You think that 'Ashlee' would have learned by now!
Wanted to whip up a caption this morning, so I went to the webz, and found this picture that struck me as something that might work well for Totalditz, so I snagged it and went to work, with only the idea that Kevin had lost a bet with his sister and had to spend the weekend dressed up as a girl and spending his time in a girl's bedroom, but she completely changed his room to the one you see in the photo .. and with that as my focal point and "framework" I put the image into a caption setting and started writing.
As I think I've mentioned quite a few times, I always write directly into the caption, as that helps me figure out where I need to start and where to end as far as spacing goes. I'm not one to write in Microsoft Word, edit, and then paste it onto the caption, so I've gotten to a point where it's almost like automatic writing .. I just go with the flow, wherever it takes me.
And in this case, I started writing, and the idea of HOW she'd pay for it became obvious, she has an 0nlyfans page, and she crowd sourced the entire operation, with the promise of getting her "sister" to appear with her in a video. Sounded great, so I steered it that way. But as I got a bit further, that wasn't quite a part of the bet. I didn't quite have an ending yet anyway (a provisional thought was to make Ashlee document everything in a Hello Kitty diary or something like that, after having him wonder where all his old stuff went,) so I figured, "why not lean into her brother being quite clueless about how much smarter and feminine his older sister was," Think Ellie Woods from Legally Blonde mixed with Cher from Clueless.
That was when I knew how to wrap up the caption, and tie it into a cute little bow for Ashlee to wear. It's funny to think about how the logistics of a caption plot setup can lead you to ideas on how to make them seem more grounded, even when they get a bit fantastical in scope. You want readers to suspend their disbelief as best they can, but helping them to rationalize the story as it goes along, without distracting them with chances to ponder the overall arch of the narrative, can really keep them inside the illusion.
Catch up with you all in a few days, but I'll definitely be lurking around in the comments if you wish to leave one. It's always a lot of fun to read what you all have to say!