Liz Enslaved ends! "Sold", a director's commentary

[TheWritingGroup]

Welcome to another overly-long director's commentary.

Author Note: this is the one with lots of kinky slave sex. Just so you know. It was pretty fun to write.

I'm delaying the next Liz arc, Owned, to have more sex and less long dialog.

You could actually read and understand this without reading parts 1 and 2. You might enjoy it more in sequence, though.

I want to let people read Liz's stories without reading assignments first. That's another reason I delayed Owned, to have time to work on that.

She saw her own reflection: naked, pale, heavily freckled even after weeks of never seeing the sun. Brownish hair, now falling below her shoulders. She looked very fit to herself, after weeks of physically demanding slave training. Silvery metal collar back around her neck, now that the burns had healed.

I struggle to describe characters without feeling artificial. "Janet had tanned skin and green eyes and was wearing a sun dress and sandals." I had already established that this room has glass walls and a glass door. It felt natural to me for Liz to notice her reflection.

The wrangler she was following tapped the glass, then led her inside and said, "Present!" She stood, feet shoulder's length apart, hands open, palms facing forward, head down, back straight. One skill mastered.

Callback to "Rug Pull", where Liz is told to Present and screws it up. Here she's picture perfect. I like the end of a story to reflect the beginning and show changes, character or situation.

Marilee was one of two people in that entire slave training facility that Liz felt she could trust ...

Marilee was one of the first people Liz met at Circle-Q, the first sympathetic one. Now, she's one of the last people Liz meets, and has to say goodbye to.

She continued, "My mouth is also pain-free. I have a scar on the inside of my lip, where it was cut. The dentist says that it will heal, but the process will take weeks or months."

That's actually a plot point for the first story in Owned.

I'm seeing things from the wranglers' point of view, judging how they do their jobs. Katie was right, I am analyzing, studying them. She understood me, maybe better than I understood myself.

Katie is very smart, and a few years older than Liz. They're both good at understanding other people (as we see later in this story) but not quite as good at understanding themselves without help (as we will see in "Poetic Justice", Katie's story).

I think she enjoys the chance to talk to someone in technical-speak. She doesn't seem to have any assistants or other vets to talk to here.

You mean she's like you, Liz?

… Don't think at all. Feel how warm and soft those lips were, feel Marilee's left hand stroking her hair, feel a tongue not her own lick her lips, taste Marilee's cherry lip gloss. Feel her own breath whistling through her nose, as the kiss excited her. Feel!

This is a key thing that happens in this story. In her sexual encounters, you'll see Liz, for the first time, able to let go of her internal monologue, stop narrating her life and just live it, enjoy and react to sensations. I had a reason for putting Liz's thoughts in italics. I wanted to make it noticeable when there were no italics for paragraphs and paragraphs.

Her nipples were so sensitized now, she could feel the breath from Marilee's nostrils and the hair on the vet's arms stimulate the scarlet twin peaks of Mount Liz.

Billie used this metaphor in "Still Picture". We plan to arm-wrestle for it the next time we're in a pub. We can't remember who thought of it. (Billie did it better.)

Remember when Liz thought of Katie as a "brown face with blue icing"? When she's giddy, her brain goes for very surreal, poetic imagery.

Then Marilee moved further to get between Liz's legs and bent to kiss her mound. Unthinking, she whispered, "Please, Mistress. Please, please Marilee."

"Mistress"? Yeah, in that moment Liz actually does feel like Marilee's slave. She is affected by her weeks of training. Yet, she is still Liz.

Marilee didn't stop licking and sucking, and Liz kicked right over into another orgasm, her voice rising in pitch ...

This is the first time Liz has been multi-orgasmic without the drug.

"Mistress … I guessed." Marilee looked surprised again. "I'm a pharma student, and my best friend used—uses—ildeslafine." A pang passed through her. She missed Maria terribly. "I used to tease her about how her boobs don't droop because of the drug. Mistress, forgive me, but your own breasts are not drooping nearly as much as one would expect in a person so … experienced. They don't look silicone, either." Marilee was staring at her. "You could be a free citizen user of prescription ildeslafine, of course, but it would take megadoses to produce such dramatic, long-lasting changes to the Cooper's ligaments that support the breasts. Only slaves get that much."

This sequence is "Liz shows off for Marilee." They really like each other, even if the situation means they can't have a normal relationship. Liz enjoys impressing her. It should remind you of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (a doctor), which is why Marilee's real name is Johanna Watson.

This is the place where Nicky attacked me. I don't know why I'm not more traumatized. I'm not freaking out at all.

This is a plot point that won't pay off for several stories.

Even when tied by the wranglers, she had never been quite this helpless. And he had done it with one coil of rope and a hood.

Nice!

Liz is totally unafraid as this stranger ties her to torment her. She isn't being brave, she just isn't scared. Despite the not-yet-explained betrayal by Ben, she has a lot of confidence in her judgment and she's sure 1702 won't harm her. She is correct.

