too long that you find it annoying.
While I must admit that human high school girls with pastel-colored skin has basically no appeal to me in any capacity (spicy or otherwise), I am far too much of a sucker for the 'bad guy X good girl' schtick and checked this piece of yours out anyway.
I liked the scenes you wrote more than I thought I would, given that I also have basically zero interest in the details or elaborations of BDSM stuff, and instead see that whole category as a simple 'to keep her still' gimmick that compliments the true focus of a scene. Yet, despite that, I do think you delivered quite well on the meat and potatoes that followed said BDSM focus.
It's always very tough to take a character from a beloved show that has dialogue written probably by a dozen or more separate writers over the span of numerous seasons and then try to incorporate that character into a setting they'd never canonically be in (such as bondage rape, lol) and still have the character seem like themselves. To do it well almost requires that you do a private, internal character study of them to not only try and access the headspace of what the character writers were aiming for in their multiple years writing for that character, but also what it is about the character that viewers/fans/readers find the most universally appealing about them, then finding a way to keep that universally appealing something in tact while putting the character through an outlandishly foreign experience to their established lore or their personality's frame of reference.
The story was littered with points where I felt like Twilight wasn't Twilight anymore, and I suppose it's just a rather unavoidable side-effect of how hard it is to write someone in-character when they're thrust into a very out-of-character scenario. Funnily enough, I had this same feeling with Sombra drastically less, with the most notable being when he actually began to show weakness to Twilight's bullying of his seeming adversity to direct sex. This lesser degree of feeling out-of-character moments with him is likely due to him having such weak characterization from the show to begin with, rendering him far more moldable clay for fanfictions to do as they please with and not result in seeming out of place or out of style.
Nevertheless, his tone and personality in the story seemed like it went from dangerous, pervy villain that takes what he wants to humiliated school boy offended by jokes about his sex life with far, far too quick a transition (for what the reader actually got to digest, I mean. I know the story spans numerous days of them """bonding""" which we don't read moment by moment or anything).
Still, with all that being said, I think you did a pretty decent job taking established personalities and thrusting them into an unestablished NSFW setting. When I saw the angle you were going for with their relationship morphing into a far more balanced distribution of authority over each other, it also made way more sense why I had tons of moments of "wait, the actual FiM Twilight Sparkle from Equestria is saying this?". A transition like that will always be tough to pull off while still doing a character justice according to the profile readers have of them in their heads while they read.
I did think it was very cute and charming, and caught myself smiling at multiple points as I read through some of their banter that displayed the power imbalance rebalancing itself in real-time as they interacted with each other, so I definitely can't say the angle you were going for with them was a bad idea by any means!
The main critique I suppose I'd offer is that Twilight seemed to be overly chatty in what should've been rather emotionally severe/traumatizing circumstances. Almost as though she's explaining to the reader why she isn't bothered by X, or isn't resisting Y. It feels a bit like it goes beyond her simply being a hyper-practical nerdy girl that just naturally sees things as an exact science first and a personal experience second, and instead felt more like her being used as a vessel to try and justify to the reader why she was not acting out in an expected manner, even if, technically, she was answering prompts from Sombra as her means to do it.
The reason I think this is worth being the main critique of the story is because readers default to using a character's reactions as a guiding conductor and tone setter for how they read an entire situation as it plays out through the words. When a character isn't taking a situation seriously enough even when it's very much serious, it ends up disappointing the reader, functioning as a sort of bait-and-switch sensation that frustrates them. Given that this happens several times between periods of what is functionally literal pleasure-torture or otherwise humiliation rituals with Twilight, I think that's the key component that made those interactions feel unsatisfying. The severity of the circumstances Twilight is in primes the reader for how she'll react to such an intense thing, but then that intense thing seemingly rolls off her with a "ponies are naked all the time anyway" or a "because I cannot stop you so what's the point?" where the reader is left feeling let down by her lack of believable investment into her own ordeal as it continues.
Picture 3 smut scenes where spicy things are being done to the corpse of a woman, a sleeping woman, and a conscious, living woman. The physical activities are all the exact same, but the appeal for the reader is very, very, very different between the three. That's the phenomenon I'm talking about. It's not constant or anything, but it's faults were spottable more than enough times to be a pattern that had a disappointing effect to it. How Twilight reacts to something has tremendous influence over how satisfying it is for the reader to read said thing being done to her.
