Part 5

Part 5

“Okay, before we start reading, there’s a couple points I thought we didn’t give proper attention to last time.”

“Yeah, I was kind of distracted by Lily.”

“Did you know she actually called me? I think she’s got a crush on me.”

“Wow, I wonder if-wait no, dang it. Vic, we’re getting distracted again.”

“Okay! Refocusing! Points we missed.”

“Like Marcie’s strategy for pulling Lauren and Marel into her council rather than making them her sex slaves. Missed opportunity, there.”

“No, it’s actually brilliant. Cyrus of Persia employed a similar tactic on the Medes.”

“...She made Marel eat her own son?”

“That’s...no. No, that’s Astyages and Harpagus.”

“Oh, sorry. Different story.”

“Same story, different part. After Cyrus defeats Astyages, he incorporates most of Astyages empire into his own and lets Astyages retire with a bunch of gold. I meant Marcie’s doing the same with Crazy Blue.”

“And no one eats their own son?”

“...No, Sam.”

“Oh.”

“Also there’s some brilliant wordplay in the chapter where Marcie tortures Gina. Gina’s POV chapters repeatedly refer to Marcie as ‘cow.’”

“And as she’s being...well, impaled, Gina manages to say ‘Cow...’ before Marcie laughs it off, saying it’s unoriginal. Then Gina finishes her statement with ‘...ard.’”

“Really neat how that offhand detail set up expectations for us and then betrayed them.”

“Yeah, good literary stuff.”

“Alright, let’s get into the new stuff!”

Part 5: Chapters 60-74

Reading Music: BGM

(I’ve been waiting to use this song since I started)

“Okay so we have Gina finally getting the tattoo, and having to show it to the whole school on stage. I like staged stuff, very theatrical, but kinda tame for being 60+ chapters in.”

“Yeah, if it were me I’d have had her tied to an exercise machine, ordering her to strip when her reps slow down.”

“Vic, sometimes you say things that both arouse and concern me.”

“You say that like it’s my problem.”

“Moving on, we get to Rina’s punishment. Basically assisting with a threesome and then getting a long horrible spanking.”

“There’s a line here about punishing someone enough to forgive them that…it feels fascinating to consider. The people who hurt or betray us, if we could punish them to a level where we’re comfortable forgiving them…it’s obviously not something we get to do in life, but where to draw that line? That’s a fascinating thing to ask.”

“It feels wrong to me. Like I spend every spare hour I can fighting those who would hurt others. Do I think about getting ****? All the time. But it feels like it’ll feel good in the short term and then I’ll regret it.”

“**** is the best. Especially if it’s really twisted and humiliating. It’s the forgiveness part of it that gets me. Like a medieval flagellant.”

“…I’m making a mental not to never prank you.”

“Smart little puppy, you are.”

“Next is a very sexy bit of Marcie creating a positive feedback loop of arousal and then forcing Gina to get permission from her to masturbate. The sexiness isn’t just from the usual stuff here, there’s also a lot of great chemistry between these two.”

“Marcie and Gina are a really great couple.”

“All right. Time to talk about it.”

“It feels like too soon and too late all at once.”

“This part of the story…broke me. I felt so emotionally drained from it. It was like someone holding your most prized possession over a storm drain.”

“It’s fucking rough. Lindsey gets Marcie alone and, box cutter to her throat, demands she call in Gina. There’s a very dramatic confrontation on the roof of the school. Gina tries to slice her chest open to appease Lindsey and save Marcie, but she can’t because of the order against self harm. Marcie admits she loves Gina, even knowing who she is.”

“And then Lindsey pushes Marcie off the edge of the school building, where she falls and cracks her head on the pavement below. The last orders she leaves for Gina would make it impossible to forget about her, constantly aroused, never able to find release.”

“This…I can’t imagine a more horrible thing to happen to these characters I’ve grown so attached to. I I’ve wanted these characters to be happy since I started this story. After 74 chapters, to have this happen is devastating.”

“I just…damn. I was so harsh with Gina. Maybe I misjudged her.”

“And I guess Marcie was the best shot Gina had for redemption.”

“It just feels so abjectly cruel.”

“Oh hey, thought that was the last chapter. Guess there’s more, Victoria. Want to finish it next time?”

“Yeah. I’m sad but also glad I read this far. Thank you, Sam. You’ve made this a lot of fun.”