Tabenings - 2020 edition

Happy New Year!

Looks like it was... geez, October (!) the last time I posted.

When writing this blog weekly, the problem was generally that I'd have to come up with something to talk about. With the sort of delays that have been going on around here recently, the problem is the converse - there's been so much mind control and smut related content to discuss that I've forgotten half of it and don't know where to start with the other half!

But there are at least a few things I have been keeping pinned to my mental corkboard for you guys, so let's start with those.

First, the realm of manga. The overlap between "yuri" (lesbian) and "mind control" content is sadly quite slim, but I read an intriguing translation recently and wanted to share it with you: Wizard after twelve o'clock.

If you want to read it without spoilers, go do so now, because the discussion in the next paragraph will give away a pretty major plot point.

The manga (technically a doujinshi, but I'm not gonna flirt with pedantry because I am not nearly enough of a weeaboo to do so successfully) dips into those convoluted realms of hypnotizing one's self and hypnotizing another to be dominant that trilby and I used to love writing and discussing. Plotting out who is programming whom to do what stretches mental muscles that are surprisingly  pleasurable to exercise.

In a different vein, fans of Hajime Sorayama will enjoy being made aware of an exhibit currently going on which features his work: Tokyo Pop Underground (exhibited by Jeffrey Deitch).
Finding photos involves going to a few different web page permutations; here are some:

• Tokyo Pop Underground New York
• Tokyo Pop Underground Los Angeles
• HypeBeast

It's decades ago now, but Sorayama's illustrations were a really big part of my fetish fantasies for many years. Speaking of the Great Old Ones, thrall also was strongly attracted to the visions he put forward. thrall, if you're reading this I hope you're doing well!

Amusingly, my teenage daughter recently noticed the collection of Sorayama art books I have on the shelf in my voluminous library downstairs and gave me one of those inscrutable "what is this / mom, you are such a..." looks that teenagers do so well. I never thought, back in the late nineties when I was hunting for physical copies of Sorayama art books the way a junkie hunts for that dime bag he just knows he put away for later, that one day middle-aged Tabico would have to deal with either hiding or explaining her arty porn from her daughter.

In other current news, Dollmistress made some very lovely images based on my story 'Rouge' - one of my best stories, I think - and was subsequently inspired to produce a marvelous new illustrated story set in the universe, a story which I am consuming like the aforementioned junkie (F5 - F5 - F5 - F5 - etc).

And there was lots of other lovely stuff in November and December of last year which I should be mentioning here but am not because I have the memory of a pop-tart. Feel free to remind me in the comments, though!

Tabenings - Bowsette Edition

Hey, it's Tuesday!

*blink blink*

What?

Well, fuck September anyway. That was not a great September and, frankly, October is turning out to be mostly about recovering from September so it's pretty crappy so far as well.

However, I do have good news! I am even now (well, I was a moment ago until I stopped to write this blog post) editing the final script of CORE #13. And, in parallel, Uzobono is rendering the very last scene! So it's just lacking the necessary postwork - i.e. putting the images together as pages, adding some special effects, and doing the word balloons - and CORE #13 will be in your sweaty digital hands! Yay!

So in other news a fair amount of fun fetishy stuff has happened. I am totally going to miss a bunch of things, but here are some of them:

1. Dollmistress came out with a bunch more images; a set called 'Last to Awaken' and now one called 'The Thirteen Stages of Processing'.

2. Callidus released a spiffy new animation called 'Fun Room'.

3. Anaximanes had a few releases; 'Factions' was made available to his Patreons but more importantly for us non-renumerative sorts Cereborg chapter three was made available.

4. Dreampaintloon began releasing a bunch of spiffy fetishy drawings for October.

And a bunch more! But you know what, I'll save that for next week. May help with this whole 'resuming blogging' thing.

Another thing that happened was that a sexy new meme was born and exploded - EXPLODED - all over the Internet. I am referring to, of course, Bowsette. (Note: Link goes to Wikipedia page.

So here's the story behind this cutie. A fellow with the handle of Ayyk92, artistically talented but not of any particular fame, posted the following cartoon on Wednesday, September 19th:

Now, if you are as old as I am, you might not know what's going on there. Basically, in the Super Mario series of games, the big turtle fellow is Bowser - he's Mario's antagonist - and he repeatedly kidnaps Princess Peach (in white in the first panel) forcing Mario to trek through hazardous video game level after video game level to rescue her.

Earlier in the month, Nintendo had revealed that for the 'Deluxe' re-release of 'New Super Mario Bros. U' one of the other characters, Toad, had a version called Toadette who got a special power-up, in the form of the pink crown there in panel 3. The power-up would turn Toadette into Peachette, basically a character that looks like Princess Peach but with some of Toad's features.

So you can see what's happening in the cartoon. Peach spurns both Mario and Bowser, Bowser dons the pink crown and turns into Bowsette, and everyone goes on happy dates.

Well, this struck the Internet with the force of a hot, gothy, spiked-collar-wearing atom bomb. Before the weekend was over I personally had collected over forty Bowsette images from really good artists, quite a lot of them deliciously pornographic. Amateur and professional artists jumped in, many of them Japanese, many of them of actual published manga both smutty and non.

