callidus-mc

Hrm. Well, there’s knowing that you have a fetish and there’s knowing how
to define that fetish; I knew I liked ‘zombie girls’ more or less since
puberty. As for the fetish genre of mind control, it really only became an
overarching genre encompassing all the things that pushed my buttons -
vampires, parasites, Robert Palmer videos – with the growth of the WWW.

I remember encountering the Mindnumbing archive – Brian C. Ladd, right?
Gosh, it was so long ago – and the perhaps hundred stories there, but
until Simon bar Sinister stepped up with the EMCSA and trilby started
posting his stories there, mind control was just one of several subjects
that I liked. It was only around the turn of the millennium that I realized
that mind control was really the erotic kernel at the heart of my many
disparate sex fantasies.

Well, first off, I am bisexual. And not in a ‘experimenting in college’
sort of way; if I am seeing a man then after a while I begin to hunger for
women, and if I am seeing a woman then after a while I start fantasizing
about men. It’s tough on relationships, let me tell you.
That said, when I write it’s almost always about the transformation of a
woman. And that’s because, as a woman, I really only associate with the
inside of a woman’s head.

Frustratingly I cannot remember who said this, but when asked if a
certain character in one of a particular well-known author’s novels was,
in fact, that author, he replied “they’re all me.”

Which is why my stories are the way they are. I’m not a sub, nor am I
attracted to the idea of being mind controlled. Hell, with my imagination,
hypnosis actually scares me. But when I write about women being mind
controlled, I can be them – I can understand them. I understand who they
were before and who they are after and that’s what gets to me.

I don’t understand men. You say you’re so simple, but you’re not. So when
a man is being mind controlled, it doesn’t push my buttons because I
cannot get into his head in the same way.

Mostly by leading me to write F/F stories.

How does my writing influence my sexuality? Not a lot, really. I have
experimented with bondage and D/S, but while fun they weren’t more fun
than straight up vanilla knockin’ boots. Mostly I use writing to get
myself all revved up, and then I go indulge in some good old fashioned 1-1
sex with my partner. No watches, no collars. Don’t need ‘em.

Hrm. I dunno, what do you like?

Mostly I like transformation, of a good believable character into
something much less than she used to be. Even stories that are kind of
hokey or poorly written can do it for me if they hit the right notes.
I like fantastical elements. I read almost anything with demons, vampires,
robots, mind control slugs, no matter how poor. And if it’s well-written,
I like it a lot.

I like degradation, a lot, dog-on-woman sort of stuff, but I do NOT like
anyone sneering at it. If there’s anyone around to see what the character
goes through, that person had better already be or be on their way to
being degraded themselves.

Which leaves me cold on a lot of the more common Mf stories, or even the
Fd stories, because they’re about one party getting what they want and the
other party licking their boot. Not for me. I want everyone licking boots
and whoever is left holding the chain is an entity wholly uninterested in
mocking them for it.

I also like happy endings. Certain of my correspondents tease me about it,
but I don’t like it when characters die, or wind up despondent. I like the
victims to be happy about their fate, gross and/or degraded as that fate
may seem going in. If you read my stories, there are only a very few where
the protagonists don’t wind up being happy in the end.

There are Tabico stories on the EMCSA solely because of trilby else.
‘Watering Hole‘ was so *good*, so *pure*, that I just had to give
something back, no matter how second-rate. (It was, too – ‘New Tunez‘?
GodWhatWasIThinking…) And then I grew from there.

I’ve had lots of influences. trilby, pretty much constantly, Iago, Sara H…
It may sound arrogant but I try not to trace influences on my work.
I’m a good writer, and I know it. I write what I like, the way I like,
which is the way I know how and the way that appeals to me. That said,
other authors – and, frequently, the outside world, or my dreams – inspire
me to write something specific. ‘Rouge‘ for instance was directly caused
by trilby’s ‘Hive‘ – after reading it (again and again) I just *had* to
write a “women in a hive” story. It wasn’t that I was trying to emulate
‘Hive’, it’s that I was inspired by it to create something of my own.

