I'm an addict
So I got slapped upside the head with one of my guilty little secrets the other day. And by that, I really mean that I'd forgotten this tidbit of brain chemistry that makes me go 'Mmmmmm', that it's been manifesting in other ways but not such that I'd really noticed and put 2 and 2 together. But there was a picture, and it linked to other pictures, and they were innocuous enough pictures in themselves but...
Hi, my name is Jesslin. (Hi, Jesslin!) And I have an addiction. It's an interconnected, multi-layered addiction. The first thing - Robin Hood, the every man. He's not some lost child, stolen at birth and hidden to protect him, not some scion of godly power. Yes, he has talent and charisma. Yes, he might even be a man of privilege, depending on the version of the legend you prefer. But almost all agree that he was a man who was wronged, who saw others being wronged, and who gathered the people to him and made stuff happen by virtue of being too proud and stubborn and pigheaded to roll over and say 'yes master'. Okay, plus he's an archer and lives in the woods, which were, like, childhood dreams of mine. But I digress. If you want my attention, give me a Robin Hood legend to chew on, I love them all. Even the presentations that stink, I'll find redeeming qualities and nuances and just sink my mental teeth into it all and roll in the filthy little mud piles and I. Will. Be. Happy. Literally, warm-fuzzies happy.
Then there's the next thing - I have a Damsel-in-Distress fetish (although gender is actually immaterial). The captured hero or side-kick. Not necessarily the random maguffin-person that's captured just to give the hero something to do but the dedicated purpose, the intentional removal of a roadblock, and really just the focus of the story that now rests on our subject and how they got here and what lengths they'll go to to get out. A treacherous fight? The slide into unconsciousness? Bound, imprisoned and a little torture? The struggle and the despair? All part of the plot.. Winning free is all the sweeter for paying a good price for that freedom. And of course this is all part of the story -- this isn't real life, these aren't real people being hurt, no lives are truly being lost. It's the dichotomy of the imagination, where I can create things in my head that would horrify me in reality. Does that make me a bad person? By imagining bad things happening to good people (whether they triumph in the end or not), am I propagating evil in my soul? Or am I sublimating my primal urges onto a straw man so that I don't feel any need to explore them in real life? The Id redirected by the Superego (or however that goes; I was never a huge Freud fan)?
But the point - these things together, Robin and the DiD thing - is that someone took some good photos from the Ren Faire. It reminded me of visiting Tuxedo Forest Faire, where I think I picked up (or at least codified) this particular fetish of mine. Scenarios at ren faires are often schlocky, sometimes downright awful, and with age and training have come a habit of looking for the trick - once you know where the rabbit hides in the hat, it's often hard to ignore that hidden pocket, as it were. But photographs remove that problem - you have an image that you can hang your own story on, where you don't see the sword missing its target but only the potential of the strike. I can't lie to myself, having a physical attraction to people involved does *not* hurt - it's not that I want to hurt people better looking or anything, I really think it's pat of the whole hurt/comfort Thing. It's just -- it's a thing, and I don't even know where I'm going with this, except to acknowledge on some level that I'm a terrible person, but I guess I don't care. My name is Jesslin, and I have DiD and escape fantasy fetishes. Bring it!
Hi, my name is Jesslin. (Hi, Jesslin!) And I have an addiction. It's an interconnected, multi-layered addiction. The first thing - Robin Hood, the every man. He's not some lost child, stolen at birth and hidden to protect him, not some scion of godly power. Yes, he has talent and charisma. Yes, he might even be a man of privilege, depending on the version of the legend you prefer. But almost all agree that he was a man who was wronged, who saw others being wronged, and who gathered the people to him and made stuff happen by virtue of being too proud and stubborn and pigheaded to roll over and say 'yes master'. Okay, plus he's an archer and lives in the woods, which were, like, childhood dreams of mine. But I digress. If you want my attention, give me a Robin Hood legend to chew on, I love them all. Even the presentations that stink, I'll find redeeming qualities and nuances and just sink my mental teeth into it all and roll in the filthy little mud piles and I. Will. Be. Happy. Literally, warm-fuzzies happy.
Then there's the next thing - I have a Damsel-in-Distress fetish (although gender is actually immaterial). The captured hero or side-kick. Not necessarily the random maguffin-person that's captured just to give the hero something to do but the dedicated purpose, the intentional removal of a roadblock, and really just the focus of the story that now rests on our subject and how they got here and what lengths they'll go to to get out. A treacherous fight? The slide into unconsciousness? Bound, imprisoned and a little torture? The struggle and the despair? All part of the plot.. Winning free is all the sweeter for paying a good price for that freedom. And of course this is all part of the story -- this isn't real life, these aren't real people being hurt, no lives are truly being lost. It's the dichotomy of the imagination, where I can create things in my head that would horrify me in reality. Does that make me a bad person? By imagining bad things happening to good people (whether they triumph in the end or not), am I propagating evil in my soul? Or am I sublimating my primal urges onto a straw man so that I don't feel any need to explore them in real life? The Id redirected by the Superego (or however that goes; I was never a huge Freud fan)?
But the point - these things together, Robin and the DiD thing - is that someone took some good photos from the Ren Faire. It reminded me of visiting Tuxedo Forest Faire, where I think I picked up (or at least codified) this particular fetish of mine. Scenarios at ren faires are often schlocky, sometimes downright awful, and with age and training have come a habit of looking for the trick - once you know where the rabbit hides in the hat, it's often hard to ignore that hidden pocket, as it were. But photographs remove that problem - you have an image that you can hang your own story on, where you don't see the sword missing its target but only the potential of the strike. I can't lie to myself, having a physical attraction to people involved does *not* hurt - it's not that I want to hurt people better looking or anything, I really think it's pat of the whole hurt/comfort Thing. It's just -- it's a thing, and I don't even know where I'm going with this, except to acknowledge on some level that I'm a terrible person, but I guess I don't care. My name is Jesslin, and I have DiD and escape fantasy fetishes. Bring it!