Charon's Boat

Building the List #2

I could have missed this story. The author does not have many stories on EMCSA, and from what I can gather is not active on the boards. So, I'm grateful to have caught this one. It is Lemma the Librarian by Midori Konton.

Lemma is a sorceress, a young, powerful, self-absorbed, intelligent, pretty (but no so pretty as she thinks), naive, volatile sorceress who because of the volatile, dangerous mix of character traits and power has been sent on a 'special' mission which has landed her in the backwaters of Lemura. The mission is to recover a group of stolen magical grimoires and return them to the library where they belong. She is bound to this duty by a spell which partially directs her actions. The grimoire in the first chapter is: Gender-Specific Glamours and Their Uses, by Soltad boSuntel the Surprisingly Popular

Lemma's character makes this story go. The story is written from her perspective, but her perspective is a well-executed example of an unreliable narrator which leads to most of the plentiful humor. Lemma's warped perspective on herself and events leads several clever moments of disconnect between what is happening and her reaction to those events. It also leads to her getting herself into serious trouble.

The mind control is interesting. The control is centered on character doing the controlling, leaving those influenced by it in a kind of netherworld when not in the controller's presence. They have their own minds and realize they are being controlled, but they also know they will continue to obey.

There's plenty of sex. Aside from the first scene, it's not a standout part of this story, but the first scene with and the the descent into the MC is plenty hot.

One note, this story is not complete. However, the first four parts make a complete chapter. This is what I'm recommending. I hope to recommend it all when it is complete. All in all, a nice addition to the list. I will make a page with them all in the next couple days.

Gonzo the Great

The Power of Self-Hypnosis

Star Trek MC

Yesterday's post got me thinking about Star Trek, and given my bent, I couldn't help but think of Dagger of the Mind.

Kirk and Dr. Helen Noel beam down to investigate a prison colony. It goes without saying that part of the backstory is that Kirk made a pass at Dr. Noel, and she was receptive, and after an initial test of a device called neural neutralizer, Dr. Noel suggests to Kirk that the experience went a bit further than it had in reality.

And Catspaw where a woman turns McCoy, Scotty, and Sulu into mindless slaves but saves Kirk from that fate because he 'fascinates' her.

Then, finally, A Private Little War. The wife of the local chieftain uses a root to entrance Kirk into 'madness'.

No wonder I rewatched all these reruns when I was growning up.

Domination in Space

Over at io9.com, they composed a list of the greatest SF dominatrices of all time. The 'bringers of pain and delight' from Spock's Brain have always been a favorite; push button control of the men they'd captured. Very nice.

Unfortunately, there is one glaring oversight on the list. They forgot Ursa.

I guess I was about ten when she came along in Superman 2. I didn't care much about General Zod or Non, but she was another one of 'those' girls: dark clothes, dusky makeup, cruel and pretty. I was kind of hoping she and Superman could work something out, especially since I liked Lois Lane about as much as Ursa did.

(tip of the hat to Boot Lady Teri, where I discovered the link.)

Callidus takes it up a notch

I've been a fan of Callidus for a long time, and he's just upped the ante with his latest pictures. He's now making animations with effective and precise attention to detail which have added a new dimension to manipping photos.

I liked them all. These two: Slipping and particularly Worship are my favorites. The attention to detail in Worship creates a wonderful effect. Well done.

Building the List

As I'm building my list of favorites from the EMCSA, I've reviewed a number of other people's lists, and there are a few authors which seem to be like mushrooms after a rainstorm, and the listmaker's particular bent seems to modify only the choice of story from the author, not whether the author is present. One of these authors is Tabico. One of her stories which gets quite a bit of attention is "Yellow".

I've tried to like this story, but for me, it's like a description I've heard of Tchaikovsky; there seems to be two of him: there's the one everyone loves and the one everyone respects. For example, everyone loves The Nutcracker ("Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy", "Waltz of the Flowers") or the 1812 Overture (who doesn't love a piece of music which uses cannon fire as a percussion instrument?). On the other hand, there're pieces everyone listens to once then say they respect such as the Sixth Symphony or the 1st Piano Concerto.

