End of Week: Pretty Much More of the Same Edition

I'm feeling a bit under the weather after undergoing surgery yesterday and trying to cope with the changes caused by it (and also after spending far too much time editing today), so I'll be brief(er) in this post.

Hot Pressed

This story is now clocking in at about 20,000 words, with the middle section almost completed. The ending is up next, and although I more or less know what needs to happen there, there are a few interstitial scenes I haven't worked out yet. Chalk up one more thing to the task list.

It's a toss up right now whether I'll sit down and try to think through the final scenes or if I'll just wing it. I should probably put more thought behind this, especially since the last part is likely to be another 10,000 words. My original plan for the ending got kind of thrown out the window once I decided there's less non consensual stuff that's going to happen to the MC. Oh well, the way it's going now makes for a stronger story.

Robotic Restitution

As promised, I did manage to get through another chapter this weekend, though it took me about five hours today to get it done (that's the problem with not getting a little bit done each day, the work piles up at the end of the week). Boo procrastination!

Unfortunately, I checked out the next chapter, and it's even longer than the one I just finished! I suppose I had better get a move on, I don't want to spend seven hours in one sitting trying to get just one chapter edited!

This does put me at about half way on the first editing pass. No time to celebrate, of course, there's so much more to go, but now I'm starting to get concerned that I still don't have a firm idea on how I'm going to handle the book covers. It seems likely now that my best bet is to take some photos myself, but finding the appropriate arrangement is difficult.

I was able to locate some purple orchids at the local home improvement center. They aren't exactly what I need (blue orchids would have been better to match what I'm using in the story), but they'll have to do. Will probably use a photo editing tool to make them the color needed, though that feels a bit like cheating. Whatever works!

However, this means I need to take photos as soon as possible before the blooms die out. I don't want to have to wait half a year for the plant to bloom again (if it even does, which is not guaranteed - I don't know how confident I am in my ability to keep the plant alive). Perhaps that's a job for tomorrow. Too much speculation and uncertainty around all this for my taste.

Midweek Hotness: Origins Edition

This week I'm going to talk about some of my early influences.

Sometimes it's hard to define them until long after they've been encountered, but looking back I think these two video games had an out sized effect on how my fetishes first developed.

No real sexy images this week, I'm afraid. We'll have to use our imaginations.

Agent USA

Taking the time machine way back into the eighties, there was an edutainment game called 'Agent USA.' The main idea was to teach kids about geographical locations by forcing them to take train tickets to different parts of the US.

It seems anachronistic now, and even then I believe plane travel was far more prominent than passenger trains, but it still makes a useful framework for a game.

The main conceit of the game was that there is a Fuzzbomb somewhere in the USA, which is infecting people and turning them into fuzzbodies. Fuzzbodies travel diagonally until they hit a wall , then bounce off in a 45 degree direction. If they get close to another citizen or you, they'll start chasing you, but only at a 45 degree angle, so they're not impossible to avoid.

Fuzzbodies can board trains and travel to different locations, turning more citizens into fuzzbodies as they're touched. It's basically a zombie plague, and if you do nothing you can eventually reach a game over scenario where everybody has been turned into a fuzzbody.

You play as mister white hat, while all the normal citizens around you have black hats (an amusing parallel to computer hackers, I know). In your personal wallet, you start with a small number of crystals. Your job is to grow your bank account to one hundred crystals, travel to where the fuzzbomb is in the USA, and touch it, without getting touched by existing fuzzbodies.

Each city has an informational map that can help you locate which cities have been fuzzed, and where the fuzzbomb is located.

Each city also has a ticket booth where you can catch a train to another city. Tickets are free, but you have to type in the whole city name to get a ticket. Also, not all routes travel to all cities. Some trains are slower than others. While you're travelling by train, time passes, you swap time zones, and the fuzz bodies spread.

To grow new crystals, you set them out anywhere in a city and more will materialize next to the existing ones. You do have to be careful to keep crystals away from the civilians, as they'll snap them up like they're actual money if you're not careful.

You do have the ability to move towards a civilian and push them away, which is useful if you only have one black hat you need to deal with.

Eventually you'll encounter fuzz bodies wandering around. If you get too close to one, it will start chasing you. You can turn it back into a black hat citizen by dropping a crystal in front of it. Civilians can hold multiple crystals and will resist being turned into fuzzbodies if they are holding crystals.