I think this particular point is also why the best parts of the story were simply the graphic descriptions of the spicy activities themselves where zero character dialogue was expected to be present anyway, since the scene is meant to paint physical images in the reader's head 80% and have a character express their personality through those reactions the other 20%.
When Twilight speaks, she often doesn't quite act like the reader expects the personality of Twilight Sparkle to act in situation X, but when Twilight moans or writhes wordlessly, she is acting exactly like the reader expects any girl with a physical female body to act when subjected to Y, thus rendering the scene exponentially more engaging and believable/relatable to the reader's imagination.
Overall, I think you did great at painting depictions of spicy filth in the reader's head (which is QUITE imperative for a smutfic, obviously), but fell short on getting the reader to care about who it was happening to, or even necessarily who was doing it, either. Again, not across the board or anything, just that it's the general distribution of the story's strengths vs weaknesses.
The advise I would offer is something I myself struggle with and am still learning to apply more thoroughly, and it is of course the fundamental rule to fictional engagement: show-don't-tell.
Don't use Twilight to tell the reader why she isn't resisting, or isn't bothered by nudity, or succumbs to pleasure/pain stimulation from this or that, just show it (I.E. express it more through descriptions and detailing of a character's actively developing mental state that the reader can follow and surmise conclusions from, rather than explicitly stating it outright with no curious build-up or room for reader pondering, be those to-be-avoided explicit statements coming through direct character dialogue or just bland, watery exclamations without any quotes around 'em).
I look forward to seeing what you choose to write next!
12083110
Oh boy! Now that's a comment! Thanks!
I definitely appreciate your insight, and yeah, may of the actions are OOC. Some of that is by necessity (NSFW BDSM porn story is not what these characters were designed for, as you noted), some by very intentional choice (Ponyisms), and some by carelessness (uncharacteristic verbosity).
I'll point at a few things, partially to note my divergent thoughts on them and partially to agree with you.
On the points of Sombra, specifically, Yes. I definitely argued with my editor the most over "what he would say" over anything else in the story. He does feel a little like a yo yo. And that is absolutely due to my lack of time spent working on characterization with him. By day 15, Twilight is taunting him (I'll talk about that later) and he falls for it. To the reader, this is chapter 4, or really the second "non sequential" scene. So it's relatively fast. But the character I was shooting for is supposed to be proud to a fault, and very bad at social interactions in general. He usually solves problems with sheer force, but that's not working here. So his social skills are very intentionally set at "humiliated school boy" because that's about as socially adept at handling these sort of challenges as I was imagining the character. Yes, he can be "charming". Yes, he can be persuasive, or thoughtful, or eloquent. But when things don't go to plan, and the "enemy" is taunting him and he can't just beat them into submission with threats, force, or magic? He emotionally goes back to being that twelve year old on the school yard. This also ties into his obsession with "maternal traits" as he puts it. It's even lampshaded/forshadowed/sideshadowed when Twilight wonders if he wants to be called "Daddy" at the end of one of the early chapters. (No he doesn't. In fact...) So while it's an odd encounter for the reader, it's 100% supposed to be how I was trying to play his character, and is even light foreshadowing. And it's interesting to me how it played out. I'd be curious how to do this better, because it's actually a case of me doing "Show don't tell" quite thoroughly, and it doesn't seem to work as well as I'd hoped.
As far as the main critique of Twilight being chatty... That's something I have to think on. My editor didn't bring that up at all. (but did bring up that she's far too calm during the first encounter, which is absolutely fair. I definitely upped her physical responses due to his input.) It's one of those situations where the character I wanted for this exchange wasn't "exactly" the Twilight we know. It's supposed to be after the end of the series, (Sombra's dead) but not so far that Twilight and Spike are "Big". Spike's still a puppy. So she has a level of willpower and experience the show Twilight doesn't have for 95% of the show running. Which makes it an interesting take. She's been captured by Sombra, Chrysalis, the Storm king, and more by now. She's been beat up, turned to stone, trapped, blasted, etc. a bunch. She's pretty darn tough, has seen some stuff, and is not the neurotic librarian we know at the beginning. And Canon Twilight gets very chatty when she gets nervous, she just doesn't stay "calm" about it. She usually rants, actually. So I imagined this incarnation of her keeping her cool better, but still ranting and lecturing when she can. Which maybe I had a little too much fun with... Where her character definitely deviates from Canon is her "mean streak" to Sombra. Canon Twilight isn't mean. Even to bad guys. Her worst character trait is probably her desire to be right all the time, which isn't what I used here. She's simultaneously too mean and too soft. That's something I should have spent some time with...
