Saturday, May 26, 2012

Jackson in HRPG-World: 1-2 Puff-Puff Setback

The story continues...


Jackson in HRPG-World: 1-2 Puff-Puff Setback

“Welcome to the lair of Moréhâgg the succubus, adventurer,” horny fetish-bait said. “I’m going to enjoy playing with you.”

“And ima gonna give your face a good turkey-slappin’ wiv my penis,” Jackson said.

Jackson had given up bothering to say anything sensible. It was a JRPG. No one had more than three lines of dialogue and it didn’t matter what he said anyway.

Demonic perv-magnet pouted at him. “Wouldn’t you rather I sucked it instead?”

Eh?

No time to ponder what he’d thought she said. He felt that strange swirly dislocation that indicated he was about to enter battle. His vision blurred and then cleared. He was standing in the same location, but everything around him appeared crisper, as if he was seeing it all at a higher resolution.

That included the succubus.

Jackson smiled and shook his head. So predictable. Didn’t matter what age the game was aimed at, the dirty old developers couldn’t resist sneaking in an obvious fetish fuel character for them and their audience of adolescent boys to perv over. Jackson used to be one of those adolescent boys before he’d grown up and realized how sad it was.

Moréhâgg was worthy of a good perv. She looked like filth incarnate. She possessed the mountainous silicone-enhanced peaks of a porn actress welded to an impossibly thin wasp waist—the kind of figure that could only exist in hentai. Her costume wasn’t exactly there to preserve modesty. Her shiny purple top revealed more cleavage than it hid, and the glossy material was stretched almost to bursting trying to contain her abundant breasts. The eye-shaped clasp that held the thing together at her chest looked like it might pop at any moment. Most of her flat belly, including the little dimple of her navel, was exposed. Her long lithe legs were covered in kinky fishnet stockings that ran down to a pair of sexy stiletto heels. The stockings were attached to her waist with suspenders.

Fetish fuel. Pure filthy fetish fuel.

She was also the area boss. Jackson could tell—she had her own battle theme.

That was the other stupid thing. Every time he went into battle, music would start playing even though there wasn’t a single musician in sight. Usually it was something wibbly-warbly that was meant to be rousing, but instead sounded like someone farting through a tin in a bath full of semen. Moréhâgg’s music was different—slow and slinky. Dirty.

Wait!

Jackson noticed she wasn’t wearing any underwear. He looked between her legs and saw a neat little bar of trimmed pubic hair and the shadowy cleft of her pussy.

This was…unexpected.

He remembered her words before the battle had begun. Had she actually said what he thought he’d heard her say?

Moréhâgg stood next to the throne and gave her long red nails a bored glance.

“Are you going to do something, or do I have to wait here all day?”

That jerked Jackson to attention. Yes, it was his turn.

He charged forwards and slashed Moréhâgg across her ample chest. He felt the impact and Moréhâgg doubled up. Thirty-one flashed above her head in floating red numbers. Then she stood back up straight and Jackson saw no visible mark his attack had hit her.

None of his attacks ever did. Jackson had slaughtered hundreds of stupid gonks in the ruins above and in the countryside leading up to them and his blade was still as pristine and shiny as if it had been freshly forged. Kids’ game. No blood effects allowed here.

“Is that all?” Moréhâgg taunted.

Jackson knew he’d damaged her from the numbers he’d seen flash above her head.

She looked down at his sword.

“No wonder. You’re still using that? Why didn’t you get the better one at the last town?”

“Waste of money,” Jackson muttered at his toes.

Never buy weapons. There was always the same or better hiding in the next chest. That’s how JRPGs worked.

The demon girl threw a fireball at him and he smoothly dodged it. He didn’t know how much health she had left. Probably not much. The fetish fuel enemies were usually pretty flimsy, but they often made up for it with lots of annoying status-changing attacks. Best if he finished this quickly. Time to use…

“Oh, are you going to use one of your special attacks?” Moréhâgg asked. Her eyes shone with excitement.

Who was this? She was the first character Jackson had encountered that seemed aware they were in a world constrained by weird videogame rules.

“Come on, let’s see it,” Moréhâgg said eagerly.

Jackson took up a stance with his sword. He hated this part.

“Aww, are you embarrassed,” Moréhâgg said. “You know it doesn’t work if you don’t call it first.”

Jackson knew. Unfortunately.

“Super Slash,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

Stupid Japanese anime conventions. She was right though, it didn’t work unless he called it first. Jackson hated that. It always made him feel like the dorkiest Dork McDorkien.

The succubus put a hand to her mouth and giggled.

Flames flickered along the edge of Jackson’s sword.

Laugh this off, bitch, he thought.

He charged and hit her with an upward stroke that flung her backwards. Seventy-one flickered above her head in red numbers.

Yeah! That’s more like it.

“Like that, huh,” Jackson said. “After I beat you I’m going to use this ‘bad’ sword on you like a dildo. If I’m feeling nice I might even insert it hilt first.”

“Ooh, kinky,” the succubus said, standing back up with a smile on her full lips.

