sexuality and lack thereof

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

{{next post in sequence, branch 1}}

{{next post in sequence, branch 2}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

staxilicious:

artkat:

despairnaegami:

personasanta:

does anybody else think tired and sleepy mean two totally different things

sleepy is cute and dozing off and happy but tired is 10 cups of coffee and murder

Sleepy vs Tired

reblogging because the last graphic comment is FLAWLESS

@sinesalvatorem pinged me on this, but Tumblr refused to display the parts of the thread above hers (not only on the dash, but on her blog and on the reblogging screen as well).

I debated for a bit whether to reblog directly from her or go back one link in the reblog chain and use that. On the one hand, I think the humour was enhanced by not knowing what the post was right away (so that I wondered “what did she ping me on?” and going back a link and seeing the original thread acted as a punchline). On the other hand, a deactivation here and a name-change there and people who come across this later on might not be able to find that punchline. In the end, preservation concerns won out.

Anyway, thank you, Alison! I’m glad you thought of me.

(Also, they do seem to be grasping at the same distinction we were, don’t they.)

Tags:

#real life continuity nods #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #language #reply via reblog #(and I’ll add this one in since it’s why the topic came up in the first place:) #sexuality and lack thereof

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

Wait, so let me get this straight.

Consenting in advance to someone having sex with you while you’re unconscious is invalid, because it’s not truly consent if you’re not able to revoke it and back out partway through.

Consenting in advance to someone performing surgery on you while you’re unconscious and can’t back out, on the other hand, is totally fine.

Tags:

#today in internally inconsistent anti-kink arguments #(well not technically today) #(I don’t actually have a specific example in mind here) #(just the general type) #(every so often I poke around somnophilia communities) #(in hopes of coming across a kindred spirit who fell in with a different crowd) #(haven’t found any yet but I have found an awful lot of arguments about whether consensual intercourse with sleeping people is possible) #nsfw? #sexuality and lack thereof #vagueblogging #(maybe) #oh look an original post #I feel like this probably deserves some additional warning tag but I’m not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

responsible-reanimation:

deusvulture:

*browsing a new blog*

*person reblogged a certain kind of niche fetish porn*

Me: oh, [mutual] is into that, I should airplane them this po-

Me: wait

Me: what the fuck am I doing

Informal porn-sharing networks are a thing of beauty, and I for one heartily endorse sending people weird stuff you know they’re into as a quality social norm (assuming you know they’re comfortable with it).

Just remember to Ctrl-C something else later.

Something to add to that list of questionable blogging-etiquette assumptions?

Tags:

#I have been having trouble lately forming Opinions #but judging from the fact that #when I saw the Vampire Duchies were inspired by me #my response was ‘aww that’s sweet’ #I feel reasonably safe inferring that I endorse this norm #reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw?

Director Commentary: The Dark Elves of Nahui-Citli

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

smut-theory:

This week, we’re going to try separating out the Hentaiculture and commentary, both to make it easier to respond to one or the other, and to allow people to form an opinion of the Hentaiculture on its own before being told what it was “supposed” to be doing. This is about yesterday’s Hentaiculture post, The Dark Elves of Nahui-Citli.

This entire hentaiculture was built up around a single scene image/idea: A mother impregnates her daughter, with a child that daughter will eventually impregnate, with… etc, etc, in an endless cycle. For this reason, all of them have to be futanari. Now, I personally love futanari, and would be happy replacing all the men in every hentaiculture with them, but I know not many share this opinion, so I am already on the back foot: most people prefer their fantasy realms with men and women, and I do like making things that can appeal to people who don’t share all of my interests. So, I decide to use some strategic ambiguity so that, depending on what you are looking for, you can interpret this society as an endless self-perpetuating cycle of psychologically scarring abuse, as well as the bizarre-but-happy beautiful cycle of renewal and rebirth I originally envisioned. If you’re reading charitably, you should see whatever you prefer most, and if you are reading uncharitably, nothing would have salvaged your opinion anyway. Images that are different depending on what angle you see them from are made with “lenticular printing”, and “lenticular” will be a good way to think of what I am trying to do with their morality and tone.

