Nyx Nyghtingale
patreon
Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 10 - Reflection
🕑 Added 2024-03-17 03:19:08 +0000 UTCReaching Chapter 10 was really exciting as a milestone, mostly because it's a nice round number. After this, the milestone get a little more abstract - first book, 100k wordcount, things like that. Still, as someone that's churned through a lot of hobbies in the past, it was really nice to hit 10 chapters and not feel burnt out in the slightest.
I would say this chapter also marks a little bit of a turn in the narrative. Amara and Vee have been dancing around each other for a while now, and this is really where a lot of those threads start to converge.
The opening scene was a nice simple sex scene, which also gave me a great chance to show off how comfortable Amara is getting with her new self. More importantly, though, we get to see her helping Nick through his nerves for the first time. My poor girl has gone through a lot, so it makes sense that Nick has been the one doing a lot of the heavy lifting, so I'm glad we got to see that flipped a little bit here.
Nick's date with Vee was something that I'd originally planned to go differently. In my original outline, it was going to go great, but suddenly turn sour when she smelled the sulfur on Nick. When I sat down to write it, though, I realized that didn't make any sense. Vee has been, sadly, on a bit of a downward spiral for the last few weeks. She's not sleeping, she's got a lot of baggage that she totally doesn't have conflicting feelings about, and Derek has turned a big chunk of the school against her, which she thinks was all the mysterious succubi's master plan.
Right now, Vee is not the person that's going to go on a fun, easygoing date.
I also got to hint at her background a bit more! Not much, but, y'know, got to save something for the sequels.
It's also pretty important that we see tangible effects of Derek's blame campaign. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this in past reflections, but I really believe that the audience should get to see the ramifications of plot events. Like, if someone's depressed, let me see it! Let me see what people are feeling!
Once we finish up with that date, we're back to the rest of the friend group. We get to very briefly see Chloé again (Yay!) and then our Witch/Demon duo are off the library.
I actually have a little sidebar about the library, related to this chapter but also to chapter 2. I'm a huge fan of libraries, I think they're a wonderful resource, and they serve amazing narrative purposes in stories. Research montages just hit harder when you're surrounded by books rather than sitting at home on your computer, right? Anyways, one issue that occurred to me is the time period - why would people still be at the library when home computers and smart phones exist? Personally, I'm able to really easily ignore small plot beats like that, but I also tried to build enough solid rational in the story itself. I mentioned Nick needing to get out of his room, articles locked behind paywalls, as well as information simply not being uploaded online. Best case scenario, no one is frustrated about this particular plot point! If you are, well, I guess it's good they're not there often.
The real meat of this scene is Amara running into Vee's demon trap. I planted this particular seed a while ago, and I'm curious if it caught anyone by surprise when it went off. I wouldn't be surprised if some of you forgot about it!
This alerts Amara and Vee to the fact that someone on campus is aware of Amara's demonic nature, to a degree, but it also shows another instance of Amara losing her temper somewhat. Clearly she doesn't like divine cattle prods.
Then I end with a quote from Chapter 2! I like quoting myself, it's such an easy way to tie things together. Though I guess it sounds a little self-indulgent when I phrase it that way. I hope you can forgive my raging narcissism!
Nyx <3
