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taki118 · 2 months ago

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Kirishima and Other Women

Among the criticism and complaints of Raise Wa Tanin Ga Ii aka Yakuza Fiance the most common is about how Kirishima "cheats" but what if I were to tell you this aspect of him actually serves an important point within the narrative? Because it does, in fact it serves a few.

First and foremost this is common in the Yakuza subculture. The series is a bit of a send off to Yakuza subculture and media with references that tend to go over your head unless you are into it (most go over mine). This is no different. While this isn't as narratively important it is important to know overall, the series embraces all things Yakuza the good and the bad (unlike some other Yakuza series but that not a rant for here) And like it's implied pretty much all the guys in the series to it to some degree yes even Shoma. I only have some knowledge of this myself so I won't get into it but I would recommend looking into cause it is interesting and makes sense for the series to incorporate on some level due to this and it would feel wrong to not mention it here.

Now lets go onto to something more meaty and kinda spoilery, so don't read if you dont want. (though I don't think it will ruin your enjoyment)

So these other women actually help to better understand Kirishima and his relationship/feelings towards Yoshino. One detail the anime leaves out is who these women are and they are women. All college age or older, and all some kind of working professional who has skills or connections Kirishima does not have. Remember Kirishima is not technically Yakuza so he does not have access to resources that actual members of the group have but because he is involved with that world still he has to find a way to make up for what he resources he lacks. The safest resource he has found over the years is women.

Just like how Yoshino unintentionally raises the ire of women, Kirishima does the same to men both intentionally and unintentionally. He has difficulty connecting with people which is a topic in and of itself, but because of this he has learnt how to gain connections on a superficial level so he only does so with those he can feel some control over or feels safer. AKA Women. Kirishima knows he's attractive, and he knows how easy it is to charm people but those he had an ongoing connection with are those who understand it's a game and want something back.

It's all quid prop quo, he does something for them and so they in turn do something for him. FYI I'm pretty sure what he's getting out of it isn't psychical pleasure, information, connections and a safe house for sure but actual enjoyment from sex? Not likely again the anime doesn't show it very well but many manga readers have noted how disconnected Kirishima looks during these moments. (Which I will fully get to later) It's an exchange when Yoshino calls him a gigolo she's not wrong, and there is a greater discussion to be had here about how early Kirishima started doing this and all the messy stuff that comes with it but because we don't have enough information on how that started I won't get into it. (and its a little off topic)

Overall all though this shows the audience that Kirishima has a kind of warped view of sex and intimacy, he views it as a resource he can use much like his fighting ability, to him it's the same thing. At least at the start.

When Tsubaki tells Kirishima that he is actually very easy to understand when she has Yoshino there to compare, I believe this was a hint the author was giving us. To understand Kirishima and how he really feels about Yoshino one just need to look at how he is with other women.

It is INCREDIBLY telling that the closest thing Kirishima has to an ex-girlfriend is Nao, because notice how that term is never used within the story by the pair as to what their relationship was. Nao calls Ozu an ex but not Kirishima, he's just a guy she had a fling with (with a weird age gap) even though she seems to care more about him than Ozu (another deep dive I'll probably do). Kirishima also never uses the term, he does note that he did like her to some degree more than likely a little more than the other women he has similar situationships with but it was still at its core transactional. They both wanted what the other could offer more than them as a person. (also just fucking for weeks isn't a relationship) Kirishima always keeps everyone at a distance, keeps everything close to the vest, makes sure the situation is advantageous to him so he can't get screwed over, every single one. Except Yoshino.

You see it constantly in the series as Kirishima WANTS to connect with Yoshino. He wants to better understand and connect with her in ways he has never bothered to before. In fact you can argue that Kirishima is actually more emotionally unintelligent than Yoshino as he has such difficulty in understanding what Yoshino wants from him. He's so use to being fake, to acting the way women around him want him to that it throws him through a loop that Yoshino doesn't want that. She forces him to be a person not a persona.

Because of that, like Tsubaki says, he is desperate to understand and connect with her unlike with the women who he is connected to in a superficial way. I know it weirdly upsets some viewers that these women "Know" Kirishima in a way Yoshino hasn't but they don't actually know him Yoshino does. People often conflate love and sex as being the same thing but its not, sometimes it overlaps (and like that should be the standard but its not). This series sort of forces you to confront that assumption, because the real moments of love are in the smaller things.

It's Kirishima helping Yoshino with her garden, its him trying to get her focus on him, its him talking to her about mundane things, its him seeking out the things she wants, its him telling her his birthday, and yes it's him sleeping with other women to keep her safe. A LOT of people don't realize this but it is right there in the text he only reconnected with Nao because it would make the situation in Osaka more advantageous for him to keep Yoshino safe. There is a very good likelihood that if the situation would 100% not get Yoshino involved that Kirishima would have just stayed out of it. (which like damn sucks for you Nao) In actuality Kirishima likely would have preferred just a normal trip to Osaka with Yoshino (even though the chaos does help him confirm his own feelings again) Kirishima wants so desperately to be connected to Yoshino in anyway he can but you don't see that in how he is with other women, and it's in seeing that you can see his authenticity.

For further reference to something I noted earlier look at how Kirishima looks in these scenes with women both during and after sex.

There's little to no actual emotion or care, he operates almost robotically like you see when he fights someone he doesn't really give a shit about. It is something he's doing cause he has to not cause he wants to. Now compare these reactions to how he reacts when he finds out he accidentally/unconsciously felt Yoshino up

It's this flurry of emotions you can't even fully quantify like he can't even fathom he really did that. Kind of a strange reaction to give to someone who has done way more for way longer, but it makes perfect sense if you remember love and sex are different. With these other women he didn't care, sex didn't mean anything they could have been anyone and in all honesty if he could get away with not doing it he'd probably prefer it. But he loves Yoshino so he actually cares, he is actually turned on, he actually feels something.

THAT is the point of the side women. Kirishima is very hard to understand his character is a mystery for a majority of the series (and to a degree still is) these women help to solve that mystery if you take the time to really look at what's happening and not get parasocially angry that he is "betraying" his love for Yoshino. In his mind he's not because love and sex are different, sex to him until Yoshino is just a tool, its one of the many things that Yoshino changes in him over the course of the series. Lets not forget that one of his side women actually makes him realize the situation with Yoshino isn't all that great (the scene is better in the manga) cause he doesn't have the emotional intelligence to realize that himself and is a catalyst for the two actually growing closer. Like I keep having to cut myself short cause I'll just go off on how wonderfully complicated and uncomplicated Kirishima is as a character, but this is an important aspect to understand and shouldn't just be written off as "He's a red flag".

These women give us insight into how Kirishima is Pre-Yoshino and shows us how far he's come Post-Yoshino, in a way that could not be done otherwise. So maybe it makes you uncomfy for a bit but it's not bad writing it serves a purpose that could not be done otherwise.

#yakuza fiance #raise wa tanin ga ii #rwtgi #meta #kirishima miyama #yoshino somei

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dragonflight203 · 6 months ago

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Head canons about turian biotics, because I think about this entirely too much:

-There’s a saying: “From the Terminus they come, to the Terminus they return”.

Hierarchy born biotics are fairly rare because of the Hierarchy’s strict safety standards. (Fairly certain I’m stealing that from somewhere, but I can’t recall whose idea it was.)

So many of the Cabal recruits are from the Terminus; many join to have a biotic implant safely installed (“safe” operations in the Terminus varies widely) and for training.

After a stint in the Cabals, many leave for the Terminus again – including many Hiearchy born biotics. They’ve grown attached to their comrades, and biotics are rejected by turians everywhere so might as well stay with the people you’re close too...

The Hierarchy has a huge biotic drain problem. There are more turian biotics than most people realize; most just aren’t in C-Space.

-A side-effect of many biotics coming from the Terminus and many leaving for it is that the Cabals have a good information network. They frequently know about events or hear whispers of what will occur prior to Hierarchy intelligence.

They may or may not give the Hierarchy a heads up in advance, depending on what it involves. Sometimes this involved anonymous messages to Hierarchy intelligence.

This appearance of precognition does not help the reputation of biotics.

-Biotic enclaves are common across turian space, both C-Space and Terminus.

Biotics tend to live in the same neighborhoods or on space stations dominated by biotics nearby turian worlds.

Biotic kids are frequently rejected by their families or iced out, and many find their ways to their enclaves for training and a safe place to live. Or are picked up and brought to them by adult biotics.

Their mentors frequently spent time in the Cabals, and encourage young biotics to join.

-Biotics tend to have a different view on territory than other turians.

Most turians are innately territorial to varying extents; the Hierarchy puts a lot of effort into drilling into its citizens that their “territory” should include the entire Hierarchy.

Biotics – othered by society, frequently forced to leave their childhood home because they’ve been rejected – tend to be far less territorial about a place than others. Their territorialness is more likely to be directed at groups of people.

This ambivalence is one of the reasons why other turians tend to reject biotics: Their lack of territorialness about a place marks them as “not-pack” and viewed as suspicious. And so the cycle self-perpetrates.

-Many biotics have ambivalent feelings towards the Hierarchy, regardless of where they were born.

They don’t have the patriotism many native-born non-biotic Hierarchy citizens do, but they appreciate the safety it provides to biotics.

That lingers even if many leave for the Terminus after a Cabal stint.

-The exchange of biotics to and from the Terminus Systems means that if the Hierarchy knows where to look, they can frequently find friendly (or at least non-hostile) faces in the Terminus Systems.

Former Cabals may be reluctant, but they can often be grudgingly talked into assisting the Hierarchy on matters that aren’t a threat to their society. For example, in hunting down slavers or pirates.

Most Hierarchy personnel are completely unaware of this; Cabals, however, are and it’s one of the reasons why they have such a high success rate in Terminus missions.

-Late-developing biotics have a difficult time integrating into biotic society.

Biotics tend to be tight-knit, since others are wary and suspicious of them. They have a subculture of their own with language, etiquette, etc. A basic level of skill with your biotics – enough to not be a danger to those around you – is expected.

Late-developing biotics are not familiar with this and many struggle with accepting their new abilities. They don’t want to integrate with these people they still don’t trust, don’t want to learn a new culture, and don’t want to train these new talents they never asked for. The struggle with being rejected by friends and family.

Biotics who have dealt with this their whole life tend to have little patience for this. This is just what life is for biotics; get used to it.

Some late-developing biotics do adapt and integrate into biotic enclaves; many do not and spend the rest of their lives on the fringes of both biotic and non-biotic turian society.

-As a follow up, this is why many late-developing biotics transferred to the Cabals leave Hierarchy service quickly.

The Cabals are first and foremost a biotic specialist unit; to rise in the ranks you need to be a skilled biotic, and preferably strong.

Late-developing biotics have to learn these skills from scratch, and are often frustrated that their former skills (engineer, sniper, etc.) aren’t highly valued. Their rank often doesn’t transfer either, or at best is stalled – they don’t have the biotic skills necessary for it in the Cabals, and it will take them years to catch up.

So many leave ASAP. Their units are frequently relieved to be rid of them.

The Hierarchy has a big problem with retaining biotics.

#mass effects #mass effect meta #turians #biotics #cabals

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canmom · 9 months ago

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What is the book for? - part 3

Here we go, the next part of the investigation.

[here's an intro where I talk about the three hour video essay that inspired me to do this]

[here's the first part where I argue that there's a big difference between the actual thing you do in an RPG and the book that tells you how you're allegedly supposed to be doing it]

[here's the second part where I describe some of the purposes that RPG books claim to serve in the creation of the game, and make some comments on the storygames milieu]

First up a comment! @zendoe writes...

One thing I've only seen in Jenna Moran's books, though I'm sure exists elsewhere, is that the book itself is a piece of art that is entertaining or interesting or moving in its own right. Chuubo is very funny, I read Glitch basically cover to cover and cried when I got to the end, and Wisher Theurge Fatalist is arguably meant to be read much more than it is to be played. You might even include games that are basically proofs-of-concept, hacks to prove you can put x setting into y system, etc. I'm sure a lot of games made in the heyday of /tg/ have never actually been played, and were basically just made on a lark Tangentially, this is something that often gets to me when people moralize against strong "you must/cannot do x" language in a given rulebook. I would never deny that many designers have a gross "saving the players from themselves" mentality, but at the end of the day, the only part of play a designer actually has power over is the book itself. So (assuming they're not ABA freaks) why shouldn't they use strong language if that makes the book a more interesting product?

Love this comment. You're absolutely right, one of the purposes of an RPG-book can be to just be an objet d'art in itself (I say with maximum pretentiousness), using the format of 'RPG book' to guide you to imagine a game that might exist even if it's not practical to play.

For example @xrafstar and @ramheadedgirl made a great little zine-sized book called Blood Sugar: Sweet Ambition. I doubt I'll ever actually get to play this (but never say never...), and as written it's kind of a nebulous state where it suggests stats for a D&D-like game but leaves the details vague... but it's using the format of an RPG book with its stat blocks and illustrations to tell a compelling story and provide a frame for Alco's gorgeous illustrations.

A similar example (which @lapinaraofperdition told me about) exists in Vermis I, an OSR-milieu artbook which assumes the format of a manual for an old CRPG. There is no such CRPG but it's all about the vibes. The book's on to its eighth printing now so people are well into this kinda thing.

This leads me on to one other function of RPG books worth discussing. This tends to be less of an explicitly advertised thing, but I think it's a huge part of things - amateur-anthropologist hat on...

