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Pleasure Slave	By : Capitalist Category: +. to F > Card Captor Sakura Views: 84325 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Card Captor Sakura, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 49
- 50
‘the afterword’

No self-respecting limelight-loving author, such as myself, would leave an epic like this alone without sticking in her final two cents. So here I am, wrapping up the whole affair with a little Capitalist commentary – and yes, I’m taking an extra chapter to do it. C’mon, it’s not like it’s a separate update, so no one can complain of undeserved jumping to the top of the page, and after a story this long I think it’s only reasonable to stick all my notes in a separate chapter. Besides, I’m OCD and I like the look of (50) chapters on my summary rather than (49). It felt frustratingly unbalanced like that.
Where was I? Commentary. Well, kids, what can I say? It’s been a hell of a ride, broke all kinds of records with this one. An impressive 49 chapters, exactly 601 pages, 621 readers, (darn odd numbers!) and as of this writing 1, 345 reviews. And of course, an incredible 3 years and 3 months in the making, more than twice as long as it’s taken me to write any other story. (Of course, it’s also far longer than any of my other stories.)
Three years is a really long time. Since I first put my fingers to the keyboard for Pleasure Slave, I have quit one job, moved between countries, moved again between cities, started another job, finished it, languished in unemployment for a combined 18 months, held the hand of a friend in her pregnancy from discovery to birth, got a boyfriend, broke up with him, and then moved again between homes. It’s a safe bet that at least a few of you 621 out there have graduated from something or another during the course of this story, started college, perhaps even gotten married (that’s definitely one change I was nowhere near). And yet still you stuck with me. I appreciate that – no, appreciate isn’t nearly strong enough. I LOVE that, and I love all of you! Even through the long gaps of muse-drought, when I wasn’t updating for 3 or 4 months at a time, you held out, you were patient and kind and understanding. I really mean this when I say that my Pleasure Slave readers are the most awesome readers I have ever had.

The dream…
It all began with a simple dream. I’m not usually the sort to have clear and defined dreams with a plotline and all that, but for some reason, that summer night, I did. I dreamed of just two scenes in the story, but somehow ‘knew’ the rest of what had already happened and was about to happen. Would that all my stories came to me so easily. I dreamed of the third chapter, in which Tomoyo deflowers Sakura, and then of the final scene in chapter eight, in which Yue proposes the ‘deal’ to Touya down in the dungeon.
I woke up thinking: I need professional help. Then I thought: I should write this down. So I got right on the computer and started typing, first the Tomoyo/Sakura scene and then the Yue/Touya one. After that it was only a matter of filling in what had come before and between, and on a hope and prayer began to post. The erotic, racy nature of what I was putting up was slightly offensive to my own prudish nature, and I was so embarrassed I decided to post at a different site than my usual, under a different name. Capitalist, a decidedly unromantic nom de plume, was chosen simply because I am one and couldn’t think of anything better.

The sex…
What’s that? I’m a prude? Well, kinda. Disturbing dreams notwithstanding, I’m not known for having much of a sex life (rather be writing) and I don’t even spend much time hunting for stories about it. Certainly I’m fine with it in theory, and I’ve read a number of excellent stories that feature it. Kira Takenouchi’s infamous Taming Riki comes to mind, a heavy influence on this story, but there’s a reason I stopped reading it years ago. In so many stories, particularly on this site, the sex becomes so overwhelming the reader is desensitized to it. And as we are desensitized, the author keeps upping the ante to keep our interest, until the scenarios have gotten so implausible (not to mention disgusting) that they’re no longer adding to the plot. And there, Undisclosed, lies the real cardinal sin. Everything should always add to the plot – even in porn fics.
And that’s why, impossible though it sounds, Pleasure Slave is actually a pretty clean read. There’s bondage and domination, yes, but as far as I’m concerned true domination takes place in the mind and not in leather straps. There was a decided lack of toys, because I think they’re gross. Yue suffers from jealousy when he sees Touya near anyone else, so I can’t think why he would allow anything like a threesome. This straightlaced southern Methodist doesn’t even want to think about things like ‘fisting’ or ‘rimming’. Yuck. I figure, you guys are capable of filling in the mental details if you’re into that stuff, so why do I need to write it?
And, as was probably inevitable, the more the story progressed, the more the plot began to supercede the sex. It got to the point where I didn’t even need to write it out anymore – we all knew what Yue and Touya are doing in bed by chapter twenty five. There’s only so many euphemistic terms for penis anyway, as anyone who reads a Steele novel can tell you, and I didn’t feel like writing about Yue’s ‘hot throbbing shaft’ more than was necessary.
Interestingly, nobody complained, so you probably all agree. What I did get a lot of was demands to know (and thinly disguised begging to see) if Touya would ever take the role of seme in bed. It didn’t happen, and I’m sorry if that bummed you out, but as far as my reasoning goes it wasn’t needed.
A major theme in my story was the question of power, and what it means to have it. A yaoi couple, in my opinion, was the perfect vehicle to explore such a question because on the surface both actors seem well matched. Equal height, equal physical power, equal intelligence. Yue is the master, with the castle and the magic to back him up, but Touya has his pride and the blood of fiercely independent mountaineers flowing in his veins. And as his hold on Yue grew, so did his control of the relationship, until the slave became the master and then eventually realized it. And contrary to whatever you might read in the abundant yaoi fics on this site, the seme doesn’t have to be the one in charge. You probably don’t know many gay couples in real life, but you probably do know a couple in which it’s clearly the woman who dominates, always telling her husband what he is or is not allowed to do, setting the schedule, making the rules. Well, women are physically incapable of being the seme, aren’t they? So in the interest of maintaining that delicate balance of power in Yue and Touya’s rather fucked up love life, Yue stayed seme to counter Touya’s dominance.