Dark Elves will be perfect for this morally-lenticular society, because there’s equal associations of them just being Neutral Evil dominators and bouncy hentai sluts, someone can see hints of what they want to see. Also, I can explain how a cultural norm wherein all children produce at least one baby hasn’t resulted in complete overpopulation: as Elves live a very long time, their gestation period is a very long time, too, so making babies as fast as they can is not all that fast. I also need a handwave for why incest hasn’t imploded their gene pool, so I say, well, immortals have funny DNA stuff anyway don’t worry about it.

Since, at least in my mind, a good deal of the fun of Dark Elves is their sense of control and composure, and that has them highly associated with bondage and domination anyway, I decide almost immediately there is a bondage and slavery element in this cycle. Now, slavery, especially the incestuous sort, comes across as evil way more easily than as positive, and it is hard to load it positively enough to make it seem okay to people who want it to be okay, while still being fucked up and abusive for those who want it to be fucked up and abusive.

So, I decide, I have to use their physiology and situation to justify it. By framing it as the inevitable result of their physical and cultural evolution, they can credibly say “Hey, we weren’t *trying* to be weird, we just operate differently from other species, and things that would hurt you are very positive for us.” But you can also, if you choose, read it as either rationalization, or cruel fate of biology inflicting terrible trauma, especially if it is phrased as “inevitable”. The long gestation period helps justify the bondage-slavery part easily: pregnant people are more vulnerable and weaker and must be taken care of, Dark Elves are pregnant for a very long time, they need a long-term dependence and custodial situation that is separate from the normal form of childhood, as pregnancy comes after it. To justify the incest and dominance, I say that they need a very large and very tight family structure to discourage betrayal. Dark Elves, at least the evil D&D sort, are usually portrayed as being scheming and traitorous, so I acknowledge this as being part of their old history, that they have now moved away from by aligning their societal traditions to prevent it. Hopefully, this will be another thing allowing the lenticular interpretations, because it can either be “remnants of an evil society” or “yeah, we used to be evil, but we’re all right now.” 

It also helps to justify why they aren’t technologically advanced beyond everyone else, they were too busy murdering and betraying each other to progress. There was a sourcebook on Drow for D&D 3.5 that I really liked that said Drow had invented the steam engine on several different occasions, but were so paranoid and unwilling to share information or fairly compete that it just sparked another string of betrayal-murders instead of the Industrial Revolution. I liked that detail, but couldn’t find a way to fit it in, as the time period it describes was Long Ago and mostly-irrelevant.

As I detail the cultural associations of the bondage play, I originally say that handmade harnesses are only for the really poor or the really rich, but on reflection, I cut the ‘really poor’ part. People who want to see oppression can infer the presence of an expoited underclass from the presence of an upper class, while people who want to see a big, happy, weird family-society can see an upper class and everyone else taking care of each other as family in order to make a middle-class lifestyle. Adding the bit about passive-aggressive one-upsmanship is dialing back, in order to alleviate the tension that might be building around a slavery-focused society by showing them engaging in humanizing foibles even through their bizarre sex culture, and demonstrate “see, they don’t exist just to create incest-slaves, they are people as well”. Then, on reflection, I add the “crashing on the couch” explanation for much the same purpose, to get a few tension-defusing giggles and hint, for those who wish to believe it, that we can trust this society mostly works because we are being told where it doesn’t.

Then, I realize this is too involved and too futa-tastic for the first installment of Hentaiculture, so I do the Vampire Duchies instead, and let this draft stay fallow for about a month. I figure, this is a weekly column, best to “ease into” more kink-intensive and potentially-alientating stuff, so people can get an idea that there is a range here, and not see the first one is black-diamond level lewdness and think the whole column is not for them. So I pass the partial draft around to the other editors for a while, who respond generally positively. One who favors Dark Kink says that it reads perfectly as Dark Kink, another says it leans to the Light side interpretation. I consider adding a bit about the dangerous halls of power, which fit what people expect of Dark Elves and can be another point that you can interpret as dark or light – “the evil machinations of the masters filter down to the population” or “the extent of their evil machinations is family bickering and most everyone else stays out of it.” – as well as a note about foreigners hotly debating whether the society is a self-perpetuating cycle of abuse or just a weird thing that works for another species. An editor advises me, rightly, that the latter one is way too on the nose. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t have “powerful, scantily clad, sexy and dangerous” Dark Elf Mistresses in there somewhere, so we get a bit about how they are scheming at the top and the high classes scheme underneath them. And I throw in a bit about how they wear latex and patent leather, foremost because I think it actually makes sense given it is damp underground so you want waterproofing and there aren’t many textiles, and only secondary to that because they are associated with bondage and because I think they’re hot.