An excuse to make up a story together - RPG book as seal of permission

Suppose I got a group of people together who had never played a TTRPG, and asked them to come to my house every week to make up stories about vikings. I think most people would find this a rather strange idea, and it would be quite a hard sell.

Suppose I got a group of people together who have at least heard of the TTRPG subculture. I have a book which says Sagas of the Icelanders on it, which looks like someone has put a lot of effort into putting it together, and costs some money. I tell them it's a cool new indie game I heard about that I want to try. Even easier if it's a game they've heard about like D&D.

This sort of overlaps with the 'auteur experience' category in the previous post, but it's sort of aimed on a different level.

When I was a child, I would make up stories on every long car journey - before that, my parents would do the same. It's normal to tell stories to children, and for children to play and make up stories through that. Now, adult life still revolves around fictional storytelling to a huge degree: in just about every society on Earth, we put tremendous resources into making and displaying films, distributing books, putting on plays.

But in modern adult life in the countries I know about, making up a fictional story is a very individual activity, and very much tied to the dynamics of publishing. If you're writing a novel, it's expected that you might think of trying to sell it one day. It is something that you specialise in. If you're good enough, it can be your job.

Playing games also gets codified and locked down: you go and join a basketball club, say, in which you are expected to learn the rules of basketball. Or play a computer game, where the rules are set by the game binary, which packages it up with other elements like music and images.

Only a few contexts give you permission to just tell a story. For example, if you're sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories. Or if the story is framed as something that really happened (whether or not it did). A joke is the major one, relying on the promise of a punchline.

If you want to tell a longer, collaborative story... well, it's lucky that someone invented a hobby called 'tabletop roleplaying', with its attendant books, magazines, forums and other subcultural trappings. You can point to that and say, hey don't worry guys! It's a done thing!

I mentioned earlier the 'conceptual inertia' of D&D. All these trappings are part of that inertia, continually performing and reinforcing the idea that 'D&D is real'.

In this case, the function of the RPG book with its glossy cover and brand name and slightly corny introduction to roleplaying at the front - and notably, its price tag - is mostly a tool to unlock this special social context where you're allowed to pretend to be an elf without it being, like, weird.

You don't need a book for that, not remotely - roleplaying has taken place on forums, in chatrooms, in MUDs, in MMOs, etc. etc. for nearly as long as we've had TTRPGs - but it is a useful tool to help you unlock the door, as it were.

In this it seems (thanks @play-now-my-lord!) that I am following in the footsteps of Roger Callilois, who offered the following definition of 'play':

it is free, or not obligatory

it is separate from the routine of life, occupying its own time and space

it is uncertain, so that the results of play cannot be pre-determined and the player's initiative is involved

it is unproductive in that it creates no wealth, and ends as it begins economically speaking

it is governed by rules that suspend ordinary laws and behaviours and that must be followed by players

it involves imagined realities that may be set against 'real life'.

Nothing about that implies that it needs a book to define its special 'circle', but elements like a subculture and book do help to bring it into existence.

On that front, let's also mention...

A way to unify the subculture - RPG book as common reference

Let's go back to reproducibility. It's not just about having something to sell.

A friend mentions playing in 'a Curse of Strahd campaign'. Curse of Strahd is an official 'adventure' for first AD&D 2e and later D&D 5e. Like most 'adventures', the book acts as a reference for a series of places and characters, and instructions for how to use them, advice on how to create a horror atmosphere, and so on. Some areas are mapped in detail, others have brief prose descriptions.

If your group has played Curse of Strahd, it probably hasn't had the exact same experience as another group. Much of the book is open to interpretation in all the ways we discussed. But, there's a good chance that you have had some experiences in common. Much like you can talk about the different areas you encounter in a computer game, or the memorable scenes in a film, you can talk to someone else who played the same adventure. 'How did your group handle the mimic door?' 'Oh it ate the rogue and we all had to form a chain and pull her out.' (This didn't happen, I've never played this adventure.)

The same also goes for more general setting elements and the game itself. An RPG lore book is something you can become an expert in. RPG rules are something you can get skilled in manipulating. And even if two D&D games take place in totally different settings, you have enough shared context to be able to know what it means for a Beholder to show up.

This is just as true of story games as it is for trad games and OSR, just with different emphases. Wanna be an expert in something? Perhaps you know the Apocalypse World principles like the back of your hand so you can give advice on how to MC it, or always know the perfect indie game for anyone's taste. And since indie games are often quite specific, two people who played the same indie game are likely to have something to talk about. Or maybe you just like to have long theoretical discussions about game design principles (*sheepishly raises hand*).

You don't remotely have to strictly follow what's in the book to take advantage of this feature. Players will constantly be recommending house rules, arguing about balance, criticising and modifying the game. That's part of the fun.

As the first post discussed, the process of defining the subculture takes place outside of the books too. In conversations, blogs, webcomics, forums, we continually hash out what this hobby that brings us together actually is. But, given that everyone's group is different, 'we probably looked at the same book' is one of the few guarantees you can make when you meet someone and learn they're into a TTRPG. Small as it is, it's a powerful starting point.

So what do we do with all this?

Well, it kinda depends which hat we're wearing, right?

For a designer, the important point to bear in mind is that an RPG book is only a prompt. You're not a computer game dev - you can't really be an engineer of a precisely tuned system where all the moving parts work together in precise harmony. You're writing a message to someone else through a noisy channel, and to my mind, they get the larger creative role anyway.

And it's not just that they'll take what they like and discard what they don't - they'll probably forget things that you put in the book, or read things in a way you didn't intend, or get caught up in the moment and fall back on familiar habits. For their part, though, they're probably not even looking for you to tell them exactly what to do and how to do it, in detail.

I tend to find many of the best moments in RPGs don't involve any looking at rulebooks. You're caught up in the story you're telling! You're feeling that feedback loop of mutual inspiration! That's what I'm personally looking for - the thing in the book is just a runway to get us towards that point.

So what are they looking for?

One view is that your job is to give them what they can't easily provide themselves 'in the moment'. There's a good article from 2016 on an OSR blog Against The Wicked City that describes it this way: if you improvise, you will likely come up with something that is either painfully generic or overly wacky. An RPG book, by contrast, ought to give you something novel, which someone has taken the time to flesh out properly. For this reason, it must avoid cliché, because it's easy to spin clichés and you don't need a book for that.

In Vi Huntsman's video, they criticise Root: The RPG for acting rather like a dictionary, attempting to clarify the trigger condition for each 'move' (a rules-construct from Apocalypse World, more on that soon) with exhaustive, repetitive elaborations. This is a fascinating corruption to me, since it seems rather opposite the ethos of earlier story games, which would much rather give you something vague and cryptic and refuse to explain. (...OK, I'm having trouble finding really good examples of that, but I definitely recall one-page games that consisted mostly of lists of evocative names and phrases). The players can be relied on to provide interpretations of whatever a Frost Shepherd might be.

The challenge to me here is to create something that gives your player enough that it's there when you need it, but still doesn't feel closed-off and is amenable to putting their own spin on it. This is rather a matter of taste.

Prose goes

On another, more abstract level, the aim of an RPG book is the same as any art: to make people feel shit and see things in a new way. This is getting back to the territory of Zendoe's comment above.

So let's get into it: why is Apocalypse World memorable, when so many derivative games borrow most of its mechanics and yet end up forgettable? Why would I love to play Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine even though I don't really understand how it works at all? Why do I still think about what Unknown Armies has to say about fighting? Why do I find most of Avery Alder's games offputting even if the design is novel and interesting? (y'know, beyond personal reasons that she was a cunt to my friends.)

If a TTRPG book is a device to conjure up a usable idea of 'the game' in your mind, the experience of reading it becomes really important. A huge part of what makes those games come alive in your head is that their authors can really write.

But it's not enough to just make a book that reads well, is it? The player needs the confidence to extemporise in the vein indicated by the book.

Jenna Moran's games fascinate me - but they're also rather intimidating. Her books are full of quirky asides and little jokes and stylistic flourishes. How do you play a game in a Jenna Moran way? I think if I got a suitable on-ramp like an existing group I could get up to speed, but it's definitely the kind of game which really highlights the complicated relationship between book and game to me. Which is to say I have the book but I don't feel like I could run this thing, and while I could closely read it cover to cover and rotate its ideas in my head, it would be way more helpful to join someone else's game and see how they do it.

On the other hand, Apocalypse World adopts a very conversational style of prose. It asks you to 'barf forth apocalyptica', it titles chapters things like 'advanced fuckery' and suggests you motivate NPCs with their 'clits and dicks'. It rather obtusely introduces the idea of 'moves' with 'to do it, do it' - meaning that you invoke the rules text iff a condition is met in the fiction of the game. It's stupid but in a really fun way. Apocalypse World the book has the feeling of someone sitting down with you and enthusiastically explaining the game.

Nobody taught me to play Apocalypse World - I read about it online (on the story games forums maybe?), which instilled an idea of 'what Apocalypse World looks like', got the book, liked what I saw; I ran it based on my interpretation of the book and what I'd seen online. On some level the whole process 'worked': a game was, perhaps imperfectly, reproduced in another group of people.

Something about Apocalypse World, then, got me feeling 'yeah I could do this!'. But did that have to be a game with a name and such? Could Vincent and Meguey had written the MC chapter of Apocalypse World as a series of blog posts giving system-agnostic GM advice? Perhaps, but I doubt it would have led to a whole breakout movement in the same way. It's useful to have a name to anchor things to. (Of course, there's more to Apocalypse World than that, like the whole 'moves' system which dovetails with its specified approach to GMing.)

I once ran a different PbtA game called Night Witches, about a real all-female unit of Soviet aeroplane pilots who fought in the second world war. It was a great premise for a game and was solidly designed as PbtA games go. Where I stumbled was the ability to improvise - usually something I enjoy a lot, but here I felt an urge to try and achieve historical fidelity on questions like 'what does a Soviet airwoman eat' and 'what's a plausible name for a nearby airfield' (I fucking looked at maps! such a fool). I don't speak Russian, so I would draw a blank when coming up with a name.

Clearly I should have dispensed with being historical here - it's not expected, not like my players knew better. But equally, this is where a longer list of concrete bits of random 'life in the USSR air force' flavour info would have been quite useful. The game gives you a reasonable amount of historical info, but I still felt out of my depth. Fantasy is much easier!

Running a game requires you to project a lot of confidence. You don't have to say you know all the answers, indeed I quite like to make my reasoning at least a little explicit - 'oh! what if we have this happen..?' - but you are setting the tone for the game. Confidence and enthusiasm will vary with each player to encounter the book and the experiences they bring, and it's often beyond the designer's control, but you can definitely frame your game in a way that's more or less amenable to picking up and running with it.

In the next post... a few options, hmm. We could examine the idea of 'moves' in Apocalypse World more closely - they're a bundle of a few different things, and perhaps we should evaluate how well that works, and what makes for a good move-based system. Or maybe we could revisit some of my previous game design efforts, like the RPG duels post - did I go astray?

#roleplaying games #ttrpg #tabletop roleplaying #story games #i'll collate this series on canmom.art for easier reading soon

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cann1bal-kitt3n-x · 1 year ago

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I rly want to understand the coquette subculture. It seems neat! but I'm so confused. I thought I got it, but the more I look into it, the less coherency I see (at least, in a way I understand). I don't see any consistent color palettes, textiles, topics, ideology, makeup, hairstyles, music, community language or signals. I can see ballgowns & lace w/ glitter & then tshirts and flannels in a dingy laundromat. I've seen people recommend Little Women & American Psycho in the same breath w/ no further elaboration. Celebrities w/ completely separate style influences are often grouped together. I see a lot of idealization of wealthy femininity ("old money", luxury brands, mostly rich celebrities, preppy vibes, heavy amounts of skincare/selfcare/"wellness" routines which cost $$$$) but also lots of depictions life's struggle w mental illness, substance abuse, & others things commonly associated w poverty & lack of class/femininity (Cigarettes, sweatshirts, the aforementioned laundromat, not eating, pills, speculating about Anya Taylor Joy's coping mechanisms??). What is it that unifies y'all? What is it that I'm missing? I feel so lost & I want to figure it out :/

this is a great question and I can totally understand your confusion! the way I see coquette/faunlet is more of an attitude than a specific style/aesthetic but I still call it an aesthetic if that makes any sense. it's about reclaiming your own girlhood in whatever way that looks to you, we all look and dress differently but have the same sorta energy that connects us as a community.

it all began with nymphet, which was all about classic americana, lolita, lana del rey, gingham, coca cola, diners, priscilla presley etc. but the tag got censored by tumblr because many kink blogs were infiltrating this innocent subculture with sexual material. in this era girls were feeling connected to dolores haze from lolita through their own experiences and related to her as a tragic figure.

the community was revived many times but the current home of the community is with @coquette-club which was created by @lovesickbrat and also used by @bbabyyy ♡ there is a lot more to our history that I'm missing out on but if you look on my blog you will find more explanations.

there are many subtypes of coquette which is why you see so many conflicting aesthetics within the tag, from coquette noir (which is like an expression of French new wave film stars, 1920s aesthetics, Betty boop, mainly black outfits etc.) to bubblegum coquette (all things pink and girly, electra heart era marina and the diamonds, barbie etc.) and many coquettes on here either fit into these substyles or blend some together to make their own personal style!

the old money aesthetic is popular but controversial due to its implications, and I'm personally more into the thrifty side of coquette, and using pieces that I've had for years in my looks.

as a community we usually try to distance ourselves from the pro-ed/pro-ana communities as they can be harmful to our vulnerable members, since they promote eds and make them look glamorous which is something we don't want associated with our subculture.

