Three's Company

The End is Near

I certainly didn’t intend for three months to pass since my last blog, but it seems that’s what happened. Here we are, just one week away from the conclusion of One Last Song, and to my Forever Victorious series as a whole. I’m going to try and write a few blogs this week to cover the events since I left off in my discussion.

CaTorAde

I’ve shared a little about how the idea came about for One Last Song. The short version is that I had four fic ideas after wrapping up The Untold Jori: a proper “senior year” story that would explore Tori’s first love AND adapt the amazing Jayniac’s perfect finale story from his video; a modern day story with “my” Tori, Jade, etc. that would serve as a distant sequel to The Untold Jori; and a CaTorAde story that wouldn’t be connected to any of them.

As it turns out, I wove them all together, and One Last Song was born. It would be a full-on, epic sequel to The Untold Jori, that would flash back to past events that were relevant to the modern story that was unfolding. And, somehow, CaTorAde would happen.

The details of how I worked it all out are numerous and probably pretty boring. Let’s just say it involved dealing with the ridiculous idea of Sam leaving to join a biker gang, setting up a senior-year “Cade” storyline that explained in more detail why Jade and Cat were so much closer in my books than they were on the show, and creating a situation where Cat absolutely believed Sam was gone forever, but in a way that didn’t undo all of Sam’s growth thus far in my stories.

One Last Song’s epic feel and scope stem from trying to work all of these details into a cohesive story that could really serve as a proper goodbye to the characters. I loved the idea of dealing with them getting older, adapting to change, and even dealing with death and disease.

It was really hard to ensure CaTorAde felt natural and yet also surprising. It had to be a “WTF” moment that, upon reflection, was maybe more obvious than you’d think. I’d already hinted at Cat having a crush on Tori and Tori finding Cat attractive back in #GrandFinale, so some of that groundwork was already there. (And come on…that Slap post from Tori in Wanko’s Warehouse about how good Cat smelled…? No hetero explanation for that one, in my opinion!)

The story gets so dark and painful as it goes on. One thing after another keeps coming at our girls. Fights. Division. Losing careers. Any good story breaks down its heroes as much as it can. It’s the only way to make them grow, to push them into rising above. I hurt with everyone else as things kept getting worse. It was painful to write. But it had to happen. By the time that moment is upon us in the little B&B, we have to fully understand and believe that these girls are at their worst, and the only thing they have is each other. And in a haze of alcohol driven confusion and days or weeks of not sleeping well and not thinking straight, plagued with overwhelming fear, we had to buy the moment where Tori instigated this impossible encounter. And I think once we hear her thoughts on it, when she takes the narrative over again, it does make sense.

But…a Threesome!?

Yeah, I know. I get it. It borders on smutty in some ways. Despite the erotic elements of my fics, I do try to keep them grounded in reality and not get too gratuitous and crazy. Tori, Jade, and Cat have such a close and unique relationship. And without getting into many personal details, I did apply some firsthand experience and knowledge of this type of situation. It’s something that has happened to me, including the awkward aftermath, and I did my very best to write the scene and its fallout as believably and true to my own experience as possible. I wanted it to be sexy, sure; this IS erotic fiction after all, and I assume y’all are expecting some fun sex scenes mixed in with the story. But even more important than having masturbation fodder was making sure the threesome was really the emotional “climax” (see what I did there? hee hee) of the Tori, Jade, and Cat story that had been developing over the past few chapters. I hope that I succeeded in that. I’ll spare you the details of what elements of the threesome might have some roots in my personal experience, but there might be a little piece of it here and there…maybe…

Of course, we all know now how it turned out long-term. Sam wasn’t gone for good. But I’ll talk more about Sam’s story in my next blog! Until then, thank you so much for reading and for joining me on this crazy adventure! Love to you all!