#while im thinking about a specific case this honestly happens in almost every single fandom

[eyestrain-addict]

Far be it from me to judge someone's headcanons or favorite characters ships and whatnot, but it is disheartening when you watch a show or play a game or read a book, and you enjoy it and join the fandom, only to find that the fandom version of certain characters are completely different from the canon.

[clavis-baby]

The (possible) Downfall of Obey Me

5-16-21 (when writing this the event toys out)

(Tbh this post is just be trying to be naïve towards Solomare and at ever aspectthat I mention you have every single right to be upset and mad)

Okay so it’s no secret that Obey me is making bank and is very very obviously trying to make us money on the game with even trying to make us spend money with original stuff that was free to now secretly changing some mechanics behind our back

Here’s a post by @thalfox https://thalfox.tumblr.com/post/653994972840919040/i-just-noticed-a-little-bit-ago-that-the-barbatos that dose a really good job at explaining everything that has changed

(also this isn’t a hate thing fox has actually done a great work explaining everything to good detail of what has changed)

With all the changes I don’t think that it’s shocking to say that players are leavening the fandom because of many reasons to the games getting stupidly harder to even the game development

This is just a heads up this in no way is a post saying “hey this is why you shouldn’t feel this way” I kinda just wanted to see from a business standpoint and be naïve of what’s happening you have every reason to be mad at Solomare because even me I’ve been playing sense week 2 of game released and I’m only on lesson 42 every counter argument that I’m going to make I have complained about at some point

Arguments

(P.s grammar is really bad it’s sort of turned into more of a rant I wrote this at 5 am without any sleep so sorry)

1. Obey me is marketed as a free to play game

First there are many reasons people are mad this main thing that I hear about is from a lot of people is that is a “free game” which lets be honest is ridiculously hard

But still it is still essentially a “free to play game” I personally feel like the main prolog is lessons 1-20 to introduce all the characters to understand and getting the just on how to play the game

Okay and now here’s where I sort of stand with obey me, the gatcha rates are kinda ridiculously lucky when you play for the first week you luck is so amazing and is in my experience with gatchas the best luck I have ever seen for games so it’s not really hard collecting the cards

Now are they the best absolutely no, this I feel like is where you might have to spend money unless they up the skills on the Nightmare A

But what Obey me is technically trying to do is obviously making you pay by releasing your favorite demon card every 2 week which…aren’t essential they are really just hoping that you love your main demon enough to pay

With the high increase on the gatcha rate there really isn’t a pity unless you count the card pieces (but I’m not going to count that because you are more likely to roll your UR before completing the pieces)

Now after lesson 20 once the huge break I feel like Obey me almost expecting the players to keep logging in any doing jobs and some players did do that and boy did it pay off

But those players have not needed to spend a single dollar and are all caught up

Now for everyone else who didn’t the game was so difficult it’s unimaginable and because for that a whole lot of players left the game and personally I don’t blame them because of how much impact the next lessons were

Now sort of like Mystic Messenger you really just have to grind you ass off log in everyday and do JOBS :D and grind but as hard and long as it is you are still able to be a f2p but where obey me fails is that when grinding Mystic Messenger grinding was a lot more fun for me it took about a whole year to just get 550 hourglasses even when I purchased and same with Genshin Inpact it takes a while but with obey me there isn’t really anything else to do once you get to a certain point which I think obey me really lacks and could be part of a reason why people left. Grinding just is not fun (now I do think that on a phone there is so much you can do with a app game but I feel like there could be a bit more they could do)

Personally I’m just going to come out and say it don’t spend your money for one UR card for your favorite demon it’s really not worth it now im one of those Mammon stans but if I ever wanted a specific card for instance the Mammon bunny card when it first came out I wanted it so badly and didn’t get it but I also knew there would eventually be a revival so I saved and did not spend any DV(demon vouchers) until the revival

The events

Some people complain about getting the cards in the events onestly for me this one kinda makes a bit of sense I noticed the first change when the Vampire even came out and how it wasn’t as easy to get the second card but if you think of it it makes sence why

When the first event came out (Santa event) you only had to collect about 30,000 gingerbread compared to the 100,000 in event today but when the first event came out no one was at high enough levels for the AP required and you would every day when times rest to gain gingerbread as well as there was only one part to the story so when people kept leveling up their AP Obey Me had to higher the bar so it wouldn’t be so easy to get all these cards and have a actual reward system but eventually they also added another story lesson starting at the Ruri Chan event

Second thing about the events is that one there started just getting plain out boring.

When lesson 20 finished and we were all waiting for season 2 I was still loving in everyday and logging in at 12 and 8 for the free 30 AP because I didn’t know what else to and would participate in the event but eventually what I think that all otome games that have constant events like Ikemen Vampire and Ikemen Revolution they just start getting repetitive and getting real boring so I stoped playing until there was something more interesting

The last thing that some people complain about the events is that you can’t keep up with the story and the events now I can’t find it but I believe that @0beyme said something about the events a long time ago about how you have to pick between the event and moving through the main story which I kinda think isn’t really the games fault and more just a discussion on maybe missing a event

Add ons

Okay so they did this from day 1 you spend a certain amount of Devil point that you guaranteed don’t have and get out a card

Now this is just spelling out a disaster

Yeah so for the first Charge Mission is when you log in which everyone had but essentially what they want you to do is spend $100 on a game that you just logged into and never experienced or played I don’t really understand what they were even thinking with that but it must’ve worked for them to keep doing them

The second time they did it was when the break was over and season 2 came out and they celebrated by doing another charge mission which was the Lucifer and Simon card which would cost again $100 again I really don’t understand what they were thinking

And now this is I believe the fourth time they have done this for the 1.5 anniversary where they know that Mammon is obviously a favorite for many Obey Me players and where smart to put it on the really stupid charge mission but the difference is, is that instead of it costing $100 it would cost almost $200(same with Levi’s) for one thing I don’t understand

But one thing that you do have to remember is is that this isn’t apart of the main gameplay it really just is a mini game if you would even call it that of dress up and optimization so still I guess would be just a add on that has no effect on the actual story and game so you could I guess still call it a f2p game with really really stupidly high priced add ons

VIP

Umm so I am the first one to call myself out I have bought the VIP package first when season 2 happened and I knew how much I loved the game so personally it was worth it to me to support the developers and gain something out of it

