Carson + Paul is obviously the best choice. Heal the world + never worry about being sick or getting STDs + end the drug war. Only downside is spending three hours a day praying, which is honestly the easiest downside to deal with.
Also I think Paul’s running mate bonus is supposed to say “decriminalization” in the last paragraph.
Kasich is better than Carson I think. If you have a legion of 11 million loyal followers willing to heed your beck and call you could do pretty much anything and it would be a lot more fun than standing around all day touching people and feeling guilty every second that you’re doing anything else
I’m trying to figure out why Ted’s running mate bonus is supposed to be a good thing lol
I mean you could probably earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a day curing AIDS and cancer if you really just wanted to use it on yourself. Which is arguably just as good if not better than having 11 million loyal followers.
Or you could tax the ohioans just a few dollars a day each to earn a hundred times more.
Assuming “Ohio” means the legal state of Ohio, and not “the territory which currently forms the state of Ohio”, Kasich/Paul is totally OP and broken.
First, I legalize individuals and communities choosing which state to belong to democratically. The other states may whine, but governance only with the consent of the governed doesn’t violate basic rights, so with Paul I can totally do it.
Then I end the drug war. In Ohio, because I’ve legalized states setting their own drug laws.
I decriminalize states setting their own immigration rules, and open the borders in Ohio, defining ohioans as “anyone present in Ohio, or who announces their decision to join Ohio, or who has previously fulfilled either condition and has not renounced their ohioanness” (thus, making me immune to assassinations as anyone who would try to do it would have to travel to Ohio, become ohioan, and stop wanting to assassinate me and start wanting to protect me instead).
Then I implement a basic income in Ohio (for those who have been ohioans for a sufficient amount of time, as I have previously suggested). And all the other cool stuff, in Ohio.
Everyone would give anything for the cause, so I ask the people to be excellent to each other, and otherwise be free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t deprive others of the same right (but if they wish to give to charity they really should prioritize EA instead of Make-a-Wish). Crime in Ohio plummets to zero, and so does poverty, deprivation, and coercion. The economy gets an immense boom from the immigrants, and the abolition of zero-sum and negative-sum bullshit games, and all people working together for their prosperity, like a weird libertarian (or, in fact, full-blown anarchist in all but name) version of North Korea’s propaganda films come true.
The obvious consequence is that a lot of people would want to be a part of Ohio. Just as planned. It won’t take long until Ohio has a population of approximately 200 million and covers a vast fractal shape encompassing most of the major cities.
Then I become the president of the US in the most overwhelming election since Washington, seize control of all brances of the government, and turn my Paul powers to international law instead. Rinse repeat with a bit more restraint to not provoke a nuclear war, and I’ll soon have acquired most of the Americas, the major liberal cities of Europe, and vast swathes of territory in Africa as well (I’m deliberately not touching Russia or China because that way lies armageddon), in this only-nominally-stateful community of freedom and dignity.
It’s immune to invasions because open borders mind control magic, it’s immune to terrorism because surely you wouldn’t want to hurt your fellow ohioans, it’s immune to pretty much everything except ICBMs. For ICBMs my policy will be a clear and ruthless MAD if attacked, but otherwise non-interference in the affairs of the other superpower and the little regional Shitholistan with a superiority complex propped up by its ridiculous nuclear arsenal. In fact, I can afford a comparably submissive foreign policy, letting Russia pick the arctic oil and China get whatever gas fields it wants because our anarchist regime is too rich to care about such slim pickings.
We’re going to outer space instead. All the labor and ingenuity currently wasted in pointless things will be redirected in a program of technology and space colonization (and AI research but I’m assuming no FAI because it kind of cuts everything short and turns things boring). We’re going to cure all the diseases, conquer the Moon, Mars, and everywhere. We’re going to win.
A wise man once asked: “Why does everything always end in world domination with you guys?”
The rationalist answered: “Have you ever tried giving us a scenario that did not have world domination built in?”
To the US I came seeking fortune But they’re making me work til I’m dead The congressmen have it so easy The bankers put gold on their bread The people of the world are so hungry But think what a feast there could be If we could create an anarchist state That cared for the people like me:
I am the man who arranges the blocks That descend upon me from up above. They come down and I spin them around Til they fit in the ground like hand in glove. Sometimes it seems that to move blocks is fine And the lines will be formed as they fall – Then I see that I have misjudged it! I should not have nudged it after all.
Can I have a long one please? Why must these infernal blocks tease?
