is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

lizardywizard:

fierceawakening:

osberend:

fierceawakening:

osberend:

bakrua:

bewbin:

Why do people drink alcohol it tastes disgusting

you don’t drink it for the taste. u drink shit like apple juice for the taste. you drink alcohol to get rid of the bad taste that every awful person in your life has left

Maybe you don’t drink alcohol for the taste, but plenty of us do. I do like getting a good buzz, but frankly, the amount of alcohol I want to drink because (many) alcoholic beverages are fucking delicious vastly exceeds the amount of alcohol that would take me over the line from enjoyably to unpleasantly altered. Hell, depending on my mood, it often exceeds the amount that would take over the line from alive to dead. (Needless to say, I therefore do not drink as much as I want to.)

A lot of people who are just starting to drink drink the cheapest shit that’s available, and often that’s not very good. If they like the effects but dislike they taste, then they often keep drinking the cheapest shit that’s available, because “it all tastes like shit anyway.” It’s a vicious cycle. If your experience of alcohol is limited to Natty Ice and/or whatever vodka happens to be cheapest at the local liquor store, you’re not going to have a very good basis for understanding “what alcohol tastes like.”

if all alcohol tastes bad, does that mean people who like wine are doing absolutely nothing but posturing?

Remarkably, there are multiple people (who are active on the forum of a single comic) who actually believe this (and multiple others who believe different things that are equally nuts)! See this completely asinine xkcd comic, and an alarming fraction of the official forum discussion of it.

There’s enough of this going around that when I type “xkcd beer” (without the quotation marks) into Google, the third suggestion is “xkcd beer stockholm syndrome.”

The hell?

(And I say this as someone who hates 97% of all beer I have ever tasted, even.)

I find beer to be delicious and refreshing. Not all beer – I used to think I hated beer until a few years back when I was getting a tattoo and was having drinks with the artist afterwards (she’s a cool person, owns many reptiles). She gave me a Tecate and maybe it was because I was wired and dehydrated from several hours of being inked, but it was the best thing I could have had in that moment.

So I don’t like a lot of beer. I’ve tried fancy microbrews and supermarket brands alike, and a lot of them are shitty. But I will knock back a Tecate any day.

I don’t assume that people who like alcohol have Stockholm Syndrome; I simply assume their perception of alcohol is different. I’ve shared drinks that the people I was sharing with liked, that the people I was sharing with could distinguish flavours in, but all I could “taste” was the sensation of pins and needles.

I also perceive carbonation as causing pins and needles (before you ask, non-carbonated alcohol is still stabby). Similarly, I assume that people who claim to like soda perceive it as tasting more pleasant, and are not merely choking it down for the caffeine high. My avoidance of soda and alcohol alike is not a reflection on others.

(I note that–very often in speech, but occasionally in text–I have trouble expressing my theory of mind even when I actually do possess it. Acknowledgements that other people are unlike me tend to get lost on the way to my mouth. If someone sounds like they are claiming alcohol tastes bad to everyone, you might want to double-check that they actually meant it that way. I can guarantee you there’s at least one person in the world–*gestures at self*–who is likely to say that and not mean it, and where there’s one there might be more.)

Tags:

#alcohol #reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

brin-bellway asked: Huh, you found out hypnosis was real *before* finding out it was a fetish? I did it the other way ’round. I wonder what differences that causes. (Like how, while *intellectually* I believe there are people whose kinks actually can’t be satisfied in real life, my experiences have left me with a visceral skepticism towards the idea. My first thought when someone says their fetish can’t be acted upon is always “When *I* said that, I was wrong: maybe you’re wrong too.”)

~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

tennfan2:

My answer to this is a qualified “kind of.”

When I was a kid, hypnosis was totally compelling to me – any time I saw it, heard about it, anything, I could not at all pull myself away from it.

I was also obsessed with the Atlanta Braves, but the mere mention of Paul Assenmacher did not leave me hanging on every word, you know? (Dale Murphy is another question.)

So on some level, I knew my interest in hypnosis was something other than a hobby. It was literally always in the back of my mind. It still is, actually.

I was a young, young child when this started. I had no idea that I was a fetishist. At the same time, though, it always did feel “dirty” to me for reasons that I get now, but had no way of knowing at the time.

Anyway: hobby before I *knew* it was a fetish, but not by much.

Here’s a question for the crowd: is your hypnosis fetish something you were born with?

 

gigglisgallery:

Hypnosis in movies and stories was always compelling to me. But I “knew” that was just fantasy.

I saw hypnosis as a real thing, but something used for therapy, and stage magic, and stuff like that, and that was intriguing, but not in any kind of fetish sense.

