How could I possibly keep this to myself?

A friend just posted this on another board, and quite naturally, I had to share it with all of you here. Immediately. :-)

He seems to have found it on this site, which is a sort of I Can Has Cheezburger for the H.P. Lovecraft crowd - and which, interestingly enough, contains a few repurposed Beksinski pictures.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: My Very Own Serial Number

Trying to explain how how I came up with My Very Own Serial Number is a bit like trying to answer that famous old "chicken or egg" question.

On the one hand, there was the recent Saturday morning when I lay half-asleep in bed, toying with ideas for MC stories and eventually coming up with the two images I first posted here.

As you can see from reading MVOSN, I did end up using both those images in my story. I didn't, however, find any place to plug in the extra scene I hinted about. That Saturday morning, I envisioned my protagonist coming upon an encampment of resistance fighters in the woods, during the final days of conflict, and seducing some hapless young guy with a display of flickering eyes and skin patterns. Oh, well. I think focusing on Duncan in the final two chapters made for a much hotter, scarier story, and I hope you feel the same.

By the way, Duncan is one of the two characters I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, who were meant to be throwaways but ended up becoming central to the story. The other, in case you haven't guessed, was 2520. All in all, the writing process for MVOSN was much more loosey-goosey than usual for me. I started with only a rough idea of where I wanted to go, and I did go exactly where I wanted. But I made up a lot of what happened in between the first and last scenes as I went along.

And thus we come to the "egg" half of this Peek Beneath the Duct Tape. Once I realized MVOSN was going to be a long, detailed story instead of the quick one-off I'd originally planned, I turned to an old MC fantasy from my teen years to help flesh out the details.

Now, I went to a small, conservative private high school in the Bible Belt. It had all the usual cliques of popular kids, all the usual propaganda fests disguised as pep rallies, and (thanks to a double assload of written and unwritten rules) a far larger than usual supply of conformity.

But as you can imagine, I never quite managed to conform. Oh, I tried; after all, I was the the good little girl, back then. But I had the wrong clothes, the wrong background, the wrong tastes (Heh, little did I know just how wrong!), the wrong everything to ever fit in at that school. Still, watching those popular kids and sitting in on those Naz- whoops! - pep rallies did give me plenty of fantasy fodder.

It occurred to me, even as a teen, that you could use the whole peer pressure/conformity thing to brainwash an entire generation. You'd start by suborning the world's best researchers, to get them preaching that conformity is actually a good thing. Then you take over the military, both for the muscle power and to keep them from spoiling your plans. Fortunately, with the fighting forces so gung-ho about conformity and obedience already, it's simple enough to get them started on your "performance enhancing" drugs. They'll do whatever their commanding officers tell them to do, and you'll have gotten to their commanding officers first.

And then, ohhh then, you can go after the teens. Most of them are just dying to be popular and/or kewl already - or failing that, at least to be accepted. So you start by secretly brainwashing the popular kids, getting them to talk in monotone and adopt the latest in robo-fashion (Yes, the bodysuits and contact lenses were a part of this fantasy even then, though you won't be surprised to hear that the lenses I originally had in mind were mirrored). Then you get the teachers and administrative staff on your zombified team. Finally, you hold a pep rally where aaaaall the kids are invited to join the popular crowd. They just have to file down front and drink the magic Kool-aid. Oh, and if a few nonconformists sneak out the back door, no problem: there's a platoon of polite-but-firm soldiers out there waiting for them.

Of course, it goes without saying that the kids would then march home and doctor their parents' drinks. After all, my fantasies were never limited to just my own high school or even my whole town or state. It always about taking over the world, baby! Muaaahahahaha!

And here you thought I was just a submissive little thrall. ;-P


P.S.: If you think MVOSN pokes fun at certain churches, pseudo-churches, and extremist ideologies on both sides of the political spectrum, you're absolutely right.

your final sneak peek at "My Very Own Serial Number"

Here it is, folks, the first half of the final chapter of "My Very Own Serial Number." I'll be giving the whole thing one more polish before sending it off to Simon today or tomorrow, and then the story will be complete.

