Midweek MC: Futanari Comic Edition

I've decided I need to turn this weekly post into a combination of 'nice stuff I've seen this week' as well as miniature reviews for the MC stories I've read over the week. I'm starting to run out of backlogged items anyway!

I'll still sneak in awesome stuff I've seen as well, but I won't be entirely focused on that going forward.

MCStories

This site usually updates Saturdays, and I browse it every week looking for stories that tickle my fancy. Here are three that I've been following this week and particularly enjoy:

The Camping Bug - That Squick Guy

This is one of the hottest, squickiest stories I've read in quite some time. The mind control vector is very large bugs that turn women into nests to create more bugs? Yes, please!

I don't think as many people like this kind of horror story, but I do!

I love that the new 'nests' are really happy about being nests after they've been converted!

It's too bad the story is only a two parter, but I'm looking forward to more from this author.

Uplink - nevermind

The depersonalization associated with robots/nanomachines don't generally float my boat, but Hive Drone creation and serial recruitment are always fun. I don't have much to say on this one as I've only gotten half way through, but the way the first recruitment is handled is quite hot.

I'll have to dig into this author's backlog and see if there's anything else I would enjoy in there, as it looks like they have been active for quite some time. I'm not sure how this author flew under my radar, but it's possible my tastes didn't align with this author's past works.

It Rings for Thee - Doctor D

There are lots of things to like about this tale - the idea of a group of powerful, foreign women coming into a town and slowly taking things over with powerful artifacts has been done before by Tabico to great effect, and I'm pleased to see it again here. The animalistic nature of the hunter women, and the strange things the invaders are forcing the townspeople to do as they are subtly changed amps up the heat.

My only major gripe with this tale is that it's so damn SLOW to get to the denouement. It's the opposite problem of many tales, where the mind control is wham, bam, thank you maam, and there's no build up. Here you're just left waiting with the faucet drip, drip, dripping material to you.

We still don't really know the true form of the huntwomen. We haven't really seen any transformation being done yet to the main heroine despite her slow fall into corruption - and it's three long chapters into the story already!

This story is incredibly promising. I won't give it up, but I'll have to wait and see if the payoff matches the hype. I suspect the next chapter is where it will really get hopping. Hopefully.

Uzobone - Black Helix

I haven't mentioned Uzobono on this blog yet? Crazy!

She's been making amazing rendered comics for a long time, now. To catch her earliest work, you'll need to visit MC Comix, which is unfortunately still pay walled.

However, all her most recent work is freely available on DeviantArt! I would especially recommend the CORE series, a collaboration with Tabico.

Her latest offering, titled Black Helix, is, in my opinion, one of her best efforts yet. That's only if you're okay with futanari, however. If not, I would recommend the rest of her collection, as it is all lesbian. She even says herself that this is probably the only futa comic she'll ever make, which is a shame, since she makes such high quality comics.

There's a lot to like here in her latest offering - forced transformation, brain washing, with a side of eventual pregnancy. I won't give too much away. Just... go read it! It's free!

Miraculous Ladybug - Reflekta

Let's take a segue in an odd direction. 'Miraculous Ladybug' is a French children's cartoon about two teens in France with the ability to transform into costumed superheroes - a ladybug and a cat guy. They episodically fight an evil villain which has a penchant for transforming other normal teenagers into his minions - which means they're effectively fighting a proxy war all the time. Sucks to be them.

As a children's show, this is of course played with a light tone, but some of the transformations are quite interesting. One episode in particular spawned a lot of fun transformation art.

The episode can be seen on Youtube here. The villainness, called Reflekta, is granted the ability to turn other people into copies of her. This unfortunately doesn't involve changing their minds as well... but imagine what could have been if that were the case! What if she had won?

Plenty of people did imagine that:

Please join Club Reflekta. When you leave you might be a little bit... changed.

Reflekta combined with goo physics. She looks so... gloopy.

More platform boots, please? I like this trend. Let's do it more often.

Ah, Reflekta with a side of that Joker gas. Epic.

That's it for today. Enjoy!

The Very Late Update So I Can Go To Bed Edition

This week has proved to be busy, far busier than I had originally reckoned on it being. It's fun to hang with friends, but soon the time vanishes, the weekend is over, and you begin to wonder if you've been doing anything productive with all that time.

