elftaint | Entries tagged with post mortems

This is the tail end of Part 3 Of The Seymour x Aizen Porn Post-Mortem. Thanks LJ entry size limit! I had no idea that you even existed. :(

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
17	09/08/09 05:13 PM	Seymour	315	85	65	45	45	10

He allowed his gaze to sweep over Aizen. In his own clothing once again he seemed severe, masterly, commanding - his thoughts flitted briefly to the masters of the monastery in their penance robes. But that was the past, and this moment, in which he seized both of the loose ends of the rope in his swift hand, was the present. And Aizen was no monk.

With his other hand he slid something towards himself from the side of the bed - it looked like the back of an enormous painting, there was even the suggestion of gilding on the scalloped edge as it turned out. A heavy leather hanging-strap was nailed some distance from the top. Seymour fed his rope-ends through this loop, and then with some effort drew them out, hoisting the thing up by its strap.

From the sag of the rope, and his obvious difficulty in handling it, this was a very heavy object. Nevertheless he slid it back on its catch towards the bed and tied the end of the rope around the span between the bedposts - an uncomplicated provisional knot.

Then, using both hands and all his concentration, he lifted the thing away at one end, and turned it around.

It was a mirror nearly four feet across and six high, including its luxurious frame. It barely fit between the bedposts. He dipped the top under the rope, then let it fall, and he was hidden behind it then as he untied his original knot and hoisted the mirror up by its catch as high as it would go - indeed, it butted up against the canopy over the bed. It trembled as he tied it off, and then hung freely.

He appeared at Aizen's side a moment later, blandly indicating the bedspread before them with one huge hand.

"If you will make yourself comfortable, we can begin."

The Revelation of The Mirror, the completion of the ceremony, and the point at which Aizen must clearly give consent or withdraw.

There are only two things to note about this tag.

First, it took me a day and a half to devise a way for a single man with normal strength to hang a huge mirror at the end of a bed in such a way that there is no sign of what's happening until the very end. He slides the mirror over, rests it against a bedpost outside of the canopy, sets up a rope tie which serves both as pulley and mounting point, and lets the bed frame serve as a horizontal wedge. I enjoyed the technical challenge very much.

Second, in leading through the ceremony, I had intentionally ramped up the pressure on Aizen-mun much more so than Seymour had pressured Aizen. I wanted her excitement in order to assure his complicity. Dudes are gonna call me on being skeevy beyond belief for doing any such thing, but those haters can fuck off. I was creating something beautiful with the intention of making a real live person happy. I don't go through trouble like this for the emphereal and informed happiness of imaginary characters in an artificial setting. Once again, we come back to Elf's Means To An End.

KINK SCOREBOARD:

Kink	NAILED IT
Humiliation
Masturbation
Obeying questionable orders	eh~
Katoptronophilia	HEADSHOT
Writing on people

ROADMAP:

In the next part: Aizen's reaction, Aizen-mun's reaction, and incredibly hot things that happen while people still have their clothes on.

Part 3: From your desire, this star; from this star, my course.

When we last saw our heroes: Well Aizen was just about fed up with Seymour's nonsense.

I had begged Aizen-mun for a bone, but hard on that, I basically left the house for a while. I can't think about sex and sensuality in any meaningful way while holding still. I had to take a nice long bike ride. Thinking about this now makes me very unhappy as my bike was stolen a couple days ago. The bike ride that Cracked Aizen's Case was indeed a pleasant ride.

It was late afternoon and warm. There's a walking trail that curls between several nearby towns, and lots of brushy forest and little creeks on either side. The roundtrip is about ten miles and for the first seven, I assure you, my mind was even more empty than usual. I was just working very slowly on a single idea.

Why would Aizen Sousuke want to be in that bed.

At the top of the trail I turned abruptly and headed back the way I came. The tall wildflowers bowed in the wind and the deep green blackberry brambles looked lush, I remember admiring them and their trembling fruit. That was what was wanted: a trembling lush ripeness ready to be taken. How to evoke it.

It was useless to try and figure out some kind of canon-related reason. I didn't know anything about his canon. I barely knew anything at all. However unlike the void that confronted me with Kasumi, I did have something: Aizen-mun's letters.

That player had picked that character and this situation, and there were these letters.

Aizen will not submit out of cowardice or fear, he can't be threatened, and if he can be coerced it won't be by any kind of simple and obvious method. What was it that he had said: ""If you know who I am, why are you going to such lengths to test my patience?"

He's powerful, like a god. Seymour isn't that powerful. In fact Seymour has exactly three tricks: he's smart, he's a smooth talker, and he has the informed attribute of being good at fucking. The magic and whatnot is just dress-up: all submissions must come back to these three tricks in the end. All his dominations are psychological first and foremost. How can anyone psychologically dominate a god?

Only a god could do that. How to present Aizen with a god's authority: wait. Aizen-mun's so-specific fetish: "...especially since most of my kinks are sensuality based, for instance katoptronophilia (mirror fetish) or...." The mirror. Of course.

But it wasn't enough to just plunk him in front of a mirror and announce "be impressed with yourself please! ♥" There would have to be ceremony in which he is led to the correct frame of mind. The ceremony would require a contract, the contract would require consent. He must be made to consent: what makes him consent. What brought Aizen-mun here in the first place: curiosity.

This position would rewrite all the events of the scene to this conversation:

"I bet I can dominate you."
"Oh yeah? I'd like to see that."

As I pedalled up the trail back home, the sun was setting. A lovely rose-scented breeze blew up off the houses and gardens on the left. I felt very good about that ride; I had been so deep in thought that I hadn't realized how fast I was going, but I was sweating like a pig and felt a line of attack on Aizen growing over my previous uncertainty like a scar.

Consent & Ceremony: Tags 7-17

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
7	09/07/09 04:21 AM	Seymour	203	70	45	55	65	15

He didn't answer right away; rather, his pale eyes closed against the excruciatingly erotic sight of Aizen's compressed lips, and he was still and shuttered.

Within, he sank into profoundest thought. His mind unfurled in a luminous network of dark blue dreams and he tested each possibility-of-Aizen that occurred to him as though this were only a complicated game that he had begun.

it will not
no, this is not
impossible to
it is too remote
what a mess it would leave
without the use of
unavailable here, even if it would
that would kill
he would never accept
more than I can

At last his fingertips touched the shining smooth surface of the correct path, and he emerged into it as though surfacing from deep waters. His eyes opened; they were peculiarly bright and warm, and perhaps even sympathetic. It had been only a few seconds.

"You flatter yourself; it was not difficult. I discovered many remarkable things about your body while you slept." He sat at the edge of the bed, well within Aizen's reach even as he was mindful of the dangerous expression that illumined his dark eyes. "You who have no equals: shall I tell you what I learned?"

I began the ceremony at once, anticipating that I would obtain consent by the immediate appeal to Aizen-mun's curiousity. This stage is like opening the temple doors.

It was necessary to show Seymour's re-assessment - essentially rebooting the scene - after he'd shown such weakness earlier. This was a shot across the bow: "I am changing the rules starting now, and something magical is going to happen, if you want it to. If you let it." It's difficult to say how this affected Aizen-mun at the time - she would have to hustle over here and tell us - but I felt it almost as though I were physically constructing a foundation on which to build.

Note the little juicy bits of implication there. All kinds of gore, rape, and power are hinted at, and gently turned away in favor of something else. Anyone even a little curious could not fail to wonder "what on earth could be better than gore and rape?!?!!!" The kicker is an insult ("it wasn't hard to kidnap you, mr. god") and a blatant appeal to Aizen's vanity. And yet after all that, look at Seymour sitting nervously at the edge of the bed!

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
8	09/07/09 07:37 PM	Aizen	196	70	50	50	60	15

Aizen's fingers tightened imperceptibly in the smooth folds of fabric under them, watching the stranger's eyes willfully close against the sight of him. A few seconds were a considerable amount of time; in the space of so long he might have exercised his will to leave a little more determinedly. As it was, he waited until the grey eyes opened once more, and though the subtle softness of them was instantly unnerving he made no attempt to disengage his own.

Nor did he move away as the stranger settled beside him, despite the intimacy of his sitting so close. His weight on the edge of the bed disrupted the level plateau of the mattress beneath him, and his hip nudged the stranger's back before he self consciously drew himself away from the contact.

The spoken words, in the meantime, melted into the back of his spine, flickering interest mounting in the roaring wake of impotent rage; curiosity. He weighed his words carefully before he spoke.

"I suspect that your revelations might come with a hefty price." But he was not a miser, and his eyes narrowed subtly before he continued. "What is it that you want?"

Confronted with an emerging splendor and the promise of hearing all about himself, Aizen's force is blunted immediately.

He perceives that he must give consent and balks from it. Yet he's interested - certainly, he is interested. The bait has been taken up, and now it is a question of not tearing the hook out of his mouth before he bites down.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
9	09/07/09 11:02 PM	Seymour	265	75	60	50	55	20

A boy has his companions, who fill up the silence of his days with noise, play, combat, exploration, threats, treachery, warmth; from this a man emerges who carries his childhood ruckus with him in his smiles and jokes and the way he takes umbrage and in what he finds lovely. In Seymour's smile there roiled the soundless sacred space of his temple exile and, attendant upon it like a funeral upon death, an unreal and furious hunger. But these things were of course invisible to those who had no comprehension of loss, isolation, rejection, or greatness.

This was the manner of smile with which he answered Aizen's protestations. It contained, too, an element of trust as fine and bright as the filament of a lantern. He burned where the swordsman had pressed against him, though he was motionless, and avid.

"All I ask is that you will allow me to show you. Should you find it unedifying, I will not prevent you from leaving. Do I have your consent, Captain?"

He barely looked over his shoulder at all; there was no need to. The long legs tangled in his sheet covered in fine chestnut hairs, with horseshoe indentations at the outer edges of his kneecaps; or the hands whose fine fingers bore characteristic calluses between the first two knuckles, yet which barely had fingerprints at the third; the forearm whose blue veins submerged into the cords of muscle in a pattern that suggested low and menacing storm clouds - he was already a master of these details and many others. No need to be greedy.

Here the bait is sweetened by two details:

1. Seymour Is Deep Waters - worthy of a god's attention, and capable of having experiences and performing actions that would be novel even to a god. This will be good, I promise. That's what he's say-showing here.

2. A taster - when the promise is "I'm about to tell you all about yourself", it is always nice to know exactly what kind of All-About-Myself will be delivered. It is made explicit here that the knowledge to be bestowed is sensual-physical - this intentionally plays on the mun's interest in his or her own character in addition to playing to the vanity of someone canonically self-interested.

The request for consent is made explicitly. The stage of the ceremony is: the revealing of the artifacts and relics. The alchemy performed here is that it makes a virtue of the Creepy Strategy that I had recklessly heaved into at first! "Sure buddy I kidnapped you and took all your clothes off while you slept. You wanna know why?" The crime is subsumed in its product.

It doesn't cancel the initial fault, but it does make a manifestation of delicious criminality out of a rather low and gross piece of dodgy behavior. Is it enough?

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
10	09/08/09 12:28 AM	Aizen	223	75	60	50	55	15

Aizen's knowledge of all four of those things was impersonal. He was a study of other people's human behaviour, and whilst he had certainly achieved greatness it was not an experience; he had been born with the greatness instilled in his very essence, and he had become it. Still, he paid careful witness to the surface feelings that the stranger allowed to mask his face. Until he knew him better, however, he would be at a permanent disadvantage.

He knew this game; he could feel the broad strokes as the stranger painted them, and he had settled upon his curiosity immediately and expediently progressed to wielding something secret and ungrasped above him as though he could simply reach out and take it. The question was whether or not he could trust the man to not simply tug it away as his fingers closed around it.

His voice, when he finally resolved to speak, had fallen a pitch lower. It rumbled, threatening with darkness but also underlined with a low laughter.

"If you wish for my consent, you will have to trust me with the power of your name first. There may be other stipulations, but I will decide on them as we proceed." It was anything but a surrender, but it was a step up from 'You were not brought here to speak'.

I think that while Aizen's narrated and expressed lack of interest in Seymour's Specialness (bullet #1 in the previous tag) is power-grabbing, Aizen also leaks a little control between the narration of 'a step up from' - itself implying that he was a step down in the first place - and a stipulation on consent. In general everyone's position holds steady here. But Seymour would snatch on that stipulation as though it were itself an agreement.

This is the first tag in which Aizen consents and participates in the ceremony. While he says 'there's a stipulation, and there may be more stipulations' - just doing so is taking the a step into the metaphorical temple: the space of interest and wonder which Seymour has promised and controls absolutely.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
11	09/08/09 01:08 AM	Seymour	156	80	65	50	50	15

"My name is Seymour Guado." He answered immediately, then rose and ducked behind the bedcurtains. His voice called back to Aizen, indistinct, from the southeast quarter of the room beyond, "I am fetching your clothes; that should please you."

A door opened, somewhere. There was a heavy sliding sound and the light, dry, pleasant, condescending voice drifted back to the bed again. "Your insistence on terms and conditions is admirable, but unnecessary. Is it so impossible to believe -" There came a grunt here before Seymour resumed, his words overlaid by a hissing shushing that drew closer as he did. "That you were brought here under exactly those conditions that would make your voyage palatable to you?"

The bed shook briefly as though struck by something heavy, and his head poked through the curtains once more. He tossed a handful of loose light garmets on the bed - white, black-cuffed, with rather severe tailoring. "Get dressed."

Ahaha check that out, Seymour takes "maybe" for "yes" and proceeds to sail off as though everything that follows is a foregone conclusion. Was it?

This tag sets up a sequence that was necessary to me as a player much more than to Seymour as a character. I knew fuck-all about Bleach or Aizen. What does this Aizen guy wear? How does it go together? Ffff hey I've got an idea, why don't I have Aizen show me. So Seymour dumps his clothing on the bed and says 'get dressed, sugar.' This wound up being a much more interesting decision strategically than it was tactically, as we will later see - and it was already pretty interesting tactically. Coincidentally I extracted a little revenge on Aizen for dumping his naked angriness in Seymour's bed in the first place.

Overall this order was an economical and efficient piece of action that would continue to pay dividends for the next dozen tags at least.