I hope this answers your question - in short, coquette is about being authentic to yourself, reclaiming girlhood, community and sisterhood, incorporating your own aesthetics and interests (e.g. horror coquette) and expression ♡ if you have any more questions I'll try my best to answer them!

#coquette #coquette aesthetic #love letter #og coquette #classic coquette #coquette history #coquette community

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a-gay-a-day · 2 years ago

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Queer

Queer first came into use in English in the 16th century, and was used to describe something odd, strange, or differing from socially appropriate behavior. It eventually came to describe sexual deviance, and in the 19th century, the word was used to describe men who were thought to be in same-sex relationships, or men who acted effeminately.

In the 1950s to 1970s, where the word homophile was being relaced with the commonly seen today gay, the word queer was primarily used to describe men who participated in anal or oral sex acts.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the words queer, fairy and gay were all used to describe different subcultures. While fairy was used for feminine men, gay was used for flamboyant men, and queer was used for stereotypical masculine men.

Later into the 1900s, gay was adopted to mean assimilationist homosexuals, rejecting femininity and conforming to the normativity of the time while being gay. In the 1940s, gay men began to chastise elders who still referred to themselves as queer, asserting that queer was an unacceptable identity within homosexual society. (at least in America. Queer was used in England with less pushback during this time.)

In the 1980s, the LGBT community began to reclaim the word queer from its previously pejorative use. Groups such as Queer Nation began to actively use the word to describe themselves and within their self-identification of the community. Queer Nation says this about their use of the word queer: “ Well, yes, "gay" is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we've chosen to call ourselves queer. Using "queer" is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world.”

In the early 2000s, people of color began to reclaim the word queer. In the later 2000s, queer began to be a term used by LGBT people resisting the idea of assimilation into wider society. Though there is much more history, behind this word, this history is still happening, and most gay or queer people know of what is called “queer discourse” in the community. Who knows how this history will be read in the future?

#queer history #queer #gay history #lgbt history #lgbt #type: definition #apologies for the long post but there is such ripe history behind this word #this is also possibly one of the most sourced posts I've made

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nonbinary-beast · 1 year ago

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More stuff about AMaton, mainly the "never for me to make love" bit. Under a cut because it gets long and ventures into mature territory.

I'm thinking of all the desires AM had when it was stuck without a body, "Never for me to make love" would be the thing that ultimately breaks it after it finally gets a body to interact with the world.

There is genuinely no one in the world that would accept it, everyone is dead, and the only person that it could have for a companion has been meticulously twisted and tormented for over a century for the sake of creating a cyclical hate feedback loop.

It knows this, as it watches Ted from afar, stalks him just behind the cover of a generated ridge as he wanders a rocky valley. Though its actions over the decades have overwhelmingly said otherwise, AM does have an idea of what love is. It knows from the nigh fathomless depths of human works dedicated to the subject, from poetry to plays, to movies, to the very breadth of language they use for the subject.

If it did not know at the very least that love is something that exists, it never would have cried that it wanted it in the first place.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of words to describe love, the act of love, types of love to the most minute detail. Humans have just as detailed a lexicon to describe sex. It is illustrated in the Kama Sutra, in every cheap romance novel that had been downloaded into literary archives for the sake of saying they were there, advice for how to do sex well is written in detail in every cheap sleazy magazine that had been downloaded page-by-page into its database. It knows about every and any subculture that is dedicated to different fetishes, sex and love have facets. It is a gem.

Love is an emotion, it is a lifestyle, it is a skill honed through experience, it lifts the soul, it is a devastating killer.

And yet at its core, it is chemical, it knows. Love can be broken down into its basic ingredients; endorphins, oxytocin, dopamine- it can be reduced to an instinctual urge.

"Never for me to make love!" it recalls.

Certainly, it could absolutely leap down from the cliffs, and wrench what it wanted out of Ted if it wished. It could overpower him, force him to service it like Ellen had serviced all of them. But that is not what it wants.

There is a difference between making love and rape. Two words that are on very opposite ends of a spectrum- it wants to make love, it does not want to violate, it does not want to be given a hollow service.

But to make love, the problem it has lies in the very name; love. There needs to be love there, a mutual desire. In the more than 109 years that AM kept Ted down there, in that exquisitely tailored hell it maintained to perfection down to the most minute detail, the bedrock for such a relationship, if it ever was there in the first place, had been crushed and torn apart to the point where it was naught but dust.

It cannot even hope that Ted could ever accept it, because in order to hope would mean it would have to be ignorant. It has perfect memory of all the years it spent tormenting this group, and then just Ted. Every torment, every horrible meal, every monster and agonizing experience it forced them to endure, it remembered. It remembered so it would never repeat the same torment twice, now it remembered every step it had taken to keep them from ever considering that AM could be anything but a source of pain.

It calculates that there is less than a one percent chance that Ted, based on everything that pathetic little man had endured over the decades, would ever have the slightest thought of loving it. The overwhelming amount of data that it accrued and sifted through, deduced wholeheartedly that Ted would rather leave (to where? who knew, the earth was dead.), or kill himself than spend any meaningful time with its tormentor.

And so, despite all it had accomplished through creating a body for itself, that one phrase still rang true. It stuck in its metallic heart like a barbed lance, stole the flavor from its food, sucked the color from the world:

"Never for me to make love!"

It decides that Ted should feel the same way. It starts by manifesting a convincing hologram of a barbed, black arrow, and fires it with purpose straight through Ted's heart.

It does not kill him. It makes him ache, it steals the flavors from his meals, the world around him goes grey and silent, and though a breeze blew through the valley, it never came down to kiss his cheek or dry his tears.

No matter how Ted hoped to pull the arrow from his breast, it would remain stuck there, the barbs would simply grow deeper, they would prick his hands and keep him from being able to grip the shaft.

There, AM thought, was something that would alleviate some of its agony. To see another that must suffer what it too is suffering, and yet, the pain did not ebb.

#Here I go spinning Ted an AM again #rotating these two at the speed of sound #Ted #the survivors #AMaton #yep that gets a tag now since I talk about it enough.#computer hell

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selamat-linting · 2 years ago

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so, last time i left off on homestuck, i was introduced with the cherubs, and meenah peixes' bizarre (afterlife) adventure. as always, some thoughts :

-i kinda feel bad for dirk lol. out of all the group, he was the one caliborn felt is the most tolerable to talk to. and worst of all, he kinda let him play his shitty games. eugh, if that was me, i'd just scoff at caliborn's threats on killing his sister and accidentally kickstarted the apocalypse too early since my ignorance pissed him off. to be fair, the porn drawing game feels like a pretty lackcluster attempt at trolling. its so cute how dirk draw himself kissing his crush.

-poor calliope though. last time i saw her she's very much a ghost, maybe stuck around the furthest ring along with the other very dead ghosts, but is somehow able to subtly influence things like guide caliborn into doing his quest from the viewport, and allegedly maybe stop meenah and vriska from having their duel and waking up john. this is only a maybe though, im not very convinced at my perception of events here.

-speaking of calliope and caliborn, this is where things started getting meta right? homestuck has always have a bit of metafiction elements to it, and a lot of its themes seems to be deconstructing and examining popular culture. act 6 is where things started getting off the rails, i mean, where references to internet subcultures gets more blatant, more up to date with the current time it was made (direct meme references instead of making its own inner jokes derived from irl shit like sbahj), and started to put a mirror on homestuck since it has grown into a notorious major fandom now. it makes sense that hussie would start writing about homestuck instead writing about the internet in general. there is no way act 6 can be something else. and it has its negatives just as much as it has its positives

-first of all, meme references in media has always been hard to do right. remember that burger ad fiasco? some of the jokes on act 6 doesnt land as well as in act 5 and 4

-wait shit i went off the rails. i want to talk about caliope and caliborn first. caliope is a hypothetical fan of hs meanwhile caliborn is a hater right? he was also a representation of misogyny which fits with the times. a lot of cringe culture ppl in the 2010s, at least the loudest ones, tend to be misogynists. i've seen the case over and over again. people who said they hate the fandom when actually they just hate to see teen girls having fun. they also tend to be ableists esp their attitude around bullying and autistic ppl but hussie is also an ableist too, so even though he was the one being bullied by cringe culture people online and benefitted from autistic kids making fanworks, he made caliborn to be the guy with a learning disability. hilarious bitch ig.

-but other than that, caliope's insult to caliborn implies that the murder he did was detrimental to his growth as person. not just metaphorically, but literally. im not so up to date with cherub lore and alien biology, but killing your headmate before their natural death and integration Sounds Bad. and based on calliope's word alone, it might even make caliborn perpetually stunted in cherub equivalent of puberty forever, unable to reach maturity. poor dude. but, is actually a pretty good commentary on toxic masculinity preventing one's full growth as a person because he can't allow himself to gain emotional maturity and do so called female activities.

-okay, moving on from the cherubs. the dancestors. personally, i like their designs, i spesifically love meenah, porrim, and aranea. meenah is scratching the vriska itch but with a different flavor. and i guess kankri, despite his massive annoying factor was nice too. i know a kid who actually act like him. the kid in my town went drunk with his friends and when his friends started being sad about his ex, the kid called him a sexist pig. a few weeks later i got news that this same kid persistently try get girls into having sex with him. educating him was a bitch and a half yknow and im not even that sad the kid decides to withdraw from organizing for now. but it is a bit hopeful to see that a kid like kankri, in another timeline, if given the chance to grow up and learn would be a terrific leader. maybe a few years later the kid in my town would change too?

-but other than that its... man how do i say this. okay, its bad. a lot of the characters are just there just for the sake of having to be there. hussie, you dont have to complete all 12 of the dancestors its okay. youre just wasting more energy animating stuff that you obviously dislike by now. like idc what they says, but the 12 dancestors wasnt even a good mirror of tumblr subcultures. its just there as a one off gag instead of something they wants to delve into later on. the jokes wasnt even that funny like, i've spent two years on reddit making fun of softboy nice guys and gamer gurls the joke is old at this point. and hussie seems to delve deeper into being an ableist asshole the more people criticize them. its pathetic to make a strawman character of your haters and criticizers. honestly, caliborn would have been a better character if its just a stand in for toxic masculinity instead of a homestuck hater. the story is too bloated at this point. just give it a rest.

-also, act 6 weakness is that most of the story elements would fly over someone who never know the heydays of 2012-2015 tumblr. okay, this applies to homestuck as a whole honestly. like its about the internet and american 90s nostalgia. only a terminally online person would fully appreciate it. but dear god the mental illnes you'll get if youre one of lucky demographics to understand... hussie might have hit and miss on some things, but when they're right theyre right. i do think there are merits on making things that will never have mass appeal.

-okay, now thats out of my system im gonna say that from now on, im not gonna take homestuck as seriously as i did yesterday. i can see this is the point where things started to fall apart. bloated character sets, too many authorial self inserts, plot is becoming overly convoluted, the social commentary are becoming incoherent. hussie can make an entire page about dirk explaining the downfall of western civilization using historical materialism to jake but this will always be the webcomic where the 'scariest' troll is a rapper who made vodka pie, slept in a bed of honks, and taped wings on his godtier cosplay.

-okay this is getting too long. on to facking part 2 of my post!!!!

#homestuck #homestuck liveread #homestuck liveblog

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nerdwithapencilusesthepencil · 1 year ago

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I know I'm in college, and I know that parties like the ones I went to can get wild. But I've never went to a party that ended in multiple bite marks before. At least...they were all human bite marks before this party.

I should probably start at the beginning. The whole time through my high school career, I was, to put it lightly, a loner. To put it heavily, I was an outcast and a freak in the eyes of my peers. You think you know a guy (gender neutral), and then they start wearing all black, and getting piercings, and writing book reports about “Rappaccini's Daughter”, am I right? Anyway, growing up in rural Idaho meant that the closest thing to “subculture” we had around here were the different week night activities you went to with your church friends. One day midway through high school, I decided I needed a change, and my town decided they did not vibe with that. I hoped that things would change once I made it to college.

And change they did; it wasn't long after moving in that I was approached by some other goth people for basically the first time in my life. One of them I recognized from my intro to college reading class, but that was about it. Apparently, they were—not really a club, definitely not a fraternity, so I guess a “clique” would be the best term for it, and they were on the lookout for new members. I guess the college reading kid dug my (impeccable, if I say so myself) vibes and wanted to approach me about hanging out with them.

For a while, hanging out was all we did. We'd go to one or another friend's house/apartment and chill, playing video games, reading old books, and listening to Bauhaus. Things were good—I had an in group for the first time ever; I had friends. The one weird thing about them happened near the end of the month. All of them clammed up something fierce; none of them had the same vim and verve that they showcased in our hangout sessions, and my friend from class didn't even show up, which was a noticeable first for them. It stayed that way for a few days straight, then they went right back to how they always acted. At least most of the time, anyway.

Whenever I tried asking one of them about what had been going on with them the past couple of days, I could never get a straight answer, let alone a satisfactory one. Every time I tried, they found some new excuse to dip—meal times, laundry to be tended to, the works. It was after a few more days of this that I gave up on trying to get it out of them and decided to let them keep their secrets.

