Happy/Merry Whatever ;-)

Here's my holiday gift to you all. It's the video for Karen O, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross' cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," from David Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." The music and video are fantastic in and of themselves, but the whole thing gets even better if you imagine it as technology-and-latex fueled MC induction. You're welcome. ;-)

For your viewing pleasure

I don't know if you've discovered the gorgeous and totally unique Andrej Pejic yet, but if you haven't, you definitely need to. I'd read a few articles and seen a few pictures around the net and admired his/her looks, but I hadn't really thought much about Andrej beyond being pleased s/he's out there. This video, though, would make anyone take notice. Whoever came up with this campaign (not to mention the bra behind it) is a genius.



If you like what you see in this video, there's plenty more of Andrej all over the net. Here's a quick link to Google Images.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing

So now you see why, in a previous post, I said the picture at left had influenced a part of my latest story. ;-) I think I'm going to have to create a new tag for gas masks. Yes, I really will. I know a lot of people fetishize about gas masks, and to a certain extent, I'm one of them. For me, they have to have an organic quality and/or a hood and goggles that hide the entire face. As always, it's the robotization, depersonalization and voicelessness that most appeals to me.

So anyway, about What to Expect from your Alien Brainwashing. The first bit that occurred to me (in a dream, as is often the case), was the title. And the first title that occurred to me was, "What to Expect from Your Alien Overlords." I liked the idea because it had an inherent humor based on the popular meme, and I could tweak it to be more MC-specific while still keeping some of the humor. Of course, the first tweak had to come with the title.

The idea developed gradually, with the part I'm proudest of - Tinker Toy sex lattices - coming to me again in a dream. Gah, I love my subconscious!

I wasn't sure what my aliens would look like until I found the picture above (all credit to Kimatica). Then, of course, they had to be Greys so I could fit in the huge eyes and pointy faces. Sorry if that's a let-down for anyone expecting more exotic aliens, but it's been my experience in reading SF that it's really, really hard to come up with truly alien species. Vernor Vinge did a great job in A Fire Upon the Deep, of course, but I still fault him for not making the most of the MC possibilities. ;-) As for me, I knew my audience was more interested in the MC than whether my aliens had fur or scales, so I decided to take a pass.

When it comes to the wall installations, I was probably subconsciously influenced by all those weird '80's videos that had people running along corridors where human hands or heads stuck out of the walls. Funnily enough, though, I stumbled across this just yesterday, via Oddee.

Another funny thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that I chose this story out of the three percolating in my brain because I thought it was the lightest; and yet it turned out pretty grim in the end. I hope you still find some humor in it (I do; I always find it funny when MC victims blather earnestly about the favors they're doing their recruits), but the story as a whole got pretty dark. It seemed that with each successive polish, I came up with creepy new ideas that slotted in just perfectly with the plot.

For instance, the idea of elites creating a presentation for their processees was originally just a joke: that's their notion of waiting room reading material. And I had to make my processee desperate enough to read it, so I came up with "wait times might be longer than usual" - a common recorded message Americans hear when they dial toll-free numbers for any sort of assistance. It was only later that I realized why the wait times would be longer than usual: the new architectural craze was sucking up more slaves than ever. That added a whole new layer of horror to the ending. Our poor processee will probably end up a mindless bit of X-rated wall decoration.

Is it just me, or does anyone else now have Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" running through their heads?

And it's off!

I've just finished my newest MC story and sent it off to Simon. It turned out to be a bit darker than I expected, but I still think it's kind of funny. I'm not sure what anyone else will think, though. As I've hinted before, this one's pretty...odd. It might even be polarizing. Anyway, be on the lookout for it in the next EMCSA update. It's called "What to Expect from your Alien Brainwashing."

Virtual Hypnotist and Windows 7

I'm not the only one who's noticed that Virtual Hypnotist works differently on Windows 7 than on earlier versions. In some cases, it's only a difference of appearance; but in other cases, you have to make adjustments in your code and/or software. Stop by my new Troubleshooting page for more information. And if anyone else out there has had problems and/or found solutions to problems, please email me so we can all learn together.

Important addendum to my last VH post

If you've already copied the script snippets I gave you in my last entry, be sure to add the following suggestion (or something similar) to whatever script you use them in.