I am the man who arranges the blocks That continue to fall from up above. Come Ohioan! To the every last one! An individualist regime of peace and love. I work so hard in arranging the blocks But the landlord and taxman bleed me dry But Ohio will rise! We will not compromise For we know that the old regime must die.
Long live freedom, burn the flags! We salute the orange and black!
I am the man who arranges the blocks That continue to fall from up above. The food on your plate no concern of the state An individualist regime of peace and love. I have my choice in arranging the blocks Under promethean rule, what you say goes. The rule of the game is our rights are the same And my blocks can make my own-shaped rows.
Long live Ohio! It loves you! Sing these words, you know what it’ll do…
I am the man who arranges the blocks That are made by the men from Shitholistan. They came two weeks ago and back there they won’t go Now they’re working to our world conquest plan. I am the man who arranges the nukes That will make all the Putin keep away The hopes have come back, and ‘Murica is Black! Let us point all our dollars at EA.
We shall live forever more! We can start an altruism war!
I am the man who arranges the blocks That are building a highly secret base. Hip hip hurray for the AS of A! We are sending our men to outer space.
“Every single man, woman, child, and animal in Ohio” (emphasis added)
See the loophole?
That’s right, folks: nonbinary assassins.
(Furthermore, if we’re going to play with definitions as much as “Ohio” has been played with, perhaps the resistance could have elaborate coming-of-age rituals, without which one is not considered to be truly adult, and then deliberately keep binary people in a liminal state where they are old enough not to be children*, but since they haven’t completed the rituals they’re not men/women yet.)
(Might also be able to get some stuff done through gender abolitionism, which I seem to recall Promethea favours? So there could still be some benefit in this from their perspective depending on the resistance’s methods.)
(But nonbinary assassins would still be the quickest and easiest method, because we already have some nonbinary adults readily available and wouldn’t need to spend precious time training people out of old thought patterns regarding the meaning of adulthood and/or gender.)
*For obvious reasons, the definition of “child” should be made as narrow as possible.
Wouldn’t nonbinary people still technically be animals, biologically?
I’d say Carson/Paul. Cure all the diseases and become “the greatest doctor who ever lived” (obvious implications for medical and scientific research) and total immunity to disease (which probably means impressive personal longevity.)
And with Paul’s running-mate bonus, you already control the country (or possibly every country?) Pretty easy to dissolve Ohio by criminalizing it, or direct US forces against the unstoppable armies of John Kasich (if that fails to release to the mind control.) The only issue is what counts as a “human right” in this context – constitutional rights? The UN declaration? Can we experiment on moral law by checking what qualifies as a human right to this power?
“Wouldn’t nonbinary people still technically be animals, biologically?“
Good point. The resistance is clearly going to need more robots.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #fun with loopholes #choice games
Evidently there is some “math versus the rationalists” conflict brewing up, and I for one could not be more pleased. This promises one metric fuckton of grade A Tumblr drama.
Bring it nerds!
this conflict makes me anxious because what if, after another day of working on my applied math ph.d dissertation for 10+ hours, i open up tumblr and it turns out i agree with The Rationalists and therefore am Not A Math
this conflict is annoying because I hate having to scroll past y’all’s long incomprehensible mathposts
me: “ah, yes, the numbers are numbering very hard right now. I see that the letters are also involved. jolly good.”
You can just hit “j”
That’s good to know! I’m somewhat surprised I hadn’t known about it before. I did a quick search and found this list of twenty-one Tumblr keyboard shortcuts; hopefully others will find it useful!
Fair warning: occasionally I try to hit “K” for moving up a post and accidentally hit “L” for like. I don’t think I’ve ever had a *particularly* awkward accidental liking (often it’s posts that I’d already liked anyway), but that’s just good luck.
(Content warning: Hypnosis, bondage, neither of those being what you were thinking of, vampirism, polyamory, sort-of romanticizing mental illness, enormous cultural ruses, pandering to submitters [maybe])
This is a new column, where we will be building and detailing a hentai-focused or otherwise lewd culture. We’ll start with the condensed core idea, for those who prefer the short and sweet little nugget they can then build up in their own minds. Then, we’ll go into less necessary details, building up the world and culture and society. And then, at the end, a review from the author, explaining the decisions made and why.
THE SHORT AND SWEET
The Vampire Duchies of Otdykh are known to foreigners as a cold, barren, windswept place, divided up between immortal predators, where all humans are the thralls of a cruel, blood-thirsty master who controls their minds and drinks from their hearts. This is all a ruse. Vampires have the power of hypnosis, not mind control, and cannot force someone to go against their own wishes or alter their thoughts. And they feed from people’s hearts, meaning that even more important than getting people’s blood, is getting those people to LIKE them. Instead of cruel masters, vampires are service tops.
