#subliminalbo

[subliminalbo]

10 Years of Subliminalbo

Candice Swanepoel: Mindless Supermodel on Tour Annotated [ 1 ]

Originally published November 26th, 2013

Hundreds of young women were gathering at a Victoria's Secret in Pasadena [ 2 ] where Candice Swanepoel was promoting a new lingerie line, Obedience by Victoria [ 3 ]. Many only showed up to get an autograph and a picture with the supermodel, but a select few were chosen to join Candice in a private meeting after the event [ 4 ].

Once the fifteen chosen girls followed Candice into the room, each one received their very own Obedience bra which Candice ordered them to put on [ 5 ]. When all of the girls had returned from the fitting rooms, they found that Candice had stripped down into her underwear and was waiting to greet them in her own pair of Obedience by Victoria lingerie. Then she began her demonstration. The girls listened intently to Candice's every word as she went over the usual stuff: how the bra gave enough lift to create the illusion of larger breasts, but didn't sacrifice the comfort that every bra needs [ 6 ]. How all the designs, for example her's with black and white polka-dots [ 7 ], were cute and flirty but sexy and mature all at once. And how the bra kept a woman mindless, blank, submissive [ 8 ].

"Each bra comes with its own unique identification card [ 9 ]," Candice spoke promptly, professionally, as if she were reading from a script [ 10 ]. "And the holder of that id card controls the wearer of the bra. As long as I'm wearing Obedience by Victoria, I have no control of my own. However, since I have your cards, I do have control over all of you. Does that make sense? [ 11 ]"

"Yes, Mistress Candice," the girls replied [ 12 ].

"Good," Candice smiled as she looked upon an audience of blank faces. "The bra was assembled in America with materials produced in Pakistan [ 13 ]. Utilizing research that is only legal in Yugoslavia [ 14 ], Victoria's Secret has created a bra that is truly a first of its kind, and a look into the future of the industry. Please refrain from wearing Obedience by Victoria for more than four hours; prolonged use may cause memory loss, catatonia, loss of motor control, and irregular increase in sex drive. If you experience any of these symptoms, remove the bra immediately and consult a physician for you could be experiencing early signs of mind control poisoning. Ask your doctor before use [ 15 ].

"Now, my girls, [ 16 ]" Candice took a breath.

"Yes, Mistress Candice?"

"You're all going to go home, and you're going to find another girl. It could be your sister, your friend, your mother, your cousin, it doesn't matter. You're going to find another girl and you're going to make sure she gets a bra just like yours [ 17 ]."

"Yes, Mistress Candice. We will obey."

"Good. We want every woman in America to experience Obedience by Victoria with us."

"Yes, Mistress Candice. They will submit."

Mindless, the women left the mall and headed home, all thinking about their mission [ 18 ].

Candice boarded the fastest plane out of LA, en route to Milwaukee [ 19 ] where the next Victoria's Secret on the tour was located. On the plane she received a call. "Yes," she spoke quietly into the receiver. "I fitted them all with the bras...Yes, the effect was instantaneous...Of course I'm still wearing mine...Yes, I do nothing but think of you when I'm wearing it...Yes, I will do anything...Yes...Anything for you, Master. [ 20 ]"

[ 1 ]. Mindless Supermodel Model on Tour created a lot of problems for me. It was originally meant to be a series of shorts where we see Candice in different little mind control vignettes, but the idea of a mind controlling lingerie brand was too broad to just bury in a random one shot, so I kept writing about it. I pretty quickly moved to writing fictional characters after this short, but Obedience by Victoria remained an important bit of lore for several years until I just said fuck it and swapped out Victoria's Secret for Fleur-de-lis, creating ersatz versions of the Victoria's Secret models that I'd previously written about. You can read a much, much better version of this story here as Obedience By Fleur #1.

[ 2 ]. Before Romero, I liked to set these stories in completely random cities that I've never been to.

[ 3 ]. Fun with brand name parodies. I thought Obedience By Victoria was so clever for some reason.

[ 4 ]. In my "just writing a quick caption to establish context for the manip" era, these stories start so abruptly. It feels really weird to just jump into something without any groundwork.

[ 5 ]. They aren't even mind controlled yet lmao

[ 6 ]. Incredibly painful to read a 19 year old kid write about women's underwear like he knows what he's talking about.

[ 7 ]. I used to go out of my way to place the story in the manip somehow, but this proved incredibly limiting. At some point I stopped letting the manips tell the stories and today I rarely reference imagery from the manips.

[ 8 ]. This is supposed to be a "murder, arson, jaywalking" joke, but the bit doesn't land because I spread it out over three long sentences instead of one list.

[ 9 ]. Huh

[ 10 ]. Because she's under mind control, you see. Totally unreasonable to suspect that a person pitching a new product for their company would be reading from a script.

[ 11 ]. Weirdly insecure for a mindless drone.

[ 12 ]. Nitpicking myself here but I don't think "replied" is the word choice I would use for fifteen mind controlled girls speaking in unison today.

[ 13 ]. I wonder if this was researched or if I just picked completely random countries. I'm guessing the latter.

[ 14 ]. Oof, most of the jokes in my early stuff just don't land. I've always been better at the melodrama.

[ 15 ]. Pretty good bit.

[ 16 ]. I would also probably not have her say "my girls" if I were writing this today. Just reads weird to me.

[ 17 ]. Not the first instance of serial recruitment in my writing at this point (the sequel to that Fleur-de-lis chapter that I posted the other night has it), but the first that I like.

[ 18 ]. Are they mindless or are they thinking? Just a weird transition paragraph that exists to remind the reader one more time that there's mind control in this story.

[ 19 ]. What even is this tour? Surely there are Victoria's Secrets between Pasadena and Milwaukee lmao

[ 20 ]. This is a Metal Gear Solid reference and it's fucking stupid

[ottopilotreturns]

I'm on the westsiiide, the night's still young. Now if I'm still liking your posts when you wake up... Then yeah. 😮‍💨

Lots of notifications still coming in despite the late hour. Are you freaks all in different time zones or are we all up worrying about *gestures vaguely at everything* together?

[ottopilotreturns]

Obsidian order (heh) and @subliminalbo/@laurentidal music recs queued up

[ottopilot-wrote-this]

Coven: that's a wrap

I finished the Halloween story at the witching hour on the dot, and frankly, I think that fucking rules.

This is the longest, most ambituous story I've written since maybe the fifth grade. And if I pull it off, it's just the first domino in a larger project I've been brewing for over a year now.

I want to give a quick couple of shout-outs:

shout out to @subliminalbo, who I've read for many years but have somehow become friends with seemingly by chance. Last year, serendipitiously, he posted about his writing process and I must have took that shit to heart, because I proceeded to just pour out words for hours about an idea I had just been kicking around in my head, the story alluded to above. Of course, tragedy stuck in the form of a deactivation, and the first two chapters of Coven were lost (though, I promise, the story is much better now for it).

shout out to Xenos, whose fantastic Stable Diffusion models I am greatly indebted to. Again, fate would have it he messed up and posted an absolute nightmare fuel checkpoint on accident, but that's what caught my eye in the first place. It turns out what we have in common is we are both hypno/MC veterans (he wrote on EMCSA) with designs on using generative AI for bigger mixed-media products (his vision is in gaming). He also has a Discord where I've spent a lot of my time in Tumblr Exile meeting some other cool people.

shout out to @foreverlostinspirals for reading and reblogging this story. I jokingly said she is like Sigourney Weaver when she was the Ghostbusters' only client. She has been very sweet and supportive when I resort to self-deprecating comments about my writing.

I have 8% battery, so I'll thank my wife, not just for her love but her patience. I know she rolls her eyes when I am working on this when I need to be doing other things, but she does so with love and support to let me do my own thing sometimes. Even though it is highly unlikely she'd read this, I love you.

Probably a short hiatus from stories while I take a breather and organize thoughts, and I have a couple fun things planned, but you can find me on @ottopilotreturns, because I am an internet addict with no boundaries! TTFN.

[karaland]

I'm sorry for bothering you but thank you for the tag on the reblog! Literally the kind of feedback that I dream of.

Omg before rebloging I actually went back and re-read the rest of the series as well bc it's so hottt. Thank you for sharing your writing!!

Not a bother at all <33

[classicsubliminalbo]

Psychology 8: Finale

Originally published Jul 4, 2018 This series is a non-canon CYOA

Do you...

