Two kinds of gorgeous

First, let me remind you that photographer LXXT has a gallery on Deviant Art that mostly features Princess Fatale and occasionally includes some of her playmates. It's updated frequently, so be sure to follow it or at least bookmark it. Here are some of the best pictures from recent weeks.

And now for something completely different. A few days ago I ran across an article on io9 called The Most Jaw-Droppingly Beautiful Cliff Top Hotels Ever Built. Now, I always like to look at beautiful architecture, but I'm not in the habit of sharing it on my blog (Facebook is a different matter; you get a fuller view of my interests there than you do here), but this pertains to the topic at hand. As I was writing What Do You Give the Alien Who Has Everything?, I had pictures in my head of how the Imperators' compound should look, but I never found any real pictures to convey the scale and beauty of it. Then I ran across this article.

The first picture, in particular, is almost completely true to my vision (All it lacks are the colonnades). The last one really isn't very true to my vision at all, but it's just so gorgeous that I had to include it anyway. And everything in between will at least give you a better idea of what was in my head as I was writing.

Some excellent mainstream mind control

art by Jeremy Zerfoss

Have you heard of Annihilation? The book, I mean, not the concept. It's the first in a trilogy (all coming out this year, thank goodness - I don't want to have to wait) by Jeff VanderMeer. I haven't read anything else by him yet, but I've heard great things about him and plan to read more soon - including the second and third books in this series. Annihilation has me totally hooked.

I won't try to give you a "reviewer's review" because I know you're here for the mind control, so let me give you a synopsis with enough spoilers to pique an EMC fetishist's interest.

First, imagine H.P. Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith living today, in or near Florida. He's writing a fantasy/horror novel set in his neck of the woods - only it's not quite his neck of the woods, because in his story it's been invaded by, um, something from what might be another dimension. The Southern Reach, a mysterious organization that keeps sending expeditions into this place, calls it Area X. Half the people who go into it vanish or die, and the ones who make it out sometimes aren't quite themselves afterwards. And yet people keep going in.

Annihilation is concerned with the twelfth expedition. This time the Southern Reach has chosen four women identified only by their roles: the biologist, the psychologist, and two others (I'll bet you can already guess it's the psychologist who practices mind control, right?). The biologist is the narrator, and since she doesn't know why the Southern Reach picked an all-female team this go-around, we don't know either. It doesn't seem to matter much from a plot standpoint, although it did make me think of Tabico's Blue - and not just because of the gender makeup of the team.

Almost as soon as they hit base camp, the researchers discover a stone tunnel with a spiral staircase that leads down to some unknowable depth below the surface (Notice the spiral. If you read the book, notice all the spirals). When the team explores it, the biologist is quickly infected by some sort of alien spores (Yeah, it's that kind of book. Are you excited yet?) that render her immune to the psychologist's hypnosis. All four of them already knew the psychologist had used hypnosis to keep them calm while crossing the border into Area X, but the biologist is the first to realize how deep their team leader has sunk her claws into them.

As a matter of fact, the control the psychologist exerts over the others is far beyond anything a real-life hypnotist could accomplish. It makes me wonder whether VanderMeer is taking creative license or whether the Southern Reach employs some actual technological and/or supernatural method of mind control, maybe something they picked up in Area X and kept to themselves. It's possible. Like I said, this is just the first book in a trilogy; a lot remains unexplained at the end.

Anyway, the Southern Reach knows a lot more about Area X than it lets on. Take the scene below, where the biologist pretends to be hypnotized along with the others so she can see what the psychologist is up to. You won't understand all of what happens here, but you're not supposed to. Not this early in the story. Just ask yourself why the psychologist has to command her team to keep seeing the structure as if it's made of shell and stone. If it's not made of shell and stone, then what is it really made of? Why don't they see it as it really is right from the beginning? And why doesn't the psychologist want them to see it as it really is?

If you're intrigued by the quote below, you can read the whole first chapter of the book over on io9.

---

Then she abruptly stood and said three words: "Consolidation of authority."

Immediately the surveyor and the anthropologist beside me went slack, their eyes unfocused. I was shocked, but I mimicked them, hoping that the psychologist had not noticed the lag. I felt no compulsion whatsoever, but clearly we had been preprogrammed to enter a hypnotic state in response to those words, uttered by the psychologist.

Her demeanor more assertive than just a moment before, the psychologist said, "You will retain a memory of having discussed several options with regard to the tunnel. You will find that you ultimately agreed with me about the best course of action, and that you felt quite confident about this course of action. You will experience a sensation of calm whenever you think about this decision, and you will remain calm once back inside the tunnel, although you will react to any stimuli as per your training. You will not take undue risks.

