Record Chaser

[RapeU]

It's interesting that we both around the same time period wrote about characters telling their experience about being assaulted. Like I mentioned in my previous comment, this brings depth to stories that you don't normally see. It makes the characters more relatable. More alive.

I'm not just reading a story to satisfy my fantasy. I'm reading something bigger and deeper. Something that both brings out the fantasy to help satisfy the itch, and something that tugs us back to reality that it's inhumane.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later. Perhaps I'll give this another read like a full novel from start to finish now that it's a complete story.

[JTCK]

@Vela Nanashi, what a great comment, I agree with you on everything; I especially like your thoughts about trust in relationships — I also don’t see a future for Jason and Nora.

[Claire]

Thank you all so much for your kind feedback. I'm a very happy girl right now. Let's see how many posts I'll make this response...

I've mentioned in other comments that I've deep-dived into writing theory a lot. Watching writing videos. If this story were in one of those, I'd expect them to say it was a risky move, putting the final focus on a previously unseen character. Well, some of them would say it was just plain wrong, but free advice on the internet often returns what you paid for it. What did I think of that choice? Undecided. It wasn't flat-out wrong, and it delivered something I'm trying to put my finger on. I'm not sure it was the best possible option, but I'll just try to work my thinking as I write it and see if I can figure this out.

You're probably right that this is a weird move. I liked the tonal whiplash of mundane relationship trouble to the heaviness of the previous chapter as the opening hook for this final chapter. And I also like to try new things. We write so much from the perspectives of victims and rapists... I just thought it would be interesting to look at the victim from the perspective of a well meaning third party, not someone who objectifies her. And one of the reasons why I chose Jason as the POV character and not Emily is that I like to have some positive male figure in longer stories like this one. Given the nature of our genre, we're usually not painting male characters in the most positive light. So every now and then, I like to include a positive male presence in my stories.

If I wrote stories with the hope of getting published somewhere or living off my writing, then I would likely consider such a drastic choice to change the POV character more carefully. But for a forum like ours, I ultimately just thought: If my readers followed me for 10 chapters on this journey, then they will follow me through that POV shift as well.

I suspect it's hard to have a close friend let it drop that she was raped that very night.

I think for many survivors even using the word rape can be hard. And in Claire's case, she was not "just" raped but abducted, held captive for a day, raped repeatedly, and she is severely sleep deprived. From what I understand, dissociating trauma victims often have trouble giving a coherent account of what happened. They will start their account of the events somewhere in the middle ("I was in a basement."), fixate on weird details that make no sense to anyone but them ("I liked Eugene's shirt."), and lack awareness for the context information that the person they are talking to has. In the story, I tried to convey the latter by having Claire mention Eugene in the same breath as Emily despite Jason having no idea who he is, and her talking about Mark's record which also means nothing to Jason. I have no expertise in this either, but looking at how I portrayed things, I probably made Claire too coherent for this to be a truly realistic portrayal of someone in her situation. Other symptoms of trauma you could see in this or the previous chapter are her hypervigilance (checking the door, the window, irrational fear her keys might be gone) and decision paralysis (having trouble to choose what to wear for sleep).

I don't know if author-Claire intended something like this as the ending all along, but giving us pictures of Claire's personal connections as a mental lifeline worked in-story and also as a writing technique that allowed her to pull of an ending that breaks a lot of storytelling rules.

.

I kind of like being called author-Claire... Anyway, I intended this to be the ending since at least December 2024 I think. In chapter 4 part 1 of my story Späte Genugtuung is a reference to Jason calling Claire's work place for her and letting them know that she's sick. So I decided on this ending for Record Chaser some time before that.

Some other stray thoughts. I briefly wondered if Jason and Claire were going to end up a couple after all, but quickly dismissed it.

I think there is two readings on this that both make sense. Either their relationship is as platonic as their own thoughts would want you to believe, then no, there will be no romance. Or these two have internalized the "Our bond is too precious to risk destroying it with romance"-narrative so much that they are lying to themselves. In that case, this additional closeness will likely bring any romantic undertones to the forefront once Claire feels ready to explore romance and sexuality in a consensual way again. Either way, I absolutely did not want to portray any sexual tension in this final chapter. I think if you see a person you truly care about hollowed out like this, your mind simply does not register them as sexually attractive in that moment even if they are usually the hottest person in the world for you.

I probably could have done with less of their argument.

That's fair. I never wrote a scene like this before and it was a lot of fun for me to write this stupid, petty argument. So I might have gotten a little carried away with this. But I will talk in a later post about why I included this scene and what purpose it serves from my perspective.

Thank you for your feedback. I enjoyed reading it a lot!

[Claire]

Even though I stupidly already wrote this under the last chapter as well: now really — what a wonderful ending to a wonderful story!

In a way, the ending is open. But somehow you can also sense a kind of happy ending in the distance — and the two of them have truly earned that.

I'm so glad you liked the ending! I wouldn't compromise my vision for the story because a reader doesn't like the reaction I'm taking things. But after your disappointment with chapter 8 I was a bit scared that you might not like where I'm going with this. And that would have made me really sad.

I also hope that here is a happy ending somewhere on the horizon.

I’m usually quite reserved with superlatives, but this might be the best chapter I’ve read from you so far. I find it incredibly gripping; you manage to portray the psychological exceptional situation the two of them are in with absolute credibility.

