He does try to get hold of Vizh's friends and family though. I wonder now if he wants Mags and Griffin as his children? They could grow to be powerful heirs to his eternal empire.




Well the pleasure slaves thing is a tricky one, isn't it? You'll recall that the Caphans started as a one-line joke in the response thread to early Transworlds Challenge episodes of Untold Tales. I threw some in there as part of my responding-to-replies-for-fun interaction. I sent them to Vizh because he was the funniest one to drop them on. Then you decided to adopt them and take them home. And a colony of them are still here, with a whole fairly-fleshed out (pun intended) planet behind them and at least fifteen well-developed (pun intended) cast members.

But despite the fun story and romance possibilities of the characters there's also a deep underlying tackiness about their situation that I have to be careful of when I come to write them. Slavery is wrong and it's inexcusable. Sexual slavery is even more horrid. The green-skinned slave girl trope can ultimately lead to those Gorean sex fantasies with hordes of helpless nubile girls in BSDM scenarios.

The "hero and rescued slave" story is a very old one, going back at least to Greek myth. We see it in old pulp literature like Conan all the time. It's a specific variation of the "I've rescued you so now you'll want to sleep with me" fantasy. But at least to modern sentiment there has to be more to the scenario than the hero getting a reward f&ck from the heroine de jour.

So I've always tried to be careful to veer away from any kind of romantic relationship between the Caphans and our "regular" cast that hasn't been 100% of their desire and which moves away from the social coercion duty that underpins their concept. It's a judgement call and I know I don't always get it right in everyone's opinion.

Another example in my PV writing would be Exile and Valeria. Old readers might recall that Val was enspelled to be completely obedient to her master but was given by a bizarre set of chances to Exile rather than some ravishing villain. I had a lot of fun with Exy having to be all noble and restrained and I hope in the end I managed a proper romance between him and Val despite that restriction and because Exile didn't take advantage. As with the Caphans later any sexual chemistry came because the partners went contrary to the scenario, not with it.

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Really I need to put some time into the Hood. He pops up too often as a deus et machina and relies upon being spooky and foreboding. And it's too long since he did something really evil.

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Don't worry, I'm on it.

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excellent. As you note, we haven't have a lot of focus on the Hood for a long time... Certainly nothing like back when he and Lisa could be counted on for sparks.

I tend to shy away from Hood spotlight stories for fear of hogging the limelight too much. Since the Hood is a villain there's a risk that stories that feature him could "put down" other poster characters who are his adversaries. Since I tend to write stories about whole poster casts I'm reluctant to push my own characters to the fore.

ut this means that sometimes I let the Hood become a cypher or cliche (not that he wasn't created to be a cliche, but eleven years on he should really be something more than just that). I think I need to go back to basics with the Hood sometime and establish him from the ground up - show not tell why he's an archvillain and why he's a threat to the Lair Legion.

I generally like to introduce the next "big bad" as soon as I've taken the last one off the board. Who should I establish as a serious developing and ongoing threat after the Carnifex, I wonder? Who could possibly be more dangerous (without being even more all-powerful) than the Parody Master or the Carnifex? Hmm, let's see...

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I'm looking forward to what you might have in store!