When a band of vampires hungers, they will take a handful of villagers and spirit them away to the vampire castle or manor. The villagers will be hypnotized into a deep, relaxing trance, be bound in restraints (to prevent them wiggling during the blood draining process and causing injury), and then fawned over, having all their needs cared for better than they could do to themselves if they were not bound. In their deep, relaxed hypnotic trance, they are sexually pleasured at whatever pace they find comfortable, or simply massaged if that is their preference. They’re fed opulently, by vampires and vampiresses in sexy Gothic outfits, to keep their body recovering the blood they lose. All the while, they are encouraged to offload any troubles or burdens from their minds to their ‘masters’, who listen attentively and provide support, encouragement, or advice, which sometimes is more effective due to the trance. After a week or so, the villagers are freed from bondage and trance, happier but probably a bit lightheaded, given an excuse note to show their employer, and sent back on their way.
Vampires themselves reproduce through converting other humans into vampires intentionally. Since vampires are so fundamentally insecure, this is not something to be taken on lightly, as it’s kind of like inflicting a mental illness on someone so they can understand you better – for this reason vampires only do it to people who know what it entails, and usually only offer to people who seem insecure anyway. Vampires organize in small bands of 3 to 8, and rely on each other for emotional support much more than tangible service. Everyone in the band is lovers with everyone else, romancing as equals, their presence able to assure one another ‘it’s okay, don’t listen to those thoughts that people don’t like you, because I am here and I prove you are worthy of love.’
DETAILS
Many stories about how terrible vampires are were spread by vampires themselves, for two reasons: to keep their lands from having an influx of people they can’t afford to take care of, and so they don’t feel like people are laughing at them for being wusses. The need to be liked is stronger the closer a person is to a vampire, so for faraway people they will never feed on, it’s okay to be feared instead of liked when the alternative is being a laughingstock. They also spread the story that direct sunlight will kill them – it doesn’t kill them, but it makes them as disoriented and confused as a drunken seven-year-old who just stumbled out of a showing of Eraserhead, which not only makes them vulnerable to being killed by anyone who wants to, it’s humiliating and they don’t want others to see them that way.
Vampires are insecure down to a physiological level: their need for other people to LIKE them, especially the ones they feed on, especially especially those under their ‘control’, is as real as living things’ need for oxygen. Tales of the experience of a newly-risen vampire, overwhelmed with the thirst for the blood of the living? Yeah, that’s because it sounds cooler than an overwhelming wave of “Oh God oh God what if they don’t like me I want them to like me so bad!” Blood from a human who actually likes the vampire is exponentially more fulfilling, physically and psychologically, than any other. Blood from someone who likes you is as filling as, say, a 3-course meal from a restaurant with 3 Michelin Stars, after 2 weeks starving in the desert. Blood from someone who hates or fears you is like trying to chase off heroin withdrawal by huffing paint thinner.
Otdykh vampires pretend – even to their mortal subjects – they are only vassals of a great and secretive Vampire King, and that’s why their polities are merely “duchies”. This is another lie. Yeah, centuries ago they tried to have a Vampire King, but it just didn’t work – the crushing psychological need to have that many people like you is completely overwhelming. The last would-be Vampire King, four hundred years ago, went on a crying jag that lasted a couple weeks, long enough to send him into a torpid sleep that he hasn’t risen from since. The other vampires visit his castle and leave little presents outside his coffin sometimes, in case he’s occasionally poking his head out. Don’t let that give you the idea that vampires are incompetent rulers, though – with smaller groups of vassals, they do very well, responsive to their people’s needs (though keeping odd office hours), and the satisfaction they have after feeding from someone who actually likes them, even from just getting affirmation of their subjects’ appreciation and loyalty, is an elation greater than anything they could experience in their mortal lives. When the first republics arose, there was a treatise by an Otdykh-ian political philosopher decrying it due to the obvious superiority of absolute monarchy at meeting the needs of subjects; this confused the hell out of pretty much everyone else in the world.
