I’ve seen and read a few things and had some conversations about fetish that sparked a line of thought.
There’s a sense of ‘fetish’ that refers to ‘the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object’. Interacting with the object, using it in some ritualistic way, enables you to communicate with a world beyond the immediate and everyday - the spirit world, a deeper level of consciousness, however you might like to model it. In that sense, do our fetishes enable us to communicate with or enter into a world that is not part of ordinary reality?
Notwithstanding the somewhat simplistic description of shamanism you'll find on Wikipedia, shamanism is similarly about communication with a world outside our normal experience - a world that is often entered through the use of powerful symbolic operators such as fetishes, objects attributed with the power I've destcribed above. OK, there's often ritual, physical exertion such as dance, and drugs too - but these are all means to a similar end. Are we all, in some small way, shamans now?
Women and transvestites probably know more about this than men. Eyeliner, lipstick, blusher and well-cut fabric have an almost ceremonial purpose. Put on your makeup, change into a favourite dress and heels, and by changing your appearance you become almost literally a different person.
Pagans know about this. Go to a pagan camp and people you normally see in jeans and T-shirts are striding around in capes, carrying a staff and with an atheme on their belt. At one level it looks rather like medieval re-enactment, but whatever people are, or aren’t, wearing (there may be a certain amount of skyclad-ness) it’s meaningful to them as a symbol of identity and something that helps them connect with whatever energies or aspects of personality of belief they want to connect with.
Probably police officers, nurses and priests know about it as well – put the uniform on and you become the kind of person the uniform symbolises, not least because it influences how others interact with you.
Fetishists know about this. Don your leathers, your PVC and latex, and you can almost feel your personality changing as the second skin covers you. They are symbols, conduits connecting you to a sexual identity outside your everyday persona. Do you become more essential? More vital? Feel a link to something that empowers you? In its own way, fetishism can be a shamanic experience.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Friday, 18 March 2011
The triumph of imagination...
Second life has been turning up on my radar periodically for a while now, for a few reasons. So I’ve been investigating.
SL , for anyone who hasn’t encountered it, is a virtual world in which you (i.e. your avatar) can wander round, interact with others and do a lot of the things you might do in the first (‘real’) life – work in a shop or buy things there, go to events, be a DJ, chat people up and have sex with them. You can of course own things that wouldn’t be easy to own in your first life – a genie in a bottle, a sword of aetherial flame, and so forth. You can do things you wouldn’t normally do in your first life, whether that’s sprout wings and fly (or have your own jet airliner, or use a flying vacuum cleaner), design shoes or be involved in sex parties (or organized crime for that matter). You can change your skin tone, body shape, hair length and tattoos several times a day if you want. You can even become ‘pregnant’ and have a baby, presumably without worrying about its long-term care or stretch marks.
You can even be someone (or even several people) you wouldn’t normally be – middle aged men can be young women, young women can be 150 year-old vampires, vampires can be warlocks, etc.
SL has a whole bunch of real-world uses. Some universities, for example, use it to teach science students by distance learning in virtual labs. Some companies reputedly use it to hold virtual conferences. Disabled people use it to lead the kind of life or lives they’d never have in the real world, and presumably abled people use it the same way.
But sex is in the virtual air. The featured fashion items of the day are mostly rather skimpy outfits that would go down well in nightclubs or at fetish events: a ‘sinner’s leather dress’, samurai outfit, and things that look like delinquent schoolgirl wear.
But of course. Why on earth would you want to wear stuff in your second life that you could equally well wear in your first? (I'm assuming it isn't cold and doesn't rain in SL. If you can in fact wear clothes like these in real life outside of a nightclub or fetish event and get away with it, congratulations! And no, I can't remember who the vendors are or the proper names for these outfits, sorry).
SL has its own economy, based on Linden dollars. You want to add effects to your avatar or build a home (or buy a flying vacuum cleaner or genie in a bottle) - or buy the outfits shown above - then you need to work for it. There are many jobs available but those that caught my eye included: Dancers (M/F) & Escorts, Female Dancers Wanted for Women Only Club, club hosts/escorts (All Genders/Orientations/Adult Avs, Human, Furry, Tiny, Neko, Etc., All Welcome!), and furry, human or hybrid Host/ess, Dancers, Entertainers, House Slaves, and DJs for BDSM Club.