"Don't mean nuthin', forty-niner. Juss' how I talk."

It amused me to have 1702 know history and call her a Forty-Niner, after the California Gold Rush. He's calling her a treasure, but Liz is a science nerd and doesn't catch on. I haven't detailed 1702's backstory, but he's a college graduate with a Humanities degree.

Thanks, Kondo-Sensei. Her Aikido teacher had taught her that one.

The author keeps mentioning Aikido. That can't possibly mean anything.

Pretty cheap way to get us all grateful, some canned soup, but I can't complain.

Yes, you can, Liz. You were unjustly indentured and deprived of normal activity and sensation for weeks. You can complain, even if a tiny window was made in your cell.

"Mistress, may I have both 1632 and 1702 at once? I am feeling … Mistress, I would like to please 1702, and I would hate to leave 1632 unsatisfied today."

I said that I like to have endings mirror beginnings. When Liz came in, she had to satisfy multiple men, including deep-throating. She had chemistry with one. That describes this encounter, too. Both times, Liz took control, in a subtle way that the men don't necessarily understand.

"Up on the table, fawty-nine. You asked for two guys. You got the two best girl-pleasuhs in ahr coffle. Smaht girl."

I need to learn to do accents and dialects better.

Aside from Marilee, [Katie] was the only person here that Liz trusted enough to reveal her true self to …

It's not a coincidence that she's attracted to her fellow leaders. She doesn't realize it.

[putting half in the first reply because Literotica's software counts 9,000 characters as over 10,000 somehow]

 

[TheWritingGroup]

[continued from thread starter]

“I’m just a foreman …"

Actually, she's Chief Wrangler, the foremen's boss. She's working-class, she isn't comfortable being a big boss just yet.

Even in this incredibly stressful situation, about to have red-hot metal pressed into her skin, she was still analyzing herself, trying to find a way to make things come out best.

She just analyzed her own analytic tendency. It's doing its job, helping her stay in control.

The walk only took a few seconds, but her furiously revving mind made it seem like minutes until she reached the squeeze.

This is what Liz thought after Phil ordered her to crawl out of the cage to a line in "Rug Pull". Rhyming.

She clearly heard Lance call, "Sold! Sold to the beautiful lady in the beautiful green dress for forty thousand dollars!" "… a woman in a green evening gown, glittery in the dimness of the audience."

This is Charlotte. We will meet her again.

She suddenly smiled, realizing: in terms of actual sensation, the brand had hurt about as much as the two zippers being yanked suddenly off her chest ...

In a future story, Mikey will tell her how impressed he was by her throwing off being branded and smiling like that. Yes, he returns.

For a moment, she saw only red, saw the world through a haze of anger at the unfairness of this, of being permanently disfigured because she trusted someone who didn't deserve it.

Liz was able to control herself while getting agonizing, disfiguring burns on her ass, but thinking about how unfair it is almost made her lose it. She was right before about being tougher.

The inspector … said, "010-541-3349's lease may legally be sold."

"Lease"? Yeah, a debt slave like Liz is owned by the state and leased out for the time of her sentence. Why did I introduce that? Keep reading.

"Goodbye, 3349. Up on the block now!"

The block sequence was originally three paragraphs, distant and abstract, "The bids came in" instead of showing the bidding. Another writer advised me to be more involving and emotional and visceral. I hope I succeeded.

Then she was bundled out to the loading dock, told to sit in the back of a four-door sedan, gruffly reminded to put on her seat belt, and driven off to somewhere.

Enslaved started with Liz being unloaded from a vehicle, and it ends with her being loaded into a vehicle and driven away, a different person … and very much the same.

Important: the first thing her new owner does is caring and kind.

What do you think?

 

[MrSmith27]

"She saw her own reflection: naked, pale, heavily freckled even after weeks of never seeing the sun. Brownish hair, now falling below her shoulders. She looked very fit to herself, after weeks of physically demanding slave training. Silvery metal collar back around her neck, now that the burns had healed."

How did Liz feel about her appearance in the reflection? She's in better shape now; does she feel she is more attractive? Does she still see herself as Liz or as a naked slave girl? After weeks of sexualization does she see herself as a sexual object? Does her reflection arouse her? Will former acquaintances recognize the new her or just see through her only seeing another slave girl? That is one of Joe's theories that he explored with Sarah Hollister when business acquaintances did not recognize her when she was a naked-collared slave. They just saw another piece of slave stupid merchandise for sale on the block. Likewise, nobody recognized Flame (Sarah) or Lindsey (Calr Bradford's "Sabadical in Slavery) while on the Yo Ho Ho. What if someone Liz knew was in that auction audience? How would that make her feel?

Regarding the loading dock scene; you didn't introduce the new owner, only that someone most likely an employee bundled her out onto the loading dock and into the car. What was her reaction/impression of the man who controlled her fate for the next four years? Did he at least inspect the merchandise? There was an opportunity to spice that up creating more of a cliff hanger for what comes next for Liz.

