These are a few of my favorite things: Model Mayhem

As promised, here are a few (okay, a bunch of) random images I've collected from Model Mayhem over the last couple of years. When I see enough pictures of the same model (or taken by the same photographer), for me to want to follow her or him, I create a separate folder just for that person. But I still have a bunch of odds and ends in my original Model Mayhem folder, and I don't get back into it a lot - which explains why I was so surprised by all the goodies I found last night. It was hard to narrow the list even by this much, but I hope you enjoy the selection of images I've chosen to share.

Note: Some of these photos were saved before MM started letting its members hide nude photos from non-members, and some of these people below have changed the content of their galleries over time. Therefore, you might not be able to find these shots in their galleries today. Nevertheless, I'll give you all the information I can about who did what.

At the top of this entry is Rai Leid in a picture by Ecce Homo.

Below, from left to right, are model MissMya LA, photographed by Adam Chilson; model A Chaos, photographed by Corrupt Image Data; and model Countess Grotesque.

Below again, left to right, are an unknown model photographed by Jeff Hui, wearing designer Artifice Clothing, with hair styling by Hair Enforcer; model Hexabelle; and model Ifhegemeia.

Below again are digital artist Ka Xiong; model Elizabeth Thuy Tien, wearing designer Lili Forrest; and photog/digital artist Low Tek (Lady Ru'etha might remember why this image is so special to me!).

And finally, left to right below are photog prlls; model Yumi-U and friend photographed by Zee Maitri; and model Rael Cohen, photographed and digitized by Koray.

Random Awesomeness

Last night I was browsing through my saved Model Mayhem photos and came across at least a half-dozen jaw-droppers that I'd totally forgotten about. You know what that means: I have to post them here now. I have no choice.

Then I woke up early this morning and found the image at left among my new Deviant Art messages. It must be a sign. ;-) This is a piece from digital artist MichaelO, whom I've featured here before. He really seems to have found his groove.

Now I'm going to use some hypnosis to try to go back to bed for a few more hours, and then I'll have some lovely Model Mayhem pics to share with you. :-)

Caught

Last weekend, I had a delightful, um, conversation with Lady Ru’etha by phone. We’ve talked a few times since my visit last November, but we hadn’t had a chance to do any more trance play until Sunday night; and I, at least, was practically begging for it. I like to think Lady R was eager too, but of course I can’t speak for her. ;-)

Anyway, we agreed on a time to get together, and she came into the session with the idea that I’d want some robot play – not surprising, since I've made no secret of kinking that way. But I was browsing the sensual nudes of the Yerbury website when she called, and (as I later realized) I also felt really self-conscious about doing the robot thing in front of someone else, even her. Isn’t that hilarious? After all the stuff I’ve posted on the EMCSA and this blog! After all the stuff I’ve done with Lady Ru’etha in person already!

Well, I’m sure she could get me over my self-consciousness pretty quickly, but she was happy enough to go in another direction. Lady R is the kind of storyteller who can whip up a tale at the drop of a metaphor, and in minutes she had me dreaming I was wrapped in sensual vines, then sprayed with intoxicating pollen, then bitten on the neck (by what, I don’t entirely know, but we had been discussing vampires before the trance play began).

Of course, she made sure I knew she was the one who was controlling my bonds; and the scenario ended with the vines gone and me cradled in her lap: a lovely image, so rich with possibilities.

I won’t say much more about what went on during the play, but I will tell you this. After awhile, the feeling of being tied became so strong that my hands went up behind my head and crossed at the wrists. In fact, I ended up straining so hard against the imaginary vines that my biceps are still wobbly as I write this.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what happened to the phone while my arms were above my head, I had it cradled between my chin and shoulder…which probably explains why we got cut off at a couple of critical junctures. ;-) Fortunately, she called me right back, and I never broke trance.

I haven’t even had the chance to tell Lady Ru’etha about the arm thing yet, so I hope she’ll get a kick out of reading this entry. When she gives you a gift as fantastic as a personalized trance, you just naturally want to repay her. Part of my repayment was my pleasure Sunday night, because being the cause of other people's pleasure pleases her. And part of my repayment is writing about the experience here. This entry is a tribute to Lady Ru'etha and to the awesome things she can do with a willing subject.

