Today’s deck is the Wizard of Oz tarot.
I’m delightfully pleased with this one, not just in the utility, theme, and readability; but also on details like how everything that happens in Kansas is made in a sepia tone.
Today’s reading has a lot of elements of impotence and failure, but as you’ll see, it was somthing I was pushing against.
So a while ago I talked about what I called “Smut Attempt Number Two”. It refers specifically to how a while ago I tried to write something smutty only to feel like I was trying too hard, making me take the draft to one side and then try again with something else.
First of all, here’s a link to the story in question.
Second of all, let’s talk about the first of the many realizations I had in the process, that “trying too hard” part.
You see, when I wrote VA-11 Hall-A (if you’re somehow reading this and didn’t know that, hello! I’m VA-11 Hall-A’s writer) that was effectively my first longform start-to-finish story. I’ve talked in the past about how the story has a lot of experimentation precisely because it was the first time I had a chance to even think about such a thing. I had written shorter things and had a bunch of OC stories of the “it doesn’t exist linearly, it’s just a cool scene I had in mind” variety.
The result of this is that I never developed a proper sense of escalation. One of the many reasons I grew burned out to a crisp around 2019-2020 was the fact that I lacked a sense of “I can do small scale writings”, in my mind everything had to be a big production with a shitton of production pipeline-related nonsense.
So in other words I didn’t do the normal escalation of make small thing and then go polished, I went straight to polished and had to learn to relax.
I’m still learning to relax, this blog is one such step.
So anyways, chatting with N about it, she could tell that there was something being held back there, and I’m gonna save you all the back and forth while I figured things out. But before I tell you about that, let me tell you about Fray.
One thing I’ve talked about in the past is how there’s moments where it feels like there’s a second voice inside of my head, a voice that feels dettached but still distinctly me. Here’s how I’d explain the way it feels now that the memory is fresh.
Let’s say I got done dirty by someone in some situation, the core-est core me thinks from roughly the base of my neck. That core me tends to be more task-oriented so it’s going to think about how the situation might delay other plans, potential solutions and whatnot.
Surrounding that there’s the part of me that gets anxious, happy, sad, annoyed, and so on. Which is why whenever I need to solve a situation the hardest part is “thinking through the noise”.
Then there’s Fray, Fray sounds like a speaker on the inside of my forehead, always sounding as if from a different place slightly above, divorced from me enough that I can listen to it through the noise but still me enough to have a sway on what I think.
Yes, Fray is named after FF14’s Fray, though I’ll note that I’ve had thoughts/fantasies involving a split sense of self where all parts are in cooperation all my life. Anyway, Fray is the “Third Person Fer” I often bring up, the part of me that treats me like I treat others. The voice in my head born from the fact that if I treat others better than I treat myself I better other myself to survive.
And it has worked, so hey…
Back to the main topic. I was talking with N and the topic of my difficulty in being indulgent came up (something she’s aware of since I bring it up often). In the middle of this line of thought as I’m doing other things, Fray chimes in going.
“Hey so you know how you feel like you always gotta accomodate for others but nobody ever accomodates you? Do you think your inability to externalize your indulgence is tied to that?”
What followed was my brain feeling like it was splitting itself open for a few hours. Honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve felt that way, last time was when I realized I was non-binary. But this time it was more, uh… like digging than realizing.
Taking a page from L, who has had to make dialogs in her head to come to terms with things, I decided to write my dialog with Fray as it was happening because if nothing else it’s useful notes for therapy.
Here’s a truncated version of how that conversation went. + is Fray, – is me.
+So you think the problem is that you’re used to not having opportunities to be catered to?
-Probably, I mean, I often have sexual fantasies where I’m being forceful, I wonder if it’s some pent-up anger I haven’t addressed.
+…or maybe it’s just a preference, have you thought about that?
-I have, but-
+Wait WAIT… son of a bitch, this is you being worried about how a sexual fantasy or preference might be taken as the entirety of your moral compass, isn’t it?
-It’s not just that! You know how many friends we have that are abuse victims, it feels bad to-
+AND BECAUSE WE HAVE THOSE FRIENDS YOU KNOW FROM THEIR STORIES THAT IT DOESN’T PLAY LIKE IT FANTASIES, IT NEVER DOES.
-Fuck me, this is another case of the one that shall not be named leaving me an emotional scar by shaming me so often when I opened up to them about stuff they themselves brought up, isn’t it?
+If your concern is that you’re somehow betraying those friends-…
-“Are you directly abusing them in a non-consensual real life context?” No I’m not… but you see what concerns me, right? The fact that normally I wouldn’t even tap someone in the shoulder without explicit consent and my fantasies go in that direction.
+So first of all, I don’t need to rub in your face your own recurrent words about how fantasy exists precisely to let those thoughts be explored safely, right?
-Fair…
+Second: Assuming a consensual context, and like you said you don’t do anything unless allowed to, I know how you stop hard the moment a no is issued no matter how light; assuming consensuality wouldn’t agreeing to rougher play be a sign of intimacy and trust?
-Uh…
+AND THIRD: I know you, I know us. You’re not happy unless you’re serving others, no self-motivation blahblahblah, that’s why I exist. That fantasy is perfectly in character because even if it’s rough you’re still basically catering to the other side in the end, you’re actively putting in the effort.
-Huh…
I left out the more rambling part of the back and forth, the ones with actual names and such, and I edited it all to be more concise because it was literally writing like being dictated to. However I wanna highlight from the original file this paragraph where, letting myself get fully absorbed, I ended up typing about the fact that I was hesitating to type.
Fray has a very distinct voice, that’s because he’s just me when I’m hearing a friend’s problems, down to the same level of sass.
Some of you might be wondering why this is important. Do I want to pivot into becoming a porn writer?
Aside from the fact that I don’t like being told what I can or can’t do, the main reason is that, like I say in the bio of the Uma Musume blog: Horsegirls were born to run, and I was born to write.
To me a writer is someone that externalizes the internal, and so, such internals must be refined and polished. That’s why I read not only in as many genres as I can but in as many topics as I can, why I travel and try so many different hobbies, and (relevant to this topic today) why I seek self-improvement almost compulsively.
Because a writer is only as good as their internal world and the experiences they draw from, and if the part of me that’s meant to be indulgent feels like a radioactive puddle instead of a friend that’s on my side, that’s gonna inevitably show through in what I write.
And more importantly, I just like sharing these moments of self-improvement because I like it when people don’t feel alone. We might not share the same struggles but we both struggle.
There’s also an element of me in a life-long crusade to demystify the creative process and make everyone realize you don’t need to be some mysterious savant to make things and that anyone can and should try to create stuff… but I’m getting sidetracked by then and this entry is gonna be longer than the short story that triggered all these epiphanies if I did.