"You will continue to see a structure that is made of coquina and stone. You will trust your colleagues completely and feel a continued sense of fellowship with them. When you emerge from the structure, any time you see a bird in flight it will trigger a strong feeling that you are doing the right thing, that you are in the right place. When I snap my fingers, you will have no memory of this conversation, but will follow my directives. You will feel very tired and you will want to retire to your tents to get a good night's sleep before tomorrow's activities. You will not dream. You will not have nightmares."

I stared straight ahead as she said these words, and when she snapped her fingers I took my cue from the actions of the other two. I don't believe the psychologist suspected anything, and I retired to my tent just as the others retired to their tents.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape on Sleepwalkers, Chapter 9

I was probably just as relieved as you were when Shara when came back to life. After all, I built my original fantasy around her. She's a completely different person in this version of the story, but that doesn't make her any less important to me. I hated killing her. I just felt like I had to do it.

Here's how the decision came about.

Almost exactly a year ago, Callidus and his wife came to visit me. I hadn't yet begun to write Sleepwalkers, but I was pretty far along in the brainstorming. My main dilemma, at that point, was figuring out what to do with Shara. I knew that Paul would be wracked by guilt because he'd imprinted her, and that when Shara Awoke she'd forgive him; but it couldn't be that easy. Callidus was the first to realize Shara had to feel guilt of her own. Justice is her driving force, and she's done some horribly unjust things (not least to Wizard). Now she'll have a chance to try and make them right.

I probably already knew, when I met Callidus in person, that Shara would guess Paul was Awake; but I didn't know how she would confront him. That came much later. I bounced a lot of ideas off Callidus via email, and gradually I homed in on the idea of her testing Paul's loyalty by making him kill her. It was such a shocking idea, and such an impossible thing for him to do if he were Awake, that I knew it would work perfectly. I just had to figure out how to revive Shara afterwards. I toyed with the idea of faking her death; but in the end I decided, just as she and Hawthorne did, that the test wouldn't prove anything unless it demonstrably killed her (BTW, this is a good place to clarify that Shara didn't expect to be revived). But since she had to come back to life afterwards, that let out a gory death. Thus I settled on a lethal injection. Paul's test of the ingredients proved to him, and to my readers, that it really worked. But then (You see what a complicated thought process this was?) I had to figure out how Shara could be revived after the lethal injection. The magic ingredient in the saline is what the fine folks over on io9 call "handwavium."

So anyway, Shara's alive, Awake, and in a better position than anyone else to bring down Hawthorne. That's not to say she'll succeed, or whether anyone else will come along for the attempt. But at least you get to see the real Shara again after a long, dark stretch with her evil twin.

Robot and doll fetishists, right this way

Thanks to Slyspeaker for the videos below. He found them in an article on io9 about post-apocalyptic K-pop. The other videos on the page are also worth checking out, but these two were my favorites. Slyspeaker said the first one reminded him of Willing Subject. I can see that, but what it mainly reminded me of was A Tenpack of Trixies - in fact, it reminded me so strongly of my story that I could half believe the video directors read it.

The second video isn't as fetishy as the first, not once you get past the incredible introduction, but I do love the silver foil suits. They're like what the costume designers of classic Star Trek wished they'd come up with for The Gamesters of Triskelion.

I want more. Why isn't there more?

I just found the image below on io9. Sadly, there doesn't appear to be much of a story behind it, although there should be. If anyone has the mojo to dominate Slave Leia, it's Uhura.

Following the links at the bottom of the io9 post led me eventually to a post on Facebook saying the picture was taken for a really stupid-looking schlock site - which, yes, I visited just in case there was more. There wasn't. But, desperate to find at least a higher-resolution version of this image, I did a Google Image Search and came up with this nice big version, from Deviant Art.

Enjoy - and if anyone out there finds an even larger version or, better yet, more pictures from this set, you will earn many, many karma points.

eye candy

Last week I found a teaser trailer on io9 for a short film that will apparently be turned into a movie. The teaser looked so interesting that I hunted down the whole short film on YouTube and decided to post it here. I can't say much about the plot because there isn't much of a plot, but damn if this isn't great fetish fuel. You'll see cyborg clones emerging from pods with glowing eyes and full, gorgeous, skin-tight battle armor - then, yes, battling one another. I won't pretend there's much logic behind their fighting, but it has that Maxtrix-y wire-fu look that never gets old, so that's all right. ;-) If this thing really becomes a movie, maybe this short film will be the opening scene and the rest of the plot will make more sense.