If you give yourself the idea during trance that, just because you can't hear your thoughts, you don't know what you're thinking, this can carry over into your waking life. I found this out the hard way. ;-/ It didn't stop me cold, but it did make concentrating and focus a bit harder - and I'm not even hugely suggestible. If you're more open than me, it might really be a problem for you. So if you use the "How do you know what you are thinking?" bit in your sessions, be sure to counteract that suggestion with something else later on. This is what I use in my bedtime session:

When you wake in the morning, you will feel refreshed and ready to get out of bed. The wormhole will have disappeared, and you will think normally, and be able to focus easily on whatever task is at hand.

Getting back on track with Virtual Hypnotist

If you've been following my blog for awhile, you know I lost all my old Virtual Hypnotist sessions in a computer crash earlier this year. Since then, I've been slowly recreating my morning and bedtime sessions based on scraps and older versions of the sessions.

The morning session is now in...acceptable...shape, although there's a lot more I need to do with it before I can enjoy it properly. But that's less of a priority than my bedtime session, since I only run the morning session every now and then, for fun. I use the bedtime session every night to help me wind down enough to get to sleep.

Fortunately, Bedtime 2.0 is in excellent shape now. It's a little different than it used to be because I couldn't recreate it exactly, but I think the new wording is mostly an improvement over the old wording. Let me give you a few examples, which you're welcome to plug into your own VH sessions if you like. I just ask that you give me credit for them, if you share those sessions with anyone else later on. I'm also leaving out the bits of code and other tweaks I use to make the speech synthesizer sound more human. After all, I don't want to make things too easy for you. ;-)

Anyway, here are some bits I'm especially proud of:

     You can hear my voice, and the music, echoing through your empty head; and you know that the echoes mean your head is already very, very empty. But there is still one thing in your head besides my voice and the music. There is a wormhole at the very bottom of your mind. 
     Picture this wormhole now, spiraling gently inward, there at the bottom of your mind. Every time one of your thoughts becomes logical enough and heavy enough for you to notice it, the gravity of the wormhole draws it in and carries it down, down, down. Far below your body. Far beneath your chair. Much too far for you to find it again tonight. 
     Gravity is such a powerful, pervasive natural phenomenon. Nothing with any weight can resist it. 
     But music has no weight. And subconscious thoughts and unconscious dreams have no weight. So they're not affected by the gravity of the wormhole. They will become even more powerful, even more pervasive, as your conscious thoughts spiral down into the wormhole and disappear.
     Already, you can't hear yourself think over the music. And if you can't hear yourself think, how do you know what you are thinking? 
     You don't. 
     What you hear, is what you think. It's just too hard to think anything else, when the music is right there in the center of your mind. It's too much trouble to pay attention to your own thoughts, when you can't even hear them. So you can just let the music be your thoughts. It's so much easier that way. So much more relaxing. And all you want to do right now is relax anyway.

     And of course, your mind and your body are connected.  Picture the nerves that run from your brain, down your spinal column, and throughout your body. Just as your brain sends signals to your body, your body sends signals to your brain. So as your body relaxes, your mind relaxes too. It's a loop. A circuit. A spiral.

     The inside of your head is a vast hollow cavern, filled with nothing but music and echoes. Only your subconscious thoughts, and your unconscious dreams, can move freely through this vast empty space, because subconscious thoughts and unconscious dreams have no weight. Everything else gets drawn into the wormhole and erased. It feels so wonderfully relaxing, to let all your conscious thoughts be erased.

     And now you are even deeper. And going deeper still. Deeper by the second. You have made such a nice, inviting playground for the nonsense. Even your conscious mind is pretending to be asleep now. The music, and the wormhole, have erased and replaced so many thoughts, leaving so much beautiful, relaxing emptiness. And the music echoes through that emptiness so beautifully. The music invites the nonsense, and the dreams, to come out and play. Now they are peeking eagerly out from the darkest corners of your mind.  They want to come out and play. They can tell how relaxed you are. How empty your mind is becoming. Because mind and body are connected. In a spiral. And your body is so clearly very, very, relaxed.

Now, the next suggestion is very important, if you plan to use the "How do you know what you're thinking?" bit in your sessions:

When you wake in the morning, you will feel refreshed and ready to get out of bed. The wormhole will have disappeared, and you will think normally, and be able to focus easily on whatever task is at hand.
 

