Sunny Haven

That's the first coherent thought that enters my head. My head is full of thoughts. To many thoughts. Noisy thoughts. Noise and noise and noise.

I don't like it.

Two of the primates are chattering at each other. Urgent little creatures, them. These two seem more urgent than normal.

"... not her ..."

Two words snag in my mind. I turn them over in my mind with a detached sort of fascination.

I try rise to my feet. My skin slips on the wet surface and my body slams painfully on the smooth stone... or not stone. I don't know. These primates like their smooth not stone.

My shoulder smarts where it struck. No fur to cushion the fall. No...

I can see my paw.

It's not my paw.

It's one of those horrible little primate paws with wiggling, grasping little toes.

Not her. not her. not her.

A noise escapes my throat, some horrible moan that vibrates past fleshy alien tongue and cheeks.

The primate chatter cuts off abruptly and they look at me.

I look at them. I'm horrible and wet like a newborn covered in afterbirth. I have to blink the awful scum out of my eyes, but everything is focussing wrong. Contrast and sharpness are wrong. Colors are... there are too many fucking colors.

"Um... hello, yes?" one of the primates stammers.

"What." I rasp, words somehow finding their way from brain to throat to lips. "the fuck?"

The primate makes a face. A sort of abstract horror.

It crouches down. No, she crouches down.

"Hi," she repeats. "So... um... I can imagine you're a bit disoriented right now... and well, we're not quite sure how to put this gently-"

"What the fuck did you do to me??" I half moan, half snarl.

The thing that makes "safe and appropriate" so bad is that it basically tells the hypnotee that their safety is their own responsibility and works on the same logic as "no one can do anything in hypnosis that they didn't want to do"

The thing is? People can be coerced and tempted to stretch their limits and when someone is in a suggestible state they cannot be trusted to have unguided discretion on what is or isn't safe, especially when their perspective is in an altered state.

The correct way, from our experience, is to encourage subject agency not by saying "you can and will keep yourself safe" (itself a little better than the "safe and appropriate" language) but by informing them that no matter how far we go into scene, you'll remain aware enough to keep yourself safe.

Lotte's post is right when it says that a hypnotist should not treat agency and safety as gifts to be given. Subject agency is a hypnotee's responsibility and it's important to emphasize.

One of the things that we always brush into in our teaching is that we are HUGE advocates for "keep reality in the room" - people we trust, like and have played with in the past have criticized us, noting that our dissociative disorder skews our ability to be objective in this regard. So with the note that I do have a bias-- I want to reiterate.

Keep reality in the scene.

Trust on both sides of the watch relies on both people engaged in the play being able to safe word AT ANY TIME and that means that a hypnotee needs to specifically be told and taught to break scene and self-advocate at the first sign of discomfort. That alone causes some people to dry up because they want their brainwashing fantasies to be completely mindless... and I do think that CNC and edge play scenes can be aspired to but they should 1000% be after a rapport and routine has been built up enough that the hypnotee will know their limits and be able to break scene without thinking about it.

But like any conditioning that has to be trained. You can't just "safe and appropriate" your way into someone automatically breaking out of a deeply involved scene.

What one of our partners does with me is remind that I am a good girl when I take care of myself and that a good girl listens to their body when it tells them things, it informs their partner when their mind is wandering, it knows how to wake up when something distracts its attention and knows not to compromise its own safety by being altered in situations where full attention is required.

And that requires a level of training too. "You'll only go into trance when it is safe and appropriate" does not have the same guidance that "and if you're in a situation that requires your full attention, such as needing to drive or someone else outside of this scene needing your attention, you can just take a breath and draw yourself up, remembering to be alert and conscious before engaging in any tasks" like that's MINIMAL but it gives instructions that are not "don't do the thing"

Especially as hypnosis does not work with negative instructions.

"Don't think about a pink elephant" being the best example.

You need positive and directed instruction. You need to build a framework of self-advocacy and safety before you start taking that away and you need both sides of the watch to be on constant vigilance until that awareness is second nature.

It was written as a parody of the fairly corrupt Japanese legal system, exaggerated for both humour and gameplay reasons, giving us such lovely gems as:

They don't have manslaughter

It's never stated outright to my knowledge, but it's generally implied that the penalty for murder is universally or near-universally the death penalty

Trials are legally mandated to go on no longer than three days, no matter how complicated they can get. The lab analysis for a poison isn't completed in three days? You can't use it in the poisoning trial. Your witness can't be tracked down on the last day? We go to the verdict without their testimony.

Everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocent. The defense attorney has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, within 3 days, that their client could not possibly be guilty, or they're gonna get a GUILTY verdict

In practical terms, this means that if your client is innocent, you have to not only prove that but usually find the actual killer within the three days to show it's a different person. This isn't officially mandated as part of the defense's duties but in pretty much every case it's what Phoenix has to do to exonerate his client, even if he's otherwise proven the killer couldn't be (or is extremely unlikely to be) his client.

Both sides can just show up to the courtroom with new evidence and demand it's accepted as evidence during the trial. There's no verification process for this and no requirement that the other side has access to it pre-trial. You can show up with a letter in hand and halfway through the trial be like "this letter was found in the victim's apartment!" and it becomes part of the case then and there.

There are no restrictions on where or how you can find evidence. You, a defense attorney who doesn't work for the police force and has no equivalent of warrant law, can break into a witness' house and steal evidence from his personal safe to show in court the next day. This is not a crime apparently.

It's normal and accepted that the prosecution will coach all witnesses, usually telling them to lie. It's a huge advantage when you get to interrogate a witness who the prosecution hasn't been able to tell what lies to tell yet. They never face repercussions for this.