I don't regret the ponyisms! I'll admit they're a little goofy, but it's hard for me to feel like the "Whatever, I'm just naked." attitude is particularly out of character. I also wanted to show how Sombra doesn't handle "unexpected" things particularly well. The ponyisms really start to bother him halfway through the scene, and the naked taboo thing is the first of them. I also feel like it makes Twilight fall more in the "experienced warrior princess" realm, and less the "damsel in distress", which is supposed to be a slight subversion to Sombra's expectations. I think the problem here is that it's also a subversion for the reader. Twilight isn't exactly a damsel in distressed. She signed up for this, and acknowledges that, even if she hates everything about it and him (at first), and is very unprepared for the sexual stuff. I probably need a better framing to set up her character for this... Any ideas on this one?
As far as her expositioning... that isn't what I was shooting for at all during the spicy scenes. The worst of her expositioning is in the first two scenes, and I thought is was hidden okayish. The explanations she gives to Sombra really are for Sombra. She does exposition a little in her thoughts later, though. That was a weird balance that I'm not sure how well came across.
I will be referencing this comment frequently! Thank you! I'm working on two other Twilight centered stories right now (With very different Twilights. They're all heavy thinkers that like organization, but other specifics are slightly different. One is a social disaster [think her worst traits from the movie and episodes that don't paint her well, even though her intentions are good], and the other is a "prodigy" [All the best traits, specifically magic and research]). I'll try to look here and use this as a baseline check when this sort of thing is relevant.
Another thing to consider is breaking up a really long scene of hard/depressing things. A little levity goes a long way, and that was another reason I had those moments. But I could see how if you're "in the scene" it's not a good idea. It becomes a bit of a challenge when the scene itself is, frankly, too long. Which was part of the pacing experiment I was doing. I was trying to have the more "traumatic" new experiences take up a lot of time, and then as things become rote, they become footnotes. Kind of like how a living person experiences "most" of their life before they're 20, just due to the perception of time. So the first few scenes are huge, then long, then short, as time passes faster and faster. I don't know if it was a good idea at all! lol. I'm still not sure about the ending being so short. I want a much longer epilogue...
Thanks again! I love your stuff! I'll go leave a comment there, but not tonight, lol.
This is somehow the most accurately portrayed Twilight in the mind-break adjacent genre - Bravo!
12083266
Thank you! I would really appreciate your thoughts on that. Anything in particular that makes it seem convincing? Was there anything in particular that seemed particularly out of character, or unconvincing? I really appreciate your comment either way!
12083270
I mean, she stays herself as a character and has thoughts about situations that she would have, independent of the whims of a human society where she's a guest anyway, but is also subtly and not so subtly altered by her experiences and still takes that in stride as she would. tl;dr no hamhanded cultural lens from a woke author or out of character melodrama. So good job getting into Twilight's perspective.
12083286
Thanks! I just wanted to get the specifics here, since I'm going to be referencing this page for later writing. I appreciate it! Sorry to put you on the spot.
Now that I've read it all, god, this is so peak.
I rather think the pacing experiment went quite well. You kind of have, well, what we're here for, and then you proceed to the After in a way that is neither tacked-on nor overstaying its welcome.
My one major complaint is that I'm genuinely very curious about the state of Twilight's home and friends and stuff, and then of course how she intends to, well, explain this whole situation and how that shakes out. A little bit more of the ending would have been welcome.
