Azzie & Rowana Read "Beast of Burden" by bartolimieu07, Part 2

A tampon was changed. Baby oil was washed off. The wives returned to the couch, no longer expecting sexytimes, and had opted for comfy jammies. They settled down next to each other and let out a collective sigh.

"I do want to finish this before we rush to conclusions or respond to bartolimieu07's response," Rowana said. "But I should like to start this out by saying that part of the reason this story is so infuriating for us, besides not being our particular kink, is that while many of the right ingredients are there for a story of sexual submission and degradation, the individual proportions are not correct."

"Maddie basically is too oblivious, and when things go bad, doesn't respond sufficiently. Actual slavery requires a huge amount of physical, mental, and societal structures to work. People should freak out. Without some form of mental manipulation or drugging, there need to be more consequences, more often, and significant ones. A slave has to choose to remain enslaved, because the consequences are too dire otherwise," Azzie said. "Like, if Maddie knew that if she escaped, her sister would have to fulfill the terms of her lease, that would be a major mental impetus for Maddie to stay and continue through the degradation. If she knew it was for a limited time and that she was helping out her family, she could choose to endure it. But we haven't seen that set up. Which means this isn't a sexy BDSM story of dominant vs. submissive. It's a horror story like a half-assed, blood-free version of Hostel. Using BDSM tropes without the consent actually makes it worse."

"And it's not that there isn't a sense of betrayal, or a bit of a submissive kink in Maddie's nature," Rowana said. "There is. But there's not enough. Her family whored her out without even asking; that's the kind of blasé you normally see in porn spoofs played for humor, and none of this is being played for laughs. Anyway, let's get back to the review, and then the response."

"Honestly, we mostly talked about you, your situation."

"I can't tell if this is 'two-timing-son-of-a-bitch' territory, or 'subtle-hint-that-they're-working-on-a-plan-to-help-Maddie' territory," Azzie said.

"From what bartolimieu07 has already written, probably both," Rowana said, deadpan.

"You're...going to spank me, mistress? That's so embarrassing! I'm way too old for that."

"In a better world, Mom would end up being sold to the megacorp at the end of the story and be forced to endure everything her daughter did," Azzie said, grimly. "As it is, I've spontaneously decided no spanking for the kids."

"Agreed," Rowana said. "The thing about spanking is that there's a very specific set of cultural associations, some of which don't really exist anymore except in kink play. Corporeal punishment used to be common in schools, at home for children, and even for adult women. It's a demonstration of power as well as a source of pain-without-too-much-damage, and when performed by a parent or other older individual, it infantilizes the subject. But it's also something that is no longer normalized in society outside of shitty parents, kink play, and actual torture. So having her mother and her sister do it to her should be, at the very least, psychologically traumatizing to some degree."

It's all so fucked up, like a seventy-year-old pervert's wet dream, but I guess it's not much different than the cows or ponies or pets that have been cropping up over the last month.

"Again, we didn't read the other branches, but I have a feeling there's a chunk of worldbuilding we've largely missed by not doing so," Azzie said. "Which is fine. In an ideal world, a single path would contain all the necessary information for that path, but Morgoth has corrupted this world with his essence."

"I-I'm still one of your bridesmaids, mistress?" I say, blinking. "You know I'll be looking like this for the wedding?"

"What the everloving fuck," Rowana said. It wasn't really a question. "I mean, on the one hand, Maddie's slavery is basically paying for the wedding, but I do not think Maddie should be that eager to parade around naked with corporate branding tattooed on her."

"I think the porn logic in this story is agitating us, a little," Azzie said, patting her wife on the knee. "In porn, you just accept stupid shit because it's porn, and every snippet of plot is just a set-up for the next sexy scene. But this is straining disbelief."

"David Peralez?"

"I suppose we should be thankful her father didn't win," Rowana said. She stared at the chapter. "I mean, that is sort of the direction I expect this to go at some point. Random faceless company dude pounding her ass raw is one thing, and yeah a look behind the curtain gives a vague hope that something might happen at some point, but I do sort of expect this to go further degenerate before we're over."