A few signatures of control:
1. Condescending tone: to be administered only to non-threats.
2. Seymour off-scene: he's off controlling a part of the scenery Aizen can't see and Aizen-mun doesn't know about. While he's doing so, he's basically untouchable.
3. An order which sets up a lose/lose situation for Aizen: either follow Seymour's instruction, or stay naked and vulnerable. In fact this would be called out explicitly in the next Seymour tag.

After all that, flipping Aizen a name to work with was a bagatelle.

Ceremonially speaking, this is the reading of the litany.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
12	09/08/09 03:56 AM	Aizen	155	80	65	48	50	15

A name, and finally he is on a level playing field with his companion. Seymour. Guado certainly isn't the name of any noble families he's aware of. Though in any other circumstance such a thing would have immediately brought him to register him as below his class, the simple eloquence of his words forces him to believe otherwise.

As clothing is tossed carelessly beside him on the bed, he reaches out to curl his fingers around the fabric. He doesn't immediately move to move to dress, though he does lower his eyes to his closed hand in idle contemplation. When he actually speaks his smooth voice is not directed toward his companion, but to the bed, and his breath ghosts across his own skin as he speaks.

"It seems to me that you went to a remarkable amount of effort to strip me if you intended your first order to be for me to redress."

There's actually not much Aizen can do right now while remaining civil. Certainly, he could at any moment bust out and punish Seymour for such profuse insolence. But he doesn't - because it's undignified? Because he is curious? Because there's some kind of higher power at work?

The way he directs his words towards the bed rather than his opponent speaks to his loss of momentum and creeping loss of control. It's a submissive act, to be honest. Perhaps Aizen's first genuinely submissive act in the thread.

He calls out Seymour for ordering him to dress after taking such trouble to get him naked...

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
13	09/08/09 06:03 AM	Seymour	136	85	67	48	45	18

Seymour regarded him with an expression of eloquent surprise, not that Aizen was paying attention. "Your first order was for your clothing. Now you have it. If you hope to spite me by remaining naked, I must admit -" A soft sigh uncurled in his voice. "I would find it infuriating."

He sat again at the far corner of the bed and watched Aizen steadily. His robe hung open nearly to his waist, exposing a chest ridged with promiscuous muscle and engraved in black ink, and his hair seemed to runch at the temples like the fitful curls of a young girl. His long fingers shifted in a pinched yet elegant movement that suggested nearly that they had sneezed. Aside from this last peculiarity he seemed, perhaps for the first time, perfectly at ease.

He waited.

....and walks right into a wall. Not only does Seymour have a deeply unpleasant answer waiting for his inquiry, it is an answer that is earmarked as following Aizen's own order from his first tag in the thread. Good work me! That was just awful.

Seymour gets comfy on the bed to watch the show, with little hallmarks of weirdness in attendance. Being a little weird tends to keep the ball in one's own court. The next time we're in prison, I'll show you how it works.

This represents a ceremonial rebuke: Aizen does not have the proper holy frame of mind to refute any doctrine presented in the litany as he attempted to in the previous tag. He must be broken to the law.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
14	09/08/09 06:46 AM	Aizen	298	85	70	45	45	20

There was something almost unsettling about the thought of redressing in front of someone. He was being watched, as though his compliance in the act was simply a show; a demonstration for private eyes. It was so immensely personal that he briefly hesitated before he withdrew the first item, a white shirt with no sleeves, and corrected it to the right position before him. His fingers closed together to perform the necessary maneuvre of threading them in through the holes, but he felt no better with the garment on than he had been without it. There was certain eloquent surity to nudity that he lacked partially dressed.

It felt uncomfortable, a truth bourne in no uncertain terms. Something he had never practiced, something undeniably human and trivial, and yet it had never been shared with another. The question was only how Seymour had known - if he had known at all - that this might bring him such discomfort.

Apart from the single hesitation, and one firm glance toward his observer, he showed no other sign and continued to dress in silence. He pulled his coat purposefully over his bared arms, then moved to the edge of the bed when it was necessary to rise to finish dressing. His face had resumed the fine lines of something a little more business like, the curious smile waning just as easily as it had waxed. His legs - long and unwieldy unclothed and hardly the legs of a self-proclaimed god - moved from one concealment to another, although the curtains had none of the warmth that his body had transferred to the sheets. With only the briefest of grazing glances toward his companion, he reached across the bed behind him for his hakama and the burgundy obi that accompanied them.

A magical reply from the perspective of the dominant. Aizen's unease and awkwardness, his disconnection from his seat of power, and yet his sense of purpose as he obeys - absolutely wonderful. In fact I hadn't even thought about how awkward it would be to dress in front of someone. This layer of power was painted and surrendered by Aizen-mun alone. I think this is probably the point where I started to genuinely enjoy Aizen's response just as a beautiful response - rather than the rather masturbatory gratification of seeing my plan come off so well.

One of the traits of Aizen tags that I would come to love is their emotional translucency. And here, especially - so much three-dimensional detail here - expression and thought, physical action, reflection on the past, contemplation of the future. This was a great tag and worst of all check the timestamps: Aizen-mun popped it out so fast!

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
15	09/08/09 02:08 PM	Seymour	270	80	70	45	45	15

There was nothing of satisfaction or vindication in Seymour's faintly pompous expression. He tilted his head a little to better see the curve formed by the long muscles of Aizen's back and shoulder as he shrugged into his shirt; the jacket bored him, but Aizen standing was not unpleasant to regard, though there was something deliciously silly about such a tall man wearing no pants. He watched with particular interest the coy show of long thighs that shifted behind the length of his jacket.

Suddenly, as if remembering something, he stood. Ducking behind the curtains again, he spoke again: "You may dislike this next step, Captain. Be easy."

He must have moved to the far end of the bed. The curtains were suddenly parted there, and Seymour had a long length of dark red rope in his hands that gleamed like satin in the low light. He seized the rope approximately at the center and let the rest drop to the floor; the look of concentration he wore, and the way his hands shifted, suggested that he was evening the ends. Then he let it slide between both hands as he spread his arms; that seemed to satisfy him, and he tied it nearly as high as he could reach onto one ornately carved and turned bedpost. He then stretched it - not too taut, as it was visibly sagging in the centre - to the other bedpost at his left, and tied it there at the same place. He turned the ends over the tied length; they fell abundantly onto the bed, bouncing, with fat tassels at their tips.

Seymour watches, a little mockingly, and then shoots off to do more Generation Of Drama.

This tag was intentionally set up to foreshadow a bondage scene. The rope - itself an ornament, fat, red, and tasseled. The bedposts - classic place to tie someone to on a first date. The methodical way that Seymour measures and adjusts the rope - even as Aizen's next tag would note, it is... what was the delicious phrase Aizen-mun used? "Aesthetic compulsiveness" that is so well-developed in the art of bondage.

A tertiary level of control over the scene: letting Aizen-mun assume that what was coming next was bondage, when, in fact, it was something else entirely. This misguidance was the final stage of the ceremony, setting everyone involved up for the Revelation Of The Mysteries.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
16	09/08/09 04:38 PM	Aizen	292	75	65	50	50	20

Trust, if only in his own grasp of the situation, was all that was truly necessary to advance through it, though he did incline his head slightly to look over his shoulder. He watched with unashamed interest as the man reappeared through the curtains with nothing less than a piece of rope held in his long, strong hands. Aizen spared a moment to observe him in silence, undisturbed by the suggestion in his actions, and rather more curious about the abnormalities in the stranger that he was now free to observe at will. Beside the obvious inhuman attributes, there were intricate tattoos hinted at from beneath the loosely tied kimono. They were oddly primal, if only for their decorating a clearly masculine chest. Seymour displayed a desire for order with his attention to the rope; or perhaps an aesthetic compulsiveness.

His attention returned to his efforts to dress, and he leant into the curtain, the luscious fabric trailing across his face like a lover's carress as he rose to his feet. It parted around him and settled again, and he found himself in what was an incredibly sparse room. It was clear that the bed was the centerpiece; all of the warmth and decoration in the room was confined within the encapsulating curtains. The effect for anyone of lesser will than his own would, he assumed, be to draw them back to the warmth as quickly as possible, but instead he took his time dressing properly, and moved one hand deliberately to check that his hair was in place, rather than tousled from sleep.

Feeling infinitely better, he turned once more toward his bed, lifting away the curtain with the back of one hand. He waited for Seymour's attention in patient silence.

Aizen himself is in a holding pattern in this tag, interested despite himself. However the tag itself carries a lot of secret heat - suppressed eroticism seems to well up from it. The details of Seymour's body, the shocking coldness of the empty room contrasted with the voluptuous bed, the way in which Aizen adjusts himself - it's all pitch-perfect, a final shriving. Aizen is nearly kneeling at the altar here.

When I talk about things like this, I don't mean to give the impression that I in my genius foresaw all of these details and Aizen was operating within my confines like a puppet. It is so far from that. The reason why Aizen-mun quickly came out as a superior partner and Aizen as a superior character to play against is because I would keep setting up these situations, and Aizen would completely fulfill all their possibilities. Like with the detail of feeling awkward while dressing, or adjusting his hair in this tag - his responses are profoundly characteristic, profoundly aware, profoundly gratifying. In Aizen-mun's vivid depiction I could see all the effects of Seymour's actions so clearly.

The way that Aizen was led through the stages of this ceremony is nothing like how a dog is led, and everything like how a dance partner is led. No matter how interesting the steps, I would get bored and oppressed quickly if my partner didn't fill that dance with his or her own light, grace, and ornament.

OMG I have overrun the entry size limit. Tag 17, kink scoreboard and roadmap in addendum post!

Part 2: Seymour Guado, You Ain't Nobody's Boss

Chart Porn; or, putting values on the invaluable.

Let’s talk about chart porn.

So whatever, I already have a reputation for being obsessive. I can’t tank that any worse: I am unquestionably very obsessive, just like many other people are unquestionably very stupid or very unpleasant. But you don’t see me casting aspersions, do you? No, that’s because I have boners I need to get involved with.

This Aizen thread was very important to me for a number of reasons both as a writer and as a sympathetic person. I had an exquisitely keen sense of the fluctuating power levels in this scene - I could almost feel Aizen taking control of the scene in places, and also, with (and as) Seymour, it was equally intense and specific.

There are about 50,000 different power games going on in this thread both IC and OOC and at the twilight margins of both. If I diagrammed all that out it would take a hundred years. Instead, I’m going to quantify and talk about five different kinds of energy:

Seymour’s Mental Control / Aizen’s Mental Control - Each character has a level of mental control over himself, his partner, and the situation. Mental control includes: being the guy who is making demands, being the guy whose demands must be followed (there’s a difference between these two, you know), confidence, grasp of what the other guy is going to do, control of elements of the environment, etc.

EX: When Aizen shows up in Seymour’s bed announcing “give me back my clothes, my lad, and nobody will have to get hurt” - he has a high degree of mental control over himself, and more than a little over Seymour, who now has to answer the implicit threat and explicit demand.

Mental control of the scene is not a zero-sum game: both characters can have a high degree of mental control at the same time, and it is actually this situation that I like best. The opposite of a cold war!

Seymour’s Physical Control / Aizen’s Physical Control - Like mental control, there is also a kind of control that has to do with the control of space and of bodies and of contact. Taking up a lot of room physically, initiating kisses or caresses, doing things that require the other guy to respond physically - whether in motion or arousal or whatever else - that’s all physical control stuff.

EX: When Seymour directs Aizen’s own hand to his own nipple, he is expressing the almost complete physical control he holds at that point in the proceedings. He is more or less free to do whatever he wants to with Aizen’s body at that point.

Again, it’s not a zero-sum situation and again, I like things best when both parties have a lot of control over each other - which is the case in most sympathetic passion.

Ambient Smut Level - sexuality has its own kind of power, which influences everyone involved in ways both subtle and gross. I rate the Smut level of a scene based on the degree of appealing sensual and sexual detail - think of it as a “that’s hott” factor.

My ideal situation is to max out all five levels.

All quantifications are non-percent numerical values from 1 to 100. They are highly subjective - the numbers I will be presenting here are completely my own invention and reflect only my own experience, and it’s likely that Reg saw everything quite differently.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
1	09/06/09 09:30 AM	Seymour	181	65	65	40	40	15
2	09/06/09 10:51 PM	Aizen	331	50	50	55	55	15
3	09/06/09 11:47 PM	Seymour	131	55	55	55	55	20
4	09/07/09 12:21 AM	Aizen	215	50	40	60	70	20
5	09/07/09 01:07 AM	Seymour	139	65	45	50	65	22
6	09/07/09 02:07 AM	Aizen	254	60	45	55	65	20
7	09/07/09 04:21 AM	Seymour	203	70	45	55	65	15
8	09/07/09 07:37 PM	Aizen	196	70	50	50	60	15
9	09/07/09 11:02 PM	Seymour	265	75	60	50	55	20
10	09/08/09 12:28 AM	Aizen	223	75	60	50	55	15
11	09/08/09 01:08 AM	Seymour	156	80	65	50	50	15

The Tags: 1-6
- I will be reproducing almost all tags in full since they are too dense to excerpt in most cases. The flow of information and implication is pretty important.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
1	09/06/09 09:30 AM	Seymour	181	65	65	40	40	15

We start in a familiar place: here, in the tyrant's bed.

The light that spilled from the ornate filigree lamp was dim....

"Forgive me; it was more expedient this way, my love."

As noted in the Kasumi write-up, this is a tag that posits Seymour as reasonably in-control of the situation to begin with. People entering this thread have to do so in a way that explains why this pervert is addressing them so familiarly, and most people (okay all people) chose to interpret the situation as a kidnapping, for better or worse. Whatever, that still means Seymour is in control.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
2	09/06/09 10:51 PM	Aizen	331	50	50	55	55	15

Maroon lashes fluttered as he stirred from his slumber; unconsciousness clinging futily in an effort to prevent him from waking. The dim glow cast by the lamp was familiar and comforting in its own way, resembling the languishing decadence of his own bedchambers.

If not for the heady incense he might not have awoken at all, but as he shifted into a more comfortable position - the naked cobbles of his spine dragging against what could only be his own sheets for how soft they were - an inhalation of the scent burned its way down the back of his throat, destroying the illusion. His brown eyes finally opened completely, and in them hardened an instant comprehension of the obvious facts: this wasn't his room, it wasn't his bed, and someone - or possibly something judging by the sound on the other side of the curtain - had placed him here while he was sleeping.

