Nostalgia Gaming: Splatterhouse

Still on the topic of violent video games, here’s a classic from the prehistoric days of lumbering arcade machines.



There was a Splatterhouse arcade machine at my local ice rink and I remember spending a few Saturdays in my youth feeding it 10p and 20p coins. The graphics were totally wacko and disturbed compared to other games at the time. There was a boss with chainsaws for arms, crawling baby things with oversize heads and many vomiting alien monsters/torture victims. The first boss section had waves and waves of bloody worms springing out at you from all angles in a room piled high with red meat. It was sick, it was gruesome and it was fun. There was a satisfying ‘Thwack!’ to splattering enemies up against the back wall with a meaty swing of a pipe.

It was also fiendishly difficult. Back then most arcade games followed a simple formula—a fairly pedestrian stage one, followed by a harder-but-still-possible stage two, and then ramping up into a black hole of difficulty designed to suck all the small change out of your pocket. Mr Chainsawman did for me on many an occasion, although I did see the occasional player stumble past him only to fall at the floating cross and severed ghoul heads at the end of stage four.

A few years back I managed to find a version to run on my PC with MAME (a fantastic program for nostalgia gaming geeks). With infinite simulated 10p coins I would have my revenge, bwahahahaha…

Just about. By level six and an organic corridor full of wibbly embryo monster-things jumping on your back at every opportunity, the game developers are telling you to ‘sod off!’ in no uncertain terms. If it wasn’t for some gratuitous save state scumming (yeah, because even infinite coins isn't enough...) I’m not even sure I’d have completed it at all.

It’s a game I have many fond memories of. It was the first arcade game I remember to really go for it when it came to gross horror visuals. There’s a recent remake I’ve been meaning to check out, even though I’m sure it won’t have that same…you know…Thwack!

I never could pull off that damn sliding kick…

Won't someone think of the children . . .

I’m normally against all forms of censorship, but the recent overturning of a proposed California law to ban the sale of violent video games leaves me perched rather precariously on the fence. Don’t get me wrong, I love violent video games. Whatever games console I have lying around usually gets updated around the same time the next Silent Hill or Resident Evil instalment comes along. I also thoroughly enjoyed playing the notorious Manhunt. However, I’m not sure twelve-year-old kids should be playing these games.

Attitudes are changing now that the Nintendo and PlayStation generation have grown up and are old enough to have children of their own. Video games have grown up too and are no longer seen as solely for children’s entertainment.

Not everybody appears to have caught on.

It always reminds me of a (possibly) apocryphal story about a video/DVD rental store clerk and a certain, highly notorious, Japanese animated film.


Dad walks up with two young sons in tow and puts a copy of Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend on the counter.

Dad: I’d like to rent this film.

Clerk looks down at fresh-faced young boys.

Clerk: Um, I’m not sure it would be suitable for them.

Dad: Whaddya mean. It’s a cartoon. Action, explosions, giant robots, that kind of thing.

Clerk: Um, it’s quite . . . extreme.

Dad: Don’t be silly. It’s a cartoon. Rent me the goddamn film or I’ll call your manager.

Clerk (hands up): Okay. Whatever you say.

The next day.

Dad storms back into store and slams video down on the counter.

Dad: You sick fuck! What are you doing renting me this sick filth! Fucking pedo! I’ll call the police on you.

Clerk: Um, I did say it wasn’t suitable for minors.


I don’t mind age restrictions. They’re good defence when the moral meddlebutts try to use the Think-of-the-children! card when they want to ban something. Britain, I think, uses a similar ratings system to the one used for movies, which seems sensible to me. When the moral meddlebutts next get in an indignant froth about the latest GTA or Manhunt and how children shouldn’t be playing such sick filth, it’s easy to counter by pointing at the 18 certificate and asking how children are playing the game in the first place. Think-of-the-children! becomes Where-are-the-parents? and draws a lot of venom out of the meddlebutt’s attack. I’d rather developers had the freedom to create games for adults covering adult themes, without worrying about a latter-day Mary Whitehouse whipping up a moral panic and shutting them down.

Like the original blogger, I’m not sure if this is a victory to be celebrated. It’s always hard to know with these things. The moral meddlebutts are getting sneakier at depriving the public of things the meddlebutts disapprove of. There are ways to ban things without explicitly banning them, in the same way a NC-17 rating will financially destroy a film in the US. Maybe this was a battle that needed to be fought and won.

Prick-Tease Muse

I think my muse might be a prick-tease. All of Saturday before me and she's off shopping/drinking/tormenting poor misguided souls. Come Sunday and just before I'm due to head off to cricket practise she's back with fiery inspiration.

