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I give a small, exhausted laugh and sink bonelessly against his chest. "No, sir," I say. "But you may have ruined regular ones for me."
Arlon chuckles and strokes my wet hair away from my face. "Just wait until I give you both at once," he rumbles into my ear. "Then you can say I've ruined you."
I shiver and let my eyes slide closed. "I hope that's a promise, sir."
- COMMENTS
AletheaFaust6 months agoAuthorThanks for your comment, AC! I will always pardon tangents. I totally agree though - the whole realm of speculative fiction is hard to pin down, and I feel like terms are getting even more muddled as time goes on and authors continue to bend genres and subvert expected "sci fi" and "fantasy" tropes. I think magical fiction is a pretty apt description for this story. I try to write character driven stories, and definitely don't focus on any sort of "hard" magic systems. The rules for casting have some logic to them (I hope, at least), but I didn't want to make the rules of casting strict. At the Crux, magic is viewed more of an experimentation than a hard science. Everyone is still learning and exploring, and they're finding out new things about what magic can do constantly.
But I do remember when I sent Mastery out to my beta readers. I asked if it was too much - TOO explicit. Because sex is an integral part of worldbuilding, I feel like it's hard to find the balance of what is and isn't gratuitous. I'm glad it's still balanced on that front (though I hope you'd let me know if it's getting too much :P). I'll say that part 3 is looking to be more plot heavy which I'm really looking forward to. I love writing castings at the Crux, but Dom has to start venturing out into the real world eventually!
Anonymous6 months agoGreat writing; compelling characters; intriguing worldbuilding and lore; and engaging intimacy and sexuality.
Pardon me as I go off on another tangent, but I've always thought the classic divide between sci fi and fantasy is a very heavy handed example of trying to force a rather complex possibility space down into a simple binary. When broken down a bit, we find that there is plenty of reason to split science focused writing into the more fantastical - the usual example of science fantasy being Star Wars, where nobody really cares how the science based things work as long as they are internally consistent - and the true truer speculative fiction works, where the underlying science and the way it affects the setting is integral to the way the stories in that setting are told. Then, on checking the fantasy side of things, it's a bit of a clown car as we peel off magical fiction ("hard" magic systems and similar), historical fantasy (absent a true magical element, though it may have "potions" and "curses" as did our own history, and also historical fiction (which speculates either about the unknowns in actual history, or the potentials of an alternate history), leaving a much reduced scope for true [magical] fantasy.
Obviously the labels above do not sufficiently describe even the possibility space for stories typically lumped into "sci-fi/fantasy". In reality, this is best used as a sort of 3D space, with "magic", "science" and "history" forming a sort of cylindrical Venn diagram that can passably describe the combination of those three elements in determining a story's setting, with a "height" that describes the "fantasy" versus "fiction" (Harry Potter, for example, is heavily "magic" focused, but leans to "history" as well because of how it ties into the Muggle world and its history).
This story is magical fiction. Yes the magic system is not all that quantitative - but neither is cooking nor sex, the former of which provides a metaphor for how the disparate elements of casting combine to form a cohesive whole for a spell, and the latter is the core of casting. However, there is an important additional element to consider: sex.
Including sex as a core part of your magic system does not exempt you from the difficult balance of sex versus other story content - and while there is no true or right balance, as there is no right or wrong balance of setting type and fantasy/fiction division, there is typically a less forgiving spread on the preferences, and a complex curve of ideal sex to story ratio that depends on all the other elements of the setting and even the writing style.
The casting setup, though, as well as good writing, generous but not excessive kink, and compelling characters, has in my opinion placed this story in about as comfortable a space as I have ever seen a definitively sex-inclusive story.
Thanks for sharing!
-AC