When I found the mcstories site, I saw it had lots of hypnosis stories, but I after trying a few, I found them boring and tended to skip them. Stories involving fantasy elements and scifi gizmos were more interesting, and hot, because they were more believable (giggle).

(Though to be fair, hypnosis stories often have things like, “And now your boobs grow three cup sizes” and they do, instantly, due to the power of hypnosis. Things like that just destroyed my ability to take the stories seriously. )

Then – much later – I stumbled across hypnofetish sites, and had that lightbulb moment: “Whaaaaat? Hypnosis really can be used in this way? OMG give me it NOW!”

And the hypnosis subgenre of mind control simultaneously got a lot hotter for me (but there’s still so much terrible stuff in there, sigh).

 

scifiscribbler:

Yeah, I think there’s a much broader gulf between the MC fetish and the direct hypno, and that expanding from MC to hypno (as GG and I both have) leads to a very different approach to hypnotic suggestion.

 

tennfan2:

I’m the polar opposite. Hypnosis as a subgenre of mind control? Obviously the other way around! (Kidding, kidding)

Mind control was pretty much never that appealing to me except when it looked and behaved like “classical” hypnosis.

That said, I also have rarely if ever gotten off on anything that feels “fictional.” Even when I got off on hypnosis in fiction, it was hypnosis that felt in some way accurate.

 

scifiscribbler:

See, this is the thing. I don’t think MC and Hypno are kink and subkink.

I think fantasy MC and real hypno are whole kink categories in and of themselves, with sufficient thematic overlap that a lot of people miss this.

And I think there’s a specific point where that needs watching, and it’s where inexperienced hypnotists and naive subjects cross from MC to real hypno without really grokking issues like consent, post-scene sub- and dom- drop, and the potential repercussions of deep conditioning work, because the MC fantasy stuff doesn’t have the ties to established kinks that teach this.

Mostly, though, I think that realising they’re disparate kinks can go a long way to helping people sort out what appeals and what doesn’t and feeling more able to specify the stuff they like.

Elsewhere on here the discussion that @ellaenchanting has been part of with retro/pop culture hypno is right there on stuff that walks the line.

I like both. But my life in kink got a lot easier when I realised there was this bg divide along the lines of which people liked or didn’t like aspects.

(yes, there are also subkinks for both that not everyone digs, but not usually in so polarising or definitive a fashion.)

Okay, going to try to respond to multiple things here.

tennfan2: I was a young, young child when this started. I had no idea that I was a fetishist. At the same time, though, it always did feel “dirty” to me for reasons that I get now, but had no way of knowing at the time.

Same, and if I implied otherwise, I didn’t mean to.

It feels weird to come up with a completely new phrasing for this when I can just quote my past self, so I suppose I’ll do that. Take it away, me of one year ago. (Note: the question I was answering was “If you had kinks, sexual fantasies, or sexual interests before puberty, how did you interpret them?“)

I thought it was just a fascinating topic, like the things I later learned to call perseverations* but much more stable. Sure, I had a sense of privacy about it, but I also (though to a lesser extent) tended to keep perseverations private. And sure, perseverations didn’t cause that twinging feeling in my chest and abdomen, but I figured that was probably some minor quirk that I would never have an explanation for. (I now think the twinging is my brain misinterpreting the “heat” of sexual arousal.)

For the record, the thing that made me re-evaluate this was not puberty, but rather learning from TV Tropes (at about age sixteen) that hypno-fetishism was a thing. (And dear *god* did my life make so much more sense after that. I wish somebody had thought to tell me sooner.) I didn’t really “bloom”: I mean, obviously my libido didn’t vary with menstrual phase back when I didn’t *have* a menstrual cycle, and for some reason I didn’t start having erotic dreams until I was fifteen, but in essence my sexuality is pretty much unchanged since the time of my earliest memories.

*Note from the present day: these days (and even at the time, really), “special interest” seems to be a more common term for this autistic trait than “perseveration”, and you might be more familiar with it.

scifiscribbler: Mostly, though, I think that realising they’re disparate kinks can go a long way to helping people sort out what appeals and what doesn’t and feeling more able to specify the stuff they like.

The definition of “mind-control fetishist” in my internal dictionary is something like “person who genuinely prefers the stuff I subsisted off of as a child because I didn’t even have the concept of anything better”. Like, I do know there are honest-to-god MC fetishists out there, and I want to emphasise again the unendorsedness of this reaction, but when I encounter MC fetishists talking shop I am frequently struck with the urge to tell them “You don’t have to settle for this! There’s other stuff out there, and a lot of it is so much better!” *I* was settling, and I find it hard to tolerate erotic horror these days knowing there’s fluffier stuff I could be reading instead.

tennfan2: Here’s a question for the crowd: is your hypnosis fetish something you were born with?

