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.

[twistedsmile]

04. "Steer" Commentary

Another pun: steer as in cow (for the cowboy motifs), and as in 'giving directions' ("not that I didn't appreciate directions").

"pink, bedazzled cowboy hat" - I thought it would be fun to give Sophie some cowboy accessories. But this is the UK, people don't just have cowboy hats lying around, and she's not going to buy a new one for a joke. Then I remembered pink cowboy hats are a common accessory for a 'hen-do' (bachelorette party)

"I lived in a 'modest' flat" - Sophie and Mark live separately mostly so that Mark could be sent away in the chastity cage at the start of chapter 2. Mark lives in a flat (apartment) because it's easier for him to give it up when he moves in with Sophie (as opposed to having to sell a house). An interesting side-effect of this choice is it suggests Sophie earns more money than Mark.

"excellent Indian take-away" - Sophie and Mark seem to eat a lot of takeaways throughout the series. Can't be good for them.
"These ones had really good reviews. Feel how soft." - I really like these sweet little domestic moments
"what would the neighbours say" - she really is just a love machine
"careful, that's bad luck" - I learned about that superstition from Yellowstone

So the thing with the cowboy hat is, I didn't want it to be just a cheap joke that's forgotten right after it's introduced. So I made a point of tracking where the hat is through the whole story, with it almost always being on either Sophie or Mark's head.

"cow-print bra" - what can I say, I like someone who commits to a bit
"She turned into a reverse cowgirl" - naturally
"Her crotch rubbed against my cock... Was she doing it on purpose?" - yep
"I'm gonna need a picture of this" - I keep a list of things like this so that I can callback/pay them off later
"She pushed the hat down over my eyes" - see the previous commentaries for why she keeps covering his eyes

"Yar" - as it turns out, there aren't many good words starting with 'Y', but I was determined to stick with it for 'yeehaw', 'yoga', and 'yellow'. Then I happened to watch 'A Philadelphia Story' - "My, she was yar." It's a boating term, meaning (effectively) easy to steer.

"picturing her topology" - in 'The Atrocity Exhibition', JG Ballard has this way of describing people in abstract, geometrical terms that I found really striking, e.g. "The young woman was a geometric equation... Her breasts and buttocks illustrated Enneper's surface of negative constant curve, the differential coefficient of the pseudo-sphere."

"I could really see myself--" - '..spending the rest of my life..' or something like that
"my back was sore" - getting hogtied is a young person's game

"Yellow" - chapter 3 proposes 'scrabble' as their safe word, but that felt too silly for general use. Instead, they use the red/yellow system, which this section is intended to show-don't-tell

"I wanted to swallow it... I couldn't make my throat do it" - something psychological, I reckon
"sharing the load" - you guessed it, another pun

"chicken Dhansak" - I wanted to pick something non-obvious for her (i.e. not korma, tikka, etc.)
"Lamb Passanda" - 'Sliding Doors' reference? Nah, that's too obscure, even for me.

"She picked the cowboy hat off the floor" - see! Hat accounted for, start to end.

"I was pretty hungry though" - this is trying to make it feel like Mark isn't TOO upset about being left tied up for however long. Otherwise it might feel too cruel. You could also chose to believe that she never actually left and was, in fact, fucking with him.

---

Teann has thrown me a curveball by skipping over the two stories I submitted after chapter 10, and has just posted chapter 11. So, ignore what I said last week And I will stop procrastinating with these commentaries and get back to writing before Teann catches up to me...

[teanndaorsa]

Teann has thrown me a curveball by skipping over the two stories I submitted after chapter 10, and has just posted chapter 11. So, ignore what I said last week

Those ones are coming, next week, just a processing glitch that put chapter 11 first!

[twistedsmile]

Those ones are coming, next week, just a processing glitch that put chapter 11 first!

All good. In that case, I appreciate you putting something out at all

[twistedsmile]

05. "Spaniels" Commentary

The section titles are all varieties of spaniels. Turns out there aren't that many. I tried to assign the titles in a way that was vaguely thematic; 'water' being the most apposite, and 'cocker' being the most crude (cock her? I hardly know her).