Thank you, that's high praise. I'm almost a bit worried about writing scenes that have little to no sex in them. I'm sometimes very proud of these scenes but I know they usually don't get much attention. So it's really nice to read some appreciation for a scene like this.

Especially during his argument with Nora. Written so authentically! For a moment I was afraid her jealousy would stop him from going to Claire.

I've been so cruel to Claire, I couldn't do that... As I said in my response to @SoftGameHunter I might have had a little too much fun writing this argument. Especially this moment here:

“Fine, go, but don’t think about coming back when you get there and it turns out she texted you because her cat ran away!”

“She doesn’t have a cat…”

“NOT THE POINT, JASON!”

I laughed so hard when I wrote this.

Thank you for this wonderful story — for me personally, it’s the best one here on the forum.

Back then, I struggled for quite a while before deciding to register on RU. Now, of course, I’m glad I finally did. And the fact that my comment motivated you to keep writing the story makes me incredibly happy!

What made you struggle back then? I think you registered a bit before did. Was it just the thought of registering on a site with adult content and the stigma this still carries?

It's interesting that we both around the same time period wrote about characters telling their experience about being assaulted. Like I mentioned in my previous comment, this brings depth to stories that you don't normally see. It makes the characters more relatable. More alive.

I'm not just reading a story to satisfy my fantasy. I'm reading something bigger and deeper. Something that both brings out the fantasy to help satisfy the itch, and something that tugs us back to reality that it's inhumane.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later. Perhaps I'll give this another read like a full novel from start to finish now that it's a complete story.

Was the scene difficult for you to write? And let me know how rereading the story changes your perspective if you do read it again!

[Claire]

One thing I really find sad is when a girl/boy friend does not trust their boy/girl friend enough to dare let them be with their friends, why even be a couple if you can't trust your girl/boy friend? It is a really ugly look too, and then there are the people who want to isolate their girl/boy friend from all friends, those are even worse. Maybe this is a weird opinion to have I dunno...

I get to a degree that your boyfriend having such a close friendship with a childhood friend can make you question things... but yeah, I agree with you. I once was in a very short lived relationhip with a man who simply could not get his jealousy in check. So I know from personal experience how irrational fears born out of jealousy can be.

I don't think that Nora wants to isolate Jason from all friends. I think she just feels that she can't measure up to the bond he has with Claire.

Please excuse me when I talk to characters in the story lol.

No no, go ahead. I think it's cute.

All those fond memories are totally adorable, got swept up reading them, and loving them

That's nice of you to say. That was the one part in the chapter I thought might drag a little.

so I think she is managing to communicate somewhat good given the circumstances.

You're right. As I said in an earlier post, she is probably too coherent for the state she's actually in.

I would suggest very slow flaying Jason, that way Mark would go to hell screaming, ahem, but yeah that might not be what Claire needs right now.

Go, Vela! Nice to see you so protective of my fictional characters!

I think you also captured with just a few words the way men guard women they are with when they are out, and women who are with a trusted man can relax a whole lot, knowing they are safe, and don't have to keep eye out themselves.

This moment is actually a callback to Claire's thoughts in chapter 4:

Where was Jason? Jason had always looked out for her when they went partying together when they were younger. He had told her that he knew what boys could be like, especially drunk boys meeting a lone drunk girl. She had told him that he didn’t have to look out for her. He did it anyway, even when it had annoyed her a little. He was sweet that way. Why wasn’t he here now?

Though he forgot to go look if door was locked (but it probably is).

He knew that the door is locked and he never intended to actually look. He was just calming her ind to help her fall asleep. That bw, from what I understand, is something you should do if you're responding to someone's trauma. Don't invalidate their feelings/fears by saying "The door is locked" or "You worry unneccessarily" but take what they are saying as given and sooth them from their own perspective ("I'll check for you.").

I think I need to see her be okay, also my eyes are leaking, damn it.

Finally, I'm not alone in crying for Claire...

Thank you for the amazing story Claire.

You're welcome! And thank you for sticking with it despite it being outside of your usual wheelhouse.

that is clear signs of depression to me

In her case, this is severe trauma induced dissociation and sleep deprivation.


Thank you, Vela. Great comment as always.

[RapeU]

It's interesting that we both around the same time period wrote about characters telling their experience about being assaulted. Like I mentioned in my previous comment, this brings depth to stories that you don't normally see. It makes the characters more relatable. More alive.

I'm not just reading a story to satisfy my fantasy. I'm reading something bigger and deeper. Something that both brings out the fantasy to help satisfy the itch, and something that tugs us back to reality that it's inhumane.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later. Perhaps I'll give this another read like a full novel from start to finish now that it's a complete story.

Was the scene difficult for you to write? And let me know how rereading the story changes your perspective if you do read it again!

Yes. My eyes leaked tears and I had to just get up out of my chair and walk around for a few minutes before finishing it.

[SoftGameHunter]

Was the scene difficult for you to write? And let me know how rereading the story changes your perspective if you do read it again!

Yes. My eyes leaked tears and I had to just get up out of my chair and walk around for a few minutes before finishing it.

Which story are you guys talking about?

[Claire]

@SoftGameHunter The CUNT rapist, @RapeU's magnum opus.

