Monday, March 06, 2017

H-space MGB Profile: Hunting Arachne

Name:  Hunting Arachne
Type:  Arachne
Habitat: Rocky terrain.  Mountains.  Caves.

Description:
A type of spider-girl.  At a distance she looks like a naked human woman riding a giant spider.  Closer inspection reveals both are parts of the same organism, with the head and torso of the woman replacing the head of the spider.  The woman appears to have truncated vestigial legs that taper to points after about a third of thigh.  These house and hide venom-filled fangs.

Her upper body is dark-skinned with silver hair and looks fully human aside from three sets of additional jet-black eyes located on her head.  Unless seen close up, it is easy to mistake these additional eyes for jewellery.

The lower body is brown and resembles the agelenid spiders found on Earth, albeit on a considerable larger scale.

Attack Strategy:
This type of arachne is an active hunter.  They produce webbing, but use it as ropes to cast at and entangle prey rather than building webs.  Once they catch a man (It is always a man.  Unlike other HSIOs, hunting arachnes show no interest in women) the arachne will wrap them up in a cocoon.  This silk is coated in a mild aphrodisiac.  Venom glands within the false legs contain a much stronger aphrodisiac and the arachne injects it into her prey to place them into a state of sexual hyper-arousal before beginning to feed.

Outwardly, feeding resembles copulation.  The arachne will get her prey aroused and then insert their erection into her false vagina.  This orifice is her true mouth and connected to a series of powerful sucking stomachs in her abdomen.  She stimulates her prey to ejaculation and then slowly pumps out all their fluids while they are in a helpless state of sensual bliss.

Countermeasures:
This type of arachne is fast, agile, and especially dangerous in broken terrain where they can attack from a multitude of angles.

Their resistances are comparable to similar HSIOs.  The cuticle is resistant to small arms and they have some limited regenerative capabilities.  Chainsaws and/or flamethrowers are recommended for fighting this type.  It is also advised to engage them in open areas rather than seeking cover.

Threat Level:
Moderate.

Fast, agile, and extremely difficult to handle at close quarters.

Sunday, March 05, 2017

H-space MGB Story: Hunting Arachne

PFC Stewart Peter Bate had thought the spiders would be okay so long as you weren't stupid enough to fall into their webs.  He'd been in H-space long enough to hear about and even see firsthand some real crazy shit.  Giant spider-women.  Sure, whatevs.

What they hadn't told him about—and Bate was supremely pissed about this—was the spiders that chased after you and threw ropes of sticky silk like they were cowboys lassoing rogue steers.  They also hadn't told him about how quick they were.  Or how accurate they were at throwing their sticky ropes of silk.

Or how damn sneaky they were.

Bate stood with his back to a crumbling wall.  Finding the ruins had been a surprise.  No one knew who'd built them or what they were doing here.  H-space was weird like that.  Explo teams had reported coming across strange structures left in the middle of nowhere as if they'd been transplanted here from another world.  These ruins were old.  Whoever built them was no longer around and hadn't been for a long time.  Maybe the spider-women had eaten them.

He knew she was out there, stalking him.

He strained to hear any sounds—the telltale tic of a chitinous spider leg on stone, or maybe the little rattle of displaced gravel.  Nothing.  How could something so big move so silently?  It wasn't right.

She was the last one.  He was the last of the squad.  The other spiders had got the rest.  Poor bastards.

Bate paused behind the rock wall to get his breath back and wonder how the fuck he was going to get out of this.  To his right was an open square floored with stone blocks.  On the other side of the square was a broken arch standing out on its own.

Bate was fast.  Back in college he'd been county champion at the 100m sprint.

The spiders were faster.  She'd run him down long before he reached the broken arch.

To his left was a maze of rubble and crumbling stone walls.  The spiders could climb walls just as well as their tiny cousins back on Earth.  What was an obstacle course for him would be a racetrack for her.