Here, the answer is simple: not much in the writing arena.

'Hot Pressed' is not going to be hot off the press any time soon. I've successfully moved my heroine from the ground to her first adventure on an airship, but now I'm besieged with such banalities such as whether she should attempt to climb onto the airship via a line in front of a running engine nacelle, or behind it.

Given that I was unable to figure out whether someone passing in front of an engine would feel forces sufficient to prove dangerous, instead I think she needs to climb up behind it, as the prop wash will definitely be hazardous. It feels dumb that it took so long to make this decision, but I truly think that ensuring small things like this are more plausible makes a story more immersive.

Of course, this doesn't solve what exactly the airship looks like on the interior, so that's another layer of complexity that has yet to be worked out. Regardless, the first pivotal scene of the story is about to be told. Which indicates to me that I may be nearing 1/3 completion on this tale.

If I'm extremely lucky, this will remain a short story and not turn into something more ridiculous.

Robotic Restitution

The big angry gorilla in the room for me. Sadly, not a lot of work was done on this project this week either. I did finish proofreading chapter five, and chapter six looks fairly short, so that should definitely be done this week as well. 

I'm rapidly getting close to finishing reading the 'first novel' part of this tale, though I have yet to firmly decide there the first novel should end. I'll need to do some word count calculations and compare that to natural stopping points in the story.

That, though, can wait for later, after the first proofreading pass is complete.

It's late now, and I can't be bothered to type up another discussion, so that will be it for this week. Have a great week, everyone!

Midweek MC: CHYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) Edition

Choose Your Own Adventure. The phrase hearkens back to my childhood, scattered with small paperback books containing odd choices. A time traveler? An art thief? A mystery? All those and more could be had in those short adventure books. As long as you didn't make the wrong choice and get sucked out an airlock, shrunk by a shrink ray, or pulled apart by a roiling portal.

I tried to make one myself out of a sheath of paper when I was a kid. It was a horror story about an axe murderer, and you as the hero had to make decisions to avoid being killed by him. I recall there was one scenario in this sordid tale where you were juggling knives and needed to make the right choice to avoid killing yourself with a flying knife.

Yes, I was a strange kid.

The problem with good CHYOA is that it's hard to write. Not that any individual piece is that difficult, mind you, but because of the branching paths there's so much MORE to write. A single narrative gets split and chopped up into any number of endings you desire.

Writers often get bogged down trying to work on different endings and never finish the story at all. To help solve this problem, web sites have been created to help authors share the load with each other, which then results in different problems - a lack of vision and differing skill levels.

Nothing is more jarring than reading a fun story where the writing takes a turn for the worse due to swapping authors midstream. The new author decided he didn't like the story line and looped the story back to the beginning. Or the choices you're given are boring.

Sure, a different author could come back and flesh out a different choice for a more interesting ending, but that might never happen. Eventually, these stories peter out as the original author loses interest, or they turn into completely different stories as other creative visions take hold.

That isn't to say that good choose your own adventure stories don't exist. It simply means that they are harder to find. Fortunately, I have two great corruption/transformation stories here that I'll list, and if somebody else knows of more hopefully they'll post them!

A good CHYOA on Amazon

It's harder to make the leap to reading a CHYOA on Amazon because it's difficult to invest in something that may not quite strike your fancy. Self-published CHYOAs will at least be more complete than their counterparts online, but it's easier to read and discard ones you don't like when you're not paying money for them.

Fortunately, Escape the Island of Eldritch Lust is definitely one I can recommend.

The story has the erroneous subtitle 'Princess to Pleasure Slave Adventure 2,' which is silly to me since 'adventure 1' isn't a choose your own adventure tale. That collection of short stories might be interesting in their own right, but I haven't read them so you'll need to decide on your own.

Regardless, the story is long and the endings are many. You can be corrupted yourself, corrupted with your mother, corrupted with your sister, etc. The table of contents sets you up to skip to certain endings, making it easy to read certain paths in the story if you so choose. I've read a handful of CHYOA stories on Amazon, and by far this one is the best laid out so far.