The couples…
I think everyone was pretty much okay with Yue and Touya – and if they weren’t, I’m guessing they hightailed it out of this fic pretty quickly. I did catch a surprising amount of flak for pairing Sakura with Syaoran, which puzzles me because it is THE MAIN couple of the original anime. Did you write Clamp and complain to them too?
Tomoyo’s a sweet girl. I won’t deny it. She was the perfect character to calm and comfort our poor kidnapped heroine, and ideal for introducing her to the wide world of sex slavery. She has a heavy nurturing streak in her, which I guess is why she’s so happy to spend most of the anime doting on and taking care of Sakura. In PS, it was probably inevitable that she fell in love with this sweet, innocent girl. Certainly Sakura needed her support, and would grow to love her as a friend.
But there is a reason Sakura chose to love Syaoran in the anime, and it’s the same reason she loves him in my story. Little girls fall in love with their father figures, we all know that, and Yukito even mentioned that when he was gently rejecting Sakura near the end of the show. Fujitaka wasn’t the only strong male influence in her life, though, and it seems Touya did even more to raise her than their father did. Ditto for Pleasure Slave-verse. And Syaoran is, undoubtedly, a close replica of Touya’s personality. They’re both straightforward, aggressive, smart in a practical sort of way, unafraid of a fistfight, and prefer to take charge. It’s inevitable that they can’t stand one another, they’re so alike, and it’s inevitable that Sakura falls in love with the former because she was raised by the latter. So, no, there is no chance of her falling in love with Tomoyo and I’m standing by that.
Someone did ask me if Tomoyo and Meilin couldn’t wind up together, to which I will shrug. I generally don’t care for T/M pairings, but that’s only because I’d like to think the two rejected girls can do a lot better than simply turning toward one another. In the world of Pleasure Slave, though, it seems appropriate. I can envision a very happy future for them once Tomoyo’s been freed, so if it makes you happy to imagine that then you go right ahead. I won’t say no.

The emotions…
If you love something, let it go, blah blah blah. I think I pounded that message through pretty clear in the actual text, so there’s no need to get into that here. Instead I’ll just say that Yue and Touya’s relationship was the most ridiculously complicated thing I’ve ever tackled in my literary career, and I hope I never have to do that again. Yue was terrified of getting hurt again by love and clung to his loyalty toward Clow as a shield; Touya couldn’t bear the thought of loving someone he once hated so much and willed himself into denying it even existed. Woof. A lot of people were really upset and disappointed that Touya refused to listen to Yue the first time he finally managed to confess his love, but just getting Yue to admit it to himself was half the battle. Gathering the courage to release Touya from slavery, the hard evidence that he really loved him, was necessary before he could actually say it to Touya’s face. Tricky love like this has to be taken in steps, you know.
Why did Touya cover his ears and run away? Many reasons, I suppose. For one, he had no idea whether Yue had chosen him or Clow, at that point, and was terrified of hearing the wrong answer. And if even if Yue did choose him, Touya was emotionally incapable of handling it. He’s never been in love before, much less in such a complex love/hate relationship, and didn’t know what he was doing. It’s only natural he panicked.
Syaoran and Sakura I tried to give a much more normal, classically structured relationship. In case it wasn’t obvious, their love was meant to be the literary foil against which Yue and Touya’s screwy situation was compared. And as Yue unhappily discovered, the example they should have been following all along.

