#facelessoldgargoyle

Tangentially related, I am kind of getting tired of the seeming compulsion people have to analyze why Ilya doms. It’s getting to the point where I feel like ppl are trying to make an excuse for him? I think there are probably are psychological roots for him, but also, lots of people just like domming!

the compulsive pathologizing of domming is a big contributor to the dehumanization of doms as a whole, so i wouldn't say it's tangentially related (it is The Thing In Motion)

as a dom who is very very similar to ilya in the show. guys. ilya doms bc that's just how he is. we see him act like that all the time unless he's under stress/distress. his trauma, fundamentally, is disassociating from himself and his desires in order to appease authority despite being someone who always asserts/takes what he wants. he doesn't dom to take back control or for any compulsive reason. domming is freedom for him, it's not something he thinks about at all. that's just What He Does when he's turned on. the healing part is that he's allowed to be himself freely and with perfect reciprocity (in shane)

part of the fixation with pathologizing him is likely that shane is such a basket case of a sub. but the same fundamental principle applies to shane, too. shane subs bc it's who he is, and ilya gives him the freedom to do so

on the other hand I think it would be fucking excellent to get Shane into a posture device. Anything from a stiff corset (yay for feminization bonus) to a heretic’s fork collar to anal hook forced back arch….I found this picture and I’m soooo agog.

Love love love love this and I think this is exactly the kind of thing Ilya would love to use on Shane, and the kind of thing Shane would love. He loves pushing his body but likes it even more when Ilya pushes his body.

okay well i'd just like to say that i read the post as, like. when you finger his side wound and then He squirts. like. it makes him squirt. so with that in mind uhhhh i just. heheheheheh.e. i mean. nsfw below

I spend most of my time deep in the white wolf/OPP mines, particularly Mage: the Awakening, I love CofD so much, and Exalted (2 and 3e), aside from that, I've had a lot of fun with Beyond the Wall and other adventures, and I have a deep deep love of Eclipse Phase though I've only played it a little

aw thank you so much!!! and YES i absolutely do! here's a couple of my all time faves:

the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson (book) — my favorite book of all time honestly. THE haunted house book. follows a young woman named eleanor who participates in a paranormal investigation of a haunted house in the wake of her mother's death. the opening page to it is so incredibly iconic, and since it's a pretty old book (written in 1959) you can find pdfs of it easily online!

(the netflix show of the same name is also pretty good, but not a direct adaptation of the book in any way, and i think it loses a lot of what makes the book so incredible. it does play really directly with the relationship between trauma/ptsd and hauntings in a way i really like, though! i'd say watch it after reading the book, if you want to watch it.)

control, anatomy, and the legacy of the haunted house by jacob geller (video essay) — not really a movie but i've watched it probably at least two dozen times. seriously, go watch it, it's only 20 minutes long and changed my life, no joke. (geller's other stuff is also great; i recommend fear of depths and 4 short games about pain for more along these lines!) in it he discusses anatomy (a game by kitty horrorshow), haunting of hill house, house of leaves, and control, and all of those are absolutely recommendations in their own right, too!

crimson peak, dir. guillermo del toro (movie) — gothic romance! a woman moves into an old mansion with her new husband and his sister, and everything around her is very sinister. has the absolute best set design & costume design of any movie i've ever seen, and i highly recommend looking up what costume designer kate hawley has said about her work on the film — specifically, she made the costumes echo the architecture of the house in a way that i think is fascinating. (content warning for inc*st because some of the plot is, uh. questionable at best. but the movie overall is gorgeous.)

in the dream house by carmen maria machado (book) — this one isn't a haunted house in a literal sense, mostly. content warning for abuse; this memoir follows machado in her time living in a house with an abusive partner, as viewed through various tropes; dream house as haunted mansion being the chapter that's perhaps the most directly relevant here (and the way machado writes about hauntings is just *chefs kiss*) but the whole book is incredible and totally worth reading.

ghostland by colin dickey (book) — a nonfiction book! dickey goes at hauntings from a really interesting angle of examining the why behind them. what makes people in a specific city tell the ghost stories they do? what about the history of a place shapes the haunted houses that are talked about there?

Yep! It's the complete grail lore, it's the current run I'm doing! I've enough free time now that I can play Cultist Simulator again after work, and it's been so cool to explore the new mods that have come out!