Eventually it gets difficult to avoid the fuzzbodies and it becomes a mad dash to turn them back into civilians and to grow new crystals. If a black hat has crystals, they'll even try dropping some themselves to save their fuzzed buddies.

Once you have enough crystals, find the fuzz bomb, touch it, and victory is yours! If you don't have 100 when you touch it, however, you're instantly fuzzed and it's game over.

All this seems fairly straightforward. It's the fuzzpocalypse, and you need to stop it. So how does that play into a mind control fetish at all?

Much like sonic the hedgehog, every time you get touched by a fuzzbody, you lose half your crystals. Eventually, you run out, and if you're touched one time too many you get turned into a fuzzbody yourself.

Here's where it gets interesting, though - becoming a fuzzbody does not trigger a game over as you might expect. Instead, you wander around the city, with no control over yourself. You watch, helpless to resist as you walk from city to city, touching black hat citizens and turning them into more fuzzbodies, recruiting them to become just like you.

If your fuzzed body takes you onto a train, you'll travel to another city and continue the recruitment by touching more civilians there. The only way to get back control over your character is to pick up a crystal dropped by a friendly black hatted civilian, and that could be very tricky if you never gave any crystals to civilians. Especially since you have no control over which city you travel to when you're fuzzed.

This was my first encounter with the serial recruitment trope, and it left quite an impression. Sure, there's not much hotness potential with being fuzzed or being turned into a zombie, but if you replace that mechanism with being mind controlled by insects or worms to spread their species to more unsuspecting citizens, you can quickly turn it into some great fetish nightmare fuel.

Heck, the fuzzbomb could even be a malfunctioning AI that has decided to recruit new female robots to help it take over the world by turning civilians into carbon copies of its favorite robotic maid. The possibilities are limitless!

If you'd like to watch a video of a play through of this game, you can find one here. The C64 had better graphics and sound than other systems for this game, but I believe I originally played this game on the good old Apple IIc. Ask me if I've ever beaten Captain Goodnight or Karataka on the Apple II...

Duke Nukem 3D

Growing up, I had played several of the early Duke Nukem games, but Duke Nukem 3D had the biggest effect on my young mind. My mother would never have approved if she had known what I was playing, but as she wasn't all that interested in video games, she didn't pay as close attention as she might have.

The story, as with all Duke Nukem games, was rather shallow. 'Somebody is stealing all the babes! I gotta go rescue them so I can get home in time to watch Oprah!"

In Duke Nukem 3D, it was various aliens stealing the babes. But they weren't just stealing them - no, they were also altering them. That's where the sexual intrigue came into play.

In various places babes could be found cocooned, bound to a fleshy pole made of vines, or even suspended from the ceiling. Most of these were hidden in out of the way spots, of course, almost like easter eggs for the interested explorer.

Not only are the eyes of many of these babes red, but many of them are clearly being used for alien breeding purposes.

This is probably the first time I realized that I wasn't into quite the same sexual stuff as other people. It was a rather confusing time, to be sure, but eventually my understanding solidified into what I qualify as 'squick' (that's probably an excellent discussion for another time).

At one point I even found a sprite viewer, and was able to locate the sprites I liked the most and flipped through them. I recall being disappointed that there weren't that many, but hey, there probably wasn't a huge budget for making those kind of sexy sprites.

Sure, what happened to the 'babes' in Duke Nukem 3D is horrible, and the Duke was right in kicking the alien's asses. But that's only because the aliens were assholes.

If you're picking up females from another race for breeding purposes, why would you treat so them poorly? Sure, as the invasion proceeds, you could expect to capture more of them, but it's just a bad policy to treat your broodmares as expendable.

I suppose I could term this the 'Aliens' syndrome, or the 'extremely deadly virus' problem. If you kill all of your hosts too quickly, there won't be any left to propagate the species. It makes for a good horror show, but a poor strategy for keeping a species alive.

And it's not nearly as sexy to me. But, of course, that's not what the horror show writers care about.

If I were the aliens, I'd make my captured females as comfortable as possible, alien environment permitting. Even better if you can slowly alter their minds or transform their bodies to like being bred. If, once rescued, your new cows want only to come back to you, the war is already won. Your enemy won't want to kill them, because not only would that be bad press, but it would be morally wrong for them to do it.

