S!ssy Bubble Gum! A Long Blog Post Awaits!

Something different this time .. as the caption was posted to Deviant Art first, for a reason!

No, I am not abandoning this blog after 16+ years, so don't worry about that. I'm actually more worried that blogger will abandon this blog after 16+ years. Anyway, let's move on!

Since it was posted to Deviant Art, first, let's see what I said there on DA when it was posted back in June.

I've been chatting with Scptrain, who is a watcher of this "page" and they wanted to start making TG captions. So we did some brainstorming on an image they wanted to use for their first caption. Mostly discussions about what they wanted to write and what their plot would be. While we did that, I went and took the image, edited it a bit in Photoshop, and then put it in a caption setting.

I thought it'd be a good exercise to show how the same picture could generate two totally different captions. I often use myself as a character in my captions, especially because it's good shorthand for getting a plot driven forward without much elaboration needed. In this case, the first two sentences set up the story nicely, establishing me as a controlling Mistress, and the action of the character's blowing bubbles POPping as a controlling device. I also left the protagonist's name anonymous, so that all the readers out there can picture themselves as the star of this caption.

For contrast, you can find Scptrain's caption by clicking HERE. I think they did a great job on their first creation. If you comment, let them know you found the caption through this post. And I have another coming up from the 2nd brainstorming session we did, which they also haven't seen.

That is relatively explanatory, as I wasn't trying to write up a full blog post like I would here. I disabled the link, and instead am uploading their caption right here so you don't have to travel away.

You can tell that they have been reading TG captions for quite some time now. It's been plotted out well, and they sprinkled in the name of the character once in each paragraph to keep it grounded for whomever Luke is (Maybe Scptrain themselves?) but didn't fall into a pattern of "Luke went to the store. Luke thought that the gum looked interesting, so he took it home. Luke started to chew it ..." And the first time the new female name appeared, they put it in italics. The format of the caption is good too, framing the image like a selfie on a cell phone.

I'd rank it quite highly for a first caption, and there'd be a few suggestions to make it better, but it's more something they'd probably pick up over time. Things like .. you don't have to describe things that you can see in the image, other than maybe casually mention them moving the plot forward. I'd have removed paragraph three and perhaps maybe used that space to tell how the new Nicole felt as those things were changing, as we can see the hoodie, shirt, long hair, etc. and can imply that she was growing boobs and that there would be a bra underneath. 

The other part is in the writing. "the gum" or "gum" is used 4 times .. with the title, and in the first 1 1/2 paragraphs. We see a bubble in the image, so perhaps not use the word so repetitively in the body of the text, unless it's a trigger word or something you want to emphasize. for instance, in my caption, I don't use the word gum at all, or mention blowing bubbles .. it's already in the photo .. so I just use the action of the bubble POPing each time to drive that idea forward.

Trust me, I would NOT have written the caption this way 10-15 years ago. I probably wouldn't have used the image at all .. but I have improved my craft enough to bang something like this out in 15 minutes. If only this was a useful skill to have in my everyday life!

As mentioned in the Deviant Art posting at the top, I have another caption that we both did for another image. That one should be up in the next month or so, especially since it falls into the upcoming fall season quite nicely. I LOVE doing comparisons like these two captions, where you can see how 2 different people see the same photo, yet pull a different story out of it .. though this one does have that common theme.

I find it quite satisfying to remember that some of the catchiest pop rock songs of the 90's were made by a band that started out quite punky at the beginning of the band's life. Us punks KNOW melodies, we just don't often use them the way most people do!