It was a man's hand that parted the curtain, not a monster's, and for a moment he suspected that this might simply be one of Gin's jokes. The face that followed dissuaded him of that notion immediately. The stranger had strong features, cobalt blue hair, and striking eyes that clearly swept in an unreserved examination of his body.

He responded wordlessly at first, his languid movements as he rose to sit reflecting only confidence and fearlessness. The situation might be new to him: finding himself naked in a stranger's bed, confronted by a declaration of love - because really, how ridiculous! - but the actions would always have been the same. Satisfied, but still unashamed of his own nudity, he settled eyes that were now as hard as granite on the mysterious stranger and spoke.

"Everyone is forgiven a single error in judgement. Return me my clothing immediately, and we can forget this happened." His voice is a dulcet baritone, but every word sounds with authority even though he doesn't raise his voice beyond conversation level.

Aizen's first tag hahaha I seriously did goggle a bit at this. (Incidentally there is running commentary on this stuff up to a point over here. "And now you have a tag~ I genuinely hope that you enjoy it." Aizen-mun notes, as though it was no particularly big deal. The first of many tildes that she would come to inflict on me.)

This tag instantly indicated Aizen as a threat to Seymour, and Aizen-mun as a threat to me. He's why.

1. Totally attuned to environment - touching, looking, sniffing, remembering, interacting. This world that I had built was instantly hers as well, at least within the bedcurtains. I lost a critical degree of momentum right away.

2. Naked and pissed - naked I'd seen before, but pissed I had not. This recontextualizes Seymour's position: something is going on here other than a little gentle bodysnatching - this was Seymour trespassing upon a powerful man and stripping him and who knows what else. It was actually a huge curve ball to pitch my way right out of the gate, even if it did presume tremendous power on Seymour's part.

3. Already barking orders - well I mean, not barking, but still: the first friggin' thing he says is an order backed by a threat. Jesus Christ how could this possibly lead to anything but a fight? And immediately Seymour is forced to answer the order and the threat rather than dictating any further terms and policies.

OHSHIT. This is not a helpless character or an unimaginative player. You can see me directly take five psychological steps back while I desperately try to concoct narrative out of what Aizen-mun had pitched at me.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
3	09/06/09 11:47 PM	Seymour	131	55	55	55	55	20

Seymour was indeed examining him minutely, his focus sliding almost tangibly from the nape of Aizen's neck to the intricately masculine bones of his wrist, and from there he began to silently curse the rumpled sheets. Though he was unconscious of it, he licked his lips with the tip of his tongue.

He suddenly had a visceral flash of memory: undressing the unconscious Aizen, whose light, luxurious clothing seemed to melt away in his hands; the strong tanned body emerging as though a genesis. He'd suffered the momentarily dizzying sensation that he had created Aizen in his nakedness rather than unwrapping him.

"How sad that so splendid a form should be wasted on so incurious a mind." He replied, his tone as bittersweet as the incense. "Your reputation exceeds you, Captain."

So my immediate first-tier solution is:

1. Get creepy
2. Talk smart

Don't underestimate the power of getting creepy, guys. Do not write it off as the express province of actual IRL creepers or the product of a deranged mind. Controlled creepiness is guerilla warfare: the idea is to force your opponent to back down by punishing their progress with creepy tentacles. It is a low and ignoble victory, but it is still victory.

In going directly to creepy, I basically abandoned the field to Aizen-mun's direct physical and psychological dominance. I fled before the army even really showed up, to continue the metaphor at painful length. Creepiness makes a bad first resort.

Talking smart - I mean, that just works. Smacking a dude down makes that dude small and you big. But in a situation like this it reads to me as talking instead of doing. Rather than answering Aizen's threat like a gentleman, Seymour is answering it like a bureaucrat - with words and inactivity.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
4	09/07/09 12:21 AM	Aizen	215	50	40	60	70	20

Aizen was distinctly aware that every detail of his body was being absorbed, as though the steel grey eyes were sponges. No, not absorbed: devoured, if the lascivious wandering of the stranger's tongue was to be taken at face value. It was triviality that he simply allowed it. This man could be no threat to him.

His elegant fingers smoothed across the thin sheet that concealed him, then curled almost carelessly amongst the folds of silken fabric, prepared to throw it aside so that he could physically remove himself from this situation. He halted, however, even as the muscles in his arm visibly tensed, and he raised his face subtly; just enough to look down at the stranger, even from his position on the bed.

Setting aside a sharp response regarding his curiosity, he settled on what he considered to be the more important comment. This man had known who he was, and yet he had proceeded anyway. Just who did he think he was? Clearly finding out was his first priority.

"Then I am at an immediate disadvantage," he prompted. "I am not in such a fortunate position as to know who I am speaking to." It went unsaid that perhaps this was because the stranger didn't have reputation enough to attract his notice.

To which Aizen responds, basically "I see that you mean to answer me like a bureaucrat and not a gentleman. Also, I'm taller." Note the details of physical supremacy in this environment. I feel them very sharply and was genuinely shaken. In fact, I was starting to lose confidence in myself completely.

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
5	09/07/09 01:07 AM	Seymour	139	65	45	50	65	22

"That is because you were not brought here to speak."

This was not true, in the strict sense of 'truth.' Yet where truth is not useful, it should not intrude; so he thought as he watched Aizen's fingers, with their peculiarly precise knuckles, slide over the sheets as his own fingers had slid over his taut abdomen. How vicarious this pleasure.

There was a banked fire in Aizen's expression, and in the threatening curve of his body, that inclined him despite himself to be cautious. Yet there was no sign of unease on his features, nor tension in his tattooed shoulders. A sharp metallic taste rose in the back of his throat, and he smiled - a quiet, secretive, unpleasant smile.

"Were you aware that there is an almost perfectly flat morsel of skin behind your right ear?"

Three separate people, including Aizen-mun, told me that "That is because you were not brought here to speak." was a great line and a genuine slap in the face to Aizen. Yet I can't personally extract it out of the failure of the rest of the tag - more creepiness and effeminate twiddly bureaucratic detail. While I awarded hefty Seymour Mental Control Bonus Points!!! based on the positive responses to "...not brought here to speak," I maintain that Aizen is clearly and vastly winning the Who Is A Big Man War, claiming more and more space physically and mentally. At this point in the thread I still have not even recovered from Aizen Victory Point 2: Naked And Pissed (otherwise known as "why am I here?")

I noted as much explicitly in the OOC thread:

I should say for the benefit of our viewers at home that this scene is particularly challenging not only because Aizen is a little uber, but also because I'm so unused to be seriously challenged at all.

Moreover I'm having a lot of trouble managing the physical space: Aizen is big, and he is capturing big areas of the space available in this scene both mentally and physically. Whether out of perverse embarrassment or reluctance to get inelegant, I have been opting to shift into notions of obscurity, silence, and penetration rather than overt physical overpowering. I feel that I do not have a grasp of the momentum of this scene, and this makes me confused.

While this is very rare for me, I am actually blocking out this scene IRL so that I can re-grasp the physical aspects in play.

The question permanently hollering at me is WHY - not on Seymour's part, that part is obvious to me (only) and one of the few aces I feel are solidly in my hand. But what motivation can Aizen be provided with?

DON'T ANSWER THAT QUESTION. This is my puzzle and I will conquer it.

Aizen-mun replies

My only suggestion is that perhaps over the next few posts, I can provide a little character insight through his actions and reactions that might provide, both for yourself and Seymour, some kind of prompt or suggestion.

And as a note I often find myself copying the previous comment into the box so that I can snip out the bits that I have to remember to respond to.

That would definitely be good, as my ignorance is at least part of the reason I'm struggling. At the same time: how dare you indulge me. I will break you.

Also, I enjoy the ambiguity and challenge, though they are torture. Also I will slit your throat for that OOC comment on your last (wonderful) tag.

Was my answer. The OOC comment, by the way, was "Just let me know if it gets too much ♥" I was basically crying aloud for mercy and guidance.

At the same time, Aizen tags:

Tag #	Timestamp	Author	WordCount	SM-Control	SP-Control	AM-Control	AP-Control	Smut
6	09/07/09 02:07 AM	Aizen	254	60	45	55	65	20

The instant effect of those words was to quiet any more words immediately. It wasn't obedience so much as righteous indignation, which bubbled up in his chest like caustic soda, threatening to burn the skin and give the petty feeling away. Nobody had ever - not in a hundred and twenty years - dared to say such a thing to him. Yet this stranger - and it seemed that he was determined to stay a stranger indefinitely - had done so almost off handedly.

Just as the stranger remained impassive, so too did Aizen. The smile that he recieved was eerily familiar, and yet for once his own cruel smile was completely absent, leaving behind a guarded expression in its wake. His lips were pressed into a strict line, brown eyes smouldering with something that was far from pleasure. He challenged himself to speak if only to break the silence, only to find himself interrupted before he could begin.

This man had undressed him. He had laid him bare and mapped every part of him as a lover would, while he could not so much as lift a finger to prevent it. Without his permission.

He was not often angry, and he had never demonstrated it. This, however, had ignited a quiet rage beneath his fingertips and behind the curtain of his eyes. When he speaks, however, there is a note of genuine curiosity in his voice.

"If you know who I am, why are you going to such lengths to test my patience?

Super, angry god on Seymour's hands. No problem, I was already doing so well. Note too that my Creeper Strategy comes back to bite me in the ass here so hard: now not only is Aizen enraged, he is also unquestionably justified. This is why creepiness is not a first-tier strategy, gang.

I lost. By this point, I had completely lost and was utterly foundering. I couldn't answer the question: why is Aizen there, and what does Seymour want to do with him. Without that answer, I had no way to motivate either party, much less beat Aizen into a corner as he so richly deserved, and the scene would just end.

ROADMAP

That's where matters stood at the end of tag 6: lost Seymour, supreme Aizen. By tag 11 this situation would be almost totally reversed. Stay tuned!

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT: It's over here, the thread where I lost my dignity.

SO WHAT THE HELL: Hey remember where we left off last time? I will never forget it.

Rising up after a few more lengthy seconds, he lapped soothingly and replaced his mouth with a hand, stroking with sensual intent. Coughing quietly, he cleared his throat and swallowed, returning the raw insides to their saliva-coated state and leaning on an elbow as he kissed his way back up a chest, nipping the tail of an intricate tattoo.

A little hoarse, he asked, "Are you okay with me taking you?" The tip of his nose dragged up a collar-bone, tracing the knolls momentarily; kissing a little higher, he applied the same suction to the arch of a throat. "It's okay if not, but I want to feel you around me."

OH MY GOD. (Quick break: this is still a really well-written tag though, isn't it!)

I sat on this for like a day and finally sent a PM to Kasumi-mun stating something like:

Ha ha... really?

Which is a completely bitch-ass thing to say. Kasumi, sensible and mature, replied:

Man, it's cool, whichever is absolutely fine to me - most likely Kas won't mind that much either if Seymour's all RARR MUST SEME, since he's completely used to it. Act as IC as you want, honestly. Kas won't throw a fit, he's mature enough to be snarky without being a dick at the same time.

Which only made me feel worse for being a stickler on this point.

The Law Of Seme Ass

The Law Of Seme Ass is: you must be better than the seme at something major. Taller, stronger, smarter, faster, MOAR POAWERS, something. It is sadly not enough to just be the most adorable guy ever.

I think that if Seymour ever took it up the butt from someone at TLH, it would have to be either crack (i.e. pegged by Didi from Dexter's Lab, bent over the couch by a very aggressive C3PO) or someone whose immense glee made him unstoppable - like Kasumi. Kasumi, who was titled The Joytopper by my followers-on. But it would have to be someone like Kasumi, not Kasumi himself.

At the same time, I felt kind of bummy about it, like "pfft am I just holding out for no reason like a little bitch?" In fact, I may have been. It is only pretendy fun-times after all. Yet I was still reticent, and Seymour's sentiment even in the loose sense that I interpret IC was: one requires a slightly smoother approach than "are you okay with me taking you?" in lieu of anything else.

If Kasumi-mun had said "this is something I really want", we would have made it happen. But instead Kasumi-mun said "PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT w/e."

At the same time, I thought it was inappropriate to do the scene such that Seymour is ramming Kasumi. The mood was all wrong. This was just not meant to be a physically penetrative encounter. I negotiated down to mutual frot, let's leave it at that.

.... Frottage is cool for me! If you'd prefer a steamy 69, that's all gravy too. Seymour can screw (ha HA back at you) with Kasumi's head all he wants, the boy likes to keep attentive and responds well to - or should I say falls for? - distractions.

Actually Kasumi-mun was more than cool about it. Seymour was even given some rather advanced-level permissions to do a bit of headfucking and whatnot. Next tiiiiiimmmmeeee.~

Anyway back to the action.

His smile fell - peculiarly faltering and vulnerable for him. His hand slid from Kasumi's fine yellow hair to the small of his back, and he held him close. He took a deep breath, his expression unfocused, and at last he held Kasumi's violet eyes with his own and murmured, "It isn't what I want. Not in the way you meant." It was unlike him to be so hesistant, but this situation wasn't like anything he was accustomed to, either.

He traced a trail all arabesques down Kasumi's chest. His fingertips rejoiced in the hotness of him and the way his naive fragrance rose from everywhere he touched; at last they closed around his erection and he rolled the surface of his palm against it lightly. "But come, there are other pleasures."

Aw poor Seymour.

One thing that sticks out about this exchange is that I very seldom see TLH threads where lovers disagree on how to love in character - I think it's usually all handled mun-side and the characters themselves always have perfect movie sex. There was something rather erotically-charged about the naturalness of this particular scenario. Not that it would stop me from continuing to flip Kasumi seme bullshit, and not that it would stop Kasumi from flipping cute boy shit at absolutely the entire planet.

"Give me your mouth," He hummed, the arm around Kasumi's back tightening with genuine warmth.

"That'd be hard, s'kind of attached," Kasumi stuttered, a moan breaking over his lips without warning as his erection pulsed with need, bucking into an obliging hand. Shaking his head to clear it and not to be outdone, he renewed his efforts of stroking, nipping at addictive lips.