Enslave Madison

Warn Madison

As you exit the psychology building you find Madison sitting on the steps. "Took your time," she scoffs.

You heave a frustrated sigh and reply, "Well, you didn't give me the easiest job." "Please," Madison says with the flip of her hair. "I had the hardest job." "Getting her out of the room? Sure. Why couldn't I do that?" "Because," Madison shrugs. "So where's the thing."

You hold out the USB drive between your thumb and pointer finger. "Of course."

Madison smiles and says, "With this information I can get rid of Dr. Fielding for good." "You like this, don't you?" you ask. Madison cocks her head and replies in a sickly sweet voice, "What do you mean?" "Making people do shit for you. You've been playing me this whole time."

"It's in the name, hon," Madison says, her voice dropping its sweet ring. "I'm an Alpha." She snatches the USB drive from your hand and pockets it.

As Madison struts away, you call after her. "Are you sure about that?" Madison stops in place, turning slowly back around to face you. Her brow narrows as she considers the implications of your question. "What do you mean?" "Sometimes a person gets it in their head that they're a lion," you say. "When they're actually just a little lamb."

You can see Madison visibly shudder as the trigger takes hold of her psyche. Her eyes drift close and then, as if her body is moving in slow motion, Madison begins to tip face first over. You jump to catch her, and her chin lands on your shoulder. At first you're shocked by Madison's reaction. You've only been on the receiving end of triggers, so it's a new experience to have a completely brainwashed person hanging limply in your arms. You shake her and shout, "Madison?!"

Madison's body tenses as she begins to regain control. She balances on you as she pushes herself back up, and then she stands there, straight as a statue. Her eyes are trained on you, but they aren't focusing on anything. You've felt that kind of intoxicating emptiness before. "Madison?" you repeat.

"Yes?" she replies quietly. "Are you alright?" "I feel great," she says. "Okay," you nod. "I'm going to take you back to Dr. Fielding now." "Oh please..." Madison smiles. "I miss my Mistress so much!"

Madison eagerly obeys as you lead her back to Dr. Fielding's office. She slips into the chair across from the desk and sits there stiff and silent as Dr. Fielding exams her.

"You did good," she says to you. "Right," you reply. "Understand that I couldn't have done this without you. Sure, I could have found her myself but people might ask questions, a professor snooping around a sorority." "You could have sent someone else," you say. "You've got dozens of students in that computer who will do anything you ask."

Dr. Fielding smiles. "I suppose you're right." "But it's not really about that. It's a rush to subvert someone's will, isn't it?" You place your hand on Madison's shoulder and the mesmerized girl shudders. "But to get someone to do your bidding, without having to warp their minds--that's the ultimate rush." Dr. Fielding's smile fades and she says, "I suppose you're right about that too." "I think I've had it with psychology. I've had it with this school." "It's not for the faint of heart, I'll tell you that," Dr. Fielding says. "I gave you what you wanted," you say. And then you turn around and step toward the door.

Dr. Fielding speaks as you leave. "But you're forgetting something."

When you turn around to face Dr. Fielding, you see that watch, its face cracked, swinging in her hand. Dr. Fielding says, "You still belong to me."

On queue, Madison steps out of her chair and slinks her way over to you. You're frozen in your place, eyes locked on the watch as she presses an index finger to you lips. Then she leans in for a soft kiss.

"Isn't this what you wanted?" Madison asks.

You look for the answer in the watch.

"Yes," you reply absently. "Why leave," Madison says, sliding her hand down your chest. "When there's so much more to explore." "So much..." "Submit to Mistress Fielding. Submit, and we can be together in her service."

What do you do?

Submit

Submit

Submit

[ottopilotreturns]

@subliminalbo check this shit out

Roger Ebert wrote a movie for the Sex Pistols. He wrote all about the failed project here.

[classicsubliminalbo]

Dirty Work

Originally published Jun 2, 2018

It was half-passed midnight and Andrea was ten minutes into a promising night's sleep when the phone rang. She answered with a curt, "What?"

"We got a job," Tyler said on the other end of the line. "It's a weird one." "Jesus, Tyler, I've got a midterm in nine hours." "We've all got shit on our plate, okay, Andrea? But it's a weird one. And weird ones..." "'Weird ones pay more,'" Andrea repeated. "Fine, whatever, pick me up." "Already outside."

Andrea met Tyler in the small parking lot across from her apartment. He was driving that same old shitty mint green Crown Vic he'd been threatening to trade in for a Tesla since they started the job. At least Tyler had a car, a thought that helped Andrea retain some humility every time she settled in the passenger's seat. The ignition stuttered when Tyler turned the key, and he shot Andrea an optimistic glance before the engine roared to life.

At a stoplight he asked, "What do you think about Vietnam?" "The war?" Andrea replied. "No, for spring break. I know it's a little esoteric but everyone does Orlando or Cancun." "That's because they're on this continent, Tyler." "Right," he said, driving through the light. "I think if you asked daddy he'd buy you a fucking beach." "You don't have to insult me," Tyler frowned. Andrea smirked and added, "What are you even doing still driving a beater?" "Honestly?" he asked. "College girls don't want to date a guy with a nice car. It's intimidating." "I wouldn't fuck a guy in this car. It smells like cheese."

Tyler continued on to Romero's main business strip, finally pulling over to the shoulder in front of Argento's Pizzeria. "Here we are," he said. "Argento's?" Andrea asked skeptically, studying the restaurant through her window. The lights were on but the neon open sign was switched off. Argento's Pizzeria and Italian was a staple of Carpenter State student life. Most students on a budget were regulars at Pizza Joe's, but Argento's was where you took a girl if you wanted a second date. It was never closed before two.

"I told you it's a weird one," Tyler said. "A couple of hours ago this girl goes batshit crazy, starts writhing on top of the table, really making love to this plate of spaghetti." "Gross." "Yeah. Junior can't get her to leave and she's making a scene so he does the logical thing and closes up, feeds her all the pasta she wants till she passes out." "Why doesn't he call the cops?" Tyler shrugged. "Bad for business, I guess. People round here know about us, Andrea. They know our deal with Pierce."

Their deal with Pierce. Most of the time he had them tailing his daughter, Monica, taking her into Dr. Fielding when she got too crazy. But things could get weird around Carpenter State and whenever the dean found himself or a friend in trouble, he called upon his team of fixers to clean it up. It was shit work, but it payed well. Most students wanted internships to build their resumes for life outside of college, but Andrea and Tyler's work with the dean was strictly off the books. That wasn't as big of a deal to Andrea who had the ambition of a hibernating bear. Tyler was the rising star of the pair, a journalism major with lofty goals and the family connections to achieve them. Growing up rich taught Tyler a lot about climbing ladders, and though he couldn't put "fixer" on his resume, Dean Pierce did promise to write any recommendation letter Tyler would ask for and had managed to secure him the position of head editor at The Daily Gremlin, Carpenter State's official student paper. Tyler found that controlling the news media around campus made his secret job a little easier.

"This place always gave me the creeps," Andrea commented as they waited for Junior at the door. "Why?" Tyler asked. "Who opens a pizza joint in a church?"

They heard the lock click, and the wide doors swing open. "Thank Christ you're finally here," Junior Argento breathed. "Where is she, Junior?" Andrea asked.

He nodded toward the back and the pair followed him into the kitchens. There they found the girl, Amy Teller, lying on the floor at the base of an industrial sink. Her boyfriend Jay was sitting next to her distracting himself with his phone. When he saw the two new faces he hopped up and eagerly asked them if they were cops.

Junior slapped Jay and sternly shouted, "No cops!" "We're the next best thing," Tyler winked.

Jay introduced himself and when Andrea asked, he explained what had happened.

"I swear it's those goons from Carmella's again," Junior grumbled. "They're trying to run me out of business!" "Tyler, come look at this," Andrea said as she examined Amy. "What is it?" Jay asked, taking a respite from his cuticle.

Tyler knelt down next to Andrea. She lifted up Amy's eyelid to reveal a solid crimson eye underneath. "You have any idea what that is?" she whispered. "I'll call Dr. Fielding," Tyler whispered back.

Amy jolted to life, startling the pair to their feet. "More!" she cried, grabbing hold of Andrea's arm. "So good...I need more!" "Baby!" Jay cried back. "It's gonna be okay, baby!"