It was still his best choice.  The derelict walls would provide some form of cover.  If he could sneak through without her seeing him...

A shadow fell over him.

Bate looked up into the smiling face of the spider-girl.

"There you are," she said.

If you didn't know any better, the spider-girls kinda looked hot.  Her skin was a rich coffee-brown color and looked flawlessly smooth.  Her exposed breasts were full and round and topped with perky dark-brown nipples.  She had silver-white hair that was cut short in a bob that extended to just below her pointed elf-like ears.  The only blemishes to her otherwise beautiful face were shiny black orbs attached to her forehead and temples.  It was easy to mistake them for jewelry... until they blinked.

And now Bate didn't have a choice.

He turned tail, put his head down and sprinted across the open square as if his life depended on it.  Which it did.  Abstractly he reckoned he'd probably just smashed his PB.  Not that it did him any good.  The broken arch was still in the distance when he felt something wet and sticky strike him in the center of his back.  He carried on running but now it felt like he'd been attached to a bungee cord.  His forward momentum slowed to the point it was like trying to charge through thick mud.  He hit the limit of his tether's elasticity and came to a halt.  He reached out despairingly for the arch that was out of reach of his imploring fingers, then he was yanked backwards.

The spider-girl caught him.  Bate had resolved to not go quietly if one of these bastards ever caught him.  He thrashed and lashed out.  It was like fighting a hurricane of scissoring limbs and drifting strands of sticky silk.  Bate's clothes and kit were neatly sliced away and then his naked body was spun around while she wrapped him up in sheets of sticky wet silk.  All of him was cocooned aside from his face.

Because she wanted him to see, Bate realized.  Sadistic bitch.

She smiled at him as she squatted down on top of his cocooned body.  Bate saw her mix of human and arachnid from up close.  It was far worse than had she been completely alien.  It looked like a giant spider had no head and instead a buxom brown-skinned female amputee was sitting in its place as if she was riding some kind of exotic wheelchair or chariot.  That was Bate's brain trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.  Spider and woman blurred together at the join.  Chitin plates extended from the body of the arachnid and up the sides of the woman.  Her leg stumps were like one of those trick rabbit-duck pictures.  One moment they resembled the leg stumps of a double amputee, tapering to a point.  The other they looked like the mouth parts of an enormous spider.

Rider and spider were one.

Rider and spider had always been one.

What the fuck was wrong with this fucked up dimension?

"How's that?" she asked.  "All wrapped up and comfortable?"

Bate briefly flexed against his bonds before realizing it was hopeless.  She'd wrapped him up as tight as a hapless fly caught in a spider's web.

"Fuck you," he said to her.

The spider-girl laughed.

"Patience," she said.  "We'll do plenty of that later."

She ran a hand over Bate's silk-wrapped form.

"Oh, but our little game of hide'n'seek has got my juices going."

Curved fangs popped out of the leg stumps that were not leg stumps.  A droplet of pink fluid formed at the tip of each.

Bate's eyes widened.  Forget her human appearance.  She was a spider.  She was going to inject him with her venom and suck out his insides.  And there was nothing he could do about it.

"Fuck you," he re-iterated.

Bate was determined not to go out a pussy.  It was all he had left.  He wouldn't beg.

"Ah, so eager," the spider-girl laughed.

Her poison fangs sank into Bate's sides.  There was a brief prick of pain and then...

ooh

Warmth bloomed up inside him in expanding clouds.  It was like she'd injected him with opiates... and something else.  All his tension and fear melted right away.  He relaxed and then a different kind of tension gripped him.  He felt strange and antsy.  Hot.  Horny.

"Normally I'd wait for the aphrodisiac soaked in my silk to take effect," she said.  "But you've made me all wet.  I can't wait."

Blood surged down to Bate's cock.  The spider-woman must have spared that part of his body when wrapping him up.  His erection started to rise without hindrance.  She wrapped her hands around his manhood.  In contrast to her alien, arachnid appearance her hands were warm and soft.  She spat on his cock and used it as lubrication as she pumped him harder and harder.