I decide on a Mesoamerican/Aztec flavor for their names, because of the “their telenovelas are fucking bonkers” joke I wanted to tell, the long-past history of bloody ritual sacrifice of the Aztec empire matching the long-past history of bloody betrayals, the fixation on natural cycles, and, let’s face it, the fact that Nahuatl names sound cool as all hell. At first, I try to find the name of the Aztec spider goddess to name the society after, only to discover that nobody KNOWS the name of the Aztec spider goddess, and she is just referred to as “Teotihuacan Spider Woman”. But in poking around, I do find other nifty bits of Nahuatl phraseology, which I misused, but hopefully I haven’t misused too badly. I wrote the ritual impregnation cycle as being a 53-year gestation called the “Cycle of Love”, but looking up Mesoamerican names for cyclical things, I find the “tonalpohualli”, a name for a 260-day count… that syncs up with the 365-day calendar count every 52 years. I switch the gestation period to 52 years and rename the Cycle of Love “tonalpohualli”, specifying it means “sacred count” instead of “cycle of love”. Then, noting that my previous hentaicultures haven’t had nearly enough names, I sprinkle in some more terms that seem appropriate and give off a feel of things being from a foreign culture. Since their society is ruled by matriarchs, it is appropriate they have a special name for their rulers: cihuachpilli is cihuapilli, meaning “noblewoman”, mixed with achpilli, meaning “great-grandmother”. Nobility who are great-grandmothers. Since becoming a grandmother means you have completed the Sacred Count, it would make sense that those at the top of society would be referred to as great-grandmothers. Then I take that “grandmother” theme and name the civilization after it: “Nahui-Citli” means “Grandmother Sun”, patterned after the Aztec names of the five suns, or five ages of the world. “Sun” is not really all that appropriate for dark elves, but screw it, say the grandmothers replace the sun. The Aztec names of the five ages of the world are Nahui-Ocelotl, Nahui-Ehécatl, Nahui-Quiahuitl,

Nahui-Atl, and the current age, Nahui-Ollin, meaning respectively “Jaguar Sun”, “Wind Sun”, “Rain Sun”, “Water Sun”, and “Earthquake Sun”. Each of these names comes from what would define and destroy the world that sun shined upon (The Aztecs believed this world would end in catastrophic earthquakes). Does this mean that this society is defined by grandmothers, or will be destroyed by grandmothers, or has been destroyed by grandmothers when the cycle of the Sacred Count obsoleted the old murderous society? Mysteries!

It’s just as important to note everything I did not define as what I did define, in order to meet the goal of a morally-lenticular culture. At no point do I ever specify what happens to the rare females that are born to the majority of futanari, so they can either be just a weird quirk that sometimes happens, or a hated, punished, exploited underclass tormented by futanari supremacists. I never specify if they enslave anyone else, implying that they do not, but if you are pre-disposed to see evil futa supremacist slavemasters formenting males and females, nothing stops you. I never specify what age or age-equivalent the Sacred Count starts at, just that it’s “maturity”. If you want that to mean “18 in Elf Years″, you will see that, and if you want that to mean “10 in Elf Years″, you will see that. I never say if the slavery is brutal and degrading or not; the fact that Dark Elves in the second acts of their life willingly seek out dominant/submissive relationships implies to me that they like dominance play and the term of slavery is mutually enjoyable and a vital part of helping them determine whether they are dominants or submissives, but if you want to see people abused and twisted until they think evil is good and seek to re-enact their abuse as the only form of love they understand, you can see that too. Is high society truly that vicious or just family drama most people can safely ignore? They seem to think it’s nasty and dangerous but they have nothing to compare it to, and the stories they tell about it in the telenovelas are really silly. Foreigners say their Sacred Count is evil, they say it’s perfectly fine and works for them – are they normalizing their own abuse, or is it another humorous example of people getting offended on behalf of others who are fine?