Andrea placed a calming hand on Jay's shoulder. "We're taking her to the Psychology building. You should come with us."

Amy continued writhing in Tyler's backseat as they drove her down the road to meet with Dr. Fielding. Jay held her in his arms, trying to bring her back down, lull her back to sleep. Andrea and Tyler could only share uncomfortable glances at each other as Jay whispered hopefully in his girlfriend's ear. "Why the psychology building?" Jay finally asked.

"Dr. Fielding knows a lot about behavioral science," Andrea replied. "We just want to rule out a psychotic episode." "Jesus Christ," Jay cried.

Dr. Fielding was waiting in her pajamas outside the psychology building. She told them that she'd spoken to Dean Pierce and asked them to wait outside of her office while she worked with Amy and Jay. Andrea felt an eerie feeling of déjà vu sitting there, but she pushed through it while she discussed strategies with Tyler.

"It's not just going to sweep under the rug," she said as she rubbed her eyes. "A lot of witnesses." "It's midterm season, maybe school got the best of her?" Tyler suggested. Andrea shook her head. "Nah, Pierce'll never go for that. Too much heat on the school. Next we'll have parents asking what Pierce's doing for our mental health, he'd have to call a special investigation to save face." "What do you think then?" Tyler asked.

Tyler had the future, but Andrea was the real brains of the operation. This was where she was invaluable.

"What if...a new drug is going around campus, making students loopy." "I could print that," Tyler nodded. "No. We leak it to local news. Start a real hysteria, 'the new designer drug and why you're eleven year old is using it.' That way people aren't talking about Argento's, they're talking about the drug." "That's really smart, Andrea."

"I know," Andrea said. Sometimes it scared her how good she was at this job. "You ever think this is fucked up?" "All the time," Tyler replied.

Before they could continue discussing the ethics of their job, Dr. Fielding's office door opened and a surprisingly content-looking Jay stepped out. Fielding followed behind him and whispered in his ear. "Yes, Dr. Fielding," he said. Andrea and Tyler exchanged nervous glances as Jay shuffled blissfully away.

"I eased Jay's concerns," Dr. Fielding clarified. "But it's going to take a little bit more than hypnotherapy to bring Amy back." Dr. Fielding shook her head then added, "Of course you two don't have to worry about that. It's awfully late now, you'd best get along."

"Thank you," Andrea said, inching toward her seat. "Oh!" Dr. Fielding chirped. "There's just one more thing before you leave." "Yes?" Tyler asked. Dr. Fielding smiled, and somehow Andrea knew she had seen that smile before. 

"No!" Andrea cried, trying to leap out of her chair. But Dr. Fielding said, "Sleep," and Andrea was powerless to disobey the doctor's command. 

Andrea's body plopped lifelessly down in the chair as her chin hit her chest. Her heartbeat slowed, but she was still alive. Conscious even, but unable to think without a command. Andrea heard Dr. Fielding's voice echo clearly in her mind. "You both did a wonderful job tonight," she said.

"Thank you, Dr. Fielding," Andrea and Tyler said in unison.

"Pierce will get you your money but you understand by now that he needs you insurance you won't go telling your friends about the job. It's all very confidential." "Yes, Dr. Fielding, we understand." Dr. Fielding turned to Tyler and said, "Tyler, affirm your loyalty." "I am a loyal student of Carpenter State University. I swear to proudly serve Dean Pierce and protect the legacy of this institution." "Andrea, affirm your loyalty." "I am a loyal student of Carpenter State University. I swear to proudly serve Dean Pierce and protect the legacy of this institution."

"Very good," Dr. Fielding smiled. "Now, I want you two to take all of those doubts you have, all of those nagging ethics and questions that you have and lock them away someplace in your head that you'll never find. When you wake up, you'll understand what you've done tonight, and you'll be proud." "Yes, Dr. Fielding. We are proud to serve."

Andrea didn't remember leaving Dr. Fielding's office. She awoke the next morning in her own bed with a foggy head and an email granting her a makeup on the midterm, another benefit of working for the dean. Andrea smiled, happy that she could play a part in protecting her school.

[subliminalbo]

I've lost a lot of motivation to write multi-part stories. That isn't to say that I don't still write from a series perspective, but that I'm more interested in exploring those series as loosely connected vignettes than a chronological order of events. It's not that I don't want to write in traditional chapter formats, but that I find chapters to be constraining and, to be honest, the vignettes do better numbers.

At this point, I have a lot of ongoing series that I write in, so my process goes a little something like this: first, I get an itch to write something, then I consider each Romero series. Sometimes just listing everything out will bring ideas to me.

Like for example, when I wrote Just Research, the itch started with a character idea. I knew I wanted to use Sabrina Carpenter, and I knew that I wanted her to be a Corbin Arroyo fangirl who immediately gets in over her head when she starts her own investigation. The next step was to consider where she could fit in among all of these series:

Alphas

Assimilation

Obedience By Fleur

Futurum

The Submission Principle

New Thralls

Internal Affairs

Assimilation doesn't really fit the investigation storyline, so I eliminated that at first glance. Alphas is an interesting option, and I ultimately folded that series into Tabbie's backstory. The original idea for a Corbin fangirl was going to be part of the Futurum series, but I burned that idea on a Hypnovember post last year. The point being that Internal Affairs wasn't high on my list when I started thinking of ideas, but after laying these series out, the gears started turning and I developed it into this sort of unreliable narrator type thing.

The process isn't just limited to series either. If you want to base it off of characters, list your OCs and you'll start to see patterns. Maybe I'll realize that I haven't written a story about Andrea Rubin in a while and go from there.

My point is that if you're interested in writing mind control smut within a connected universe, it doesn't have to be that complicated! I know from experience how easy it is to lose control of this sort of thing. You start with a quick little vignette about a mind controlled supermodel and after a few weeks you've got 19 incomprehensible chapters with like, thirty different characters. The reason I write in a connected universe is because I want to build familiarity with these characters, it's not actually about these wide sweeping plots. I feel that it's important for readers to know who these characters are so that they can enjoy their transformations into brainwashed sorority sisters, or mindless vessels, or loyal thralls later.

[subliminalbo]

10 Years of Subliminalbo

Candice Swanepoel: Mindless Pet Annotated [ 1 ]

Originally published November 28th, 2013

"You've done well, Candice. Since launching Obedience by Victoria, women just can't seem to get enough of our products. Sales have tripled in the last month alone." [ 2 ]

"Thank you, Master," Candice replied. She was teleconferencing with her boss, who had put her in charge of the Obedience campaign. Candice had traveled across the nation to nine different Victoria's Secret flagship stores [ 3 ], spreading their new product and enslaving the minds of customers who were now feeling so much more loyal to the business [ 4 ]. But they weren't the only ones under the control of this new high-tech lingerie. Candice was, in a way, patient zero.

"As a reward for your excellent work, we've decided to take you off of the campaign. I'm sure we have other models who are just dying to wear Obedience by Victoria. [ 5 ]"

"Master," Candice frowned. "Does that mean...?"

"You no longer have to wear the lingerie, yes." he replied. "We have other lines for you to promote, we can't be wasting you on one thing [ 6 ]."

"Yes, Master, I understand." Candice nodded. A part of her felt worried to be released from her boss' control [ 7 ]. She'd been wearing this lingerie for weeks now and was quite fond of someone thinking for her [ 8 ]. It was just easier.

Time fixed Candice's aversion to thought [ 9 ]. After a few days' worth of withdrawals, she no longer felt the urge for obedience [ 10 ]. With her mind finally cleared, Candice had a lot of questions for Victoria's Secret [ 11 ]. Like why they'd forced her to wear a hypnotic bra for twelve weeks [ 12 ]. So much had changed since Candice went under. Girls would stop Candice on the streets, and she would look into their eyes. Those empty eyes. And Candice knew that they were wearing Obedience, and she knew that it was her work that had taken this girl's mind [ 13 ]. "I love you, Candice. You are my idol," the girls would say, and Candice would remember all of those girls on tour. The ones who had just shown up for an autograph and had left with a new pair of underwear and an empty mind . And those girls had gone and forced their friends and family into mindless obedience as well. The campaign was so successful that CEOs of other companies were falling over each other to copy the Obedience bra's technology. Walmart had enslaved all of its employees to guarantee better service, and McDonald's was replicating the technology for food so that its customers would never eat anywhere else [ 14 ].