"Welsh lady" - I'm not very good at giving characters distinct 'voices', so giving them a strong accent is an easy cheat. We are blessed, in the UK, to have so many to choose from.

"the bad website" - Amazon. I don't know where we stand with using real brands, but I didn't want to be accused of being sponsored by or endorsing anything. Given my rule about the characters being money conscious, likely most of their toys are cheap stuff off the bad website.

"Spaniel?" - the first breed that popped into Mark's head, because it's the word Sophie won with on Scrabble night (chapter 3)
"The size looked okay" - I'm not sure if a dog collar would actually fit an adult human man. Maybe one for a beefy boy, like an XL bully?
"We ducked behind a shelf" - in an earlier draft, Sophie put the collar around Mark's next right in front of Joan, which felt a little too brazen.

"The name'sh 'Bond'" - Sean Connery accent, of course. The name 'Bond' is 3 references for the price of one: the obvious, James Bond; the pun, bond(age); and a reference to the pet dog in 'Spy x Family' (calling back to chapter 3 "you watch too much anime")

"IF LOST RETURN TO SOPHIE..." - this is engraved on the reverse of the collar's name tag. The traditional meaning is: if Mark is misplaced, anyone who finds him should return him to his owner, Sophie (as one would a lost dog). It can also be read as a directive/mantra for Mark - if he's ever 'lost' in the existential sense, then he can find solace in Sophie. This second meaning will come back.

"Come along, 'Bond'..." - Doctor Who reference. Bond is in scare quotes because Mark chose the name unilaterally, and Sophie doesn't approve.
"If she could have given me a tail" - yes, I'm aware. But Mark isn't. (see chapter 6)
"Good boy." - apologies to Eido for how often I use this phrase
"I sat back on my knees, with my palms on my thighs." - callback to chapter 2
"BL manga" - BL = boys love (gay). Foreshadowing.
"I staaaared at her" - I had a dog that did that. She didn't bark, she just stood by the door and stared at me until I noticed and let her out.
"Did Timmy fall in the old well?" - cliche, low hanging fruit

"Oi-eht..." - 'toilette'. Open for interpretation whether she makes him pee in the garden as punishment for breaking the 'no talking' rule, or if she would have done it anyway.

"Dogs pee in the garden." - on this, I took inspiration from the manga 'Nana & Kaoru'. It's not about the urine, per se, it's about breaking one's inhibitions, and being able to do so because the dom(me) provides the sub with a feeling of psychological safety - "She'd take care of me, and everything would be okay." Granted, some people are quite comfortable with urinating in public, but doing it naked in bondage heightens the stress of the situation. I did worry that the urine stuff would put people off. I mean, I was a little wary when 'Nana & Kaoru' started heading down that path. But in the end, I 'got it'. Anyway, hopefully my execution of it is tasteful, at least.

"I felt her calm" - I felt that she was calm, I shared her feeling of calmness
"A light came on in a neighbour's bedroom" - foreshadowing
"chocolate spread" - nutella
"smeared the chocolate on her pussy" - reference to that urban legend about the girl who smears peanut butter on her crotch and gets the pet dog lick it off

"She turned over onto all fours" - doggy-style. Had to be done.
"I imagined a collar around her neck" / "not that I didn't enjoy it" - our first hints that maybe their roles aren't set in stone; and maybe they'll switch in, say, chapter 10

"It was HORRENDOUS [...] I guess it wasn't SO bad" - Sophie can be quite manipulative

"have you heard of 'ponygirls'?" - ponygirls are one of my kinks (as the writer). But it doesn't really 'fit' into the world of Sophie and Mark, so this is kind of me poking fun at myself.


5.5 "Invitation" Commentary

These point-5 stories start with 'I' because they're interludes. The interludes are meant to bridge the gap between 'seasons', and sometimes foreshadow future stories. If I were posting them on my own site, I probably would make them standalones, but by the plaza's standards they're much too short, so they get tagged onto the end of the season finales.