"I don't know," Azzie said, toying with a lock of hair. "If this were a normal setup, maybe. But bartolimieu07 isn't exactly playing by the rules. Like, if this was all about the humiliation, the anal deflowering wouldn't happen in a random breakroom; it would be broadcast live to the entire company, Gadseden would use it for marketing purposes, it would hurt more, and she'd be forced to clean up the mess she made afterward. I hate to say that your megacorp sex slave world doesn't feel really fleshed out, but thematically, it feels like Maddie should be suffering more than she is, and that's part of the reason it all feels so off. Like, it's crueler than it needs to be, but not cruel enough given what Maddie is supposed to be enduring."

"Tada!" My sister, Ava, pops out of the bathroom where she'd been hiding. Unlike her normal casual clothes, she's dressed in a smart-looking business skirt and blouse. I gape at her.

"Oh fuck off," Rowana said. "So not only did the parents sell one daughter into sex slavery, they got the other an internship and never fucking told her. Holy shit, I want all these people to die by having the shitty code monkeys run a train on them."

"It is really the ultimate 'we just don't love you as much as your sister,'" Azzie said, and her nails dug into Rowana's knee. "And if this turns into Ava trying to pull an angle to get her sister to escape, I still hope she gets sold into sex slavery in place of her."

"Last name Peralez, mistress?"

"See, if the anal deflowering were broadcast, this would lead to juicy whispers and embarrassment," Rowana said.

Madison, maybe you can go over and talk to them, help them feel a little more settled? I'm sure they're freaking out right now.

"Objectively, older corporate slave meeting newer corporate slave should be an interesting dynamic. There's some automatic sympathy there. But also a chance to contrast reactions," Azzie said. "And quite fucking honestly, I hope the new girls bite Maddie's tits off for being a dumb ass whore trying to get them acclimated."

"The whole idea of corporate sex slaves is a weird concept," Rowana admitted. "Especially because actual whores are cheaper. Like, you can just pay a retainer and medical and insurance and that'll cover an 18-year-old with a G.E.D. and zero prospects. So for service girls to make financial sense, you've got to have a huge cost-to-benefit ratio, or some properly fucked-up executives that prefer it when the women aren't willing."

"Again, porn logic. We're not doing the math here. But we have to assume that the payout to the parents, the tracking, the tattooing, the medical costs—amazed Maddie hasn't had another STD check, btw, one dose of syphilis and it's spread to half the company by this point—and the kidnapping and forced enclosure if they run is all being tracked by some asshole in accounting," Azzie said. "At least with a women-in-prison movie, the key thing is the women are already in prison, a facility designed to contain, house, and feed the inmates. Gadsden appears to be working under the assumption that the women won't bolt at every opportunity."

"For the last month or so, yes. It sucked balls. I had this collar on my neck, and it shocked me for everything. Try to talk instead of bark--get shocked. Try to stand on two feet--get shocked. Do the slightest thing to displease mistress--get fucking shocked."

"Points where they're due, Miko is a good way to frame a different perspective," Rowana said. "I mean, it's a fucked-up perspective based on gruelling, constant sexual assault and torture that suggests the music of the Ainur in this world is the theme music to a sadistic underground sex video, but it's something."

Even as I say this, I'm mildly disgusted at myself. Am I truly helping Candice, comforting her? Or am I acting on the company's behalf, making another poor slave like me learn to live with her shackles? But then again, do either of us really have a choice?

"That second thing, right there," Azzie said. "You're bad, and you should feel bad."

"I know we sound like a broken sim-recording, but Maddie really needed more of an internal life in this story than we get," Rowana said. "There should be tension. She should be in shock, or questioning herself, looking for an escape, contemplating terrible things and rejecting them, etc. Not fucking with her worthless boyfriend and getting spanked by the sister her parents actually love."

Well, nothing that would seriously harm yourselves or anyone else, but basically--yes,

"We really never get any hard rules here," Azzie observed. "Which is another of those things that hurt the story. When you have rules, you can have people work around the rules, edge up to the rules, twist the rules to their advantage, even break the rules, all of which increase the emotional tension. Miko could use knowledge of the rules to top from the bottom, or push an executive too far; Maddie could tiptoe up to the line of insolence without crossing it. But without knowing what the real limits are, it all feels like it's being made up as it goes along."

"This is outrageous," she says in a clipped tone. "Unacceptable! I was told--I was assured!--when I signed the papers that she'd be kept out of the way, that I wouldn't have to see her."

Azzie and Rowana scowled at the screen. Rowana placed a hand on the swollen green stomach.

"Never," she said.

Azzie took a deep breath.

"It is a quality of good writing to evoke emotion," she said, and left it at that.