BDSM is big in SL. My guess is that SL enables people to have the kind of sex they can’t have in real life, for a range of reasons: family responsibilities, fear of being ‘outed’, being the wrong sex or whatever.
Nothing wrong with that – SL is about, I think, exploring your imagination. There’s no point in being sniffy about people doing stuff in SL they don’t do in real life because, erm, that’s the point of it. And in SL, as you'll see in a moment, it's possible to do stuff that's not just illegal, but physically impossible in real life.
The graphics may be pretty primitive when it comes to BDSM play and sex, but in the days when people were using alt.sex.whatever sites to post and chat, there were no interactive graphics and imagination filled the gap. Imagination is still as powerful a tool as it used to be.
At this point I’ll make an admission: I’m not a member of SL and am unlikely to be anytime soon, because my first lives are numerous enough and time-consuming enough already, thank you. Even the BDSM side of it isn’t hugely attractive because, erm, that’s something I can do at home. If I were involved in SL I’d probably use it to do stuff that wouldn’t be feasible in my normal lives, like build and live in an airship, or explore new planets… Obviously, Your Mileage May Vary, just like your imagination may vary, and that’s the whole point.
Meanwhile, it continues to amuse me that the following kinds of products appear to be popular. They're not in any particular order!
Asylum Gurney. L$400. A gurney with straps which hold the victim / patient helpless. The device is a vehicle, and may be wheeled about by the operator.
Sex Table Sightseeing. L$99. You wanted to stare into her pussy forever? Here she lays on the talbe - just in front of you. You smoke your cigar while you keep her waiting.
Sculptie Bang Penis Weirdiculous. L$50. A specially sculpted penis for for your avatar.
Pissing Guy with Noobie Friends. L$99. Complete your urban or grunge scenery with a guy pissing in the corner!
TortureChamber. L$500. Eleven pieces of dungeon furniture for your torture chamber.
Certificate of Vasectomy. L$30. Men! Are you worried about being surprised by pregnancy of your partner or girlfriend! Now you can sidestep that situation...
Lap Dance - Tease Edition. L$190.
PERDITION: The Dungeon Prison. L$3999. A massive set of interlinked stone chambers with prison cells, cages, concrete slabs, stone walls etc. Themed accessories available separately include: shower stalls, punishment blocks, whipping frames, inspection tables, cell bunks, interrogation racks, branding furnace (gives free brands), flogging poles (two versions; breast whipping and ass whipping), slave rags clothing, etc.
Tentacle Lover's Lair. L$3500.
Escort Training Starter Kit. L$3000. From Newbie to Sex Godess...
Giant Flower Sex Machine. L$2500.
HELLHOUND Animated Bestiality Prim Dog. L$2160. Animated hellhound that features a highly realistic canine genital, 9 different sex positions...
Sperm Bank Deposit. L$1500.
Sperm Bank Withdrawal. L$1500.
Gorean Auction Block, with poses. L$1500.
Blow up Doll Psychiatrist. Fully interactive, in three differn't styles, Blond, brunette AND Redhead
Big nipple cocks. L$89.
Baby Helspawn 5 Pack. You can either be the predator or the victim, if you play the predator [ a ‘demonic hermaphrodite’] you can have your fun, raping your victims and making the bitches carry your unborn helspawn… Victims will, allegedly, grow to enjoy living in the ‘corrupted world of demons’ and becoming a ‘surrogate whore of the abyss’. They experience ‘19 random emotes timed to humiliate you every 15, 30 or 60 minutes,’ though fortunately it appears gestation is over 16 hours rather than 9 months…
You can see what I mean about the triumph of imagination, I guess...
In erotic story terms I should probably up my game now this kind of stuff is around.
By the way, the extent of sex on SL resulted a while back in the 'adult' part being located behind an age-restricted barrier, so several of the items described above, which I came across before that happened, won't now be publicly visible unless you're a member.
Final thought. If you're in Second Life and you want to escape from it for a while, is there a Third Life somewhere in Second Life??
