Brief Update

Although I'm more of a 'trunks' person myself. Ha!

So I'm up hecka early before our drive to the 'rent's house this morning. Hopefully I can blog from there, if not, have a great Holiday season and I'll see you in 2017.

I've sent Uzobono the script for CORE 11 up through scene eight... but I've also reorganized things a bit so that there are now seventeen scenes. So not quite halfway there, although I may pull in some stuff at the end or just cut it entirely, so we'll probably wind up with 15-16 scenes total. We should be able to keep working on it during the break, but as always no promises.

Still, it's exciting to be working on it. Rhinociraptors! Albino bunnygirls! Although, technically, the rhinociraptors take place offscreen.

Tabenings - pre-Holiday edition

So Uzobono just sent me (well, yesterday) the renders for the first scene in CORE #11 and they look fucking awesome. I have to say, it's so fantastic to be able to write something, send it over to Uzo, and then receive back images that are not just what I had in mind but better than what I had in mind.

If you wonder why I've only produced a couple of stories - and been shoddy about finishing them - in the last several years, but have managed to reach CORE issue #11, you need look no further for your explanation. The sheer awesomeness of working with a gifted illustrator simply cannot be overstated. The payoff for my writing is right there, days later, arriving in my inbox and totally beautiful. No wonder I manage to get my lazy ass back into gear and write the next scene, and the next.

So currently the script is up to scene four (inclusive), and the renders are down for scene one. I should have another few scenes over to Uzo by tomorrow. The current plan is for a total of 15 scenes, so we're definitely looking at 2017 but probably not too far into 2017.

In other news, mmm, let's see. Gonna be at the parents' house for the winter break, and I dunno how that will affect my blogging. In fact, recalling my issues this summer, it's entirely possible that you shan't hear from me (unless we are corresponding via e-mail, e-mail still works) until next year! Though I hope that won't be the case. Farking Google and their "sure you have the right password but your IP address is different so give us your cell number" fuckitude.

In any case, if I can't blog between now and January,  have a great Holiday season. We'll know by next week.

Tabenings - Hey Look Over There edition

Greetings once again! Well, no news on the smut front this week, so I thought instead I'd link to a couple of the smutty webcomics I enjoy consuming! Not that I'm trying to distract you or anything.

In no particular order:

I Roved Out in Search of Truth and Love (http://www.irovedout.com/)

Rupert Everton's extremely naughty fantasy webcomic. I have no idea where it's going, plot-wise, as there's fucking every few pages and after each bout thereof they seem to introduce some new tangent, but the art is delicious and the writing is fun. My very favorite episode is not actually on the webcomic site, but rather over at RE's Hentai Foundry page, a short piece called "Maeryll Says". Page 9 is one of my favorite things ever.

Alfie (http://buttsmithy.com/)

InCase is another artist who does gorgeous work; the plot here is much more sensible, though it moves slowly due to basically being a skeleton for lots of detailed fucking. But it's all so nice that I can't wait for each issue and religiously reload his Alfie WIP page to see what's coming next. For my predilections, of course, the chapter six lesbian encounter is by far the best, but even the male homosexual stuff - which is not my cup of tea - is really well written and drawn.

The site navigation is pretty atrocious, if you haven't read it before you should go below the current strip and use the 'Select Chapters' pull-down menu and read from Chapter One. Only then use the usual 'Prev / Next' etc. links at the top.

InCase also does great pin-ups and other art, though a lot of it is futa which I find annoying. But I can bitch about the 2010s futasplosion which somehow got all over everything and spoiled a lot of otherwise promising porn in some other blog post.

A couple of lesbian romance comics which I follow...ed, until their updates ground to a halt:

Alien Hand Syndrome (http://ahs-comic.com/):

Engaging and just enough of a tease, but it's slowed down catastrophically as the creator has succumbed to some sort of malady. :(

The Night Belongs To Us (http://tnbtu.com/):

 Hrgh how I wish this one was still going on. So much tease not to deliver on! But a fun read nonetheless.

Enjoy!

Tabenings - Not December Yet edition

I just sent off the next part of CORE 11 to Uzobono, which brings us up through part four (of fifteen). Hey, it's double what we had last week!

In other news... well, there's not much other news, honestly. Thanksgiving was nice, although there are family difficulties at the moment which I shan't get into. There are some yummy silver-painted girls in the music video for "Everything Sucks" by the band Dope, which has apparently been out for years but I only discovered it this weekend.

Mmm, I do like me some silver-painted girls. There's a silver-painted skin texture for the Victoria 4 Poser model which I have to say is almost enough to get me to try out 3D modeling again. The paces I'd like to put her through...

Tabenings - Eleven Point Two Edition

Greetings yet again! I just sent off the first draft of CORE #11 parts one and two to Uzobono for initial look-over and rendering, so things are underway! Right now I have, let's see, fifteen parts outlined, so that will give you a sense of the progress, which is to say there's a long way to go.

Haven't done much else in terms of smut; there are some difficulties in my personal life at the moment, and they are keeping me out of the headspace I generally need to be in for writing.

One thing I have done is I finally got around to playing Princess Trainer, which was enjoyable. It's a smut game by some Russian fellow named Akabur, and it's based on the Aladdin film from the House of Mouse. Basically, Jafar won, is now the ruler of Agrabah, and you are given princess Jasmine and told to turn her both (a) obedient and (b) slutty.

Fortunately, there's a "school" in town that sells classes which do exactly that - how they do it is a bit vague - so you do various quests and amass money and turn Jasmine into a dolled-up tramp, along with two other girls you meet along the way. It's enjoyable and smutty if an obviously male-centric male-power fantasy; the art is nice and the gameplay good. I liked it.

Between Princess Trainer and Free Cities, I really wish I had the impetus to create a 'Mind Trainer' game, where you use the various tropes and tools of the EMC genre to bend someone into the slave you want them to be. You start out with some cash, you buy and then upgrade various enslaving technologies and of course slaves - who start out rebellious, of course - and earn money with them in various ways to continue upgrading and refining your enslaving technologies.

Why, just off the top of my head you could have:

• drugs
• subliminals
• hypno-machines
• hypnotists (e.g. other slaves, yourself, outside contractors) 
• cybernetics / implants
• surgery / physical modification
• squicky mind-control critters

Aimed at:

• personality modification
• obedience
• fetish implantation
• likes / dislikes
• personality erasure
• libido enhancement / reduction
• memory implantation / erasure
• sexual orientation

And in all sorts of combinations, intensities, etc. Much more fun than "I had her whipped a lot and now she loves me" IMO.

But of course talk is cheap and ideas are cheap - the real coin of the realm is effort. And I don't see myself wrestling through Twine or Ren'py any time soon.

But hey - CORE #11 is underway!

Tabenings - Ignition Edition

Woo, sliding in under the wire again. Thank you, habit!

Well, I've done a bit more on M&A, and I'm laying out CORE #11 and writing the first couple of scenes so that Uzobono can get started. As usual I'm the bottleneck; she's over there shooting me irritated glances (note: from several states away) and amusing herself trying out Daz Studio (or is that DAZ studio? Is it an acronym?) and wondering what stupid expensive props I'll ask for next.

But CORE #11 is underway, and there should be solid progress to report on it shortly.

I've realized that I haven't posted any more Secret Files here and I'd been meaning to. I think perhaps for Thanksgiving I'll post one of my very favorite of my own stories, 'Luthrina'. It's a fractured fairy tale, much more humorous than erotic, and I am very fond of it. Hmm, though as it is finished perhaps sending it to Simon would be the more appropriate course of action, and I can leave the Secret Files for more "bits 'n bobs" sort of things.

Tabenings - Election Edition

Well, it's election night, and I'm all freaked out watching the coverage, so nothing witty in the Tabenings this week. I just... how can we... how can so many people... gah! So terrifying.

Anyhow, hopefully the sun will rise tomorrow, and there will be additional mind control smut in the future.

Tabenings - Synthetic Edition

Hello again! Well, it's November! My time looks to be freeing up a bit-

-no, no promises. I will do what I do and then we shall see where we are.

In other news, though, Uzobono has produced another magnificent and ridonkulously large mind control comic book in the Division universe. If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to download it right now!

I helped a bit with the text editing, so am always pleased to hear feedback about how good it is.

Tabenings: Tylmarande Edition

Not a lot going on smut-wise this week, I spent much of the weekend working on someone's costume for Halloween. No, not mine, I have plenty already in my closet.

Fun discussion from last week on video games and their possible mind control / corruption themes. I am as it turns out a big fan of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and have re-installed it (and applied the fan patch) a couple of different times. I can rarely bring myself to fight through the interminable Hollywood sewer, but I do love me that Heather, rrr. There's a mod I apply to her, 'nigh-naked Heather', and... well. Rrr Heather. Also a fun game aside from that, I've rarely seen its equal in sheer atmospherics.