"Oh, Maddie!" she laughs. "You have no idea what you're signing on for. But if you truly want to find out, you should drop by my apartment on Friday at eight. I'll text you the address."

"This does not feel like an escape plan," Rowana said. "This does not even sound like a concept."

"All hail our munificent corporate overlords," she says softly.

"There isn't enough lead-up to this," Azzie said. "I know we keep saying that, but it continues to be true. We don't get enough of Maddie's thoughts before she acts. We get her playing the slut, we see she's working an angle, maybe to get some intelligence on her situation, but we have to assume a lot because, frankly, we're not given enough of her thought process leading up to it."

"I think part of it is just the timeframe. We're not given exact dates, but over the course of 49 chapters we're covering about half as many days...roughly three weeks," Rowana said. "I feel like Maddie being bisexual should have been on the table before she was forced to eat her first pussy, and that maybe there should have been more exploration of her shifting sexuality. It would be more poignant if she was actually unsure how much of what she was doing was playing a role and how much was her actually being a slut now. But that's a different story."

"Please be gentle, mistress."

"I'm not getting my hopes up," Azzie said flatly. "Mostly because I don't think Maddie is getting out of this. And that's kind of depressing, because a downer ending is okay if you build it up so that escape it at least possible. But it's also a darker tone than this story consciously takes."

"No, no, nothing like that. I know my mom loves me." Her eyes look extremely troubled. "But you thought the same of your mom. And I'm sure Kacey did, too."

"Shots fired," Rowana said. "Lot of teenagers should be getting emancipated in this universe."

"Fuck, master!" I hiss. "Not out loud!"

"Knew it was coming," Azzie said, with a sigh. "Let's see if he's fucking the sister or not."

The last time we met, she proposed...a threesome. You, me, her.

A green brow furrowed. "This is worse. How did this get worse?"

"Because we dared to allow ourselves to hope," Rowana said.

"I've been so stupid. I'm sorry. I know how you must hate me, but please find it in your heart to forgive me!"

"Lying shit," Azzie said. "Calling it now."

"A very dangerous game," my boyfriend grumbles.

"I don't see this ending well, but at least it's a coherent plotline," Rowana admitted, begrudgingly.

"Gadsden's private jet is scheduled for a cross-country flight tomorrow," says Ava. "And they need some attendants for the passenger cabin."

"This is the kind of scene that could be interesting, under different circumstances," Azzie said. She paused. "That is part of the problem with the whole sex slave fantasy. Porn has no consequences, or the consequences have to be part of the narrative. Getting raped is a consequence, one people usually strive to avoid, but after the rape is over, you're left with an injured person and a mess to clean up. The person watching the porn gets to put away their jizz rag and walk away, but in a story we can follow, we can see what happens next. And we're skipping a lot of what happens next here. Which is a very porn thing to do, but also robs the story of a lot of emotional weight and depth. Sex slavery is a very intense scene, but the follow-through needs to be equally intense. Those sex slaves have lives when they're not fucking. They get bored. They do things. But we mostly don't get to see that."

"And yeah, you don't want to show the whole sex slave economy because it's ugly and nasty," Rowana said. "We get that. But let's be honest: this is a nasty story, in part because you're trying to keep it clean. It's an entire society of sexual abusers. If I wanted to watch that, I'd turn on the evening news and look at billionaires today."

"Fucking hell, Candice," Miko sighs.

"If I didn't know she's about to be punished for this, I'd laugh," Rowana said. "The derogatory sexual objectification by the executives is a cherry on top, by the way. I think that's a main part of the draw in this scenario as well as the drawback. The sexual fantasy of the whore or sex slave is a nymphomaniac, someone who can't control her lusts, always gagging for it. The reality can't be like that, but people need to believe it, need to believe that they did something to deserve this. Except we know they didn't and they don't. That doesn't make this more humiliating; it just makes it sadder and tawdrier. But it only works if THE AREN'T FUCKING SLUTS."

Her mouth is quirked in a half-smile, and her entire face is flushed in a way that screams "well-fucked".

"You can't have your cake and eat it too with sex slave stories," Azzie said. "Even rape victims orgasm sometimes, but when it happens, that should be a betrayal. They should be worried about becoming what they are being objectified as."

Sis...I think we've got to talk to Mr. Hodges. The CEO.

"This is going to go badly," Rowana predicted.

"Are we just being down on this story now?" Azzie said.

