The Perils of Madame Mystica: The Complete Origin with Writer's Commentary

Hello Patrons!

It's Val here with another goodie to hopefully spice up your weekend! It's been a while since I've done a Writer's Commentary so here, for your reading pleasure, is the first volume of The Perils of Madame Mystica, all three chapters collected as one. This will be released on Amazon next month but of course, you patrons get it first as well as this exclusive introduction where I give you insights into this story and how I came up with it. 

Very soon after writing the first Damsels Anonymous story I started brainstorming on what other stories I wanted to write. As much as I enjoy writing the DA stories, I wanted to keep things fresh, not only for my readers, but for myself as I feared that I would grow bored if I kept writing the same series continuously. Naturally I figured that my other series should be a superheroine series since I love sexy superheroines in peril, and I started brainstorming as to what kind of superheroine story I wanted to tell. 

At first I was torn over what kind of heroine I wanted her to be: either the powerhouse kind of heroine, who was super-strong but had an achilles heel that her enemies could exploit, or a heroine with vocal based powers, so being gagged would be her weakness. As you all know, I love heroines like Zatanna and Black Canary whose voice is their power. I actually took a poll on Twitter to see what my followers thought, but ultimately I chose a vocal based heroine, though I would end up making a powerhouse heroine with Power Lifter several years later. 

Once I decided that I wanted my heroine to be vocal based, I drew inspiration from several sources. Zatanna was one of my main influences, since I loved her magical powers meaning that she had to be gagged frequently, and I was also heavily inspired by Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden novels, which combine fantasy, horror, and noir and follow the adventures of a Wizard PI. This gave me a sort of basis for my heroine and her world, as I decided that I wanted to go with a heroine with magical powers as opposed to a more science fiction heroine, and it would mean that I could have fun and put the heroine in more outlandish bondage situations that I couldn't do in my DA series. 

So now I had to figure out what my heroine's powers would be. I didn't want her casting spells like Zatanna or having a sonic cry like Black Canary, but then I remembered the Marvel show Agent Carter. Near the end of the first season there was a villain who could hypnotize people with his voice, and when the good guys eventually catch on they gag this villain to prevent him from hypnotizing anyone else. In fact, when this villain is put in prison, it's shown that he must wear a gag at all times to prevent him from using his powers.

I realized this would be a fun power for a female heroine, and appropriate for a bondage story since these stories are all about control, and the idea of a woman who could control people with her voice -- and then losing that control -- would be very appealing to me. Though I knew that being gagged would be her weakness, I decided to add in a few more limitations to her power and decided that her power would only work on men. This could lead to some fun situations as male antagonists would have to gag her immediately but her powers would be useless against women, but also if she was caught by a female antagonist there could be fun banter before she gets gagged. I also realized that without her having super strength or anything, it meant that she was more at risk for being overpowered by her enemies, which was also quite appealing to me. 

Since I wanted a heroine with powers based in fantasy and magic, I decided that the source of her power would be a magical ruby that she wore around her neck, though this posed another problem, since if this was the source of her powers, why couldn't her enemies just take it away? So I came up with the idea that only the heroine could remove her ruby, meaning once again that gagging her would be a necessity. With the idea of a magical ruby and the Zatanna/Dresden influence, the more I thought out this heroine, the more I wanted a story that focused on witchcraft and such.

 When it came to her costume, I knew that I wanted it to be as skimpy as possible. Obviously you all know that I love Phantom Lady because of how skimpy her outfit is, and I figured that my heroine would run around in a sling bikini just like Phantom Lady. I added a hood and a cape to complete the outfit, but at first wasn't going to give her a mask, instead meaning for shadows from the hood to cover her face. It was during a brainstorming session with my friend Destro that he convinced me to add a mask, and I'm glad that I did, as it completes the look. It was also during this brainstorming session that Destro came up with the name: Mystica. 

With the powers and costume worked out, what would this heroine look like? After a quick brainstorming session, I decided to model Mystica after fitness model Suni Sweeney. 

I've been obsessed with Suni with quite some time, thinking that she's super sexy and has an amazing body. In fact, there's a future character in Damsels Anonymous that I want to base off of Suni as well (but that's quite a ways off). I figured that the heroine being afro-latina would make her stand out more and add some more diversity to my stories, something that I had been looking to do for quite some time. 

