#agency

Forget autopilot. Your safety doesn't depend on a "protective subconscious." It depends on you, conscious and active. Agency is something you do, not something you magically have.

Negotiate from clarity. Your first line of defense is explicit negotiation before entering trance. Limits, desires, safewords. If you can't speak clearly outside, there's no safety inside.

Train your "NO". Practice rejecting suggestions and using your safeword inside trance, from day one. It's a muscle that strengthens with use. An ethical hypnotist will celebrate you for it.

Know and fortify yourself. Work on your self-knowledge and self-esteem. Fawn responses or trauma make it harder to hold boundaries. Your psychological well-being is your fundamental shield.

Claim your power (and your responsibility). You are the person ultimately responsible for your safety. Empower yourself with knowledge, practice, and the choice to play only with people who respect your active agency, not those who promise magical protection.

Stede doesn’t say, ‘It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way,’ because Stede knows Ed likely does feel the same way. If Stede though had said such a thing, it might’ve set Ed up to say something he didn’t mean in the moment, such as, ‘Yeah, well, I don’t.’

What Stede does is recognise that Ed likely does feel the same, but there’s no compulsion to say it at such a raw moment, because Ed isn’t ready to be that vulnerable (or quite that forgiving).

Too often ‘I love you’ or the equivalent is said in expectation of quid pro quo. Stede’s approach removes that immediately, recognising that Ed’s feelings, and the current situation, are complex. It allows Ed the agency to say ‘I’m not about to [say it],’ not that Ed doesn’t feel it.

Emotionally, it protects both of them really. Because Stede’s smart like that.

[alternate link]

Sarah Stremming (Host) + Kim Brophey (Guest)

I see a lot of discourse surrounding character agency on here. There seems to be this idea that a character must control every single thing in the plot in order for them to have agency—which is just not true. In fact, in my beloved film-inspired outlining, the story relies on something uncontrollable happening to the character in order to get the story rolling. This is called the inciting incident. Almost every movie you will ever watch will start with an uncontrollable event challenging the protagonist’s life. Example:

Prim gets called for the Hunger Games, someone is murdered in the chateau, the best friend’s dad shows up in town. Etc.

When people say that your characters need agency, they mean that your characters need to make decisions and have an impact on the world, and their journey is largely informed by the decisions they make. But things can and should happen to them that are beyond their control—things that throw them off course. In fact, every decision they make should have another end of ‘thing happens to them’ as a consequence,

This is called the causal chain, or as my mentor used to call it: fortunately, unfortunately. It looks like:

Fortunately: MC completes their application for their local university in time (choice)

Unfortunately: School rejects application (consequence)

Fortunately: Dean takes bribe to let student in

Unfortunately: Rival witnesses the bribe

When I say that a character’s journey should be informed by the decisions they make, that’s what people typically mean by agency. It just means that the major things that happen should either be a decision the character makes or a consequence to one of their decisions. Not that their uncle can’t come visit and help them with the next piece of the puzzle.

TL;DR Agency is important in forcing your protagonist to grow and become who they need to be by the end through making difficult decisions and dealing with the consequences of those decisions. However, it does not mean that things can’t happen to them. In fact, things should happen to them that they can’t control to create conflict and raise the stakes.

Glad we had this talk.

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