Depends on your definition. It doesn’t really make sense to me to claim anyone was born with a hypnosis fetish per se, because you’re not born knowing what hypnosis is.

You are, on the other hand, born knowing what sleep is. While a version of me raised in the late 1700′s would probably not have had a hypno-fetish (the conception of hypnosis at the time was not restful at all), I think any version of me would enjoy dozing…I was going to say “a little too much”, but that makes it sound like it’s wrong. Enjoy dozing to an extent that normal people would not. The ways in which this desire manifests depend on what’s available in the surrounding culture, but the core remains the same.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #nsfw #sexuality and lack thereof #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #I feel like this post is not as coherent as I would like it to be #if you need something clarified let me know

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

justice-turtle:

Anyone else get hiccups from low blood sugar / hungry tummy? It is not a thing I hear about happening in general, but it happens to me every goddamn time I skip meals.

Not me (that I’ve noticed, anyway). Any followers know?

Tags:

#disordered eating #signal boost

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

dhalim:

Did anyone else have trouble finding the face in this picture? It’s called an optical illusion, but that’s a lie and it took me nearly 10 years to finally find the darn thing. It’s in the bottom centre, btw.

5 – 10 seconds? That was after reading “Did anyone else have trouble finding the face in this picture?“ and before reading “It’s in the bottom centre, btw“, so I knew more or less what I was supposed to be looking for but not where. It didn’t really jump out at me, but nor was it especially difficult to track down when I was deliberately searching for it. I don’t know how much harder it would have been if I’d just been told “there is a hidden thingy in this picture” and not what it was.

Tags:

#reply via reblog

Deeper For Me: I’m Changing My Major to Kink

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: http://deeperforme.blogspot.it/2016/03/im-changing-my-major-to-kink.html }}

ellaenchanting:

hypno-sandwich:

deeperforme:

     Oh my god last night. Oh my god, ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod last night…

I’ve lost my virginity three times: Once when a woman touched me, with intent, for the first time (my first intercourse, only a week or two later, is almost an afterthought in my memory); once when I pinned a submissive girlfriend to the carpet and first saw that look in her eyes; and once when I hypnotized someone for the first time. After each one, the world changed.

…

Read on for my pre-NEEHU opus, about fighting programming that says it’s wrong to spend all this time, money and energy pursuing kinky sex. I put in video clips and quotes!

If we’re friends…
If you follow me…
If you read one thing about kink…
If you care about joy and love and living free from fear….
Read this.

On embracing something joyous. :)

“Opening yourself up to desire and passion takes courage. Makes you silly and vulnerable, like Alison in her underpants. My friend has a line about how much safer it is just to fantasize alone in the dark – besides the obvious risks of going out and doing things, you also risk having your cherished masturbation fantasies touched by disappointment, embarassment, sadness, all the complications that come with doing things with real people, in the real world.

The upside? Having my wildest dreams come true.”

…I honestly can’t tell if there’s something wrong with this post, or if it just caught me at a really bad time.

When I talk about losing my taste for mind-control-as-such and focusing more on the sedation aspect, I describe it as uncovering something buried under desperation and ignorance of other options. I still think that’s true, but today (just today, literally a few hours ago) it occurred to me there might be something else to it as well.

It’s also more convenient. When all I had were tales of mind control and people telling me it couldn’t be done, I was most attracted to the most common type of porn. Now that I know a great deal of it can be done, I’m most attracted to the safest acts.

Perhaps that’s not entirely a coincidence. Perhaps my reaction to learning my wildest dreams could come true was to stop having wildest dreams. My dreams are tamer, these days. Oh, the thought of partnered sex still scares me, but it’s nothing compared to the terror I’d feel at wanting to enact that.

I don’t like this theory. I don’t like the way it carries the implication that the way I am now is wrong. I’m happier now than I was, more hopeful now than I was, and it feels more right and true. I neither want nor want-to-want to play in the deep end of the proverbial pool: I like sticking to the shallows. Is that wrong? If my not wanting-to-want it is at all a factor, even partially and subconsciously, in my not wanting it, does that change the answer?

(I keep thinking of those people who say you haven’t lived until you’ve done psychedelics (and risked coming back wrong), that the simplistic highs of sedatives are not and should not be enough. I wish I were confident enough to tell that idea to fuck off. I wish I were not so worried that telling the idea to fuck off would be the wrong move.)

Tags:

#sorry Divney #pretty sure this isn’t a response you were looking for #sexuality and lack thereof #I have tried to polish this thought process from its original form into #something comprehensible to people who aren’t me #don’t know to what extent I succeeded #TMI

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

responsible-reanimation:

My ideal choice for a low-level superpower would be “hours of sleep work like interchangeable energy-units.”