That leaves the door open for you to rescue them later, and because they're ready and willing to be your slaves, they'll welcome you with open arms. It's always easier to make the choice to be taken care of in luxury than to live hardscrabble in a resistance force.

That's what the aliens would tell you, anyway. Take it from them, it's far better to not resist.

If you're lucky, your new slaves might even assist you in recapturing them so that you can breed them further. This is also a great way to pick up new breeding stock if your current slaves have appropriate family members to capture.

If you want a primer on what can actually be seen in the game (it's not really all that much), you can find a page about the Duke Nukem babes here.

Now I'm done taking a trip down memory lane. Next week it's probably time to talk about another hentai! Stay tuned!

End of Week: Steady As She Goes Edition

The upcoming week is going to be rather strange, as I'm planning on having a tooth extracted on Friday. I absolutely hate dental work, but this is going to be far worse, as that tooth has been the only thing I've been balancing my jaw on after a bicycle accident broke off two of my front teeth years and years ago. Not sure what state I'm going to be in after the tooth is removed.

That is all to say, that progress in the weeks afterwards this surgery may be lower than usual, but I'm hoping it won't slow me down too much.

Hot Pressed

I'm deep into the next scene on this story, where we get to meet the nobleman that our main heroine has been spying for. It feels a bit odd writing this character, as I need to give him all the necessary backstory and character attributes as if he'll be a recurring character, but he won't be. There's no place in the story to use his character a second time unless the narrative is expanded, and I have no plans to do that.

That's just the limitation of the 'short' story format, I suppose. Good practice for working on your characterizations, not so great for being able to reuse the ideas you've thought up for those characters.

Anyway, I expect I'll be able to finish this scene during the next week, which will setup the story for writing the climax, which will probably take multiple weeks to complete.

Robotic Restitution

I've finished the first editing pass on chapter nine this week, which puts me close to the half way mark on the first read through. The next chapter is just as long as chapter nine (which was a bit of a doozy in and of itself), so I expect it to be a bit tricky to get through this week, but I will persevere!

This story is sufficiently long that I've already forgotten some of the plot beats. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as I'm getting back into the sections of the story that are pretty hot. That does slow things down a little, though. :)

At any rate, nothing huge to report here at the moment, though I might have a go at getting two chapters done this week (that seems overly ambitious).

I'm still thinking about how I'm going to handle the cover art. Stock photos seem to be the thing for many erotic authors at the moment, but I don't feel like I want to go that route. I have some options in terms of my own photography, although I'm not convinced I want to go through the effort of acquiring the flower that I've used as a plot point.

At any rate, that's still some time away as I have far more to proofread, but I do need to keep thinking about it.

Story Outlines

I haven't done a writing topic for awhile, but this has been on my mind lately.

I used to be a believer in the 'write until you've finished telling a story' idea, but as time went on that changed. Yes, this is a great way to let your imagination run wild and release your inner creativity, but it's a terrible way to actually finish a story.

For one thing, you never know when you're done, and you'll be continually tempted to finish the story before its natural conclusion. You might write yourself off a cliff and need a deus ex machina to get yourself back on solid ground. You might have to restructure great chunks of the earlier story to make new plot points fit. You might get writer's block in the middle and can't figure out the ending.

These aren't problems solely exclusive to not starting with an outline, but many of them are enhanced by not having a plan.

There's also a few reasons why I'm biased towards having an outline now that I've gained more writing experience:

Many of my story ideas come to me in dreams, and I have to write them down quickly before they disappear. These usually form the bare bones of a plot outline in and of themselves.

Additionally, I find that I'm just plumb slower if I don't have one. I already spend enough time thinking up how the next scene is going to work before I write it; I don't want to have to worry about where the story is going and how it's supposed to end at the same time.

In the end, of course it's the writer's preference, but if you've never written with an outline before, I would highly recommend you give it a try.

Of course, as an author, you need to choose the right tools for the job. If your goal to write a hot flash or very short story, ditching the outline is probably the right call.

Good luck with your writing!

Midweek Hotness: Squick and Body Horror Edition

It should come as no surprise to people who have read my writing that I am into certain kinds of body horror. Alien face huggers? Insect mind control? Bizarre transformations into aliens? Yes, please!

