Emily and I had to rush to get to the Roman Baths on time, but when we got there it was a cool experience to have. The site of the Roman Baths was actually rediscovered and turned into a museum in the late 1800s. The baths themselves are actually below street level, but when the construction began for the museum, buildings were built above the baths. The interior of the area surrounding the baths bears resemblance to what one would expect from Ancient Rome, with tall pillars, a terrace, and statues erected to Roman gods and goddesses. Without given any of this information about the baths or without much prior knowledge about authentic Roman life, somebody visiting the baths could easily believe the Great Baths and the pillars and statues surrounding it were actually authentic and discovered with the baths themselves rather than a later construction.

There was a lot to see in general and Emily and I found with every turn more things to discover, though we did have to rush a bit because we arrived slightly late due to the fact we left Glastonbury later than scheduled. Along with the main baths, there were hot springs, a temple to Minerva, other artifacts on display like pre-Roman coins, and realistic looking videos in different parts of the baths depicting life-size Romans going about their daily lives using the public baths, bartering at markets, and more. I wish we had had more time there– even if we had made it on time, a half hour wouldn’t be enough to properly appreciate everything there– but it was still an enjoyable experience and a rather nice change of pace from the more typically English sites we saw on our trip.

“ There is never a harder time to argue in defence of civil liberties than in the aftermath of a horrific and deadly terrorist attack. It’s easy to argue for universal rights during periods of relative stability, after all, what harm could possibly come to pass? But during times of bloodshed, of anger and of disgust, it’s somewhat harder to step back and make the case for civil liberties, even when that case appears to suggest a lack of will to tackle the cause of the bloodshed. But it is important that we do so, because we can be sure that those that are the enemies of liberty and freedom will be seizing the opportunity (whilst simultaneously failing to see who they share that cause with). “

Blog post by Ian Clark

Good Riddance, Tumblr - SIZEKINK .COM

Hey all, so what with the news that tumblr is going to be officially banning visual smut content (though apparently writing is still kosher), I formally urge y’all to back up your shit, back up other people’s shit that you’ve liked, and get the hell out of dodge. 

I’ve been saying this for a long-ass time, and I’ll say it again, but the kink communities that rely on social media need to stopand figure out another way to operate. Free platforms are not free lunches – you agree to the terms, and if the host company suddenly decides to turn into a bully, there’s nothing you can do but jump ship and hope the next place doesn’t screw you over and delete all your hard work in the process too.

I’ve thought about getting rid of sizekink.com for a few reasons, namely that I’m broke these days and all my domains renew around the same time (I pay like $60+/yr for them), and the fact that my partner got really sick this year and has been in and out of the hospital since August so I haven’t had much motivation to make with the sexy, so my site has been languishing. But with the news that Tumblr is going puritan – though the writing was on the wall since they were bought by Yahoo – I’m keeping it up in protest. Make the smut you want to see in the world. Host the smut you want to see in the world. At least I know that when I’m ready to start drawing more again, though, my website will still be there for me.

In response to the news, some of the members of my robo/technophile Discord server, Kiss Kiss Clang Clang, have tossed around the idea of starting up our own forum – somewhere safe from the meddling of big business and slash-and-burn PR policy (masquerading, of course, as concern for sex trafficking victims, FOSTA-style). In the meantime, we still have the KKCC imageboard for hosting art that folks want to save from the tumblr censors.

If you guys don’t really know where to set up shop over the next couple weeks, feel free to hang out at KKCC in the meantime; many of us are trying to figure out where a more permanent home might be and what it might look like going forward. If you have suggestions, definitely pop in to give your 2c, or reply to the blog post that this is autoposted from. (Comments are enabled, and you don’t have to register or anything.)

I’ll be removing all of my art from this account in the interim, and will continue to sync blog posts though they will be text/link only. Being an adult blog, I’m already invisible on tumblr’s search, but some of you with SFW blogs may still want to keep up with me.

Tumblr can suck it. Let’s figure this thing out, guys!

As an addendum to the previous post, I’d like to take this opportunity to come out as a trans man. This discovery has been largely due to my time roleplaying with Reuven. Whether or not we ever have time to finish BST, I’m grateful for having the experience to play Hawker and having gotten the opportunity to get to know myself a little better while doing it.

I’m no stranger to trans identity, I should note. The roleplay didn’t “make” me trans or anything like that – I’ve known I was not cis for many years, and there have been major signs of transmasculinity going back as far as I can remember. From childhood attempts to shave, to teenage attempts to bind, to the inexplicable lifelong obsession with crossdressing, I’ve always been a little off.

So if you’ve been referring to me as either “she” or “they”, I’m ordering a full-stop: please exercise the use of male pronouns when talking to/about me from now on!

