Writer's Commentary: Damsels Anonymous Volume 4

Hello Patrons!

I'm back with another Writer's Commentary, this time on the big one - DAMSELS ANONYMOUS VOLUME 4! I'm going to be releasing the full fourth volume on Amazon next month, but of course you dear patrons get it first, so I have it uploaded as an attachment to this post. Now you can read the full, epic story as one piece! This is the biggest DA volume yet, and dare I say, my favorite volume so far. It's definitely my most ambitious piece yet and I'm super happy with how it turned out. In a way, this volume feels a bit like a "finale" of sorts. It's certainly not the final DA story, in fact far from it, but if Damsels Anonymous was a TV show this would be a "season finale" in the sense that it wraps up some of the storylines from the previous three volumes while setting up future stories. 

The idea for this story was in my head for years, pretty much immediately after I finished Damsels Anonymous volume 1. At first I wasn't quite sure of where to go with the fourth volume, but I had an idea for an opening. It would begin with Felicia Fetters going undercover at a brothel. There, she would jump a dominatrix, take her outfit, and leave her bound and gagged in a closet. Felicia would pose as the dominatrix to get close to someone she wanted to question, meanwhile, the struggling dominatrix would eventually get free and subdue Felicia before exacting kinky punishment on her. I wasn't sure where to go after this but I originally planned on having this be just the beginning of the story and that eventually Felicia would escape. At first, my idea would be Gina and the others storming in and arresting the dominatrix, and then Gina would chide the bound and gagged Felicia for going off by herself with no back up, and then leaving the bound and gagged Felicia to struggle overnight as a punishment for her cockiness before returning to free her. 

Enter my friend and frequent collaborator Destro. After releasing the first part of Damsels Anonymous, we began what would become a lengthy online  correspondence and brainstormed ideas for future stories. Using the "kidnapped by a dominatrix" idea as a springboard, Destro pitched the idea of Felicia's prolonged captivity at the hands of this villain, complete with various humiliations and tortures, with eventually Felicia being rescued only to find out that she spent a year in captivity. At first, I wasn't sure how comfortable I was with this idea of Felicia being a prisoner for a year, but the more we talked about it and the more I thought about it, I eventually warmed up to the idea. At first the story would be mostly Felicia centric, with a subplot of Gina looking for her that we didn't really flesh out all that much. Though I still liked the ending of Gina leaving Felicia to struggle as punishment, I eventually dropped that because it didn't feel like something Gina would do if Felicia had been missing a year. 

So this became the thing that the first three volumes would lead up to, with the villainous Queen being hinted at in volume 2 and introduced in volume 3 before taking center stage in volume 4. If you recall from last month's commentary, I wanted to end volume 3 with Gina, Felicia, and company getting free, which would set up volume 4, but I wasn't happy with any of the escape scenarios that I wrote and felt like they were slowing the pace of the story. Now I was written into a bit of a corner because I was setting up that Shelly was going to sell off the captive police women, and soon I came up with an idea of the bound and gagged girls being loaded into the back of a truck that would then crash in the middle of nowhere. Gina, Felicia, and the rest of the girls would all get separated, with Felicia stumbling across a farm that was in fact a marijuana farm, where she would get caught and forced to do chores around the farm while bound and gagged. At the time, WWE wrestler Lana had posted videos on social media of her doing chores on a farm in a bikini, which gave me the idea of Felicia being forced to wear a bikini and work on a farm while shackled and gagged. 

So I was considering using this idea for volume 4 and pushing the Queen storyline to a future story, and I ran it by Destro, who convinced me to stick with the Queen storyline instead, and I'm glad he did. But, I was still left in a quandry as to how to get to the Queen storyline seeing how I ended volume 3 with the girls in a truck ready to get sold. As I was brainstorming, it hit me, and suddenly I was mapping out in my head this massive, sprawling story with Felicia's captivity as the overarching plot, but every other character would get a moment/subplot that would explain what they were doing during Felicia's yearlong captivity, and it would all kick off with a botched rescue that would cause the characters to all go their separate ways. I knew at the time this would be a big, massive story, but part of me relished the challenge. This approach would also deal with one of my major concerns about the year in captivity angle, which was that I would get bored with it. I love the anticipation of the capture and the suspense of escape, and didn't know if I could remain interested in writing a story where a character is in constant captivity. By cutting back and forth between Felicia and the other characters, it would keep things fresh for myself and the readers.