Candice was disgusted at this new world, and she knew something had to be done [ 15 ]. She first tried to take it up with her boss, but he was always too busy to listen. Then she tried filing a report to the ethics department of Victoria's Secret, but that too was met with no response [ 16 ]. Frustrated with her employer, Candice decided that she had to do something drastic [ 17 ].

Santiago Cruz was a young journalist trying to find her first major story to break through [ 18 ]. So far she was relegated to covering puff pieces like fashion at the Golden Globe Awards and the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show [ 19 ]. Candice had remembered Santiago from last year's show, but it was Santiago who approached Candice. She'd been focusing on Victoria's Secret in the last few weeks, after a friend of hers had gone completely off the grid reporting on the new line of lingerie. Santiago had an eye for conspiracy, and this really stunk [ 20 ]. So over coffee one morning, Candice spilled her whole story.

"They told me to try on the bra, and then... Well, everything felt so good. I just wanted to do everything they told me to."

"And you didn't know what it did? You didn't know that they were brainwashing you?" Santiago replied. She rarely looked away from her pad which she scribbled every possible detail onto. Notes on Candice's story, important dates, important names. This story was going to be huge.

"I didn't... And the worst thing is what they made me do. I had sex with so many men and women [ 21 ], and they made me go around passing out the lingerie, turning other women into something like me."

"That's awful," Santiago interjected [ 22 ].

"Yes. It's addictive too. After I was freed, I wanted nothing more than to go back. I wanted to be controlled. I wanted it so bad I even tried self-hypnosis [ 23 ]."

"But it didn't work."

"No."

As the interview wrapped up, Santiago asked if anyone in Victoria's Secret knew that Candice was talking to her. Candice told her about the ethics report she'd filed, but assured Santiago that no one knew she was going to the public with the story. The two women shook hands and Santiago promised Candice that justice would be served, then they went their separate ways. A few days passed before Santiago heard from Candice again. This time it was a text that read: New info. We need to talk. Meet me at our coffee place asap. Santiago said she was on her way, and as she left the office, she told her boss that she was going to check up on a new lead [ 24 ].

Santiago arrived at the coffee shop to find it mostly empty, except for the two baristas who stood stoic and guard-like behind the counter, and at a table in the back sat a well-dressed man with Candice, who sat on the floor next to the man, resting on her knees [ 25 ]. Unlike the man, you could not say she was well-dressed. She wore some gaudy kind of cat inspired lingerie [ 26 ].

"What is this?" Santiago asked Candice. "What's going on?"

"You're asking the wrong person," the man spoke up. "She doesn't say much anymore."

"Oh my God, Candice... What did you do to her?"

"My name's Ed [ 27 ], it's nice to meet you. We've reeducated Candice. And to answer your question, Miss Cruz, this is a trap [ 28 ]. For years reporters have been trying to out my company for one dirty reason or another. We're a blight to America's youth, we teach girls to be sexual at a young age... We just can't afford to have a brainwashing conspiracy on our hands so... I guess you'd call this the coverup."

"Candice," Santiago cried. "You've got to snap out of it!"

Ed smiled and ran his hand through Candice's hair. "Go ahead, my pet, you may speak."

"I was wrong to come to you, Santiago," Candice frowned. "Thankfully Master Ed was kind enough to take me back, and I'm sure he'd be happy to have you too, if you asked. We could be good kitties together!"

"No!" Santiago screamed. "I'll never put on your disgusting lingerie!"

"I'll make you a deal," Ed spoke up. "Surrender to me, and I'll let Candice go. Your mind for hers. Or... I keep Candice as my pet, and pull some strings for you. You'll have your own column, your own news show. You'll be able to do anything you want. All I ask is that you don't print that story."

Santiago looked into the empty eyes of a mindless Candice who was busy playing with the bell on her collar. Candice had trusted her to do the right thing. Santiago promised her that she would expose Victoria's Secret, and that this kind of thing would never happen to her again. But Santiago had only taken this story because she wanted her big break, and now she was being offered just that by Ed [ 29 ]. And Candice, she looked so happy.

"Okay," Santiago choked. "You can have her. No one will ever hear a word of this [ 30 ]."

"That's a good girl," Ed smiled [ 31 ].

[ 1 ]. This short was a kind of soft pilot to writing original characters, shifting the focus from Candice Swanepoel to reporter Santiago Cruz. It wasn't the most graceful transition. For example, it created this alternate universe in my series where Victoria's Secret is, inexplicably, a dominant political force responsible for the mass brainwashing of consumers. Obedience By Victoria would come up from time to time in my stories, but I mostly got around the absurdity of the plot by mentioning Victoria's Secret as little as possible after wrapping up Santiago's Story.

[ 2 ]. Consumers being targeted by mass brainwashing campaigns is an idea that I still find really compelling, partly because profit is the most logical motive for mind control, but also because there's just sort of this mundane evil to the whole scheme. Manipulating millions of consumers into submissive puppets to raise profit margins is very funny to me.

[ 3 ]. Yeah, again I don't really know anything about Victoria's Secret campaigns and have no idea where I came up with the number nine but I'm very surprised that Milwaukee was on the list.

[ 4 ]. Probably the worst example yet of telling the audience that there is mind control happening. These days I'd probably just be happy with Candice "spreading the product" (weird word choice too tbh)

[ 5 ]. I don't really understand the motivation to take the campaign away from Candice here, other than to create an inciting incident for the story.

[ 6 ]. From the mind controller's perspective, this just seems like a bad decision. How is Candice not supposed to blow the whistle here.

[ 7 ]. Ah man, I just hate interiority like this. I try really hard to not tell the reader what the character is thinking or feeling.

[ 8 ]. Subliminalbo cliche #3: mind control is nice, actually.

[ 9 ]. This is a stupid sentence.

[ 10 ]. Casually breezing over this harrowing experience right here in a single sentence.

[ 11 ]. Girl, same.

[ 12 ]. I am convinced that these are the four worst sentences that I've ever written in succession. I think it's meant to be understatement as a joke but it's just awful.

[ 13 ]. Classic subject-verb agreement error here. Fun fact, I was finishing up my first semester of freshman English when I wrote this.

[ 14 ]. So much to unpack in this one paragraph. First of all, it's like three paragraphs at minimum. But it's so weird that I didn't put any thought into what Obedience By Victoria is and how it works. Like, how is Walmart implementing mind controlling bras? How did McDonalds put inside fucking burgers? In future versions I think I made sure to note that all of these other companies were exploring their own research, but here I mostly just wanted to stress the sheer number of people who had been mind controlled since the last chapter and I didn't really care how.

[ 15 ]. Girl, same.

[ 16 ]. "Victoria's Secret's HR department" would have been less clunky language.

[ 17 ]. Why would she even try to handle it within the company? Like, what did she expect would happen here?

[ 18 ]. Hell of a way to introduce a new character. Literally just me explaining her archetype to the reader. I could have just pasted a TV Tropes page here.

[ 19 ]. In later versions of this story I focus a bit more on what Santiago actually does. In this first draft I saw her as a Buzzfeed journalist but later have her writing for Trespass, which is an ersatz Vice. Both have struggled in recent years, but Buzzfeed was such an easy target that I felt like Vice was more interesting to criticize. Anyway, I never actually say where Santiago works in this version because everything is surface level.

[ 20 ]. Subliminalbo cliche #4: the paranoid reporter who seeks out trouble because they suspect that mind control is everywhere.

[ 21 ]. I think this concept works better as a straight conspiracy thriller about corporate brainwashing but it's always about sex. What's funny is that I'm too young here to write confidently about sex so I just have the characters mention sex and that's the smut.

[ 22 ]. Don't like the word choice here. You don't "interject" when listening to a person talk about their trauma lol

[ 23 ]. It's nice to get a little bit of Candice's struggle after taking off the lingerie, but it's still really surface level stuff here. 2013 Bo is very committed to telling instead of showing.

[ 24 ]. Eh, this paragraph is fine I guess. I just want to call out how quickly I accelerate out of the scene. We get a brief stretch of dialogue between the two and then a quick summary of everything else they said. It really feels like I'm just trying to get to the end of this story. I'm also not really sure why I went out of the way to mention Santiago's editor, just weirdly superfluous information here.

[ 25 ]. There are like eight sentences inside this sentence.

[ 26 ]. The story follows the manip again.

