sexuality and lack thereof

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

solluxander:

can you illegally download sleep

Tags:

#Step 1: look for those sleep-aid hypnosis recordings #Step 2: find one that charges money #Step 3: steal it #voila #(no I have not done that) #(I don’t even like audio) #(and in general there’s exactly zero reason to steal things when other things in the same category are freely given) #(to even be tempted you need some reason to believe you’ll like the paid one more) #(which usually means ”a particular for-profit piece has a high reputation”) #(and that’s not something that comes up much in this case) #((the entire concept of pirating porn makes no sense to me)) #((because IME most individual pieces of for-profit porn have no reputation at all)) #((and the ones that do never have a reputation that makes me more inclined to want them)) #tag rambles #sexuality and lack thereof #okay so while I *was* joking about that answer #if you actually try anything like that remember to vet your scripts #(”vetting the script”: listening to it first *without* following along to check that you approve of what they’re saying) #(and they’re not going to try to fast-talk you into some bullshit) #(because no matter how many of them are fine there’s always that one asshole you know?)

Anonymous asked: would be good if individuals could just easily adjust their own sex drives up or down as wanted, really. I mean, I know there are medications with either effect, but I don’t mean like that, I mean like you’d adjust a setting in a piece of software.

~ Brin ~ 4 Comments

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theopjones:

brin-bellway:

argumate:

it would indeed be very handy!

I think like most emotions it would be kind of self-reinforcing, in that once you’re at one end of the scale the other end seems unappealing, but it would still be good to have the option available.

…do people normally find a given level of libido self-reinforcing?

Only middling-libido!mes want to stay that way long-term; I get sick of high libido after ~1 day and of low libido after ~1 week. (Unless I’m too distracted by other things to notice the vague sense of being incomplete that happens when my libido is too low for too long, which is how I spent the month of April. But even that is more “being sufficiently fucked up that your damage-assessment mechanism is also damaged”, rather than actually being okay with it.)

Mind you, when I see other people complaining of loss of libido, they’re almost always talking about practical effects and not the inherent badness of having an ego-syntonic part of your psyche go missing, which makes me wonder if maybe ego-neutral libidos are more common than typical-minding would lead me to believe.

Kind of my feeling is that I often get the feeling of IQ reduced by 25% around hot woman + weird effects on inhibitions (both reduced and increased. Which is sort of self-reinforcing. 

But is also why I agree with the anon that I don’t really like a lot of my sex drive. 

I would kind of like it if I could turn off my feelings of sexual and romantic attraction 2/3rds of the time. And thats a lot of the reason. I often don’t like a lot of the effect that it has on me.

And I also wish I could shut off a lot of inappropriate times I’m attracted to someone or a lot of the feelings of unrequited crushes and such.

…okay, in hindsight I guess I should have figured my other divergences would imply divergence here as well. I had…kind of forgotten that sex drives could have interpersonal effects, since mine doesn’t really.

(I wish you good luck and good coping.)

Tags:

#god I love being ace #(fun fact: when I typed ”god I love being”) #(the ”popular tags” section recommended ”god I love being bi”) #(you almost got it recommended tags! you’re in the right general area!) #nsfw text? #sexuality and lack thereof #reply via reblog #asexuality #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

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Anonymous asked: would be good if individuals could just easily adjust their own sex drives up or down as wanted, really. I mean, I know there are medications with either effect, but I don’t mean like that, I mean like you’d adjust a setting in a piece of software.

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

argumate:

it would indeed be very handy!

I think like most emotions it would be kind of self-reinforcing, in that once you’re at one end of the scale the other end seems unappealing, but it would still be good to have the option available.

…do people normally find a given level of libido self-reinforcing?

Only middling-libido!mes want to stay that way long-term; I get sick of high libido after ~1 day and of low libido after ~1 week. (Unless I’m too distracted by other things to notice the vague sense of being incomplete that happens when my libido is too low for too long, which is how I spent the month of April. But even that is more “being sufficiently fucked up that your damage-assessment mechanism is also damaged”, rather than actually being okay with it.)

Mind you, when I see other people complaining of loss of libido, they’re almost always talking about practical effects and not the inherent badness of having an ego-syntonic part of your psyche go missing, which makes me wonder if maybe ego-neutral libidos are more common than typical-minding would lead me to believe.

