Sophie and Mark by Twisted Smile

[twistedsmile]

Thank you for the kind words, anonhandle, I'm genuinely moved
I'm glad you're enjoying the series and have gotten so much out of it.

I'm only sorry that there will be a bit of a wait before chapter 16 (don't you just hate when work gets in the way of your hobby  )
But in the meantime there will be more commentaries (and a couple of non- Sophie & Mark stories) to hold you over...

[twistedsmile]

11. "Stroll" Commentary

This was one of those stories that started with an S-word. Alternate title, "Saunter".
Stroll implied doing 'something' in public, some exhibitionism or outdoor sex/bondage. The tricky thing was narrowing that down to something specific.
Then I remembered a line from chapter 2: "Jeans helped to flatten and obscure the cage's bulge, but even so I didn't want to be out in public with it" But walking around in a chastity cage isn't a very exciting story on its own, so I heightened it by putting Mark in a dress. But then the bulge was a problem again. So the question was, why would he be wearing a cage in the first place, and why would Sophie allow him to remove it? He wasn't wearing it as a punishment, it was serving a practical purpose - erection management. That became the through-line for the story.
"The chastity cage was creating an obvious bulge in my dress." - He's saying this rather casually, which kind of implies that Mark has gotten quite comfortable with cross-dressing AND wearing a chastity cage - and in public, no less! This is meant to suggest that Sophie and Mark's kinky games have continued escalating in the intermission between chapters 10 and 11

"Wig in a Box" - The section titles are all songs from the musical "Hedwig and the Angry Inch". Is there a meaningful connection to this story? Eh. Mostly I'm just a fan.
"I found a cream cardigan which matched the dress well" - I spent way too much time trying to figure out what colour cardigan would go well with a white and green floral dress. I tried a google image search but the results weren't very helpful. Plain white was the obvious choice, but maybe too obvious. And given what happens on their stroll, it would have gotten very dirty.
"videos to learn some 'cross-play' tricks for making my face look more feminine" - something I learned about from 'My Dress-Up Darling'
"It wasn't entirely successful." - I'm a boring realist who can't imagine Mark looking like a plausible woman with a bit of make-up
"It was late summer" - I'm only vaguely keeping track of when each story happens. In this case, I actually trapped myself by making this story intersect with Brett & Darren, and had to handwave away the whole 'wearing a face mask in summer' thing.
"during the pandemic, there was this micro trend.." - I don't know if it was actually a trend in the kink community, but there was a sub-reddit for it. But yes, these stories take place in a world where COVID happened.
"the gag didn't have the usual saliva leaking problem" - this line is for the annoying voice in the back of my head that says 'wait, didn't the gag make Mark drool in chapters 1 and 5?'

"The Dog and Pony" - if you've read Brett & Darren you will recognise this pub name. Yes, it's the same pub. The name is obviously a reference to pet and pony play, and just happens to sound like a British pub name. Not sure that anything in the story counts as a 'dog and pony show'.
"young man who was clearly in high spirits" - did you figure out who this is? As mentioned, this story overlaps with a scene from Brett & Darren 1; where Brett mentions someone walking past his house singing 'a football chant'. Fun fact, Sweet Caroline is sometimes used as a chant at England football games.

"I'm Eileen." - you can probably see where this was going... which is exactly why I didn't do it. Don't get me wrong, I was very tempted. But in the end it felt too crass.
"The man seemed more interested in me" - funnily enough, this isn't the last time Darren will find himself attracted to a woman that is actually a cross-dresser.
"joggers" - this is set-up for the later 'midnight runner' joke
"smeared lip gloss" - I didn't explicitly call it out in the getting ready section, but I think it was implied in 'natural' make-up
"her denim shorts" - when Mark is cross-dressing, Sophie usually dresses more 'masculine' (or maybe less 'girly', at least)

"We didn't discuss this." - there's a subtle evolution over the series. In the first 5 chapters, Sophie always gets explicit consent before starting a game. In the next 5, consent is not explicitly shown 'on screen' (did you notice?) In those stories, nothing particularly extreme happens, so consent might reasonably be assumed. But assumed consent is a dangerous precedent - as we will see in this 5 chapter arc.