I also did Star Wars the Old Republic for six months or so when it came out - some fun corruption there, including as mentioned the girl who joins the sentient bugs (Tabico? Enjoying girls turned into bugs? Who would have thunk?) I understand that there has since been an update or two which allow for same-gender romance (at least, of a specific NPC) but thus far that hasn't been enough to lure me back in. I did enjoy several of the different class story arcs, though, at least one of which (Imperial Agent) played with mind control liberally.

And I do recall that set of Silithus quests! Mmm Cthulhoid Bug Overlords.

Now one instance of video game corruption that hasn't come up, but was exceedingly powerful to me - and those who recognized the name in the title are nodding their heads - was from Neverwinter Nights, the isometric Dungeons & Dragons based game from 2002. Aribeth de Tylmarande, smexy elven paladin, is seduced and corrupted into a Chaotic Evil blackguard during the main story quest.

At this remove, a lot of that storyline was pretty forced, and the seduction was sadly not all that seductive, more "look at how badly they treated you - why not join team CE?", but at the time good damn did it push my buttons. I loaded and replayed and loaded and replayed the scene where she gives in and converts to evil oh so many times.

And then in the Hordes of the Underdark follow-up campaign, you can find her wicked spirit in the underworld and get her to sign up with your party, either by returning to the light side (*roll eyes*) or remaining as a wicked, wicked, naughty girl (*rrrr*).

Heh. I'm tempted to go play it again right now just for that, and I don't even own the game any more.

Tabenings - Spooky Edition

Gar, it's late on Tuesday and I almost forgot to post!

Been working on M&A, hit a bit of a stopper but I'll try to plow through it. Um.... what else. Hrm.

As I may have mentioned, I picked up World of Warcraft again, and am enjoying it relatively well. I've been playing my Demon Hunter class recently, and one of the decisions you need to make early on in the class is which of two other Demon Hunters you want to make your lieutenant; the decision doesn't really affect your ability to do anything later on, but it gives flavor and determines which of a set of quests you get to do.

The two options are a 'loyal lieutenant' sort and a 'questioning / greater good' person. I suppose each have their appeal, from a persona perspective, but of course I made my choice based on totally different criteria.

If you pick one of them, Kayn, then you wind up getting the option sometime down the road to do a small set of quests involving a Demon Hunter you encountered in the prelude, Cyana Nightglaive, who has apparently been tempted to the dark side and gone over to the legion.

Rrrr. That hits the spot. I love me some corruption. Blizzard delivers on that - although obviously in a rather G-rated way - as anyone who played the Diablo games can tell you. So, since Kayn is the one who offers access to this particular set of Evil Cyana quests, Kayn is the fellow I signed up with. Loyal? Rebellious? Who the fuck cares? I want to see me some corrupted elf-girl!

(Sadly, the eventual quest has almost zilch in erotic corruption payoff, but even so it's the razor I went with to make the decision. Which probably says a lot about me.)

Tabenings - Half Halloween Edition

Hi again!

I hope you all are enjoying 'Incubated', I know I am! I'm also avidly consuming 'Internal Affairs Bureau', and if you missed 'Mindworms Unchained', here's a chance to go back and read that, too!

This is an outcome which I find really gratifying. I write smut because I consume smut, and I write the type of smut I like - mind control - because that's the stuff I really enjoy reading / get off on. So really there's nothing better for me than when people write stories like the stories I write, because then it's exactly the sort of thing I enjoy only there's that new-story aura to it because someone else wrote it.

So it's certainly a good time for me, consumption-wise. Production-wise, I wrote some more M&A - that new idea/story element I slotted into it last week has proven to be a real key in driving part of the action forward that I had been sort of lacking, so that's good. The lack of business trip did kind of leave me without that high-productivity boost I was hoping for, but we persevere.

Tabenings - Time Warp Edition

Psst!

Wanna know a secret?

I did some writing again this week! Yay!

Wanna know another secret?

It wasn't Pierced.

(Booo!)

See, that's how it goes in the 'smut hobby' world. I write as the spirit moves me, since the spirit comes with no cash whatsoever.

Anywhoo, I had this really strong vision of a scene come to me, and it slotted perfectly into M&A, a 50% finished story I've had around forever. Like, 2007 or earlier. In fact, Synthetic, M&A, and That Which Has Been Lost are all sister stories of a sort, I was trying quite hard to keep my story output up and failing badly, and had all three chugging along at the same time. If I felt like fantasy, I'd write some TWHBL, sci-fi then I'd write Synthetic, and modern era I'd work on M&A.

And I've finished none of them, which is quite sad, really.

Yet! None of them, yet. As I say, I got a good erotic vision last weekend and squeezed it for some good smut writing impetus, so M&A has crawled out of its coma bed and shown a little legs.

Oh, and my trip got called off. One of the people I was to meet with had a stroke. Yeah, sucks. I don't know him very well, but obviously it still sucks.

So I'm at home playing World of Warcraft and eyeing more M&A, or maybe that story I really ought to be working on. We'll see.

If I don't get M&A out at some point it will have ceased to be "modern" and will have turned into historical fiction!

Tabenings - Plague Edition

So, the good news is the first of them stories based on my stories that I'd mentioned a while ago has made its appearance: Incubated by the marvelous Half Shim. If you like 'Pierced', you'll like Incubated! Beaches! Hot babes! Alien crawlers suckling on heads and mucking around with brains!

Speaking of mucking... the bad news is I spent all of last weekend about a hair's breadth from death, or so it felt. Some flu-like malady really kicked the spit out of me; I couldn't even manage to rise from bed to make a proper supper for myself and the Subsidiary Unit either Saturday or Sunday, and I had to get someone to cover for me at work both yesterday and today.

No fun!

But I'm not dead, so that's good, and am in fact a bit on the mend. As mentioned I do have a trip coming up in the near future, one which will put me in a hotel with not a lot to do but eat Cheetos and watch porn (old joke reference) so I will do my best to get some writing done and ready for you scurvy dogs.

(The joke is: man goes in to see the doctor. "What seems to be the problem?" the doctor asks. "Well, doc, it's my penis. It's turned orange." "Orange?" the doctor asks. "Okay, let's see it."

Man pulls down his drawers and sure enough his schwanz is bright orange, the color of marine rescue equipment. "Huh," the doctor says, examining it. "How strange. Hmm. Could be an allergy - have you changed your habits recently? Eating new foods, wearing new clothes?"

"Naw, doc, I can't afford none of that. I got laid off a couple months back so now I just sit at home eating Cheetos and watching porn."

Ba-dum-tsss!)

Tabenings - Aragorn Edition

The Tuesday may come when I fail to update the Secret Files - but it is not THIS Tuesday!

Not that I have much.

Did some work on Pierced, but not as much as I would have liked. Was hoping to have it for this coming weekend but that's looking unlikely at this point. It's tough to have the energy to write smut in the evening when you work all day and then spend your evenings helping your subsidiary unit with homework or shuttling it around to sporting events. I just want to sit down and watch some Home and Garden channel followed by falling asleep to whichever of Colbert, Kimmel, or Fallon has the most interesting guest on.

Yes, it's a thrilling life here in Tabico-land!

I'll note that my colleague Dollmistress has produced another fantastic illustrated story, available over at her Deviant Art gallery, which you should investigate if you haven't already.

(How can they call it "Deviant" Art when they specifically disallow anything naughtier than nudity? Talk about misleading nomenclature. It's a good thing Telsis put up that other page.)

Anyway.

I'm a huge fan of these enslavement/transformation scenes - obviously - and this one has again gotten me thinking about how to build a story around something similar.

I'm thinking some sort of base or facility which is dedicated to human to sexy mindless slave transformation. Our protagonists have to raid it, a la 'Rouge' - we'll get to 'why' in a moment.

Of course, the other immediate question is whose facility is it? I rather neatly solved that in 'Rouge', if I do say so myself. Dollmistress has established the Enthasans, an alien race of mind controlling Mistresses, and aliens are a solid choice for this sort of thing; it lets the author use 'technology' not readily understood by the characters.

(I have something similar going on in 'M&A', if I ever decide to finish that one and release it to the public, though it's all modern real-ish world stuff, no aliens at all. In fact it's in the SCUniverse and Diana Snowden makes an appearance. And Neil Arundsen a phone call. But enough about the back burner.)

So, enslavement facility. I'm gonna start with 'aliens', though I think I'll go Far Future and.... ooh. Now there's an idea.

So. Race of aliens that like to enslave and convert humans. Said race is more powerful than the humans, although there are many solar systems' worth of humans and they're not being totally overrun so much as plucked like fruit.

Fortunately for the humans, there are yet other races who don't go in for enslaving humans - because why would you? I mean, you'd just wind up with all these... humans milling around - and said other races also do not like the Enslavers. For whatever reason.

So those folks and the Enslavers have had a war. And the Enslavers lost (to an indeterminate but significant extent) and have been rolled back. And the humans are now returning to territory which the Enslavers had taken from them, because the victors in the war either don't want it or enjoy being vaguely patronizing towards lesser races.