So...about those new stories I've been hinting about

I finished the rough draft of one of them today. It's the darkly humorous story, the one I've been extra-mysterious about because I think it's an original idea and I don't want anybody stealing it from me. ;-) It's also very short, just about 1800 words at the moment, although of course it still needs more editing.

If I follow my usual timetable, I'll have it ready for publication either in next week's EMCSA update or the one after that. Let's just go ahead and assume it'll be the one after that, so I don't put any undue pressure on myself....but you never know. It could be next weekend!

Way too awesome not to share

I hadn't planned on blogging today, but how on earth was I supposed to keep the Little Rooster to myself?

via via

spotlighting another classic

I remember when Star Trek: The Next Generation was still on the air. I used to watch it from time to time, but somehow I missed the two-parter where Captain Picard was assimilated by the Borg and used as a weapon against his own people. I don't remember why I missed it: I just reading reviews of the episodes and kicking myself for losing out on the awesomeness.

Eventually I got to see the episodes in syndication, and they were everything I'd hoped for...in short bursts, anyway. I wanted to see less Picard-as-Picard and more Picard-as-Locutus. Or better yet, more of Picard's transformation into Locutus. Even after all this time, I have a distinct memory of him lying motionless and blank-eyed while alien technology sucks all the free will from him brain and his face pales slowly from human flesh to Borg gray. I've just spent some over on YouTube trying to find that scene, and I finally came up with it - jammed in with nearly ten minutes of trance music and a bunch of repetitive space battles.

On the other hand, I found another, shorter video that a) has everything but the face-paling bit and b) must have been created by someone who appreciates the same stuff you and I do. S/he has edited the clips in a way that makes for a perfect EMC story: First we see Picard's hubris in defying the Borg, then his capture and assimilation, his revelation to his horrified former comrades, a bit of space battling, and finally a slightly ambiguous conclusion (Okay, it could have been more ambiguous, but the editor seems to be more of a Star Trek fan than an MC fan, so the Borg Cube had to be destroyed).

So here's what I recommend. Watch the video below first. This is the short, good clip without the trance music. Then click over to YouTube for the longer video, but only watch seconds 0:32-0:37. You can even turn the sound off if you like. I don't recommend watching the full 9+ minutes unless you're really bored or under the influence.

Enjoy!

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!

How could I possibly not post this?

I just found the image at left in the Deviant Art gallery of photographer Addicted Image. He has lots of other goodies, too, including pics of Scar13 and Ancilla Tilia. Go have a look. :-)

Virtual Hypnotist updates

If you haven't paid much attention to the right-hand sidebar, you might not have noticed that I added a new page to my Virtual Hypnotist tutorial: Troubleshooting.

If you use VH and notice any problems with it, check my Troubleshooting page to see if I have a solution. And if you don't see a solution there, please feel free to e-mail me and ask a question. I'll be happy to tell you anything I know, and I'll also address your question (without using your name, of course) on the Troubleshooting page.

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.

Funny and awesome

Sometimes I wish this wasn't an 18-and-over blog (Okay, yeah, I know there are plenty of people younger than that reading it, but let's pretend). The video below is wonderful for anyone of any age - especially but not exclusively closeted LGBT's. It's funny and and hot and pretty damn dirty: a great combination. But since this is an 18-and-over blog, I can't specifically address this post to LGBT teens. I hope you'll help me share it, though. It really is awesome.



Thanks to Lady K for sharing it with me!

Paranoia city

Just a quick check-in, as my situation still isn't settled and I don't have consistent, proper internet access yet. Make of that what you will, and please don't ask me how I'm managing this post as it's rather weird and complicated. ;-P

Anyway, while I've been on hiatus I've seen lots of things I wanted to post, but didn't for various reasons. This is what finally brought me completely out of hiding: the tour visuals for Muse's performance of "Darkshines" at this year's Reading and Leeds festivals. Now, I try very hard (sometimes sitting on my hands!) not to rave too much about Muse here; after all, this is a fetish blog, not a music blog. But of course Muse is all about SF weirdness, paranoia and mind control; and this video has it all in spades. In fact, it even has a UFO trying to abduct a cow - and apparently failing because the cow is too heavy! Now, how can you say no to a video like that? ;-) Also, be sure to notice the x-ray of the disappearing brain, an underplayed but excellent metaphor for total MC.

hiatus due to grenade

Sorry, folks, but I've had a grenade tossed into my personal life. Well, actually I've had a series of grenades since last fall; but this was the big mama. It's going to take some time to adjust to. Kind thoughts and/or prayers would be appreciated.

