Her Deflowering - Comments

This is incredible.

Holy. Fuck. Okay, I normally don't read stories on Mibba. Like hardly ever. But I came across this story and decided to check it out. Then I couldn't stop. It was really serene and calm and that's what makes it one of the scariest things I've ever read. It was intense and I was horrified but couldn't stop reading. I'm glad it's so short though. I don't know how I would have handled a longer story like this. It was perfection just the way it is. Short, chilling, and beautifully written. I don't know if I should congratulate you on your epic ability to portray this character, or be worried as I have now made contact with you.

I kid. But seriously. This is wonderful.

@ nine crimes.
This has got to be the longest comment I have read in my entire life! I'm amazed by you. You wrote an article. I liked that you gave a full commentary on the shor story.

I liked the description. It shocked me that Rose completely changed her thought when she was talking to Mickey about Florence. Who thinks like that?!

I think having a serial killer your head is not much to worry about but please, do not do what one would do.

This was another amazing story! It was excellent, so well written and developed. It was really original and you explored Rose's feelings and obsession so well and in such wonderful detail. It was truly brilliant!

Such an captivating story. I was enthralled by the beginning by your description and attention to detail. I continued to read as your fine tuned characterisation continued to amaze me. I truly wish I could write something as amazing as this. It was an amazing read, and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to read it. Great job. I really can't critique anything. Just... Brilliant.

This was absolutely amazing. I never really read original fictions on here much but I gave this a shot and wow, you did not disappoint. Suuuuper good. You give such great detail to everything and its just absolutely brilliant. You are an amazing and truly talented writer, keep up the absolutely amazing work. (:

wow, just wow. This is a really good story. I know that there are people in the world who are like this and you always hear about people getting killed. But you never hear it from the killers point of view. This just gives it a whole new life to look at. This is really good and I hope you write more like this one. This short story was amazing and I hope you keep writing :)

This was probably the most amzing short story I've ever read. You wrote it in a way that I could see it being published in a magazine. I like that you included real life events, such as the discovery of the zodiac killer, and how you hinted that Rose may have had issues with men in the past. I found the fact that she kept not only a jar full of insects, but a black widow spider as well, rather creepy.

The way you embodied Rose's obsession with Micky was so real that I honestly felt bad for her first victim. I also liked how you displayed how quickly someone can become obsessed with something or someone. The fact that Rose couldn't accept Micky not loving her, just shows how far her obsession has progressed.

Overall, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I feel that this was written beautifully and hope that you continue to write.

I really enjoyed reading this (is that a bad thing to say? that I enjoyed reading about a serial killer?) and I must say, the depth of this short story, the set-up, and the characterization... amazing, all of it. I do like the way you set up the smaller chapters in the two parts. It just worked in this way I really can't describe. Just great, really.

The fact that this was from the killer's view was plain out awesome. Rose was so convinced that she was right, and her insanity - her sociapath tendencies - came out so well in the narration. However, I wouldn't have picked up that she was crazy in the beginning. I think that fit really well with her idea that she is justified in her killings, and it made the story so much more suspenseful.

^ that basically covered characterization as well. Florence and Mickey were also both wonderfully developed even with their smaller parts. I felt like you fit them well in the era, too.

In conclusion, this was really good, and it could totally be published in some sort of literary magazine. Ever heard of Neon? They would probably take this. It's amazing. Great job!

Dammit. The coding didn't work. Reposting for awesomeness:

Dear She Who Is Awesome Of Epic Proportions;;



This is creepy and eerie and I love it. I just reread it and feel like I should check under my bed for Rose o.o even though I'm a girl so technically she wouldn't kill me... right?

Anyway, time to break this down for real so you know exactly what I think about it. And I'm going to do it methodically so that I actually get down everything I need to say rather than just pointless fangirling mush. Although there's going to be a fair amount of that, too:

Layout: Okay, like, you already know you make awesome layouts. That's a given. But I felt I needed to just say--for whatever random reason I cannot fathom--this layout seems to really 'fit' with the story. Ugh. That's not a very good way of explaining it. But like, do you get what I mean? The woody background offset with the floral pattern gives this feminine sense to it, but it's also a bit creepy. I feel like spiders will be crawling out through the cracks in the wood at any moment. I also really like the thing you do with your layouts where you have a little bit more of the story area image on the right side than the left. *le shrug* I don't even know. I'm just partial to it, for some reason. And it's clean, of course. Nice and easy to read. Kudos.