Right now, less than a month later, a search on 'Bowsette' on the Rule34 website (because we're all here for the porn, let's face it. You can also search for 'Bowsette' on google and get a shitload of hits if you are somewhere where nipples are frowned upon.) brings up more than 750 images. Less than a month later. And that's just some of the porn.

Also, you'll be interested to know that Bowsette appears in two common models - the blonde, Princess Peach like model as seen above, and a dark-skinned, red-headed model (otherwise the same) for those who think it makes more sense (and/or is hotter) to use Bowser's original coloration. And/or they just like redheads. Which is the camp I fall into.

But take your pick!


Here, lemme conclude with a few of my favorites:

Rawr!

Tabenings - DDR Edition

Hallo again!

I took my spawn to see 'The Incredibles 2' and I have to say, Holy Mind Control, Batman! Wowzers! Of course, none of the mind control was played for sexiness but on the other hand, Mrs. Incredible herself provided a whooole bunch of that. Mmm-mmm.

Anyway I liked it. Also enjoying all of the Rule 34 material which is coming out. A wonderful example thereof is a recent piece by 'John Doe', who was already tops on my list of smut artists. Man, does his stuff ever ring my particular bells. So here's his Elasti-Mom piece (at least, the non-smut part of it, for the full naughtiness you'll need to visit the link:

If you haven't seen his stuff he also has some scrumptious body-control / kinda-mind-control stuff called 'The Bird Cage' (it's on that pixiv link) where some Batman related heroines get covered in latexesque outfits and used as puppets. It's super hot. Also have a look at 'Royal Guard Recruitment'.

My favorite picture of his, just because I loooove female muscle, is this one:

That's from his tumblr rather than his Patreon. Oh my God, I could apply my mouth to that body for the rest of my life.

Heh - I hadn't actually sat down intending to post about John Doe, but then here we are.

So, CORE #13 is a thing that is proceeding. Parts 1-3 are written and parts 1-2 are rendered, so we're definitely off to the races. Uzobono was kind enough to post an image over on DeviantArt for those who like the sneak preview sort of thing:

That there is our central protagonist for the issue. No, not the one in the tube.

Also if you haven't read the posts before this one, Dollmistress' most recent Space Ditz saga has continued so you should definitely check that out.


Excelsior!

Tabenings - Joon Edition

May! I haven't posted since May!

Faugh!

Well, I'm not dead. On the contrary! I have started CORE #13 with Uzobono - the first scene is written and it's being rendered and I need to get the next scenes out post-haste. The overall plot is also done, that's the first thing that we do. If you've enjoyed the sub-plots about Erin and Yuen and Karo City University, then this issue should be up your alley! Not so much parasites this time - or any, really - but plenty of mind control.

I'm also back to working on 'Modding'; it's such a great concept and I shouldn't let the "what come next at this exact point" issue I'd gotten hung up on stop me - so I haven't. Progress is being made! Not nearly as fast as I'd like, but then I have a life and that life makes demands.

As far as other relevant content goes, if you haven't been paying attention to Dollmistress' DeviantArt page, you should be, as she's spinning quite a wild tale over there.

In other media I'm watching the latest season of Archer, which is good but thus far not superlative. My favorite bit was the line  - and for this to work you have to know that this season is set in 1938 - where Pam says "Yeah, it's a real Catch-22," to which Archer replies "...I don't think that's a thing yet." Ah, the fun we have with the 4th wall!

Bis zum naechsten mal!

Tabenings - The Brink Edition

Thaaaaat close to giving up blogging - but not today!

So! Writing productivity is not nearly what it should be, but you might be glad to know that I've fleshed out the plot of CORE #13 (lucky #13) and should be getting the first scenes written shortly. Also turned my attention back to 'Modding' and made some progress there.

Let's see, what else. Callidus has put out some fun new episodes of 'The Black Room'. Just this week Dollmistress has embarked on a new comic release, apparently inspired by Infinity War, with the usual bubbling mixture of fetish and humor. 'Humour' I should probably say.

I know I'm missing some things. In mainstream media I greatly enjoyed Deadpool 2. Their interpretation of Domino really tickled my fancy, and I think Zazie Beetz hit the character just right. Also, I figured 'Zazie Beetz' was totally a made-up stage name until I looked her up and discovered that her father is German, so 'Beetz' is her completely legit last name.

Since then I've been binging on German-language interviews with her on YouTube. I may have a bit of a crush.

Not doing much vidya at the moment; dabbling in some World of Warcraft, mostly, which you can rightly curse for some of my lack of smut productivity. I keep meaning to try out Far Cry 5 but haven't gotten around to it.

Okay, will try to get back to weekly updates. Or even more! Also more writing. TTFN!

Tabenings - Penfold Edition

Almost forgot! But didn't!

So, Uzobono is off and rendering the new scenes I sent over, and I said that I'd have the final couple of scenes written this week, so that should happen. Still aiming for that late February / early March release. I'm still astounded whenever I get back these stunning images in exchange for the dry prose I send over.

Also, DollMistress (hence 'Penfold'... 'DM'... get it? Yes I'm old...) updated her deviantart page with some new teasers from 'Replis City Blues', the game she's working on. If you haven't played 'Miss Adventure' (or 'Space Ditz' or 'Overseer') you owe it to yourself to do so; it sounds like we won't see RCB any time soon but I'm sure it will be worth the wait when it arrives.

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?

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.

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?