Ok, wow, what a journey! I finally reached the end of the story. And I stand by my earlier assessment. I think this is the best story I read from you. Admittedly, there are still quite a few stories I have to read from you. But based on what I read so far, I see a clear progression in your writing. I think overall depiction of characters, dialogue and pacing is much better in your most recent stories. I hope you feel the same.
Partially, I might think so because I prefer more grounded stories with characters that feel real over stories with crazy, boderline superhuman serial killers. But I don't think that fully explains it. So seriously, be proud of your progression as a writer. I think it really shows. I think you created a story here that might not get the same instant recognition like some spicy short story. But whereas most of those short stories will be forgotten after a few months, I think The CUNT Rapist has the potential to be dug up by users stumbling over it time and again. I would really like to see this story make it above the Popular Stories reputation threshold so that it doesn't dissappear into the void. It's an outstanding piece of fiction in our niche that has so much more to offer than just fap material.
I have one major gripe with the story though... and that's the ending, basically the events starting with Alex' confession. And it's not because the ending is badly written. You asked explicitly whether the change to present tense was an issue. Personally, I didn't mind. You framed this as a story being told by an older Alex, so switching to present tense works well to illustrate that point. At least for me it did.
What didn't work for me was the incredible leniency that everybody in the story showed Alex once she confessed what she did. The transition from "I raped half a dozen man" to "I'm in love with you, Sums." and her responding with "Maybe we can be together if you get therapy" within minutes was a bit jarring. I think you really got to like Alex. And I like her too in some sense, she is a sympathetic character, not unlike the Joker in the Joker movie. But I think the ending falls into the trap of portraying rape as less bad or more forgivable when the rapist is a woman.
If you look at the ending, Alex is barely condemned by the people she talks to but met with unconditional love and acceptance by everybody. Her crimes are being described as her "having fucked up". But we're talking about a serial rapist here. This is not the story of a woman who acted on impulse once while she was drunk and committed a single assault where consent was ambiguous. She meticulously planned multiple assaults while being fully aware of what she's. And the suffering of her victims, what became of them, how she tried to own up to them, all of that was completely absent from the ending. If I just imagine this ending with gender swapped roles, I don't think you would find many readers who wouldn't see this as downplaying the severity of a man having raped muliple women. And then he gets the love of his soon to be boyfriend anyway because he was willing to do therapy. That doesn't feel right to me.
To me, this feels a bit like you poured a lot of yourself into Alex and wanted her to have a happy ending because of that. But I think the ending is making a bit light of the severity of sexual violence and instead portrays the rapist as not being that bad after all.
But I don't want to dwell to long on that point. I can only repeat, overall I liked the story a lot. And I think Alex is an extremely memorable and interesting character that's really rare in our genre. I really hope you write more characters like her in the future. I'm always in the mood for reading the story of such an interesting person who is more than just a vessel for depicting sex. Excellent work,
@RapeU! I never regretted the 3 points I gave this story fairly early on. And I'm really happy that I could help shape the story a bit with my early feedback.