In passing, I should also mention The Easily Defeated Hero's Monster Girl Adventure. While by the one of the co-authors of the other work, I don't consider this to be nearly as good because not as many alternate paths have been fleshed out. Also it looks like those people buying the stories separately may have gotten hosed, which is unfortunate (include me in that list, I probably won't be buying the final collection). Still, it's a fun romp if you're into that sort of thing.

A great CHYOA on chyoa.com

If you're looking for something more free, I have found a story I would recommend on chyoa.com - The Tower.

Fair warning, though, you'll only find this hot if you're not afraid of mind controlling bugs/aliens with tentacle thingies converting victims into hive breeders. However, there are also plot points where women soldiers are corrupted by the hive, their hair turning pink as they become breeding bimbos.

The best bits, in my opinion, is where some of the characters turn into matriarchs and help to convert their compatriots to the side of Hive. There is also a path where your character gets podded and altered into a more willing slave of the tower. Yum.

In general, chyoa.com is a good place to write this sort of smutty fiction, but you will need to register for a free account if you want to look at the story map. 

I would advocate doing this, as the story map not only shows you which paths are available with their titles, but also color codes which paths you've already read. It can be difficult to determine what you've already seen in a CHYOA tale, and this helps with that immensely.

Have fun choosing your own corruption!

Writing Update: Middling Progress Edition

The snowstorm last week threw everything for a loop, and I'm just now starting to get back into a useful rhythm for working on my projects.

Very little got done on 'Hot Pressed,' though I have managed to get the first capture scene almost fleshed out. I'm stuck between wanting to show what's really happening during the abduction of the first 'victim' vs. increasing the amount of suspense/foreshadowing. The latter has won out for the moment, since I'll be showing the end result of what happened to this captive later on in the story.

It does preclude me from being able to write a hot conversion scene, but I think it's more important to the flow of the story that I make it happen this way. Flow matters more than show.

The worse news is that I'm not feeling the motivation to work on this story like I was for 'Robotic Restitution.' I think that's really more a fact that I'm earlier in the process - too many plot points need to be fleshed out, and I haven't gotten close to the characters yet, so it's harder to make their thoughts and dialog flow. I'm sure it will get easier with time as long as I stick to it. And this time I will stick to it - I will get these ideas onto the screen and out of my head.

I'm saying that just to convince myself, aren't I?

But it really needs to happen, as I badly need to plot out and start work on the teaser story for Robotic Restitution, as that will be a big blocker towards getting it released. Advertising is tough work when you're a nobody.

Robotic Restitution

Progress is being made on the proofreading process. I've just finished proofing chapter four. There are about sixteen more to go, and I'm estimating that each chapter takes about three hours to do the first proofreading pass.

That leaves about 48 more hours of work to do before I can start the second proofreading pass. From this end of the process that seems like an insurmountable mountain, but I'll keep plugging away at it.

Let's not mention the currently nonexistent cover art and teaser story that needs to be written before I can release anything.

Seems likely that it will be half a year before I'll be ready to publish. That seems exorbitant, but realistic. Real authors obviously get a lot more help than I am soliciting, so it wouldn't take them nearly as long as it's taking me. Real authors also have a better idea whether their project will be a success - I suspect that this probably won't be, since, to be realistic, what I'm writing is pretty niche. As it's a passion project, I really can't devote more resources to it other than my time since the return on investment will likely be minimal.

This is probably a stupid tack to take because it increases the lead time on getting anything else done, but there's too many uncertainties involved for me to feel comfortable doing anything else. Bummer.

This has already run on rather long, so I'll save some of my other discussion topics for another time. Adieu!

The Things Gracing My Browser Window Edition

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The Not Getting As Much Work Done Because of the Snow Edition

After finishing the first draft of 'Robotic Restitution,' I've slacked off a little. I rather expected that might happen, but it doesn't make me any happier that it has happened.

Still, this weekend I have managed to proof read two chapters of Robotic Restitution, which means there's only ~15 to go on the first pass (which isn't really true, since I already know the last chapter is probably going to be split into three).

The first pass is the most important, as this is where I'm taking copious notes to ensure internal story consistency/fixing continuity problems. Later passes will be less for content and more for typos, so they ought to take less time to execute.

Unfortunately, the version of Libre Office I'm using is now refusing to spell check anything, so as usual there's more troubleshooting required, as always seems to be the case with software.

