Sophie and Mark by Twisted Smile

[twistedsmile]

02. "Stamina" Commentary

Original title: Shutdown. That felt like a good pair to "Set up", but then I worried readers would think 'shutdown' meant the story (series) was finished.

"it's going to help you with your self-control" - it's never explicitly called out in the story, but one of the reasons Sophie and Mark didn't have sex for so long was because Mark was getting gratification from porn (more on that in chapter 3). So one of the motives for caging him was to force him to go a week without jerking off. Though, tbh, I think he still watched some porn during that week.

"REMEMBER... NO touching" - Kinda moot when you're in a chastity cage. But he does give it a good old try.

At this point, we should address how messed up the situation is - she tricked him into a chastity cage, and kept him locked up for a week without warning. The consent is dubious at best. So there are several elements in the story intended to soften that.

"you can wait that long right?" is something like checking consent. Mark says 'sure', but clearly isn't happy about it. He was given a way out, but didn't take it because of pride or not wanting to appear weak or something. Emasculated by toxic masculinity, you hate to see it.

"Sophie would message me to ask how I was... was the cage causing me any problems" - another missed opportunity to back out.

"I was on my knees." - literally and figuratively

"Her hair was still damp... Her make-up was simpler" - she rushed getting out of the shower and doing her make-up. She didn't want to make him wait too long.

"she placed my palms flat on my thighs... 'no moving until I say.'" - this was inspired by a scene from the first episode of the "Irma Vep" mini-series. It wasn't even a sex scene, and yet the power play was strangely hot. I didn't watch the rest of the series, but that scene really stuck with me.

It was interesting to contrast not being able to cum due to the physical restriction of the chastity cage, against the 'psychological' restriction of submission.

"my own breath would be enough to finish me off" - foreshadowing

"I'd fill her up with everything she'd done to me" - not sure if that phrasing is sexy or gross

"What was stopping me?" - If Mark decided to jerk off, or "jump up and grab" Sophie, she really couldn't stop him. If she says "you lose, the cage is going back on", he could just say "nah, I'm not doing that", and what's she going to do? It's all a game, and Sophie only has power over Mark for as long as Mark chooses to keep playing along.

"Maybe another week wouldn't be so bad" - and he very much is playing the game, even as he considers breaking the rules.

The sequence of ellipses are meant to evoke that feeling when you're right on the edge of an orgasm and you're just waiting for it... to... pop.

"Cum sprayed from me like a fountain." - that's such a dumb fucking line, especially after the build up with the ellipses. I had a giggling fit when I first wrote it

"I felt like I was being turned inside out" - you ever cum that hard? Buddy, it's something else.

"Clarity" - as in 'post-nut clarity'

This final section is what I like to call the 'no hard feelings' epilogue. I use it in most of my stories. It's the after care stuff, and it's to reassure readers that whatever just went down, no matter how intense, everyone came out of it okay. Everyone's happy and there are no hard feelings.

"I don't think I can have normal, non-kinky sex anymore" - hurray, Mark's on board. The series can continue!

"I kept messaging you... if you used the safe word, obviously I would have let you out." - she's being a little underhanded here. Yes, she gave him opportunities to back out, but never explicitly told him he should use the safe word if he wanted to stop (because she didn't want him to).

"I hid a spare key in your flat" - do you believe her?

"I think it's called... a hogtie?" - I wanted to show Mark actively asking to do some BDSM. I didn't want the series to just be him passively going along with whatever Sophie wants to do to him.

The other thing was, since chapter 3 is a flashback, I wanted to set up the subsequent story (4) to reassure readers that there would be more stories. As indeed there will be more commentaries!

[twistedsmile]

03. "Scrabble" Commentary

As mentioned in (1), after writing the first version of chapter 1 I spent some time thinking about the characters and their backstory, and this chapter is the direct result of that. Even tho the events take place before 1, I kept it as chapter 3 because it takes a long time to get to the sexy stuff, and I was worried that might put readers off.

The first line I wrote was something like - "it all started with too much alcohol and a losing game of monopoly." I was just making a dumb joke. But then I thought, well what if I take it seriously - how would that play out? Turns out, pretty well. I changed it to Scrabble mostly because it starts with the letter 's', but it ended up providing a useful plot device (the tiles).

"Why don't we have sex anymore..?" - while I was figuring out the backstory, there was a column in the newspaper from a woman who hadn't had sex with her husband in over a year (despite her best efforts). Eventually she discovered he had been watching porn on the sly.