Thus we have an Enslaving facility, on a former human world. A team of soldiers/scientists goes into it with multiple aims - rescuing anyone not converted, if possible, but also securing Enslaver technology, and confirming that the place is "safe" - and, well, this being Tabico talking, you can guess what happens next.

They find, and turn on, the power.

Mmm.

Also I was considering, based on DM's recent ventures, some still-nebulous way of working audience participation into the story. Sadly, I have yet to crack the mysteries of 3D illustration. But I can write purty. So what I was postulating was writing more or less scene by scene, filling in the plot as dictated by my vision but then larding the thing with delicious naughty conversion scenes by taking a vote on the preferred mechanic for each scene as it arises.

Let me elaborate. So I'd write the intro, which would go long enough to insert the protagonists firmly into the facility and turn on their doom the power. Then there would be a vote on the next scene: who should be subjected to Mind Control, and what form should that Mind Control take - which could be a list of options such as:

• Chemical / drug
• Biological / parasitical 
• Mechanical / implant / MC machine
• Subliminal / subtle
• Hypnotic / interpersonal
• Memory / personality erasure

You get the idea. The depth of the control exerted would be up to the author (me), so earlier scenes would not necessarily be "WHAM she's a mindless robot now" but could be more like laying the groundwork for a personality change - but then again, they could also be "WHAM robot now" for effect.

Whaddya think? Interesting idea? Unworkable? The Internet would discover the poll and make every poll result "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong"? The story's no good if they're all going to end up enslaved anyway, because what's the point you know how it's going to end?

Mid September Tabenings

Well, it looks like even over on 4chan they've given up on seeing an end to 'Pierced', so I guess it's about time I got off my ass and wrote one! Ending that is, not an ass. I don't even know how you would write one of those.

Also, given my recent dearth of smut activity - entirely explicable, mind you, given RL commitments that ramp up this time of year - I'm thinking I may go back to some sort of 'Tidbit' paradigm. Since I do a blog post on Tuesday, maybe Thursday would make sense. For the alliteration.

Other than promises and intentions, though, nothing to report on here this last week. Well, nothing from *me*. I can report that I've seen not just one but two stories - very nice, smexy stories - that other writers - very nice, smexy writers - have done based on or related to my stuff, and that you will probably be seeing the delicious fruits of their labors in the very near future.

Also I've been playing Pillars of Eternity, since it was on sale on Steam recently, and... well, I'm underwhelmed. The mechanics are fine but I've just not been pulled in by the setting. If you want to go dark and morally uncertain in your game's fantasy world, that's fine, but then you particularly need some levity and uprightness to create contrast - even if you plan to tear it down for effect later. Eh. They made an actual game, and I did not... but it would have been better if they'd hired me, that's all I'm saying.

Anywhoo, I'll get some prose bubbling or my name's not Tabico, see if I don't.

Tabenings, Ganesh Edition

Oh snap, it's Tuesday again! How did that happen?

Ohh right, there was a holiday yesterday. Ganesh Chaturthi! Also Labor Day, if you're in the States.

Well, as is too common around this time of year, I've got nothing new to unveil. I already directed you to Dollmistress' excellent and fun recent renderventure, as linked in last week's Tabenings.

As usual with erotic mind control stuff like that, it inspired some naughty spin-off ideas; and this seems like a reasonable place and time to elaborate on them! Having nothing else to report anyway. None of them are jelling into a coherent narrative, but it's worth putting some pins into them for examination.

The tale ends with Mel being turned into an incubation drone, her mind deliciously cored out. This elides in my mind towards pregnancy, and I was thinking how yummy it would be to have a story wherein a group of refugees from the Evil Mind Control forces are taken in by those opposed to the malevolent slavers, but the innocent women/children they admit behind their defenses include a goodly number of pregnant women - who are in fact not pregnant, but have inside them the actual advance agents of the EMC forces.

There's obviously some good bio-squick there; the creatures nestling in their hosts' wombs would have control not only of their hosts but could also have some telepathic MC powers which they would use to enthrall, then enslave, the defenders of the redoubt. And they could have all sorts of icky tentacles or eyes on stalks or whatever which could emerge, glistening, from their hosts' vaginas, to brainwash their new hapless victims.

A particular angle that this snippet evokes in my conception is some serious depersonalization. In general with mind control, even heavy mind control, the subject is assumed to retain some sense of self-worth, even if only as a tool for her Mistress. But in this case, the hosts could have been mentally broken down so much that they see themselves as having no intrinsic value at all - they are merely sheathes, sheltering disguises which their masters wear and might discard as they see fit. And in their remodeled minds, that is as it should be.

To reiterate - this is what the hosts truly believe. Without rancor or disapproval. They've been ego-wiped so thoroughly that they look at themselves, dispassionately, as totally disposable. "I am a slave husk; I have neither will nor desire. The Masters command and I obey. My body will serve their purposes for as long as they desire; then I shall die."

Mmm. Definitely something there.

Secondly, and not particularly related, the coterie of protagonistas which DM set up for us also set me to thinking of a similar 'commandos versus mind control' sort of scenario.

Posit powerful Mind Controllers who, let's be honest, really rather out-class our heroines, much as in DM's Space Ditz universe. Said Mind Controllers can use hypnotic / telepathic powers and pretty much enslave anyone they encounter without a lot of difficulty. For some valid reason they don't run the world - perhaps there aren't that many of them - and our heroines have some small defenses against them but nothing that would withstand direct woman-to-Mistress confrontation.

But! It has come to light that once upon a time the Mind Controllers had some enemies, competition as it were, of a more powerful but less cerebral sort. They got the upper hand over these rivals and, unable to destroy them, locked them away some while ago.

Our heroines have recently learned of the existence of these imprisoned but possibly still puissant entities. And now you can see where this is going - the crew of heroines must infiltrate the still-guarded locale where these enemies-of-their-enemies are locked away and, if possible, enlist their aid.

A desperate mission, to be sure, but what alternative is there?

And of course during the infiltration things will go slightly wrong and some of them will be suborned by the Mind Controllers; possibly some started out as traitors, either knowingly or unwittingly, and will betray their comrades to their Mistresses as soon as the time is ripe. But of course through pluck and luck, success is had, and the vault breached - but what is locked away down here that is frightening enough for the pursuit to stop?

And will whatever it is be helpful? (Well... it will certainly help itself to the delicious minds delivering themselves to it...)

Anywhoo. Some random thoughts there, of the sort that spark off of lovely striking material such as DM's set of renders.

Outlook for my near-term smut productivity is low, but I shall as always keep you posted here, in the Secret Files!

Tabenings - Farewell August

Nothing much to report from my end - RL continues to fill my days with non-porn-producing activity.

If you hadn't seen, over on DA, Dollmistress ran a little game in her Gallery wherein commentators got to vote for and against several characters as they tried (and failed) to escape being dolled. It was pretty awesome, though I am equally in awe at her ability to crank out over a hundred sexy renders and story text in a weekend.

I really have to try again to learn how to render. Thus far my efforts have met with frustration, but it's just too appealing a skillset not to acquire. As you are probably aware, I used to make imagealters (rather a lot of them) and was pretty good at it - and it taught me pretty much everything I know about Photoshop, which I now use on an infrequent but regular basis for totally non-smut projects.

If I could figure out how to render characters up to my exacting standards, I could move forward with the game I've been plotting for several years. The zeitgeist in the smut community definitely seems to be with games in this year of our Lord 2016, and I sure do enjoy me some video games - hell, I've even created one, though it had nothing to do with smut. And was written in C. In the 90s.

Anyhow, guess I'll put that on my to-do list:
a) Learn to render, successfully this time
b) Write mailbag blog post
c) Write 'smut sites I visit' blog post
d) Finish 'Pierced'
e) Finish 'Compromise'

Hrm. Maybe I should put it at the bottom.

Tabenings - N'est Pas Un Pipe

Guh.

Well, there's one update left in August, and I don't see a way that I'll be in it. My, shall we say, employer, opted to have me not embark upon the, let's call it, project which I had prepared for, but rather a different one entirely, leaving me scrambling to ready myself before the, shall we say, clients arrive.

I know, I know. Lame excuses. But you will just have to learn that in the Secret Files we are working on a "best effort" basis.

In other news... AWMBH has started up a blog, so if you like gently cartoony sexy mind control illustrations, you might have a gander over there.

I'll update you on the writing front as soon as writing happens; also I need to do a mailbag post because I am running out of room in my brain to remember the responses I wanted to give to certain questions and issues that arose. We'll shoot for that in the next day or so.

Tabenings - Whip Cracking

Hmm, it's halfway through August and I haven't done a lick of 'Pierced'. Better get moving if I want to meet my self-imposed deadline! By next week I shall have something written.

