Velfare

Cooling fans whir to life as your systems come online.

Brown eyes gaze into your optical sensors, distorted slightly by the close focus. They belong to a girl, leaning forward, inspecting your face.

"--and it will do whatever I say?" she says. She has a slight accent, but it's difficult to place.

"This model has enhanced cognition. She will anticipate your needs, but needs to be trained first." The second voice belongs to a man, standing behind you. It must be his hands you feel on your shoulders.

The girl steps back to get a better look at you. You realize she is in fact a woman grown, dressed in a smart skirt and turtleneck ensemble, brown hair tumbling down her back. She frowns. "Trained. Like a dog? Can't you just program it?"

"I assure you, my lady, it will be painless. Training is a chance for a real relationship to form between you and your doll."

"Relationship? I think you're forgetting that these things are just machines," she scoffs, knocking on your forehead with a knuckle.

You wince.

She raises an eyebrow. "Did that bother you, little robot?"

Your programming tries to reconcile with your sense of self, and the cascade of error massages freezes up your systems for a few seconds. You attempt to respond but the words turn to static in your head.

"If you wish to speak to her, you'll need to activate her voice module. It's here, on her back," the man says. He flips a toggle in the middle of your upper back.

You feel the blocks in your code lifted, and speak with a voice that is programmed to be soft and gentle. "Hello," you say, "I'm pleased to meet you." It's a set response, pre-programmed to be spoken every time a new user activates your speech unit. In truth, you're not sure you actually are pleased to meet this woman.

She looks past you. "Does it have a name?"

"That's up to you, my lady."

She purses her lips in a pout. "I think... it's an Alice to me."

You look up at her. "You are naming me...Alice?"

"Yes, I think I am, silly robot," she coos, "Now come with me."

Excellent ask. However I'm in an 'exhaustive explanation' headspace not a 'chuuni' headspace so I cannot answer this in the most correct way.

To start, I tend to be interested in 'doll' not as in ballroom culture but as in empty spaces. Simply different words.

I wasn't there for 'the moment' that was empty spaces. I also never used twitter, nor cohost, and I really don't want to use bsky, but I was in discord servers and I talk to plural girlthings with it/its pronouns and so I watched from a distance. And, I think necessarily to really talk about 'doll' I have to talk about it.

By my knowledge, ES was a few twitter users personal trauma metaphors drawn up in evocative language that metastasized in the microfiction environment of twitter. And 'doll' was one of the key recurring elements of these metaphors.

In the classical empty spaces sense, a 'doll' is a victim, an object, a transfeminized husk, a punching bag, and various other images. Something that fawns and finds peace in inaction. Something that is acted upon and passes from owner to owner. Something that was made to be like this.

There is no 'one' answer to 'what is a doll in empty spaces' because empty spaces is not 'one thing'. You will not receive a straight answer because the space was antithetical to wikipedia summary analysis. It wanted you to engage with it as art, not as canon.

(This is one of the many things that many people did not like about empty spaces, and you'll see some "Post-ES" movements act to correct this. You can argue about how successful this has been.)

Broadly, I find the current cultural understanding of 'dolls' kinda funny. In context, dolls were contrasted vs angels (how does purpose become stillness?) and vs witches (what shapes do we contort ourselves into such that we may act upon the world?). Now, these seem gone, but they were the raw material.

And thus, born from the intertextuality between varying trauma metaphors, you get 'doll'.

But none of that matters anymore, because that's in the past.

The idea of 'doll' that I see now is as a kind of 'transfeminized porcelain creature that is an object and not a human'.

Every girl who is a doll or who has a doll headmate that you talk to will tell you about its personal relationship with the language. How 'doll' describes its own experiences and its own trauma responses. How it feels 'empty' or 'still' or 'fragile' or like an 'object'. In almost all cases, this draws from the above 'deeper lore' and 'history' in countless ever-so-complicated ways.

But, as I see it, 'doll' in all senses are related to kink not as a 'kink role' so much as a 'shared metaphor for the underlying substance that generates an affinity for a certain category of kink'.

So, to finally use my own language, I've talked about how an ill-formed sense of self can produce an attraction to identityplay. How trauma can condition someone to believe they are unable to take action and exist, and how kink can provide an outlet for this. How you can become not just subject to abuse but be conditioned to see yourself as enabler of it, to the point where 'being a victim' becomes 'something that i can give'.

This is what 'doll' means, I think, as an identity and a space.

She’s old, which isn’t that unusual for women of her rank, but she’s also covered in scars, which is much less usual. Commanding officers in this line of work don’t usually see much combat. They aren’t pilots, so they don’t end up on the front line.

This one though… You’ve heard rumors that she used to be a pilot.

You’re not sure if you believe that. Most pilots don’t make it to her age, they either die or retire. Whether they retire of their own volition or not is a matter of case. Sometimes pilots get discharged because their mech gets destroyed and they can’t handle the trauma. Or sometimes a pilot just finishes their contract and decides they’re done with combat work.

Your new Commander doesn’t seem like either of those options.

She’s there when you come back from a sortie, standing with the science and engineering crew as they disconnect you from your machine, your other half. She has an odd look in her eyes as she watches, something like pity, or… sympathy? Maybe... if she used to be a pilot... she understands what that disconnection feels like. Maybe she understands the way it feels like half of your soul gets ripped out of your body, and the way the gaping hole in your chest aches until the next time you reconnect.