New Work - Hot Pressed

I've started work on 'Hot Pressed' again. Fortunately, I have good notes on that story, so I know more or less how it's supposed to go.

However, I'm already starting to do some scene shuffling for plausibility purposes. For example, my original intent was that a gang of crew members goes into the city and randomly abducts a person to convert them into another member of their crew. 'Press Ganging,' as it were.

On retrospect, this won't really work all that well - too many questions need to be answered. Why would the foreign city guard members let them wander around their town to do this? During twilight hours, what kinds of people are they going to find to abduct? How are they going to abduct them without anyone noticing?

Answering these questions has significantly changed how the capture process is going to work. Instead of grabbing someone off the street, I need the induction squad to be searching for a suitable candidate. This candidate must be someone who is compatible with the head mask they are looking to fill, and this person must be willing to leave their current country behind. Having genetic markers from the nation this capture squad hails from is also important. The capture method will need to be some form of hypnosis combined with a somewhat willing subject.

The subject will be removed back to the source airship for further processing via a wooden coffin the squad members are carrying around - that's less likely to draw attention. The family of the person who is being abducted will be compensated and mind controlled.

Overall, I think that will provide for a more interesting and plausible story, preventing the reader from scoffing at what's going on. Sure, as a writer I have complete control over what happens - but I don't want to make the people in the story seem like complete idiots. Being internally consistent plot-wise is, I believe, one of the most important things a story can do.

Unfortunately, this week the chances I have to work on stories has been rather light due to terrible snow conditions in the area. This reduces the amount of time I spend on public transport and therefore the amount of time/motivation I have to work on this story. Continuing bad weather makes it less likely I'll get any progress finished this week as well, but I will get back to it eventually. I'm already thinking that this is probably going to end up ~40,000 words by the time it's wrapped up, so it's definitely not going to be a small project. It seems that anything I think is small on first blush always balloons upwards in size anyway...

Why I like Happy Endings

AKA 'bad endings and why I like them.'

But only if they're a certain type of bad ending. The 'happy' bad ending.

What makes up a 'happy bad ending?' You might inquire.

That's fairly simple. Everyone is happy in the end. That might require some mind alteration to make it happen, but that's perfectly acceptable.

What isn't acceptable is turning the main character into a mindless vegetable, a cored catastrophe, an automated automaton without any volition left. Don't get me wrong, those types of endings can be pretty hot if executed well. They work fine as bad ends in multiple choice adventures and games as punishments for the user making dumb decisions to see what will happen if they are terrible to their main characters. However, they will never make me want to re-read them - why bother if your character became a robotic puppet with no self-volition?

In the same way, the 'happy' ending where the main character wins out against the mechanism of mind control completely kills the erotic tension in a story for me. "Hey, you thought you were getting a good dose of mind control, but this character has plot armor and nothing truly bad can ever happen to him/her." This gives a story a feeling of impermanence, as if nothing will ever change for the main character.

As with all things, moderation is key.

I think that's why I keep coming back to Tabico's tales, Herd Instinct and Weaponized in particular. Sure, terrible things happened to the main characters, but by the end of the tales they were absolutely fine with whatever had been done to them. They loved having it happen to them. They gave themselves to it. They wanted it wholeheartedly.

I think you could also pull off a tale where by the end the character has been changed at some base level by the experience. But that might also be a convenient setup for turning the main character into the villain for the next tale... which sounds like an excellent idea, I should get right on that.

Corruption and Transformation

Some of my favorite artwork follows these themes. Of course, if they happen to mix in some mind control to make it happen, that really spices it up. Over time, I've found that if the corruption and mind control is executed well, the subject matter is less important to me. Of course, I'm sure that won't be the case for everyone, so feel free to skip the categories that don't do it for you.

In this post, I'll run down my the top four artists that use these themes to create some really hot stuff (which is convenient given that I don't really have more than four I can think of at the moment anyway).

4. Clown Transformation - Miycko

Usually people go for the 'creepy' clown stereotype. I've only found a few instances where that's been flipped on its head, and Miycko is one of them. Most of this artist's work consists of people transforming into clowns - and really enjoying it. In one of them there's a gender bender transformation, but for the most part it's played safe. Who wouldn't want to be a cheerful, big breasted clown?