SL , for anyone who hasn’t encountered it, is a virtual world in which you (i.e. your avatar) can wander round, interact with others and do a lot of the things you might do in the first (‘real’) life – work in a shop or buy things there, go to events, be a DJ, chat people up and have sex with them. You can of course own things that wouldn’t be easy to own in your first life – a genie in a bottle, a sword of aetherial flame, and so forth. You can do things you wouldn’t normally do in your first life, whether that’s sprout wings and fly (or have your own jet airliner, or use a flying vacuum cleaner), design shoes or be involved in sex parties (or organized crime for that matter). You can change your skin tone, body shape, hair length and tattoos several times a day if you want. You can even become ‘pregnant’ and have a baby, presumably without worrying about its long-term care or stretch marks.
You can even be someone (or even several people) you wouldn’t normally be – middle aged men can be young women, young women can be 150 year-old vampires, vampires can be warlocks, etc.
SL has a whole bunch of real-world uses. Some universities, for example, use it to teach science students by distance learning in virtual labs. Some companies reputedly use it to hold virtual conferences. Disabled people use it to lead the kind of life or lives they’d never have in the real world, and presumably abled people use it the same way.
But sex is in the virtual air. The featured fashion items of the day are mostly rather skimpy outfits that would go down well in nightclubs or at fetish events: a ‘sinner’s leather dress’, samurai outfit, and things that look like delinquent schoolgirl wear.
But of course. Why on earth would you want to wear stuff in your second life that you could equally well wear in your first? (I'm assuming it isn't cold and doesn't rain in SL. If you can in fact wear clothes like these in real life outside of a nightclub or fetish event and get away with it, congratulations! And no, I can't remember who the vendors are or the proper names for these outfits, sorry).
SL has its own economy, based on Linden dollars. You want to add effects to your avatar or build a home (or buy a flying vacuum cleaner or genie in a bottle) - or buy the outfits shown above - then you need to work for it. There are many jobs available but those that caught my eye included: Dancers (M/F) & Escorts, Female Dancers Wanted for Women Only Club, club hosts/escorts (All Genders/Orientations/Adult Avs, Human, Furry, Tiny, Neko, Etc., All Welcome!), and furry, human or hybrid Host/ess, Dancers, Entertainers, House Slaves, and DJs for BDSM Club.
BDSM is big in SL. My guess is that SL enables people to have the kind of sex they can’t have in real life, for a range of reasons: family responsibilities, fear of being ‘outed’, being the wrong sex or whatever.
Nothing wrong with that – SL is about, I think, exploring your imagination. There’s no point in being sniffy about people doing stuff in SL they don’t do in real life because, erm, that’s the point of it. And in SL, as you'll see in a moment, it's possible to do stuff that's not just illegal, but physically impossible in real life.
The graphics may be pretty primitive when it comes to BDSM play and sex, but in the days when people were using alt.sex.whatever sites to post and chat, there were no interactive graphics and imagination filled the gap. Imagination is still as powerful a tool as it used to be.
At this point I’ll make an admission: I’m not a member of SL and am unlikely to be anytime soon, because my first lives are numerous enough and time-consuming enough already, thank you. Even the BDSM side of it isn’t hugely attractive because, erm, that’s something I can do at home. If I were involved in SL I’d probably use it to do stuff that wouldn’t be feasible in my normal lives, like build and live in an airship, or explore new planets… Obviously, Your Mileage May Vary, just like your imagination may vary, and that’s the whole point.
Meanwhile, it continues to amuse me that the following kinds of products appear to be popular. They're not in any particular order!
Asylum Gurney. L$400. A gurney with straps which hold the victim / patient helpless. The device is a vehicle, and may be wheeled about by the operator.
Sex Table Sightseeing. L$99. You wanted to stare into her pussy forever? Here she lays on the talbe - just in front of you. You smoke your cigar while you keep her waiting.
Sculptie Bang Penis Weirdiculous. L$50. A specially sculpted penis for for your avatar.
Pissing Guy with Noobie Friends. L$99. Complete your urban or grunge scenery with a guy pissing in the corner!
TortureChamber. L$500. Eleven pieces of dungeon furniture for your torture chamber.
Certificate of Vasectomy. L$30. Men! Are you worried about being surprised by pregnancy of your partner or girlfriend! Now you can sidestep that situation...