Now I haven’t really seen much complaints on the VIP because people more use it as a “hey the game is impossible with out VIP” but the people who say this ive noticed never bought it

For $9.99 each month it is 100%

IT IS NOT WORTH IT!!! Out of everything you get which honestly isn’t much you get some extra free space in jobs and really that’s it and if you choose to use all your job slots for the highest paying you get around 30,500 about a 10,000 difference not really worth it in my opinion

With VIP you also get other things like higher chance of gifts from Jobs which you will not notice one bit, and +20 AP (which if you play the events is sort of useful) as well as extra packages exclusive to VIPs so after paying $9.99 per month you also get more things to buy and that’s about it for VIP now if you really want to get more grim just use your AP and spend it of normal lessons you will get more AP that way

The Story and Kids

This could be all me just complaining and a theory by I wanted to include it anyway

Obviously many people are not even caught up or even playing but as more lessons went on the less interesting the story became to me I don’t know if it’s a me thing but season one was absolutely amazing the once season two came out it was good but not anywhere as good and one

One reason why I think that it to me became almost bland is the amount of kids that is on the app and how sensitive people were if anything bad happens

It’s no secret that the Japanese versions a lot more non-kid friendly for hell’s sake the characters don’t even swear as well as all the colors I feel like to a American audience bright colors is usually marketed towards kids but in other countriesI think many understand that that is not always the case for instance a lot of people will thing in America that anime is all for kids but I mean look at Attack on Titan or Tokyo Ghoul you would not let kids watch that of literal people getting brutally murdered you just don’t see things like that in the West where something looking kid friendly could also be very adult like

Also wtf dose this in the App Store say +12 with Ikemen Vampire and a lot of other games if you have a game rated +17 then there will be a actual pop up that says something along the lines of how “thier could be violence acts and sexual act are you sure you want to instal”

Now the story I’ve seen people point this out but there isn’t really much character development for instance Beel he dose not have a actual personality his personality (fight me on this one) all you really know about him is that he likes food and his family now I could be wrong cuz I’m on lesson 42 but still not much and this is kinda with all the characters except the special ones where the devs really favor and love for story

Some one mentioned how the developers hold back a lot which I agree with 100% they said how when there is character development they all the sudden pull back and never will almost talk about it again like ???? So there’s this constant bland story

——————-

Honestly if you liked this I might do more cuz as much as this post made me especially at the end I kinda liked ranting so...yeah there is also many other things that I want to rant about but I’m tired soooo

feel free to comment your opinions btw

Bye ima go sleep now

[disaster-bay-leaf]

Ok so these were the cutest~ (ㆁωㆁ)

4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 19, 22, 23, 28, 33, 34, 46, 47, 52, 59, 60, 63, 66, 83, 87, 88, 93, 99

I kno I listed like....all of them lmao but feel free to answer whichever you want and ofc you can ask me in return Baybe ( ◜‿◝ )♡

uHUHUHUHU much content for me to answer, im happy bebe 💜💜💜✨

4 - how do you take your coffee/tea?

hm coffee either Very Black No Sugar (for the sleep deprived me) or iced latte three sugars and theres no in between

and as for tea its All Black Teas That Exist, cinnamon-flavoured especially (but basically all teas that come to mind when u think “autumn”), and rooibos!!! okay basically the only oke i dont like is any type of green tea (which is sad because they look cool but my tastebuds said ✨no✨)

6 - do you keep plants?

honestly id l o v e too because i love plants but,,, im kinda horrible at taking care of them though still way better than the majority of my family (research helps) so the only plant i own is kinda a small-palm-tree-looking thing in a bigass glass jar that i saved from my mother’s plant-destructing hands and its mostly doing well (the ends of its leaves are starting to be yellow tho and im worried:((( )

7 - do you name your plants?

yes!!! though the current one was named by my sister and its called “pickett” after fantastic beasts shsjjsj

9 - do you like singing/humming to yourself?

oh god oh dude you have n o idea

i have absolutely n o singing voice but its something i do constantly to give my brain the right amount of stimuli so basically i listen to music 24/7 and hum to myself 99% of that time

12 - whats your favourite planet?

oh i actually didnt think about this for so long but either pluto (hes a planet screw nasa) or saturn (RINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) or venus (girls,,,and libra,,,)

19 - do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw in it?

okay im gonna be completely honest with yall and say that my every single try at keeping a journal failed spectacularly and i lost motivation after like a few months so my only journals rn are my fancy fake-leather-bound calendar to note tests and assessments into, a kinda roughed up notebook that i uses for noting down poems or scribbling or passing notes in class, and a kinda fancy bullet journal notebook that i used as a book of shadows for a while but since my fountain pen died i didnt touch it

22 - are you a morning person?

n o

i am so not a morning person but i wish i could be because honestly dawns are beautiful

but as it is rn im either sleep deprived all the time and loathe every second of being in an awake state or (if i have a few days of schoolbreak) my biological clock moves forward a few hours and i sleep 2am-10am

23 - whats your favourite thing to do on lazy days with zero obligations?

except for the fact that i dont remember the last time it happened, i would probably spend it drawing outside, watching anime with my sister and riding a bike around the forest

28 - sunrise or sunset?

i love sunrises because its so peaceful and everyone is asleep but also i subconsciously immediately correlate them with waiting for a train to take me to school (because thats basically the only time i see them) so its a bittersweet love especially with my fucked up biological clock

but sunsets are really really pretty too and i see them more often so i cant choose

33 - whats your fave pastry?

and isnt that a millior-dollar question dhsjjsjsj

either cinnamon rolls (i absolutely adore them) or that one specific type of cupcake-shaped-thing made out of shortcrust/bread/whatever its called and filled with vanilla pudding

34 - tell us about a stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?

awwww this is cute

okay so basically my two favourite stuffed animals (i still have them, they sit in my wardrobe) were two teddy bears (like maybe 20cm high each of them) and one was pure brown and the other was silver-brown and they had stereotypical polish male names “Waldek” (read. Valdek) and Stefan (i think tho im not sure if i remember correctly, my memory is a feeble thing sometimes

46 - tell us the worst pun you can think of

what dog would never bite you? a hot dog *badumtss*

47 - what food do you think should be banned from the universe?