Practically anything nondestructive that transforms or mind controls someone into becoming a part of the alien menace is a lot of fun for me. That's why I have a love/hate relationship with the Alien franchise - I love the body horror, but I hate the chest burster aspect.

It all seems rather dumb to me, anyway - why bother destroying your hosts when you can implant them with eggs and breed them over and over? The aliens have a non optimal breeding strategy. For a supposed 'perfect being,' the designers really screwed up.

I digress. If you're not into such stuff, now would be a good time to turn around and walk back out. If you do like this sort of thing, however, I have some fun stuff to share!

Alien(s)

Of course, 'Alien' was first, and 'Aliens' came later. All in the same universe, but different genres. A thriller isn't anywhere close to an action adventure film, but the Alien franchise has lent itself particularly well to both types of story telling. It would have helped if they had been more creative with the naming to avoid confusion, but I won't bother trying to understand the logic of movie makers.

Let's start the discussion about the Alien franchise by looking at some of HR Giger's art, from whence the designs originated.

All of HR Giger's material seems to feature a melding of humans with machinery, mixed with bizarre aliens. A perfect breeding ground for horror films.

Some of them are a bit more grotesque than others. I won't claim to like this one.

If you're into robotics, this one might tickle your uvula as well as your fantasies.

This... thing... is certainly well endowed, though I don't think it would be good for your health to get in bed with this creature. Those spiky nipples look positively brutal!

Let's loop back to the Alien mythos, shall we? It's hard for me to know whether images like this pre-date the films, but I imagine a few of them do, as they don't seem to be (pardon the pun) fully fleshed out aliens.

I believe this one is a mural done for one of the films. An accurate representation of the alien life cycle, as far as we know it. Only the guy wearing the mask has any sense at all, though even a space suit helmet was unable to save the guy in first Alien film.

The facehuggers in the films are rarely shown close up enough to see what's really on the back side - suckers, suckers, more suckers, and oh by the way a gigantic waggling tube that wants to fill you to the brim with alien eggs.

Of course, nothing would be complete without looking at some clips from the series. That twirling, worm-like tail from the first film is just so... amazing!

Yep, he's got that gigantic tube down his throat, with those huge alien balls slapping him in the face. I've always imagined how much more fun the story would be if the face hugger, instead of killing the host, bonded with the host, transforming them slowly into a xenomorph. A much more palatable plot, in my opinion.

There's even this theory that people can be morphed into alien eggs to perpetuate the alien race. A bit too vore-like to my taste, but fun to think about.

And then, of course, some strangely inventive people made this. Called 'Splorch' for more or less obvious reasons, I can't think of a more impractical sexual device. It does serve to give the mind a pregnant pause, as it were.

PredAlien

Ah, but wait, there's more weird stuff, courtesy of the Alien franchise!

If facehugger impregnations aren't enough for you, the new PredAlien introduced in Aliens vs. Predator 2 opened up a whole new world of mouth to mouth implantation!

I bet if you saw an alien rocking up on you while you're in a hospital bed you'd be pretty terrified, too.

The next part, where the eggs are jammed down her throat, is one of the most unintentionally arousing scenes I've seen in a film yet.

Glug, glug, glug. I really do wish this hadn't turned into another boring chestburster scene later in the film. There's no explanation why the alien chose her to bear its young instead of also impregnating the nurse outside. These aliens are far too irrational!

Slither (2006)

This film is remarkable for being *almost* something good, but never really getting there. Billed as a horror/comedy, it's not successful at either.

You have all the usual ingredients for success - an alien menace, worm creature thingies, a hive mind, parasite infectivity via mouths... but the alien is wholly unsuccessful at really stopping anything the main character does.

The best scene is when she's threatened by the creature, but nothing ever comes of it. Quite a shame.

As in many horror films, bad things always happen in the bath. This seems like a good reason to only take showers.

Oblivious, the worm menace approaches!

Ah yes, the old 'sucking on the gelatin snake' procedure.

If only she actually got infected here! Then the scene would be really interesting, in my opinion. How do you stop the worm from devouring everything... when you're a part of it? Hmmm?