When I was brainstorming story ideas I came to findom; the opening line "I just don't get it" is me (the writer) speaking. But I played out the dialogue in my head and it went in the direction of Sophie inviting Mark to move in. I was going to do it off-screen, but this was better.

I chose the amount £200 (~$265) because it felt big enough to raise an eyebrow without being malicious. I didn't have anything in mind at the time for what Sophie bought with the money, but I assumed it would be sex toys or such like. This eventually pays off in chapter 8.

---

I'll leave it at that for now, and stop spamming people who're only following the thread for actual story updates/feedback

[twistedsmile]

06. "Stretches" Commentary

The title is referring to the literal (muscle) stretches at the start of the story, and also the gradual stretching of Mark's... constitution.

There's a whole avenue of kink that involves putting things in butts. But I can't imagine Mark has had the pleasure when the series starts, and one does not simply jump straight into pegging - you have to ease into it (so to speak). But it didn't seem worth dragging out across multiple stories and besides I didn't have enough plot ideas to justify it. So we end up with three stories in one.

"I'm too tight!" - the old switcharoo. The back stretching is a payoff to the remark in chapter 4: "We'll have to work on that." 'that' being Mark's inflexibility.
"Sex contracts" - no disrespect to people who use such things, but they're a little too formal/serious for Sophie and Mark

"I didn't want you reading those books" - Fifty Shades of Grey. I haven't read them myself, but I remember there being a lot of discussion in the kink community about how it was a poor depiction of a BDSM relationship. Naturally Sophie wouldn't want Mark reading those books and getting the wrong idea.
"they make my inner goddess do backflips" - I remember a lot of jokes about lines like that

"I'm confiscating your tablet." - it was around this point I started to feel like Sophie was acting a bit too 'maternal' towards Mark. I tried to tone it down after that, and maybe made her meaner as a result.
"butt plugs that have an adorable, fluffy tail" - callback to chapter 5: "If she could have given me floppy ears and a tail."
"in the Christian way" - missionary, of course
Woman sticking her finger in a (straight) guy's butt during sex has become a bit of a cliche, I think. I really didn't have a lot to say about this particular act, so I just made a joke and left it at that.
"Come on, baby, just a little more" - the old double-switcheroo
"Like shitting in reverse." - a little gross. But accurate!
"S A F F R O N" - that one isn't going to pay off for a while

The neighbour was originally an older gentleman called George. But I realised it was more 'useful' to make him closer to Sophie and Mark's age (whatever that is). That's foreshadowing, by the way

"she can be a little d-dom" - that's probably too cute
"did she get herself a dog" - toldya that would pay off from chapter 5 ("A light came on in a neighbour's bedroom")
"Fuck you, not cool!" - Mark seems pretty upset. Wonder how Sophie's going to make it up to him in, say, chapter 7
"A L I E N (5 points)" - chapter 9 (I can't help myself)
"Fucking me, doggy style [..] Arching my back. Her lips on my neck." - callback/inversion of the sex scene from chapter 5

This ended up being the shortest chapter, despite technically being 3 stories. If I'm being honest, it was mostly a 'table setting' episode. Although, now that I think of it, there's not a whole lot of butt stuff in the chapters that have been posted to date. Well, I'm sure it'll come back around eventually

---

BTW, my previously mentioned 'other stories' - Brett & Darren - just went up, if you're interested.

[twistedsmile]

07. "Satine" Commentary

Previously considered titles: "Sucker", for the fellatio and for Mark being tricked (again), but that kind of gave away the ending; "Silk", for the material of the maid's outfit. Then I was watching Moulin Rouge, and Satine is the name of Nicole Kidman's character. It kind of makes sense: it's French, and similar to silk, 'satin' alludes to the glossy material of the maid's outfit.

"Boos and Booze" - hi, my name is Twisted S. and I'm a pun-oholic
"Sophie was my sexy French maid" - callback to chapter 3; Mark's prize if he had won that game of Scrabble.