Tags:

#I know I know I have a blatantly atypical mind in this area #but there’s no reason to think that the known divergences would indicate a divergence in *this particular aspect* #and it’s not like I can go around with a baseline assumption that people *aren’t* like me or I won’t get anything done #there are so many ways to be not-like-me and no reason to assume any particular one over others #you have to start *somewhere* #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw text?

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

So because of Reasons (I maybe shouldn’t go into much detail publicly, but it involves a side gig), I have been exposed to a lot of romance novels (often erotic, though not always) over the last few months, and it has been an Experience.

1. Did you know that in mainstream fiction circles, “MC” stands for “motorcycle club” rather than “mind control”? Because I did not know that, and I did a hell of a double-take when I first saw an “MC romance”.

2. Relatedly (or I guess *not* relatedly, if you are someone who looks at “MC fiction” and thinks “motorcycle club”), I did not expect memory play to be so popular. I mean, they put a different spin on it, of course, but still. Quite a few people in these have glorious sex with their true loves and then later wind up mind-wiped (I think usually by Fiction Head Trauma) and the true love has to Remind them *nudgewink*. And that’s not even counting other variations on the theme.

3. Wow, is a lot of this stuff dark. And even when it’s not dark, it’s often embarrassment-squicky, or people are doing something ~taboo~ and worrying about getting caught. It seems like even people who aren’t *specifically* marketing to taboo fetishists casually assume that something being taboo is a point in its favour, sexiness-wise (why would worry be sexy?). (And apparently breath play? Although that might have just been one person. But she seemed to think her audience would agree, without having selected her audience for hypoxyphilics beforehand.)

4. Overall, when I see stuff about what’s up in popular erotica, I am left with a sense of “wait, *these* are supposed to be the normal vanilla people? they’re *way* more out-there than I am.” (Also, that a lot of the problems† that I thought were specific to primarily-non-con-oriented kinks (or even specific to hypnosis, like memory play) are apparently happening all over. Not that I was expecting *this* porn to appeal to me anyway, but still, I feel some solidarity with the people who *would* like this stuff if only it were fluffier. Though there’s still *some* fluff out there, of course (just as there is here).)

Did something happen to, like, the sexual Overton window while I wasn’t looking? Is it subcultural effects–but I would expect subcultural effects to work in the *opposite* direction if anything. Or outgroup bias: everyone thinks the [people who are only into central examples of sex]†† are Over There in Normal Land, and that it’s just their own circle that’s kinky? Maybe the central-example-of-sex people just don’t read much erotica, even mainstream stuff? Maybe things were *always* like this and I’m just naive? (I think I have vaguely heard that taboos-are-sexy was always like that, though I don’t understand why.)

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†I am using “problem” in the subjective sense here, to mean “trends that make porn less suited to my tastes”.

††I am no longer confident in my sense of what “vanilla” means, so I’m trying to avoid it here.

Tags:

#??? #sexuality and lack thereof #oh look an original post #amnesia cw

Libido

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

asexualactivities:

Do you have a libido?  What is it like?

What is a libido, anyway?

When I talk about my “libido”, the main thing I’m usually referring to is the frequency and intensity of my sexual fantasies.

During high-libido times, I think a lot more about (loosely defined) sex, and how good it feels, and how much I’d like to be having some right now. Even when I’m not focusing on it, if my libido’s high the fantasies and the longing will often be kind of running in the background.

I’ve heard other people describe feelings of “pent-up sexual energy”, but in my own context that feeling manifests as more of a fatigue.

I wrote a tag ramble about this ages back, which I still mostly endorse. (Unlike past!me, I at least have the *option* of masturbation now, even if I’m not especially good at it and often don’t get around to it anyway.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #(in this case: no) #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #nsfw text

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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Also listened to “The Sweet Tooth”, which reminds me very much of reading “The Glad Hosts”.

They both feel strongly like somebody took a cliche, paint-by-numbers erotic-horror story, stripped out the conventionally-sexual content*, and gave it to a vanilla audience who wouldn’t recognise its pattern.

And so you’re like “…do they know? Is that what they did, or did they independently reinvent this standard plot?”

(IIRC, there’s an RPA behind-the-scenes bit that suggests they didn’t know, and that they did independently reinvent this plot. Which is interesting, in a convergent-evolution kind of way. “The lure is a chocolate shop, and women liking chocolate is for whatever reason more of a Thing than it is for men” and “this story is porn aimed at gynephiles” both lead to the same result of all-female targets.)

*But didn’t do a complete job of it: you can still see traces. Mai’s “love erotic”; the way the shop preys exclusively on women.

