The Grand Unified Theory Of Smut

[brazenautomaton]

hey for those of you who liked the smut-theory blog you may want to go check out and spread this link right here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25394464

I wonder what it contains

I wonder if someone will help me come up with a better summary

[brazenautomaton]

none of you reblogged this

you people are monsters

[smut-theory]

I love your hentai culture world! How about Henterra, for a world name? Also: can I send suggestions for more cultures in this world if the mood strikes me? I love hentai world building SO MUCH.

Sure, you can send in any suggestions you like.

[smut-theory]

Alarune: The Heartwood

The Short And Sweet: Alarune are a species of hermaphroditic sentient plants, generally taking the form of a human or elf with forest-tone skin sitting within an immense flower. Their culture is sedentary and close-knit, emphasizing close bonds between individuals and involvement in the community. Though their sex drive is low, they’re quite possibly the best romantic partners you could have, assuming you’re the type to put down roots.

Alarune Biology: Alarune have two ‘selves’: their blossom, which is the broad flower where their mind is stored, and their body, which is a humanoid puppet-self that lets them interact much more easily with the world.

The Blossom: Alarune blossoms vary considerably in aesthetic: some have broad, flat petals like a lily, while others are more roselike. Some have exotic and brilliant colors: others are relatively muted. No two look exactly alike.

That said, there are some commonalities, chief among them size. Even the smallest Alarune blossoms are at least fifteen feet wide: some particularly impressive individuals reach diameters of over twenty-five feet! Alarune are not houseplants - they can easily take up entire rooms.

The central five-foot diameter of Alarune blossoms is always filled with a shallow pool of nectar - the source of the flower’s drowsiness-inducing pheromones. Alarune nectar is immensely sweet, and has a consistency similar to syrup: some non-Alarune have been known to experience aphrodisiac effects when they eat it or absorb it though their skin.

Alarune blossoms have extensive and complex root systems, so naturally Alarune tend to have problems with mobility: though they have full control over their many petals, vines and roots, they can only drag their blossoms over land at a rate of a few feet per hour - and even making that slow speed is significant work.

Fortunately, Alarune are able to survive comfortably on photosynthesis and ambient mana: they are also quite capable of defending themselves against threats. Even if their hypnotic pheromones aren’t enough, they have a tremendous number of vines to lash their enemies with, as well as inborn capacity with nature magic.

The Body: Alarune bodies are almost as varied as their flowers: though the majority of them can be broadly described as 'humans with forest or flower-petal skin tones’, many Alarune are significantly divergent from this norm. Pointed ears are common, as are wooden horns, antlers or brow ridges: some Alarune have bodies that look more like ambulatory trees than people.

Just like the flowers themselves, Alarune bodies are universally hermaphroditic: however, they aren’t generally interfertile with other species. Rather than producing sperm and seminal fluid, Alarunes ejaculate pollen-infused nectar: similarly, their megaspores aren’t generally fertilizable by non-plants without the use of magic.

Alarune bodies serve as their hands, eyes, ears and mouths. Without their mobile selves nearby, Alarune flowers have only a sense of touch, and have to use their vines to communicate in sign language or writing.

Though most Alarune are loath to separate their bodies from their blossoms, Alarune bodies can actually range moderate distances from their flowers. However, even the hardiest of Alarune can’t spend more than an hour or so apart from their blossom, or travel much further than a mile away from it. Those who stray too far or for too long experience steadily worsening fatigue, eventually progressing to unconsciousness and the death of their mobile body.

If an Alarune’s mobile body dies but their blossom remains intact, their blossom will fruit with a new body. However, this is a taxing and unpleasant process - after all, the Alarune is left deaf, blind and mute for weeks while their new body is budding. Most try to avoid this if at all possible.

Some rare Alarune - usually those who grow in very mana-rich environments - are capable of maintaining multiple bodies at once. This can cause significant issues at first while the Alarune learns to multitask, but the convenience of having multiple bodies generally outweighs the downsides.

The Rest: Alarune inherit genetic memories from their parents. As a result, even a pair of Alarune who have never met each other before will have impressions of each other’s personalities, some of which can be remarkably specific and intimate: over time, this has developed into all Alarune treating all other Alarune as part of their extended family.

This genetic memory is also largely responsible for Alarune culture’s matter-of-fact attitude towards sex: after all, it’s hard for anything to remain taboo when you and everyone you know share the inherited kink library of your ancestors.

That said, Alarune sex drives are actually remarkably low: the majority of them go for months without attending to their libido. As a result, Alarune culture emphasizes romantic attraction over sexual attraction, as well as commitment to relationships: many of them are quite shy about courting potential partners.

Alarune Culture: Due to their deep sense of shared heritage and their general difficulties with escaping annoying neighbours, Alarune have a very tight-knit community that embraces the concepts of diversity and tolerance. Their genetic memories can make them seem wise beyond their years, since they are able to inherit the perspectives and lessons of their ancestors: however, these inherited lessons and viewpoints can also make them stodgy and old-fashioned, especially because their mobility issues make it more difficult for them to gain first-hand experience of new things.

Their genetic memories also shape their views on sex: very few things are taboo in Alarune culture, because everyone remembers what having that kink was like. The incest taboo in particular is practically nonexistent - all Alarune are intimately related to all other Alarune anyway, so why should it matter who you love? The heart wants what the heart wants.

Because Alarune are all hermaphrodites, they can also have trouble understanding the social implications of gender, much less the categories lesbian, gay, bi and straight. Why on earth would you exclude some people as potential partners? Appearance is only skin-deep: it’s the meeting of minds that really matters.

Due to this emphasis on tolerance and acceptance, Alarune have a degree of cultural pride in their low libido: they don’t experience such frippery as crushes based on appearance, they’re not shallow like that! Alarune romances are grand and fated and romantic, they’re not based on something so plebeian as sex.

Thus do the Alarune manage to be repressed and shy about sex, even while they’re casually discussing the finer points of how to punish a disobedient sub. After all, that’s just a theoretical discussion. They would never mean to imply that you could maybe possibly theoretically be their sub. Oh gosh, you’re making them blush, stop it!

The Kinks: The Alarune common thread is about devotion: wether that means monogamous commitment, being something essential for your partner, sharing your deepest secrets, obeying without question, or simply being extremely physically close, Alarune culture and biology encourages and supports it.

If your image of devotion is commitment and courtly romance, Alarune shyness and demisexuality make them partners that are often best served by long-term relationships. If your image of devotion is being someone’s essential other half, Alarune mobility issues provide an obvious area where they need support. If your image of devotion is unquestioning obedience, Alarunes’ hypnotic pheromones and whiplike vines provide the instruments of your submission. Their deep cultural acceptance of diversity and kink means that you can entrust them with your darkest secrets, while their genetic memories and romantic ideals can provide an element of fated romance.

Now, let’s examine a few kinks and potential kinks more closely:

Incest is an obvious first candidate, given the Alarune genetic memory. While partially included because I know one of my fellow-mods enjoys it, there are other important reasons for its inclusion.

1: It’s a taboo, but one of the weaker ones. By having it be visibly and obviously broken, the Alarune acceptance of 'taboo’ kink is demonstrated, without having to make direct reference to more extreme kinks.

2: By having all Alarune consider each other family, I can emphasize community and deepness of affection.

3: It supports a significant element of the larger Prismata culture. Watch this space.

BDSM: Alarune can work well both as dominants and as submissives, though they’re more obviously optimized for the dominant role.

Dominant Alarune make use of their plethora of vines for bondage and whipping scenes, while their pheromones’ hypnotic influence inspires obedience in their subs. Depending on the Alarune, they might even tattoo their submissives with intricate designs, using thorns for needles and the natural pigments of their blossom for ink. Those subs who are into pain might also appreciate the use of those same thorns in scenes: there are plenty of non-thorned Alarune for those who aren’t masochists.

Submissive Alarune are likely to be shrinking violets, eagerly obedient to their dominant partner’s every desire: additionally, their mobility problems mean that bondage can sometimes be a matter of simply withdrawing support. For the sadists among us, the replaceable nature of Alarune mobile bodies means that many potentially-dangerous kinks can be enjoyed without any risk of permanent physical harm.

This leads in nicely to our next topic: endosomatophilia. Alarune flowers naturally contain pools of intoxicating nectar: by closing their petals around a partner in this pool, they can embrace and enclose them fully. This kink (being contained within one’s partner) is known as endosomatophilia: descriptions of why it’s hot range from “it’s comforting to be that close to someone” to “it’s like sex inside sex!”

Endosomatophilia is intimately related with vore and unbirthing kinks: in the first case, the implied 'Inner space’ is the stomach, while in the latter it’s the womb. Transformation is often involved as well. It’s possible that some Alarunes’ “extra bodies” are actually partners who’ve become part of them, sharing the same greater self. After all, what greater act of devotion could there be?

[smut-theory]

Have you considered making an erotic flash game based off your Hentaicultures? It would probably be more complex than most other, even very in-depth games like Corruption of Champions or Flexible Survival, given that you'd have to account for more settings and options and TF probably wouldn't be there, or at least not to the same degree, and you'd need a light or dark toggle switch, maybe finding some way to turn this into some kind of tabletop RPG system might work? Other erotic RPG books exist

Hey, let’s take it one step at a time. Barely any people have even submitted names for the setting (and I am not going to count “Hentai McHentaiface”, though that was a pretty dank meme). 

A game more complex than CoC or Flexible Survival for a smaller audience is absolutely not going to happen; those are huge projects, none of us have the skill to attempt it, and unlike those games there’s no central mechanic to tie the gameplay around. By which I mean, those are games about transformation and corruption, but the Hentaicultures are all about different kinks, so there’s no common thread between them to make the game about. Though if someone wants to make Bimbo Bunny Manager 2k17, be my guest.

A tabletop RPG system would be more likely, since at least one of us loves tabletop game design and that doesn’t require the technical skills of a Flash game, but it’s still a long way off if it’s ever coming. 

[smut-theory]

Whence the Header Image

Someone asked where our header image came from!

Here's the short answer: It's from a questionably-safe-for-work card game in development hell, called, rather unimaginatively,  "Schoolgirls love tentacles."

But I think there's a longer answer worth exploring: how did it come to be that there are pieces of reasonably-SFW Art depicting cute, loving relationships between women and tentacles?

[Image from “Schoolgirls Love Tentacles”, depicting a girl on a cold day wearing a set of tentacles like a short scarf. She is sending a text message on her phone.]

To some extent, the answer is "Because there always has been." The Japanese woodcut of "The dream of the fisherman's wife" dates back hundreds of years, and it depicts a consensual sexual encounter between a woman and an octopus.

But... The stereotypical plotline of 'tentacle porn' is a rape fantasy. Some sort of horrible squiggly creature is trying to claim you for its own! Oh no, whatever shall you dooooo?~

How did that turn around 180 degrees and develop an entire new consentacle subgenre?

Well, there was a practical component. At one point there were rumours of a ban on tentacle porn because it was seen as too violent, so artists who enjoyed the genre fought back by deliberately drawing more happy and loving relationships with tentacles - but that doesn't explain why they kept on with it after the authorities' eyes passed elsewhere.

If you'll bear with me for a moment, I'd like to talk about corruption, sluttification, sissification, defloration, conditioning or training, addiction, and degradation. These kinks have an obvious common thread - sliding into into 'sin and debauchery.' The idea that you love someone or something so much, that you're willing to throw away precious parts of yourself for it - to become a different and possibly worse sort of person because the sex is just that good.

Often, this implies that the group you're petitioning for access to is somehow subhuman - that being a sex worker, or a non-virgin, or a promiscuous person, or a woman, or of another race is fundamentally worse than what you are right now.

Naturally, this doesn't generally make people in the group chosen as 'lower' look well on these kinks.

But what about tentacle monsters? Tentacle monsters are the lowest of the low. They're filthy, slimy, amorphous creatures that can only get partners by force.

So, metaphorically...

Consensual Tentacle Porn is about the ability of outsiders to be loved and accepted.

It says: "If Squigly can do it, so can you!"

Even beyond that, the consentacle genre has other important messages to send. 1: Breaking the rules of how relationships are "supposed to work" is okay. 2: Sex is fun, and it's okay to want it. 3: You can love and romance people who are different from you. 4: People's personalities matter. 5: Being visibly kinky is okay. 6: Indulging in degradation kinks with a consenting partner is okay!