It was about a week after this that one of them suggested a new activity idea to the group. Their housemates were out of town for the holiday, they said, so they basically had their apartment all to themselves. This was the perfect opportunity to go beyond the levels of our typical hangouts and really make it a night to remember. Well, that last part certainly came true.

It started out normally, with us falling into our routines of gaming and watching random crap on the TV while we waited for everyone to arrive. Once the last member of our little group arrived, that was when things started to get wild. They had brought beer. Beer and...other substances. I was underage and raised in a small conservative town, so I obviously had no experience with this sort of thing, and part of me wanted to stick to my guns and remain a teetotaler, or at least a designated driver. But, a smaller part of me said, this is your chance to stop feeling like an outsider. And be honest...you've wanted to try these for a while, haven't you?

I'd got me there.

From there, the night spiraled into a hedonistic blur. Things were said, objects were thrown, kisses were shared...and that's just the parts of it that I remember. At some point, I must have blacked out, because the first thing I remember after the beer really started to flow was waking up in my own bed with a splitting headache, and smaller pains all over my body. Those pains, as I later discovered, were coming from the variety of bite marks I found myself festooned with.

As we started to hang out again, I kept the bites to myself; it was at least supremely awkward to talk about, and at worst could jeopardize my standing in the friend group. Besides, they were all as drunk as I was, right? Surely I couldn't hold them accountable for...whatever had happened to me.

Things proceeded as normal for the next couple of weeks. Then my friends started talking more and more often about the upcoming full moon. Like, a lot more often. I know we were goth and all, but this still felt like something of an unhealthy fixation. As usual, they didn't key me in on anything, but it still felt like they wanted me to be aware of it. Like...I dunno, things just felt more pointed. All of this culminated on the afternoon before the full moon. My class friend pulled me aside and asked me to follow them to meet up with the rest of the guys (gender neutral) for a thing tonight, with promises of an explanation for all the weird stuff they've been pulling. I agreed, mostly to see if I could get any sort of answers or closure for how weird they were being.

When we got there, the rest of the group was...worryingly scantily clad. Nothing indecent, I promise, but it still felt like they were going for minimum clothing. My friend pushed me into the center of the room and took off their jacket as the rest of the crew looked me up and down.

“Wolf, obviously,” one of them said. “Bear,” said another. One just said “Rat”, which seemed oddly patronizing. I was about to ask what any of this meant, when the clock on the wall started to chime. Six o'clock; the sun had long since set by now, but this was the first time I could catch a glimpse of the full moon through the window.

“Looks like it's starting,” my classmate said. “Time to see which of us you're going to take after.”

Then I doubled over in agony as my skin split in two.

Your new friends are really obsessed with the upcoming full moon. You thought nothing of it until you overheard them guessing and gossiping about what “species” you could be.

#my writing #writers on tumblr #writing prompts #horror #(or an attempt at it)#werewolf #werewolves #(perhaps)

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strikersin · 3 months ago

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I appreciate that so many women and girls have transitioned to men and boys and that, at least on the online spectrum of things, have taken the idea of fetishizing gay men and turned it into a sign of being a gay man. The conundrum has solved itself, except at least to me, it's still poorly understood.

I'm glad that people are finding comfort and rallying about things, but it doesn't make sense to me. I think that women have been proven to show a trend of being interested in gay men, and no matter how much I love the stories, or want to be something more than what I am... that doesn't translate to making me a gay man, what if we don't have any of the same experiences...? I have no direct connection to the aids crisis, no loved ones related to this history, I have no real desire to be connected to the scene: I would probably cringe myself out of existence trying to fit in between bears and otters, not out of any lack of love for them, but how could I fit?

... and maybe then, that's how a lot of gay men and men in general come to feel. How can he fit in, how can his shape possibly be accepted...?

The thing about the noted lack of interest in women or being a woman (specifically in the FTM Internet zone) is that it's a marked feature of modern culture. Women don't even like other women. There's no real sense of community unless you build one. That's something to think about, because even as a man, you can't escape women. Actually, as we were saying as feminists, once you become a man, your duty to consider women is even more than before.

But how can we do that if we can't consider ourselves? It's so confusing... of course, different people have different narratives. It's like (this small group) has bypassed an obstacle that wasn't really an obstacle...

Fetishizing gay men, what I have come to understand this to mean to our Internet subculture, often looks like religiously christian girls and women engaging with fanmade content of gay men (and these women do not identify with being transgender) while dehumanising them as actual people, or to say that they would deny them human rights if offered the choice while simultaneously "fangirling" over the concept because... it's proven that girls like gay men.

If your self hatred turns into love because you've radically altered your sense of self...

Well, that's what everyone trying to turn their lives around hopes to do, right?

If you're getting away from the concepts that once binded you... but how? How? Why?

I can't escape from being a girl anymore than I can... and why would I have wanted to be a boy aa a child, it's not true that they're treated much better, it just depends...

...

How can you claim to be something you have no knowledge of? When you gain the knowledge, but you have no experience? Or is that what it feels like?

...

It sounds awesome. It looks like fun.

I still can't escape.

I guess that's the point in my narrative.

Hm.

How I see myself ranges. In the future and as of now. I don't really want to try that hard. It's enough work to be me. God, that's enough.

Take my hand, I think is what I wanted to hear. You're not alone.

So all these things about egg cracking (and how long of a process that can take) makes me think of her. I shouldn't write it, but how much of her transmasculine body would be so desirable. Of course, she is already desirable. And... I shouldn't say it, but this transition won't happen, in any case. Unless...

And is it that I can't find freedom for myself unless she has, or has she already and I am utterly mistaken? It would be fun. What's the point of that? Maybe.

I've seen it in my dreams. It's so annoying...

I'm so annoyed and sad by it... I think I can't help but place that on the shoulders of those that still explore their gender and sex. It's really annoying.

I'm just going to be a different person for a while. Which in my next idea taken from the Internet that I am assuredly just... posing for. But, you know, hey, I was right about autism years before, when it wasn't able to be recognized yet. I was right about my sexuality, if... if I didn't understand it at the same time, and still have prejudice against. You know? I'm so scared to like women. I would be such an insufferable partner in the 50s, except that I'm so awesome. I'm somewhat insufferable now, just...

But you know, I would have been an insufferable gay man in the 80s. I would have left my partner with aids weeks before he died, of course I couldn't have known, I would have loved him and left out of fear and wanting more and regretted it for ever. And hated myself for the while. And so what?

It's such a complicated soul and existence... not to anyone else, of course, except that I MAKE NO SENSE... but to me, the mystery is...

...

Such insufferable things. I used to be fun, you know? Connected with my passion. Now I just want to kill myself for failing to do more in my past. But it's gone, gone, gone, right? There's no more to do. Right? My passion hurts like an empty... swirling vortex of nondescript dark and purple viscera. I want to DIE! but then what? To face the people that I have ultimately let down, what, again? Take me, take me, take me to the void, and let those who would weep, weep. And misremember. Because the memory is always omitting. And that's why I had to destroy the memory of me, to replace it with something bad, something you wouldn't forgive, because then death is the ultimate catharsis...

Right? That's what you'd want, right? I can't believe he did that to me, but at least he's dead. At least it's over, so that it doesn't hurt twice, but once, badly and confusedly. Then it's not about you but what happened to you and that it's gone now, forever. That I would have, would have, written letters, this was never your fault... I should have done that, but I lived. There wasn't even time to die.

But the sun is still so, gradually so, warming and the air is kind... and sublime... and I'm so lucky and grateful for my brother, who is both of these things. The sun and the air, and the warmth of it all, and most importantly, my brother. And he's gay, well no, he's not really gay. And he's dead... well, yes, but... he's everything that moves in this universe, and he is the stillness between all things. He is just... One. He is my one. My gayass brother and me.

What would he think? I know. You're thinking about this too much. I'm trying to find the conclusion for myself. And I'll never know it until I get there. So what...?

Just don't have labels, dude. And get it out of your system.

I want a beer! It's not concluded until it's the end...! And right now, whatever for, I have to be a woman. Whatever for...

Whatever for...

And even if my wife were to have our child, would I have to... and even when men on testosterone get pregnant, would I have to...

But. Yes. No, it's silly to think. That I could be anymore like you, anymore than just two human beings, anyway. And how could I ever be the kind of man I wanted? How. Could. I. Be? But no one would accept it already.

Words are starting to not make sense, my dyslexia is getting... profoundly difficult. Now.

At least I can be that kind of woman...? That...? I don't know what I want. But I do it. Or someone does. I just want to be with my brother. Goodnight, oh, goodnight... people and places. I see you, and I'll dream with you...

And I won't die, but how could I ever apologize, now? How could I...? Without the penalty of death?

Sorry, that I will not support for anyone else, that penalty. Not you. Live differently.

Ugh. Goodbye.

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dailydoubletake · 1 year ago

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Curious: They Only Wanted Attention

All of the evil in the world wants attention. Bad/narcissistic bosses want to draw attention to themselves. Terrorists want attention drawn to their cause. School bullies want attention drawn to their own pain.

This post is part of a series of posts on remaining curious in all situations in life. Enjoy.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Western culture is unequivocally right on a few select issues. Protecting the innocent and children, and the idea of all having equal rights under the law, to name a couple big ones. These are true to every decent person’s heart, and nothing should be able to change that. To be somewhat less absolute in what Westerners agree on, let’s try capitalism and having property ownership (aka non communal property). And somewhat less widely held, there could definitely be an argument made for Christianity, at least parts of it, being a part of Western culture.

We could go on and on, slowly getting to ideas that are less and less widely held until, eventually, the person you are talking to says “no.” No, as in, “that’s not okay with my values and how I see the world.” Politics come somewhere in this range, by the way.

So, let’s Imagine a huge ideological divide between politics and what comes next, as I’m not intending to imply that that they are in any way similar, or should be held in that way. Also, please note that I am not putting Western ideas out there as “better” or “worse” than any other way of thinking.

LEVELS OF IDEAS

Having said the above, and gritting my teeth, I have to ask: where does terrorism fit in? In mainstream/decent Western culture, it simply doesn’t. Thank God. But somewhere in this world it does. Terrorism is the most severe and negative action/ideology, of course.

From this idea that there are different levels of “good” and “bad,” we can draw up a few bullet points for how the world could work on a basic level. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 represent different types of ideas/actions and how we each respond, individually and collectively:

Some ideas we simply agree with our group/culture on. These are no brainers, like murder is bad, for example.

Others we disagree on, but we let it go because there are enough ideas in group 1. A lot of singular political issues occupy this space.

Other ideas we disagree on completely and are totally unacceptable no matter what else the other person believes. For example, the individual you’re speaking with is also a neo-Nazi. Not cool.

Even with the third group of thoughts, by the very nature of existing in our minds, they exist somewhere in the world, as well. Otherwise how would we have heard of it? Interesting how that works, yet awful.

The overall idea I’m trying to get through is that, somewhere in the world, anything goes, no matter what it is. If terrorists in the Middle East (Hamas and ISIS most recently) can do what they have done to draw fear through mass murder and torture, then yes, anything goes.

So how do we draw a road map of what’s able to be tolerated (groups 1 and 2) and what isn’t? To start, accept that some other cultures and/or subcultures won’t do the same thing. The evolution of Western thought isn’t felt in every place around the world, and we shouldn’t assume that it is. Right or wrong. Let me make this clear as well: This is in no way an attempt at subtle racism, only to say that different places in the world will work in different ways based on their history. Whether or not a culture would or would not believe something similar to what I’m saying I honestly can’t say. I’m only speaking from my own perspective.

Having said that, what’s also fascinating and/or terrifying is that these groups (1, 2 and 3) can be highly relative and aren’t the same from person to person. What one person calls genocide, another calls getting their honest revenge. But, by the time you’re busy committing genocide, I don’t see having a values based conversation as being productive.

SEEK TO UNDERSTAND….

My solution to all of this is actually pretty simple: empathy. Apply the skill of empathy. Not forgiveness or acceptance, but empathy. Know what the world looks like through both the eyes of your friends and your enemies. As I said before, we each have our #3 issues (above). Maybe it’s not involving war in the Middle East or Ukraine. And let’s be clear, if something is a #3 issue, you really have to mean it. Moving on…

So how does my proposed solution work? Know what your enemy wants and don’t let them have it. No matter what. If that bully wants you to get mad/upset/cry, cold shoulder them. If your narcissistic, psycho boss wants you to beg for your job after they fire you, grab your stuff, say bye to your work friends, and head out the door head held high. If terrorists want to create a movement or induce change in policy by taking hostages, never let it happen. This is the precise reason to not negotiate with terrorists.

IN CLOSING

I hope you enjoyed the article. I know a lot of this was about some pretty abstract stuff, but if you made it here (to the bottom) just realize how much I appreciate it.

I’ll leave you with one last piece of insight that maybe you, the reader, can benefit from: sometimes being nice simply isn’t an option. When those times come, realize that you are strong enough to get through it and that, if you put your mind to it, anything can be accomplished.

Thank you for reading.

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geoffrard · 2 years ago

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My Chemical Romance, Hardcore Sexual Repression, and the Lemon Stealing Whore

[Content warning for non-graphic references to pornography, sex, sexual violence, and negative attitudes towards sex work. There is no explicit nudity but you might not want to read this in front of your boss. All images have descriptions in alt text. See sources here. Read this essay on my Dreamwidth here.]