Tags:

#I mean yeah the villain loses in this one #but that *would* be a side effect of translating the plot from a genre where the villain usually wins to a genre where they never do #Red Panda Adventures #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw text? #reactionblogging #tmi? #for some reason it took me longer to notice with Glad Hosts than with Sweet Tooth #Sweet Tooth I remember thinking a few minutes into my first listen ”I swear I’ve read porn with this premise” #Glad Hosts felt *vaguely* familiar and it wasn’t until afterward that I realised #”oh this is basically just cliche dime-a-dozen mind-altering-parasite porn but with the conventional sexuality removed” #”I didn’t like this plot the *first* six times I read it” #(Sweet Tooth was much less horror-y so I liked it a lot better) #(have I mentioned lately I hate horror?) #oh look an original post

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

acemindbreaker:

This is the second quiz from Fetish and You chapter 3.

Picture transcript:
Let’s look at some of the thoughts of an evolved fetishist. How many of these do you believe right now? How many of them would you like to adapt as your own?

Fetish Quiz #2 – An Evolved Fetishist’s Perception:
1. My fetish means that I have “out of the box” proclivities.
2. My fetish is a little quirky, but it’s just one part of my sexuality.
3. My fetish is sexually based. The only person who ever has to know is my partner. Even, then, disclosure is solely my choice.
4. I’m a good person based upon my behaviors, interactions and values. Fetish has no bearing on my character.
5. I accept that I have a fetish.
6. I am respectful of the fact that my partner or future partner may not initially understand my fetish. I can make a mindful decision about whether or not I want to tell my partner about my fetish.
7. My thoughts can never hurt anyone. I’m lucky to have something to think about that reliably helps me to orgasm.
8. I don’t believe I’ll be judged based on my fetish. By accepting myself, I can use my energy to be the best person I can be.
9. The more I learn, the more I know that I’m okay.
10. I’m in control of my fetish. It doesn’t control me. I incorporate fetish into my life in a safe, sane, balanced way.

How to Score
How many of the modified statements did you agree with? If you agreed even once, you have an open mind. It’s my hope that by the end of this book, you’ll not only agree with every statement but that you will be living every statement.

My response:
I agreed with 1*, 4*, 9 and 10*. I rewote them in my diary as:
1. My fetish makes me unique, and that’s OK.
4. I can’t help what turns me on. I’m a good person because I have morals.
9. The more I learn, the better I feel about it. Eventually I’ll be OK with it.
10. I can incorporate my fetish in my life in a balanced, healthy way. I can learn what’s appropriate and how to fit my fetish in.

* shaky belief, falls apart when I’m upset

…is it just me, or does this list conflate a healthy fetish with an unimportant fetish?

#2 and #3 are views that get imposed on me as part of the price of being a Respectable Member of the LGBT+ Community, not goals I aim for myself. I guess #6 could work for some people, but I can’t have a sexual* partner and not tell them about my fetish; what are we even doing sex-wise if not that?

(#1 evokes the stereotype of kinky people being sexually ~adventurous~, but to be fair I suspect she didn’t mean it that way.)

*I’m guessing from context that this is supposed to be the case.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #I don’t fit the narrative of #”your sexual-attraction patterns are an Integral Part of Your Identity but everything else sexual is a minor sideshow” #(not either half) #but I’ve seen enough to be scared of what will happen if I don’t *pretend* that I do

~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

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@acemindbreaker, hello and welcome!

(and thank you for the massive spike in my activity page, it’s very flattering)

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Acemindbreaker Icon

@acemindbreaker
replied to your post “i didn’t ship you with nonternary, i’m curious about how you can be…”

Why are you so much like me?

:D

Which ways are you thinking of?

(Looking at your blog, I see you’re aro-ace, autistic, formerly homeschooled, Canadian (though not by immigration?), dislike queer gatekeeping, and your kinks are cousins to mine.)

(Was going to make this a footnote, but didn’t seem right to have a footnote longer than its paragraph: I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s room for debate about whether I’m technically autistic, and it’s definitely not official (my parents didn’t seek diagnosis when I was a kid because they didn’t want me to get stuck with a stigmatised label, and I’ve never been in a situation where the benefits of being official might outweigh that), but I’m certainly somewhere in the neighbourhood.)

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acemindbreaker replied to your link “Smashwords – Sleepwalkers: Deluxe Edition with Bonus Material – a book…”

Oh, yes. Erotica for the genital-repulsed fetishists is really rare.