12083368
Thanks! lol. I genuinely appreciate the comment and the insight. Nobody else has said anything about that, and it was like... my number 1 concern. I'm doing a completely different story where I was considering structuring it a very similar way, and the lack of positive feedback on this one was making me strongly reconsider the other one... That story isn't about "time" as much, so it wouldn't be as in your face. The problem is that it I already wrote the first scene of that one as a 16k word sex scene, but the rest of the story is like a 5k word story (but a good one with that length, IMO). lol. I was considering cutting the sex scene in the new story to almost nothing or entirely just to make the story flow more uniformly.
Yeah... The ending here needs a little something more. The original ending pass had only 400 words, but then I juiced it up to this. Hmm... I'll think on this some. Maybe I will think harder about that dark comedy sequel. I really do want to write it just for the shenanigans. Thank you for the comment again!
12083381
Ooh a dark comedy sequel could be nice - the pacing is fine: something about the gradualness of the transformation makes it more believable. If anything the initial part could be more concise.
This was a lot of fun. I think Twilight is at her best when put in really awful circumstances and we get to see how resilient and adaptable she can be.
I know your fics tend to focus on other elements like the horror, but her will being so impossibly unbreakable here contrasted with how straight everything else in the story is played made for an interesting drama that was a bit comedic by the end. Going all the way on making her a sex slave yet having her basically shrug and take it made her feel kind of alien or supernatural, and I really like when the ponies, or at least alicorns, are not written like normal people.
The endpoint was probably my favorite part. It's not really clear what her plan was or if she was "corrupted" enough to not take her freedom here in exchange for interdimensional booty calls, but I like to imagine she really did seduce and friendship her way home. Sombra himself is in an interesting spot too; he finds himself way out of his depth in terms of power, and Twilight is someone who can actually satisfy his desires without all the human misery he is usually inflicting. I'd genuinely be interested to see where he goes from here.
12083624
Thanks a bunch! I love when you comment on my stuff! (And that you're still around!)
Her being "supernatural" mentally was exactly something I was shooting for. She actually tried to explain that to Sombra in the "you're absolutely nothing like humans and ponies, but very similar to me..." rant she goes on.
Her original plan isn't well explained, but I didn't want to spend too much time side shadowing a plan that wasn't going to happen when I've already been teasing the WHOLE story about a rescue attempt. Suffice to say, the plan went immediately into the gutter when pony hormones kicked in, which is something she did foreshadow about "how much a reversal it would be if she went into heat" earlier in the story. The short of it is, yes, she sort of did seduce and friendship her way home (from her perspective).
One of the original ideas I had for this was a semi-toxic relationship where Twilight really "needed" unhealthy sexual things and Sombra was about the only practical source of those things. And she was willing to make a LOT of compromises to get those things. And Sombra was willing to express his worst traits solely on her, because he was also down bad for this interaction and also willing to compromise a lot of things for this. The idea was them "getting by" with this dynamic where everybody else was side-eying them hard, unsure wtf was going on and if they should intervene.
Yeah, maybe I will write that follow on. That was one of the reasons I started this before it devolved into BDSM torture porn for 20k+ words...
Thanks again for the comment!
12083256
Well to be honest with you, it doesn't really make much sense for her to be unprepared or unexpecting of any sexual stuff to begin with. As you said, if she's a Twilight that is post-show era and has been through numerous fights and difficulties and tanked plenty of failures and was (according to the story) even expecting and ready for torture... it doesn't make a lot of sense for what is established by the story to then turn around and say that she is completely taken by surprise by the mere possibility that a male villain would have a sexual interest in a female heroine.
Either she is extremely prepared for the worst of the worst... or she is naieve and has so little experience being a captive or having a conflict not go her way that it never once crossed her mind things might devolve into a rapey scenario.
The only way I could think to frame this or try to make it work in a believable way is if you were to try and sprinkle in some little detail about how sexuality is extremely tame and non-intimate throughout all of Equestria, and tie that in to why ponies have no problem socializing or doing business while flashing their genitals at each other by going about their day in the nude. I could tell that was an angle you pressed on a little bit, but you didn't quite seem to stick with it across the board like that notion would imply. Also, tbh, using this angle in general would simply downgrade the fun of the sexual stuff now that you'd have removed her ability to recognize sexual stuff as inherently intimate. It would functionally turn her view of sexual stuff into something meant strictly for reproduction, and the pleasure components were an undesired or uninteresting bi-product of that objective.
