Moving to AiryTales.net

This blog is being relocated to my own site. It's about time I had a permanent home!

http://airytales.net

And the first post explains what Airy Tales was going to be and will still become!

Prose That Blows 500 - NOW!

Carnatic's "Prose That Blows 500" short story contest is underway! Entries are being taken for just one week. The full guidelines are here, in Carnatic's post on bodyinflation.org:

http://tinyurl.com/proseblows

And the actual mechanics of how to enter are a little later in the thread. It's fun, we're doing it anonymously so everybody's story can stand on its own. Exactly how to do that:

http://bit.ly/11EyIF

You only have until June 30, so get to enterin'! This is a great idea and I'm proud to support Carnatic's initiative.

Cyndi Irresistible: The Lost Recordings

Spotted a few questions about Cyndi Irresisitible lately -- namely "Where is she and is she still doing inflatable voice work?"

She's fine, and she is still doing voice work, but on a professional local level, and she's not currently taking inflatable commissions. However, she's promised to lend her talents to a portion of Airy Tales, whenever that gets off the ground. AOL deleted all the user webpages last year without warning, including her site and my site, so her samples have been offline for several months. A thread at Expansion Mansion caught my eye, but the link they offered no longer works, so I figured I could post them on Airy Tales.

But when I went looking for the files, I found more than I remembered. Only three sample files/public projects were ever released on her site, but I found three more that simply never made it out very far.

So, here's a six-pack of Cyndi MP3s for those of you who might like 'em.

THE ORIGINAL FREEBIES - released 2004-2007

CyndiIrresistible_Sample1.mp3
Improvised inflation progression. This is how the "raw" files will sound when you get them.

CyndiIrresistible_MsWonka.mp3
Aloziller has given permission for me to release one of the Wonka-themed projects I recorded for him. Imagine that Ms. Wonka was half as patient and twice as malicious as Mr. Wonka was with Violet Beauregarde's gum accident and...well, download and hear for yourself! Warning: Explicit/graphic content.

CyndiIrresisible_SelfControlRedux.mp3
This is a recent completed project (with effects) that the anonymous client has given permission for me to release. This is inspired by Inflate123's short story "Self Control." Please note that I did not do the post-production sound effects and sound effects are not part of my services.

THE RARITIES - released 2009

CyndiIrresistible_Sample2.mp3
Recorded in 2004 along with sample 1, this was never released because we were afraid people would expect to hear sound effects with their orders, and we weren't offering that by default.

CyndiIrresistible_SelfControlFanRemix.mp3
An unknown fan sent in this funk remix of Self Control. I never posted it; don't know if the remix producer ever passed it around.

CyndiIrresistible_ValerieRemix.mp3
This one's released but rare. Korg Fal still has this posted in his Yahoo group, Korg's Kaboom (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/korgskaboom/). It was his dialogue, recorded one of his original projects that (if memory serves) was supposed to feature two women, but I think only Cyndi's half was ever recorded. I took the parts and remixed it into a solo story.

Enjoy. I consider Cyndi the inflation community's first and best "audio pin-up girl" and still get a charge out of hearing her work. I hope you do too.

500-word story contest

Just a note to promote the Prose That Blows story contest, which challenges all willing writers to create a complete and compelling inflation story using 500 words or less. I think it's a great idea; it ignited some sparks for me, and I wound up writing more than one story. Now I'm trying to figure out which one to submit. The other one will be posted anyway, just not part of the contest. 

Writing with a strict word count is something I do every day, but I'd never tried to apply it to my pervy stories. It was a positive experience all around. The deadline is the end of June, so you've still got a few weeks before time is up, and if you're interested at all, I'd strongly encourage you to enter. 

And if you don't enter, of course, you'll at least have several little stories to read in a month or so!

The problem with InflateChan

I've always been big on the word "community." That's because I really believe in it. When I got involved in this stuff, it was to find other people who were into what I was into so I could discuss it and feel better about it. It clearly wasn't going away, so I wanted to find a way to come to terms with it. Having no options in real life, I turned online. The rest is history, and it's kept me sane.

As a result, I am pretty serious about the network of people that has evolved over the last several years. Some of us need the community (and the human beings in it) more than others. But that, to me, is the point -- people having discussions and interacting with people who understand this weird thing and don't judge. The fetish stories, drawings, and morphs have all cropped up around that community; the sites began as mailing lists and discussion forums, and the galleries appeared later. That's like dessert to the meal, in my mind.

I try to support and post in as many inflation communities as I can. If I have nothing to say, I won't post until I do, but if I can add something constructive to a conversation, you'll see my name. The return of InflateChan struck me as one of those opportunities, a community that was making a fresh start. I posted several images from my 25GB of inflatosmut to help the cause.

I was wrong to do that. I have come to see that InflateChan is not a community; it's just a porn dumping ground. In a community, you pick a name and stick with it. There's persistence of the members so conversations can happen. On InflateChan, 90% of the posters are named Anonymous and the only words exchanged are retarded shorthand quips like "MOAR" (for "keep posting free stuff so I can leech it") and "sauce?" (for "where did this come from, for I am too lazy to Google it or participate in any other communities"). The site is a one-way door of content flowing out. And a lot of time, the anons posting the content don't have the right (legal or ethical) to post it in the first place.