I’m also putting some of my smut projects on hold while I sort myself out. As it happens, sometimes the mental switch when a trans person realizes their true identity is sudden and complete, and continuing to do things the way they’d done them before can be unbearable at worst, or plain unappealing at best. For me, the shift has indeed happened, but I’m still mostly caught up in the whirlwind of it all, and I’m still evaluating my feelings right now. To go back to writing things from a woman’s POV right now would be difficult and uninteresting to me. This may not always be the case, but for now it is. I’m also, at the moment, unsure of how to handle my old submissive/tiny leanings. I still associate them with femininity and womanhood right now and am currently swinging WAY in the other direction with all these dominant urges, so time will only tell with that as well, though I know I’ve still got lots of bottom/sub/tiny bones in my body. It’s just a matter of giving myself time to adjust.

Say goodbye to the strictly femmy nonbinary sub that I was – and say hello to the new masc vers/switchy/size-shifting me~

So recently I committed to a no-dating-June&July- challenge. It has been about 2 weeks and I must say, so far so good. It’s like removing the option for a certain desire, calms the desire down altogether. Since it is not an option for now, I feel relaxed and focused on myself. I have been processing the break up more and I feel better with each day.

Now, I have been observing something recently, mostly in myself, but also in the people around me. It seems like we’re always looking for approval of our decisions. Constantly asking each other for a second opinion, even though deep down we already know what we should do. It’s just that we haven’t developed enough trust in ourselves. Sometimes these pieces of advice even  confuse us more than anything else.. They actually cloud our own intuitive judgment.

And so, I have decided to play: Alone in the world for 1 month.

The rules are very simple.

I am not allowed to ask anyone’s advice or opinion on anything. This could be outfit advice, what I should eat or whether I should move to Yemen (who knows what can happen in a month). No matter how trivial or huge the decision is that comes up during the whole month of June, I won’t ask anyone for help. It’s like I am alone in the world and there is no one to fall back on, just me and my intuition. I am curious to see what happens. Perhaps it’ll result in a clearer intuition, perhaps I’ll go crazy, who knows.

I invite you to go wild and join me!

(Crossposted from https://jukeboxemcsa.wordpress.com/2022/04/30/liner-notes-for-april-2022/)

(This post has been brought to you by the efforts of my 198 clever and captivating Patrons! Visit my Patreon page to learn how to become one of them.)

I know February is the shortest month, but honestly April feels like it goes by much quicker - those extra two days really just vanish into the lengthening daylight hours and the changing weather and the anticipation of real spring. I don’t even know where the time went… but wherever it went, it left behind a whole month of new stories! Let’s take a look at them together.

Unjust Desserts: Anyone who knows me in real life knows that one of my personal interests is cooking. I’m not much more than barely competent in the kitchen myself, but I love the science and the aesthetics and the history of food - it’s one of the few remaining art forms that hasn’t been affected by recording technology, despite our best efforts. You can film a concert and set a once-in-a-lifetime performance into fixed form for eternity, but a great meal from a brilliant chef exists only to be consumed. That fascinates me.

And so yes, this took a lot of my interest in food and blended it with mind control to do a lot of bodily transformation fic, which isn’t usually my gig but which I’m always peripherally aware of due to its crossovers with my particular kink. I’ll admit, I expected it to be a bit better received given how many times I hear people ask me for transformation and hucow stories, but who knows. Maybe I should have centered it on Sammie’s experience instead.

You Can’t Resist It: I’ll be honest - this one was pretty much just Mark Ruffalo’s “That’s my secret, Cap, I’m always angry” transposed into a ‘horny for mind control’ fic. That’s not to say I’m not happy with it - there’s nothing quite so much fun as writing a monologue from a sinister brainwasher who’s getting off on the demonstration of their complete and total power to reshape their victim’s will, and I liked putting in the little details of how the supposedly plucky young heroine tracked him down and figured out what was going on. But yeah, it was really just a vehicle to get to that gag at the end. Because let’s face it, a lot of people do want to just pack it all in and become a mindless sex slave in this economy.

Zipper: I’ve mentioned it before, but I really do love single-word titles - there’s just something so punchy about them, something that lends itself to multiple interpretations and double meanings and powerful, vivid images. Even though there’s no other meaning to this particular word, I feel like it immediately and intensely focuses the mind on that gleam of metal and what lies behind it, which is perfect for a story about hypnotic focus.

It also gave me a chance to talk about some of the more complicated aspects of hypnosis kink in the real world; as much as we like to imagine for fantasy purposes that hypnotizing someone makes them into a helpless slave with no will or volition, or that there’s a binary between 'resisting completely and shaking off all those insidious suggestions’ and 'obeying mindlessly’, the reality is that human beings are messy and confusing and the boundary between a suggestion you get and a compulsion you have is every bit as messy and confusing as everything else. Cleo didn’t lose her ability to walk away when she started submitting deeply to her hypnotist, and she didn’t lose her kinks and turn-ons when she had her break-up. There’s not always a clear and obvious line of demarcation between what you want and what you’re being controlled to do, which is what makes long and occasionally tedious discussions of ethics so important.