[Claire]

Author Commentary

In this post, I want to talk about what it was like to write Record Chaser, what I wanted to do with the story, and how things changed over time. I’ll start with some general points and then say a bit about each chapter individually. This will likely be a very long post, but I’ll try to write it in a way that you can jump to any individual chapter section and read that in isolation.


My journey as a writer while I was working on Record Chaser

Record Chaser is the first story I ever wrote, or to be more precise: The first story I ever started to write. I began writing the story in October 2024 and published the first chapter on October 21 2024 on RavishU’s One on One board. My goal was to fill a gap I perceived in the catalogue of stories on RavishU: A rape fantasy that didn’t treat the story as secondary and that leaned into psychological realism, less into the over the top power fantasy of total domination. I talked about this a few times before, but let me reiterate it here: The more real a story feels to me and the more compassion I feel for the victim, the more arousing a well written rape scene becomes for me. I like that tension between thinking “God, this is so fucked up, the poor girl…” and “But this is kinda hot…”. I think I said once: If you haven’t masturbated to a rape fantasy while crying for the victim, then you’re not reading it right. I know that I’m a minority when it comes to that. I had one reader tell me in the past that he needs to shut down his compassion for the victim or he couldn’t enjoy the story anymore. But to me, it’s the opposite. I lean into this tension and it is the entire appeal rape fantasy has for me, at least when it comes to arousal.

When you read my stories, then you can see that they are usually characterized by deep compassion for the victim. My writing doesn’t revel with glee in their suffering, doesn’t make light of it, doesn’t make fun of it. There are of course exceptions like Men at War or BooB which are satire. But even there, despite the lighter tone in those, the victim is never the punchline. And personally, I find those satire stories not arousing but funny. So the goal is not to arouse with those in the first place.

So that was my mission statement for Record Chaser: First and foremost, write a story and write the explicit rape scenes in service of the story, as part of the story.

Also, I wanted to avoid certain tropes: No forced orgasms, no unfeeling psychopath rapist, no crazy monster dicks, things like that. Maybe this is a female perspective coming through here, but for me the horror of rape lies not in the scary strong man with the giant cock in some dark alley. It’s how mundane rape is, how ever present the danger is. It can be the middle aged uncle with hair loss, an average penis and a beer belly who turns out to be a rapist. The two meter tall guy with the perfect body and a cock you could mistake for an arm is an almost mythological creature compared to the threat of rape in the real world.

What was interesting about writing Record Chaser for me was observing the journey I took as a fledgling writer. Let’s start with the title of the story: Why Record Chaser?

I didn’t like a lot of the titles I saw on RavishU back then. To me, the worst titles for stories are things like: “The taking of Lisa”, “Charlotte’s ordeal” or “Cheerleader gangraped”. I like titles that make you wonder “What the hell could this be about?” but after you read the story, the title makes perfect sense to you. I think Record Chaser is a good example for that. You have this clear moment in chapter 3 when it suddenly clicks and I like that a lot. My favorite title for all the stories I’ve written is It’s okay, I feel a little lonely, too.

When I started writing the story, I had a clear idea for the first five chapters. At the time, I thought that it would be only four chapters but I ended up splitting the original chapter 3 into what is now chapter 3 and chapter 4. Chapter 3 especially turned out to be longer than I expected.

I wrote the story until the end of chapter 5 and then I needed a break. Chapter 5 was too emotionally draining for me. I got too deep into Mark’s mind and felt a bit disgusted by myself. Following chapter 5, I gathered a lot of experience writing vastly different stories.

The next story I wrote was An Unfortunate Misstep. I hadn’t written anything short at the time and wanted to see whether I could do it. To this day, it’s by far the weakest story I’ve ever written, but it was my first time writing a short self-contained one shot.

After that, I wrote Men at War. Inspired by a comment on Record Chaser that speculated that the countdown at the end of chapter 2 might signal the beginning of a live stream, I wrote a medium length story and dipped my feet into more comedic territory for the first time. Looking back on it now, I think that was my way of washing off the heaviness of Record Chaser chapter 5.

Then I wrote Venus’ Touch, another medium length story in which I wanted to explore what sex would look like where it’s truly not obvious whether this was consensual or not. And because the story has no rapist with nefarious intentions, only bad communication and misinterpreted signals, I was writing for the first time a story without a truly antagonistic relationship. For the most part, the tone of the story is cute, romantic, a bit melancholic but wholesome and sincere. It’s a very different beast from everything I wrote before.

Self-Defence followed immediately after. It had a more comedic tone but wasn’t a satire like Men at War. The challenge here was to write a story as a tribute for another user on the forum and depict them in a way that was respectful to them while also writing a story about rape. Certainly not my best work, but I think it holds up nicely for what it is. Interestingly, it’s another medium length story. I can’t tell exactly why, but for some reason I seemed to gravitate to this ~10,000 words spread over 4 chapters structure during that time.

After Self-Defence, I was ready to try my hand at something bigger again. I wanted to explore institutional power and the role of dependent relationships in sexual abuse. And that gave rise to my second long story Late Satisfaction which is Record Chaser’s sister story playing in the same universe, same time and featuring some of the same characters.