There's a whole series of comics you can read here: 

1. Raising Boobsy

2. Boobsy's Bedside Manner

3. The Clowning Touch

4. Pleasure Parlor

3. Animal/Bug/Snake/??? Transformation - Lunate

I like a some of Lunate's work, but some of it is honestly a bit repellent. I think that's because the insect transformations he does just look ugly to me. Still, there's some good material here to enjoy.

I especially like the Slerm Hive and Lyrian Rites and Ceremonies. However, a lot of them I'm a bit iffy about. I can enjoy The Basement due to the corruption elements, but that one straddles the line. You can explore and decide for yourself.

The artist also has a page on FurAffinity. I'm not really a furry aficionado, although I do enjoy some of the artwork they come up with if it happens to intersect with some of my fetishes.

2. Ponygirls - Domigulas - Wabuki

I rarely find a lot of doujins to be interesting to me because they don't scratch that transformation/corruption itch without adding in ugly men or really horrific body alterations. These comics, however, happen to really hit a lot of my buttons with transformation, enforced bondage, and mind alteration.

No reservations here, these are pretty much straight up fetish fuel, fun femdom pony girl comics.

If you like this sort of thing, make sure to catch all of the material available:

1. Domigulas Volume 1

2. Domigulas Volume 2

3. Domigulas Volume 3

4. Organized Heroines

5. Domigulas Report

1. Magical Girls - Dinaranger - Monmon

This has been a long running series, and sadly it looks like it will never get a real ending due to the artist disappearing. However, what's here is amazing.

Evil bodysuit liquid that converts the victims into soldiers? Serial Recruitment? Conversion of magical girls into hybrid monsters that turn against their sisters in arms? Yes please!

By far one of my favorite scenes is in the third volume, where one of the characters slowly falls into the clutches of the bodysuit she's not convinced she's actually wearing.

If you missed this one, I would jump on it right away.

1. Volume 1

2. Volume 2

3. Volume 3

4. Volume 4-6

5. Volume 7-8

6. Volume 9-11

7. Volume 12-14

8. Volume 15-16

9. Volume 17-18

Conclusion

I totally didn't just do this so that I won't lose the links to these series in the future like I have in the past... :)

If you have anything else you consider to be amazing, feel free to leave a comment below!

The It's Done Edition!

It's done, it's done, it's done!

The first draft is done of Robotic Restitution (new title(s) pending[TM])!

Countless hours (including four hours today), and ~210,000 words later, it's done!

Yikes! I don't even know what to do with myself now! Start the next story, I suppose, tomorrow! A palate cleanser before I start on the teaser story for Robotic Restitution, which I haven't yet really plotted out yet (I know the setting and general gist of what I want to do with that story, but not the details).

And now the real tasks begin - proofreading, proofreading, proofreading some more, figuring out title cover art, then doing the research/formatting on how to get this project posted on Amazon.

With the number of words this tale has now consumed, I'm now thinking it needs to be a trilogy. 70,000 words per novel is almost 300 pages per book if this were to be published in a paperback (which of course, it never will be). That seems like a reasonable length to me, given many erotic works sell as short stories.

The fact that this is long form will actually probably work against it, I suspect. Certainly writing long smut novels like this is not sustainable as a day job, but as proof that it can be done, I'm very proud of what I've been able to accomplish.

Anyway, now that this is complete, it's going on the back burner while I work on proofreading it, which means it's going to go dark for quite some time. I'll will post updates on this project while I work on new projects, but I wouldn't expect this to be out any time soon.

Next on Deck

My next number is a story I call 'Hot Pressed' about Egyptianish headdresses, body transformation into hybrid human animals that match the headdresses (that's what killing bites is!), airships, and backroom spying - which I haven't worked on since 2016. This seems like a fine time to dust off the existing manuscript, read the notes, and try to muddle my way through to the end.

It will probably take a few weeks to get done, but this sounds like a great year to start posting new content! It will be quite satisfying to start working on the backlog - I have far too many story starts for short stories that need attention.

Cheers For Now

With so much happening today, I think I shall save some of the discussions I have queued up for another week when not so much is happening. I'm rather wrung out from the writing marathon I did today - I just couldn't let yet another week pass without getting it finished!