The Apsinthion Protocol: Chapter One, Page Three

An academic lecture, at which some are not pleased, and others seem to have their minds on something other than the subject matter.

(Click on the image for larger size.
Apsinthion Protocol Chapter One, Page Three written and commissioned by Dr. Faustus of EroticMadScience.com and drawn by Lon Ryden is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.)

The Nick Bostrom whom Professor Corwin mentions is a real world figure, by the way, and he actually does argue for at least the possibility that we might be living in a simulation.

Mad Science pulp art — Virgil Finlay

The cover of Weird Tales, February 1938, done by prolific pulp artist Virgil Finlay (1914 – 1971), and depicted at left. A win for the thaumatophile: Weird Tales was were much of H.P. Lovecraft‘s work first appeared. The story it illustrates is part of Seabury Quinn‘s “Jules de Grandin” series of occult detective stories.

It’s exquisite (I think) by pulp cover standards. I love the way the central figure appears to glow; and her attitude recalls that of Ashley Madder at the end. An anticipation of cryonics? I can’t say — the nearest libraries that are likely to contain the story are a good hour’s travel away from my personal mad lab. But someday perhaps I’ll find out.

Found in a gallery at this French-language site.

In the sculpture court

So I went image-delving to try to give the reader a bit of visual experience to go along with the narrative of Iris in the sculpture court where she discovers the statue made out of Ashley Madder. This naturally involved a trip to the Medsua Realm, a great big A.S.F.R.-related site where they do that sort of thing well.

My eye was first attracted to the image at the left, presented on one of their webfinds pages. Not much provenance there, unfortunately. But we do live in a happy Internet era, and there is now a tool called TinEye, which is a reverse image search. Got an image you’re wondering about? Well, now you either upload it or just send the URL to TinEye and it will give it a shot for you. On this image, I was able to turn up that this is a sculpture known as “Femme Eternelle.” Neat! (Unsurprisingly, TinEye is now listed on my links bar as one of the Cool Tools, so by all means enjoy it.)

Interesting. Over to Google image search. Can I find it larger or better or more like it? Enter “femme eternelle sculpture” and all sorts of interesting results come back. Nothing bigger on this one, but something did come up that seemed even better from the perspective of “sculpture court visual experience.” It’s a woman on a pedestal, indentified only by the title “Une photo d’art.”

That from a French-language blog called The Dreamsland, whose collection of photography is so exquisite that it too is now added to the EroticMadScience blogroll.

Ashley’s transformation and mine

When I was perhaps twenty I had a fantasy of a beautiful woman turning, at least quasi-voluntarily, into a statue. It was satisfying to have, but at the same time I thought, “This is too weird. Surely almost no one else thinks like this.”

I was wrong about that. But productively wrong. Because not only could I write Ashley Madder into a version of that fantasy into The Apsinthion Protocol, but I also had an opportunity to find out that there seem to be a lot of people — some of them rather talented — out there on the Internet thinking along the same lines.

The general school is called “A.S.F.R.,” initial taken from an old Usenet newsgroup called “alt.sex.fetish.robot,” and perhaps more specifically “pygmalionists” or “agalmatophiles.” And for them, the idea of transformation into a statue sounds deep erotic notes. If you are interested in such things, a good place to start looking would be the The Technosexuality FAQ. Large galleries of fan-art for this kink can be found at The Medusa Realm.

Some specific artists who merit mention: there is Naga at Naga’s Den, creator (I believe) of the cute and thematically apropos animated gif to the right (it appears originally on the Technosexuality FAQ) and another creator who works under the name of Drake, and puts out vis own self-published web comic (lots and lots and lots of scenarios and illustrations, in which almost all the characters are female) called Medusarrific. An example of vis work:

From Medusarrific #42, p. 17

,

Not quite the same as the Ashley Madder experience hedonically, even if it similar thematically.

If you like stories rather than pictures, I can point you to at least one exquisite one, “Sara’s Self-Portrait,” by RM, although you can find many others at the Medusa Realm’s story index page.

And what was my own transformation? It was that, in finding so many other people who were into the same strange fantasy I once had, that I realized that in the age of the Internet, no one is ever really alone.

Ashley’s little obsesssion, and mine

I’ve blogged before over at ErosBlog about how magnificent I find the figure of Irma Vep from Louis Feuillade‘s 1915 silent serial Les Vampires. She’s one of the first great cinematic bad girls, a character as daring as they come.

And Ashley Madder, perhaps frustrated with a world that sees her as a kind of Sarah Palin in training, seems to find her magnificent, too. The poster of kohl-eyed Irma Vep which The Apsinthion Protocol’s script locates on the wall of her dormitory room is taken right from the silent serial:

(I have never actually seen an attempt at reproducing this poster in the real world, but would buy one in a minute for the right price if one were available. Hint, hint.)

In passing, I should note that Les Vampires is not just great for having a great bad girl at its center, but fine source material for thaumatophiles as well, because the Vampires, the criminal gang of which Irma Vep is a part, are among the most dedicated users of science (or pseudoscience) that I can think of in the early cinema. Poisons, paralytics, trick weapons, hypnotic mind control, and any number of clever technological tricks play key roles in the serial. We even get a laboratory scene or two, such as this one, in which heavily masked Irma Vep assists Vénénos, a chemist and criminal mastermind, who is then head of the Vampires.

Ashely will emulate her screen idol even to the extent of emulating the slinky maillot de soie in which Irma Vep commits some of her criminal acts. Also in this case, Ashley might perhaps more be emulating Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung, playing the part of Irma Vep in a movie about an ill-starred attempt to re-make Les Vampires.

More maillot de cuir than maillot de soie, perhaps, but works for me either way.