Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 50 - Reflection

Starting this chapter was a little strange. I'd just spent nearly two years building up to one scene, one powerful moment where Vee and Amara finally realize their feelings and confess their love to each other in a storm of rainbows and lightning, and then... it's time to move on. They need to land and have a conversation and time needs to keep turning.

How do I respect the preceding scene while also carrying on with everything it changed?

It's easy to think of what to say in the moment, at the peak of emotionality, but things are starting to quiet down now.

The answer (at least, I hope it felt right) was to lean into that kind of awkward adorableness you get after a first kiss. They still don't know exactly what to say, both about what happened but also how they feel about each other. Do they tell people? Do they act all lovey-dovey in the face of the Coven's threat?

In the end, I'm happy with the decision to slightly postpone everything in favor of taking down the coven. As Amara said, she was being an idiot before, but they do need to stop Davenport.

However, as much as it was to write the awkward moments immediately after their big display of love, I had another small problem to contend with. I had a few goals in mind for this chapter, most of them pretty heavy, and I needed to find a good way to transition from "Yay first kiss!" to "Oh god I almost butchered a woman in cold blood after hurting all of my friends for trying to stop me." That's, uh... that's a pretty heavy emotion, and a difficult transition.

I settled on giving Amara a moment to breath while Vee texts everyone to call a meeting. Not only does this let me confirm a fun fact about Amara (that she's been storing her phone on a roof like some kind of gargoyle) but it gives Amara a crucial moment to pause and reflect.

She sees the glow of the fires she started, the swirling black storm clouds that she didn't even realize she was powerful enough to summon. With Vee at her side, she finally has perspective on how close she almost got to doing something truly terrible, and it starts to overwhelm her. However, she catches herself trying to pull away again, to hide her feelings from Vee, and chastises herself.

A hand touched her back, pulling her thoughts back to the present. “Hey. You doing alright?” Vee asked cautiously, stepping next to her.

Amara swallowed nervously, forcing herself to nod.

Wait, what am I doing? I can’t start pushing her away already. She deserves to know the truth.

Tears welled in her eyes. She turned to look at Vee, who’d nearly sacrificed everything just to give her a chance at redemption, and broke down. She wrapped her arms around Vee, hugging her tight as she wept into her shoulder. Vee returned the gesture, gently rubbing her back as Amara vented all her frustration with herself.

For me, this is a pretty big moment, and it exemplifies my goals for this chapter. Which also gives me the perfect chance to go on a little tangent again! Yay! My favorite thing to do!

One thing that's always really bugged me in various stories is how apologies and redemptions are treated. How many times have you watched a movie where the bad guy goes "Oh no I've been bad! I'm sowwy.... friends now?" and then everyone just... accepts it?

Obviously I'm exaggerating for humorous effect, but sometimes it feels that drastic. I notice this happen a lot with big dramatic sacrifices, where the bad guy has a change of heart at the last minute and sacrifices themselves to do a big good thing. Maybe they stop a bigger bad guy or save the main character or something, but then they're dead. The problem with dead characters is they can't really apologize or atone for their actions. In a way, from a certain point of view, sacrificing yourself is the easy option; you only have to make one good decision, and you don't have to wrestle with all the harm you've caused over the course of the story.

But that also means the heroes, and the audience, often don't see genuine apologies. A real apology takes time, effort, and persistence, and involves a multitude of different steps. Ideally, when you've wronged someone and want to apologize, you should apologize to them, acknowledge what you've done, admit it was wrong, and then promise to be better in the future. Then, in a perfect world, you're able to prove your intentions through your deeds, to show through action that you really have changed, and you're working to fix all the harm you've caused.

Like, if at the end of WW2, if Hitler suddenly had a change of heart and realized how terrible he's been, then he says sorry and steps on a land mine, that doesn't fix anything. He's still caused the deaths of millions upon millions of people. His death robs the world of the punishment he deserves.

With all that in mind, I wanted this chapter of SaS to be one massive apology. I needed to show that Amara truly understands the weight of her actions, and I need to give everyone she's wronged a chance to share their grief over what she's done.

That's why we start by seeing Amara break down over the thought of what she's done. If anything, she over-corrects a little bit, telling Vee she doesn't deserve, and I finally get to show just how perfect these two are for each other.

Amara nodded slowly before sitting up. She rubbed her face with her hands, a small burst of hellfire dispelling all traces of her outburst. Placing a hand on Vee’s waist, she looked deep into her brilliant blue eyes and leaned in for another kiss. They shared a soft, tender moment before Amara rested her forehead against Vee’s. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Hey, none of that,” Vee said, her tone gentle but strict. “The more you put yourself down, the more you risk believing that you deserve to give in to those instincts.”

One thing I used to panic about at the start of SaS was that people wouldn't believe that these two were good for each other, especially in comparison to Nick, who's incredibly kind and just a real upstanding guy. Now that I've finally gotten these two idiots together, I can finally start paying off the various ways I've set up how much they understand each other. Personally, I think it's really cool that all of Amara's effort in the first two books created a version of Vee that's able to pull Amara out of this spiral.

