I’ve now been back from Barcelona for a week, but I still don’t have my luggage (thanks, WestJet!). I’m way, waaaaay behind on processing and posting photos from the trip, including from the two days I spent at the Sagrada Familia (which was magnificent beyond what I ever imagined), so here’s a quick teaser from a Barcelona photo shoot of the alien xenomorph hiphugger Borg Queen parasite.
Want a hiphugger of your very own? You can find the FAQ for the xenomorph hiphugger here!
A few days ago I uploaded a smartphone pic of my wife being test-fit with the alien xenomorph hiphugger strapon to Twitter and Facebook. I’m in Florida right now taking care of my mom, so I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity to do a test fitting of the latest prototype with her.
I posted this photo:
…and man, the Internet exploded. I woke up this morning to find the Facebook pic had been shared almost a thousand times (including, I’m told, on the official Sigorney Weaver fan site?), my inbox was jammed with people asking where they can get one, and two OnlyFans performers and an adult toy store owner wanted to talk with me.
So I think it’s time for…
Ready? Here we go!
It’s all Joreth’s fault is what it is.
Go back in time to 1977. I saw Star Wars as a kid on opening night, and for the next five years I was obsessed. I had Star Wars trading cards, Star Wars models, Star Wars everything.
So when the movie Alien came out in 1979, my parents were like he loves Star Wars, this is a space movie, he’ll love Alien.
So they took a kid. To see Alien. I had nightmares about it for the next thirty years. I still do occasionally. The creature from Alien is the shape of all my fears.
When we started planning a get-togther of the extended polyamorous network back in 2018 (interrupted by COVID), Joreth was like “you’re terrified of the creature from Alien, right? I love pushing your buttons! You should design a strapon based on that creature! And for extra horror, I can wear Star Trek Borg Queen cosplay with it!”
And thus was born the Alien Xenomorph Hiphugger Strapon, a project I’ve been working on for about four years now.
Ah, now that’s a question!
So okay, here’s the thing. Right now, four prototypes exist. The test-fit revealed a design flaw in the harness, which I’m fixing.
Each prototype takes about $80-$90 worth of silicone and about three days of work to make, which is a way of saying that if I make them for sale, they’re going to be very expensive. Every one is hand-made, and the process is a beast. (Also, these things are heavy! That’s a huge honkin’ bit o’ silicone.)
How expensive? I don’t know yet.
Where can you get them? Right now, I’m open for commissions over at my new Web site, Tentacle Love.
I’ve scheduled a photo shoot in mid-May with a model I’m really looking forward to working with, so look for a site redesign, and more information about the Xenomorph Hiphugger Strapon, in June.
Note: I am considering making designs available at reduced cost for OnlyFans models, porn performers, and porn studios, in exchange for a link back to the tentacle.love website.
The hiphugger itself is 100% medical-grade, body-safe silicone. The straps are nylon, anchored to a steel ring in the body. The tube is food-grade silicone.
The straps are riveted to a steel ring inside the body of the hiphugger and go around the wearer’s hips. (I’m modifying the design so that instead of two straps around your hips, there’s one strap around your waist and one around each leg.)
There’s a food-grade silicone tube through the tail, attached to a (rather large) reservoir. The reservoir might need to be smaller; 150ml is a lot of xenomorph slime.
Yes. If and when I make these for sale, they can be any color you like.
I’m terrified of the alien from Alien. My wife likes pushing my buttons. The extended polyamorous network is having a get-together next month, so we* have planned a Borg Queen Xenomorph Gangbang.
I legit never expected the idea of an alien xenomorph sex toy to blow up like it did.
* By which I mean my wife, my girlfriend, and my crush, with participation from my Talespinner, which is why there are four prototypes.
Have you seen the Borg Queen?
If that’s not an organism begging to be parasitized by the alien, I don’t know what is.
Of course, all the mechanization might interfere with the normal alien reproductive cycle. So rather than the facehugger attaching to the Borg Queen’s face and planting an embryo in its chest, it attaches to the Borg Queen’s hips, where it controls the Borg Queen’s mind, filling her with an unnatural, unslakeable lust, a burning desire to spread the xenomorph’s eggs through its ovipositor. The Borg Queen can think of nothing save the indescribable pleasure that floods every corner of her being when she finds a new host for the xenomorph that now controls her mind.
