Why Captain Shame?


I like erotic writing but not writing about erotic writing. I'm less interested in the opinions and politics that surround smut than just wanting to get hard and make women wet.

Having said that I am now going to write just a little bit about Captain Shame and Red Lion Street, why I do it, why I'm stopping, what I was trying to achieve etc.

I'm finishing Captain Shame at chapter 50 simply because it takes up too much time. The drawings have become steadily more elaborate and I have become quite addicted to the blog. Sometimes I looks up at the clock and realise that hours have passed whilst I have been delicately tracing out some sluts stocking tops in photoshop.

A previously unseen private commission
(face obscured) 
It's fitting because the very reason I started Captain Shame was as an antidote to another kind of addiction, my addiction to porn. I felt that if I was going to spend so much of my time staring at a computer screen with a massive hard on I might as well be doing something creative. There is that idea that if you cant find the porn you want then you should make it.

I think Red Lion Street is porn, of a kind. The word 'erotica' doesn't sit well with what I do. I'm not trying to be sensual or titillate. I want people to wank themselves off reading my words and looking at my pictures. My intentions are quite base and primal.

The writing in Red Lion Street is influenced by American crime writing. I love the short sentences that propel the narrative forward. No time is wasted. 'He went into the Police station. He shot the desk clerk five times and then left.' I thought that style of writing was better suited to sex more than the flowery Mills and Boon style.

I was trying to make a written alternative to porn.
An unused picture from Chapter 8: Through the Window. I realised early on that the
images work much better being portrait rather than landscape. After Chapter 11 landscape pictures disappeared completely 
I was unsure how erotic, drawings could be to people, but l knew I was tired of the found and stolen photographs I saw in most blogs. Anyone can steal and post a photo and almost everyone does. I feel that by using the drawings it allows me to be blunt and explicit in the words, where as describing a bukakke next to a found photograph of a bukakke is somehow just nasty and cheap.

I had an old blog which was very much like this and I've recently taken it down. I soon realised that dirty words and found images weren't unique enough for what I wanted to do.

There was an abortive attempt at a drawn sequel to the original Captain Shame blog that didn't get beyond two posts, My Dirty Filthy Mouth . It was a collaboration with a very sexy Russian woman but ultimately I think she got cold feet about it. I still like the idea though. A combination of sound and image. It paved the way for what followed.

The drawings on Red Lion Street are a mixture of tracing, composting and free hand. They are made inside the computer using a hardware pen and pad device. I am Apple all the way. I set myself rules and restrictions and I feel the limited palet of colours is what makes the pictures work.

The various stages of a Red Lion Street Picture from Chapter 15: After the Red Room. Finding a suitable model online in the various poses you needed was nearly impossible. As soon as real people started to model for me it became easier and the pictures better.

I have been told that people do bring themselves off to my drawings. In fact nearly all the feedback I have had from Red Lion Street is from women rubbing one out to it.

Unseen outtake from Chapter 25: Doctor Sun
which ended up being my favourite
chapter in terms of art.
This has been an unexpected but welcome surprise. I never thought I was making RLS for one particular sex but there is no doubting that girls want to talk to me more about it. Further more, women wanted to be in it. This was an unbelievable privilege and the only regret I have about ending RLS is that I won't have these beautiful women sending me pictures of themselves with their legs open anymore.

Writing real people into the stories was a strange and intimate process, although not always successful. I tried hard to be true to the women and what they were about, sexually. It also helped me get closer to my original vision that RLS should be about the 'the girl next door' or 'the woman you want to fuck on the tube train.'

I think Red Lion Street has always been more successful when portraying girls who you could imaging meeting, and less successful when falling into LA Porn star stereotypes. I particularly regret that one character is based facially on a fairly well known porn actress and thus breaks the spell of a weird suburban street.

Favourite stories of mine include...

Chapters 13 to 15. A linked trilogy of stories featuring red headed cousins Cate and Theresa. It was the first story where I went too far, Cate is always easy to draw and every time I think I've finished with the character she pops up again.

Chapter 25: Doctor Sun. The story is just so fucking stupid but I also feel I was on the money with these drawings. I think its the hottest set of pictures I've drawn so far.

Chapter 39: Feisty Submissive is perhaps my favourite so far of the collaborations with a real subject/model. People have no idea of how sexual they are, but in describing herself in emails Fesity wrote all of her own dialogue. The last picture might be my single favourite Red Lion Street image.

Red Lion Street was originally meant to be 100 chapters and many planned stories and characters have had to be abandoned and rejected including ...

Elaine, the landlady of the Red Lion Pub, a large sexually confidant Domme who holds swingers nights during after hours drinking sessions.

Lucy, the bespectacled Librarian who dreams of bigger tits and begs Captain Shame to buy her a boob job in exchange for a blow job in the biography section.

Denise the wide hipped house wife who exposes herself in the supermarket and gets Captain Shame to chew through her nylon tights in the carpark.

Things should end though. Things shouldn't carry on forever. It's another one of my bugbears of the blogosphere, where everything is unending and unedited.

A rare private commission. 

I may not have finished with Red Lion Street completely. After chapter 50 I have couple of ideas for continuations or spin offs. One idea is occasional specials, or a text only Red Lion Street novella or a series of very short one picture pieces of micro fiction.

I will certainly keep both my email and Twitter feed active for while.

And thank you for hanging out with me. Thanks for the support. Really, so many nice people have gotten in touch. Special thanks amongst a whole collection of beautiful angels must however go to Harper Elliot, my earliest, most positive supporter. It would have ended sooner without her encouragement.

Please continue to write to me. Especially if you are a hot girl who needs to be drawn. There is always a deal that can be made.

At the time of writing I am up to Chapter 44. I will try and make the last six the best so far.

Over and out,

Captain Shame.

5 comments:

  1. I'm thrilled that you count our first episode together as one of your favourites. I've had the *most* fun collaborating with you, Captain, and in doing so my confidence has skyrocketed - so thank you. And thank you for the many orgasms your work has given me ;) xxxx

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  2. And your self portrait is hot. Even though I can't see your face.

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  3. I am proud and honored to have been a part of this sexy, slutty, beautifully dirty street. Thank you, Captain. I will always remember this.

    I do love the self portrait...so nice to see you. I know whatever you move on to, it will be great.

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  4. From my point of view, 50 went by too fast. Always a pleasure to find the next installment available after waiting what seems to be an interminable amount of days for it to show.

    I trust you will go out with a bang heard from one end of Red Lion St. to the other as you finally nail Valerie to the floor repeatedly in hole after hole after hole, while her husband watches and possibly films it.

    Too bad the story will take longer to play out than your signature song from your last blog. No way is that long enough to cover this impending story.

    But it all is just an assumption on my part.

    Your blog - do what you will.

    And leave a forwarding address.

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  5. I'm relatively new to this blog, and just wanted to say that I am enjoying working, (sorry, I mean wanking don't I?) my way through the chapters.
    Sorry to hear it's ending, but agree with the whole all good things principle.
    Very. Hot.
    x

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