writtenbynath

[writtenbynath]

For the record, I'm not happy I was right all along. I wanted to prevent more young women from getting hurt and I failed in that.

But I would appreciate it if the people who defended him would tell me that they realise now they were wrong. And that they also failed in protecting these women from being abused.

[writtenbynath]

yes, but know that if your asks are as terrible as the Fetlife AMAs, you will be ridiculed

bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements

[writtenbynath]

Power Imbalance

Charmed! is just around the corner and I want to take a moment to think about power imbalance. I read something Lacielou wrote, CW this writing mentions the Gaiman abuse story but it's not about that. It's about a convention where people strike up conversation to pick each other's brains and maybe impress them https://fetlife.com/users/14539721/posts/11823368

When I go to Charmed, I know a lot of people in the organisation by name. That gives me more power than a first time attendee has. I have a certain reputation, that gives me more power. I'm much older than a lot of the attendees, that gives me more power. I have been on this hypnokink merry-go-round before, that gives me more power. I understand my own limits, that gives me more power. I have the awareness and social skills to steer a conversation, that gives me more power. This is why I feel safe at Charmed! And I know I tread carefully with that power to not take advantage of others. I'm not going to impose on other people's time and I'm not going to invite newbies to my room. There are people who do, though.

You probably know me as someone who is not afraid of pointing out the elephant in the room. Older men are just more likely to abuse the aforementioned power imbalances at a convention and chat up young people who peak their interest and who don't quite have the agency to tell this guy to fuck off. Maybe the young person is flattered by the attention of this older man who has more experience with hypnokink, maybe they're impressed by the presentation the older man gave or the fact that he seems to know everyone. And yes, I do realise that socially awkward men sometimes don't realise when other people really want them to stop talking, but that's a skill you can learn, guys! And it's an excuse predators and creeps often use.

Fact is, I can easily picture a scenario like Lacielou described happening at Charmed. Yes, I realise, not just men. I have definitely been caught off guard myself when I let a woman treat me in a way I wouldn't let a man get away with, just because I didn't expect it from her. But it's statistically more likely that the person abusing the power imbalance at a convention, to corner a person they're interested in, is a man.

I don't want to point any fingers. Lots of people at Charmed! are lovely geeks who don't mean to make anyone else feel uncomfortable. But I think it's good to be aware of this possibility. It's good to ask yourself "Am I making this person I'm talking to uncomfortable?" It's a convention, there's classes to go to, so let people go and don't take it personally.

It's good to ask yourself "do I feel comfortable having this conversation or do I want out?" And don't feel bad interrupting them, tell them you have places to be, ask a friend to save you from uncomfortable situations like this by dragging you away to the next class. Whatever you need to get out of that uncomfortable situation, it's all good.

And if you need someone to talk to about an uncomfortable situation at the con, that's what the consent team is for.

[writtenbynath]

“A man asked: Why do women seek safety, safety, safety?”

Because our safety, our personal space, our emotional boundaries and our sexual boundaries get ignored a lot in daily life.

We endure sexual harassment at school, at work and in public, and we often get blamed for it when it happens. ("What was she wearing?")

Our family members, members of the church and our medical care providers tend to completely ignore our boundaries because they feel they know better what's good for us, even when we're adults.

Many of us have had at least one sexual experience with a man who tried coerce us into doing something we didn't want by the time we're in our twenties, even if it's only an experience like we said no to sex, and he tried to change our mind, or he tried to convince us to let him not wear a condom. It just proves that our no gets ignored and that feels unsafe.

But the risk is bigger than that, we know there are grooming narcissists out there who want complete control over their female partners, and isolate her from her friends and family so she won't be able to get out of this abusive relationship. We know there are guys out there who just want to get their dicks wet with total disregard for the woman they penetrate (for example the men who buy drugs to spike our drinks because they just don't care about consent, if we're unconscious that makes it easier for them to "get away with it") And we know there's violent kidnappers and killers out there who find easy victims in sex-positive spaces. So yes, we want safety safety safety.

When men date, they're afraid to get rejected and humiliated.

When women date, we're afraid to get assaulted, kidnapped and killed.

[writtenbynath]

The Freedom of being Forced

For as long as I can remember, I've been turned on by mind control, and I'm not alone. And there's more than one reason to be into hypnokink (I'm just going to write it as one word now, because you know...) but in this writing I want to talk about one specific theme we also see in other corners of kink. The fantasy of being forced.