Joreth is working on a cosplay costume that combines elements of xenomorph and borg design. I’m 3D printing parts of it—I’ve learned to 3D print parts directly bonded to tulle, so she can sew them onto the costume.
Yes! It’s not as far along; I’ve been working on it for less than a year, and only one early-stage prototype exists.
The facehugger legs wrap around the wearer’s head and are secured by straps. The tail goes around the wearer’s neck, of course, and the ovipositor…well, you know.
The ovipositor is made of a different, soft silicone—the type fleshlights are made from—so it feels very soft and horrifyingly flesh-like in the mouth.
Glad you asked.
That’s also been an area of ongoing research. I’ve worked on developing an appropriately horrifying material to squirt, because of course, the aliens are known for their slime.
What I’ve come up with is a mix of edible lube, food coloring, and cooked mini tapioca pearls. It’s awful.
I’ve made it transparent and in all kinds of colors. I think the green is the worst. Just the thing for your alien egg ovipositor needs.
For those who prefer reproductive fluid in a more traditional color, or who want something perhaps more suitable for oral ovipositor use, a mix of milk, heavy cream, and tapioca pearls is suitably awful.
The facehugger is especially bad because the ovipositor is so soft it swells and then…wriggles when the tapioca pearls go through it.
Okay, now that is a loooong story. If you want to know the geeky technical stuff, read on! If the nerdy bit doesn’t interest you feel free to skip this part.
When Joreth first approached me with the idea, I used a 3D modeling program called Blender to make a facehugger. I made the tail into a dildo, then 3D printed a hard plastic version so I could get a sense of scale, because it’s hard to tell in a computer.
I printed several versions, using each one to make adjustments to the design until it was the size and shape I wanted.
It went through five or six design revisions before I got a version I was happy with.
I took the model into a program called Meshmixer to make a mold for casting silicone, then 3D printed the mold.
I actually had to get an oversized 3D printer to make the mold, because it’s so big! A normal consumer 3D printer isn’t even close to large enough. The hiphugger uses a 5-part mold; the facehugger uses a 10-part mold.
I couldn’t figure out how to cast something this complex; a normal split mold doesn’t work because the tail and the ovipositor actually connect to the body at different angles in a way that makes a traditional multi-cavity mold impossible. As near as I can tell, I’ve invented three new silicone casting techniques in the process of making this thing!
Each one is cast in several stages. The hiphugger requires three separate pours, with the silicone curing between each pour. The facehugger requires five pours with two different types of silicone.
I’me now on version 7 of the mold, with a new version 8 coming to make the harness work better.
Oh yeah.
I love making bizarre sex toys, so much I’ve set up a website at tentacle.love for them.
As you might imagine from the name, a lot of them are tentacle-themed, like this double-sided dual-squirting tentacle dildo gag:
Various tentacle gags and plugs:
There’s also the kazoo ball gag (yes, I’m serious; yes, this is real).
Some of these designs are for sale, and I also sell 3D printable molds so you can pour your own.
Want to know more? Hit me up! I’m on Twitter, Facebook, and Quora, and you can reach me by email at franklin (at) franklinveaux (dot) com.
…and all through the house, the hiphuggers were scurrying, searching for a victim to parasitize, a host they could control, forcing the host to violate all around, spreading their eggs in a gush of slime…
My wife decided that, given the alien from the Aliens movie has been the shape of my nightmares for years, I should make an alien xenomorph hiphugger strapon sex toy. And given that she loves cosplay, she’s also decided to do a Borg Queen costume, to go with it.
Because what’s worse than being parasitized by an alien hiphugger? The Borg Queen parasitized by an alien hiphugger, of course!
I’m helping her design those bits of the costume that require a 3D printer, so she’s made a life-sized dressmaker’s dummy casting of herself to better help me make sure the various bits and bobs I print are the right size.
I have the dummy sitting on my couch right now, and, well…
It’s a bit disconcerting when I wake up in the middle of the night to pee.
Orchids are cool, in a “nature is horrifying” way. There are species of orchid that have evolved structures that look like insects, which they use to lure in insects searching for mates.