I'll be fine in the end, but I need to take some time away from the blog so I can focus on real life. I will be back, because I enjoy this place - and I enjoy all your comments and e-mails. I just can't say how long it will take me to return. Hopefully, it won't be a really lengthy hiatus, so please watch this space.

Thanks.

Going pretty far afield for today's trance fix

I first learned about the movie White Zombie when I was a kid, poring through a book on classic horror films. My MC fetish was already in place, so I was intrigued by the snippet of information about the film; but I couldn't tell much more than that it sounded interesting.

Well, last week the movie came to mind again for some reason, and I decided to look it up online. I came up with a synopsis (Here's the quick version: Bela Lugosi kills a young bride and resurrects her as a zombie to do his bidding...only she's not really dead; it's more like he's stolen her life spark. Meanwhile, various men plead with her to notice them and try, mostly in vain, to save her). And I also turned up the compilation below. I have no idea why it's set to a jazz sound track, but I have to admit that it does add another level of interest to the video.

Finally, I found a site where you can download the whole movie for free. It's just over an hour long, so it's not much of a time commitment to watch; but I haven't done so myself, yet. I'm not sure I'll ever get around to it because everyone except the heroine chews the scenery like they haven't eaten in weeks. Still, their hamminess sets off her blankness all the better. Madge Bellamy gives lovely trance face. ;-) It would be fun to collect all her zombie scenes from the movie and make a compilation of those clips. Does anyone feel up to the challenge? ;-)

Anyway, you'll find plenty of fetish material in this compilation, but I'm afraid you'll have to overlook a bit of hamminess on the way.

A happy little update

First, thanks to everyone who offered sympathy regarding my computer crash and loss of data.

Some people asked me if I could just recreate the lost Virtual Hypnotist sessions, and I said I couldn't. I put so much work into getting my bedtime and morning sessions just the way I wanted them, that I couldn't bear the thought of doing it all over again from scratch. Any of you who've read Stephen King's Misery will understand. At the beginning of that novel, the protagonist is carrying the only copy of his just-finished novel with him when he wrecks his car and gets rescued/captured by a murderous lunatic. She claims to be his biggest fan, but when she reads his precious new draft, it disgusts her so much that she makes him burn it. Well, I don't think it's a huge spoiler, after all these years, to say the protagonist survives. The important thing about his story, for the purpose of this post, is that his new novel didn't survive: he couldn't recreate something that big and complex...not in the Misery book, anyway. I think I remember him rewriting it in the movie version, but that's Hollywood for you.

My VH sessions, of course, were nothing close to novels; but they were still too involved for me to rewrite from scratch. Fortunately, I was so desperate to get them back that I ended up checking every saved folder which was even loosely associated with my "thrall" identity; and in one of the very last places I expected to find anything, I turned up some really old versions and scraps of versions of the lost sessions. That was enough to spur me to action. Maybe you could compare it to rediscovering 2/3 of a novel you thought you'd burned, and outlines for what was still missing.You'd rewrite from there, wouldn't you, if you knew your work was worth saving?

I've already done a lot of work recreating the bedtime session. It will never be exactly like it was before, but it's getting to the point where it does what I want it to do: put me to sleep at night. It still needs some tweaking, but I'm pretty happy with it - and I'm backing it up every few days to a CD. I'll probably end up throwing it into the cloud, as well. This will never happen to me again.

My morning session isn't as high a priority as my bedtime session, since it's mainly recreational, but I'll get around to it soon. And when I do, I'll have If Wishes Were Horses to help me. Thank goodness I wrote that when I did! Most of the session's text is embedded within that story; so the only hard part will be tweaking the pauses, punctuation, etc., to make the speech synthesizer sound more human. I also have an old list of suggestions which had already been tweaked for the speech synthesizer, and I can insert them at the proper point in the script. I'm looking forward to getting started on that sometime soon; but I have a few other things I want to do first, like beginning that new MC story I mentioned in the post about my computer crash.