Of course, I did spend some time cleaning up 'Codi'; I hope you liked it. I think September's Secret File will be 'Fake Ones', the other story I started spinning up as a Tuesday Tidbit from back in the day. It's a story about breast implants. And brain implants, of course, I mean why would you do one without the other?

I like breast implants. Oh, I know, there are several vocal currents of people who don't like them. And, on the face of it, they're kind of indefensible: surgery - surgery! -  involving implanting foreign objects into your body, just to look more sexually appealing?

But that's why I like them. Sure, I like breasts, but what gets to me as a fetishist is the idea that this individual went to such lengths to be sexier. Yow! That's the kind of thing that in my world people have to get mind-controlled into doing. So visual aesthetics aside, I see fake boobs and my perverted brain is saying "she altered herself for sex" and that's just a turn-on for me.

Anyhow, that's in 'Fake Ones'. Which should be showing up here after I conclude 'Pierced' over on the EMCSA. Assuming I don't run off and join a convent or something before school starts, which does on occasion have some appeal. The closer school gets, the more appealing.

Secret Files - Codi

So! I almost missed my "this weekend" goal, but here she is: Codi!

I hope you enjoy. The piece (I hesitate to call it a 'story') is dripping with yummy future sci-fi mind control visuals and fetish elements. It ultimately doesn't go anywhere, sadly, as it was more of a writing exercise than an attempt to tell a story, but I hope you will enjoy it for what's there.

I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions about what could have, or should have, come after. Once the setup is done, what then? I vaguely recall thinking that Codi would go out to some archaeological type dig and find something that would threaten her obedience, but I'm not sure where I could have taken that. I'd love to hear your thoughts about where the story could go from here.

Painted Nail Tabenings

Got my toes done with green nail polish today!

So, still hoping for August for the rest of 'Pierced', not that I have done a lick of work on that. I have a wholesome family project I am working on and so I've been spending my nights and weekends on that, rather than smut.

Rather than producing smut, that is - I've been playing a bit of Roundscape Adorevia, a fantasy RPG built with RPG maker, and although it lacks any mind control *sigh* it does have a lot of fun fantasy-setting porn.

But I tell you what I'm gonna do - I'll post the three extant chapters of 'Codi' here in the Secret Files this coming weekend. By way of shaping expectations, they don't really go anywhere - I created them more as a 'keep writing' exercise than as a proper story, so was just kind of writing forward without a destination in mind. But they do have a fun atmosphere and good fetish content.

Also, someone mentioned 'Riders 2'. Well... I have parts of 'Riders 2', which was to be an actual story, but I kind of laid out the plot and wrote some of the nasty bits and never actually filled the rest of it in. So it's a bunch of disconnected parasite-MC porn scenes with only the skeleton of a story between them. I'd like to do better for that, to actually add the story bits so there's something there one might actually enjoy.

So for the time being, don't anticipate that one appearing here in the Secret Files. But there is something there, and it's not irrational to hold out hope you might see it.

A Backdrop of Doom

As mentioned, I am also intending to use this blog to jot down notes and ideas - and this is one such!

Being old, I played a video game back in the day called "Myth: The Fallen Lords". It was a hell of a lot of fun mostly because my friend and I played through the single player campaign co-op. You weren't really supposed to - you could only play missions co-op if you had beaten them on single player - but we discovered a cheat code that "insta-won" any level, so we would start a level in single player, insta-win it without even looking at it, quit, and then play it in multiplayer, which was much, much more fun.

The game was platoon-level real-time strategy in a fantasy world; your troops were elven archers, dwarven grenade tossers, and crazy barbarians with claymores. The bad guys were various humanoid monsters - orc and goblin type stuff, but creepier. It was fun to play, and the world-building was well done. It was also challenging - there were lots of ways to fuck up, the bad guys were hard and you had to hit them just right, and your forces carried over between levels so if you only just eked out a win, you weren't going to succeed on the level following.

Now, if you're worried about spoilers for a game that came out in 1998, you will want to skip the next bit.

One of the things I most enjoyed about the game, perhaps oddly, was the ever-growing sense of doom that came with each mission. You see, you would "win" any given level - and then discover that, elsewhere in the world, the bad guys were marching from triumph to triumph and just rolling over all your allies (who you'd thought were fairly tough) and pretty much everyone but you. You'd start rescuing people from some city while the good-guy army dealt with a bad guy army up north. You succeed in the rescue, and learn that the good-guy army was totally obliterated by heretofore undreamed of amounts of bad guys. You'd cut through some local groups of bad guys to avoid being entrapped - and then learn that the entire north half of the good guy country had been overrun. You'd retreat again and discover that other kingdoms you'd hoped to get help from would not be sending any help because not only had they been conquered, it had been achieved through impossible dark magic that twisted their citizenry into still more monsters and those critters were now coming for you.

The news just kept getting worse, even as you succeeded in desperate mission after desperate mission.

It was awesome.

Anywhoo, I was recalling that experience and thinking that it could be a fun backdrop for a dark fantasy erotic mind control story. The small group of protagonists learn of an evil plot to take over world (using lots of delicious mind control and corruption) and set out to foil said plot. They discover along the way (as they are going from place to place attempting to learn what is really happening and what if anything they can do about it) that the plot is totally already underway. And then the news reports start rolling in about cities and then kingdoms being absorbed into the suddenly very real mind-slave empire.

Could be some lovely scenes of various former allies and contacts being reached out to (via magic radio / palantir / crystal ball) only to discover that they are now eager slaves of the Witch-Queen.

"i belong to Her now; serving Her is my life's purpose. You are fortunate you could still contact me. Most humans here had nothing in their minds of worth to Her and have been transformed into drudge (note: 'drudge' as a group noun), but some of us had information or skills that could be made to serve Her. i was fortunate enough to be one of those. Mmm, it took Her only an hour to bend my soul. Now i am Her creature forever. i was so stupid to try and resist. Surrender, all of you. Join me."

And all that coming from someone that only a while ago had helped our protagonists and sworn to fight the WQ to her last breath. Delicious. A few repetitions of that sort of incident ("Not you too!") and you've really got an oppressive/erotic atmosphere!

Throw in a possible means of stopping the WQ if only our heroines can figure out what it is and reach it in time, a secret traitor or two, and you've really got a story.

As it happens, I do have a dark-fantasy-overrun-by-wicked-goddess universe ready to hand - the above plotline would work really well when paired with 'The Loosing of the Dark' for instance - but I'm kinda-sorta leaning towards the heroines managing to scrape out a win, which is not something I'd do to dear Sauriann. Although she was defeated, once, in the WQ era, and is actually staging a comeback at the "present" time in Middle Urth. Would have to be a new story, though; it won't mesh with what I am doing in 'That Which Has Been Lost' (you'd like a link for that one, wouldn't you?) so I can't work it in there.

And, more pertinently, I have other story ideas higher in the queue. Still, worth putting down for possible reference.

Post Vay Cay Tabenings

Well! Back from a quick long-weekend vacation, more worn-out than when I left. It was nice, though.

I see people have been commenting and feeding back - it's appreciated. Scanning through, I see various mention of story options... hmm, yes, yes... yes, I think 'Codi' would be a fine choice for this month's Secret File. Be warned that it doesn't go anywhere, but it's pleasantly atmospheric and many people haven't seen it.

So mote it be!

Not sure when I'll post that, perhaps this coming weekend.

Some more fun stuff over at Beep Boop Art, if you haven't been following that one. And Uzobono is embarking on the next installment of  'The Synthetic Evolution', if you're a fan of folks getting turned into sex dolls.

And I think you are.

Nothing much happening here; gotta pick 'Pierced' back up if I hope to have it concluded this month. But first, I've got a good five days of smut accumulation at my usual sources to peruse! So if you'll excuse me...

Tuesday Tabenings - the pre-August edition

Alll-righty then! Another week, another Tabenings!

See? Habit! Use it, mortals!

Well. CORE #10. That was a bit of a clusterfuck, n'est pas? But I think things are settling down, at least in terms of my inner emotional landscape. Additional feedback continues to trickle in, which is nice, and I'm reaching the point where I can consider the entire event with equanimity. Soon I anticipate having perspective on the whole thing.

I'm still confused - and suspect always shall be - about whether the various displeased individuals (there were a number, and their opinions were of weight) were displeased because they felt #10 was the final issue (in which case they had good right to be displeased, hell, I would have been too) - or whether they were (also?) displeased for other (probably valid) reasons. But I deal with stuff like that by an advanced tactic known as 'avoidance' and am not going back to comb it all out.

All the criticism was appropriately couched in terms of specific points of grievance, and there was an accompanying bouquet of reassurance, and I have no issues with anyone's behavior - which was all entirely reasonable - or point of view.

Nonetheless... Drama! I hate drama. So I am mentally putting the whole confusing, sordid affair behind me. Uzobono is off onto her next solo project and we shall reconvene for CORE #11 in the fall. Luckily for those of you who enjoyed the issue creating the CORE stories is a lot of fun for me, because Uzobono is awesome to work with, so it's not a chore to soldier on.