I’m getting eight (weirdly-distributed) hours of sleep a day but I’m still tired, what is this bullshit?

Were you less tired during times when you were getting eight hours of sleep non-weirdly distributed?

1: as a general rule, the younger you are, the more sleep you need. IIRC, it’s actually pretty normal for people in their late teens to need nine hours a day.

2: individual variation. Even if eight hours were the average for your demographic, you might happen to have higher-than-average sleep needs.

(I’m not saying that the weird distribution has nothing to do with it, but these might be relevant too.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been thinking about awe lately. I’m wondering if maybe it’s not that I can’t feel it, but that I don’t feel it in response to the standard stars and sunsets and religious rituals.

(Probably the thing that got me thinking this was telling @justice-turtle​ about how I can’t feel emotions that I’m under too much pressure to feel. Rituals and sunsets and fucking stars have so much baggage regarding how one ought to feel about them.)

Maybe awe is the feeling I get sometimes reading about mental experiences that are foreign to me, neither good nor bad but different. Maybe awe is in headspaces and phantom wings, the feeling like seeing the multiverse spread out before you and you’ll never leave your own little patch of it but it’s enough, it’s enough to see it and to know that there are people walking the paths you’ll never take.

Maybe awe is the feeling of reading really well-done porn for a kink that you’re completely not into. The words are filled with some foreign kind of power, power you can’t quite directly perceive but you can hear the whoosh as it flies over your head. You’ll never feel it yourself but it’s enough to know it’s there and to know that there are people who can, who can feel the power in those words and take it into themselves until their bones hum with it and their nervous system sparks.

Sometimes it’s enough, and maybe that’s what it means.

Tags:

#is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #the wondrous variety of sapient life #which may have been a literal tag all along #oh look an original post

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theunitofcaring asked: 47, 90, 94?

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

Wow, you’re fast. I hadn’t even given @sinesalvatorem the ping she wanted next time I posted an ask meme. (I couldn’t do it in the post itself because you can’t do pings on chat posts.)

47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing?

Not counting jewellery (besides, I have no idea how much any of my jewellery cost because it was all given to me by other people*), I think my winter coat? USD**$100 might have been the cost before the substantial sale it was on, though; I’ve had it for a few years, so I don’t recall exactly. The final cost might have been as low as $50.

(I don’t really go in for fashion or indeed aesthetics in general, so I never treat myself to fancy clothes because it wouldn’t be a treat.)

90. What makes you angry?

(no, brain, this is not a trick question to suss out whether you have Appropriate Emotional Responses, Kelsey would not do that)

People being wrong, On The Internet or otherwise. Even if it’s an honest mistake and they couldn’t have known any better, I still feel angry to some extent, though I try harder not to show it.

94. What are your strengths?

I’m pretty good at figuring out what my personal quirks are and ways of working around them, exploiting them, or just plain living with them. (As I recall, the example I used last time I was talking about this was knowing exactly how many new books I need to binge on in order to develop a special interest in the series: four. If I don’t want a special interest in a particular series, I can usually*** avoid it by limiting my book consumption during the first read-through; if I do want it, I have a benchmark to aim for.)

*Unless you count my (digital but non-smart) wristwatch, which I bought for $20.

**I bought it during a trip to America.

***Some series have a “love at first sight” thing, and those only take one book, but I can tell in advance which ones those are.

Tags:

#tales from the askbox #ask meme #theunitofcaring

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100th Follower Request Post (part 2) or The Million Dollar Question

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

{{previous post in sequence}}

ellaenchanting:

brin-bellway:

ellaenchanting:

First part posted here. I’m kind of proud of it myself. :)

Request:the best posts are always about girls called nicole
getting turned into bimbos called nikki :P if thats not the sort of
thing you mean, a post about why hypnosis turns you on and why you think
it turns others on also great :)- from @bimbonicolette

What about hypnosis turns me on?

Short answer: I’m not entirely sure!

Shorter answer: Everything!

Respectably long answer:

Truthfully, I’m still trying to figure out all of the ins and outs of my hypnofetish. It’s been buzzing around in the back of my brain for years, but I’ve only entirely consciously acknowledged and come to terms with hypnosis as a fetish for the last few months. (Origin story here.) Seriously- if you had asked me about hypnofetishism in May, I would have blushed and quickly changed the topic. This is after years of reading mcstories, obsessively watching fetishy TV show clips over and over, and hypnotizing people/being hypnotized by people. This is also despite the fact that I’ve always fantasized way more about hypnosis than about actual sex*. So, I may not be the most insightful person (on this or in general). Ask me next week and my answers may change.