I wrote two more German stories, Der Mitficker for Irenova’s community project and Die Unendliche Vergewaltigung as an experiment in anti-storytelling.

After doing all that in little more than a month – yes, my output was crazy back then – I returned to Record Chaser.

It was very clear to me at this point that the story could not continue just depicting one rape after the other. I knew that to write an actual story, and not just a sequence of sexual fantasies, that each depicted rape would need to drive the narrative forward and deliver a new emotional beat, otherwise the story would get stale. And second, I realized that chapter 6 would need to be a soft reset point for the story. Even if the answer was obvious, the central narrative question of the first 5 chapters was whether Claire would get raped or not. And we also knew that Mark has no intention to kill her or keep her for more than 24 hours. So the further trajectory is clear: Repeated rapes until the clock strikes midnight again, then Claire gets to go home. Basically, the story needed a new source of tension after chapter 5 released all the tension that was build up over the course of the first four chapters.

So I decided that the central narrative conflict past chapter 5 would revolve around self-perception: Would Claire be able to see herself as more than Mark’s toy? Would Mark be able to maintain his mask until the end? That is what chapters 6 to 9 are all about.

I published chapter 6 in early December of 2024 and I think chapter 7 was published on Christmas.

After that, I focused mainly on Späte Genugtuung for a while. I also gathered some new experience as a writer writing my short story You, my first and only short story using a second person narrator.

Overall, I didn’t get much writing done in December and January. Vela and I were busy organizing changes on RavishU. I forced myself a bit to write a story for RavishU’s first story contest. A few months later that story would become “It’s okay, I feel a little lonely, too.”, probably the best short story I’ve written. But at the time, my writing process was rudely interrupted when the forum suddenly disappeared on February 11 2025.

It took a few days for us to be certain that RavishU was gone for good. But once that became clear, I decided to host a forum myself: An up to date one with many features RavishU lacked, one with an easy to navigate, sensible structure, run by people who are actually an active presence on the forum. And I had to learn a lot: What forum software is there? How do you even install a forum for testing purposes on your own PC? How can I buy a domain for the forum without revealing my identity to the public? What hosts allow for rape fantasy content? How do you set up the mail address for the forum properly? What extensions are there for the forum? How does search engine optimization work?

I installed the forum on February 24 on my Abelohost account. And then I began setting up the forum properly. What followed was a 1.5 months beta test of the forum. Over 30 extensions were tested and installed. The Welcome PM, the Freshman’s Guide, the Tag Guidelines, all the explainers for the various features of the forum had to be written. Several extensions received custom tweaks from Vela and me. After a lot of back and forth, the forum left the beta testing phase and went online on April 4. I didn’t write a single word for any of my stories during that time.

Then I was busy reading basically every new story that was posted and leaving feedback on it. I only wrote stories for contests at the time, making sure that the contests had enough participants. I still enjoyed writing stories and I think that “It’s okay, I feel a little lonely, too.” is some of my best work to this day. The flash fiction tournament also forced me to write flash fiction for the first time which was a fun challenge for me. But I also remember feeling kind of glad that I got knocked out of the tournament in the first round. Managing the forum, updating extensions, writing stories for contests - it was a lot of work back then. It got the forum going, actually increased activity on the board, but it was ultimately too much work for me alone. I couldn’t keep it up and the result is the current state of the forum.

I wanted to return to Record Chaser much sooner. My original plan was to post chapter 8 about two weeks after launch. I wanted to slowly repost all my old stories over the course of the first two weeks and write chapter 8 in the meantime. That didn’t work out because the majority of people invited at launch didn’t engage with any content on the forum and I tried to compensate for that by commenting on basically everything that was posted back then.

The first time that I truly wrote a story just for fun again, not out of a sense of obligation, was Sweet, Sweet Mess: A short story that adapts a song into a piece of erotic fiction. It was my first and so far only consensual story. It features a first person narrator adressing another person as “you” the entire time in her thoughts, so a hybrid of first and second person narration almost. I also tried to incorporate the lyrics of the song directly into the text as best as I could. It’s the most carefully crafted story I’ve written so far.

While all that was happening, Record Chaser behaved strangely on the forum. I posted the first 7 chapters quickly over the course of the first few weeks, and then it was ignored like many launch stories that the few active users on the forum were already familiar with. But while most launch stories just stayed buried, Record Chaser and You kept getting pushed back to the top by user feedback. Record Chaser also became one of the most viewed stories despite not having received a new chapter for months. Ultimately, Record Chaser and You somehow even managed to become the only two Popular stories that were not written for a contest. And they likely still would be if I hadn’t deliberately pushed for some other stories to get rated in early November. I still don’t understand why out of all the launch stories these two in particular behaved so completely differently.

I finally returned to writing Record Chaser after I had given up on running the forum. So yeah, since I started writing this story a lot has changed. I wrote comedy, satire, short stories, medium lengh stories, flash fiction, German stories, consensual stories, first and second person narratives, adaped a song into a story, translated a story, organized and participated in contests, built and ran this forum, and saw it fail.

Returning to a story I had started writing when I was much less experienced as a writer and much less involved in the community wasn’t easy. But I also knew that once I had finished chapters 8 and 9, the remaining two chapters would be much easier to write. The most difficult part of the story was always going to be to keep the repeated rapes of chapters 6 to 9 interesting somehow, to give them narrative purpose. The aftermath was always going to be easy in comparison.

