callidus-mc

Even at age seven, I was talking my friends into playing MC-themed games with me. I and most of the others would lie motionless on the floor, pretending to be zombified, while our controller stood over us and gloated about how much power she had over us.

Of course, I didn’t even know the word fetish back then, and I had no embarrassment about sharing my fantasies with others. It wasn’t until puberty hit that I started to realize I was a bit…different…in my likes and dislikes and started hiding.

Oh, loads of them. Superfriends seemed to have an MC-themed episode at least once a month, and that was one of my favorite shows. I was also reading a lot of superhero comic books with similar themes. Then there was Return from Witch Mountain, which I would be astonished to find that anyone besides me remembers – though it did feature Bette Davis, of all people, as the evil MC’er – and bunches and bunches of even more obscure TV shows and movies.

I swear, all those script writers must have been MC fetishists themselves and consciously trying to warp all our innocent, young minds in that direction.

Oh gosh, this is going to be seriously embarrassing. There’s this really horrible 80’s-era movie sequel (I’ll tell you the name at the end of this answer, but try to savor the moment while you can) with one single, split-second of a great scene near the end.

A supercomputer has gained self-awareness and somehow absorbs a secondary villainess into itself. You see wires and metal plating flying around her, attaching itself to her, as she struggles briefly before falling limp. Her eyes close, then snap open a moment later – and they’re solid, pearly silver. Just for a second there, the movie hits awesomeness. Then mediocrity reasserts itself and a pathetically clunky-looking robot with a bad wig lurches out of the chamber to wreak minor havoc before being destroyed. It’s really tragic.

So, do you still want to know the movie’s title? Okay, it’s Superman III. There now, aren’t you glad you asked?

I can only guess, but I suspect it was nurture, since my early childhood was spent in a pretty strict, fundamentalist household and I always had a strong desire to please. Then later, after the biggest fundamentalist influence (my father) left, I kept on trying to be the Good Little Girl as a way of making up for my brother’s excesses.

I always had a very strong sense of responsibility. I think that’s why the thought of being a will-less slave is so appealing to me: it allows me to be as perfect as my controller wants me to be and at the same time to give up my own sense of responsibility entirely.

It was shortly after I discovered I was a lesbian. Even though I’d come to a point where I could accept homosexuality from a theological standpoint, I continued to struggle for awhile with accepting my MC fetish as okay. But finally I broke down, realizing that I wasn’t going to get rid of it no matter how hard I tried, so I might as well give in and enjoy.

I was already enough of an Internet geek to know that, no matter how bizarre your interest, you can always find a whole group of people devoted to the same thing online; so I just googled “mind control,” and up popped the EMCSA. It did take me awhile to catch on to all the coding and to learn which authors were worth reading and which weren’t, but the moment I stumbled across Tabico’s In the Back of My Mind, I knew I’d found a home.

I think this goes back to the “nature vs. nurture” question. It’s the thought of surrendering all control and responsibility, letting someone else do all the heavy lifting while you (read: I) just relax and revel in being exactly what that other person wants you to be.

Oh, I’ve been writing ever since I learned how to write; I’ve always loved it. My first (pitifully tame) heterosexual mc-erotica was written in my teens. Every once in awhile the fantasies in my head would reach critical mass and I’d have to spill them out onto a page somewhere. But once I’d gotten them out, I didn’t feel any need to hold onto them; it just wasn’t safe. So I burned them in the back yard. My stepfather caught me at it once but, thankfully, didn’t ask any questions.

In college my mc-erotica was a little bolder, usually vampire-themed, and still heterosexual. Since I didn’t have any convenient place to burn things there, I kept journals of backwards writing (It’s a trick many lefties possess). Not a perfect solution, but workable.

I didn’t start writing really explicit erotica until I found the EMCSA, and even then, it took me awhile to really cut loose. Looking back on the first version of Spellbound recently, I couldn’t help cringing at how clinical the language sounded, so I fixed it. The version that’s up now is much more in keeping with the general EMCSA tone.

There are almost too many to mention. In the EMCSA world, you’ve got all the top F/f writers like Tabico, trilby else, Sara H, and a host of others I won’t try to name for fear of accidentally leaving someone out. In general fantasy and SF, there are writers like Tolkien, Lovecraft, Gaiman, Herbert, Gibson…again, too many to name. I could go on for days. I have bookcase after bookcase in every room of my home except the bathroom.

Well, obviously, being a lesbian, I’m most turned on by women dominating women. However, I do like men and believe in equal opportunity, so I try to include them in the play whenever possible.

Actually, a better question for me might have been, why have I written tales (or parts of tales) in every color code except yellow? The answer to that is, it comes too close to real life discrimination for me to get any pleasure out of it. It’s the same reason you’ll never see me write a story exclusively about a black heroine succumbing to a white controller. There’s just too much genuine history of pain and persecution in that area for me to enjoy it.

Well, like I said above, it didn’t take me long after realizing I was a lesbian to fully succumb to my fetish. And it was only when I started to explore that fetish from an F/f angle that I discovered just how…exciting…it could really be.

Then once I started writing hardcore erotica, I found myself able to appreciate my sexuality in a way I never had before. It’s like a never-ending cycle. Now I have a girlfriend to share my writings with, and you can imagine where all that leads.

Can I start with my biggest gripe? If only a person’s body or level of arousal is controlled, that’s not mind control, dammit! I go to the EMCSA to read about minds in chains, thoughts so tightly bound they can hardly breath without their controller’s command. I want to see deep, dark, iron-hard control that extends right down to the victim’s core.

Well, the two top ones, as I mention on my Reader’s Picks page, are trilby else’s Sleeper and Tabico’s Electric Thimble Theater. I find those two stories extremely satisfying on a number of different levels, including plot, heat, romance, and humor. Now let me take a quick peek at my other picks and choose three more at random….

Okay, I’m tempted to choose two more from Tabico and trilby; but that wouldn’t really be fair, would it? So how about Akiko’s New Protege by Aerosol Kid (a good entry point to his ongoing series), Shiny, Happy People by Jukebox (just what the package says – and what I love), and Wrysteria by Sara H (sadly missing from the EMCSA now but still available via the Wayback Machine)?

Creation is fun, but it’s also hard work. Having someone you like and trust to work alongside you makes for twice the fun and half the work.

That’s the short answer, anyway. The long answer is that any kind of artist appreciates the work of another artist and just naturally wants to join efforts and see what happens. It’s like making a baby together, with all the pleasure and sharing that typically involves.

Oh, now you want to get me into trouble! If I name writer A but don’t name writer B, writer B gets offended! I’ll just stay mum and say that I’m open to possibilities.

Hmm, a multi-parter. Okay. At least half of my stories are inspired by dreams, and about half the other half are revamps of fantasies I’ve been toying with since puberty. I usually spend about a month working out the basic plot line before I start writing; being the personality type I am, there’s just no way I could start a story without knowing how it’s all going to turn out in the end.

I don’t do research for most of my stories, but I did do a bit for Octopus Vulgaris because I had to know what octopuses could and couldn’t do. And I’ve done a bit of research on Irish fairy tales and locations for the story I’m just about to start writing, tentatively titled “Ethna Redux”. It normally takes me at least another month to write a story, so obviously, I do step away. The only story I’ve ever written (for the EMCSA, anyway) in a single sitting was Solitaire.

You know, I really do work on actual plots and problems in my dreams. Unfortunately, about half the time I wake up to realize that either a) I don’t remember enough of the dream to do anything with it, or b) what seemed like a really cool idea to my sleeping mind just isn’t, on waking.

Five? That’s almost an intimidatingly large selection! Well, Spellbound, Solitaire, and Willing Subject come to mind immediately as the stories I reread most often and feel most pleased with. After those, I think I’d choose Love in a Silver Socket and Mirrored in Your Eyes because they express my romantic side in a way none of my other stories do.

Funny, I’ve never thought about that as a recurring theme of mine, but I guess it is. I suppose it must be interesting to me because I like to see tables turned in any number of different scenarios.

The recurring theme I notice most often in my stories is the abandoned (usually male) lover. I think this is a case of me reliving my shift from assumed heterosexuality to realized homosexuality. I’m sort of thumbing my nose at some of the jerks I dated (Don’t worry; they weren’t all jerks. In fact, some of them were very nice. ) and saying, “See? You just didn’t have what it takes to satisfy me!” On the other hand, I am starting to feel a bit guilty about treating so many men so badly in my stories and plan to rectify that to a certain extent in “Ethna Redux”.

Again, it’s the whole “tables turned” deal. It’s just interesting to watch someone who’s absolutely not cut out for a certain role try her best to fill it. It makes for good storytelling.

Not any different than any other passage, really. I plotted it all out beforehand, then just wrote it with an eye toward keeping the drama and pathos at the forefront. I also relied (as I do from time to time) on my regular readers’ anticipation of an unhappy ending to ramp up the tension.

Sometimes, in the early stages. But I’m a meticulous planner-outer, and being that way requires me to know where I’m headed before I get too far down the road. It saves a lot of fretting and rewriting later on.

You know, actually, I don’t think I am that big on betrayal. That’s trilby’s hot button, not mine. Or are you thinking of my common “abandoned lover” scenarios? If so, see my earlier response on that theme. As for betrayal, to me, that hurts much more than it arouses. There have been a couple of cases where my Muse pretty much demanded I do it anyway (And after all, She is the boss; I’m merely Her puppet ); but I would never say I actually get off on it. It just seems…required…sometimes.

I guess that’s just my romantic side coming out. Wow, imagine that. I always hated romantic fiction when I thought I was straight, but now I finally see the attraction.

Well, I’ve been dreaming up different ways to brainwash people since about age nine, so you can see I’ve put a lot of thought into it. It’s just fascinating to me, the process by which you turn a free-willed individual into a brain-bound drone who can only think by command. Maybe I’m a scientist at heart.

Heh, see above. Actually, I have to admit that I don’t spend too much time dreaming up *new* processes these days. I’ve come up with enough already to last me for several more years.

It’s a great demonstration of just how deeply controlled someone is if she is able to revel in something that should send her screaming.

Actually, it’s a great sense of release – and relief. I’ve talked before on my blog about feeling like a superhero with a secret identity and how much I wish I could open up completely. Let me take that one step further.

Remember the scene on the train in Spiderman 2 where Peter has lost his mask (for completely ridiculous reasons, but I digress) and finds himself on the floor of a train car, surrounded by people marveling at seeing who he really is? And then they give him back his mask and even try to protect him against Doctor Octopus. That, to me, is one of the most touching, beautiful, personal scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. It’s what I secretly wish for myself. Well, aside from the being-beaten-to-a-pulp part.

All those paintings of mysterious lasers being beamed into women’s heads while they orgasm? Oh, I’d say there’s no question he’s into it! In fact, what I wonder is if there’s any fetish he’s not into.

Oh gosh, you’re going to hate this because it’s such an obvious answer. But really, it’s the only possible one: Angelina Jolie. Daaaamn.

Hah! Well, of course I have. In fact, I’ve done more than just think about them. But I’ve never seriously considered posting any of them because they’re not that much different than what people like you and Tabico put out, and they don’t have mini-stories attached. But since you’re interested, I’ll share one with you. I got the original image from trilby else several years ago and thought she looked a bit like Cherie from Raggedy Anne, so I played with that a little.

I guess it’s just because it’s so alien to me, coming from where I come from and being the kind of person I am. It represents an entirely different way of being…or perhaps of not-being. After all, smooth, shiny blackness is about as far as you can get from human skin. It’s depersonalization at its sexiest.

My main goal for the blog is to cultivate and grow my readership. My Stat Counter program shows me that more than half of my visitors are regulars (some daily), though the number of hits varies hugely and with no apparent pattern. I’d like to keep those regulars coming back and, hopefully, draw in more. It gives me great pleasure to be able to share my thoughts and feelings with so many people at once.

As for my writing, I’m almost finished with the rough draft of “Ethna Redux,” a retelling of an ancient Irish fairy tale with a significant (and, for me, unusual) mdom element. After that will come my first dip in the cyan pool with a square-jawed, ladykilling superspy in the James Bond mold learning the pleasures of submission…to another man. Then there’s an intriguing offer of collaboration that I and another well-known F/f writer received recently. We’re still in the batting-ideas-around stages on that one, but I think the finished product will be very exciting.

And thank you! I really can’t say how much it means to me, to finally have an outlet for these fantasies I’ve been hoarding all these years – and not only an outlet, but an appreciative audience. You have all made my world a much bigger, warmer place.