When I was young, it started for me with forced masturbation fantasies. I wasn't a horny teenager jacking off, I was being forced to behave like this, and without that outside influence I would be good and innocent. And I'm sure there's many other people out there whose first forays into kink had similar themes. Forced bi, forced orgasms, forced to lick boots or forced to do exhibitionist things.

Oh how things have changed over the years. These days, I'm just over here convincing my submissive they are my obedient thrall and that's why they're completely obsessed with me. Because I'm more comfortable now doing kink for my pleasure, and I'm more confident about my knowledge and skill in hypnokink.

Mind control gives us permission to do things we already secretly want, but we're ashamed of. If it's the fault of the hypnotist or the hypnotic file that you're obsessed with sucking cock or with edging until you can't see straight, you're not responsible and it lessens the shame. It's about that deniability, that freedom of accountability.

But hypnokink is not mind control. The file didn't change your sexual preferences, the hypnotist doesn't make you obsessed, they just give you permission to be as obsessed as you always wanted. To do the things you secretly always wanted to do but were too afraid to. Hypnokink is great for lowering your inhibitions in a more controllable way than drugs or alcohol can. But essentially it's not any different from other kinky D/s play.

Give me your power so you can be free.

[writtenbynath]

Yes! Yes!

Hypnosis is magic. It is not just “the closest we can get to magic.” Trance practices in all kinds of forms have served as the basis for mysticism across cultures and human history -- thousands of years. It is not new. It is not western. It did not start with Franz Mesmer or James Braid or Milton Erickson or Wiseguy.

It’s tempting to see what we do as disconnected from the “historical” and “outdated” methods of hypnosis. I’m not anti-science (maybe a little -- tongue in cheek) but I do think that labeling hypnosis as “just psychology” is dishonest about how much we actually objectively know about it -- and does a disservice to the phenomenon itself.

It's tempting to say "It's just hypnosis" when we see the body scan used in yoga or in psychology, or when we see trance used in rituals of a more spiritual nature, or when we see persuasive techniques used in marketing and commercials, but that's doing a disservice to how ancient this knowledge is, how widely used the techniques are, and how much they can improve our lives if we just stop trying to categorise things into reductive little boxes.

Read. Own this art. And bring that respect of this art to the people you share it with. I promise you can do things with hypnosis that you have never thought possible.

You Are A Wizard, So Pour Over The Tomes

Hypnosis is magic. It is not just “the closest we can get to magic.” Trance practices in all kinds of forms have served as the basis for mysticism across cultures and human history -- thousands of years. It is not new. It is not western. It did not start with Franz Mesmer or James Braid or Milton Erickson or Wiseguy.

Modern hypnosis stems from a rich human history of fascination and spiritual veneration of the mind’s power. We are practitioners of a comparably new discipline where we can literally change the way that other people experience the world. Their innermost selves are as leverage to us -- putty to us, when we know what we are doing. We can transform others freely. We can give pleasure or pain. We can facilitate experiences that seem to defy reality.

People talk a big game about respecting that power. What they usually mean by that is respecting EACH OTHER. That’s crucial, obviously -- not manipulating, not harming, being a good person.

But what about respecting the discipline itself?

It’s tempting to see what we do as disconnected from the “historical” and “outdated” methods of hypnosis. But we are a part of that history. We are likely hilariously wrong about a lot of things related to trance, hypnosis, the human mind -- what will hypnosis and psychology look like in 100 years? And even as we innovate, we are always building on the techniques and ideas that came before us -- in ways we are often not even aware of. We reinvent; we use ideas from the past unknowingly.

We have a right -- and a responsibility -- to OWN our magic. I am not here to gatekeep and say that this magic is not yours. It IS yours; it’s unequivocally yours. But as a whole we could do more to respect it.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And hypnosis is not even a technology that we UNDERSTAND. The only real reason we DON’T see ourselves as wizards is because there is a huge motivation to legitimize hypnosis as a scientific discipline -- and non-rationalist perspectives are looked down upon in our culture. I’m not anti-science (maybe a little -- tongue in cheek) but I do think that labeling hypnosis as “just psychology” is dishonest about how much we actually objectively know about it -- and does a disservice to the phenomenon itself.

I’m not saying hypnosis is literally metaphysical. But I am saying we practice something very powerful without knowing its nature. There are secrets we have tried to suss out about this magic through history that we have written down -- past and present. We actually have tomes of knowledge, records of past experiments and modern inventors.

