MC in unexpected places

We'll take it wherever we can find it, right? And I found a very nice tidbit of MC in Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies. Most of you are probably familiar with the Discworld series already, so I won't bother describing it except to note that the books are mostly humorous but have serious undertones.

Lords and Ladies is one of the more serious books in the series; and the scenes I'm about to quote are pretty chilling, I think, despite a touch of jokiness. You don't need to know much of the plot before you dig in, just this: The bad guys in the book are Elves, Diamanda was shot by one of them and is now in their power, she's upstairs in a castle with a captive Elf in the dungeons, Shawn is a castle guard trying to learn martial arts from a bogus book, and Elves are allergic to iron. Now here we go, combining the best bits of two scenes into one:

In the darkness of her sickroom Diamanda opened her eyes, if they were her eyes. There was a pearly sheen to them.

The song was as yet only on the threshold of hearing.

And the world was different. A small part of her mind was still Diamanda, and looked out through the mists of enchantment. The world was a pattern of fine silver lines, constantly moving, as though everything was coated with filigree. Except where there was iron. There the lines were crushed and tight and bent. There, the whole world was invisible. Iron distorted the world. Keep away from iron.

She slipped out of bed, using the edge of her blanket to grasp the door handle, and opened the door.

.....

Shawn peered around the corner. There were the steps, there was the open doorway to the dungeons.

"Stop!" shouted Shawn, just in case.

The sound echoed off the stones.

"Stop! Or...or...or...Stop!"

He eased his way down the steps and looked through the archway.

"I warn you! I'm learning the Path of the Happy Jade Lotus!"

There was the door to the cell, standing ajar. And a white-clad figure next to it.

Shawn blinked.

"Aren't you Miss Tockley?"

She smiled at him. Her eyes glowed in the dim light.

"You're wearing chain mail, Shawn," she said.

"What, miss?" He glanced at the open door again.

"That's terrible. You must take it off, Shawn. How can you hear with all that stuff around your ears?"

Shawn was aware of the empty space behind him. But he daren't look around.

"I can hear fine, miss," he said, trying to ease himself around so that his back was against a wall.

"But you can't hear truly," said Diamanda, drifting forward. "The iron makes you deaf."

Shawn was not used to thinly clad young women approaching him with a dreamy look on their faces. He fervently wished he could take the Path of the Retreating Back.

He glanced sideways. There was a tall skinny shape outlined in the open cell doorway. It was standing very carefully, as if it wanted to keep as far away from its surroundings as possible.

Diamanda was smiling at him in a funny way.

He ran.

*The picture at the top of this post is a cover design for Lords and Ladies, minus the lettering. The artist is Josh Kirby.

Things on my mind

Well, I've started writing again, sporadically. I'm working on one of the three stories I mentioned in my last post, but I won't say which one just yet. After all, I have three ideas in my head; it's possible I could switch over to one of the others and get it finished first.

Anyway, the picture at left has inspired a portion of the story I'm working on now. I found it here, along with plenty of other goodies for fans of robots, altered eyes, etc. In fact, you'll even find a few shots from another post I made once upon a time.

Giving credit where credit is due, the bodypainting and prosthetics are by a design team called Kimatica.This is not the same Kimatica you can elsewhere on the net, so don't go to YouTube expecting a bunch of fetishy videos. Sorry. ;-)

tantalizing

One day soon, I really have to get back into my writing. I have three stories on the mental burners now, and the only one I've even started is that sequel to "A Tenpack of Trixies" I hinted about before. Maybe blogging about them will get me going. So, let's see. What can I tell you?

Well, I don't want to say much of anything about the third story because I think it's an original idea and I don't want anyone to steal it before I've used it. ;-) So let's just say it will be semi-humorous and will involve aliens.

As for the second story, if you've read my Peek Beneath the Duct Tape on "Mirrored in Your Eyes", you might remember hints about one of my earliest MC fantasies. Well, the conversion scene I adapted for "Mirrored" was only one part of that fantasy. I actually had plans for a novel, but that was when I was too young to know much about copyright laws. No matter how hard I tried, I don't think I could have disguised Bene Gesserit techniques enough to avoid a lawsuit. ;-/

Fortunately, I've found a new way to tell this story without using anything at all from Dune. I'm going to focus on a different character, one who doesn't necessarily need BG-like techniques, although he had them in the original version - in which I'd actually named him "Paul," silly me. I'll have to change that for the EMCSA version. The MC'er in my old fantasy was male, but I'll also be changing that; so this will be mostly a green story. That will allow for a lot more sex than my prepubescent brain could have imagined. It'll make the story less cruel, too.

Actually, that's one of the things holding me back right now. The Tenpack stories really are cruel, and I'm just not in that kind of headspace these days. I started writing that sequel and it just made me uncomfortable. I couldn't enjoy it. Of course, I will write it, in the end. It'll just be different than I originally planned - not much, but a bit. I can dial the cruelty down a few notches without losing the essence of that storyverse.

But first, I want to write something...warmer. I'm not sure whether it will be the alien story or the not-Paul one, but keep your eyes peeled.

I. Want. It.

I'll bet some of you got your first thrill the moment you saw the title of this post. That's because some of you saw the movie Looker when you were kids; and if you were a budding MC fetishist in the '70's and '80's, Looker is a hidden gem you probably found well before today.

I remember when the movie first came out in 1981. The trailer was all over the place, and I was excited because it certainly implied some MC. Unfortunately, the hints in the trailer were pretty vague and made the MC look secondary to the central plot, which was something to do with models and murders. Funny how I didn't even remember that part until I looked it up on YouTube just now. ;-)

I had to fantasize about Looker for quite awhile before I got to see it; and by then it could never have lived up to my expectations. Not that it would have anyway. The movie is mainly a murder mystery, and no one exactly gets turned into a robot...not exactly. Still, there is a bit of time-stop MC - and a bit more of "Look into my eyes" MC. That's the part that makes me squirm about Looker even to this day. If you didn't get the title of my post before, you certainly will after you watch this clip.

Oh, and one other thing: Yes, that is Laurie Partridge. You're welcome.

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? ;-)

The Cinderella Method

I had an interesting dream last night. It didn't involve any MC, but it was weird enough and hot enough that I thought I'd share it here.

I dreamed I was back in college, living in a dorm, and some of the girls on my hall were playing a sex game they called "The Cinderella Method." The idea was to start at 11:30 PM with one girl orally stimulating the other girl, but try to prolong the pleasure until the stroke of midnight, at which point the other girl was supposed to come. In my dream, two pairs of girls were playing The Cinderella Method in one bed, while several other girls stood around watching them and cheering them on.

Rediscovered by accident

As I was browsing YouTube just now, I stumbled across some footage from an old '70's horror movie that scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Even if you're in the same age range as me, you might not remember Let's Scare Jessica to Death; it was pretty obscure in its time. But judging by the comments on YouTube, I'm not the only one who had nightmares after watching it.

I really don't remember the plot now, but the clips indicate it had a lot of vampire MC and lesbian undertones - the last of which would have gone over my head when I was a kid, though they're more than obvious now.

Anyway, if you like what you see here, click on over to YouTube for more from Let's Scare Jessica to Death and a bunch of other '70's horror films that will drag you happily back to your childhood.