Warning: May Cause Addiction

"green"

"good girl. again, color check?"

"green"

A new commission is published on Read Only Mind! It's a bit long for tumblr but here's an excerpt:

Song of the Summer

Chapter 1: New Releases

The box had arrived on a Tuesday, delivered by a courier in an unmarked van. Nathan had signed for it with trembling hands. It wasn't from the weight. The speaker system was surprisingly compact. He'd been planning this for months, ever since he'd stumbled across the dark web forum where a user named "Architect_89" sold specialized audio equipment to a very specific clientele.

Nathan carried the box into the apartment he shared with Bethany, setting it on the kitchen table. She wouldn't be home from the Sound & Vision offices until seven, which gave him plenty of time to set everything up.

The speakers themselves were beautiful. But it was the secondary component that made his heart race: a small slot on the bottom that a normal person might mistake for a pry point and and a single tiny SD card engraved with a musical note.

The instructions had been clear. The card contained a text file. Whatever he wrote in that file would be synthesized into subliminal audio messages, embedded at frequencies below human conscious perception but perfectly detectable by the subconscious mind. When Bethany played music through the main speakers, she'd also be absorbing whatever programming Nathan had written.

He spent the afternoon positioning the speakers, running cables through the baseboards, and putting a bow on the stereo. It was a gift, after all. Then he sat at his laptop, the tiny card inserted, and stared at the blank text document.

"Start small", the Architect_89 had advised. "The subconscious needs to believe the suggestions are coming from within."

Nathan's fingers hovered over the keyboard. Bethany was a brilliant music critic with a discerning ear. She was also chronically messy, her creative mind apparently incapable of remembering where dishes went or that clothes belonged in drawers rather than draped over chairs.

And so, he began to type:

"I love a clean space. Tidying makes me feel calm and happy. When I hear music, I feel inspired to organize my surroundings. Folding laundry is satisfying. I enjoy putting things in their proper place. A clean home is a peaceful home."

He saved the file, ejected the drive, and plugged it into the hidden port under the entertainment center. A tiny LED blinked green twice then went out. It was active.

When Bethany came home that evening, carrying a bag of Thai takeout and humming something from whatever album she'd spent the day writing about, Nathan was reading on the couch, trying to appear casual.

"Happy early birthday," he said, gesturing to the speakers. "They came today and I just couldn't wait."

Bethany's eyes went wide. "Nate, these are gorgeous. Are they the ones I was looking at last week?"

"Better," he said, which was technically true. "Go ahead, try them out."

She set down the food and pulled up her Spotify, selecting some random playlist from his saved songs. As the opening chords filled the apartment, Nathan watched her smile pull wider and wider. He had to admit, even without the bonus features he'd bought it for, the speaker system was genuinely solid.

"Oh my god," she breathed, sinking into the armchair. "I can hear every note. This is incredible."

They ate dinner with the music playing, and Nathan watched as Bethany's foot tapped, her head nodding slightly to a rhythm only she could hear. After twenty minutes, she stood up to get a drink and paused, looking at the stack of magazines on the coffee table.

"You know what," she said, almost to herself, "this place is kind of a mess."

Nathan's pulse quickened. "It's not that bad."

"No, it is," she said, already gathering the magazines. "I don't know why I let it get like this. Let me just clear this off. It'll take two seconds."

The magazines turned into the dishes, which turned into the countertops. She spent the next half hour tidying while her playlist continued. And as she brought some dishes out of the bedroom, Nathan pretended to be absorbed in his book. But he watched every movement, his arousal growing with each unconscious act of cleanly obedience.

By the time she settled back down, the living room was spotless.

"I feel so much better," she sighed, snuggling against him. "Weird, right? I never want to clean."

"Maybe it was just a passing fancy," Nathan said, kissing her forehead.

"You're probably right. I'll be back to my old slobby self tomorrow."

"Slobby!" Nate cried with mock indignation. "You? Never!"

She punched him lightly in the arm and chuckled. But for all their teasing, when Nate woke up the next morning, all Bethany's clothes were off the floor and in the hamper.

-----

Read the rest here:

Part 1 - It's not (just) about the money

1. There is nothing more pathetic than paying your superiors.

Seriously, you paid me just because I told you to? You're that weak minded, that obsessed, that much of a simp?

Time to embrace it.

2. Findom has real consequences.

You are going to miss that cash at the end of the month. I've already spent it on something I didn't need. That's how things should be. Pleasure comes to me easily. You suffer for it.

3. Findom makes work an act of worship.

Work is boring and gets in the way of kink. Sure I'm writing this post at work right now, but mostly it's emails and spreadsheets.

As a paypig you can change that. Every hour at work you'll be motivated to try harder so you can $end more.

4. Your dom doesn't need the money

I earn way more at work than you losers can afford to send me. There's cash from subs sitting in my PayPal because I haven't bothered to transfer it to my bank. I love knowing that I'm taking money from people who need it more than I do.

5. Cash is hot

Have you ever seen someone with a fist full of cash they're about to give you? Have you watched in real time as their bank balance drops?

The card's direct effect is obviously horny: a device that doesn't mind control any in-game components but instead directly targets and controls a player. Of course, it has to be a temporary effect, but I am still weird about temporary mind control, especially when it's flavored as being forced into a bulbous helmet filled with tentacular growths reaching into your every orifice. That's just hot!

But the common gameplay loop around it is hotter. It's only one turn, which is a powerful tempo swing, and usually a bit of material advantage, but not game winning on its own. But you know what *is* game winning on its own? Permanently mind controlling you. And if you have this mind control helmet around that you're forcing your enemy into once, it's just efficient to force your enemy to wear it forever. Unfortunately, there's no gameplay difference between permanent mind control and normal defeat on the match slips.

So, like, obviously, permanent mind control is hot, but it's really the story of it that's what makes me fantasize about it. Because the moment you see that helmet, you know what your opponent is trying to do. And it's not like they're likely to hide it. The machine they're building isn't just one helmet. It takes a whole complex factory to maintain the resources necessary to lock something like you in it forever. No, they're going to be spending the next ten to fifteen minutes building this machine in front of you, all for the purposes of permanently enslaving you in it. And you're going to have to watch, because what if they mess up. And every once in a while, if it looks like you might escape, they'll activate parts of it, temporarily controlling you, to stop you. It's almost like they're aligning it to you, measuring and calculating to figure out exactly what is needed to control specifically you. And you know all this, all that's going to happen, the moment your opponent takes out the helmet. So you'll be spending every minute up to your eventual demise desperately fighting to prevent that from happening.

But, what does the inside of the machine feel like? Strictly speaking, it's not permanent mind control, not truly. It's just controlling you during your turns. It's hard to interpret what exactly that means outside of the game. I like to think of it as only controlling you when you have energy. The helmet only activates when you have the power to do anything. At the in-between times, at night or in transit, or when you're exhausted after working for them, you're free to think about what's been done to you. Of course, this means that they have an obligation to make sure you're either too tied up to do anything then or too exhausted to try. But isn't that fun?

Another fun thing about this type of mind control in mtg is that there's an in-game component that represents your current plans and ideas, your hand. And, while you're mind controlled, your opponent can see all of your plans and ideas and manipulate them. They can think those ideas for you, and they see what new ideas you think of. They can sort through every thought in your head and put it in different boxes to make sure that no thought of resistance gets through. And I'm sure during those in between moments of freedom you'll try to think your way out of it, but by that point, even your own mind will be stacked against you. Isn't that fun?