Did it work? Did you like the Dark Elves of Nahui-Citli? And if so, did you like them because they were dark and fucked up or because they were fun and quirky? Did the whole “lenticular tone” work for them? Would you like to see more stories about them, or any of the previous Hentaicultures, or how any two of them interact? Please, reblog and let us know!

Intellectually, I figured while reading the post that it was meant to be morally lenticular, and that the author personally preferred the fluffier interpretation and so was unlikely to view that interpretation as less true (in whatever sense). (I did read the main post before this afterword went up, but previous posts in the series–thinking particularly of the Orcs here–have been the same way, and I suspected it was the same person behind them.)

However, the lenticularity read to my story-analysing widget as foreshadowing: “this is being portrayed as happy and healthy on the surface, but it’s leading up to a reveal that it’s actually evil and fucked up”. I, too, like the fluffier side of things, but when I tried to view it that way I was left with the nagging sense that I was sticking my head in the sand and denying the indications of what was really going on in that story.

(It probably doesn’t help that most erotica I see is horror–by circumstance, not by choice–and the proportion used to be even worse. As such, my first reaction when learning a fiction piece is meant to be erotic tends to be something like “oh god, what is the poor bottom going to suffer through this time”.)

I’m not saying you should have done differently, mind you. It does seem like a reasonable compromise.

Would you like to see more stories about them, or any of the previous Hentaicultures, or how any two of them interact?

Yes, please! I’m leaning toward the interaction one, but any would be good.

Tags:

#nsfw #reply via reblog #long post #incest cw #hentaicultures

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

nihilsupernum:

argumate:

staceythinx:

Mechanical Principles by Ralph Steiner (1930)

Every time I see this post I interpret it as an abstract critique of pornography.

every time i see this post i interpret it as literal pornography 

i keep seeing random infrastructure or buildings or tram wires or whatever that i want to fuck it’s sort of distracting 

Oh good, it’s not just me.

…the “interpreting it as literal pornography”, I mean, not the “wanting to fuck infrastructure”. (Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to fuck infrastructure.) It’s not the mechanical aspect that makes it parse as pornographic to me, but rather the rhythmic motion: the first thought that goes through my mind when I see this post is always “ah, this must be the latest entry in the hypno-fetishists’ attempts to one-up each other with increasingly creative spiral GIFs”.

(how much do you want to bet that Justice Stewart would not know this when he saw it?)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

tennfan2:

meltinggoldanddippingthingsinit:

wildnutmeg:

nikewomen:

Hahaha ha        ha       h ––

Watch Episode 3 of our new original show series Margot vs Lily: http://gonike.me/MargotvsLilyEp3

Saw this tumblr promoted post in my feed and assumed it was a hypno porn gif …

That’s happened to me a couple times.

Same, though not this specific one. I wonder if tumblr’s got an ad consultant who just sits around helping companies make ads that appeal tangentially and subtly to weird kinky shit.

Did anyone else read that post theorising that Tumblr is using pornbots to inflate the note counts on sponsored posts, so they can say to the sponsoring companies “Look at how much exposure you’re getting! You’ve got X likes, Y reblogs, and Z follows! don’t look too closely at the composition of those numbers”?

Sex sells, indeed.

(Okay, yes, there’s also the “salience mechanisms cause fetishists to see kink in everything” explanation, but still.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #advertising

{{next post in sequence}}

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

Hentaiculture: The Vampire Duchies Of Otdykh

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

smut-theory:

brin-bellway:

smut-theory:

(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

Hentaiculture: The Vampire Duchies Of Otdykh

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

smut-theory:

(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.

Tags:

#there are few cases in which gifts of porn to someone you barely know can be appropriate #but one of them is when you are interacting on a kink blog #hence the ‘aww’ reaction #reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw #long post #vampires

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