The RA 3, Ch 10 (Patreon)

Are you sitting down? I hope you're sitting down. Here we are folks, the climax of volume 3 of The RA. It's got heart, it's got smut, it's got the presence of mind control and the absence of self-control. Something for everybody! We'll have one more chapter, I expect, for funsies and resolution and knowing me some irritating revelation to make everyone mad I'm not immediately launching into volume 4. There's also a new image that's... not perfect? But pretty good. Recommend waiting to check it out until the floor meeting section to avoid spoilers.

Some commentary below on my thinking as it relates to volume 3 that would spoil stuff, so go read first! 

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When I grokked (I used the word grok in here somewhere; someone just tell me I'm terrible so I can delete it in final editing) to the idea of this volume, I had a conflict without a prescribed end. I liked the idea of Spencer having to use his wits (such as they are) and charm to figure out how to be an RA to this particular group of hot and horny human beings. We had Tori to act as the fall guy, the Skyler White to Spencer, the one who knocks [to round them up for movie night], someone to be an annoyingly reasonable buzzkill for all the fun and interesting shit in the story.

I also wanted to do a little more defining of the Spencer effect, which hadn't even had a name before, exploring some of its parameters without turning him into a character sheet with uses per day of his powers. One of the defining aspects of the effect is, to my mind, its aftermath. It's not some mind control wand that, when girls break free, they return to themselves, horrified by the things they were forced to do. Instead, the effect is... college? It's being in a place full of young people and hormones, free of most oversight for the first time, experimenting with alcohol and sex and culture and falling in love and realizing a year later what douchebag your partner was. It's just trying things, and expanding your concept of who you are to accommodate these new things you've discovered you have within you to become. It changes you, often unpredictably, but it's not something where you wake up your junior year and howl in existential angst "WHY AM I MINORING IN FRENCH?!?!?!?!" At its best, it's surprising yourself, then running with this new version of you to see where it takes you.

So the conflict is, explicitly, women objecting to being objectified by a man with some small but not trivial authority over them. Worse, it's a charismatic man that a lot of people around the floor like, who'd "abused" his position in ways many of them enjoyed. Metaphorically, of course, it draws out all those fun (or are they tired?) questions of right and wrong, morals and ethics, which yes Ms. Carpenter we understand are distinct. It's one of the things I like about writing mc erotica, that in some ways the answers to those questions are so fucking obvious. Yes, it would be insanely wrong [if it were possible]. For my money, though, I find ethical quandaries with clear, certain answers pretty boring, and usually wrong.

It's easy to get bogged down in Spencer waffling around his competing priorities and perspectives. (We'll see how much makes it into the final cut when I'm doing 4 chapters a day and sighing in irritation at the volume of it.) Sexual coercion is wrong, but sex is good. This power came unasked, but it came anyway. Is there a difference in forcing someone to act in their best interest under threat of a policy write-up, and forcing them to act in their best interest because they want the reward of sexual gratification? Same question, but the community's best interest instead of the individual. Is it OK to enjoy enjoyable things when they're this laden with complexity? Do ends justify means? Does justification even matter, or are we just acting in the moment according to circumstance/values/agendas? 

There's a spectrum there, from making your romantic partner watch a horror movie even though they hate horror movies because this one is just so goddamn good, up to spiking a drink with magical sex tears to restore harmony to a community. I am so into exploring this spectrum, folks. We're all messy wonderful occasional hypocrites.

I knew there was no way I was going to end the story with Spencer bowing out, because I love this story and these characters too much to let them go when there's more fun to be had. Still, even selfishly forcing him to decide the way I wanted him to, I wanted to reflect all the chaotic nuance involved. It was the Hancock goons scene at the end of volume 2 chapter 8 where I first alluded to the potency of the tears, but even back then it wasn't an accident. Cum is fun, but I wanted this solution to come about through the union of passion and pain that comes with making hard decisions and enforcing the consequences.

So anyway, I've definitely rambled way too much here, apologies, and more to come. But not much more, for this book at least.