Con and Consent

I have a big, philosphical post coming up about some things that got brought up on Twitter, and as I write the printer is churning out CD labels and cover art! But first, some more stuff from Dragon*Con.

One of the most entertaining things about going to events - whether on the scale of Dragon*Con or not - is meeting new people who are interested in hypnosis but uncertain about it. One of the downsides of Dragon*con in specific is a specific cosplayer. There's no point in naming her or her character. The locals all know who she is and are already nodding. Everyone else can just take our word for it, seriously... she really takes character a bit too far. Bear in mind that this is coming from a woman who thinks that roleplay within hypnosis is one of the most entertaining and even fulfilling things one can do with it recreationally.

One of the points I make repeatedly when speaking about hypnotic roleplay is that scenes need to have a firmly defined beginning and ending. Another is the use of safewords to make sure that every scene is consensual. This becomes even more important when dealing with people who may not be involved with or aware that roleplay is taking place - and that applies to all roleplay, whether hypnotic or not. Billions of electrons have been used to make posts on this topic when it comes to LARPs (live-action roleplays), and there's a lot of discussion in the D/s community about public play and whether it is safe, sane, and consensual if people unaware of the scene are involved.

Into this comes this cosplayer. She comes to the panel which is essentially a Hypno 101 panel, meant to dispel myths and falsehoods about hypnosis for a general audience. Right off the bat, she starts in on the panelists about her vulnerability to hypnosis and how it affects her crimefighting superpowers. She was shut down pretty darn quickly, but when one of the panelists asked the assembled group to close their eyes and take a deep breath, she promptly went into trance and stayed there for the whole rest of the panel. Everyone else in the room understood this to be a demonstration of how trance sometimes feels so normal because we experience it so much. She just stayed that way. (The guy with her, who I assume is either her boyfriend or her caretaker, asked some good questions and contributed a lot.)

Now, as a Domme I'm very used to people IMing me and promptly talking about how my words are putting them into hypnosis. I ask if they've ever listened to my word, even my free stuff. No. Have I ever talked to them under another ID? No. I'm a HypnoDomme, and so therefore every word I say is by definition hypnotic. While there are some people who are probably that easy, for the vast majority of these people I'm really a sentient sex toy. They want to go into hypnosis, therefore they're going to do it... whether I take any real action or not. Most of the time, this is amusing. Sometimes, it's annoying. I know very well people like this are not going to contribute to my well-being in any meaningful way, be it by buying session time, buying CDs, or even admitting "I'm broke, let's just be friends and talk." I'm a masturbatory object, and I really wish they'd just whack off and go away. I did not consent to hypnotizing them, therefore it's not really D/s.

(Note this is not applicable to the whole giant class of people who approach me for honest conversation and friendship. Bless you. You keep right on messaging!)

The people at the panel, panelists and audience alike, did not consent to be in on this woman's roleplay. They did not consent to her game. Watching the audience's reaction, it became clear that most of them considered her at best clueless, most likely rude, and at worst actually possibly mentally ill. It was also evident, given that she chose to sit in the front row right on the aisle ("front and center"), that she was coming in with the intention of being noticed.

I don't know whether the cosplayer enjoyed her "fun." What fun there may have been, though, was at the expense of other people who didn't ask or give their OK to be props in her game or even just bystanders. My friends, that just isn't cool at all. Please, when you roleplay or cosplay, consider the people around you. That panel room emptied a lot faster than it normally did, and people didn't get to ask questions of one of the panelists because of this. As I left, a total stranger was commenting on how creepy the woman in the front row had been. That's just sad.

In a D/s situation, whether you practice RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink) or SSC (Safe, Sane, and Consensual), the word consensual is in there. Please apply consent, not simply or only to your partners, but to others who might be involved - whether it's D/s or not.

Back from Con...

Back from Con, and everyone is begging me for stories about the whole thing. Jukebox posted a quick story on his blog, so I won't cover that one. I'll just say that I got too little sleep and had too much fun for words...

OK, one quick story.

Saturday night during the hypnosis demo a lovely raver girl in a corset came in and pretty much begged to be hypnotized. She was the essence of hot... not too slender, easy to trance, and generally enthusiastic. She brought some friends with her, and one of them also wanted to be hypnotized over and over.

It was delicious watching them let go first to the rapids I was doing, then to the pocket watch. The raver girl was easy enough that when I was doing rapids on other people, she was going into medium depth trance just watching. And sure enough, they were geeky enough that giving them power buttons on the backs of their necks served as an easy way to shut down and reboot them. Note that I didn't have to do this as a formal posthypnotic trigger - "When I do this, you will respond this way." I simply mentioned "A lot of geeks power down when I..." and then demonstrated on my pets. From there, their unconscious minds did the rest.

I love Con.

I also made a few new friends, met some people from online I hadn't previously encountered, got to play with some old friends, and hypnotized someone with a turkey sandwich.

More later, but I wanted people to know I'm still out there!

Dragon*Con: The Story So Far

Crazy hectic busy. Driving and driving and I hate Atlanta traffic. Very patient Reth and my pet kitty. Get to hotel, and Jukebox and Copper show up. Pizza and riding elevators and recouping from travel. Trancing and bedtime.

Day two: Waking up, working out with Copper, showering with Copper, Georgia Aquarium. Whale sharks, beautiful sea creatures, meeting a person I knew from the Yahoo hypno chat rooms. Walking back to the hotel, Seran arriving, trancing him and programming him. New microphone as a present!! (More yay than I can express.) Registration, dinner, putting Jukebox to bed, out trancing with Copper, bed.

Day three: showering, Nimoy and Shatner panel, sciencey stuff, buying stuff, lunch, and now happy sciencey stuff again. Tonight: music and MST3K. And trancing.

This has been my vacation so far in thirty seconds. Upcoming: hypnosis meetup Saturday and Sunday! (Please repost these times to hypno sites... I don't have goods web access.)

More later!