She threw another fireball. This time Jackson blocked it with his shield, taking no damage.

“But it’s your other ‘sword’ I’m interested in.” The succubus glanced down at Jackson’s waist. “Even if it looks a little small.”

What the fuck!

“Fuck you!” Jackson shouted.

He connected with another sideways slash and thirty-one flashed above Moréhâgg’s head.

“Fuck using my sword. I’m going to shove a hammer up there instead. No, one of my shields!”

Moréhâgg spun back around to face him. For all her exaggerated curves, her moves were as fluid as a dancer’s. She placed a long finger against her silky smooth cheek.

“You seem a very angry young adventurer. It’s time to use one of my special attacks. I think you’ll like it.” Her red eyes twinkled as she smiled at him. “How about it? Would you like to see my Puff-Puff attack?”


Come back next Saturday to see what Moréhâgg's special attack is. It's rather naughty...

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Jackson in HRPG-World: 1-1 Puff-Puff Setback

And we're off with a new mini-serial...


Jackson in HRPG-World: 1-1 Puff-Puff Setback

Ian Jackson swatted the last goblin-thing with his sword. It hit the ground, disappeared, the victory music played, and then Jackson was back in the stone corridor. The monsters left behind thirty-one pieces of gold.

Supposedly.

Jackson never saw it. He never did. The gold was always transferred automatically to his inventory. Currently he was carrying 1,936 gold coins. In his pockets.

That wasn’t all. He was also currently carrying twenty daggers, fifty arrows, seven swords, seven axes, three spears, eight wizard’s staffs, two hammers, three shields, five helmets, sixty assorted bits of armor, six pairs of boots, a whip, and seventy-two medicinal herbs. And this was before even considering the slimeballs and other weirdness he didn’t dare sell off in case it turned out to be useful later. In a rucksack.

It was kind of stupid when you thought about it.

Jackson tried not to.

It was a stupid world.

The corridor turned around to the right. He must be getting near the heart of the dungeon. Nothing had leapt out to commit suicide on the end of his sword for the last fifty paces.

The walls were made out of crumbling old stone, lit up at regular intervals with burning torches. Foul smelling water oozed out of cracks and dribbled down the walls. The corridor continued for maybe a hundred meters or so before turning right again. Jackson was more interested in the big wooden door situated in the right hand wall, about halfway down the corridor.

Such an obvious boss location, he thought. So predictable.

He walked down the corridor and stopped outside the door. It was big—more than two meters high and wide enough for two men to walk through abreast. It was also in considerably better condition than the rest of the ruins. The wood was bright red in color and the hinges were freshly polished brass.

This definitely led to the area boss.

Jackson paused and checked his status. The last fight had taken him up to level thirteen. He had some new skill points. He put them into Sword and noticed how the blade in his hand suddenly felt lighter. He cast Cure to take his health back to full.

A little over a week ago Jackson had been living a fairly ordinary, if dull, life as a software developer writing transaction processing systems for a bank. It was as interesting as it sounded, but it paid well and Jackson felt fortunate to have landed the job straight out of university. In evenings he spent his time playing console games and at the weekend he hit the bars to watch sports with the guys from work.

All that had gone to hell when he’d been sucked into a computer game.

It was a long story.

The ending was simple. Beat the game and he was out. No problem. Jackson was fucking shit-hot at computer games…

…but did it have to be a fucking Japanese Role-Playing Game?

Everyone knew fantasy JRPGs were the turdiest of turds in the gaming world. Well, apart from the old nerds that still went misty-eyed at the mention of Final Fantasy VII. At least in Tron, Garrett Hedlund had Beau Garrett in a skintight silver jumpsuit to drool over. Jackson had bug-eyed morons with memories that would shame a goldfish. On leaving the first village he’d managed maybe forty meters before a giant cucumber had sprung out of the undergrowth and attacked him with a spear.

JRPGs were fucking stupid, and he was trapped in one.

At least it would be easy. All JRPGs were. Kill monsters until you leveled up enough to kill harder monsters. Repeat until the end of the game. Whenever that was.

That was the problem with JRPGs, they dragged on for fucking forever. He knew from bitter experience. Those bastards had sucked up months of his life before he’d finally grown up and discovered GTA and real games.

Maybe he’d figure out some kind of strategic exploit. All these games could be broken in half once a smart player figured them out. The only problem was Jackson was still working through the dull-as-shit early stages. It had already taken him over a week to find this, the second dungeon.

At least he was at the boss.

Okay, let’s do this.

He pushed the door open.

On the other side was a large throne room. Gaily-colored silk banners adorned the walls. The whole room was a massive contrast to the rest of the crumbling ruins. A thick red carpet scrunched beneath his sandals as he entered the room. Impressive chandeliers and candelabra bathed the room in a warm glow. At the far end of the room a golden throne sat on a raised dais.

So predictable.