And that is exactly what happened. After chapter 8, there was another fairly long gap before the release of chapter 9. But after that, I finished the story rather quickly. And I was happy with the result.


Chapter 1

When I look back at chapter 1, I wonder whether I would still write it like that today. Maybe today I would start with showing Claire at the bar, give the reader an idea of what she was like before she was abducted and trapped in a basement. But I also kind of like the cold open. I like that it takes the reader a bit to figure out who she is as a person. It’s only in chapter 3 that we learn she is a math student for example.

I also like all the foreshadowing in chapter 1: The green light, the later phone charging moment, Mark’s honesty, Emily and Jason as recurring figures in Claire’s thoughts. I think these can all be read as fluff but it all has a payoff later on.

There a few small things I would change though and probably will at some point. There are a few sentences where the third person limited perspective slips. I would like to fix those. It won’t change anything fundamentally, but it’s very noticeable to me now. I did that two or three times intentionally later on, but here it was just me being sloppy.

I also might change the title of the chapter at some point. I think it diminishes the impact of Mark’s final line at the end of the chapter.

Ranking chapter 1 is difficult for me. On the one hand, I think it might compete for the spot of the weakest chapter with chapter 7. On the other hand, it also does what it’s supposed to and I think it ends on a nice hook. So it might just feel worse to me than other chapters because it doesn’t have the same emotional payoff as some of the later chapters. But if that is not it’s purpose, then it is not fair to judge it by that criterion.


Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is interesting because it lays the groundwork for Mark’s psychology and we get his POV for the first time. I really liked writing this whole exchange between him and Claire around her simple “I don’t want to be raped.” I find it almost sad that I could not continue this early dynamic between them after the first rape. I think this exchange here is a special moment that is rarely seen in rape fantasy stories and I like it a lot.

This chapter has also one of my favorite foreshadowing moments.

Claire was all to aware that even for a woman she was on the smaller and more delicate side. It was not inconceivable that a woman on the upper end of the normal distribution in female strength and height might be able to physically compete with Mark, but sadly that was not her.

The phrasing here is deliberately chosen to be weird. But once you understand her math background, her thinking in statistical concepts like the normal distribution makes perfect sense. I always wondered whether a reader would point out that moment and think that it it’s odd. But I never saw anyone pick up on that. If you reread the story, I think this is a nice moment where you might think “Oh, that makes sense now…”.

I ended the chapter on the 27 minute countdown reveal. In the most basic sense, this is just a cliff hanger. But the ticking clock also gives chapters 3 and 4 structure.

I still like chapter 2 a lot. There also some minor pov inconsistencies here that I would like to fix at some point, but other than that, I’m happy with it.


Chapter 3

Chapter 3 keeps growing on me over time. I liked it a lot already when I wrote it and I like it even more now. We finally get some background information for our girl. I remember discussing with myself whether including the Gödel reference was a good idea or not. Would I just confuse the reader with that? But ultimately I decided to just go with it.

Then the chapter has of course the title drop moment and I love the buildup to that moment. The entire dialogue is so unhinged. On some level, it was fun to write that. But it was also the first time that delving so deep into Mark’s mind was unsettling for me.

After the title drop we get to be alone with Mark for a while and his whole pathology is laid bare. This was also the first time that I dared to include some dark humor in a story. I still find that imagined online discussion surrounding Mark’s rules hilarious. I could really see something like that happen. I can already imagine some philosophy YouTubers make videos about Mark’s ethical rape ruleset from a utilitarian and a kantian perspective.

Originally, I had planned for this chapter to get to the end of what is now chapter 4. But I quickly realized that the chapter was long enough already. So I ended it with Mark getting back to Claire.

I would rank chapter 3 quite high probably. If I had to change something, then I would probably try to make it even clearer that the Mark we see in the first half of the chapter is an act and that him talking like rape is not a big deal is intentional cruelty he thinks he has to perform.


Chapter 4

I think the biggest question for chapter 4 is: Is it too long?

If a reader thinks that it drags, then I would get that. The point is of course to highlight the cruelty and the psychological dread of time slowly ticking down, and the horror of Mark’s soft touch in this chapter. And I think that the final glimpse of Claire’s mind when she’s reduced to childlike pleading is heartbreaking. But the way to get there is long. And because this was originally meant to be a smaller part in the combined chapter 3 and 4, it now lacks some strong emotional beats.

Overall, chapter 4 is probably one of the weaker ones for me. Ultimately, there is just not much happening here. But I think the end of chapter 4 still holds up nicely.


Chapter 5

I talked in an earlier post about how chapter 5 hit me hard:

As the first story I ever wrote, it obviously has a special place in my heart. Im surprised with how satisfied I am still with it. And I needed to take a break from it after finishing chapter 5, for multiple reasons. When I really get into a story I'm writing, I can feel quite strong emotions. I can't read the final chapter of Men at War without laughing at the absurdity of it and I can't read chapter 3 part 2 of Späte Genugtuung (Late Satisfaction) without crying. But chapter 5 of Record Chaser was in a different league. I felt disgusted by myself after I finished writing that. Maybe I delved in too deep into Mark's mind, but portraying the final sentence of that chapter as this great revelation... Ugh, I still shudder a bit at the thought when I think too much about it. Looking back on it now, I am not surprised that the next few stories I wrote weren't nearly as heavy. An Unfortunate Misstep is just a forgettable quicky, Men at War is a satire, Venus' Touch for the most part is plain romantic and then I wrote a tribute story for another user on RavishU that had comedic elements to it. It was only then, more than a month later, that I was ready to get back into the darker tone of Record Chaser and its sister story Späte Genugtuung.