Bate watched on in a confused stupor.  He'd thought she meant to eat him.  This he didn't mind.  She knew tricks with her fingers that had Bate moaning in pleasure.  No, he didn't mind this at all.  Even being wrapped up in the silk cocoon felt okay—kinky, but comfortable kinky.

If he'd known she was going to do this he wouldn't have run away.

The girl smiled at him as she pumped his dick.

"Much better," she said.  "Now we can fuck."

The plates of chitin guarding her crotch slid aside to expose the hairless folds of her pussy.  Her labia were plump and red with engorged blood.  They parted to reveal a red tunnel slathered with her juices.

Bate trembled with anticipation.  Even though he could clearly see it wasn't a typical human pussy he didn't care.  He felt so hot and horny he needed to cool off.  And the only way to cool off was to douse his boiling-hot cock in her wet sex.

Which he couldn't do because his body was tightly cocooned in silk.  The woman knew it and teased him with her sex.  She moved over him and pressed down enough for the plush lips of her sex to encircle the swollen head of Bate's cock, but not enough for him to penetrate her.

Bate felt so hot and horny it overwhelmed everything else.  He moaned in frustration at not being able to thrust up inside her.

The woman laughed.  "Don't worry.  Arachnes are accustomed to their lovers being bound.  My pussy will bring you to ecstasy and you won't have to do a thing."

An organ expanded within her and the resulting suction it generated through her vagina drew Bate's cock up into her with enough force to lift his hips up off the floor.  The position was uncomfortable, but Bate wasn't held in it for long.  The spider-woman had proved her point and lowered her body so Bate was resting on the floor with her lying on top of him.

Her sex was tight and muscular.  Muscular enough that it might have been uncomfortable, even painful, had her walls not also been thick, padded and soft.  It felt like his cock had been wrapped in and squeezed by a big plush cushion.  The arachne didn't move up and down on top of him.  She let the internal motions of her vagina do all the work—squeezing, tugging, sucking.

Oh fuck, that felt incredible, Bate thought.

He let out a surprised gasp.  Again something had expanded within her and Bate's member was gripped by a rippling suction that drove his senses wild.

"It feels like you've got a mouth down there," he said.

What was this sensation?  It was amazing.

The woman gave him a knowing smile.  "I'm a spider.  Our lovers can't move when we've wrapped them all up, so we... hnh..."

She flexed something within her.  The thick fleshy walls of her sex contracted around Bate's cock.  He felt that same powerful suction, but this time it was focused on his cock... down inside his cock... inside him.

"...suck the cum right out of them."

Bate was trembling all over.  His cock throbbed inside her.  Her pussy squeezed back making him throb even harder.  He hadn't so much as twitched his hips and yet he was already bursting to shoot his load.  He'd been with a hooker that had a similar technique, but what this H-space woman was doing to him was far beyond that.

"Just like... hnh... this," she said.

It was like she was taking a deep breath and that breath was Bate's cock.  And then it was his cum.  Bate felt a tingling, trembling sensation all over his body that concentrated down into his loins until he could hold it back no longer.

"Yes, let it out," the woman hissed as Bate groaned and erupted inside her.

She lay on top of him and wrapped her arms around his cocooned body in a tight hug.  Her segmented legs formed a cage around his lower back, buttocks and legs.  She pressed her lips against his in a sloppy kiss.  Her taste was strange... bitter.

Bate's orgasm was long and powerful.  One, two, three, four, five strong throbbing pulses as he unloaded his balls.  Her sex tightened around his throbbing member and formed a fleshy cuff.  As her mouth worked against his he felt other workings deep inside her sex.

What was happening down there?  Bate's semen was pulled from him faster than he could spurt it into her pulsing sex.  It felt like... gulping?