A sexy and extremely sluttily-dressed girl sat on the throne. Demon girl to be more exact. As Jackson walked up to the throne she stood up and purple-black bat wings unfurled from behind her back. As well as the wings she also had horns and a long slender tail with the classic spade-like tip.

Not a bad collection of pixels, if you were into that kind of thing.

“Welcome to the lair of Moréhâgg the succubus, adventurer,” horny fetish-bait said. “I’m going to enjoy playing with you.”

“And ima gonna give your face a good turkey-slappin’ wiv my penis,” Jackson said.

Jackson had given up bothering to say anything sensible. It was a JRPG. No one had more than three lines of dialogue and it didn’t matter what he said anyway.

Demonic perv-magnet pouted at him. “Wouldn’t you rather I sucked it instead?”

Eh?



A quiet start. Things will start heating up in part two next Saturday...

Friday, May 18, 2012

New manyeyedhydra mini-serial starting here this Saturday

I wanted to get back to the lighter tone of stories like "Slayer vs Succubus" and "Succubus Keep", and I picked up some inspiration from a discussion of JRPGs that was supposed to result in a short short story, but ended up being an average length short story. Rather conveniently, it breaks into four 1,000 word chunks and should fill the gap that would have been taken by previews for A Succubus for Freedom if the eponymous story hadn't delayed me finishing the whole damn thing by a couple of months (grr....)

I'm not sure whether this will be the start of a regular series, or just a one-shot. I threw someone into a JRPG and added an X-rated encounter because I am a sick and twisted individual that delights in taking previously harmless, if slightly dodgy, innuendo and pumping it up into full-blown hardcore filth. It should come across as an affectionate parody with lots of in-jokes, but if it devolves into something seedy and creepy, hopefully it will be entertainingly seedy and creepy.

Should start Saturday anyway, and I hope people enjoy it.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Big Chill in TVTroperLand

'ello, 'ello. What's 'appening 'ere?

TVTropes is an enormous wiki covering common storytelling devices and conventions. It's a fascinating resource for a writer as it's a comprehensive list of just about every plot device, twist, idea ever used in history. As a lover of the weird and exotic, I've also used it in the past to discover new shows, films, games and books I might never have heard of.

Although not anymore by the looks of things.

First I noticed something was wrong was when I tried to access the Monster Girl Quest page and was instead redirected to the Monster Girl Encyclopedia page. These are two similar, but completely different creations. One is a series of artworks and books by Kenkou Cross, the other is a hentai game created by Torotoro Resistance (although it does feature artwork by Kenkou Cross). To make matters worse, the Encyclopedia page now redirects to Daily Life with Monster Girl, a completely different series of work by a completely different artist.

I'm not totally sure what's happening. TVTropes appears to be in the middle of a big purge of anything referencing sexually explicit material. I found a few posts like this and a page with a list of the affected material. If this is true it would be a great shame.

Admittedly the old TVTropes was a bit of a jungle, but that was part of the charm. It was great to go hacking into the darker undergrowth and come out with a gem of a new series, film, book to follow. The internet needs its wild spots and quite frankly, a wiki that aims to be a compehensive handbook of storytelling devices yet omits anything related to sex is totally useless.

Internet. There is damage. Time to reroute.

EDITED TO ADD:

Mveculous tweeted me this link and I'm aghast at the level of stupidity on display:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13365137390A58421200&page=1

Being uneasy on the lolicon aspects is fair enough. Those profiles don't appeal much to me either. However, the follow-up posts on redirections are beyond stupid. Um guys, you do know these are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT creations you're trying to lump together? This is basically the same (and as idiotic) as redirecting Slayer and Meshuggah to the Metallica page.

If you want to cleanse the undesirables from your playpen, fine, but don't be stupid about it.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Reviews, Lovely Reviews (Me this time)

Reviews are like buses, wait ages for one to come along and then you get two in the same week.

Here’s a lovely one for A Succubus for Halloween on The Horror Fiction Review:

http://thehorrorfictionreview.blogspot.com/2012/05/may-2012-reviews.html

The horror writer in me that died over a decade ago might have unearthed himself and done a little jig after reading that. As a quasi-self-published author, I always have doubts about whether my work is actually good enough to see print. Reviews like this are great for kicking those bad thoughts back down into the cellar where they belong.

And a nice (and detailed!) one from Tera for A Succubus for Christmas over on The Succubi’s Tale blog:

http://www.succubus.net/blog/2012/05/04/a-review-of-a-succubus-for-christmas/

That one did remind me I’ve been neglecting the fun stories of late. I haven’t written anything like "Slayer vs. Succubus" for a while, something I intend to correct. Don’t worry. I’m not going to stop with the dark stories either. Balance is good. Always keep the audience on their toes. That way they don’t see it coming when you sock them in the guts…

I haven’t seen a big increase in sales after the reviews. That’s fine. Contrary to what some people say about us self-published ruffians, money is not our sole motivation. I’m having fun writing and I’m glad to see I’m not embarrassing myself with my efforts.

I think I might hold off on letting the folks know about the pseudonym for a while—not sure how they’d take to “kinky and depraved”. :D