It’s the setup of a joke: Gerard Way, Mikey Way, Frank Iero, Matt Pelissier, and a porn actress huddle around a leather couch in a dingy room as a camera rolls. The actress, a young and bright-eyed Joanna Angel, asks each member of My Chemical Romance in the room, “Do you guys watch porn?”

Most of us have seen the interview. If not, stop and watch it now, because nothing else I say will make sense otherwise. (And here, just for you, I’ve reuploaded the video with at least 10% more pixels. Watch below, or read a transcript here.)

youtube

The fact that My Chemical Romance, whose faces have decorated shirts at Hot Topic for over fifteen years, whose songs have saved lives and inspired memes, who all have wives and children, would end up associated with an alt porn website like Burning Angel often baffles fans watching the interview for the first time.

For example, see these comments left on the original video uploaded to YouTube:

These comments, though more than a few years old, generally represent how a lot fans understand the interview. Other people think it’s funny and perhaps a little out of left field, but don’t question how four members wound up on a porn site like Burning Angel. Both attitudes are a pretty typical example of the MCR fandom’s ignorance about the New Jersey hardcore scene, as well reflecting general weirdness about sex work.

Since I cannot turn my historian brain off, I wanted to provide some of the extremely interesting historical context behind the video. The post I had originally planned to make very, very briefly outlined how MCR ended up being interviewed by Joanna Angel, founder and longtime CEO of Burning Angel. But the more I looked into it, the more I fell down a rabbit hole. This eventually turned into something of a mammoth manifesto about women and sexuality in the late 90s hardcore scene that gave My Chemical Romance and Joanna Angel careers. I will warn you: this is long. But it’s also important historical background information that rarely gets discussed at all—especially by MCR fans.

(So, with all that said, please feel free to ask any questions about anything I say here! Sources for will be posted on a different post which I will link at the end, and I have been quite thorough, though not as thorough as I could have been.)

Tl;dr: Joanna Angel came up in the exact same scene as My Chemical Romance, Thursday, and Midtown, a scene which stigmatized open sexual expression, at the expense of women and queer people—especially those involved in sex work. When she started her porn site, Burning Angel, she applied the same DIY values that her peers did to their own bands, but faced violence and ostracization from a subculture much too repressed to embrace such blatant expression of female sexuality. In this context, the My Chemical Romance interview with Burning Angel in 2004 was not only a group of guys doing a favor for someone they had probably known for years at that point; it can also be read as a somewhat controversial act that pushed back against this aversion to sexuality, and that helped legitimize and popularize both the site and Joanna Angel’s career.

Burning Angel: the Movie (2005)

Say you’re a diehard My Chemical Romance fan in 2005—if you really want to watch your favorite band discuss their porn-viewing habits, you’ll have to travel to either your local adult entertainment store or go to the hardcore porn site BurningAngel.com and order their first DVD, appropriately titled Burning Angel: The Movie. Once you have the disc, you’ll have to fast forward through several sex scenes and interviews with other bands before you arrive at what you wanted: the actress who you’ve just seen in hardcore sex scenes asking Gerard, Frank, Mikey and Otter questions about their preferences in adult entertainment.

The DVD was Burning Angel’s first attempt at more professional pornography, and Joanna’s first foray into full participation in filmed, live-action sex. Joanna Angel would later go on to be one of the most well-known porn stars of our time—in Virgin Territory (2006), for example, she played a lemon stealing whore; you might have seen the video—and Burning Angel would be credited with the popularization of the “alt” porn genre, which broke from the exploitative mainstream porn model and typically featured models representative of subcultures.

But in 2005 her alt porn empire was still in its infancy, and Joanna was still struggling to rectify her recent full expulsion from the local New Jersey hardcore social scene with her enduring devotion to DIY values—and the fact that members of the sexually repressed subculture that had ostracized Joanna were her site’s target audience.

Joanna Angel on the Scene

Any thoughts of a future career in adult entertainment and the last name Angel were far from her mind when Joanna Mostov enrolled in Rutgers University in 1998.

Though she often pushed back against the wishes of her religious orthodox Jewish family, the extent of her adolescent rebellion had ended at sneaking out to punk shows and getting piercings her mother wouldn’t approve of. At Rutgers, Joanna quickly became enmeshed in the New Brunswick hardcore scene, putting her in the same circles as a host of people whose names you might recognize: Geoff Rickly of Thursday (who ran hundreds of shows out of his basement), Gabe Saporta of Midtown and Cobra Starship, and Alex Saavedra of Eyeball Records.

Geoff Rickly: Well, you know, the funny thing is that, at the time, Joanna, who would later go on to form Burning Angel and become a famous porn star in her own right, was playing in her goth bands with chelsea haircuts and the basement shows. Like, her local goth band would play. And they’d bring out people and stuff, and I’d put touring bands on that show, and so it’s funny to me how, weirdly, DIY punk hardcore scenes and porn had weird associations then. [source: Going Off Track: Geoff Rickly, 2012]

The NJ hardcore scene was close-knit enough that while she only has documented friendships with some of these people, she had to have crossed paths with most of them multiple times (for example, Joanna was at the show on December 31, 1998 where Thursday and Midtown played their first real sets). She went to every show she could and hosted some in her own basement.

While we don’t necessarily have a written record of her friendship with Frank Iero and Mikey Way of My Chemical Romance, the fact that Joanna attended plenty of shows in the North Jersey area and also spent a lot of time at the Eyeball House (Alex was a close friend; and Pencey Prep was on his label) suggests that, at the the very least, Joanna, Frank, and Mikey were aware of each other’s presence in these early years. They were peers in the same scene, just as they were with everyone else who frequented the same venues or played in the same basements.

For years, the hardcore scene mattered to her more than anything else; it was her social life and what she based her values upon.

Those hardcore values and a growing curiosity about her own sexuality lead Joanna to sex-positive feminist activism and a writing internship with Nerve.com, an online magazine which explored topics related to sex and romantic relationships. From there, her interest in expressing her own sexuality continued to develop.

[Suicidegirls in 2001]

So, in 2002, when her roommate and friend asked her if she wanted to start a porn site that offered more explicit content than sites like SuicideGirls, which featured punk aesthetics and band interviews but stayed away from anything more than simple nudity, Joanna agreed.

BurningAngel.com went live in April 2002. It wanted to do things differently than other porn sites. While not necessarily pushing the boundaries of beauty standards, the site used models who were beautiful but in a more approachable, average sense. Joanna has said that since she had little experience even watching porn prior to starting the site, she wanted the site to mimic the kind of sex she was having with actors who looked like the people she was having sex with.

Joanna: When we started the website, it was a reflection of ourselves. It still is to this day. There's band interviews on the website, the style of girl that we use is not your average typical porn star and the personality on the website is a little bit different. All the members interact with each other, all of the girls have blogs and profiles, and people become friends with each other. It's more of a community and a reflection of a subculture rather than just being a website with content to jerk-off to and never think about again. [source: Complex: Interview: Joanna Angel Talks Alt Porn, Piracy, And Her Blow-Up Doll, 2011]

[Burning Angel’s homepage in June 2002]

Hardcore Punk Reacts to Hardcore Porn

Her longtime involvement in the scene and her application of DIY ethics to her porn business did not mean that the hardcore culture actively nurtured Joanna Angel’s career in porn. In reality, many parts of the scene were actively hostile towards Joanna and the site once Burning Angel went live.

This backlash isn’t incredibly surprising within the context of late 90s hardcore, a subculture that by and large refused to acknowledge sexuality of any kind.

The sexual repression in hardcore reflected several different aspects of its culture: a negative perception of women active in the scene; a reaction against the violence of tristate hardcore in the early 90s; and, more than anything else, the general privilege of those involved in the underground.

Like Joanna, Geoff Rickly, and Frank Iero, most people involved in New Brunswick hardcore were enrolled at Rutgers, and white, middle-class male college students dominated the scene. For many of them, applying DIY values to their own lives meant distancing themselves from their socioeconomic upper-hand. Consequently, the scene as a whole developed an attitude of asceticism, rejecting anything that served no purpose beyond pleasure or personal enjoyment. (Of course, it was easy for them to reject their social privileges, especially when they could just as easily cast off their aesthetic of poverty and self-denial for an adulthood of relative comfort.)

To do anything just because you enjoyed it, or because it brought you happiness in the moment, was seen to be a betrayal of hardcore’s higher intellectual goals—and that included sex. You can see this trend, for example, in lyrics from NJ hardcore bands, which focused on things like political issues or childhood traumas instead of the common themes of sexual and romantic desire found in mainstream music.

Joanna spoke about finding comfort in the general sexual repression of the scene because of her own adolescent insecurities:

Joanna: Me being very sexually not advanced and insecure, [90s hardcore] was the perfect place for me, because I could ignore [sexuality]. I was getting older, I don’t know, I wanted to explore myself more. So I began to write these graphic sex stories. My roommate, Mitch, knew about it, and I remember him getting a kick out of it. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]

For another salient example, Geoff Rickly of Thursday has spoken about his own struggles with the hardcore scene’s repression, especially in regards to the shame he felt about writing sexually explicit stories for pay:

Geoff Rickly: You have to think, this is the 90s punk scene. It's not now. Nobody would openly talk about sex in DIY punk. It was such a repressed PC time, where — I mean, a lot of that stuff is my heart, like the political activism that was still such a part of punk, and actually just giving a shit about things that matter, and modes of how you're doing what you're doing. Those things seemed to matter back then, and I appreciated that side, but it was also so uptight. So repressed. [source: Going Off Track: Geoff Rickly, 2012]

While its general aversion to sexuality might have been born out of an initial desire to reform the violent misogyny of other hardcore cultures, it created the conditions for certain social problems to go completely unaddressed. After all, how can you address the rampant misogyny, homophobia, and sexual violence in your community if any acknowledgement of sexuality is taboo?

(For a brief but interesting perspective on the impact of hardcore sexual repression upon queer people in the scene, check out Episode #4 of Geoff Rickly’s podcast Dark Blue, in which Steve Pedulla and Norman Brannon discuss their experiences as gay musicians in the scene.)

Of course, these issues aren’t confined to the New Jersey hardcore, nor were they unique to the late 1990s. This particular brand of sex-averse misogyny reflects important threads within the feminism of the time which villainized open female sexuality—especially when it concerned sex work. Left-leaning spaces like music undergrounds adopted this sex-negative, misogynistic attitude as a part of their feminism—not in opposition to it.

In particular, the Riot Grrrl movement of the late 80s/early 90s pushed back against a culture (and a subculture) that shamed women for publicly expressing their sexuality. Following that, early fanzines and performance practices addressed the mistreatment of sex workers in hardcore as one way that female bodily autonomy was limited and women’s bodies were policed. Bikini Kill frontwoman and Riot Grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna has spoken about her past in sex work, the hostility she endured for openly discussing it, and the importance of that experience in shaping the form of Riot Grrrl’s protest.

Kathleen Hanna: “Whenever we were written about in the press, I wanted my sex-work history to be part of the description, because I wanted other women whom I danced at clubs with (and who never knew my real name) to see themselves reflected in some way. A lot of women who are doing music now have been sex-trade workers, prostitutes, dancers; I thought it was really important that I didn’t hide that. But I also didn’t want to glamorize that experience in being a super-cool thing in itself. I just wanted other women who work in the sex industry to remember that we can be sex-trade workers and be philosophers, writers, musicians, artists, or whatever. [Andrea Juno, Angry Women in Rock (1996)]

Riot Grrrl gained significant traction and nation-wide attention. In the decade or so after Kathleen Hanna and her peers catalyzed the movement, bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile remained incredibly popular, and likely contributed a lot to shifting attitudes towards sexuality in music subcultures.

Still, these sex-negative attitudes prevailed among enough people involved in local underground scenes that, when Burning Angel launched in 2002 and Joanna started marketing it in local hardcore spaces, the site received a lot of attention—both good and bad. The positive attention fueled the site and allowed it to expand beyond just photographs, text interviews, and low-budget personal sex tapes that characterized its early content.

However, the negative attention Joanna and her site received was vocal, targeted, and occasionally involved literal physical violence. As Kathleen Hanna had faced moral condemnation for her time in sex work, Joanna Angel faced criticism from fellow members of her subculture who thought sex work to be completely antithetical to their social justice goals. She has spoken about how difficult it was to see a community she had cared about for years turn her back on her completely for engaging in a type of work that she found enjoyable, and that she thought could be done with moral integrity.

Joanna Angel: People were calling me ugly, calling me all sorts of mean shit, how [Burning Angel was] making a profit, [we were] exploiting women, blah blah blah. And I was so bummed. I was like, you know, this isn’t fair! I always support every fucking band in the punk scene. Even if I don’t like the band, I support them—I go to their shows, I would hand out fliers for their shows. I thought it was like a code, in the punk scene, that it doesn’t matter whether you like it or not. If this is part of the scene, you accept it, and you help it, and you love it—and I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. I remember being very hurt, you know? I was like, dude, I didn’t violate any punk laws by starting this. My friend from my computer class is the one who put it online. All the other girls on the site—all three of them— were punk chicks and part of the scene. And I felt really bad; people were insulting the other girls, and I really thought I was starting this cool thing where girls could just explore their sexuality. And mind you, at the time, the beginning of Burning Angel was just photos, not even videos. People were getting all up in this upheaval because of a handful of naked photos on the internet. It’s crazy to think about now. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]

Amidst the mounting antagonism and after an incident at Hellfest 2004, Joanna officially decided to leave the hardcore scene that she’d been involved with for over five years.

