Lara Croft's Vacation with Writer's Commentary!

Hello Patrons,

March Madness has begun! If you haven't done so already, head over to my Twitter page to vote in the third annual Damsels in Distress March Madness. I hate sports but love this time of year! 

It's also time for yet another "Writer's Commentary" on one of my old Deviantart stories, and this time it's one of my favorites, biggest, and most popular stories, Lara Croft's Vacation!

This was another idea that had been floating around in my head for a long time, since pretty much soon after I finished my first story. Obviously as you all know, I love ladies in thongs, especially thong bikinis, and many, many of my Lara Croft fantasies involved her getting tied up while wearing one. At one point, I came up with a fantasy in which Ms. Croft gets breast smothered into unconsciusness by another bikini clad woman and then gagged with her own bikini. It was such a delicious idea that I had to bring it to life. This story went on to contain many of the things that became hallmarks of my work: a beach setting, thong bikinis, fitness models, and Latina's. See this as basically the blueprint for Damsels Anonymous. Also much like in Damsels Anonymous, most of the bondage in this story comes from the characters constantly double crossing each other

As I said in my last post, I stepped away from the Red Sonja story because I wasn't sure where to go with it. There's a thing in writing called "Shiny object syndrome" that happens usually when you're in the middle of a project and it seems like you'll be writing it forever, and then a new idea pops into your head that's so exciting that you want to quit what you're working on and start writing that instead. I suffer from "shiny object syndrome" hard, though I've improved in resisting it today, but back then I often fell victim to it. When I was struggling to finish my Red Sonja story, I started thinking about my Lara Croft beach idea more and decided to move onto that and get back to Sonja. Then, after writing the first chapter of Lara Croft's Vacation, I didn't know what to do in the second part and instead starting writing my first Phantom Lady story (which we'll talk about very soon). At this point, I still hadn't learned to plan out my stories in advance.

As I said, I love thongs and beach settings. I think it came about from growing up and watching wrestling with my brother in the late 90s, when all the female wrestlers were constantly strutting around in thong bikinis or underwear, but even before that, shows like Baywatch or Acapulco HEAT were on TV, featuring bikini clad heroines or crime-fighters. All of these things had a formative effect on me, and a bikini clad damsel tied up on the beach became the stuff of my fantasies. When it came to Lara Croft, I was often finding ways of getting her out of her clothes before she got tied up, but giving her a story where she's in a bikini the whole time made everything much easier, and sexier.  At this point my attraction toward fitness ladies was becoming much more intense as well, so I very explicitly made the other female characters in this story fitness models.

At this point I'm also putting more of my own ideas in my stories and mixing them with ideas inspired by other scenes. Breast smothering and ass smothers/headscissors were other things that I was discovering turned me on, but at this point I hadn't ever put them in a story. I was still wary of what I could get away with on Deviantart but decided to go for it in this one, and thus far, no one has objected and now both have become mainstays of my stories. The first two chapters of these are both pretty original ideas, mostly because I loved the image of Lara being smothered by giant breasts, and in the second story I loved the idea of a bound Lara's ass cheeks against a glass window as she tries to escape. The idea of Kelly actually being gagged by Tara's breasts is an interesting one as well, though I'm not sure if I would ever reuse that one again for a future story. 

The scene where Lara, clad in a hot pink thong bikini, is chased through a jungle and caught is actually inspired by a cheesy B-movie I caught on SyFy Channel called Supergator (B-movies are great fodder for inspiration). In the film, several models are posing for a photo shoot when they are attacked by the eponymous giant alligator. One of the models, played by Holly Weber, is quite busty and clad in a hot pink thong bikini, escapes into the jungle where the monster pursues her. What ensues is a prolonged chase with bikini clad woman, her breasts bouncing up and down as she runs, fleeing through the jungle while a bad CGI monster chases her. There's a scene where she hides under a fallen tree to avoid the monster and we get a beautiful shot where from a distance we see her thong clad behind poking out from under the tree as the monster searches. Unfortunately, Holly comes to a bad end, but I thought this scene was one of the hottest things I had ever seen in a movie, so I adapted it for this story, complete with Marie seeing Lara's thonged ass poking out from under the tree as a homage. 

The scene in which Lara taunts a bound and gagged Marie was inspired by an old Cary Grant film. I don't remember the title but there's a scene where Cary is bound and otm gagged to a chair and another guy finds him, but instead of helping him, starts taunting him while Cary can only moan in his gag. I love it when a damsel is taunted while gagged so I thought it would be hot to have Lara taunting another gagged damsel before making a getaway. Later, when Marie ties up a laying down Kelly was inspired by an old American Damsels video where Amber Michaels ties up a model who's laying on a bed in thong underwear and then cleavegags her before adding some tape. It was one of the first bondage videos I ever stumbled across and thought it was one of the hottest things I had ever seen. Now I own that video, and it's still so damn hot. 

The subplot with Lara's obsessed stalker was heavily inspired by the Martin Scorsese film The King of Comedy, particularly one scene where Robert De Niro's character kidnaps Jerry Lewis' character and duct tapes him to a chair, practically mummifying him, cocooning him in tape up to his nose. The idea of Lara having an obsessed female fan do this to her was such a delicious concept to me.

Let's talk about the stalker, The Latina. When I was thinking about this story, at some point I stumbled on paparazzi images of Vida Guerra at the beach in a thong bikini. I was already aware of Vida and had a thing for her, but these images just sent me through the roof. They were mesmerizing. Soon, the idea of including a Latina character inspired by her popped into my head, and the rest, is, well history. Now if you follow my Damsels Anonymous stories then you know that the character of Eva is also based off of Vida. Much like The Latina in this story, Eva is lust filled, attracted to women, and kinky, seemingly at the mercy of her bondage fetish. In one of my Damsels Anonymous stories, there's a passage where Gina says that she doesn't know much about Eva's past except for strange rumors about a rich heiress and a botched kidnapping attempt...

So... one can infer that after the end of this story, The Latina somehow got off that island that Lara left her and the other girls stranded on. Maybe being tied up during that escapade left something of a mark on The Latina's psyche, causing her to enjoy being tied up as much as she likes tying other women up...

That's right, while the women of Damsels Anonymous are having their misadventures, Lara Croft is also out there, doing her own thing! Now, does this mean that Lara Croft will pop up in a future Damsels Anonymous story? Probably not, due to copyright, or if I did then it would probably be a one shot just for Deviantart or my Patreon. Anything is possible, and never say never.