"I gave up hope for a happy ending at least twenty chapters ago," Rowana said.

"You should be more respectful to your betters," says Mr. Faulkner as he takes hold of Ava's shirt and begins ripping it from the collar. "You won't get far as a service girl with that kind of attitude."

"Called it," Rowana noted.

"I'd feel worse for her if she hadn't been stupid enough to stay in the company after her sister got sold into sex slavery," Azzie said.

Ignoring the pain--and the trails of garbage slime along my legs and flank--I flip myself out of the dumpster, then help Ava out as well. We've made it outside! Dashing over to a nearby row of bushes, we crouch down, shivering--huddled next to each other for warmth--and consider our next move.

"As much as I appreciate the classic escape route, Maddie still has a tracker in her tit," Rowana pointed out.

God, I sound like I'm in a bad porno script.

"Sister, you have been in a bad porno script for sixty chapters," Azzie acknowledged.

"You might not believe it, but a major impetus behind the service girl initiative was to allow the company to ferret out exactly this sort of wrongdoing. It's the reason we chose the particular people who were involved in the initial rollout. The company already had its suspicions...And here you are, beating us to the punch. Anyway, you came to me with this information, not the authorities. Why?"

"I do not believe it," Rowana said.

"I do not believe it," Azzie said. "That is grade-A oliphant shit."

"Oh, and fire Candice's mom, too," says Ava. "Sorry, I don't know her name, but I think she works in account management."

"Out of a cannon, into the sun," Rowana said firmly.

Good. Fuck them

"Arc words," Azzie said. "I suppose I should bitch about it all ending a little too cleanly, and they're still stuck in a world where slavery is legal and Maddie has to get her tattoos removed. I will say one last thing—I am surprised there weren't more long-term mental consequences. I expected to hear Maddie slip out at least one more 'Master.'"

"I'm glad she didn't, this story has already been frustrating enough for the both of us," Rowana said, rubbing her wife's baby bump. "Some of that stuff hits kind of close to home, you know? But more than that, it just does feel like a story where the balance of elements was off, and not enough thought went into what kind of story was being told and why. The themes were messy, the message unclear. Part of that might be just us not having read the preceding branches, but...yeah, it just icked when it tried to be sexy."

"And now," Azzie said. "We turn to the response by Maddie and Trevor."

Sadism, I guess--following a mostly non-masochistic character as they're forced to suffer the most degrading shit. Pushed to its most extreme conclusion by, well, Sade--but there are other writers, other works, that take a gentler approach. Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty series. Much more recently, authors like Badger Therese. Lena White. Paige Bond. The mailgirl sub-genre. The 'intern' path is basically a mailgirl story with the serial numbers filed off. It's...not for everyone.

"There are three perspectives for sadism," Azzie said. She held up a pinkie. "One, the perspective of the sadist. They want to inflict pain, enjoy power, or maybe they're forced into it, but they get the voyeuristic experience of being the one to subjugate someone else. That's a strong audience surrogate, but they can't know what the victim feels, except through observation."

Ring finger. "Two, the perspective of the victim. They may be powerless, or not. They may be complicit in their own subjugation, or not. They may enjoy the pain, or come to enjoy it, or not. But their perspective is focused on the limitations of their worldview. Their bonds and the sadist tormenting them becomes their world."

Middle finger. "Three. The voyeur. They don't hold the whip or feel the lash, but they see it happen. They are powerless, impotent, and that privilege and that powerlessness is very different from being on the end dishing out or receiving."

"Most of the famous sadist works focus on the victim," Rowana noted. "They're the most sympathetic, their journey the most compelling. Into acceptance, freedom, or escape through death. There's nothing inherently wrong with a sadist story if you have a strong stomach, and if done well there's a lot to be done with it. The problem here is we don't get enough motivation for...anyone. The parents might lose the house, and that justifies selling their daughter into slavery? There has to be a deeper psychology to that, or it isn't believable. While we might not like the content of this story on principle, our main storytelling critique is how it's told. There needed to be a lot more character development and thought put into this to make it believable and to make the narrative acceptable to the readers."

"It really does feel like the slavery thing happens too quickly and is accepted too readily, by everyone involved, from Madison on down," Rowana continued. "This story is nominally told from her first-person perspective, as the victim, but a lot of the sex scenario scenes are closer to the voyeur. It's lurid in a way that doesn't sit well with us, because it feels unearned."