Mind you, I made that same mistake. I posted a bunch of stuff from an artist that I really like, but foolishly I'd completely blocked out a pretty dramatic situation ending in "don't post my stuff anywhere." I went back and deleted it all, but the damage was understandably done. I posted a few more things before someone said "Hey, that's also from a private archive, dude." Stupidly, I'd mixed up my files and lost track of which stuff was not to be distributed publicly. I deleted stuff again.

And then I started to think...why am I trying so hard to be part of this site anyway? I don't have anything to gain from it. It's not a discussion board; there's no discussion going on. New content is expected, not really appreciated, and it's not generated by the people posting it (that obvioulsy includes me). There's not much respect for the actual artists whose work is being posted, there's a huge sense of entitlement, and several content creators that I really like (Johnny Swell, Bambi Blaze) have had to fight to protect their basic artistic copyrights. Bootleg stuff shows up as often as legit freebies, and more and more (and MOAR) artists are coming out, expressing displeasure that their stuff is distributed in this context.

A site like that goes away when people stop posting images for the people who anonymously and immaturely demand them. So that's my plan. It's kind of a shame, because in theory, I think a site like that could work, but there is so little respect among the users that this one never will grow to be more than it already is. It makes DeviantArt look absolutely brilliant.

I tried to repair my mistakes by deleting the sensitive stuff I posted, and while even that was likely too late, I'm not going to be part of the problem going forward. I have close to 15 years of really good smut on my hard drive, and InflateChan pretty much convinced me to lock it down.

But we can always have a good discussion.

Slow for a Saturday Night

I've found that the same triggers hit me over and over again. I tend to like the same scenarios (mad science! spies! magic! revenge!) and as long as the description of the inflation is interesting, I can forgive everything else -- silly plot, bad plot, no plot. But that doesn't mean I don't like to see people trying new things. Artistically, it's nice to see people taking a different road, even if that road is bumpy.

I think that's why I'm so intrigued by Slow for a Saturday Night, the latest BE inflation vid from TaylorMadeClips. Even they describe it as an "odd" clip that didn't quite turn out the way they thought it would. It's atmospheric, it's got a guy boring a bartender to death, and it's got low lighting. It's also apparently got sound effects from a water cooler and it turns hardcore in a hurry; the ending seems tacked on.

But you know what? It's a short movie with atmosphere and characterization and and implied history and all that stuff we always look for in inflation stories, and for a while there, I was sucked into its world. It's a noble experiment and it made me stop and think about what people could or should be doing with the medium.

It's tricky because the only people currently making inflation/expansion videos are doing it for a profit, so on one hand I think it's wise to stick to the formulas that work or simply base their work on the requests of their paying customers. But on the other hand, I like surprises and respect artistic attempts.

And now a rant about piracy

It's 2009 and I still see stupid shit like this posted on inflation community forums:

"Sorry, but I'm a personal believer of, 'If you don't want your stuff stolen, don't put it on the Internet.'"

Do I even have to explain why that's fucking moronic? Attitudes like this are what kills communities like ours. It certainly demotivates anybody who

It always starts with a bedrock of amateurs following their bliss, nice enough to publicly post their private fantasies as stories or drawings or morphs or renders or what have you. That's awesome; it's the lifeblood, and the main investment is the creator's time. But every so often you get someone who wants to take it a step further. What about animation? How about video? What about actors? The desire is there; the ambition is there. But the costs are there too.

So, more sophisticated content means higher costs. The obvious answer is to charge for the content and help defray the costs. There's a difference between a backyard camcorder movie and an art-house film, even if the spirit that drives them might be the same.

The logic behind the "don't post if you don't want it stolen" is beyond asinine. Similarly, "If you don't want a bullet in your head, don't walk outside when I have my gun in my hand." Or "If you don't want to get run over by my car, then don't leave your house when I happen to be driving on your sidewalk." The suggestion that personal responsibility no longer counts because the delivery medium is digital is staggeringly stupid.

I've seen both Bambi Blaze and Johnny Swell fight leech communities to have their paid material removed from public postings. I don't begrudge BB and JS for charging for their work. But if they can't win against pirates, what does that say to the next person who would like to aim their content-creation sights a little higher than average? There's no motivation to even try to raise the bar, because jackasses will beat them to death with it if they so much as try to ask for compensation for that effort.

It's 2009. For fuck's sake, we need to grow up.

Heliumgirl77's "Photo Enlargement"

This is the best story I've read since...well, since "Nozzle." It's well crafted. It's creative and clever, a riff on something that until five seconds ago seemed tired and played out. It's intensely erotic, and the expansion scenes are described with gently insistent care. I wish I could write like this; I wish I could plant such rich scenes in people's minds.

I'm a little short of breath.

What's up with Airy Tales?

