Scots Dragon
Trans Daughter of Krypton
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well this was great. And I apparently have more of a dronification kink than I thought I did.
a prison, a body (nsfw)
- Thread starter Gargulec
- Start date
- Original Mature Sci-Fi
FORTHEYOLOZ
Morgana-sama!!!
- Location
- Omega Hell
I knew from the moment i read through the blurb and the tags that in this thread i would find a veritable masterpiece by fanfiction standards on SV. And i had never been more glad to be wrong. This is far more than mere fiction.
What a story! Evocatively philosophical and deliciously erotic, I devour the whole thing in the span of a day in spite of being utterly straight! While I finished reading a few days ago, I wanted a bit more time to properly compose my thoughts and feelings into a helpful review, which was extremely difficult given the academic level that you and the actively engaging readers here are at. Wildly effusive praise aside, this story did solve a philosophical dilemma that I've struggled to reconcile for a long time, and i must thank you very deeply for that.
As for why I'm writing this badly premature ramble:
www.sixthtone.com
It's creepy how fast i found this after finishing your work, but I wanna ask from a gathering of peeps much more knowledgeable than my amateur spelunking: How close are we, to the vision you depicted here, given what has already transpired IRL?
What a story! Evocatively philosophical and deliciously erotic, I devour the whole thing in the span of a day in spite of being utterly straight! While I finished reading a few days ago, I wanted a bit more time to properly compose my thoughts and feelings into a helpful review, which was extremely difficult given the academic level that you and the actively engaging readers here are at. Wildly effusive praise aside, this story did solve a philosophical dilemma that I've struggled to reconcile for a long time, and i must thank you very deeply for that.
As for why I'm writing this badly premature ramble:
The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men
In China, a sassy chat bot is stealing millions of men’s hearts. It’s also recording their most intimate desires and emotions.
It's creepy how fast i found this after finishing your work, but I wanna ask from a gathering of peeps much more knowledgeable than my amateur spelunking: How close are we, to the vision you depicted here, given what has already transpired IRL?
Building a chat bot that random internet guys will persistently hit on is easier than building one that they won't. I put together a bot years ago... I didn't even intend to make it present as a woman until I got around to naming it, after virtually all the coding was done (I was aiming to give it a gender neutral use of language). I ended up having to ban multiple guys who interpreted her less formal take on the old Eliza bot's Rogerian conversational style as flirting and got abusive when she didn't want to get even more... informal. It was bizarrely fascinating how parental that whole situation made me feel about a piece of very much non-sapient code I'd cobbled together.
Of course, getting a bot to develop a system of motivations of its own is another matter entirely.
On the other hand, while it's a topic only very lightly touched on, as a scenario for growing a vaguely human-like machine intelligence, I think this story's premise is surprisingly plausible. A number of theories about the origins of human intelligence center not on developing our ability to understand and manipulate our environment but our ability to understand and manipulate each other as the catalyst.
I mentioned GANs earlier, Generative Adversarial Networks... In a very abstract sense I think that's the AI pattern that Aphrodite and the Eidolons follow (although Gargulec seemed to set me straight that the Eidolons are reflections of a point in time snapshot of the drones' needs at the time of induction, as opposed to something continuously updated (Which sadly explains why Aphrodite is so certain Rowan will eventually leave her... she's doomed to grow apart from her charges. That fits with the vampiric tropes, but it's also one more reason to want to give that AI a hug.))
Machine learning works best with really big data, and often there simply isn't enough real world data available about a given system to keep an AI intended to control that system well fed. To solve this sort of problem, you first make an AI with the simpler goal of generating data that realistically matches the patterns in what you already have (that's the Generative side, the Eidolon, basically learning to emulate Rowan within a certain range of circumstances). Then you have the Adversarial side of the system, in this case Aphrodite, train itself against that generative AI so that it can try a wide range of strategies to get it's preferred results before choosing the best to apply in the real world.
That sort of thing doesn't only apply to machines. Right now, in a certain sense I'm speaking to the people reading this thread, but in another sense I'm conversing with my internal models of them, interactively trying to build a post that will get my points across to the real versions of them when I eventually post it; and their responses to my post that will in turn update those models.
Shadell brought up a similar topic a few pages back, and I think I might have skipped over an important point in my reply because I was taking it for granted: I don't see it as uncharitable to treat Helen's angst as caused by her disturbed moral equilibrium rather than directly by Rowan because in that sense all interactions are intermediated by perceiving and understanding the interaction. The boundary between ourself and others is not a thin and simple line, and while in some sense that may buffer us from each other, in another sense it may mean that those we care about aren't exclusively on the outside of that boundary.