I know, right? One of the nice things about text-based porn is it’s easier to skim those bits. (that and easier pausing/rewinding, and hyperlexia)

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acemindbreaker replied to your photoset “coeur-de-porcelaine: pansexualpagan: kaylamariesmiley: …”

Um, most pregnancies are not “nine months of pain”. If you’re experiencing chronic pain throughout pregnancy, something is wrong and you should talk to your gynecologist about it.

I wonder if this is related to the thing where anti-dysmenorrhea advocates treat it as a half-the-population issue, completely ignoring the existence of people who menstruate without being dysmenorrheic (*cough*). It’s tempting to exaggerate the scope of the issue in the hopes of being taken more seriously. (And sad to think, rightly or wrongly, that one wouldn’t be taken seriously if one were honest about the scope, as if the real version of the problem isn’t bad enough.)

Tags:

#acemindbreaker #replies #nsfw? #sexuality and lack thereof #okay I’m late for bed I’d better go #be back in the morning #fertility cw

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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enscenic replied to your post “Once Upon a Time (cont.)…”

This is, of course, the pay off on following you – the commentary and evaluation is delightful. Especially in the tags.

:)

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I’m realising that it’s really hard to model my ten-year-old self’s sexuality, because there was so much she didn’t know. Nowadays it’s hard to grok what it’s like to know that little, and to not even be aware that you might be missing information in this area.

(Apart from the lack of practical demonstrations (no condom-on-a-banana or anything; it was all book-learning), my sex education was about as good as it could reasonably have been, which is to say it was absolutely terrible for me except for teaching me how my reproductive system worked on a purely anatomical level.)

Like, how high was my pre-pubescent libido? In early puberty, when my body was still sorting out what hormonal profile to have, what effect did that have on it? I don’t know, because at the time I didn’t have a concept of “libido” in a way that was relevant to my life, and so it never occurred to me at ten to ask questions like “how often do I think about hypnosis?” or me at thirteen to ask “that time when I spent two (nonconsecutive) weeks out of a four-week period (so to speak) menstruating* because my body was still a noob at having a menstrual cycle, did I feel really tired a lot no matter how well I slept**?”. I didn’t know that these things were all connected until several years after the fact, so I didn’t keep track.

—

It occurred to me this morning: while I loved A Wrinkle in Time (and thought the sequels were reasonably enjoyable in themselves but failed to live up to the first one), and I loved the Children of the Red King series, my main reaction to Molly Moon was “more boring than it had any right to be”.

I mean, it was okay, and I read a couple of the sequels, but like, how bad does your book about hypnosis have to be to get merely an “okay” rating from a porn-starved hypno-fetishist?

A model of my childhood sexuality would need to account for that, and I’m not sure what it was that made it different. (“Told almost entirely from a top’s perspective”? “Being ‘a book about hypnosis’ is actually a problem, because it causes too-high expectations”? Both? Something else?)

—

*And so possibly two weeks ovulating as well.

**For a moment there, my brain tried to combine the stereotype of “teenagers are constantly horny” with that hypothesis of “our society has been chronically-sleep-depriving the vast majority of its teenagers for so long that we think symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation are ‘just part of what being a teenager is like’”, and then I remembered that for normal people, “constantly horny” is not a symptom of chronic sleep deprivation. (Note that I personally was not chronically sleep-deprived as a teenager: I was homeschooled and allowed to set my own sleep schedule.)

Tags:

#enscenic #replies #(the chronic-sleep-deprivation hypothesis would certainly explain why everyone was always so impressed with my maturity as a teenager) #(perhaps I was the only well-rested teen they’d ever met) #sexuality and lack thereof #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #my childhood #nsfw?

Once Upon a Time (cont.)…

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

enscenic:

… in the interests of not making the monster post of monsters, I’m going to limit the reblogging of these to however many times it takes to cover 100 tumblrs. CLICK HERE if you are, for some reason, interested in seeing #s 1 through 110.

111 – 120

@blnkstr – reblogs of hypno stuff

@topfonts – I have a confession to make. I have a small font obsession. (I once crashed the hard drive of my super cool windows 95 Gateway pc with 25 entire GBs of memory because I had too many fonts. Ah, the good old days…)

@spiralturquoise – Another hypno person who I am now privileged to have met in Real Life. They write most excellent smut, which you can find at mcstories.com!

