Porn Post-Mortems: Seymour x Sephiroth at The_Love_Hotel, Part 1

[elftaint]

son_of_calamity has been kind enough to give me permission to dissect this beautiful scene. Thanks Sephiroth-mun! As this was a very long scene it will probably take a few parts to cover.

What scene?! Where?!: The Room Of Cool Night Breezes, Seymour x Sephiroth, @ the_love_hotel

Beginning With Your Name...

I posted an opening that made room for bondage-y and/or slave-y stuff but quiet either way (I think silence is one of the best ways to put the squeeze on anyone.) But when Sephiroth first posted I kind of instantly went "hahaha forget all that bondage nonsense."

"It is not..."

The silver-haired swordsman was standing some distance away, leashless himself, his arms folded lightly over his chest as he too observed the heavens. All of this was just another illusion provided by the hotel, he was certain. Even so, it was a pleasant change to at least feel the breeze of the outdoors, his senses fooled into believing there was fresh air and a clear sky above him.

There was something strange in the air tonight, though what, he couldn't have explained.

Fortunate then, he thought, that he'd happened upon this room in particular. His eyes traveled sideways to rest on the halfbreed Guado, silent in their observation of him.

[ ooc: I fully intend to have the current even in the hotel fuck with him, but he'll require a little convincing before he submits to anyone. Hope that's okay. ]

IDEAL TAGBACK. Here's why:

1. Good writing!

Plenty of description, and a rhythm in the writing that suggested to me that this writer was accustomed to taking control of situations - especially since it was active and direct. A good omen.

2. Responded to the setting and character

Which, more than being just respectful, means to me that the other player is ready to share in the things that interest me.

3. Indicated interest in a way that was both obvious and subtle.

Sure there's an expression of interest that happens as soon as someone posts in reply to one of my posts. But what I really appreciated here was getting the character's mental narration. It wasn't "this player is interested in playing with you" it was "this character is interested in your character." But it wasn't in-my-face either. Seymour can be a really skittish top! On a first meeting, he hates being chased back. It's his controlling nature. So this was pretty much a perfect approach on Sephiroth's part.

4. Right off the bat, OOC note saying "this may take a while, but things totally will happen."

That's exactly what I need to know. There was a fight scene a little later and if it weren't for notes like this one, I would have gotten to the point where I was like "b-b-b-but don't you want me?!" And of course, just through quality of writing and the other points mentioned so far, this player had aleady written a sizeable check on my account - the account... of my heart.

The fact that it was Sephiroth had nothing to do with my immediate squeefulness. I've never played FF7 nor seen Advent Children, and I had no feelings about the character for better or worse going into the scene. I'm going to have to play FF7 now :( and I'm sure I'll be thinking the entire time "...ooohhh just you wait I'm gonna get an enchanted ring on you and..."

It is perversely the case that the better the tag is, the longer I take to tagback. Good tags always give me too many ideas. I found it faintly insulting that Sephiroth was always able to turn out a good tag in like 5-20 minutes, and there I was off doing anything but writing for an hour while I tried to come up with a suitably brilliant response. But at least at first, I was all "DO WANT" and reasonably fast.

"Do you resent the illusion?" Seymour asked, his tone restrained and unprepossessing. He appeared to take no notice of Sephiroth's gaze as he was, himself, lost in his contemplation of the artificial heavens.

Yet he was acutely aware of exactly where the other man stood, of the breadth and height of his body, the faint scent of his hair as it carried on the breeze. It was the excruciating awareness of the hunter. He smiled in acknowledgment of its swift grip on his heart.


[[The chase is often as good as the catch.]]

TL;DR: I am absolutely going to pork you stupid no matter what it takes.

That's totally how I read this tag now, but at the time I wanted to do at least three things:

1. Continue the conversation the characters had begun

Looked like a good conversation. Once characters are talking about honesty, you can force all kinds of unpleasant revelations, manipulations, and other psychological levers into the mix. As it turned out, the conversation became quite fruitful later.

2. Give an IC indication that Seymour was reciprocally interested

And moreover interested in pursuit. OTOH Seymour is always interested in pursuit. ^_^ I should stick that in my kinks but w/e moving along.

3. Give an OOC indication that I was prepared to be patient and/or clever about convincing Sephiroth

Several tags of developing conversation followed, the upshot of which was Seymour concluding that ethics are irrelevant at TLH, then going to fetch wine, and Sephiroth being left alone on the balcony to find a weird ring on the ground.

At this same time, son_of_calamity and I had a short OOC conversation about where the scene should be going. Sephiroth-mun was interested in seeing if Sephiroth could stretch, as a character, to being submissive. I was interested in pretty much anything I could get, and said so. But we settled on submission, so I immediately set about making it as easy and frictionless as possible.