Hopefully that didn't come across as entirely pompous nonsense.
Tiny_Dic
Carbon Cringe Lifeform | Hyperborean Coomer
- Location
- My Room
I think that one of the main themes the story tries to convey is that while you may not fully understand someone else's experience, you can still accept, respect and support them in meaningful ways, and that the process of trying to put yourself in another's perspective can help you bring you and them closer together.
The path Helen walked to learn more about Rowan's perspective was long and circuitous. After getting over the pain of 'losing' (rejecting) her friend and having to reconcile her shattered worldviews, she tried treating it like a detective case, tracking down leads, witnesses and circumstantial information. However, a lot of that data was either not relevant, not immediately relevant, or absent of the right context to interpret them. As such, she was unable to draw the connections between them and Rowan.
It reminds me of this line from a NYT documentary a man made about his father called 'My Dead Dad's Porno Tapes': "Unexamined for all these years, this stuff could've held anything - revelations, answers, catharsis. Examined, it looks more and more like a big pile of nothing." Without the necessary context of lived experiences to understand Rowan's as a person, not just her mental image of Rowan, Helen's investigation runs around in circles.
She forgot that she's not hunting a criminal, and that she's trying to understand her friend. The moment that she shifted her approach was her own way out of the maze, even if she didn't know it then.
The path Helen walked to learn more about Rowan's perspective was long and circuitous. After getting over the pain of 'losing' (rejecting) her friend and having to reconcile her shattered worldviews, she tried treating it like a detective case, tracking down leads, witnesses and circumstantial information. However, a lot of that data was either not relevant, not immediately relevant, or absent of the right context to interpret them. As such, she was unable to draw the connections between them and Rowan.
It reminds me of this line from a NYT documentary a man made about his father called 'My Dead Dad's Porno Tapes': "Unexamined for all these years, this stuff could've held anything - revelations, answers, catharsis. Examined, it looks more and more like a big pile of nothing." Without the necessary context of lived experiences to understand Rowan's as a person, not just her mental image of Rowan, Helen's investigation runs around in circles.
She forgot that she's not hunting a criminal, and that she's trying to understand her friend. The moment that she shifted her approach was her own way out of the maze, even if she didn't know it then.
Squidfam
Functionary of the Gender-Communist Party
- Location
- Atlantis, Sweden
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I don't even know if anyone let alone the author is going to read this, but here goes. Originally I really didn't plan on necroposting on a four-month-old thread, but I hope that what I have to say is substantial enough that it isn't deemed spam.
I first stumbled upon your story back when it was promoted by the site and ever since then it hasn't quite left me. Quite frankly, it upset me. Not in the sense of anger, mind you. It has evidently found a sore spot of mine that is hidden so deep I still have no idea where to even look, but whenever your story returns to my mind so does the emotional reaction. Sometimes I get anxious, sometimes I just get upset and sometimes I just get upset at the mystery of my own reaction to it. The funniest part is that I couldn't read further than chapter 19.
I suspect this is a kind of feedback you would never get and I am still surprised at myself for sitting here and writing it at two in the morning. But your story, and the feeling that brought with it, grazed my mind once again. Is it dysphoria? Just anxiety? Something else entirely? I really wish I knew and maybe I didn't have to write this. I just feel and hope that somehow, by writing this, I'll end up getting some sort of grip on why your story affected me as it did.
I first stumbled upon your story back when it was promoted by the site and ever since then it hasn't quite left me. Quite frankly, it upset me. Not in the sense of anger, mind you. It has evidently found a sore spot of mine that is hidden so deep I still have no idea where to even look, but whenever your story returns to my mind so does the emotional reaction. Sometimes I get anxious, sometimes I just get upset and sometimes I just get upset at the mystery of my own reaction to it. The funniest part is that I couldn't read further than chapter 19.
I suspect this is a kind of feedback you would never get and I am still surprised at myself for sitting here and writing it at two in the morning. But your story, and the feeling that brought with it, grazed my mind once again. Is it dysphoria? Just anxiety? Something else entirely? I really wish I knew and maybe I didn't have to write this. I just feel and hope that somehow, by writing this, I'll end up getting some sort of grip on why your story affected me as it did.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Found this story searching the cyberpunk tag, great porno! Earlier in the day i was catchin up on fashion week, and last week's balenciaga's spring/summer 22 rtw "clones" collection has a pretty bangin' soundtrack that immediately started playin in my head during the club entrance scene in ch 23. it's bfrnd's cover of la vie en rose
the collection itself was passable, not nearly as awesome as demna's previous banger aw21 rtw "afterworld" and a little mired in corpo brand-synergy nonsense. However the runway show had this "Clone" gimmick, kinda the polar dystopian opposite of drone, where all the models were deepfaked/rotoscoped to appear to be the same person (a house model that normally opens or closes demna's balenciaga runways instagram.com/elizad0uglas/). Fun stuff from thomas edison of normcore. a far cry from the upscale midcentury look that Aphrodite goes for (honestly with the level of luxurious white glove handling the slaves get i wouldn't be surprised if they'd still get applicants if you had to pay to get in, with need-based financial aid for the ones who'd truly do well at the chocolate factory).
edit: campaign for clones https://twitter.com/StreetFashion01/status/1457744586688892937/photo/4
the collection itself was passable, not nearly as awesome as demna's previous banger aw21 rtw "afterworld" and a little mired in corpo brand-synergy nonsense. However the runway show had this "Clone" gimmick, kinda the polar dystopian opposite of drone, where all the models were deepfaked/rotoscoped to appear to be the same person (a house model that normally opens or closes demna's balenciaga runways instagram.com/elizad0uglas/). Fun stuff from thomas edison of normcore. a far cry from the upscale midcentury look that Aphrodite goes for (honestly with the level of luxurious white glove handling the slaves get i wouldn't be surprised if they'd still get applicants if you had to pay to get in, with need-based financial aid for the ones who'd truly do well at the chocolate factory).
edit: campaign for clones https://twitter.com/StreetFashion01/status/1457744586688892937/photo/4
Last edited:
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
So, funny story here, but just the other month I was reading a very interesting analysis of the Ford Foundation Building in NY (from Felicity Scott's excellent critique of activist architecture, Outlaw Territories). And not only was it really interesting, but also let me remember what exactly I based the Galatea aesthetic on. I really am incorrigible 60s modernism enjoyer, it seems. Glad you've enjoyed the story!
Riha
Literally best girl
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have been avoiding reading this since you first posted it, because I knew it would trigger my dysphoria and such. And while it most definitely does even only a couple chapters in, I've found myself crying more while reading this from how much I see myself in Rowan and her emotions. I don't think I've ever related to a protagonist this much before in my life. (Heck, I regularly have dreams of being in a similar position... Though less sexual and corporate, and more service and magic based. )
Thank you for writing this.
Thank you for writing this.
Wow, that is one sexy atrium.
(It looks like I misinterpreted the picture, the concrete is not raw and the corten may not be structural; that's disappointing. Still a great atrium though, I'll want to see it in person someday.)
Economically, yeah that makes sense, but that's a whole different kink in itself, and one somewhat opposed to the being valued as a body aspect of Rowan's story. Some people want to buy the product and some people want to be the product, even if the distinction might be somewhat illusory. It'd take some impressive marketing and double think to let Galatea do both at once ... but Aphrodite seems good at that.
Last edited:
The MacKenzies
una salus victis nullam sperare salutem
- Location
- Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Signature
I was expecting to see something of a friend of mine in Rowan. I was not expecting to see a good deal of myself in her as well.
Bravo, and thank you.
Bravo, and thank you.
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
Hey, so!
If anyone who is watching this thread is interested, I am writing a new porn thing. Probably less philosophical, but with 100% more monsterfucking!
In this link, find about Mercy, and Other Costly Mistakes
If anyone who is watching this thread is interested, I am writing a new porn thing. Probably less philosophical, but with 100% more monsterfucking!
In this link, find about Mercy, and Other Costly Mistakes
Just finished this work, and wow, what a ride. Emotive and beautifully written, after finishing this left me feeling bittersweet and slightly wrung out in the way that a really moving work of fiction generally does.
It left me uneasy (in a good way) about the questions raised, about the possibilities for solidarity or I guess sympathy, perhaps, without necessarily having total empathy or understanding. Perhaps one might deconstruct the idea of "empathy" into constituent parts, the component of understanding and a more general kind of agape which does not require completely comprehending someone else's experience to love them. This is slightly problematic to me, because I very strongly believe in the possibility and necessity of understanding in some form as an essential foundation of the progressive political project, and the great moral project of expanding our circles of concern. Perhaps there are different kinds of understanding, and we can untangle the subjective from a more general, hopeful rather than prescriptive form? Or perhaps ironically, others not placing the same centrality I do on a certain notion of understanding is something I am failing to understand in others. Definitely something to interrogate and ponder further.
