A. Regina Cantatis's Blog, page 7

The people have spoken

After this, the next post on this blog will be the announcement that "Ragdoll Annie" has gone to print. I'd planned to have it out Monday morning, but due to personal issues, it's going to be a little late. Midweek, maybe.

In the meantime, here are the results of the survey I talked about in my last post. I wondered whether the male subs (or, really, anyone) among my readership would like a gender-swapped version of "Ragdoll Annie" with a male as the victim, and I invited you to take a survey on the topic. Unfortunately, it didn't take long to realize there isn't much interest in male living dolls, so that story's off the board for good. I'll get back to working on the "Transfixed" CYOA next week.

Seeking feeback on "living dolls" stories

As you know, I'm in the process of updating an old story ("Raggedy Anne") about a woman being turned into a living doll. I shared a sample picture with you last week, and here it is again. I hope to have the story available for purchase in a week or two.

Now, it seems like the majority of my readers are male subs, and one of them recently asked me if I planned to rewrite "Raggedy Andy" as well as "Raggedy Anne." I told him no, because "Raggedy Andy" didn't come out well and I didn't get any feedback from it. But since then, I've begun wondering how male subs would feel about a different kind of "Raggedy Andy" story - not the sequel I posted to the EMCSA, but a brand new gender-switched version of the original "Raggedy Anne" with the same female mind controller but a man as her victim.

I've never tried gender-switching stories before, and I'm not sure if anyone else has, so I don't know whether there's any interest in this sort of thing. I do know, however, that I got some pretty enthusiastic responses to this post, and that seems hopeful. Maybe my male readers would like to put themselves in the shoes of the victims rather than reading the female viewpoint.

To find out, I've created a very brief survey (just three questions long) which readers of every sex and gender are welcome to answer. It's totally anonymous and has room for you to add any comments you like. If enough people express interest in a male living doll story, I will write it - and I'll take you comments into account as I structure it.

Please take a moment to fill out the survey, even if you aren't interested in male living dolls. Every bit of feedback will help me decide what to do.

Thanks, everyone!

Back in the Gimp Suit

Or the GIMP suit, if you prefer. Here's a bit of what I've been working on and getting ready to work on lately.

I follow a site called the Astronomy Photo of the Day just because I like astronomy, but from time to time I also find images that I can incorporate into my manips and book covers: star fields, nebulae, individual stars with clear points, etc. Since the images come from NASA, they're generally public domain. The image at left is of the star Proxima Centauri, and as soon as I saw it, I noticed how much the circle of gold and blue looked like the iris of an eye. Naturally, that got me thinking, and the final results are at right. I've always loved this image of Kumi Monster because it's just about the most submissive, potentially mind-controlled image I've ever seen even before you add in the latex, bald head and bare breasts. This was my process, just in case you're interested in playing with the same effects. I made one copy of the central circle, including the iris; and a second copy of the whole star minus the background. Then I inverted the copy, made it white, blurred it, and put that layer underneath the iris layer. Et voila.

Next up is an image I'm getting ready to work on. Early next week, possibly even as soon as tomorrow, I'll be starting on a publishable version of my "woman turned into a living doll" story, originally titled "Raggedy Anne." Since I don't want to get sued, I'll be renaming it "Ragdoll Annie." That should be close enough to clue readers in to which doll I actually used for my template. I love this model's blank expression and curly hair, but I haven't decided yet whether or not to make that hair red the way it is in the individual story. If I do, I should probably recolor her lingerie so it'll stand out more - maybe a bluish-purple color. Then I'll probably use a red spiral in the background...and don't worry; I will absolutely make her bra skimpier. That'll probably be the easiest part of the process, although you know what they say about famous last words.

In the meantime, don't worry about the Transfixed "Choose Your Own Adventure." That's still in process. It's just that CYOA's take a hell of a long time, and I need to get something else on the market before readers forget I exist.

Thank you

Sometimes I realize how lucky I am.

I just watched a video made by someone I never expected to mention on this blog and will probably never mention again: Pewdiepie. Now, I'm not a video gamer and I don't follow him on YouTube, but I know who he is. I've also seen a few videos of him talking to his fans. It was one of those that inspired me to write this post. In this video, Pewdiepie is reacting to trash talk in YouTube comments made by his own fans. He says whatever kind of gaming video he makes, people always want something else. He feels like he respects them but doesn't get respect in return.

Now, I don't have particularly strong feelings about this guy, but I feel more strongly about some other people with the same problem. Many of my Facebook friends are fellow erotica authors, and I read their gripes on my wall. Some of them have rude fans too, although in their cases, they're mostly being hit on and sent unsolicited dick pics.

