the Face
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Posts by the Face
A Thoroughly Gnostic Foreweird, Shubby Subs, and Lovecraftian Science
012 years ago
We’ve received the Foreword (or Foreweird, as he appropriately titles it) by Jordan Stratford (author of Mechanicals, Living Gnosticism: An Ancient Way of Knowing, and A Dictionary of Western Alchemy) for Scott R Jones‘ When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality and we gotta tell ya, Migraineers, it is some erudite stuff and no mistake! Stratford describes the work as an exercise in “cryptarchaeoxenotheology”, even. Grok the following excerpt…
“… the Madness of Cthulhu is not clinical dysfunction or psychosis, but a hermeneutic suspension of the pedestrian, rational mind that is required to successfully navigate the waking world. In its place is the supra-rational, the information that comes without the need for communication, egoic disassociation, the disintermediated experience of experience. What Jones refers to here as the Black Gnosis.
If I were to tell you I actually saw a beautifully strange city emerge from the sea, and in its seeing that I gained deep insight into my own psyche, you would have reasonable grounds to demand physical evidence or else have me institutionalized. Yet if I told you I dreamt this, and because of this dream I gained these same insights, you would no doubt nod and take another sip of your coffee. In our Nietzschean age of mechanistic meaninglessness, flensed horses and droning Dawkinistas, where the machine has been scrubbed clean of any ghosts; dreams, apparently, are granted a certain pass.
You can take your head apart with this book if you like, but you will never get it back together again. Unlike the sophomoric tattoo-parlour-flash of Carroll, the lunatic-trickster Bertiaux, or the almost-brilliant Grant – not to mention the gaptoothed carny antics of LaVey, whose Aynrandian quotes are eagerly nodded along-to by Creationist tea-partiers – Jones is not so easy to dismiss.”
We agree. He really isn’t. When The Stars Are Right (with illustrations by Michael Lee Macdonald) is coming soon in paperback and ebook formats and will be available for pre-order. Keep watching this space or follow us on Twitter or Facebook for updates.
THE CONQUEROR WOMB Submissions Rolling In…
Submissions for our second annual MMP anthology are beginning to show in our inbox and so far the range of pieces is interesting indeed! For more info on how you can submit your Shub-Niggurath themed weird-smut, please consult our SUBMISSIONS page.
She Blinded Me with Eldritch Science!
We’d like to take a second to give a shout-out to Fred Lubnow, who writes the very smart and interesting Lovecraftian Science blog. Curious about the sexual reproduction of Elder Things? Ever wondered how shoggoths get it on? Fred’s got everything you ever wanted to know about the squamous biology of the Great Old Ones but were (reasonably!) afraid to ask!
Some CONQUEROR WOMB Inspiration from Filmmaker Joseph Nanni
012 years ago
Submissions are rolling in for THE CONQUEROR WOMB: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath! So far we’ve seen some dark and atmospheric short and flash fiction and we’d love to see more. To inspire you in your erotic-horror imaginings, here’s Joseph Nanni‘s teaser trailer for his film Black Goat… imagine this scenario, only sexier, and you’ll be on the right ancient track to our final edit column! Shub-Niggurath is a fertility deity after all, so there’s no reason why our intrepid investigator here couldn’t have a partner (or partners) in that frosty circle with him. Not to mention what could happen if those Dark Young are feelin’ frisky! Submissions for CONQUEROR WOMB close on December 15, 2013, so get writing and give us your best weird smut! And please blog, post, and retweet us for that all-important signal boost.
Martian Migraine Press: the Best Kind of Headache
The Times Are Interesting For Erotica
412 years ago
We open our inbox this morning to find a little encouraging missive from the Amazon content mavens: Your book is available in the Kindle Store, it says. Huzzah! Seems our response to the giant’s request for a cover change to JustineG‘s Summonings: Anicka & Kamil was met with approval by whatever bizarre metric they use. Now, considering that THIS is what upset them…
… we wonder how it is that THIS met with a nod (electronic or otherwise) of acceptance?
Again, we feel it’s very likely that the bare midriff and possibly the almost discernible navel piercing in the original cover was what put the censor-bots on alert. And yet! And yet the second, revised cover is clearly far more porn-y than the original. Our second girl isn’t even wearing a top and her expression is about as cheesy and wanton as you could expect. That’s some straight-up Hustler-style imagery there. (Note: image is fair use, not taken from Hustler)
All that being said, it’s not even the cover imagery that is at issue here. That we’re putting down as simply an interesting experiment. The issue is the moral tempest-in-a-teacup that the recent ebook censorship blow-up illuminates. As Daily Grail contributing editor Ian Vincent @catvincent tweeted yesterday…
I’ll believe the Amazon/Kobo/WH Smith erotica ban is a moral act the second they pull 50 Shades Of Grey. No? Didn’t think so.
To that sentiment we heartily agree. Especially when we consider that much of the fury surrounding this issue is ebooks with “questionable” or “immoral” content, content that the censors apparently scan for using keywords provided by the authors. Now, Summonings: Anicka & Kamil, as we mentioned in our last post, is a transgressive little bomb of a book in this regard. In fact, “transgressive” is one of the keywords we used when originally putting the thing on the Kindle Store shelves. But that’s only one of the seven keywords we chose. Here are the others…
erotica
m/f
weird sex
horror
hentai
incest
Yup, the ancient privilege of royalty and gods, right there in the open, and still there after the first sweep of the Amazonian censors. Hell, we’re not even shy about it in the description of the book!
Blackstone readers briefly met Anicka, teen witch and High Priestess of Stregoicavar, and her handsome idiot brother Kamil in BLACKSTONE Book 1: RED MONOLITH FRENZY. In ‘SUMMONINGS: Anicka and Kamil’, we learn what these wicked siblings get up to when the incense is smoking and the incantations are called. Dark sex and black sorcery like you’ve never read before!
Oh Kamil. You handsome idiot. What a pair you and your sis are!
So, just what is going on over at Amazon, we ask? Based on this, our admittedly limited experience with censorship at their hands, let us venture this as a fair estimate of Amazon business practice vis a vis erotica ebooks and the prudish “think of the children” fuss they occasionally have to deal with (we seem to remember something similar to this blowing up a year and a half ago?)…
It’s nothing, folks. A wrist slap here and there, a hoop or two to jump through to satisfy groups that, once mollified, will forget that such books even exist. Certainly such people aren’t reading them now and if they do, well, that’s their dirty little secret and they’re welcome to it. It’s our hope that Amazon and Kobo et al. get the whole thing sorted out in a way that benefits all parties, and we’re reasonably confident that they will, because despite all the public hand-wringin’ and mollycoddlin’, erotica titles are a large part of their profits. The smut is not going away. So keep writing, keep putting it out there. Yes, the times are interesting for erotica production and consumption, but hey! News flash! It’s always been interesting out here in the smut mines.
Having posted all this, perhaps we’ll get hoisted on our own petard soon and find our entire catalogue of Justine’s books pulled from the shelves. (Orgy in the Valley of the Lust Larvae, anyone?) We’ll keep you updated, Migraineers.
