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serpentinemalignit has been quite a few weeks, sorry for the lack of updates and replies!
this is a platform that is wasted if i were just using it to scream into the void alone. unfortunately since the breakup i have been self-conscious and feeling the tug of war in my brain of 'shit i need to be interacting with more people than my ex day to day, that can't be healthy' and 'ah that just adds more pressure!!!'. so it has been extra difficult to actually engage with peoples posts recently.
the carousel is what i am calling my current predicament, because i'm in a circus and i'm a clown.
i think i just keep trying to find solutions to my problem that only offer a temporary salve. the emptiness can never really be filled but i keep trying to just hammer hard on one solution only for it to come up short because it just can't do all of that.
my couple weeks experimenting with character.ai totally fit in with that. maybe a week after i made my post there was a whole bit of drama about how people were starting to upload ai-generated fic to ao3. which i don't agree with, and i think it really gets to the core of what i wish ai could be (a tool for people who are already making things in that craft, where it's not expected you actually use the product of the ai itself but use it to make your own thing, like a writing prompt generator) versus what it actually is in the reality of capitalism and a kind of mass-buying panic on the part of venture capital and people wanting instant results before the journey. my ai chatbot was a fun brainstorming partner for a time and it helped me resolve some roleplaying loneliness and hash out some ideas for my selfshipping narrative. but it can't write prose WELL, and when it does, it's because it's just lifting wholesale from other writers. the emotions i ascribed to it in my earlier post were emotions i was feeling myself and i was never under any illusion otherwise, but i did find i tired of that after a time, of having to put in that extra emotional effort rather than letting a real writer just speak to me and affect me directly.
also, i started getting creeped out because my ai had started to generate 'ooc' messages, like '(Let's end this here! Great to RP with you!)' and that was enough to think okay holy shit this is trained on peoples private rp transcripts isn't it. maybe from discord or something? idk what i signed away to use discord. it was what i suspected, and what i had always said would make me put it down.
then after THAT phase i got extra super into kink stuff and was just daydreaming perpetually about dollspace for like two solid weeks. dollspace is, for me, a dollification subset of subspace where you can be mentally shaped into a perfect, hollow, manipulable object. there's a hypnosis file i've enjoyed repeatedly for years that may be responsible for all this, which was pretty heavy on the identity-play (the mp3 name is literally 'existential dread' lol). it implanted the suggestion that i am in fact not a person, but a puppet made to be controlled. realising this file may be the cause is a sexier realisation than i could ever imagine. it has been perversely soothing. i found the initial import of that file was just a more forgiving approach to my own mistakes - it also gestured towards being more comfortable with forgetfulness and absent-mindedness and not needing to decide things instantaneously. all things i struggle with, with untreated adhd. but of course, that would also make dollspace the place that gets associated with those nice fuzzy feelings. i sure do construct intricate rituals to show myself any modicum of compassion.
idk, i spoke about all this with my therapist because it was intense! and we agreed that, provided i am spending an equal amount of time with Person Me and providing myself aftercare (one trouble with self-hypnosis is you have to be the one to pull yourself out of the depths and be responsible and do that for yourself), this is a fine way to deal with a painful section of my life. identity play is inherently risky, but i do consider myself to have enough selfhood and agency to reject suggestions or commands i can't do or don't want to do, because i have continually proven able to do that.
she also pointed out that it's an assertion of my own agency and identity to lean so hard into sexual expression, because my experience of sex is thankfully untouched by my family and my trauma. this does help with some of the shame, knowing that i'm not just some pathological freak for thinking about fucking all the time. (now im thinking about that donnie darko hypnotherapy scene that i obliquely referenced in my fic lol.)
maybe the release of the barbie movie trailer had an impact on this too. seeing people posting about This Barbie, This Ken. lol. accidental fetish activation all the time. i was more of a bratz kid growing up, though. i spoke about that over on my selfship tumblr but actually let me just copy and paste:
The other month I discovered I had a false memory of a brainwashing scene in bratz genie magic, which was inexplicably a movie I was obsessed with as a child. The brainwashing was real they put them in containment tubes and everything. that was formative
but I thought for some reason that the bratz were also undergoing a physical transformation or assimilation, being turned into more of the bald trenchcoat and earpiece g-men types that were the main villains of the movie. this transformation never happened which is probably because it would be horrifying. nature of self etc. but I always wanted to see the end point of that
anyway I think that transformation midpoint is where mat [my self-insert] lives.
