Mancandy Saturday: Andrew Garfield

Or as I, and many others like to call him, Bambi.

Because he totally is! He stumbles around on his shaky, stalk-like legs, with his big moon eyes just gazing and gazing at you until you fall helplessly in love. Or helplessly in something, at any rate. The need to feed him handfuls of raisins or nuts or whatever the fuck it is deers eat, while petting him.

I would totally pet him. I would pet his wild maze of insane hair, until I went down the wrong follicle avenue and wound up facing a minotaur with nothing but a flimsy nightie and my feverish love of Andrew Garfield to protect me.

Which it wouldn't, because Andrew Garfield couldn't protect anything or anyone. Look at him, he can barely walk. I'd have to throw him over my shoulder like a saddlebag, and run like the wind so that we don't get gored by the bull-man that mysteriously lives in his hair. Though how both of us came to be running away from something in his own hair I've no idea.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Things I like about Andrew Garfield:

1. He does a lot of awkward things with his hands. As though he's holding a lot of imaginary items in front of his face. Hopefully, they're items we can use to fend of the Minotaur in his hair maze, otherwise we're in trouble.

2. He makes the most excrutiatingly perfect Tommy from Never Let Me Go. Seriously, it's like they carbon copied him out of Kazuo Ishiguro's brain. Or failing that, like they carbon copied him out of the file in my brain labelled "socially stunted total weirdo that somehow you still want to fook".

3. He's going to be Spiderman! Only without the requisite "his webslingers as a metaphor for nocturnal emissions dirty boy filthy boy yum". Booooooooo, I say.

4. His face juts out, weirdly. He's like the opposite of Robert Pattinson. He got the bits of face that Robert Pattinson didn't. He reminds me of how Natalie Portman looks at the end of Goya's Ghost, cos her jaw's been all smashed up. Look, this is what I mean:

See? It's like something's happened to his lower jaw. And now for the life in me I can't say what it is I like about that. I'm definitely not winning anyone over to the "Andrew Garfield Is Sexy Ok?" club, I know that much. Maybe it's just all about that Bambi thing again only it's a Bambi where his Mum got shot and then the hunter kind of shot half his face off, too, and now I have to give him soothing linament rubs and pin his jaw back together.

Jesus Christ, what am I saying??

5. After this, I can definitely say that I've crossed over into cougar town. I mean, he's three years younger than me. That makes me a cougar, right? And sometimes he looks so young that it makes me feel kind of queasy and wrong inside, until I put on Red Riding and stare at his sideburns and remind myself that he's actually nearly thirty.

6. And finally, my most favourite of all my man-crush tropes: "secretly a goer". Yeah, that's right. He looks like Bambi, but he nails that girl at the start of Red Riding like sex is going to cease existing tomorrow. Like he needs to hammer sex home, in case people start forgetting what it is. The kid can barely walk upright and keep his hands by his sides for more than thirty seconds, but he rode that chick like a pony and that's what I like to see.

I don't care if you can't walk. I don't mind if you stare at me gormlessly from behind that TV screen, Andrew Garfield. Stare as gormlessly as you like. Staring don't mean anything. Horniness means everything. Wild, abandoned, secret horniness, and the ability to hammer away for Britain.

I was wrong, Andrew Garfield. You could save me from the minotaur who lives in the maze of your hair. You could save me with the almighty and secretive power of your total sex.

Neglectful Charlotte

So I've been kind of neglecting you of late, blog. Yeah, I know it. I can feel you always on the periphery of my mind, your sad little last dated post getting further and further away. Is it really over a week since I last loved you?

I'm so sorry, blog. I never meant to hurt you. I'm sorry that I made you cry. I didn't want to hurt you. I'm just...well. Not a jealous guy. I mean, you haven't given me anything to be jealous of, have you, blog? It's not like you're off having flings with other, better, more interesting blogs behind my back. Like that Justine Elyot, who's got this mammoth free read thing going on over there when you've just got...Paul Schneider.

