#advice ask

Great question! Finding resources for this sort of thing can be quite challenging. Credentials are not very trustworthy: at least two cats have been awarded high-level hypnotherapy credentials, and no matter how warm and relaxing they are, cats aren't hypnotherapists.

For a similar reason, I'd generally advise against paying for any books or materials that haven't been specifically recommended to you. Not because they're all bad, but because anyone can sell a book these days, there are just as many bad paid resources as bad free ones. (Although the best ones may be better than their free counterparts.)

Confusion inductions are reasonably easy to learn if you've been able to hypnotize people in the past. I recommend the induction "Seven, Plus or Minus Two" (you can find a few different scripts and demonstrations for it online) as a good starting place. It's not the only way to do a confusion induction, but it can be easily adapted to lots of different environments, so it's a good one to learn. I strongly encourage you to use point-form notes instead of a full script, and Seven Plus or Minus Two is very well-structured, so it's a good one to start with point-form notes if you've been reading scripts up until this point.

Conversational inductions are a lot harder, mostly because there are a lot of people interested in them who want to hypnotize others without consent (genuinely, not just CNC), and so there are a lot of creeps and grifters trying to make money off them. Anything which mentions "seduction" is an immediate red flag, and I'd also steer clear of anything which is trying to teach hypnotic techniques to salespeople. You'll come across a lot of references to "neuro-linguistic programming" as well. I personally don't like NLP as a model/paradigm, but many objectively good hypnotists do like it and claim to benefit from its techniques. I won't say not to learn about it or listen to its adherents, but I will encourage a healthy skepticism.

I'm still not amazing with conversational inductions, but the way I eventually learned them was by studying Eriksonian hypnosis and indirect suggestion. Once I had a firm handle on that, I was able to integrate those hypnotic patterns into my speech. The book I found most useful for conversational hypnosis (among many other things) was Trancework by Michael Yapko. It's a great book and very informative, although fair warning: it is a textbook for therapists, so it's quite dense and some of the ideas need to be filtered/adapted for a recreational context.

i’m a trans guy recovering from an ed. while i was never shockingly underweight, my food restriction kept me from gaining weight through puberty. now that I’m recovering I’ve gained a substantial amount of weight. It’s healthy gain, I feel better, and I know it’s what I need, even if the bmi scale says otherwise. I love my body. I love my chubbiness.

now comes to the advice part. with gaining weight I no longer fit into the majority of my clothes, most of which are fem items i’ve had since i was 13 or 14. i’ve been trying to subtly ask my parents for new clothing, framing it as gender affirming stuff since they’re supportive. they agree but believe I should do it slowly, not taking initiative to buy me stuff. I’m still a minor and i don’t have the money to fund this.

how do i tell them about all of this? how do i tell them that it’s a necessity /now/? they know about my ed in passing, but they’ve made jokes that it wasn’t really that bad since i wasn’t that poster child of thinness. how do i admit that i’ve gained from then? even more pressing, how do i avoid falling back into the trap of undereating out of financial necessity?

Hi anon! First of all, I’m very happy to hear you are in recovery. Seriously. I’m proud of you. That shit’s hard.

Secondly, you mentioned that a lot of your clothes are from you were 13-14? I think that’s enough of a reason to ask for something new. And the gender-affirming aspect makes it even more understandable.

Teens grow out of their old clothes all the time and I doubt they’d blink an eye. Something as simple as “A lot of these seriously don’t fit me anymore” or “I’ve grown out of my wardrobe and it’s actively uncomfortable” is really all you need.

Most importantly, you don’t have to ever mention your ED if you don’t want to. With like, anybody, ever. Sometimes it’s between you and yourself and maybe a therapist. Given the jokes they’ve made and how they invalidated the severity of your ED, I suggest you avoid telling your parents for now.

As to avoid undereating: I’m not a professional unfortunately, and can’t give you the best answer there. All I can really say is that I hope your parents would provide you the food you need and clothes you feel comfortable in. If they don’t, then you definitely want to look to someone far more qualified than me for help.

Any tips/preferences on naming conventions? Do you prefer longer names, descriptive adjectives, just main character names, etc? Any names that are particularly better/worse for you as a reader?

And of course, happy holiday season! Much love to our fluffy prehistoric family!! 🦣🦁

Referring to this ask

I'm glad the resources were helpful! That doc is really good because it helps summarise a lot of things I've absorbed through osmosis reading so many comics and listening to what the authors have to say cx

On naming conventions, I'm once again gonna give a disclaimer that this is all just my opinion! If you have chosen/want to choose a name that would be "wrong" by these standards, don't let me stop you!

We personally are very hesitant to do that.

Now, plenty of games that have plurality in them will go with this approach. Usually it's some sort of possession, where the ghost, spirit, alien, whatever, is an NPC under the GM's control. And usually there's systems in place that dictate a switch. So it's certainly not outlandish whatsoever to have different headmates than the host be played and controlled by the GM.

And this approach certainly makes a lot of sense. Headmates don't always get along. When they don't it can lead to some extreme situations. Injecting that kind of drama from the GM might be perfect for a game.

Some pitfalls to avoid however are more specific variations of the same kinds of pitfalls GMs need to be aware of anyways. For most games, it's pretty risky to impose things on the player's character's backstory. For instance, it might make for an awesome game to reveal that the BBEG turns out to be the PC's parent. But it also might be pretty frustrating for the player if this contradicts the backstory they had already established.

So if a player had an idea for a plural character, handing over one, or nearly all, headmates to the GM to control opens up a lot of risk that the GM will play said headmates in ways that contradict what the player intends. And unlike someone in their backstory, their character's headmates will be sticking around.

If the GM springs a headmate on a PC, that's likely to cause some friction. If the GM doesn't give the PC options to avoid a switch, that's going to feel like a lot of autonomy taken away from them. Yes, all of these things can and do happen to real life systems, but in the context of a game we have to consider what is fun more. And if the player of this plural PC is also plural, all of these intra-system conflicts might hit a little too close to home.

Ultimately though, these issues are something that's handled with lots of communication, making sure to get consent, and providing the player with autonomy appropriate to the game being run. Having an ongoing dialogue between the player and the GM about expectations is always important, but more so when the GM is taking such an active role in a PC's simple existence.