Vampires also have a large influence on the culture and art of Otdykh, beyond the fact that vampire artists have a lot more experience at it than the human ones and sort of lead tastes and trends. During their blood-draining spa sessions, they encourage people to write horror stories and create art and architecture in the Gothic style, talking up anyone who has an interest in those genres. Partially, this is to aid their efforts to keep the real nature of vampire rulership a secret. Mostly, it’s because vampires all think horror stories and Gothic art are fucking cool as Hell. After all they do for the human population, and the little they ask in return, people are more than willing to go along with those requests. Those vampires are pretty likable folks, after all! Of course, it’s inevitable, after the invention of mass communications, that the secret gets out eventually. The plan the vampires have come up with is, as soon as the secret gets out, start broadcasting the truth about their feeding sessions, inviting everyone to come and join, in the creepiest tone of voice and most dead-eyed expressions they can manage, and play it off as a “obvious ploy by monsters to trick people into their lair” kinda deal.
The relationships between vampires in their groups are the most important ones they have, as the only people they can relate to as equals, and completely drop all pretense around, and who understand what they are going through. Given every one of them can produce just as much mental anguish as alleviate it, their poly-amorous organization is almost necessary to ensure that SOMEONE has their shit together at any given time.
COMMENTARY
The first installment of this column was originally going to be something completely different, that I realized was just too specific and futa-intensive to be the first installment. Then, on reading the reader submission in response to “Finding My Common Thread I”, I thought to myself, “Yeah, I HAVEN’T seen any hypnosis stuff that isn’t about mind control.” This would be a better choice for the first column – and, plus, it had a guaranteed audience of at least one, who was underserved by the current market!
Since this has to be about a culture, it’s a worldbuilding exercise after all, it can’t just be “a person hypnotizes someone to relax them” – it has to be a culture where it happens often. As the other culture was going to be fantasy-based, and I may want to link them with opportunities to others to contribute to an overall “setting”, fantasy was a good idea here instead of sci-fi. What fantasy creatures can hypnotize people? Naga/lamia, vampires, and mind flayers. Mind flayers are really a D&D thing, naga are supposed to be about crushing power, so that leaves vampires.
So, why do vampires hypnotize people, but not control them? For their benefit. Why are vampires doing things for other people’s benefit? Well, maybe instead of blood, they feed on happiness – so they need to make people happy. They are service tops! Now, vampires who appear powerful but are secretly emotionally vulnerable are always popular, and since this is about not being sinister, I decide “I need people to like me” is a better way to put it than “feeds on happiness”, and I say they need the blood too, to make it more defined and tangible (and throw a bone to anyone with a bloodplay kink). Vampires are associated with Russia and Eastern Europe, so I name the country “Otdykhat”, which Google Translate tells me means “relax” with the connotation of “like what you do at a spa.” Then, about thirty seconds after I post, someone who speaks Russian wakes up in the middle of the night and informs me this is the infinitive verb form, and it should be “Otdykh”, so I fix it hopefully before anyone notices.
Now that we have non-sinister, emotionally vulnerable vampires as service tops, I figure that the rest should be exactly what you expect the aesthetics and associations of vampires to be – misty moors, castles overlooking villages of human subjects, Gothic architecture, all that – but invert expectations about dominance. So, the village ruled by the vampire is run very well, since the vampire cares more about their opinion of him than a human ruler (and I can joke they accidentally invented Moldbug, who thinks it works this way everywhere else). And instead of being an oligarchy at the top, the band of vampires is at the bottom, mutually supporting each other. With that in mind, I cast them as a sort of mentall illness support group, calling to mind comments from people with personality disorders or other such conditions who talk about how amazingly incredibly good it can feel for their specific needs to be met. Hopefully, by tying it to blood consumption (which everyone expects vampires to have) and not making it any specific personality disorder, people who want that dynamic of mentally-ill mutually-supporting polyamory can focus on that primarily, but those who don’t can just see it as “well, it’s pretty much like drinking blood”. I add a bondage element because it goes well with the concept of a “service top” that I see even less than I see service tops: someone who is bound not to make them helpless, but to show they have no need to help themselves. If there is a name for this, I’d love to know it; “power bottom” is definitely not it.
From there, it’s just filling out a couple of details – think of a couple of common things people deal with, and imagine what they do. For a joke I wanted to make in the original Hentaiculture, I was going to say that television had been invented, so I could say that they had telenovelas that were completely fucking bananas. So, if vampires are keeping up appearances of being evil, TV is going to be a problem – I’ll say, they plan to act really obviously like North Korea, so people say “well, that’s an awful attempt at pretending everything is fine”. The old “lying by saying true things in a way that makes people think you’re making it up” trick is always funny to me, so it’s in. Now that I have established they influence culture to keep their secret, specifying they keep everything looking dark and Gothic just because they think that shit looks cool is a character-building dial-back: some of the stuff they do for their Secret Goal, some of it they do because it’s just neat. While dialing back, I see an opportunity to not make it a unified kingdom, and show their system breaking down and failing in a way that doesn’t hurt a lot of people: they are well able to rule small areas, and that is all nice and cool, but they can’t handle having a lot of people under them, so they don’t have Maximal Rulership.