Of everything I wrote, chapter 5 of Record Chaser is also the most arousing for me. Of everything I wrote, this is what I masturbated the most to. I just love how wrong it feels to find the content of this chapter hot. I've been told by a reader in the past that he had to suppress his empathy for the victim to find a scene hot. But to me it's the other way around. The more I feel for the victim, the more arousing does that tension between "This is so wrong!" and "This is so hot..." get.

I also already talked about how Mark is kind of the protagonist of this chapter. He’s the one overcoming obstacles on his way to achieve a goal and ends up having a revelation that helps him understand himself better.

The chapter has a lot of moments I like. First, the initial difficulty of penetration. I think I read that in real life about 50% of all attempted rapes fail. We usually portray raping someone as extremely easy. I liked to deviate from that.

Next, we have Claire’s reflection on what has changed culminating in “she would never be not a rape victim”. This is one of those momens that can make me cry when I reread the chapter after a while.

Then we get her dissociation expressed in her absurd fixation on the ceiling and finally Mark’s “enlightenment” at the very end. I just love this chapter.

For me to this day, a clear candidate for the best chapter of the story.


Chaper 6

Chapter 6 was difficult to write. This was a soft reset for the story. Four chapters of buildup finally had their payoff in chapter 5. I knew that the story could not keep up or increase the intensity of chapter 5. So Chapter 6 needed to slow down, introduce a new conflict to the story, and return some agency to Claire. If that didn’t happen, then the story would either numb the reader to the repeated violence, or be reduced to a mere series of rape scenes without any relevance for the plot.

So we see here clearly Claire understading Mark’s pathology and using it against him. I really enjoyed writing Claire’s emotional outburst here. This unconstrained anger added an emotional register to the story and her as character that wasn’t present up to this point. So the chapter did not only prevent the plot itself from becoming monotonous, but it also prevented fear from being the dominant emotion hanging over everyhing.

This is also the first time that we were left alone with Claire. In chapter 3, Mark also left the room, but we stayed with his POV. This time, we stay with Claire as she reclaims her body. I think the story hits a gentler, softer tone here that you won’t find anywhere else in the story other than chapter 11 maybe.

Looking at the chapter now, I can still sense that I had recently finished writing chapter 3 part 2 of Late Satisfaction. Writing that chapter gave me the confidence that I could pull something slow and heartfelt like this off.

Honestly, there I probably nothing I would change about chapter 6. I think the emotional beats of the chapter work as intended and the pacing is on point. This chapter is also a contender for best chapter of the story for me.


Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is a difficult one. I wouldn’t call it bad, but it is probably the chapter I would consider to be the weakest. And that is weird because it has a lot of things in it I like.

I very much like the opening that shows us Mark reflecting on the pregnant woman he raped. But ironically, this in my view strongest part of the chapter is an echo of chapter 6 because it deals with the fallout of Mark’s guilt after Claire got to him.

On the surface, the second rape also has a lot of elemens that make it different from the first one. We get more physical resistance from Claire. The focus lies more on humiliation, disgust and Claire’s involuntary participation. I really liked Mark’s stupid pronoun joke. From a pure sexual fantasy perspective, the chapter focuses much more on Claire’s boobs. We get Mark being a total creep while Claire is asleep.

So on paper, there is enough to prevent this chapter from feeling like a repeat of the first rape. And yet, it feels a bit redundant. This is the chapter that could be cut the easiest without disrupting the flow of the story.

The main reason why I didn’t cut it is this: I think jumping from the first rape immediately to the eighth rape when both Claire and Mark were already showing signs of exhaustion would have been too abrupt. This is also the last time we see a Claire who is not yet used to the abuse. With her arms free, we see her now fighting tooth and nail. I think it was important to include that moment in the story. But that doesn’t change that in terms of progression of the story, this chapter is the weak link. The chapter achieves one thing though: It sets the tone that Claire’s resolution from the end of chapter 6

“She couldn’t stop him from raping her. But she couldn’t allow him to take ownership of her perception of her own body.”

would be a fight of attrition.


Chapter 8

Chapter 8 is Claire’s absolute low point. It’s a mini story in and of itself. After the time jump, we get the inciting incident with the attempted a kiss. And the following spanking scene is almost a fight scene in disguise. We know the stakes and both characters have a clear win condition. Mark is bound by his rules. He needs Claire to submit without breaking his rules, so he chooses humiliation and psychology as his weapons of choice since physical violence is unavailable to him. Claire knows this, she understands his self-imposed rules and just has to endure long enough.