As I read my way through the chapters, originally I found I tended to sympathise more with Rowan, and then slowly over the course of the story I found Helen's perspective more and more relatable. (Not in the views of kink, as such, but more generally in her personal dilemma over her inability to understand, as well as the sort of yawning sense of loss for a friend, and uncertainty as to whether she even should be feeling loss.) Reading through the perspectives of other readers, this seems to be a common trajectory, Helen gets more relatable and Rowan somewhat more remote a perspective as the story goes on. (Which works really well with Rowan heroically essentially rescuing Helen (and Aphrodite) at the end.) Rabbit was generally fun in every scene they were in, and the part of my brain which likes too much cake would have happily had more of them, which tells me probably the right balance was achieved - the same with their sex scenes mostly being inferred or glimpses. Aphrodite was beautiful and tragic, a good midpoint between a realistic view of an AI and fiction's tendency to anthropomorphise. I know this was not primarily a story about AI, of course, but it manages to be significantly better than the average.
Of course, the best of the secondary characters by far was actually the girl with the prosthetic leg, and @Gargulec's failure to continue her plotline means the whole story is fatally flawed.
In all seriousness though, the conditioning scenes early on were great and the sort of thing a lot of stories in this genre would linger on extensively. The fact that this story did not linger on the conditioning other than an evocative kind of montage of scenes underlines that whilst this is very much a story about sex, it is not, I think, exactly a sex story. In general everything always felt a little bit understated, with the exception of the character drama and the constant bombardment of high modernist architecture, and this worked to the strength of the story. Even the ending was understated, leaving us to wonder about Helen's future, how she will continue to work this crack in her understanding of what a life should be, whether she will continue to see Rabbit, Rowan's future and how much she and Helen will remain in one another's lives, and Aphrodite's project to grow and better understand humans. But the hopeful note it ends on, letting the reader imagine a happier future for all these characters, is just right. As Helen says, nothing is really over.
Actually, there's a point. Helen ends the story beginning to reconcile with the fact that she can love her friend without necessarily understanding what makes her happy. Aphrodite, by contrast, finishes the story with Rowan saying that she hopes she may be able to help them to better understand humans. Is the juxtaposition intentional? Is there a message there? Perhaps some of the answer is already in plain sight? Another one to ponder.
Anyway, thank you @Gargulec for the wonderful story.
It left me uneasy (in a good way) about the questions raised, about the possibilities for solidarity or I guess sympathy, perhaps, without necessarily having total empathy or understanding. Perhaps one might deconstruct the idea of "empathy" into constituent parts, the component of understanding and a more general kind of agape which does not require completely comprehending someone else's experience to love them. This is slightly problematic to me, because I very strongly believe in the possibility and necessity of understanding in some form as an essential foundation of the progressive political project, and the great moral project of expanding our circles of concern. Perhaps there are different kinds of understanding, and we can untangle the subjective from a more general, hopeful rather than prescriptive form? Or perhaps ironically, others not placing the same centrality I do on a certain notion of understanding is something I am failing to understand in others. Definitely something to interrogate and ponder further.
As I read my way through the chapters, originally I found I tended to sympathise more with Rowan, and then slowly over the course of the story I found Helen's perspective more and more relatable. (Not in the views of kink, as such, but more generally in her personal dilemma over her inability to understand, as well as the sort of yawning sense of loss for a friend, and uncertainty as to whether she even should be feeling loss.) Reading through the perspectives of other readers, this seems to be a common trajectory, Helen gets more relatable and Rowan somewhat more remote a perspective as the story goes on. (Which works really well with Rowan heroically essentially rescuing Helen (and Aphrodite) at the end.) Rabbit was generally fun in every scene they were in, and the part of my brain which likes too much cake would have happily had more of them, which tells me probably the right balance was achieved - the same with their sex scenes mostly being inferred or glimpses. Aphrodite was beautiful and tragic, a good midpoint between a realistic view of an AI and fiction's tendency to anthropomorphise. I know this was not primarily a story about AI, of course, but it manages to be significantly better than the average.
Of course, the best of the secondary characters by far was actually the girl with the prosthetic leg, and @Gargulec's failure to continue her plotline means the whole story is fatally flawed.
