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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?

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.

Joja!

As mentioned, I've been playing a lot of Stardew Valley. Got gay married to my sweetie Abigail, because how could I resist a purple-haired proto-goth who loves pumpkins, autumn, cemetaries, and rainy days? I couldn't, that's how.

Also, purple is her natural hair color (the game is set in a universe with both trains and soda pop but also with dwarves and wizards), and let me just say: purple pubes. Oh. My. God. I would kill to rub my face in those.

So she's mine now and we are happy down on the farm.

Meanwhile, there's an entity in the game known as the Joja corporation, a faceless corporate behemoth that seeks to crush any independent commerce and force everyone to shop and work at their soulless identical stores and/or numbing corporate offices. The local Joja-mart manager even has devil eyes, that's how bad they are.

The combination of these two items - my loverly Abigail and the malevolent Joja Corp - recently smeared together into a rather hot fantasy.

It starts with coming home to find Abigail in some skin-tight shiny latex getup - think the outfit of the lead singer from The Pretty Reckless in their Going to Hell video - with cut-outs for the breasts and crotch, acting all submissive and enticing ("I got this to please you.")

She starts sliding further into sex-kitten over the next indeterminate period of time, discovering that she likes being naughty and objectified.

Then come the breast implants; she gets them as a surprise, and loves having them, they're so plastic and unreal.

She got them, of course, from Joja, which is more or less the only game in town for that sort of thing. And now her slide into becoming more and more designed for sex starts becoming tinted Joja; the idea of being a sex object and being a faceless corporate cog - no, corporate asset - blend together in her fantasies.

She begins going off to 'workshops' offered by a particular branch of the Joja corporation. In theory they are about skills and etiquette and such, but of course they are really a sort of corporate indoctrination, deepening her (and the other participants') desire to become Joja assets. Joja property.

Then comes the tattoo, the Joja logo on her shoulder, prominently displayed when she is wearing her tight Joja-blue latex lingerie. She takes a job at the local Joja mart; during which time she wears headphones that pump Joja subliminals into her mind as she smiles and vapidly rings up the customers.

Her salary is put into the Joja bank. It is immediately loaned back to Joja corporation at zero percent interest.

The next tattoo is on the nape of her neck. It's a Joja bar code.

When scanned, it reads 'plastic appliance'.

Now she's listening to the headphones while she sleeps. During sex, she refers to herself as a 'plastic appliance', as 'Joja property'.

The next time she's in the city, she visits the Joja surgeons again.

For the brain implant.

The headphones are unnecessary now. And her personality has changed; she's no longer playing at being a Joja puppet because it turns her on. It's more natural now; she simply thinks of herself as a Joja plastic appliance, a servile sex device which obeys because that's its purpose. She still answers to 'Abigail', but that's because Abigail is a Joja plastic appliance.

She sleeps standing upright now, in a barometric chamber, which Joja installed in the house. It wirelessly connects with her brain implant to guide her through her day; at night she sleeps within it, eyelids fluttering as it bombards her unresisting mind.

She has a new focus now: dissolving her personality.

She is a Joja Plastic Appliance. It says so on her neck. And there is a standard personality implant for Joja Plastic Appliances. Her last desire as Abigail is to melt away 'Abigail' so that she can become a pure servile device. So that she can become Joja Plastic Appliance #19,201 (the number that was tattooed on months ago), with the latest Joja Slavebot Personality installed and running her mind.

**

So that's the fantasy that cropped up there. I haven't worked out what the protagonist is doing during all this. Are they complicit? Appalled yet unable to do anything? I'd like to find some middle ground allowing for Abigail's complete submersion into the timeline above but that doesn't have the narrator as the driver - but I can't think of one offhand that doesn't instead leave them looking foolish or helpless.

Perhaps I will think of something. Taking suggestions!

Incest From Space

So I like incest. Not in real life of course - yuck - but in my smut.

This is a bit of a problem because some of my favorite co-fetishists do not read incest, full stop. Thrall, ferinstance, has it on her verboten list; Vanderbilt won't touch it. And that's a shame, because they write great stuff and I like for them to enjoy my stories. So I shy away from incest a bit more than I might if left purely to my own devices.

That said, I do find it hot, so I do sometimes go there. A good incest story can really hit my buttons - witness If I Was Not You's Continuous/Updatable Neuropositive Therapy. Short, snappy, sexy. Also witty, but that doesn't start with 's'. (The story could have used more sex, IMO, but then I've fallen victim to forever-longer-story disease, so take MO with a grain of salt.)

Recently I dropped a couple of hot redheads, Lynn Thompson and her daughter Calla, into my story Pierced. They do good work there, although they don't bang on camera (and that would distract from the main story themes anyway). However, I'd really like to have them bang, so I put them in a little headcanon that goes as follows:

Title: Lesbian Conquerors From Venus! They Want Our Women - To Want Their Women!

(I'm pretty pleased with that one.)

In the event, no Venusians are on screen. The backdrop is that Earth is being invaded by LCFVs, forcing evacuations, and our protagonists Terri Smyth and her daughter Veratrine take in a couple of refugees from the invasion: none other than Lynn and Calla Thompson!

These are an alternate universe Lynn and Calla, who are here not broodslaves but rather fifth columnists for the LCFVs, spreading lesbianism behind the lines of the resistance forces.

And that's basically the story. Calla seduces Vera, with the aid of some hypno-gadgets, at the same time as Lynn seduces Terri; Vera's induction into the Lesbian Fifth Column proceeds a little faster (she's young) and we ultimately get a scene where her new mindset is revealed to her wavering mother, who finally gives in, and is led not only to acceptance of her new attitude but also a big squishy incest-pile; and at the end of the story as usual everyone is blissfully happy with their mindset. Tabico Happy Ending get!