Some orchids use these insect visitors to pollinate themselves. The insect does its thing and then flies off, horny and frustrated and covered with sticky pollen, but otherwise none the worse for wear.
But some orchids are carnivorous. They lure insects to their doom, slowly digesting their prey alive as the ill-fated insect struggles helplessly.
And some orchids mimic insect pheromones, sweeting the honeytrap with the same signals that female insects use.
I’ve been thinking quite a lot about sexual parasitism of humans lately, in no small measure because I’ve finished the first version of the Xenomorph Hiphugger Strapon, a Giger-esque nightmare sex toy first conceived by my wife Joreth. Imagine an alien facehugger that wraps around the subject’s hips, then incites the subject to seek out victims, violating them in a parasitic frenzy. As creepy as this image is, it’s table stakes in the game of real-world sexual parasitism, which is horrifying.
Anyway, that’s got me thinking: what if an alien species created mimics of human females to lure in the male of the species? (An idea for a horror novel with this theme is bubbling in my brain; stay tuned!)
I’ve been playing with a version of the Stable Diffusion 2.0 AI image generator tuned to human faces, looking to take the images out of my head and drag them into the light.
What I’ve come up with so far is…well, pretty horrifying.
I’ve started work on a small, AI-illustrated graphic novella (is a graphic novella a thing?), though with all the projects in the pipe right now—including a version of the hiphugger strapon optimized for oral violation—it may be a while before it’s finished.
I’ve done it! They said I was mad, but I’ve done it! After almost three years of work and countless redesigns, I present to you:
The Xenomorph Hiphugger Strapon!
This Giger-inspired monstrosity comes from the deepest depths of my nightmares. It all started when my wife Joreth said, hey, you know what would be cool? A strapon that looks like the facehugger from Alien, but it goes around the wearer’s hips, and the tail is a dildo.
And now, here it is!
This thing is massive—almost eight pounds of silicone—and features a tube and a reservoir so that the tail can be made to spurt fluids. Because it isn’t really an alien if it’s not dripping slime, right?
The tube was actually a late addition—I’d finalized the design when joreth said “hey, can you make it spurt?” The version you see here is a bit of an accident: I’d intended to buy silicone tubing that was 3 mm inside diameter/5mm outside diameter, but accidentally ordered 5mm/7mm tubing instead. So it should, I think, have a rather more…voluminous fluid flow than I’d originally planned.
You can see more photos of the xenomorph hiphugger strapon in all its monstrous glory here. Sweet dreams!
I first posted this on Quora in 2017, when we lived in a very different world. Now that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has explicitly said that Griswold v Connecticut should be overturned on the same grounds the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, and Mississippi governor Tate Reeves (R) has said he won’t rule out a state ban on contraception, and Trump-backed candidates in Michigan and Ohio have called for a Federal law banning contraception, I thought this deserved a repost.
I keep hearing the argument that Griswold is safe because the overwhelming majority of people in the US still think contraception should be legal. Well, that was also true of abortion before Ronald Reagan. People forget how a few decades of persistent, well-funded managing can shift the Overton window.
So let’s take a look at the “pro-life” groups in the United States and see what they say about contraception, shall we?
The largest pro-life group in the US is the Roman Catholic Church, which has no fewer than seven sub-groups within its overall organization dedicated to opposing abortion. The Catholic Church opposes all forms of contraception except the rhythm method across the board.
The second-largest group is National Right to Life. It takes no formal stand on contraception, a policy which it reiterates many times. However, it has consistently lobbied against bills in Congress that make access to contraception easier, as well as against bills that would provide education about contraception both domestically and abroad.
The American Life League opposes contraception. They repeat the false claim many times on their Web site that birth control pills work by inducing abortion. They also claim that other forms of contraception increase abortion, showing statistics that abortion and contraception use in the US increased at about the same time (which is like saying ice cream causes sunburns; prior to Roe v Wade, most places in the US also outlawed contraception). They seek to overturn Roe v Wade and also ban contraception.
The Susan B. Anthony List opposes contraception across the board. The group’s president says, “the bottom line is that to lose the connection between sex and having children leads to problems.”