This is how I feel about Yellow. I respect it. It creates a wonderful world with different and interesting characters, but in the end, the squick doesn't work for me. "Lord May" is another matter.

A man and a woman are living together, are happy together, and are progressing well in their careers. A package is mis-delivered to their condo. Being good neighbors, they step over and give the package to the proper addressee who lives a few doors away. The neighbor is a gentlemen who refers to himself as Lord May, and is the height of courtesy and generosity. The man is parapalegic, but there is a stream of attractive women who seem quite taken by the man.

The reason for this is that he has invented a unique pleasure-giving system which I'll let you, dear reader, discover on your own by reading the story, and as the friendship between the couple and Lord May progresses, the woman is offered a chance to experience this system. Both the man and woman overcome their uneasiness because they are both drawn to the possibilities, one of which is that the woman's pleasure can be controlled via a remote control. This leads to a thermonuclear section after she's had the device installed, and they discussing it's use. This is a taste:

"Harder." She spread her legs a bit, dropped her head, braced her arms against the floor, tears still squeezing from her eyes. "Hurt me."

I slid the intensity knob up. My finger hovered over the button.

"Tom?" she asked, looking over her shoulder.

"Yes?"

"Call me a bitch, and push the button."

I blinked, but the look in her eyes was electric, demanding. I swallowed, then hardened my expression.

"Bitch," I said. "Take this." I pushed the button.

She shrieked and collapsed to the carpet, writhing and gasping, crying. Her eyes were flooding with tears. "Oh," she gasped, "oh. That felt... so..." She whimpered a bit, folding into a fetal position, hands across her chest.

"Good," she said at last, quietly, lying curled on the floor.

I was a bit disappointed in the ending; it was as though a villain was needed, and the character shoehorned into that role didn't fit into the slot, especially how the ending of the story left things much as they had been before the climax of the story, except with the 'villain' being viewed as 'bad'. However, there is an alternate ending which changes things some, but I don't believe it's any better.

Still, member #3 of the list, joining "Gospel" and "Trailer Park Tango" is "Lord May". Read it. Love it.

Not Quite MC Enough

Here's a story I submitted to the EMCSA, but it wasn't quit EMC enough to make it onto the archive. I'm still pleased with it on the whole. I hope you like it. It's called Stalker.

An Old Time Religion

I've been messing around with applying textures to skin, and I'm pleased with the result on this one. I posted this on the Collective yesterday. Again, I cannot recommend the site enough. Please note that the full-size image is NSFW.

You can see the rest of my manips here.

Vampires

I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it. I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. - Jonathan Harker's Journal from Dracula

I don't recall the first time I heard of Dracula or saw a vampire in a cartoon or television show. (I didn't read the book until I was nineteen.) I remember getting some fake teeth and wearing a black cape for Halloween when I was about twelve. But I do remember the first time they turned into something other than blood sucking fiends from beyond the grave.

I read a bunch of Stephen King novels when I was about thirteen. I started with Pet Sematary, I convinced a librarian to let me take one of the copies before she put it out on the new release shelf, and worked my way back around through Carrie and reached Salem's Lot. I don't remember the plot details, but I do remember one character being saved from the clutches of a vampire and commenting that he would've let the attack happen because of the sexual charge he got from the experience.

Then along came a movie in 1985 which made it explicit, Fright Night. I didn't see it until it arrived on cable a year or so later. It had this scene (original was color):

And the sequel, Fright Night 2:

For me, Anne Rice arrived soon after, and while her stories were short on MC, they had plenty of eroticism, along with the big addition of seeing through the eyes of the vampire. Better than her book, I thought "Moon Over Bourbon Street" by Sting captured much of my interest well (a user video which uses the Interview with a Vampire).

Being drawn to something which takes you over when it's turned loose: "I must love what I destroy and destroy the thing I love."

It's back to that sexy melancholy. There's the orgasmic moment, but it has consequences. And either the moment seems worth the consequences or the consequences' allure is enough.

