hesitant independent

I'm totally not looking to be florted or anything... plz, that'd be horrible...

[cadence-the-hypnotic-floret]

Good lord.

6700 words.

This puppy play file is going to be a monster.

Y'all ain't ready for this one. 😁

EDIT: Teaser is up btw ;)

Post by @cadence-the-hypnotic-floret · 1 audio track

💬 0  🔁 0  ❤️ 4 · A Stray's Lucky Day (Early Access and Teaser) · Because I still have about a week buffer, my next file is up on my Patreon

[cadence-the-hypnotic-floret]

If you don't like non-con, this setting is not for you.

If you don't like dubcon, this setting is not for you.

If you don't enjoy forced drugging, intox play, and being treated as lesser, this setting is not for you.

If you aren't generally down with the idea that changing a person to help them be happier and less miserable, even if this means drastically changing them against their will, is a good thing in a fantasy setting, HDG might not be for you.

And that's fine. It's not for everyone. It's aggressively, emphatically not for everyone. It's niche, it's weird, and we're quite happy to stay that way. There's nothing wrong with reading HDG, bouncing off it, and going, "Hm, not my thing".

That said, if your response is to explicitly seek out consent in the non-con setting; if your response is to complain when the consent gets even slightly dubious (shoutouts to the weirdos whining about Good Sensory, a fic which is and continues to be as consensual as it is possible to be within the world and framework of HDG); if your response is to rate fics based on whether or not someone gets their mind erased...

...maybe don't? Maybe go find a different setting and writing community. Hell, make your own. HDG is probably not for you, and it definitely doesn't need you to "fix" it.

We're over here in our sandbox playing with toys like disempowerment, dehumanization, and unconditional love and care regardless of whether you think you need or deserve it. If that's not your jam, there's countless other sandboxes with countless other toys to play in. Find one of them.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to slow-boiling a Terran so hard she doesn't realize how few choices she truly has left, and making it so much fun for her she doesn't really care.

[violet-or-something]

Some of the responses I've seen to this post accusing it of being gate-keepy are a little bit concerning tbh. It's true and valid that not every story has to an emotionally complicated almost-nightmare to work (there is a long tradition of fluff fics in HDG, after all, and the vast, vast majority of what's written is on some level wish fulfilment), but the non-consent really truly is inescapable – maybe it's worth spelling out some of the reasons why.

The Affini Compact does not permit you to suffer if you could be helped. Its ethos is to give you what you need, regardless of whether or not you want it. This is obviously true in rebel capture stories where the non-consent is explicit, but it's not only true there. There's no level of "good behavior" where the Compact will respect your wishes or boundaries. vis-a-vis suffering.

If you're an independent and you're struggling, you can expect any affini in your life to take action about it. That doesn't just mean kicking down your door and collaring you. It might mean having a wellness check called on you (a not-at-all-subtle allusion to a thing that happens in real life, spun to be less horrifying but no less an invasion of your privacy). It might mean the affini in your life make it a minor project of theirs to nudge you toward changes that will make you better, and keep updated on your progress with those changes – they may be as blunt or as light-touch as the author prefers, but they're still sticking their vines into your personal life, and no amount of boundary setting is going to keep them out.

If you're a floret, you've signed a contract assenting to a life of very intimate physical and emotional care (which is not necessarily sexual, but probably involves things that are about as intimate and vulnerable), and that contract has an explicit provision saying that your affini can change your contract at any time for any reason without your approval. That isn't something you can consent to, definitionally – even if your affini never exercises that provision (something I really haven't seen much of). Consent requires perfect or neary perfect information about what you're consenting to, and a domestication contract frustrates that by design.

It's important to keep these things in mind when you read – as I said, HDG trends fluffier than a lot of largely transfem serial web fiction out there, but like a lot of what's in that broader space, its themes are still rooted in coercion and manipulation that in the context of a real relationship would be toxic.

Cadence's post isn't bemoaning a lack of "edginess" in HDG. Fluff fics have always been here, and it's extremely common for humans and affini to agree to things in ways that are definitely shaped like consent and good faith negotiation, including a lot of beloved stories.

Cadence's post is about a specific phenomenon that happens with concerning regularity, where someone discovers the setting and mainlines a bunch of stories without recognizing that the stories they're reading are noncon/dubcon for one reason or another, and while I'm sensitive to concerns of gatekeeping this phenomenon has a bunch of downstream consequences that aren't good for anyone involved.

This hypothetical user will ask for more stories similar to the one they read, then be shocked and put off when they recognize some of those stories are non-consent.

Recommending stories to this user will be impossible, because they don't have the language to articulate their actual preferences except through a private definition of "consent."

The setting will become a minefield for them, because the idea of the setting they internalized from misreading the small pocket of stories they liked doesn't reflect reality – more of the stories they find will hurt them than not, and they'll fall into a toxic love/hate relationship where they can't put HDG down despite being emotionally hurt by it more oftent than not.

They'll evangelize for HDG in places where it is extremely not appropriate to do so, like stream chats and social media comment sections. Remember, they think they're just reading transfem erotica, not problematic consent and kink – they're recommending this to people who are not looking for problematic kink, and may not be looking for anything in the vicinity of smut. "Stories belong to their readers" has to have limits – don't go recommending smut, even ace smut, in contexts where it is not being asked for.

Users who do that previous bullet also tend to be more conscious of their asynchronous view. The label "noncon truther" is sometimes used as a derogatory for them – they're often under the belief that what they're reading isn't noncon, either because the character on the receiving end wants or needs what happpens to them, or more problematically out of syllogistic logic like "Nonconsent is bad, I like this story, and I don't like bad things, ∴ this story is consensual."

Both of these rationalizations are dangerous.

The latter is a form of moral puritanism that's fertile soil for conflict-prone behavior, and an especially caustic one due to how it's built on layers of denial. The notion that the thing they like is nonconsent or otherwise problematic is an ego threat to them – the way they see themselves would have to change if they came to believe the thing they like is nonconsensual, and that underlying cognitive dissonance can manifest in seeming conflict-seeking behavior. They may frequently get into heated arguments with others, driven by a psychological need to reaffirm that they don't like The Bad Thing, and so They Aren't Bad. Rarely, they may engage in harassing behavior trying to root The Bad Thing out of this thing they love, as though it's an insidious corruption rather than a foundational element it was constructed on.

As for those who believe that it can't be noncon/dubcon if the character on the receiving end wants or needs what happpens to them on a subconscious level, I really hope I don't have to spell out why that's a dangerous belief to hold.

Nobody wants to take your HDG fluff from you (if they do I'll fight them), but we all need to recognize that whatever is happening in that fluff, it is not actually consensual. That's fine. You're allowed to like it. The violation of consent and denial of boundaries in order to provide help those boundaries are set up to reject is often the point.

As a writer in the setting, a member of the community, and a feminist, I just really want everyone to understand what they've gotten into here. This is not what consent looks like. This is stuff you should not try at home. Please stay safe. And please don't flame out in someone's comments section because you're overwhelmed by the cognitive dissonance of liking something you've built your identity on despising – nobody deserves that.

❤️