Americans United for Life, the oldest pro-life organization in the US, opposes all forms of hormonal birth control and IUDs, repeating the false claim that they work by inducing abortion. They oppose measures to teach about contraception, domestically or internationally. They support laws forbidding a company from firing a pharmacist who refuses to sell contraception. They do not have a stated policy on condoms, but they endorse only abstinence-based sex ed and oppose teaching about condoms.
Live Action opposes contraception. They claim that hormonal birth control induces abortion. They also claim that condoms do not work, that statistics showing 97% efficiency of condoms are lies promoted by Planned Parenthood and the “abortion industry,” and that making condoms readily available increases teen pregnancy.
The Family Research Council opposes hormonal contraception and IUDs. They do not have a formal position on condoms, but their Web site does say “we do question the wisdom of making it available over the counter to young girls.” They support a system where hormonal contraception and IUDs are banned, and condoms and diaphragms are available only by prescription.
Focus on the Family opposes hormonal birth control, IUDs, and contraceptive implants. They are neutral on condoms and diaphragms within marriage but oppose making them available to unmarried people. They oppose sex outside marriage across the board.
The American Family Association opposes hormonal birth control and IUDs. They do not formally oppose condoms, but they do oppose advertising condoms, making condoms available for free, and any sex education that mentions condoms.
American Right to Life opposes all contraception. They use scare tactics claiming that hormonal birth control causes cancer and strokes. They support legislation banning hormonal birth control and restricting access to condoms and other barrier forms of contraception.
Campaign for Life in America has no stated policy on contraception.
The Center for Bioethical Reform, the anti-abortion group most famous for showing grisly pictures of dismembered fetuses at protests in front of clinics, opposes contraception. The group’s leader, Mark Harrington, compares condoms to “drugs, gangs, rapes, assaults, and murder” as proof that America is abandoning its moral heritage as a “Christian nation.” He says legal decisions overturning bans on contraception were done by “terrorists in black robes” with a “warped view” of the Constitution.
The Human Life Foundation opposes all forms of contraception except the rhythm method.
Operation Rescue opposes all forms of birth control and states that the only legitimate purpose of sex is procreation.
Choose Life opposes hormonal contraception, IUDs, and contraceptive implants. It endorses the rhythm method, condoms, diaphragms, and sterilization. It supports teaching of barrier methods of contraception.
Coalition for Life opposes contraception across the board. It claims that hormonal birth control and IUDs cause abortion. It states on its Web site that only the rhythm method for birth control should be used, and its Web site urges its members to “help end the ravages of contraception.” It supports legislation to ban all contraceptive methods.
The Right to Life Federation opposes all contraception. Its position is that “abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and contraception are intimately connected” and that a person opposed to any one of those things must be morally compelled to oppose them all. It claims that use of contraception is statistically correlated with abortion, and supports an across-the-board legal ban on both abortion and contraception.
If you support any anti-contraception group financially, even if you do not oppose contraception yourself, this is the message you are funding.
Make no mistake: Griswold is next.
Preorders for The Hallowed Covenant, my new post-scarcity science fiction erotic novel with Eunice Hung, just went up today! And man, I am really, really excited about this book.
This is probably my favorite book I’ve ever coauthored. We take a deep dive into what it’s like to live in the City, along the way touching on themes like:
• How do you have a system of justice in a post-scarcity society with no police or codified laws?
• What are the AIs the people in this society worship as gods? What are they like?
• What do transgression and atonement look like when there’s no such thing as law?
And of course there’s lots of sex, much of it involving kinks so exotic they don’t even have names.
The novel follows seven friends as they wrestle with changes in their lives, set against the backdrop of the Festival of the Lady (the AI god of art and creativity)—think Burning Man in a society with a tech level that makes Star Trek look late Bronze Age, but more hedonistic.
The first two novels in the Passionate Pantheon universe have done so well people started asking us for audiobook versions, and guess what? We delivered! The Hallowed Covenant has an audiobook, narrated by the amazing (and incredibly sexy) Francesca Peregrine.
Thanks to a special arrangement with the Nobilis Erotica podcast, you can listen to the first two chapters here!
I am just incredibly, incredibly proud of this book. Like, I am absolutely giddy that it’s almost out. If you like science fiction and you like sex, I suspect you’ll probably like it too.
Check it out here! If you back the crowdfunding, you can score a copy before pub date for less than you’ll find it anywhere else. (And stay tuned for new perks coming soon!)
“The street finds its own uses for things.” —William Gibson, Burning Chrome
Last year, my wife, my co-author, and I launched a new podcast, The Skeptical Pervert. We talk about sex…and more specifically, we talk about sex through a lens of empiricism and rationality.
The Skeptical Pervert’s website runs WordPress. Now, I’ve been around the block a few times when it comes to web security, and I know WordPress tends to be a rather appetizing target for miscreants, so I run hardened WordPress installs, with security plugins, firewalls that are trained on common WordPress attack vectors, and other mitigations I don’t talk about openly.
I run quite a few WordPress installs. My blogs on franklinveaux.com and morethantwo.com run WordPress. So does the Passionate Pantheon blog, where Eunice and I discuss the philosophy of sex in a far-future, post-scarcity society. In addition, I host WordPress blogs for friends, and no, I won’t tell you who they are, for reasons that will soon become clear.
I automatically log hack attacks, including failed login attempts, known WordPress exploits, and malicious scans. I run software that emails me daily and weekly statistics on attacks against all the WordPress sites I own or host. I also subscribe to WordPress-specific infosec mailing lists, so I am aware of the general threat background.
Because WordPress is such a common target—it’s the Microsoft Windows of the self-hosted blog world, with everything that implies—any WordPress site will get a certain low level of constant probes and hack attempts. It’s just part of the background noise of the Internet. (If you run WordPress and you’re not religiously on top of security updates, by the way, you’ve already been pwn3d. I can pretty much guarantee it.)
The fact that I host WordPress sites not connected with me to the outside world gives me a good general baseline reading of this background noise, that I can use to compare to hack attacks against sites that are publicly connected with me.
And the results…well.
In all the years I’ve been on the Web—and I started running my own Web sites in the mid-1990s—I have never seen anything even remotely close to the constant, nonstop barrage of attacks against the Skeptical Pervert site. Joreth and Eunice are probably quite sick of my frequent updates: “Well, the firewall shows over a thousand brute-force hack attempts against the Skeptical Pervert site so far today and it isn’t even noon yet” (seriously, that’s a thing that happened recently).
Here’s a graph showing what I mean. This graph covers one week, from June 13, 2022 to June 20, 2022. The “baseline” in the graph is an average of several WordPress sites I host that aren’t in any way connected to me in the eyes of the Internet at large—I don’t run them, I don’t put content on them, my name isn’t on them, I merely host them.
Note that the attacks don’t scale with traffic; the More Than Two blog has the most traffic, followed by franklinveaux.com, then the Passionate Pantheon blog, then the Skeptical Pervert.
So what to make of this?
Part of it is likely the long-running social media campaign my ex has been running. Attacks on franklinveaux.com and morethantwo.com increased in the wake of her social media posts.
But that doesn’t explain what’s happening with the Skeptical Pervert, which has turned out to be targeted to an extraordinary degree.
Now, I don’t know who’s attacking the site, or why, so this is speculation. It’s hard to escape the idea, though, that when a site and podcast explicitly about sex, co-hosted by two women of color, talking about non-traditional sexual relationships is targeted, at least part of the answer might simply be the same old, same old tired sex-negative misogyny and racism we see…well, everywhere, pretty much. The fact that my ex doesn’t like me (and will say or do anything to get other people not to like me) doesn’t explain what’s happening here.
It’s easy to blame conservative traditionalists, but Eunice reminded me there’s another factor at work as well. The Skeptical Pervert approaches sexuality from a rational, evidence-based, skeptical lens. In the United States, there’s a stubborn streak of misogyny amongst the dudebros of the skeptics community. A podcast with two women that looks at sex from a highly female-focused, feminist point of view taking on the mantle of skepticism? It’s possible there are dudebros who will perceive that as an encroachment into their space.
In short, I don’t think this is about me. I think this is about women talking openly about real-world non-traditional sex, and getting the same pushback that women always get when they dare to do that.
If the podcast were just me, or me with obviously male co-hosts, I don’t think the level of Web attacks would be anywhere near the same.