In the last couple of years, I’ve started teaching/facilitating “text studies” -- classes where we sit down with an excerpt from a hypnosis book and parse through it as a collaborative group. I desperately want to show people that there is value in just critically reading the resources available to us. The clinical texts -- especially older ones -- are hard to read, like they are almost in a different language. But it is amazing the insights we have come to by tackling them together.

These old texts are not pure truths -- there is a lot we’ve improved on over time. But we can learn a lot by learning what hypnosis was like historically. The entire discipline of hypnosis is extremely susceptible to change -- it is defined SO MUCH by how we view it culturally. I just recently was amazed at re-reading some Erickson where he talks about making his subjects daydream autonomously -- as a primary mode and result of inducing hypnosis. Contrast that with today, where if someone’s mind wanders for even a moment, they feel like they’ve failed. There’s something really important here -- a technique from 50 years ago that tells us something we’ve lost in modern practice.

And there are countless examples of this, of people losing and reinventing methods over and over. As I’ve watched our kinky niche grow over just the past 13 years, I’ve watched ideas phase in, out, and in again -- there is both growth and regression of our collective body of knowledge. That’s the nature of things, especially when we operate partially disconnected from the resources that are available to us.

We CAN be connected to the rich human history of trying to unravel the secrets about our minds, and about this thing that gives us enormous transformative powers -- powers that we take for granted.

You are a wizard -- so pour over the tomes.

Read a book. Read an article. Set aside some time and view yourself with the respect of being someone who can study and suss out a magical text. Take notes, look up words and concepts you don’t know. Or just absorb what you can on a first pass and go back later. Read a chapter or just master a single page. Romanticize the aesthetic of sitting with the scent of paper, or as the technomancer with words appearing on a screen.

Read. Own this art. And bring that respect of this art to the people you share it with. I promise you can do things with hypnosis that you have never thought possible.

------------------

This is a little motivational piece (for you and me!) as I gear up to teach "Analyzing Erickson" at Charmed. It's something I feel really passionately about, and I wanted to share it.

Permanently linked/free on Patreon.

[writtenbynath]

This is what happened to the Witcher because of his wish

Soulmates as a horror concept.

You WILL love this person. It doesn't matter who you loved before; any feelings you had, any promises you made, they will become inconsequential as soon as you lock eyes with the stranger Fate has picked for you.

There's no way to stop it.

There's no way to say "no."

You will meet someone and with a single glance, both of you will become someone new, someone who's now bound to this stranger whether you like it or not, want it or not.

Trapped in a dance together until the day you die.

[writtenbynath]

anon from yesterday, sorry i was in a emotional state when i wrote that, i meant to say that i just learnt he was awful, and was looking for something.. less likely to end up hurting me, im sorry.

I still don't make or listen to files, so I'm the wrong person to ask. Which is the biggest reason why I thought you were pulling my leg. Anon questions is one of the ways Nimja's fans tried to get to me in the past, and I simply don't know much about files.

[writtenbynath]

hi ive been listening to nimja files for a while now, im gonna take a break from hypno but once im back, would you have any recomendations for similar content?

No, I don't have any recommendations. I don't make or listen to files.

Call me old and cranky but I feel like you're pulling my leg. If you had taken a good look at the hypnokink knowledge I share here, you would have seen that one of my most popular posts is called Nimja Is A Predator. Now if you just want to listen to the files of a known predator who has abused many women, and you're ok with that, I absolutely have no recommendations for "similar content".

If you're trying to rile me up, good luck. Because the good news about Nimja is that one of his victims has been very open about the abuse in the past year, and then other people came forward, and then the problematic organisers who were covering for him abandoned him and now he's not welcome anymore at any in person hypno event or on any discord server except his own. The abuse is known, there is no denying it anymore. And my local community is finally safe from him. I actually just came home from teaching a lovely beginners workshop.

I have rarely been happier.

[writtenbynath]

Hello, I am asmileonyourmind and I am a fellow hypno content creator. I stumbled upon your writings several months ago, namely The Escape Room. I was curious to know if you would be open to the idea of a narration of said story for the last day of Hypnovember as the prompt I have taken is the one of "Aftercare" where I just tell a story, no hypno, just a moment to decompress from everything and to "tuck the listener in". Your story was, in my opinion very well crafted and I would very much like to bring recognition to your work. I of course would have no issues in providing links to your work and giving you the credit you rightfully deserve. I hope this message finds you in good health and I hope we can speak further on this. Thank you for your creativity.

