R.I.P. H.R. Giger

H.R. Giger died earlier this week, after a fall. This is my memorial to an artist among artists. Rest in peace, Sir.

                   

first of two posts this weekend

Sometime on Sunday I plan to make a post about "Found MC" - a fascinating scene from semi-classic literature that I somehow never connected with MC before. Maybe you haven't, either, but I hope you'll enjoy.

It will take a little while to type up the whole scene, so in the meantime I'll share the Facebook page I've just begun. I'll be happy to accept friend requests from anyone who doesn't strike me as an out-and-out lunatic. I don't have much content yet except for a metric ass-ton of fetish art by Luis Royo, Hajime Sorayama, H.R. Giger, Boris Vallejo and others; but I think that will more than satisfy you. ;-) Have a look.

Freaky sex with a side of MC

...and some body-horror, for those of you like me who enjoy that sort of thing. I might or might not have had this scene subconsciously in mind when I wrote Hoarder.

This story, though, is American Gods, which I'm currently rereading. As I was enjoying the scene below, it struck me how perfectly appropriate it is for this blog.

If you haven't read the novel, all you need to know is that in modern America, the ancient gods of the Old World are near-powerless because they're deprived of worship. They make ends meet in different ways as determined by their temperaments. Bilquis turns  tricks.

All ellipses below are in the original text. I'm not leaving anything out.

Now buckle your seatbelts and enjoy....



He unbuttons his blue jeans and removes his olive T-shirt. She massages his white shoulders with her brown fingers; then she turns him over and begins to make love to him with her hands, and her fingers, and her tongue.

It seems to him that the lights in the red room have been dimmed, and the sole illumination comes from the candle, which burns with a bright flame.

"What's your name?" he asks her.

"Bilquis," she tells him, raising her head. "With a Q."

"A what?"

"Never mind."

He is gasping now. "Let me fuck you," he says. "I have to fuck you."

"Okay, hon," she says. "We'll do it. But will you do something for me, while you're doing it?"

"Hey," he says, suddenly tetchy. "I'm paying you, you know."

She straddles him, in one smooth movement, whispering, "I know, honey. I know, you're paying me, and I mean, look at you. I should be paying you, I'm so lucky..."

He purses his lips, trying to show that her hooker talk is having no effect on him, he can't be taken; that she's a street whore, for Chrissakes, while he's practically a producer, and he knows all about last-minute ripoffs, but she doesn't ask for money. Instead she says, "Honey, while you're giving it to me, while you're pushing that big hard thing inside of me, will you worship me?"

"Will I what?"

She is rocking back and forth on him: the engorged head of his penis is being rubbed against the wet lips of her vulva.

"Will you call me goddess? Will you pray to me? Will you worship me with your body?"

He smiles. Its that all she wants? We've all got our kinks, at the end of the day. "Sure," he says. She reaches her hand between her legs and slips him inside her.

"Is that good, is it, goddess?" he asks, gasping.

"Worship me, honey," says Bilquis, the hooker.

"Yes," he says, "I worship your breasts and your hair and your cunt. I worship your thighs and your eyes and your cherry-red lips..."

"Yes..." she croons, riding him.

"I worship your nipples, from which the milk of life flows. Your kiss is honey and your touch scorches like fire, and I worship it." His words are becoming more rhythmic now, keeping pace with the thrust and roll of their bodies. "Bring me your lust in the morning, and bring me relief and your blessing in the evening. Let me walk in dark places unharmed and let me come to you once more and sleep beside you and make love with you again. I worship you with everything that is within me, and everything inside my mind, with everywhere I've been and my dreams and my..." he breaks off, panting for breath. "What are you doing? That feels amazing. So amazing..." and he looks down at his hips, at the place where the two of them conjoin, but her forefinger touches his chin and pushes his head back, so he is looking only at her face and at the ceiling once again.

"Keep talking, honey," she says. "Don't stop. Doesn't it feel good?"

"It feels better than anything has ever felt," he tells her, meaning it as he says it. "Your eyes are stars, burning in the, shit, the firmament, and your lips are gentle waves that lick the sand, and I worship them," and now he's thrusting deeper and deeper insider her; he feels electric, as if his whole lower body has become sexually charged: priapic, engorged, blissful.

"Bring me your gift," he mutters, no longer knowing what he is saying, "your one true gift, and make me always this...always so...I pray...I..."

And then the pleasure crests into orgasm, blasting his mind into void, his head and self and entire being a perfect blank as he thrusts deeper into her and deeper still...

Eyes closed, spasming, he luxuriates in the moment; and then he feels a lurch, and it seems to him that he is hanging, head down, although the pleasure continues.

He opens his eyes.

He thinks, grasping for thought and reason again, of birth, and wonders, without fear, in a moment of perfect postcoital clarity, whether what he sees is some kind of illusion.

This is what he sees:

He is inside her to the chest, and as he stares at this in disbelief and wonder she rests both hands upon his shoulders and puts gentle pressure on his body.

He slipslides further insider her.

"How are you doing this to me?" he asks, or he thinks he asks, but perhaps it is only in his head.

"You're doing it, honey," she whispers. He feels the lips of her vulva, tight around his upper chest and back, constricting and enveloping him. He wonders what this would look like to somebody watching them. He wonders why he is not scared. And then he knows.

"I worship you with my body," he whispers, as she pushes him inside her. Her labia pull slickly across his face, and his eyes slip into darkness.