Liz has led a sheltered existence in the slave training facility where naked slaves and slave wranglers are the norm. Now she is going out in public nude. How does that feel? There should be some humiliation and embarrassment. I am looking forward to some encounters with people from her past life. Will they recognize her or just see a naked piece of property? How will they and Liz react?

The branding right before sale on the auction block was an interesting twist. What happens if an unrestrained slave moves and injures themselves? That seems rather risky.

I enjoyed your use of HJ in the story and found the following paragraph well done. The Big D sells fresh slaves who have not experienced horny juice. I look at them as selling an organic product with the slave heat demonstrating potential. The Circle Q sells slaves whose slave heat demonstrates what they have become.

"We've spent weeks here being trained, conditioned and drugged and trained, to react strongly to sexual stimuli. When you do the undrugged half of the 'test', we'll react as strongly, or almost as strongly, as we did with a megadose of Horny Juice. Then you'll point out how naturally horny we are. It's part of the program to make people think of themselves as natural slaves."

 

[TheWritingGroup]

How did Liz feel about her appearance in the reflection? She's in better shape now; does she feel she is more attractive?

This is not explicitly answered, but we see in the scene with the two male slaves that she still doesn't think of herself as attractive.

Does she still see herself as Liz or as a naked slave girl? After weeks of sexualization does she see herself as a sexual object?

Well, yes. She's in a between state. She does see herself as a slave, especially in the Marilee scene (where I do say that explicitly), but also not.

What was her reaction/impression of the man who controlled her fate for the next four years? Did he at least inspect the merchandise? There was an opportunity to spice that up creating more of a cliff hanger for what comes next for Liz.

I did have that start at the end of "Sold" originally. It was literally anticlimactic, just making the ending sort of trail off, so I moved it to the beginning of "Owner" (part 1 of Owned).

The branding right before sale on the auction block was an interesting twist. What happens if an unrestrained slave moves and injures themselves? That seems rather risky.

Granted. Good point.

Thanks.

-Annie

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I felt as if I needed to expand on that last bit: I moved the branding to the same time as the auction to amp up the tension and drama. Another Lit writer has told me I tend to be distant, too abstract. I was trying to make the whole thing visceral and emotional and full of sensory impressions. @MrSmith27, you are right that it wouldn't be practical, but my head was somewhere else writing that last scene.

Now that I wrote the above, I should have more smells. I only mention the smell of the hot iron, but a pit like that would have a real funk that could add some literal atmosphere. Missed opportunity. I'll add that to my current WIP, "Wager", though. I already had a fair amount of smelling in my other WIP, "Being a Blessing". (The first is part of the 34A stuff, the second is a totally different genre.)

-Annie

 

[Joe_Doe_Stories]

It's possible that an experienced blacksmith is able to pull away if the girl moves, to avoid smudging. Of course, this means the girl has to be bound and rebranded, which will make it considerably more painful. Not that her pain matters, except to the extent that it serves as a good lesson to her.

I thought the other interesting aspect was putting the girl in the ring right after the branding. Definitely a demonstration of her fortitude, as she has to do her paces when she barely wants to move. The Circle Q might want to do this as seeing the girls at the lowest point in their lives might excite the buyers, and increase the sense of "fun", and thus drive up their prices. The girls will enter the ring like the stunned cattle they now are...

I also like the "pit" idea, which is more like a real, grubby auction PIT where a couple of dozen buyers might casually gather for a sale. The auction maybe life defining for Liz, but for everyone else it is simply another transaction. EXCELLENT WORK!

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I think my brain did things in that order because in many stories (including by @Joe_Doe_Stories) branding is a spectator thing. That means that I associated branding with crowds of gawkers, which then meant it happened at an auction. In retrospect, not, but then again my little world isn't exactly the same as any other writer's, inevitably. My slave training is different from some others', for instance, happening in total isolation from outsiders, and the outside world. As Liz figures out, I was deliberately invoking military training camps and cult indoctrination as a way to change people's personalities. (OK, technically Liz doesn't know about me writing it, but she gets Circle-Q's training philosophy.)

Up higher, @MrSmith27 was asking about Liz accepting slavery. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that she never does. She is not a "natural slave" of the type Joe mentioned in his response to my WIWAW. Like, oh, Cindy Jackson from Carl Bradford's "Going Around to Cum Around", she's just trying to get through the next few years. And like Cindy, she will be changed by the experience.

I'm not trying to write a Joe Doe or a Mr. Smith story, after all. I'm writing an Annie story. I'm not writing a Carl Bradford story, either, but my stories might be more similar to his. Cindy and Liz are very different people, though.

-Annie

 

[Joe_Doe_Stories]

I very much enjoying YOUR story, and the choices you've made. I find the differences delightful. Thank you!