[ 27 ]. Though I don't name him explicitly here, Ed is based on former Victoria's Secret Chief Marketing Officer Ed Razek who was something of a minor celebrity in the model blogging space as the creator of the Victoria's Secret Angels. In 2019 Razek stepped down from his position at the company following misogynist and transphobic comments, as well as allegations of creating a culture of harassment within the company. So uh...I hate this story.

[ 28 ]. I kind of hate the way my characters talk to each other in these early stories.

[ 29 ]. She jumps straight to the rationalization, holy shit.

[ 30 ]. I originally envisioned this story as Candice trapped between two powerful wills, but it's pretty shocking how quickly Santiago folds to Ed. Later revisions have focused a ton on expanding this scene and showing that Santiago ultimately has no choice, but I don't really feel like she's in a corner here.

[ 31 ]. The verdict: my worst story yet. Under baked and ludicrously rushed, you can just sort of tell that I'm writing this as a quick caption to a manip. There are tons of unfortunate real world implications too with all of the Ed Razek stuff that went down at Victoria's Secret, it makes for an icky story that I'm really not proud of writing, but it is important because it marks my transition to original characters. Of all my stories, this is the one I've come back to the most to rewrite, and I've finally gotten to a place where I'm fine with it. If you've read all of this I recommend checking that version out because it really has changed a lot (though a quick glance through it and I'm already finding things I hate about it).

[subliminalbo]

10 Years of Subliminalbo [ 1 ]

Fleur-de-lis 1: Adriana's Entrancement Annotated [ 2 ]

Adriana [ 3 ] looked out among the crowd gathering on her balcony and she smiled. There wasn't another supermodel in sight [ 4 ]. You see, tonight wasn't about the business, it was just pleasure. Most of her guests thought that this was a simple housewarming party. Adriana had a lot of homes in a lot of cities, what was so special about this unassuming Los Angeles condo? But after modeling for eighteen years, Adriana didn't get a lot of opportunities to be herself. That's why she'd invited only a handful of guests, personal friends unrelated to the industry [ 5 ].

Adriana floated in and out of conversation with her guests until she spotted a woman standing at the railing, overlooking the Los Angeles skyline.

"Excuse me," Adriana approached her. "Are you with somebody?" She didn't mean to sound rude, but she had been strict about the guest list and she hadn't expected to find strangers are [ 6 ] her own party.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" The woman asked, her eyes trained on the lights dotting the landscape [ 7 ]. "I've always loved this view. Pardon me," she turned her attention to Adriana and extended a hand. "Elena Maxwell [ 8 ], I'm a friend of Miranda's."

Adriana frowned. Though she was friendly with the other Victoria's Secret models, Miranda Kerr was the inevitable exception [ 9 ]. She was the type of woman who only saw enemies. For Miranda, Adriana Lima was the biggest threat to her rising star. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't invite Miranda."

"Oh, I know," Elena replied. "Actually, I invited myself. My people have been trying to reach out to you for months and we haven't heard a word from your agent, so I just had see you personally. I'm the CEO of Fleur-de-lis lingerie, and I think you'd be a great fit for our growing roster of models." [ 10 ]

"Excuse me?" Adriana was growing more and more flustered by this woman's presence. Not only had she invited herself to a personal event, but now she was talking business, trying to pull her away from the company that had treated her so well for so many years. These were the kind of shifty politics that made Adriana want to get away from the fashion world for just one night. Adriana knew of Fleur-de-lis, Miranda had recently left Victoria's Secret to work with them. It was a welcome change, but not soon after they'd begun reaching out to her too. Adriana had been firm with her agent: she wasn't interested in modeling for another company. That was the end of that. "I'm sorry, but you're intruding." [ 11 ]

"No, I'm sorry," Elena smiled and placed a cold hand on Adriana's shoulder. "I just wanted to see if you were as beautiful in person as you are in all of those photoshoots."

Flattery would get Elena nowhere. Adriana was finished with this conversation. She turned around to signal for her bodyguard to escort Elena off of the premises.

"Okay then," Elena said, slipping on a pair of sunglasses. "Bring the light." [ 12 ]

"You're going to have to come with me, ma'am," Adriana's bodyguard took a firm hold of Elena's arm and pulled her away from the balcony. She didn't fight back. She moved with the man as he took her toward the door, but the man stopped short as the sound of helicopter blades silenced all of the voices from the party. Everyone, including the bodyguard, looked to the sky as the helicopter hovered above the hillside condo. [ 13 ]

"What is this?!" [ 14 ] Adriana shouted before the entire balcony was flooded in a bright, piercing glow from the helicopter's spotlight.

Adriana knew there was something wrong as she looked into the light. Warm, tingling waves washed over as her body numbed, and her mind soon followed. I need to look away [ 15 ], Adriana thought. She managed as best she could to speak, but was startled when out of her mouth came, "Need...look...way..." She tried again but this time only a long, hollow grunt escaped. [ 16 ]

The rest of Adriana's guests stood there frozen, their heads cocked up to the sky, entranced by the blinding light. Elena smiled as the bodyguard's grasp loosened, his arm falling harmlessly away.

Meanwhile, Adriana's world was narrowing. She lost focus on everything around her. The light, that was all that mattered now. [ 17 ] She could hear someone moving around her, but she couldn't to turn her head to see. There was a small part of her, whatever part was left fighting, that hoped someone had arrived to save her. And then Elena spoke in her ear. Her words echoed through Adriana's mind [ 18 ]. The light is pleasure. The light is comfort. The light is peace. You want to look into the light.

And she did. Adriana no longer felt the urge to look away. She only wanted to be drawn in. A wave of pleasure washed over her [ 19 ] as she gave in to its power, her mind completely washed clean of its useless thoughts. The light wouldn't leave Adriana permanently brainwashed [ 20 ], but Elena could fix that as soon as she got her back to the Fleur-de-lis office in downtown LA. She took Adriana's hand and as she led her from the condo, dozens of Elena's men slipped in through the front door to handle her guests [ 21 ]. For them the night was over. By the time they awoke in the comfort of their own beds, they would have no memory of this night's bizarre turn of events, and Adriana Lima would already be deep into her orientation as a model of Fleur-de-lis. [ 22 ]

[ 1 ]. My first mind control story was posted to Deviantart on November 23rd, 2013. At the time my username was thedude11111 and that was what people would know me by until the switch to Subliminalbo in 2016. Fleur-de-lis started as a single 250 word story (the original text was lost forever in a 2017 rewrite that expanded the setting) to act as a companion to the manip. I don't like this story very much. I write about fictional people for a reason, but I'm using the original text mostly to dunk on my younger self.

[ 2 ]. Before fictional college towns and mind controlling goo, I wrote about Victoria's Secret models. My Deviantart era is an ongoing source of embarrassment for me, but one which I find a little difficult to hide from. I was eighteen years old and I liked supermodels and mind control. Around 2019 I decided to semi-canonize Fleur-de-lis by fictionalizing all of the models and recontextualizing it around the universe I've built. If this story feels familiar to anyone, it's probably because it's the first half of Fleur-de-lis #1: An Orientation, which is a slightly better proof edited version. Despite the update, The original Fleur-de-lis remains a bizarrely popular series over on Deviantart. I have no plans to bring it to Tumblr in its entirety, but you can read the full series collected on PDF over there.

[ 3 ]. Celebrity stories were big on Deviantart in 2013. Outside of the gross ethics of writing fantasy mind control smut about real people, I always found the situations to be limiting. Even today I have a hard time returning to write new chapters of the remixed series because the stakes are just so damn goofy.

[ 4 ]. Another limitation of writing about real people was having to come up with these little plot details that felt true to life. I used to run a modeling blog (my secret shame) and the community was full of gossip about which models hated who, so I kind of characterized Adriana as this consummate professional who is desperate to get above the bullshit. It's a hyperbolic look at the modeling world that is just flavor, but it's not good flavor? Like, I really don't care about these characters.

[ 5 ]. I build up this party like it has some big significance and just completely drop it by the end of the paragraph. My 2013 work ethic on full display, just shitting something out and never looking back. Made worse, of course, by the fact that this paragraph survived the 2017 rewrite (and is mostly in tact in the 2022 remix. I suck so much sometimes).

[ 6 ]. Happy to see this typo survived the 2017 rewrite too.

