I think one of my favorite moments of my entire erotica-writing career was when I was at arguably my most popular when I wrote into Being More Social that *Spoiler Alert* Nicole had been sexually assaulted in the past, and readers of Being More Social responded. Some with shock, others with disgust, and some with such ferocity that I received my first ever death threats. Most people online care a lot about death threats, perhaps because their name used online is also their public one. I’m an anonymous figure so I care very little about them, and don’t really want anyone to have any sympathy for me for receiving them. I only point it out because it shows how much passion readers had  for a character they never met before.

These people, after all, come from the same community where you could look up ‘rape’ as a fetish and find really disturbing comments of “ohh fuck yea i’d love to rape a 17 year old virgin haha” by the dozens on a story where a barely fleshed out girl (sometimes barely fleshed out in more than one way) gets violated over and over. I don’t really have a rape fetish of any kind, I’ve tried CNC (consensual non-consensual, basically a rape fetish role play for those that haven’t heard of it) but only if the girl asks first. I can still understand that a lot of people find the taboo nature hot, but it seems interesting that no one said anything about the rape of Nicole hot. No one found the Whodunnit of ‘did Phil rape May’ in BMS hot either. Zero comments about that, and believe me, I received an uncomfortable amount of comments. How could the community respond so negatively to a rape in one story, yet positively to a story seemingly centered around rape?

This is where humanity’s inherent goodness shines through, if you ask me. There’s a reason these rape fetishists aren’t commenting from inside a prison cell (besides our terrible judicial response to rape reports heyoo). It’s because, here’s hoping, they’ve never raped anyone. They don’t actually like to rape anyone, they just enjoy the taboo concept. They don’t want a character fully fleshed out to the point where they can sympathize with the character, only to have that character violated. Because non-consensual sex is, at best, uncomfortable, and at worst, life-shattering. No one wants it to happen to someone they like.

So in sex stories, and sex novels, like what I happen to write, characters which are fully fleshed out are relatable. They have personalities, goals and aspirations. People want to see where they go in life. Readers have let me know that GBM has taken a really dark turn, and that they’re not sure they like where it’s going, which is valid. Much ‘darker’ stories have been written as standalones which contain more defiling acts in the first few paragraphs, but those stories are ‘hot’ because they showcase acts instead of showcasing characters. This is another thing to consider in character-driven stories, a continuation of my discussion of legends versus sagas (refer to my essays section if you’re confused). Spend enough time with a character and readers will care about them. Honestly, you don’t even need to be too good a writer, time is the most effective variable here. Even if you’re bland and vague, your readers’ imaginations will fill the voids. They’ll care. This also means you need to handle character-driven stories with care. I write dark stories because that’s what I do. If you want to write rape-based stories because you think they’re hot, maybe don’t flesh out characters too much (unless you’re a truly sick fuck, and hey, who am I to judge).

The best way to make your readers care about your characters is to care about them yourself, and not dehumanize them immediately. Similarly this advice goes the opposite way too. If you want people to not come after you with torches for writing a rape story, I wouldn’t build up your characters too much if I were you. I want to stay away from specific advice concerning how you should build up characters because there is no one way, and I don’t want to disrupt anyone’s lateral thinking. I like seeing out-the-box thinking, and would love to see it from your stories. Just another thing to consider when writing, I guess.

After this blog, I’ll get to uploading Amy’s Fantasy on other sites. Again, I’m still working on GBM’s next chapter, and hopefully it’ll be out next. As to when, I can’t answer that quite yet. I’ll talk to you all in a week.