"Trade off," he grinned, quirking an eye-brow. "What do I get?"

"Don't get cute with me. I'm a very important man." Seymour leered, though the effect was undercut by the naked urgency with which he pumped against the hand that enclosed him. He caught Kasumi's playful lips and sank his teeth into the lower - not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to hold him.

"Howe stiw."

OH COME ON THIS IS CUTE AS FUCKING HELL. This is absolutely an entire litter of sexy kittens' worth of cute. These two bantering: ahn~ <3

Seymour is butching up as I relax into the flow of the scene again - I read these lines mentally as being very "high-powered 80's executive comedy", you know, where the adorable yet ambitious young exec is mashing on the older boss man in a doorway near a room where a lot of black lacquered furniture resides. Come on, guys. You see it too, right?

Right?

C'mon guys. Hrnnn.

Butching Up

I don't want to get into a too-extended discussion about how to write Manlier Dialog because it's a subject on which I will wax overlong. But here are three rules that will get anyone off to a good start:

1. Be brief yet specific.
2. Be direct.
3. Use the imperative tense without exclamation points.

Menergy is all about being unashamed to ask for what you want, and to do so with the idea that you already deserve it. It is all about saying what you mean because why on earth wouldn't you.

He could feel rays of Kasumi-desire glaze over him, and - sensitive in his own way, when it suited him, and it so suited him now - Seymour wrapped his huge hand over and around his lover's where it lay on his hungry cock. He could get both of them in hand when they were lined up like this, and still had spare enough for his fingers to brush the inside of his own palm. "Let me," he urged against Kasumi's fever-hot mouth, his tongue flicking its intricate corners. "Just stay close."

You sure are a top, Seymour! You sure are.

I can't help it sometimes. :( No, I don't want to help it. Fortunately Kasumi was willing to play along a little now.

A ragged gasp was drawn out of him and he furled his arms around a body so much broader than his own, absently running his now free hand over the tattoos that held him fixated, wondering if they meant anything. Scattering his fingers down a waist, he clawed with gentle urgency, moans thickening into messy kisses as Kasumi's tenuous hold on manners finally began to slip.

"S-Seymour - hah, ah -"

Words trickled unbeknown amidst the urgent growls that continued to build in his chest, pinning a hip with the single-minded intent of grinding down that much harder. Pleasure began to uncurl in the pit of his belly, sparking startled cries as he chased it, the tang of salt heady under his tongue.

"Yes ..."

Ah, lovely. So often I am presented with what I like to call the Caterpillar Uke: this is the bottom who wriggles and moans and that's... it. I am catastrophically uninterested in that sort of thing.

The impassioned, affectionate, gripping, kissing, touching, panting, alive uke - even if, as in this case, it's not really an uke at all - is clearly a superior article.

Our heroes totally spooge all over each other shortly after this and it is beautiful. Aw, how sweet, now they can shut up and cud-

He was insensate as he slumped back against the bed, his arm trailing limply around slender white shoulders. After a long rumbling sigh, he eventually wedged his hand out from between them and let his fingers enjoy the luxury of cupping Kasumi's elegant hip instead. His pulse slowed, and the sweat that had gathered on his skin had started to dry.

"Shall we marry?" He asked quietly, in a sere and diffident tone.

OH SEYMOUR REALLY.

Over in OOC land I was still smarting from getting so completely led around in this scene, and I was all "TIME TO FLIP SHIT AT THE LITTLE MAN."

...Sighing in parody of his lover with luxurious decadence.

"You're the bride," he grumbled, smiling as tickles shivered across his shoulders.

"No u."

"I look well in white," Seymour amenably replied, laughing quietly in counterpoint. "Though I will be asked why my groom is so runty."

First things first: "I look well in white" was a punchline handed to me from a third party following the thread. Hi third party!

Would Seymour Guado ever use the word "runty", really? I have no idea anymore. I ran through a hundred synonyms for "smaller" and "runty" was the only one that was perfectly playfully insulting. In any event, his gracious antiphony here is of my favorite genre of masculinity. Educated, subtle, good-humored, and unafraid to slum it up a little.

"I'm not runty, you're just stupidly buff. Insult me in half an hour," he instructed, settling down for a nap to regain his senses and the ability to walk.

Perfect. It is exactly the right pitch of cute - endearing without being shrill or supplicating. Kasumi isn't asking for a pat on the head here, he is making a succinct demand to a six-foot-tall alarm clock.

I didn't talk a lot about sex in this post mortem because the sex aspect of this scene was just - relentlessly and evenly good-quality. I would have to quote everything at that rate. I think it was the power dynamics and the adorable banter that made this one for me. I would be delighted to thread with Kasumi again, though I think Seymour might claim he has to see the dentist or something. Thanks very much to Kasumi-mun

i_was_serious!

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT: It's over here, the thread where I lost my manhood.

SO WHAT THE HELL: When we left off last time, I had begun to stick a plot in some PWP out of despair while Kasumi was relentlessly molesting me. Then:

He groaned low in his throat and covered his eyes, flowers of warmth blooming under Kasumi's hands and lips, his hips undulating under the chilling cellular tickle of those intrusive nails. His stomach muscles clenched viciously as he strained towards his teasing touch and he began to pant like a senseless animal. His fingers splayed almost reflexively over the younger man's satiny shoulders.

This was rapidly getting out of control. He had the heartstopping thought that one of them was in grave danger, but he was no longer clear on which.

Seymour was freaking out! It's so unlike him to lose his cool. But then, it's so different for him to be so deliciously attacked like this.

I have to be careful to separate IC and OOC here, which is normally not a problem for me because I deliberately picked a character to play with whose nature is very much like my own.

IC: Seymour is pretty much freaking out.

OOC: I am enjoying the hell out of being taken for a ride but I can't understand why it is that I'm not in control of the situation.

So there are notes of pleasure, confusion, sorrow, lust etc. going on in this tag. All these Kasumi tags are so busy on an emotional level!

Quirking a brow at how easily riled the other man became, Kasumi once again reminded himself that no, he wasn't in Kansas - or to be more specific, Tochigi - anymore and yes, he was probably going to be surrounded by the weirdest, most curious individuals for the rest of his natural, nexus-screwed life. Dipping his head to the centre of a built chest, he allowed himself a moment to inhale the scent that stemmed from the core of his newfound lover, lapping belatedly across a tattoo of a wild animal - lion, dragon? - as clean musk infiltrated his sinuses, holding him captive.

Splaying the hand on Seymour's hip, Kasumi raised his head with a kind smile; younger he might have been, but that really didn't mean anything when he sensed his partner was nearing distress.

"Hey," he quietly muttered, sweeping a caress across the ripples of an abdomen. "You okay there, blue?"

Casually draping a bent knee over a partially-clothed thigh, he let him know without words that he wasn't going anywhere, whatever the answer.

To which Kasumi was delightfully sensitive.

I was totally all "DO NOT FOURTHWALL ME YOU BITCH" IRL but I learned to relax. That's another thing that happened a lot in this thread: me overreacting to stuff just because I was so unused to Kasumi-nature, and having to take a step back and be all "ha ha slow down there big guy."

Hey let's look at a few Textbook Good Things going on in this Kasumi tag.

1. Kasumi is always direct and specific. Dude is gonna lick your chest and you will not have any questions about what he's doing. I totally got whiplash off of this after so many threads, both at TLH and other places, where a guy licking my chest will be worded like "Sparkle-chan delicately placed his oral muscle on a part of Seymour just below his neck and it was soooooo sexy."

2. Kasumi is the opposite of a powergamer. He doesn't have any magic powers, he's not going to make you cum with psionics, he isn't seven feet tall and the world's greatest swordsman. He's just a guy, and in that he gets to do Actual Guy Stuff like be sensitive to his partner's distress and put his tongue all over someone and giggle. He doesn't have a reputation to maintain or face to preserve. Excellent.

3. Kasumi doesn't underwrite or overwrite. I do both with great regularity, so I can particularly appreciate the approach here. Kasumi's actions, thoughts, and words are described clearly yet without excess fat, self-description, internal monologue, etc.

4. You never have to guess what Kasumi wants. He's a cute guy who wants to get his dick wet and wants his partner to have a good time while that happens. The story ends there!

Hard on the heels of this thread I got so involved in a thread that can be best described as amazingly baroque with an Aizen - it was actually impossible for me shake off the intense and very verbal conduct of that thread when coming back to the Kasumi thread. You can see, too, in my Aizen tags where I picked up Kasumi-style conciseness. The byplay amuses me but I worry that I did an injustice to both partners. Anyway.

"You remind me of someone I once knew," He started, his eyes pointlessly searching the canopy of the bed - he sounded as though he were in pain, and if his rock-hard erection and trembling fingers were anything to go by, he might have been. He couldn't finish the thought aloud, though it might have gone something like I cannot tell which debts to repay first, nor your punishment for reminding me of them. Instead he opted for the comparatively safer, "When I brought you here, it was in memoriam, you might say."

...
He shifted onto his side, regarding his unlikely companion with a surprising mildness. "I admit defeat. Another round?" He cupped Kasumi's chin in his hand and brushed his thumb over his tender pink lips. "This time as we are, rather than as I was. My name is Seymour."

Hey Seymour, you think the Big Boss Guy routine is maybe falling through?

I had to ask IC for basically a reboot because there was no other way to get Seymour down from his tree. I hope it came off graciously.

Grinning defiantly, he touched the aching length that stood proudly between toned thighs for the first time, stroking experimentally from root to tip and passing the pad of a glancing finger across the inflamed head as he did so, giving a squeeze to enforce his next point.

"I'm Kasumi."

Oh my god, what a dick!

On Seymour.

Kasumi accepts a renegotiation of terms like a good sport: by tickling a hard-on. Would that all contracts were signed-off so.

Still, he got a ruthless grip on his imagination, and thereupon he very meaningfully held Kasumi's lilac eyes with his own. Tensing a very particular set of muscles, he caused his cock to hop and twitch on each syllable of "Pleased to meet you," as he spoke.

IRL ASIDE: the first time a man showed this to me it was in a hotel room in a big American city. I laughed so hard he had to put a pillow over my face so I wouldn't wake up the entire floor/block. The kind of thing one does not forget lightly.

entirely at odds with the random pollution of gouache and cursory soap that surrounded the student,

Kasumi running with his art-student-ness, and

if Seymour was a lion, Kasumi was most definitely a house cat, if a spunky one.

"I love your hair," he mentioned as an after-thought, the cool expansive of it brushing his forehead.

Two nice notes here: Kasumi once again graciously allowing me to have pride of place in name if not in action, and also, an unlooked-for compliment.

It was even more distracting to have his hair complimented. He rolled his eyes up to his forelock, a wry smile tugging his lips. "That's my penis in your hand. Are you talking about my hair only to unman me?"

Which I refused to be a sport about. Actually Kasumi's smart-ass mouth encouraged me to be more of a smart-ass myself than I would normally be IC. I hope the idea of Seymour turning cheap jokes isn't too unbearably OOC but fuckit, it was fun.

As if to assure him that there were no hard feelings - no other hard feelings - he let his hand glide along Kasumi's lean fresh flank nearly to his knee, and then swept up between his thighs quite patiently.

Seymour thought him distractingly beautiful - no, he amended to himself: in his smoothness and shapeliness, and in the instant warmth of his smile, he had the look of an idol.

Yet still, I'm struggling really hard with action in these tags, and I doubt anyone could miss it. I'm touching like an uke here! What the hell.

A big part of it was that I had no sense of Kasumi's body or personality or history aside from the crumbs I had ineffectively gleaned from tags. Check the timestamps on Kasumi's next tag and my reply, and then the next tag and reply. It took me two days to throw two tags, neither of which were more than a few sentences long.

What happened?

Basically I shuddered to a halt. I didn't have enough information to go on. Unlike Sephiroth, there aren't exactly 50,000 shrines to Kasumi all over the internet. Very few pictures, very slim canon backstory, and worse: I had very little to go on in terms of IRL experiences since I've never hopped in the sack with anyone like Kasumi. I had nothing. I was out. My ocean of smut ran dry.

So I sent a panicked drunk PM to Kasumi-mun, basically saying

I CANNOT GO ON IN THIS VOID.

Kasumi-mun, sugar-sweet and sunshiny as Kasumi himself, replied with "lol you are so cute here have a backstory." It was huge and extremely complete! Oh thank fuck. It took me a couple hours to digest it but by the end I felt much better about the character and the -

KANYE VOICE Imma let me finish but I just have to say
It is OF COURSE possible to write smut without having a profound grasp of the character you are smutting with. Of course you can just stick tab A in slot B and call it good, and there's nothing wrong with it. It was eminently possible for Kasumi and me to finish out this thread by writing straight up "my blue-haired guy touches your blond-haired guy" tags.

But it's not what I want and it's not what I like. If I was just in the market for porn/CR I wouldn't drop so many threads. What I really want is to fiddle with interesting minds in sexual territory. It's obvious that Kasumi-mun has an interesting mind, and I couldn't do credit to it or fiddle with it on the kind of personal and intricate terms that I favor while suffering from such punishing ignorance. I've mentioned before that 90% of what I do at TLH is pretext: this is the 10% that isn't.

I had to know. Fortunately Kasumi-mun cleared that hurdle with a few miles to spare.

He squeezed Kasumi's slinky, satiny, flexible body between his knees, smiling down in answer, although a kind of doubt played around the corners of his eyes. "Don't choke."

There was a keen edge of heartbreak mixed up in this uncomplicated pleasure. More than just those he had lost and left, he felt the absence of the sweetness of life as a young man: to have enthusiasm, to believe, to be safe, to be swept away by novelty, to run one's self to exhaustion under the soft sun, to sleep carelessly, to love artlessly.

Something in Kasumi's irrepressible brightness was forcing these old agonies to bubble up from their benthic oubliettes. It was poignant and odd, and yet, as he felt the student's soft breath on his most sensitive parts, he rather ruthlessly decided that there was no time like the present to start enjoying youth.

This is my first tag after the Vulcan Character Mind Meld. I'm still not fully on-board yet but I think I can see where I'm starting to pull my stuff together. This is Seymour drawing mentally into a position of solid ground.

benthic oubliettes. paging Bulwer-Lytton.

"Guess you really are natural," he said, more to amuse himself than Seymour when Kasumi's gaze lingered on downy curls.

Kasumi doesn't miss a beat, heading (ha HA) directly into making fun of Seymour's lovely blue ballhair. If the rest of that tag hadn't been so hot I would have just been annoyed. ^__________________^

Shocks of pleasure like distant lightning rolled through his stomach, and when he felt that clever pink tongue hit there - the nub of a particularly prominent vein on the underside of his cock head - he shuddered and moaned, his hips shifting into the delicious pressure.

Guys dicks have sensitive spots and less sensitive spots. You are doing dicks an injustice if you RP them like they are big undifferentiated hotspots. Good job me!

Kneading the muscles of a taut thigh, he reduced the pace of his bobbing head instead of taking the other route and finishing things quickly. It gave him the opportunity to lavish more attention on the prone spots of a virile body, sucking that much harder and slower, fingernails raking behind the supple curve of a knee. With the added help of a set rhythm, Kasumi timed a reverberating moan around the patterns his tongue traced over salty skin, taking a deep breath.

I haven't been delving into it too much but when this scene was developing, I was mostly thinking "shit this is a much better beej than I administered to Sephiroth." I was a little jealous and a little (okay a lot) turned on. I mean Seymour was turned on. Ha ha. Because it would be ridiculous otherwise.

It's a good beej because there's a ton of activitiy, specifically described (as we've noted about Kasumi before) and without trepidation of any kind. Straightforward, clear, and hot. Pretty much perfect! Man this couldn't get much better, could it! I got my character backstory, my killer beej, some nice plot developing, nothing can go wrong here!

Rising up after a few more lengthy seconds, he lapped soothingly and replaced his mouth with a hand, stroking with sensual intent. Coughing quietly, he cleared his throat and swallowed, returning the raw insides to their saliva-coated state and leaning on an elbow as he kissed his way back up a chest, nipping the tail of an intricate tattoo.

A little hoarse, he asked, "Are you okay with me taking you?"

*NEEDLE SLIDING OFF RECORD* OH WHAT THE SHI~

In the next part, we'll take a look at the loltastic fallout from this tag (which basically put my entire porn world on notice!)

I mean it happens on occasion that I get full of myself and am fairly sure that there is not a single dick on all of LJ that is bigger than mine, nor a dom so invincibly dommy. It happens. The next time it happens, my partners should just seize me by the nose and direct me towards this thread.

I got face-owned so bad here. I lost my hold on the momentum from pretty much post one and managed, by the end, to improve my position to only a little behind. I found this particularly tickly and hilarious sandwiched as it was between the fantastic Seymour x Sephiroth thread treated of in my last post mortem and the epic Seymour x Aizen that will get treated next. Both the Sephiroth and the Aizen scenes ought to have stuck me directly in "I am literally the shit, am I not?" territory, but then some little blond boy came along and utterly tweaked Seymour's nose.

Seme/Uke: haha wat. We won't be needing those terms here. There is a guy who thinks he is on top purely by force of habit (Seymour) and a guy who is actually calling all the shots (Kasumi.)

The setup: this was during the "Fall In Love With The First Person You See" event at The Love Hotel. I played pretty true to this event; I just don't do goggling hearts-in-eyes saddo anime twoo wub. Nope! I've gotta make everything difficult. What better way to start than with an ambiguous power play?

The light that spilled from the ornate filigree lamp was dim, of a dark gold hue, and cut all over with the shadows of patterned grating. The long silken hangings at all sides of the bed were covered in intricate patterns laid in metallic thread that glittered in a manner both luxurious and menacing in the low light. A heavy incense - aloeswood, and something that suggested peonies and bitter mints, the smoke so oily that it fell rather than rising - insinuated itself from a compartment in the lamp.

There was an indistinct slithery sound from outside of the enclosed bed. Then a huge hand burrowed into the bed hangings, and a man's head poked in. His long hair was damp and gathered at the back of his neck with a wide black ribbon, and he wore what looked like a thin bathrobe contrived of patterned and knotted silk. His smile was inconsequential, feather-light; his eyes slunk along the shapely resident of his bed with rather more heat and weight.

"Forgive me; it was more expedient this way, my love."

As a nearly unrelated aside, all of the replies I got to this thread had the exact same premise: Seymour had kidnapped character X, character X had no knowledge of of Seymour or his/her situation. When I wrote the tag I imagined there would probably be some wiseass who would show up yawning and rolling around in bed with sex eyes and singing "good morning, darling, last night was wonderful. Your ass is amazing. Walking alright today, I hope?"

I was really looking forward to that wiseass!

Kasumi came the closest, in any event.

Yawning widely as he awakened, Kasumi squinted at his immediate surroundings with a critical, if appreciative, eye.

"Makes a nice change from the same old crap," he murmured under his breath, rubbing his eyes and sitting up in the luxurious bed, taking note of the fact he was naked. Scratching his head, he debated leaving in the hopes of escaping whatever predicament he'd been thrown into but pulled his hand back from the draperies when he heard a noise, instead surprised to see a complete stranger insinuate himself through the glittering veils.

Arching a brow at the damp-haired man's tone, Kasumi smiled up at him wryly.

"Do I at least get to know your name?"

Smug little prick! I should have known then that I was going to run into trouble. Kasumi was confident and unconcerned without being explanatory. I was tickled and despite having absolutely no knowledge of the character, I jumped in.

"There are already so few mysteries between us, and you wish to spoil those that remain?" He tsked and eased onto the bed in a sprawl of splendid unconcern.

TL;DR no you are not the shit;it is I who am the shit.

Kasumi was torn between laughing and edging away, settling for bringing up a knee under the blankets to rest an elbow on, chinning a subsequent hand.

"Uh huh. So few, you say?"

First, he had to figure out whether he was dealing with a delusional maniac or being mocked before he offended the guy by attempting to leave; he was a little less built than his new bed-mate, but nothing so slender that he doubted being able to put up a damn good fight if things took a nasty turn. Fervently, he hoped they wouldn't.

"Sorry, love, but it seems my memory's not what it used to be. Do you know my name?"

Pfft make yourself at home, why don't you. I was OOC enchanted and irritated at this flip lad who had turned up in my Bed Of Being In Control. I do enjoy being annoyed very much. :)

Kasumi's narration indicates that the field is open either for naked (ha HA) trickery or pure madness. I also liked the detail of Kasumi's physical smaller-ness - size differences are one of my little predilections - and yet his promise of being full of fight. I was at this point reading the situation as "feisty uke who secretly wants to be brought to heel." What I failed to read was what was actually being said: "you can have fun with me. The only thing you can have with me is fun. Try anything else and I'll beat your ass/leave."

I enjoy the brinksmanship of getting as close to "no" as possible, and I enjoy manipulating and coercing people into saying "yes" to things that they ordinarily wouldn't. Like flower-arranging, it's an art of bending their wills into more beautiful shapes. Coming from this kind of mindset, it was actually very difficult for me to understand where Kasumi was coming from a lot of the time. I kept trying to impose a D/s mentality onto a totally not even a little bit D/s scene.

You can see me struggling with this!

Seymour's eyes fluttered shut at the imprecation "love." Though he quickly regained his aplomb, and rolled his fingers idly on his free hand.

Certainly he was not about to relieve anyone's ignorance.

"A name is purposeless, an accident of birth, a whim of one's progenitors. I already know what to call you, love."

He reached out in a plainly familiar manner to smooth a stray lock of Kasumi's soft golden hair back in place.

TL;DR oh I promise I'll be gentle when I break you, child.

Which met with :

He watched Seymour as he brushed aside rumpled waves of hair, clearing his throat.

"Kind of helps at the bank when you need a loan, though."

Peering around the shrouded bed, his attention lingered on the lamp and cascading plumes of bittersweet smoke, a violet gaze gradually shifting back to the enigmatic (and slightly disconcerting) person sprawled at his feet, close enough to touch.

Kasumi did, returning the favour as he gently flicked aside cerulean coiffure, freeing up dark eyes.

"If you don't tell me, I'll guess."

TL;DR what the fuck are you talking about, oyaji.

I am laughing at it even when writing this. But at the time, between my confusion, my lack of grasp of Kasumi's canon, and my reluctance to turn on the Hard Beatdown Top on a scene in which that approach seemed subtly incorrect - I was foundering, and having a harder and harder time replying.

"I don't think I'll let you have me ruin your image by painting you wrong. How about you tell me if the door's locked and I'll decide if I want to kiss you, whether it is or isn't, based on first impressions?" He smiled mildly. "You'll know if this whole seduction scene is paying off."

To make things worse, Kasumi was growing more forward all the time, and to make things double-worse, I was beginning to be more entertained by his cheek than by the prospect of breaking him. My motivation was all fucked up!

"Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the door is in the state that is most likely to incline you to kiss me."

Was Seymour's reply. I mean, if nothing else works, maybe.... smut?

"That's cheating," he softly snorted, leaning against him with a widening grin as his slid his hand up a throat, thumb skimming a temple to tilt that handsome face. "And a good answer."

Sure, says Kasumi. Let's smut. And by "let's" I mean "I'll just go ahead and treat you like the beautiful lady you are, Seymour."

Then Kasumi-mun and I got in a kissy-icon war, which I promptly lost, even as some very luscious kissing started to develop.

"Nice to meet you," he breathed hotly, never breaking the slick glide of lips and tongue.

OMG so much delightful panting boy sunshine in so few words. Wonderful. Note the timestamps - Kasumi has no trouble tossing out a tag within 20-30 minutes, whereas I took longer and longer and longer while my internal MUST GET A LEG OVER BOY engine started grinding to a halt.

His free hand covered the wrist that lay at the opening of his robe, and he dragged it down to the knot of his sash. Here.

"I'm the boss."

Shallows breaths puffed free as Kasumi slumped more comfortably against Seymour's side, licking his way down the knolls of a collar-bone while parting the folds of the bathrobe ... just enough.

"Not really, no."

I Should Clarify

In general when people try this shit with me it is my specific and deliberate delight to break them of their mistaken notions. I genuinely don't enjoy Not Being In Control, I suck at receiving action rather than leading it or at least giving as good as I get, and I think it's incredibly pushy and rude when people try to get my character to back down and Be A Good Boy.

It was something specifically about the happy, eager, direct, and very sexy Kasumi in prose that disarmed Seymour's defenses. He was constantly in a position where he had to recognize that saying "no" meant saying no to something he wanted anyway (delicious sexy times with agile young blond). It never even occurred to him to really put his foot down, even if this wasn't going to happen on his terms. I think it was this bizarre tension that pushed me to install some backstory on the smut: recontextualized, Seymour's reaction to Kasumi was less one of "whoa sex" and more of "whoa a fragment of a lost world." Which was a more acceptable basis on which to let go of his, as Kasumi-mun put it in a PM, RAR MUST SEME nature.

When Seymour was eighteen, his exile was broken, and he was brought to the capital to be ordained and admitted as a priest. He was overwhelmed for two weeks after he arrived in the city; then, he fell in with a group of rather free artist types. They were light, buoyant, careless, dramatic in their moods, and excessive in their tastes. Within a month he had been presented at temple and could no longer make excuses; as it would have been too difficult otherwise, he left without saying goodbye, and he never saw any of them again.

Kasumi might have been one of them. The realization made him feel dizzy and trifled-with. Whether it was terror or liberation to be touched so, he could not say.

This backstory slices out just four weeks from otherwise canon events and inserts a troupe of scintillating art students thereupon. It's reasonably plausible and makes short work of Seymour's mixed feelings.

It was a random and serendipitous decision. At the time I wrote that, I had no idea that Kasumi was himself an art student. The resonance between this backstory and Kasumi's backstory wound up being very productive, and it would continue to lend a bittersweet leitmotif to the CR throughout.

In the next part, we'll see what happens when I basically just break down and scream I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER to Kasumi-mun! Also, blowjobs done right.

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

the_love_hotel

LONG ENTRY IS LONG.

We're in the homestretch, and ironically it was only now that I came into The Fullness Of My Powers And Majesty etc. From this point til the end of the thread I felt only easy, natural, scientific control of activity - all the setup work was done, however well or badly, and now it was time to reap a harvest of startling beauty.

"Then come." Like a cat snatching a moth from the air, he grabbed one of those white hands before they had a chance to get away, and began to lead Sephiroth towards the couch. He took it completely for granted that he would follow.

Regardless of how lilac this prose is, it's immediately obvious to me that there's been a shift in control: where I was hesistant, I became certain. Where I was unclear how to proceed, I created certainty. This is also a characteristically Seymour move - you can even see it in the FMV in FFX during the wedding sequence.

Those tremors of ecstasy had not completely left him by the time he found himself being led along blindly after the Guado. The floor was cold beneath his feet, but failed to jar any sense of coherent thought back into his head. Thoughts of escape or protest were distant whispers, barely recognized for what they were in the wake of that mind-shattering release.

What next would he have of him? It wasn't a literal question, for the answer surely must have been obvious, but rather an outlook. If there was indeed no fighting it, perhaps there was pleasure to be found in this...

Seph's tag clearly indicates a willingness to follow my sudden manic lead - that was really important to me, and once again, slickly and tidily done IC.

The ideal is always to get all communication to happen IC. It's just not possible - it's really really not possible - but Seph-mun is showing us how it's at the very least possible on occasion.

They came to the verge of the low couch. Seymour tugged him forward so that his shins would brush the edge of it. "You should sit." Though he would regret that any part of Sephiroth's splendid nakedness should be unavailable to him.

He bit his thumb then in sudden contemplation, his clear eyes sharp but focused on nothing. Then, decisively, he let his fingers roll through the empty air as though circling the base of an invisible sphere. A soft flash followed. The curse of blindness was broken.

This is the second most efficient tag I would post in the entire thread (score: 80 to 4). The description of breaking the curse is physical, clear, interesting, and concise, and there was even time to throw in a little narration and action that showed the kind of rough concern that Seymour had conceived for Sephiroth at this point.

pressed his lips to the very end of his collarbone.

Hahaha I swear I'm not obsessed with that part of the body. I SWEAR IT.

