I really love how you play around with the concept of hope. That is why I love Breaking Point so much and some others such as Mr. Drake’s Games so much due to how you give them a chance of redemption just before completely destroying who they are. It makes the transformation all the more sweeter, since they fight harder for a chance to keep some semblance of their previous selves.

Hope is crucial for my writing, which is why it’s everywhere in my stuff. If there’s one thing about writing in the MC/TF genre, it’s that it’s deceptively difficult to get a good story going along side the porn, because it’s really hard to foster any sort of dramatic tension. If I have one complaint about most of the stuff in this genre I’ve read, is that there’s no plot–usually it’s just long, drawn out wish fulfillment, and nothing more. You gotta have something else going to keep people interested, I think.

I rely on hope a lot to create tension, because that fosters at least some conflict between the changer and the changee. That said, I often feel like it’s a bit of a crutch–a really useful crutch, but a crutch all the same, because hope is only good at *simulating* conflict between characters. It doesn’t actually mean that conflict actually exists.

Some of the best stories I’ve written, and some of the best one’s I’ve read, manage to put two characters into conflict such that the outcome of who comes out on top really in indeterminate (and in the end, both characters usually end up very different than they were). “Dream Camp” did this really well, I think, as did “Fall of Troy.” Those are the kinds of stories I wish I could come up with more often. 

Don’t get me wrong–the stories you mentioned are good, and I enjoyed them, but the hope the characters feel doesn’t actually have any corresponding chance of them escaping. Both of the antagonists in those stories hold all the cards, they can dangle little bits of hope for the person to grasp for, but they have no actual chance of getting them. Of course, this power dynamic is sexy–the idea of someone with so much power toying with their victims is definitely a sexual trigger for a lot of people, but just because something is arousing doesn’t mean it’s good plot, if that makes sense.

Still, thank you for the compliment! I didn’t mean to seem like I was talking badly about what you said up there. It’s nice when people notice the sorts of techniques I use in these stories, but I also like to go into them with a bit of depth when they come up.