So, did it work? Did you enjoy the vampire duchies, or the format in which they were presented – and what could be done to either to make them better? What sorts of cultures, fetishes, or combinations thereof would you like to see in the future? Please, let us know!
Aww, for me? That’s so sweet!
Re: whether the pandering* worked,
While I do platonically love worldbuilding, the nature (to me, anyway) of broad overviews rather than detailed scenes is to be limited in hotness. It’s got some promise as a foundation on which to build, though.
I’m rather sensitive to repetitive descriptions in erotica, so to me you seem slightly too fond of the word “relax”. Also, I can’t quite place my finger on it, but the piece has a vaguely unpolished feel to it. I mean, that does make sense, since you couldn’t have started writing it longer than a day or two ago, but I thought I’d mention it.
*I’d have used “bottom” rather than “submitter”, but I suppose there’s no point in starting that argument again.
Well, some people do enjoy the broad-strokes worldbuilding, because it gives them a framework in which to construct mental scenarios. Or stories. Or art.
The Monster Girl Encyclopedia setting never really detailed any specific scenes, just ecology, but it became a fully-fledged setting with stories and fanart! Maybe some fanartists wanna get on that? ;-)
(also ‘submitter’ meant ‘person who made the submission to the blog’)
“(also ‘submitter’ meant ‘person who made the submission to the blog’)“
Oh, I see. That makes sense.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw #long post
this apparently answers the question of whether your kink genes are inheritable. congratulations for Science!!
I assumed that this was proof my grandmother DOESN’T have a hypnosis kink (not that I had given it much thought).
Because if she did, why the fuck would she drop that on my Facebook?
My reasoning for asking went like this:
“I’ve heard quite a few stories of children who don’t know yet that they’re kinky* playing (or trying to convince people to play with them) unknowingly-erotic games. Therefore, it is possible for some people to have the fascination aspect of a kink without the accompanying sense of propriety, at least as long as they are not made aware of the sexual nature of their fascination. (Just because *I* was always very uncomfortable when my parents sang me lullabyes doesn’t mean that *everyone’s* anti-incest instincts adapt to their sexualities without prompting.)
There is insufficient data to even hazard a guess at how likely someone is to make that joke assuming the absence of a hypnosis kink, but–ignoring propriety, for the reasons given above–it can safely be assumed to be less likely than someone who does have such a kink making that joke.
(Yes, there are so many non-hypno-kinky people out there that a random person (maybe even a blood relative) telling that joke is probably still more likely than not to lack the kink, but I didn’t say it was a strong suspicion.)”
tl;dr The story sounded like stories kinksters tell about their childhoods as evidence they were, in hindsight, kinky, but with your grandmother in the place of the child (and age alone isn’t always enough to make you aware of your kinks).
*These stories are usually told by the children’s present selves, now adults and more self-aware.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #I may not have shifted the writing part of my brain entirely out of lab-report mode yet #sorry if it’s too formal
I have never once been able to read your URL as “Ozymandias Two Seven One.” It’s always “Ozymandias 27182818…”, “Ozymandias e”, or in extreme cases “ozymandiase”, and I don’t speak enough biochemistry to know what that enzyme even does.
On the other hand, it took me MONTHS to realize that was e. Embarrassing.
It helps to have known their previous username :D
I did! I still didn’t figure it out!
…well shit.
Um.
*awkward*
(I never noticed and it’s been maybe a year and I’ve been working with natural exponentials and logarithms in math class)
Tags:
#(although to be fair I’ve been using the e button on my calculator) #(so the actual *value* of e doesn’t come up that much) #(maybe if we were using approximations I’d have figured it out) #reply via reblog #math
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night: Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise – apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
I think you meant The Best Prop.
Tags:
#Beauty and the Beast #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog
In which I have the mind-blowing experience to end all mind-blowing experiences, at least until the next one comes along, preceded by a truly terrible dining experience.
Saturday!
What I meant to do: get up early enough to attend classes.