In short: the Consentacles subgenre has survived because people want and need it. It's a very good example of sex-positive pornography, and even beyond that, it fulfills desires and fantasies that tentacle rape simply can't reach.

In the end, all the tentacles really wanted was to be noticed by Senpai.

[Image from “Schoolgirls Love Tentacles”, depicting a girl leaning in to kiss a tentacle wearing glasses. The tentacle is blushing furiously.]

[smut-theory]

Hentaiculture: You’re Nobunny Until Somebunny Loves You

(content warning: busty blonde bimbo breeding bunnies with Babbage engines)

The Short And Sweet:

The “magical market hypothesis” is the pithy explanation of why your clever scheme to exploit a gap in mana costs and produce infinite free energy won’t work: the ‘market’ will correct until you no longer profit mana out of the process. Some people phrase this was “you can’t beat the market”, but they are wrong. Because that’s what the bunnies do. Their entire physiology is one gigantic arcane salami-slicing scam.

The symbolic and magical energy involved in the process of creating life and imbuing it with a soul and placing it out into the world is enormous, far greater than the chemical and energy input. Bunnies evolved into a humanoid, magical form that exploits this: by stealing away some of the mana required to make a new being and make it permanent, they obtain a surplus of mana. Each bunny will be born many times during their lifespan, retaining the same soul, memories, and identity, but taking on some attributes of each new mother or father they are born from. A while after each birth, they will ‘fade’, disappearing, their souls and minds going back into the queue for rebirth. All the mana that would have gone to the symbolically-expensive attribute of permanence and the creation of an entirely new soul is siphoned off into the communal energy store, known as the Eggregore. The “new” reborn bunny gets her bearings and goes back to whatever she was doing before she vanished.

Bunny culture places no value at all on general intelligence, which leads others to write them off as “idiots”, or, charitably, “ditzes”. They may be ditzy and bubbleheaded, they may be obliviously sexual and have no aversion to being fucked or impregnated by anyone, and they may not remember useful facts like “how to do math”. They don’t value general intelligence, but they DO value social intelligence, managing large networks of connected people and knowing who to go to for what skill. Write off the bunny bimbos at your own peril: in those teeming bunny warrens, that bunny you laughed at is bound to know somebun who’s an expert at whatever thing is going to ruin your day, and that Eggregore is going to give her a lot of time to plan how to get back at you.

Details: Physiology

Like all races who can use magic, bunnies have the general shape of Elves [though we will use the term “humanoid” for our readers, the word for the form is actually more like “Elfanoid” and humans are considered Elfanoid primates], with a few leftover accoutrements of their evolutionary forbears: two long ears coming from the top of the head, a poofy cottonball tail at the base of the spine, and legs that just don’t quit. In that they can kick your head off your shoulders. And, of course, a propensity for breeding.

Bunnies breed constantly, with everyone; there’s a good chance of any given bunny you meet being pregnant at any given time. Their primary sexual interest is to experience pregnancy and birth as sexually pleasurable, and so they think “normal” sex to get pregnant is just a fun activity to do with pals, or a good way to meet people. With pregnancy pleasurable and desirable as an end unto itself, and no long-term risk from STDs, bunnies almost never turn down sex, even when it comes as a complete surprise. You might think that, since they enjoy pregnancy so much, they would fastidiously maintain 100% pregnancy uptime, but you know, that’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot to keep track of, and really it’s just better to let it happen than to stress out about it.

Even if it didn’t feel so good, they’d want to do it anyway as common courtesy to the other bunnies who have faded out and are waiting in line to be rebirthed. But allowing fellow bunnies back in the world is just one benefit: though each bunny maintains the same soul, memories, and identity over each fade and rebirth, they take on minor qualities of their ‘parents’ each time they are reborn, and a bunny with more parents is healthier, stronger, and smarter... relatively speaking, anyway. Bunnies, without anyone to impregnate them, are capable of inducing parthenogenesis through non-reproductive sex activity with each other; lone bunnies can induce parthenogenesis through non-reproductive sex by themselves, but anyone birthed as a result of this doesn’t last as long before fading again and doesn’t get the benefits of multiple parentage. Bunnies don’t fault each other for doing this, even if it is a slight disadvantage to the bunny being born; you gotta do what you gotta do.

Though bunnies age -- most of them live to 50 objective years old but more on that later -- they do so in discrete chunks when rebirthed, not continuously over time. Early in a bunny’s life, these segments of life between births are shorter, and they grow longer as the lifespan goes on, but there is no hard and fast rule for when they occur: it seems to be based not just on time elapsed, but things experienced, and a bunny who learns or sees a lot of new things is likely to have a shorter time before her next fade and rebirth “locks it in”. A bunny who dies of unnatural causes is sent back into the rebirth queue just as if she had faded; however, she forgets anything she learned or experienced since her last rebirth. Something to be avoided, to be sure, but not as bad as what happens to everyone else. 

The first few times a bunny is born, it’s in the form of a colorful, brightly-patterned egg from which nothing hatches. Bunnies guess this is the bunny-to-be “learning” the basics like object permanence and language and that kinda stuff -- the first time a bunny comes out in recognizable humanoid form, it’s the equivalent of another species’s child being eight to ten years old. Which is probably a good thing, given that bunnies would not be good mothers to helpless infants. Space inside a bunny is compressed when gestating another bunny, and as different ages of bunny have different gestation periods, the onset of labor is usually a surprise, though a pleasant one.

Details: Culture

People may want to call bunnies “stupid”, but this is mean, and inaccurate. The preferred term is “ditzy”, or “spacey”, or “bubbleheaded”. A bunny is not an idiot, but she is a bimbo. She’s not really paying attention to most things, and takes some prompting to remember that she might have some useful or relevant information. Bunnies, as a culture, just don’t place any value on having general intelligence, or being perceptive. 

But they have incredible social intelligence, and ability to keep track of and relate to people. Due to the pseudorandom nature of what bunnies are assigned to what births, they don’t have a traditional familial structure or keep track of lineages; nobody really knows who is descended from whom, there is no formal hierarchy of any kind, but the bunnies all know each other’s names, personalities, and quirks and don’t understand why everyone else has such a hard time keeping track! Bunnies don’t sweat doing a lot of thinking about numbers or math or stuff they think is “boring” or “lame”, but when there is an intellectual task they enjoy, they throw themselves into it with zeal. Given that warrens have hundreds or thousands of bunnies, odds are, there’s a bunny in a given warren who just LOVES doing whatever particular task they need, and spends most of her free time on it. And every other bunny in the warren knows who to go to for it. 

In this way, bunny society can be called “specialized”, though that isn’t quite accurate, as not everyone has a specialty. Most bunnies find something that they think is super cool, but some of them don’t. And some of the ones that do, their interest just isn’t useful in any way. Bunnies don’t really care, and since nearly all of them are feeding the Eggregore with mana anyway, they don’t feel a need to pressure anyone to contribute. There is no provision in their society for “disabled” bunnies because they simply do not have a concept of disability as being different from the norm. Almost everyone is terrible at almost everything, so why make a special new category for bunnies who can’t do things? So what if you can’t walk, or see, that just means the list of things you are bad at is very slightly longer than everyone else’s, and keeping track of a percentage difference that small is a lot of work and sounds really boring, so let’s just forget that whole category thing.

For a subterranean species, bunnies are often seen out and about in the world. It’s tradition to spend one’s teen-to-twenties (equivalent) years out abroad, on what is known as “vaycay”.  Seeing what the world has to offer, increasing the chance you’ll stumble on something you think is neat, collecting interesting stories to tell back int he warren, and getting impregnated by a large and genetically diverse population -- such journeys are done in groups, so that when one bunny fades, she has a nearby bunny to be born from to get back to her business quickly. Some bunnies find something they love that can’t be done in the warren, and stay out in the world (oddly enough, the most common reason for this is discovering a passion for practicing law), but they stay in touch with the warren and with the latest group of bunnies out on vaycay. While out on vaycay, bunnies usually need to find some occupation to pay their rent and bills, and they are actually very popular as secretaries and administrative assistants, since their ability to keep track of lots of people is quite valuable in that position, and few people complain about their figure or semi-oblivious sexuality.

Once your vaycay is over, assuming you want to come back to the warren (and most do), then it’s time to settle back down at home. While power siphoned from the Eggregore helps all bunnies, notably in giving them the energy they would get from a healthy, well-balanced diet (which they don’t have, they mostly eat candy and ice cream), the Eggregore energy’s effects on the warren itself are most notable. The eggy matrix of mana compresses time and space around itself, with effects becoming more pronounced with proximity. As bunnies get older, they move deeper into the warren, and the Eggregore’s compression makes the rooms larger, fitting more bunnies, and time flows more slowly, giving bunnies more time to interact with the larger group. At the core of the warren is the Eggregore’s chamber itself, which usually appears to be a vast sunny meadow or beach or some other area suitable for lazing about and chit-chatting, and it is here where the oldest and ‘wisest’ bunnies are found, sometimes practicing their art, most of the time not doing much more than hanging out. Though a bunny usually lives to be around 50 before the final fade, experiencing compressed time doesn’t hasten this process -- it’s 50 outside world years, not 50 subjective ones, and by their own reckoning they can live nearly as long as some Elves. Of course, not much happens in those long lifespans, but hey, who said it had to? A denizen of the Eggregore core who needs to go to the surface for a day or so may come back to find many years have passed for her friends, but she still hasn’t missed much -- not more than she could be caught up on in a few minutes. Just a lot of hanging out, napping, games, and casual sex. Bunnies aren’t into the drama, you know? 

Along with selling excess mana, bunnies can also lease out space in the Eggregore chamber to outsiders who need extra time for things, though as their physiology wasn’t made for that particular magical field, they find themselves much more bubbleheaded and distractible. Not a lot gets done when an important conference or meeting or planning session gets time near the Eggregore, but it’s a popular destination for very busy people’s holidays. One thing that can’t get distracted is a computer, and mechanical Turing machines aren’t messed up by the time and space compression the way even hardy vacuum-tube computers are, so nowadays every Eggregore chamber has a few banks of Babbage engines constantly computing figures. Even counting the time it takes to repair them after errant volleyball hits damage them, they still can crunch numbers faster than larger electric computers, meaning their computing time can be sold at a high price. Good for the bunnies, as all that candy and ice cream isn’t free!

Bunnies are not very good at deliberate magic -- they have a natural, unconscious magic that makes them “lucky”, consisting of many really specific spells to influence outcomes in their favor, and the wider diversity of people who “father” them the more different spells they have available, but all those latent spells make it very hard to create and manage your own intentional magic. However, they are one of the few species and/or cultures of the world capable of performing true divine magic, wherein they ask for intercession of a deity to perform a miracle. The bunnies know their Goddess is real: her name is Cyndi, with the I dotted with a heart, and they know that Cyndi created them, needs them to generate energy for the Eggregore do she can use it to do god stuff in her god realm, and that she thinks they are doing a super great job and she loves them lots. They know this because Cyndi communicates with them some times: bunnies, usually priestesses, sometimes lay eggs that are made of hollow plastic and contain messages from their Goddess, written in purple gel pen, that say things like 

Wanted to let u gals know u are doing a super great job with all the mana! Love u lots!!! 

XOXOXO, Cyndi. 

PS. If there’s any goddess stuff I can do for u, lemme know! :-)

Though adherents of other faiths that don’t get miracles have all sorts of excuses why Cyndi isn’t REALLY divine, she is just some sort of trans-dimensional bimbo being who has limited powers but is not worthy of worship, the fact remains that writing a request for a favor on the back of one of her messages, resealing it in the egg, and placing it back inside a bunny will usually result in the request being granted by divine, sparkly pastel pink power. While a few letters and eggs are kept around in case of “like a really super bad emergency”, most of them end up being used to ask for sweets, party supplies, or other luxuries. Cyndi never seems to mind.

[smut-theory]

One kink, many reasons?

So it seems my procrastination game is so strong that attempting to finish a portion of my other entry spurred a whole other separate post. So, here’s a completely unplanned and spontaneous entry.