And you know what that means: tune in Sunday for a "Peek Beneath the Duct Tape." :-)

By the way

Sorry I didn't get chapter 4 of My Very Own Serial Number finished in time for this week's update, so here's a My Little CthulhuPony to make up for it. ;-P

You'll be happy to know that the extra polishing time has given me an opportunity to add two new scenes and flesh out Duncan's unique recruitment process a little further. I think it's nicely shivery.

And yes, I'll be sneak-previewing chapter 4 here on Wednesday, so stay tuned!

entrain in the membrane

If you didn't get the song reference in my title, don't worry; you're probably better off that way. But what I want to talk about today is brainwave entrainment, the fancy name for what happens when you listen to binaural beats.

I've discussed binaural beats before in conjunction with Virtual Hypnotist, but here's a quick refresher. As far back as the early 1800's, scientists have been studying a strange phenomenon that happens when people hear slightly different tones in each ear for an extended period of time: their brainwaves gradually take on the frequency directly between the two tones. Certain frequencies will make a person more alert, and certain frequencies will make a person more relaxed. That's it in a nutshell; if you want a bit more detail that's still geared toward newbies, click here.

Anyway, "entrainment" is the temporary adoption of a new brainwave frequency in response to binaural beats. But doesn't it sound much more sinister than that? Whenever I hear the word, I imagine a black-clad domme with a riding crop, standing over a victim bound to a table with electric leads running from her head. ;-) But despite what my imaginary domme might prefer, entrainment is only temporary. And it's nothing at all like brainwashing, although it's certainly useful for hypnosis.

It has a host of other great uses, too, as I discovered when I stumbled across this decidedly more clinical article on brainwave frequencies. The most interesting part, to me, was the talk about the "twilight stage of learning" and hypnagogic images. That sounds almost exactly like what I think of as the "nonsense" that fills my head when I'm drifting off to sleep at night, except that my nonsense is primarily words instead of pictures (I have seen some pretty freaky images, though. For instance, I once visualized a dark, narrow room piled high with human hair). It's also exactly what I experience on those rare mornings when I'm able to just lie in bed half-awake and toy with ideas...ideas that often show up later in my EMC stories. Apparently, I'm following a long, proud tradition of artists and inventors who learned to tap into the power of the theta state. Who knew? :-)

I've also discovered another use for binaural beats, entirely on my own. As I've said here before, I suffer from restless leg syndrome; and my symptoms often manifest during the day as well as at night. But I've discovered that if I plug in my earbuds and listen to mid-alpha for about ten minutes, the symptoms disappear - not permanently, but they do disappear. Completely.

Just before I started this entry, I did an online search to see if anyone else had connected binaural beats with RLS, but all I found was a smattering of seriously sketchy ads for products I'm sure don't do an ounce of good for anyone but the people making money off them. Oh, and one report from a guy who says binaural beats gave him restless legs...but he thinks RLS is just as likely to be caused by spiritual enlightenment as a medical condition, so take that with however many grains of salt you feel are appropriate. I can't speak for him, but I am quite sure that my restless legs have a lot less to do with kundalini than with stress and iron deficiency.

Anyway, if you suffer from restless leg syndrome and want to see if binaural beats will give you some relief, there's no need to deal with the sketchy-ad people. You can download all the beats you like for free, right here. Now, I wouldn't suggest listening to one frequency from bedtime till morning, as your mind passes through several different stages of sleep during the night. But do try one or more ten-minute rounds during the day, when your symptoms flare up, and see if the beats help. Let me know if they do!

a sneak peek at chapter three and a slight change of plans

Okay, folks, the first part of "My Very Own Serial Number," Chapter 3, is now online here. Remember, this isn't all of Chapter 3, just a teaser - but it ends on quite a lovely cliffhanger, if I do say so myself. ;-)

I'm still busily editing the rest of the story, and as I ran a word count last night, I realized that this chapter has become so long that it really needs to be split in two. Fortunately, there's a really nice break point almost exactly at the halfway mark.

