The Finishing Touch

A collaboration between Anne Oni Mouse and myself

This is a caption made my request for help in "Collaboration Round 2".  Much like my previous collaborative works, I took a story written up by Anne Oni Mouse that was inspired by a photo and idea from me, and applied it into one of my designs.

After almost two weeks, I'm getting back up on the horse with these collaborations.  I'm still not 'back', but I felt a strong urge to create and instead of burning that energy in other things I decided to use it designing a cap for Anne's story.  I picked Anne's story first for several reasons.  First... well she was the fist to write up a story.  But more than that, I really felt that this was an interesting story.  It is both forced and willing.  Both humiliating and sweet.  It's a story of being transformed against one's will, and not only accepting it but finally reveling in it.

Now Anne's story was originally written in the third person.  I changed it to first person both because I thought it would have a little more emotional impact that way, but also because of the way Anne used the names.   The story started with 'Johanna' having sex with Allen.   It flashed back to the past with 'John' getting transformed into Johanna, then Johanna escaping.   To keep away from her former club members she changed her name to Rita and found a man that she willingly wanted to have sex with... but my mind kept coming back to 'wait... Johanna was having sex, but was calling herself Rita'.

I didn't want any readers to get into that circular argument as I did.  I probably could have simply changed the first sentence from 'Johanna breathed in Alan’s musky aroma...' to 'Rita breathed in Alan’s musky aroma...', but as long as I was going to make a change, I went for the more emotional powerful first person.

And like last time with Anne's story, I did a re-write.  Changing it from third to first person required that, and as long as I was going to that effort, I changed around some phrasing and punched up some scenes.  I swear though, that this isn't because I think any less of Anne's story.  I honestly love her story... it's just the way I operate.  If I'm changing, I just flow and change as I go.  I believe on my last collaboration effort, I got a little lazy on the writing side on the last couple caps.  I could have changed them a little more as I did with Anne's.     Hopefully I'll keep this same level of energy and put the same level of editing into all the stories.

So... I like this design even though it goes against a couple things I normally strive for.  I normally want the 'action' to be heading left to right.  That would leave the photo with the man to the left and the woman looking to the right.  But to make that work with this image (in this layout) I would have to have the beginning text box in the upper right corner.  While I dislike action in the photo moving right to left, I hate the text being in the upper right corner more.   And with the photo and text in this layout, the title worked best in the lower left corner... another thing I don't really like.  But even with all these 'I don't like this, I don't like that' parts... I do like this cap.

I didn't play with the color or saturation of the image because I felt it's warm saturated tones and dark shadows worked really well with the duality of this dark/sweet story.

As before, I wait anxiously to hear not only Anne's opinion, but yours as well.  I also hope that this marks a return to not only collaborative capping, but full on Caitlyn capping.