I felt bad about portraying Lottie as a drunken party girl in chapter 3, so she's much more sober and canny here (and who amongst us doesn't get a little sloppy on our birthday?). Zara was previously mentioned in chapter 4, from whose hen-do Sophie got her cowboy hat.
"Better watch your back, Mark" - I think this is the first time the narrator is actually named in the text of the series.

"This may have been a mistake." - I like to think of Sophie and Mark as like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Bugs is this mischievous imp, who always comes out on top. And if Daffy ever tries to declare that's it's wabbit season, he's going to end up getting shot in the face.

"Breakfast on Pluto" - the section titles are mostly movies beginning with 'B' that are about characters who cross-dress or are trans; Other titles I considered were 'Burning' as in 'Paris is', and 'Bus' as in Priscilla. But those felt like a bit of a stretch.
"She behaved herself all evening, not once breaking character" - we already know that Sophie likes to commit to a bit (chapter 4)
"runner-up prize from Scrabble night" - chapter 3, of course. Mark is being rather charitable framing his loss as being a runner up.

"Monieur, please, it is my first time." - like I said previously, I like to imagine Mark having very basic sexual fantasies, such as taking a woman's virginity. This scene was longer in an earlier draft.
The idea was this - Mark is drunk, so his sexual performance is really bad, but because he's so drunk he thinks his performance is really good. So the question is, how do you depict that, when telling the story from Mark's pov. So solution I came up with was to have Mark describing really good sex, but describing it poorly. Only it turns out there's a fine line between a well written and poorly written sex scene, and the more I exaggerated it to make the badness 'read', the more the whole thing felt like a farce. I think the 7 lines of dialogue get the same point across. And we still get the punchline: "last night was fun" / "you just about managed"

"That's why I 'par-lay fron-say' so well." - I never did an exchange program, but I did study French in school. What appears in this story is about as much as I can remember of it.
"It's not like you have to do an oral exam" - dramatic irony. For anyone unfamiliar, an oral exam is an exam where you have to hold a conversation in French (or whatever language). Naturally, us teenagers back in school had a good old laugh at the word 'oral'.
"she said she'd cut me if I tried to grab her boobs" - I meant this as a warning, like grabbing her boobs would distract her and she might nick him with the razor. Alternatively, you could read it as a threat.
This section does this weird, slipping through time thing. Adding proper connecting passages is just so tedious. "They got out of the bath and got dressed and" who cares! (My attention span is seriously fried)
"You have lovely long eyelashes..." - that's something an optician once said to me. What she meant was 'your eyelashes are getting in the way of the retinal camera'
"my lips painted a familiar shade of red" - Sophie's lipstick from chapter 1
"I was never the most masculine man" - Lola, by The Kinks ("I'm not the world's most masculine man")

"Burlesque" - starring Cher and Christina Aguilera; a film that doesn't seem to know what burlesque is (but what can I say, I have a soft spot for camp). These days, burlesque usually refers to a classy (or silly) striptease. Traditionally, the meaning was more like a parody performance - such as Sophie, dressed as a man, performing a parody of receiving a blowjob and cumming on Mark's face.

"She decided she was going to be French too." - it doesn't really make sense. It's mostly because Sophie has all the best lines
"scrolling on her phone" - foreshadowing (she wasn't just scrolling)
"Bon Appetit" - this one isn't a movie title. Manger, baby!
"I got down on my knees." - Lola, again

"yellow" - the real reason Mark doesn't go through with this is because I didn't want Mark's first pegging to be an after-thought on a crossdressing story - not when it could be a story all on its own! It's also a bit of a bait-and-switch, after all the anal build-up in chapter 6. Funny thing is, that refusal kind of imbues the act with a 'weight'. Like, textually, why is Mark so hesitant about getting pegged?