In other, shorter-term news, I'm off for a short vacation trip this weekend, so don't expect anything. In response to various emailed entreaties I am telling people that I shall conclude 'Pierced' before the end of August: there's a stake in the ground for those who like stakes.

Speaking of stakes...

I'd kinda like to work on 'Summer Flesh' a bit, as well - vampire romance seems appropriate for late summer - so hopefully things will gel on that front. I know the beginning of the story, and the end (Tabico knows the end? How unusual!) but I am hazy on the bits just beyond the beginning, so some hashing out will be necessary. One of my usual means of doing so is just to start writing, and see what emerges, and I suspect I will go with that.

Also, another set of Secret Files could easily make their appearance in August. Any preferences?

Tabenings - Post-Release

Wow! I didn't post on Friday, I didn't post on Sunday... good thing I have this habit of posting on Tuesdays! Let's hear it for the power of habit, eh? Let that be a lesson to you all!

Now if only I had a habit of writing smut at a set time...

So! The big news is of course the release of CORE #10, available over at Uzobono's DeviantArt page.

NOTE: SPOILERS follow, so if you haven't read the issue, go read it now!

I'm pretty happy with it, although there are a few commentators (a small number, but ones whose opinions are of outsize importance to me) who are displeased with the, shall we say, tone of the ending.

This is of course ironic, given that just recently I was being lambasted for always having the bad guys win. I guess if I displease only some of my audience with any given story then I am doing alright!

I'm actually kind of glad to go the other way with CORE #10 - it gives me some mental leeway to indulge in "bad" endings again. As regards CORE, the medium kind of constrains the message. If I want to write episodic entertainment with a given set of characters, I can't eliminate those characters.

I have looked into the face of Saturday morning cartoons, and they have looked back into me!

I am also reluctant to add more than a handful of new characters in any given issue because finding the art assets for each character - the skin, hair, outfit, face, etc - represents a non-trivial amount of work for my awesome partner in this endeavor. "Oh, we need to introduce 6 more people" -> hours of work I am blithely handing off. So I don't do that.

Also, as regards CORE, I have actually been planning the whole showdown and dramatic role for Lilit for, oh, many issues now. I was going to have my showdown surprise by God, so things were gonna be made to work out that way.

On the other hand, trilby did accuse me of going soft in my old age, and he may have had something there.

So, what's on the drawing board currently? Hmm. I should finish 'Pierced', and indeed that is my intention, but demands for it have intruded on my feedback for CORE and this is causing my mule-like hindbrain to dig in and refuse to write. Yes, I have a grumpy old person inside me. "You want what? Screw you!" But I do need to finish it to clear the decks for whatever I want to do next, and I basically have the entire conclusion done in my head, *and* now I can indulge myself in a

In a what? In a what?

And as usual, I've spent the last 24-48 hours loading and reloading Uzobono's page (and checking the MC Form and MC Garden) to see if anyone liked my story, and although there were a few very nice notes it's never really enough, is it? So I'm also having a fair amount of "eh, why do I even do this?" - which I always do after releasing anything - and will require a bit longer to restore my illusion of an adoring public before I turn my hand back toward smutty endeavors.

So nothing Tabening at this exact moment. The conclusion of 'Pierced', eh, fairly soon. Probably.

Tabenings - CORE #10

Yikes! Tuesday and I almost forgot to post! See, that's what happens when you fall out of your constructive habits.

So, what have I been working on smut-wise? Why, this of course:

That's right! CORE #10 will be available this weekend! Friday for those of you who provided feedback on CORE #9, Sunday for the Great Unwashed.

Uzo sent me the semi-finals over the weekend, and I spent some time with final edits and tinkering. When you see the images melded together as pages is really the first time you know whether the dialogue flow worked the way you hoped it would. Mostly it does, sometimes it doesn't. So I've bounced back the last few changes and we should be ready for the weekend. Prepare your body! And, hopefully, your mind!

For those that have been worrying, this is the conclusion of the current story arc, but it's not intended to be the conclusion of CORE. I'm already pulling together the vague clouds of plot for the next issue; as previously, I expect Uzo to spend some time on her own delicious book, Aria of the Hive, and then we'll reconvene afterward.

Back in Green

Heeeeyyyy, I can post again! Stupid Google. "Oh, you know the password, but you're not at home, eh? Gimme your phone number. No, I won't send something to your email - gimme your phone number. No phone number? No login."

Fuckers.

So! Back again, new and improved, returned to our irregularly programmed schedule. (Anyone remember that song?)

Going on a trip, particularly one such as this one which involved a high level of exhaustion, is an interesting experience - it's kind of startling how quickly it puts one outside oneself. Real life seems far away, and immediate surroundings take on an outsized importance. I became oddly intrigued by the prosaic landscape print in my hotel room, for instance.

Obviously, being me, I've taken to viewing this through the lens of mind control; how placing a subject in unfamiliar, controlled surroundings can have an outsized impact on their mental state.

But enough about the trip. I did have Internet in the hotel, and via Callidus' blog I bumped into someone I had previously been unfamiliar with, 'sleepystephbot'. Check this out:

She has a bunch of other great MC fetish material there, too. Worth a gander, though it only goes back to October 2015.

It's interesting to me that I still occasionally bump into existing material I'd been unaware of. After all, I've been avidly consuming MC porn for decades now, and I dig for it frequently, yet I still now and then find an entire source I'd been unaware of. Let's hear it for the vast resources and hidden corners of the Internet.

No progress report today... but there's been no progress on anything. Well, anything fetish related, I got lots and lots of work done for my real job. Also played a lot of Free Cities, which desperately needs more overt mind control content, but even without it is a reliable way for me to get myself off. Maybe when it hits a stable version I will add it myself.

Friday Roundup

Well, I *should* be getting ready for my trip, but first let me drop a little update here.

Dollmistress just shared some preview pics for one of the two games she's working on - and if you haven't played a Dollmistress game, you owe it to your fetish to do so. I'd start with Space Ditz, and then go for Miss Adventure, and *then* Overseer, but really you could do any order and be well served. I would definitely advise having a walkthrough or other guide ready to hand, though. DM plays for keeps. I finished Witcher 3 on 'Blood and Broken Bones' (I know, I know, casual) and I think I had to reload saves more often in Space Ditz.

I believe all three games are available via the forum over at the Hypnopics Collective.

As I say, she's got two new games currently bubbling away in development, and just revealed some delicious new pictures from one of them. One in particular caught my eye:

Now, I have no idea what's going on there, but in my mind that lovely lady is the voice of late-night radio WDRN, breathing sultry news and updates and taking calls from insomniac listeners who are well aware that secret cabals of mind controllers run all the major institutions of modern life, but aren't capable of doing anything about it.

Sort of like the late night lady DJ you can hear in the Vampire: Bloodlines game, the Deb of Night, only with discussions focusing less on vampires and more on the mind control drugs in the water supply and the secret ponygirl ranches in back-country Montana...

All right, it's Friday and that means time to scan the last week's comments for anything that requires answering by yours truly... ooh, looks like I skipped last week. Eh, I was busy prepping the Secret Files. So the last two weeks of comments.

I daresay the reappearance of 'Deeper Than You Think' therein addressed FZY1's observation from the 12th!

sohta was wondering about the number of issues left in the current story arc of CORE. That's easy: one! CORE #10 will wrap up this story arc, and CORE #11 will kind of sidestep to a different set of threads for a while. Same characters, but doing some different stuff. I do like the idea of the protagonists in one story becoming the antagonists in another, that's a good one. Interestingly, I was planning to do the opposite in 'Radiance' - Briaza, the antagonist in chapter one, would have been the protagonist in chapter two.

I am amused by the expressed skepticism, not to say dismay, from certain parties regarding the 'mind controllers lose' ending of Radiance.

Ziim seems to have been a hit. I only ever intended to write the bit as it stands - I'm not actually sure where I'd go with it, were it to continue. With superheroes you run into the problem that the heroes kind of keep ramping up in power, so either eventually they would defeat the Ziim simply by being too super, or the Ziim would win and that would be the end of that. As I say, I had no further plans in mind beyond the sexy vignette as it stands.

Half Shim - I shall give Notepad++ a try, I am familiar with regular expressions. Thanks!

Vanderbilt - but if the protagonists were all really smart *and* had super powers, how would I ever get them to fall into the mind controllers' clutches? No, no, I need those character flaws, hubris in particular, so that I can stop them from always winning!

And sorry about the jellyfish. :P

Hmm, and as for my unfinished stuff, it appears that what I should have been working on is a story about ponygirls *in* Middle Urth! Who knew?

Tuesday Tabenings - Hands on the Periscope

Thanks for the comments on the first of the Secret Files! Glad to hear that people are enjoying them. Next month I'll post either the FACs or the Tuesday Tidbits. If you don't know what I'm referring to, there's an early post on the blog describing them.