Oh, and on second thought: I also wanted to say I really love how in the chapters, you have like, mini-sub-chapters. The little numbers and the page breaks. I don’t even know why, but it makes it really aesthetically pleasing to me. Yeah.

Characters: Like WHAT THE FUCK WHY HAVE YOU GOT A SERIAL KILLER IN YOUR HEAD? Well, I'm not so concerned that she's in there, but more that you developed her with such clarity. I think it was really gutsy of you to write this from her point of view, in particular. Because it takes a certain level of skill to paint a character in first person who wholly believes they are justified and sane and yet come off so completely psychotic. Ugh. I'm not explaining this very well, sorry. What I'm trying to say is that I like how were seeing the story through the eyes of someone who thinks they are the victim and still convince us that they are the perpetrator - not just through her actions, which sort of gives it away, but by writing her point of view in such a way that we can pick it up from how illogical her train of thought is. I'm sitting here thinking like 'Yeah, Rose, that's not how it works. You're crazy.' It's really a difficult thing to pull off, and YOU DID. My one and only constructive criticism in regards to what she says, she comes off as much younger than her fifteen years - but even still, that's fairly standard what with her being a raving lunatic.

Let me just take the opportunity to say: I LOVE MICKEY. I'm not even really sure why. I just really like him. He seems down to earth and reasonable and mature but at the same time he's still an annoying, selfish teenage boy. He's very, very real. Which made me quite sad when he died. Particularly the nature of his death -- I can't be the only one who is arachnophobic so this sort of scared the shit out of me.

And your other characters, however minor: Florence (GAH. I love how you nicknamed her 'Flo' through Mickey. Super adorable) is really cute and though her character isn't in-depth, she has a realism and a sense of roundness to her that I really liked. Also, Rose's mom made me laugh my ass off so hard. "Oh Rose! You're wearing so much make-up!" Buahahahaha. I don't even know, Andi. That's so mom-like to deliberately notice these things when you least want them to be noticed. I felt that her character helped me get a better grasp on Rose. Soooo... very good :)

Style: As usual, I’m completely in love with the way you write. You have a cadency in your writing that I envy so freaking much. Everything you write seems to flow effortlessly, and this is really no exception. In fact, I’m almost tempted to say this might be one of the best things you’ve ever written—not due necessarily to the way it’s crafted (for example, in TIGTWD, you use themes and literary devices throughout in a way that ties it together beautifully) but more because of the tone to this piece of writing. There’s no embellishments: and that’s much a reflection of Rose’s character. You’ve written it so wonderfully that I actually thought it might have been a real story that you’d taken minor liberties with. I’m actually not kidding. I searched Rose Noir in Google when I was finished reading. So what I’m trying to say is that this is a literary masterpiece. There’s really nothing to be added or removed or improved. Though it doesn’t have the lyrical quality to it of some of your other work, the brutal simplicity gives it an air of honesty. In fact, it was so well written in this style that I felt I should have realized it was a letter all along. That you literally had this character you crafted writing down their story. Rose’s point of view is told flawlessly. It’s haunting.

Now for some on what you’ve actually written:

Content: The way you introduce this is chilly. That’s the best way I can describe it. There’s almost a clinical tone to it, the factual introduction just contrasting the idea of the story so well. It’s like you’ve subtly suggested to us that the death of Mickey K. Staunton was every bit as tragic as Hurricane Camille, every bit as final as the Beatle’s last concert, and every bit as significant as the first moon landing. It was very clever.

And then this one line:

this is just marvelous. You’re probably thinking it’s one of the simplest, most mundane things for me to pick out, but it has a lot of weight for me. It’s one of those things a lot of irritable teenage girls say to justify pulling someone’s hair or something equally mundane. But the fact that your character can feel so justified in murder—that’s really hugely significant. I think it also helped weave in the fact that she is very much an ignorant teenage girls in many ways.

I really enjoyed the light conversation between Florence and Rose at the start, because it very gently shows the reader that Rose hasn’t much experience in dealing with those her age outside of school—she’s socially stinted, in addition to being pathologically insane. And then we had Mickey introduced and like I said—I ADORE MICKEY—he’s just so… cool. That seems a blatant understatement, but I digress. I love how he reads Florence’s diary. It’s so big-brother-bully but you just made it so cute and fluffy and UNF LET ME HUG YOUR GENIUS, ANDI.

