Ch. 73 Extended Afterword (Patreon)

Like I mentioned in the main post, I had some thoughts I wanted to share about the direction that the new version of the chapter took. it's still the same skeleton, but it's been greatly fleshed out and some specific elements were expanded upon, namely Zoe starting to have some strange thoughts about Mia. This was always the plan, it's just happening a little earlier than I expected. I think it fits in nice here, though, as it's going to give me something big to end the volume on.

The new version of chapter 86 was planned to be Zoe having a brief conversation with Mia high as fuck in her bedroom where we get some amusing passive aggressive comments but ultimately still feel the tenderness of their friendship and Zoe's desire to change, and then she was going to shower and go to bed. I think that conversation will trigger something else to happen in the shower now, though, and the book will probably end with Zoe reaching her first-ever climax using the showerhead as she imagines herself with Oliver and Mia together.

I don't feel like I need to defend myself here, if you're this far into my story, you know I like including girl on girl stuff on the sidelines. That's not going to change, as ultimately, I like writing my harems as actual poly situations where there are actual feelings beween the girls, too. My particular version of the harem fantasy is about being surrounded by love on all sides, not just being loved by many girls at the same time, and I'm never going to compromise on this specific fetish of mine.

That said, Oliver IS still going to be the crux of Zoe's development. He IS the reason any of this is even happening to her, and he WILL be the foundation of all the inter-harem relationships that spring up around him, but it needs to be said that the reason Mia is the prevalent thing in Zoe's fantasies this chapter is because of how weird it is for her to suddenly see her in this new light. They've been friends their entire lives, and Zoe has stubbornly insisted that she has no interest in sex, but I personally imagine there's an alternate timeline where the two girls are actually able to talk through their feelings and Mia would've introduced her to sex much earlier. That's not what happened here, though, and so she's currently freaking out more about Mia being in her fantasies than she is about Oliver.

It doesn't mean she is going to be more romantically into Mia in the long run, it's just that Zoe is literally having a sexual awakening right now and it's driving her crazy. She has this new guy who's really nice and pretty cute on one side, and her best friend she's known for ages and ages showing off this new, sexy side of her that Zoe had never noticed until Oliver managed to bring it out of Mia, and Zoe is right there in the middle, looking back and forth between them in adorable bisexual confusion Another way to look at it is there are now two delicious cakes sitting in front of Zoe. One of them is new and exciting, while the other one has been there for a long, long time, and for one reason or another she, didn't know that eating it was always an option.

We are now at the phase where Zoe has just been handed a fork and informed her that both cakes are for her.

Make of that what you will.

I mentioned that the developments here would influence the rest of the rewrites, and this is probably going to feature significantly throughout the next day of the story. Specifically, I think it's going to lead into Zoe's spur of the moment decision to stream once she gets the heads up that her temp ban has been lifted. Doing it like this will make it feel more natural, I think, since hanging out with them while she's going through this period of weird sexual confusion is rough on her psyche, and I feel like I can make that play into Zoe's relapse really, really well. I might cut out the part where Zoe tries to stay for another round and replace it with her having just been shocked by a random moment of sexual attention that scares her into running off using her stream as justification. That would leads to the chapter where we see Zoe streaming later on, which I think would have an even bigger impact if after all that Zoe comes too the conclusion that 'yeah this sucks compared to hanging out with them, even though being with them is scary and confusing right now'.

I don't think I have too much more to say on all of this other than that I'm really happy with the direction all of this is shaping up in. I hope my burst of stability keeps up and I'm able to breeze through the next chapter as well, because I would love to be able to release this as close to the anniversary of volume 1 as possible. I hate that it took me two years, but I'm feeling closer to recovery than ever before and on top of that I feel like the material has significantly improved with the extra time I got to spend on it, so we'll see how this goes.