huh a year ago id say pineapple pizza but i guess i dont hate pineapples that much anymore (tho putting them on pizza is still an abomination) but i think that if id ever want to get rid of anything it would be parsley, i hate that freakin herb (does it count as food tho)

52 - what are your favourite memes of the year so far?

the ever given for sure shsjshjsjsjsjjsj

but bullying tramp stamps is gold and pure tumblr energy too

as for fandom memes: im in love with all keeping-up-with-the-todorokis variations and the fact that the entire bsd fandom looked at fukuchi and said “biTCH” and thats one of the only things we’re unanimous about

59 - whats your favourite myth?

i always liked the kora/persephone myth (though demeter is an overbearing parent to the nth power), loki and thor crossdressing at a party to get mjolnir back, atalanta because shes a queen and id politely ask her to kick my ass, and cassandra because she deserved better, and theres a l o t more because alas i was a mythology nerd but this post is long enough for me not to make this section 20 times longer sjjsjsjsjsjks

but there are a lot of slavic myths that are very cool too, though we dont know that much about them as about the greeks for example

60 - do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?

o o o o h yeah i do like poetry because to create such a beautifully sounding thing with only words someone has to be a genius

some of my favs are: some works of nakahara chuuya (thank u bsd for introducing me to this man’s beautiful imagery in his works i swear to god the descriptions do it for me) (also his poem about having hangovers is a mood like i feel you buddy), the raven by ea poe (i know everyone likes it but hOLY DAMN THE INTER/INTRAVERSE RHYMES ARE LIKE,,, BREATHTAKING) (and aso im a slut for gothic horror), and many more but also That One Poem From Welcome To Nightvale about reaching the island in the west,,, only perfect vibes from it

63 - are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organised or kinda leave them be?

okay heres the thing. for anyone else both my playlist library and my bookshelf would be considered pure chaos of a mad man b u t they actually have a highly focused system which means that i sort them based on their vibes, lovability and (in case of books) their age and whether or not theyre a part of a series so i would say my bookshelf is rather organised (when a quarter of it isnt occupying my desk that is) and my music is more organised than not but sometimes it gets out of control and i have to sort it entirely again

66 - what would your ideal flower crown look like?

either entirely constructed of simple white daisies, entirely constructed of only white roses, or something that probably would win a “how many different coloured flowers can one fit in a flower crown” competition

or something purple (maybe not belladonna)

83 - whats some of your favourite album art?

god i dont know if it counts but hozier’s wasteland baby is probably one of my absolute favourites and no one shall beat that

“thrifted youth” (dalynn) and “standard deviation” (danny schmidt) have very aesthetic covers too

also the iconic p!atd too weird to live, too rare to die! album cover,,, its just iconic what can i say

and last but not least matt meason’s pink-and-black album covers (though bank on the funeral is really pretty too but like,,, “who killed matt meason” d o e s it for me and so does the 2017 tribulation single)

87 - what are some movies that you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?

this is such a hard question because im not a really cinematography-oriented gal but i suppose that (at the risk of not going deep enough into the cinema world):

- the princess bride

- inception

- night at the museum

- SPIRITED AWAY

- forrest gump

- truman show

- E.T. (i cried okay)

- the lord of the rings (because damn me if this isnt one impressive adaptation)

- parasite

and one more personal recommendation: “ready or not” with samara weaving because goddamn i dont usually watch this genre but holy s h i t is it good

93 - whats the hairstyle you wear the most?

honestly just plain hair down (because having curly hair is a menace), split in the middle when i have longer hair and split on one side when its short

also low ponytails or half-up-half-down when im exercising, or double french braids when my hair doesnt cooperate enough to look presentable in any other form

99 - list some songs that resonate with your soul whenever you hear them

this is difficult because my music taste is a goddamn rollercoaster on a good day, but heres some:

- me and the sky from “come from away” musical (this is sort of a test song for my mental stability, if i cry i aint stable)

- dancing after death by matt meason (okay most songs by matt meason except for like,,, hallucinogenics maybe)

- tears and rain by james blunt

- i will follow you into the dark by death cab for cutie

- almost home by mxmtoon

- anything by hozier really but shrike especially

- payphone, the cover by alex g (i cried to this song so many times)

- burning pile by mother mother (can i roast all my problems please)

- long way from home and cleopatra by the lumineers

- autoclave by the mountain goats

oooh that was c o o o o o o o l as fuck thank you sm so much bebe (and sorry for the long post @everyone else)

[rogueshipagogo]

ppl have been asking me my opinions on space channel 5 vr... and i guess since i bought a vr headset off craigslist just so i could play it and speedrun it before work the day it came out... i should talk abt it now... i dont rly think i’ll be able to separate it into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ things i think i’m just going to do a rambly stream of consciousness bc i have a headache... but i DO have good things to say abt this game... so st.... sta stay t tune  d

right off the bat, the thing i appreciate most abt this game- i like that space channel 5 vr doesnt have cash grab vibes. i Do genuinely believe that they Wanted to make this game For the people who are still obsessed with it, and that they ultimately did what they set out to do when they intended to scale certain aspects of the series up conceptually to match the way the fandom perceives it nowadays. but like i’ve said before... i’m not going to Disagree with the very common conclusion that it Needed to be longer, or at Least more intricate plot-wise. one of my fun and fresh excuses for sc5vr being as short as it is is because you arent really supposed to be playing vr games for too long anyways, its really disorienting and kinda painful, but even that doesn’t account for why so much of the game that we got is a rehash of old settings, concepts, songs, and characters. [i dont even have a problem with reusing old songs, i just think the ones they chose ended up being misleading]

for example i think it makes sense that the first report is a remake of the first games first report on the surface, it’s meant to take you back to the way the first game felt and give you an idea of what it means that the games classic scenery can be rendered in actual high quality detail now [same with the recurrence of events like encountering the space pirates in the asteroid belt/the last battle against a villain being singing to it about what it’s done wrong], but i really thought, like, report 1 was going to end up being a simulated scenario for the benefit of lou and kee’s training... which i dont think ended up being the case??? i think they really did write ‘ok here you are in the first game’s setting again, fighting the old enemies again, because... :^) ok have fun playing report 2!’