God, I knew you'd turn this around on me, blog. It's not that you're a cheating hoor, it's that I'm not filling you up with satisfying content! I mean, don't you see how much that hurts me, blog? I try and I try and I try to come up with silly Mancandies and useful updates and sexy bits and pieces, and all you do is complain about it.

Well, what do you want me to do about it, blog? Write a post-modern self-referential bollocks post as though you're a real person and I'm a hateful jealous neglectful shrew?

Well fook you, cos I just did. Ha!

Mancandy Tuesday: Paul Schneider

There's a little story behind this Mancandy. Well, not exactly a story. A story implies that it's interesting and you're going to be gripped, when really it's just another meandering load of old nonsense about my weird head-life. In other words, it's a bunch of stuff that never actually happened because the stuff that actually happens in my real life isn't worthy of discussion on the internet. Mostly it's just:

Ate some midget gems. Am now comprised entirely of E657594

Watched something then fell asleep with the menu song playing over and over. The Dexter one goes peeeeeyoooooo-yooo. Yoooooo-yooo. Peeeeeeyoooo-yooo. Yoo-yoooo.

Wrote some stuff. Almost destroyed laptop after passing out from exhaustion.

Almost destroyed Kindle. See above.

But I digress about my boring life. Back to this non-story from my head-life.

So, I almost started fancying Paul Schneider back in some year I can't remember. I think it was after watching The Family Stone, because in it he's adorable and just waiting for some girl to notice him and also I think he's a cop*, which is orsum. Everyone knows by now how much I like contrasts, and the contrast between tough cop and sweet guy is almost too much for my vagina to bear.

And yet somehow, I didn't progress into full blown man-lust. Just so we're clear, full-blown man lust occurs when my loins reach critical mass, and the CDC has to come and cordon me off in case I spread to other areas and turn perfectly reasonable women into foaming feral 28 Days Later-a-like creatures who attack at the slightest provocation.

You know, like, when a dude accidentally shows a bit of underpants as he bends down to pick up a ten pence piece.

But I never quite got to that stage, with Paul Schneider. I mean, he has everything I like. Check him out:

Insane eyebrows. Roguish stubble. Very dark. He's not that tall, but he gives the impression of tallness. There's even a slight hint of burly about him, which I love. Plus, he kind of looks like Zachary Quinto:

Only he's really, really heterosexual. Which I feel bad about listing as a plus point, but I can't deny that it's easier to imagine him boffing ladeez than it is Quinto. And that's important to me, because I write mainly about dudes boffing ladeez, as you all know.

But anyhoo, I seem to recall then having another mini-crush on Schneider during the winter of 2009**, after watching The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. In this film, he's this total man-slut (he often plays man-sluts, which is sometimes in his favour and sometimes not) who goes around seducing proper ladies while they're sat on toilets, and he calls himself an innamorato which is just the most sex-busting thing I've ever seen on screen.

He's fully clothed while he says it, and he doesn't even progress to fookin' this woman's brains out (though I have no doubt he could accomplish this task, should he so choose), and yet there is something so completely lustful and sexual about a hot rugged dirty cowboy saying that about himself that I can't even. I can't. Call the CDC.

And yet, I still did not promote Paul Schneider to the status of man-candy. He lasted a week, at most. I idly cast him in a few stories, then took him out. Time passed.

Then BLAM. I watched Parks and Recreation. Suddenly, I had acres and acres of Paul Schneider to run around in. I had hours and hours of him fumbling his way through weird romances and trying to better himself and although he never once calls himself something that I'm used to only hearing the female version of, he still finally got into my stable of man-candies. He's in the harem in my head, probably having a slightly sardonic and fairly miserable time.

While I write stories about a dude who looks a lot like him, seducing chicks with his enraged eyebrows and his strange bottom lip and oh, Paul Schneider. You're my innamorato.

*He's actually not- he's a paramedic. But the point still stands because he's a cop in my vagina.

**Date almost certainly made up.

Femdom

There are many things I love about femdom. I mean, I hate the fact that it sounds like one of those stupid female contraceptive plastic bag thingies, but otherwise- yeah. Totally love it. Love reading about it, love writing about it, have made a list of all the things I love about it:

1. 95% of the erotica/erotic romance I read features alpha males. It's good to get a break, sometimes.

