Unleash by GeorgeGlass
(Spoilery review warning!)
I really enjoyed this! Two strands woven together here to make a great little story. There’s enough background there to show how things used to be, how they are, and how things’ve got desperate enough for them to try these new drugs.
Sam and Freddie going at it like that is hot as fuck. There felt like some echoes of your pair from ‘Kiss and Make Up’ with their previously suppressed lust just bursting out, but they’re distinctive enough characters to have their own thing going on. This whole bareback incest thing is super hot fantasy stuff anyways,
Then, young Jenny, sitting there. The stark obliviousness of it has a bit of a creepy edge. Can’t tell which way the drug is going to affect her at all, and even when her Daddy came in I couldn’t really tell what was going to happen – Halloween stories can have brutally unhappy endings – but when it turned out she’d just sat there and planned everything as best she could and carried it out – getting him to take the bat for prints, having the clock ready and the rest – it was really well executed. As was the Dad.
Other quick thoughts: Don’t often see maenads mentioned in this kind of context! With her father’s alcoholism it’s an extra fun usage.
Really loved the line about her feeling Freddy’s desire inside her too.
Jaydee
you are quite talented when it comes to gore <3 Its a marvelous story.
Here's to hoping we see more of Tommy and Sarah (In flagrante delicto) Your world building is amazing too.
Tricked by InvidiaRed
(Also spoilery review warning. I never learned to review properly.)
So, I’ll start with a bit of a gripe, I know, I know I’m a dumbass – I just figure if you’re writing a sequel to TCR’s Death Always Wins and using an extended reference to InBrightestDay’s lady who was also a spider and then a spider lady (…and if that’s a reference to the Van Dijk he used in The Woman in the Statue, it’s technically my horrible rapist lawyer character…) the cool thing to credit the sources so any readers can go see further adventures. Especially with it being a sequel for any readers wanted to go back and see what happened last year with the Casino! Chips! Corpses! Craziness! Clocks! C-Words! Anyway, gripe done…
…This line here, “The televised elder abuse of a senile geriatric as his political party, was dead set on throwing his corpse over the finish line if need be.” Made me laugh right out loud, partly because it’s funny anyway, but coming right after the genocide reference it was a hell of a mood swing. Perfect comic timing there!
…I heard Gabriel last got the horn with Mary. Ok, sorry, bad joke. Nice use of the affable yet threatening phone call there.
There’s some really nice descriptions here. Just about anything about the effects of oblivion really comes across well. Gotta love an unmaking void. The corpse puppetting description too was nicely grim. I’m really not sure how Lucifer got out of there… alive is possibly the wrong term. Existing? I guess it really is a Halloween miracle, especially If that cabbie really was a part time carpenter.
The epilogue felt a little bit un-related (in defence I may have misunderstood an obvious connection! I ain't the sharpest knife in the bulb socket) but it was fun to catch up with Duncan again!
“two poisoned suns would shine over Nippon” is just an awesome mention in a great line. Been 75 years and that shit still hits.
I shoulda said this to George too, but thanks to both of you for taking part and sharing stories with us. Sorry ‘bout the gripe at the start. Feel free to tell me to fuck off!
Tricked
Ah, a sequel to last year's story -- although I just glanced at InBrightestDay’s review, which points out that the first one was written by tcr. Interesting choice to sequelize that.
I still like the idea of the various underworld gods, old and new, hanging out together. The bit about some of them collecting very few souls these days was a good one.
And I'm guessing the cabbie was Jesus?
Unleash
Well, guess I can feel better about the brother/sister story I'll be writing for the Holiday anthology!
This was quick but very effective, and did a neat little thing by prompting and then answering a question. Given the Inc tag and the way Sam and Freddie immediately just grabbed each other when they took the drug while Jenny appeared to just zone out, I started worrying that they'd have discovered a new romantic relationship, but would still have been stuck with their abusive father.
And then we got to Jenny's part of the tale, and that was just the right combination of cool and dark for a Halloween story. I really liked how that was set up too, the little details like how Jenny was abused (with her father damaging her eye), having the alarm clock taken apart, her holding up the bat and then giving it to her father, and the greatest awesome/creepy line in the story:
Jenny came a half-step closer, standing over him. A drop of blood dripped from the screwdriver and landed on his cheek, splashing outward.
***
“It’s like they say, Dad,” she replied flatly. “An eye for an eye.”
I mean...that kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it?
If there's one criticism I have here, it's that the story's short length means we have to rely on some things just happening without much in the way of foreshadowing, referring in this case to the hidden attraction between Sam and Freddie, which we only learn about as it's...uh...unleashed.
Overall, though, this was a fun little piece that did an impressive shift in what I expected it to be, making me think it was just going to be smut before adding some more macabre elements.
Tricked
What have you done, Invidia!? You've crossed over that which was never meant to cross over! You've opened the seals and we're all doomed! DOOMED I TELL YOU!!!
*Ahem.*
Ok, so I started this review wondering whether or not you'd cleared this with tcr, seeing as this is clearly a direct sequel to Death Always Wins, albeit with some rather noticeable changes, one of which is that you have it in your Powdered Sugar setting (which admittesly was inspired by tcr's story, but wasn't a direct continuation). Then the story went in a direction that raised several questions, leading me to the assumption that this is the setup for a Duncan adventure (Duncan himself appears to have blacked out after the end of Temporary and then woken up here), and then...
Duncan's on a road trip to find Yua.
This is deeply flattering, and it would be very cool to see Duncan and Yua interact, but also might cause some potential problems depending on how it relates to the other stories. I am very interested in seeing where it goes, mind you.
Uh...sorry this wasn't more of an actual review of the story itself! I kind of got distracted when Yua was namedropped. The story itself feels more like the first act of something larger, which works in the sense that it makes people interested, but at the same time has the inevitable side effect of storylines here ending on cliffhangers (like whatever's going on with Lucifer at the end there).