Again, the worm has a non-optimal strategy. Completely destroying everything removes your source of food. Much better to create nice little farms to keep your mind controlled hosts in, happy and healthy while you spread your influence, sapping the will of your slaves so that they are unable to disobey.

Evil Aliens

This one is just plumb weird, but I like the idea anyway.

What if you were kidnapped by aliens and infected, slowly turning into one of them?

As the infection spreads, you slowly start to think like them. To be like them.

After your transformation, you are them. You join them. You do what you are told. You make more of them. You infect others.

Okay, well, the transformation is not slow or subtle here, but one can dream of having a proper corruption plot in a film some day.

That pretty much drains the well of weird stuff that I have for now. Anybody else have something they'd like to share?

End of the Week: Steady Progress Edition

Hot Pressed

There's been no shocking progress on this story the last week, but I have fleshed out the next scene. The scene after that scene will entail some political skullduggery and a reveal of some of our heroine's new powers, after which point she shall return to the airship and the final act will begin, which I suspect will consist of several scenes.

It's going well, but the finish is probably still another month away.

On a side note, I never realized quite how fun it is to write internal monologues with amused second parties, and I think I'm going to have to do something like it again at some point in the future.

Robotic Restitution

Another week, another chapter proofread. 

I'm now up to chapter nine, which is a bit longer than chapter eight, but I'm committed to getting at least a chapter done a week, so with any luck I'll be able to say the same thing next week!

I've taken the time to restructure the last 'chapter' by splitting it into logical chunks, which has left me with around twenty chapters total for the entire story.

Splitting that again into logical book sized chunks leaves me with three stories with about these lengths:

• Book One: 78,651
• Book Two: ~65,776
• Book Three: ~65,776

These aren't exact counts, but I expect the final product will be somewhat close. The last two books seem a tad short to me, but as their length would be longer than a 240 page printed book, I think it makes sense to keep them separate.

My intent is to write a short(er) story to release for free on the Internet to introduce the universe, which I will tack onto the end of book three, which will end up padding its length... but, of course, that won't be all that interesting to people who can find it online. I still think it would be a good idea to include this extra material.

It's a bit exciting to be making this much progress, but there's so much more work to go I'll have to tamp that down. No need to be too eager, too early.

Midweek MC: Corruption of Champions Edition

In the world of text based smut games, Corruption of Champions is fairly legendary. I would be surprised if any of you haven't heard of it. What you may not have heard of, however, is that there is an active modding community that is keeping the project going now that Fenoxo has moved off to other projects.

You can find the modded version located here, called the 'Revamp' mod.

Fenoxo also has additional offerings linked from his web site. I'll walk through CoC and talk about what I think are my favorite bad ends. Here's Fenoxo's download page if you want to go directly there.

Perhaps this stretches the 'Mind Control' tag on the Midweek MC, as there isn't as much mind control going on in these games (quite a shame, in my opinion, since there's plenty of room in this type of game for hot transformations using mind control). Still, they're fun to explore and imagine my own bad ends.

Here's some random bad ends I've been thinking about while fooling around with the idea of writing my own game.

1. Our heroine ends up on a planet ruled by ever warring tribal queens. To run their war efforts, they need lots of cart bearing animals for transporting supplies in their logistical trains. The main character gets brainwashed and ends up as a pony girl, bearing their burdens and serving as a bed slave as they transit from location to location.
1. Or, depending upon the path you take, you can end up as a milk cow, or even breeding stock, if you're discovered by the right mistress.
2. Whilst exploring a remote cave, the hero comes upon spongy organisms that look like amoebas which cause faint feelings of pleasure when they are touched. As the situation escalates, more and more of the organisms appear until you're blocked into the cave. Some of them slip under your clothing, taking liberties with your breasts. Eventually you turn into a breeding ground for new organisms, and others come to investigate why there's so many of the organisms infesting the area (the local town starts having problems with people disappearing and being turned into breeders).
3. The heroine finds a rubber globe on her bedside table. The more she touches it, the farther she falls to the rubber corruption, which slowly coats different parts of her body with a rubbery mass. Those parts become ever increasingly sensitive to the point where she can no longer think about important things. Eventually she is taken and is re-purposed as a rubber slave for her superiors. Comments are made about 'how much of a shame' it is that she was unable to overcome the conditioning, but that she has 'been made useful anyway.'
4. To support the war effort, your heroine has the option to incubate the eggs of insect warriors that serve as cannon fodder on the battlefield. If you incubate too many of them too often, then you get turned into a mindless, egg bearing slut.

