A. Regina
Cantatis: A Muse’s Puppet
Imagine for a moment you’ve been
put in a chair. People around you are working with various devices you don’t
recognize. They surround you and strap you into the chair. A long cord is then
inserted into the back of your neck with a slight pinch and a solid click. Then
you start feeling parts of your mind being rearranged and altered with the
difficulty of reorganizing the files on your computer. Some memories are
removed (you never had a dog, so why are they mentioning one?) Memories are
altered, some are subtle (of course blue was always your favorite color its why
your phone case is blue) or maybe they are less subtle (it is great that people
stopped worrying about memory redesign isn’t it?) In the end none of that is a
problem as all your memories and personality are stored away in a little file,
in case they are ever needed, and all that remains is a drone waiting for
instruction. A. Regina Cantatis is an author with a passion for writing stories
centering on the concepts of altering the mind and identity. She writes scenes
like the above (amongst other things), sometimes they are treated as the
unfortunate fate of the villain’s victims; other times the scene is something
where there is no victim and the person is a willing subject.
Because the material she writes is
of an erotic bent name A. Regina. Cantatis is a pen name chosen for when she
writes erotic work. The pen name is to allow her to alleviate her worry about
the response it might garner if her real name were attached to these stories,
“I’d never do anything that might hurt or embarrass [my loved ones] - and I
won’t risk my job, either. There’s no telling what my boss or coworkers would
do if they knew the truth.” The name was picked for two reasons first,
one of the possible translations is “enchanted by the queen” and the other
point is because it sounds like a real name. Ms. Cantatis is occasionally
amused with the response the name gets because of how realistic it sounds. “A
lot of people on Facebook call me ‘Regina.’ I always laugh about that because
I’m on the opposite end of the dominant/submissive spectrum from the queen.”
The name A. Regina Cantatis was
created when she began e-publishing. Of the roughly thirty stories she has put
out online she has released seven stories as eBooks. There’s less
pressure in attempting to get work e-published as opposed to using a normal
publisher as the author is allowed to decide which of their works to release.
The other concern that she had felt when dealing with publishing was that
she feared costs trying to get her works published would cost “I assumed
there’d be an up-front publishing cost to eat into my profits and maybe even
lead me into debt. “ She learned through her experiences with e-publishing that
the process is still complex and difficult, but as far as costs go “There
aren’t any up-front costs; Amazon and similar organizations just take a cut of
your profits. It’s not a huge cut, and it’s completely worth the time you spend
in publishing something.” While she wants to get all of her works published
eventually, but Ms. Cantatis has started publishing her stories based on how
likely she thinks the story is to sell, so that it can help build her name.
This means that her stories are not necessarily published by her whether or not
a story is her favorite. Though the first work she published was the
story Sleepwalkers, which Ms. Cantatis had been mulling around in her
head for most of her life and as a result is her favorite of the works she has
written, “That’s my baby. I came up with the original concept when I was about
eleven, and since then I’ve spent three decades trying to turn it into a novel.
I’m proud to have finally succeeded, and I’m even prouder about the praise it’s
received.”
Ms. Cantatis has had a fascination
with mind control from a young age which she reasons is a result of her
upbringing. As a child Ms. Cantatis was always told to be a good girl, and she
believes that mixed with her innate desires to please and be responsible. These
factors led her to two facts about herself, that she was fascinated with the
idea of mind control, and that she found she favored being controlled not
controlling. Cantatis believes that while her mindset is mostly the result of
how she was raised she does admit that her nature had to have some impact on
it, “It’s my desire to please someone else that makes me want to submit: if I’m
controlled thoroughly enough, I can never displease. On the other hand,
my sense of responsibility can be a burden sometimes. I could shed it if I were
someone else’s puppet; then I wouldn’t be responsible for my own actions at
all.” It is important to understand that in spite of her fascination and
enjoyment of the idea of mind control and depersonalization. They are things
she believes should be fantasy only and are not things that should be done or
attempted in the real world. However, in these fantasies the thing
that intrigues Ms. Cantatis the most though is not being a puppet or just
controlled, but is much more involved with her love of science fiction.
A common element in Ms. Cantatis’
work is individuals being turned into drones of one type or another,
predominantly robots. As to why she enjoys robots as opposed to puppets. The
answer is first that she likes the shininess and second, “it’s a combination of
loving science fiction and being fascinated with really deep levels of
depersonalization. A doll is more human-like than a robot, so a doll is less
interesting to me than a robot.” Ms. Cantatis finds the idea of
depersonalization appealing, although she will point out that she is happy with
herself and has no self-esteem issues, but it goes along with her interest in
the idea of being controlled combined with a desire to not have to deal with
the pressures being a person brings. “Standing out in a crowd is stressful,
especially when you’re a kid who wants to fit in but doesn’t know how; and
that’s how I grew up. I wanted to be like everybody else, so I fantasized about
losing my individuality; and those fantasies still resonate with me today
because I grew up with them.” Thus she uses her stories to explore and share
her fascination with the ideas of depersonalization and mind control. Some of
her stories can be used to compare the difference between different levels of
being an individual.
In her story Willing Subject
Cantatis has the main character, Missy at the start of the story, go through
different levels of being controlled and experiencing depersonalization. The
main character starts out as a fully free individual intrigued by an individual
claiming to be an ancient sorceress as part of a stage hypnotism show called
the Black Pearl. Over the course of the story Missy develops her submissive
personality that wants nothing more than to serve the Black Pearl called m
(lowercase is part of the spelling at this point in the characters arc.)
Eventually Missy and m are actually arguing over whether to return to
being Missy or continuing to attempt to become a perfect servant like m wants.
In the end there is no Missy or m, there is only a thrall without
identity. The thrall, in contrast with m, isn’t striving to serve because it is
incapable of wanting anything at all. This story is a good example of how Ms.
Cantatis demonstrates the different levels of a controlled individual and how
it can be used to play with the idea of identity. You have the different
types and, with the exception of the thrall, the personalities eventually come
into conflict over what they want.
Ms. Cantatis plans to continue
with her publishing and is presently working on a special edition of
Sleepwalkers, as she’s trying to get the cover right. For those considering
getting into e-publishing she notes that getting the right cover image is very
important, and that while the process of getting a book e-published is not
expensive it is still a difficult process to get through. “That’s why I gave up
on trying to publish anywhere but Amazon and Smashwords. Those are troublesome
enough.” She is proud of the works she’s done and is looking forward to getting
more of her work put out in the future. For those who have any interest in
reading her work look her up on Smashwords or Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment