Callidus

I love updates.

Its like playing the lottery. The anticipation as your never-fast-enough internet connection renders your favorite web page, isn’t far removed from furiously scratching at those small tickets with your lucky penny. The code solidifies, coalesces, and a moment later, if you’re lucky, its a winning ticket. A (dare I say it) plethora of new mc hotness to be downloaded and ogled.

Unless it happens to be this week’s update.

In which case its more like waking up to find a news crew on your lawn asking for your reaction to being your home state’s single wealthiest individual after you bought that single powerball ticket on a lark. This week’s update at the EMCSA is like that…except you still have to show up for work tomorrow. Analogy aside, this week’s update at the EMCSA is pretty much jackpot city. Behold my favs:

sara castle, this week, delivered on her solemn promise to me (actually the word she used was probably, but to a rabid fan like myself its pretty much the same thing) for a followup to her molten-hot Augmentation. This prequel installment winds the clock back to Jill and Saphron’s first assignment together and yields interesting contrast for the more developed relationship seen in the series’ first chapter. Oh…and its smokin’ hot. That too. Sara has the most devious imagination as evidenced by her creative (and by creative I mean smokin’ hot) use of Allyson’s psychic blades against “poor” Jill. Wondering what kind of oh-so-naughty mind control deviance one can get up to with a pair of psychic blades? Quench your curiosity and go find out. This one isn’t to be missed.

For the second time in as many months, I find myself in the enviable position of relaying to you the glorious event that is a new trilby else story. Taker is a whopping five-part opus full some of the most deviant stuff I’ve read in a good long while. Though its a bit like saying the sky is blue, its worth pointing out that trilby is a master of what I refer to has ‘headspace mc’. Witnessing the seduction, struggle, and inevitable enslavement of his characters from within their own thoughts reveals the depths of his tradecraft. Trilby’s ability to dramatize that internal struggle, to portray the waveforms as a character struggles against control, against themselves wanting that control is astounding. This tale is somewhat reminiscent of trilby’s earlier effort Inhuman, as is its particular flavor of deus ex machina. I, for one, welcome revisiting this material: its fertile ground indeed, and worth exploring again.

See you next week.

Welcome back everyone! I hope the week finds you all well. If you’ve got some mc site-seeing on the agenda this weekend, then let me recommend checking out some of these exotic locales:

Photo-manips:
Orpheus_sail has been posting to The Collective for a little over two weeks and already his work is showing great promise. Dramatic images, inventive writing, and strong technical polish leave orpheus a manip talent to keep your eye on.

Jord is no stranger to anyone who follows the Photo-manip scene. His (well earned) reputation precedes him in many online circles. His art is inventive, edgy, sometimes humorous, and always his own. You can tell by a thumbnail that you’re looking a Jord manip. His astounding technical polish and fearless sense of exploration are the hallmarks of one of the finest manip artists around. For those squick fans among us, his gallery at the Galaxy of Terror is not to be missed.

Both orpheus_sail and Jord have new work posted this week.

That’s it for this time. Remember, if you enjoy these artists’ work, let them know! Leave them some comments or drop them an email. See you next week.

Well as January is nearly gone and I promised myself I’d do better at keeping up with the Blog this year, I figure its time for an update. Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now is a weekly update on my favorite things in the mc community. Just whatever caught my eye during the week from an artist, author or website. This week, I’ve got several since really I’m pulling stuff from the whole month of January. Sue me, they’re my rules to break. One quick note, I do try and track down an author’s/artist’s gender before I talk about them, but not everyone is on the forums and even then not everyone discloses that info. Bottom line, if I’ve got it wrong, please let me know so I can correct myself, or at the least just pretend I’m using the editorial hers/his. Anyhoo:

Fiction:
This past week, ghosthostblue added an eleventh chapter to The Art of Following. While I don’t normally go for the MD stuff, this series has been exceptional on every level. The writing is excellent, the protagonists’ struggle with the power he wields over his several hypno-playthings is handled with uncommon honesty, and every chapter has its share of some seriously scintillating mind-control sex (three times fast). While the emphasis on the act of sex itself as opposed to the eroticism of mind control is a bit of a departure from my usual haunts, its been a welcome change of pace. Ghosthostblue strikes an excellent balance between these two qualities, all while weaving a haunting tale of one man’s struggle with his own nature.

Last week, sara castle, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors, posted the final two chapters to her excellent series: Sluthack. Like many of her stories, Sluthack is set in a near-future cyberpunk/tech fantasy world. Think old-school Shadowrun (for all my fellow gen-x’ers). Lies, deception, and hot, hot, hot mc are on the menu as well as some anthropomorph-sex and sara’s superb prose. She’s amassed quite a catalog over the last year or so, all of it worth checking out.

Manips:
Ooae10 updated over the weekend with five new manip offerings. His gallery is noteworthy for his excellent captions and healthy appetite for voluptuous women. Most of his images feature models wearing the classic “trance-face” and an added hypno-bauble, usually a pocket watch, crystal, or locket, dangling before their pretty (and sleepy) eyes. His work is some of the best and most pure in terms of its expression of the mc fetish, recalling the heady days of privatepages.com and the work of William Lee.

Paladin has been posting for two years, though sadly I only recently discovered his work. His gallery is relatively small (just under thirty images as of this writing) but filled with super-hot writing and creativity running in all directions. I love the different ways he approaches his text. Just a glance at his gallery finds speech balloons, traditional captions, and almost subliminal type; all at home in his work. His latest posting is a three part series, utilizing comic-style panels, and a picture set I happen to have saved myself; filed away for some rainy day manipping. No need to do it now though: it wouldn’t be nearly as good as what Paladin’s done with them.

So there you have it: the Weekly Picks. Go check em out, leave some comments, email the authors, etc. And leave some comments here too, let’s hear what you think. Hope you’ve enjoyed (or at least had your horizons broadened a little).

Until next time.