Okay, and yeah, maybe it’s a bit of serial recruitment, too. You never know. ;-)

These are a few of my favorite things: Fraulein Ehrhardt

Eeny, meeny, miney, moe....Since I embarked on this recurring "My Favorite Things" theme, I've found myself overwhelmed with things I want to share with you - which partly explains the number of "Favorite Things" posts I've made these last few weeks. I'll try to go a little easier on you from now on, since I know different  readers come to this blog for different things. ;-)

I'm trying to give you a little more variety within my "Favorite Things" picks, too. Today I'm featuring a woman who's both a photographer and a latex designer, so I get to showcase her work in two different arenas. Also, just because I can, I've decided to avoid pictures of her more recognizable models (like my #1 crush Ulorin Vex), and instead focus on some people you might never have heard of...and whose names I often don't know, myself. I've been scavenging Fräulein Ehrhardt pics from all over the web for a number of years, and I wasn't always as scrupulous about credits as I am now (Trust me, it's a good idea if you collect lots of pictures). Plus, the Fräulein herself doesn't always provide first names for her models and never provides last names. So here you go: a bunch of lovely shots of people you might or might not be able to find more pics of on your own.

Fräulein Ehrhardt's chief online presence is at High Gloss Dolls, which has a free section, a members-only section, and an online store.

You can also find a small collection of her work on Model Mayhem; and while she doesn't have a gallery of her own on Deviant Art, you can find many samples of her stuff by searching in the "Photography" section on both Ehrhardt and High Gloss Dolls.

The moral of the story

A few weeks ago, I was doing my usual "One link leads to another" thing when I ran across this video of Swedish singer Fever Ray accepting some sort of award. Please take a look, if you can, before reading this rest of this post.



Okay, so, are you totally weirded out now? Are you fascinated? Are you wondering what kind of music this lady produces when her mouth isn't totally obstructed? Those were my initial thoughts. So I clicked on over to some of her music videos (Vimeo has better versions than YouTube; start here, if you're interested), just out of curiosity, and ended up liking her stuff so much that I downloaded her album.

Now, at this point, you're probably wondering where I'm going with all of this. After all, the awards "speech" does have veils and voicelessness, but it's not exactly sexy...well, okay, the veil is a little bit sexy, but that makeup? Nope, I'm out. So why am I blogging about this woman, then? Because Fever Ray is the solo effort of Karin Dreijer Andersson, half of the brother-sister electronica band The Knife. I'd never heard of either of them before I saw that awards video, but now I at least know what they sound like (They keep their appearances mostly hidden).

Which brings me to the point of this post. Aside from Karin's recognizable voice, Fever Ray doesn't sound much at all like The Knife. Is Olaf the one who brings most of the electronica edge to The Knife? Is Karin the one who brings most of the creepiness? Is the Fever Ray album typical of Karin's personal style? What would a solo album by Olaf sound like?

It's all about collaboration, you see. More and more, I think of the collaborative process as being like making a baby (Get your heads out of the gutter and work with me here). Each person involved has her or his own individual style, and when they combine their efforts, the result blends those styles and becomes something new and interesting in its own right. At least, that's the way it should work. If one person dominates too much, you don't have a collaboration at all; you have a clone. But if the process goes well, you end up with something none of the contributors by themselves could have produced. And that's incredibly cool.

Faye, Tai, and robophilia - all in one strip

Hope you're not tired of my references to Questionable Content yet. ;-) But today's strip really, really deserves a link from my blog.

Oh, and don't worry; I have something equally interesting and even more WTF-y planned for tomorrow. ;-)

Happy Valentine's Day from Ulorin Vex

Credits, left to right: photo by Phantom Orchid, fashion by Bibian Blue; photo by Allan Amato, fashion by Jane Doe Latex; photo by Slingshot, guest star Amalthea (Ulorin's twin sister)

What it's really like

Before I got involved in the online fetish community, I had a certain impression of what its members would be like: a bunch of drooling perverts who had no interests in life except wanking off. In fact, even when I posted my first story, it was with the expectation of getting replies that would make me want to vomit. I posted anyway, because by that point in my life I had to find an outlet for my fantasies; but at the same time, I steeled myself for a bunch of nastiness.