I started volume 4 in 2018 soon after finished volume 3 in late 2017, but almost immediately was hit with setbacks with a busy work schedule. Progress was slow, but then there was a major set back when I found myself in a bit of financial bother. I needed quick cash, and a reader had been asking for a Damsels Anonymous custom story for a bit. At first I told this customer that I would do his custom after I finished volume 4, but I needed money, and was still very early in volume 4, so I decided to take him up on the custom offer. Since I knew how volume 4 ended, I figured that I could write a custom set after it, but just to give myself some creative wiggle room, I set this custom a year after, and this is how volume 5 came about. This took me a few months, and after finishing, I went back to writing volume 4, though once again, I found progress slow thanks to work. 

Eventually, I needed money, and in 2019 once again took a few custom requests, including another Damsels Anonymous custom that would become volume 6. This was in fall of 2019 and I finished this custom in early 2020, and finally sat down in earnest to finish volume 4. Obviously, I didn't know that a pandemic was right around the corner, and I remember that in March of 2020 my workplace announced it would close for two weeks due to the pandemic. At the time, I looked forward to a few weeks to dedicate to writing, but like many workplaces, those two weeks turned into several months. I was making steady progress on DA volume 4, and was planning on doing the second annual Damsels in Distress March Madness , but with the pandemic happening, the real March Madness was cancelled. 

I debated on cancelling my Damsels in Distress March Madness poll on Twitter, but I decided that my followers (and myself) could probably use the entertainment, and distraction, during the pandemic, and decided to go through with it. The second annual DiD March Madness was even more successful than the first, and I noticed a spike in my book sales as well, though I'm not sure if this was due to the tournament, people bored during the pandemic, or both. After seeing this spike, I started to debate on if I should take advantage and start releasing installments of volume 4 even though I wasn't finished writing it. At this point, I was about halfway finished with volume 4, and figured that I could finish the rest in a few months. In the end, I knew that I had to capitalize, and released the first installment of Damsels Anonymous volume 4 after finishing March Madness. A few months later, in summer 2020, I finished writing Damsels Anonymous volume 4, the biggest volume yet, coming in at over 600 pages. Almost a year later, April 2021, I released the final installment of volume 4 on Amazon. 

Stories always grow and change from concept to execution, and it's the same with this one, obviously. Many of the situations that Felicia finds herself in at the hands of The Queen stayed the same as when Destro and I first came up with them. Destro suggested the idea of The Queen turning Felicia into a fetish model and calling her Felicia Fetish, as well as many other ideas. One of his ideas was having The Queen tattoo "Property of The Queen" onto Felicia's ass cheek, but I felt this was a bit too extreme. I had seen videos on Instagram though of women with tape on bikinis that they used for tanning and loved this concept, and came up with the idea of Felicia being forced to wear one, and a tanning decal saying "Property of The Queen" being put on her backside, which seemed like painful and permanent than a tattoo. 

Destro also suggested the idea of The Queen making a video with Felicia being dressed as a superheroine. Of course I loved this idea and had to put it in, and came up with the idea of the Mrs. Americana TV show. Once I came up with this idea of an in universe superheroine show, I thought it would be a fun bit of world building, and it soon gave me the idea for a future story as well, as you long time Patrons may remember... :)

Once I had the story figured, I knew that after Felicia jumps the Queen and takes her clothes, that the male character that she punishes would be Jack. I always wanted Jack to eventually get his comeuppance at the hands of Felicia, and realized that the most appropriate punishment would be for him to get bound and gagged like he often did to her. I've always been open that I like men tied up as well, but I debated on doing this scene because I wasn't sure how my readers would react. In the end, I realized that I liked this scene too much to take it out, with Felicia exploring her dominant side and being turned on, and figured that if I did it as a pseudo-sex scene, that readers wouldn't mind. My attitude was that if a reader didn't like having a dude tied up in one story, then fuck 'em anyway. Ultimately though, this is a rare occurrence in DA anyway. By no means will there be more dudes in distress in these stories (though one does come up later in this volume) and my Kar stories will be my outlet for male in distress for the most part. 

