#meli-val.log

[meli-writes]

never forgetting a friend sharing a death threat she got via twitter and the same username subbing on OF an hour later, as just a perfect synecdoche for how bigotry drives demand for trans porn.

and now there's cis women with fake dicks on OF, sometimes managed by agents, and multiple mainstream porn companies with futanari brands to the point of having made full-on prosthetic make-up dicks (and not just hiding strap in some trousers). so much effort all to make trans porn without actual trans women in it.

i wouldn't blame most workers involved, i don't see it as a serious threat, and i'm not even super mad it's just more like... come on, really? like, if there's one bit of 'leverage' (cos it is not an advantage) we have it'd be sex work, and you wanna deny us even that.

[meli-writes]

proposing an alternative to "none of these words are in the bible" that is just "all of these words are tags on ao3"

[meli-writes]

"Um, actually this mecha is about the horrors of being a trans woman."

Mal, writer of Hekate's Call, has written a gorgeous article about how she feels writing HC and with mechsploitation digging into:

what is mechsploitation about

gatekeeping and the place of men in the genre

the use of sexual assault as just one expression of a system

mechsploitation as 'porn' and personal exploration

strongly recommending people read it, it's only 15 minutes long.

funnily, i'd probably agree that i'm also far in the corner of things. i'm not on bluesky where Mal is and i'm very conscious of the fact that what i'd call the most mechsploy of my writing is either a) stuck in WIP hell b) from before there was a name for the genre and in need of remastering (working on it!), while the rest is short, smutty and not really deep into the themes or horror (and w/ too little mechs i know).

some day i will get round to the stories that're why i use the word, but not just yet. until then this really does encapsulate so many of the thoughts that i have (esp in regards to how it's a horror of existing within systems, not just through being a trans women but also through disability and sex work as well). anyway go read:

https://starset.dev/mechsploitation-and-hekates-call/

[meli-writes]

funny that it was hurled at me as an insult but i actually really like 'mechslop' as an alt term to 'mechsploitation'. like, yes, i do enjoy writing psychosexual milfic body horror wherein experiences of transmisogyny are processed through high concepts paired to brutal, grounded execution -- in self-aware lineage with 'mecha' as an anti-war genre that literally embodies the inhuman scales of the violences of war & colonialism into recognisable human forms -- but also sometimes i just think a beeg lady should pin me down, tie me up, and give me kisses and cuddles after okay?

wdym desiring forgivness & love from someone who you believe could only see you as an enemy, and the security of being captive & dependent on them, is also a psychosexual reflection of the escapist fantasy of throwing off the internalised guilt & self-hatred resultant of the tension in struggling to find a place in -- and the burden of surviving alone in -- a world that doesn't want you to fit into it (probably a world which in itself doesn't fit into a wider one).

motherfucker just replace her neural link with a fleshlight already.

[meli-writes]

10 stories & their first line

i never do challenges or ask games, but this seemed nice! the first line from 10 stories of mine, as invited by @lostscriptorium.

Long Time, No Shear

There’s a human on Dolly’s doorstep—and she’s naked.

Hell's Ashes (Arcane)

Vi can’t say it, but she can think it as much as she likes.

February Brings the Rain (Collab)

Zif presses a boot against February’s ass, imprints another mark and admires her own intoxicating handiwork—a Rorschach's butterfly of black grease that is ruining February’s cream-coloured dress; its sides splitting and screaming as she does.

Conversion Rate

Ran stares over to the other ship’s cargo deck.

softpoint

she sits where you'd forced her to -- the plush velvet arm of your chair, a trophy on display -- and stiffly asks, "bring her here."

Payload

"Nah, this is too good to be true," the merc-rebel-something mutters.

Beast Beset

“She'll surrender, your Grace,” her adviser repeats.

L'État, C'est Mecanisée

The Sun Empress wakes, left cheek scraping on tile, shackled to a blue-bloodied, automatic operating table—crown jewel of the mechanised annex of her Grand Inventor.

culture shock

"why am i here," she says, pushed down into a barely-padded metal chair, hands tied behind her back. "i heard you say the brig."

reuse. recycle.

a flower blooms on the backside of a mech's torso.

i would invite @coffered, @spectrechosts, @hi-dogys, @relia-robot, & anyone else who sees and thinks this is fun <3

[meli-writes]

trying to write the most awful, despicable woman you can imagine that you can still sit there and read and find enough to go "oh fuck i'm like that."

[meli-writes]

not to be incredibly easy to take out of context as a carte blanche for mindless consumption (don't i swear) but when it comes to enjoying "problematic" media or characters all i have to say is:

i don't eat a takeout burger because it's healthy, and i'm very capable of liking it while understanding all the ways in which it's not, and wouldn't be good for me if it were too much of my diet.

and in the end you sort of have to trust people to make those choices.

[meli-writes]

if i had some quiet counterpoints, borrowed from a much smarter writer and friend, to the idea that mechsploitation has a 'shallow reference pool' it would just be that:

>there is an elitism in assuming people are being shallow here >even if true it still consitutes a rich, varied community/body of work >many genres have exploded from small reference points

what is cyberpunk without gibson to catalyse it. remember how it was all called 'doom clones' before someone invented the word 'fps'.