Reasons I Like Hypnosis (in a sexy way):

1. Fear: Oddly.

     So, one of my formative experiences with hypnotism was seeing a stage hypnotist on Nickelodeon as a kid and FREAKING OUT about it. I took the show way too literally. That hypnotist was so obviously dangerous! Why was someone so powerful allowed to run around in public playing with people’s minds? I didn’t understand why everyone else was so calm about this being on TV. In fact, there’s a little part of me that still wonders why people who know nothing about hypnotism ever volunteer to be hypnotized. From the outside, it looks exactly like mind control and for a control freak like me that’s deeply scary (see below). Even today, knowing everything that I know about the safety of hypnosis, it still feels a little scary and dangerous. There’s a psychological theory called misattribution of arousal– the idea that fear and sexual arousal look very physiologically similar so people tend to mix them up in their heads. It’s why you should always take your date to a roller coaster or a horror movie. :) I remember being abnormally scared by hypnosis stuff when I was a kid, so there’s likely some misattribution of arousal that created an obsession and eventually a fetish. (Now, of course, I experience accurate attribution of arousal.)

2. Trust: I don’t normally play around with things I fear during sex- I’m not a traditional BDSMer and I don’t have the seemingly-ubiquitous lady rape fantasy. What makes the hypnosis fear sexy is the greater or equal amount of trust that balances out that fear. I know normal BDSM play has trust as an implicit component, but the trust in hypnosis is so much more explicit and stated. When I’m being hypnotized, I love that I’m doing something a little scary and that there’s someone there to protect and guide me and keep me safe. It’s a bit regressive, but in a very nice way. I have a hypnotist friend who will hold my hand and tell me he’s right there with me when I’m tranced and that is AMAZING. It feels incredibly right. When I’m the hypnotist, I really really enjoy the trust that is placed in me and become very protective. I love it when my subjects get that happy trancey glow and when they’re obviously having a good time. I love how much they’ve allowed themselves to trust me and themselves to let the good time happen. It’s a beautiful thing.

3. Intimacy/ Vulnerability: Following along with the trust, there is so much intimacy and vulnerability in hypnosis. Being hypnotized is in many ways the act of letting down your guard so much with another person that they may see sides of you that even you aren’t aware of. That’s the most intimate thing I can think of. It’s way more intimate than a naked body. The fact that you allow someone to play around with you on that level is letting yourself be very vulnerable. Sharing that vulnerability is profoundly bonding. Seeing someone else willing to give you that gift is also humbling and bonding. As a hypnotist, I love to use that intimacy to find strength and creativity in a subject that they weren’t aware of and bring it to their attention. It’s the process of letting a subject show him- or herself something personal and neat.

4. Control/ Power: This was the hardest part of my hypnofetish to accept. I really like the idea of having a lot of power over someone else (or them having power over me). Like many women, I was often discouraged from seeking power for myself as a child and was told that being anything but a doormat was morally wrong. Wanting power was always a negative thing.  In my real life, I still tend to be passive and quiet and sometimes feel guilty for asserting myself in even the most basic ways. It can make me miserable. I find that when I’m doing more hypnosis (especially as a hypnotist), it often helps me regain a sense of power in other areas of my life. It’s like nothing bad happens when I exercise power in these large theatrical ways so it’s safer for me to exercise it in smaller, day-to-day circumstances. I’m also practicing being powerful in hypnosis in fun, silly, and helpful ways so I’m breaking the idea in my brain that power=bad. Exercising power has not turned me into a bad person. When I allow some of that power to leak into my life I tend to get more done, get along better with people, and generally be happier. Even when I’m a subject, the ability and encouragement to assert what I want is a way of showing power- one that I can transfer to my real life. I also am a bit of a control freak in my passive aggressive way (I blame being raised Baptist) so hypnosis is a way to relax that control- or increase it!

5. Fun/Creativity/Intelligence: Hypnosis can be such a fun, creative thing to do. There are very few limits outside of your and your partner’s imaginations. As a hypnotist, it’s also a thrilling challenge to figure out what’s going to work for each particular subject. (This can also be part of the fun of being a subject- working out a partnership with your hypnotist to collectively work towards your responding more fully.) At it’s best, hypnosis can create a fun synchronicity that feels like magic for both parties involved. I’m a bit sapiosexual, so intelligence is always sexy in a hypnotist or subject (or both!)