"pulled my arms behind my back, around the tree" - at a young age, I saw an episode of "Gimme Gimme Gimme", in which a guy gets handcuffed to a lamp post in drag. I think that was a classic bachelor party prank. Anyway, the image of this guy in women's clothes, handcuffed in a public place, helpless, scared... I don't think that had any sort of lasting impact on me

"Think about... Brexit" - if that doesn't kill your erection... In retrospect, putting an intentional boner killer in the middle of a pornographic story is a weird move
"she was joking, right?" - so... this is pretty fucked up, yeah? You could read this as revenge for chapter 10 (after all: "that one likes to hold a grudge"). I'm not sure that makes it any 'better', tho.
"what other option was there?" / "I tried to follow her voice." - from the song 'Wicked Little Town': "If you've got no other choice, you know you can follow my voice"
"turalura turalura laaay..." / "A midnight runner!" - Come On Eileen, Dexys Midnight Runners. This is Darren again - "a drunk that got lost on their way home"
"if I said the safe word ... would she come back" - this is another theme for this arc: the limits of safe words; what if you're unable (or unwilling) to use it?
"It was so quiet." - sometimes I have this thing where I get so stressed out that it kind of burns out and I feel weirdly calm instead
"I felt a ghostly hand REACHING OUT, TOUCHING ME on the shoulder..." - TOUCHING YOOOOOOU
"My heart burst out of my chest and scurried away into the night" - chest-burster, chapter 9
"She got down on her knees ... and she drank me deep" - I was planning on doing a full BJ scene, but truth be told when I got to it I couldn't be bothered
This is where the "cum on Eileen" joke would have happened; tho realistically, there's no way Sophie was going to be walking about in public with cum on her (even if she maybe deserved it).
"The good times never seemed so good." - SO GOOD! SO GOOD! SO GOOD!
"I noticed her necklace hanging loose... Had she always been wearing that?" - in case it wasn't clear, yes, she had the handcuff key around her neck the whole time. Mark was never in any danger, and Sophie was probably hiding behind a tree, a few feet away, keeping an eye on him.

[twistedsmile]

12. "Separation" Commentary

Original title "Solo", for obvious reasons. Later "Saviour" referring to Rob, but I felt like that gave the ending away.
Going with "Separation" was a bit of a cheeky fake out; Sophie and Mark are apart from each other, but not split up. You could also read this as a double bluff, to lull readers into a false sense of security before the next couple of chapters. "Separation" could also refer to 'separation anxiety'. Mark is clearly not coping well with being apart from Sophie.

I mentioned elsewhere in the forum that self-bondage stories were what drew me to the plaza in the first place, so a self-bondage story was always part of the plan. And I think I showed a lot of self-control (or as Teann said, 'self-restraint' ) in waiting til chapter 12 to do one. (Actually, that's not strictly true. I wrote another self-bondage story just before this, in Brett & Darren)

"Rob and I" - Rob the neighbour first appeared in chapter 6
"It all started - as all the worst stories do - with too much alcohol." - inversion of the opening line from chapter 3; there it was: "as all the best stories do"

"I always loved Bond films" - I don't see it as much these days, but in the self-bondage stories I read when I found the site, there was this recurring trope of: "for as long as I can remember I've been into self-bondage". This is a sort of riff/parody of that.
Am I suggesting that Bond films implanted a subliminal interest in being tied up into Mark's brain? Not necessarily; but it's as good an explanation as any. I think it's 'relevant' that Bond is this cool, strong, masculine character, and the fact he gets tied up a lot doesn't diminish that. That feels like something that would matter to Mark's ego.
Besides all that, in the present, the scenes being mentioned are making Mark think about himself being tied up - making him miss Sophie, and nudging him towards tying himself up in her absence.

