Tag: long post

Y’know like. Something I think about a lot re: the purity politics in fandom spaces is how a main rationalization people have for them behaving the way they do is that it’s just an age thing; they’re young and they haven’t developed enough emotionally to really understand empathy or perspective or morals beyond black and white. But honestly? I really don’t think age is an appropriate excuse because I just think back to 15 year old me, who had been reading the Vampire Chronicles for a couple years and was super drawn to the racy elements of the material so I wanted to explore more pornographic content in a literary environment, because it was the only way I felt comfortable exploring sex because I wasn’t ready to actually do it irl yet?

So I figured I’d read the Sleeping Beauty trilogy because it was already a familiar author and everyone was talking about how erotic the content was and how it was revolutionary in terms of literature because there wasn’t a whole lot of stuff like it on the market, all there really was at the time was just your garden variety shopping cart romances and those didn’t interest me in the least because they were all really derivative and less about kink and more about emotionally codependent swooning damsels. And that was not at all what I was in the market for.

So I got the entire trilogy with my birthday money and read them. Actual paper books from a bookstore. No tag warnings, no “I’m an adult and consent to proceeding” button. I was curious and wanted to know what all the fuss was. And yes, there was a bit of an actual plot in those books outside of just kink, and the story hooked me. And yeah, admittedly, it was a bit of a mistake for me to read those books at that age. I was not prepared. I was still a virgin then, I hadn’t experienced attraction to any real life person, and while I was interested in sexual pleasure, I wasn’t particularly interested in actual sex with actual people (which is honestly still the case as an adult, but I digress). Anyway. The point is, I hadn’t had any exposure whatsoever to BDSM and probably should have eased myself into it more gradually instead of just diving right into it. Consequently, it kind of messed with me a little, emotionally. I felt a little disturbed reading them, but I kept reading them anyway, until I finished the entire trilogy. Then I didn’t touch them again for a few years, because I wasn’t really fond of the emotions I felt tied to those books.

THAT BEING SAID. At no point did I presume to blame Anne Rice for the choice I made to read her books. At no point did I think “this made me a little uncomfortable, therefore this should not exist.” That notion never even occurred to me, not once. What did occur to me? “Damn, why did I do this to myself. I shouldn’t have read these books. Maybe I should have waited until I had some semblance of sexual experience.” I THOUGHT THIS AT FIFTEEN. I didn’t think less of Anne Rice for writing them, I didn’t try to blame someone else for luring me into the content. I took full responsibility for choosing to read them when I knew exactly what kind of content I was getting into based on the initial exposure I had to it within the fandom at that time (or at least the closest approximation to a fandom that existed). 

I mean, this was a good…some years ago. When I was 15, the internet wasn’t really an accessible thing that was in every home. Some schools had it, but these were the days of dial-up and geocities. There was no tumblr, no AO3, Brad had just created livejournal as a niche thing for his friends that no one knew about. So it’s not like there were these ~predatory adults~ in fandom communities who lured me into it. I was exposed to the material the old fashioned way, via actual professional literary reviews in magazines and interviews. I was choosing to be in these adult spaces, which were essentially just sections in the bookstore and library, browsing at my own leisure. At any point, I could have disengaged. I chose not to. I took responsibility for the small amount of discomfort that resulted. It didn’t scar me for life, it didn’t change or influence my perception or association with sex, it had no effect on me other than “ahh! fuck, I’m too young for this right now, from now on I’ll just avoid content of it until I’m ready.” Blacklists didn’t exist then. Tag warnings didn’t exist then. And I certainly didn’t perceive this content as, like, purely didactic material and use it as a rubric for future real life sexual activity because who the fuck does that? I understood it was fiction. Erotic fanfiction of a children’s fairy tale, even.

Which is why it’s so hard for me to rationalize this trend of young people who presume to equate personal discomfort to status of law, or that because something in fiction disturbed them a little that it shouldn’t exist outright. Like, yeah, I know what it’s like to be supremely unsettled by a work of fiction. It’s happened to me plenty of times. It still happens to me even now. But if anything, I’ve been appreciative of its existence so I could always come back to it if I chose to and engage with it at my own pace to see if my feelings have changed over time. 

So like. I really think it’s less of an age thing and more of a generational thing. I mean. I don’t really have any viable solutions to offer to this problem, I just think it’s really unfair all the way around, because on the one hand it’s dismissing culpability for personal choices and shitty behavior at the same time as it’s insulting and infantilizing young people who are perfectly capable of making informed decisions. LIKE YEAH I KNOW IT WAS A LONG FUCKING TIME AGO but I was 15 once too and I perfectly remember what it was like because I was a writer even then and used to chronicle my thoughts and shit so I know what I’m on about here, don’t play me with silly excuses jesus chrits

So, I was thinking. Since SAM has access to his host’s sensory and emotional responses, do you think SAM can experience some approximation of emotion by proxy? It would kinda make sense, since the whole point of being linked to the host’s neural implant is to learn and understand more about the human experience. 