-Smile

I'm glad you like the story. Feel free to use it. Here is a link to my other stories

[writtenbynath]

We interrupt your regular schedule of hypnokink stuff for this important European petition

[writtenbynath]

I just thought of a pedantic way to answer this question:

Yes, whether you interact with him or not, he is still a dangerous man.

Is NNPP dangerous if there's no direct interaction with him?

You know, It's been a while since I heard that name. What I know about him is that he was abusive to the people who helped him to record files, for example by lending their voice reading his scripts. He became full on dangerous and stalkery to some of them when they pointed out that some of the files he made had harmful suggestions in them. Now, it's possible that he doesn't make such harmful files anymore. I don't know. I do know that he still denies the harm he inflicted on those people and he has some flunkies online who actively spread the story that he never did anything wrong. What I've seen of the stuff his flunkies spread online is some victim blaming misinformation, that's pretty harmful too.

In short: he's dangerous if you criticise him, his files could be harmful and the misinformation he and his fans spread online is harmful too.

[writtenbynath]

Hi. Things are bleak, I know that. I know that we paid for Trump's last term with blood and it is likely the price will be blood again.

But listen to me. LISTEN.

You do not have to force yourself to witness horrors as an act of activism. It is not a form of activism. You can put your phone down, you can block that horrific video. We cannot win if you cannot fight and you will not be able to fight if you are hopeless.

Do not let them guilt you into this. People who are exhausted are easier to walk over. Take care of yourself, find community where you find joy.

[writtenbynath]

I think there's something that needs to be said about encouraging readers to leave feedback.

For me it's not about "tell me my writing is amazing and stroke my ego"

It's more about "please engage with me so that I can experience your joy secondhand and foster a connection with you"

I understand that not everyone wants this in their reading experience, some people are shy and a million other reasons why maybe someone wouldn't want to engage and that's perfectly fine!

But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.

On encouraging reblogs —

I understand that not everyone is comfortable reblogging, especially explicit content. This is ok!

But just consider that the only reason you were able to enjoy a fic or fanart is because someone else shared it, and by not sharing it yourself you are potentially robbing someone else of the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you did.

As OPs our reach only goes so far and this website relies on reblogs in order for anything to truly get seen by a wider audience.

So that's really it! That's why I encourage these two things at the end of every story I post. Not because I'm trying to be demanding and "make people feel bad" if they don't do it.

I know most other social media sites encourage mindless content consumption and that's just the way of the world nowadays, but I am from a time when community was at the heart of fandom and I just don't want to lose that.

[writtenbynath]

[writtenbynath]

Ways to check in on your vulnerable friends right now post election

Do: hey! I was thinking about you and wanted to say hi. How you doin? You hanging in there?

Don’t: *long monologue about how worried you are about their safety and that you wont let them be rounded up for The Camps or whatever*

Do: hey! I saw your post on *insert social media here* you seem worried. Maybe i can come over and we distract for a while?

Don’t: so you could totally teach english in another country- when you leaving?

Do: give them a phone call to see how their day was. Leave the convo open and up to them but remind them that they were on your mind and you care about their life. If they wanna talk abt how things suck, they will.

Don’t: immediately word vomit about politics/ send news articles about racism/sexism/homophobia. These things might come up in convo naturally but dont START with those things unprompted. I promise you, they know already, and if they dont its on purpose.

Do: send pics of a restaurant they love- offer take out and movie night at yours/theirs if possible.

Don’t: go to your more vulnerable friends as a measure of how fucked we all are or to have them talk you down. If your friends are BIPOC/disabled/lgbt and you ARENT? You are not building their optimism by asking them to convince you they will be fine.

Do: leave the door open for more conversation, more hang outs, to run to the store with/for them as a buddy system or to take something off their plate.

Do: send them encouraging news and uplifting videos and media if they’re interested! Doomerism helps nobody.

Remember: not everyone wants to talk about their negative feelings right now. Open the conversation and make sure your friends know that youre there, that you care, that you are a resource and a set of hands and ears they can call on. Do not reach out in panic or fear but out of care and love ❤️

[writtenbynath]

This post was never about you. Why are you trying to make it about you? This is about how Scifi awards have ignored female writers and their preferred subgenres. It's about the way female writers in TV and movies are continually overlooked. This is about giving more attention and credit to Women who Write. It's not about you.