Just to clarify, Andrew isn't "seeing" anything. He's dreaming. So while you can theorize that an external being is invading his dreams and speaking to him, if that's not the case, it doesn't necessarily indicate mental illness/delusion. It just means that's how his dream is manifesting. Dreams often contain symbolism, so if Andrew is feeling guilty while awake, it's perfectly reasonable for him to dream of a goddess of punishment to punish him for whatever he's feeling guilty about. Being stuck in a method character while awake is much more indicative of mental illness, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what he's dreaming about.
I guess a better way to phrase what I meant was that we are seeing Andrew's delusional dreams. Unless, those Goddesses were actually involved in the past events, his dreams/memories are now inaccurate since they are being told to him from imaginary manifestations of specific Greek Goddesses... for some unknown reason. For us readers, the unreliable narrator trope is fair to consider right now. Also, the manifestation of "someone else" within his mind to sort of narrate his memories, is not something that I would consider mentally "healthy". You are correct though that crazy dreams do not equal mental illness. I will say that the amount of influence that these dreams and
possibly imaginary Goddesses
appear to be having over his important life decisions, is rather alarming and could/should point towards psychosis and/or dissociative identity disorder.
Also I wouldn't be so quick to assume what most MTF TF fans want. There are all kinds of weird fetishes out there that don't really make any sense unless you have that fetish. I've heard from masochists and humiliation fetishists who self-insert as Andrew and still want bad things to happen to him.
I have hundreds of fetishes, so I'm not one to judge.
Just based off of anecdotal evidence and personal assumptions, I think
most MTF TF fans want to self-insert as the transformed main character.
Most of those fans are wanting to experience something better than what they have in real life.
Not all but most. Some MTF TF fans are into masochism and humiliation, but not most. I'm actually in that niche group!
However, for me, it needs to be the right type of story and sometimes from the right type of author. Dark endings can be amazing! I love some dark stories which end with being stuck in an unhappy relationship as male or female (NTR, cuckold) , or stuck as animal, or stuck as an inanimate object, or identity death, or sometimes literal death (snuff).
Personally, I think bad endings can be very enjoyable, *as long as that's what I was expecting or as long as I was not deceived into thinking I would be getting a happier ending.
There are probably sadist/dom fans who might self-insert as Nikos.
Absolutely! Yes, there are also some fans who are self-inserting as Nikos. Again, probably
not most, probably a niche group of MTF TF fans. Personally, I would be pretty disappointed with self-inserting as the male romantic love interest in this particular story given the lack of character depth for Nikos, but maybe some fans like that? Maybe lack of character depth helps with self-identifying and roleplaying as Nikos? I'm not part of this group so I can't give an accurate POV. I would think that sissydom (sissy domination) stories would be more appealing/targeted for these types of fans. Also, they are more readily available than MTF TF stories to people of a sadist/domination mindset, but someone else can educate me on this. I would be interested in hearing more from this POV if anyone wants to share.
From my outsider POV, I see logic flaws with self-identifying as a "forceful feminizer". To me, unless you have a personal vendetta against your target, it just seems easier to take a more voluntary subject and roleplay with them. If Nikos for example, would have put out a personal advertisement looking for young males who wanted to be feminized and age progressed into being his wife, he would have had plenty of voluntary candidates. Some people who are reading this right now are probably saying, "
Yep, that would be me!"
Many would probably love a BDSM relationship too. I just don't see the fetish fulfillment from the perspective of Nikos in this particular situation. Yes, he turned his nephew into an older woman to be his wife, but he's not really openly fetishizing it. He's not telling the whole world what he did nor is he really basking in it. Subtly, he
might be taunting Marina a bit for some unknown reason and he has dominated Elena during sex, but
probably not anymore nor any differently than he would have with a different woman like Dimitra as a substitution for Elena.
And plenty of others who don't self-insert at all.
Yes, some fans don't self-insert but I think
most do. So again, probably a smaller niche group that don't self-insert, but I guess we need to conduct some polling to be certain. I'm just going off of my own anecdotal observations. YMMV = your mileage my vary. My observations might be more unique than I realize, maybe? I am an extremely unique individual.
I'm assuming that Melissa primarily writes within her own fetishes and she has written dark stories in the past, including ones with identity death. Even K-Pop is pretty damn dark. That story is Forced feminization with a capital F- no room for ambiguity. Nick is clearly traumatized and is already talking about killing himself. So while I don't necessarily disagree that warnings at the beginning would be nice, I think the other stories written by this author already serve as a warning.
That being said, I have no idea if this story is heading for the type of trauma you've described, or if it will have a happy ending or a dark ending.
I agree on your assumption.
She has written dark stories, which if that was all she had written, it would be a "shame on me" or anyone else for assuming that
Aphrodite's Mirror wouldn't be dark. However, she has written non-dark stories and most importantly, she has said that her story wouldn't have a dark ending. *Although as previously stated by others, what Melissa considers dark versus "not dark" is quite an unknown mystery.
In my opinion, Melissa's
Never Meet Your Heroes Unless You're Wearing Your Best Heels was about as happy of a MTF TF story as can be made, but whether she considers that ending to be happy or not depends on her perspective I suppose. From a forced feminization POV, it's the opposite of what was wanted, so technically it could be considered a dark ending because it was too happy.
For me and perhaps others as well (???), the issues of
Aphrodite's Mirror and
A Kpop Idol being "too dark" are kind of due to bad marketing or I guess you could call it false first impressions. Both stories started off giving different impressions than where we are at currently. For example, with
Aphrodite's Mirror, it's easy and understandable to have thought that the story was going to be a lighthearted tale. Andrew and Marina appeared to be a happy couple and the idea from her uncle was more of a funny temporary adventure than anything that appeared to be dark and permanent. The tone from the early chapters is very different from what the tone is now. That's something that I think everyone can agree on, right? I feel like Melissa didn't advertise what the story was going to contain. It's like how horror movies are supposed to give you a little jump scare early on to set the mood, to let you know how much "fright" the movie contains. This needed something like that. Some hint of what direction this was going to take later on. So, I understand anyone who feels deceived or like this was a bait and switch. I personally feel deceived.
It's not that I wouldn't have read this story if I had known it was going to turn out much darker than it originally appeared, it's just that I would have liked for Melissa to have been more upfront about it. With a different marketing tactic of either being upfront with content labels/warnings or doing more foreshadowing, I would be loving this much more right now than I am. That's probably the root of where much of my story criticism comes from and perhaps I'm not alone in this sentiment?