It was hella intense, like nothing he'd ever experienced.  A few more throbs and Bate finally felt like his tap was running dry.  It left him a jangling, exhausted, but happy wreck.

The spider woman sank her fangs into his sides and held them there.  Bate shuddered and gasped into her moist lips as she poured her aphrodisiac venom into him.

"You were right.  I do have a mouth down there," she whispered in his ear.

Her muscular sex contracted and tugged him rhythmically.  The sucking organ deep within her spider abdomen throbbed with the same rhythm as she sucked a second powerful ejaculation out of him.

This would be the longest orgasm of Bate's life.  It would also be his last.

"I'm a spider," she whispered.  "I suck all the juices out of my lovers... my prey."

The sucking organ in her abdomen pulsed as she drew Bate's juices out of him.  Thanks to her venom it was his precious bodily fluids he was ejaculating, not semen, but the pleasure was the same.

"But I am a kind spider.  My prey feel only bliss as I suck their fluids out of them."

Bate barely heard her.  He let out a little ah of ecstasy with each pulse.  The arachne could have dragged it out longer, but they were out in the open and exposed.  She sucked him dry with great lusty gulps until his eyes clouded over and he let out a final rattling sigh.  Finished, the arachne murmured contently as she stroked her now full abdomen.

"Did you enjoy that as much as I did?  I think you did," she said to Bate's wizened face.

She kissed him on his cracked lips before carrying his cocooned and dried-up husk back with her to her lair.  It wouldn't do to leave it out in the open where it might frighten future lovers away.

Wednesday, February 08, 2017

A Brief Roundup on Recent Monster Girl Hentai Games

There's been a few interesting Succubus/Monster Girl hentai games released recently.  Normally I'd review each separately, but I'm trying to focus more on writing fiction at the moment.  Also, I've still yet to complete some of these, and I don't like writing reviews of games I haven't completed.  Maybe I'll come back with full reviews later, but for the moment here are my initial impressions.



The animations are of course sumptuous.  However, this fourth instalment didn't really click for me.  The main appeal of this series has always been the various wacky and gross Bad Ends.  I think I might have got too accustomed to the craziness, and once the game loses that surprise factor the law of diminishing returns sets in.  The game is also not complete as they didn't finish it in time for their scheduled release date.  That means there is more content on the way.

If you're really into vore, the game is still a compulsory purchase.  As for me, I'll wait and give it a fuller look when the last remaining content is added.



This is a remake of D-Gate Camel's earlier action-Vore game.  When I first heard about it I wasn't sure if it was necessary.  Then I played the demo and got more excited.  The pixel art and animations are gorgeous and it plays well as an action-platformer in its own right.  Vore, again, is the main focus, but there are enough sexy monster girls to make up for the lizardmen, giant salamanders and other weirdness.

The Bee Queen boss fight is almost worth the price of the game on its own.  Stunning and hawt as hell.

(Note to self - write a Bee Queen story.)



I don't know if this is made by the same people that made Succubus Quest, or a group that was heavily inspired by that game.  Either way the artwork is gorgeous even if the monster girls are a little vanilla if you're used to games like Monster Girl Quest (This might be a positive for some people).

This is an RPG where you recruit succubi and other monster girls to fight alongside you in sex battles.  It's unusual for this genre in that there are no Bad End scenes.  The reason for this becomes apparent with translation.  The erotica comes from the range of sex moves each succubus has and the range of combinations would require more artwork than would be reasonable to expect from a low-budget indie H-game.

One thing I do recommend is picking up the partial English translation from over here.  Without it I don't think the game is playable unless you're proficient at reading Japanese.  Auto-translators can't keep up with all the sex-combat dialogue and I'd originally written this off as unplayable until I found the partial translation patch.

