Pixiv Link - 1/3: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/111925575
Pixiv Link - 2/3: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/111925594
Pixiv Link - 3/3: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/111925573

Hello everyone! After a long period of 2 weeks, I have finally finished the newest chapter of TTIBAS!

Don't you love it when a familiar face comes to a rescue just when you needed it? Well, this might not be that situation, because big sis Lia came back at probably the worst time possible! Right when Alice was about to be turned into Claire's slave, Lia invaded the dream and is about to teach Claire a lesson, what she mean by that, you'll soon see! Alice's dom teacher is here to remind her that she needs to keep up!

I hope you like this new chapter of TTIBAS! Oh and a little reminder that I will take a break in October! More information before I leave to China!

If you want the story uncensored, you can support me in Fanbox and you will get a downlaod link for you to keep! (Includes all my previous work and stories!)
Fanbox Link: https://darkflame.fanbox.cc/posts/6705787

*Before I begin my review, a disclaimer: due to personal moral hang-ups, I have not looked at a good chunk of the image set for this part of TTIBAS. Instead, DarkFlame was kind enough to provide me with access to the script for this chapter, which I then copied before proceeding to black-out huge chunks of it like some heavily redacted government document so that I could experience the story without having to deal with THE INCIDENT. Why did I go to such lengths? Because That Time I Became a Succubus is my favorite DarkFlame series and (since I was told THE INCIDENT would be a one time thing, which I will take as truth until reality proves otherwise) I wasn't about to allow some temporary discomfort to hold me back from keeping up with the goings-on in this story. That being said, my experience with this chapter may differ from the average viewer's as a result of this. You have been warned…

So, last time we left off on what appeared to be the start of a *shiver* deus ex machina. Fortunately, while some of the story elements for such an occurrence are present – which I will discuss later – I'm happy to say that the most dangerous component of that storytelling trope is not present… like, really happy… like, “I was expecting to have to write a review on the death of the TTIBAS narrative and now I don't have to do that” happy. So what happened that allowed the story to avoid catastrophe? Well, basically Lia and Alice happened- No! That is not what I meant! Stop that right now!… Anyway, allow me to elaborate. Going into this chapter, I was concerned Lia would make her dramatic, unexpected debut, hand Alice the boost she needed to make all her problems go away, then peace out like some kind of corrupt fairy godmother in black latex. And while some of that did happen – again, I'll get to that – two very important factors came into play which changed the impact of this interaction. One of these is that Lia did not hand over Alice's power-up for free. Like some kind of perverse Yoda, she made her work for it, hard- Stop it!- and because of that, the road toward Alice's redemption began to feel more earned. But what really sold me on that last point was Alice's attitude toward all of this. If she had only acknowledged her mistakes briefly before moving on to her 'payback's a bitch' arc with her new outfit and an undeserved swagger to match, then the training session she endured in this chapter would have been meaningless. Instead, Alice chose to own her mistakes, and even more importantly, she views it as her responsibility to correct them. That's the mark of a character who has learned from her errors and grown stronger as a result, in a way that's much more crucial than gaining new special powers or a fancier looking getup. While Alice has never been, and likely never will be, my favorite character in TTIBAS, I now have a greater respect for her character, and thankfully that is exactly what she needed to earn in order to be worthy of delivering the presumably forthcoming butt kicking to the all-too-deserving ass of Claire… as long as she doesn't lose her focus on what she's fighting for and why, or allow herself to become so reliant on her new succubus powers that she forgets to be cautious and fall into more of the same traps that have already cost her so much. Claire may be a bitch, but her shrewd and careful planning carried her to the precipice of victory, and in order to defeat someone like that Alice will have to be every bit as cautious and clever. In other words, it ain't over 'til the weaker succubus screams… in mind-searing ecstasy, that is.

So about that near-catastrophic, almost deus ex machina: I think the issue there was a poor balance between the desire to have a big, shocking “what a twist” moment and providing the necessary foreshadowing to make the impact of the moment really stick. Many storytellers, both novice and experienced, eventually fall into this trap, where they have an idea for a plot twist that they think will blow away everyone who encounters it and place it in their stories in a way that ensures no one will ever be able to guess that the moment is coming until they see it, usually because they deliberately avoid dropping any hints that such a moment is going to occur. It's usually not malicious, and oftentimes they even have the details of how and why the moment was going to occur planned out in their heads, ready to be revealed once the surprise has been delivered. The problem is that the shock of the moment isn't what makes such plot twists impressive. This kind of story element only truly shines when it's backed up by carefully hidden, well-placed bread crumbs that steer the most sharp-eyed, astute readers to the looming twist in advance while leaving everyone else to experience a moment of shock followed by the realization of “oh my gosh! So that's why she said 'this' and 'that', and why 'the other thing' happened!”. Now maybe I'm just not as good at picking up on these sorts of hints as I am at discussing the problems arising from their apparent absence, but I'm fairly certain there was never a hint WITHIN THE PAGES OF TTIBAS that Lia was destined to show up when she did – or at any other time – or that Alice had ever received (what appears to be incredibly unorthodox) training to be a domme, or that Lia even existed to begin with. And yes, I read the bit in the info page about Lia being the one who left the box for Alice, but if someone can justify how 'box of succubus stuff left anonymously for Alice to find' leads to 'the great succubus Lia will someday appear before Alice to complete her domme training', then they probably deserve a doctorate in “degrees of separation” or something. Also, if anyone is wondering why I put so much emphasis on the importance of the clues being in TTIBAS, check DarkFlame's 10K subscriber story where Lia makes her first 'canon' appearance. There are a lot of reasons why this being counted as foreshadowing for something that happened in TTIBAS should be viewed as dubious, but since this review is already running far longer than I intended I'll skip listing all the details and simply say that one line at the tail end of an almost completely non-canon special that many fans of TTIBAS may not have read is not a great way to covertly reveal that a new character may be appearing at some unspecified time in the future in one of your mainline series. Good stories need to be able to function as their own self-contained entities. Period.