I do have a thing for elaborate explorations of one's anatomy, and I find that people are very sensitive where the skin is stretched over bone without a lot of padding. More than that, I think it's inherently a dom thing to deal in precise and atypical anatomy: that kind of attention - to detail that so often goes unnoticed - confers a kind of power and momentum to its practicioner. It is as dazzling IRL as within an RP context.

"...what would you have of me?" It was the first he'd spoken since that blindness had been incurred, and now it was low and languid, almost a purr.

"Don't ask questions." Seymour answered, though there was nothing cold or commanding about it. It is better to anticipate than to know.

A beautiful exchange, but of course it triggered the operation of the Smut McGuffin. DERP.

When he felt Sephiroth's fingers on him, he sank his teeth into the flesh at the base of his throat and groaned. It was then that he noticed the massive scar and stilled.

Then, he felt him pause, and his touch indicated what had caused such a reaction. That patch of skin, which felt newly restored, pale and silky beneath his touch, lay just over...

Ah.

He would have asked if the other wished to see the reason, but he found his tongue silenced. Seymour's previous statement had prevented it. Instead, he merely gave the other a faint, knowing smile.

So since I knew basically nothing about the canon and Seph-mun knew it, she asked me OOC if, you know, I meant to Find A Wing. And I was like "uh yes I guess I mean... if that's alright with you."

Let me clarify. What I MEANT to say was "fucking get the wing out, I wanna play with it." But you can't talk like that to civilized humans.It's impolite.

The next couple of tags were very short dialogue tags. I'm always embarrassed about doing short tags even if they're appropriate but Seph-mun didn't upbraid me for it so we were in the clear. Then, at last:

Sephiroth nodded, shifting back out of the other's grasp if for but a moment. He would not want to be so close when it unfurled...

And unfurl it did. His hair stirred as something dark pushed it aside, stretching upwards. The muscles of his shoulders visibly flexed as a form as dark as ink drew forth. With a final stretch it was fanned wide, nothing more or less than a singular black wing extending from his right shoulder. The flourishing movement dislodged a few of those feathers, floating quietly down to rest on the couch beside him.

That accomplished, it folded to rest against his back, that faint smirk not quite leaving his lips.

This was so adroitly described that I kind of O_O'd IRL. A genuine WAT moment! It's a little weird to have only one wing, but more than weird, it is kinky, I am sorry to say. Seymour has a "WAT" to "KINK" turnaround time of about three posts.

He briefly debated the good taste of the question that came immediately to mind, and yet...

"Is it - sensitive?"

He ran his hand lightly over the furled arc of shining black feathers as if to test for himself.

OK, two posts.

He traced the arc of the top all the way to the tip, and then dipped his fingers into the dark feathery secret place where the wing emerged from his shoulder, searching for where one became the other. His other hand he let rest on Sephiroth's chest, one fingertip resting in the pulse of his throat.

This is precisely the point where I started to really relax and let my freak flag fly. I dunno if it's visible in the prose but my understanding of the energy of the scene went from being unbalanced and unsure to being completely involved. I think my biggest "tell" that I'm really into a scene is that I start getting very three-dimensional with things, and 'dipped his fingers etc.' is a very live-and-in-person response to a beautiful black wing.

Smut in general is written strongly when it's direct, physical, and specific.

It was a feeling that he was accustomed to, at least, if not one enjoyed. The examinations of Shinra's top scientists had been a part of his everyday existence for so long, though admittedly, none of them had dared touch him in so...intimate a manner. Those had been cursory, no longer than necessary, and utterly cold.

This was different enough to be borne. To be...acceptable

Good character color in Sephiroth's reply. It also showed, I thought, a receptivity to Seymour's IC reaction that was subtle and sweet.

His searching fingers soaked up the tremendous heat of the enclosure of feathers. They were unimaginably soft, with sweetly downy underpinnings that made him feel curiously dizzy. He laughed suddenly - a guileless laugh, like a boy.

"Touch me with it." He stood up, presenting himself, legitimately and uncomplicatedly grinning.

Though once I've gotten control of a scene, sometimes the problem is that I, hm. Get baroque.

Stepping forward, he curled that wing around the both of them, feathers brushing as low as his calves and pressed flush against him from there on up. They tickled against the back of his thighs, almost curling all the way around again to hug his side, as Sephiroth's hands slid to curl around the Guado's broad shoulders.

Seph rises to the fetishistic/affectionate nature of the occasion magnificently.

There is a very tender exchange that follows this which it would displease me to pick apart: a show of vulnerability that meets with warm acceptance, and, at last, corcordance between the lovers. Too warm and lovely to take a microscope to!

Folding one knee over the couch, he had thought to lower him onto his back - then suddenly realized. The wing. "Ah - then, the other way." Instead he pivoted and sat back himself with his lover in his lap.

I realized in the middle of writing the tag that this wasn't going to be the MxM Missionary that I had originally anticipated. The IC reaction nearly follows my OOC train of thought. It was necessary to pick a position that allowed face to face contact as this was to be very definitely lovemaking and not screwing.

Although, reviewing my other TLH threads, I don't think Seymour has ever not done face to face. Oh wait, once, rather infamously, but that's a lost tale. I'm putting it on my to-do list anyway!

That accomplished, it was too easy then to rock his hips forward, a spark of friction resulting as they met, rubbing against one another.

Once settled, Sephiroth is immediately rather forward. It was excellent. I think I've mentioned before how much I dislike being obliged to lead someone through contact, so this was great if only for that reason. It was great also because pffft rubbing boners together is the best.

There was a note of panic in his voice, however subtle. "I've got to get inside you. Here."

His free hand slipped between their bodies and the open space between his own thighs, and his fingers curled up to stroke insistently there.

Even as willing as he might have been, the fit would still be tight. He'd never allowed anyone to have what the other sought. The sudden press of fingers earned a low hiss as his own fingers dug into Seymour's hips, his forehead leaning in to rest against the other's shoulder.

I thought that was a great (and very hot) reaction from Seph: a silent, sensual, slumping acceptance that nevertheless comes short of being full-on consent. The act of a man with mixed feelings and an erection! Hence: perfect.

Oil. The thought punched through his haze of lust. It was in his robe and there wasn't a chance of grabbing it without breaking contact. No - he could just reach it with his toe, though it must have looked mad and absurd beyond any reconciliation when he began to drag it over with his foot. The little vial rolled out of his sleeve and he picked it up between his toes with the feeling like he'd just won a war.

Lube! You have to have it for the buttsecks. I realized that our partners had gotten to the couch and they were both naked, so there was nowhere clever to hide lube on their persons. WORSE: I absolutely did not want to put Seymour in a place where he had to get up and break contact with Seph. This gently ridiculous business with catching his robe with his toe was my resolution and compromise.

I have an awful habit of interpolating lovely drippy thin oils for the heavier and more enduring lubes that are p much a requirement in IRL assfucking. It's not that I don't know better, and I should probably preface all these anal scenes with "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME" but honestly, it is Seymour Guado and Sephiroth having sex in an interdimensional love hotel, I think "oil that's too thin" is maybe an acceptable bending of reality in context. See? I say that because I'm embarrassed. I hate thick lube and I can't hide it.

he got his hand around both cock again

Everyone makes typos and it isn't a big deal in an otherwise great scene, but sometimes typos have excruciatingly bad timing.

After that, there is, as the French say, un peu de la fingering du ass, then:

To his credit, he made no sound at the intrusion of those fingers, still rocking shallowly against the slick heat of the other's body, willing enough to distract himself. Sensation worked better than gentle words, though those earned Seymour tiny nips and kisses against the curve of his throat, along with those quiet, unsteady hitches in breath.

Seph is plainly both willing and uncomfortable. An excellent realistic detail.

"Up," He ordered, however gentle the tone in which it was done, and tugged at Sephiroth's hips. He had nearly exhausted his patience, and no matter how tenderly Sephiroth kissed him it was absolutely mandatory that he get in. He slid forward a little on the couch, regretfully releasing Sephiroth's cock and holding his own out.

"Come down slowly, Sephiroth."

Omg haha look at the timestamps. Seph wouldn't reply to this tag for 12 hours, and I worried that it might be because I was too pushy. It was also incongruous given the material before. A case of OOC leaking into IC: it was fucking late and I was rather tired. I should have called it a night three or four tags earlier but I was a little obsessed with keeping up with this thread. When Seph did at last respond:

Rising up to place almost all of his weight upon his knees, he gazed downward at the blue-haired Spiran, his own parted lips letting go of a soft groan. Slow, he had said.

His grasp shifted, clutching the other's shoulders as that wing fluttered, balance sought as he obeyed and slowly lowered himself downward. The muscles in his abdomen had grown taunt and hard as steel, back arching catlike as he felt that initial press against him.

No stopping to think. He had commanded him...

And so, head lowered to allow that curtain of silver to hide whatever discomforted expression that might betray him, he continued to press down, until tense muscles gave way. It was heat and pressure unimaginable prior, and he felt his chest tighten with every slick inch that managed to slide in.

Not a sound. No protest or hesitation. Seymour's shoulders, however, might well be bruised and bear the mark of his nails for days afterward.

It was excellent. This scene did skirt the edge of non-con in a lot of ways, but that kind of dangerous, uncomfortable, coercive tension is so hot IC as long as it is organized in good faith OOC.

I liked Seph hiding in his hair; is he hiding from Seymour, or is he hiding from himself? Either way, it was a sign of too much awareness of too little power, which makes my inner dom~seme oh so very happy.

Distantly he realized that this was going to be painful for Sephiroth; in spite of the tenderness that had passed between them, he only knew black pride for the distress he would cause. In his perversity he thought it was a bond and a vow: only I will hurt you like this, and only I will bring you out of pain to pleasure.

A very hard top kind of feeling, that feeling of being willing to hurt, and committing to the responsibility of justifying the hurt. It's a confident and wicked feeling and it represents a dare that the top had better be able to make good on.

I had to be careful to note that it was a one-sided feeling - when I originally wrote this line, I wrote it as though there was an actual contract being formed between these two men. That was presumptuous! I had to reword.

"Look at m-me," He muttered, his breath catching as intense pleasure washed over him. "Don't hide."

Those lips, however, tugged upwards by the faintest degree. "How can I hide...when I'm right..." A flex of those toned thighs as they grasped Seymour's hips, and that tightness round the other only increased.

"...here?"

Hahaha Seymour got boner-pwned. Nice work Seph!

As they begin to move together,

There was pain, screaming protest in his veins as he felt Seymour sink all the deeper, but pain was temporary. He could deal with that easily enough. It would fade. It already had started to, dulled in the wake of that sparking friction.

Seph-mun bears the burden of deciding whether and how Sephiroth will take pleasure from this. I offered no guidance in that regard, no "I fuck you in the ass and you love it" or "I hit your prostate every time without fail (and you love it.)" I dislike forcing a reaction like that, so I usually don't mention the prostate thing at all until it's indicated by my partner.

Another case where I really depend on having a strong partner who's not afraid of deciding and feeling what his or her character is experiencing.

Seph's gorgeous reaction and growing warmth sends Seymour into a fevered fugue:

It was going to be the death of him that he had only two hands and one mouth. It wasn't enough just to touch like this, not with this aching promise of nearness so nearly evading him. His vast hunger curdled his thoughts and he dreamed dark unholy things as he thrust up into Sephiroth's shivering body. To tear open the skin and merge as one, to fold into each others' bodies, a one-winged mutatis mutandis all-encompassing.

This must never be revealed.

Look he's a bad guy, he's allowed to have dark thoughts about intimacy. I also wanted to touch on the way that both characters had mutated in the course of their in-game lives - one of the few experiences they would have in common. I'm sure that's a killer thing to discuss over coffee in the morning.

Then, when it seemed they could be joined no closer, that soft onyx-black wing folded around Seymour's back, pulling himself in and pressed all the closer to that man now giving him this incredible new feeling.

OH SHI~

In the normal course of things, first the uke comes, then the seme. The uke comes because of stuff the seme does to him, the seme comes because of the uke's orgasmic response. That's Yaoi chapter and verse. But Seph-mun picked up on Seymour's obsessive thoughts of intimacy and brought the wing in for a very personal reprise, and I had to throw the Yaoi Bible straight out the window.

The feathers that closed around him were too exquisitely soft, too warm, too close, too full of his mysterious scent. That was the end of it for Seymour.

His moan was strangled in Sephiroth's mouth as he jerked up with desperate strength, shoving himself as far in as he could possibly get. The clenching wet feeling of being inside soaked his consciousness and he came like a man drowning in his lover, sightless, breathless, and hopeless.

Victory: Sephiroth

It was perhaps more the sight of Seymour's surrender to his own climax, more than the feeling of sudden warmth and unending fullness as he drove inside of him one last time, that drove him right over the edge with him. Knowing, despite his submission, that he had wrought this desperate desire from the other...

And the inversion of The Normal Course Of Things is completed. A very elegant denouement.

Warm sparkly afterplay followed - one of the most touching things about all TLH threads is that this is almost always included, I don't think I'd ever seen a thread where characters came and went, as it were - and at its end:

It was impossible to seriously concentrate on anything but the sensation of skin on his skin, warm breath on his shoulder, the strength of his lover's arms and hands - perhaps he was a swordsman - and his long clean untangled hair.

At last he inhaled deeply and spoke, and though his tone was steady it was only because of his overwhelmed senses. "Stay tonight - no, will you stay tonight? Please."

He couldn't fathom the wrath in store for him when the spell the hotel had cast was broken, and Sephiroth returned to his senses, or he would have never requested such a thing.

Still, for now, his prize was won. Sephiroth's head moved in a slow nod, those eyes bright as pyreflies lifting to rest on the Guado. Though it had been revoked as a request, it...didn't seem too disagreeable a proposition. For now.

At the end of this I was like: and then they wake up in the morning and they're in loooooooooooooooooove. Right? Right?

I had to mentally slap myself and be all "omg you pussy, you have the most awful case of bitch dependency." It wasn't because I'm a pimp who needs to get hustlin' or anything, more because it would be awkward and greasy to assume, much more to act on the assumption, that Seph-mun had been as involved and gratified by the thread and the character interaction as I was. I suppose I could have just asked but where's the ~~angst~~ fun in that?