"Bound" - the Wachowskis' movie. Not crossdressing/trans, but it is a lesbian movie (see below).
"How about a cassoulet?" - a French dish, naturellement
"I didn't know you were into le femme." - I'll say at this point, all my characters are some degree of bisexual (whether they realise it or not). Mostly because it affords more story possibilities. This is - you guessed it - foreshadowing
"enjoying our bilingual game" - bilingual = two tongues. Like in French kissing. That's an etymology pun (I can't help it, it's a sickness)
"The rain... in Spain..." / "By George..." - My Fair Lady

[twistedsmile]

08. "Strip" Commentary

This was one of those story ideas that started with thinking up 'S' words. What I didn't consider at the time was a striptease is a very visual act - so you have to be a damn good writer to do it justice in prose. I did my best... But it feels like a lot of "she went over here and did this, then she went over there and did that."

"I didn't know how long she planned to make me wear the cage" - I stuck Mark in the cage at the end of chapter 7, as 'punishment' for not being pegged. The thing is, I already did chastity cage in chapter 2, and didn't/don't have much else to say on the subject. So it's kind of incidental in this story.

"She closed her eyes, covered her face with both hands. She took a deep breath" - going back to what I said in an earlier commentary, she was self-conscious about her body; and while she's gotten more confident (in general) as the stories go on, there's still a bit of that anxiety in her - especially for this act which is very much focused on her body.

"The music started" - The song that plays in my head is "The Stripper" by David Rose & His Orchestra. You'd know it if you heard it (BAH-da-BAH ba-DAH-da-BAH).
"Strip." / "Slower!" she demanded, "Sexier..." - it's a two-way strip tease! Turns out women objectify men too, if you can believe it.
"wiggling my fingers like jazz-hands" - sometimes my impulse towards silliness takes over.

" A corset!" / "Fin-dom's not so bad after all, huh?" - I was thinking I'd like to put some leather and/or a corset in a story, but it kind of didn't really fit the series' money-conscious ethos. Then I remembered the £200 Sophie spent in interlude 5.5 which was unaccounted for, and this seemed like a fine place to put a corset. I didn't bother to check if you can actually get a leather corset for £200 (or less), mind you

"she took the cuffs from the bed" - I thought it would be fun to contrast Sophie adding more and more bonds to Mark as she removes more and more of her clothes. I also wanted Mark to be more actively involved, rather than just passively watching.
"You know, since you liked sucking dick so much." - I just really liked that line. Sophie made Mark suck a (fake) dick and now she making fun of him for it
"she took the gag all the way into her own mouth without flinching" / "See, not so hard?" - weird power move, but I dig it
"pulled away one hand to reveal... she was giving me the middle finger" - there's that silliness again

"Shall we play a game?" - WarGames
I'm quite fond of this section. It has a real energy that the first half was kind of lacking. This is the second meaning of the title - for what is escaping if not stripping (of bonds).

"should have stretched..." callback to chapters 4 and 6. Listen, stretching is important in BDSM
"there was nothing anchoring the ropes to the chair" - I can't decide if this was an over-sight on Sophie's part, or if she just thought that Mark wouldn't figure it out.
"Come here, you!" - Marks latent desire for dominance showing itself again, setting up chapter 10

"I'd come out on top, and I was going to enjoy her" - I mean, don't you think he deserves a win, at least once? Like I said earlier, I already did the chastity cage story, so having him lose would have been a narrative dead-end.
I would invite you to reflect on whether Sophie let him win. She certainly seemed like she wasn't playing fair, but then, Mark got out pretty easily, don't you think?
"no... fair..." - it was tempting to have Mark mirror Sophie's 'who said anything about fair' line. But I think readers are smart enough to make that connection without having it spelled out.

"how did she get the corset on in the first place?" - I don't know either. I was unsure whether to have Sophie remove the corset while doing the strip tease. I kept it on, because it felt like a bit of a waste if she didn't wear it for very long. Tho it goes unmentioned through the escape section, so I guess it doesn't really make a difference. This line is mostly to remind readers that she did indeed keep it on.

