Overly Familiar Pt. 02 Ch. 07

Laila's screams grew faint.

The outside world turned dark.

Matt felt cold.

(A/N: Hello everyone! Hope 2021 has been treating you a little better than 2020 has. But you didn't come here for all that, so I'm going to get to nitty gritty as it were. Since the last chapter there's been quite a few things to respond to so this might be a bit longer than usual. Lol as always, feel free to skip it.

So let's see. What's first? Oh! Let's start with a quick one. Mara. She is in no way going to become a mindless slave, nor will any of the familiars... though I suppose Teri is pretty close, but you get what I mean. They will always retain their core personalities. I enjoy those quirks as much as you all do. The Mara punishment scene was more a case of Matt not giving direct orders often so when he does, he wants them followed. But he's not the kind of person who would order her enough that she'd lose herself.

TL;DR: Mara's a demon, she will remain demonic.

Now, for the sex scenes. I know technically only two people have complained about there being too much sex and not enough plot. But I'm assuming there are more of you out there who feel the same way. So let's see here. I guess I should start with the difference in format between part one and part two.

Part one was designed to be three chapters. A Mara-centric one, a Laila-centric one and a Teri-centric one. I knew where I wanted each chapter to end and I didn't stop until the chapter reached that point.

Now part two is structured entirely differently. If it was done the same as part one then the first chapter would be Mara's day, then Laila's day then Teri's day. But I wanted to take my time with this one. Each chapter is roughly around the 7k word mark. And when I get to that point, I cut it off when I feel it works as the ending of the chapter. As such I'm able to get a lot more world building and character work in. It's a much slower process which is why it will have way more chapters and... well... move slower.

That said, while it might not appear this way, I'm very particular of what sex scenes I put in these chapters. There's always a reason for them. There's either something important that's character oriented or I put some kind of world building/foreshadowing deal in there. Believe it or not the complaints about there being too much sex actually make me a little happy, because I was worried I was being too obvious about the stuff I was putting in them, but if they look like pointless sex scenes then I guess I hid it too well lol. Once this story is done, I'm very curious how many people will reread the whole thing and catch onto some of the things that I was subtly hinting at. Though sometimes it's not technically subtle. It's just information that won't make sense without the context, which I haven't given you yet.

However, I will admit that a few of the sex scenes are there purely because it makes logical sense for the fucking to happen in that situation. But I do write those differently from a normal sex scene and they tend to not be as long.

TL;DR: If I put in a sex scene, it's for a reason.

And finally, Alex! I do wish that I could ease your worry and tell you that this story will stay light hearted. But... no, Alex is absolutely going to come slamming into this story like the wrecking ball that he is.

But what I can tell you is that the way that I write Overly Familiar and the way that I write Corrupted Desire are very different and I won't change that. For example, in Overly Familiar, I acknowledge that Mara has been raped before but that's as far as I went with it as opposed to if she was introduced in Corrupted Desire, I probably would have gone into the messy details.

As a friend of mine once told me, Corrupted Desire is just a fundamentally more painful story to read and it's designed that way. Overly Familiar isn't designed the same way. So yes, the story will get darker in nature, but I won't revel in the darkness. That said, I probably will do some Corrupted Desire chapters that run parallel for those who would want messy details.

And finally, just like I said earlier with the sex scenes, any darker tones I use in this story will only be ones I feel are necessary to tell the story I want to tell. I can promise you I will not do any gore for the sake of it. Nor will I just kill and torture characters purely because Alex is there so I have to ramp up the angst.

TL;DR: This is inherently a story about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It's going to get darker, but not unnecessarily so. It will keep its tone for the most part.

I think that's everything. Happy Early/Belated Valentine's Day! Hope you're all staying safe and I'll see you in the next chapter! I left this one on a cliffhanger so I'll try to get the next one out faster than usual, but I can't make any promises. Work keeps me busy.)