She stretches on the bed, like a huge cat, and then she yawns. "Yes," she says. "You do."



*The image above, of course, is by H. R. Giger.

Paging Dr. Freud. Dr. Freud, please report to the Prometheus medical bay immediately.

This isn't a review of Prometheus (though, for the record, I liked it). In fact, I'll do my best to avoid spoilers in this post, so feel free to read on if you haven't seen the movie yet but plan to do so.

What I want to blog about today is the movie's concept art and makeup. You probably know that H.R. Giger was the driving force behind the look of the original Alien. As far as I know, he didn't have any direct input in Prometheus, but his indirect influence flows everywhere like kinky black slime. Just look at the images below. I picked these mostly for their Freudian squick and Lovecraftian overtones, except for the last two. Those, I threw in because they look like excellent brainwashing pods.

The artwork here is by Ivan Manzella. If you choose to repost these images, please be sure to give him credit for them.

I gathered these images from three different sources: this Concept Art World page, this io9 page, and this io9 page. If you like what you see below, just follow the links for more - but beware of mild spoilers.

My own early (unknowning) attempts at Giger

Hunting for and posting Giger pics made me think about some of my own old artwork, which was usually science fiction-ish - and a hell of a lot kinkier than I realized at the time. I was somewhere around 10 or 11 when I drew the pics in this post: old enough to know the facts of life, but not old enough to have much conscious interest in them. My unconscious, on the other hand...well, see for yourself!

I still remember showing this first drawing to a child psychologist whom I was seeing in the wake of my parents' divorce. He said he saw a lot of sexual imagery in there, like fallopian tubes in the alien's antennae and a vagina in the middle of its chest; but I just pooh-poohed him. These days, I still dispute the fallopian tube analysis, but only because the antennae look more like open legs to me. I guess the alien can't spread her lower extremities, so she's spreading her mind instead. And after all, isn't that the story of my life? ;-P Strangely enough, though, even at that age, I had the idea that while the alien was friendly, whomever she was offering her fruit to might not understand.

Now let me share a few more pictures from that same time period - not because I think they're great art, but just to show you what my subconscious mind was getting up to while my consciousness was looking the other way. You might recognize the fish-eating seaweed on the left as an early inspiration for the lake monster in Union, Reunion. As for the woman on the right, well, what can I say? ;-P

These are a few of my favorite things: H.R. Giger, Part II of II

And now I'm back again for the second half of the H.R. Giger post I started this morning. If you somehow managed to miss that entry, just scroll down a tiny bit. I started uploading Giger images this morning, but Blogger was misbehaving and I had to quit and go to work. Fortunately, the pipeline seems to be flowing more smoothly now....Sorry, no, that wasn't meant to be a pun. But hey, it works! And anyway, here are the rest of the images I wanted to share with you.

I'm throwing in this last picture just to mess with your head. Did you know H. R. Giger did some illustrations based on The Lord of the Rings? I certainly didn't, not until I started investigating those links I mentioned in my earlier post. Yep, there are several Giger pictures titled Mordor, and then there's this (and one other, much less interesting) painting titled, simply, The Lord of the Rings. I shudder to think what, in LotR, could possibly have inspired Giger to paint this. Hopefully Professor Tolkien never had to see this painting before he died, because it would surely have sent him to his death - and kept him from ever resting in peace!

But if you really want to give yourself a mind trip, think about this. Giger is famous, in part, as the concept artist behind Alien. He's also known to some as the would-be concept artist of an early, aborted effort at a Dune movie. So now ask yourself, what would the LotR movies look like, if he'd designed them?

These are a few of my favorite things: H.R. Giger, Part I of II

I'm a little late with this week's mid-week post because I've just been having so much fun collecting Giger pictures that I couldn't stop long enough to write about them.

I assume all - or at least most - of you are already familiar with German superfreak H.R. Giger, the concept artist behind Alien, an early aborted version of Dune, a number of Necronomicons, and a bunch of other creepy/sexy fetish paintings and sculptures scattered from one end of the Internet to the other. But just in case you're not familiar with him, or in case you just want to know more (and get a good laugh at the same time), allow me to point you toward this Cracked article.

I've been collecting Giger art for quite awhile but haven't thought of blogging about him - I guess because I kind of take him for granted. After all, he's as much apart of the cyber-fetish scene as Sorayama, isn't he? Fortunately, I stumbled across a few great Giger sites this week, and those led me to a few more sites; so before you know it, I was off on one of my typical OCD image chases. Results below.

For anyone who wants to follow in my footsteps, here are the best places I've found for high-quality Giger scans. This site has the biggest, clearest images, but it's a little limited in scope. This site has more images, but they're not always the best quality. This site has the most complete collection - and also features art by some other artists I've featured on my blog: Luis Royo, Boris Vallejo, and Julie Bell.

And now, on with the show. As the Cracked article so humorously points out, a hell of a lot of Giger art is about dicks. But a lot of it's about vulvas, too. The part that interests me most, though, is the intersection between human and cyborg, human and inhuman. To me, a lot of these images suggest seduction and/or mind control by supernatural or mechanical means. Those are the images that really push my buttons - and, I hope yours.

And now, unfortunately, I'm going to have to sign off for a little while and go to work. Blogger is misbehaving and refusing to upload the rest of the images I have planned, so I'll try again this evening or tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for the rest!

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. ;-)