One thing I always find perplexing when people want to criticize kinks is that they always start from the assumption that everyone who is into a thing is into it for the same reasons. For example, that everyone who is into domination is apparently a (cis straight male) power hungry mysoginist who cannot love women as his equal, and everyone into submission is a traumatized brainwashed frail little (female) being with internalized mysoginy, etc etc

Personally, I really doubt that these people understand kinks as well as they like to go on about, for two simple reasons:

1) I know people who are not only into my same kink but sometimes even into the exact same kinda stuff as me, or close enough, who all have completely different reasons why they are into the thing. When it comes to noncon (which will be the main subject of my other entry), for one it’s about control, for another it’s degradation, for another is humiliation (as in causing shame), for me it’s distress, etc

2) I have some kinks that I am into for several vastily different reasons, and it’s more like they coincidentally happen to manifest as the same kink than a specific explanation to why I find the kink appealing.

To make an example: monster sex kink.

I am into monster sex hentai because it’s a degradation thing, because monsters are often disgusting and bestial, and the idea of fucking with a monster is repulsive and shameful, and it’s like being treated as a lesser being. Maybe it’s not even that monsters are evil, but they are used by someone else to do evil, and they’re just mindlessly doing what’s natural for them. Maybe they’re just following the instinct to mate, and you just happen to be the closest living being near them, and they can’t quite grasp that you aren’t of the same species, or that your struggles are an attempt to escape rather than just empty meaningless movements that they can’t understand.

But also, I am into monster sex hentai because it’s about complete unescapable loss of control, because monsters are often mindlessly evil in a way that’s different than humans, they have no empathy or pity or ulterior desire, they just want to harm and be cruel, and there is no way of bargaining or pleading or convincing them to stop, they will take you and hurt you because that’s what monsters do, it’s just in their nature, and a puny human can’t do anything to stop a powerful monster whose main drive is that to be as evil as it can. They will fuck you out of evil, and then will crush you when you are no longer useful or entertaining, or maybe they will use you as a breeding nest for their young until your body is consumed.

Moreover, I am into monster sex hentai because actually, are monsters really evil and disgusting and mindless, or is it what it’s expected of them? Are monsters really fundamentally different from humans, and undeserving of sympathy and understanding? I can relate to being a freak and being seen as undesirable. I like the idea that monsters can love too - and not everyone can accept that, and maybe it’s not in the same way as humans love - but monsters can fuck out of love, and it can be gentle because no one notices it but they actually can have a soft side, or it can be rough because that’s the only way they know how to act, but it can be beautiful in its own way.

And also, I am into monster sex because maybe some monsters are evil because of their humanlike part, because it’s their more human side that makes them choose to do evil, rather than it being unavoidable, and it’s their human feelings that make them go out of their way to obsess about someone in the same way as some humans do, but it’s their monster part that gives them the power to go beyond what an ill-intentioned human could do, that makes them truly dangerous and scary. They are monsters that will choose to hurt you and enjoy hurting you because of their human nature, and will have a disproportionate power to hurt you because of their supernatural nature.

Yet, if monsters are not evil but just not really capable of understanding, like beasts, couldn’t they be the ones who are being taken advantage of and used for sex? All they know is that this fucking thing feels good, and this weird creature touching them in weird ways makes some of their parts tingle and gives them a weird rush and an urge to relieve it. Maybe they’re the ones who are being corrupted into something unnatural and perverted, but they just don’t have the means to understand that. Maybe they even can grow to care in their own way for the human who makes them feel good and lets them use their body for sex, but the human is just using the monster without really caring about it, and one day will abandon the monster without a care because it doesn’t mean anything to them. And maybe the monster will feel lonely and confused and try to chase after them, and be attacked and hurt because they’re just a monster so killing them is not seen as bad.

These are some different ways in which I find the kink of monster sex arousing and interesting. As you can see, not only are they based on different things but some even contradict each other. All of the have very different drives behind them, but all of them have as main focus in common the concept of monster sex.

So, if not only different people can be into a single kink for very different reason, but the same person can be into a single kink for very different and sometimes contradictory reasons, it doesn’t really follow that every single person who is into a certain kink is into it because of the exact same reason caused by the same type of socialization.

At least, that is my conclusion. What do you think? Does the idea that the same kinks can come from many different things line up with your experience, or do you think I’m completely off-base and most people really are into certain things due to the same common and universal reasons? Do you also have kinks you are into due to reason that contradict each other? Did you just read this for the monster kink commentary and you’re really passionate about monster sex and now you just want to infodump and/or delve into elaborate monster sex discussion? Or is there anything else in this thread that you want to address?

Either way, feel free to comment!

[smut-theory]

Reader Poll: What Name For The World Of Hentai?

You may have noticed, there was no Hentaiculture last week or this week. Due to the war effort, mosaic filters are being strictly rationed, leading to sharp downturns in the production of hentai. We all pray for the safe and sexy return of our brave fighting men and women and futas and tentacle monsters.

But in the meantime, you can help!

So far, every hentaiculture has been made to occupy the same world: the Vampire Duchies of Otdykh, the Orcish Children of Zendigiish, the Succubus Diaspora, Kitsune Vale, the Dark Elves of Nahui-Citli, and the rules of magic, all exist alongside each other, along with several other hentai-cultures (at least three in development!). But while this world has lots of weird people in it, and lots of sex, and rules of magic and how that differs from physics, and bits of implied history, what it doesn’t have is a name, which makes it hard to refer to the world as a whole.

So that is where you come in! Have a neat or evocative-sounding name for this world? Or the rough germ of an idea that maybe someone else could refine into a name? Send it in! Reply or answer to this post, or send in anonymous asks or submissions with your suggestions for the name. If there’s enough entries, we’ll put up a strawpoll so that you, the fans, can decide between the best options.

[smut-theory]

Director Commentary: The Dark Elves of Nahui-Citli

This week, we’re going to try separating out the Hentaiculture and commentary, both to make it easier to respond to one or the other, and to allow people to form an opinion of the Hentaiculture on its own before being told what it was “supposed” to be doing. This is about yesterday’s Hentaiculture post, The Dark Elves of Nahui-Citli.

This entire hentaiculture was built up around a single scene image/idea: A mother impregnates her daughter, with a child that daughter will eventually impregnate, with... etc, etc, in an endless cycle. For this reason, all of them have to be futanari. Now, I personally love futanari, and would be happy replacing all the men in every hentaiculture with them, but I know not many share this opinion, so I am already on the back foot: most people prefer their fantasy realms with men and women, and I do like making things that can appeal to people who don't share all of my interests. So, I decide to use some strategic ambiguity so that, depending on what you are looking for, you can interpret this society as an endless self-perpetuating cycle of psychologically scarring abuse, as well as the bizarre-but-happy beautiful cycle of renewal and rebirth I originally envisioned. If you're reading charitably, you should see whatever you prefer most, and if you are reading uncharitably, nothing would have salvaged your opinion anyway. Images that are different depending on what angle you see them from are made with “lenticular printing”, and “lenticular” will be a good way to think of what I am trying to do with their morality and tone.

Dark Elves will be perfect for this morally-lenticular society, because there's equal associations of them just being Neutral Evil dominators and bouncy hentai sluts, someone can see hints of what they want to see. Also, I can explain how a cultural norm wherein all children produce at least one baby hasn't resulted in complete overpopulation: as Elves live a very long time, their gestation period is a very long time, too, so making babies as fast as they can is not all that fast. I also need a handwave for why incest hasn't imploded their gene pool, so I say, well, immortals have funny DNA stuff anyway don't worry about it.

Since, at least in my mind, a good deal of the fun of Dark Elves is their sense of control and composure, and that has them highly associated with bondage and domination anyway, I decide almost immediately there is a bondage and slavery element in this cycle. Now, slavery, especially the incestuous sort, comes across as evil way more easily than as positive, and it is hard to load it positively enough to make it seem okay to people who want it to be okay, while still being fucked up and abusive for those who want it to be fucked up and abusive.

So, I decide, I have to use their physiology and situation to justify it. By framing it as the inevitable result of their physical and cultural evolution, they can credibly say "Hey, we weren't *trying* to be weird, we just operate differently from other species, and things that would hurt you are very positive for us." But you can also, if you choose, read it as either rationalization, or cruel fate of biology inflicting terrible trauma, especially if it is phrased as "inevitable". The long gestation period helps justify the bondage-slavery part easily: pregnant people are more vulnerable and weaker and must be taken care of, Dark Elves are pregnant for a very long time, they need a long-term dependence and custodial situation that is separate from the normal form of childhood, as pregnancy comes after it. To justify the incest and dominance, I say that they need a very large and very tight family structure to discourage betrayal. Dark Elves, at least the evil D&D sort, are usually portrayed as being scheming and traitorous, so I acknowledge this as being part of their old history, that they have now moved away from by aligning their societal traditions to prevent it. Hopefully, this will be another thing allowing the lenticular interpretations, because it can either be “remnants of an evil society” or “yeah, we used to be evil, but we’re all right now.” 

It also helps to justify why they aren’t technologically advanced beyond everyone else, they were too busy murdering and betraying each other to progress. There was a sourcebook on Drow for D&D 3.5 that I really liked that said Drow had invented the steam engine on several different occasions, but were so paranoid and unwilling to share information or fairly compete that it just sparked another string of betrayal-murders instead of the Industrial Revolution. I liked that detail, but couldn’t find a way to fit it in, as the time period it describes was Long Ago and mostly-irrelevant.

As I detail the cultural associations of the bondage play, I originally say that handmade harnesses are only for the really poor or the really rich, but on reflection, I cut the 'really poor' part. People who want to see oppression can infer the presence of an expoited underclass from the presence of an upper class, while people who want to see a big, happy, weird family-society can see an upper class and everyone else taking care of each other as family in order to make a middle-class lifestyle. Adding the bit about passive-aggressive one-upsmanship is dialing back, in order to alleviate the tension that might be building around a slavery-focused society by showing them engaging in humanizing foibles even through their bizarre sex culture, and demonstrate "see, they don't exist just to create incest-slaves, they are people as well". Then, on reflection, I add the "crashing on the couch" explanation for much the same purpose, to get a few tension-defusing giggles and hint, for those who wish to believe it, that we can trust this society mostly works because we are being told where it doesn't.

Then, I realize this is too involved and too futa-tastic for the first installment of Hentaiculture, so I do the Vampire Duchies instead, and let this draft stay fallow for about a month. I figure, this is a weekly column, best to “ease into” more kink-intensive and potentially-alientating stuff, so people can get an idea that there is a range here, and not see the first one is black-diamond level lewdness and think the whole column is not for them. So I pass the partial draft around to the other editors for a while, who respond generally positively. One who favors Dark Kink says that it reads perfectly as Dark Kink, another says it leans to the Light side interpretation. I consider adding a bit about the dangerous halls of power, which fit what people expect of Dark Elves and can be another point that you can interpret as dark or light -- “the evil machinations of the masters filter down to the population” or “the extent of their evil machinations is family bickering and most everyone else stays out of it.” -- as well as a note about foreigners hotly debating whether the society is a self-perpetuating cycle of abuse or just a weird thing that works for another species. An editor advises me, rightly, that the latter one is way too on the nose. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t have “powerful, scantily clad, sexy and dangerous” Dark Elf Mistresses in there somewhere, so we get a bit about how they are scheming at the top and the high classes scheme underneath them. And I throw in a bit about how they wear latex and patent leather, foremost because I think it actually makes sense given it is damp underground so you want waterproofing and there aren’t many textiles, and only secondary to that because they are associated with bondage and because I think they’re hot.