Oh, and speaking of upcoming stories, about a week ago I had a fantastic dream which laid the groundwork for another MC story that badly needs telling. And you know me: I can't deny my Muse. ;-) I'm just glad she's hanging around so much lately.

Scary dolls

Sweet dreams };-P

I doubt they can top this

So the new Fright Night opened this weekend. I doubt I'll go see it. The buzz hasn't been great; I feel like the whole vampire thing has been played out; and most importantly, I doubt the new version will live up to the original - particularly this scene. The '80's fashions and music might put you off for a minute or two, but you'll get past it. Then you'll be every bit as caught up in the seduction as our heroine is. This is great stuff.

There she goes again

Maggie Gyllenhaal is doing another quirky sex movie, God bless her. This looks awesome.

Since the "AgniDog" set went down pretty well...

...and since at least one of my visitors noticed the connection between AgniDog and Agna, I thought I'd share some shots of Agna today. There's clearly a strong connection between the two, but I'm not sure if they're just collaborative partners or something more.

I also can't say for sure which photographer took each of these pics. I think it's safe to say AgniDog was behind most of them, but I didn't see any credits (that I could read, anyway) when I saved these images.

Anyway, the URL's stamped on most of the pictures will lead you to more Russian latex, zentai, bdsm, etc. - much of it featuring Agna.

This guy is stepping up his game

I've been following AgniDog on Deviant Art for awhile now. I suspect he's a fairly new photographer because he doesn't have a huge gallery and his older pictures are often, well, less than satisfying. But some of them hit home for me right from the start, and more of them are hitting home for me these days; so I think he's hitting his stride.

Not that catering to my tastes means a photographer is hitting his stride, but you know what I mean. I hope. ;)

Anyway, here are a few of AgniDog's best and darkest offerings.

What I did on my summer vacation

...and what I did afterwards. Let's start with the bad news first so I can get it out of the way and move on to things that will make you and me both happier.

Not long after posting the last entry before this one, my Paleolithic computer died the True Death. I had to buy a new machine, which is good in some ways but bad in others. The worst part was losing everything on my C drive. I'd been backing up my most important files and/or storing them on an external drive just in case something like this happened, but unfortunately, there was one set of files I somehow left behind: my Virtual Hypnotist scripts. I can download the program itself again, and I still have access to the scripts I've posted online; but gone, gone, gone are my bedtime session and morning session. It makes me want to kick myself so hard. Technically, I could try to rewrite them, but I put so much work into getting them just right that I can't imagine doing it all over again. Thank goodness I've reached the point where I can get to sleep without the bedtime session now; otherwise, I'd be really upset.

Anyway, enough of the bad news. The good news is that during my staycation, I was daydreaming one afternoon and came up with a new EMC story idea without even trying. I don't want to say too much about it yet because I write so slowly; it might be months before I'm ready to publish this one. I'll say this much, though: the story is set in the Tenpack of Trixies universe, will feature at least one of the characters from the original "Trixies" story, and will probably be just one chapter long. Of course, I've expected other stories to be just one chapter, and they turned into three- or four-chapter stories, so don't hold me to my word on that. Just be glad I have a nice, new computer to write it on. ;)

It's nice to be missed :-)

Thanks, Tabico and Elizabeth, for letting me know I was missed! Let me see if I can return the favor for you and everyone else who follows my blog.

The lovely ladies in this set are Bellefast (redhead) and Courtney Cruz (black hair), and the photographer is Michael Helms. He's been rolling out images from this photo shoot on his Deviant Art gallery for the last several days. I don't know if he's finished or not, but you should check out his gallery regardless because he's just that good.

As for the models, Bellefast's DA gallery is here and her Model Mayhem gallery is here, while Courtney Cruz's Model Mayhem gallery is here.

Staycation

I'm going to take about a week off from blogging. Catch you again next week!