I think these two characters would always have a very prickly and difficult relationship. Even if they came to care for each other very deeply, there is just way too much intensity, grief, loss, compulsion, madness, misc darkness for there to be anything easy, casual, or wuvvy in their interactions with each other. But it's better that way. Sweet and uncomplicated relationships are no fun at all to RP, as pleasant as they are IRL. And this scene, with all its struggle and uncertainty, was really exceedingly fun to RP.

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

the_love_hotel

Oh my god, I have gotten up to so much other nonsense that it is almost like reading this thread for the first time all over again. What a great thread, seriously. Too bad we have to talk about the weakest part of it now.

Beej! Let's do it!

His chest hitched slightly, eyelids sliding shut at the unexpected flush of heat from so simple a gesture as a press of lips to his wrist. He should have been more concerned with the fact that he was now as he had been upon his arrival in this place, without a shred of clothing on him...

Lovely Sephiroth is responding to my response; I love these feedback loops especially since I do so much advance planning on scenes, and when something like this develops, it distracts me totally from my plans. A+ would ship these two again.

That will leave a mark, he thought, all rueful gratification as he felt the bite of nails on his skin.

He ran his huge palms over Sephiroth's lean thighs, his fingers curling around to brush the fine hairs along their backs. His thumbs curled into the creases at the apex of those legs, but failed to touch his penis; instead they circled his hips, stroked the indentations of the muscles of his lower abdomen, barely touched the pale curls there - and shifted away again, his fingernails running down the insides of the thighs again.

Very lightly, as though it were an artifact of breathing only, he blew along the sensitive shaft of Sephiroth's cock.

The Importance of Teasing! My problem is that I kind of suck at it here, and here's a too-long discussion of why.

I think of seme-ness as being informed by a variety of essential qualities, some of which I have in superabundance, and some of which I can barely lay claim to.

Superabundant: intelligence, education, perception, working and advanced knowledge of sex in all its physical glory, ability and willingness to take control, ability and willingness to maintain a posture of superiority
Barely there at all: ability and willingness to hold control of a situation, patience (don't be fooled, I cover this one up hard but it's still a cover-up), ruthlessness, tolerance for ambiguity, a bunch of other things I fail at so hard that I don't even know their names

That is to say: I'm great out of the gate, but not much for stamina. I will come on like a hurricane, and like a hurricane, I will eventually blow myself out.

Someone like, say, Ryuichi Asami as played by

inurviewfinder has pretty much all of the qualities I lack, so you can see how well they look and work in the hands of a master. There is a sense of quiet, calm, measured, unflappable composure in Asami's actions that I will on occasion impersonate, but never possess. I am always just exhorbitantly excited. In Seymour this channels out as obsession, rage, and a morbid fixation on his past -- all of which are kind of secondary "dark seme type" values, so it works out.

But I always feel my weaknesses.

They are apparent here: I know how to tease someone senseless, but the tension of writing it out, of finding the right place to collapse multiple repetitions into a single phrase, trying to feel out my partner's interest and limitations and level of tension - I lose focus, as with fight scenes. I have a regrettable tendency to consider teasing as secondary to actual screwing, which is all ass-backwards for reasons I shouldn't need to clarify.

People who can write good tease scenes are fucking rare, I suppose I shouldn't kick myself over it. ^_____^ But seriously I mean, in the next tag Sephiroth is all:

He was teasing him, and Sephiroth might have been indignant if he wasn't so concerned with him not stopping.

And my first reaction was "oh god did I overdo it, was that cheesy, I can't stand this tension."

GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF, SEYMOUR.

The way that Sephiroth moved in his arms was lithe, delicious, provoking - and if he were any less certain of having all the time he wanted to do all the things he wanted, he might have cut short this leisurely campaign on his defenses.

"Tell me what you want." He whispered, every movement of his lips stroking the soft skin at the base of other man's penis. Though 'tell' was a generous word, another salve to his victim's dignity; what he meant was 'admit', or perhaps 'confess.'

See you can totally tell, I can barely keep my stuff together here. There is none of the relaxed majesty and free-flowing information of all kinds that characterizes my good material. Sephiroth, how on earth did you put up with these lame tags?!

And of course where my strength failed, Seph-mun picked up the ball and ran with it:

What he wanted...

To be freed. To pin the other down and show him exactly what happened when you toyed with the powerful warrior in Gaia. For all of this to just have been some strange dream, in the end. There were a great many things that occurred to him, but damnably enough, only one left his lips.

His head lowered again, those eyes open and sightless, though gazing right at him. "Your mouth."

The hand in Seymour's hair shifted, as though to illustrate this point by the change in grip, though he could not enforce anything upon the other. They both knew this.

Lovely: elegantly concise references to his blindness, his desire, the state to which he had been driven, the powers reserved to each party. Also delicious characterization. DAMNIT SEPH QUIT SHOWING ME UP.

This was to be the last stage of his seige, and he would command it absolutely.

Even I lol'd at this when I was writing it. "I own this situation," said the guy with the dick in his mouth. Hahaha sure fella, whatever you say. Watch it with the teeth.

Of course here I fall into the unpleasant trope that the guy who has a dick in his anything is somehow lowered by it. Yaoi reinforces this dynamic as a matter of course but it's even worse in het porn. It doesn't have to be the case - Seph himself would go on to prove it. But that comes later.

I'm having trouble with this writeup; I kind of balk at writing what I was thinking for a lot of these tags. I wouldn't be back into the warm bright certainty of Doing Pretty Good until after the beej was over. But let's look at the best bits!

Ah wait one more bit of flagellation:

As a young man he had heard many rude jokes to the effect of "what do you call a Guado with no gag reflex? A monk." It worked as well and as frequently the other way around. He had repaid all of those who had mocked him, yet he couldn't help but remember them now -

CHEAP! I was throwing this shit out there because I was genuinely overset by the level of tension in this scene. Sure it's kind of a funny joke if you want to get into the fanwank but nevertheless, I was telling jokes because I couldn't gain purchase on the momentum of the scene in any other way.

Okay good stuff.

Seymour: His hand on Sephiroth's hip gripped tightly, jerking him forward, inviting him to thrust.

Sephiroth: It was an invitation gladly taken, hips already rolling forward with shallow thrusts, pressing deeper into that wet, silken heat closing so tightly around him.

A nice exchange of feedback, and Sephiroth is given permission to be more Sephirothly and active.

Though his adversary was punishingly large, he wanted the prize at stake with a depraved hunger.

I should dislike this line of mine as a matter of course, because it's using abstraction to gloss over the rather messy physical action in this section, but I think "depraved hunger" is the perfect angle of approach on any beej. A useful term! Ever since I wrote it I find myself thinking in those terms about IRL blow jobs.

That peak was hit, and he was arching into Seymour's mouth with a ragged gasp, spilling hotly down the other's throat as the darkness in his vision was suddenly subject to blinding white. As the shudders subsided, he was stone still, save for the uneven pants of his chest, pulse thudding heavily in his own ears.

That...was better than he would later admit to.

Great descriptive tag from Seph, with a whiplash of manly reticence.

After a long silent breathless moment, when he was disentangling himself, his searching tongue slid very lightly over the slit of Sephiroth's cock; only to get a taste for what he had missed, only for the sake of the intimacy of victory.

Bittersweet - he was licking his lips as he rose. He could afford to be magnanimous now, and he drew the conquered soldier into his arms gently. "Can you walk," His voice was hoarse and low after his exertions. He spoke against the flawless shell-pink blush of Sephiroth's ear. "Or shall I carry you?"

Fucking finally, I was beginning to get my legs back under me. A delightful slice of seme artifice in "Can you walk, or shall I carry you?" - a good line, too dry and heartfelt to be Juicy Cheese. Some purpling of the prose but let's not begrudge me that.

The parting flicker of his tongue sent a sensitized rush through his veins, a crisp edge of pleasure parting the haze momentarily. He was slowly but surely coming back to himself, though the hotel did not seem to be satisfied by merely this. His mind still felt mired, and apparently the spell over him was not yet completely broken.

The words against his ear sent a chill down his spine, and what was an attempt at a scowl may have only been given half-heartedly. He was, after all, still reeling. "I can walk," he replied tartly, and as if to prove it his hands detangled themselves from the other.

Seph's last beej-related tag is Relevant, disclosing the effects that he's still under and their locus. He reacts to Seymour's statement but brushes it off crisply, if a bit pettishly.

After this things would immediately pick up, and I will be much happier to talk about them in part 5 than I was to talk about these in part 4.

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

the_love_hotel

Well thank goodness we have come to the entry of smut. I actually really liked this undressing scene for a number of reasons that were not at first apparent. The blow job that came after I think was much weaker - all my fault, Sephiroth was blameless. Let's look!

(PURELY AS AN ASIDE: I thought I'd get into the blow job this time, but we're already up to 1700 words on this entry and Sephiroth doesn't even have his pants off yet. BJ to be pushed to Part 4!)

With the end of one of his red undersleeves, he wiped away the trickle of blood at his lip. His eyes were dark, and narrowed cruelly, but there was wonder in them. Whether it was desperation, foolishness, or overconfidence, he took Sephiroth's quietude for acceptance.

Every movement was tenative, perpetually ready to shift from a caress to an attack. He came from the side, his hand closing over Sephiroth's gloved fingers where they rested against the wall, and he tried to pull them away. There was strength in his grip, though he was not to be compared with the hardened warrior he was pursuing.

"Come," He whispered. "And let me undress you."

I thought this was, purely on the merits, one of the most efficient tags I would post in this entire thread. There's a signature of Seymour's fastidiousness and cageyness, a sleazy seme line, arrogance, but it's not too overbearing. Good job me! So that leaves the "efficient tags" score at 28-3 in Sephiroth's favor. What I didn't quite realize at this point was how Sephiroth-mun had elected to operate the Smut McGuffin, but I was about to figure it out with the next tag.

And he made no move to stop him, or strike out, though tension resonated through him at that touch as though it were a bow string drawn taunt, almost to the point of snapping.

Seymour had asked it of him. The option to fight had ended without resolution.

A noise escaped him, a soft exhalation of breath perhaps, as his hand was guided away from the steady stone beneath his touch. His anchoring had shifted to Seymour alone, the rest of the room an unknown variable vaguely recalled his brief observance of it, earlier.

His eyes had slid halfway open, glowering at nothing at all, in a look that mirrored that of a cornered predator in its proud fury.

OH. Ha ha sorry Sephiroth-mun, it really did take me this long to figure out that Sephiroth was bound to obey direct commands.

One of the delights of leaving things like this open-ended is that each party has an opportunity to surprise the other. I'm enough of a romantic to prefer leaving things open-ended for exactly this reason: not because I love ambiguity, but because I want to feel the effects of my partner's imagination. Anyway, Sephiroth surprised me. I'll confess that it was not a pleasant surprise. I saw it as being pushed into the position of 'boss', and:

1. Being a boss is for the inhumane and detail-oriented, neither of which I qualify for.

And my experience with threads immediately previous to this one was that being a boss happens because the other party is not interested in allowing me sufficient intimacy to understand what they really want and feel, so I'm forced to guess and direct instead of sense and lead. The difference is a little subtle but it hinges on reciprocity: the boss doesn't need input, he already has a vision for how things should go. But I want the constant back-and-forth feedback of a struggle.

2. Being a boss means one is a lot less likely to be surprised.

Both by disobedience and by acceptance - both of which I absolutely crave. I don't want to win the battle of getting the character in bed only to lose the war of becoming important to that character. My ideal long-term RP relationship would be one where the ostensible bottom fights back forever, yet clearly doesn't want to win if it means losing the relationship. Tense! Dramatic! Intimate! Surprising!

3. Being a boss pretty much always means that my partner is about to go on cruise control.

And I'm left driving all scenes basically blind, which I kind of resent.

I harp on this because all these things developed in their most inglorious fruition in the thread I was most involved in immediately prior to this one. And that thread really got under my skin and fucked with my seme!compass! So honestly I was intensely displeased to see this crop up with this lovely thread that was developing with Sephiroth.

Nevertheless: I made one mistake and one not-mistake. The mistake was not talking to Sephiroth-mun about it right away and getting clarification on where the scene was going from that perspective.

The not-mistake was trusting that this sensitive, intelligent, attentive player was not going to go limp on me. My trust was not misplaced and the scene continued beautifully. STILL IT IS ALWAYS BEST TO ASK.

Seymour: Where pale skin emerged he couldn't help but run his fingertips over it, feeling the other man's pulse, his warmth, the secret history written in his scars.

Sephiroth: Those scars were fine, nearly invisible but in the right light glistening even whiter than the pale skin they lay upon, sealed with mako energy and the regenerative powers of that creature whose cells he bore. One exception ran parallel to his shoulder blade, hidden by that coat and lengthy silver strands, a pale patch of skin still netting itself together again.

The scars were still few, and most would never even notice. He was, after all, meant to be invincible.

And of course in the very next tag I would prove to be very aggravating indeed: imputing scars where none existed. But Sephiroth-mun rolled with it, praise holy boners and alleluia. I can only imagine how annoying it is when someone misreads your character's body. I was embarrassed to make this mistake, but I also had to smile at "...most would never even notice. He was, after all, meant to be invincible." - I took it as the most delicate and subtle kind of "pay more attention" knock, and thought it was very slickly done IC.

Actually, I would say that good manners informed an enormous amount of the energy of this scene on all levels. Which I loved - I am a stickler for manners IRL, I think if you follow all the little rules you can break the big ones, and I would rather talk with a murderer who chews with his mouth closed than a saint who asks me how much I make a year. Sephiroth-mun has excellent manners, and it shows.

Anyway pfft let's talk about sensuality.

Seymour: The long sea-blue tendrils of his hair brushed Sephiroth's chest as he leaned in. As his victim's coat and bindings fell away, the hollow of his collarbone was revealed, and Seymour bent to kiss it. He inhaled deeply, relishing the fresh masculine scent of his skin.

Sephiroth: He could catch the scent of the Guado's hair, something oceanic and exotic, as he leaned closer and the warmth of his lips passed over his skin. Again he grew tense at the proximity, those slitted pupils thinning.

Sephiroth: Now, as he felt the other's breath and lips teasing below his jaw, a warm spasm ripple through him, pooling directly downwards. An echo followed in its wake at the warm touch of unnaturally long hands trailing ever lower...