I'm riffing on several influences - trilby else's Venusian Lesbian invasion story, Golden, for one. I can still picture the curly-haired girl wearing nothing but her sock from that one. Rrr. And also a real classic, The Pyramid, a short and direct-to-the-point story of a pyramid-shaped device that turns women into lesbians, no muss, no fuss. Visually I'm humming from the key of InCase, who did a (it's futa but I won't hold that against him) hot redheaded mom/daughter tryst, and a second one on  the same theme I picked up somewhere - I can't figure out who the artist is, if you can, let me know.

Of course, those are Lynn and Calla - for Terri and Vera I'm thinking brown hair and blue eyes, another favorite combo of mine. Rrr.

Anyhow, yet another idea for the idea bucket. This one does have the promise of being relatively short, though.

Productivity

I have other interests besides mind control smut - I bet you do, too - and in the pursuit of those interests noticed the following chart recently:

It's a newly-released chart from the USDA, showing the state of the American dairy industry. What I found startling is that red line representing the milk productivity per cow. It has almost doubled since 1980.

Think about that for a moment. Each cow now gives almost twice as much milk as a cow in 1980 did. That's incredible! What could be the cause of that?

Is it breeding? We've been breeding cows for thousands of years. And yet somehow in the span of the most recent 35 years, we've managed to double their milk output. Cows are ready to breed at 15 months, so at a really aggressive estimate that's only 28 generations. Are we that much better at breeding that we can double the output of an already thoroughly-customized species in only 28 generations?

Is it drugs? There are obviously a number of ways to increase milk output through pharmaceuticals. Is it process? Don't underestimate the ability to improve outputs by rearranging  processes, it's a major and effective component of industrial organization. Feed the cows at 11 rather than 9:30 and there could be a small but quantifiable change in their behavior and output. Add up hundreds of those little observed results and you can achieve real change (although I can't imagine an actual doubling of output).

Is it something else? Or, and this is the most likely, a combination of a lot of things?

Anyway. I don't want to get lost in the weeds, here - I'm not that interested in the American Dairy industry. What I am interested in are the fetish ramifications of this information. Particularly considering that I'm a huge fan of the whole human cow / human dairy concept (as made obvious by my story Herd Instinct).

Thus, being that sort of pervert, immediately I was struck by the idea of a mind-transformed human dairy herd having their productivity doubled. Mmm.

Of course, pursuing that idea with an eye towards a story immediately runs into some of my hesitancies. I don't write about things happening to children, which of course immediately causes challenges when writing about selective breeding. I do write drugs, so that part is easy, but frankly selective breeding has to be pretty central to this whole concept so there are some mines laid there. Also I am not pleased writing death (some people might be surprised to hear that, but it's true) so when breeding humans the generations in my story would necessarily be long and productive rather than quick and with a lot of weeding out, which is of course key to any real selective breeding.

Also, sort of as an aside, I would absolutely never include any sort of slaughterhouse concept. There are those who write human cattle stories who feature that prominently, and of course it fits squarely into the milieu. But the whole idea is a total unpleasantness for me, so no, never.

But I can work with drugs and selective breeding. Those of course lead to another major question. Who is doing this selective breeding? The immediate problem being that if it's a standard modern era Mistress/Master figure, they're not going to live long enough to oversee more than a few generations, as the cattle live as long as they do (as mentioned, in my stories the cattle will be living long, happy, mindless lives).

That, by the way, is why we don't have acorns next to the almonds on grocery shelves. There are oak trees that have mutated to produce acorns which are sweet and good to eat, but breeding oak trees is beyond our patience. In addition to their long lives and land requirements, the genes that produce the inedible tannins are multiple and complicated, so planting sweet acorns doesn't produce sweet acorn producing trees. Reaching sweet acorn trees that would breed true would take many human lifetimes.

But back to fetish. So, in this theoretical story focused around improving human cattle stock (and admit it, for some of us the idea of "improving human cattle stock" is erotic), who is doing the improving?

Could be aliens. But in this sort of story where you start with a big pool of enslaved humans, where's the interest in the aliens' motivations? Where's the conflict? Not to pooh-pooh alien stories, they can be done really well (e.g. trilby's Xenophilia), but it doesn't seem like the way I'd go here.

Could be robots. That might work; some sort of AI created a long time ago whose goal is to perfect a race of human cattle. I did something similar in 'Rouge', with a system that was set up to enslave people and then self-perpetuates. So that's one possible path.

But, let me go back to my initial human caveat "modern era". Let's discard that, and slide over to "fantasy future era". That opens up the field a bit. What about humans who are a different type of humans? In other words: a caste system. So there is a caste of Masters/Mistresses, and a caste of human cattle. Possibly other castes, possibly not. This would fit nicely in a "destroyed environment" dystopian future. And you also get to riff on caste/class themes. And you can have politicking going on within the Master/Mistress caste. That would work nicely, providing Master/Mistress figures who are properly dominant yet also can be related to by the reader.

So then, if that's the milieu, who is our protagonist? One option is a time-traveller; someone who was frozen from an earlier time and wakes up in this future. I did that in 'Codi' (see a few posts back). It allows the author an easy avenue to explain things.

Or it could be a cow. That's a good chance to write a mind controlled sub point of view. Hmm. Perhaps a cow whose Mistress is using her as part of the aforementioned machinations... raising her up for some reason? Which of course her upbringing and generations of selective breeding would struggle against. Yes, there's a good story in there.

But - I should be working on an existing story, rather than designing an entirely new one. Well, one more idea for the pile. But I figured I'd share what sort of thing goes through my head when I read USDA reports.