What I actually did: slept in til just before lunch time
Sigh. So apologies (again) to hypno-sandwich and also to daja-the-hypnokitten and hypnosisenthusiast, all of whom had classes that I missed. (Just keep repeating “it’s an UNCON”)
But man do I enjoy sleeping in. It’s one of my favorite things! So the next actual scheduled thing we (myself, Carneggy, and Kat) attended was the catered lunch, which was excellent. There were food and speeches, introductions and awards, and getting to know people. If you were at the table with us and read this please remind me who you are! Because, sigh, it is again all a blur. Part of that is I was still getting to know Kat and spent an awful lot of time focusing on her. Part of that is mind-entropy from not taking notes nightly. (No, that wasn’t a joke, I really did intend at one point to take notes every night.) So please let me know :)
After lunch I had intended to attend krullfelix2002 ‘s story telling class. Yeah, that didn’t happen either. Instead, we went back up to the room and…well you don’t really have to know, right? I’m sure you can guess that there was more getting comfortable happening. Right up until it was time to hit the one class I did attend in full, Carneggy’s Potato/Potatoe discussion. Which was fascinating. I am fairly pathological about being understood, and always try to use exactly the word that means precisely what I want to say, and have MANY MANY times ran into terminology issues where what I was saying and what other people were hearing differed. So very topical and appropriate to my interests.
Which is why I feel fairly bad about admitting that my favorite part of that class was before it even started, when hypno-sandwich grabbed my hair, and theleeallure grabbed my throat, and zanythoughts grabbed my hand, and between the three of them reduced me to a dazed and shaking semblance of a human being, who then had to spend most of the following discussion trying not to obviously shake while pressing my legs together and doing my best to just (fucking focus already!) pay attention to what Carneggy was saying.
I don’t think he minded.
And then it was time for the great meal debacle of MEEHU2 (part 1) – the trip to the Mexican restaurant. Which was chosen because it was close, and therefore faster and more time-efficient.
When the universe makes jokes, it really goes all out.
I waited tables for 14 years, I know of what I speak.
THINGS THE RESTAURANT DID WRONG
1. no splitting checks.
2. food taking almost an hour to arrive
3. food being less than room temperature but more than stone cold when it did finally arrive
4. NEVER bringing the check.
5. Making us late for Hysterical Literature
THINGS THE RESTAURANT DID RIGHT
1. the pineapple margaritas
Just in case you didn’t catch it, I was late to Hysterical Literature. We arrived a little bit into the first reading, zanythoughts performing hypno-sandwich ‘s story “ClickBate”, which I recognized right away since it was part of our first story challenge. What I didn’t realize was that much like in the original videos upon which this presentation was based, zany had a little help under the table. She got through the entire story, which was a real act of willpower! And not coincidentally hotter than hot.
But wait, do you, gentle reader, even know what Hysterical Literature is? Here, go check this out – but be warned, Stoya is definitely NSFW!
Hot, right? Well, in our version, each of us who read got hypnotic coaching beforehand to achieve the same result as Stoya’s hidden vibrator.
Here, as best I can remember, is the lineup that night. (In no particular order. Because reasons. Because I don’t recall who went when until the last of us.)
Solarianne reading from the MindPlay Study Guide (which weirdly seems to only be available in the UK right now)
ashcatred reading one of her own (unfuckingbelievably hot) works
RoseSpells and Doomsux reading from an absolutely hilarious radio play (the name of which I do not know, although it sounded very familiar) about trying to remember the title of a movie
IT WAS AMAZING. As you can probably imagine, most of us who participated have a certain flair for the dramatic even without the aid of hypnotically induced orgasms. I would go so far as to say that some of us who participated have probably been brought to near orgasm just through performing on some other occasion. (And please let me know if you have!)
After that I got to play a little bit of hypno egg with both Kat and orchid-girl, and found out that the writer of Harry Potter & The Methods of Rationality was interested in having me post a file of my reading online for him.Because his housemates were at MEEHU.
I fucking love this world I live in now.
And then Carneggy, Kat, and I meandered past the con suite and up to the room, and you know, got more comfortable with each other.
Wait–they–what–
…of fucking course Eliezer Yudkowsky’s housemates were at MEEHU. I shouldn’t even be surprised anymore: I already knew that my life (well, Brin’s life, anyway) was a perpetual Orange Volkswagen effect of hypno-fetishists.
(I was wondering where all the MEEHU recaps were. Then I heard you’d gone, and I looked, and apparently they’re all on your blog.)
Tags:
#shut up Brin nobody cares #reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw #I still don’t have a rationalist tag #I tried to insert a readmore but I couldn’t get it to work right #oh well at least it’s tagged #in that case I should also tag it #long post
Brinens and Things 