A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 2

This is the chapter I blogged about several months ago, where I said I'd come up with an M/f induction so cruel that I could barely bring myself to write it. The thing is, once I committed to this particular storyline, the scene became necessary; and once it became necessary, I had to go all the way with it. I knew I couldn't wimp out. You have to know how far Paolo has sunk, and you have to see the change in Shara from furious Resister to eager slave. Early reader reactions indicate that people are taking it just the way I want them to: they're horrified but also (at least in some cases) turned on. It turns me on, too, a bit...but then I feel bad about that. This is the nastiest thing I've ever written.

On a somewhat lighter note, now is a good time to talk about the original fantasy that sparked this story. Like I've said before, I came up with it when I was about twelve. I thought I was straight, so I made the MC'er a man; and I was too innocent to realize being controlled was what got me off, so the main characters in the story weren't really MC'ed at all. They were just pretending. Here's how it played out.

Shara was the central character of the fantasy. She was a completely different person than she is in "Sleepwalkers," and the world she lived in was somewhat different than the empire Hawthorne creates. Certain people had Bene Gesserit-like control over their bodies and minds, and Shara was one of them (If you don't know what a Bene Gesserit is, go read Dune - or at least Wiki it). Paul was another. The fantasy began with Shara being arrested by the Master's troops and taken to his headquarters for brainwashing. Paul was on the ship that carried her there. He'd been captured long before and made a doctor, so he was on site in case she was injured during the arrest. Later, when they were alone in the imprinting chamber, he revealed that he was only pretending to be brainwashed; and that whenever he ran across someone with abilities like his and Shara's, he saved them from brainwashing too. He hoped to eventually create a force that was strong enough to take down the Master.

The rest of the fantasy involved him coaching Shara in how to fool the Master, then the faux-brainwashing scene with the Master gloating over them both. That part of the fantasy played out a lot like my story Mirrored in Your Eyes, as I blogged about here. Interestingly, the mind-controlling drug and the will-replacing chip were parts of the story from the very beginning. So was the bit where Paul's chip gets turned off to horrify Shara; but in the early fantasy, it was the Master who turned off Paul's chip, Paul was only pretending to be catatonic, and Shara was only pretending to be horrified.

Not much drama there, eh? Or much originality, either. But after all, I was only twelve. I'm just proud of myself for coming up with the turning-off-the-chip thing that early in my EMC career.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Spy vs. Guy

Hmm, where to start? Should I begin by reminding you that my model for Guy in Spy vs. Guy is the same fellow I used for Finvarra in Ethna Redux, fetish model Perish (Click the pic for a link to his Model Mayhem gallery)? Or should I begin by telling you that I haven't had this much sheer fun writing an EMC story since Solitaire? Gay men are always a blast to hang out with.

How about detailing all the trouble I went to, trying to find the right sort of EMC fetishists to proof me on my m/m sex scenes, before finally turning to two long-time friends from entirely outside the EMC community? I've done my best to reward the two of them, both with thank-you's in the credits and by addressing their various requests/concerns in the bulk of the story. The slash fan asked if I could let her favorite couple in on the fun, which I did (disguised, of course); and Jordan's "boner" gave my usually-blasé orc pal a literal case of the willies, so I added a "P.S." at the bottom of Chapter One to reassure my male readers that no, it really didn't hurt at all. Certainly not like this would, anyway. ;-P

Speaking of Jordan, I'm sure any of you who've seen The Crying Game know exactly where I got the idea for his big reveal. Oh, and if you happen to like Jaye Davidson (as I certainly do!), you might enjoy this lovely pic.

But there's so much more to this story, so many little geeky references and in-jokes that you might or might not get. The Monty Python and Star Wars shout-outs are pretty obvious, but I wonder how many of you will catch the nod to Stephen King or to the Village People's second-best-known song, much less the "I see your schwartz is as big as mine" moment. ;-) Then again, I suppose many of you are young enough (or Mad-illiterate enough) to miss the significance of the title itself. :-/

I've already discussed the origins of this story in an older post, so I won't repeat myself here. I'll just note the add-on's that occurred to me as I was writing, like the symbolic possibilities of the Samson and Hercules stories (Each of those scenes is "real," though obviously twisted to suit my purposes), and the Freudian connotations of various weapons - which I also played with in "Ethna Redux," as I do hope some of you noticed.

I also toyed with including Jacob's sexy tussle with that angel - it's always seemed to me that the angel let him win, as proven by how easily it disabled him in the end with just a touch - but I ditched that idea before writing a word of it; it was just too much for the story to take. I did, however, sneak in another crypto-homo-biblical reference split into halves, just to make it a little tricker to spot...though I do hope some of you will spot it. I like to add the occasional Easter egg to my stories; unfortunately, sometimes they're so subtle that no one catches them at all (as in Queen Bee Becomes a Drone - I'm really going to have to go back and spell that one out one of these days. In the meantime, please, someone let me know you figured out Morgaine's real identity!).

The design of Wylde's retreat was one of those happy cases where my subconscious did a lot of the work for me, and my conscious only twigged to what was going on toward the end. For those of you unfamiliar with the symbolism of houses (especially in dreams), they signify the totality of a person's soul or self or whatever you want to call it. I didn't realize at first just how appropriate it was that the upper levels of Guy's home are all bright and shiny; while below ground, it's pretty damn freaky. You can thank H.R. Giger for that - and yes, Wylde's sort-of throne in the third chapter is a Harkonnen Chair.