Once changed, however, you can never go back. Whether for good or ill, you live with the consequences. The power to make that change is now gone. That moment, the one where the change occurs will never happen again, along with the thrill of the dream.

Dreaming about that moment is also an allure. It's like putting money aside for my first car. I could imagine where I'd go, the freedom of going where I chose, and that I'd never had to ask to borrow my mother's car again. For two years, I put money aside, and I had that dream every time I deposited a paycheck for my after-school job into the bank. Then, I turned sixteen, and I bought the car.

Afterwards, it was making the repairs, buying insurance, friends wanting to be friends because they wanted to go places too, but the dream, for me, was over. Sure, I loved having the car. I loved almost everything about it, but I missed the dream sometimes. The dream was perfect; the car was reality with all its messiness.

Vampires have none of those problems. The porcelain skin, the full lips, the eyes which capture and mesmerize, drawing the curious, the victims so their mind goes blank and they float towards the cold predator, trembling with fear while wanting the feel of the fangs, don't exist. There will never be that apex moment where the bite occurs, the blood begins to flow, life ebbs, and it all goes black. Perhaps even, the vampire gives back a piece, and death becomes immortality and a new life. It won't happen. They are safe within dreams, and that makes them fun.

Summing Up 2007

Best Story, Best Craft, Most Heat. As I was reading these stories, I realized that I've never made a favorites list for EMC erotica. I can remember my first story which made me realize that other people shared my kink - Night Music by the Flying Pen. I also remember my first kinky erotica, a little story called Adventures in Rubber by Dr. Hevea, but in all this time, I've never chosen favorites.

As an aside, the methods by which I obtained both stories in 1992 was via a server where you sent an e-mail with the title of the story and nothing in the body. If you misspelled the title your e-mail disappeared. There were no websites, and ftp and gopher were just coming over the horizon. Also, the server was like Fight Club. You had to get invited to know it existed, and you didn't give the e-mail address to anyone. You obtained what was available on the server by sending an e-mail with the subject line "CATALOG". It was very fun and very James Bond. It also added to the secretive, underground feelings I had towards kink way back in 1992. I must've burned through several reams of paper as I printed all these stories out at work and sneaked them home. How did I find out about the server? Rules #1 & #2 are all I can say.

Back to the point, I'm making a list, starting with my choices from this year's winners. The three categories which I will be using as a starting point are ones which I've stolen from Chrystal Wynd's reviews on the MC forums: Story, Craft, and Heat. I may change, but I believe this will get things started.

So, with that in mind, which of this year's stories would make the list? I had three candidates: Trailer Park Tango by Gasman, Gospel by Iago, and Capes and Cloaks: the Illithid's Tale by Samarkand

The clearest choice and overall winner was Gospel. In the three categories, this one did it right. Written in a confessional style like the Tell-Tale Heart with a beautful style and a fantastic burn which smolders and becomes disturbing while remaining erotic, this story is great no matter which year it shows up. It's on the list.

Capes and Cloaks: the Illithid's Tale was fun and had flashes of eroticism, along with a high style which would make my all-time list if it would've kept it up, but it didn't. An edit and a better handled ending could get it there though, but as it stands, I have to keep it off even though it did win for yellow.

Finally, for pure heat, Trailer Park Tango wins the year. Where Gospel was a burn, this story ignites and keeps the flame high. The transformation of the jock is unusual because it's not presented as an arc. Instead, it shows the before of a certain aspect then performs the change, showing the after right away. So, it's more disassembly than a holistic descent. I don't believe it's quite as good as Gospel which uses the holistic descent because, without the eroticism, the story doesn't work where Gospel tells a good story independent of its eroticism. This does nothing to change the fact that Trailer Park Tango makes the list.

As a class, I believe red got the best of things this year, three of the stories (Gospel, The Happily, and Ink Soaked Penumbra) were worthy of being chosen, and all the reds were well constructed. Green was uniform in style of story (they were all stroke), but very uneven in quality. However, it did produce the hottest story of all the nominees I've read. Yellow was in the middle, but it gets credit for the most creativity of writing style. I'm going to watch and see if this is a consistent pattern.