[ 7 ]. The focus on the LA skyline is an allusion to the movie Heat for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

[ 8 ]. Even before CSU and its growing roster of evil mind controlling ladies, I preferred female villains in these stories. It's not as much a femdom thing as it's simply more palatable to me. I've never wanted my characters to be confused for self-inserts.

[ 9 ]. Miranda Kerr left Victoria's Secret in 2013 on supposedly bad terms as her marriage melted down, famously leading to Orlando Bloom vaulting a couch to punch Justin Bieber in the face as Leonardo DiCaprio cheered. Sometimes life becomes a mad lib.

[ 10 ]. The conflict of this series is mostly about contracts, which is part of the reason I find the stakes so stupid. It actually really bums me out how much energy we waste in 2023 talking about business decisions like this. Consider the copious amount of Endgame theories that speculated on the deaths of characters based on whose contracts were expiring. Just a real staring into the abyss type stuff to me.

[ 11 ]. Ah! Gross! I don't even know what to call these kinds of run-on paragraphs, but they still show up in my writing from time to time. A long stretch of unbroken exposition bracketed by unconnected dialogue. To me it all screams, "I need to fill out space." Just painful to read.

[ 12 ]. I think Elena is supposed to be talking into an earpiece, but I don't make a single reference to it in this version of the story. It kind of comes off like this is just a thing she says before she does evil shit.

[ 13 ]. Kind of a clumsy sequence of events. Not a fan.

[ 14 ]. I'm not one hundred percent certain that this isn't an allusion to Professor Quirrell's "what magic is this?" line from The Sorcerer's Stone film. For whatever reason the line reading always stuck with me. Anyway, trans rights are human rights.

[ 15 ]. Okay, I am one hundred percent certain that the inner dialogue here is a reference to Jukebox's "I Need to Wake Up"

[ 16 ]. I like to think that I've gotten better at writing mind controlled people lmao

[ 17 ]. Inductions have always been a weakness for me. There are a few that I've written over the years that I'm proud of, but overall I still find that the vast majority of them happen way too fast.

[ 18 ]. A first appearance of a Subliminalbo cliche: conditioning "echoing" in someone's mind. Still comes up in probably four of every five stories that I write.

[ 19 ]. Subliminalbo cliche number two.

[ 20 ]. In early stories I would go out of my way to explain the mechanism of the mind control. These days I'd trust that the reader can work out for themselves that Adriana is only mesmerized here without me saying it directly.

[ 21 ]. Always imagined these men coming in like Sylvia Christel's cleaners in No More Heroes.

[ 22 ]. In the absence of actual smut, I close the story out with the promise that Adriana is going back to the evil corporate headquarters to be brainwashed. Some painful telling instead of showing.

[classicsubliminalbo]

Assimilation #11: The Master's Voice

Originally published Dec 19. 2020 This series is being revised

When Shelby returned to Syracuse, she found it lonelier than Romero. The city was a good two-hundred miles from her hometown, most of her friends from her undergraduate program had moved on to different universities, and those familiar few who did stick around were now her rivals in the department. The competitive nature of graduate school was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was easier to do in a new environment than one surrounded by people you knew and trusted. Her return to Micah was inevitable.

Catching up with Micah was like picking up a conversation that had never ended. She met him at his new apartment where he promised to fill her up with pizza and wine. She expected that the wine was some kind of hint. A not-so-subtle way of showing her that he could be in a room with alcohol without downing the whole bottle. She didn’t object to the red Moscato, even if she preferred pink, while Micah sipped a glass of water.

The plan was to watch a movie, but there was never a break in conversation. Hours passed while they shared stories of their time apart. Micah was fascinated by Romero’s dark history, though Shelby wasn’t eager to stay on the subject. She lied and told him that she’d gotten homesick on the other side of the country. She mentioned the weird vibes, but left out the part about disembodied voices summoning her in the middle of the night.

“Weird vibes?” Micah asked.

“You know,” she deflected. “Just weird. I’m pretty sure the president of Carpenter State is a vampire.” Micah laughed. Shelby didn’t.

As the conversation finally began to lull, Micah excused himself to the bathroom. Shelby sank into the couch and took in his new place. It was a larger space than the cramped apartment above the shoe store on State Street, but she worried that he risked selling out his struggling artist appeal for the swanky new place. At least he still had the Pulp Fiction poster. That fucking Pulp Fiction poster.

He’s still cute though, she thought. Micah kept his hair buzzed short when she had dated him, but he hadn’t gotten his hair cut since they separated and for the first time since high school she could see his curls flopping messily to one side. His beard was fuller than she remembered, but he was still partial to those crewneck sweaters that she loved to wear after…

She bit her lip. She hadn’t been fucked in months. Not since…

Shelby didn’t want to think about the Image in the cabin. The things she’d done with that twisted reflection of herself. What it had done to her, and the promise that the Master would deliver a pleasure beyond the scope of anything she would feel in that cabin.

In the bathroom, Micah stood before the mirror with the faucet running. He’d just flushed and only a had a few seconds to psyche himself up before Shelby would expect him. His hands were shaking.

“You’ve got this,” he said. “You’ve got this. She came to you. She wants you.” But his eyes were doubtful and even though he tried to will it into existence, he knew that Shelby was just lonely and needed a friend. Micah was strong enough to swallow that pill. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck it. She needs you.” He said. “To be whatever she needs you to be.” A friend. That’s all she needed. And he was okay with that.

When he opened the door to the bathroom, Micah was surprised to find Shelby standing in the doorway, biting her lip.

“I need you,” she said.

Micah pulled her into a kiss as her fingers sunk into the back of his sweater. They couldn’t get to the bedroom. As he fucked her on the hallway floor, Shelby’s mind wandered to the Image in the cabin and its promise. She imagined that Micah’s cock was the Master’s as he thrust himself inside of her.

“Take me!” she cried. “Take me, Master!”

________________

The cabin was exactly as Shelby had seen it in her dreams. To the right of the front door was the kitchen, to the left the living room. A Navajo blanket sat on the floor in a haphazard attempt to cover up the linoleum. An lumpy old futon sat against the back wall, a crooked “Footprints In the Sand” woodcarving on the wall above it. The television was so old it had a dial. Shelby had never questioned who owned the cabin because, until this moment, she didn’t know it was real. But now, under the influence of the Master’s call, she couldn’t question it. This was where the Master wanted her to be, and she wanted to be here too.

She studied Alex’s face, his blank eyes. The same eyes she’d seen in her Image. And she knew that the Master had delivered her to him.

“I have been chosen,” Alex said coldly. “To fulfill a special purpose.”

Tears pooled up in Shelby’s eyes. “I wanted it to be you,” she smiled.

Shelby knew that it could have been anyone. That if the door had opened and she stood face to face with the Dean of Arts and Sciences, she’d still drop to her knees in surrender.

submit

Shelby’s body shook as the Master’s command dropped her like a bolt of lightning. Her knees buckled and she hit the cold linoleum hard. Alex methodically unbuttoned his pants as Shelby tore at her clothes, ripping her shirt and tearing her bra off to expose her bare breasts. Alex stood before her mindless, his cock fully erect and dripping with the Master. He looked down at her with an empty smirk. In that moment, there was nothing of the man she loved inside of Alex. He was just the vessel chosen to deliver the Master’s power to her. She had never been more attracted to him.

drink

Shelby hungrily took his cock into her mouth: sucking, licking, gripping his cock and pumping. She took him by the ass and pulled him closer into her, forcing him deep into her throat until he came, the black liquid of the Master filling her mouth. She closed her eyes and swallowed, taking in every second of the transformation. She could feel it moving inside of her, the liquid seeping into her veins and taking complete control of her body.

“Take me!” she cried. “Take me, Master!”

assimilate

Alex obeyed, pushing her down onto her hands and knees and taking her from behind. She moaned as he entered her, thrusting violently as he marked her. Each penetration brought more of the Master with it, filling her with the power. The voices of the assimilated seeped into her head as she linked with the hive mind. The Master had taken countless more vessels since the night it first called to her, spreading silently through campus one person at a time. Some of the voices she recognized: Charlotte Blake, the professor who had sponsored her dissertation, was now sponsoring her assimilation.

“The Master was disappointed when you didn’t answer its call,” Charlotte whispered in her mind. “Do you see now? Do you understand the Master’s gift.” “I do,” Shelby moaned, black tears streaking down her cheeks. “The Master claims me, and I accept! Fuck! I accept the gift!”