For my story, I didn't want it to be solely either character's 'fault' that they weren't having sex. The way it went in my head was: Sophie had this secret desire for doing BDSM. And since she was too scared to talk to Mark about it, she had to settle for vanilla sex. Naturally, this is less satisfying for her, so maybe she's less interested in - and less inclined to have - sex at all. Meanwhile, rather than questioning or trying to push for more sex, Mark is gets his gratification elsewhere (porn). Granted, none of this is explicit in the text, tho Mark's multiple references to pornography is meant to imply that he's a voracious consumer.

"C H A I N S (11 points)" - I like a good gimmick. These Scrabble words are scattered throughout the series. The choice of words isn't random. The scores come from an online Scrabble score calculator.

"I like BDSM" - around the time I was writing this, I'd just read volume 1 of the "Tease Me Harder" manga; in which a sub confesses to her boyfriend that she wants to be dominated. I didn't want to copy that, so I flipped it to the domme confessing. I think it works better this way - it makes the pov character the newbie being taught about all this stuff; like a Doctor Who companion, but with more ball gags.

"I'd seen images, videos" - as noted, Mark clearly consumes a lot of porn, and has at least a little interest/curiosity in BDSM.

"you want me to, um... tie you up?" - Mark comes out of this story in the sub role, but that doesn't mean he has no interest in being a dom: "It was kinda hot"

"there were other videos" - I didn't want this to come off as kink-shaming. It's more a statement of the kinds of things that won't appear in this series - because they're things I (the writer) am not into, so I couldn't write about them authentically.

"if I win this game..." - It's not like the bet is legally binding. I think of it like the confession - it was something Sophie wanted to say, but the alcohol gave her a way to save face if she wanted to take it back. By making this a bet, she's allowing Mark to save face if he ends up regretting it, "I HAD to do it, I lost the game."

"sexy french maid" - I like to imagine Mark having really basic, middle of the road sexual tastes prior to Sophie corrupting him. French maid, specifically, was added retroactively to set up chapter 7

"You watch too much anime" - maid cafes are a common trope in anime/manga.
And to quote Marin Kitagawa from 'My Dress-Up Darling': "is there a single person on this rock who hates bunnies?" Rest assured, bunny girls will come back around as soon as I find a good place for it.

"L O S E C R V" - I don't know if I can claim to be the first person to put a Scrabble joke in a work of pornography, but I can't imagine there's much competition. Mark's tiles include the words LOSE and LOSER, but also LOVERS and CLOSER. And for those playing along at home, there are the 7 letter words CLOVERS and VELCROS; but I can't find any 8 letter words containing all those letters, so Mark couldn't have played all his tiles for the 50 point bonus.

"The tiles were mocking me." - Mark isn't trying to lose, exactly, but his subconscious is clearly sabotaging him.

"S [E] R V E" - [E] means the 'E' tile was already on the board. "Serve" is a loaded word, of course.

"S P A [N] I E L S" - I picked the word 'spaniel' as the title for the pet play story (5), and when I noticed 'spaniels' was 8 letters I retroactively made it Sophie's winning word

"pulled my t-shirt up over my shoulder, covering my face." - as I mentioned in (1), the dry spell has left Sophie doubting whether Mark finds her attractive. She covers his face because she's self-conscious about getting undressed in front of him.

"she pulled my jeans and my pants and my socks all the way off" - I can't abide people who keep their socks on during sex

"She was still wearing a pink bralet" - a bralet is a bra without wiring or padding (for those unfamiliar). She wasn't expecting to have sex that night (why would she, after so long?) so she chose her underwear for comfort over sexiness. In my mind she was also wearing mismatched pants. But since our pov character had his eyes covered, he didn't see the pants before she took them off, so that detail isn't in the text. She's still wearing the bralet because, as mentioned, she's feeling self-conscious... until she isn't, and takes it off.

"not yet" - going back to 'realism', men have that troublesome refractory period to reckon with, meaning most of the stories only have one male orgasm.
"She came. I came." - on the other hand, Sophie & Mark almost always orgasm at the same time, which is a little unlikely. But it is convenient!

"I filled her with all that wasted time." - poetic or gross?

"when do the chains come in?" - retroactive foreshadowing (back-shadowing?)

"guess I couldn't have escaped after all. Huh." - there are some sinister undertones to Sophie's behaviour, which slowly become less 'under' as the series progresses.