I decide on a Mesoamerican/Aztec flavor for their names, because of the “their telenovelas are fucking bonkers” joke I wanted to tell, the long-past history of bloody ritual sacrifice of the Aztec empire matching the long-past history of bloody betrayals, the fixation on natural cycles, and, let’s face it, the fact that Nahuatl names sound cool as all hell. At first, I try to find the name of the Aztec spider goddess to name the society after, only to discover that nobody KNOWS the name of the Aztec spider goddess, and she is just referred to as “Teotihuacan Spider Woman”. But in poking around, I do find other nifty bits of Nahuatl phraseology, which I misused, but hopefully I haven’t misused too badly. I wrote the ritual impregnation cycle as being a 53-year gestation called the “Cycle of Love”, but looking up Mesoamerican names for cyclical things, I find the “tonalpohualli”, a name for a 260-day count... that syncs up with the 365-day calendar count every 52 years. I switch the gestation period to 52 years and rename the Cycle of Love “tonalpohualli”, specifying it means “sacred count” instead of “cycle of love”. Then, noting that my previous hentaicultures haven’t had nearly enough names, I sprinkle in some more terms that seem appropriate and give off a feel of things being from a foreign culture. Since their society is ruled by matriarchs, it is appropriate they have a special name for their rulers: cihuachpilli is cihuapilli, meaning “noblewoman”, mixed with achpilli, meaning “great-grandmother”. Nobility who are great-grandmothers. Since becoming a grandmother means you have completed the Sacred Count, it would make sense that those at the top of society would be referred to as great-grandmothers. Then I take that “grandmother” theme and name the civilization after it: “Nahui-Citli” means “Grandmother Sun”, patterned after the Aztec names of the five suns, or five ages of the world. “Sun” is not really all that appropriate for dark elves, but screw it, say the grandmothers replace the sun. The Aztec names of the five ages of the world are Nahui-Ocelotl, Nahui-Ehécatl, Nahui-Quiahuitl, Nahui-Atl, and the current age, Nahui-Ollin, meaning respectively “Jaguar Sun”, “Wind Sun”, “Rain Sun”, “Water Sun”, and “Earthquake Sun”. Each of these names comes from what would define and destroy the world that sun shined upon (The Aztecs believed this world would end in catastrophic earthquakes). Does this mean that this society is defined by grandmothers, or will be destroyed by grandmothers, or has been destroyed by grandmothers when the cycle of the Sacred Count obsoleted the old murderous society? Mysteries!

It’s just as important to note everything I did not define as what I did define, in order to meet the goal of a morally-lenticular culture. At no point do I ever specify what happens to the rare females that are born to the majority of futanari, so they can either be just a weird quirk that sometimes happens, or a hated, punished, exploited underclass tormented by futanari supremacists. I never specify if they enslave anyone else, implying that they do not, but if you are pre-disposed to see evil futa supremacist slavemasters formenting males and females, nothing stops you. I never specify what age or age-equivalent the Sacred Count starts at, just that it’s “maturity”. If you want that to mean “18 in Elf Years″, you will see that, and if you want that to mean “10 in Elf Years″, you will see that. I never say if the slavery is brutal and degrading or not; the fact that Dark Elves in the second acts of their life willingly seek out dominant/submissive relationships implies to me that they like dominance play and the term of slavery is mutually enjoyable and a vital part of helping them determine whether they are dominants or submissives, but if you want to see people abused and twisted until they think evil is good and seek to re-enact their abuse as the only form of love they understand, you can see that too. Is high society truly that vicious or just family drama most people can safely ignore? They seem to think it’s nasty and dangerous but they have nothing to compare it to, and the stories they tell about it in the telenovelas are really silly. Foreigners say their Sacred Count is evil, they say it’s perfectly fine and works for them -- are they normalizing their own abuse, or is it another humorous example of people getting offended on behalf of others who are fine?

Did it work? Did you like the Dark Elves of Nahui-Citli? And if so, did you like them because they were dark and fucked up or because they were fun and quirky? Did the whole “lenticular tone” work for them? Would you like to see more stories about them, or any of the previous Hentaicultures, or how any two of them interact? Please, reblog and let us know!

[smut-theory]

Hentaiculture: The Dark Elves of Nahui-Citli

(Content warning: futanari, breeding, incest, slavery, domination, dark elves, countersignaling, telenovelas)

The Short And Sweet

Ancient historical accounts of the Elves, what little can be assembled, speak of the Dark Elves’ land of Nahui-Citli as a wicked subterranean empire of blood and betrayal, where murder lurked behind every false smile and poison in every offered drink. The Dark Elves, surprisingly, will cop to this: in their ancient times, they were pretty terrible, and though they had wisdom and resources beyond most other species, they wasted it all on politicking and betrayal. Dark Elf sociologists will point to how the tonalpohualli they now align their society around was really the only way their society could have kept going without murdering itself into oblivion. They point to this theory more strenuously when everyone else objects to how... odd the tonalpohualli is.

Almost all Dark Elves are futanari, meaning they are female-bodied, female-minded, with a fully functioning set of male and female genitals. Due to their extended lifespans (a Dark Elf can live to be 2000), the gestation periods of their children are proportionately longer: 52 years. The tonalpohualli, or “Sacred Count”, is the ritual period encompassing this time. It begins when Dark Elf children, upon reaching the age of sexual maturity, are impregnated by their mothers, usually while the both of them speak partially-improvised litanies about how the mother was taken by her mother to create the daughter, and how the child created in the daughter will one day be taken by her. Then, the daughter’s childhood officially ends, and her term as her mother’s pregnant sex slave begins. She wears a leash and collar, to symbolize ownership, and a bondage harness, to symbolize her mother’s constant embrace. Slavery to her mother accomplishes two things: a means for her mother to keep her safe and take responsibility for her during the long period where pregnancy makes her more vulnerable, and a means for her mother to fully, intensively train her in adulthood and womanhood (including the slavery she will place her own daughter in!)

The Dark Elves say this is a perfectly reasonable process given the vulnerability of pregnant people, the need to provide large familial bonds in society to guard against damaging internal betrayal and warfare (as underground cities are incredibly defensible against outside invasion), and given the same genetic process that prevents them from aging normally prevents incest from damaging the gene pool. Further, this endless cycle is a beautiful renewal that unites them all in experience. Everyone else says “You’re fucking weird, and every love song any of you has ever written is incredibly creepy.”

Details: Society

Passing the four stations in the Sacred Count, from child, to slave, to mother, to Mistress, marks a Dark Elf’s mastery and comprehension of her roles in life and place in the world, even though it is (comparatively) early in her lifespan, and she is (probably) free to go about the life she wishes. Contra F. Scott Fitzgerald, this means that every Dark Elf life has a second act, and that is where most of their life happens, though they are shaped by and will never forget their participating in the Sacred Count.  It isn’t uncommon for Dark Elves after this point to feel no need for romance, looking back fondly on their mother and their daughter as sexual and romantic partners and staying in touch from time to time but not pursuing partnership further. Most others, after some time alone to find themselves, will begin a courtship and romance with another Dark Elf, which proceeds in a way that’s very familiar to most societies that engage in romance, save for the fact that the two partners are almost always blood relatives. As a matter of fact, sexual attraction to those you can’t trace blood relation with (”outcest”) is considered a kink, though a somewhat common one. There have been, like, five cases in recorded history of twin sisters who did NOT fall madly in love with each other and marry the moment their slavery ended.

  Though Dark Elves are mostly monogamous and value fidelity in relationships, returning to one’s mother or daughter for sex is never cheating, and there’s at least one day on the Dark Elf calendar where one is expected to do it. Due to the fact that everyone is a mother and there are many, many generations of mothers around, and your mother wants to visit HER mother, etc, the Dark Elves actually have five Mother’s Days, to prevent the whole thing from becoming an unnavigable clusterfuck. Divide your generation number by five, the remainder is what Mother’s Day honors you.  Many non-maternal couples don’t have children, but in those that do, the dominant partner traditionally manages the child’s slavery, with the submissive one assisting.

Lacking the male and female genders found in many other species, Dark Elves have courtship traditions that align more along axes of dominant/submissive, though they can vary wildly in intensity from “full time sexual slavery” to “a mostly-equal relationship where one partner gets the final say in truly intractable disagreements.” Dominants present themselves as powerful and maternal, favoring less-adorned clothing that shows off their physique and the size of their breasts; submissives present as more neotenous, favoring fancier outfits that imply more helplessness and neediness, as well as downplaying the size of their breasts, as breasts don’t swell up until after giving birth. Most Dark Elf clothing is made of patent leather or latex-like material, simply because underground there aren’t many plants usable for textiles and moisture resistance is paramount. Honestly, they had no idea outsiders would find it kinky at all.

Once a Dark Elf’s daughter is born, she is released from slavery, a full-fledged mother-citizen, and begins to raise her own child to maturity so the tonalpohualli will continue endlessly. Most Dark Elves are, at this point, prepared for an independent life thanks to their mother’s training and conditioning during their slavery, raised to be who their mother wishes them to be, and having placed it into practice in the training of their own daughter. With the consent of both parties, however, a freed-child may volunteer to bear her mother another child and re-enter slavery, which may continue indefinitely from there. Reactions to this are mixed overall, as while mothers do enjoy having pregnant sex slaves, sometimes it is a statement of “Mother, your love for me is so perfect I have no need to be independent, I wish to be in your tight embrace forever”, and sometimes it is “Mother, I totally cannot get my life together, so putting another baby in me lets me crash on your couch for at least another 52 years before I have to get a job.” 

It was tradition to craft a unique bondage harness for your daughter to wear, until it actually became feasible to mass-produce them. Now, nobody gets a handmade harness unless they can splurge on hiring master artisans for something really fancy and unique, and a lot of passive-aggressive one-upping of the neighbors consists of buying fancy name-brand designer harnesses for your daughter-slave to show her off.

There are some lingering vestiges of the dark and murderous days of the Dark Elves’ ancient past, they season their foods with microdoses of poison, for example, but nowhere are they more obvious than in the upper echelons of society, where the cihuachpilli (”noble great-grandmothers”, Matriarchs) of each family line scheme their ancient schemes, maneuvering for power and dominance for their family lines. Beneath them, their daughter-courtiers plot and vie against one another for the Matriarch’s favor, or to depose and replace the Matriarch. While it isn’t as bad as in the dark days of legend -- people very rarely die now, since they ARE all family, and the Matriarchs themselves are experienced enough to know open conflict with other Matriarchs is a bad idea -- navigating the Dark Elven halls of power is still a dangerous game at best, with a thousand secret alliances woven into an already dense web of familial connections. All political power and decisions happen within the Matriarchs’ courts and inter-court negotiations, with the matriarchs themselves genuinely concerned for the well-being of their subjects, as their subjects are literally their descendants. High-class and powerful Dark Elves have a style best described as “as ornate as possible while made of as little material as possible”, and most of them are perpetually pregnant as a display of their power and security that they don’t NEED to worry about being weakened by pregnancy. Competing to see who will get to sire a Matriarch’s next child is a regular cause for office-politicking and alliance-mongering. 

The majority of Dark Elven population has nothing to do with their leadership and are happier for it; indeed, they never understood the appeal of democracy because that would just mean everyone has to keep track of a huge web of alliances for every vote and that would be juuuuust exhausting. However, there is one notable effect of their high-society dealings on the rest of the population: their telenovelas are fucking bananas. Long, dense, intricately woven plots upon plots upon plots with casts of hundreds, made to be even more overblown and overwrought than the reality of high-society politicking they are derived from, they’re like mana-infused cocaine for soap opera aficionados. Currently, the matriarch Cihuaztli’s political and economic power can be traced entirely to her decision to subtitle the wildly popular telenovela Within the Spider’s Web and license it for distribution abroad, even though international critics agree the show’s really gone downhill since Izel had a heretofore-unmentioned identical twin who was replacing her in several key scenes as a plot to ruin her life for spurning her advances. The real critical darling is A Stalactite Looms Downward, which sounds far more poetic in its native language.

Creator commentary for this post will follow soon!

[smut-theory]

“It’s Magic, I Ain’t Gotta Explain Shit”: Precision Application Of Handwavium To Hentai

Issue #9 of Ultimate X-Men (and do not get me STARTED on the Ultimate Universe’s decay and fall) begins with Nick Fury dropping from 2000 feet up over the city of Delhi, with no parachute. He’s in contact with his Mission Control guys on his super secret mission, and says his super paradrop shoes worked great and were unscratched, and they can see through his button-camera perfectly. He goes into a temple to Lakshmi that is really full of Goons, activates some superscience sunglasses, and reduces them all to smoldering skeletons. Mission control tells him how to get inside the temple, where it’s actually a super evil science base, and to sneak in, he tells them to set him up fifteen seconds of intangibility to get through a wall.

So far, so typical, right? Just another example of comic-book superscience that’s way too powerful at the start of the story, then stops working later so there can be some conflict.

Then mission control tells him “I’m sorry sir, but accounts just sent a message saying that their budget can’t stretch beyond nine seconds at the moment.”