The street finds its own uses for things. In the hands of people threatened by or frightened of non-traditional voices, the Internet has become a safe, anonymous tool of harassment.
This has been an incredibly productive year. Well, years, actually. The last three years have been the most creative, most productive time in my life. And I’m pleased to share some of that creativity with you!
First up, a new novel, The Hallowed Covenant! This is the third book I’ve co-authored with the marvelous Eunice Hung. It’s also the third book in the Passionate Pantheon series of far-future, post-scarcity science fiction theocratic pornography.
Yes, we invented a genre.
Anyway, I’m incredibly proud of this novel. We explore (I think) some really interesting ideas about autonomy, responsibility, atonement, and forgiveness, amidst all the really hot super-kinky sex.
This is also the first Passionate Pantheon novel that will have an audiobook version, narrated by the amazing Francesca Peregrine. She had some lovely things to say:
Favourite chapter so far: a description of a festival that basically sounds like Sexy Sci-fi Burning Man. I want to…go there? Like….now? Immediately, please. Give me chaotic, beautiful art blended seamlessly with hot people Doing It. @franklinveaux and @Eunice_Serina
— Francesca Peregrine (@readtomefrankie) June 16, 2022
Just finished recording the final chapter of #TheHallowedCovenant by @franklinveaux and @Eunice_Serina. I am BEREFT. It’s been the most incredible sexy intense trippy magical erotic ride, and I can’t wait to find my way back to The City.
— Francesca Peregrine (@readtomefrankie) June 20, 2022
The book publishes this October. Preorders are up on Barnes & Noble and Amazon, but watch this space! You’ll be able to get a copy before pub date at a special price (and an early peek at the audiobook and the fourth novel in the series, Unyielding Devotion) if you back our crowdfunding next month!
I’ve also just launched a new website for makers who like sex: Tentacle Love. This is a DIY site full of tutorials and tips for making your own silicone sex toys, and includes downloadable 3D printable molds for you to cast sex toys yourself.
(And yes, you can also get a Team Tentacle T-shirt if you like.)
I’ve been making silicone sex toys for a while, so from time to time I also plan to put one-offs on the site for sale. These aren’t your typical sex toys, oh no—my tastes being what they are, I’ve made everything from kazoo ball gags (yes, seriously) to double-sided tentacle gags to…well, stranger things.
I’ll admit I’m probably a bit late to the party here, but I’ve only just recently learned of the existence of Roman spintriae coins, coins that were (allegedly) minted at Roman brothels either as a form of token patrons could buy representing different sex acts or as an alternative form of currency because Roman law forbade paying sex workers with coins bearing the likeness of the Emperor, depending on which archaeologist you believe. Or maybe neither of the above; it’s complicated.
Anyway, they’re super cool: each coin shows a sex act on one face and has a number on the other. And, of course, the world being what it is, you can buy replicas on Etsy, because of course you can (though this particular design is, at the moment, sold out).
I have, for completely unrelated reasons, also been doing a dive into the archaeology and anthropology of sex work in ancient Rome and Greece, since we’re doing an episode on the subject for the Skeptical Pervert podcast, and it turns out nobody really knows how sex work worked back then.
I mean, there are lots of competing ideas, and the general consensus was that sex work was definitely a thing, but if you try to drill down deeper than “yes, it existed” you quickly run into all kinds of ambiguity.
Like, surviving writings from ancient societies frequently make no distinction between “prostitute” and “woman who likes sex and wasn’t ashamed of it” (rather like, oh, I don’t know, modern society today!), and on top of that, few records exist that detail how brothels worked.
In fact, it’s not entirely clear if there were dedicated, single-purpose brothels at all; some archaeological evidence suggests “brothels” may have been any place where women worked, and that dedicated sex workers were few—people who did sex work may typically have had other jobs as well.
And its not entirely clear spintriae were used exclusively or even primarily as currency or tokens for sex work. They’ve been discovered all over the place, leading some folks to the hypothesis that they may have been used as part of a game.
Which, I mean, I can get behind that—the folks in my social circle have already started talking about fun kinky uses for Etsy spintriae coins, and I reckon they’d be a big hit at a play party. But I digress.
Anyway, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, and I appreciate the fact that people in ancient societies were complex, messy, cool, and, well, very human.