Maria in the Tack Shop Again - Director Commentary

[TheWritingGroup]

Hi, Annie here. This'll be shorter than a lot of the director commentaries I've posted here. "Maria in the Tack Shop Again" is part 2 and the ending of this particular story. Not the last you'll see of Maria, though.

"You collared her?" He had a deep voice, and he spoke loudly. He stepped past Maria as if she wasn't a person and held his right hand out to me. "Raoul."​

Notice that Raoul doesn't call her "Maria" until Luis does? If you look back at the first story, he never uses her name or lets anyone but himself touch her possessions. He's protecting her identity, trying to prevent potential stalkers from finding her.

I wanted to get things going, so I said, "Raoul, this is an actual shopping trip."​

That's me. I am always afraid my stories start too slowly.

"Might be weird for me to say it, but it's good you feel that. Some people come in here, they pretend a little too hard. Seen some sad cases.”​

Originally I intended the sad case to be Billie from "Pranked", but then I realized she would be about 8 years old at this time.

There was a surprisingly long pause before Maggie appeared, towing Maria on the leash. My beautiful blonde was looking less than happy. She was dripping water, goosebumps showing how cold she was.​

This is something I did to connect the two central pillars of these stories, Maria and Liz. Liz, all through Enslaved, is getting drenched with cold water and hating it.

I also noticed that the customers were drifting into the area, but standing pretty far back. When Maria was an "escaped slave", they crowded right around, she told me. Maybe they were more respectful of a free woman doing something brave than a pretend slave.​

Yes, and also Raoul has learned by experience to keep the mob under better control. There are a couple of regular customers there who help with that, like volunteer moderators in a forum or Discord. As he says near the end, he is always trying to learn from what happens.

"... You can't free a slave over 60 unless they can be self-supporting ..."​

This, believe it or not, is inspired by George Washington, who by the time of his presidency wanted to free his slaves, but felt as if he couldn't because they were largely not able to support themselves and would just become penniless vagrants--or at least, that's what he thought.

"Do free women compete as ponies much? I don't know a damned thing about that. Is it handled like a sport, or a beauty contest, or what?"

"Yeah. Not millions, but some free ladies do it. It's a hell of a fitness thing ..."​

Some writers in the 34th Amendment multiverse have a rule that if someone acts like a slave voluntarily, they can end up enslaved for-real. My stories are set in a carefully-unnamed US state that has different laws, because I don't feel like having that be true.

The leather-wearing man came up to me first, held out his hand, and said, "Ty." Slightly shorter than me, shoulders and arms like a blacksmith, blonde hair almost the same color as Maria's, blue eyes. Strong grip, lots of calluses. "I met Maria the last time she was here. I see the crop marks on her butt healed with no marks."​

This is the person who rubbed ointment into her crop welts and later fingered her when she was in the pillory.

Looking at her butt like this, I saw the brand. A reversed F, paired with an E. It almost looked like wings. "Hey, Raoul, I don't know brands. What's this one?"​

"Maggie's? You say it as 'Back Eff Ee.' It's my company's brand, Full Experience."

This is the brand:

I was fingering them both, and both were squirming. I realized that Maggie needed lube, though. She must be a woman who doesn't make much naturally.

Luis is 22 here. He doesn’t know that post-menopausal women often don’t lubricate.

"... She didn't figure out what you were doing until hours later, when James--our friend who rescued her--and she were talking about it."​

Raoul froze, almost falling over.

This is the thing I do where I reverse what happened at the beginning near the ending. When they came in, the guy in the cowboy hat almost fell. On the way out, Raoul does. It isn't even on purpose, apparently my subconscious likes that trope.

That's all I have to say for now. I hope you enjoyed it. Even if you didn't, please tell me below why. I post these to learn to write better, comments like, "Needed a car chase," or "Too much bondage, not enough discipline!" will definitely help me.