Despite every bone in Amara’s body wanting to repeat her earlier thought, that she didn’t deserve Vee, she forced herself to nod.

I’m not alone. Even if I don’t believe in myself right now… she does. And she’s amazing. She’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, and I spit in her face every time I insist I’m a lost cause.

Do it for Vee, Amara. You’ve got this.

A lot of what we're seeing here is Vee slowly coalescing into, for lack of a better phrase, her final form. Her platonic ideal existence, where she's the most confident with who she is. I wanted to show the effect she's able to have on Amara, and I think that quote does a good job at selling that.

We then walk past the quad and see Amara put out the fires she started, then it's finally time to meet up with her friends.

I don't think there's too much to say about this scene now that I've broken down my thoughts about how I think apologies for work. Amara talks at length about how she understands what she did, she's horrified by it, and she apologizes for different things to different people. Her friends all have chances to react in ways that feel suitably appropriate, as well.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Tessa just decking Amara without hesitation and Nick needing to hold her back. That poor girl's been through a lot, and I'm really happy with how I captured her personality in her apology.

Honestly, the same goes for Chloé, too. She's not the angriest character, but I love that she playfully slaps Amara just because Amara expects her too. I've mentioned this before, but I never realized just how much of an impact Chloé had on the group dynamic until she came back, and it made me appreciate her even more. Without Chloé, the group weighs too heavily towards angst and anger. Vee works great as a very hopeful and inspiring person, but without Chloé, they lose a very specific kind of positivity that Vee doesn't often contribute. Vee takes everything at face value, and is often pretty serious with her optimism, whereas Chloé is just a little goober.

Also the group gets a chance to gas Chloé up a bit for being the absolute badass she is. Fuck yeah.

I'm also really pleased that Amara's conversation with Nick speaks to their history. They're able to just understand each other with barely any words, then it's time to hug it out.

“I’m just giving you shit, Nick,” Amara said, smiling as she stepped back. “I’m happy you’re here. I’m happy you’re with us.”

“I’m just glad you’re all safe. I’ll admit, sometimes it’s a little frustrating that I don’t have more to offer, but I’m happy to admit when the situation has escalated beyond me.”

“You’re not jealous that you don’t have cool powers like everyone else?” Amara asked, playfully poking Nick with her tail.

“Fuck no!” he said with a laugh. “I’m happier on the sidelines, Amara. I don’t have the temperament to do what you do. Magic? Glowing swords? Fire powers? That’s too much for me. I’ll still never understand how you took so easily to growing a tail.”

I'm particularly fond of this section, mostly because it's something I haven't really touched on too much. This only came up a little bit in the first book, where Nick admit that, other than flight, he's never been jealous of anything happening to Amara.

Once we're all finished up with the core friend group, it's finally time to go confront Elizabeth and Palesa.

I'll admit, this scene gave me quite a bit of trouble. Of everyone Amara hurt, I personally believe that what she did to Palesa was the worst of it. I had a general idea of what I wanted to happen; I knew I wanted Palesa to use her magic and physically punish Amara a bit, but that's not why I had trouble with this scene.

The more I thought about Elizabeth and Palesa, the more I focused on their roles as witches. I haven't brought this up much in the story, but witches exist to try and keep balance between the worlds of men and magic, and this means they side with mythical creatures just as often, if not more so, than they side with men. It's extremely likely that they've seen countless examples of people abusing mythical creatures.

So what happens when a creature of magic wrongs them?

It's a complicated emotion, and one I wasn't expecting. I very much want to paint Elizabeth and Palesa as older and wiser, so it doesn't make as much sense for them to be petty in their responses.

However, this also gave me a unique chance to take advantage of their history. Elizabeth is able to say "Hey, I've seen lots of terrible shit, and what you did was horrible even in that context." I love the additional context their experience gives Amara's behavior, and I think it builds the world out in a really interesting way. We get hints at other cryptids, but we also get even more people stating that demons are uniquely awful in the grand scheme of things.

This experiences swings both ways, however.

Elizabeth and Palesa have seen helpless creatures backed into corners before, and they're able to see the exact circumstances that led to Amara's breakdown. They're wise enough to recognize how awful Davenport's plan is, and that it would be foolish not to ally themselves with the group of students that literally contains an angel and a demon.

However, I thought it was important to give Palesa a moment of retaliation. A moment where, in some small manner, she re-asserts her strength against Amara, and explains just how terrible her actions were. As she states, it's impossible for he to truly retaliate against Amara, who violated the sanctity of her mind, destroying the one place she thought herself safe while she tried to navigate Davenport's twisted political trappings.

I'm also particularly happy that she brought up the future. Like I mentioned in my brief tangent about apologies, current remorse is no protection against backsliding, and I love the idea of the coven potentially setting up a more permanent presence at AU not just for the gate, but also for Amara.

Hopefully Amara's apology felt genuine, and hopefully the reactions of everyone she wronged felt weighty enough.

Wow, that's a pretty short reflection.

Nyx ♥