________________

When Micah was finished, Shelby washed up and joined him in bed. “What was all of that?” he asked. “All what?” she replied. “‘Take me, master, I need you master?’” “I was improvising,” she lied because she didn’t really know the answer herself. “You know, trying a new dynamic.” “Okay,” Micah nodded. “You didn’t like it?” “No,” he quickly replied. “I thought it was interesting. Different.”

“Good different?” “Yeah.” Now Micah was lying.

Shelby curled up next to Micah, resting her hand on his chest. “I’m sorry I left,” she said. “I hated you,” he said. “I know,” she replied. “I love you, Micah.” “I love you too, Shelby.”

________________

Shelby was so used to waking up next to Micah every morning that at first it didn’t register to her that it was Alex’s arms wrapped around her naked body. She was still buzzing from the night before. It felt a lot like the night in Syracuse when she met Micah for pizza at his apartment. One moment they were laughing about old times, and the next she was thirsting for him. Had she jumped Alex in the same way?

Alex rolled over, freeing her from his hold, and she sat up, surrounded by unfamiliar territory. It wasn’t anywhere she recognized in Romero. Not her old apartment, nor the hotel she booked. It wasn’t even the cabin she frequented in her dreams. She realized that Alex had never invited her to his apartment. She’d never seen his bedroom before. She was surprised by its masculinity. His sheets were an indifferent gray and the bed sat deadass on the floor. Micah’s Pulp Fiction poster was framed; Alex’s John Wick poster was tacked to the wall. His room smelled like Febreze.

“Hey there,” he mumbled. Shelby turned to see him sitting up. “Breakfast?” he asked.

Alex returned with McMuffins and McCoffee. Shelby ate quietly while he studied her from across the breakfast counter. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “I just can’t believe you’re really here,” he said. “I can’t either,” she replied shortly. “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

Shelby sighed and said, “You stopped messaging me. I thought something happened to you.”

Alex looked down at his coffee, spinning the cup in circles on the countertop. Without looking back to Shelby he whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re sorry?” “Of course I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t know why.” “Why you’re sorry or why you didn’t reply?” “Both I guess,” he said. “I saw your messages. Every one. And I wanted to reply. I really wanted to reply. I just couldn’t.” “Why?” Alex shook his head. “I don’t know. Every time I’d pick up my phone I would try to type something, anything. But I couldn’t. Like the words weren’t there. No. They were there they just…they were taken from me. I know that doesn’t make any sense but it’s the truth.”

Any other girl who had traveled across the country for a boy just to hear him say he had deliberately ghosted her would have left on the spot. But Shelby knew something about acting upon impulses she couldn’t control. It seemed that was going around lately.

She leaned across the breakfast bar and pressed a kiss to his lips. They were Alex’s lips now, not the Master’s. Truthfully she didn’t know which she preferred, but in that moment she was happy they were his.

She knew that Alex didn’t remember anything from the cabin, but she knew every detail. When the Master’s strength came from its numbers, but its success came from its ability to spread secretly throughout campus. This was easier to achieve if the vessels were left dumb, unaware of their true condition. The vessels had families, careers, hobbies, but they were ready to drop anything for their true condition.

But Shelby was different. The power of the Master flowed freely through her. She could link her mind to Alex’s at will, fuck him senseless without even touching him. She still felt the love for Alex that had driven her back to Carpenter State. Her desire to establish herself in academia, to publish meaningful research. Shelby hadn’t lost any part of her that made her tangibly Shelby. But even with all of those humanly motivations, she had become something else in that cabin. Alex was smiling as their lips parted, but when they settled back he found himself looking into the eyes of a different Shelby. Dull, white eyes. Ones he’d seen before, but couldn’t place where. He opened his mouth to speak, but before a word could escape his lips, Shelby spoke in the Master’s voice.

“Awaken.”

Alex’s eyes glazed over, ready to serve The Master. 

[classicsubliminalbo]

Album Covers (2015-2020)

Originally published Jul 28, 2020

In 2018, Deviantart rolled out "Eclipse" for beta testing. Eclipse was the first update to Deviantart in four years and the first major UI update in almost a decade. It was awful, and everyone who had access (the beta version was only available to paying subscribers) immediately switched back to the old UI. In late 2019, Eclipse was made available to all users with the option to toggle back to the old site. It was still awful, and everyone immediately switched back to the old UI. But in 2020, Eclipsed launched for real and Deviantart officially killed the old UI.

The biggest loss for me were these custom gallery images that ran down the left side of my page. Deviantart has added some minor customization options to Eclipse in the years sense, but it's never been the same.

[classicsubliminalbo]

Assimilation Bonus: Shelby's Image

Originally published Oct 27, 2019 This series is being revised

Though Shelby feared her Image in the cabin, she found herself returning to the cursed place in her dreams, its message imprinted on her soul: "The Master's will is stronger than any amount of distance. It will find us. It will take us!" Even after fleeing Romero for the safety of the east coast, the Image pulled Shelby back to the forest on Romero's outskirts. The same one she'd felt compelled to the night the Master first called out to her.

Even though Shelby was terrified, a large part of her personal horror was that she was so fond of her time in the cabin. She dreaded the way her mind would wander in the middle of a long afternoon into daydreams of the cabin. That was when Shelby realized that she was losing control. When the cabin was no longer limited to the space of her dreams, when it began to invade her conscious mind, she knew that the Master had rooted itself somewhere deep inside of her.

She considered something drastic. Maybe psychotherapy, or even an exorcism, but the thought of losing her time with the Image was too much to consider. So she buried the fear, and accepted the pleasures of the cabin.

Her Image was an alchemic mixture of her subconscious mind and sleaziest desires. It was the part of her that had surrendered itself completely at the Master's first calling, and now it was dutifully poisoning the rest of Shelby's mind. The Image knew every way to please her. It knew where Shelby wanted to be touched, tasted. And it was totally, completely, and wonderfully relentless.

[classicsubliminalbo]

Assimilation #10: Shelby's Submission

Originally published Sep 30, 2019 This series is being revised

“This is irrational, Shelby,” Micah wedged himself between his girlfriend and the door, forcing one last confrontation before she could leave. Shelby had given Micah a day’s warning, but that had been hard to take seriously. Now the sight of his girlfriend at the door with a packed suitcase was giving him some serious breakup flashbacks. “Romero’s history. You don’t have to go back.”

“Micah,” Shelby said softly, raising her hand to meet his face. “It’s only for a couple of days. Look,” She flashed the plane ticket for him to study. “Round trip.” “But why?” he demanded. “Why now?”

It was inevitable that Shelby would find her way back to Micah when she returned to New York. He was one of her oldest friends. The two had grown up together in Lake Placid but hadn’t started dating until their paths crossed three hours away from home at Syracuse University. Micah liked to think it was fate that kept bringing them together. That’s why he wasn’t surprised when he received a text from Shelby that she was in town. He was even less surprised when they ended up sharing a bed that night.

Micah wasn’t the same person that Shelby left when she took that position at Carpenter State. He’d replaced pints of Crown Russe for artisanal coffee, traded in his crippling self-loathing for a position teaching creative writing at a junior college. He’d set this all in motion the day Shelby walked out, swearing off the old vices in favor of getting his shit together. It wasn’t entirely about self-worth—Micah wanted to be ready for Shelby when she returned.

Micah only asked Shelby once about Carpenter State, but he never pushed too hard on the subject. He preferred his fantasies where she returned out of love for him rather than something else. Shelby was equally withholding on the details. “Administrative bullshit,” she said. “You know how it is.”

Micah had an idea how it was. He knew more had happened than Shelby cared to share. At night, she trembled so violently in her sleep that it sometimes jolted Micah awake. He would find her breathing heavily, a cold sweat sticking to her soft skin. Micah never woke her. Instead he would hold her into the early hours of the morning, pressing her head to his chest and running his hand gently over her back until her breathing slowed back down. He tortured himself imagining the horrors that existed in Shelby’s head. He took for granted these borrowed days with her. He worried that it came at the cost of her mental health.

When she awoke she would shrug off the night with a simple, “Bad dreams.”

But those nights faded with the passage of time, and soon it was like she had never left at all.

Shelby’s fist clenched around the handle of her suitcase. “I can’t explain it,” she sighed. “It’s like there’s something inside of me,” she paused when she saw Micah’s reaction to that description then added, “Something in my mind. Something’s pulling me back, and I don’t totally understand it but it’s real and I have to go.”