The game is pretty big for a H-RPG and I'm currently stuck in a forest section with changing exits, so I can't comment on the whole game.  I've liked what I've seen so far, even with the lack of actual sex scene artwork/animations.  There is a section of your "home base" where you can have "friendly" sex battles with succubus allies.  Standing on a bed and shouting "Come at me" to a trio of lusty succubi plays out exactly as you might expect. :)

Monmusu Quest #1 [Side Story: Succubus Illusion (Fantasy)]


Yet another spin-off based on torotoro resistance's awesome Monster Girl Quest.  Yet another disappointment, I guess.

It's hard to judge this against expectations.  On the one hand you get some awesome, hawt H-scenes of Luka being sexily taken advantage of by various succubi.  On the other hand, at fifteen minutes it's very short and barely even touches on whatever plot is running behind the scenes.  Luka and Alice are cleaning out some succubi, one of the elder succubus gods hinted at in the Paradox game intervenes with some kind of reality-warping magic and then it's mucho snu-snu for Luka.

What you get is a mass-orgy succu-draining scene, followed by a multi-succubus gang-bang on Luka, then a scene with Erubetie, and finally a scene with Alma Elma.  Erubetie behaves a little too vanilla for a slime queen (pink pussy?  I don't think that's right...) and the voice acting for Alma Elma is a little weird if you're used to the game, but not that out-of-keeping with her character.

I don't know enough about anime to know whether what we got is what you'd expect from a small studio or a shameless cash-grab on a popular IP.  Personally I think it's a little pricey for what you actually get.  Don't get your hopes up for this one.

Succubus Prison ~House of Lewd Demons~


Expectations were high on this based on the demo.  It delivers.  This has maybe the best succubus sex-draining scenes I've seen in any H-game.  The artwork is good and the limited animation is enough to give the scenes extra life.

As a game it's best described as a puzzle game with the interface of a typical JRPG.  You play a protagonist trapped in a house with three succubi.  The goal is to sneak around and find all the items needed to escape.  If the succubi catch you, lethal snu-snu ensues.

Unfortunately the game is a little buggy, with some events not triggering correctly.  There is also a problem with text-hookers.  I was able to play the initial version (1.00) with AGTH okay, but after they upgraded it to 1.01 I couldn't hook AGTH to it without the game crashing.  Other players have reported similar problems and I don't know whether this has been fixed.  On a more positive side, the game appears to have attracted a lot of attention from Western succubus fans, so there's a decent chance we might see a fan translation at some point.

Anyway, that's a round-up of the various H-games that have distracted me recently.  Time to get back to the mystery Barry Lyle novel.  I have my own hot succubus scenes to write... ;)

Saturday, February 04, 2017

Updates for February

It's February.  I was hoping to kick off this weekend with a new H-space story and profile.  The story isn't quite ready, so I'm going to put that back to next week.  The reason it's not ready is I've found a nice novel idea to run with.  It was originally going to be a mini-series for another publishing platform, but I was never able to find time to write it last year.  The last couple of weeks I found some enthusiasm for that story and it seems to have legs at the moment.

I'm not going to give any more details as my enthusiasm on writing projects tends to wax and wane fairly randomly.  After a scratchy last year where I tried to push things when I didn't have enthusiasm for them, I'm going to embrace ChaosWriting a little harder this year.  Basically, if I have enthusiasm for a particular project, I hammer the hell out of it and try to get down as many words as possible as quickly as possible.

So nothing concrete there yet, but if it continues to be promising, expect introductions to some sexy new succubus characters in a few months time.

Because I saw some comments asking for it, here are the other things that are currently at the top of my writing TODO list.  Nothing is guaranteed here, you all know how sketchy I am at keeping to solid schedules by now.

Sandwiched by
This was supposed to be a monthly thing ran over a year.  I was thinking of restarting from January, but then decided the best was to get back to the monthly schedule (or rather get them done far enough in advance that I can keep to the monthly schedule).  Sandwiched by Stomachs was the planned fifth instalment, so May is the tentative target for that one.