"I love you." - first time either character explicitly says 'I love you' in the series. Didn't earn the story the 'rom' tag, tho. But then, none of the stories have to date. Not that I'm bitter about it

[Caras pet]

Part twelve is up, no Sophie this time...
When the cat's away the mice will play

[twistedsmile]

09. "Succubus" Commentary

A succubus is a demon that steals a man's sperm while he's asleep. Self-explanatory title, really.
The original title was 'Sci-fi', but I didn't want to say that up front. I wanted to put reader on the back foot about what the hell was going on.

So the question was, how do you tell a sci-fi story in a 'grounded' series? Making it a dream sequence is an obvious workaround. The tricky thing with dream stories, though, is if you don't do it right, it can feel like a middle finger to the readers; like, why did you just waste my time with a story that doesn't count?

There are two things going on here. Firstly, events in the dream reflect things that are happening (to Mark) in the real world - such as getting his dick sucked.
Second, dreams are usually made up of variations and remixes of memories. So this story could be viewed as a kind of clip show. For that reason, it was originally going to be chapter 10. But the story that became chapter 10 (Sub) has much more impact, and following that with a dream story felt like an anti-climax to the season.

Along similar lines, dreams tend to be populated by people we know in the real world. In my head, 'Flecher' is Charlotte Fletcher (aka Lottie), Garret is a male friend of Mark that I haven't found a place for yet (Gary). And 'Arbee' is a pun: R-B (Rob, the neighbour).

I wanted to take the actual sci-fi story 'seriously'. I didn't want it to be a sci-fi coat of paint on a regular story, or just a couple of sci-fi sex scenes with perfunctory connecting material. There's actual plot, and characters with clear motivations. But, at the same time, this is pornography, so I didn't want the plot to over-power what people are actually here for (the kinky stuff).
To that end, the plot passages are very 'efficient', and we jump from scene to scene, skipping over boring connecting bits. I think I can get away with it here because dreams do kind of behave like that; and it's by no means incoherent for doing it.

I started with the face-hugger scene, and figured I might as well lean into the Alien riff for the plot. I've seen all the Alien movies, but I've seen each of them only once, so this is all based on vague memories. It mostly pulls from Alien, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant (I think).

"MSTRUS" - the 'mistress' equivalent of Alien's MUTHUR. I don't necessarily think of MSTRUS as a representation of Sophie, since Sophie is the xenomorph. And plus, Mark has never referred to Sophie as 'mistress'. It's more a pure plot device.

"4-Sigma-s" - I looked up actual naming conventions for exoplanets. 4-Sigma would be the 4th star in the Sigma constellation (which doesn't exist), and 's' would make this the 13th planet orbiting it; following the Flamsteed Designation. But more to the point, the acronym is 4Ss (I hear that place stinks!)

"a hefty fine for the salvage company" - as usual, the real villain in an Alien story is capitalism
"Fletcher took a long, slow drag on her cigarette" - reference to characters smoking on a spaceship in the original Alien, which seems kind of weird these days. But also I thought it would be a funny affect to give one of the characters

"The Sigman sky was dense with clouds of ice crystals" - I had a technical problem: the ship needed to be damaged during the landing, but also needed to be able to leave again unharmed. I imagined an atmosphere of ice clouds, similar to that one planet in Chris Nolan's Interstellar. The ice can damage the ship on the way in, but be melted to give them a clean exit.
"Sigma was in syzygy with its binary stars" - i.e. one of the stars was hiding behind the other. This is slightly contrived, but the idea is, when it emerges, its additional heat melts the ice in the atmosphere.
"the perigean star" - the one closest to the planet
"There's a demon here" - a semen demon!

"What do you make of that, Captain?" - Mark is portrayed as the captain of the ship, mostly because it's his dream and he's the one driving the action. I was unsure if that made sense psychologically - that a submissive would dream of himself in a command role. Maybe we can call that foreshadowing again

"'I can detect no signs of life [..] besides your own,' returned Arbee." - 'your' own is meant to imply Arbee has no life sign (because he's a robot). There are various other hints before the reveal, like his slightly stilted pattern of speech (no contractions, etc)
"It is safe to breathe" - can't get face-hugged with a helmet on
"Garret never came back" - A ship needs a crew of more than one, and an alien needs red shirts to kill, so I had to introduce a handful of characters. Then I systematically killed them off so I didn't have to keep track of them all.
"tequila" - callback to chapter 3
"like he'd been sucked dry [..] almost looked like he was happy" -
"yonic orifice" - like a vagina