And I get a lot more interested. Before, he had super mega giga technology that could do anything and overcome any obstacle, before the writer realizes “shit, I wrote this guy as being able to do too much, I have to just ignore the powers I gave him.” After, now he has limitations -- he’s got the theoretical capability to use all this super science, but it’s so fucking bonkers expensive he needs to run it past Accounting every time, and so the question isn’t “will he have a superpower that gets past this obstacle”, it’s “can he properly manage the limited resources allocated to the powers he has to get past all the obstacles?”

Mark Millar never really took that idea anywhere, and powers for Nick Fury and the Ultimate X-Men thereafter seemed to follow the “spam all day” model that most superpowers do. So, if he won’t use it, why not salvage the idea for your hentai?

Geeeeet back here.

There are a lot of rules that people say a story MUST follow in order to be good, that clearly aren’t as hard and fast as they claim. Even when in non-pornographic stories, but especially when it comes to hentai. Hentai doesn’t often need a strong antagonist, and characterization is really more of a “necessary but not sufficient” condition. Mary Sues, to a limited extent, are allowable, because we aren’t here to see a character struggle, we are here to see them have sex.

Does that mean you can ignore these rules? No! They still apply, at least partially. Writing for hentai, whether it is a fiction, comic, or erotic roleplay, you don’t need to be as concerned with FOLLOWING the rules, as not obviously BREAKING them. Just as dialing back on an element of your setting lets the reader believe that the place works even when she’s not looking at it, you just need to refrain from flagrant violations of the storytelling rules so that the reader can buy that this take place in a larger world where those rules still apply, even if they aren’t relevant here.

The place where this is most important is with magic / superpowers / science that may as well be magic. Ordinary pornography and erotica, which just represents a physically possible and fully desirable state of being, doesn’t have to worry about magic and power, but hentai often does. Magic is how you get the impossible hentai things that convey the emotional essence you’re trying to get across, and many people are tempted to just have magic that does anything they want, so they can get right to the action without a lot of futzing around.

This is a mistake, if your story will ever take place outside the bedroom, or reference a world that exists outside the bedroom -- and hentai is far more likely to do this than ‘normal’ erotica. If you have magic that, in order to do what sexy things you want, is capable of doing anything, then you create dissonance any time there is a problem in the entire world that could be solved by magic but isn’t. Time to rag on mind control fetishism again, since it’s by far the worst offender: if mind control is this easy, how is it not used more? How is anyone not mind controlled yet? How does the world look ANYTHING like the world we know and can identify with?

Some people see this and go the other way, with a rigidly defined set of powers and spells that are all specifically enumerated (you can see several of these on F-List, if you look.) I won’t say this is a mistake, if spelling out the details is what you enjoy, but usually it’s unnecessary and a hindrance -- you are going to want to do something not on that spell list eventually, and you can’t spell out everything you might ever want to do in a scene ahead of time. 

So what is the answer? You can have non-rigid powers that you can use right away -- they just need a justification that they do whatever you want, and nothing else. You don’t have to show limitations in a way that is actually a major hindrance to the characters, you just have to have them exist. You want a Resident Evil RP where the new H-virus infects Claire and Jill and turns them into horny monstergirls, you don’t need to have a chapter of clinical trials on people the virus never transformed, you just need someone to say “I’m glad this finally worked, we were lucky both of them have the H-susceptible gene”, and now with that one sentence you justify how the whole world isn’t horny monstergirls. You like ultracasual/free use/unaware sex and want to give a character mind control powers to engage in it? Instead of giving them general mind control powers, only give them the ability to cause other people to see their actions as normal, with a single between-scenes line about trying to get people to obey commands and failing, and now boom, it makes sense they use this power for free use sex instead of taking over the world. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on what your powers can’t do, you just have to establish there are things on that list. You can still handwave -- just make a system of handwaving. You can add lots of details that don’t restrict you in any way, and it feels like there’s a lot of rules and the system is fair, when really you can do whatever you like.

In that spirit, let’s flesh out the magic system for the fantasy world of the Hentaicultures seen so far, as a framework in which to handwave without breaking things.

Magic is a fundamental property of the universe, a form of energy able to be manipulated by all sapient beings. Most scientists agree that evolution into a sapient being capable of using magic causes a species to take on the familiar bipedal, binocular-visioned, opposable-thumbed form we would call “humanoid”, whether their species evolved from apes, rabbits, trees, butterflies, foxes, wolves, pangolin, etc. There are exceptions, and nobody really knows why, but that is the general principle. [This sounds like something people put a lot of thought into, giving it science cred -- but isn’t a restriction in any way. It just justifies lots of species and lots of anthros, if you want.]

Magic is powered by mana, which can be stored in organic structures or crystals -- most insubstantial things are MADE of mana, somehow, but these are the ways you can store it and use it later. Magic is sometimes described as the “language of creation”, performed through combining “words” into “sentences” that describe a desired result, which is then actualized by expending magical energy. However, as the size of the effect increases linearly, or the versatility of the spell increases linearly, the magical energy expended increases exponentially, almost all of it wasted by inefficiency. Being a skilled wizard is not about having bigger spells, but smaller, efficient ones, and the useful magical “words” are a long list of qualifiers, adjectives, adverbs, logical operands, and other things that are loaded into a sentence to make it more specific and thus more efficient. Everyone can learn the spell to kill all living things in the universe, it’s like five words long, but nobody can ever cast it, because the mana required to power it is several hundred times that which could possibly exist in the entire observable universe. A good wizard memorizes a lot of qualifiers and the complicated syntax to assemble them to create a hundreds-of-words spell that very clearly specifies its target, range, power, duration, and omits every use case that isn’t relevant, in order to create a spell efficient enough it can actually be cast. A few qualifiers, a scale-down from two bolts of lightning to one, can mean the difference between a spell that drains 20% of your mana crystal, and a spell that cannot fire because you would need 20% of all the mana crystals in the world. Not every conditional or modifier is known to every wizard, even beyond the difficulty of memorizing them and using them in proper syntax, and most wizards have “specialties” that encompass the modifiers they do know how to use, which can range from “better in a certain region of the world”, “better on certain species”, “better at certain types of effect,” to “better in snowstorms,” “better on people with unpaid debts,” or “better when the Magus City Magpies have lost their last two games”. [This makes magic seem hard, the province of extremely skilled people who are far above the “normals”, and says there’s a lot of things magic can’t do because of power limitations. But it places no restriction on what you say is in each category -- you can use incredibly powerful spells in the world because you can say “That spell only worked to do that exact thing, at that exact time, to that exact person -- it can’t be adapted out to break the world.”]

Further complicating matters is what Orcish wizard Graelvur described as the “Magic Market Hypothesis”, which describes the phenomenon wherein the mana costs of magic “words”, especially the thirteen “verbs”, fluctuate over time. Magical scientists now agree that while the theory isn’t wholly accurate, the model that magicians are one side of a market in magical words, with unseen agents acting as the other side who respond to fluctuations in supply and demand by increasing or lowering the mana costs of magic words is “close enough for anyone below a 400-level Magical Theory class”. There are ways to “beat the market” and get more energy’s worth than you put in, or exploits to get bigger or more versatile magical effects for cheaper, but they do not last long as the “mana prices” correct themselves. As this world’s use of electricity follows the rules of magic rather than the more stable rules of physics, this makes sensitive electronic equipment nearly impossible to produce, since a mana flux can cause the voltages that made a device work one day fry its insides the next. [Oh boy, theories and economics and self-correction! All it means is you can’t leave a hole in things that would break the system and get infinite stuff like people say they can with Harry Potter magic or Marvel superpowers, and any mistake you make as an author gets self-corrected. It also lets you change your mind about what is and isn’t possible between scenes, based on what you want to be possible or impossible for a given scene. An ability you used previously would make you able to get past a much bigger obstacle much more easily than you should? Well, the ease with which you used it last time meant the mana market was due for a correction, and now it’s too costly for you to manage. The electricity thing just keeps the tech level where I want it to be, industrialized but pre-Internet.]

So, what do you think? Do you agree with the idea of placing limits on abilities that restrict them to ONLY what you want to do? Do you think this is an effective way of keeping your setting sane and avoiding writing yourself into a corner of “I made this too powerful” or “I need magic to be able to solve this thing I said it can’t solve”? Does the magic system for our Hentaicultures do what it sets out to do? Please, reblog and let us know, or send an ask, or reblog just for the heck of it!

[smut-theory]

Kitsune Vale: The Descendants of Saika

(Content warning: Anthro, sex rituals, exhibitionism, breeding, forbidden love, contradictory societal expectations, cultural isolationists realizing the industrial revolution happened)

(This is a user submission by @evangelineingram, who was okay with her name being attributed to it.)

The Short and Sweet: The Kitsune of Kyuchi are descended from the mythical mating of a fox-deity and a female saint, and none of them will let you forget it. Their rigid, caste-based theocracy is heavily based on inheritance of divine fox blood: however, the fertility rites that prevent that blood from thinning over time require their society to regularly descend into bacchanalian orgies. As a result, relationships across caste lines are common, the clergy is also a courtesan’s guild, and most people have multiple partners.

The descendants of Saika come in three major flavours: “Pureblood Kitsune”, “Hitosune”, and fox-blooded humans. The first two categories correspond roughly to “Anthro” and “Foxgirl”. Purebloods are higher status than Hitosune, who are higher status than humans. Within each caste, tail count is used for more nuanced status games, with more tails being higher status. If you’re a barbarian from outside the vale, you’ll probably be considered below everyone else by default.

The contradictions of everyday Kitsune life lend themselves to forbidden love, scandal, and interesting expectations around sexuality and romance. Whether you want to write about the daily life of a sacred prostitute, a traveler learning to navigate the intricacies of a foreign romance, or the scandalous affairs of the bored nobility, you can do it in the Vale.

The Legend: In ancient times, a beast with nine tails preyed upon the humans who lived in the mountain valleys. It was not quite a god, but more than a simple fox or wolf; with unmatched savagery, it killed all those that crossed its path, tearing them apart with divine strength and ferocity.

The Kyuubi was held in worshipful fear, and offering after offering were made to deter its wrath: but none worked. Brave and foolish men attempted to slay it, but none returned. None could withstand its divine fury.

Then, a woman named Saika ventured into the lair of the beast. As it rose from slumber, fangs bared, she kindled a different hunger within it, gentle touches and stolen fox musk stirring it into lust.

Saika was patient, and timed her visit well. The Kyuubi was in heat. That night, she lay with the beast: and in the morning, she took a stone knife from her torn, discarded robes, kissed the Kyuubi between its eyes, and slit its throat while it slept.

The people of the mountain villages heralded her as a living saint, even as they honoured the Kyuubi’s sacrifice. It was thought that a beast such as the Kyuubi could not possibly have been deceived so easily by a mortal. Rather, it made a trade, laying down its life in exchange for the survival of its line through Saika, now heavily-pregnant with the divine beast’s half-human kits.

In the following months, the first kitsune were born. All Kitsune or Hitosune in the Vale can trace their ancestry back to one of Saika’s many children: Those closest to her by blood rule by the right of their inheritance. Saika is to this day worshipped as the ‘Mother of Nine Tails’, her bravery and cunning held up as a role model for all those of the blood of the Kyuubi to aspire to. She is traditionally depicted with nine silver fox tails, contrasting with her black hair.

The spirit of the Kyuubi is worshipped as well, prayed to for strength and success in life — but an undercurrent of resentment still flows. The Kitsune of the vale call a hotheaded or reckless male ‘Kyuubi-touched", and often swear by the Kyuubi’s fangs and claws.

Culture of the Vale: Kyuchi organizes itself by how much Kitsune blood an individual has within them. At the top of the heap sit the Nine Tails, a council of the nine Kitsune who are most closely related to Saika: beneath them sits the upper class of full-blooded Kitsune, who have muzzled faces and furred bodies. Most of the middle class are Hitosune: humans with foxlike features, most commonly ears and tails. The 'fox blooded’, humans with Kitsune blood, are the lowest class. Those without any of the blood of Saika are generally regarded as beneath serious consideration.

However, there’s a natural problem with this: there are only so many people with fox blood. While pureblood Kitsune are encouraged to have large families, the Blood of Saika thins with each generation. Eventually, there will be no more Kitsune.

In order to avoid this fate, a grand enchantment has been laid over Kyuchi. It strengthens the Kyuubi’s blood, so that later generations will be just as foxlike as — or more foxlike than! — their parents.