6. Relaxation/Focus/Being Cared For/Gentleness: If it’s not obvious from my tumblr, my mind tends to run a million miles a minute in all different directions. I can also be sharply critical, which is a skill (when directed towards new ideas) and a detriment (when it’s directed towards myself). I have a history of both anxiety and depressive disorders and (while I’m doing a lot better now) my brain still has those tendencies. Being hypnotized allows me to relax and focus and enjoy the moment instead of frantically dissecting everything in my surroundings**. It’s like I’m frantically rubbing my hands together and someone holds them apart and loosens them and just lets me rest.  It’s a relief to know it’s OK to let go of that hyperawareness for a little while- that I’m safe and can just relax for a bit. I love being treated gently and being taken care of in general and especially when I’m being hypnotized. I’m historically not good at being gentle to myself (although I’m getting better) so it feels good to be guided to a gentler mindset. As a hypnotist, I really enjoy the hypnotist’s trance that makes me feel calm and focused and settled.

Most of all, I like how different combinations and gradients of these ideas can come together in a trance. In my head, hypnosis is very symbolic of a lot of big themes and experiences. It’s a way for me to play with some of these big themes and come out well and happy on the other side with a partner who is also well and happy. I don’t quite know how it came to have all this symbolic significance for me, but I’m very glad it does. I can’t think of any other single activity that leaves me so deeply satisfied on so many levels.

What about hypnosis turns you on? Can you relate to these ideas, or is it an entirely different set of factors for you?

*I like actual sex and have been proudly slutty at points in my life, but hypnosis is a true, classically Freudian fetish for me- it lives in that part of my brain where sex would normally reside for most people. I didn’t become interested in actual sex until well into my college years.

**I get similar benefits with meditation, but it’s nice to let myself be guided there.

“What about hypnosis turns you on? Can you relate to these ideas, or is it an entirely different set of factors for you?“

Well, while reading this post and trying to compare it to my own experience I kept thinking “Sort of…maybe…slightly…but…no?”. So that’s fun to sort out. Like, yes I was pretty scared of it as a kid, and I don’t even know how I feel about the intimacy aspect, and the control aspect has some appeal but not nearly as much as it did when I was younger because, in hindsight, I think it was always more of an instrumental means-to-an-end thing rather than a goal in itself…

…but those all seem like minor issues to me, to my own sexuality and my own understanding of it. The important thing, the core of it, is restfulness. There a reason one of my tags is “people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me”: to me, the two are all tangled up and blended together. Tiredness and sexual frustration are generally the same feeling, distinguished only by cause and whether spending a while unconscious will fix it.

I’ve never knowingly met anyone else like me. For me, the process of getting into the hypno-blogosphere hasn’t been about finding a community of like-minded people, people who truly get me, but rather finding successive groups of people with increasingly close resemblances to what my hypothetical community would look like, little glimpses here and there of “yes, I actually grok what you’re talking about”. Lately I’ve managed to even find people who are into consensual stuff*, but even with them…like, take all the hype about the “Hypnotic Amnesia” book. I don’t grok memory play at all: it feels like it’s completely missing the point. If I wanted to forget the good bits, I would go take a nap. To me, the point of hypnosis is that we don’t have to settle for that. We can take the enjoyable parts of sleep, the calm and the peacefulness and the wonderful feeling of dozing, the feelings I long for the same way that other people long for sex, without having to deal with the unconsciousness or the hypnagogic amnesia. Sometimes, if we play our cards right, we really can eat our cake and have it too.

*By “into consensual stuff”, I don’t just mean “finding ways of healthily acting out their non-con fantasies”, but “genuinely deep-down prefer consensual situations, even in fantasy”. Let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with having non-con fantasies, but over the past couple years I’ve been increasingly realising that they’re just not really for me.

If it helps, I can totally dig your somnophilia. Sometimes I get annoyed at quickie inductions because I want the long, slow slide into a nice, gentle, relaxed place*. The drifting feels very nice all on its own. If I know someone else enjoys that feeling specifically, I’ll try and expand their sense of time while they’re in trance to give them more time with those good feelings. I like the idea of giving someone a seemingly endless, floating peace- like warmly floating on your back in the ocean and staring at all the stars in an expansive sky.

I’m sure there are other people who are more on the pure relaxation side out there. Anyone want to self-identify?

*Sometimes quickie inductions are great- depends on my mood.

I wish that were what somnophilia meant. Then I would have a keyword to use for finding like-minded people. I can see how it could have ended up meaning that if things had gone a little differently, but as it is “somnophilia” seems to be pretty settled on referring specifically to being into having sexual intercourse with unconscious people (or, occasionally, other people having sexual intercourse with you while you’re unconscious). Even if you ignore the intercourse aspect (which I am not into), it seems to be specifically about unconsciousness to them rather than dozing.

As for “if it helps”, it helps a little bit. It’s one of those glimpses of visceral understanding.