I wish I could write like this

I've written before about Tipping the Velvet, the miniseries; but it's taken me until now to pick up the actual book. I've only just begun - Nan and Kitty are still striking up a friendship that will blossom into something more - but I'm already in love with the author's (Sarah Waters) style. Every sentence is thick with eroticism, even something as prosaic as a description of Kitty taking off her stage makeup. Here, have a read:

     She sang on; then opened one eye very wide, and leaned close to the glass to remove a stubborn crumb of spit-black - her mouth stretching wide, out of a kind of sympathy with her eyelids, and her breath misting the mirror. For a second she seemed quite to have forgotten me. I studied the skin of her face and her throat. It had emerged from its mask of powder and grease the colour of cream - the colour of the lace on her chemise; but it was darkened at the nose and cheeks - and even, I saw, at the edge of her lip - by freckles., brown as her hair. I had not suspected the existence of the freckles. I found them wonderfully and inexplicably moving.

Then there's this bit, from a few paragraphs later. Nan is about to leave and takes off her glove to shake Kitty's hand, but...

     All at once she was the gallant boy of the footlights again. She straightened her back, made me a little bow, and raised my knuckles to her lips.
     I flushed with pleasure - until I saw her nostrils quiver, and knew, suddenly, what she smelled: those rank sea-scents, of liquor and oyster-flesh, crab-meat and whelks, which had flavored my fingers and those of my family for so many years we had all ceased, entirely, to notice them. Now I had thrust them beneath Kitty Butler's nose! I felt ready to die of shame.
     I made, at once, to pull my hand away; but she held it fast in her own, still pressed to her lips, and laughed at me over the knuckles. There was a look in her eye I could not quite interpret.
     'You smell,' she began, slowly and wonderingly, 'like-'
     'Like a herring!' I said bitterly. My cheeks were hot now and very red; there were tears, almost, in my eyes. I think she saw my confusion and was sorry for it.
     'Not at all like a herring,' she said gently. 'But perhaps, maybe, like a mermaid...' And she kissed my fingers properly, and this time I let her; and at last my blush faded, and I smiled.
     I put my glove back on. My fingers seemed to tingle against the cloth. 'Will you come and see me again, Miss Mermaid?' she asked.

Like I said, I've only just begun this book. I know there are dozens of incredible (and occasionally kinky) sex scenes ahead, and I can't wait to find them. Just think: if Sarah Waters can pack this much eroticism into a hand-kiss, what can she do with an actual lovemaking scene?

Luis Royo's ultimate BDSM fantasy

I've blogged about Luis Royo a couple of times already, and many of you already knew about him before you ever read my entries. He's a Spanish artist with a taste for fantasy, SF, and various kinds of kink.

At left is a dome commissioned by a Russian billionaire back in 2006, and below are details from some of my favorite panels. If you want to see the rest of the dome in closeup, just go here.

In my imagination, the various panels depict a harem kept by a powerful Mistress (Maybe she's the one on the pedestal at the center, tossing roses). Her most experienced slaves teach the newer ones the ways of pleasure, deepening their mindless obedience one orgasm at a time.

In one panel you can see Royo, his son, and the Russian billionaire peeking at the harem from behind a hedge. I like to imagine they're about to be ambushed by a company of mindwiped Amazons. I don't know what Mistress will do with them in the end, but they won't be in any condition to complain about it afterwards. ;P

Giving credit where credit is due

This is a post I've been meaning to make for awhile; I've just been distracted by other, more exciting topics. But it needs to be said, and now is as good a time as any.

These things are just matters of politeness:

1. If you share a picture that you found somewhere else online, tell your readers where you found it.
2. If it's a professional shot and you know who the photographer and/or model is, tell your readers that, too.
3. If you have only incomplete information about a picture you found, tell you readers as much as you know.
4. If you publish a story on the EMCSA and someone else helped you with it in any capacity (even proofreading), thank them by name at the start of your story.

I'm not thinking of any particular incident as I write this entry. It's more about an accumulation of annoyances over several years - annoyances about things done to other people and things done to me personally.

What it all boils down to is this: if you want credit for the things you do, then it only makes sense to give others credit for the things they do.

End of rant. I promise to give you something sexier next time around. ;)

I think you *have* to be a fetishist to appreciate this

Behold!

