He Thought Of Everything

Didn't he?

I wasn't in a particularly capping mood this morning, but did my normal look through the recent galleries posted to Fuskator.  When I saw these wedding shots I was impressed as they're incredibly sexy, but the only idea that came to mind was the standard and overplayed 'standing in for the bride' story line.  I can't recall the name of the exact story, but it was one of the first TG stories that I read.  The bride to be was stuck in mexico and her brother (I'm not sure if he was a twin brother or not), had to stand in for her.  He was of course nervous and was forced to kiss his 'husband' over and over at the reception.  When they finally got to the honeymoon suite his husband demanded that he perform his wifely duties.  It was quick, fun and erotic... and if I've seen one version of it, I've seen a dozen.

I can't blame people for re-writing it or making their own version.  Being a bride is the height of femininity and it's fun to play the subjects nerves off as 'wedding jitters'.  But I really had no intent to re-write that story.  It's been done, and it's been done well.  So initially I closed the gallery and just moved on.  But as I was looking at another set (completely unimpressed with the photography), I though that it might be fun to turn the story on it's head.  Instead of having him quickly forced into the bride's role and end up servicing his husband unwillingly.. why not have it be a long process of fooling everyone into believing he was a girl for a staged wedding.  The twist at the end would be that he actually fell in love with his new husband.

I pulled the photos back up and initially chose out these two images and started writing:

I really got into showing what Calvin went through.  Describing his new apartment, his transformation, and their dates was a LOT of fun to write.  It also took up a lot of space, so I added the middle photo to have an extra panel.  The hard part was lining up the photos in the layout.  Here is how the first panel looked before I changed the photo:

It didn't look bad... but the photo section was more or less centered on Desmond, and I wanted to focus on both of them, if not Caitlyn directly.  So I slide the photo over to the right, leaving a gaping space to the left.  To cover it up, I simply copied the left hand side of the photo, stretched it, and lined up her veil.  Here are those steps without the text in the way:

I was shocked at how easily it meshed up.  Normally when I do this I have to erase portions to give a soft edge where the two sections meet... but this was almost perfect.  And considering that any error would be obscured by the text box made it perfect.  Then came the second image:

Not only did I want to push the happy couple over to the right, I was going to have to deal with the big opaque light in the background.  Leaving it just wasn't an option as I'd have to make the text box almost completely solid... and that ruined the whole etherial look that I was going for.  So like before, I moved the image to the right:

But instead of copying the edge and stretching it out, I had to cover up the light.  Thankfully it would also be covered up by the text box, so I didn't have to be perfect.  I probably could have done a better job if I really put my heart into it, but as bad as it looks, it was acceptable:

I was pleasantly surprised when I put the text into the third panel.  It was about a paragraph less than the previous panels, so I was able to just shrink the text box instead of moving the photo.

I'm pretty happy with the series.  I think the story is different enough from the original inspiration to really stand out, and I think the photo edits work well enough.  I hope you enjoy it as well!