Then there's the stories that embody the underlying fantasy, what some--not all--practitioners envision when they're roleplaying. Actual sadism. Actual slavery. Actual masochism. Like the difference between a story following a group of people playing Dungeons and Dragons versus a story set in the Forgotten Realms. Maybe sometimes these get conflated

"Fantasy can play out BDSM-style ideas in a safe narrative space. But they don't normally use the same terminology, unless it's on purpose, and outside the BDSM space the fantasy needs to be well-established, because the safeguards aren't there," Azzie noted. "That means people don't generally go meekly into blowjobs. Suicide becomes a real possibility. If you want a Candyland world where the sex slaves are obedient and enjoy their work, that's fine, but it's a completely different setting than what you've worked up here. You can't try to be quasi-realistic in the sex slavery and make the women eager whores. That stretches belief to the breaking point, unless you're striking a very different tone."

"To go back to the mailgirl story thing—workplace sexual fantasies aren't new; financial domination to force sexual accessibility is old hat, and there's room for that, but it generally assumes that the woman involved has the implicit choice of taking the nearest stapler and to her boss's nuts if she really feels strongly about it," Rowana said. "To avoid violence, there needs to be a stronger attachment than just I need this job. You need to know why you need this job; there has to be something that the job allows—an elderly parent in a retirement home, a sick sibling getting cancer treatment, a pregnancy you're saving up for—that makes sexual degradation worth it. We made a few suggestions elsewhere that Madison's parents could have threatened Ava, or they could have leaned in harder on the guilt trip."

"I think they mostly manufacture chemicals, pharmaceuticals, a few other things," I respond. "There are a few hints in this branch and elsewhere, but ultimately, I don't believe it's all that relevant--not to Madison's role, which could exist unchanged within any number of different corporate environments or other power structures."

"While I'm all aboard for faceless megacorps, most of them have at least some sort of corporate culture that can be depicted to set it apart from all the others. It's not all boardrooms and blowjobs," Azzie said.

"I think it's important because it shows a level of...well, generic-ness. Lack of care in the world-building," Rowana said. "While their exact holdings might not matter as far as Madison & co. are concerned, the whole service girl thing is not normal, and thinking about the kind of people who would build and implement that kind of program is important for depicting it in a convincing way. As it is, the ambush before they meet the CEO comes out of nowhere. The CEO's easy acquiescence comes out of nowhere. While it's okay to make stuff up as you go in a fantasy story, there does need to be some thought behind the work if it's to convince."

"I wonder where the three years came from? Did they misread Madison's three-year lease to the company?"

"...okay, I must have misread the Female Servitude Act date," Azzie admitted. "Mea culpa, product of reading too fast."

"That really doesn't make it better," Rowana grumbled.

Not everyone is like that. Sometimes, people are scared of confrontation or change. Sometimes, people are stupid--i.e. sleepwalking through life in a stupor. Not everyone is inclined to tackle their problems head on, especially not with violence.

"To be fair, Madison's fear is not brought out sufficiently on the page," Azzie said.

That said, this line is spoken by Madison's sister, who has an incredibly warped view of things at this stage of the story. It's certainly not a premise Madison herself accepts.

"Ava is another character whose motivations and attitudes are not well developed," Rowana said. "The gleefulness would work if she actually hated her sister or if they had something going, but the sudden change-of-heart reversal doesn't work either. After all, she's the winner in her sister-enslavement scenario."

"Until she isn't," Azzie noted. "Which twist comes too late in the story. It makes for a bit of a climactic confrontation, but the CEO makes that anticlimactic."

"I know we've said before that this isn't our kink. That definitely colors our 'appreciation' of the story. And please don't take this as being a criticism of your ability to write: it's all clear, concise, no typos, decent dialogue, technically proficient and good, solid prose," Rowana said. "We just don't like the premise and kind of hate how the characters work through it. The uncaringness of the parents might have hit us especially hard, but in general the whole thing feels...well, we're sorry, we didn't like it. Which is fine! Not every story is for everyone. Quite sure there are many stories on this website by a certain Zeebop you wouldn't enjoy either, and that's no strike against you either. Any parting words, Azzie?"

The Uruk-Hai considered. Both hands clutched her swollen stomach.

"None of these slavers shall reach the Halls of their Ancestors. They shall wander alone in the wastes until the ending of the world, shadows among shadows, without form, carrying only their pain with them."

"Well said. Until next time!" Rowana said with a grin.