Here is what was important to me: Even Claire’s lowest moment has an element of agency to it. She loses the fight over the kiss, but she does so to protect something that’s more important to her. She doesn’t want Mark to taint the image of Jason in her head like he already had with her father. And you can see the echo of the thoughts he put into her head here later in chapter 10 when she writes that message to her father. Of course she is doing something here she doesn’t want, but it reflects a value judgment on her part. She’d rather let her rapist kiss her and spread her legs for him “willingly” than let him drag Jason into his sick game. And of coure that scene only works because Mark is honest with her and sticks to his own rules. So Claire knows that Mark won’t continue going after Jason if she does what he wants.

To me, chapter 8 is the most cruel and sadistic chapter. It’s weakest point is probably the depiction of Claire’s emotions in this. She doesn’t want to give Mark a reaction and her defeat in the end is one of quiet desperation, not dramatic crying or explosive anger. The outcome for her is numb disbelief. But that is by its very nature emotionally subdued. If I ever write something like that again, I might have to think more about how to make that emotionally resonant for the reader.

Compared to chapter 7, this one is absolutely vital for the story. Claire lets Mark’s actions start to define how she views herself and it seems like she is loosing the fight for her self-perception. That is what elevates the chapter to being more than “just another rape”.

In my own ranking of the chapters, this one here probably goes somewhere in the middle.


Chapter 9

Originally, my plan for chapter 9 was to be the shower rape. It only makes sense that Mark would at some point let Claire go to the bathroom. And on the surface, this would have introduced some new elements into the abuse again. Different location and position, you’d have water involved, Mark could watch her pee. But it would all just be violation and humiliation of a slighly different flavor. After chapter 8, Claire had reached the absolute low point already. Claire would have been even less responsive than before and there would have been no point to showing any of this in detail. So when I couldn’t find a reason to include this in the story, I simply didn’t. And I think that was the right decision.

Instead we get Mark reaching his record. In the psychological battle over their self-perception, Mark loses here. The mask slips when he hits her because she won’t let him deny the truth of who he really is. And Claire is of course not suddenly ok, but finds a new resilience in truly understanding how pathetic Mark’s existence is. His words lose all power over her here.

What surprised me the most was how short this chapter turned out to be. For the longest time, I was sure that the story would hit the 50,000 words mark, but it fell short by ~2,500 words because this chapter turned out to be so short. But I think the chapter is long enough for what it does. There was no point anymore to go into detail for the mechanics of the rape. I only wanted to capture the exhaustion, desperation and pain Mark inflicted upon himself at this point.

I really like the resolution of the central conflict of the second half of the story we see here. I knew that throwing Claire just deeper and deeper into despair would just get depressing. I also knew that having the story end with Mark killing Claire and betraying his rules and persona his way would make the narrative too much about him in the end. So I needed to get Claire out of this, alive and with her personhood intact, but damaged of course.

Similar to chapter 8, I would rank this one here somewhere in the middle.


Chapter 10

With chapter 10, writing the story got a lot easier again. The difficult part, making the repeated rapes somehow feel meaningful from a narrative perspective, was over now. With Claire regaining her freedom, I had so much more options available to me. When I began writing the scene where she gets dressed, I realized that this is the first time in the story that she’s not naked. I had to stop for a moment and wonder what kind of outfit she would have picked before she got abducted. Her getting dressed, that was a literal glimpse at who she was before all this. I really had to wonder for the first time how to reflect her personality in her clothes.

The purse with Maxwell’s equations underlines her nerdiness and her connection to Emily. The bralette made sense to me because given her small boobs, she wouldn’t need a bra that offered a lot of support. As an introverted virgin, it made sense to me that she would prioritize comfort over sex appeal in her choice of clothes even when she’s going out.

But the heart of the chapter is of course the latter half when she is finally home alone and can’t sleep. That was rough to write. Seeing her get up over and over again and writing these uninhibited messages she never sends instead of sleeping made me feel anxious. I tried to go here for a trauma depiction that went beyond the stereotypical “She showers and curls up into fetal position”. Seeing this traumatized girl being unable to sleep after being awake for 40+ hours because her nervous system won’t let her believe that she’s safe was heartbreaking to me.

And how does this chapter and Claire’s POV in the story end? It ends with agency, with her making the choice to ask Jason for help. That was important to me. Writing Claire as a protagonist who makes meaningful choices that drive the plot forward was the most difficult challenge of the entire story. And so it was important to me to stay true to that to the end and have her part as the narrator end with her making a meaningful choice that has consequences and that shows us that she still has the strength to reach out for help on her own. I didn’t want the story to end with her just being alone, or Emily, Jason or her parents finding her because they didn’t hear anything from her for days. I wanted somebody to come to her because she had the strength to ask for it.

I like the chapter a lot and if it consisted just of the second half of Claire being alone at home, I would put it up with the other 3 chapters I have at the top of my list. But I put this one here in clear fourth place I think. The chapter affected me a lot. Seeing the state Claire ends up in made me truly realize what I put this girl through. And at the same time, I was saying goodbye to her as a protagonist after over a year. That was really rough.


Chapter 11

Making Jason, a character who was only a memory in Claire’s thoughts up to this point, the pov character and protagonist for the final chapter might be a controversial choice. But here is why I did it.

First, getting the perspective of a third person allowed me to show Claire and what happened to her in a different light. We see how much she’s hurting, how much what Mark did affected her. The shock of seeing her like this we get from Jason’s view tells us how broken she truly is. This is something we rarely write in noncon stories and I really wanted to depict that.