What it feels like

I haven't talked about my experiences with Virtual Hypnotist lately, but they're still going well. I continue to use one of the scripts I wrote for myself at bedtime every night, to help me get to sleep. By now, the background music (Men at Work's soporific "Down By the Sea") has become so ingrained in my subconscious that, if I don't have access to VH at bedtime, I can play the song in my head a few times and drop off pretty easily. VH is more fun, though. ;)

I thought you might like to hear how it feels for me, slipping off to sleep via hypnosis, so here we go.

When I first wrote the bedtime script, I was trying to put myself in a state of near-mindlessness; I thought that was the best way to still my thoughts enough to get to sleep. Well, I haven't managed mindlessness with my bedtime session (Oddly enough, I have managed it with my morning session...but that's a little too personal to go into ;)). But even though my thoughts still bounce around a lot during my bedtime session, I am becoming deeply hypnotized. I just don't realize it until the program ends with the command for me to get up and go to bed.

This is where things get cool. The script tells me that it will be easy for me to raise my arms, remove my earbuds, and get up; but it's not. I've become so relaxed by now that it feels like I'm deep underwater. My limbs are heavy, my movements slow, and performing more than one action at a time is more than I can handle.

I can't time myself, of course, but my guess is that it takes me about 15 seconds to get out of the chair.

Picture this. I'm in front of my computer with my chair tilted back and my feet up on a stool. My elbows rest at the point where the chair's arms connect to the back, and my hands are loose in my lap with my fingers lightly curled. "Now go," the program says. "Go to bed."

My arms draw outward until my hands are barely touching my body (To move them any further would just be too much work). Then slowly, oh so slowly, my hands move upwards, fingers grazing the sides of my torso and then the sides of my breasts. Now I move them inward, toward the "V" where the separate earbud cords join together and snake off toward the computer. At this point my hands have to rotate so my fingers are in a position to grasp the cords. Then my grip has to open a bit and my fingers feel their way upwards, looking for just the right spot to grasp the cords and tug.

But even after that, I'm not through. Now I have to lean forward and place the earbuds with their cords carefully on the computer desk. Otherwise, they might drag on the floor and the chair wheels could roll over them, potentially destroying them. Only after I'm sure the earbuds are safe can I get up from the chair, putting one foot on the floor at a time, and head off to bed.

After all of that, it's no wonder I feel sleepy enough to drop off right away.

*The image at the top of this post is by Kassandra Vizerskaya.

More fun with nudity

Look what I found, barely an hour after my last post about half-naked men. This time they're fully naked, and they're for hire.

Be sure not to miss the final question!

Naked asses and frying chicken: who wins?

In a sense, we all do. ;) But I think the lady with the mostly-nude male harem took home the jackpot. ;P


COCKTAIL TIME! from EIT! on Vimeo.

Thanks to the silent ones

Cyan stories don't get much recognition from the EMCSA crowd, but I know people read them even if they don't comment on them. For instance, I haven't received much feedback on "How Did It Come To This?"; but Stat Counter shows me how many readers are clicking through to my blog from the story.

I don't have any personal information about my visitors, but the statistics are nice in their own way. They let me know people are out there, all around the world, enjoying what I have to say. That's a great feeling.

So let me return the favor. I don't post on every forum I visit, or e-mail every writer who floats my boat. I appreciate the privacy of lurking, and I appreciate the fact that you stopped by even if you didn't say anything. You might not have known it, but you made me smile.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: How Did It Come to This?

I hope I fooled some of you with the red herring in How Did It Come To This? - and I hope none of you dropped the story before you found out it was a red herring. If I ever wrote another vampire tale (and after collaborating so successfully with Jukebox* on The White Album, why should I?), it certainly wouldn't have a vamp as traditional as Jimmy would have been...if he'd been a vamp.

Admittedly, my first idea for a hockey-player-vs.-figure-skater story did involve a Nosferatu, but there's a reason the story didn't work out that way. I couldn't make it work out that way; it would have been too boring. I didn't get enthusiastic about the tale until I realized Jimmy didn't have to be a real vampire; he just had to seem like one. Then it occurred to me that the lyrics to "Time Is Running Out" would fit incredibly well with an EMC story, and I got really enthusiastic.

I don't know how many m/m fans are also Muse fans (though the "belldom" phenomenon would suggest some overlap ;)), so I won't go into much detail about the Muse-related Easter eggs in the story. If you're not a fan, you won't even notice them; and if you are a fan, you'll get a few extra laughs from the story. Here's a hint: Aside from TIRO and "Hysteria," I've referenced at least seven other Muse songs; and I've also given each of the band members his own hidden shout-out.