As for new stuff, well... there's nothing going on. I actually have a trip coming up for the next two-plus weeks. Days will be super busy and nights will be in a hotel room; although in the past I've managed to do a little writing during these trips, there have also been trips with no writing at all, so don't count on anything. Seeing this coming up was the reason I wanted to get the CORE script over to Uzobono when I could. Don't anticipate much from me the next several weeks, though I believe CORE #10 will be available mid-July.

I shall try to update the Secret Files blog at least Fridays and Tuesdays, and hopefully more often as interesting things turn up.

I should figure out how to get a poll working. I'm curious which of my many 50% finished but unpublished stories people would most like to see me complete - the Middle Urth story, the modern-era ponygirl ranch story, Synthetic, Summer Flesh... obviously leaving off existing  commitments like finishing Pierced and Compromise, which I know I need to work on.

Secret Files: The First Installment!

And here they are! The first batch of actual Secret Files!

They took a little work to post because I write in Notepad - yes, Notepad - and use manual line breaks which keep the text in a fairly narrow column. This works great (apparently) when Simon converts the text for posting on the EMCSA, but for my purposes here I had to go through every line and kill the line breaks wherever they happened within a paragraph, which was often.

You're welcome!

First up we have 'Deeper Than You Think', from 2002. As mentioned, this was posted in Vice's Yahoo group back at that time - and he illustrated it for me with three fantastic hand drawings, which I have included!

Secondly, another Vice-related story, 'Ziim: Masks', from 2005. I wrote this one as a 'Thank You' gift for Vice, who had been posting (and has continued to post) wonderful Poser images of mind-controlled pretties for many years. I don't recall the specific pics which inspired the story, but there were some (Nov/Dec 2004 I suspect). And, conforming to the cycle of smut, Vice himself subsequently made some illustrations based on the story, which was based on his illustrations.

And thirdly, a never-before-seen (unless you are trilby else, in which case: call me) story: 'Radiance'. It's high fantasy with a butt-kicking heroine, crossed with Lovecraftian mind controlling horrors from beyond the stars. Sadly, it's only part one, but it stands on its own pretty well.

So, enjoy! Let me know what you think!

I'm serious! More feedback = more Secret Files! Less feedback = fewer Secret Files! That's right! I can take them away! Mwah hah hah!

Tuesday Tabenings about Ten

Good News, Everyone!

I just sent Uzobono the completed script for CORE #10. Huzzah! As mentioned in an earlier post, our workflow is basically I send a chapter, she renders it while I write the next chapter, etc. I have thus now sent her the final two chapters - AND I edited all the prior text in light of the renders she's already made. So things are nearly wrapped up from a writing perspective.

Unfortunately, of course, Uzobono is still in Kuala Lumpur on CIA business otherwise occupied and won't be back to rendering for a few more weeks. But from my side, everything is essentially finished and were I you I would expect an early-mid July release.

On other smut-writing fronts, no news is bad news. Haven't gotten back to 'Pierced', or anything else.

FZY1 observed that my story 'Deeper Than You Think', about hypnotic jellyfish, doesn't appear to be available over on the EMCSA. That is actually a total oversight on my part. I wrote that story over a decade ago and it was awesomely hand-illustrated by Vice, and posted on his Yahoo group of the time.

I had always intended to subsequently publish it on the EMCSA, but wanted it to spend a sufficient amount of time being released only on Vice's group after he was sooo cool as to illustrate it, you know, as sort of an exclusive.

Then apparently I forgot to actually ever publish it on the EMCSA. Who knew?

Anyway, I tell you what I'm gonna do - this coming weekend I will post the first of the Secret Files, and one of them will be 'Deeper Than You Think'. I'll provide the illustrations if I can find them, otherwise we'll have to beg Vice to dig them up.

I'll also put up 'Ziim - Masks', another story I wrote in the same era, inspired by one of his Poser renderings of the time. You can still find it around, but I think I'll also put it here.

Of course, although unavailable for a while, those are pieces that people have seen. Maybe there should be something new, for the folks that alerted me to those stories' absence, and thus, have already read them. Let's see... here's a piece from 2010 called 'Fetch', about faeries and magic boots and suchlike. It has Perytons in it! Hmm, unfinished though, and really it needs some more work towards the end. Ah! Here is 'Radiance'. That's pretty much a complete chapter; I was going to add more but never did. Still, it stands alone pretty well. And I daresay none of you have ever seen it.

So there! Three actual Secret Files, coming to the Secret Files real soon.

Exis Tech Beauty Solutions

Uzobono is being awesome again.

Friday Commentariat Roundup

Ho-kay, let's give this 'mailbag' proposal a try. If I do this regularly, it shouldn't become too challenging. Of course, since I *haven't* been doing it regularly, there's quite a backlog at this point. I think if I were to start from the beginning, it would be overly daunting, so I shall start from now and work backwards. I may or may not get very far. Will start from this post next time.

Note: my policy is to only comment where I have something pertinent to add; if your comment stands nicely by itself, I shall simply enjoy it without the post needing any validation.

Comments on 'Happy Endings':

Anonymous, on switching between first and last names in 'Pierced': Well, all I have to say is that you should think twice before reading any Tolstoy! I did in actual fact have to create a cheat sheet because the characters each had half a dozen ways of being referred to. But it's a valid problem; I need to balance the way in which the characters think about each other with the reader's need for quick recognition. Here again if the story got more than two or three edits, things would be better.

Saint Germain, on the protagonist coming to like what's happened to her: Well, yes. :) That's very true; I aim for what I call the 'Tabiconic Happy Ending': everyone at the ending is happy, as horrified as they might have been earlier in the story. You're quite correct.

Half Shim, on preferring the MC victorious ending: Good! In a similar vein, trilby else used to observe that (for us) e = mc, namely, the eros *is* the mind control, and vice versa. Physical sexy times are all well and good and yummy, but it's the mind control that's the erotic element of the story, so if you undo it at the end you've kind of done a take-back of the erotic power in the story.

Comments on 'June Tabenings and Etiquette and 'Seed' thoughts':

Anonymous, on coming off as crazy and/or me getting too many emails: I do not get too many emails. :) Also, your post was just fine. And I just bought Stellaris myself!

Saint Germain: Aww, you make me blush.

Frank, on trilby else and Psi: I had not seen that bit of art! So awesome! I reblogged it. As for trilby else... well, he became depressed about various things in his life and decided that his persona writing mind control smut was not helping, so he stopped. He had always been extremely protective of his real identity and only ever had the one point of contact, an email address via an anonymizing service. So... I dunno. He decided he was done, and that was that. I truly hope he has been having a good life since then.

Comments on 'Mmm latex':


Let's see, one 'undecided', two votes for seeing some unfinished stuff, and a vote for more 'Compromise'. Hmm, I dunno. I make no promises about 'Compromise', but lemme see about putting 'Codi' or 'Fake Ones' or maybe something else up here later this month.

Happy Endings

I am pleased by the suggestions for comment-response that are coming in; so far the "mailbag" approach seems to be the most reasonable given my predilections, so I'm leaning that way, unless I can figure out some blogspot gadget that would allow me to do something a bit more precise.

Now to the point of this post. Someone over on 4chan (a wretched hive of scum and villainy, which is probably why I am over there so much) observed that my stories tend to be sort of boring because the villains always win. In fact, let me quote:
The biggest and really only problem with Tabico is that all his/her stories read the same.

People act deliberately stupid, X character never had a chance, and every ending is a bad end.

Why not a story where the characters are smart? Why not a story where the villains don't just pull out a surprise trick? Where they aren't just going to win all along?

Why not a happy ending?

Now, some other anon posted a very intelligent and reasonable response to the question, but I figured I would also dive into it myself. Obviously, the first thing to say is that, like most stereotypes, the claim isn't entirely true - Winter Flesh, for instance, has a classic 'good guys win' happy ending. I daresay some of my other stories do as well. And I try my best to write intelligent characters; they're usually just outgunned, or unprepared, but not stupid.

But, like most stereotypes, there is truth at the core of the statement; I do write stories where the Evil Mind Controllers win. It's true; it happens again and again. And it's going to keep happening, and I do wrestle with the fact that if the reader comes to expect the bad guys to win, the story might get boring.

And there's a simple reason for it - when I come from (yes, 'when'), stories where the mind controller won didn't exist. So I very purposefully set out to create them.

I came up on Saturday morning cartoons. (This dates me, by the way. Saturday morning cartoons no longer exist.) Over and over we'd watch characters get mind controlled - which, for budding fetishist like me, was so confusingly erotic - and then by the end of the episode it was all reversed and everyone was back to normal. It happened in movies, it happened in books, you name it. The heroes always won; the mind control was always defeated, although in adult-focused media such as films the specific individuals who were controlled would generally meet bad ends while the protagonists went on to defeat the evil forces.