Dark Necessities: This was super heavily inspired by a particular scene in the Stephen King vampire novel 'Salem’s Lot’ that stuck with me probably since childhood (my parents left a lot of very inappropriate books lying around the house when I was a kid, and although I was too young to have the attention span for a full-length novel, that one is full of little vignettes that are just the perfect size for an eight-year old. If not the right subject matter.) In it, the vampire Barlow visits with the local caretaker for the town dump just after sundown and has a friendly chat with him that shades very gradually into hypnosis and blood drinking, and it always caught my attention that this minor character is really the only one that Barlow views as worthy of his time and direct interaction. King is a very working-class writer (a trait I feel like I share) and so I wanted to write something about a working woman who’s singled out not as a victim, but as a potentially kindred spirit who’s ready to become something more.

Warning Sign: I don’t know why, but hacking of medical devices is where my mind always goes whenever I think of cyborgs. I mean, obviously I’ve got a kink, but also it’s just such a terrifying and fascinating notion to me that we could reach a future where prosthetics and augmentation reach these dizzying heights and have a whole new set of fears to deal with solely because some people are assholes (although it’s worth mentioning here, outside the context of fiction, that a lot of the treatment of human augmentation to overcome disabilities is written from a very ableist perspective in general and those cyborg body parts aren’t really the solution people think they are, and the people who are living with them and using them as we approach this future aren’t being listened to the way they should be when they talk about the real problems with cyborg limbs and cybernetics as a mobility aid).

Honestly, that lengthy parenthetical really is the tweet here, because this is about someone who gets a cyborg prosthetic they’re told will fix all their problems and finds out that no, there’s a whole host of practical issues that were downplayed by a medical establishment so proud of their achievements and glowing with the glamour of Helping the Helpless that they didn’t really take on board the feedback from the people who had to use the damn things. Couple that with the very real and very scary obsession with linking every damn thing to a computer network and not thinking even once, let alone twice about the way hackers are always ten steps ahead of security experts (not to denigrate security experts, but they’re fundamentally in a reactive position which puts them at a disadvantage) and you get a story that sits squarely in the middle of a lot of uncomfortable truths. It may not be sexy, but I think it’s good.

And that’s April in the books! Join me next week for another blog post, and next month for another Liner Notes!

(Crossposted from https://jukeboxemcsa.wordpress.com/2022/04/27/early-bird-sneak-peek-just-a-taste/)

Hi all! It’s time for another Early Bird Sneak Peek, where I share a glimpse at the story my lucky Early Bird patrons will be enjoying next Saturday thanks to their pledges at my Patreon page! Of course, if you’re not an Early Bird patron, you’ll still get a story next week–“Warning Sign”, teased previously, has already been submitted to the EMCSA. But the Early Bird patrons will be getting “Just a Taste” (MC MF FD)!

Nita has a bizarre theory about the pheromones in her vaginal lubrication, one that Marcus doesn’t really want to argue over but can’t help refuting. He’s getting drawn into a conversation he didn’t ask for, and that’s not all he’s getting drawn into. Here’s a taste (but just a taste of a taste):

Marcus opened his mouth, but the sheer bewildering surrealism of the situation choked off any words before he could say them. How could he even argue with something so utterly bizarre? He wasn’t a biologist, his major was structural engineering. He couldn’t cite any studies or point to any research to prove her wrong; all he had to go on was a deep conviction that if human pheromones could really have an effect like that, someone would have documented it a long time ago. If a woman could genuinely drug a man with her… with her natural lubrication… everyone would know about it. They’d probably teach it in fucking health class or something. ‘Boys, we all know you’re interested in becoming generous lovers, but let’s talk about the risks of oral sex with intensely hormonal women….’

But as strong as his conviction was, it wouldn’t convince Nita. The chestnut-haired woman with the sparkling hazel eyes seemed utterly immune to any of the counter-arguments he’d provided so far, and she wouldn’t let it drop. And since she was so clearly, obviously, overwhelmingly wrong, Marcus couldn’t either. Even if he hated confrontation, even if he especially hated confrontation with a forceful, confident personality who relished being challenged, Marcus couldn’t just sit there and concede such a transparently egotistical delusion. Which left him stuck. Mouth open and nothing to say.

And of course, Nita couldn’t resist teasing him further. “Is it working already?” she asked playfully, her stroking fingers brushing the denim fabric over her pubic mound. “It wouldn’t surprise me, you know. I spend a lot of time in this room when Tia’s not home, and sometimes I get a little bit… you know. Excited. A girl’s got needs, after all.” She gave Marcus a conspiratorial stare, enlisting him in a conspiracy he wanted no part of. “On a day like this, with no work and no school and Tia over at Drae’s place all day? Sometimes I play with my pussy for hours.”

Hope you enjoy it!