Many of these ideas would only work in either a fantasy or a sci-fi setting, and some would only work well in more of a game-y way where you can slowly trickle out the body and mind transformations. That's probably why I'd lean towards making a corruption of champions style game  over making a choose your adventure, though putting together something like that in Twine would be fairly difficult. Both story styles have their advantages and disadvantages.

I have more ideas, but I can't let all the cats out of the bag before I ever get a chance to use them!

Corruption of Champions (+CoC Prisoner)

Corruption of Champions is a text based game where you explore various areas, gathering transformative items and encountering sexual bad ends. You can find the original version on this page. The latest modded version as of this writing is located here.

I would highly recommend downloading the modded version, since it includes the latest released base game, as well as many additions that didn't make it into the base game. This includes the incomplete 'Prison' mod that has been available for CoC a long time, made by fei fei wong.

It's worth the time to explore the submissive subplot in the prison, though it's still not a completely fleshed out area, to my understanding. If you wish to explore it, you'll want to load the modded version of the game, go to the 'Options' menu, and turn the 'Prison' switch to 'On.' Then, while playing the game, when you encounter the bizarre bazaar in the game, you can access the dungeon by being captured in the back alley. Be aware that you need to be above 33 corruption to visit the bizarre bazaar, or you need to be able to beat the guardian of the bazaar.

I would recommend these bad ends in the original game proper:

• Any of the bad ends in the 'Desert Cave.' Being turned into a breeder slut with quad breasts? Yes, please!
• Any of the bad ends in the 'Demon Factory.' If you lose, you can get turned into a lifelong demon cow, having your milk pumped from your breasts via automated machinery. Also yum.
• The good old Fetish Cultist ending, where you become a latex cultist. Very hard to trigger, as it requires that you have an intelligence under 9 as well as the event has to have been triggered for you to encounter cultists in the first place (I'm unsure what's required for that). Drinking Equinum or eating Canine Peppers or Whisker Fruits are good ways to decrease intelligence early game. Just don't turn yourself into a full on horse since that's a bad end.
• Anything to do with Ceraph. It's always fun to get a few piercings from her, then make the decision whether you want to go all the way. Just don't get that last piercing or you can't fight anything.

Additionally, it's always fun to turn yourself into a drider and impregnate all those enemies who stand in your way. :)

One confession I should make is that I just discovered that the CoC Revamp mod existed while writing this, so I need some time to go explore what has been added. The wiki for the Revamp mod is available here. The forum page is located here.

Trials in Tainted Space (TiTS)

TiTS is Fenoxo's attempt to get into the Sci-Fi genre, and in my personal opinion it didn't work out as well as CoC. I've tried this several times, and simply can't get into it.

The production values clearly went up, but along with them the style of game changed, introducing new problems that weren't there before. The map is shown to the player, making it easier to see where you're going, but in every area you're given the opportunity to explore. Exploring may result in a monster encounter, or something else interesting happening - you never know.

This, combined with a slew of areas, makes it hard to know if you're ever in the right spot to find something. This makes using a guide via the wiki almost a requirement to play the game, which in my opinion is a bummer.

This coupled with the fact that none of the transformations or bad ends really hits my buttons has made me give it a pass.

But don't take my word for it! Try it out yourself and form your own opinion.

Corruption of Champions 2

I hesitate to directly recommend this game. It's well written, but it follows the same format as TiTS, which means it inherits the same problems that game has. It seems more difficult to find the bad ends you're looking for, and it doesn't appear completely finished as of yet.

Much like TiTS, I wouldn't give it a hard pass - definitely check it out if that's your bag, but so far I haven't found a lot that tickles my particular fancies here. Here's the download link.

Another Slow Progress End of the Week Edition

Hot Pressed

Despite having an extra day to work on this story last week, I didn't make nearly as much progress as I had originally thought I would. I suspect that's because there's so many little plot details still to be worked out. The scene I've been working on has changed multiple times while I've been writing it to better fit how the characters should be introduced to each other. I've finally landed on what I think makes sense, so I'm free to move onto the next section.