Thanks for the signal boost.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof

100th Follower Request Post (part 2) or The Million Dollar Question

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

ellaenchanting:

First part posted here. I’m kind of proud of it myself. :)

Request:the best posts are always about girls called nicole getting turned into bimbos called nikki :P if thats not the sort of thing you mean, a post about why hypnosis turns you on and why you think it turns others on also great :)- from @bimbonicolette

What about hypnosis turns me on?

Short answer: I’m not entirely sure!

Shorter answer: Everything!

Respectably long answer:

Truthfully, I’m still trying to figure out all of the ins and outs of my hypnofetish. It’s been buzzing around in the back of my brain for years, but I’ve only entirely consciously acknowledged and come to terms with hypnosis as a fetish for the last few months. (Origin story here.) Seriously- if you had asked me about hypnofetishism in May, I would have blushed and quickly changed the topic. This is after years of reading mcstories, obsessively watching fetishy TV show clips over and over, and hypnotizing people/being hypnotized by people. This is also despite the fact that I’ve always fantasized way more about hypnosis than about actual sex*. So, I may not be the most insightful person (on this or in general). Ask me next week and my answers may change.

Reasons I Like Hypnosis (in a sexy way):

1. Fear: Oddly.

     So, one of my formative experiences with hypnotism was seeing a stage hypnotist on Nickelodeon as a kid and FREAKING OUT about it. I took the show way too literally. That hypnotist was so obviously dangerous! Why was someone so powerful allowed to run around in public playing with people’s minds? I didn’t understand why everyone else was so calm about this being on TV. In fact, there’s a little part of me that still wonders why people who know nothing about hypnotism ever volunteer to be hypnotized. From the outside, it looks exactly like mind control and for a control freak like me that’s deeply scary (see below). Even today, knowing everything that I know about the safety of hypnosis, it still feels a little scary and dangerous. There’s a psychological theory called misattribution of arousal– the idea that fear and sexual arousal look very physiologically similar so people tend to mix them up in their heads. It’s why you should always take your date to a roller coaster or a horror movie. :) I remember being abnormally scared by hypnosis stuff when I was a kid, so there’s likely some misattribution of arousal that created an obsession and eventually a fetish. (Now, of course, I experience accurate attribution of arousal.)

2. Trust: I don’t normally play around with things I fear during sex- I’m not a traditional BDSMer and I don’t have the seemingly-ubiquitous lady rape fantasy. What makes the hypnosis fear sexy is the greater or equal amount of trust that balances out that fear. I know normal BDSM play has trust as an implicit component, but the trust in hypnosis is so much more explicit and stated. When I’m being hypnotized, I love that I’m doing something a little scary and that there’s someone there to protect and guide me and keep me safe. It’s a bit regressive, but in a very nice way. I have a hypnotist friend who will hold my hand and tell me he’s right there with me when I’m tranced and that is AMAZING. It feels incredibly right. When I’m the hypnotist, I really really enjoy the trust that is placed in me and become very protective. I love it when my subjects get that happy trancey glow and when they’re obviously having a good time. I love how much they’ve allowed themselves to trust me and themselves to let the good time happen. It’s a beautiful thing.

3. Intimacy/ Vulnerability: Following along with the trust, there is so much intimacy and vulnerability in hypnosis. Being hypnotized is in many ways the act of letting down your guard so much with another person that they may see sides of you that even you aren’t aware of. That’s the most intimate thing I can think of. It’s way more intimate than a naked body. The fact that you allow someone to play around with you on that level is letting yourself be very vulnerable. Sharing that vulnerability is profoundly bonding. Seeing someone else willing to give you that gift is also humbling and bonding. As a hypnotist, I love to use that intimacy to find strength and creativity in a subject that they weren’t aware of and bring it to their attention. It’s the process of letting a subject show him- or herself something personal and neat.

4. Control/ Power: This was the hardest part of my hypnofetish to accept. I really like the idea of having a lot of power over someone else (or them having power over me). Like many women, I was often discouraged from seeking power for myself as a child and was told that being anything but a doormat was morally wrong. Wanting power was always a negative thing.  In my real life, I still tend to be passive and quiet and sometimes feel guilty for asserting myself in even the most basic ways. It can make me miserable. I find that when I’m doing more hypnosis (especially as a hypnotist), it often helps me regain a sense of power in other areas of my life. It’s like nothing bad happens when I exercise power in these large theatrical ways so it’s safer for me to exercise it in smaller, day-to-day circumstances. I’m also practicing being powerful in hypnosis in fun, silly, and helpful ways so I’m breaking the idea in my brain that power=bad. Exercising power has not turned me into a bad person. When I allow some of that power to leak into my life I tend to get more done, get along better with people, and generally be happier. Even when I’m a subject, the ability and encouragement to assert what I want is a way of showing power- one that I can transfer to my real life. I also am a bit of a control freak in my passive aggressive way (I blame being raised Baptist) so hypnosis is a way to relax that control- or increase it!