A quick update about Airy Tales. It's still a going concern, but we have hit a few snags. I had kind of hoped to have the whole site launched by now, but a few things set the plans off the rails.

First, the creative team behind the project had to swap some members around. I know I haven't said much about that team, but it was not just me and a crazy idea; it's several people working together. Real life got in the way and one of the people had to bow out. So that was an adjustment.

Second, a technical/artistic issue hit the project, and we've had trouble navigating around it.

And third, of course, the good old economy. Frankly, most of the people involved (myself included) have had to focus on real-life work that pays instead of putting time into the fun side project. I am not upset about that -- disappointed, but not mad. I mean, c'mon. Airy Tales isn't paying anybody's rent.

So, Airy Tales is still happening. But the schedule, which I never wanted to discuss publicly anyway for fear of things beyond my control changing it, has to remain flexible.

This week in Jessica Rabbit news

When it rains it pours. Here I am, sitting at home, thinking that everyone had forgotten the world's most voluptuous fictional redhead, and wham, she's suddenly back in the zeitgeist. At least for a week.

It started when folks in the UK who participated in a Cadbury survey voted Jessica Rabbit the sexiest cartoon character of all time. Please note that the news article says that Jessica beat off several other characters. Way to go, copy editors.

That news snippet led to a Saturday Night Live sketch with a retort from Cathy and a guest appearance from Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel. The video is below or you can see some stills here if it's not loading right below.



Frustration squiggle! LOL.

Also? Yum.

Violet (a chemist's view)

I love the web. It brings you to weird things like this page for a physical chemistry class at the University of Illinois.

Of special note is the page of homework helpers, where it would appear a teacher's assistant with a dark humor streak created a series of chemistry problems set in the world of the candy magnate/munitions factory owner/brutal murderer Willy Wonka and the chemistry behind his various ways to eliminate the sweet innocent children who visit his factory. (There's also a series of Hellboy problems in there, not to mention Robert Browning. That that, English department.)

They are posted in reverse chronological order, and as it happens, Violet is first and provides the setup for the series. Problem 3 on her page asks -- and answers -- the question, "Does Violet keep expanding till she’s no more or does she return to her normal size and live?"

I am not a chemist so I did not understand a word of it. However, all of them are funny and I recommend taking a few moments to poke around. He also tackles such burning scientific questions as the nitric acid content of a chocolate river and how many children Wonka does in every week.

What happens when you die?

I know what happens when you die -- you become worm food. I mean, when you live a secret life online and you have surrounded yourself with a community of friends who do not know your real identity and have no way of contacting you outside of a web forum or an anonymous email...how will they ever know?

I got to thinking about this because someone in the community that I know pretty well suddenly went silent for a month. This was someone who I talked to every few days, maybe every week, in e-mail. They aren't much for forums, but they are also kind of busy in real life and it was the holidays, so I wouldn't usually freak out. But we were talking about an active creative project back and forth, and then, nothing. There was a lot to talk about and they're usually pretty gregarious.

So I started assuming the worst. The person lost their job and had to restructure their life for a while. The person got "found out" and has to manage their face-to-face relationships with people who now think they're an online pervert or predator. Maybe they took ill, got hit by a bus or something, and have been laid out in a hospital bed. Maybe they had a death in the family and were grieving privately and didn't want to focus on such frivolous stuff as this.

Or maybe it was both of the last two combined -- maybe they got hit by a bus and the death in the family was their own. Oh fuck.

I care about this person, so after a month of emails and a few phone calls -- a friend of a friend had their number -- they wrote back, which seems to confirm that they are alive. I don't know why they've been quiet, and perhaps it's not my business -- but I'm happy just to know that they are still here, which is all I was trying to learn.

My wife knows about my fetish; she knows my alias, she knows my password, and she knows who I know in real life. When I snuff it, she can log in to my account, write to one or two people, and tell them to spread the news, so the community doesn't endlessly wonder "What happened to Inflate123? Why doesn't he post any more? When is the next story coming out? And what about Airy Tales? He's such a slacker." She'll be able to say, no, he's not a deadbeat; he's just dead.

Do you have a death plan for the community? Is it even feasible in your situation? Or do you not even want people to track you that much?

Videos by Violet

We know Bambi. We know Taylor. And now here's Violet, another inflation video actress with clips for sale who went online earlier this week. Hey, the more the merrier. I'm personally not a fan of the messy food or traditional BBW stuff, but the body inflation does interest me. However, I'm not sure what to think about the inconsistent pricing -- one clip is $9 for five minutes, while other is $8 for seven minutes, and a few other seemingly random pairings of price and length.

The worst part is that I do not see links to a sample; both Bambi and Taylor have always been good about showing both short teasers/trailers of clips as well as multiple still frames from the film. I suppose some people will just download the stills but they help me figure out if a movie is my cup of tea before I buy it.

What it boils down to is that I'm interested in that button-bursting one called "Violet Pops," and I might cave and buy it -- but at a costly $8.99, if those five minutes don't utterly knock my socks off, I probably won't ever come back to buy another clip. And that makes me wonder which of us is taking the bigger financial risk.