As I planned out this scene with Felicia and Jack, I also came up with the idea to kill him off as well. This was something else that I debated on as much as I debated on tying him up, but at the end of the day, I realized that I just didn't have anything more for Jack after this. At this point, I knew what I had planned for Brad, and realized that he basically takes Jack's role as this volume goes on. Not only that, but Brad also has a personal connection to many of the damsels, which gives him a much more interesting dynamic with them. With all that in mind, I decided to kill Jack off early in this volume, but also that Felicia's revenge on him should be what leads to her punishment. 

Another thing that gave me trouble in this story was the character of Jessica. At the risk of spoiling future stories, but I have long term plans for her. I knew that I wanted her as a captive of the Queen and that she would attempt an escape with Felicia. The moment with them taping up Shelly and storing her in a truck was inspired by a scene I saw on youtube from a foreign film where a man is mummified in duct tape and placed in a rear storage compartment on a truck. The scene where Felicia and Jessica get caught is inspired by Star Wars of all things, specifically Return of the Jedi, after Leia rescues Han and Jabba and his cronies reveal themselves, with C3P0 being handgagged by Jabba's goons. 

I still loved the concept of a damsel being forced to do work on a farm while bound and gagged, and as I thought of this story, realized that it would be a perfect punishment for Shelly. Not only was she a character that hated getting her hands dirty, but she needed proper punishment for being the cause of most of the trouble in the first three volumes. At first I wasn't sure if I was even going to include this in volume 4, and Destro suggested making Shelly on the farm its own, stand alone story and leaving this story with her falling out of the truck. When I got to that point though, the story felt incomplete with Shelly just falling out of the truck, so I decided to write in the farm subplot. 

 Originally, my idea was that Jessica would beg the Queen's forgiveness, and The Queen would send her to retrieve Shelly to prove her loyalty, but I realized that there was no way The Queen would trust Jessica again after such a betrayal. There's a scene at the end of the Martin Scorses comedy AFTER HOURS where the main character is running from some goons and takes shelter in an artists studio, where she disguises him as an art project by covering him in paper mache. Unfortunately, his mouth is covered too, which means he can't protest when thieves snatch him from the studio thinking he's a statue. I always wanted to do a scene like this, and originally wanted this to be Jessica's fate, realizing it would be a good way to take her off the board until i needed her again. Once I realized that The Queen wouldn't trust Jessica again, I needed a different solution.

I came up with the idea of The Queen sending a bounty hunter to retrieve Shelly, and for a moment, considered bringing back the character of Maria from my Bartender and Bodybuilder story. If you recall, the Bartender character made a cameo in DA volume 4, and I considered revealing that Maria was now working for The Queen as a bounty hunter would end up as the character wrapped in paper mache, but Maria seemed too feisty of a damsel to suddenly be working with The Queen. Eventually, I came up with new bounty hunter character based off of Kendra Lust named Lustra. Though her fate is left open in this story, I would love to bring back Lustra for more adventures.

This also meant that I still didn't know what do with Jessica. I loved the punishment of The Queen force-feeding her, and debated on a situation where Jessica loses her fit body because of constant force feeding, and The Queen leaves her naked on a beach surrounded by paparazzi as punishment, but it didn't make sense for The Queen to just free her like that. Another subplot I considered was having Jessica and Vera get kidnapped by a rival of The Queen's, and The Queen would negotiate for Vera's release but would leave Jessica as a compromise, but with this story having enough subplots, I decided to scrap that.

Felicia being forced to wrestle with Tanya is another bit from this story I love. The idea came to me after watching a video of Christina Carter and Goldie Blair being bound and gagged prisoners forced to wrestle for their freedom. Losing would cement Felicia's place as a prisoner, and came up with the idea of Tanya having to walk to her freedom after seeing  a Wonder Woman video where Wonder Woman is stripped, gagged, nipple-clamped, and forced to walk along the side of the highway. Originally, after walking for a day, Brad would come by and pick Tanya up in his car and this would kick off a subplot with Tanya becoming Brad's willing sub/slave. At the end of the story, Janet and Caitlyn, suspicious of Brad, would sneak into his house looking for clues and find Tanya bound and gagged. Thinking she was a prisoner, they would remove her gag only for her to call for help, leading to Janet getting caught. Once again, with this story having enough subplots, I cut this one, but also I felt like Tanya naked, gagged, and left walking on the side of the road was a good place for her to make an exit from this story. 

Speaking of exits, much like DA volume 4, this is running a bit long, so I'll continue this commentary next week!