[2:37 PM] Sanagi: ...Hrrm. Krissy, I've been doing some introspection, especially in ...well, in comparison to Bea. In regards to kinks, to what they dig out and say about the underlying mind of a person.
[2:37 PM] Sanagi: Do you mind if I soundboard these thoughts, here?
[2:38 PM] BigFatFae: Go for it~
[2:40 PM] Sanagi: For context, Bea, in particular, sees herself as a bubble. As something big, kinda ridiculous, but as something impossible to miss, and for that it gains attention. She's said it herself many times.
[2:41 PM] Sanagi: ...Us...I'm starting to piece together, I think...we don't so much desire -attention-. We desire -control-. We desire ...being able to fine-tune, adjust, and tweak ourself, our -life-...as -we- see fit.
[2:43 PM] Sanagi: We've lived most of it having to play some damn semi-mute behind a mask, struggling with that so much that we had no real...-control-. School life was it. Regimented by schedules, by the hopeful but clueless whims of our parents. Came to a head shortly after high school. The 'urging' to go to college, to pick up that programming studying we'd been looking forward to out of idealistic hopes to be a video-game programmer, up until we realized we had no head at all for programming's sheer...rigidity, the indecipherable jargon-ish nature of it.
[2:44 PM] Sanagi: What we want is to shove all other hands off the helm and grip onto them with our own two fists until they -fuse- to those levers.
[2:44 PM] Sanagi: Expressed in two different ways, with 4 different characters that immediately come to mind as the obvious ones.
[2:45 PM] Sanagi: On one end, we have Gertrud and Salo. The Full-Body Prosthetics. The more 'ideal', I suppose, expression of this want. Being almost entirely advanced machines wrapped around the intact mind, they can control every dial, ever aspect as they please, of their own bodies.
[2:46 PM] Sanagi: They at least have no chains of even the most basic problems or issues of biology tethering them, troubling them. They have a plethora of tools instead, linked directly to their minds, their bodies are entirely responsive.
[2:47 PM] Sanagi: No need to eat, sleep, void, no need to succumb or even acknowledge physical pain...
[2:48 PM] Sanagi: On the other. On the more 'extreme' end, we have the Baroness and Luca.
[2:50 PM] Sanagi: Those who have radiated their control out so far that not only their bodies, but their -worlds- are bent to them. The Baroness enthralls her subjects, deceives and beguiles those not -quite- yet wrapped around her finger fully, has so many redundancies and backup plans in case of the nigh-inevitable backlash or failings of her subordinates that nothing of the world itself can reach out and disturb her as she prolongues her hedonism endlessly.
[2:52 PM] Sanagi: Luca is a sociopathic AI driven to simply dominate because that -is- her one lens of life. Via it, she's become the CEO of a cyberpunk megacorp, sublimating direct control out to relish in the wider, more slow-burn gratification of controlling such a vast expanse.(edited)
[2:53 PM] Sanagi: Probably for good reason, both of them are much more considered villains or terrors; they're -meant- to be somewhat disturbing, even if not blatantly.
[2:55 PM] Sanagi: Perhaps a recognition that -that- sort of control innately requires a very...cruel and intrusive reach. To get that far, you have to do things that are innately horrible.
[2:56 PM] BigFatFae: Nodnodnods Intensity requires intensity. But intensity can be fun to imagine, even if it's not fun in practice
[2:57 PM] Sanagi: Altogether, the 4 of them paint a picture of -us-, I suppose.
[2:58 PM] Sanagi: As Bea puts it, her...'true' inner self is a bubble, essentially. Pretty, delightful, even a bit laughable in a gentle way, but impossible to really miss, especially if you get it -big- enough.
[2:58 PM] Sanagi: What would our inner self be, with this picture? A processor?
[2:59 PM] Sanagi: A golem given its own voice, the reigns to its own yoke?(edited)
[3:01 PM] Sanagi: A drive for control. To hold in absolute certainty, our own life and to choose where it goes, without any strings attached.(edited)
[3:05 PM] Sanagi: ...I suppose the clearest, though most implication-drenched image, would be that of the old iron gauntlet.
[3:12 PM] Sanagi: Either way, I guess it shows where we -want- to go, somewhat, in the less literal sense of things. We want to sieze back what we see as the reins of our life.(edited)
[3:12 PM] Sanagi: Feeling they've been left dangling at the whims of too many others who don't understand how to drive the damn thing, or what they're driving.(edited)
[3:19 PM] Sanagi: At least, if we dig under what the fetishes directly display. That's the read I've gotten now. Like. as Bea put it, kinks, fetishes like that, they're more...the scar tissue.
[3:21 PM] Sanagi: That make sense?
[3:23 PM] BigFatFae: Mmm... I think it's more to it than just that, but that is a very apt description in many cases
[3:24 PM] Sanagi: It's a little of a poor paraphrasing of what they said, yeah.
[3:25 PM] Sanagi: A fetish is a bit like a pearl, to borrow from them again. Around it is the enjoyable, pretty pearl, the sheen, but at the very core of it, is whatever bit of grit, of sand found its way in to become such a psychological irritant that the mind inflamed itself around it like that.
[3:28 PM] Sanagi: I suppose I COULD be reading a bit harder into it than I should, but -that- much at least feels to have some merit, yes...
[3:33 PM] BigFatFae: I think the direction is correct
[3:33 PM] BigFatFae: My view on fetishes is that they are a gateway into the mind
[3:33 PM] BigFatFae: And I think for a lot of people, that will involve trauma and coping mechanisms
[3:33 PM] BigFatFae: But I don't think that's universal, and I think that it's more to do with a generalized sense of longing. Whatever it is we seek, but particularly that which we cannot find
[3:34 PM] BigFatFae: Whether it's comfort over a trauma, control we have been denied, attention we lack, anything we feel inadequate or undeserving of...
[3:36 PM] Sanagi: It's not necessarily the sign of a wound that's 'healed' or is trying to, it could simply be...say, the pillow one holds onto, for lack of a better term? Or just something we aspire towards?
[3:36 PM] Sanagi: Or sometimes just something that, without -any- rational explanation, happens to set the body flush.
[3:39 PM] BigFatFae: Well, see, that's the thing, in my view
[3:40 PM] BigFatFae: Trauma is absolutely something that can lead to a fetish
[3:40 PM] BigFatFae: But I've seen people with very little trauma to speak of develop very intense fixations as well
[3:40 PM] BigFatFae: I think that it is but one of many pearls that can form. The pearl in this case isn't pain, per se, but just some desire that attaches itself okay to symbolism
[3:41 PM] Sanagi: Which I suppose is more our case. There's no large trauma, just...a driving desire, here.
[3:42 PM] BigFatFae: Well, there's no singular trauma
[3:42 PM] BigFatFae: The difference between hot stress and cold stress
[3:42 PM] BigFatFae: You've had that lack of control nearly your whole life
[3:42 PM] BigFatFae: It wears on you and breeds that intense longing I think is a major component
[3:42 PM] BigFatFae: But I'd be suspect of anyone trying to dismiss that as a form of trauma
[3:42 PM] BigFatFae: We all deserve agency
[3:52 PM] Sanagi: The knife wound as compared to the abrasion of a sandstorm, to put it one way.
[3:52 PM] BigFatFae: Exactly it
[4:18 PM] Sanagi: ...At the least, I guess it DOES help riddle out something about ourself, too. Thanks for listening and discussing, lil'bun~.
[4:19 PM] BigFatFae: Snuggles Myu~