The influences….
Stealing from one is plagiarism, stealing from many is research. Hard as it can be to admit – not for me, though, I’m fine with it – none of us writers have ever come up with something completely independent from anything else. There’s always influence, whether it be in terms of characters, style, or plot, it’s only a matter of how well you manage to disguise it so you don’t get sued.
It has been put forward by several, with good justification, that both Ai no Kusabi and Beauty and the Beast played a significant role in the formation of this fic. I’d say that’s about right. Beauty and the Beast might actually have contributed more since I didn’t even watch AnK until a month ago. I’d only browsed the fandom enough to know the general idea. Certainly Beauty has a closer parallel to the structure and setting of my story – old fashioned surroundings, castle, magic, etc. Also the ‘prisoner exchange’, and of course the fuzzy library scene. AnK provided a template for the more sordid parts of my story: male rape, slavery, dominance and submission.
Just as vital an influence that nobody guessed is Phantom of the Opera. I’ve read the book a dozen times and memorized the musical, and I see a lot of the Phantom in Yue. They’re both terrifying in their power and ruthlessness, but for the one who manages to capture their hearts (Christine/Touya), they prove to be astonishingly vulnerable and insecure. This fragility scares them, and they tend to lash out in lethal ways when confronted with competition (Raoul, Sakura, Aya) or any other threat to their relationship (both Christine and Touya attempt to run away and are severely punished). Both would rather keep the object of their affection as a prisoner than trust them to go free. And both Christine and Touya are young and virgins in the world of love, unable to cope with this overpowering devotion and more than a little scared by the responsibility it puts on their shoulders. Yet somehow, their hearts are captivated…
The beauty of Yue releasing Touya in the end, I would like to think, parallels the Phantom’s 11th-hour release of Christine. As much as they love their special person, and as powerful as they are, they finally understand that keeping someone a prisoner will only kill their chances of love. Unfortunately for the Phantom, Christine actually does leave and chooses Raoul instead. :( I’m not nearly so inclined to put my characters through a miserable ending, so Touya picks Yue. Whee.

The music…
No story is complete without music. Alas, the written word doesn’t have much in the way of a soundtrack, but there is still the music that I listened to while I was writing and helped shape the style of my narrative. Just about any Pure Moods CD will do the trick, naturally, especially the second and fourth. Evanescence’s My Immortal also works surprisingly well. Listen and you can feel the pain Yue’s been harboring since Clow’s death.
Hands down, however, nothing captures the feel of this story more than Alessandro Safina’s Luna. You’ve probably never heard of him, and that’s fine, but once you have I swear you’ll be hooked. He’s huge in Italy and has a small but devoted following here in the states. I happened to overhear it one day in a bookshop, and was transfixed. It’s impossible to relay the beauty here on page, of course, so I highly recommend you go find a copy on itunes or whatever you kids do these days. But here are the lyrics, and I think you’ll agree when I say they couldn’t fit Pleasure Slave more perfectly if Safina had been trying.
Luna tu oh, moon
Che conosci il tempo dell’eternita you know the secret of eternity
E il sentiero stretto della verita and the vulnerable truth
Fa piu luce dentro questo cuore mio relieve my heart
Questo cuore d’uomo che non sa, non sa my heart that knows nothing
Che l’amore puo nascondere il dolore love can ease the pain
Come un fuoco ti puo bruciare l’anima like a fire consuming your soul
Only you… can hear my soul…
Luna tu oh, moon
Tu rischiari il cielo e la sua immensita you light up the heavens in all its immensity
E ci mostri solo la meta che vuoi we only see the side you wish to show
Come poi faciamo quasi sempre noi such is our want
Angeli di creta che non volano porcelain angels that don’t fly
Anime di cara che si incendiano paper souls that burn
Cuori come foglie che poi cadono hearts falling like leaves
Sogni fatti d’aria che svaniscono dreams going up in smoke
Figli della terra e figli tuoi che sai children of the earth and of yourself
Che l’amore puo nascondere il dolore you now that love can ease the pain!

The ending…
Was confusing. I’ll grant that. It wasn’t an easy concept to get across in words, particularly in what is supposed to be a grand, flashy finale. My idea was this: much in the same way Sakura’s nameless card fused with Void to create the Hope Card (the nameless card seems to have been born out Sakura’s pure love for Syaoran), Touya and Yue’s ‘true love’ would fuse with Void and not so much kill it as put it back where it should have been all this time – the mortality in each of Clow’s creations. It calls itself Yue’s twin because they were born on the same night, Yue being the first of Clow’s children, but in actuality it is the counterpart of all of them. Every time Clow made someone new, Keroberos, each of the ‘cards’, he added negative mass to the Void. That’s why the Void was stronger than Yue.
More than a few readers thought Yue might have to die in order for the Void to perish, but I don’t think that would have got us anywhere. As Clow pointed out before, dying for someone else is easy and painless. In my view, the real sacrifice was what Yue had committed in the previous chapter, releasing Touya because he loved him so much that Touya’s happiness came before his own. And Touya sacrificed his chance to return home, and not to mention risked his life, to return to Yue’s side, so the true love was reciprocated. Those were the sacrifices that killed the Void, not the literal loss of life.
Was it over-the-top? Well, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. But you can’t complain that the end felt like a movie when there were plenty of other parts of the story that felt like a movie too, mainly Void’s invasion of the castle and Sakura’s harrowing fall from the bridge during their escape. I don’t know if anyone caught it, but after that scene Yue confided sadly to Sakura that Touya would have thrown himself into the darkness to die with her but he would never do such a thing for Yue. Then, in the end, that’s precisely what Touya did. So I did have my reasons; things were arranged that way on purpose. And since I have a taste for action scenes, I won’t apologize for it. Over the top melodrama is fun!