Lap Dance - Tease Edition. L$190.
PERDITION: The Dungeon Prison. L$3999. A massive set of interlinked stone chambers with prison cells, cages, concrete slabs, stone walls etc. Themed accessories available separately include: shower stalls, punishment blocks, whipping frames, inspection tables, cell bunks, interrogation racks, branding furnace (gives free brands), flogging poles (two versions; breast whipping and ass whipping), slave rags clothing, etc.
Tentacle Lover's Lair. L$3500.
Escort Training Starter Kit. L$3000. From Newbie to Sex Godess...
Giant Flower Sex Machine. L$2500.
HELLHOUND Animated Bestiality Prim Dog. L$2160. Animated hellhound that features a highly realistic canine genital, 9 different sex positions...
Sperm Bank Deposit. L$1500.
Sperm Bank Withdrawal. L$1500.
Gorean Auction Block, with poses. L$1500.
Blow up Doll Psychiatrist. Fully interactive, in three differn't styles, Blond, brunette AND Redhead
Big nipple cocks. L$89.
Baby Helspawn 5 Pack. You can either be the predator or the victim, if you play the predator [ a ‘demonic hermaphrodite’] you can have your fun, raping your victims and making the bitches carry your unborn helspawn… Victims will, allegedly, grow to enjoy living in the ‘corrupted world of demons’ and becoming a ‘surrogate whore of the abyss’. They experience ‘19 random emotes timed to humiliate you every 15, 30 or 60 minutes,’ though fortunately it appears gestation is over 16 hours rather than 9 months…
You can see what I mean about the triumph of imagination, I guess...
In erotic story terms I should probably up my game now this kind of stuff is around.
By the way, the extent of sex on SL resulted a while back in the 'adult' part being located behind an age-restricted barrier, so several of the items described above, which I came across before that happened, won't now be publicly visible unless you're a member.
Final thought. If you're in Second Life and you want to escape from it for a while, is there a Third Life somewhere in Second Life??
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Xcite's new website
If you’ve already bought stuff from Xcite Books you’ve probably heard about this anyway – but from 1st March, Xcite is migrating its web activity from all its domains - UK, US, Australia etc. - to a new website, www.erotica-romance-ebooks.com.
Presumably the old links will be redirected to the new URL but I hope to have all the links on here updated by Tuesday when the new site goes live.
The new Xcite site is significant because it will be a one-stop shop for romantic and erotic ebooks and audio formats not just from Xcite, but also from other publishers and authors around the world. Their press release says: ‘It offers a unique, genre specific, shopping experience for romance and erotica readers because they can discover new authors and publishing companies alongside their established favourites.’
In other words it will be a sales point not just for Xcite’s own publications (including of course many of my own stories and some of Velvet Tripp's) but for other erotic/romance publishers as well. In addition individual authors will be able to upload their works to it and set their own sales price provided they have a valid ISBN.
That website again: http://www.erotica-romance-ebooks.com.
Presumably the old links will be redirected to the new URL but I hope to have all the links on here updated by Tuesday when the new site goes live.
The new Xcite site is significant because it will be a one-stop shop for romantic and erotic ebooks and audio formats not just from Xcite, but also from other publishers and authors around the world. Their press release says: ‘It offers a unique, genre specific, shopping experience for romance and erotica readers because they can discover new authors and publishing companies alongside their established favourites.’
In other words it will be a sales point not just for Xcite’s own publications (including of course many of my own stories and some of Velvet Tripp's) but for other erotic/romance publishers as well. In addition individual authors will be able to upload their works to it and set their own sales price provided they have a valid ISBN.
That website again: http://www.erotica-romance-ebooks.com.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Recent activity
By way of an explanation for the lack of activity recently, I'd just point out that all is not well at the Fulani/Velvet residence - we've both been quite ill with chest/bronchial infections for what feels like months, though are now on the mend courtesy of, interestingly enough, not contemporary medical practice but Velvet's knowledge of natural remedies. The fact that hefty doses of garlic are working should not be taken to indicate vampire-related illnesses (though it would probably discourage casual visitors as well as vampires!). The likelihood is that we've had a viral infection. This would of course also explain why antibiotics didn't do a lot...
