quixerotic
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Vaught - WIP - Chapters 18-20(Ending)
🕑 Added 2023-08-03 20:44:27 +0000 UTCLydia's fate revealed. Elizabeth, Abby, and Greg embrace the consequences of all they've done. And loose ends are tied up.
Hi all. The first draft is in the bank at ~110,000 words. It is admittedly rough in more than a few spots, but the meat of it is there. And, worst case scenario, there's a lot of fucking, so it delivers on that at least. From here, I'll be making some initial quick revisions in the next few days so that I can give it to an alpha reader for some notes from fresh eyes. I also love to hear any feedback you all want to give, and you can always DM me if you want to keep it non-public. I'll then do the heavier editing to produce the second draft which will likely become the advance reader copy (ARC) which will be posted here some time in the next week or two.
Two other things to mention before I go into my thoughts behind the content of the last few chapters. First, patreon's notifications aren't the most reliable in the world, so I may not immediately see a message or notification. But, I do usually check the site at least once a day, so I'll see any activity, notification or not, eventually and I try to respond right away. Second, I've added another file to the Series Compiles folder in the dropbox. Shifter City Stories #1-7, includes two (numbers #6 and #7) which had evaded getting posted on this feed mainly due to my erratic record keeping.
Now then, if you'd like to read the ending of Vaught with virgin eyes, now would be the time to do so before I taint it with my thoughts on what I've written.
I mentioned before how I've tried to inject some breaths into these last few chapters. Five chapters of sex, hopping from one pairing to another can get desensitizing. In 18, things come to an abrupt and intentionally harsh stop to achieve one of these "breaths". I think it works out and lets the focus center in on Lydia/Greg without distracting too much with how the others are reacting. Lydia also gets the most fringe changes. Initially I had a more in depth explanation of how and why she gets those, but I trimmed it down to a few casual sentences to keep things from bogging down.
19 is the final payoff for Elizabeth and Greg. I tried to walk a line between having Elizabeth retain some of her core identity while also letting her submit fully to Greg. It may need some bolstering in the spice to warrant it as a payoff to the primary antagonistic relationship in the story. It's tricky though because ultimately these two have always been attracted to one another, and Elizabeth's derision and judgemental attitude has been thoroughly disassembled by this point in the story. If, by comparison, Elizabeth had been the first sex scene "after midnight" then it could have been much more brutal and gratuitous, but that would have deflated the rest of the scene by taking out one of the main POVs.
20 is an odd duck. I needed to return to Maddock/Alice if only to find out where they disappeared off to. Leaving them as the heirs to Greg/Abby makes sense to me, but I may need to establish Alice's cunning a bit more explicitly in the her sleuthy chapters. I think Maddock plays out well. I had also considered an epilogue that gave a glimpse at a Christmas ball at the Vaught Family Dairy (a subsidiary of Milktec Industries). People from Farrs Post coming by to meet and mingle with the scantily dressed hucows, most of whom are four months pregnant.
I'll have more to say when the full draft is put together, but in the meantime, happy reading!
Comments
Quixerotic
All good feedback 1. Abby's changes were meant to be subtle since she does need to continue with her work. The fetish wear outfit was a way of enhancing her presence. Also, she doesn't get to play during the final set of scenes since the only viable pairings are with Greg or Benny. However, I agree that she evades the limelight too well in the final section. My first thought is to have her leave Elizabeth to think about things while she goes to find Greg in the shower. In that context, it can be revealed that her changes are tuned only to him and she gets a "bonus" change in that quick interaction. 2. Greg does come off as a "handled" animal through the last sequences. Staying in line with the previous shower scene idea, it would give Abby/Greg a chance to resolve their power dynamic in private and allow him to be more domineering when they're not alone. Having separated out the others to give Liz the stage at the end, shifting to Greg's POV to quickly revisit them each as he gives commands might be interesting. 3. I've already convinced myself that the epilogue chapter is necessary. I resisted it at first only because it was an easy way to smooth the edges of what I have currently.
Red Panda Seven
My thoughts on the final places where people ended up Amanda / Wet Nurse : Kinda fun interesting twist like the sapphiric twist to the one twin and spin on the entire hucow transformation. Lydia though weird in transformation was interesting but I had hoped for something else (see Abby) Liz I'm mostly down with given it was "her" story really Benny : Kind of wanted to see him explicitly bonded but helping out ; would have liked to see it where he was given to Liz but don't necessarily think it matters Maddock ; His ending with Alice fits and though odd Ch 20 works for me Alice : I see how putting her investigative mind to work helping Maddock sets up the enterprise to continue; part of me wanted to see her put to work for Milktec helping rat out issues. Mel : meh, she turned into a milker not really more to say. Greg : There seems to be a common story beat of "not knowing what Abby has gotten up to" with everything that goes on. Feels like after the scare with Lydia and everything else should be showdown of sorts with her to set clear boundaries. We get he was a scary person tamed by Abby and went with what she wanted, but I kind of hoped that the BULL would re-assert some of the Alpha in him and have him set boundaries and semi-reasonable limits for the time being. In my mind the reason they are doing this is to help smooth the transition of normalcy of the hucow world and be a "public face" of Milktech ( I might be painting the Norman Rockwell ideal of what a perfect Milktech Dairy would be a BULL with his herd and helpers ensuring the milk flows) Abby: I feel robbed a real transformation with her. Everybody else sort of has a metamorphosis and she is changed but we don't get to watch it happen. Honestly I wanted her to get one of the twins as her mad scientist apprentices / mini-me. Some part of me wanted Lydia to reject Liz in favor to be more like Abby as she's had the brains to boot but Liz had prevented her from pursuing it further. I'd like to see a 4 months later, only to catch up and see where people are, with Alice/Maddock taking an active role in the logistic operations, how the dairy is working, a party at the plantation and just to see the down-trodden Senator deflated and defeated. But I sort of want to see what the staff who returned after things settled is like. The few women who perked up seeing the milking equipment in hopes of returning as cows and the others working away as if everything was normal.