and then whats report 2... you fight another old boss from the first game... but theres Still no clear villain or motivation for anything thats happening... and there wont be until like... basically the end of the game...

like, glitter is a really cute character, but its kind of underwhelming that shes just a random citizen who was kidnapped by an entity that we NEVER LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT... like part 1 was extremely notable for being about corporate greed and corruption, part 2 honestly wasnt that political in comparison but at least made you do a think wrt purge’s motivation and his methods, and this game just has a plot device that feels like it’ll do smth but then ends up not doing anything beyond what we already learned about it from the information on its character bio before the game was out. if it turns out that cell x is actually relevant again in a future entry in the franchise and they do have a more developed concept for what cell x Is in mind, i’ll do an entire backflip, but for now its just chalked up to being the result of More Space Hijinks that dont need to be explained

ESPECIALLY WITH ALL OF THE ALLUSIONS TO CELL X BEING AN ENTITY THAT FEEDS OFF OF DANCE ENERGY... it had me thinking that there would have to be some New Method of fighting it off that didn’t just lend it more power in the process, but nah apparently just tacking on the disclaimer ‘*this dance energy is not for glitter’ is enough to turn it from smth it can consume for power into big attacks you can use to kill it... like honestly it sounds like im asking for a lot from a game that has Never made too much sense, but considering that in part 2 they could add details like ‘oh didnt you know purge can open pocket dimensions? ulala is capable of manifesting tangible dance energy and the only other person who can do that is purge???’, its not like they havent come up with weird new shit for dance energy to do within the plot before. they just didnt do it in this game fsr

like did anyone else think that cell x/glitter was going to be the result of tossing purge out into deep space and him encountering the sc5 universe’s equivalent of an eldritch alien creature, smth more bestial than morolians?? even if purge wasnt part of it, when you say ‘uh oh, this guy Eats this society’s only source of energy!!!’ i expect the stakes to get HIGH, and i want the ramifications of it to be kinda STARTLING, because blank wanted money and purge wanted to ritualistically end the world but something this near to an ecological disaster that would force an entire paradigm shift hasn’t occurred yet in the series?? its totally new!!! there’s a lot they could do with this but OH DONT WORRY ABOUT IT EVERYONE ulala knows how to make dance energy kill cell x instead of feed it she’s got this we’re good no need to investigate more into all that

i can’t explain why the game is like this. and i dont expect grounding to address it in any meaningful way either. i’m sure they’re Aware of these complaints by now- the game reviewing community has Not been kind to sc5vr specifically due to all of these shortcomings [i didnt even touch on the issues with motion sensing and how many of the games mechanics were removed in favor of smth presumably easier to program yet much less satisfying, like Secret Moves just being mini quicktime events and Turning Your Ratings Into Stars just being replaced with the standard Three Strikes You’re Out method of scoring], but the pr team still seems very enthusiastic abt the game and is still promising dlc and potentially even more games in the series after this one- heres hoping that they’ll at least take these grievances to heart and consider making the experience not only more accessible [aka it will... go back to being a rhythm game with controller input.... and not... an exclusive vr experience...], but also as immersive and detailed as the old games, with less reused plot beats. i can let some of it off the hook in this game simply because i’m aware that it began its life as a tech demo that was only supposed to be that initial first report from the first game But Happening All Around You!, but i Really dont think they could get away with doing this little to expand upon the groundwork set by the first two games again. not with the way people remember part 2 being such a vast upgrade from part 1... the bar had been set so high that this just felt like a huge backslide into something even sillier and harder to take seriously than part 1 before we had any idea what kind of staying power the franchise would have as a hallmark of sega’s quirky antics. like... this game is what i think space channel 5 looks like to people who don’t understand the appeal of the first two games. and that scares me

but i guess for the most part, aside from wishing they had done more to revitalize the setting and the lore of the sc5 universe itself, im kind of glad it didnt do a lot to change the existing storylines the characters have kinda forged for themselves- here i was stressing out that they would pull out some plot development that would utterly and drastically change the way we talked abt the series for the rest of time, but so little happened and so little was added to the bank of sc5 lore that we can kind of all just carry on as usual and keep having the same headcanons we always had.

BUT!!! there ARE a lot of cute little details here and there that make the experience feel wholesome and like i said not an utter cashgrab- like so many of the character profiles referencing previous games [all of the references to npcs in this game being relatives of the npcs of the last games made me lose it] and how often ulala changes her expressions up and looks right at you and talks to you. the new music they wrote for the game also all slaps and everyones redesigns [if they got a redesign... rip pudding] are stunning

one of the most important things they did in this game was give a nice sort of Update to every character.... for example explaining that ulala isn’t a rookie reporter any more like she was in the first 2 games, that she’s moved up to being in charge of training new channel 5 reporters, and that while pudding is still somewhat stuck on her rivalry with ulala her career isn’t stagnant either, she was just cast in a romcom series as the lead... which is really nice considering how in the past she was portrayed as somewhat of a loser with almost no remaining fans left from her idol years

and you knew i was going to bring up jaguar at some point HES ALL OVER THIS GAME AND IT LITERALLY MADE ME FEEL LIKE MY LIFE WAS WORTH POWERING THROUGH THESE LAST FEW YEARS AND ALSO LIKE IM A GENIUS FOR SPENDING SO LONG POSTING EVERY SINGLE DAY ‘NO REALLY, HE’S THE SECONDARY PROTAGONIST OF THE STORY, ITS ABOUT CHANNEL 5 AS A COMPANY AND THEIR IMPACT ON EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER ENCOUNTERED THEM AND THAT INCLUDES JAGUAR AS WELL AS ULALA HES INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT BC SHE WOULDNT BE ALIVE IF IT WEREN’T FOR HIM’ i feel like it’s really incredible how in this game he has genuinely nice energy and doesnt withhold praise from ulala just to be helpful in a mysterious way later and he like HAS FRIENDS now. like consider how he went from disgraced former ch5 employee who got mad every time he saw them, to kidnapped robot henchman kinda humbled by the fact that now the turns tabled and ulala had to rescue Him, and now 3 years later his bio is all about how he has a new tv show thats super popular and he has a new entourage of ladies who he considers his '’’’’’comrades’’’’’’’ within the station he founded??? AND AFTER 20 YEARS THEY WERE FINALLY ABLE TO GIVE HIS MODEL JUICY ASS CHEEKS??????????????? NO MORE PANCAKE BOOTY???? THE BOY HAD A GLOWUP AND NO I WONT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT

WHEN I SAY MEOW MATCH THE POSE MOTHERFUCKERS THIS BLONDE BASTARD GETS TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE HUNDRED STAGE BATTLE NOW TOO THIS IS THE YEAR OF THE SPACE PIRATES BAYBEE

[sparxwrites]

i think u have a point abt kinks being only one step sideways from vanilla stuff, but what about the heavier/violent stuff? im trying to think of where it might come from and my only idea is maybe a dark fascination with what our imaginations are capable of. i remember being younger and fascinated with writing violent things just because i was surprised my imagination served. you're certainly more experienced with dark stuff than i am, though. what do you think?

tw for frank discussions of violence and sex, sometimes the intersection between the two, and a whole variety of sometimes very extreme kinks

Okay, that’s a tricky one. And not something that has a single answer, either – I’ve talked to a lot of people about what they see in darker fiction, and honestly every single person has had a slightly different perspective on it (one person, entertainingly enough, just shrugged and said they liked the aesthetic). But there do seem to be some common threads, and I’ll see if I can… if not provide answers, then at least provide food for thought and maybe lay out the groundwork for an interesting discussion.

(The rest is under a cut because, me being me, I got a little carried away, and this turned out to be something of an essay, and a compilation of thoughts I’ve had for a while now and conversations I’ve had with others. Whoops.)

The first thing is, I think, defining whether we’re talking about heavier/violent stuff in a consensual (either fictional or non-fictional) context – ie. heavy impact play, bloodplay, needleplay, consensual nonconsent, humiliation and degradation, what I’d call BDSM in a broad context – or a non-consensual, fictional context – ie. fiction involving rape, torture, severe bodily harm, gore, what I’d call whump and darkfic.

(I’m not talking about non-consensual non-fictional contexts, on the basis those are a) pretty much illegal, and b) even people I’ve talked to who enjoy really dark non-consensual fictional stuff are usually deeply upset or even disturbed by the thought of the same stuff in a non-fictional context. I can talk about the psychology of someone who wants their fave fictional character being beaten bloody, but wanting that to happen to an actual person is… a little beyond me. It’s not something I’ve talked to people about, and something I personally feel deeply uncomfortable thinking about outside the context of a consensual BDSM scene.)

Another thing is to define whether we’re talking about sexualised “stuff” or nonsexualised “stuff”. The consensual things are almost always sexualised, fictional or not (though very occasionally you might come across depictions BDSM that are entirely free of sex). Fictional depictions of non-consensual things are also sometimes sexualised – noncon fanfic (which is, by definition, sexualised, since noncon vs. rape was fandom-historically used to differentiate between sexualised and nonsexualised non-consent) is the most obvious example. Most fictional depictions of non-consensual violence, though, are things like torture, sickfic (not exactly violence, but it falls under the general “people in pain when they don’t want to be”), hurt/comfort, and whump, which generally aren’t explicitly sexualised.

We also need to work out whether people’s responses to these various categories are erotic or not. Are people actively getting off to them? Passively aroused by them, but not getting off? Are people reading them because they want to be aroused, or is that a (possibly irrelevant?) side effect? Are they getting something other than arousal from them?

With sexualised stuff, this is pretty easy – people pretty much always have erotic responses to sexualised stuff, that’s what it’s designed for. It’s written with the intent to arouse, that’s why it’s classed as “sexualised”.

But with non-sexualised stuff, such as whump, or hurt/comfort, or torture porn, it’s a lot more complicated. Some people have erotic responses, but a lot of people don’t, or only sometimes have erotic responses. Many seem to struggle to even answer any of the above questions – the difference between erotic responses, other powerful emotional or physical responses, can sometimes be blurry and difficult to define.

I and other people I’ve talked to about this, though, seem to get strong “stomach feelings” when reading good whump. They sound similar to arousal but are different somehow. Variously, I’ve had people talk about things like an emptiness just under their ribcage, a heaviness in their stomach, a lurch in their stomach, “like someone’s tucked a hook behind my stomach and pulled”, lightning through their abdomen, shortness of breath / panting, tightness, hollowness, an ache…

There’s definitely similarities to sexual feelings there, but people usually seem pretty insistent that it’s not exactly the same – even though it does feel good, and it’s a sensation they actively try to find more of by seeking out fiction that generates it – since they only get it from fictional depictions of violence or pain. Trying to find language for intense, pleasurable physical sensations that aren’t sexual is incredibly hard, but non-sexual or only partially sexual physical pleasure seems to be an integral to a lot of people’s enjoyment of fictional violence.

(Case in point: like you, I also remember being younger (we’re talking like… starting from about six or seven, here, really young) and daydreaming about either my favourite characters, or myself / thinly-veiled self-inserts, being hurt to help me get to sleep. Like, properly broken bones and blood and screaming kind of hurt. It took me until maybe a few years ago to realise these were not the kinds of things “normal” people daydreamed about for fun, so I certainly wasn’t doing it out of surprise at what my brain could come up with, and it definitely wasn’t a sexual thing. I just liked it. Lots of other people I’ve talked to have similar stories of enjoying fictional depictions of violence, and daydreaming or thinking about them for enjoyment, from a young age and well before they had any kind of sexual awakening.)

In some ways, I think the sexualised stuff is easier to analyse, since that’s mostly about sex (by the sheer merit of being a consensual scene or a sexualised non-consensual fantasy, it’s designed to be jerked off to). So, let’s have a look at some of the feelings and desires based around that kind of thing first.

The fact that people get off on power and control, or lack thereof, and vulnerability, is just sort of… a fact. And almost all fetishes eventually come down to that power versus no-power dynamic, even the really weird, “scary” ones – I’ve talked to people about hard vore and rape fantasies and execution kink, and they’ve all talked about how it’s about Dom/sub roles, about the submission of the “victim” to their fate, about the power held over them by the predator / attacker / executioner.