(Aside: William Lee once had a 'Saturday Morning Mind Control' site that put together a fantastic list of these cartoon mind control moments. Is that still around? *googles* No, no... hmm, some other person wrote a book with that title. Unrelated. Darn, it appears to be gone. Maybe the Wayback machine... ha! God damn I'm good. Saturday Morning Mind Control, from 2005. Sadly none of the links work, but you can see the list. Good God, it even has a quote from me!)

So when I went to write Mind Control Porn, I wanted to redress that balance. The forces of Evil Mind Control win in my stories, by jingo, partly because IMO that's hotter, and partly because they never, ever did, when I was growing up. It was a balance that needed redressing.

What's interesting to me is that we're now getting a generation of readers who are being exposed to stories like mine (and a lot of other writers) and who don't share that assumption. Who are, in fact, experiencing our stories and wondering why the good guys never seem to win. Who may, ironically, go forth to write stories where the good guys do win because they want to redress the imbalance that I and my ilk have created.

Which is fine. And I will see if I can have the good guys win a little more, just to keep things interesting. Of course, I can also split the difference, e.g. 'Lens'. Did the good guys win? Did the bad guys? Sort of both.

In the end, what's important is that someone resurrects that Saturday Morning Mind Control site.

Pierced Art

Yay! Frank observed on the previous post that Psi created some 'Pierced' fan art over on Hypnohub - which I hadn't seen - and it's awesome! I am super chuffed. Check it out.

I am always tickled when artists create pieces based on my work, particularly when they are awesome like this.

June Tabenings and Etiquette and 'Seed' thoughts

As regards the Tabenings, I am sad to report no smut writing (so far) this week. Real life kicked into high gear round about Friday and for the moment shows no sign of letting up. Do not expect the conclusion to 'Pierced', or anything else, this coming weekend.

Now, I'd like your suggestions about something. People have been leaving comments on the blog, which makes me very happy. They are good comments and I treasure them. Like all responses to my words, I hold them close to my heart and they warm me. However, I'm not sure of the optimal way to respond to them.

I'd rather not go back to each post and respond to the comments one by one. That's not scalable, I think. It has been my habit since my very first story to try and reply to every bit of email I receive. I really like getting email/feedback and I figure if people are kind enough to send it to me I should encourage them to do so. I've failed a few times, but I think in all honesty I have replied to over 90% of all emails ever sent to me (not counting follow-up emails, just initial ones).

But it seems weird to me to respond to blog comments that way, one at a time. It bulks out the comment lists in a way that seems forced and artificial. Is there some way to keep a running "response" column in a sidebar or something? I could do a gazette sort of thing, responding to all the recent comments in a blog post, but posting that as a "regular" blog post also doesn't seem, I dunno, aesthetically pleasing.

So: taking suggestions. I would like to respond to people's comments - they are good comments, and I as I say I enjoy each one of them - but I'd like to do so outside of the normal flow of the blog.

Onward! People seem to have generally enjoyed the 'Seed' epilogue. I had always meant to include it; I just hadn't written it when I wrote the rest of the story because it lacks any erotic power. And, let's face it, what drives my smut is usually horniness. If the prose doesn't involve pussies or minds, it's waaaay less compelling for me to write.

This, by the way, is the true reason that 'Compromise' is unfinished. All that's left there is plot. Intellectually I know I should finish it, mentally I have it written, but what's left to write just doesn't grab me down there and thus, lacking other compensation, I haven't finished it. Well, hopefully 'Seed' has proven to me, more than to you, that I do have it within me to properly finish stories, even without big shiny delicious boobies.

Back to 'Seed'. I'm wondering if readers noticed that Khuluub's tropical utopia is, in many ways, communism. The state owns all the property, allocates it to the workers, and is upheld by a populace that's been indoctrinated to a religious fervor.

Oh, sure, there was that bit about joint stock companies, but if you examine it... well, let's not get into the weeds.

This allegory has long roots in our genre. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is, of course, the major example. Back in 1956 when it was released, the fear of communists - who looked like us only they worked for an alien, self-sacrificial ideology, one which could spread and take over your friends and neighbors, your very family - was a very real and not irrational thing.

Trilby else and I used to have long email discussions about this sort of thing. *sigh* I miss him. He was so goddamned *smart*. Older than me by a decade or so, he really understood the mindset of late 70s and 80s communist and anti-communist thinking and the effects it had on the world and on popular culture. And a zillion other things, to boot.

I always told him that one day our correspondences would be collected and, if not studied, at least read with interest when smut had become a socially acceptable genre and people could get degrees in writing pornography and researching famous pornographic authors. They'd dig up our decades-old naughty stories and dissect them as examples of the mind control smut subgenre. Yes, I am that narcissistic.

But veering back to 'Seed' again - that communist overtone was very deliberate on my part. I wanted to present a society that was in many was very appealing compared to its peers, but also a bit disturbing because of the unstated implications of what it might get up to.

Also Rhoda, the Quinyri, popped into my head fully-formed and was a fun character to write for.

That is all.

When the Treatment is Yummier than the Malady

I don't imagine anyone is reading the Secret Files who isn't also checking up on Callidus on a regular basis, but if you are here first, I'd like you to be aware that he has created a yummy new visual story for us!

Head on over and check out Treatment Program. You'll be glad you did.

Mmm latex

Just emailed Simon the two epilogue chapters of 'Seed', so even if the bus does hit me, you'll see them this weekend. Can't say the same if the bus hits you, mind. I wanted to get them in because this weekend, starting tomorrow, is looking pretty darn busy.

Haven't done any other smut writing - though I discovered a couple other unfinished stories whilst tidying my drive that might see the light of day here on the Secret Files, although thus far no one has actually appeared interested in my unfinished arcana. I guess if it ain't done, what's the point, amirite?

In other news, apparently Reflective Desire has decided to support the fetish by placing all their works into the public domain. Does thrall know about this? Because she ought to.

Hmm, I wonder if she even knows I blog...

Final Tabenings of May

So, the 'Seed' epilogue has been split into two parts and nicely polished, so that's a go for this coming weekend. No sex, no mind control, but there are some good lines in it.

Not a lot of motivation beyond that, at least tonight. Playing a little more Stardew Valley and debating if 'Blood and Wine' is enough to motivate me to re-learn how to play Witcher 3. I played the entire release campaign, and liked it well enough to start a second 'complete everything' play-through, but that fizzled out somewhere in Novigrad and I haven't touched it since last year. I bought 'Hearts of Stone' but despite everyone saying how good it was, have never yet played it.

'Stellaris' still appeals, though waiting for the next major patch might be the way to go.

Not going to kick off 'Joba' (Note the cunning name change! Also... Novamist Valley. How clever! How obfuscated!) tonight. If I'm feeling horny tomorrow, perhaps.

Also need to get CORE #10 revised and completed and over to Uzobono (who sent me a nice email from Belgium, or maybe Belarus) before I leave on vaycay at the end of June. Obviously there's time, but since I need to do it, perhaps sooner is better than later.

Working for the Man

I'm thinking more seriously about writing that Joja story. It's providing good fuel for my random fetishizing during the day, and I think I've worked out how to move the plot forward with some tension in it.

Couple of problems - first, I'd like to go with the name 'Joja', but of course that's a direct lift from Stardew Valley and thus I am hesitant about it. Simon has a strict 'no fanfic' rule - which I think is wise and I have always abided by - although I think that using the name 'Joja' for the company but not swiping any of the other character names, place names, etc would skirt by with enough leeway.

Second of course is me - I daresay that the 'short' story I am describing in my mind would balloon outward as I drew in other characters and paced out the conversion over time, etc etc. I'll have to fight that tendency pretty hard.

Still, the idea is attracting me. Maybe it's just my desire to procrastinate from finishing 'Pierced', I recognize what a terrible habit I have in that way. On the other hand, if I start something else I could procrastinate from *that* by concluding 'Pierced'. Hard to say, really.

A good Tabico would procrastinate by writing the final bit of 'Compromise'. Not feeling romantic enough at the moment for 'Summer Flesh', or baroque enough for 'That Which Has Been Lost'.

Well, we'll just have to see, you and I. But smart money would bet on my starting 'Joja'.

Sprouting

I just now finished the Epilogue for 'Seed'. 50Kb, which will probably increase the usual 10% upon editing, and looking back I brought the chapters for 'Seed' in at under 25k each, so I'll need to break it in half for posting.

But it's done!

Almost.

I still need to edit it up, and frankly I am not gonna chain myself to my desk and slave away at it tonight (as I do with surprising frequency) just to get it into Simon for this weekend's update. So you should expect not to see any Tabico prose for the Memorial Day weekend update, but (barring that ever-worrisome bus attack) you *will* see the conclusion to 'Seed' in next weekend's update.

There's no sex in it. Hell, there isn't even any mind control. It's pure fantasy-novel, from start to finish. So those of you who like that sort of thing will hopefully like it. And it will give you a chance to read 'Seed' again, because I had forgotten most of it and I daresay you have too.