This series of tags digs into at least three of my favorite domination tactics, which I will probably kill the magic of by explaining, but that's the sad nature of a post mortem so:

1. Railroading the conversation through excessive eloquence.

This is a pretty direct "mine's bigger", where Seymour takes complete control of the situation and demonstrates that he's the intellectual superior of whoever he's putting the moves on.

Sephiroth's player is more than sharp enough to keep up personally, but Sephiroth himself doesn't have a particular reputation for scurrilous eloquence. I thought the conversational tagbacks were wonderfully IC given my limited understanding of the character.

I often wonder how IC all my talk is with Seymour. To be honest, I'm not all that concerned with characterization, and I'm sure it shows.

I was extremely fortunate that a canon character existed who was physically large, intelligent, amoral, and weird, and who would also just pull amazing speeches out of his ass. But I get the feeling in-game that Seymour's eloquence is the product of knowing exactly what everyone will do, so he can prepare appropriate amazing speeches as needed. Seymour-as-played-by-me is eloquent because he has access to a lifetime of my fast-talking jive. Anyway back to domination tactics.

2. Leaving the room.

I am always a little astonished at how well this works, which is silly because people do it IRL to me all the time. Not that it was hugely effective here. Just that as a general rule it works well. Leaving the room forces the other person to notice your absence. It can be especially effective if you've just made a big fat power play like taking control of the conversation. Leaving the room is also a lovely opportunity for entry-level commands. "I'm going, you stay here." I will almost always let politeness and good manners do the heavy lifting at the beginning of dominating someone.

3. The Smut McGuffin.

The ring! It came from nowhere and leads to nowhere. The ring is an excuse, and meta-gaming of the first water.

The deal with the ring is that it's a prop on which we can hang anything we like. Seymour claims that it's enchanted - it may or may not be. Seymour was actually off fetching yet another McGuffin: wine, which may or may not have been tainted with aphrodisiac. The point of both the ring and the wine (the latter turned out to be superfluous) was to give Sephiroth a reason to be less perfectly in control of himself.

But also on the player side: a prop like this creates anticipation which is in my control and not anyone else's. I don't dominate players when Seymour dominates their characters, but I think it's useful to retain a grasp on the scene's momentum when portraying a top.

Let's look at Sephiroth's response at the apex of Smut McGuffin trickery:

"What manner of ill-humored jest is this?" he uttered softly, his voice gaining a sharp edge to it. Sharp...damn it, Masamune wasn't on hand. No matter. If need be, he could dispatch the other without the need for his sword.

His grip around the wine glass had tightened significantly. Still, he was not as outraged as he should have been...in fact, the thought that the other might be able to control him sent a chill up his spine that was not altogether unpleasant.

But it should have been! More treachery, he was certain of it now.

Beautiful. We get some character flavor - this can so often be awkward, and I thought it was particularly nice that the character flavor came from NOT having a Big Superpowery Thing - and an admission of McGuffin operation, and yet also conscious anger. In FFX, Seymour takes particular delight in putting people in horrible situations just to watch them squirm, so this is extremely aces for him. For me as a player, I appreciated having Sephiroth's reaction shown and told.

There's a delicate balance between just showing and just telling that operates in, you know, pickup smut RP. To do a really classy job of things and follow the instructions of all our English teachers, Sephiroth-mun would have had to write three pages touching on the many physical indications of helplessness, frustration, outrage, insufficient outrage, unbidden pleasure, etc. I would have admired the quality of the writing and been bored silly. By the same token, a tag that read

"What manner of ill-humored jest is this?" he uttered softly. He was kind of mad but also a little horny.

...I would have idled out of that thread right away.

So it's imperative to find a balance that works for both players. I wouldn't say that I hit it perfectly all the time - I think I tend to run long when it would be better to be brief, and vice versa, because I'm exceedingly perverse - and Sephiroth-mun too occasionally ran a little short when I wanted more detail. But the point is: a good scene doesn't depend on perfect tags every time. It depends on tags that work for most of the players most of the time. I think it's harder than perfection to find someone with whom one has genuine compatibility.

Part of the magic of TLH for me is that chance of finding these sleeping dragons and hidden tigers.

In part 2 we'll look at the fight scene and its immediate aftermath! Stay tuned!

Comments

[son-of-calamity.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to add: That brings up a point that it pays to keep in mind when posting to someone, in any sort of rp setting. You can never assume that the person you are posting to knows your character well enough to know the finer details of their reaction. It's difficult sometimes to bear this in mind, and you can assume a person will know exactly what sort of reaction your character is having because, well, YOU know exactly what sort of reaction they're having.

It can be easy to overlook certain details when posting with this assumption, and that's nobody's fault. I'm guilty of that a lot of the time, myself, at times. We overlook things that seem obvious to us, not realizing the other person might not necessarily pick up on those points, not being in the mindset we adapt when we write as those characters.

TL;DR: Err on the side of detail, when in doubt.

Unless you're at work at posting. WHICH YOU SHOULD NEVER DO. *cough*