If you read all the stories tagged with Ms.F., you might notice— if you were paying attention to anything at all beyond the plight of the young women whom she manipulates with such cruelty and finesse— some apparent inconsistencies in Incantata’s position in life; an academic in one story, a management consultant in another series, the shadowy madam of an escort/stripper agency in another.
This was pure laziness on my part, of course. In older stories, I very often used the same names in different stories— many of the young women were Chloe, older men were Sir Stephen or S, boyfriends were René or R, and domineering women were either Anne-Marie or occasionally, Ms. F.
Of course, you could say it wasn’t laziness, but efficiency. Since I started with captions (some of which are collected in these posts), there were only the sketchiest of storylines, and all but zero character development.
Whatever, we are where we are, with Ms. F. perhaps beginning to become someone in some of your minds. So, mostly for fun, it seems worth attempting a resolution to the confusion.
In other words, THW has engaged in a brute force exercise of author-powered engineering.
Here goes:
Incantata Fiammina— a career of infamy, in short
As with another through character in these stories— Anne-Marie in the Castle stories— Incantata’s supreme confidence and extraordinary ability in suborning, training and managing young women in degrading circumstances, coupled with the way the Cabal brings together powerful people from all walks of life, has resulted in various offers of employment.
Unlike Anne-Marie, Incantata— Ms. F.— took up one of these offers, and thus, from her original position as a high flying academic (in this story), she has transitioned to an elevated (and significantly better paid) position in a management consultancy— specialising in HR, of course.
In this context, Ms. F. shows particular skills in aiding managements (of the type which can only be described as ‘deeply corrupt’— you could amuse yourself by deciding which of the many office-based stories here might have used her services) in the subtle coercion of younger, more malleable staff members, until they find themselves volunteering for extraordinary levels of intimate service to their superiors.
In this era of #MeToo, such arrangements must, of course, be particularly carefully handled— and Incantata is the go-to girl for this. Her new employers are very happy with her, and consequently allow her significant leeway with recruitment— which is how poor Paige gets to star in the Moth stories!
More thorough readers may remember an older Ms. F story, though— which has her as the Madame of an escort/stripper agency (not strongly specified in the story).
This, of course, is the final stage of her career, after the inevitable scandal resulted in her having to be very publicly fired by the management consultants (I haven’t written the story, but it probably goes something like this: not Ms F’s direct fault, of course, but destabilising pretty young women, corrupting their morals and selling them to cruel and perverted rich men is not a low risk business; one of the latter got seriously out of hand with one of the former, and, well, let’s just say it ended with blood and the story got out…).
Ms. F. ends up carving out a successful high-end niche in the sex industry under the pseudonym of ‘Madame Flavia’, where her reputation is an asset, rather than a hindrance.
So, there you have it! All ends neatly squared away in the history of Ms. F.— who weirdly has more tags than Anne-Marie (but you can find her in almost all the Castle stories).
This sort of thing is the fun part of writing genre fiction— as an author, you just have to say things, and as long as it doesn’t jar with the expectations of the genre, there is no need at all to explain them! They simply become true!
I think this is possible because, in genre fiction, the reader has already consented to a certain kind of suspension of disbelief before starting to read— it’s part of the contract. Whereas in ‘literary’ writing, all the onus is on the author, and the reader’s consent must be worked for at every plot twist.
The quid pro quo of course, is that the genre author has to stay in her lane. If my ‘engineering’ had involved some quantum mechanics explanation of mutliple universes, or time travel, or witchcraft, then I would have mixed genres, at the risk of alienating whole swathes of readers.
Oh! One more thing, since we’re here - how do you like your Ms. F.?
Tell THW in the comments below - or suggest something else - AI might be able to picture her for you!
Picture 1: Ms. F: Louche, debauched and naked, but still very much in control
Picture 2: Ms. F: older, still elegant, but definitely kinky
Picture 3: Ms. F: Anonymous, elegant, but kinky with it
Picture 4: Ms. F: classic domme
Picture 5: Ms. F: Sultry and subtle - the iron fist in a silken glove
Thanks for reading!
Please don’t forget to comment and hit the ‘like’ button (not just here - every story has ‘em!) - we needy and isolated authors require our oxytocin hits!
