Hostform of CORE

(Crossposted from https://jukeboxemcsa.wordpress.com/2020/02/29/i-cant-stay-silent-any-longer/)

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I feel pretty confident that I’m going to feel guilty about posting this later - I don’t generally like posting something that’s purely negative, especially something about people in the hypnokink community (this doesn’t name any names, but there are going to be some people who feel personally attacked by this one). I’m trying to tell myself that I’m only giving constructive criticism, and that I’m only expressing the feelings of many who have suffered too long, but… yeah, I’m going to regret this. But I don’t care. It’s gotta be said.

PUT.

FUCKING.

PARAGRAPH.

BREAKS.

IN.

YOUR.

TEXT.

INDUCTIONS.

I cannot fucking tell you how many times I’ve stumbled on a hypnotic induction on Tumblr or BDSMlr or just on MCStories and been utterly unable to even get far enough into it to be affected by it even if I wanted to, simply because the whole thing is a three-screen long wall of repetitive text and I lost my place three times before I started even feeling fuzzy. Like, I am 100% fully aware that there’s a lot of debate about whether it’s a good idea to post a public induction like that, and what kind of warnings and disclaimers need to be in place and what sorts of suggestions are kosher, but trust me - for a lot of hypnotists it doesn’t matter, because what you’ve posted is unreadable, not irresistible.

And this shouldn’t even be hard! Hypnosis is as much about rhythm and cadence as it is about specific language; the pace of the pauses should pretty much suggest itself to anyone writing a halfway decent text induction. And yet time and time again, I see people who’ve decided to represent those pauses with ellipses or sentence breaks or something, leaving their actual text as a solid column with nowhere for the eyes to mark your place. I don’t know if they’re thinking that the subject will have to keep reading if they don’t have a visual stop, but it causes the opposite effect. When your eyes do stop, they don’t know where to start again from.

And it’s even worse than it sounds, honestly, because the same people who write long inductions without any line breaks also tend to use very repetitive and self-similar language. Which… look, we all know that you can construct a perfectly viable hypnotic induction for a subject who understands how to go under just by repeating the word “Deeper,” but if your 1,000 word long text induction uses the word “sleepy” 372 times and doesn’t have any paragraphs, I’m probably going to wind up reading from the wrong one the second my eyes get tired. And you, as a sinister hypnotist, want people to be thinking, “I am falling into your power,” not, “Wait… did I read this bit already?” Make it easy for me to be lulled along by your words, not fucking impossible.

I’ll admit, it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to be drawn into a trance by a random text induction I’ve read online. Lady Ru'etha has spoiled me for pretty much any other hypnotist, and I don’t mind admitting it. But I have a certain degree of offended professional pride, here, regardless of ethical considerations or personal desire. Please. Paragraph breaks. Every single goddamn time, okay?