2. Male vulnerability is orsum. Yes, I know that men are big and tough. I know that it's great that they swing in at the last second to ruggedly save someone in a ruggish fashion. But just occasionally, I like it when Indiana Jones gets punched and looks like he feels it.

3. I'd make him feel it, all right.

4. The dynamics are so different to what's expected. I've always loved stories that push against barriers, be it actual literal sci-fi forcefield barriers or just barriers around propriety or good sense or any other number of things. The tension in a story is highest when people aren't allowed to do stuff, or maybe they just think they shouldn't be allowed, or maybe society does a frowny face when they try and allow themselves. It's easy to explore this stuff in femdom, and when I read it there's always this delicious frisson of gender subversion and other naughty stuff.

5. It's hot. It just is. And I think more people would find it hot if they encountered the really well done stuff. Because it's so rare, the proportion of actually well written femdom is much, much finer than the proportion of well written alpha male stories.

So now I'm going to go over my favourite all time femdom stories.

1. The Top of Her Game, by Emma Holly

It's a modern cowboy story. That I actually like. That's some kind of miracle all on its own. But the main and most important thing about this book is that the hero is not some simpering, living in a cage obsessed buffoon. And the heroine doesn't have to give up her illicit femdom ways in order to find happiness. Nor does she discover that actually, secretly, she's really a submissive.

2. Taking Care of Business, Megan Hart

I'm just going to talk about the Megan Hart portion of this book, here, because the Lauren Dane portion is not femdom. Here, again, you've got a hero who isn't a cipher or a whiner or some other stupid thing usually associated with femdom. He's big and handsome and orsum, and the action is hot without a hint of "oh what a little pathetic idiot he is". I can handle the doubting, am-I-a-weirdo-for-liking-this attitude of the heroines in both of these books, because...well. I can understand why they feel that way.

3. Blackberry Pie, Bonnie Dee

It's not technically femdom, but there's something about the dynamic in it that veers close. There's just something about a religious man giving in to carnal desires that ticks all the boxes. And I feel that Bonnie Dee has the potential to write awesome femdom, if she ever tried her hand at it.

4. A Baumgartner Reunion, Selena Kitt

Again, it's not technically femdom. But HOMG the scenes with Henry in them... He's everything that I love in a femdom hero: horny, handsome, big, eager and just waiting to be bossed around. I was desperate to get my hands on his story, and though it didn't live up to those little snippets in Reunion it was still totally fab. Selena Kitt always writes the best male characters, and especially when they're bonking. She makes them vulnerable in their horny eagerness, which is something you hardly ever see in erotica/erotic romance.

And that's it. I think there are others. Joey W Hilly writes some great femdom heroes, for example, and other writers dare to create beta heroes. But the fact that I can't think of very many other femdom books I love when I've read every erotic novel ever written says a lot, I feel.

Which is why I wrote one of my very own! The ravenous zombie-like craving for femdom just became too much, and I had to feed my fix myself. Which is weird because I can't really read my own writing and enjoy it, but I can at least hope that you do, gentle reader.

Here it is:







And here's the blurb:


Clarissa Levinson’s boyfriend has asked for a very unusual birthday present this year. He wants her to fulfill three wishes, and all of them require Clarissa to push her own personal boundaries and become the boss not just at work, but in the bedroom as well.

His kinky demands initially make her nervous, but the more she gives him what he wants, the weaker her inhibitions become. In fact, she’s starting to really like being the one in charge. Who knew domination could be so much fun?


And the link:


http://www.jasminejade.com/p-8883-giving.aspx


And an excerpt:




“Are you shocked?” he asked. His voice sounded dry, like it was desperate to gulp right in the middle of the sentence.


“I don’t think shocked is the word for it.”

It was true. It wasn’t. Instead, she had to press her thighs together against the rising tide of feeling. Sweet tingles threaded through her body, tightening her nipples and swelling her sex as they went.