Our main character has finally left the airship and is about to discover that the armlets she just stole have... special properties which she hadn't originally accounted for. I'm looking forward to writing some inner brain conversations between her and her new mental... passenger.

This puts the story as solidly 1/3 completed, so hopefully it should be done in about another month.

Robotic Restitution

I'm currently about 3/4 of the way through editing chapter 7 (I did say progress was slow). I expect to finish editing this chapter today. At the rate of one chapter per week, the first editing pass probably won't be done for another three months, though I will endeavor to speed up the process. One chapter a week is pretty sustainable, though, so at least I won't get burned out if I continue working at this pace.

It's too bad I need to read everything at least once more before release, but future editing passes shouldn't take as long since I won't have to resolve continuity errors.

On the Process of Editing

After hearing from some other people on how their editing process goes, I've realized that what I do is rather different than others. Some people find the need to rewrite scenes over and over until they get them working the way they want them. Others say that they've had to throw out large chunks and start over again due to plot problems.

I've never done that before. In fact, I've almost never rewritten a scene. Thinking it over, there's a few reasons for that:

1. I always start with an outline. I've tried to write before without one, but without a definite conclusion to write towards, it's hard to know when you're 'done,' or if you'll ever get there. At least with an outline you can nail down exactly what you want to write and push towards that goal.
2. I spend an awful lot of time while writing a scene trying to figure out if what I'm writing fits into the end goal. Probably why I'm so slow when writing - I want to make sure that what I'm writing will be plausible, advances the goal of the plot, and introduces the proper foreknowledge of future events - hints that the reader can find if they go back to look. Sure, most readers won't bother, but I believe it makes for stronger stories.

When I go back and re-read a scene, I find it difficult to change parts of it in sections because of how the story flows. It can be done, but it takes a lot more consideration to make two parts meet up again if I need to insert a paragraph. Fortunately, I don't have to do that too often.

The end result is that when I go back and look at what I have written, I usually surprise myself at how good I think it actually is. Some of that is probably self aggrandizement, but I truly believe I do a fairly good job overall.

On the other hand, this gives me a lot of self doubt for the future. Every time I start writing again, I feel like I can never measure up to what I've been able to do in the past. It's nonsense, of course, but it's hard to lock those emotions away.

I suppose the answer is just to keep writing! Don't allow the forces of doubt to slow you down!

Midweek MC: Old School Comics With Mind Control Edition

This week I didn't find anything new that tickled my particular fancies on the EMCSA, though if you haven't read Uplink yet, I would encourage you to do so since a second chapter has been added.

This happens fairly frequently for me, but there's a lot of good stuff that gets posted every week which might tickle YOUR fancy, so it's always a good idea to browse.

Perusing one of the authors I mentioned last week, nevermind, I did discover (rediscover?) a story titled Black Swan by the same author. The method of mind control is too quick for my taste, but the relationships between the characters almost makes up for that. Definitely recommended.

And now, without further ado, let's get into the meat of this week's post.

Comics From Another Era

I, like many people, have an archive of comics from a time when... they were more accessible to me. This has given me a brief glimpse into a world I honestly know little about. These days I know far more about Anime than I do western comics, and even at my prime I was never much of a comic geek.

Luckily, the comics I do have access to contain two really fun stories that are germane to this blog - corruption/transformation/mind control. Let's take a short tour.

Vampirella

This first story is from June/July/August of 1998. Vampirella tales are usually good, bloody fun, but this story amps it up quite a bit.

Ah, red heads and vampires, a great combination. An evil, red headed vampire with a penchant for body swapping and mind control of her victims? Even better!

I gotta say, the nipple caps really do it for me, though this story does get a bit grotesque.

I find it interesting that she can be extracted like a tarot card and plugged into someone else as if she's a floppy disk. I wonder where her stylized nipple caps, forehead heart decoration, and heart panties go when she's extracted. A trans dimensional pocket?

Of course, nobody can resist the evil vampiress for long, and she starts to cause problems for our heroines. If you consider what she does next to be a problem...

Ejecting your soul in a tarot card? No problem! Tossing that card like Gambit into a new host body? No problem!

It was inevitable. And the best part of the this story. More red headed Vampirella? Yes, please!

Our heroines are helpless to prevent themselves from being controlled like pawns by our villainess! Ho ho ho!

