Nyx Nyghtingale
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Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 08 - Reflection
🕑 Added 2024-03-16 03:54:11 +0000 UTCThe start of this chapter was one reason that I reworked the end of the last chapter. Had I gone with my original draft, the slightly more light-hearted shenanigans of "Help I'm on fire I guess would need to fuck" would have felt a little jarring.
Unrelated to that, this does mark the first time I call Amara's abilities superpowers. (At least I think it is.) It's a parallel I try to avoid when possible, just because I feel like I'm writing in a pretty different genre, and there's no way in hell (Pun intended) that Amara starts roaming the streets and fighting crime anytime soon. This isn't that story.
But, on a very exciting note, this chapter is a huge turning point for Amara! After her flaming fuck with Nick, she's now got a significant amount of control over her abilities! She can shapeshift, pull her demon bits in and out at will, it's a grand ol' time. There still might be things for her to learn in the future, but at least she can, y'know, leave the house. Which I hear is a good thing for a protagonist of a story to be able to do.
The scene right after is sadly much less triumphant. I was hoping to paint some mystery at the beginning, and honestly I was hoping this whole consequence would catch people off guard. Derek has a lot of shit to answer for, and I'm sure quite a few readers were jazzed to see him get torched, but sadly he's not the type to take that lying down.
This scene was also a great chance for me to show that Vee and Amara are honestly really good friends. I mentioned in a previous Reflection that I love showing the friendships between everyone, though Amara's friendship with Tessa took some pretty important steps after they learned about each other's identities. Amara and Vee, on the other hand, seem to have some pretty severe lies in the middle of their friendship. I'm sure that won't come to anything.
It was also a great chance for me to drop more church lore. If I've played my cards right, I'm starting to paint a picture of Vee's backstory, and the baggage she's bringing into this whole chain of events.
The last scene, with Tessa, let me do one of my favorite things! I love starting in media res, to me it makes the world feel a bit more organic. Like, there was clearly a whole conversation leading up to this one, and I hope that makes it easier to view all my wonderful characters as actual, fleshed out people with hopes and dreams. While it's true that all of them exist to serve the needs of the plot, at least on some level, I really hate when you're able to see the hand of the author moving pieces around just because a certain plot beat needs to happen. With any luck, that never happens with my work, as I'm hoping my strength lies in my characters.
We also see Tessa get pretty fired up about keeping everything a secret. I've got a lot of thoughts about her as a character, and we'll get to that sometime, but for now we're pretty laser focused on Amara's puberty problems.
A few important-ish lore drops pop up here as well. We get to see Tessa's telekinesis in action, but also start showing it's limitations, and we finally get some payoff for all the investigating our resident witch has been doing. I promise I'm not just cramming two gorgeous woman together for no reason, there is a point to everything they've been doing.
Random side note, but I honestly do a fair amount of worldbuilding behind the scenes. I'd say like, 90% of it will never see the light of day, but I always feel that it's obvious when a world has a sense of consistency to it. When I understand all the underlying concepts and factions, it makes it easier to introduce new elements without worrying about plot holes. Don't worry, though, I'll never turn into the author that spends 10 pages dumping the history of all creation on you.
Apart from that, we get to end the chapter with Tessa haphazardly fucking with magic and trapping herself under a bunch of vines. Not only was this a great chance to hint at Amara's enhanced reflexes (And maybe another fun thing :P) but it helps build a picture of why all these circles are here. In a more immediate sense, it just means that Tessa is a little tied up ;)
I actually had a few comments on Lit that had some incredibly accurate guesses about what could happen in Chapter 9. I have no problems being predictable, and honestly, sometimes that's a great sign that you're doing your job as a writer. People should be excited for what's coming! They should be able to piece together the clues and made informed guesses about your plot! Then, when they're right, they get to go "Ah HA!" and feel good about themselves!
Oh shoot, I think I accidentally stepped on a soap box for a second there. Um, ignore that last bit.
Nyx <3