And beyond…
What’s that? Other stories? Don’t even mention a sequel, that’s not funny. After a monster like this, I don’t think there’s anything left in the character’s lives to explore. Sakura pops out half a dozen babies and she and Syaoran live happily ever after, and so do Touya and Yue, at least once Touya wakes up from fainting after hearing the news of her pregnancy. The end.
But I do have other stories in reserve. In particular I have an old Yue/Touya flick that I wrote a year before ever dreaming up Pleasure Slave, and used to have posted on mediaminer. That site’s formatting kept screwing with my story, though, so I took it down out of frustration. It really belongs here, so I’ll put it up. Keep in mind that I wrote it BEFORE Pleasure Slave, and it’s considerably shorter, so your expectations will need to be lowered a notch or two. It is, in fact, the story in which I accidentally discovered how much I loved Y/T in the first place.
I guess I should wait a few weeks, so as to give you all plenty of time to digest the end of this epic. But you can go browse my account at fanfiction.net if you’re bored. As I said earlier, the concept of Pleasure Slave rather flustered me and I was nervous about putting up my real name. But then some real plot happened, and the relationships actually got to be layered and complex, and in the end I can say I’m proud of the stupid thing. So what the hell? I admit it, I am really Peacewish. You might have read some of my stories over at ff.net, like Wild Flower or Lotus Reborn. Up until Pleasure Slave, pretty much all of my stories focused on Syaoran/Sakura as the main couple, and the collection’s pretty much evenly split between AU and Canon. Some people like ‘em, hope you will too.

The gratitude…
Cannot be expressed enough. You are all dear to me, especially those of you that took the time to review and give me your wonderful feedback. You wouldn’t believe how many ideas you gave me! Pleasure Slave, much as I hate to admit it, would have been a very different and much weaker story without your valuable input.
I’d like to thank my regulars, particularly Tori, Hikari, Ori, Mad Hatter, the eternal Sakura-hater Sana-chan, my personal artist Gittachi, Vix, and the ever faithful Taboo. Scorpinac and Lili I would like to honor, espcially, because they were two among my first ten reviewers, all those years ago, and I can’t believe that they actually stuck with me for so long. Hats off to you guys.
And to all those people that complained and asked what you’re supposed to do with your lives now… hah. Very flattering, but what about me? What am I supposed to do with MY life? I’m still unemployed and haven’t done anything but write PS for four straight months! I shied away from trying to apply for any real work by justifying that I needed to write, and now what? The story’s done, PS will soon be languishing on the second or third page of the CCS section, and I’ll have nothing to look forward to on Fridays. Used to be I could say, “Sure I’m single while all my friends are married, and sure I have no career, no job, not even a home that I particularly like, and sure I haven’t been on a date in nine months, but at least when I post this next chapter there will be thirty-odd strangers reminding me that they love me!”
Not so anymore. Sigh. I suppose the only recourse is to alter PS and turn it into an original fiction, then apply to a publishing company. That’s the yucky, difficult side to being a writer, if you ask me, and I have no idea how to go about it. So it is with a tingling sense of dread that I close off my beloved work of art, hoping and praying that someone at Be Beautiful Manga will like this thing half as well as you guys did. Because being the unemployed black sheep in your family sucks, so I’d like to have at least one thing I could be proud of. (Though what with my southern Christian family, I won’t be able to actually share the work with them. Oh well, at least my friends can celebrate with me.)
So that will be my next project, and wish me luck. If you want to be in on the process you can always join my yahoo group, and we’ll see what comes next. This story will probably have to come down off the site, should I be lucky enough to get considered, and if that happens I won’t have anyway of contacting you all aside from the group members. Incentive to join!
I’m 28 years old. It’s probably time I stopped writing fanfiction and tried to make a real living from the written word. Clearly, it’s the only thing I can do well. So adieu to all of you, thank you again from the bottom of my heart for coming along on my ride. I hope that, even if you’ve said nothing to me all this time, you’ll post at least one review before you go. I love you all.
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Pleasure Slave