To take intimate, pleasure-centric sexual stuff and then have it done to a character that sees sexual stuff in a completely non-intimate, non-pleasure-oriented way really only leaves you with the option of just subjecting the character to pleasure-centric sexual stuff anyway, and then having them react to the unique experience and essentially having it traumatize them with being slammed in the face by a whole new world of sexual stuff for fun instead of sexual stuff for strict biological functionalities divorced from any social or relationship-intrinsic elements.
Again, to do this is essentially to downgrade the character, making them apathetic or ignorant to sex almost to the degree of a young child while still having them just as mature, intelligent and cognizant as an adult. It would be off-putting for the reader to say the least, not to mention QUITE difficult to write well, as you'd start with a character who genuinely doesn't understand why their captor is so interested in sexual stuff, then you have the character pleasure-tortured, then you have to maintain the character's brand new perspective of fear and emotional breakdown as their body's own pleasure reactions are used against them repeatedly on end.
The direction the story went, though, with Twilight and Sombra basically becoming a couple implies that the sexual intimacy Twilight was forcefully subjected to did not in fact have zero social or emotional or relationship elements to it, and instead she naturally gravitated toward liking it (and, in turn, Sombra) with Sombra eventually doing the same.
This ending the story currently uses would never make sense to happen if Twilight came from a culture or place where sex and nudity truly were virtually 0% intimate in their nature, which would then cause her to not understand nor be prepared for Sombra's noncon intimacy intentions at all despite still being SO experienced in conflicts and villains and captivity and plans gone awry since she is a post-show Equestrian ruler, and also highly intelligent and well-read in general as per her character archetype.
Ultimately, I feel that you're probably stuck with either recognizing you can't frame her unpreparedness for sexual stuff any better because it's using logically flawed groundwork to begin with, or you'd have to go all in and make her a brilliant, intelligent, experienced adult magic combatant/ruler who, due to her cultural norms, sees anything sexual as 0% intimate across the board (hence Equestrian nudity), meaning she would never develop stockholm syndrome or any kind of intimate relationship with her captor Sombra, because any sexual stuff she is subjected to genuinely has no intimate component for her that can then be exploited with repeat exposure or groomed into a flourishing state like we see as the story concludes (and thus the story would have lost one of its bigger and more charming appeals).
12083830
While I can see the extremes you have there being problematic, I'm going to have to disagree with your analysis.
That's a lot of absolutes with no room for continuums, which is usually not how I work my characters. A possibility on the continuum is something she even stated in the story "Friends don't do this, lovers don't do this, enemies don't do this." ie, she knows about sex, she's very specifically using what she knows about sex as a baseline for comparison. Sex is something friends *might* do, it's something lovers do, it's not something enemies do, and this specific act isn't qualified under her definitions (Violent BDSM acts treated as sex). That could be expanded a couple of ways, but an easy one, and my default, would be "Bad guys have never sexually assaulted her before" which is even very likely given the bad guys she's dealt with, even if sexual assault does exists in her world.
"Obviously" he's going to interrogate her, steal her magic, put her in a bottle or something, but sexual assault? Nobody else has done that to her yet. Chrysalis is a bug, she might be a true emotion eater and not interested in physical sensations. Nightmare Moon was interested in conquering, not assaulting her. Discord honestly seems asexual. Starlight had other concerns. Tempest was a soldier doing her job. Verko was going to harvest her for parts. And so on. She's used to having her magic taken, beaten to a pulp, interrogated, captured in a "Thing" and so on. But just because "This" Sombra is prioritizing his sexual interests over practical actions of conquering, stealing, consolidating, etc. doesn't mean any other villain has. And this is exactly a show don't tell situation. Going through the list of characters that haven't sexually assaulted her is one hell of an exposition.
This is just one point of the continuum. There's an infinite number of options. The idea that it is either extreme would, IMO, need far more explanation than not, and is not a natural conclusion at all. She doesn't think Sombra's some horny teen when she meets him. She's used to him being a literal shadow of magic, who she probably doesn't think even has "working parts" as he seems more undead than alive with his toolkit.