The dinner scene made me really uncomfortable. But not in a bad way. I just got this really sick feeling from the level of Rose’s obsession by that point—which she doesn’t acknowledge at all, believing her behavior to once again be totally justified. I really should congratulate you for that, but it really creeped me out. In a good way. Mostly. The fact that she wore lots of make-up and wanted to look like Marilyn Monroe and deliberately tried to get his attention and everything made me sick to my stomach. It’s like that… pre-rape feeling. Which I don’t talk about lightly, since it’s actually something that nearly happened to me at one point. And it’s weird that you could make me feel that way considering it was written from a girl’s point of view—as the molester, instead of the molested. So yeah. Even though it freaked me out, I do bow down to your uncanny writing ablity.

All these little references to spiders really get me too. Because they freak the shit out of me. I had a big black one crawl all over my hand once and I couldn’t stop shaking for hours. But you’ve used this metaphor really, really effectively. I just felt the need to touch on that because it’s clear you put a significant amount of thought into it and it really is superbly done. ALSO, ALSO the references to the Zodiac murderer really struck my fancy. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this story, struck by the possibility she’d killed Mickey for something far less seemingly-mundane thing. Like he’d raped her. Instead of her essentially drunk-raping him. *le shudder* But yeah, the serial killer references worked really well too. This whole creation is insanely well thought out. Definitely an all-time favorite of mine.



Heh. Foreshadowing. And irony, too, in a way. You’re really very talented, did you know that?

And then there’s the actual scene with Mickey. Once again, this rubbed me the wrong way—but I can’t deny it’s masterfully written. Drunk!Mickey is sort of adorable anyway, so that made it bearable for me. But I’m so uncomfortable with this crazy bitch! She’s psychotic! And when Mickey wakes up… I felt so bad for him. I really like Mickey. And he was so good about it all, he was mature and tried to deal with it seriously and treat her like a person. And at this point I’d very much like to address the point of flowers and weeds and deflowering that you’ve used in this story: you used it so literally in the first chapter, and then came back to aliken it to what was happening to the characters in the story. That’s what makes a really great writer, I think. This is so well put together, I’m sort of in love with it. Yes? Okay? Yes.

FUCKING SPIDERS I DO NOT LIKE SPIDERS WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THIS ARGH.

Yeah, anyway, like, I really like how “Darling had never eaten a mate before”. Because now you’re making the boy not only the spider’s meal but you’re making Rose the spider, because she’s the one who mated with Mickey. It’s all very clever: Rose likes Black Widows. Rose’s Black Widow is named Darling (which is a sick twist on a pet name for a lover). Rose uses Darling to kill (see: biting the head off the male spider) her mate. Thus Rose becomes the Black Widow. I see what you did there. Very, very, very good. Amazing, actually. No. That’s not enough. Stupendous? Supermegafoxyawesomehot clever stuff? Maybe. You get the idea.

Okay, and here’s another thing: Rose’s preoccupation with the fact she thinks Mickey is romantically interested in his sister. This is really well done and of course it’s creepy too, but it reminds us that Rose has never had a sibling and therefore does not understand the dynamic. It also shows us that she refuses to believe that anyone else does not think the way that she does—ie that Mickey wouldn’t like her because she gave off clingy, obsessive, creepy vibes. She doesn’t feel that she is clingy, obsessive or creepy, so that train of thought doesn’t even occur to her. (And well done on reinforcing the “weed” metaphor with Rose killing Mickey—she’s weeding her garden. She sees herself as the flower—and lol her name is Rose—and Mickey is the ugly weed and she feels like he’s wronged her, ‘deflowered her’. Whatever. It was very shrewd.)

AND THE ENDING. Which, like I said before, I should have seen coming, based on the tenor of the story. I very much like that you’ve waited until the ending to reveal this (ie not starting the story with a ‘Dear Newsletter…’). It seems like Rose is simply recounting the tale in her head, but, in actual fact, we are reading it written. Which is even more frightful, really, to realize after all these years she stands by what she’s done and that even when she writes it all down she can’t see the error in her ways.

But, as I said before, HOLY CRAP. HOLY MUSICAL, BATMAN. This is just amazing. And I wanted to thank you for writing it. Since it’s magical and terrifying and beautiful all wrapped up in one big bundle of awesomesauce.

So I’m going to finally end it here. I’m pretty sure I’ve said everything I came to say. I’ve typed this in Word because I knew it would be very, very long (four pages, as it were, in font size 12), so I have the added benefit of giving you a wordcount for this review: 2228 words.

This review was well-deserved. Now finish writing your novel so I can buy it and own a signed copy of the next biggest trend before it gets widespread. Go on. You know you want to.

This is absolutely amazing.

Hooked already. Can't wait to see what you decide to do with this. :)

This is absolutely beautiful. You should write this!