Oh, we're doing confessions? Alright then, I'm fully prepared to make enemies with this, including, I suspect, some of my alts, but here goes nothing: #nsfwe #abuse I think Human Domestication Guide is mid as hell on a conceptual level!!!! >_> For those who don't know, HDG is an erotica-focused setting that mostly lives on AO3. You can kind of think of it as being the same type of trope as omegaverse, except with a central authority. The idea is, in essence, as simple as "dommy plant aliens that are legally authorized to do hypno kink and petplay to you without your consent." Or, to be a bit reductive, it's a setting primarily based on eroticizing the evils of institutionalization. You show signs of suicidality (or mental health conditions in general) in public, you get your basic rights taken away. This is a really close-to-home experience for a lot of people so there's nothing all that surprising about people using it as a basis for noncon kink. However. However! Despite all that being literally what the setting is about, that's not how the setting AS IT'S USED actually plays it! Because for SOME REASON, the seven novellas that the wider setting sprouted out of were obsessed with the idea of the alien dommes being ontologically good! So instead of actually making use of any of the obvious potential that was there they just fell back on "you'd be better off being institutionalized because the medical establishment has your best interests in mind and are better at caring for you than you yourself are," which! Is really offensive, but more importantly, it completely defangs the fantasy!!! The whole point of this kind of noncon is to kink on ego death, the stomach-churning terror of watching in real time as your identity falls out from under you and is replaced by something you can't recognize! Trying to play it as wish-fulfillment acts at cross purposes with the core nature of the kink! And like, you can see in how people talk about it that the "wish" being "fulfilled" is deeply concerning! You'll go on Tumblr and someone you haven't heard from in months will appear unprompted on your dash reblogging a post about how "florets are always happy by definition and loved unconditionally, this is supposed to be a utopia" or whatever. And this is a recurring pattern with how people talk about the setting. A large majority of them are genuinely acting like "being loved" is such an all-important need that receiving unconditional love from a benevolent god would be something they'd actually want for themselves in real life. And like, I don't want to be too much of a downer here but I grew up in an abusive household, and my shithead mother did genuinely love and care for me. The love was the problem! She was driven to do such unhinged and traumatizing bullshit SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE of her affection for me and belief that it would be in my best interests! I don't have a good way to end this post. I'm getting genuinely tilted at bad porn, this is a deeply embarrassing thing to even chitt about in the first place. FML.
Actually never mind I do have a way to end this post. You know what they say about thinking about a great one-liner while you're on the escalator. Young lonely trans girl reading this, heed my warning. At some point, you may find yourself so starved for touch and person-to-person contact that you start thinking that you "just want to be loved." It is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT that you DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR BRAIN ON THIS MATTER. That's how you get into toxic relationships and cults. What you want isn't love. You don't need that shit. What you want is RESPECT. THAT is the foundational need that you're missing. Love without respect is a slow-acting poison that permanently fucks you up. Respect without love is, at worst, a decent rapport with your coworkers.
I largely agree with this analysis The concept of HDG is so ripe with potential conflict and friction The kind of thing that pushes any ficiton forward especially kink While I understand using it as wish fulfillment I see no reason to defang the Affini They are evil And yet they are not cruel This is an excellent dichotomy to explore and the apparent authorities on the setting seem reticent to engage with them
Naturally those friends of mine who enjoy the setting ignore the idea of them being ontologically good At most they downplay the evil in more lightnearted/comedic fics
And frankly if an entirely brainwashed Jade can fully understand that her master is evil HDG writers have no excuse