"a strange, crab-like creature" - I was watching the Alien: Earth series, and when the guy got face-hugged I was thinking you could model a bondage gag/mask after a face-hugger. Like an elaborate penis gag, with legs that buckle behind the head, and a tail that wraps and buckles around the throat. Thinking about that got me weirdly aroused, so now you have to deal with that too.
"I tried to push it back with my tongue" - I actually added the penis gag to chapter 8 retroactively, so that the face-hugger could be a 'callback'.
"raging priapism" - erection. The story was originally just face-hugger and xenomorph, but it felt like it needed something in the middle. When you get an erection in your sleep, sometimes that manifests within the dream.

"She belonged amongst the stars." - I decided Fletcher's motivation was she just loves being a mechanic, even tho should doesn't need to do it for money. I wanted a more poetical way of saying that and came up with this line. Then I thought: well, I guess now I have to throw her out of an air lock.
"The scans show no anomalies." - if you've seen an Alien movie you know what's going on here; the robot is always conspiring with the evil company to bring a xenomorph sample back to earth.
"Cave spores, maybe?" - but wait, didn't Arbee already say no toxins or hallucinogens in the air!

So there's two questions at this point - why is Mark dreaming about being jerked off by a male-coded robot, and why one specifically modelled after his neighbour? On the first point, you could argue that Mark doesn't view Arbee as 'male', but rather as a machine, performing a purely medical function; its gender presentation is irrelevant. On the second point... erm...

"His grip was a little firm" - callback to chapter 4
"he spat a gelatinous fluid" - that was a bit cheeky
"WHY WASN'T THIS WORKING?!" - in my experience, you can't cum in a dream unless you also cum in real life, and that usually requires physical stimulation (in the real world)
"applied pressure just so. Like magic, I actually felt myself soften" - chapter 1, of course
"devices such as these were known as 'chastity cages'" - just to make it unambiguous what the 'containment device' is. Chapter 1/2 callback
"Come on, baby [..] Just a little more..." - callback to chapter 6
"demon... save... demon... save" - Arbee is echoing the original distress signal, but what he's actually saying is "save [the] demon" (so it can be brought back to Earth)
"Its skin was pitch black, and had a sheen like latex" - I really put myself in a corner with the money-conscious thing. Otherwise I might have done an actual latex story.
"shutting herself into the airlock" - the thing about blowing Fletch out of an airlock is you have to get her in there in the first place. After some thought I decided it was easiest to have her put herself in, to escape the xenomorph
"Let me try the override, 1-9-7-9" - that's probably a bit too cute (year the first Alien film was released)
"Come on, MSTRUS [..] We've got a fuckin' monster to slay." - and with that, she sealed her fate.
"My hands were held together above my head, my ankles pulled apart" - callback to chapter 1
"The alien woman" - as Mark gets closer to waking, the image of the alien blurs more and more into Sophie
"She bit down, violently, on the containment device" - chapter 8
"The small mouth plunged, consuming my penis" - presumably this is when Sophie starts her assault in the real world
"I felt the sensation of [her tail's] ridged surface" - alike the buttplug in chapter 6 part 2
"My chest was pounding [..] SOMETHING was pounding on my chest" - in the real world this is the feeling of his heartbeat, manifested in the dream as the chest-burster trying to break free
"I couldn't move my arms [..] stretched out above my head [..] something holding them in place." - sleeping in bondage, perhaps that's why he had such a kinky dream?
"She wiped her mouth" - implies that she swallowed, if you care about that sort of thing.

"With apologies to Ridley Scott and H R Giger" - I'm not sure they'd approve of what I did with their creations :p This was also to underscore the fact that this was an intentional Alien riff, and that I wasn't trying to hide that fact.

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BTW, thanks for the encouragement, Caras pet. I always appreciate it