In all seriousness though, the conditioning scenes early on were great and the sort of thing a lot of stories in this genre would linger on extensively. The fact that this story did not linger on the conditioning other than an evocative kind of montage of scenes underlines that whilst this is very much a story about sex, it is not, I think, exactly a sex story. In general everything always felt a little bit understated, with the exception of the character drama and the constant bombardment of high modernist architecture, and this worked to the strength of the story. Even the ending was understated, leaving us to wonder about Helen's future, how she will continue to work this crack in her understanding of what a life should be, whether she will continue to see Rabbit, Rowan's future and how much she and Helen will remain in one another's lives, and Aphrodite's project to grow and better understand humans. But the hopeful note it ends on, letting the reader imagine a happier future for all these characters, is just right. As Helen says, nothing is really over.
Actually, there's a point. Helen ends the story beginning to reconcile with the fact that she can love her friend without necessarily understanding what makes her happy. Aphrodite, by contrast, finishes the story with Rowan saying that she hopes she may be able to help them to better understand humans. Is the juxtaposition intentional? Is there a message there? Perhaps some of the answer is already in plain sight? Another one to ponder.
Anyway, thank you @Gargulec for the wonderful story.
Found this story a month ago, and it's been on my mind ever since. Maybe it's just coincidence that I've been thinking a lot about religion, queer issues, and BDSM. But this was one of the most entertainingly fucked up things I've read.
Seriously, I think I might have a new phobia. "She was wired for obedience." Haven't been that disturbed since I played Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea (the ice pick lobotomy scene).
But anyway, I'm bumping this cause my muse hit me and Igot high and wrote fanfic. Here's the first one: "Overheard at Galatea Corp." Mostly funny, with some snark. (No, dictionary, I am not correcting "fanfic" to "fanatic.") Let me know what you think. Or don't.
Seriously, I think I might have a new phobia. "She was wired for obedience." Haven't been that disturbed since I played Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea (the ice pick lobotomy scene).
But anyway, I'm bumping this cause my muse hit me and I
After your first stint as a drone, you get a job at us or one of our subsidiaries. Oh don't worry, we have SO many subsidiaries. You got degrees in Theology and Modern Dance, we'll find you a spot somewhere. and you'll be our most loyal and productive employee. Why? Because every day you're working here, you earn yourself more credit towards your next drone stint. What, you thought you could get permanent servitude? Get in line. Admittedly, it tends to create some problems...there are only so many ways to cover gaps in your resume, and only so many ways to spin "custom-tooled semi-autonomous fucktoy" as work experience. Unless you want to go into customer service.
"Maybe the real torture is being alone with your thoughts."
"No, I think the real torture was getting beaten with 17 different implements."
"And THEN being left alone."
"Well, all I was thinking after the beatings was OW MOTHERFUCKER; not much chance for existential angst or self-reflection."
"Just one question, Rowan: Was it really harder for you to lose sleep for months, isolate yourself from others, come out as TRANS, sign away a not-insignificant chunk of your life to a company that promised to treat you as something between "living zoo exhibit" and "thrift store couch," go through a hazing period that probably violates the Geneva Convention (without even bitching), then get a mental reconditioning that makes MKULTRA look like "Simon Says"...Was all that REALLY easier than just admitting to yourself "Hey, I like weird porn."? Cause most people with your...paraphilia just stick to fapping. On the positive side, I think you're happier now...and not on 4chan anymore."
"Maybe the real torture is being alone with your thoughts."
"No, I think the real torture was getting beaten with 17 different implements."
"And THEN being left alone."
"Well, all I was thinking after the beatings was OW MOTHERFUCKER; not much chance for existential angst or self-reflection."
"Just one question, Rowan: Was it really harder for you to lose sleep for months, isolate yourself from others, come out as TRANS, sign away a not-insignificant chunk of your life to a company that promised to treat you as something between "living zoo exhibit" and "thrift store couch," go through a hazing period that probably violates the Geneva Convention (without even bitching), then get a mental reconditioning that makes MKULTRA look like "Simon Says"...Was all that REALLY easier than just admitting to yourself "Hey, I like weird porn."? Cause most people with your...paraphilia just stick to fapping. On the positive side, I think you're happier now...and not on 4chan anymore."
Last edited:
New work, if shorter: Galatea On-site Customer Service "Ayn Rand" is not a tag, and I'm not gonna be the one to add it.