Imagine my surprise when all the e-mails I got were full of friendliness and encouragement, with nary a hur-hur in sight. In fact, after eight-plus years on the EMCSA, I've still had only one proposition (which I ignored by accident because it landed in my spam filter, then was glad I'd ignored when I discovered it several days later). It turned out that most EMC fetishists were just people. They have a kink, but they also have lives - and they're just as happy to chat about those lives as they are to chat about EMC. I've developed several strong friendships over the years with other fetishists, and when I think back to the e-mail conversations we've shared, they're mostly about things like friends, family, romance, politics, religion...and the occasional hot fetish model. ;-) EMC is just a recurring theme in the middle of everything else.

I lived the first two and a half decades of my life as a pretty judgmental person...okay, well, it's probably more accurate to say I had a giant stick up my ass. And I can't say I've completely done away with that stick. I'm a very strong "J" on the Myers-Briggs scale, so judging is as natural to me as breathing. But I've also learned a lot about people since I came out to myself and gave myself permission to indulge my fetish. Specifically, I've learned to be less frightened about what I once perceived as "other." I am "other." Everyone is "other." Sure, there are plenty of people who deserve to be feared and shut away from society, but there are even more who don't deserve it and get treated that way anyway.

I'm really glad I've learned to tell the difference.

Cthulhu rising?

The stars must be right, because Cthulhu seems to be rising in this image from the frequently awesome Astronomy Picture of the Day website.

This would make a great desktop wallpaper, wouldn't it?

You won't believe this unless you actually know me, but...

There's more than a little switch in me. My knee-jerk reaction to most situations is to submit; but under the right circumstances, I can be hardheaded, opinionated, bossy, or even (in cases of perceived injustice) vengeful. I must have been accumulating a lot of those feelings over the last several months, because last Wednesday night they all came out together in one spectacular dream.

Some time ago I had a...let's call it a "falling out"...with the head of a local group to which I used to belong. Since then I've had several dreams in which I ran across him by accident and didn't know how to treat him, so I just tried to hide. Well, this dream began with me finding myself in the group setting; running across him again; and deciding that, dammit, I was tired of hiding and had no reason to hide since the whole ugly mess was his fault anyway. So I just laid into him, telling him exactly how much of an arrogant lunatic he really was. It felt soooo good. :-)

Then things got really interesting. A gang of young teenage boys appeared, armed with some sort of ill-defined power over everyone, and began terrorizing the group. They even killed a few people. I didn't consider myself a part of the group anymore and wanted to sneak off, now that I'd had the confrontation I needed; but the boys trapped me in a room and began to grill me for their amusement. I wasn't frightened, just annoyed. In fact, I felt oddly in control. Somewhere deep inside, I knew I had a hidden power of my own.

The gang leader demanded my phone number and address, but I said I wouldn't give him that even if he threatened to kill me. Then he found out I'd been a teacher and asked what the students had thought of me. I said they'd thought I was hard and mean; and as I said it, I began to feel proud and even more in control.

Suddenly I was alone with the gang leader; the other boys had left the room. And I realized this kid had a fantasy about being dominated by a mean teacher. I started playing into it, becoming more and more harsh in my responses to him. Eventually I got him to prostrate himself in front of me, beg me to be cruel to him, and even to call me "Mistress." And that's when the others came back in, just as I refused him - and humiliated him in front of his underlings.

I mocked him and told all of them I'd be back later to rip them apart. Then I flew out the window and escaped.

Power can be nice, sometimes. :-)

You can always tell when Lady Ru'etha is having fun

Among other things, she does hypnotic domination over the phone; and there have been several times over the last few months when she's had her subjects post to the Realm of Bliss Yahoo Group while in trance. There's a particularly yummy new message today, which I'll leave you to read for yourself (Not a member yet? Well, join, for pete's sake! It's free, and it's fun).

Whenever I read these posts, I imagine Lady Ru'etha sitting at her phone, grinning hugely. You can tell, just from what she has her subjects share with the group, that's she's having a blast herself.

Yep, Dora's bi

Meanwhile, over on Questionable Content, coffee shop owner Dora has just moved in with her boyfriend Marten and his cute-but-prickly platonic roommate Faye. Here we see Dora looking for her cat...or something.

You never know where Jeph Jacques is going to take this strip. Sometimes he's funny, sometimes he's tender, and sometimes he's just making crass jokes about farting and periods. No telling what, if anything is going to happen between Dora and Faye. I'm betting nothing, but I have to admit I'd love it if Faye discovered that the reason she can never maintain a straight relationship is because she's actually a lesbian. ;-)