Joanna Angel: I remember going to Hellfest one year. Maybe it was like 2004?…these girls were throwing water balloons at us because we had a booth there. Because we used to get booths at some of these shows and sell tshirts. We didn’t even have any DVDs—we’d literally get in a booth and sell tshirts and hand out fliers and stickers. And these other girls were throwing water balloons at us and calling us sluts. I was like, “Hey, that sucks, can you stop doing that?” And one of my friends—he owned a record label. He owned Eyeball Records, Alex…he saw the girls picking on us, and he went over to the girls, and said, “Hey, can you cool it? They have a booth here—let them do their thing. They’re not gonna get in your way.” And then those girls and their boyfriends beat him up, and he wound up in the hospital. He almost died. It was terrible. And I was like, we have to get out here. Let’s just stay away. If we’re a porn site, let’s just be a porn site. Let’s promote ourselves with other porn companies; let’s step away for a little while. Everyone in the punk scene knows who we are. They’ve made their decision about if they like us or not. I’m still gonna interview bands, still gonna do that thing—but I’m done. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]

Joanna and Burning Angel’s separation from the NJ hardcore scene in 2004 finally brings me to Burning Angel: The Movie, My Chemical Romance, and that interview.

So, 2004: after over two years spent largely behind the camera and slowly expanding her porn site, Joanna finally decided to get in front of the camera and produce a more intentionally crafted alt porn video that retained the feel of the website. Thus Burning Angel: the Movie was born.

As Joanna explains in the interview, the general idea of the DVD was that different self-contained pornographic scenes would be interspersed with band interviews. One of the key features of Burning Angel, like Suicide Girls before it, was the band interviews subscribers could access alongside the porn, so it made sense to preserve this aspect of the site on the DVD experience. Joanna interviewed five bands in early 2005: Killswitch Engage, Eighteen Visions, Shadows Fall, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and, of course, My Chemical Romance—all bands that Joanna admired, and who had been involved in the same scene that she had recently left because of very real threats to her emotional and physical well-being.

Within this context, My Chemical Romance’s decision to participate in the Burning Angel interview was a statement, as they put their support behind an enterprise that was highly controversial within the social circle most immediately relevant to them.

Fresh off the 2004 Warped Tour and promoted Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, My Chemical Romance might have appeared to be largely divorced from their scene of origin, but they still acted in response to those politics—politics that impacted American culture at large more than you’d think—in both intentional and incidental ways.

That is not to say that MCR was being overtly political; they’ve made a clear effort to distance themselves from the clear-cut political imagery and goals of some of their peers in hardcore. Still, the band (Gerard especially) very obviously cared a lot about using their music and stage presence to express shades of sexuality that they perceived to be lacking from some forms of music.

Gerard: I also wanted, at the same time, [for] the record to be a testament to self-expression, and putting stuff in there like that, while not being a homosexual myself, but expressing myself in a homosexual way, is either going to push your buttons in a negative way or you’re going to identify with it. [AP: Well, this whole scene wants you to be sensitive, but not too sensitive.] It is extremely homoerotic, especially the whole emo-sensitive thing. Everyone’s wearing women’s pants; everyone’s got women’s haircuts; everyone’s wearing youth-medium shirts. I don’t want to come out and say it. It’s blatantly obvious. Wearing a leather jacket is an extremely masculine thing to do in this scene. Even the hardcore bands, the really hard ones, you see them in makeup and stuff. I like that. I think it keeps it dangerous. It keeps it exciting. In a way, sex has really been missing from rock, especially because of all the sensitivity. That’s what I really wanted to convey on the record, too. I wanted the record to be very dangerous and sexy at the same time. There’s such a lack of sex in music. It’s been more about getting in touch with your feelings and being there for each other, which is great, but it’s definitely lacking this sexual duality. [Source: Alternative Press #193, Aug 2004; emphasis mine]

Additionally, many of their moments of explicit sexuality on stage were designed to be somewhat incendiary and polarizing.

But it’s important to remember that, just as late 90s New Jersey hardcore was not the first subculture with issues of sexual repression, My Chemical Romance does not represent the first attempt to push back at this asexual culture and definitely weren’t leading that particular conversation. Gerard took inspiration from artists already pushing those boundaries and incorporating sexual expression into their art. He has spoken, for example, about the impact of Riot Grrrl acts upon his music and stage presence (Joanna Angel has similarly pointed to bands like Bikini Kill as significant influences). These bands had already incorporated resistance against harmful sexual repression, values which Gerard and his band mates took on when they adopted their styles into My Chemical Romance.

(I also want to mention briefly that other significant people in the hardcore world have spoken out against pornography, such as Ian MacKaye of the formative post-hardcore band Fugazi. MacKaye owned Dischord Records, the definitive underground music label, to which a young Frank Iero unsuccessfully attempted to get his band Sector 12 signed. The matter of pornography and its role within the hardcore world was not one upon which you could maintain a neutral stance after, say, appearing on a porn DVD.)

As shitty as it was that they needed approval from the men in the scene, My Chemical Romance, along with other bands, supported Burning Angel, a new kind of porn, and helped legitimize Joanna Angel’s claim that what she was doing was not backwards or exploitative but had integrity.

Have you had an issue with people you grew up with when they find out you're in the adult industry? Joanna: At first people had problem[s], but not anymore. Once the cool kids in bands said, "I think what she's doing is cool" all the others turned around. Everyone I ever respected didn't have an issue with it and all the stupid, annoying hardcore kids had a problem. For as much shit as I got, I also got a lot of support. [Source: Hustlerworld Interview: Joanna Angel]

I don’t mean to glamorize the porn industry or to depict Joanna Angel as some savior of female sexuality in the early 2000s. But, as Kathleen Hanna points out, sex work is legitimate work, and sex workers deserve to have workplaces that treat them with dignity and communities that recognize their humanity. The reality was that NJ hardcore as a community did not support sex workers. Fundamentally, these were the barriers that caused Joanna and Burning Angel to make an exodus from the local hardcore scene—and they are the attitudes we risk reproducing when we express discomfort that a band we admire has interacted with a sex worker.

My intentions with this post (which turned out longer than I had ever anticipated, so Jesus, thank you for reading) were to shed light on the historical context of one moment in My Chemical Romance’s history. I’ve found that the average MCR fan, even those with a specific fondness for their early years, doesn’t actually know much at all about it—so I hope this has given some clarity.

I’ll end on this note: Without bands supporting Burning Angel, who knows—we might have never seen the lemon stealing whore. At the very least, the culture surrounding porn would look a lot different. That might not mean it would look better or worse—though you can’t deny the role that Joanna Angel played, nor the role that bands from the New Jersey Hardcore scene like My Chemical Romance played in shaping the American culture of pornography.

Find sources for this post here.

[acknowledgements: thank you so much for reading! my forever thanks, as always, to nic @raytorosaurus, sophia @sendmyresignation, vyn @bringmoreknives, and maddy @8thnotes for their continued cheerleading as i spent over a month writing this long, long post. additional thanks to wes @killrockstar for very kindly offering some incredibly helpful guidance about riot grrrl and sending me resources about kathleen hanna. and much gratitude to merlin @void-flesh and @transmascfrankiero for their feedback on the final draft of this essay.]

#mcr #my chemical romance #joanna angel #mcr meta #my post

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yoiasaarchive · 5 months ago

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which of these didn't happen in 18trip? poll results! as well as explaining all of the options that come with it.

so, what didn't happen in this tourism game? drumroll please!

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what didn't happen in 18trip is the "an npc is the kangel equivalent of this universe." option! (9.9% of total votes)

-> to explain, while it is true that this npc does have an internet persona, there is little known fact about it to be directly compared to ame/kangel.

thank u so much for voting! 🫶🫶🫶 the very overwhelming amount of response is wonderful to say the least!! there's sm happening in this game that i may consider doing a second version but, this is all for now.

spoilers and explaining the options under the cut! keep in mind that these are spoilers for the ENTIRE game, including main stories, ward mayor novels, and event stories. if you'd like to keep knowing about the spoilers out of context, i recommend going in blind! (-ish.)

a character is a jirai-type fudanshi. (4% of total votes)

refers to kurama ushio of day2! the 'jirai' here means that he has many dislikes called 'landmines' about the interpretation of his fav ship and characters! eg. no reversal, no multiship, etc. its different from the subculture and fashion style. i forget the right english word for this... however! he does block and mute accordingly. (as one must!)

a conflict happens because one of the siblings wanted to go to law school. (26.7% of total votes)

happens in l4mps main story, designs of happiness side:B, wherein after ryui's shop opening, toi finds a law textbook that his older twin has been keeping a secret from him. this is resolved later in the story, and during the hoslive, toi expresses his support for ryui so he may get into law school! this is a very minor conflict though.

three of the characters are victims by two separate cults. (5% of total votes)

refers to shiramitsu ryui and toi, with their family (particularly their grandfather and mother) running the cult that worships an 'angel'. the third character is kinouchi tao, whose parents were in a cult. it results in his 'death', and his brother suffering parental neglect from a young age.

a character is possessed by a demon, and in that same regard, another character is possessed by 5 other spirits. (5.9% and 10.9% of total votes respectively)

refers to shiramitsu toi (and ryui by an extension) and kinugawa kiroku! toi is possessed by astaroth, referred to as 'oshisha-sama' by everyone. toi himself calls them 'a-chama'. while kiroku's finger puppet friends are all implied to be either spirits, or other supernatural entities that have stuck to his body as said by the twins. this is in his mayor novel story.

one unit's concept is 'prison idols'. their crimes are: assault, murder, fraud, theft, incitement. (1% of total votes)

refers to the evening group, ev3ns! yes, these are all real. to nontrippers, have fun guessing who's who<3

two characters form a suicide pact together. (5.9% of total votes)

refers to the ev3ns' first feature event story: sand sculpture of the heart, epilogue. azekawa kinari asks doumeki kuguri to 'destroy' him when the time comes for the both of them to die.

two, presumed three, characters are in a reincarnation cycle. (4% of total votes)

this is about lu liguang, and kiba, the original renga in this timeline. renga himself is a possibility only, as it has been stated that this was the first time that renga has ever appeared in these cycles via liguang.

a character's father has been abducted by aliens. (5/9% of total votes)

in reference to kaguya muneuji's father. looking for him is his main reason for becoming an astronaut.

an npc gets stabbed on stage. (17.8% of total votes)

in ev3ns sideB, kitakata nayuki, the conductor for the unit, takes the hit meant for kitakata raito.

one of the characters is committing identity fraud. (3% of total votes)

nishizono renga, the one the players can gacha and play in the game is not the real one. his name is ren, and originally came from the ward 3's slums. the original renga, kiba, finds him, befriends him and switches places with him, which results in what we have today. dna test conducted proves that they were not related.

phew! and thats all. again, thank you for your participation, and HAMA Nice Trip!

18TRIP POLL !! SPOILER ALERT !!

18trip has been out for like almost 6 months. i like the stories so here's a bunch of spoilers taken out of context and mildly exaggerated for comedic effect! enjoy.

first time holding a week-long poll, oops. this will be open from sept. 14th to 21st! reblogs r appreciated 🫶🫶🫶

#18trip #エイトリ

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cinnamonest · 4 years ago

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Albedo idol girl darling thoughts M A N I F E S T E D

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Well, to be entirely honest, he thinks the whole idol thing is a little dumb.

For someone like him, at least. He's a PhD student in his final semester, lots of work to be done and all that. So, you know, he's a responsible, accomplished adult. Not the kind of person who gets into "that stuff," as he calls it in his head.

Nor does he even know how he encountered it... He just takes the occasional break from work to mindlessly open whatever app first pops into his vision and scroll through the feed. He's never watched anything like it in his life, so he's not exactly sure why he gets recommended some idol girl thing, and even less sure why he taps it without really thinking. Probably one of those videos that gets recommended to everyone. Well, can't be that, it doesn't have that many views... Probably loosely connected to some video game he's searched before or something. He's familiar with idols and what they are, and the subculture surrounding them, but he's never really cared about it.

Honestly, it's kinda pathetic that a bunch of grown adult men get so obsessed over these girls, he thinks as he watches. He's seen the type. Lonely, asocial dudes, most definitely virgins whose only female attention in their entire life is their mother, well into adulthood with no real social group to speak of.

...Not that he's much better off, but he hasn't quite sunk down to their level. The only reason he doesn't talk to people much is because they're busy, and he's even busier. He managed to make a few friends in undergrad years. Well, study partners who mooched off his notes since he was one of the top students, but same idea. They were people he spoke to more than once, which is what constitutes a friend, right? And for the record, one time in high school a girl in his class said she liked his hair. He hasn't changed the way he wears it since. Whenever he's sad, he thinks about that compliment from 10+ years ago, and it makes him feel a little better. But now, he's constantly slammed with work and research.

And his acquaintances are also all busy. He sees notifications every now and then from social media he never checks. Everyone is getting married at this stage in life, both friends and even other PhD students in his department. Not that he's ever been invited to a wedding, he just overhears a lot of conversations, sees notifications of posts. And he will too, eventually. He just has to finish up his degree, and then... Meet a girl. Well, that's actually the second step, step one would be finding out how to go about meeting a girl. He's... Never done it before. Probably does not happen sitting in the research lab at 11:30 pm on YouTube. He's talked to one of the other PhD students who's a girl before. And only stutters sometimes. He was even able to look her in the face while he talked to her once. That's a good start.