"We tried using drones for customer support. It didn't work. The official reason was that clients wanted a human face to talk to/bitch at/complain to. What I think? Even drones have standards. And after operant conditioning, sensory deprivation, 8-hour edge sessions, cervix fucking, full-body waxing, etc., listening to some entitled rich doofus complain cause the honey he got smeared in wasn't organic just loses its priority."
Re-reading this story, and I think I like it better the second time. Maybe because there's less "WTF" this time. Although I'm disliking Helen more. SO MUCH TALKING. She seems...stereotypical? Or maybe the world DOES belong to those born without the curse of self-knowledge, as the prophet said.
"We tried using drones for customer support. It didn't work. The official reason was that clients wanted a human face to talk to/bitch at/complain to. What I think? Even drones have standards. And after operant conditioning, sensory deprivation, 8-hour edge sessions, cervix fucking, full-body waxing, etc., listening to some entitled rich doofus complain cause the honey he got smeared in wasn't organic just loses its priority."
Re-reading this story, and I think I like it better the second time. Maybe because there's less "WTF" this time. Although I'm disliking Helen more. SO MUCH TALKING. She seems...stereotypical? Or maybe the world DOES belong to those born without the curse of self-knowledge, as the prophet said.
Last edited:
One last burst of inspiration.
First story: Memos From Aphrodite, wherein more comedy is had.
Second story wound up turning into smut, so here's the clean part:
Drone Dreams
>Had one again last night
>Dream or memory?
>I don't know…
>Every night, I wonder if I'm getting one
>What do you think causes them?
>Leftover remnants of drone programming? Memories?
>Wishful thinking?
>A voice, whispering to your ghost while your body sleeps.
>You wake up, heart pounding, still quivering from the dream orgasm…
>Share yours. Here's the list…
>Come, O beautiful and comely goddess;
>I summon you with holy words and pious soul.
[150 entries/prompts of various degrees of smuttiness redacted]
>You know Aphrodite is reading these, right?
>Of course. Why do you think we share them?
>At one time or another, we have each given her everything else, including the right to give things away. Why not these, too?
>Is it data?
>Hopes?
>Prayers?
>Little HTML prayer flags, waving in the server wind…
>Little relics of eidolons…
>Is it holy or horny?
>Call it devotion…
>You delight in festivities, O bridelike mother of the Erotes,
>O Persuasion whose joy is in the bed of love, secretive, giver of grace,
>visible and invisible, lovely-tressed daughter of a noble father,
>bridal feast companion of the gods, sceptered she-wolf,
>beloved and man-loving giver of birth and of life,
>with your maddening love-charms you yoke mortals
>and the many races of beasts to unbridled passion.
First story: Memos From Aphrodite, wherein more comedy is had.
Second story wound up turning into smut, so here's the clean part:
Drone Dreams
>Had one again last night
>Dream or memory?
>I don't know…
>Every night, I wonder if I'm getting one
>What do you think causes them?
>Leftover remnants of drone programming? Memories?
>Wishful thinking?
>A voice, whispering to your ghost while your body sleeps.
>You wake up, heart pounding, still quivering from the dream orgasm…
>Share yours. Here's the list…
>Come, O beautiful and comely goddess;
>I summon you with holy words and pious soul.
[150 entries/prompts of various degrees of smuttiness redacted]
>You know Aphrodite is reading these, right?
>Of course. Why do you think we share them?
>At one time or another, we have each given her everything else, including the right to give things away. Why not these, too?
>Is it data?
>Hopes?
>Prayers?
>Little HTML prayer flags, waving in the server wind…
>Little relics of eidolons…
>Is it holy or horny?
>Call it devotion…
>You delight in festivities, O bridelike mother of the Erotes,
>O Persuasion whose joy is in the bed of love, secretive, giver of grace,
>visible and invisible, lovely-tressed daughter of a noble father,
>bridal feast companion of the gods, sceptered she-wolf,
>beloved and man-loving giver of birth and of life,
>with your maddening love-charms you yoke mortals
>and the many races of beasts to unbridled passion.
this whole story was just... amazing.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The themes of this work were on the knife edge of familiarity to me, and while they don't resonate at all, I can see the intended goal. The sections from Rowan's point of view were practically alien to my perception of bodily experience, so that may have contributed to my sense of alienation towards her character (which considering alienation is an aspect of her personality makes it seem funny somehow). I am perhaps the wrong type of audience for this one, but I could definitely see this being published in an anthology. As said by Cesar A. Cruz "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." so I would like to thank the author for so thoroughly disturbing me.