I mentioned the outside world – I also draw some inspiration from art. I
collect erotic art books; Hajime Sorayama, Shirow Masamune, Stephen
Grey… and those images will percolate around and amass erotic stories
around themselves like a pearl around grit. Most of them stay locked up in
my head for lack of impetus to write them down, but sometimes they make it
out. ‘Adaptation‘ is at least in part from some Chris Achilleous
illustrations, one in particular of a giant wasp carrying a nude woman
away.

Hmm. That’s a hard question to answer. I do find it hot – very hot, it’s
one of my top turn-ons – but as to why I find it so? I don’t know. That
gets right down to the root of “why do you like what you do”, and I can’t
really answer it.

It is a key feature of MC eros for me, though. Were you to sum up what I
find breathtakingly hot in a sentence, it would be “I shouldn’t want to
submit but I really, really do.”

See above. In addition to the vicarious thrill of risk, those situations
are perfect for the internal conflict of the aforementioned attitude.
Skirting the pitfall because intellectually it’s bad, but taking the risk
in the first place because emotionally it has irresistible erotic pull.

Perhaps that’s part of the power – the conflict between intellect and
instinct, the highlighting of the fact that the character (and by
extension, the reader) has powerful impulses that do not stem from, and
run counter to, rationality.

Heh. Well, aside from the already-mentioned appeal, this is also a good
way to present lots of mind control in a story. I mean, just practically
as an author, how do you reconcile your desire to portray lots of yummy
mind control and a protagonist who goes immediately to the police? You
know?

So the two ideas – the protagonist who is an MC fetishist, and their not
taking action because of it – combine naturally in storytelling.

As for continuing with daily life, I do try for realism outside of the
central conceits of a story. You have to keep showing up for work (unless
of course you no longer plan on ever going back).

Heh. It’s fun. As an author, exploring characters is, simply, fun. The
one-dimensional sub or dom can be interesting, but ultimately I think most
people have a little of each in them. Over time, in particular – some days
you want to make the decisions, some days you don’t. But mostly I write
characters such as Andrea because they are interesting.

Hee. I am a recently-minted PhD in one of the many branches of biology;
more specific than that I prefer not to get. So I do know what I am
talking about, although in general my stories are fantasy, and I do no
research and don’t worry about technical realism when constructing
fictional critters or scenarios.

If you look back at my story Mind Worms, you’ll see a reference to the
even-at-the-time discredited McConnell planaria experiment, which I had
read about as an impressionable undergrad and included in the story
without any real research, and ever since then have been embarrassed by. I
keep that around as a reminder to myself.

The inhumanity of them. Being subjugated by a robot or some plant on some
alien world is, well, demeaning. They’re not smarter than you and now you
eagerly obey them. Rrr.

Plus I like sci-fi in general. Big Larry Niven fan, or at least the early
stuff. So I write sci-fi because I like it and I write erotica because I
like it and frequently the two happen at the same time.

A long time ago. Heinlein’s puppet masters, the Body Snatchers, all sorts
of science fiction things I was exposed to (you know what I mean) as a
lass.

I enjoy degradation, but I don’t enjoy gloating. A good way to combine
those interests is to have the mind controller be non-human. And, if it’s
going to be non-human, might as well make it as slimy and disgusting as
possible! I mean, the yuckier, the more degradation, you know?

Plus, bugs are neat. I mean, come on, I am a biologist. I have to like
this stuff.

Same reason. Degradation without gloating. I love dog-on-woman stories
involving just a dog and a woman. I really dislike dog-on-woman stories
where someone is holding the leash and controlling things.

Big fan – huge fan. In fact, it’s directly his fault that I write smut at
all. Back in the day when he presented Watering Hole I was so smitten with
the story I *had* to show my appreciation. And so I started writing MC
porn, because, well, he liked it.

As for the question – yes. It is precisely the wrongness that makes it
exciting. The wrongness itself, and being turned on by that wrongness.
A character being mind controlled is hot; that character wanting to be
mind controlled (and knowing that its bad), even moreso.

Hee. Yes. Actually, exploring it in my work is easy and fun – *sharing* it
is a bit frightening.

There are things that turn me on that I would find far too shameful to
tell anyone in real life. And I’m at peace with that, I don’t feel somehow
morally bad or feel any need to stand up and proclaim my perversions. The
status quo is just fine.

I have, as a matter of fact, refrained from writing at least one – no,
actually, just one – story because I’m ashamed that it turns me on. But
that’s all I’m going to say about that.

One day, perhaps, everyone can be as big a pervert as they like and
man-on-peanut-butter action will not prevent someone from being elected to
congress. But that day’s a ways off and I’m okay with that. It’s not
necessary for everyone to expose their peculiar buttons.

I would like to observe, however, that I am bisexual, have been out about
that for years, and find the lingering stigma associated with being gay to
be stupid, backwards, and morally reprehensible. I live in Southern
California, thank God, but there are too many places in this country and
the world where people have to hide in the closet, and that’s a crime.

Uh. Fitness is the story that can most reliably get me off. Lord May I
like for a number of reasons, its departure from my usual themes, the cool
cyberpunkiness of it. I really like the Middle Urth setting I swiped from
Iago, and enjoy all three of my stories set there. I enjoy Summit for the
characters in it.

I like all my stories, really, some more than others, but they all have
different things about them that I like. Cool concepts, engaging
characters or setting, luscious description – they vary in how much of
each. Also, sometimes I am in a Winter Flesh sort of mood, say, and at
other times vampires leave me cold. So the list would vary by day or even
hour.

Plus I have a terrible memory so if you mention a story I always think “oh
yeah, that one, I liked that one for X”.

Yeah, that’s a good one, and I’m proud to call it mine. I wrote it, along
with an unfinished piece called ‘Fake Ones’, during the first Tabico
Tuesday Tidbits effort. For a few months I tried to goad myself into
writing more by posting something, anything, every Tuesday on the forum we
were using at the time. Sub Routine came from that effort, and a nebulous
idea about a mind controlling computer program that the protagonist kept
exposing herself to knowingly, although always with the thought that it
was a bad idea and she wouldn’t really go all the way, though of course in
the [end] she does and does so more-or-less knowing that slavery was what
she wanted all along.

In fact, the original concept is still bouncing around in my head, because
Sub Routine is a (very good) departure from the original story vision.
It’s a good example of how a story sort of tells itself, one step at a
time, and the author is in a certain sense just channeling it.

Originally Lord May was a concept piece; I had a dream wherein a woman was
imprinted/painted with lines like circuitry and they turned her into an
obedient robot.

Lord May was what happened when I sat down to write that idea. As I’ve
protested to numerous people, I like men, and this seemed like a good
story to tell from a male point of view; after all, writing from a robot’s
point of view can be hot but would not have conveyed the visuals I wanted
to convey.

Well, that’s it in a nutshell, really. Making up names is a non-trivial
portion of initializing a story, at least for me, and although fun is
sometimes a fair bit of work. Balphagor was a creation, so I thought, of
my own pure brain – it *sounds* like a demon’s name, and just the right
sort of demon, too.

Then, weeks later, I’m in a bookstore perusing a book on demons and ta-da,
there is an entry on ‘Belphagor’ – and he’s an incubus sort of demon, to
boot. It was really quite startling.

I still have no idea if it’s simple coincidence or if I had seen and then
forgotten the name.

On the one hand, it’s fantastic. Iago is a great correspondent and he
idolizes my work as much as I idolize his, so there’s a lot of
mutual stroking going on.

On the other hand, we both suck at actually sitting down and writing
things, and when he’s on I may be off and vice versa. So our dreams always
outstrip our actual output, and that’s frustrating for both of us.