@buzzfeed – Because funny.

@buzzfeedbooks – Because books.

@buzzfeedau – Because fandom.

@scifiscribbler – Here is a person from Hypbook, who I think many people follow for the image captions. I personally don’t really care for those, I followed him for commentary and reblogs of issues that matter to me. But if you like snippets of mind control stories attached to pics of mostly naked, big-busted women, you may like this tumblr.

@wildnutmeg – Another hypno person, and a friend of a friend of mine, who swears that we would get along like gangbusters, but somehow we never seem to have the time at events that we have in common to get to know each other. Someday…

@zanythoughts – I want to say something short but I can’t. I followed this tumblr because I made friends with its owner at MEEHU 2, and I heartily approve of everything it posts. BUT I could hate everything that got posted here and I’d still follow it, because it’s Zany. Because you understand where my head and heart are at most of the time, and we can talk about serious shit without it feeling like a terrible chore or battle. Because choking. Because bloody beautiful art. Because slapping. Because…

@hypnowish – Followed because I liked the idea implicit in the name. Sadly inactive now, and never really lived up to its potential when it was active.

121 – 132

@girl-intraining – Beautiful writing that explores BDSM in ways that are easily accessible to people with little or no experience. READ THIS POST to see what I mean.

@brin-bellway – Rebogs some gloriously beautiful imagery, also has really good taste in comic books.

@justfairythings – was inactive for quite some time, but recently has posted again.  Like most of the tumblrs I follow, really properly funny. (An example:  “Q – Loving your blog, especially the unicorns. Did you know that the unicorn is the national animal of Scotland? A – I am afraid of Scotland.”)

@nerdistindustries –  Because they speak my language.

@hypnosubdude – Someone I know in real life, who is awesome in a lot of ways, but for me none moreso than his incredible enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is always delightful for me to watch.

@shaman58 – A fellow writer of hypno-smut! Opinionated and creative and just plain interesting to follow.

@calamitybrain – POSSIBLY the name I wish I’d come up with first the most of all the possible names. Makes an AWESOME art project, for some definitions of art project. Another hypno person that I’ve gotten to meet and befriend in Real Life.

@nicolettecuddleston – fictional bimbo blog that I followed primarily because I liked the name. Inactive.

@ladyskyla-dreams – Someone from Hypbook that I have known in Real Life. Once upon a time we carpooled together to WEEHU 1 and she convinced me that the me in the rearview mirror was from an alternate dimension, and how could I be sure that the me I was seeing was ever actually me…

@taylorswift – my most problematic problematic fave. Not the world’s best anything, but I like her anyway.

@alternative-pinup – Very active tumblr that posts beauty that falls outside the glossy unreality promoted by fashion magazines and mass media. Lots of tattoos and retro looks.

@dancercoder – Look! Another adorable hypno person whom I know in Real Life! <waves enthusiastically> Someday a class I am teaching WON’T be scheduled against one of your dance classes. SOMEDAY.

“gloriously beautiful imagery, also has really good taste in comic books.“

This description of my blog feels very weird from the inside, but that just makes it more interesting to know what you think of when thinking of me.

(My ability to enjoy beautiful imagery is relatively limited, and I have possibly never read a comic book in my life. Comic cultural-osmosis stuff can be fun, though, and I have been known to watch video adaptations of Marvel stuff and of Red Panda Adventures comics.)

(in related news, you guys should totally listen to the Red Panda Adventures radioplays, they’re clever and funny and well-plotted and the protagonist is occasionally uncomfortably attractive*)

*The Youtube mirror only goes up to season 4, so I couldn’t link straight to the 21:05 timestamp.

Tags:

#although if my tastes weren’t so narrow these days he’d be uncomfortably attractive more than occasionally #(I’m old enough and the show new enough that it would take some serious fucking with the timeline) #(you can’t just arrange for me to stumble across the right website at the right time) #((and of course in any case I wouldn’t want to destroy my own timeline in the bargain)) #(but I really wonder what (perpetually porn-starved) ten-year-old me would have thought of the Red Panda) #(I can partially extrapolate given what she thought of A Wrinkle in Time but that’s different) #(notably the sequels to A Wrinkle in Time are pretty much not kinky at all) #((which was very disappointing)) #(whereas RPA just. keeps. being like this) #((like not all the time but a lot of the time)) #reply via reblog #comic #Red Panda Adventures #tag rambles #(a tag ramble that has been percolating in my head for some time) #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw?

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