Anyway, enjoy.

Everything you need to know to write an EMC story with sexual imprinting is right here

I found this on io9 a few days ago and saved it up for my weekend post:

Musings on boobs

I just found this astonishing ad on io9 and felt like I had to share. Too bad the video won't embed, but trust me: it's worth your time to click on over and have a look.

Technically, this is an infomercial for the latest variation on the old "magic bra" formula. I don't speak Chinese, but I'm pretty sure the ad promises to grow your boobs to at least twice their usual size. But wait - there's more! The sound effects are hilarious, the models' pre-enhancement pouts are adorable in a sad-kitten sort of way, and that woman in the violet dress just can't seem to stop feeling everyone up.

As for the product, I'm extremely dubious, but I give the designers credit for making it sexy enough that you'd want to wear it even if it didn't grow your boobs...which it almost certainly wouldn't.

Watching this video made me think about my own quest to find the perfect bra. I'm sure at least half of you out there will relate. You and I both know you can't just go into a store with a lingerie department, grab something in your size, and buy it. No, you have to try it on, adjust this and that, try your blouse on over it, and finally toss it in a corner of the dressing room and go look for something else because this one just won't work no matter what you do with it. Then you do it all again until you find something that actually works on your body. Then, good luck finding more than one of it in your size - or finding one again the next time you need to buy a bra. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

My own boob-related challenge isn't the sad-Chinese-kitten problem, but rather the Queen-Latifah-in-Chicago problem. Ever since I saw I saw her in this outfit, I've been obsessed with her undergarments. My figure is pretty similar to hers, but I've  never been able to make my tits stand up like hers without grabbing them in both hands and just mashing them together. What kind of foundation garments did the costumers use on her here? Did it involve any duct tape? I'm pretty sure I'd need duct tape, to make my boobs do that.

Anyway, that's why I'm doubly fascinated by this Chinese super-bra commercial. If it did work, I'd buy one just to improve my cleavage.

Robophiles, rejoice

I had intended to blog about something else today, but as is often the case, io9 stepped in with something so mind-bogglingly appropriate that I set the other idea aside.

There's nothing subtle about the video below, nothing implied. It's all right out there on crystal-clear display. So, robophiles, start your downloading engines. You're going to want to keep this one!

Context-free follies

First, remember that I don't have cable and never watch TV. Now, remember that I regularly read io9. Finally, realize that due to my insatiable curiosity, I tend to read articles about shows I've never seen and never plan to see.

So...take a look at this clip from a new cable TV show called American Horror Story. If you've seen the show itself, or if you know more about the plot than I do, just pretend you haven't/don't. Now watch this video and write your own plot. Niiiiice, right? ;-)

Sweet robot lovin'

I was going to write about my superheroine-gets-MC'ed dream from last night, but then I ran across this entry on io9. It's even better. Cyriaque Lamar has taken the time to catalog 15 robot-love videos of varying awesomeness, and the commenters below the post have added several more.

Right at the top of the page is that gorgeous Bjork video I blogged about once before, so I won't repost it here. There's also a video of Dana Scully (a.k.a. Gillian Anderson, and don't bother telling me it's really the other way around ;-P) chanting about dirty deeds with an automaton. But this is the one I liked the best, aside from Bjork's. It would not surprise me a bit to find out Janelle Monáe has read A Tenpack of Trixies.

Enjoy!

Lovecraftian musings...and art

Recently the students at the Rhode Island School of Design were issued a challenge, to illustrate some of H.P. Lovecraft's scariest scenes and monsters. At left is what I consider to be the best of their efforts, a Shoggoth painted by Craig J. Spearing that IMO is just begging to become a book cover. But there are lots of other goodies at this website, which it's only fair to say I found through io9. Dagon looks pretty awesome, too; as does a creature I feel sure the judge misidentified when he guessed it was a ghast (IMO, it's clearly a denizen of Innsmouth).

Anyway, looking at these images makes me think of the difficulty in turning creatures this squicky into subjects of mind control erotica. You can go the route Tabico and I did in The Icky-Squicky Spider, intentionally using the horror to illustrate the depth of the MC; or you can go the route I tried in Octopus Vulgaris, trying to find something beautiful amidst the squick. I doubt Lovecraft ever found anything beautiful in his creatures, and I have no idea if I succeeded or not. But I do know it's easier to make these things beautiful with words rather than images. Some of the student art I linked to above is funny, but the only one I'd call beautiful (Chun Lo's Dhole) looks more like something from an SF novel than anything from Lovecraft's mythology.