This enchantment feeds on love, affection, and sexual pleasure — especially when generated in concentrated bursts. Therefore, the normally-reserved Kitsune culture descends into complete bacchanal on a regular schedule: fertility feasts and festivals are held every three months or so, while smaller, more private services occur each week. This leads to an interesting social construct in Kitsune culture: the “ritual bondmate”, someone outside your normal social circles who you nonetheless have an intimate relationship with.

While ritual bondmates aren’t given the same social status as wives or lovers, it’s terribly gauche to question anyone else’s choice of bondmate. Having multiple bondmates is normal within Kitsune culture, though true polyamory is still somewhat looked down upon.

Though having at least one bondmate is encouraged of all those in the Vale, the church of Saika understands that not everyone has the time, social skills, etc. to find one on their own. Therefore, temples are often part religious institution, part matchmaking service, and part brothel, with priests and priestesses playing the role of sacred prostitutes. You don’t have to be one of the 1% of Kitsune that are hermaphrodites to be part of the clergy, but it helps.

Temples further provide hands-on sex education, relationship counselling, magical aid with fertility issues, contraception, and so on. If it has to do with love or sex, they can likely give you guidance.

Kitsune Biology: As previously mentioned, Kitsune break down into two major classes: 'true kitsune’, who have muzzles, fangs, claws, fur, and so on; and Hitosune, who look mostly human except for fox tails, fox ears, pointed canines, or something along those lines.

Within the classes, the number of tails you have (from zero to a maximum of nine) determines your relative social status. Aside from being a status symbol, these tails are also useful: much longer and fluffier than a real fox’s tails, they are also prehensile and independently controllable, giving some Kitsune the equivalent of eleven arms and hands.

About 1% of Kitsune are hermaphrodites. This isn’t enough to make them common, but it is enough that everyone knows someone who knows someone who’s 'twinned’. This third gender has its own stereotypes in Kitsune society: the Saikyu are generally considered to be more easygoing, spiritually attuned, and passionate than other Kitsune, and as a result many of them end up in the clergy.

The Vale in the broader world: While the Kitsune have traditionally been isolationist, this policy has been breaking down in recent years as the Council of Nine Tails realizes that Kitsune technology and magic is being outstripped by their neighbours.

As a result of this new open-borders policy, there has been a wave of emigration outwards from Kyuchi, led by those among the Kitsune who find the rigid caste system confining. As a result, Kitsune found abroad are of a much different character from those within the vale’s walls: while Valers are generally hidebound and traditionalist, wandering Kitsune are much more open to experience. Perhaps because of this, the Saikyu (hermaphordite kitsune) are disproportionately common outside Kyuchi.

Kink discussion: Overall, Kitsune culture’s common thread is about masks and roles: it’s about a rigid class structure with a whole bunch of exceptions, and most of the kinks are about either conforming to or breaking from an expected role. Sex is expected of you? Check. Forbidden love? Check. Ritualized sex? Check. High-class nobility who participate in orgies with commoners? Check. People being surprised by well-spoken barbarians? Check.

If pregnancy is your thing, it’s an easy tweak to make: all you need to do is turn up the volume a little on 'Pureblood Kitsune are encouraged to have large families’. Saika might be traditionally depicted as pregnant, leading to the gravid female form being held up as a beauty ideal. Her church might even pay highborn Kitsune to pass on their genes! After all, they have more than enough infrastructure to raise Kitsune children communally.

BDSM is also easy to work in. Kitsune tails are very useful, and higher-ranked Kitsune naturally have more 'hands’ than their lessers. It’s also not difficult to adjust the 'ritual bondmate’ concept to become outright harem-keeping, if that’s your thing.

Exhibitionism/Voyeurism/group sex can also be dialled up or down. Kitsune fertility rites might be enormous partner-swapping affairs where everyone does everyone, or they might simply be days where everyone goes, gets blessed, then comes back home to have a lot of sex. By default I’ve left this dial turned halfway up: most Kitsune have two or three partners specifically for ritual days, and ritual sex is semi-public.

[smut-theory]

It’s probably appropriate for me to comment on the first user submission: I likes it! There’s not as much to say as there could be, as @evangelineingram does a good job of analyzing how its kinks work and are expressed. (She DID emphasize pregnancy some more at my suggestion. Whee!)

At first glance, you would think that a setup like this would be easy to put incest in, with the whole “trying to keep bloodlines pure” thing. But I think it was the right call to leave it out, even for reasons beyond “the creator didn’t like incest”. This whole thing is about forbidden love, secret love, trysts, orgies, all of which require unexpected or unconventional partners -- a society that condoned incest wouldn’t be able to do that, because you know who your relatives are. So the spell that amplifies blood strength doesn’t merely provide an excuse to avoid something that might have squicked the author, it makes the society work better at what it’s trying to do.

It’s also a good way to have a society built around doing things society doesn’t approve of, for lack of a better word -- the tension between the ritual sex, and the propriety you’re supposed to show, allows everyone to do things that feel forbidden while not making that social standard lose power. Certainly better than I could have done, since I make everything comparatively out in the open.

I’m looking forward to more user submissions in the future! From anyone, even you!

[smut-theory]

Kitsune Vale: The Descendants of Saika

(Content warning: Anthro, sex rituals, exhibitionism, breeding, forbidden love, contradictory societal expectations, cultural isolationists realizing the industrial revolution happened)

(This is a user submission by @evangelineingram, who was okay with her name being attributed to it.)

The Short and Sweet: The Kitsune of Kyuchi are descended from the mythical mating of a fox-deity and a female saint, and none of them will let you forget it. Their rigid, caste-based theocracy is heavily based on inheritance of divine fox blood: however, the fertility rites that prevent that blood from thinning over time require their society to regularly descend into bacchanalian orgies. As a result, relationships across caste lines are common, the clergy is also a courtesan’s guild, and most people have multiple partners.

The descendants of Saika come in three major flavours: “Pureblood Kitsune”, “Hitosune”, and fox-blooded humans. The first two categories correspond roughly to “Anthro” and “Foxgirl”. Purebloods are higher status than Hitosune, who are higher status than humans. Within each caste, tail count is used for more nuanced status games, with more tails being higher status. If you’re a barbarian from outside the vale, you’ll probably be considered below everyone else by default.

The contradictions of everyday Kitsune life lend themselves to forbidden love, scandal, and interesting expectations around sexuality and romance. Whether you want to write about the daily life of a sacred prostitute, a traveler learning to navigate the intricacies of a foreign romance, or the scandalous affairs of the bored nobility, you can do it in the Vale.

The Legend: In ancient times, a beast with nine tails preyed upon the humans who lived in the mountain valleys. It was not quite a god, but more than a simple fox or wolf; with unmatched savagery, it killed all those that crossed its path, tearing them apart with divine strength and ferocity.

The Kyuubi was held in worshipful fear, and offering after offering were made to deter its wrath: but none worked. Brave and foolish men attempted to slay it, but none returned. None could withstand its divine fury.

Then, a woman named Saika ventured into the lair of the beast. As it rose from slumber, fangs bared, she kindled a different hunger within it, gentle touches and stolen fox musk stirring it into lust.

Saika was patient, and timed her visit well. The Kyuubi was in heat. That night, she lay with the beast: and in the morning, she took a stone knife from her torn, discarded robes, kissed the Kyuubi between its eyes, and slit its throat while it slept.

The people of the mountain villages heralded her as a living saint, even as they honoured the Kyuubi’s sacrifice. It was thought that a beast such as the Kyuubi could not possibly have been deceived so easily by a mortal. Rather, it made a trade, laying down its life in exchange for the survival of its line through Saika, now heavily-pregnant with the divine beast’s half-human kits.

In the following months, the first kitsune were born. All Kitsune or Hitosune in the Vale can trace their ancestry back to one of Saika’s many children: Those closest to her by blood rule by the right of their inheritance. Saika is to this day worshipped as the ‘Mother of Nine Tails’, her bravery and cunning held up as a role model for all those of the blood of the Kyuubi to aspire to. She is traditionally depicted with nine silver fox tails, contrasting with her black hair.

The spirit of the Kyuubi is worshipped as well, prayed to for strength and success in life — but an undercurrent of resentment still flows. The Kitsune of the vale call a hotheaded or reckless male ‘Kyuubi-touched", and often swear by the Kyuubi’s fangs and claws.

Culture of the Vale: Kyuchi organizes itself by how much Kitsune blood an individual has within them. At the top of the heap sit the Nine Tails, a council of the nine Kitsune who are most closely related to Saika: beneath them sits the upper class of full-blooded Kitsune, who have muzzled faces and furred bodies. Most of the middle class are Hitosune: humans with foxlike features, most commonly ears and tails. The 'fox blooded’, humans with Kitsune blood, are the lowest class. Those without any of the blood of Saika are generally regarded as beneath serious consideration.

However, there’s a natural problem with this: there are only so many people with fox blood. While pureblood Kitsune are encouraged to have large families, the Blood of Saika thins with each generation. Eventually, there will be no more Kitsune.

In order to avoid this fate, a grand enchantment has been laid over Kyuchi. It strengthens the Kyuubi’s blood, so that later generations will be just as foxlike as — or more foxlike than! — their parents.

This enchantment feeds on love, affection, and sexual pleasure — especially when generated in concentrated bursts. Therefore, the normally-reserved Kitsune culture descends into complete bacchanal on a regular schedule: fertility feasts and festivals are held every three months or so, while smaller, more private services occur each week. This leads to an interesting social construct in Kitsune culture: the “ritual bondmate”, someone outside your normal social circles who you nonetheless have an intimate relationship with.

While ritual bondmates aren’t given the same social status as wives or lovers, it’s terribly gauche to question anyone else’s choice of bondmate. Having multiple bondmates is normal within Kitsune culture, though true polyamory is still somewhat looked down upon.

Though having at least one bondmate is encouraged of all those in the Vale, the church of Saika understands that not everyone has the time, social skills, etc. to find one on their own. Therefore, temples are often part religious institution, part matchmaking service, and part brothel, with priests and priestesses playing the role of sacred prostitutes. You don’t have to be one of the 1% of Kitsune that are hermaphrodites to be part of the clergy, but it helps.

Temples further provide hands-on sex education, relationship counselling, magical aid with fertility issues, contraception, and so on. If it has to do with love or sex, they can likely give you guidance.

Kitsune Biology: As previously mentioned, Kitsune break down into two major classes: 'true kitsune’, who have muzzles, fangs, claws, fur, and so on; and Hitosune, who look mostly human except for fox tails, fox ears, pointed canines, or something along those lines.

Within the classes, the number of tails you have (from zero to a maximum of nine) determines your relative social status. Aside from being a status symbol, these tails are also useful: much longer and fluffier than a real fox’s tails, they are also prehensile and independently controllable, giving some Kitsune the equivalent of eleven arms and hands.

About 1% of Kitsune are hermaphrodites. This isn’t enough to make them common, but it is enough that everyone knows someone who knows someone who’s 'twinned’. This third gender has its own stereotypes in Kitsune society: the Saikyu are generally considered to be more easygoing, spiritually attuned, and passionate than other Kitsune, and as a result many of them end up in the clergy.

The Vale in the broader world: While the Kitsune have traditionally been isolationist, this policy has been breaking down in recent years as the Council of Nine Tails realizes that Kitsune technology and magic is being outstripped by their neighbours.

As a result of this new open-borders policy, there has been a wave of emigration outwards from Kyuchi, led by those among the Kitsune who find the rigid caste system confining. As a result, Kitsune found abroad are of a much different character from those within the vale’s walls: while Valers are generally hidebound and traditionalist, wandering Kitsune are much more open to experience. Perhaps because of this, the Saikyu (hermaphordite kitsune) are disproportionately common outside Kyuchi.

Kink discussion: Overall, Kitsune culture’s common thread is about masks and roles: it’s about a rigid class structure with a whole bunch of exceptions, and most of the kinks are about either conforming to or breaking from an expected role. Sex is expected of you? Check. Forbidden love? Check. Ritualized sex? Check. High-class nobility who participate in orgies with commoners? Check. People being surprised by well-spoken barbarians? Check.

If pregnancy is your thing, it’s an easy tweak to make: all you need to do is turn up the volume a little on 'Pureblood Kitsune are encouraged to have large families’. Saika might be traditionally depicted as pregnant, leading to the gravid female form being held up as a beauty ideal. Her church might even pay highborn Kitsune to pass on their genes! After all, they have more than enough infrastructure to raise Kitsune children communally.