On the basis I have notes from the conversation I had about execution kink, let’s look at that one (I told you, I really like learning about this stuff). On the surface, getting off to fictional depictions of people being executed seems very, very heavy, but… the person I discussed this with talked about liking the aspects of the person being bound and handcuffed pre-execution (bondage), about being tried and sentenced and paraded around in front of a crowd and feeling scared and embarrassed (humiliation), about the ritualised aspect of it (rituals of various kinds are common in the BDSM community, from collaring ceremonies to body modification rituals). They talked about the historical pressure for the condemned to submit to their fate, “put on a good show”, pay their executioner (submission). They talked about necks and breathplay, and the condemned’s feet twitching (foot fetish), and the “death erections” people sometimes get (involuntary arousal) with regards to hanging, specifically.

So that’s, y’know, something really big and dark that I think a lot of people would kind of instinctively rear back from, that’s actually just a lot of smaller, very “reasonable” kinks being combined into one thing. If someone says, “Hey, I’m into necks, breathplay, bondage, humiliation, Dom/sub stuff, and feet,” you might think that’s a lot of kinks or be squicked by some of them, but you won’t necessarily think they had “dark” tastes. Turns out, that’s also all the basic components people who like fictional depictions of executions and hangings seem to enjoy. Weird, huh?

On a similar but slightly different note, some things I’ve heard from a lot of people who enjoy noncon or dubcon are that, a) contrary to the popular opinion of “people who like noncon are stealth rapists”, they tend to imagine themselves in the victim’s position rather than the attacker’s, and b) there’s a strong element of “I feel ashamed by / scared of / nervous about the prospect of sex, and having to admit I want sex, and the negotiation and intimacy and emotions that come with that – but also I want sex. Therefore, in fiction, the idea of having sex forced upon me, or being drugged/intoxicated or manipulated to the point I am not responsible for having sex, is powerfully appealing”.

Essentially, a large part of the appeal of rape fantasies seems to come from the prospect of being able to have sex whilst maintaining you definitely don’t want sex – which, in a culture that constantly talks about sex and encourages sex and pushes images of sex, whilst also telling people (specifically women and afab people, and some other marginalised groups such as disabled individuals) that they shouldn’t have or even want sex, makes sense. In a rape fantasy, you can have as much sex as you like, and it’s not your fault (and therefore you’re not an awful, sex-hungry monster), because you didn’t ask for or consent to it.

Obviously, people don’t actually want to be raped and would be deeply upset if their fantasies actually happened irl, but in the privacy of their own heads it’s a useful “tool” of sorts to circumvent feelings of shame attached to sex. Also, hey! Conveniently plays into the whole submission thing a lot of people have, often conveniently plays into stuff like breathplay, bondage, bruises and slapping, humiliation, maybe age difference or size difference or group sex… Again, big scary fantasy, really not particularly scary once you break it down into lil bite-sized chunks.

(Not all people have rape fantasies for this reason, though it’s a very common one. For some people, the “actually wanting it, deep down” thing is actually a turn-off, given they’re attracted to the vulnerability and control aspects of it. For some people, they enjoy “actually wanting it” in depictions of sexualised assault, where there’s an element of ravishment to it, but dislike it in non-sexualised depictions of assault, where the appeal is the character’s vulnerability, or the control the rapist has over them, or the negative emotions and physical pain involved with it. Fantasies are complicated, and even people with very, very similar fantasies may be getting completely different things out of them.)

There’s also the taboo aspect of these kinks and other things like them, which is a powerful draw. Humans like breaking rules (or at least, breaking rules in the privacy of their own heads) for some reason – it gives them a bit of a rush, makes them feel good. Humans also just seem to fundamentally really like power dynamics, and as a result they’ve found a lot of really interesting ways to tie it into sex (with various additions for flavour).

(You’ll notice how I say “in fiction” or “in their own heads” or “in fantasies” – because, surprise surprise, a lot of people with darker sexual fantasies don’t want those things to ever happen. Fantasies are often not remotely an indication of what you actually want, irl, sexually. You can have a reoccurring, incredibly powerful fantasy that gets you off like a rocket every goddamn time, and also be kind of sick thinking about it happening irl. That’s perfectly normal, and perfectly fine – and, in the case of things like rape and executions, probably pretty good, because it indicates you’ve got a working conscience.)

With outright kinky stuff, too, I think there’s a habituation aspect to it – you can be kind of trained to find something erotic by having it presented alongside more conventionally erotic stimuli often enough, or even just coming across something that presents it as strongly erotic. A lot of people tell me they didn’t realise they had a certain kink until they read something I wrote with it, and I really suspect that’s because I kind of… think about the building blocks of what makes a particular fetish appealing, and emphasise them in a way that appeals to even people without the fetish. You can definitely coax other people into liking something with a “convincing” enough “argument”, or train yourself into liking something by associating it with pleasure. This, I think, though, is probably less common for violent and dark things than it is for stuff like, say… foot fetishes or leather kink, more every-day objects of fixation that it’s easier to accidentally associate with pleasure.

For less sexualised violent and dark fiction, such as whump and hurt/comfort, though, understanding why people like it becomes a little more difficult and murky. It’s not directly about sex, and people don’t seem to view it as inherently sexual or have inherently sexual responses to it, but do seem to get some kind of pleasure from it. Sometimes that pleasure is sexual, sometimes it’s not, mostly it seems to be a very confusing mix of the two. I suspect that mix has a lot to do with people who like whump also liking analogous, explicitly kinky and sexual things, and sort of… not signals getting crossed, exactly, but something similar.

It doesn’t help that a lot of the language of sex is also the language of pain – squirm, gasp, groan, moan, writhe, shudder, clench, too much, please, god, fuck, kicking feet and sweat and wide eyes and dilated pupils and hearts thumping in chests. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the language of pain is also the language of submission – begging and cowering, vulnerability, reliance on others, bending to another’s will, weak and small and shaking. Even when torture or pain isn’t deliberately being written as erotic, the language of sex and power (and a variety of other fetishes besides) is still there, and both brains and bodies will still respond to that.

Oddly enough, if they’re written similarly, your arousal probably doesn’t care much whether that fictional character being choked consented to it or not, or whether it was supposed to be sexual or not – their eyelids are still fluttering, their breath is still coming in short pants and hitching wheezes, they can still see the darkness creeping in at the edges of their vision and hear the blood rushing in their own ears, and they’re still going to have a collar of bruises blooming dark around their neck come tomorrow morning. The only difference between a Dominant and their submissive, and a torturer and their victim, is consent, and in fictional fantasies that can be a very blurry line when it comes to people’s weird, unreliable sex brains that just want that sweet, sweet power differential.