Not trying to argue, I'm just 0% buying your reasoning. It's a completely different thought process than I have, which is really interesting to see but very foreign to my thinking--and I'd hazard not the common interpretation, but either of us only have our own bias as the basis, so perhaps it is!
12083891
I think I see what you mean. There is enough room for suspension of disbelief that captive sex could still reasonably surprise her based on the types of canonical villains she has encountered in the past.
I guess my point would then only really be emphasizing the flaw in the story's approach of how it taught the reader exactly why Twilight was surprised by it to begin with.
I feel like the main hitch in how you framed it is that, in the story, she was bizarrely slow to recognize the reason her sexuality was being targeted by Sombra, which ended up taking away from the oomph it had in the relevant scenes. It came off as bizarre because, being the bookworm that she is and having visited the human world numerous times in the past, one would think she'd have at least done some research on how humans and ponies differ if she were going to be swapping bodies and entering their living spaces while posing as a belonging human on repeat like that.
This also plays back into the critique of why she felt rather out-of-character, but with more detail.
She had unbelievably ample opportunities to learn about humans—specifically their reason for always-always wearing clothes being something that her canon self would have looked into once or twice at the very least, since it was one of the most unavoidable differences between human and pony culture—yet she is caught off guard when that specific differing detail (among a few others) comes up explicitly with a human-variant of a known villain, which makes it seem as though the differences were never even contemplated by her a single time until her capture by human Sombra. Her referring to human breasts as teats, for example, is the sort of stuff that gave this feeling, framing her surprise as oddly foolish naievety that didn't make sense for her character. It seemed more like the show-don't-tell was showing that she was ignorant to sex being intimate or pleasure-centric with human culture, and blindly assumed that the human world just paralleled pony culture in this regard, even though that wasn't what you were going for.
I think a much better framing would be if the show-don't-tell had instead showed that she recognizes sex as an intimate or pleasure-focusable activity just fine, but the only hold-up she had was that she couldn't fathom a villain being interested in it with a captive... at first.
A much better way to have hit this nail home for the reader while framing it way, way better would have been to play out her surprise as not a long-form period of repeat confusion, but instead a very distinct and recognizable moment where Twilight realizes her captor is engaging via sexual interest instead of the usual strategic villainous ploy for power, and from there it could flow much more naturally and seem less like she was naieve/uneducated (which wouldn't fit Twilight Sparkle) and more like she had accidentally been caught in what was functionally a form of culture shock with expected sexual contexts between the pony and human worlds. A point in the story sequences where Twilight has an "Oh no, wait... this isn't an experiment, he's just a pervert!" moment would have been way more fun to see play out, as opposed to simply seeing her be repeatedly unbothered by forced nudity/exhibitionism, never considering differences in anatomical terminology between pony and human, and ultimately taking way too long for it to click that she was an object of lust to her captor, instead of a bargaining chip or magic battery like she was expecting from Equestria villains.
This would be a nice two-birds-one-stone solution to frame her surprise better while also patching up some of her out-of-character feel as well. Pony vs human differences like clothes and nudity taboo seem like they'd be something Twilight Sparkle would be giddy to learn about on day 1, not day probably-90-to-600+ and still never have connected such dots. However... I feel like her simply not realizing villains get rapey in human form far more than pony form and nothing more is well within the bounds of suspension of disbelief, so you could still have the 'it surprised her, which surprised him' dynamic you wanted that way.
As it is currently, some of the scenes played out as though she still couldn't figure out why those dots were connecting that way with human villains since they didn't connect that way with pony villains, but a defining moment where she does connect the dots would then allow every sequence after that defining moment to focus on her just being a powerful girl put in a uniquely perilous situation where the concept of being in peril is not new to her, but the sexual details of it most certainly are. That's probably the best smut-clay you could use from there onward while having nothing about her surprise of sex + villain encounters feel poorly framed OR out-of-character at that point.
Overall, though, I see what you mean where there's actually plenty of wriggle room to try and make her being surprised by—but not immature about—a coercive sexual encounter actually work in a story. I understand your position when you essentially say it isn't fruitless to aim for that mark in particular like I was suggesting, but rather it is indeed just very particular and precise to hit it well without taking a dink to story/character believability.