BDSM is also easy to work in. Kitsune tails are very useful, and higher-ranked Kitsune naturally have more 'hands’ than their lessers. It’s also not difficult to adjust the 'ritual bondmate’ concept to become outright harem-keeping, if that’s your thing.

Exhibitionism/Voyeurism/group sex can also be dialled up or down. Kitsune fertility rites might be enormous partner-swapping affairs where everyone does everyone, or they might simply be days where everyone goes, gets blessed, then comes back home to have a lot of sex. By default I’ve left this dial turned halfway up: most Kitsune have two or three partners specifically for ritual days, and ritual sex is semi-public.

[smut-theory]

god damn it, that was supposed to add to queue to post at the right time, but since it was a submission, I can’t just delete and repost it

i’ll self-reblog it at the scheduled time I guess

[smut-theory]

Kitsune Vale: The Descendants of Saika

(Content warning: Anthro, sex rituals, exhibitionism, breeding, forbidden love, contradictory societal expectations, cultural isolationists realizing the industrial revolution happened)

(This is a user submission by @evangelineingram, who was okay with her name being attributed to it.)

The Short and Sweet: The Kitsune of Kyuchi are descended from the mythical mating of a fox-deity and a female saint, and none of them will let you forget it. Their rigid, caste-based theocracy is heavily based on inheritance of divine fox blood: however, the fertility rites that prevent that blood from thinning over time require their society to regularly descend into bacchanalian orgies. As a result, relationships across caste lines are common, the clergy is also a courtesan’s guild, and most people have multiple partners.

The descendants of Saika come in three major flavours: “Pureblood Kitsune”, “Hitosune”, and fox-blooded humans. The first two categories correspond roughly to “Anthro” and “Foxgirl”. Purebloods are higher status than Hitosune, who are higher status than humans. Within each caste, tail count is used for more nuanced status games, with more tails being higher status. If you’re a barbarian from outside the vale, you’ll probably be considered below everyone else by default.

The contradictions of everyday Kitsune life lend themselves to forbidden love, scandal, and interesting expectations around sexuality and romance. Whether you want to write about the daily life of a sacred prostitute, a traveler learning to navigate the intricacies of a foreign romance, or the scandalous affairs of the bored nobility, you can do it in the Vale.

The Legend: In ancient times, a beast with nine tails preyed upon the humans who lived in the mountain valleys. It was not quite a god, but more than a simple fox or wolf; with unmatched savagery, it killed all those that crossed its path, tearing them apart with divine strength and ferocity.

The Kyuubi was held in worshipful fear, and offering after offering were made to deter its wrath: but none worked. Brave and foolish men attempted to slay it, but none returned. None could withstand its divine fury.

Then, a woman named Saika ventured into the lair of the beast. As it rose from slumber, fangs bared, she kindled a different hunger within it, gentle touches and stolen fox musk stirring it into lust.

Saika was patient, and timed her visit well. The Kyuubi was in heat. That night, she lay with the beast: and in the morning, she took a stone knife from her torn, discarded robes, kissed the Kyuubi between its eyes, and slit its throat while it slept.

The people of the mountain villages heralded her as a living saint, even as they honoured the Kyuubi’s sacrifice. It was thought that a beast such as the Kyuubi could not possibly have been deceived so easily by a mortal. Rather, it made a trade, laying down its life in exchange for the survival of its line through Saika, now heavily-pregnant with the divine beast’s half-human kits.

In the following months, the first kitsune were born. All Kitsune or Hitosune in the Vale can trace their ancestry back to one of Saika’s many children: Those closest to her by blood rule by the right of their inheritance. Saika is to this day worshipped as the ‘Mother of Nine Tails’, her bravery and cunning held up as a role model for all those of the blood of the Kyuubi to aspire to. She is traditionally depicted with nine silver fox tails, contrasting with her black hair.

The spirit of the Kyuubi is worshipped as well, prayed to for strength and success in life — but an undercurrent of resentment still flows. The Kitsune of the vale call a hotheaded or reckless male 'Kyuubi-touched", and often swear by the Kyuubi’s fangs and claws.

Culture of the Vale: Kyuchi organizes itself by how much Kitsune blood an individual has within them. At the top of the heap sit the Nine Tails, a council of the nine Kitsune who are most closely related to Saika: beneath them sits the upper class of full-blooded Kitsune, who have muzzled faces and furred bodies. Most of the middle class are Hitosune: humans with foxlike features, most commonly ears and tails. The 'fox blooded’, humans with Kitsune blood, are the lowest class. Those without any of the blood of Saika are generally regarded as beneath serious consideration.

However, there’s a natural problem with this: there are only so many people with fox blood. While pureblood Kitsune are encouraged to have large families, the Blood of Saika thins with each generation. Eventually, there will be no more Kitsune.

In order to avoid this fate, a grand enchantment has been laid over Kyuchi. It strengthens the Kyuubi’s blood, so that later generations will be just as foxlike as — or more foxlike than! — their parents.

This enchantment feeds on love, affection, and sexual pleasure — especially when generated in concentrated bursts. Therefore, the normally-reserved Kitsune culture descends into complete bacchanal on a regular schedule: fertility feasts and festivals are held every three months or so, while smaller, more private services occur each week. This leads to an interesting social construct in Kitsune culture: the “ritual bondmate”, someone outside your normal social circles who you nonetheless have an intimate relationship with.

While ritual bondmates aren’t given the same social status as wives or lovers, it’s terribly gauche to question anyone else’s choice of bondmate. Having multiple bondmates is normal within Kitsune culture, though true polyamory is still somewhat looked down upon.

Though having at least one bondmate is encouraged of all those in the Vale, the church of Saika understands that not everyone has the time, social skills, etc. to find one on their own. Therefore, temples are often part religious institution, part matchmaking service, and part brothel, with priests and priestesses playing the role of sacred prostitutes. You don’t have to be one of the 1% of Kitsune that are hermaphrodites to be part of the clergy, but it helps.

Temples further provide hands-on sex education, relationship counselling, magical aid with fertility issues, contraception, and so on. If it has to do with love or sex, they can likely give you guidance.

Kitsune Biology: As previously mentioned, Kitsune break down into two major classes: 'true kitsune’, who have muzzles, fangs, claws, fur, and so on; and Hitosune, who look mostly human except for fox tails, fox ears, pointed canines, or something along those lines.

Within the classes, the number of tails you have (from zero to a maximum of nine) determines your relative social status. Aside from being a status symbol, these tails are also useful: much longer and fluffier than a real fox’s tails, they are also prehensile and independently controllable, giving some Kitsune the equivalent of eleven arms and hands.

About 1% of Kitsune are hermaphrodites. This isn’t enough to make them common, but it is enough that everyone knows someone who knows someone who’s 'twinned’. This third gender has its own stereotypes in Kitsune society: the Saikyu are generally considered to be more easygoing, spiritually attuned, and passionate than other Kitsune, and as a result many of them end up in the clergy.

The Vale in the broader world: While the Kitsune have traditionally been isolationist, this policy has been breaking down in recent years as the Council of Nine Tails realizes that Kitsune technology and magic is being outstripped by their neighbours.

As a result of this new open-borders policy, there has been a wave of emigration outwards from Kyuchi, led by those among the Kitsune who find the rigid caste system confining. As a result, Kitsune found abroad are of a much different character from those within the vale’s walls: while Valers are generally hidebound and traditionalist, wandering Kitsune are much more open to experience. Perhaps because of this, the Saikyu (hermaphordite kitsune) are disproportionately common outside Kyuchi.

Kink discussion: Overall, Kitsune culture’s common thread is about masks and roles: it’s about a rigid class structure with a whole bunch of exceptions, and most of the kinks are about either conforming to or breaking from an expected role. Sex is expected of you? Check. Forbidden love? Check. Ritualized sex? Check. High-class nobility who participate in orgies with commoners? Check. People being surprised by well-spoken barbarians? Check.

If pregnancy is your thing, it’s an easy tweak to make: all you need to do is turn up the volume a little on 'Pureblood Kitsune are encouraged to have large families’. Saika might be traditionally depicted as pregnant, leading to the gravid female form being held up as a beauty ideal. Her church might even pay highborn Kitsune to pass on their genes! After all, they have more than enough infrastructure to raise Kitsune children communally.

BDSM is also easy to work in. Kitsune tails are very useful, and higher-ranked Kitsune naturally have more 'hands’ than their lessers. It’s also not difficult to adjust the 'ritual bondmate’ concept to become outright harem-keeping, if that’s your thing.

Exhibitionism/Voyeurism/group sex can also be dialled up or down. Kitsune fertility rites might be enormous partner-swapping affairs where everyone does everyone, or they might simply be days where everyone goes, gets blessed, then comes back home to have a lot of sex. By default I’ve left this dial turned halfway up: most Kitsune have two or three partners specifically for ritual days, and ritual sex is semi-public.

[smut-theory]

I like your blog, it's very interesting and makes me think. I'm curious to know what you think of noncon fetishes. Like, actual non con not just dominance.

Me, personally, the person who has done most of the posts so far? Not a fan. I don’t think it’s evil or harmful in real life, I just don’t like it; it’s just too mean for me. However, there are other mods who really like it, and they will lay out why in upcoming “Finding My Common Thread” posts. 

Just a reminder, if anyone out there would like to submit such a post about finding THEIR common thread, we’re happy to have them!

[smut-theory]

Hentaiculture: The Succubus Diaspora

(content warning: succubi, prostitution, sort-of-but-not-really corruption, magical girlfriends, failed conspiracies, pandering to @funereal-disease)

In this weekly column, we build and detail a hentai-focused or otherwise lewd culture, starting with the core concept, then expanding into fleshing-out detail, and concluding with commentary on what decisions were made and why.

THE SHORT AND SWEET

Succubi originated from a demonic nether-realm, hundreds of years ago. Made to be the perfect spies and covert agents who could take any form, seduce any leader, gather any information and misdirect any effort at defense. But the demon realm that seeded them here checked the math again and, it turned out, it was just WAY too expensive to invade this plane. It wasn’t even cost effective to summon the succubi back home. They were told “Sorry, guess you’ll have to find some way to make do on your own!”

And that is exactly what they have done. Designed to spread out all over the world and keep in contact to prepare for a dark invasion, they now spread all over the world to find their own niche and keep in contact just to keep each other company. Most of them are sex workers of some stripe, whether prostitutes or strippers or something else along those lines. Because hey, they’re good at it, they like it, and people pay them for it, sweet deal! 

All succubi desire sex, and companionship, not necessarily in the same amounts. But they also have another burning desire: the desire for something complicated. Their brains were built to be good at and satisfied by scheming a conspiracy to presage a demonic invasion, and now that that’s gone down the tubes, each succubus (or incubus) finds some other in-depth interest to occupy his or her time. It could be Otdykh-ian literature, it could be trains, it could be blacksmithing, it could be the latest revision of Hyperspace Hyperwars. Bring it up, and everything about that air of the refined, unattainable incarnation of desire will be dispelled by a squeeing, arm-flapping session of gushing about how cool something is. But the succubi don’t feel ashamed about it – why be ashamed of your passions?

THE DETAILS

In their “natural” state, a succubus resembles a pinkish-violet skinned human, with large batlike wings emerging from their shoulders, digitigrade legs ending in cloven hooves, and a pair of petite horns on their forehead. They are not often seen in their natural forms, as their shapeshifting abilities allow them to mimic humanoid traits to blend in to their environment – but they do keep the horns. Both as a show of courtesy to others that makes it “I’m a succubus, but just fitting in” rather than “I am a deceptive shapeshifter who is infiltrating your society”, and because the horns are micro-transcievers that allow them to locate other succubi and engage in simple conversation with them. It’s not all that useful, especially now that there’s these thing called “radio” and “television” to communicate over much longer distances, but it’s a nice thing to have around when you need company. Succubi in Orc lands, of course, are almost always in their true forms, as a show of respect to their hosts and their disgust with deception. 

“Succubi” is the accepted term for them as a group, because most of them are women, but there are male succubi (incubi) as well as futanari succubi – their natural shapeshifting allows them to present as whatever gender they identify as, and their bodies will default to that gender when making no effort to shapeshift. Referring to the species by the name of the female is not unheard of, much like “falcon” refers to the whole species or its females, and male falcons are called tiercels. That’s not worldbuilding, that’s actually true, and I thought it was interesting.