Write this story now, now, now!

I know her lies. If I cry off practise, she'll be gone again within an hour and it'll be another afternoon lost to the great time-suck that is Civilization. I'm better off getting out in the sunshine and giving the little (cancerous malignant creators of filth) grey cells a good airing.

Looming deadlines are always odd for me. Sometimes they spur me on, other times I grind right down to a halt. Time for a project switch methinks to get the juices going again.

A prick-tease muse, hmm. Given the kind of stories I write, I really shouldn't be that surprised . . . :)

Harry Potter and the Future of Publishing

There have been rumblings about JK Rowling’s new online venture, Pottermore. This week those questions were answered. While Harry Potter fans will understandably be delighted by the new collaborative web site thingymajiggum, it’s the eBook side of things that’s of interest to those of us with a toe (nail) in publishing.

The Harry Potter series is one of the most lucrative franchises in the history of publishing. And JK Rowling holds the electronic rights…

Can you say million dollar diamond mine.

The publishing world has been thrown into a lot of turmoil with the rise of eBooks. Age-old ways of doing things are being ripped up. Authors are going it alone and grabbing a bigger slice of their own pie. The interesting question was always going to be how one of the most successful authors ever would bring their much-loved series to the digital market.

Well the answer is out and I suspect various high-level Amazon and B & N execs were choking on their coffee this morning. The Harry Potter books will come out online, but exclusively from the Pottermore site.

Ouch.

That’s really taking control of your work. Rowling didn’t cut out her publishers entirely, they’re still playing a role, but it sounds like she thinks she’s big enough to manage just fine without the services of the biggest bookseller in the world.

Interesting times indeed…

Plans and Schemes

The "Locked in with a Succubus" mini-serial is over, so now it's time to move onto pastures new. Here's my current todo list.

• Write story for Literotica's Nude Day contest. This may involve weres. It may actually appear in this year's contest. Bearing in mind I originally intended Locked in with a Succubus as a Valentine's contest entrant it's probably safer to assume it'll appear next year.
• Write story for an eXcessica anthology due out middle of next year. This has a hard deadline of July 17th. Time to start sweating...
  
• Clean up Succubus Summoning 1o1 and get it ready for publication. My first novel, yay! I'll be adding a lot of extra scenes to develop Phil's character a bit.
• Gather enough stories from my stockpile to put a 4th collection together in time to go out first half of 2012. A little hampered in that the current stockpile is a bit lacking in stock.
• Complete Succubus Summoning 201. I suspect the only item in the list some of you care about. I kind of feel all GRRM about it as it's been clattered all over my schedule because I'm always behind with other things. Thankfully, I have most of the plot planned out in my head and it will be everything you hoped it would be :D.
• Anthology collection #5 for Halloween 2012. (yeah, right. Dream on snail-pace writing boy!)

Of course, most of this won't actually appear until 2012, which is kind of in the way-too-far in the future category. What about the right here and right fucking now. Here's the 2011 run down.

• There's the Literotica Nude Day contest story (assuming I finish it in time). You can also expect to see me mount equally fruitless challenges against the unstoppable juggernaut of HEA romance (with or without vampires) in:
• Literotica Halloween contest. Because all my stories qualify.
• Literotica Christmas contest. Because it's already written (naughty, naughty elves!).
• A Summer Dance with a Succubus is in one of eXcessica's forthcoming anthologies. Oh dear, some readers are going to be in for a shock if they go on from that to my other stories. Oh well, everyone has to get a little Unretrofied now and again ;)
• A Succubus for Halloween. Collection #3. Yum. Lots of new goodies including a brand new Nicole story. Be warned, it fits Halloween well. Horror-head is awfully hard to rein in for that time of the year. Halloween Nÿte is in there and it isn't even the most fucked-up, nastiest story.

I enjoyed writing the Locked in mini-serial, so I can see myself doing something similar around Halloween to promote the book. Not sure on what yet. Giving away stuff is fun, but I've got to keep some things back otherwise my writing career will be extremely short-lived ;)

Locked in with a Succubus: The Inside View

Okay, so it looks like I need to run through an explanation after all. :)

Whether people got it or not depended on whether they'd already read my earler story: Delivery Special Soap. That's a fail on my part as I always intended the recurring characters and cheeky little references to enhance the stories for the readers who were familiar with my other works, but not be essential to the understanding of the story for the first time reader.

Here's a little peek from the other side to clear up any confusion:

Demons (and possibly other mythological beings) exist in that world, but they're rare and largely unknown. George doesn't know they exist. Inari, the mysterious woman he does some odd jobs for, does and she has a problem.