Various things have been going on nonetheless. Most of them involve the reorganisation of electrons on magnetic disks, a process that I laughingly describe as 'writing'. Ironically, a couple of ideas that started off as pieces of flash fiction for here have taken on lives of their own and become quite lengthy stories. You'll forgive me if I try to get actual money for them before posting them here are freebies. The second novel is proceeding albeit at a slower pace than I'd hoped, because I've been doing the stories. And some other things are in progress that I'll blog about when there's enough news to make then blogworthy.
Plus, of course, in the not too distant future there's the story collection that will be published by Renaissance/Sizzler. I'm looking forward to seeing the cover, because I'm hoping it will incorporate the photography of a mate of mine. I'll say more when I see it.
Various things have been going on nonetheless. Most of them involve the reorganisation of electrons on magnetic disks, a process that I laughingly describe as 'writing'. Ironically, a couple of ideas that started off as pieces of flash fiction for here have taken on lives of their own and become quite lengthy stories. You'll forgive me if I try to get actual money for them before posting them here are freebies. The second novel is proceeding albeit at a slower pace than I'd hoped, because I've been doing the stories. And some other things are in progress that I'll blog about when there's enough news to make then blogworthy.
Plus, of course, in the not too distant future there's the story collection that will be published by Renaissance/Sizzler. I'm looking forward to seeing the cover, because I'm hoping it will incorporate the photography of a mate of mine. I'll say more when I see it.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Announcement imminent!
Some of you may have come across this short story on my 'other' blog, which has been reposted here and here.
The fun thing, really, is this. I wrote the stories, then wrote the intro in which I put myself as a character, and then wrote essentially the same story as a kind of semi-promotional piece from a different point of view in which the first person narrative was by the book's main character, with me and the publisher's editor as the other characters in it. Maybe. It could be that the protagonist is real and I'm the fictional one... You'll have to decide. How very poststructuralist and pretentiously literary of 'me'. Or of someone, anyway.
I was going to wait until the thing's actually out before doing a big announcement. In fact I still will - so this is only a pre-announcement and I'll have more to say in a couple of days' time.
Emails have been flying back and forth today sorting out the cover...
The fun thing, really, is this. I wrote the stories, then wrote the intro in which I put myself as a character, and then wrote essentially the same story as a kind of semi-promotional piece from a different point of view in which the first person narrative was by the book's main character, with me and the publisher's editor as the other characters in it. Maybe. It could be that the protagonist is real and I'm the fictional one... You'll have to decide. How very poststructuralist and pretentiously literary of 'me'. Or of someone, anyway.
I was going to wait until the thing's actually out before doing a big announcement. In fact I still will - so this is only a pre-announcement and I'll have more to say in a couple of days' time.
Emails have been flying back and forth today sorting out the cover...
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Messing about
This is me just wondering what the possibilities are for encoding flash fiction in a QR code. Realistically I think you're looking at only about the same number of characters you could use in a tweet...
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Congratulations, Velvet
The more observant among you will have noticed that I live with Velvet, who is an author of erotica in her own right. Her latest story ‘Tropical Paradise’ is the first piece in the just-published Xcite collection Tropical Paradise: A collection of five erotic stories.
The collection was originally themed as a 'sex at work' collection, and still is, because Velvet's story concerns Ellie, who works in the tropical house of the zoo and her lover Sam who looks after the big cats. They meet after work for a night of lust among the exotic flora and fauna.
The contents are: Tropical Paradise by Velvet Tripp / Just Like Your Father by Sommer Marsden / The Salon Sensual by J Troy Seate/ Typing Pool by Honey Leigh / The Deepest Dig by Sylvia Lowry.
Priced at £2.99 for the e-book, part of Xcite’s normal ’3 for 2′ offer, and apparently with a print edition coming soon.
We were both amused, incidentally, by the communications from Xcite. As the collection was designed on a 'sex at work' theme, Velvet ended up with a bunch of emails from the publisher with subject lines like 'Contract for Sex at Work' and 'Payment for Sex at Work'. Which might in itself lead her - or me, or maybe both of us! - to write something in the future about what such a contract might look like.
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