Sensuality is so important to me.

I hope it is not any particular secret that I am, like the Seymour I portray, an inveterate sensualist IRL, and I will let that inform my RP. What is less obvious is that I love love love love it when a partner also trends sensual and talks about the sensations of closeness: scents, tastes, etc. I don't care if they have to godmod or make things up - like the detail about how Seymour's hair smells, or mine about how Sephiroth's skin smells. I am delighted to have my character painted with the sensations that you or your character enjoy. I can only hope that Sephiroth-mun was as forgiving about all my (non-scar) imputations.

I love reactions, too. There were a great many excellent reactions on Sephiroth's part, and once again, I can only hope I kept up my end.

Well it's about time for another dirty domination trick!

Alas, boots. Although it would have entertained him greatly to take Sephiroth with his pants around his knees, hobbled by his own impossible garments, it was wrong for this moment. This capitulation would come more easily if it permitted Sephiroth to retain his dignity, or so he strategized.

"Here," He offered suddenly, dragging Sephiroth's hand up to the top of his head. Though it was more than a little ridiculous, the position made sense as Seymour knelt to undo the buckles at the general's knees. "Lift your foot."

BE RIDICULOUS.

A moment of careful absurdity does much to break tension and generate intimacy. The message I'm hoping for is "I am absolutely going to pork you stupid, but I'm human and vulnerable like you." In another scene at TLH, Seymour started the scene seated in a big fancy chair; he surrendered the fancy chair to his partner and fetched a comically tiny canvas folding stool for himself.

A character who never does anything ridiculous may be more respectable and easy to worship, but worship, like non-con, is entry-level intimacy. I would rather provoke a single moment of genuine affectionate confusion than a lifetime of worship. You lose the battle of looking like a god, but you win the war of looking like an unforgettable and very real lover. I think the very end of this scene owed much to the willing failures and absurdities presented en route, like this one.

Once more he could not seek protest, though if he was hoping to save his dignity, this was certainly not helping matters.

His free hand instinctively went to the other's shoulder, grasping perhaps more tightly than was necessary. His fingers had already curled into the brilliant blue strands that he could no longer see, one foot lifting as instructed.

Luckily, there was a zipper that ran down the length of the boot at its back, hidden but for the tiny metal tab at the top. The sensation of those hands caressing his leg, meanwhile, did nothing to end his inner struggle not to enjoy this.

I've nearly forgotten to talk about how beautiful Sephiroth is blinded in this undressing sequence, which is incredibly erotically charged. He has been de facto overpowered by the curse on his eyes and the operation of the ring's enchantment - so it's like bondage, but he's not actually tied up, so everyone's hands and mouths are free to roam where they please.

This is the kind of bondage I like best, perhaps all the more so because it's next to impossible to perfectly enact IRL.

It was around this time that I was starting to relax about being the 'boss' - it was becoming apparent that Sephiroth was still alive and angry under his obedience, which is also a quality I value greatly. Seymour was permitted to have his way with him physically because of the enchantments and spells and whatnot, but there was still a fight going on: whether Sephiroth would mentally accept first the physical acts, and secondly Seymour himself on whatever level.

There was still something to hunt for! Excellent! I'm back on board!

Anyway note that, as if to reassure me that he was indeed no puppet, Sephiroth grabs Seymour's shoulder more or less voluntarily.

The moment when Sephiroth grabbed him for the sake of stability - even if his grip was tight enough to hurt - marked the first time that he had laid hands on Seymour of his own volition. As if anything about this could be construed as voluntary.

He was indecently thrilled by it. Seymour marked the occasion by turning his head to press a lingering kiss to the white wrist at his shoulder, and proceeded to remove the other boot. He reached up then to tug the loose black pants down, and found himself eye to eye with what had to be the most exquisite -

"Remarkable," He breathed, almost inaudible.

LOL EUPHEMISMS. It's always hard to figure out how visceral the vocabulary should be in a scene with someone you don't know very well. I erred so far on the side of caution that I got all the way to omission.

Anyway, Seymour was surprised IC and I was surprised OOC to find Sephiroth reaching out for him. In 99% of all cases, TLH subs seem to live in an impermeable box that they cannot move out of without the dom's express permission. Again, in my prejudiced way, I take this as cowardice in the face of intimacy. I have no idea what else it could represent and I not only welcome correction on this point, I beg for it. What on earth can it possibly mean that your character won't touch mine without forms signed in triplicate?!

I was inappropriately moved by this gesture on Sephiroth's part.

I also thought this undressing scene was pure class and would rank it just behind the 'let's play with your wing' and 'let's have an inappropriately involved anal sex orgasm' parts of this scene in terms of absolute enjoyment.

OHMYGOD THESE ENTRIES KEEP GETTING LONGER. BJ in Part 4! I promise!

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

the_love_hotel

We're picking up right at the start of a fight, but first:

So I keep showing logs and whatnot to IRL/non-otaku friends and they keep saying "seymour wat" and also "sephiroth, is he jewish lol." Viewers at home, go ahead and mute your speakers and repress your hatred for lolengrish with the following videos:

Sephiroth:

Seymour:

They are both kinda pwn in their own element DA NE. Of course Sephiroth's element is stepping on faces with incredible force, and Seymour's element is being almost unspeakably greasy and having a really active afterlife. In terms of classic seme values this pairing could really go either way.

SEME VALUES CHART

Sephiroth	Seymour	ADVANTAGE
185 cm tall	187 cm tall	Seymour
Huge sword, mighty in battle, fireproof, chip on shoulder	Mage, summoner, terrible mother issues	Sephiroth
Physically perfect, abs of diamond, silky silvery hair, luminous emerald green eyes	Fucked up half-breed, built but trending chubby, with sick tats and hair gel club memberships. Has Leona Helmsley's eyes.	Sephiroth
Monster yet angel	Just a monster	?????????
Deigns not to get funky with people	Canon sensualist, kisses girl, spent adolescence in monastery	Seymour

Naturally I see Seymour as the permanent top in this relationship because I always weight heightiness and perviness over strongliness and prettiness and body count (seriously has any FF villain ever killed fewer people than Seymour? Sure he turned in his old man, and that's gotta count for something, but overall the deaths he caused can be measured in, like, single digits. Meanwhile Sephiroth is all *flicks dust offa coat while cities burn*.) in the seme olympics, but YMMV.

There was a player intervention that determined top and bottom, and since it was determined in my favor, it was my happy task to make it look realistic and possible. That's how I saw things. This fight scene nearly overset all my carefully laid plans.

We pick up at the point where Sephiroth has realized that his will is not completely his own. Seymour opens with one of my absolute ~~favorite~~ worst habits ever:

If Seymour was surprised, he gave no sign of it. Neither was there any indication of victory. He only smiled, as he had throughout their time together; the quiet, careful, predatory smile of one who had run down his mark. "As you said, this is only a dream. There are no consequences." He remarked, though it was not unkind. "No matter how serious the crime."

He slipped his fingers under the strap that ran down Sephiroth's right shoulder, deeply enjoying the warm skin there and the hard muscle that he felt twitch under his hand. "Is this not uncomfortable on such a warm night? Does it unbuckle, or shall I tear it away?"

Bolded above: Juicy Seme Line. I can only pray that other people enjoy them as much as I enjoy writing them. I will seriously throw such intense cheese down at the drop of a hat, and once I've done it once, I will try to do it over and over until I realize I'm being an awful ham.

Look, I did it again in the very next tag!

"Come," He said quietly, slipping his hand under Sephiroth's long coat and around his waist. "This doesn't deserve petulance. Trespasses like these must be fought furiously, or not at all."

Gross!

Inbetween, Sephiroth is patiently doing the hard work of actually being a character.

This was not what he had meant, not in the least. That he would twist his words as such...

"It unbuckles." His jaw tightened at the touch, as he tried not to respond to it, his eyes flashing cold fury in the face of that smile. "Now take your hands off of me."

If anything, his voice was twice as cold as his gaze.

As a serious aside, during these tags I was furiously searching the entire internet for pictures of Sephiroth's outfit so I would know how to take the damn thing off of him. At one point I was going to throw up my hands and have Seymour order Sephiroth to undress himself. It didn't help at all that there are several variations on the costume, and eventually I went to the place I always go: poetic vagueness.

He slid his free hand between their bodies and started jerking open the zippers and latches and innumerable buckles of Sephiroth's complicated and severe clothes.

But that comes later. What I really want to talk about here is how difficult it is to make a fight work between two Big Bad Guys.

In response to "petulance...fought furiously, &c."

son_of_calamity basically asked me OOC "do you mean it? Can they actually fight? It will draw things out." I really appreciated that, because there are situations where I'm not really interested in humoring a fight. There are also numerous restrictions involved at

the_love_hotel - no uber powering, nothing that would destroy a bunch of things, etc. Canon Sephiroth and canon Seymour both have a lot of very uber powers and I was frankly leary about getting involved in a scene that could so easily become wanky.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I was already beginning to trust that Sephiroth-mun was not going to be precious about the character, and that I was only being made to earn my dominance (which I enjoy doing very much.) So let's do a fight scene!

That sounded like an option, to him, and the other was going to regret simply taking for granted that he couldn't do anything about it...or at least believed he couldn't.

As the inhabitants of his world could testify, Sephiroth could convince himself of just about anything he meant to.

"Very well." There wasn't the slightest change in his expression as the hand on Seymour's chest was used to shove him backwards, as though attempting to pin him back against the nearest solid object. Considerable force was put behind that shove, perhaps to make up for the somewhat disturbing fact that he couldn't draw away just yet, that the feel of his skin's warmth was pulling him in, in a way he could not have explained if he cared to.

Let's do a sexy fight scene! The narration at the end here, which admits to an uncomfortable level of IC fascination, was really encouraging to me. It reinforced that this was a necessary, important, and challenging part of making the submission work for Sephiroth, so I was glad to pick up the gauntlet.

Seymour stumbled back, slamming against the parapet wall behind him with a hard gasp. Sephiroth had pushed him hard enough to knock the wind out of his lungs, and he wasn't able to say anything clever about it until he'd gotten his breath back.

It's important to remember that being a seme doesn't mean being invincible. I do see these things play out where the guy on top acts like nothing in the world can hurt him. If it turns out that your seme is not physically able to overpower an epically powerful uke, you just have to find another way to do it - you shouldn't make the seme suddenly twenty times as beefy.

Seymour gets in a few good hits in this fight, but it's obvious he's not anywhere near Sephiroth's level. My favorite/least-favorite tag was this one just after Sephiroth has gotten a hand around Seymour's throat:

Seymour ignored the hand at his throat - it would be trivial in a few seconds, he was certain of it - and instead leaned in to press his lips against Sephiroth's. His own were warm, a little too wide, and tasted of wine. He slid his free hand between their bodies and started jerking open the zippers and latches and innumerable buckles of Sephiroth's complicated and severe clothes.

He didn't bother to reply in any other way. If he had known of Sephiroth's faith in his powers, immense though they were, he would only have laughed. For the difference between one man and the other wasn't so much in the magnitude of power as in the will to use it. A conscience, regret, sorrow: these things that informed Sephiroth's humanity also bound him. But for Seymour there was only the shameless freedom gifted to the most supreme egotists.

CHUUUU~~~

Kinda sleazy. It doesn't even really make sense from a physical perspective. Bad RP!

The note at the end does highlight an important bit that maybe should go on the Seme Values Chart: Sephiroth has reluctantly come around to Giving A Fuck, and Seymour never has. Not Giving A Fuck = more seme power. But his emotional void becomes a liability later on, though it will be a while before we get there.

It wasn't as hard as he could have. That drain of his strength still seemed to be in place...it was as though the hotel, in its cruel humor, meant for him to have enough resolve to fight, but not nearly enough to win.

As the fight wore on, Sephiroth's narration continued to suggest that the fight was Seymour's to win, even if it was due to cheap moves and enchantment. Still, I couldn't seem to close the deal.

Seymour, too, was confused. He had his hands full with this violent man; he'd be forced to fall back when shoved once again by those powerful arms, and his lip was bleeding, and he was failing completely to make any progress; and yet, Sephiroth hadn't said anything along the lines of "no" or "I don't want to" nor done anything decisive like leaving no matter his advantage in a hand to hand fight.

There's an IC feeling of "well why are you sticking around then" that mirrors the OOC feeling I usually get in prolonged fight scenes. I have a lot of trouble parsing them and figuring out how PAOUR LEVALS ought to match up - an admitted weakness. Anyway at this point I was finally of the opinion that there was no reason for Seymour to win a physical fight - most of all against a powerful warrior like canon Sephiroth. Seymour is a magic guy above and beyond anything else.

The time for mere physical persuasion was over.

His hands curled over each other and a queer dark mist coalesced between them. As he released it, he murmured a curse in the most caressing tone. "Be blinded, Sephiroth."

That was the last line of the tag. It was completely up to Sephiroth-mun whether this curse would be allowed to hit or miss, and I'm totally like, please let it hit please let it hit please please silently.

It wasn't materia, which he might have been able to divert. It was some strange variation of the magic used on Gaia, clearly from his own world, and there was no escaping the spell.

Oh thank fuck.

His relief was apparent on his blue-veined face, not that Sephiroth could see it.

Him too.

Fight scenes can definitely go on too long and I think the worst artifact of that is they become unfun as players try to protect the specialness and uberness of their characters. Ha ha even me, though I like to think I'm above that kind of nonsense normally. But here, Seymour was willing to admit a kind of defeat, and Sephiroth was willing to admit another kind.

Seymour: His gaze was locked on his beautiful prey, on whose fine features were written many secrets and many promises. Only be weak, he prayed. Just for a moment.

Sephiroth: He was silent and still for the duration of the other's words, though there was no telling if they were having the desired effect or not. Those eyes were closed, curtained off by the fall of that silver mane, as was his expression. Even hearing the other draw to his feet and close enough to speak, he didn't move.

He could have fought harder. Could have beaten him, easily. Could have escaped.

That he hadn't would haunt him.

I think it was a mutually satisfactory conclusion.

It also left Sephiroth in a delectable position: blindfolded without the blindfold. In the next part of this post-mortem, we'll look getting naked and FINALLY some sex: a big fat BJ!