#duplicate

sexycontainmentprocedures:

the power’s out and I can’t sleep so I guess I’ll throw together the post I’ve been saying I need to make, especially since the article apparently hit +100 recently

I wrote a tale in early 2018 – right after the worst six-month period of my life, during which I was involuntarily committed to a psych hospital thrice and in a relationship with a dangerous social dynamic – called “Sex, Drugs, Money” set in the Broken Masquerade canon (wherein the Foundation is public). The plot deals with a Foundation guard and the anomaly he’s assigned to having a sexual relationship with each other, secretively, knowing well that it’s against the rules but both individually believing that they are not in the wrong; the regulations are.

Before I go further into the fiction, I recommend you read this post about my real experience with psychiatric hospitals; I can’t summarize in a sentence or paragraph my feelings about how that industry attracts and encourages abuse, and the parallels between real involuntary committment and fictional containment should be somewhat apparent.

So, as part of the turmoil surrounding my personal history, I have seen in the past several months some claims that “Sex, Drugs, Money” is supposed to present Reggie and Jasper’s relationship as a good thing, and the Ethics Committee as the antagonist. This take does not match my authorial intentions, and while responsibility for misinterpretations of work does always fall on the author to some degree, I think my various comments in the tale’s discussion thread made it clear enough that this is not the case. (Thankfully, most people ‘get it’ and have since the beginning, but there are enough people running with the controversial interpretation that it’s making me uncomfortable given why I wrote the tale.)

To make it abundantly clear since I apparently did a mediocre job conveying this in the work itself: You are NOT supposed to conclude that ANY character in that tale is a GOOD PERSON. It is meant to demonstrate all the main characters’ biased views of the same situation. Every single one of them has been corrupted by the Foundation’s bureaucracy in some way. (Again I suggest drawing the parallels between containment and psychiatric hospitalization and referencing that post I linked in order to make sense of this element.) That’s not to say they can’t change later in their fictional lives – and some of them do in later tales – but at the time the tale is set, the characters are MEANT to seem immature and a risk to each other.

Reggie and Jasper are not supposed to be cute together, they are supposed to be disturbing. Reggie is neglecting his professional responsibility to pursue personal goals with someone who does not have any power over him, but on the surface level expresses enthusiastic consent; Jasper sees their relationship as rebellion against authority instead of inappropriate submission to authority, and for this reason vehemently defends it to the Ethics Committee as consensual.

Reggie is not “good” because no matter how much he cares about Jasper’s consent as an individual person, he has still elected to ignore the power difference between them which makes the relationship inherently unhealthy, which was his responsibility as someone with authority over Jasper.

Jasper is not “good” because they are aware that Reggie is easily swayed/convinced of things despite being in the authority position, and they repeatedly pressure him toward inappropriate decisions. Jasper knows that Reggie would do anything for an anomalous person – a trait that, at its core, the Broken Masquerade era Foundation appreciates – but uses this to move or deny boundaries in their relationship. Reggie’s personal boundaries are nearly insignificant to Jasper, because Jasper doesn’t want a relationship with Reggie as a person, they want a relationship with the control over their life that Reggie represents. Jasper knows that the relationship is inappropriate and cites to the Ethics Committee interviewer that the imbalance of power is what appeals to them in the first place.

Jasper is trying to “take back” the circumstances under which they lost their autonomy to the Foundation – by means of reenacting it on their own terms. Jasper is someone with an unhealthy coping mechanism for their trauma, and Reggie is the person who can give them what they want – but should know better than to do it.

The Ethics Committee are the closest to the “good guys” because they end the dangerous relationship, but they’re also the Foundation; they are who took Jasper’s autonomy from them in the first place and caused them their trauma to begin with. They are the department that failed to vet Reggie before allowing him into a position of power. They are who could have stopped this before it started.

Lastly, Agent Trauss is not supposed to seem like a good person either. He’s actually meant to seem like the most irresponsible and unhealthy character. He consumes an unreasonable amount of THC even when working, he allows Reggie to stay with him in his near-the-site townhouse after Reggie’s mother kicks him out of theirs because he gives Reggie the benefit of the doubt, he says he doesn’t think there’s any ethical issue inherent to relationships with anomalous people as long as they’re not in containment and/or classified as skips (he’s wrong; just representing the Foundation causes enough potential issues, because the Foundation is given power over the anomalous in society as a whole once public in this canon – not always in the regulatory sense, but in the social sense) and he lets the Foundation’s bureaucracy into every corner of his life. He has a detachable radio earpiece in his tragus (the thick cartilage bit that comes off your face toward the middle of your ear) and expresses to Reggie that it’s because he would panic if he couldn’t always reach his superiors somehow. He also, in his irresponsibility, leaves dangerous substances in reach of Reggie while knowing he’s feeling unstable.

Jasper wanted a sexual relationship with Reggie. It was Jasper’s choice to pursue it, but it was Reggie’s responsibility to say no.

Reggie was clearly unstable and hurt when Trauss left the house. It was Reggie’s choice to abuse amnestics, but it was Trauss’ responsibility to leave them out of his reach.

Trauss is blatantly obsessive and immature. It was Trauss’ choice to over-dedicate himself to the Foundation’s goals, but it was the Foundation’s responsibility to recognize an unstable employee.

In summary: The subject matter of “Sex, Drugs, Money” is not meant to be interpreted as anything other than disturbing and problematic. If it freaks you out, that’s the point. I was never trying to portray any of them as morally admirable people. The entire system they’re caught in is dangerous. I would agree with interpreting the takeaway as “bureaucracy destroys individual autonomy,” “consent is more psychologically complex than just expressing that you definitely want something,” “responsibility is always mutual but not necessarily equal,” etc.

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything

// Paper Street Soap Company, Fight Club

Paper Streets, by the way, are Trap Streets used to protect the copyright integrity of printed maps. I find that interesting in a book & film about (im)perfect doubling, duplication and doppelgängers.

skinnyfatboy:

pieechan2:

Wow!! Sexy Daddy!!!

Find my ‘tache bloke’ (real name Ron) collection HERE