“Is disturbed the word for it?”

She had to laugh at that. He always thought the worst of all the things he wanted. Like he shouldn’t take that extra slice of pie, and if he did, people would think he was greedy and disgusting. Like he shouldn’t tell people he liked watching figure skating, because they would think he was weird and unmanly. Like he shouldn’t confess things he’d been feeling ever since he caught his first girlfriend being spanked by another man and all he could think was—

I wish I was the one being spanked.

She knew what he thought. She’d seen it in the flush all over his cheeks and the nervous stammering and the questions he didn’t need to ask, like—Do you think girls leave guys because they know that secretly the guy is kind of soft inside?

But how do you reassure someone about something so simultaneously complex and ridiculously simple? None of the things on the list even remotely suggested a softness about him. They were largely mean, cruel sorts of things that took all kinds of strength to endure or admit to.

Yet the fact remained that he wanted them because of some deep-seated needs and long-held desires, and she couldn’t just unpick these things by patting him on the head and telling him not to be silly. She couldn’t just suggest to him—Don’t be embarrassed. This stuff turns me on too, apparently.

Showing would likely work out better. Just showing him that it was okay. That would work out right, wouldn’t it?

“You don’t have to do any of them if you don’t want to. I mean—they’re just ideas, really. Outlines, if you will. Nothing set in stone. And if you don’t want to at all then that’s okay, because I love doing the stuff we do. I really love it. At the very least, you actually act like you want to have sex with me.”

Sometimes she could understand why he said things like that. When they’d met he’d had no idea about clothes and spent his days in brown corduroy or even worse—purple corduroy. He’d side-parted his hair and worn sweaters just for everyday living like the one he was wearing now, and he’d found his glasses in the bin marked “die alone” at Specsavers.

So she could see how he often wondered why anyone had ever wanted to have sex with him. She really could. Apart from where he was absolutely and obviously gorgeous underneath all the derp-itude and the corduroy, like the ugly-duckling-to-swan movie She’s All That only stupider.

Hadn’t anyone been able to see his outrageous potential? The size of his hands, the broadness of his shoulders, that jawline like something out of Strong and Firm Magazine’s wettest dreams. And he was sweet, too. And smart and funny and not like any other man she’d ever met. She knew he was, because here they were spending his birthday together and she’d never spent birthdays or holidays or any of that kind of thing with anyone. Not even her own mother.


“I always want to have sex with you. I’d be having sex with you right now if you weren’t wearing a sweater with dancing bears on it. In fact, even that cutesy image isn’t really putting me off.”

He chuckled.

“You’re such a goof.”

She loved him for doing things like calling her such a goof. He said it with such warmth and affection, as though her being silly meant something good, instead of how her other boyfriends had felt about it—that being goofy or silly made her a scattered flake who didn’t fit into their career plans.

Unfortunately, considering their various points about her only made her think about how relevant being goofy was to the idea of becoming some kind of sexual Dominant. Probably not very, right?

Until words came out of her mouth. And they sounded so businesslike and almost alien that her entire body thrilled all over again.

“So. When do you want to get started?”

Christmas Reading and Watching Marathon

So in the true spirit of Christmas, I've been reading and watching loads of stuff. I got the following for Christmas:

A Kindle
Sims 3
Tetris Party
A sudden and amazing amount of new readers for Past Pleasures, courtesy of All Romance Ebook's "get it free for one day" offer. So far, it has an average of 3/4 stars, which I am so thrilled with I can hardly speak.
Professor Layton
Art Academy (as you already know my fab art skillz, you know this gift is going to be put to good use)
Miranda Series One
Time Travel Machine
Modern Family
The Office Series Six
Sharlto Copley
30 Rock Series Four
The Middle
Supernatural Series 1-5
Holodeck
Loads of chocolate

As usual when you read my blog, be aware of the disclaimer: some items may not be real and are just the product of Charlotte's fevered imagination. But the Past Pleasures one that doesn't seem real? Yeah, that's totally real. I am actually still number one in All Romance Ebook's Time Travel story chart, and number two in their sci-fi chart. Hell, I'm number six in their erotica chart. See here if you don't believe me:

http://www.allromanceebooks.com/category141.html

http://www.allromanceebooks.com/category144.html

Have never been so high in any chart before, and it's totally made my Christmas.