I'm sorry Vampirella, you've caught a sudden case of the evils. There's an app for that.

Our co-heroine, Shi, seems pretty useless here. Maybe that's why the villainess didn't even consider trying to swap bodies with her.

The image of the bloody red queen here is reminiscent of Kerrigan from Starcraft. Another crush of mine. Have I ever mentioned how much I liked the second episode of Starcraft II where you get to play as Kerrigan and rebuild the Zerg Hive back into a bastion of power?

All good things must come to an end, after all, and eventually she gets defeated. But not REALLY defeated.

I like how any body she takes gets pumped up to supermodel state, inheriting her physical characteristics. It's like instant full body plastic surgery!

Back down to the denouement. This ending seems pretty weak sauce given the powers the Red Queen has shown elsewhere. And threatening to kill a baby ain't cool, yo.

I debated including this, but it's here for completeness. What a sad end for such a fun villainess. How convenient that this women has more will power to resist the Red Queen than Vampirella did. They don't even give the villainess an ambiguous ending!

A paltry end for such a fun idea. That's the way the blood flows for one shot villains, I suppose!

In my head canon, the Red Queen ejects herself from her current host when it appears that she's starting to lose her grip on the body. Shi retrieves the card and keeps it for safekeeping. Later on, in a teaser, Shi gets taken over by the Red Queen. She ends up doing her bidding for a while until Vampirella catches up to her. Another battle ensues and eventually she is driven off again.

Vampirella tries to kill the Red Queen by burning her card, but this only sets her free from her prison. Her spirit possesses another and more fun times are had trying to get rid of her. I would imagine at this point her body hopping days might be over and she might have to strike a deal with whomever her new host is, and become less of a random killer. Ah, what could have been!

Ascension

This next story of corruption comes from a series of comics called 'Ascension.' This is another Image series, but I don't quite know when it was published. Likely the late nineties, as all of my collection is from around that time period.

On a second read through of this tale, I realize I still can't really make heads or tails of what's actually going on in the world of this comic. It's a fun ride, regardless.

Before bad things happen, our heroine is already pretty kick ass.

However, things go sour for her once she is captured by her enemies. In a dream, our heroine is accosted by a specter of her lover.

As it turns out, however, the image of her lover is actually the big bad dude, who's pretty ugly in the real world.

Bamboozled by the fake images he's providing her brain, she is swayed and under his control.

 Somehow winged angel girl can visit her in her brain, but it unable to break creepy blue dude's control!

Ooh, a really cool looking badass blue woman. I wonder who that could be?

Oh yes, the corruption has changed her body color for unknown reasons. And added gratuitous chains and piercings. They don't quite explain how this happened. And they also kind of spoiled the upcoming corruption on the cover of their comic - they hadn't actually done a reveal of her new form until this cover! I do still love the change that happened, but I kind of wish it was handled in a less abrupt fashion than 'yeah, she's bad now.'

She's blue, pierced, and brainwashed!

She's totally under his control! I love the glowing blue eyes the corruption gives her.

Smashing through windows is probably a bad idea, even if you're a super amped up mind controlled woman.

Voivodul has great taste in women. He also needs plastic surgery. Dude, you're ugly!

Now she looks more like a Drow, but she's still a human. Maybe.

For more unexplained reasons, the evil bad dude's control over her wanes. We see here that when he's not in full control, her body gets less blue.

The linkage between our heroine and the big bad leads to his inevitable downfall.

The strange thing is, after she defeats him using her mind link, her body turns permanently blue. I'm not arguing against this artistic choice, but they never really explain why. Maybe a part of him was left in her after his death? That would be a fun story line, but they never take advantage of it. She never shows any evidence that a seed of his personality has been left behind to fester in the depths of her pliant mind. Bummer!

A sexy image of our corrupted/Blued heroine. Just because.

Inevitably, it all ends in angst.

I leave you with one more amazing image of our blue heroine in a collar. Yum.

She and her paramour Lucien get exiled from Angel land due to the bad things she did while under the bad dude's control. Never mind the fact that she wasn't exactly in her right mind.

The story takes a weird twist and turns into kind of a detective tale. Unfortunately, that story line meanders on for another ten comics and never really recaptures my interest. Too bad!

Do any of you know of fun comics like this that have great mind control scenes? I'd love to hear about them!