[Insider] Toxic Attraction: Chapter 35 Alpha Draft
Added 2025-10-22 22:01:10 +0000 UTCHey all, keeping the message here brief after s
Comments
I think Sarah needs to be more open about her love for Lester. This would begin with confiding in her mom. It seems like Renee would be more than understanding about it. After all, she just wants her daughter to be happy, and if she thinks Lester is making her happy, she'll totally be on board.
Mark Albright
2025-10-27 19:41:48 +0000 UTCOK, having been through 2 reads of the chapter, here are my takes (apologies for the length, but I wound up having fairly specific thoughts, that it took several paragraphs to fully detail): 1) I’ve been waiting hoping for a bulked-up role for Renee in the narrative, so, on overall themes, you gave me Christmas morning, and I thank you for that. 2) That said, I would have changed some of the execution. I was fine with the Renee teases up to this point being introduced on-page (the idea of texting with Lester about Sarah, the hacking the wifi for the dick pic, etc), but then mostly marinating off-page until it was time to really cook them—but it felt here like you turned up the heat, without any acknowledgement of the marinating. I feel like Sarah texting Lester about coming to Chicago, could have been accompanied by a separate parallel text or texts from RENEE to Lester about coming to Chicago. Let him work both, game out how he’s going to play them off, either in concert, making them think he’s helping them help one another, or against each other, how he can manipulate one or the other or both. This is obviously a sex story, but what’s so good about it when it’s at its best is also how psychological it can be, and you can explore the sex content while also enriching it by exploring the psyches of the characters and what their motivations/hopes/fears are about performing given actions. 3) At the bar—I’ve seen a lot of people saying it should have been the adult theater or a strip club or other settings—I’m not as particular about that, I think you could’ve set it any of those places in general and been fine…I just, again, would’ve changed the in-scene mechanics. Lester is usually this meticulous planner, and yet, in a scene where you have an opportunity to showcase some pretty devastatingly meticulous planning, the opportunity is either ignored, or, left to the reader to project not-explicitly-stated assumptions on to. I’m willing to suspend disbelief that a dingy bar bathroom at a crowded venue would go unused by multiple patrons for 30+ minutes…but I shouldn’t have to if a hotter and/or more plausible alternative is available. Example: Lester is all about control and manipulation—let’s give him MORE control and manipulation in that setting, explicitly stated on-page. Let’s say he pays or trades or otherwise leverages any one of or all of or some combination of the bar manager/bartender/a bouncer/bathroom attendant, to “keep an eye on the two hot blondes, keep ‘em liquored up”, when one or both of them get up, inebriated, to use the ladies’ room, make sure they either get diverted (possibly to a smaller “employee rest room” that they don’t realize is designed for that purpose, but that Lester can know he has full control of while still selling Sarah/Renee the fear/thrill/fantasy of public exposure), or, maybe the bar’s an old place, that used to have male/female restrooms, but, cheaping out on construction/renovation, now just has two unisex bathrooms, and, other than Sarah and Renee being allowed to enter it, an “out of order” sign is placed on one of the restrooms to divert OTHER patrons and give Lester his grand stage? 4) Inside the sex scene—what I would have done differently here, and again, I have to admit my pro-Renee bias and confess these changes are suggested with the intent of heating up her portion of this: I would’ve cut the gloryhole threesome with the stranger, and reconfigure it. Keep everything about going out, Sarah’s and Renee’s conversation at the bar, Lester’s sending the drinks, his text set-up to Sarah. Once she goes to the bathroom though, have Lester pull a bait-and-switch…it’s not him waiting for Sarah, it’s somebody else—whoever you want…one of the D&D guys, one of the adult theater people, Jesse, someone from the bar or someone else Lester has leveraged…I’m loath to introduce a new one-off character into this scenario, but a case could be made either way. The replacement person says “Lester told me it was my lucky day”…or whatever specifically tailored opening-line perv banter you want them to spout depending on who it is—the point is, that she’s being shared, as he said she would be, and between her own internal heat at the situation and her fear/stress that reneging could negatively impact the promised financial support coming from Lester…she falls right into it. Then, the same element of Renee coming to look for her after a while transpires. The same element of her overhearing the sex and getting aroused and stumbling into a stall occurs. Except now, the gloryhole is not in Sarah’s stall, it’s in Renee’s. And the user is not a stranger (to the reader, anyway), it’s Lester. Sarah’s reference point for a “yellow-brick road gloryhole” might likely be the movie “The Sweetest Thing”…Renee’s more naive, innocent reference point may still be “The Wizard of Oz”. She revisits in her mind all of lust, the wanting, the neglect…everything she’s been missing from James…and she’s drunk and aroused, and her mind is swimming with lust, and she follows the yellow brick road, until she finds not just a cock, but THE cock, the one that’s been haunting her dreams since that time her phone wouldn’t let her forget it while surfing the web. She has NO idea it’s Lester’s—she may not even think it’s REAL…maybe she thinks she’s just having a fever dream caught up in the moment—because by what possible means could the same cock from her dreams suddenly be standing proud jutting out of the wall of this dingy bar in full living color? But she’s horny, she’s lustful, she’s riding the wave of listening to some slut get publicly railed a couple of stalls over, so she chases her buzz and submits to the moment and just gives herself over to sucking the cock from the wall. Again, thank you Don for the increased role for Renee. Everyone’s opinion differs, but, for me, this is the heart of “Toxic Attraction”. That title, to me, has never necessarily implied the subheading of it being “The Sarah, Dan, and Lester Show”. The story for me can expand and twist and turn and grow to include new characters as long as the character depth and toxicity remains. I see people complaining from time to time about “the story’s run its course”, “this sucks, you’ve lost the plot”, “you’re stealing people’s money, etc”. I don’t understand this mindset—the day I think this story’s run its course, I’ll just stop paying for it and say “Thanks for the memories, Don”. But as long as there’s depth to the characters, and hot sex scenes, and deliciously fucked up plotting, and a community of patrons to read and discuss that with, I’m in, gladly. Thanks for reading this comment, everybody that cared to make it to the end of it.
DLambert9394
2025-10-24 20:57:09 +0000 UTCWe need to hear about Jesse in this chapter not just Lg. All the threads need drawing together.
Royston smith
2025-10-24 19:27:45 +0000 UTC
