Early Bird: Tickled Pink, Ch. 05 (FINALE!)

In which Bryan, tickle-subdued by Adeline's pretty handmaidens, finds himself utterly at her mercy. Will he be able to escape, or will this weak boy's fate be sealed by a few pretty girls?

Hello, my lovelies! And with this, we have finally, at long last, completed the Tickled Pink saga. This was a challenging series to write, and I definitely overdid it a bit, but I really enjoyed the commission and I am so happy it's finally completed.

In general news, I've got a system for editing that seems to be working out for me--I'll let you know if it holds up next week, when I hope to post a fun flashfic about Swish and some sheepgirls as well as... maybe the next chapter of Intrepid Pawns? We'll see! We'll be taking a bit of a break from tickling stories for the time being, at least.

Oh, as a warning (and slight SPOILER), this is firmly a denial story, so it's not going to end with Bryan climaxing. :P

Writing Wrap-Up

So, this is the first series I've finished in a while, and it's tradition for me to sort of debrief after a big series winds down. Like I said, this story went long. I very rarely get to write tickling stories, and this was also my first time seriously playing with a trope I've become very fond of--a "girls rule, boys drool" blend of fantastical misandry.

What would I change? Well, there aren't a lot of great synonyms for "fluff". Nor for "tickle", honestly. That makes it hard to really draw a tickling story out--ironic, since tickling kink IRL is sort of all about being drawn out as long as possible. If the story starts feeling repetitive, that's partially why.

The real reason this story took so long, though, is I wrote the last three chapters in one day (along with a couple other stories I can't recall). I'd been running behind on the commission, and, like, I thought one big burst might really help finally finish the drafts. And it did! The problem was that those drafts were very messy--messy enough to paralyze me a little.

A very useful trick when you're writing a novel is to "skip ahead" when a scene is boring you. Finish the novel, then go back and fill in the blanks. The problem is, I'm not writing a novel I have eternity to edit. I usually don't take more than one pass at editing a story these days--one and a half, if you count spellcheck. It's just not been worth the time. This means I accept a slightly lower "mechanical" quality than some of my peers, and I feel a little embarrassed about that, but for me, I'd rather focus on quantity and get to write more fun diverse concepts than get bogged down on third and fourth drafts. Also, like, I'm not being paid enough. Maybe that's a $4,000 pledge goal.

The point is, this meant I had an impossibly messy three chapters to edit, with whole sections outright skipped with a "write more hypno here later". It took me over a year to finish editing the last two chapters. That's a little ridiculous.

As for commentary on the story itself, I like it! I like stories where big tough guys get humbled, and I like characters like Bryan for that. I always feel like I made Alrek too gruff and grizzled and stubborn, too "adventurery" at the start, due to my own insecurities about writing stories about characters getting really humiliated and losing control. Now that I'm more comfortable with letting my characters get reduced to base parts, I write more heroes like Gretel and Senya, more antiheroes like Limini: characters made for humbling.

And boy oh boy does Bryan get humbled here.