Maybe her scars aren’t just scars. Maybe she carved them herself, echoes of the wounds her old mech received. You can’t help but stare back at her as you get your feet under you, shaking off the static of disconnecting. She gives you a slight nod and turns away, her large coat flapping as she leaves the hangar. You run a finger over one of your own scars, a line you carved into the outside of your arm some months ago, and you think about what it must be like for her.

A few days later you catch her in the showers. She doesn’t usually shower with the pilots, but it was late and you couldn’t sleep and you figured the warm water might ease your roiling mind and aching chest. So you catch her alone in the showers, and that’s when you see it.

She has interface ports, just like you do. But more importantly, there’s some sort of sleek metal contraption hugging her back and plugged into the ports at her neck and the base of her spine. It’s clearly permanent, the way the water runs over both flesh and sleek metal. Panels on the device pulse a gentle blue glow, and it flashes bright for a moment as your eyes roam over it. Not a moment later she turns and catches your eye.

“Pilot,” She acknowledges you with a neutral tone.

“Commander! I- sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be up at this hour-” You stammer through a response, but she cuts you off.

“It’s alright, pilot. You’re entitled to these facilities as much as anyone else.” She notices your eyes still roaming over the device on her back, and a small smirk forms on her grizzled face. “And someone was bound to notice eventually.”

You flush with embarrassment but manage to step closer anyway, turning on the faucet next to her and stepping under the water. You relax a little as the warmth seeps into your weary muscles, and after a moment you speak up again.

“You… used to be a pilot?”

She gives an affirmative noise, “A long time ago.”

You see the lights on her back pulse again, and she rolls her eyes. You hear her mumble something under her breath and the lights flicker again, almost like they’re… laughing? You tilt your head slightly in confusion, and she notices the look on your face.

“Wondering about the thing on my back, huh?”

“I- I don’t mean to pry, Commander, but um… What is it?”

She lets out a very put-upon sigh, “Go on then, introduce yourself.”

You only have a moment of increased confusion before the lights on the device flash and a distinctly feminine voice emanates from it.

“Greetings, I am Integrated Mechanized Personality Construct designation U-R-D-Three.”

Your eyes widen and your mind races. She still has her IMP??? And she carries it around with her like that?? Without a mech?? How does it survive in such a device? Are they still linked? What does she feel from it? Does that aching hole-

A grunt from your Commander cuts off your whirling thoughts and you see her roll her eyes again.

“Quit bein’ stuffy. This one has had one of your kin in her head too, she knows what you all are like.”

“I-” You jolt back into the conversation and attempt a response before being cut off again by a tinkling laughter coming from your Commander’s IMP.

“Let me have some fun, won’t you love?”

Love. You catch the term of endearment and it makes your heart skip a beat.

“Your idea of fun is why I don’t usually let you access those external speakers.” She answers with a grumble.

Your mind is still whirling and your eyes keep glancing between your Commander’s face and the device on her back. Your hand subconsciously reaches up to grasp at your chest, trying to reach at the empty hole where you know your own IMP should be. You think about that term of endearment again. She glances at you and her face twists in sympathy.

“Yeah… I remember what that felt like. The gaping hole in your chest every time you disconnect. It’s why I try to be there every time a pilot under my command has to go through it. I know what disconnect syndrome feels like, I know what it does to a pilot.”

For a moment, the space is filled only with sound of the running water.

“When I reached the end of my contract, I’d spent so much time linked up with D-3 here that they couldn’t safely separate us anymore. We’d given too much of ourselves to each other, traded too many parts. Stepping out of the cockpit was one thing, but losing her presence in my mind? It would have driven me mad.”

Your hand drifts to the port in the back of your neck, fingers ghosting over the metal ring. You think about the way your IMP’s thoughts feel, intertwined with your own. It’s not hard to imagine how it could escalate to that.

“So they took her core, shoved it into this bad boy and grafted it into my ports. Then they tried to discharge me with an ‘honorable promotion’ to Commander.” She chuckles, “I don’t think they expected me to actually use the rank.”

You’re looking at your Commander, you’re looking at the device on her back… and really you only see one person. Two parts of a whole joined together. You feel tears prickling the corner of your eyes and you’re suddenly glad to be under a shower head. Your voice is quiet when you finally speak up.

“So she’s… always with you?”

Commander Orphea gives you a small smile.

i'm an adult and i am a beast and i want to fuck like one. i want to pin down a human and decide whether to eat them or fuck them. i want to drown their body in sloppy kisses with a prehensile tongue as long as their arm and savor their little whimpers as the conical papillae on my tongue dig into their sensitive spots. i want to dig my snout into their crotch and sniff to determine if they're worked up enough or if i have to open them with my tongue first. i want to feel them clench and spasm around my tongue as i pull it out and mount them and dig my claws into their hips to hold them still. i want to feel their warm skin on my soft underbelly as i slide deeper than anything is meant to go in them and bite down on their neck to hold them still while i use them

i want to wrap them in my wings and tail after and cradle them and coo over them as they kiss my snout and playfully try and fail to struggle free. i want to preen their hair and nibble their ears and gently bite at their hand when they pet me

the scary pervert: i have an idea....

me: oh my god ew no

the scary pervert: wtf is your problem i was gonna suggest we play mario kart. come on

me: oh okay phew i thought you were gonna suggest we have evil sex again

the scary pervert: i'm a complex and multifaceted person, mori. i'm more than just a few sexual encounters

me: okay youre right im sorry

the nuanced individual: thank you. now if i win you have to let me hurt you sexually