"Bond is shackled to a metal table" - this scene is from "Goldfinger", obviously. Sean Connery, calling back to Chapter 5 ("The name'sh Bond")
"I got a pair of handcuffs from the toy box" - being in bondage makes him feel like Sophie is 'closer'
"spaghetti bolognese; medium difficulty in handcuffs" - I intentionally tried to pick a meal that would be tricky to eat while cuffed.
"Bond is locked into this exotic bondage chair" - "The World Is Not Enough", Pierce Brosnan. The films that Mark watches are in chronological order (tho he does skip, like, 15 of them). This scene in particular did leave an impression on my own young mind.
"to: Sophie: I miss you" - slight change in how text messages are presented versus chapter 2's simpler "me: message". Since Mark messages someone besides Sophie later, it had to be clear who the message was going to.

"IF LOST RETURN TO SOPHIE..." / "I put on my dog collar." - 'if lost' is what is engraved on the reverse of the tag on Mark's dog collar; first mentioned in chapter 5. In the commentary for that chapter I mentioned the double meaning - "if spiritually lost" - which Mark currently is. This is also included here to reminder readers about it, ahead of its use in chapter 14. Oh, and in case you forgot, the name on the front side of the dog tag is "Bond"

"I picked up the chastity cage" - I reckon it's growing on him
"Microwave chicken Dhansak" - Dhansak is a callback to chapter 4; notably that was Sophie's meal choice. It's a microwave meal because Mark can't be bothered with anything that requires more effort. By this point, Mark is showing clear signs of depression.
"Bond is naked, tied to a chair with no seat" - "Casino Royale", Daniel Craig.

"Thursday" - this section switches to the present tense (where the rest of Sophie & Mark is past tense). This is meant to feel a little disorienting, because Mark is clearly drunk. The narration itself is also quite hyperactive, stream-of-consciousness. All together it's meant to give it that feeling of manic immediacy you get when drunk.
I'm not going to go through this line-by-line. Suffice to say there are a lot of repeated phrases/motifs, and a lot of dramatic irony.

"I sit in the chair" - tied to a chair, not unlike Bond.
"No. This is wrong." - this is meant to be a joke; you're meant to think that he means doing self-bondage is wrong, when he's actually saying his bondage is insufficient
"I grab an ice tray, drop in the key" - I don't think he understands how ice-release mechanisms work
"I remember that other time ... I can't just slide the chair legs out" - chapter 8
"She did this to me" - he's imagining that Sophie tied him up. He's also saying that she made him want to do it (by getting him into kink)
"I push my hands together" - this plays out quite similarly to the escape from chapter 8. I actually drafted this chapter first, then accidentally plagiarised myself when I wrote 8. Of course, this escape doesn't go quite so smoothly.
"I'm so close" - close to reaching the phone and close to orgasm
"So... iff..." - it wasn't until I was proof-reading that I noticed 'so if' is quite close to 'sophie'. I thought about making it more intentional, like 'so fi' or 'so if ee', but that felt too contrived/forced.

"Been having a bit of fun while the missus is away" - there's another trope I used to see in a lot of self-bondage stories, where the discoverer is like "Oh my god, are you okay? Who did this to you?! I'm calling the police!" It always made me roll my eyes, like, do you really think someone broke in, stripped the person naked, tied and gagged and stuck a vibrator in them, and left without stealing anything?
Rob's aloof/open-minded reaction to seeing Mark in this state is lowering the bar of plausibility for the next chapter.

"He pulls out his phone." - foreshadowing
"or did you invite me over for a different reason?" - foreshadowing
"drop in the ice cube containing the frozen chastity key" - the implication being he's still wearing the chastity cage; as a sort of self-imposed punishment for his misadventure
"How long does it take for scars to fade?" - he's not just talking about physical scars
"Like, there was this one time in uni..." - FORESHADOWING!
The 'experimented in college' cliche, juxtaposed with the scene where Bond implies he's had sex with men before. Again, making Rob's involvement in chapter 13 more plausible.
"Bond is tied to a chair (again)" - "Skyfall", Daniel Craig (again). Mark chose to tie himself up on Thursday rather than watch "Quantum of Solace", which is entirely reasonable.

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A new story by me went up last week - "The Queen's Trial"
Quite different to Sophie & Mark, but you might still enjoy it