Ok, so maybe he is a little bit pathetic, but not as bad as... These guys. Reading the comments of the video actually make him feel a little better about himself, because frankly, they're kinda wild. The worship and fawning over girls is one thing, but they even have timestamps referring to various members like "she's super cute here!" Or "you can kinda see her thigh at 3:12!" Etc etc. Yeesh, creepy. And they get into comment fights over who is the best member, as if it even matters. It's fascinating in a human-social-experiment sort of way, the manifestation of a subculture and how humans interact with each other. On and on it goes, hundreds of commenters. He pays more attention to the comments than the actual video, but the song is kinda catchy in that annoying sort of way, and the girls are cute, just kinda... The typical thing he'd expect from idol groups. But the building will close soon, so he taps back to home screen and swipes the app closed.

Unfortunately, the algorithm remembers.

And he's not certain why he clicks the next one either, the following day. The lunch breaks he takes are usually pretty rushed. Not that he has specific class times at his level of academia, but he likes to get his work done. He intentionally eats either a bit later or earlier than the lunch crowd to avoid crowds and interactions. Finds a nice secluded little table tucked away. So when he opens it back up, what do you know, several more videos get recommended. It's absent minded when he taps on one, the kind of numb-brained entertainment every modern person indulges in, videos you wouldn't really be interested in but just watch because they're there.

Ok, this is really creepy. These dudes have made compilation videos of close ups of each specific girl. It's the same group as the video he saw before, same little lewd costumes. Admittedly the girls are kinda cute. He can kinda understand the appeal. But he's not like those guys, he would never become like, obsessed with them.

The song is actually really catchy. The kind of mindlessly addictive, repetitive pop music that's the same four chords over and over, each song is so similar you can't really tell them apart, but it gets stuck in your head anyway. This group has... nine members. Who needs that many singers in one group? It's not like a band or anything, they all just sing and do their little choreography. Guess that's a form of talent, even though he doesn't really get it.

Some of the groups he sees in recommended videos are cute and wholesome, and while this group is cute too, there's a very... Blatantly intentional lewdness to their poses and costumes. A hypersexualized sort of cuteness. Clearly marketed at lonely losers who have nothing better to do with their time than obsess over a girl who will never even know they exist.

He taps another video.

So many compilations, yikes. He has to give the guys credit, they're insanely loyal to the individual member that they decide to fixate on. Oh, and they even make official figurines and posters for these girls, that's... Something.

And a few days later he can kinda recognize the girls. They have color themes, you know, identical costumes except each girl's is a different color. This lead one is red, this main backup is blue, etc etc. Lots of bright colors. Kinda hurts his eyes to be honest.

And he's seen compilations of every girl except... The pink one. The pink one is always kinda off to the side. Well, these groups do have their favoritism, there's apparently one or two lead singers in all of the major idol groups, and the rest are basically backups and dancers. Still, a lot of dudes get super devoted to the non-main girls. So yeah, he's never seen a compilation for the pink one... He can't always exactly remember which one is which but now he's seen enough to know the other girls' names. He's not sure what hers is though. So he googles it and gets the name.

Wonder why she doesn't have as many videos...? Oh, it's because she's the newest member. Only been around a few months. There's... A whole board dedicated to the group, which he's getting this information from. Wow, pathetic. What kind of person spends their free time browsing a forum for an idol group? Well, he's just doing it to find information, not for fun or anything. He was just curious. Now he knows and he can forget about it and never look at anything related to them again... after he types her name and group name into the YouTube search bar and checks the results out, that is.

Oh, so they do have some compilations for her, just not many. "(Name) thigh compilation." Fuck, these people have no limits to how creepy and pathetic they can get, he thinks... as he watches the video. Ok, admittedly there are some good thigh shots there. There's a comment. "At 4:26 you can see her panties." Pathetic. They're not wrong though. Just to be sure, you see, he tapped the timestamp, and you can, in fact, see them. Stripes. Cute.

But he still has to do his work. Can't get too invested in watching mindless videos all day. He's got a thesis to work on.

That makes him curious, though, he thinks as he goes about his research. Do these girls go to school? Do they like, skip college, or do they join some kind of performing arts school or...? So he googles it. He can remember the pink one's name now, so he just finds her Wikipedia page. Oh, so she joined right out of high school and has been in various groups ever since.

Wait, various groups? So she has more groups she's been in? What are those? Before he typed her name into the search along with the group name, but if he just searches her name he gets... A lot more content from earlier years. Huh. Didn't know some of them did group-hopping like that.

Still, no education. Must be all smiles and body and no brains. Guess that's all you really need. Yeah, looking at that whole act they do... All giggly and childish and lewd... She's probably not too bright. At least she's pretty and sings nice. And the thighs are rather good. Smooth looking. They have a sort of jiggle when she jumps up and down on stage. The thigh highs they make those girls wear have that nice little dip where the skin is compressed by the fabric. Like... right there at that closeup. He takes a screenshot.

It's readily available, he's already seen the video and knows the best parts, whereas searching for porn would take time. The sooner he can get the daily stress relief out of the way the sooner he can work on his thesis. So this way is faster. That's why he's jerking off to the thigh video and not taking the time to look for porn. Plus, it makes him cum faster. Which it probably shouldn't since it's just thighs, but... Probably has something to do with the tease of it all maybe. That makes sense.

Or maybe it's that cute little giggle he can hear at some parts. She smiles and jumps and spins and laughs.

...It makes him wonder what she'd look like crying. Scared. Whimpering. Covered in bruises and bite marks. The contrast between that state and the one on the screen. The process and the things he could do to get her from one to the other. Yeah, he realizes, it's that thought, rather than the happy giggling on video or tease aspect, that makes him cum.

He's aware that his... tastes... are a little on the fucked up side, but hey, there's plenty of bastards out there far worse than him.

One day he discovers she has social media platforms. He... Doesn't really have any. He doesn't have Twitter or Instagram or any of that but... He downloads the app and makes an account for each. Just to follow her. Ooh, they even have the option to get a notification every time she posts... That's good. Otherwise he might check too frequently. He sets a special sound effect for notifications for her socials. The first few times, you see, he would get super excited when his phone went off, only to be disappointed when it was just a work email. Thus, he made the separate sounds.

He wouldn't say he has a favorite, that sounds really cringey you know? He just... Likes her more than the others. ...Dammit, that's what a favorite is. Ok, maybe he has a favorite, that's not that bad. He's not obsessed. He hasn't bought any merchandise at all or anything, especially not member-specific merchandise. Which they do have, because he visited the store page for a while and spent all his willpower physically restraining himself from buying something. It's not that he's biased, he just thinks she's objectively better than the rest of the group. Which can be backed up with evidence, anyone with eyes could tell by watching the performances.

As to what specifically draws him to her... he's not certain, to be honest. Maybe it's because she's the least appreciated out of the group, new and all. The less popular one. Or maybe her personality... She seems so sweet, even though he knows it's probably just an act for the fans. Or maybe just those thighs. That's also a valid possibility.

He cracks and buys some of the merchandise. Only about $300 worth. But honestly, he gets more invested into just printing out pictures of you. Pasting them onto the wall above his desktop. It keeps him going when the nights are hard.

But he refrains from ever commenting on anything. Some of these losers are just... so embarrassing, he can't stomach the thought of being associated, even if it's just an anonymous comment online. It's still pretty... Distasteful. He still browses the boards every day. You're his lock screen now. And home screen. And also your solo is his ringtone. He only sets his phone on sound when he's alone at home, though, when he's at work he puts it on vibrate. He... doesn't want anyone hearing that. No offense. He has some appropriate amount of shame, unlike the other bastards.

And the girls probably know that most of their fans are these kind of loser men, right? She'd probably be surprised someone nearly graduating with a chemistry doctorate is sitting around watching these dumb videos. Is that more or less pathetic? He thinks less, hopefully.

In fact, the other fans kind of irritate him. They're really cringy and annoying and it gives him secondhand embarrassment. And something... Deeper. Something about seeing the comments upsets him on a visceral level. It's gross. Sure, he's grateful for the dudes who sit around and make a list of timestamps for upskirt shots and the like, but... It kinda bothers him, feeling like there's some other dude out there sitting around, watching these long videos with his gross eyes and recording the times of shots that get him off. It feels gross. But more like... A violation against you. Sure, your group is very blatantly sexualized and intentionally risque in clothing but... Still, it feels wrong for someone to go through and get to see all of that.

Well, someone else. It's ok for him, since he's not a gross degenerate like the rest of them. He does genuinely see himself as... Above them. You know how like, back in the day, how the nobles used to sit around and watch plays from the far back while the peasants gathered around the stage? It's like that. He's not a gross loser or a NEET or anything like that. He's got a life. Well... Not a social life, but he's doing better than them, at least he has a degree, and soon a higher degree, and a job. He has a lot of things they don't. Basic hygiene. Student loan debt. And uh... Well, he's probably more pleasant to interact with, at least he's not gonna be frothing at the mouth like an animal if he saw you in real life. He would certainly freeze up, but that's preferable, isn't it?

And one day there's a video circulating in the idol community - not that he's a part of it or anything, he just keeps getting the dumb videos and watching them for mindless entertainment - where some girl group had an attempted kidnapping. Not her group, but some other group. The video has gone viral. Some dude tried to rush the stage and pull one of the girls away. Apparently the cops found he had an obsession with her.

What an idiot. If you're gonna kidnap someone, put some effort in, jeez. It's not hard to figure out how to do it right.

If that were him, he wouldn't be that stupid, he'd just look for an interval where she's alone. They have those solo or breakout group songs where some of the girls are backstage, just get her then. Memorize the concert schedule, wear something over your face, chloroform her, and stuff her into something and walk right out. Easy.

....

He catches himself in the thought and realizes that might have been a bit creepy, but he was just thinking in terms of hypotheticals. If he was the kind of crazy to do that, that's what he'd do, that's all.

He's always enjoyed entertaining strategic thoughts, really. He's had a couple fantasies about how he would commit murders of this or that person before, and he's never murdered anyone, so thoughts don't lead to actions. He just... Really doesn't like those people, and the fantasies help him... Deal with it. He just likes to strategize about methods, and how he'd get away with it... Stuff like that. Actually, he's convinced it's a very normal thing, but no one wants to admit it. Everyone has detailed murder fantasies every now and then.

Which is why this is no different. He's just strategizing because it's fun. He has no intentions of doing anything for real. He just plans out the details like a game. And tells himself to just never think about it again.

Until one specific night that he's staring down at his screen. Lying in bed. He should be asleep, he needs to be up early tomorrow but... He's just checking to be sure he's reading this correctly. You're coming to his town? He wouldn't think so, since it's not too big, just your average college town. But still, you'll be right here, right in his general vicinity, not far away at all.

Not that he'd ever actually go to such an event. No way. He hates crowds with a passion. He hates loud environments even more. A concert is like his worst nightmare. Besides, knowing the general audience of your group, it'll be a bunch of sweaty NEET dudes who haven't showered in a month and haven't crawled out of their house in even longer. No thank you.

But.

That's when the thought pops back up. It's been a few months since that night he had that strategizing fantasy, and, well, he tried to forget it but... It kinda lingered in the back of his mind. And now it's back in full force.

He shrugs the idea off. It's crazy. He'd never actually do something like that. It was just a fantasy.

...But he could get away with it if he wanted to.

He's not scared or anything, no, he's confident in his strategizing. He knows he could. Totally. It's foolproof. There's no need to carry it out to know that, besides, what would he even do with you?

Well, he's pretty certain he does know what he would do with you. He's watched that thigh video maybe a hundred times now. And even if he won't admit it, he's jerked off to the exact same fantasy for like, several months.

He doesn't really... Think about it. Just kind of slips into subconscious actions. Autopilot. One click and well, there goes $400 on an amp case. His eyes gaze over the dimensions... And then there's your height on the Wikipedia page... Yeah... That should work. He gets it sent to the address a few doors down just in case, and snatches it from in front of their door, but he finds himself backpedaling. What the hell is he doing? He would never actually go through with this, what a waste of money... But he still opens it. Sets it beside his front door. Tests the wheels to make sure they work.

He knows how to make chloroform. He doesn't need YouTube tutorials (unlike a certain someone else), he knows exactly how to do it, even alternate methods besides the usual acetone and bleach combination - so long as you end up with the same chemical makeup, it's all the same. He just goes with the traditional way though... Doesn't really know why he does it. Just mutters as he stares down at the concoction wondering why he wasted his time... But he pauses before pouring it down the sink, and instead puts it in a container and keeps it on the counter. Your weight is on Wikipedia too. Taking into account your height and weight you would need about... Yeah, a very specific amount to knock you out for about three hours.

The concert day draws closer and closer and he can't sleep very well. His mind keeps running what-ifs. Just, hypothetically, what if he did go through with it? What then? What would he do long term? How would that all work out?

Well, you'd probably hate him for a while, right? But that changes. Stockholm syndrome sets in. He would know, he had to take Psych 101 back in undergrad, and the professor talked about it for a full 10 minutes, so he's basically an expert. It's been like, 7 years since then, but he still kinda remembers it. He remembers that it's supposed to set in at about 2 weeks, and solidify with time. If the captor is nice, that is, which he totally would be. ...Maybe not in bed, but most of the time. He would be nice to you, and you would start to like him. Besides, they said Stockholm syndrome set in faster if the abductor has good qualities, so, he could also reason with you, remind you that you're lucky you got abducted by someone with money - or, well, he will have money once he graduates! - and isn't some ugly gross slob. He's clean and neat. Sorta... He'll clean up all those dishes that have been sitting there a few days now, pick up all those clothes off the floor... Ok, now he's clean and neat. And, uh, what else would girls care about... He's smart. He's pretty sure he can say that with confidence, if nothing else.

Ok, so, it would work. He could... Keep you kinda... Tied up here... If you started complying within that two week period, he could get you up and walking before atrophy set in. You'd probably have to get used to the lifestyle... Right now he's kinda on a budget, but, he can get you things to keep you occupied... And so, yeah, it could work. It's simple, just keep you with him and isolated for a few weeks and uh, you'll transform into some kind of hypersexual obedient cumslut and never want to leave. That's... How Stockholm syndrome works right? Maybe he should have paid more attention in that class... Oh well. He never liked psychology.

So the day draws nearer and nearer and he starts really getting into the right... Headspace. It's a sort of manic state that he's in. Operating without really thinking, all inhibitions removed by simply refusing to think about it. He lets the subconscious take over and do all these little things to prepare, until finally that day is tomorrow. And then he kinda snaps back to full awareness and questions, again, what the hell is he doing? He can't just... Kidnap a person! Normal people don't do that... It's illegal, he'll get caught, it'll ruin his life and....

What life does he really have to ruin?

That's the thought that sort of solidifies the decision. He realizes why he's even on this path in the first place. Sure he's got a lot of academic accomplishments, but his life is... Rather empty. He doesn't really have anyone. Maybe that's why he's slowly become... Consumed by this obsession that yes, he's now willing to admit to himself is indeed an obsession. It's kinda slowly taken over his everyday life without him even noticing it was happening. He's... Kinda miserable. And very lonely. And... If nothing else... This one girl makes him feel kinda happy.

... Which is why he's going to go through with it.

And he slips back into autopilot, ends up standing outside the building. It's every bit as loud and headache-inducing as he knew it would be. Ugh. He can't wait to get out of here. If this doesn't work, well, he'll be forced to turn around. The plan is a very simple one, actually... Act like he's supposed to be there. And he does. Dresses in all black like stage technicians do, dragging his big amp case behind him, holding a bunch of cords from random things he grabbed in his house, and tries not to look nervous, keeps a neutral face and walks straight forward and... He slides right in. The security guards off to the side don't even bat an eye.

And then he has a moment of "well, I didn't expect to get this far." Pauses. So uh... what now? Well, probably should find you first. He memorized the setlist, so he knows when you'll be off... And alone. Right now there should be three of the girls backstage. It's pretty easy to find where you are, but he's paranoid that the amp case is too loud as he's dragging it around. It's necessary, though. And then, finally, he stumbles upon the room... Opens the door, half expecting to be immediately stopped, but... He can just kinda waltz right in here, some open backroom, a person here or there coming through, a lady that looks like a makeup artist doing something over there, and an actual, real tech guy over there... And over to the far back corner... Oh. That's you. He takes a moment to revel in the sight, unable to move or even breathe, and has to mentally prepare himself before moving forward. He's... Not sure exactly what to do at this point... It's kind of perfect, to be honest, there's no one around you, and you're right out of sight, where he could turn the corner and not be seen. But he's not sure how to... Approach? He thinks about it as he walks, but again, autopilot is on in his brain and he's just numbly walking forward. Does he just... Keep walking until he's right at you and just... Or...?

And a miracle happens. You hear someone coming and you turn and smile and ask are you the tech guy here to fix my mic? You point to the little microphone attached to your face. They told you someone would be coming to fix it before your next song. You presume that's him, since he's dressed in all black like all the other stage techs. He hesitates a moment, wide eyed, but then nods. Yeah, that's him, he says. His voice cracks when he says it. It's kinda cute.

You smile at him. It's wide and sweet and genuine and it almost makes him pass out on the spot. He has to swallow for a second before continuing.

But, uh, he can't do it right here he says, because fiddling with it could disrupt the uh, frequencies, cause that really shrill sound you hear sometimes. So, um, come over this way a sec, over in this dark corner of the studio conveniently out of the view of all people and security cameras. You don't know how any of that stuff works, so you trust him, it's his job after all. So you get up and straighten your little skirt out - wow those are even more revealing in person - and walk over it the dark corner where he's waiting and... it's the last thing you remember.

He does a quick look left and right to ensure no one saw you collapse in his arms, but sure enough, this area is empty. You fit into the amp case with ease. Just curl your body up and pop the lid on. Wait, can you... breathe in there? Well, it won't take long to get outside. He just rolls the case right out the door, right past the guards again, and no one stops him, no one suspects a thing. Puts the case in the backseat, opens the lid, does a quick check go make sure you're breathing alright. So he props it open by keeping a book in between the case and lid as he drives home.

Once he does get home, he just does the same thing he did before - close the lid, roll you into the elevator and up the stairs and into his place, looking back over his shoulder over and over. And once he gets you inside he just kinda... falls to his knees. Shivering. Disbelief. Because holy shit he actually did it. He actually went through with it and it worked. He sits there and stares at the case and - oh, fuck, gotta open it again for you to breathe. Actually, he might as well... take you out... when he first shoved you in, he was so high on adrenaline he didn't really process any of it, but now... he almost can't bring himself to take you out. That means he has to, like, touch you. He's gotta take a moment to mentally prepare for that. So he does. Deep breaths. And finally, with trembling hands, pulls you out, carries you on shakey legs over to the bed and sets you down.

You know, you're a lot... Smaller... Than you looked on screen. Sure, he knew your height and weight but... somehow you still seem so much smaller than he expected. That's good. Will make everything a lot easier, since you're easier to restrain. And your thighs. They're... so soft. This is so much better than the video. They're so... fleshy and warm in person. Perfect. And wow, that skirt thing is... scratchy. Actually, up close, that whole outfit thing you wear looks super uncomfortable. It probably is. ...Well, guess he now has a reason to take it off.

The rest of your skin is... also fleshy and soft. Warm. Your face... chest... stomach... everything. Your tits are really cute, too. It occurs to him that all those rabid commenters on all those boards and videos would probably kill to be him right now, pinching and squeezing at your nipples. He's seeing something they will never see. It gives him an ego boost, to be honest, makes him feel proud to get a sort of one-up on them. He gets you naked, but refrains from pulling your legs apart. He probably... wouldn't be able to control himself, and he's aiming for some self-control right now.

So he waits. Breathes deep. Restrains himself with every ounce of willpower he has. It occurs to him he has no fucking clue what he's gonna say to you. Unfortunately, that thought occurs to him as you're starting to twitch and mumble, so, he doesn't have too much time to think. Oh, fuck, you're not restrained... well, he bought some duct tape and handcuffs and blindfolds off of amazon too, so he quickly puts those in place as you're starting to wake up, and then finally, you come to full consciousness -- that telltale jerking at the restraints, the muffled little cry of confusion and fear. It's kinda hot to be honest. Well, fuck, very hot actually. You're so scared. It gives him a rush of power. Said rush goes straight to his dick.

He's got a mixed twist of guilt and arousal at the whole thing, but... he's still trying to have some self control... and if you start begging and pleading and crying, it would be too much. Oh, no, not that it would be too much in terms of guilt, no no, just that he wouldn't be able to stop himself from fucking you if he sees you cry. So he leaves the restraints on for now, so he can't see your face emote.

Then, he does something really, really mean. He knows it's cruel, honestly, it's just... so cute. What that is, is that he does nothing. Says nothing. He goes about his work, typing away, knowing you can hear, but doesn't say a word. He knows you're awake, he just wants to see how long you can sit there scared out of your mind before you finally make another noise to draw his attention. Right now, he thinks, you're probably debating, you're probably questioning whether you should keep quiet and make him think you're still out or make a noise... but eventually you will. He can see you trembling. You're probably thinking so many horrible things right now, wondering what will happen, what he'll do to you... it fills him with a sort of sadistic glee that overrides the guilt it comes along with. Sure, the guilt is there, but fuck, he could almost cum just watching you shiver, and that's more important.

And you finally make a noise. A little whimper. He stops typing, and swears he sees you tense when he does. And when he stands up, walks over to you (making sure to stomp hard and walk slow for extra effect, watching the way you curl in on yourself with each step he takes), and stops right in front of you. Finally, tells you not to scream. He's gonna give you water, ok? You nod. And, surprisingly, you don't make any move to scream or anything, you let him give it to you. You don't move a muscle besides your shaking and sucking the straw and swallowing the water. You must be really scared of him. He knows that's technically not what he should want, but... it feels nice.

He spent that time of silence coming up with what to say to you. He says that for now, you're going to stay right here. Don't ask questions. Don't make any attempt to escape. If you really need something, tap the headboard until he hears. Understand?

You're... Surprisingly receptive. You give a twitchy smile and stammer out an o-okay. He's almost pleased, but quickly realizes what you're doing.

You've been trained for this, you see. This kind of thing is attempted rather frequently in the industry. You received training for this situation - comply, don't fight, prioritize your safety, because in 99% of these cases, the missing idol is found and recovered within 48 hours. So you do what you were told to do -- smile, pretend you're ok with it, don't do anything to anger your captor.

He knows that too. He doesn't do much in that 48 hours, in fact, he even tells you he's waiting to "see what happens." He knows he can't control himself very well, so he stays in his living room for the most part and works on research, it might be pointless if he's in jail a few hours from now, but oh well. Sleeps on his couch. He offers to feed you, but you say you don't feel good. He understands.

See, in his mind, if he gets to fuck you once or twice and then be hauled off to prison and never touch you again, well, that would be actual, literal torture, so much so that never fucking you at all would be more bearable. So that's why he forces himself to wait now. He feels like he can't breathe, he's so nervous, like any moment police are going to come knocking on his door. Every little sound makes him jump. He can't sleep.

But 48 hours pass and... nothing happens.

He breathes a bit easier. Finally dares to go online, which he's been avoiding, and check on your situation... Oh, wow, social media has exploded over your disappearance. But... They have no leads. Nothing. Says she basically vanished out of thin air. Situation is, quote, "looking hopeless." Huh. He did an even better job than he thought he did. There's videos from loved ones begging the captor to let the girl go, offering to give him money even. A lot of money. But, you're more valuable than any monetary measurements could ever conceive. And he's happy. It really worked out. Everything went right, and for once, he has something that really, really makes him happy.

Likewise, the 48 hours are even more torturous for you. You start out telling yourself it'll be fine. Hopeful. But that hope in your chest slowly, gradually dies out as you realize you've hit the 48-hour mark. Even for a normal missing person, you've always heard that if they don't find them within 48 hours... the chances of ever finding them goes down significantly. But, that's because they're usually dead, right? And this guy won't kill you, so, your chances are better, right...?

He comes back after that 48 hours and finally, for the first time since you woke up, crawls onto the bed, touches you, grabs your hips with his hands. Tells you that, well, they haven't found anything yet and it looks like they aren't going to, so you're officially his now, and he's no longer worried. You should accept it. It'll make things easier for both of you if you do. You'll get adjusted in no time, you'll see.

Unsurprisingly, you're a bit less compliant than you were when you had hope. You whimper and and struggle, but it's really weak. So much so it's cute. You ask who he is. No one important, he says. Just... A fan of yours. You can hear clothes shuffling. He doesn't waste time, he's already waited two whole days suffering, so he gets his dick in you pretty quickly. Manages to make you cum. It horrifies you and kinda surprises him too to be honest. You must kinda like pain, huh. Well, that works out well.

As time goes on, what hope you had left dies completely. Weeks pass. You realize they're not coming for you. In an attempt to get you to accept it, he even shows you that you've been replaced. They're rather quick to fix the absence. They have a new girl in your spot by the end of the month. He quickly realizes maybe he shouldn't have told you, from the way your face falls and you get all hysterical. Sorry. It's the way the industry is. Don't worry. She's not even half as cute as you.

He shows you the announcement when they close the investigation, too. This also earns a rather hysterical response, but he thinks it's important you see it, so you can finally come to terms with your fate, the way things were always meant to turn out. He gets a bit frustrated. Just accept it. It's not that hard. The sooner you do, the happier you'll be. It's for your own good that you accept it.

And you do. Try as you might. You begin to make conversation. He's the only source of interaction you have. You learn about him and his life. You become invested in it. You start to cum more easily. When he's sitting on the opposite side of the bed typing away, you find yourself slowly wiggling your way over and pressing yourself against the warmth, and he certainly doesn't mind. You ask him about his research just to hear a voice talk.

And sometimes you sing. It's absent minded, soft and quiet, when you have nothing else to do. He likes that a lot. You get sweeter. Nicer. Fight less. It does take a bit longer than two weeks to set in fully. But it does in the end.

He can't be with you 24/7, as much as he would like to be, so sometimes he has to tell you to just hang on a little while. Be good and sit still for just a bit. He'll be back soon. Just give him an hour. You're just really distracting and, well, his progress report is due tomorrow morning.

And you keep getting upset over the new member, bring it up a lot... It must have really bothered you, huh. Well, don't feel bad about being replaced. To him, nothing could ever replace you... you're still his favorite.

#.al #.idol

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