Okay, on to my impressions of Lia… I don't like her. Even setting aside the way she… interacts with, and chooses to show… affection (I guess you could call it that) for Alice, it seems like her personality and attitude towards others are both rather abrasive, and she probably has enough mental issues and complexes to fill a phone book. The only reason I wouldn't recommend that she seek professional counseling is that I'm terrified of what she'd do to the hapless therapist that made the mistake of accepting her as a client. She's interesting for sure, but mostly she just comes off as a bit… much. I don't think its unfair to say that the less she is around, the better, both for the sake of the characters in the story and the readers who have to experience her escapades vicariously.

One thing that was mentioned as an aside in this chapter but which makes me very sad is the reveal that Alice's resistance to her initial succubus training was in fact a mistake. I had assumed that being strong-willed and independent-minded enough to resist being corrupted by someone else's influence without a fight was meant to be a source of strength that differentiated Alice from someone like Claire in a positive way. But nope, turns out Alice actually screwed up by doing that and that mistake is part of what nearly led to her downfall. I get that becoming a great and powerful succubus was always meant to be Alice's destiny, but couldn't achieving that on her own terms have been an acceptable outcome? It felt to me like this part of her story differentiated Alice from other heroines in this genre of storytelling, so to learn that it was actually a weakness for her was quite disappointing.

Interestingly enough, this chapter of TTIBAS actually had a pretty healthy dose of foreshadowing in it. I'll leave some of the more subtle examples for readers to discover on their own, but Lia's final kiss mark is clearly a setup for future story developments. Maybe it'll even be the impetus for a whole storyline, where Alice will be enlisted to aid Lia in a struggle against an even more powerful succubus. Only time will tell. Same goes for Alice's birth parents. Now that we know she was adopted, the obvious question is whether her lineage will play a role in future story developments. While nothing may ever come from this plot point, its out there now, waiting to be explored.

Now to cap things off with some quick first reaction notes:

000(Cover): I laughed when I saw that the cast list included both Claires.
035: “I’ve been a succubus far longer than you can even imagine” I mean, your bio says you're 32 and you became a succubus when you were 19. I don't know how it is for anyone else, but 13 years is pretty easy for me to imagine. Maybe she meant dream-years?
051 & 053: “Don’t blame her… she’s weaker than you” & “ Alice will be the one to break you… because you’re the one tied to her” I wonder if the Claire tied to Alice having less resistance has something to do with Alice and Lia's relationship, or maybe it says something about the differences between Alice and Mae. Hmm…
081: Wow, didn't even acknowledge Mae's presence until she was reaching for you. That's some confidence… or arrogance. It's a thin line. Hope that attitude doesn't bite you in the ass someday… or maybe I do…
124-127: Now that's some sweet, sweet karmic justice. Hope the real Claire gets a taste of something like that when her time comes.
294: Whoa… I think I blacked out for 159 pages. Did I miss anything…… wait, the most important part of this chapter is in the section where Alice and Lia have se- AHH!!! I mean the section I blacked out for?! Why!?! (Again, my thanks to DarkFlame for access to the script. I couldn't have gotten through this part of the story without the help)
368:……Welp, latex Claire doll is easily my favorite new thing in this chapter, as well as one of the pieces I've been waiting for: Now I just need Annie to get an “Alice's/Yuuki's minion” outfit in order to have everything for my dream suggestion if I'm ever picked during one of DarkFlame's request streams. I wonder if he'd be able to add Alice's mask from part 11 to Claire's latex doll form for the perfect latex slave doll combo?
429-441: Wait, I thought Claire would be able to notice if her copies were destroyed. How is eating one of them not the same thing as destroying it?! I know Alice said she wanted Claire to notice what she's doing, but did she really mean that? I feel like some clarification is needed here, because if Alice is trying to correct her mistakes and act in a more responsible manner, then that seems like a pretty irresponsible thing for her to have done.

Base +15, WarpedJ +8, ik9 +6, Zoinks -6, Pätemätön +6, Naomi Alopex -6, MeMeBigBoiii -6

上床1v1女人大战，谁摇人谁赖皮

Base +6, 大F团后勤总管 +6

颜色一如既往的深啊。。。看的累累的

Base +6

看一眼老大姐的引文就觉得她不一般

Base +6

this artist really puts in a worthy effort every comic is an epic

Base +6, Pätemätön +6

感觉作者不知道女主怎么赢了，直接摇人

Base +6

这一次克莱尔成了雌小鬼了啊（噗呲）。
乳胶是这样的啊，单双还好，人数一多起来看起来很廉价且混乱，没想到有什么好的办法

Base +6, gjvkk +2

Banger chapter, one of the best so far. Ignore what the other nerd that typed up a wall of text is saying and do your thing :3 You're the artist and shouldn't have to worry about some virtue signaling hypocrite.

Last edited on 24 September 2023, 19:27.

Base +6