Not all the Easter eggs are Muse-related, though. Larry Szymanski isn't a fan of Stephen King, but I am, so there's a reason for the capitalized "It" in the fortune cookie scene. You'll get "It" if you've read It. ;)

Speaking of which, my first idea for Jimmy's fortune was a fortune I received myself: "Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius never." Eventually I worked this out to be a bad translation of something like, "Good sense always travels on well-worn paths, but genius never does." In other words, genius goes its own way.

That's Jimmy, I think. He succeeds even though he never takes the well-worn paths and never does the expected. In fact, he's so instinctive in his actions that he doesn't always realize what he's doing, himself. I wasn't sure about that at first, but in the end I realized he was just playing by ear and having fun. Of course, he never doubted he'd get Larry in the end. After all, he's not just a genius; he's a fae.

Good thing he's an iconoclast fae, though. Imagine what could have happened to Larry if Penelope had gotten hold of him!

*My collaboration with Jukebox was so successful that I think some of his influence carried over into this story. You can see it mostly in the humor and in Jimmy's banter.

This and that

This post is sort of a mishmash, but I have a lot of things to talk about today.

First, I've sent the final chapter of How Did It Come to This? off to Simon, so expect to see it in next week's update. I hope you're enjoying it so far. I haven't received much feedback, but my Stat Counter tells me that lots of people are popping in here from the EMCSA - and lots of people are enjoying the Johnny Weir pics. I take that as a good sign. But remember: writers really love feedback! If you're enjoying the story, or even if you're not, drop me a line. Oh, and don't assume that all of Larry's assumptions about Jimmy are correct. ;)

Second, I thought you'd like to hear about a dream I had recently, since it involved so many things the EMC community holds dear. I dreamed that Supergirl was transformed into a mind-controlled zombie much like Tabico and Iago's Olithoi (first introduced at the end of this story arc). She had grey skin and white eyes, and she was utterly mindless. Her controllers sent her after another superheroine who was, I think, Supergirl's sidekick. For some reason this sidekick looked like the model Nicotine. Eventually I became this second girl, so I got the firsthand experience of being strapped to the brainwashing machine and plugged full of IV's and electrodes. So nice. :) I don't remember what happened after that, but for me, the induction is always the best part of any MC scene.

Finally, I just stopped by Asudem Latex's blog and found an amazing video. It's not embeddable, but I've taken a few screen shots to whet your appetite:

This is technically an art installation, but it's sooo easy to build fantasies around. In my mind, the two women (and one man, not pictured) are either nude or totally encased in black or silver. They've become mindless, living art displayed by some world-conquering MC'er like John Dominic of What Do You Give the Man Who Has Everything?  They don't move to make the piece more interesting; they move because all they think or know now is pleasure. And so they squirm, wrapping themselves around their enticingly placed tubes and plunging them slowly in and out, in and out....

And that reminds me of a story I read once as a teen. I'd love it if someone else remembers it and can tell me how to find it again. The story was science fiction, part of an anthology by an author I don't remember now (I once thought it was Clark Ashton Smith, but now I think I was wrong). The story was about a performance artist who paid the bills by posing at a living statue. In the centerpiece scene, she stands nude on a dais at a dinner party, stock still on her toes, with a thick tube running between her pussy and her mouth. Later she does other pieces involving silver contacts and things like that. At the end of the story, her type of performance art has gone out of style and she just lies down in the street like a piece of trash, motionless and still wearing those contacts; she just doesn't know any other way to live now. I would so love to read that story again. Someone help me out!

What is it about models?

So many of them are other things, as well: professional photographers, clothing designers, website designers, singers (although I can't think of any good model/singers) - and, of course, artists.

The sketches in this post belong to a model who goes by "Christiane" in real life, Malady Charlotina in the art world, and Ulorin Vex (Yes, her again! You know how much I love this lady ;-)) in the modeling world. I like her baroque flourishes, especially with the corsets and bondage gear. The more the better, I say!

I hope you'll enjoy her art, too; and that you'll stop by her site for more goodies. Some of them are even available as iPhone cases.