I sympathize with them (and with Pewdiepie too, although I don't know whether he deserves it), and I feel very lucky. I've been putting out MC erotica since 2002, and in all these years, I've been hit on or slagged off less than a dozen times. Most of you just lurk, but the people who comment or email me are...well...nice. You make me happy. I feel like I'm sharing something I enjoy with other people who enjoy the same thing, and that's why I started doing this in the first place. So thanks for being good people.

That's all I wanted to say. Enjoy the rest of your week. :-)

If you're into living statues...

I have an embarrassing confession to make, but I know you'll be accepting. After all, you're the kind of person who reads this kind of blog.

You know those "living statues" you see in big city squares? I'm talking about the people who paint themselves in silver or gold and either dress in elaborate costumes or simple bodysuits. They pose stock still until you toss them some money, and then they do some little routine and return to stillness. Like clockwork. Like robots.

Seeing those performers always make me squirm inside because what they do in public skates so close to my private fetish. They're pretending to be dolls or robots, and in my mind, I'm imagining that they're people who've been turned into dolls or robots. When they stand still with their eyes either closed or unblinking, it's so easy to imagine they're in trance. Someone has hypnotized them into motionless mindlessness, and although money can break the spell for a little while, they always return to the truth: they're thralls.

I get these thoughts even when I see bad living statues: ordinary faces and out-of-shape bodies stuffed into cheap unitards, wannabe robots who don't look any sleeker than me - and believe me, I am not sleek. But experiencing these fantasies while in public, with even the living statues themselves probably watching me even though they pretend they're not, I feel simultaneously horny and embarrassed. It's like having that dream where I find myself naked in public.

Well, just a little ago, I stumbled across an article written by a guy who performed as a living statue. He writes about his experiences as a Times Square regular and as hired entertainment at an increasingly bizarre party. It's a wonderful read. I'd love it even if I didn't have this crazy fetish, but having it makes the article that much better. It's so easy to imagine myself in his place...only without the dirty old man. So if you're into living statues, follow this link and read and enjoy the Lurid Confessions of a Times Square Silver Man.

And while we're on the subject, I also highly recommend "Feminine Endings," a short story in Neil Gaiman's latest anthology, Trigger Warning. I don't dare say too much about this one except that it's another first-person narrative by a living statue, and it will leave you feeling like you've taken an ice pick to the brain.

Use your imagination - or better yet, use mine

It all started with a YouTube search. I'd seen a ton of makeup tutorials by people who can turn themselves into anything from monsters to aliens to fairies to anything else you can imagine; and some of their ideas almost, but not quite, met my fetish to a tee. Almost, but not quite. So one day not long ago, I set out to find a makeup tutorial that did fit my fetish. By then I knew makeup artists could create mouthless and eyeless effects, and I'd seen other artists warp their heads and faces into all kinds of interesting shapes. Based on those videos, I figured a really good makeup artist could use these techniques to erase their face completely, becoming just the kind of mannequin you see at left above. (Incidentally, that's the look that inspired the Peacekeeper hoods in Sleepwalkers; and I'll use it again in the sequel to A Tenpack of Trixies, if I ever get around to writing that).

I've always been obsessed by the loss of identity, and being turned into a mass-produced, featureless doll is about as free of identity as you can get. So take a moment now to savor this idea. Look at the images above and imagine there are real human beings beneath those shiny surfaces, but they're so deeply controlled that they don't even know they're human anymore. They really have become mannequins, and they can neither see nor speak nor hear, nor even think. All they know is obedience. Their Mistress controls them through a brain implant and a remote control device, so that they receive no input but hers. And of course it goes without saying that most of her input involves commands about how to pose. She's turned these people into living statues, decorations at an exclusive ball or a private event for the best mind controllers on the planet, and she is the guest of honor.

But now let's back up (Don't worry; when we go forward again, we're going all the way). The reason I was searching YouTube is that I fantasize about playing out this scenario in real life. All I'd need is an artistic hypno-domme, a hell of a lot of conditioning, and the right supplies. Unfortunately, I don't have any of those things; but maybe someone out there does. I like to imagine someone does, anyway, and that they'll take these suggestions and (if they're enough of an exhibitionist) send me the pictures. I promise to post them here!

Well, the YouTube search didn't entirely work out, but I found something close enough to let me imagine the rest. There's a really excellent Slenderman makeup tutorial out there which isn't embeddable, but I recommend you watch it to help you picture the ideas I'm about to share.

Let's start with what this guy really did. He covered the top of his head and his mouth just perfectly; and he covered his eyes with muslin so that he looks like he doesn't t have eyes at all - but he can still see through the muslin. Now, this is where the problems begin for me. We can see the shadows of his eyes because he wanted it that way and used black makeup beneath the muslin. It also bothers me that he built up his features instead of smoothing them out, and he added shadows where I'd have flattened everything.