So MVOSN is becoming a four-chapter saga instead of a three-chapter saga. I'm not sure at this point whether I'll send both remaining chapters off to Simon this week or only send him Chapter 3; it all depends on how much time I find to polish the remaining sections. But if Chapter 4 does have to wait another week, you can be sure I'll offer you another teaser.

Real vampires - in *Florida*??? It's gotta be Fark.

Yep, that's where I found the link to this very interesting article. Funny how these self-described real-life vampires seem to share a lot of the same fashion fetishes as me. And what would happen if I visited their club?

Oh, I know what you're thinking: I'd be easy pickings, especially if any of them were into hypno play. But what you don't know is that I've been fantasizing about vampires for as long as I've been fantasizing about mind control - and my vamp fantasies were more about biting than being bitten.

Yes, I have to confess: I've often fantasized about being or becoming a vampire. It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? After all, the vampire is the classic outsider (who just happens to have all kinds of mysterious powers); and vampire fetishism gave me an outlet to explore my sexual fantasies in a "safer" way than MC did, back when I was still worried about that kind of thing.

So, why haven't I written a vampire story for the EMCSA yet? Funny you should ask (You didn't? Well, let's just pretend you did.). The fact is, up until recently, I didn't think I had anything new or interesting to add to this overworked genre. But then someone shared a picture with me that sparked an idea, and now I think I've come up with an all-new take on the classic vampire tale.

Or maybe not. Anyway, the results should be interesting.

First, though I have to finish polishing the final chapter of My Very Own Serial Number, then post it; and then it's back to "Union, Reunion." So the vamp story won't happen for awhile...but I am planning on it. Ohhh, yessss. I'm planning on it. :-)

some important notes

It has just come to my attention that at least one person who read my sneak preview of the second chapter of My Very Own Serial Number didn't realize I didn't post the whole chapter last week. Well, I didn't. ;-) I only posted the first half; so if that's all you've read so far, stop on by the EMCSA now and get up to speed. The best part's the second half!

And yes, I will be previewing the first half of chapter three this coming Wednesday, so be on the lookout.

Finally, I had a headsmack moment earlier this afternoon while driving around town, when I realized that I'd forgotten the most important part of the previous post: I've made some significant updates to my "Bedtime" Virtual Hypnotist script and uploaded the new version here.

a bit of hypnosis this, a bit of MC that

First, I'm still having boatloads of fun with Virtual Hypnotist. Some time ago I got to the point where, whenever I heard my trigger, my eyelids would flutter and my eyes would just roll right up into my head. You can imagine how incredibly hot I've found that. ;-) And now I've reached the point where even the anticipation of hearing my trigger will cause that effect! :-D

All in all, I'm becoming more susceptible to hypnosis and going deeper by the day. I think a big part of this is my changing the suggestion of who's hypnotizing me. Since the voice synthesizer always sounds somewhat robotic, no matter what you do to it, I originally had all my scripts begin with, "This is the voice of your inner drone, your tiny silver core, currently tasked with...." But then I had the idea of suggesting that what I hear through my earbuds is a synthesized reproduction of the voice of a real hypnodomme, controlling me live from a distance, through my computer. And you know me: I'm imagining this hypnodomme as a mysterious, supernatural Queen with vampire pale skin, flowing black hair, and amber eyes (a detail my subconscious came up with all on its own - and which absolutely does not have anything to do with The Series that Must Not Be Named. I'd rather die than watch or read that crap.). Now, I'm not quite enough of a closet exhibitionist to tell you all she's doing with me, but I will say that part of it involves a mental corset that binds my thoughts and helps me keep my mind on track so that I don't daydream or analyze too much. It's working wonderfully well.

Also, just to give myself a sense of security and possibly really keep me from doing any damage to myself, I've created a mental sentry whom I absolutely trust to keep the real me safe from harm. Or perhaps it would be better to say I've put a mental image on the sentry that was inside me all along. This sentry is very much a part of myself, and has been since I was a child. It's just not a part I've ever had occasion to share here - and never will, now. ;-) But I do encourage my fellow hypno-submissives to take similar steps. As a matter of fact, this is what Lady Ru'etha's upcoming Robotics 1.02: Antivirus session will be about. I shouldn't have to say this, but I know I probably do: people, it is never cool to submit to real abuse.

And now, one last thing: no, the image above doesn't have anything to do with today's entry; it's just the latest MC-fantasy-ready image from blackfantastix at Deviant Art. I couldn't resist sharing.

Care for a sneak peak?

I've just sent chapter two of My Very Own Serial Number off to Simon for posting in the next EMCSA update, but if you're eager to get a jump start on what I think is the steamiest (if not the scariest) of the three chapters, I've posted the first three sections online here. Enjoy!

Why doesn't anyone tell me when I have spinach in my teeth?

Aside from the alley cat, that is; but he's displaying a typical feline disdain for what I think is my best toy on offer: Virtual Hypnotist.

So anyway, I've just found out, completely by accident, that the lagoon session I uploaded over the weekend wasn't the finished version and didn't have all the proper files attached. It's fixed now, I believe, so if you're interested, try again.

And please, in future, if you spot a glitch in something I put out - whether it be a VH session or an EMC story - don't be shy about letting me know. I promise I don't bite...unless you're into that sort of thing. ;-)

vintage vibrators

A teasing e-mail conversation with a non-EMC-affiliated friend just led me to this Google search. Don't ask how or why; just enjoy...and maybe cringe, in a few cases.

And now for something completely different

Lately I've felt the need to create a different kind of Virtual Hypnotist session for myself: something that wasn't focused at all on fetishes, but rather on producing a sense of peace and healing. So I came up with a script called "Private Lagoon," which you can find here, if you want to check it out for yourself.

This script invites you to stand on the beach of your own private lagoon, then wade out into the water and float, feeling increasingly soothed and healed by the water and the fresh ocean air. The session has a strong, clear spiritual element; but it isn't tied to any specific religion, so I don't think anyone who worships any sort of loving God would be uncomfortable with the wording.

Now, when I first began running this session, I used one of the standard background music files included with VH. However, around the middle of last week, a new idea occurred to me. Let's see if I can explain it without sounding too much like the theology geek I secretly am.

Several years ago I learned about a Medieval mystic named Hildegard von Bingen, who established a number of convents in Germany, and who was also a scientist and a self-taught composer of some truly incredible music. She knew the power of certain tones (and series of tones) to create particular states of mind, and she used that knowledge in her compositions.

Well, I have a couple of albums of Hildegard's music; and it occurred to me last week, listening to one of them, that one piece in particular would make an ideal background track for "Private Lagoon." In fact, I thought, the power of her special tones might actually increase the power of the binaural beats I'd already included in the session.

And they so did. I've been having the most beautiful experiences, listening to the session with her chants in the background. This particular piece is nothing but "oo-oo-oo," but they're such lovely ooh's. If you want to hear for yourself, you can listen to a free sample on this Amazon page; it's track #15, and you'll get a kick out of the title, I'm sure.

Obviously, I can't include the Hildegard piece with my public version of "Lagoon," but if you like it, it's cheap enough to download. And if you like it well enough to explore more of her music, there are several other tracks on this album and on this one that would work quite nicely with VH sessions. Any lyrics are in Latin, so you don't have to bother at all with what she's saying; just enjoy the mystery of the sounds.

Of course, I'm sure there are hundreds or thousands of other artists, past and present, whose compositions would work nicely with hypnosis sessions; I'm just writing about what I know. So please feel free to add your own suggestions in the "comments" section of this post.

Ah, Mia

I stumbled across this image from Ferris Bueller's Day Off just now, in an article about the death of John Hughes, and I had a small moment of epiphany as I remembered just how...interested...I'd been in Mia Sara back in the eighties without ever knowing why. I think we all understand now, don't we? ;-)

But I'd totally forgotten about Mia until this morning. So naturally, I had to do a quick image search, and that led me to the scene below, which I'd forgotten even more thoroughly than I'd forgotten Mia herself - quite astonishing, when you consider the blindingly obviousness implications of lesbian mind control.