Oh, how did it start. Well, I had this great idea for a story set in a
fantasy universe, and I wrote it; Iago had just come out with Where the
Shadows Lie and it was super hot, and I realized that it hadn’t just
inspired me to write a similarly themed story, but a story set in the very
same universe.

So I wrote to him and asked if I could place my story in his Middle Urth,
and sent the unfinished story so he could see what I was talking about.
Well, he wrote back saying “oh my yes” and not only that, he’d like to add
bits, and he finished the parts I hadn’t and put in whole new sectors that
were smoking hot.

So In Darkness Bound became a team effort, and is still one of my favorite
stories. Speaking of stories that can reliably get me off, that scene
where Nerial spreads her legs for the Defiler’s iron… yow.

Of course, he wrote that part.

Thrall is a wonderful person who we must unfortunately share far too much
with Real Life. Were I a billionaire, she’d be in my stable of “your job
is to write for me” employees. I can remember when she burst upon the
scene with that Faerie story of hers, and came out with a succession of
really hot mc stories with an interesting new voice behind them. Solitaire
is probably one of the very best stories on the archive, and I envy envy
envy how she could pack so much hotness into such a short space.

Anyhow, she had a mental image of a person with an open mouth covered in
spiderwebs (it’s a lot hotter when she describes it), and was interested
in a collaboration, so we came up with Arachnae. Similarly, she wanted to
write a story about a slave who, in the course of a rescue, adamantly does
not want to be rescued and turns the tables on her putative saviors -
hence Salvation.

Working with Thrall was, like working with Iago, fun and easy and
something I’d do again in a moment. In both cases we plotted out and then
divided up sections to write, but then I subsequently felt free to edit
the other person’s work as though it were my own and vice versa, secure in
the knowledge that his/her edits would only improve my work.

I keep trying to entice trilby into a collaboration, but events
have conspired against me so far.

Hell, I can’t remember. I had this student copy of photoshop, see, and a
supply of pornography that would blow your eyes clean out of their
sockets. And back in the day I created a fair number of graphics for web
pages, so the idea of whiting out a pornstress’ eyes didn’t intimidate me.

As for the quality, it’s just because I’m a perfectionist. I’ve spent
hours getting a pair of white reflections just right.

Both. I squirrel away pornography that seems to have MC potential,
generally on account of the model’s expression. Then, on those rare days
when I think to myself “the kid’s in bed, I’m feeling creative, I’m also
feeling horny, but I don’t want to write” I’ll poke through the folder and
do some ’shopping.

On the other hand, I am a comic book reader, so I have a predilection for
stories that take more than one panel. So when I have made the decision to
produce some ‘manips, I often lean towards images that make a coherent
sequence.

Why, I am working on one of those right now, as a matter of fact.

Pure trial and error. The World Wide Web came along, I’m Gen-X, I wanted a
home page that looked cool. So I took my own photographs and started in on
them with Photoshop to turn them into web graphics.

Never took a graphics class in my life; trial, error, and google are my
friends.

Heh. More of the same, I suspect. I have a number of unfinished stories
which I would like to complete. More than you know, honestly, at the time
I’m writing this I have a nice ponygirl story that’s on part two, a sci-fi
story that’s on part three, a cave monsters story that’s pushing finished,
there’s ‘Riders’ part two with ten thousand words written, I have to wrap
up the second part of ‘Synthetic’, there’s ‘To Bring Them All’ whose next
part is half done, a sequel to ‘Winter Flesh’ that’s a couple of thousand
words in, the completion of ‘Induction’…

There are probably a hundred thousand words of unfinished stories on my
hard drive. And that’s just the smut. Basically, I write slower than I
think, so I accumulate stories that never quite reach their climax outside
of my head. I think we are all fortunate there’s as much out there of my
work as there is.

One thing I would like to do is to write some short stories. Really short.
I’m thinking here of ‘Solitaire’, so hot, so perfectly compact.

But we’ll see.