The reason I want to get into habit of getting one out a month is because Okasare Kenny was originally intended to be a series of novellas spread over a year - but I ain't doing that unless I'm confident it won't stall and slip behind schedule.  If I finally sort my unreliability out, expect that for 2018.

Succubus Summoning 301
This is the second novel I want to get done this year.  I have a rough idea of the first couple of chapters and initial plot point to resolve (the one left dangling from 201), but not the rest as of yet.  The second half of this year is where I want to get this up and running again.  I haven't decided whether to post the chapters on Literotica, but given that 201 (and 101) is still selling quite well on Amazon, I don't think it hurts to post the series online first.

H-Space Monster Girl Bestiary
I still don't have a clue on how to get any money from these stories, but as long as the other books are selling well, that will keep me going until I figure out how to best convert these into a nice book form.  I missed my schedule for this weekend thanks to a lingering bit of winter illness crud and various other distractions.  I think my best strategy for these is to write them in bursts when I get the inspiration, but post them no frequently than every two weeks.  I was going to post a story that reveals some of Bate's background, but people seem to be enjoying coming up with theories to explain what's going on, so I'll hold on that for a little longer.  It also gives me more of a chance to get the story right.  And I really want to get this story right.

Next Short Story Collection
I'm about due to put out one of these.  The main problem is that short story collections sell abysmally and I haven't been writing 5K word short stories of late.  This is something I want to fix at some point if only to start getting a few contest entries up on Literotica again.

Also, once you go past Christmas, Valentine's Day and Halloween, it gets a little awkward to maintain the naming and have a story to match.

(I was thinking of having some fun and writing A Succubus for Social Justice and lampooning everyone's favourite online idiots.  Things are a little too heated now, though.  I'm a middle-of-the-road apolitical kind of guy, and I'd like to stay that way.)

There are other reasons why I want to get the collections moving again, and it also links up with the H-space bestiary.  This one will probably have to wait a while though.

Mystery Nicole Novel
aka the novel I thought I'd be writing for the first part of this year.  The idea is still good and as soon as I've got the enthusiasm back I'll be back to writing one of the hottest sex scenes I've ever thought off (Nicole + friend, one lucky guy).

Jackson in HRPG-World
I have half of a novel here.  I really should write the four other stories (and additional shorts) and make it into a book so I can make some lovely sweet cash.  That world is also decidedly less grimdark than H-space (so far...).  I don't know why I keep not getting around to writing Jackson in HRPG-World 5.  I'll probably bounce to this if everything else gets gummed up.

And that's sort of a rough plan of what I think I'm going to be writing this year.

I say rough plan.  I'm just as likely to suddenly have a really cool idea and suddenly hare off and write that for a month or so.  I'm not the most consistent on these things, but as long as new stories/chapters keep rolling off the production line I'm happy - and we could definitely do with a few more of those after a slow start to 2017!

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Updates and the H-space MGB in 2017

My original plan was to hit 2017 running, and that happened... if you count tripping on your shoelaces and faceplanting on the ground so hard you knock the Earth out of orbit.

Ugh.

I was going to go back to logging word counts on Twitter.  As you haven't seen any word count tweets on Twitter you can assume January has not been a productive writing month for poor Hydra.

There are reasons for this - a bad medical diagnosis for a family member (it was expected), other work on the side eating up time, a bout of winter flu striking just when I thought I'd cleared it all - but I won't bore people with the details as they're irrelevant.

I have been considering what to do with the H-space Monster Girl Bestiary.  On the one hand, I really like how the background stuff is shaping up and how it slots into the wider universe I've hinted at in other stories.  On the other, the short stories have been gradually creeping up in length to the point I find it hard to keep to the weekly schedule and get other things written.