5. Fun/Creativity/Intelligence: Hypnosis can be such a fun, creative thing to do. There are very few limits outside of your and your partner’s imaginations. As a hypnotist, it’s also a thrilling challenge to figure out what’s going to work for each particular subject. (This can also be part of the fun of being a subject- working out a partnership with your hypnotist to collectively work towards your responding more fully.) At it’s best, hypnosis can create a fun synchronicity that feels like magic for both parties involved. I’m a bit sapiosexual, so intelligence is always sexy in a hypnotist or subject (or both!)

6. Relaxation/Focus/Being Cared For/Gentleness: If it’s not obvious from my tumblr, my mind tends to run a million miles a minute in all different directions. I can also be sharply critical, which is a skill (when directed towards new ideas) and a detriment (when it’s directed towards myself). I have a history of both anxiety and depressive disorders and (while I’m doing a lot better now) my brain still has those tendencies. Being hypnotized allows me to relax and focus and enjoy the moment instead of frantically dissecting everything in my surroundings**. It’s like I’m frantically rubbing my hands together and someone holds them apart and loosens them and just lets me rest.  It’s a relief to know it’s OK to let go of that hyperawareness for a little while- that I’m safe and can just relax for a bit. I love being treated gently and being taken care of in general and especially when I’m being hypnotized. I’m historically not good at being gentle to myself (although I’m getting better) so it feels good to be guided to a gentler mindset. As a hypnotist, I really enjoy the hypnotist’s trance that makes me feel calm and focused and settled.

Most of all, I like how different combinations and gradients of these ideas can come together in a trance. In my head, hypnosis is very symbolic of a lot of big themes and experiences. It’s a way for me to play with some of these big themes and come out well and happy on the other side with a partner who is also well and happy. I don’t quite know how it came to have all this symbolic significance for me, but I’m very glad it does. I can’t think of any other single activity that leaves me so deeply satisfied on so many levels.

What about hypnosis turns you on? Can you relate to these ideas, or is it an entirely different set of factors for you?

*I like actual sex and have been proudly slutty at points in my life, but hypnosis is a true, classically Freudian fetish for me- it lives in that part of my brain where sex would normally reside for most people. I didn’t become interested in actual sex until well into my college years.

**I get similar benefits with meditation, but it’s nice to let myself be guided there.

“What about hypnosis turns you on? Can you relate to these ideas, or is it an entirely different set of factors for you?“

Well, while reading this post and trying to compare it to my own experience I kept thinking “Sort of…maybe…slightly…but…no?”. So that’s fun to sort out. Like, yes I was pretty scared of it as a kid, and I don’t even know how I feel about the intimacy aspect, and the control aspect has some appeal but not nearly as much as it did when I was younger because, in hindsight, I think it was always more of an instrumental means-to-an-end thing rather than a goal in itself…

…but those all seem like minor issues to me, to my own sexuality and my own understanding of it. The important thing, the core of it, is restfulness. There a reason one of my tags is “people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me”: to me, the two are all tangled up and blended together. Tiredness and sexual frustration are generally the same feeling, distinguished only by cause and whether spending a while unconscious will fix it.

I’ve never knowingly met anyone else like me. For me, the process of getting into the hypno-blogosphere hasn’t been about finding a community of like-minded people, people who truly get me, but rather finding successive groups of people with increasingly close resemblances to what my hypothetical community would look like, little glimpses here and there of “yes, I actually grok what you’re talking about”. Lately I’ve managed to even find people who are into consensual stuff*, but even with them…like, take all the hype about the “Hypnotic Amnesia” book. I don’t grok memory play at all: it feels like it’s completely missing the point. If I wanted to forget the good bits, I would go take a nap. To me, the point of hypnosis is that we don’t have to settle for that. We can take the enjoyable parts of sleep, the calm and the peacefulness and the wonderful feeling of dozing, the feelings I long for the same way that other people long for sex, without having to deal with the unconsciousness or the hypnagogic amnesia. Sometimes, if we play our cards right, we really can eat our cake and have it too.

*By “into consensual stuff”, I don’t just mean “finding ways of healthily acting out their non-con fantasies”, but “genuinely deep-down prefer consensual situations, even in fantasy”. Let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with having non-con fantasies, but over the past couple years I’ve been increasingly realising that they’re just not really for me.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me

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