So like, imagine SAM processing pleasure for the very first time. I can’t imagine he experienced it that often when Alec was his host because SAM wasn’t developed until after Ellen fell ill, so the only emotions SAM might ever have been exposed to would be fear, grief, frustration.

But after being transferred to Scott, imagine like the first time he kisses Gil or Reyes, the pleasure centers are just exploding in his brain and SAM’s just like WAHT HTE FUCK. MORE. WANT MORE. And SAM just….doesn’t know what to do with it, it’s so perplexing but intriguing and he gets curious, so a lot of the advice he feeds Ryder is very directly linked to how likely it is to result in pleasure. Like, to the point where SAM might, a little bit, start to be motivated by the prospect of it. 

And Gil and Reyes absolutely take advantage of it, especially to amplify the experience of any kind of intimacy with Ryder. Gil does it mostly to satisfy his engineer’s intellectual curiosity, and Reyes does it because………..he’s Reyes. Like, since SAM can control Ryder’s vitals and was initially designed to affect the host’s physiology, presumably SAM can control the release of endorphins/hormones/neurotransmitters in the brain, which would in turn heighten the sensory experience for the host? So imagine Reyes being like, “SAM, give him a little boost of serotonin” or Gil being like “SAM, hit him hard with the oxytocin” during sexytimes and obviously SAM doesn’t have to comply to anyone other than the Pathfinder, but he cooperates with Scott’s partners because he knows there’s a significant promise of pleasure. 

And Scott is at the mercy of them both. 

And so imagine the first time SAM experiences an orgasm via Scott, and to Scott it’s like……..a fucking vibration in his brain, it’s unreal, it’s like an orgasm within an orgasm because he’s experiencing it himself but also can feel SAM feeling it and it’s the most monumental thing ever, and SAM basically becomes the ultimate sex toy.

Taking it a little further, what if Scott wakes up incredibly horny for no reason, and SAM’s just in his head with like, images of Gil in the shower or something, and he gently encourages him to pleasure himself, since SAM has so generously provided him with an endless stream of pleasing visuals to help. Haha, or like, “Based on the most frequently viewed pornographic videos in your browsing history, I have narrowed down your preferred fetishes and have been able to extrapolate what Gil Brodie would look like participating in them for your viewing pleasure.” 

And at first Scott’s horrified, it’s a little invasive and weird?? And he feels super guilty for Gil’s privacy too, like obviously this is very morally dubious but holy god it’s hot, so he goes along with it anyway. 

And it’s the ultimate symbiosis because, shit, what better way for the pathfinder to blow off steam and relieve stress, coupled with teaching an AI to be motivated by pleasure, which is a very human thing and is exactly the objective SAM was programmed for. 

aw dude thank you!!  That means a lot because it was a really difficult fic to write.

tbh though I don’t know if I’ll write another fic so focused on him just because he’s so challenging to write. It was really more of a fluke than anything, like when I started writing it I didn’t set out with the intention of seeing events through his eyes, it was more of a self-indulgent thing like, “Gee, Ocelot’s been holding on to Miller’s sunglasses this entire time and only passes them off to Snake at the very last minute, and is presumed to have recovered them himself, what’s up with that?” and “Holy shit, uhhhh why aren’t we seeing more of Ocelot’s reaction/how he feels about Volgin’s body being brought back to MB, this is kind of a big fucking deal, let’s take a closer look at this.” And those two things are things that I have thought about nonstop for over a year and I’ve been wanting to write fic for it for ages because it’s just been eating at me this whole time lol.

So then as I started writing it I was like, “Oh heck, these are things that largely happen with Ocelot alone, outside the scope of the main characters, how the fuck would he feel/react to this because I HAVE NO IDEA” especially when he’s such an enigmatic character to begin with and his personality is almost impossible to pin down. Like you’re introduced to this shady torture fetishist creep in MGS1 and 2, and then in 3 you get to see him as this arrogant child but with something that roughly resembles a code of honor, who obviously uses cockiness as a defense mechanism, then skip to MGSV and he’s this…….humbled middle-aged man who spends almost the entirety of TPP looking wounded and concerned and speaking very softly and gently reeling in Kaz when he gets moody. And it’s such a jarring change from the Ocelot we’ve always known that I wanted to explore it a little and poke it with a stick, who the fuck is this man?? Like obviously a lot of his muted personality probably has to do with the fact that his mind is halfway checked out for the entirety of the game, but I really liked that weird dynamic between him and Kaz and how the game makes it very obvious how Kaz feels about Ocelot, but we’re shown so little, if nothing, about how Ocelot feels about Kaz. So I wanted to put it under a microscope for once and cover what might have been going on with him while we were all looking at Venom and Miller. 

lol I didn’t mean for this to get so rambly but THANKS FOR READING and what I’m saying is I won’t make any promises that I’ll write more Ocelot-centric stuff because it’s such a daunting challenge to write and I don’t think I’m cut out for it, but I won’t promise that I won’t, either. If something comes to me, I’ll definitely write it.