Still, I do wanna re-emphasize (with a bit more detail) that I think you should keep character progression points more closely in mind, especially in a story like this where a character is undergoing what is more-or-less a brand new experience (like bdsm rape). Specifically, how Twilight reacts to her ordeal in a somewhat unsatisfying way, and how you could avoid it feeling that way in future works.
To me, a huge chunk of the filthy fun is the lady being put in an intimate situation or subjected to non-consensual intimacy, and then having to power through it as it ramps up and has more and more of a tangible, noticeably severe effect on her. However, with Twilight being so durable due to her experience as a ruler and magical prodigy in this story, there wasn't really any escalation in that regard. The forced intimacy components kept seeming like they slid right off her as soon as they were over, and nothing that was done to her really felt like it stuck to her. Except... this doesn't feel right to the reader because it's already been established that she has absolutely no experience to draw from with a villain wanting her sexually, so why exactly does she revitalize so swiftly?
The high-point of her adorable personality shift where she had no hesitations or timidity about outright bullying Sombra felt like it had crucial build-up that happened completely off-page since it occurred chronologically post-bdsm-rape, yet wasn't preceded by any noticeable low-point from this brand new type of abuse she had received (that the reader actually got to digest in the days the story actually details). I think it just made the ramifications of her exploitation hit a bit softer since she simply settled back into her usual self with inexplicable ease each time after a specific period of abuse had concluded, even though she has NO experience being abused by a villain in this way, and so that should be the last thing she was doing. As a result, the reader then feels slightly bait-and-switched with a starter of "Oh my, how will Twilight Sparkle handle this terrible new thing!?" only for it to end on "Oh... just like that,".
The incline would come off as way more natural and believable if the story did a bit more to present Twilight as being thrust into a far worse mental state than was depicted, and then have her bounce back afterward so that later when she's mouthing off to her own captor, it would then feel far more rewarding and interesting a point of plot progression, as the show-don't-tell would have already gone over her massive new low with a unique, first-time horrid experience, so the return upswing where she's no longer a shaken damsel would then feel more natural. For example, perhaps she is so stun-locked by the impact of her new experience that she then consciously, intentionally tries to force her own emotional state back into fight-mode as a retaliatory or defense mechanism, and her snippy attitude then naturally stems from that, instead of just popping up on day 15. Granted, that is a simple, quick, and even a tiny bit cheap method, but it still gets the job done and outlines a recognizable low-point of her mental state for the reader so that the following high-point of her mental state slots itself in much better as the story continues.
I get what you were going for a bit better now, and I guess more reasonable advice would be to take any key transitional points a character goes through (never been raped before, is then raped, recovers and restabilizes, spits back at her rapist for not raping her properly lol), and lay those transitional points on a bit thicker than they were here so that none of them feel rushed through or outright skipped over to the point they come off as a character being OOC or prompting the reader to raise needless logical questions in their head about why the character would ever behave that way to begin with. That seems to be all you really need for framing stuff like this better, as far as I can tell.
Remember the safe word is Quesadilla.
I love that ending! Incredibly wholesome development in the research of friendship
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Always have a safe word! Unless your an evil warlock with a captive princess. Then, eh... Thanks for the comment!
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It's certainly a development in the research of friendship! I'm not sure I'd call it wholesome... I'm glad you like the ending! I appreciate that you took time to leave a comment. Thank you!
Loved this story! The slow build in the first few chapters was particularly stellar, and I really loved the craft you put into the character work. I'd adore a followup both exploring the new relationship dynamics we get a glimpse of at the end and maybe some reactions to Twilight's mysterious and sudden reappearance. Thanks for sharing this!
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Slow build in the first few chapters? I mean, if you consider dropping right in to orgasm torture slow... lol. Thanks! Yeah, I'm thinking about a follow on here, but the attitude will be very, very different. I'm super glad you read it and seemed to like it! I actually originally didn't plan on sharing this one. It was just a weird experiment on a couple of things, and then I was like... That's a whole lot of words to just not do anything with... so I started editing it. Thanks for the comment!
The pain of realizing it's finished and I read all the chapters...