Now to see if 'Pierced' is ready to be concluded or if I should switch gears again and put some milage down on, oh, say, 'That Which Has Been Lost'.

Fetchit

Seed part 12 is up to 22k, so trucking right along. I was aiming to get it done in 40k but I may not be able to fit everything in - a real shocker, I know. However, I will not be releasing any of it until the story is done and wrapped up, so don't expect an update this week and another one later. If I have to break the epilogue into two halves, it'll still all come out at the same time.

In other news, I've been playing Fallout 4's Far Harbor expansion, and it's given me an idea for a story. In the game, there's a synth doctor named Aster (no spoiler, you know it when you meet her), who's rather clinical and cool and I think she's dead sexy, albeit grimy in the usual Fallout 4 manner. She's got a fetch quest where you can bring her asters, flowers that you find around the island.

Sadly for me, that's the extent of it. Bring her asters, she gives you some caps. But inasmuch as my Nora would very much like to get into her artificial-human pants, it stirred my imagination.

Premise: a story world similar to Fallout 4. Main character / Player character encounters a cool, clinical, yet erotically compelling NPC, who sends the player on fetch quests. As the fetch quests proceed, a couple of things develop. The things being fetched start to imply that the quest-giver is concocting some sort - or multiple sorts - of mind control. Pieces for a mind control helmet, chemical ingredients for serum. Holotapes of long-extinct dommes.

At the same time, the NPC is finding the player character increasingly interesting on account of their willingness to do her bidding, and of course their incredible competence. Although initially cool, she becomes intrigued (and turned on?) by the PC's combination of eager obedience and unstoppable success, and starts dropping hints to the effect that maybe this arrangement should become more permanent.

Eventually, the questgiver overtly starts to modify the PC, at first with their permission (opening with a powerful scene where she asks if she may use X on them) and subsequently without their permission. At the same time, the NPC, increasingly intrigued by some of the artifacts retrieved,  starts modifying her own personality to be more dominant, haughtier and more superior.

One could throw in some other NPCs who trust or rely on the PC, and who eventually the quest giver has the PC turn into her slaves. Lots of yummy possibilities.

As a meta-narrative, one might set the entire story of descent into slavery to this robot NPC within a computer game - and have the game start to act upon the player. This was done really, really well (in my opinion) in a Diablo III fanfic I've read called Braving Inferno (hentai foundry link) by aesthil, although sadly the story is unfinished (I'm not the only one!). So even as the PC becomes more and more an obedient minion, the player themself becomes more and more the thrall of the game, unable to stop playing it, and the quest giver NPC begins to show awareness of the human that she's actually enslaving.

But that's an optional extra. Just the narrative of the protagonist falling under the sway of the quest giver, bit by bit, partially voluntarily and partially involuntarily, could be a really sexy tale.

If you have good ideas for things the PC might do for the synth on the way to becoming her slave, do feel free to leave them in comments.

Tuesday Tabenings

So! I've done no work on 'Pierced'. None at all! Ha! I'm not gonna return to it until I can come up with something that Vanderbilt won't frown at.

Actually, I know what I'm gonna write, but I need to rebuild my confidence to do it. This weekend was a bad one for "okay, the story's out there... no one is saying anything... still no feedback... argh, why do I do this, I suck, who am I writing for... this ending sucks anyway..."

Which is not fair, of course, Uzobono made a wonderful render based on the most recent update - how does she read me so well? - and I got, let me count, one, two... two pieces of email from people saying they liked it, and there were a couple of kind forum posts. But I built it up too much in my mind and need a while to bounce back from the comedown.

I dunno what it is, people seem to like, or at least comment on, the plot and dialoguey installments much more than the naughty smut bits, even when it's the naughty smut bits that bring us all here. I don't quite understand, it just, it... *waves hands around*

Anyway no 'Pierced', certainly not this weekend. Though I really should finish it before Uzobono returns and can chide me for not finishing it - and she is right to do so - which does mean June at any rate.

But no 'Pierced' does not mean no writing! That's right, bitches - I've just put in 12k on 'Seed' part twelve.

That's right! 'Seed'! Remember that? I have to say, I'm really rather fond of that story, and I never did finish it, and I am doing so now. Part twelve is an epilogue, basically, taking place many years after the events of part 1-11 - oh, sorry, (spoilers) I guess - that's the risk you take in the Secret Files! - but Eyna will be making an appearance. No, she didn't die in the giant "everyone gets absorbed by the Wicker-Man-like vine-Goddess-thing". It just seemed that way because I didn't finish the story.

If I were a good author - and I mean 'good' in the sense of being kind to my readers, I write purty enough - I would have wrapped the story up back in 2014 when it came out. But you get what you pay for, I guess; yet now the story will finally be complete! Unless I get hit by a bus.

Not that anyone is asking for more 'Seed', but ehh what the fuck. 'Not getting paid' and all that.

If I am really with it, 'Seed' 12 will be out this weekend, otherwise first weekend in June, but I expect I'll already be at work on the last bit of Pierced next week.

Monday Mooning

No, not with my butt, you perverts.

So, Uzobono is off on her month-long trip for the CIA (note: informed speculation only), which basically means I can stop writing for a while. Right?

No?

Eh. I did precisely bupkis this last weekend (aside from playing Fallout 4's Far Harbor DLC) so any chance of 'Pierced' the-conclusion-no-I-mean-it-this-time coming out over Memorial Day weekend is pretty much shot. Which may be for the best, I'm continuing to second-guess the endgame I've come up with. I'm having difficulty living up to the reputation I have created for myself in my own mind, and to be honest (spoilers!) I haven't been seeding the preceeding chapters with hints or clues with the intent of there being some big reveal, I've just been writing to move the story forward.

Maybe I should know better. Don't write anything without a solid, gut-punch ending ready for it.

But at any rate, I'm not best pleased with my plan for the finale at this point but I need to put the story to bed so I can move on to the next thing, whatever that may be. I'll try getting it underway this week so that I can hopefully conclude it first weekend of June.

I'm still a bit enthused by that Stardew Valley / Joja story idea I outlined a few posts back. Some intelligent, urbane commentators provided some really great suggestions there in the comments and cogitating upon them gave me the intertwined plotline I need to actually make it a story with some tension to it; if I could knock it off in a week, I'd do it, but I am doubtful of my ability to do that.

Also, need to write that last chapter of CORE #10, and then collect all the renders that Uzo has created thus far and re-edit the whole script. That is our process, by the way; here, I shall outline it for you:

a) I sit down with a blank page and write story pages, which consist of a page number, the layout of the panels on the page, a brief description of the content / image in each panel, and any dialogue. I'll do this one or two chapters, each between 4-12 pages, at a time. Send to Uzobono.
b) Uzobono renders the images. (As far as I'm concerned, this step is fucking magic, because holy shit does she make purty renders, with details and oh the expressions she can capture) She sends them back to me as individual images, a chapter's worth at a time.
Steps (a) and (b) proceed concurrently, so that in theory at least I am moving forward with writing while Uzo is moving forward with the renders. I throw in some initial comments on the renders in case there's something that I'd like changed or added.
c) Having received all of the renders, I review and edit the script both for general goodness and to best fit the images that Uzo has rendered. Send final, complete script back to Uzobono.
d) Uzobono does the necessary postwork and then stitches the images together onto the pages, and inserts all the word bubbles and sound effects.
e) Deliver to you!

So for CORE #10, we're well into step (b), with everything but one scene written and only two scenes left to render. But, as I say, Uzobono is off to Davos for some Illuminati consulting gig and won't be back until July, so there it shall stay until then, although I need to finish up my end through step (c) so that when she's back she can render the last two parts and kick right into (d) and then (e).

But tonight I'm still feeling 'bleh' so I'll probably do some video game and go to bed early. Perhaps tomorrow Tabico will be ready to kick ass and take names.

Prepare Your Body

Okay, just emailed Simon with chapter six part three. If you liked chapter two and all the sweaty poolside alien fucking, this installment will probably float your boat.

That's the good news. Bad news is that the final part is, at present, precisely 1k in size, i.e. I haven't even started it. (The disclaimer is 1k.) So unless this coming week turns out to be unusually productive, the final installment may not be ready for next week. I have gotten most of CORE 10 drafted and sent over to Uzobono; I sent her more last night, leaving only a single (albeit long) scene left to write, so I shouldn't have to split focus.

But, in truth, I actually work *better* when I multi-task. If I have only one story I am working on, and I sit down to write, and am un-motivated, then I will do something else. (Video games.) If I have multiple stories and I sit down to write, and one of them doesn't appeal in the moment, the chances are actually good that the other one will. Somehow procrastinating from writing one story by writing another actually works for me. Works really well, in fact.

So I'll try to wrap up Pierced for the Memorial Day weekend. But at the moment that's a tall order, so no promises.