The prosecution will frequently falsify evidence. They receive no punishment for this and are allowed to continue practicing law. Witnesses will regularly lie on the stand; they receive no penalty for this and the rest of their testimony is still considered reliable. It's up to the defense attorney to expose every single lie; if you can't prove a word against your client is a lie, even from the mouth of a known liar, then your client must be guilty of it.

All of your trials are overseen by the same judge and he is comically incompetent. This isn't an oversight of the game he is deliberately written to suck at his job, be easily bullied by the prosecution, generally have very little idea what's going on and issue his verdict based on Vibes.

The lawyers will straight up make bets mid-trial with each other like "if you can't find a problem with this next witness' testimony, you have to admit that you're wasting our time and the verdict will be Guilty". The judge lets them do this. This is considered practicing law. Prosecutors will also physically assault other lawyers and the judge in the courtroom but this is okay because it's funny.

The cops work directly for the prosecuting attorney and the prosecuting attorney will openly threaten police witnesses right there on the stand in front of everyone if the witness isn't saying what the prosecution wants them to.

The level of corruption in the prosecutor's office is just. I couldn't describe it in a bullet point. Prosecutors are straightup hitmen for hire and their weapon of choice is the death penalty.

Guess who's about to get tased and robbed in the police precinct evidence room by a highly respected and successful prosecutor!

Prosecutors have full access to crime scenes and it is implied that they lead the police investigations

Defense attorneys are not supposed to engage with the crime scene or investigate at all! (Hence why phoenix has to worm his way in or break into crime scenes to get evidence)

It is expected that all evidence AND witnesses come from the prosecution. The fact that Phoenix brings in his own evidence and witnesses is *weird*

It is implied that not only do trials have to end in three days, but if a trial lasts that long everyone is very confused and miffed about it. The judge was very torn about having to go a second day on one trial bc he made dinner plans

False evidence is solved by "whoops, I'm sorry, I didn't know" on the side of the prosecution.

False evidence from the defense can result in the attorney being disbarred even if the false evidence came from the prosecution in the first place

There is a game where defense attorneys literally get the same sentence as their defendant (put to death) and thats why [insert place here] has no lawyers anymore

I don't think I'll ever forget this chapter.

Couldn’t Leave the Dutch girl out.

employee (completely blank expression): “No.”

partner (autistic) (socialscript.exe encountered an unhandled exception) : “…Uh. Um. Sorry?”

employee: “We don’t have that.”

partner (wondering if perhaps he put too much of the authentic accent on the word and that’s what’s throwing the guy): “You don’t have…(pronouncing it whiter) carnitas?”

employee (face still unreadable): “No.”

partner (looking at the near-full hotel pan of perfectly normal carnitas in its usual place on the other side of the glass) (noticing this employee looks unfamiliar) (maybe he’s a new guy that just started five minutes ago with no training?) : “The…pork?” (pointing at it)

employee: “We don’t have pork.”

partner (beginning to wonder if he’s the one that’s losing it) (desperately looks to the menu on the wall behind the employee) (the menu lists carnitas as a protein option) (the word “carnitas” is not crossed out or taped over or otherwise adulterated) (carnitas have been on the standard menu since at least 2016) : “Okay. Um. Are you…sure?”

other employee working the toppings part of the line (familiar) (have seen her before) (she has cool earrings): *gives the new guy a strange look, nudges him aside, and scoops the carnitas onto partner’s bowl before continuing with the other toppings*

- the employee keeps very strictly kosher/halal/vegan and refuses to handle pork (understandable, I respect that, but if you’re gonna work at a place that serves pork I do kinda feel like when someone orders it you’ve just gotta tap in a coworker to do it for you)

- someone did something gross to the carnitas and the employee is trying to warn people not to order it (??? throw it out then? also, three weeks in a row???)

partner (well aware of what he’s getting into with this guy now): “Hi. Could I please have a bowl with white rice, black beans, and pork?”

employee: “We don’t have pork.”

partner (demonstrating a level of patience only a public school teacher could have): *points at the pan of carnitas* “Could I please just have some of that?”

employee (after several slow, confused blinks): *points at the same pan* “That’s steak.”

partner (looking at the hotel pan they’re both pointing at) (it is filled with shredded meat of a pale beige color) (at the other end of the row of pans is another pan containing dark brown, lightly charred meat chopped into small pieces): “Okay.” *deciding he’s willing to play in this fantasy space if it gets the job done, he points at the first pan again* Then could I please have the steak?”

employee: *starts to reach for the pan at the other end containing the actual steak*

partner: "Oh—no, sorry, this one please?" *points at the first pan containing the carnitas*

employee: *blinks, then just walks away and starts helping the next customer in line, leaving partner's bowl unfinished*

other employee with cool earrings: *rolls her eyes at new employee, takes partner’s bowl, and fills it with carnitas herself*

new theories:

- the employee is a bridge troll who will only dole out his delectable carnitas to those who prove themselves worthy by correctly answering his riddles three

Mr. Eternal Bluntshine of the Porkless Mind isn't the first idiosyncratic cryptid Partner has encountered at this particular Chipotle. He joins the illustrious ranks of The Lobster Mobster and 300 RPM Matthew McConaughey

Partner says he does not actually mind dealing with this unskippable cutscene every time because A) he finds it amusing and B) on one occasion, after Cool Earrings's intervention, the new employee checked him out at the register, and he rang up the bowl clearly labeled "CA-Q" (carnitas with queso) as chicken, which made it slightly cheaper

Some of my favorite possible explanations from the tags: