Cap Hit

Chapter 9: Behind the Glitter, Horror

Glitter left the stream with questions about a few things on her mind. She starts to sob in her own bedroom:

"What's the point of 100%ing NaNo?" Glitter starts crying. "Not only that, but after showing what 100%ing NaNo will mean to Caro earlier tonight makes me feel like she's willing to just add more and more hockey games, or maybe more stuff outside of games if she accepts there's too much hockey as it is! I'm not even sure it will be good even then..."

That's the problem with 100%ing games: chasing the nooks and crannies of a game often detracts from the game's core experience, and sometimes multiple playthroughs. That's why I never 100%ed games on purpose, and also why I watched Caro to begin with. When MAA was around, I was playing, but by watching her, I watched her run content that I couldn't do myself, Glitter starts thinking about Caroline's last stream, a little after she left it over Caro suggesting her, for future streams this month, to leave after she has finished playing the battle pass quests for the day.

But as she finishes the last romance book she started, Glitter goes to bed, and her own sleep gets troubled with the cold, hard truth about to resurface in her dreams:

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Glitter found herself in a wooden cabin, surrounded by characters from past books she read. The oldest of them she readily recognized as a mafia leader, strangely looking like Stephen Harper, but others were male leads that were jealous and possessive, just not in the same position as the capo.

"Glitter, you don't want to get killed, do you?" the mafia capo was about to bind her to a bed. "Do me a favor and..."

Another of these massive men interrupted the capo and was ready to high-stick Glitter while yet another of these men, ostensibly a mafioso grunt, bound her to the bed. "No, boss, let me hit her first!"

"You think you're so tough now?" the capo drew his pistol.

"If I can't have her, no one will!" the massive thug turned to the capo instead of going for the high stick on Glitter.

The capo shot at the thug's hockey stick, breaking it apart, but narrowly missing the thug's head.

Is that how it feels to be a dark romance female lead with a love triangle? Two people out-doing each other in a fight for the right to do horrible things to a girl? Glitter's oneiric self watched, frozen in place by the restraints the mafioso grunt put on her. Or have someone else ensure their safety at a price maybe... even when the price might mean getting abused!

The capo then turned to the grunt, yelling at him. "Our hideout is under attack, and you sit there doing nothing!"

"I just need to ensure that she's safe!" the grunt retorted before the capo throws part of the broken stick at the grunt. "I'm watching over her!"

The grunt narrowly evaded the broken hockey stick, which, unfortunately, hit Glitter's oneiric self. Is that it? Am I destined to be a trophy wife to some criminal overlord? If so, why would I want to be in a relationship with a criminal overlord when I saw the consequences of being caught in the crossfire of gang warfare?

"And yet, somehow, I hope for nothing more than this pig who can't even help himself berating his grunts to let me go!" Glitter realized that the grunt didn't gag her.

And Glitter's oneiric conscience rang alarm bells in her. Caro told you about how some dark romance books may very well be horror books. If you still hold on to notions that dark romance books are not the same as horror, try to read some horror books that are labeled as such. It's not that your past reads are bad books per se, they are just horror books with a happy ending involving (one of) the villain(s) in a relationship with a lead!