“At least let me go with you,” Micah pleaded, a fleeting compromise in the face of a lost cause.

Shelby smiled sympathetically. She knew that Micah cared for her. She cared for him too. And that was why he couldn’t go with her.

The truth was, Shelby had never been completely honest with Micah about anything. She’d kept him at an arms distance since the breakup, and even after returning, their relationship was never more than something physical. She needed someone. Leaving Romero wasn’t a simple choice for her. Shelby hadn’t just left Syracuse to escape a train wreck of a relationship. She wanted to prove to herself that she could settle thousands of miles away from home, succeeding on her savvy alone. Few people knew who Shelby Irving was in Romero, and in an ultra-competitive academic world, that was a blessing.

Shelby needed the safety of Micah’s warm embrace to remind her that she’d made the right choice returning home. And she was impressed with his change. She’d left a cheap drunk and returned to find a grown adult who’d pieced his life together. Even more impressive was that he’d made the change without her as an incentive.

Without Micah, life in Syracuse was rough. In the day, she fought the constant nagging of her failures at Carpenter State. At night, she returned to campus in her dreams. She saw the faces of the she left behind. The students and the coworkers she’d abandoned. A whole new life left unlived.

And of course, there was the cabin in the black pond.

Those dreams had started back in Romero and only grew more vivid with distance. At first the cabin had felt like a location in a fairytale. It was a lodge buried at the bottom of a deep, black pool of water in the heart of the Romero woods. Inside of the cabin lived a mirror image of Shelby.  A wicked caricature of the woman that had been sent as a messenger by the very voice that haunted her. The Image claimed to be a part of Shelby’s soul, ripped from her body the night the Master first called to her. Shelby told herself that this was some bizarre, recurring nightmare. But she feared her subconscious couldn’t be so original. Micah was the writer, after all.

And the more Shelby returned to the cabin, the more it came to life in startling detail. It was a cozy little hut with only three rooms. The living room shared space with a kitchen area, with a cramped bathroom and bedroom packed into the back of the building. The cabin was dimly lit, no electricity to keep a city dweller sane. In place of entertainment was a lone bookshelf containing volumes of nonfiction war books. The décor was Native American, with anachronistic Navajo rugs on the floors. On the bedroom wall hung a gaudy photograph depicting “Footprints in the Sand.”

This wasn’t the kind of place that Shelby would visit by choice, but when drawn to the cabin in her dreams, it felt as if she’d lived in this place her entire life. Every time she returned it got a little harder to imagine herself anywhere else.

And there was the Image, always luring her deeper. Tempting her with promises of the Master. Shelby caught herself consenting to the Image, allowing it to take command of her within the cabin. She would lie down on the bed and allow her mind to fade away as the Image buried its head in her pussy. Whatever the image was—her subconscious, a piece of her soul, or fragile bits of her sanity chipping away—it knew how to take care of her. Each orgasm would weaken Shelby’s defenses, taking her closer to that mindless state she’d refused so many months ago. She knew this was happening, but it didn’t scare her anymore. With the condition that this was all just a dream, Shelby felt safe to indulge in her darkest desires.

She would tremble in her sleep not out of fear, but from the pure ecstasy of being putty in another being’s hands.

Sometimes the Image would test its control over her. When Shelby had cum and was sated and most susceptible to the Image’s control, it would settle down next to her glistening, naked body and whisper a command in her ear.

“I love sucking cock,” Shelby would repeat, as if it was her own will.

The next morning when Shelby awoke, she’d find herself unable to contain her carnal urges. Micah would welcome this change in Shelby’s behavior as her lips wrapped around him. “What is this?” he’d breathe.

Shelby would look up with glassy eyes and smile, “I love sucking cock.”

Displays of obedience in real life would be met with rewards in the cabin. The Image treated Shelby well if she continued to obey. She looked forward to her nights in the cabin, she looked forward to her training with the Image. But the experience was fleeting. A few months removed from Romero, from the powerful voice of the Master, the dreams suddenly stopped. And Shelby was left completely alone.

But it wasn’t the Image that commanded Shelby to return to Romero. It was something a bit more simple, something a bit more human. Shelby wanted to go back to Romero for a boy.

She hadn’t told Micah about Alex. She didn’t want to complicate their reunion with the needless drama of a fling. But while she was rekindling her relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Shelby remained in contact with her best friend from Romero. They spoke through text, failing to fall out of contact like long distance friends inevitably do. Alex kept her up to date on all the Romero weirdness. The Dean of Arts and Sciences had recently died mysteriously, for example, in the middle of a video chat with a camgirl. The dean wasn’t popular and had become the subject of much dunking on Twitter.

It wasn’t anything Alex said that spurred Shelby’s sudden trip, rather, it was everything he didn’t. In a year apart, Alex had never failed to respond to any of her messages. But now he’d completely ghosted, leaving her that cursed checkmark that confirmed he’d seen her last message. At first Shelby told herself that Alex was busy. The semester was ending, and he was likely buried in his senior thesis. But weeks passed, and with the memory of everything that had happened in Romero, Shelby felt that she had few options.

Something had happened in Romero. Something had happened to Alex.

The following morning, Shelby was driving back into Romero alone in her rental car, white-knuckling the steering wheel.

Carpenter State students joke that Romero is the last stop in the United States. Though a couple county roads twist like veins through the dense forest surrounding Romero, only one route leads into Romero proper, creating a city that feels largely isolated from the rest of the continental United States. As Shelby approached her exit from the east, her instincts to follow the GPS conflicted with her knowledge of the area. Ultimately, she trusted her GPS more than memory, and soon the car was bumping down a poorly paved county road as the GPS led her down a detour through the woods.

Though unexpected, the detour was a welcome change of scenery from the stretch of highway she’d followed all morning. Shelby had never actually taken a hike through the Romero woods, scared away by the local ghost stories. Shelby had always considered herself a skeptic, but when it came down to it she’d always thought it was best to air on the side of caution. That is how she got out of Romero, after all.

Miles of massive pines towered over the woods like watchmen keeping anyone from entering the city—or leaving it. Shelby followed the tight road for a mile before the GPS directed her to the right at a fork in the road. Her instincts were on high alert now, warning her that she was moving away from the city, closer to the heart of the woods.

Her hands had softened on the wheel, her knuckles receding as she relaxed, overtaken but a sudden peace. She would follow the GPS. It would take her where she needed to go. 

The road came to a sudden stop at a rusted metal gate barring entrance from any vehicles. Shelby didn’t know how long she’d been following it, driving absently down the winding road like blood through an artery. She blinked, trying to recover her senses. The GPS was caught in a loop of recalculating her route.

awaken

Slowly, Shelby opened her door and stepped out into a cool morning breeze that licked across her skin. The sensation didn’t register to the entranced woman.

come

Shelby stepped forward, following the call of the voice into the heart of the woods. Like the women before her, she knew that something was controlling her but those nights she’d spent in the cabin with the Image had dulled her once alert senses to the power of the Master’s call. She was now totally in its thrall, a puppet, a pre-vessel ready to submit herself to its power.

As she neared the black pond, the nature around her showed signs of bending to the Master’s will. The plants moved, not as if alive, but twitching like a poor stop motion animation from the 1950s. Black, glossy tendrils creeped up the bark of gray pine trees, the Master feeding off of the life force of this once great forest.

Shelby came to a stop at the edge of the pond, admiring her mindless reflection, the mirror image she’d gotten to know so intimately. The surface of the pond bobbed slowly up and down as if it were breathing.

It was all like her dream. And it was all real.

come

For a moment, Shelby thought the Master was calling her into the pond. Just like her dream, she would dip her toe into the dark waters of the Master and find the cabin hidden beneath its depths. But the Master wasn’t calling her to the pond.

She looked up from her reflection and spotted across the pond a small cabin.

Shelby approached the cabin slowly, not out of caution, but out of absolute reverence for the voice controlling her. As she stepped up onto the porch, she was surprised to see the cabin door creep open.

From the shadows of the cabin entrance, Alex stepped out onto the porch. He studied Shelby with an expression of pure terror.

“This is a dream,” Shelby whispered.

“No,” Alex replied. And as his eyes glassed over, his gaping-mouthed terror twisted into a proud smile. “The Master willed it.”

Shelby took Alex’s hand and he led her into the cabin.