No, let's face it: if you ever saw one of Lovecraft's monstrosities in real life, it would be squicky, not beautiful at all. That's part of what I hinted at in Union, Reunion, when Allie has a moment, after submitting to the lake monster, where's she's hurting and horrified and thinks, "It's not supposed to be like this." That bit actually came from a dream of mine: a dream in which I submitted to a Lovecraftian monster and it was cold and slimy and painful, not pleasurable at all. The pleasure only came after I was "converted," which brings me back to the motivation of "The Icky-Squicky Spider."

I don't know; maybe you have to turn to Clark Ashton Smith if you want beautiful MC-monsters. I still recommend The Maze of Maal-Dweb, for all its overwrought prose. In fact, I recommend almost anything by Smith - and you can find it online at The Eldritch Dark.

But this was meant to be a post about Lovecraft, so I guess I've strayed a bit. I hope you don't mind. ;-) And I hope some of you will respond to these musings. Do you find anything beautiful, anything erotic, in any of Lovecraft's monstrosities? Do you have to reconfigure them in your mind, in order to do so? Or do you just separate your horror from your erotica entirely?

If Cthulhu had a vibrator

Nay, foolish mortal, tell me not that this is actually a father-daughter science project. You must believe me: it's Cthulhu's rabbit, and the Old Ones are upon us in far more literal fashion than Lovecraft ever imagined!

just noodling around

I have plenty of other, more important things I could be doing right now; but when I found this interesting image of a sunspot on io9, I got...heh...inspired. So here you go.




Oh, and for the record, I really don't recommend doing a Google Image Search on the word eye all by itself. Yeah, you'll find some cool images, but you'll also some a few things that shouldn't be viewed on a full stomach. Just sayin.'

This guy *gets* it

If any of you out there aren't completely hooked on io9 yet, well, why the hell not? It's got everything a fan of SF, fantasy, squick, and/or SF/fantasy/squick-related porn could ever want.

Here's my latest find: an artist by the name of John Coulthart who comes closer than anyone else I've ever seen to picturing the unpicturable: H.P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. That's Cthulhu at left. Directly below, in order, are Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Wilber Whateley. Finally (for this blog, anyway; you'll find lots more artwork on Coulthart's website), beneath them, is R'lyeh.

I'm not entirely sure what's going on here, but I like it

I found artist Kiriko Moth by following a link from io9. Her blog isn't very big yet, but I like what I see so far.


Stay tuned for a Peek Beneath the Duct Tape on one or possibly two of my older stories, later this weekend.

The worst use of latex I've ever seen

According to io9, this is a test shot of Nicolas Cage in the proposed Tim-Burton-directed Superman film that (thankfully) never happened. This image will now haunt my dreams for years to come.

Fortunately, the second and third images in the gallery (just costume designer sketches, nothing involving Mister Shouty) almost make up for it.

I find myself worryingly aroused

And this image is just a tease; wait'll you see Pocahontas, or Mulan, or Sleeping Beauty, or (sweet fetish heaven!) Alice and Snow White!

Click here! Ohh, please click here!

This one's so weird I can't even think of a snappy title for the post

io9 has an explanation, sort of; but honestly, I think the clip below is best appreciated with absolutely no context whatsoever:

So...about last night

As promised, here's your follow-up post on my latest experiment with Virtual Hypnotist. But first, let me explain why last night turned out not to be the best night for testing a new iteration of my Bedtime session.

Much as I tried to avoid it, I was finally roped into watching that horrible not-a-real-vampire-movie-dammit Twilight, thanks to my beloved. *sigh* The things we do for love. Fortunately, she got bored with it almost as quickly as I did, and we only ended up watching about the first two thirds and then the conclusion. But I did find one moment of humor early on, when Bella told Edward that she didn't like cold, wet things and he laughed uncomfortably. I know he wasn't really thinking of this, but it was fun to imagine that he was. ;-P

Anyway, between turning in much later than usual and having a head full of sparkly faux vampires, I wasn't in the best frame of mind to reach new levels of brainless bliss. I tried again with the morning session not too long ago, and I didn't go as deep as I did yesterday (I'd love for someone to explain the factors that influence how deep you go on different days - any takers?), but I still had a very nice time. And in between last night and this morning, I came up with several tweaks to get more out of the new ideas. I'm still planning to post a new version of the Bedtime session on my Ono Udont page somewhere down the line, so stay tuned.

Oh, and one other thing: I'm back to writing "Union, Reunion" again and have some great scenes in mind.