Succubi created a coherent, disaporic culture once they learned they had been abandoned by their Dark Masters as a means of bonding and support, and maintained it despite being scattered all about the world through the transmitting ability of their horns. They swapped stories, advice, fashion tips, everything. They learned and taught how to get by in the world when you weren’t made for the life you live, how to find companionship and love, and how to look good doing it. Speaking of, they still favor vintage fashions popular in older eras, due to how they’ve had more time to work on and perfect those looks. And due to how they are less revealing than modern styles – dolling themselves up and being desirable and attractive without exposing a lot of skin makes them feel more wanted. They kind of have some understandable issues about that.

Succubi have a psychological and physiological need for sex and companionship that is as real as the need for food, though thankfully more elastic, in that they can go without for longer, and in that having a lot won’t make you gain weight. They enjoy sex or companionship with others of their kind, and do it for the reasons anyone might pursue those things, but that basic need is only fulfilled by mortal (ie, non-succubus) companionship. Succubi take humans, or orcs, or elves, or gnomes, etc etc etc, as lovers and companions, sharing their lives and interests for a while, providing and being provided with much-needed emotional support. Succubi live much longer than most everyone but elves, so these relationships are understood not to be a “til death do us part” sort of affair, though sometimes a succubus will stay with a certain mortal until their natural death before moving on. Most of the time, they are romantic flings of a few years, passionate, satisfying, ending before the shine wears off, and (at least the succubi like to think) leaving the partner better off for the experience. Whatever the partner is interested in, the succubus will usually find herself interested in, both to saisfy her need for complexity and to help them bond together.

The need for sex is, as said above, mostly filled by sex work, because why not get paid for doing what you need and are good at? Prostitution became legal, or at least accepted, in most every polity that succubi are found, because they’re not only very good at it, they aren’t ashamed of it, and they can coordinate with other succubi through their antenna-horns: most efforts on behalf of traditional values to keep them out just can’t compete and everybody gave up trying to stop them. Succubi don’t dominate the sex work industry, there just aren’t that many of them, but they’ve had a huge influence on that subculture as a result of their efforts. Sex workers of any species are considered to be honorary succubi , and entitled to the traditional treatment thereof: always extend charity, never take charity for granted, always know they are just trying to make it through the world like you are. Succubi are desired as sexual and romantic partners, for their skills, their shapeshifting ability allowing many fantasies to be lived out (also useful for modeling clothes or learning to cut hair), and their mystique of being dangerous delightful temptations, part of a secret underground culture, who everyone wants.

Succubi can reproduce the ‘normal’ way, but it’s highly dangerous to the mother, and also requires an exorbitant investment of energy – they hardly ever do it. The main way succubi reproduce is through the “corruption” of their mortal partners: one who meshes with a succubus perfectly, and who wants to become one of them, can have his or her nature altered by prolonged sexual experience, “unlocking” something lustful within them that allows their sexual desire to transcend physical limitation and transform their body into that of a succubus. Most partners aren’t suitable for this, which is fine, and doesn’t make them any less valuable or loved. When a succubus does corrupt someone, the two of them will remain friends and lovers, but now both of them have a need for mortal companionship the other one does not fulfill, so they need new partners as well… and should one of them find their new partner suitable for corrupting, well, the whole relationship diagram can get really complicated. Not that succubi mind, of course.

COMMENTARY

I swear to God, this did not start out as “let’s make a whole culture of @funereal-disease. It started out trying to fix the problems with succubi instead of just ignoring them.

Succubi originate as something totally different than what they are used as now in hentai. Succubi used to be inherently evil because sexiness was inherently threatening and degrading, that is where the myth came from. They were servants of Hell who used sex to hurt people because sex was sinful and sin was harm. Now, we don’t think that any more – being sexy is not harmful or degrading and ‘sin’ is used more often as an ironic self-descriptor for pornographic interests than a serious condemnation. We see sexy devil girls who love to have sex all the time, and we go “Sounds pretty cool!” People love the succubus as a Magical Girlfriend, but then they have to throw “that whole Hell thing” in as a very incongruous afterthought, and in a society where sexuality isn’t inherently degrading, it seldom reads as making sense. About the only aspect of said “Hell thing” that is actually embraced is the idea of corruption, where succubi turn others to succubi through (and as) a sexual act.

So the idea here was, succubi that could be sexy devil girls and Magical Girlfriends (or Boyfriends or Futa-Pals), retaining just enough of the demonic origin to tie in the original concept but abandoning all the parts that conflicted with what we want them to do nowadays. They’d be ‘born in sin’, but not out to hurt people. So I decided they were made to be sinful corrupters, but it didn’t work somehow. Originally, it was going to be that people weren’t ashamed of sexuality and sin didn’t harm them, and the succubi said “hey this place is nice why don’t we just live here like normal people”, but I decided against it. There’s a lot of kink that relies on actions being ‘naughty’ or ‘forbidden’ or otherwise incorporates shame or societal disapproval in some way, and I’d be ruling all that out, severely limiting my options in the future.

So I decided instead to go with the idea that some have gone with to make succubi evil when sex is not evil: that they use sex to be spies, infiltrators, and saboteurs, which does harm. So, they are here as spies for an oncoming hostile force – but then the hostile force says “actually, we’re not oncoming after all”, and the succubi are like “Shit, now what do we do?” So they become brothel madams and prostitutes and strippers and courtesans, the roles we expect them to fit into, because they just need jobs since their retirement plan just got cancelled. Had the demon army been fought and defeated, then it would have added political isssues and ramifications for their treatment that just aren’t there when the invasion never came.

Now, having your society collectively say “Shit, now what do we do?” is enough of a dial-back on its own to be sufficient if you’re trying to do something else, especially paired with an invasion from hell that is not defeated by heroism but stymied by logistics and penny-pinching. I COULD, if I wanted to, make them maximally fetishy in some other way, and these two things alone would convey the idea that they really aren’t maximally fetishy, they are occupants of a world and trying to make sense of it. But, what I am specifically going for here is Magical Girlfriends, which means they have to be as relatable as possible. You need to see them in a relationship with you, not just having sex. The concept of “succubus” can do almost all the heavy lifting in the sex department – I really don’t deviate from their standard abilities or add a whole lot of new sexy to them – allowing me to focus on just pouring on humanizing details. I thought, a good Magical Girlfriend would share your hobbies, and get excited about your nerdy interests instead of mocking them. But I can’t just say “And they love it when you talk about Warmachine or programming!”, it must be a part of their culture or physiology to justify it and not seem forced. So I said, they have a need to follow complicated things and get excited about them, because they were SUPPOSED to have a complicated infiltration plan but that fell through so they need something else to think about. That it fills a need for complexity, rather than a need to be about a specific subject, means that she can CHANGE her hobby when she starts dating you as your Magical Girlfriend, and will be into whatever you are into. 

It is at this point I realize, “Hey, these are proud sex workers, who because of how their brains are wired, are really really really into and enthusiastic about autistic-type special interests. That sounds a lot like funereal-disease! I better ask her if it’s okay to make a sex culture that looked like it was based on cloning her.” So I did. She said it was – she encouraged me to go whole hog with it. So that’s what I did.

Additional, pseudo-irrelevant details are a good way to flesh out a culture or species’ interests and make them feel real, instead of just being an excuse to convey the emotional essence of a kink or fantasy, and adopting quirks from funereal-disease is as good a source as anything else. So, she loves vintage fashion – succubi can like that too! What is it about vintage fashion? Well, people today think modern clothing is way too revealing, so, I could play that angle up. They prefer older fashions that aren’t as revealing, so they can show knowledge and expertise of a subject, and so they can feel like they are more desirable, people are willing to go through more to “get with” them – they can understandably have a bit of a cultural complex about feeling desired and worthwhile. That works. 

She’s also in a poly relationship, which I kind of assumed succubi would be into anyway, how do I play that up? Ah – I hadn’t done anything with corruption yet! “Corruption” is about the only good thing to salvage from their Hellish origins. That specific metaphor for sexuality being degrading, where sexual contact changes your fundamental nature, is super hot even divorced from a context where sex itself is a degrading thing that changes your fundamental nature. So, they can corrupt people into other succubi, through sexual contact. They have a need for mortal companionship. When there’s a mortal they are absolutely super head-over-heels in love with, they corrupt them into another succubus – and now they no longer fulfill the need for mortal companionship, so in addition to their relationship to each other, now they need to find new mortal girl- or boy-friends. And if any of those hit it off so well they want to be corrupted, well, the poly cluster can get pretty complicated. A few notes about how they chat to each other wirelessly to maintain a coherent culture and coordinate how to watch out for each other while not stepping on each other’s toes, and they’re good to go!

So, what do you think? Do they work for you or not, and why? Would you like one of these succubi as your Magical Girlfriend, Magical Boyfriend, or Magical Futa-Pal? Anything you’d like to see in the future? Would you rather see more cultures, or see some vignette stories within those cultures? Please, let us know!

Seriously, please let us know. Our inbox is so lonely. 

[wanderingwaif]

My Doubles Partner the Succubus

Honestly, getting into the business is hard enough when you have to compete with them. I mean, no offense - I’m no racist - but everyone knows that guys will pay more for suc girls. They REALLY like doing it, you see. That’s the kind of value-added you’re up against. Also, it’s hard not to get resentful some days, when I have to spend two hours getting primped up and the sucs can just POOF, and be cover model gorgeous.

But most clients are humans, so there will always be a place for me. A little niche, the “real girls”. Yeah, I know, it’s homocentric, but that’s what clients ask the SucuNet when they want somebody like me, so that’s how I advertise.

My clients aren’t bad. Some of my pixie and goblin friends from the SASWP tell me the fantasies human clients bring to them. Yikes. Ugh, I just realized suc comes first in the Succubus and Sex Worker Project. It’s a symbolic issue sure, but they come first everywhere else - why not leave us this?

For the most part, my guys want the “human slut” fantasy: a little hip wriggling, moans, dirty talk about how only human dick can really satisfy me, wrap my legs around their waist, or shoulders if I did my stretches that morning. After that all it takes is a breathy whisper - oh, <name>, it feels so good inside meeee - and they lose it. Generally we cuddle, they recover their wits while I bring a fresh towel in and clean up condom detritus. They make a few compliments, cuddle. Most are pleasant, dress, leave. About one in three, though, hesitate, and then ask:

“You’re… a real girl, right?” This accompanied by a glance at my forehead, and its clear lack of bumps, which is not nearly as subtle as he thinks it is. 

I mean, really, if I were a succubus, why would I dress up like a human to make half the rate and have all the stress of a double identity? What is going through this guy’s mind? Even if one did, they surely wouldn’t reveal that to anyone who asked. But he’s waiting on my answer, and I don’t want my Customer! Service! Smile! to drop or show my irritation at his damn fool nonsense so I bat my eyes, say, Aw hon, you’ve seen me up close, what do YOU think? Gets them every time, and if it doesn’t, he’s too suspicious to be a regular anyway.

Tonight’s gentleman caller was no different. After what feels like a half hour of endless showering and “one last” kisses, I slide the door closed, drop the corners of my mouth, and slump against the door. Dropping back into the self-focused mindset takes a minute. A compulsion to re-check the envelope brings me back to reality, so I drag my protesting feet over to the dresser. The gold is still there, and I slide the three hefty coins out into my palm.

At last. Holding the quickly warming gold in one hand, I pull the top sheet onto the floor, flop down on the now-clean bed, and rub the luscious metal across my skin. Its firm pressure reassures me (oh, I’ll be eating owl bear steak this week!) and a trickling warmness slides down my spine to pulse, softly, between my thighs. I open my eyes, and see a glitter - did he leave silver too!? 

Yes! Two silver coins on the bedside table! No high roller he, but the effort is appreciated. I make a note to add some wine to my shopping list. Starting to like this guy.

Just as I’ve started to shrug my lingerie on and sort the mess of clothes from the floor, a knock breaks the solitude. If this damn client left his damn socks here I will- but it’s not the door. It’s the window. The fifth story window. 

And what do you know, hovering outside, a purple-skinned succubus, with the kind of hip-to-waist ratio I’d kill for, electric eyes fixed on me, and two little antennae, twitching obscenely in my direction. 

“I have a business proposition for you,” she said. “May I come in?”