The clip is from Legend, but don't worry if you haven't seen the movie. You'll probably enjoy the scene even more that way. ;-)

highly polished

No, this isn't another entry about Ulorin Vex, just a great excuse to post a new picture I can't get out my head. There's just something about long, slick black latex gloves or leggings that makes me go "unnnh!"

Actually, this post is an announcement that I'm almost finished polishing "My Very Own Serial Number" and plan to send the first chapter off to Simon by tomorrow at latest.

For me, the easiest way to craft a story for the EMCSA is to write it in simple text (since that's the way Simon wants them submitted); edit and polish it still in simple text; and finally take a look at it in Word, changing the font to Times New Roman and using the automatic spell checker. I don't know about anyone else, but seeing my words in a slightly different format helps me spot all kinds of problems I'd otherwise miss.

Of course, seeing them on the EMCSA later, in front of that green background, highlights even *more* errors. I never catch them all. Never. :-/

going to eleven

There's a bit in one of the great mockumentaries of all time when Nigel Tufnel, guitarist for wannabe-awesome metal band Spinal Tap, demonstrates his unique amplifier system. Every dial goes to eleven, rather than the usual ten, and no amount of logic will convince him that this is anything but mega-kewl.

"Going to eleven" has since become a catchphrase among a certain class of geeks, but I felt the need to explain it (and to include the movie clip below) because I realize not everyone is familiar with the phenomenon that is the Christopher Guest mockumentary. But Guest is a comic of world-class brilliance, and he plays Nigel in This is Spinal Tap.



So anyway, I've always been a goes-to-eleven kind of fetishist. As I've said elsewhere, my favorite kind of MC stories are the ones where the victims are most deeply brain-bound, where they can't even think except by command. And I'm continuing to seek out that elusive eleven in my own personal hypnosis experiments.

I've come to accept that I'll probably never achieve a state of true mindlessness in hypnosis (Besides, if I did, how would I know it?), but perhaps I can reach a state where I feel the bonds on my brain as something almost physical, something that prevents my thoughts from traveling down certain avenues and forces me to think and do - or not think or do - certain things.

And physicality is indeed proving to be the key. For instance, there's a suggestion in the current version of my generic induction that says, "Perhaps you can imagine that your eyes have opened again, but that they are now completely white. The only reason you can't see out of your empty, white eyes is that I don't allow you to see out of them. If I commanded you to see now, you would. You would see exactly what I wanted you to see, no more, no less." And damned if I don't really feel like my eyes are open but unseeing when I get to that command. I can actually sense my upper eyelids drawn back into my eye sockets.

Of course, I also have several other places in that induction where the synthesized programming voice gloats over how helpless she's made me and how thoroughly she controls me. Using "Mary in stadium" works fantastically well for this, because of the echo. When you have the ear buds in and you hear that voice echoing right inside your brain, it's very easy to imagine that your head is a vast, empty cavern with her all alone in the middle of it.

I also like to turn the "brainwaves" (binaural beats) up loud enough to hear them thrumming in my head like alien brainwashing rays, and I've created a few animated GIF's to go along with my personal sessions - no easy feat when all you've got to make the GIF's are an ancient program designed for JPG's and non-animated GIF's, and a very simple freeware program that animates still images you already possess.

(As an aside, that reminds me to ask: Does anyone out there know how to "turn on" a Flash object I downloaded but can't get to auto-play? The only way I can do that right now is to right click and select "play," but that isn't possible in the middle of a Virtual Hypnotist session.)

But back to the topic at hand. I'm thinking of how to rework some of Bee's experiences from Queen Bee Becomes a Drone into a personalized VH session, since her induction relies so much on physicality. I think it could work very well for me.

Right now, though, I have other priorities, like polishing "My Very Own Serial Number" for publication in another week or two. I think you'll find a couple of scenes in the second chapter that really do go to eleven...or maybe even twelve.

Nigel would be so proud.