(As a side note, it’d be interesting to see what the correlation between “likes whump” and “likes various whump-like aspects of BDSM” is, and also what roles people tend to imagine themselves in when they read whumpfic versus how dominant or submissive they consider themselves. The general consensus by people who object to violent fic seems to be that everyone who enjoys it sees themselves in the aggressor’s position, because they’re “secretly abusers”, but… my personal experience is that people usually seem to imagine themselves in either the position of the whumpee, or the caregiver (the person getting hurt, or the person looking after the hurt person, respectively, for those not familiar with the terms).

A lot of very violent and dark stuff tends to be vicariously enjoyed from the perspective of the “submissive” party, it seems. And when someone vicariously enjoys it from the perspective the dominant party, even people used to existing in these darker spaces tend to get worried. I’ve had friends who’ve bumped into stuff like this outside of fandom spaces mention how they feel deeply unsafe around the people there (usually men) who enjoy taking on the role as the aggressor and also seem very into the idea of this stuff actually happening. So, even in dark kinky spaces, there’s a distinction between “safe” and “unsafe” people who are into stuff, based around perceived willingness to enact non-consensual violence irl.)

I think, though, the most powerful non-sexual motivators for liking non-sexualised violence in fiction are emotional venting and catharsis. Darkfic allows us to explore a range of very powerful emotions – sadism, cruelty, twisted pleasure, and anger on the behalf of the person doing the hurting, and pain, misery, fear, horror, desperation, and grief on behalf of the person being hurt – in a safe, controlled environment where we can say stop at any point. In real life, these emotions are powerful, and scary, and can be overwhelming, and in a way confronting them in fiction can be a good way of practicing for feeling them irl.

However, in the same way intense physical sensation can be good regardless of whether it’s pleasurable or not, intense emotions can be good regardless of whether they’re positive or not.

Sometimes, especially for people who are hurting, it can almost be better if they’re not good. If you’re hurting emotionally, sometimes it’s easy to translate that into physical pain in fiction, to match the way you feel like you’re screaming inside to the way some fictional character actually is screaming. If you’re angry, sometimes it feels good and cleansing to write about a fictional character getting torn to fucking shreds, in much the same way it feels good to punch a pillow and scream until your throat’s raw. There’s a lovely post about finding fiction that “matches the shredder noise in your head”, and although I disagree a little with the implication that only unhappy people like whump, and that you inevitably grow out of it as you leave your teen years behind, I really like the shredder metaphor.

Best of all, fiction comes with catharsis, usually. Not so much darkfic or torture porn, but whump and hurt/comfort usually have a caregiver character, who spends the whole story worrying over the character getting hurt, and / or spends a portion of the story nursing the character back to health. Either way, they provide a way for the reader to vicariously live through being cared about and fussed over and have people demonstrating their love for the whumpee through being deeply distressed over their pain and desperate to ease it, to help them.

(If you think about it, this is, perhaps, very similar to the way a Dom provides their sub with love and catharsis and care during aftercare after intense scenes – which may have included powerful emotions such as shame from things like humiliation and dehumanisation, or physical pain from things like flogging or spanking… Isn’t it funny how people play out the same patterns over and over? Once you’re looking for them, they’re surprisingly easy to spot. Breaking people down, building them back up again… violence and vulnerability, and control.)

For anyone (and, again, especially for people who are hurting emotionally already in some way) this whole process can be very powerful, and very soothing. The character is hurt, broken down – and there’s this lovely, intense emotional release on the reader’s behalf where they get to experience all these big, scary, good emotions, maybe have a bit of a cry, maybe feel a bit sick, maybe get a little aroused. They can wallow in the state the character’s been brought down to, where they’re so tired and broken and damaged that there’s nowhere lower to go, that they can just be – which, oddly enough, can be very soothing in a way.

And then a caregiver turns up, and demonstrates their love and affection and deep desire to help the character that the reader has been putting themselves in the position of – and the reader gets to experience that love and care and acknowledgement of the pain they’ve just been through, second-hand.

Some people need this final catharsis a lot, and go for hurt/comfort, where the balance of hurt to comfort is usually 50:50, or tipped even further in favour of comfort, and the hurt is generally fairly mild (broken leg, small accident, minor injuries). Some people need more intense hurt, and less comfort, where the balance is maybe 75:25, or tipped even further in favour of hurt (possibly even no explicit comfort, just the promise that it’s going to happen after the story), and the injuries might be graphic, or there might be torture. And then there’s darkfic, and tortureporn, that’s just entirely hurt, and usually involves gore / guro / body horror, people enduring unsurvivable injuries, and possibly the character dying at the end. So the vulnerability-catharsis cycle isn’t the same for everyone! And, in fact, doesn’t even need to be a cycle for some people.

(I, personally, tend to sit cheerfully on the line between whump and tortureporn, for those curious. Love me some torture, but I generally want at least the promise of a positive-ish ending, if not a little outright worrying and comforting from a caregiver character. Suffering is most interesting when there’s someone who cares there to witness it and worry over, for me – it legitimises the pain of it, somehow, I think.)

Incidentally, mentioning “broken down”: characters can be really interesting to read about and write in extreme mindsets, whether that’s someone broken down to almost nothing, someone furiously determined not to give into the pain and stay strong, someone who’s abusive and whose thought processes are badly warped as a result, someone who’s so sadistic they’re barely even human any more… extremes of human existence, of human experience, of human thought processes and mindset, seem to just be a Thing that people find interesting. (They’re a thing people are interested in experiencing, but in a controlled environment where no one’s actually getting hurt.) So I’m sure that’s also got something to do with it – that humans are kinda voyeuristic and nosey when it comes to Horrible Things and Mangled Corpses and Huge Tragedies, even irl, and that naturally bleeds over into fiction.

Another important aspect is that both irl and fiction are full of examples of violence and hurt towards minority groups – women, poc, and lgbtq+ and mentally ill people, to mention just a few, since they’re the groups fandom is largely comprised of. But there’s very few depictions of (specifically cishet and white, but not exclusively) men experiencing violence, or being hurt. When men in fiction do get hurt, they largely bounce back from it, action-hero style. You get this sort of “impervious, invulnerable man” character, who never seems to experience any true sort of pain or suffering – and who also looks a lot like the people who enact violence on minorities in real life.