Now that I had the heroine, I needed a story. I actually figured out a story for Mystica quite quickly, but the first story that I came up with would end up being the second Mystica story. At first my thoughts were to start in media res with Mystica already established and dive into an adventure with her and then later on or in flashbacks give her origin. Destro and I had talked about her origin and he came up with the idea of Mystica fleeing from a kidnapper and knocking over a box containing the amulet, and her grabbing it and screaming "help me!" just before her kidnapper hand gags her. As Destro and I discussed this idea, the pieces of her origin started to fall in place in my head and I became torn on if I wanted to start with the origin or not. It was Destro that convinced me that starting with the origin was a good idea.

We planned out Mystica's origin story, with Destro suggesting making her a fitness model since that had sort of become my thing after Damsels Anonymous. I liked that idea but wanted to change things up and decided to make her a personal trainer/spiritual guru instead so she could still have her foot in the fitness world, but would be unique. With her being more spiritual, it would give her a knowledge of the magical world that she inhabits, but would also give her a sense of "goodness." I wanted to make Mystica as different from my other characters in DA as possible, who were all self-absorbed and impulsive. Inspired by the classic "good girl" art of pulp comics, I thought it would be appealing if despite her skimpy outfit, Mystica had an air of innocence and naivety about her, which would make her an even better damsel. I was also inspired by the old Batman shows and comics, where the character of Batman seemed almost asexual. Once again, since the characters in my DA stories were all very sexually active or lgbtq characters, I decided that to make Mystica stand apart, she would seem very uninterested in anything sexual though would have a very outward sexual appearance, and unlike my other character, Felicia Fetters, Mystica would be very confident and secure in her body and appearance.

As for the first Mystica story, most of the situations in this tale came straight from my imagination. Since Lexa was going to be a character in the second story, I figured that introducing her would be important in this story and that the amulet, the source of Mystica's power, would be the macguffin of this story. At first I intended for Mystica and Lexa to be allies for most of this story, but as I wrote it their relationship became more antagonistic since Lexa wanted the amulet and would be jealous that Mystica got it. For Lexa, my inspiration was buxom model Lexy Stevens, who has an exotic look about her that I thought would suit an immortal witch like Lexa. When I was thinking up of this story, the opening popped into my head of Lexa clad in a witch costume and being cocooned by gauze by another villain, and I just fell in love with that scenario, plus it would lead to a good start of her and Mystica's relationship where Mystica would end up rescuing her and Lexa could also provide backstory on the amulet. 

As for the other prominent lady in the story, Tatiana, I based this character off of buxom peruvian model Yliana Diaz, another lady that I've followed for some time and have wanted to base a character on.

Since Mystica was going to be a trainer, I figured there should be a character that's her client, and I came up with the idea that Tatiana would be jealous of Mystica's confidence and natural beauty, leading to a scene where Tatiana smothers Mystica with her giant breasts. After that, I came up with an image of a bound and gagged Tatiana being given a hanging wedgie while wearing a slingshot bikini after being captured. 

For the scene where all three women are bound and gagged in Papa Noir's garden, that was loosely inspired by the old Republic serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel, based on the Shazam comics (and it's actually the first live action superhero adaptation). In the serial, as in the comics, Billy Batson gets bound and gagged quite often in order to prevent him from speaking the magic word "Shazam" and turning into Captain Marvel. Near the end of the serial, the villain discovers that Billy Batson and Captain Marvel are one and the same and instructs his henchmen to capture Batson and "take every precaution." All of the main characters are caught by the villain and tied to stakes, but Billy is the only one gagged so that he can't use his powers. I'm a big fan of situations where only one character is gagged but the others aren't, so I wanted to do this with Mystica, and even used the "take every precaution" instruction given to the henchmen. 

Later on in the story, Tatiana and Mystica are shrunken by Lexa to hide them from Papa, and Tatiana betrays Mystica. This scene was inspired by a forgotten Disney movie called "Beanstalk" inspired by Jack and the Beanstalk. In the film, two children climb a magic beanstalk to end up in the land of giants, and at one point one of the young boys turns on the other and ties and gags him with thread by a giant spool and threatens him by putting him in a toaster. I thought it would be very fun to recreate this scene and given the magical world that Mystica inhabits, this would be a perfect chance to do it.

Overall, the rest of this story is just stuff that popped into my head over the years. It's a small, contained story but really serves as an introduction to Mystica, her powers, the characters, and her world. I had a lot of fun writing this and will soon be starting on Mystica's second adventure, which I can't wait to share with you all! Until then, enjoy Mystica's first bondage adventure in its entirety!