The and is the important thing here.  I enjoy writing the short H-space stories, but I can't for the life of me think of how to properly monetise them, and as vulgar as it is to talk about money, it is essential if I want to continue doing this.  Maybe Patreon?  It is something I've been considering, but I don't want it taking too much focus away from the novels and short story collections, which is what does pay the bills.  (And I definitely don't want to make readers wait as long for Succubus Summoning 301 as they had to wait for 201!)

January is pretty much a bust at this point, so I'll use what's left of it to work on putting a stockpile of new stories together.  My plan is to start posting new Bestiary stories from the beginning of February onwards.  The one change is I'll post new ones every two weeks rather than every week.  I have a strange relationship with self-imposed deadlines.  They're a great productivity aid for me up until the point when I get too close to the end of the treadmill and then everything locks up.  A fortnightly schedule might avoid that problem as well as giving me adequate time to sink my teeth into longer projects (like Succubus Summoning 301 and mystery Nicole novel).

So, the H-space Monster Girl Bestiary isn't going away.  You don't need to worry about it suddenly going on hiatus (like some other projects I'm also eager to rescue this year).  I have too many monster girl ideas for starters!

The other thoughts I'm having is how to give the setting a little more depth.  As you might have gathered, I love writing me some death-by-snu-snu, but it does have limitations if the humans are killed on sight in every new region they enter.  I think it's time to give the poor beleaguered soldiers some "friends".

No, this probably won't turn out too well for them.  ðŸ˜ˆ

Anyway.  I'm still alive, but expect January to be quiet with some kind of normal service resuming in February.

Monday, January 02, 2017

Horror Movie Review: SiREN

I don't normally review movies, but I saw this one a couple of nights ago and thought it might be of interest to succubus/monster girl fans.



Four dudes on a hedonistic stag night get redirected to Ye Mysterious Strip Club Out In The Middle Of Nowhere, do some ill-advised and foolish things, horror hijinks ensue...  Okay, so it's not the most original of setups - think Vamp or From Dusk Till Dawn - but this trope has always been a good starting point for liberal splatterings of blood and tits.  Groom-to-be Jonah's (Chase Williamson) act of foolishness is to bust what he thinks is a sex-trafficked girl out of the basement.  However, Lily (Hannah Fierman) is a little more exotic than she first appears and what follows is a whole heap o' sex 'n' carnage (but mostly carnage).

The film can be seen as a prequel/sequel to the "Amateur Night" segment of anthology horror film V/H/S with Fierman reprising the succubus/demon character of Lily.  Although, given what we learn about Lily's race in this film and what happens, I suspect it's more likely we're seeing a different 'Lily' here.

I was pleasantly surprised with how the film played out.  The quartet of stags were refreshingly normal rather than teeth-grindingly douchey and there was a noticeable lack of characters being evil just for the sake of being evil.  Lily wants her chosen "mate" (an unwilling Jonah) and the mysterious club proprietor, Mr. Nyx (Justin Welborn having a lot of fun in the role), wants his property back.  It's a sign of good storytelling when the writer sets up a bunch of characters, lets them go, and the story plays out naturally as a consequence of the characters' competing goals bouncing off each other.

I also liked some of the other horror fantasy touches, such as the memory-extracting leeches, that hinted of more weirdness going on in the world than just a demon in the basement.  Everything seemed to fit together for a reason rather than things happening for the sake of having cool fx on screen.

On the negative side, this type of film is best when playing to the baser emotions and SiREN is maybe lacking in power here.  It has the sex and strippers you'd expect of an erotic horror, but it doesn't quite have the raw heat of something like Basic Instinct.  The same is true for the horror - not enough gore and shocks for your hardened gorehound.  And as much as I like seeing main characters not be the usual one-dimensional jerks, it does mean you lose that vicarious pleasure of watching jerks meet horrible ends that other films of this type rely on.

Overall I enjoyed the film mostly for how the plot played out.  I didn't find it massively erotic, but Lily is adorable for a blood-splattered, bollock-ripping waif from hell.

Isn't she just adorable...

"I like you."