#dcc audiobook

[calcichel]

Posted in commemoration of finishing Gate of the Feral Gods

[waterkangaroo]

Enchanted Roll of Never-ending Duct Tape. Fifty meters.

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Odds are good you know who Ted Bundy is. Odds are even better you don’t know who Vesta Stoudt is. And while this problem is not exclusive to you hairless monkeys and your pollution-ridden world, those first two statements are part of the reason why you have received this prize. Will you use it to tie people up? Will you use it to save the lives of those you love? Will you wrap your ankles together and sensuously rub your supple feet up and down a dungeon wall while you run your hands through your hair? Who knows! But you just got yourself a roll of the universe’s greatest duct tape. This 50-meter-long roll of extra-durable, fabric-based tape regenerates at the rate of one meter an hour until it returns to 50 meters.

[calcichel]

I'm starting to have some Opinions/Feelings about the way sexuality is used in this book series. It seems to be a relatively asexual series in a lot of ways so far. It tickles me that the only real expression of sexual desire in any form comes from the System AI. It's already quite a Choice to make an AI be a genuinely sexual being in the first place (a choice I love, that's extremely rare and I wish it were explored more), but to make it the only sexual being in the entire narrative, and making its sexuality oriented solely (heh) around a fetish, gives a pretty unique flavor to the scenario.

I also have mixed feelings about it, since it could be conceivably argued that in any given narrative, if the only expression of sexuality is one that is explicitly coerced on an unwilling participant through extreme power imbalance, that the text itself is an inherently sex-negative and kink-negative one. On the other hand, making Carl a more enthusiastic participant would severely keel the story directly into being fetish content, which is absolutely not the goal of this piece of media, so in practical/logistical terms, it seem to have found a pretty happy medium. Even if not a terribly satisfying one.

Also, I just have to say it, if I had the sexual attention of an near-omnipotent AI, I don't think I'd be able to stop myself from at least flirting with it, if not thoroughly indulging it, even if it were feet stuff, even if a trillion people were watching me. I guess that's just one of the things that makes Carl a better protagonist than me. Damn if reading how all this plays out doesn't make me feel frustrated sometimes.