But anyhoo, back to my reading and watching orgy.

Matched, by Allie Condie: I bought this for my Kindle, and love, love, loved it. Have a big hard-on for dystopian YA at the moment (like the rest of the world), probably because of The Hunger Games. I think I like dystopian YA for two reasons: it's always fast paced easy reading with a bit of subtext, and my mind goes into overdrive, thinking of all the ways I could write similar stories only with loads of bonking. Which is probably really perverse, considering the books are written for teenagers.

Miranda Series One: You know how, like, people say they're totally Samantha, from Sex and the City? Well, I'm not Samantha. I'm not even Carrie. I'm nobody from Sex and the City, because I do not lead a glamorous, sexy life with cocktails and shoes and hair brushing. No, I lead Miranda's life, from the TV show Miranda. She IS me. She really is. I've never seen a closer representation of myself on television, than Miranda. The only difference is that I'm not single. Everything else is identical. The clumsiness, the lack of social skills, the asides, the love of hotel rooms...I can't believe this show ever got made. It seems like they should have made yet another "fat moron gets a hot wife and complains about it" sitcom. I thank God every day that we now live in a world where Miranda gets made, instead.

Tetris Party: Loved it! What you do is, right- you make the blocks go in a particular shape, like a penguin! And if you make a penguin, then you win. Hooray!

I shall be back tomorrow with more things I have watched and read and done. I know you're on tenterhooks.

Mancandy Christmas!

Last year, I lusted after Santa. This year, I'm just going to dress up a whole cavalcade of hunks as Santa, and lust after them instead.

Mmmm, phallic.

Oooh, even more phallic glllllrrrrrrrrrrrrr.*

I call this one "terrifyingly phallic".

Uh...his hat slipped?

Okay, I realise this is just getting silly, now.

No, brain. That was not your cue to post a giant picture of a hat penis.

*sigh* See what I have to put up with? And in the season of goodwill to all Mancandy! Merry Christmas, everyone!

*Homer drool

Some Questions

So Cara McKenna put up some questions over here:

http://naughtyauthorchicks.blogspot.com/2010/12/dont-think-just-answer.html?zx=45672abcf3573335

And being all contrary, I decided to answer them here.

Favorite recent book: Dirty Thirty, by Cara McKenna

All-time favorite book: I have three, that represent the different bits of me. Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood. Desperation, by Stephen King. Menage, by Emma Holly.

Book that most changed your life: The Madwoman In The Attic, by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

All-time favorite author: This time, I have four: Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Christopher Pike, Emma Holly

Favorite band or musical artist: Tori Amos

Favorite album (by any artist): From The Choirgirl Hotel

Best song ever: Let Go, Intimate Strangers

Your favorite song right now: Dancing On My Own, Robyn

Favorite recent movie: Is District 9 recent enough? I've also enjoyed Predators, Buried, The A-Team and Let Me In, but District 9 still overrides them all in terms of the impact it had on me.

All-time favorite movie: Return To Oz

Favorite actor: At the moment, Sharlto Copley

Favorite actress: Sigourney Weaver

Favorite recent (last five years) TV show: The Office

All-time favorite TV show: Frasier

Favorite game (video-, board-, parlor-, drinking-, anything): Super Mario World

Foxiest person alive: My current top five is: Sharlto Copley, Nicholas Lea, Ryan Reynolds, Zachary Quinto, Matthew Macfadyen

Coolest person alive: My best mate.

Funniest comedian, living or dead: Stand up? Dylan Moran

Job you'd love to try for one day: Captain of the Enterprise

Dream car (or other mode of transportation): The Enterprise

If you had to get a tattoo today: I'd get a barcode with LV-426 underneath it. Yeah, that's right. I survived, and now I'm pissed.