There is, then, something appealing about a) seeing the untouchable become touchable, the unhurtable become hurt, the invulnerable made vulnerable, b) seeing someone who is usually the one enacting trauma being the one that’s experiencing the trauma, and suffering for it, “seeing how it feels”, c) seeing someone who usually shrugs off any kind of trauma or pain having to actually deal with that pain, and become vulnerable and more real as a result, sort of humanising thing, and d) being able to project the violence and trauma minorities experience or live in fear of on a daily basis onto a “blank slate” character.

In a culture that treats male (again, especially white, cishet male) as the default, hurting fictional male characters can be a way for minorities to examine, explore, and discuss their fears and feelings surrounding the violence they’re constantly hyperaware of, but one step removed from themselves. You can hurt a white, cisgender man and be able to realistically talk about violence, and the short- and long-term consequences of that violence, without having to think about stuff like racism, transphobia, and misogyny, which may be a little too close for comfort. Even given fandom’s tendency to make characters gay or bi, a fairly small proportion of whump and darkfic is focused on attacks to do with or even tangentially related to a character’s sexual orientation. People want the violence and the aftermath, but they don’t necessarily want the messy, real societal issues that so often come along with that.

There’s a lot of discussion about women using slashfic to examine their thoughts and feelings about sex and romance without having to confront various, female-specific or gendered issues around them. I get the feeling – especially given most whump targets are male, and many people are utterly disinterested in or actively upset by female whump – that whump is, similarly, a “safe” way for women and other minorities to explore their thoughts and feelings about the violence they are immersed in. They can even create imagined minorities which which to explore realistic violence against minorities but again without the personal context. This is most obvious with A/B/O and BDSM aus (omegas, who are stereotyped in-universe as weak and prey-like and needing an alpha to “protect them”, and subs, who are stereotyped in-universe as much the same), but even in aus more removed from being obvious social critiques people tend to create some kind of group perceived in-universe as weak and easily victimised with which to explore these issues.

And, even when the whump targets are members of real-life minorities, such women, or poc, or lgbtq+, there’s still that element of author or reader control. They can control whether the whumpee is getting hurt because of their minority status, which minority status they’re being hurt because of, whether the violence they experience lines up to common irl expressions of violence against that minority, how far the violence goes, whether the fictional community around the whumpee reacts realistically or overwhelmingly sympathetically…

Finally, and relatedly to the above point, there’s also the eternally-trotted-out “coping mechanism” line, which… has been pretty badly weaponised, unfortunately, by people who don’t really seem to care about the people using darker fiction as a coping mechanism and mostly seem to care about policing people’s fiction consumption. But it’s definitely a thing, and some people enjoy darker fiction because it gives them a way to relive past abuse or mistreatment in a safe environment (they can close the tab, hit the back button, if it gets too intense). Allows them to put themselves in a position of power again (reading noncon and imagining themselves as the rapist, or reading noncon and knowing they can stop reading at any time, or reading a consensual nonconsent scene where the sub actually has the power because they can say stop at any time). Gives them a sense of reassurance and catharsis through the caregiving aspect of it (their fave characters went through what they did, these characters still have people who love them even after the abuse, these characters were told it wasn’t their fault and they’re strong and perfect and deserve to be supported and their abusers are bad people). Gives them a chance to fictionally confront their abuser (the fictional abuser gets put in jail, or killed, or gets the shit kicked out of them / gets verbally condemned by the survivor’s friends, or the survivor finds the strength to confront them about what they did).

And oh, hey, look, we’re back to power, and controllable vulnerability, and catharsis. Surprise!

So… that’s it, really. In the end, it largely comes down to power and control, and catharsis, and vulnerability. People use darkfic because it’s a safe way of feeling intense emotions and then getting love and catharsis afterwards, or of venting negative feelings and desires they’re already feeling without hurting anyone or needing to feel guilty after, and because humans have been getting off on power dynamics and taboos since probably forever. People have kinks for… pretty much the same reasons, but with sexualisation and erotic responses. Pretty much every big, scary kink can be broken down into lots of little non-scary kinks. Fantasies aren’t inherently bad, and it’s pretty normal and not inherently harmful to have fantasies about things that would be Deeply Bad irl. Humans are fucking Weird, and I love them for it.

Did I really need over 5k to say that? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s been fun putting thought into this whilst avoiding doing my coursework, and hopefully it’ll be useful to some people (and maybe to me, next time I need to argue against purity politics).

If you’re interested in talking / thinking more about this: my ask box is always open. I’m always curious to hear people talk about their own experiences with trying to understand their weirder or darker kinks, or happy to answer questions about why I or other people like things, or to just be as much of a safe space as I can manage for these kinds of things. If you’re interested in more introspection about non-sexualised violence and why people have intense, enjoyable (but largely non-erotic) responses to it, go into the “whump” tag and poke around a bit on the blogs that post in there – most whump blogs talk about why they like whump a fair bit, and there’s a huge amount of variation. The “purity politics” tag on my personal blog has a lot of me being annoyed at people trying to police fiction, but it also has a lot of really good, introspective thoughts on why people like, want, and need darker themes in fiction. Finally, the book “In The Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification” by Victoria Pitts also touches a bit on similar real-life things, where body modification overlaps with kink and fetish and BDSM things and people’s enjoyment of pain and injury as both a personal thing and public spectacle. (She’s got some fun thoughts on identity that I really liked, too, though that’s for a different discussion.)

Otherwise… Whilst I think it’s good to think critically about what you’re into and how and why, and do the same about what other people are into, I don’t think it’s necessarily great to criticise yourself for what you’re into. (Caveat: this is not me approving of people committing illegal acts irl, just… acknowledging that people usually worry a lot about having “bad” fantasies, when really fantasies rarely hurt anyone, don’t necessarily indicate a desire for something to happen irl, and are rarely as bad / weird / unusual as the person having them thinks.) Think about stuff, but try not to stress, and try to enjoy working out the shape of your brain and what you like. You might be surprised what you find out about yourself in the process.