Now, about that ending. Yes, that's two open-ended conclusions in a row for me - though judging by the responses to "Ethna Redux," I'm not sure how open-ended some of you realized that one really was. Both of these stories feature The Lady or the Tiger scenarios, which should be familiar to anyone who grew up in the American school system, at least. I have no idea about the curriculum of other countries.

Then again, maybe "Spy vs. Guy" isn't quite as open-ended as it looks from outside my head. Jacob and the Angel weren't all that got left on the cutting room floor; I had also designed a seal for Wylde, LLC, which would have been a stylized lion's head with the motto split in half above and below the image: "Flexible Ethics - For the Greater Good." Besides, Guy's merry band of brainwashers just ended up being too nice to be true bad guys. Not that I didn't try to make them a bit more sinister in the final scene, but...well, you know. ;-)

Heads up!

First, my Reader's Picks page on the EMCSA is now updated.

Second, remember that horrible David Lynch adaptation of Dune? Well, things could have been a whole lot worse.

And lastly, just in case you've been living in a cave for the last week or two, there's a new Watchmen trailer available with 100% less Lower Manhattan and 100% more drama. I understand some folks are complaining about the use of the name "Watchmen" for the second-generation vigilante team; but my only real gripe is that the silhouette of the Comedian's killer looks a bit too well-defined to properly preserve the mystery.

Another Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Mirrored in Your Eyes

SPOILER ALERT: Please don't read this blog entry until after you've finished the story. I'm going to discuss some important plot points here.

Okay, still with me? Well, "Mirrored in Your Eyes," as I mentioned several blog entries ago, is yet another of my dreams-turned-stories. This dream had a bit more plot to it than most of mine do, and I've stayed fairly true to that plot as I've fleshed it out into a story. Here's the gist of the dream, minus the bits where my conscious struggled with my unconscious mind over how things should go:

I was at a school, staring into a mirrored wall and wishing I could be MC'ed. Suddenly my pupils expanded and I spun off down the hall, marching toward some unknown, programmed destination. I was wearing a schoolgirl's plaid miniskirt with latex suspenders and nothing else. Soon I heard a piano playing, and I followed the music into a room with a bunch of schoolkids and a teacher or two, all of whom had gathered around a girl playing the piano. She looked just as I describe Marina in the story. The whole room fell back in alarm when I entered because they knew why I was there: to capture one of them and make him or her like me. The girl pulled out a stun gun and tried to shoot me, but I shot her first, then carried her off down the hall in a wheelbarrow. Eventually I came to the office, where the administrators strapped the girl to a table. I knew now that I would help pleasure her into slavery and afterwards be released, myself. Then I'd get to choose whether I wanted to be a Domme or a sub for life. The dream faded out at that point; but somewhere later in the night, still in a dreamlike state, I realized that not only did I want to be a sub, but I wanted that particular girl to be my Domme.

Karen is mostly me, with a few red herrings and a couple of in-jokes added for flavor. Her thoughts and actions are pretty much what I'd expect mine to be if I lived in a world like hers. Marina isn't based on anyone in particular (and to reiterate, I didn't borrow her first name from Marina St. Mark; I got if from a file at work), but I really do like her physical type. Fortunately, I have three adorable young coworkers of varying ethnicities who more or less fit the bill. No doubt they were one inspiration for my dream.

The corset karen wears in an early scene really exists; you can see it for yourself here. Isn't it gorgeous? I so want one. ;-) Marina's gown in that same scene is a confabulation of a lot of different costumes I've seen over the years. I suppose Moulin Rouge was probably the biggest inspiration there.

Sappho came late to the party, but was most welcome. I was thinking of ways to flesh out Marina and karen's relationship and decided that some poetry from the Mother of all Lesbians might be nice, so I googled her and was amazed to find several pieces that fit just perfectly into my story. If you're interested in reading more of Sappho's work, there are plenty of websites available; but I used this one and this one.

Marina's brainwashing scene was, in large part, scavenged from one of my oldest MC fantasies of all. I think I was about 11 when I first came up with the basic scenario of the girl strapped to the table, the will-wiping drug, the shrinking and expanding irises that signified her struggle, and the eventual turning of her eyes to silver. Of course, the three mocking Dommes were one mocking Dom back then; but the biggest difference was that in my old fantasy, the girl was faking her brainwashing with the help of the doctor (also just pretending to be brainwashed) and some Bene Gesserit-like body-control techniques. Do you sense that I was a bit conflicted over my fetish back then? Well, I think I've got that sorted out now. ;-)

And so on to the ending....I bet you were expecting something a little darker from me, eh? In fact, I actually counted on it to heighten the drama. Hey, if I wasn't notorious for nasty endings, you might never have had any doubts about whether or not Karen would get her Domme. I do hope, though, that I played up the mystery enough to keep new readers guessing. Anyway, as I've said before on the EMCSA and elsewhere, I do have my 'mantic side; and I felt such strong emotion for the olive-skinned girl from my dream that I couldn't have ended my story any other way.

Don't get too used to the nice thrall, though. My Muse hands me a semi-traditional happy ending every once in awhile, but Her gifts are much more likely to come bound in black.