But in my mind, I can change that. Suppose your Mistress starts out the way this guy did, but then she begins to makes changes. She puts white circles around your eyes instead of black ones, and if that isn't enough to produce the eyeless effect She wants, She'll give you white contact lenses. Now imagine that instead of creating eyebrow ridges and painting your face in shadows, She instead fills out your features until your face is a smooth, inhuman arc. She'll probably have to leave only your nostrils uncovered, but maybe muslin will work there too. Wouldn't that be incredible if even your nose was invisible?

But we're just getting started. Next, Mistress fits your ears with earwigs that pump out a steady mix of hypnotic suggestions, mantras, and binaural beats that will keep you deeply in trance for hours. She then covers your ears with muslin and latex paint, so the sides of your head are as mannequin-smooth as your face. You really can't receive any input except hers. Then She covers your whole head with clear liquid latex, making you mannequin-smooth and inhuman. Your makeup is already white, so the clear coating over the muslin won't impede your vision much. You'll be able to trail in Her wake without stumbling, and that's another testament to Her control. Now, do you prefer robotic movements or eerily smooth movements? Whatever you want, She'll program you for it. You'll be perfect.

Next comes the smoothest, slickest bodysuit money can buy - something like the ones in these images, only they'll be white to match your head. And since we can imagine anything we like, let's go with a bodysuit that's been individually tailored to your every curve. There's not a wrinkle to be seen from the top of your head to the bottoms of your feet. Of course, you'll have footwear and gloves so there's not a scrap of flesh visible anywhere on your body. And if you like, you can imagine that those gloves and footwear are fashioned so that each hand and foot has only hints of the digits inside. After all, you are a featureless mannequin. Featureless mannequins don't have fingers or toes. Being fingerless also puts you more at the mercy of your domme, and that's exactly what you want. It's what She's made you want.

Now maybe, if you like, you can imagine Mistress attaching a futuristic radio receiver (perhaps with LED lights) to your head. Do you want it on your forehead, the top of your head, or the nape of your neck? Whatever you want, it's yours - or more properly, Hers. The receiver has wires trailing from it: some seeming to plug into your temples and other sensitive spots on your head, some twisting down your spine like a tree trunk and stretching out branches to tweak your erogenous zones. Maybe those branches pulse.

And now for the finishing touch: a collar around your neck to hide the seal between your mask and your bodysuit, and a chain for Mistress to lead you around like the pet you are. The ceaseless hypnotic commands keep you totally enthralled, and She can use Her remote control to interrupt them any time she likes, giving you new orders. She might like you to kneel at her feet, or to adopt a certain pose; and you're so deeply controlled that you can maintain that pose for hours. You can become perfectly rigid, perfectly still, and almost perfectly mindless.

Well, you can become perfectly mindless if you like, but then what will you have to enjoy or remember later? I want to see the stares of my Mistress' peers even as they think I see nothing. I want to to watch their lips move as they express admiration and jealousy, and to know that whatever they're saying isn't nearly as important as the mantras in my head. I want them to caress my arms and legs and marvel at their slick rigidity. I might even want them to kiss my absent mouth, but they can't touch my breasts or pussy. Those belong only to Mistress.

And so I'll stand there, rigid but reveling, because everyone who sees me knows my Mistress is the most powerful domme on the planet. I am a living testament to Her power, and I am nothing else at all.

Gorgeous exhibitionist hypno-sub

A week or two ago I discovered a beautiful young YouTube exhibitionist who goes by the name of Agnes Zee. Her newer videos aren't embeddable, but the older ones are. The quality of those isn't as good, but this lava-hot clip it's more than enough to show you why I'm obsessed with her. I don't think I even need to say another word. Just watch for yourself! Anyone who can sit still watching this thing is reading the wrong damn blog.

New cover, free book

I'm doing a little experiment, and you can help - and get a free copy of Union, Reunion in the process. It's one of my older stories, and I made the cover before learning how to make a really good cover, which I believe is the reason the story never sold particularly well. So earlier this week, I decided to make a new, sexier cover to see if I could generate some fresh sales on an old book. Like I said, this is an experiment.

Okay, here's why I'm offering you a free copy. Currently there's just one review of Union, Reunion on Amazon, and it's by some twat (I don't use the term lightly - this person really is a twat) who gave it one star because they were looking for a different kind of story and didn't pay attention to what they were buying.

Now, with only one review - a one-star review - this book isn't going to sell no matter what I put on the cover. In order to have a fair experiment, I need some additional reviews from EMC fetishists who won't just trash the book because the evil mind controller wins. I'm not asking for any particular number of stars or for false praise, just some genuine responses from EMC and tentacle fetishists (Yes, this story does contain tentacles. It's not for anyone who gets squicked out easily).