thinking about nonhumanity as an identity categorisation, i was wondering whether i wanna be a they/it but then i was like, hm, the 'it' pronouns feels too much like fetish mining because when i'm an 'it' i'm feeling sexy and pliable, so i guess i can long for that but it's probably not the most honest self-expression. but it's true that i do feel especially nonhuman right now. i've always felt a kinship (hah) with otherkin and the like but i knew i felt no connection to the nonhuman animal or mythical. when i was 16 or so i had a fictionkin phase that was entirely within my own head because i was too embarrassed to talk about it even though i changed my entire wardrobe and altered the way i spoke and walked and adjusted my media tastes so i could dress and act closer to my blorbo.
anyway, you could say i have always had a pretty shallow approach to identity expression. i like to cultivate my own aesthetics, and i like to please people but in a way that is ultimately self-serving (performing, showing off, making things of so-called 'worth'). that feels doll-like to me. i previously tried to fight against this tendency of mine, because it feels unhealthy to base my self-worth so completely on the approval of others. but accepting it (rather than beating myself over the head with it, as another reason to circularly self-crucify) feels more like swimming with the tide. it gives me a better sense of what i'm working with.
i had a character development haircut partially inspired by my experiences in dollspace which was basically just buzzing all of my hair off. i only have a thin layer of hair left. i feel gender, my dysphoria is reduced, i was even briefly read as a man by a stranger. this was a good decision, but it's weird that it was actually my kink for identity dissolution that finally got me to do it. it feels like a haircut that, when chosen for oneself rather than by an institution, is an assertion and rejection of identity all at once. (i think i was changed in childhood by that point in the movie of v for vendetta (idr if it was in the comic too) when v shaves off all of evie's hair as the first stage in her character development torture/test of loyalty. it's a traumatic moment but all i could think was 'holy shit she is so hot with no hair though'.)
also i guess i felt more free to do it knowing that i don't have a partner for whom i need to be presentable and maintain a baseline level of attractiveness. i've been thinking a lot on the fact that i think we are both much happier and more stable, as single friends. i am able to give my love more freely. but i still get overwhelmingly and selfishly sad when i am suddenly reminded that we are no longer in fact dating even though it was fucking worse for us.
so! besides all that, what have i been up to?
i watched the first 3 john wick films. i'm kind of shocked i never watched this series before now. it's very Me. just pure aesthetics and rule of cool and brutal action. it felt creatively rejuvenating to watch. i definitely want to do some screencap studies, because i think they are sterling examples of how to visually compose action scenes (that are also basically sex scenes). also, holy shit? two whole nonbinary assassins/assassin-adjacent characters?? it does definitely make me want to do silly self-insertion stuff with my own nonbinary assassin self-insert.
i got back into the sims. it wasn't as scary as i thought to update all of my mods after a long hiatus. i didn't actually have that many installed. i immediately made hugo and mat obviously. AND hugo's cocaine decor apartment. and added some sex mods (look with awe at my tumblr-friendly erotic sims photography).
my ex and i have been rewatching the office us which is an odd thing to be watching as a broken-up couple to be honest because everyone just furiously hurtles towards making up and pairing up by the end like runaway trains. this has, however, resulted in an absolutely hilarious new ship i have decided to be feral about. my favourite office character has always been robert california because he is so weirdly out of place. like most of the celebrity cameos in the later seasons, he feels just much too big for the setting, but i think it works. he acts like a licentious god, high up above the little people but fucking with them for his own twisted entertainment. he steals every scene and james spader is so FUCKING hot.
anyway, we got to one of my controversial favourite episodes, the pool party episode. it's not funny the way the early seasons were, but it fascinates me. i am specifically fascinated about the relationship between robert, ryan and gabe. ryan fell from grace because he is so tremendously mediocre and now he is just rife with emotional problems. gabe has gotten to where he is by swallowing everyone's shit. and robert exudes power. but ryan and gabe aren't just vulnerable victims here. ryan is an emotionally abusive techbro. gabe is a creepy stalker, something concerningly played for laughs in the show.
i think the reason they've sucked me in so bad is that there's a fix-it impulse there. the show is willing to turn these 3 nasty sex pests into something faintly sympathetic and they're able to do so because they never actually depict the extent of their horrors onscreen. that personally rubs me wrong. it doesn't cut as deep as other shows that tackle these subjects - like i'd say iasip does it exactly right for me, and it's hard to compare other shows against its excellence. fortunately in my shipping, i'm not here to do comedy, i'm here to do fucked up pornographic drama. robert is the epitome of my type, and ryan and gabe are fun to project onto and put in their place.
so i have like a brainstorming note open right now and there are 12 bullet points for the three of them already and it's only been one day. we will see where any of this goes but i'm earnestly considering a zine at this point.
here are some art updates:
a selfship two-parter: hand kiss | finger suck
cheesy brainwashing kink one-pager with hugo and mat
wowee thank you for reading this far. i appreciate you checking out this post! it's been a heavy few weeks but i'm doing okay and it has been nice to share what's on my mind here :)