Virgins are extremely tasty delicacies to a succubus, especially the nice ones and even more so the older ones. As Nicole points out, George is quite the hot commodity in the succubus world. Inari knows it's only a matter of time before one of the nastier demons (Like Orchrhys in Delivery Special Soap) catches his scent and makes a snack out of his soul.

George hints at Inari's earlier attempts in Part 6, although he doesn't recognise them for what they are.

The problem is he's now too old and a little too tasty. (Hinted at twice. At the very beginning Nicole isn't going to let him into her house. He also mentions about the masseuse, Arisa, making an excuse and leaving. They're worried they're going to eat the poor guy!)

The wine is important as most of you probably guessed.

Mysterious label. No recognisable branding. Yeah, that's not wine. It's how George is able to have a lot of sex with Nicole and not meet the usual fate of most of my protagonists when they have a lot of sex with a succubus. It keeps his energy levels high enough so he doesn't die. (Hinted at again. Nicole recognises what it is. As soon as George shows her the bottle she changes her mind and lets him in)

Nicole picks up on George's slightly submissive tendencies, but gets it wrong with the first room - a classic dominatrix dungeon - she picks.

The second room is right and Nicole reveals her succubus nature. Because of the wine she can also be a little more sexually aggressive than normal.

Except it goes wrong and she loses control. Her behaviour should (I hope!) seem a lot different in Part 9 compared to other chapters.

George passes out and then wakes back up. What happened in the meantime? Another oblique hint. George notices smudges on her cheeks. Succubi can cry and Nicole was extremely upset a few moments before. She thought she'd killed him.

Of course, I'm not going to tell you this. Why spoil the fun when there's another three chapters of will-she-won't-she-kill-him to play with! :)

It's all from George's PoV, so he doesn't realise. Nicole, ever the sublime consort, slips straight back into her role as the teasing demoness. At this point George is in no danger. Nicole has already taken his virginity and gorged on his energy. The final pieces to explaining her behaviour drop into place in Part 12 when she tells George she knows what his secret fantasies are.

The explanation for it all is in the epilogue when Nicole tells Inari her "stink is all over him".

Yeah, if you haven't read Delivery Special Soap, you've got no chance with that one. In the world Nicole inhabits, it makes sense for demons not to tangle with each other over a single human when there are so many others to prey upon. Nicole has fulfilled Inari's request. She's taken George's virginity (so he's no longer a beacon of tasty snackness to other sex demons) and claimed him as 'her kill'. Which was Inari's aim right from the start. Whether the other demons hold up to that, well that's another story...

That's a bit of a booboo on my part. Oblique references to link the story with Arisa from the earlier story are one thing. It's an Easter Egg for the people that spot the reference. Making it vital to understanding the denouement . . . that's the kind of clever-cleverness that falls straight into stupid.

Oh well. That's the good part about putting stories up for free. It's easier to make the right corrections before they find their way into anthologies. :)

I hope that clears things up anyway.

Locked in with a Succubus, part 13

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12.

Epilogue


The demoness with horns, wings, tail and empty black eyes lounged on the great big black waterbed. She picked up a phone from the shelf behind her and dialled a number.

“It’s done,” she said.

She stretched in contentment.

“Yes, he was extremely enjoyable.”

Her face darkened.

“There was a . . . moment. It passed.”

A smile returned to her face. She looked at the human lying still on the bed. Her devil’s tail lifted up off the mattress and she used the tip to tickle the man’s nose.

“My stink is most definitely all over him. Your little virgin has been comprehensibly despoiled. That should keep the others away.”

She grinned as George’s nose twitched and he murmured. Still in his sleep, his arms flailed ineffectually at her teasing tail. He snorted and rolled over on the bed.

“Mmm, you don’t need him back right away, do you? I was thinking of keeping him for a little longer. One day, that’s all.”

Nicole heard the reply. Her smile widened, revealing the delicate points of two fangs.

“Oh good. Send over another bottle of that wine.”


THE END


Now, hopefully, if I’ve done my job correctly, that ending should make sense and, if you go back and read again from the start, you should find a lot of Nicole’s actions and words take on a whole extra meaning. If there are still questions, I’ll put up an explanation filling in the gaps from Nicole’s side next week sometime. (As a hint—this previous story might help).

I hope you enjoyed this little serial. If you liked it, please support my writing by buying my books. A brand new story featuring Nicole is in my third collection, A Succubus for Halloween, coming out—appropriately enough—Halloween this year. I’ll put up more details nearer the time and maybe even find another little serial to run to promote it.