That being said, if you'd like a free copy with the new cover, be one of the first three commenters below and agree to write a review on Amazon, then email me at thequeensthrall@yahoo.com and tell me whether you'd like a .mobi or an .epub. I'll send it to you right away, and you can enjoy your tentacled MILFs.

Thank you kindly. :-)

Lovely lady robot

Last week, in the midst of obsessively gobbling down every bit of data even tangentially related to The Force Awakens (Don't worry; I won't blather about here - but feel free to get me going in the comments section), I decided to rent Ex Machina. It's a movie I'd been wanting to see for several months, but the impetus for renting it now was that two of its stars, Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson, have large roles in The Force Awakens. Both are playing characters here that are polar opposites of the ones they played in TFA, and I wanted to see if they could pull off the switch. They absolutely did; and Alicia Vikander, whom I'd never seen before, was every bit as good in her role.

Now, let me say right up front that this is a five-star movie. I'd recommend it to anyone, regardless of whether they like gynoids or not. But the fact that the gynoid is arguably the lead character in the movie makes it even more tempting for robot fetishists.

Vikander plays Ava as being very obviously a robot, but she's not the jerky, stilted-voice kind we're all familiar with. Her movements are graceful if not entirely human, and her face is lovely and expressive. But there's all that mesh in her torso and limbs, showing suggestive tubes and LED's that make up her internal "organs." Depending on how the light hits her, the mesh can disappear so that you see her robot sections displayed in full; or a ghostly female outline can half-hide her robot parts so that you almost believe she's a real woman. It's a fascinating effect.

This trailer gives you a good synopsis, and below it I'll give you a few more tasty pictures to appreciate. As you can see, this film features another robot trope so many of us enjoy: that of a seeming human who peels back part of their skin (preferably on their face) to reveal their true nature. It's a bit of a spoiler in Kyoko's case, but the trailer spoils it too and you wouldn't have much doubt about her anyway.








Now, I'm not sure whether you want my detailed review of the movie or whether you're just here for the gynoid pictures, but I'll make it easy on everyone by pasting in a review I already wrote. This was for a different audience, so it's a little more "professional" that the above. You can read it or not as you please. There aren't any spoilers.

Ex Machina is a low-budget indie movie with one remarkable visual effect: turning Alicia Vikander into a robot who looks utterly convincing (She acts utterly convincing as a robot, too - a heartbreakingly human one named Ava.).

The rest of the movie looks incredible too, thanks to the cinematography and set design, but that's all secondary to the story. It's too high-concept to summarize quickly, but I'll try: A nice young programmer named Caleb (played by Domhnall Gleeson) gets the chance to spend a week at his CEO's secret hideaway. That CEO, Nathan (played by Oscar Isaac) is a staggeringly rich asshole who runs the world's biggest search engine, and he's brought Caleb in to be "the human component in a Turing test." In other words, Caleb is supposed to decide whether the robot Nathan has built possesses true artificial intelligence or only mimics it. Things get more complicated, though, when Ava warns Caleb that Nathan can't be trusted and asks him to help her escape. Nathan really doesn't seem trustworthy, but can we trust Ava? Should Caleb help her, or is she just a machine after all? Maybe Nathan programmed her to be paranoid, either to mess with Caleb's head or for some other inscrutable reason. He's such a sociopathic weirdo that there's no telling what he's really up to. This is one of those stories where you don't know whom to trust or who's capable/incapable of what until the end. Because the three leads are all so wonderful, you're willing to believe each of them at various points, or at least believe that they believe what they're saying.

Ex Machina asks a lot of deep questions about the nature of consciousness, gender, creativity and responsibility. Writer/director Alex Garland attempts to answer all those questions, but that doesn't mean you'll agree with his answers. I didn't. In the DVD extras he explains which character he was rooting for as he wrote the script, but it's not the same character I chose at the the end; and you might not choose that character either. But that's just the kind of provocative movie this is. It'll leave you with your brain buzzing.

a quick laugh

I have a lot of great posts planned for the next few weeks, but I know a lot of folks are on holiday break, so this weekend I'm just giving you a quick laugh. Remember the video I posted not too long ago, the clip from Invasion of the Bee Girls? It's an 8.5-minute scene where a woman gets turned into a black-eyed, mind-controlled lesbian bee woman. I'll post it again below, because I'm sure you won't mind seeing it again. But the quick laugh comes from the comments section over on YouTube. The first couple of people who commented didn't know what the hell they were looking at, so it's funny to imagine their reactions when they watched this thing. The third commenter had at least some clue about its hotness, but they might or might not have gotten the fetish aspect. Either way, they left a cute comment.

So have a look, have a laugh, and have a happy new year. There are some very special things in store for you beginning next week.