Second, why Jason? I could have also chosen Emily as the pov character for the final chapter. When you write a noncon story like this, the male character usually is not a positive depiction of masculinity. With Jason, I wanted to have a positive male presence in the story. And not as some savior who makes everything alright, but as just a boy who genuinely cares and earnestly tries to be there. And of course it was important that he doesn’t objectify and/or sexualize Claire. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t find her attractive on some level, but that whatever attraction there might be is simply overwritten by pure shock over what he sees when she opens that door for him.

Why begin with his fight with Nora? It roots us in what we already know about Jason from Claire’s earlier narration in the story. He has a new girlfriend, he’s childhood friends with Claire, and his girlfriend is jealous of Claire. We know all of that already.

Then, I didn’t have a lot of time to introduce Jason as a character. And I needed the reader to like him quickly. So I throw him directly into a conflict and have him make a choice that is costly for him and that tells the reader who he is. Assuming that the reader likes Claire at this point, they want Jason to be on her side. And we see Jason here not just being a friend who sacrifices a few hours of sleep for Claire, but his first deeper romantic relationship. There is immediate conflict, there are stakes, and he makes a choice that informs us about his character: he is deeply loyal to his friends. Having that opening scene then end with him writing that reply we already know from the end of chapter 10 tells us exactly where we are.

The middle section where he walks to Claire’s place gives us a moment to breathe. We get to know him and what he thinks about Claire a bit more. And we see that he’s not perfect, that he distanced himself of her to appease his girlfriend’s jealousy. Coming to terms with that gives him a moment of growth as a character. It also gives us our first view of Claire from the outside of her mind that isn’t Mark’s obsession.

When he finally arrives at her door, we get to see the full horror of what happened to Claire from his eyes. He fumbles, he’s scared, he isn’t perfect, but he tries his best.

I considered briefly to end the story on Claire falling asleep. But I found the “Now what?”-energy of him just sitting there holding her too interesting. I had to explore that. Up to this point, he was in panic mode desperately trying not to make it worse. But now he was going to sit there for hours alone with his thoughts. And I just wondered what a person would realistically think about in these moments. He’d try to make sense of what happened, he’d think logistics. And at what point would you ask yourself “What if I have to pee?” It might feel absurd at first, but the body doesn’t stop to do its usual things just because you think sitting there still for hours is the most important thing in the world right now.

I decided to end it on his fear that he might lose her and him pleading with the universe that the girl he knew comes back to him. I think it was a nice emotional beat to end the story on. It’s tender, it’s heartfelt, it’s ambiguous as to what will happen, but it shows that she is loved and not alone. I think that was as optimistic as the ending could possibly be.

I like chapter 11 a lot. Currently, there is nothing I would change about it, but that might change over time. I didn’t have as much time yet to reflect on it like on some of the earlier chapters.


Ranking

Here is how I would roughly rank the individual chapters of the story.

At the top: 5, 6, 11

At the bottom: 1, 4, 7

In the middle: 2, 3, 8, 9

And chapter 10 in clear fourth place.


Final remarks

So these were some of my thoughts on the writing process and how I changed as a writer over time. Maybe you found some of that interesting. I’m glad that I finally finished Record Chaser and I like what the story turned out to be. Maybe I will polish especially the earlier chapters a little at some point, but I will not make any drastic changes to the narrative.

If you want to help me, you could make suggestions for different titles for chapters 1 and 7. I was never fully happy with the title for chapter 7, and the title for chapter 1 takes away some of the impact of the closing line of chapter 1.

If you read all of this, thank you so much. I know this post was long, but I like to get some insight into an author’s mind like this. So I thought it might be nice for others as well. If you find anything I said interesting or surprising, let me know!

[SoftGameHunter]

Well I can't even begin to parse all of that into my own reaction, though I loved reading it. I've never seen any author break down their own work so thoroughly that they even rank the chapters. Just out of curiosity, how many words did Record Chaser end up at? You mentioned passing 50k, so you've got a novel here.

My first two thoughts that jumped out, which I can react to now, were both math related. The first was learning Claire was a math major in chapter three (but mentioned in the chapter one response) and then the chapter two breakdown of Claire's strength on the normal distribution. Actually, it's the same response. I knew she was a math person long before chapter three. And whenever it was established she was a student, that's when I suspected she was a math student or a closely related major.

Some of this was meta on my part. It may be your first story, but it's not the first of your stories I read. I don't pretend to know you that well, but story Claire strikes me as a bit of a self-insert for author Claire. The matching names are a clue there, and I think they share similar body types too. And, well, the voice comes off the same. Now this might be my reading too much into it, but I often decline to even try separating the art from the artist. So even if you're actually a 185 cm redheaded Teutonic shield maiden, the two Claires match their public image.

And as for the normal distribution? Some readers might be blindsided by that one. But not that many. Even if someone has no idea about Gaussians and central limit theorems, the language there is identifiably nerdy. Claire's inner voice in the first couple chapters is composed and analytical even in taking in her surroundings. So I would say it's not that her phrasing makes sense once we learn her background. It's that her background becomes unsurprising after we hear her thoughts about normal distributions. You don't comment on what you pick up perfectly well. Your use of voice segued into her life even for readers that don't know of your penchant for dumping statistics all over our heads.