Relationships and RP (Pt 1?)

It's been a while since I've blogged. I've been drowning in coursework for college the past few months. The good news is that I passed my classes and will live to see another semester. In this time we wrapped up the release of Issue 1: Rain! It's been a fun wild ride.

In the studio, Mace, Verias and Oshigan are working on animating the short story I adapted for Cosmic Feline: Surrender. We have cast voice actors and everything is looking great! I am presently also working the script with Mace for Episode 2 of that arc, Survivor, so please check out our Discord for updates!

A couple weekends ago, I was able to host a panel at Fallfest 18 put on by The New Universes Project and OngoingWorlds. Fallfest was a virtual convention accessed for free over Discord focused on online roleplaying or simulations communities. It was all text based so it lacked a speaking component.

My panel was on Relationships in Roleplaying.

The main questions I helped foster discussion on were:

• How do you initiate a relationship in roleplay without being creepy? 
• How do you write a relationship that feels real? 
• How do you write polyamorous relationships? 

Please note that this blog is going to contain spoilers for “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “the Prince of Tides”. These are some old media and should be beyond the point of indignant rage for being spoiled. 

The biggest thing to keep in mind for writing relationships is that if you want it to be realistic and believable, it’s like managing a real relationship. If you lack positive personal experience, then it would be best to do research through good sources to understand relationships. I enjoy observation to learn but I also enjoy reading psychological research on interpersonal relationships. Good solid research in psychology journals or books on relationships might help broaden an understanding. Books like “the Players’ handbook” or “I hope they serve beer in Hell” should be avoided as legitimate dating advice. I would also include most romantic comedies or romance novels as bad sources for realistic relationships. I think they would be good for identifying troupes.

To this effect, I think that “Mrs. Doubtfire” is one of the more realistic depictions of a relationship in a movie. The father is desperate to become a part of his children’s lives after his divorce and after his elaborate ruse is revealed, he loses custody and cannot visit them unsupervised (since he is now considered a deviant). He and his wife do not end up getting back together. He and his wife move on but eventually work something out- though she’s still pissed he lied to her. There were consequences for being a negligent husband and father. It sucks but that’s real life.

One of the books that I grew up reading was “The New Male Sexuality: The Truth About Men, Sex, and Pleasure” by Dr. Bernie Zilbergeld. It helped me develop a deeper appreciation for the pressures and issues that men must deal with. As a woman, there is quite a bit of attention on how female sexuality is distorted through dated cultural perceptions and the view of modern media. To not acknowledge that men don’t have the same issues or misconceptions is foolish.

For instance, in Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides, the main character, Tom, is talking with his twin sister’s psychiatrist because she’s attempted suicide. Tom explains his family’s background and their childhood. At the root of the unified trauma of his childhood is when he, his mother and sister are raped by a group of escaped convicts. They are saved by his older brother and their pet tiger, Caesar (yes, a real fricking tiger) but they are told to never talk about the incident. No police, no hospital, no closure. He questioned his own sexuality for years and blocked out the incident because, “men don’t get raped”. He never talked about it, so he couldn’t deal with the issue.

Modern definitions of “rape” have finally evolved to include assaults perpetrated against men which, did not change in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report until 2013. When we talk about rape in media, the idea of prison rape is funny to must so there are lots of jokes about not dropping the soap, but we don’t do this when we talk about rape when it involves women. These things are equally wrong but with males, its more socially acceptable which is horrible.

When we perpetuate the stereotype that men can only be strong or dominating to be considered men it hurts people. In roleplaying, it means that there is an uptake of carbon copies of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone in their heyday doing MANLY things. Tall men, rippling muscles barely concealed by tiny shirts, carrying big guns and kicking ass while dealing shitty one-liners. Characters trying just so hard to be a badass that it’s laughable. Or the men that play the silent, stoic type that brood darkly in a corner and glower still hoping to win the girl.

“What do you mean you don’t want to go with me? Didn’t you see me just solo that big monster?”

Excuse me, you cannot see my eye roll through this wall of text.

I can’t tell you how annoyed it makes me to have people that are full of themselves parade themselves in front of me, talking about nothing but themselves and flexing. They reek of douchebag and I avoid those types as best as I can in real life and roleplay. The silent types… if you don’t TALK to someone ever, why should I be expected to like you? I mean, who says: “oh wow, that dude that doesn’t talk and stands in the shadows staring at me is SO SEXY, I WANT HIM”?

Then there are those other types. The “heroes” that go, “But I just saved you, why don’t you want to go out with me?”



There is this toxic idea that people are machines that you put tokens of “Kindness” into that will eventually drop out sex. This is true in real life as it is in roleplay.

No one is entitled to you for helping you.

You are not entitled to anyone if you help them with something.

Think about this a minute.

Take a scenario where you character has broken their leg and has fallen unconscious. When they wake up later in the hospital, they are told that DUDE B saved them. You are grateful, so you offer to buy them dinner or a beer. But DUDE B says, “You can thank me by having sex with me.”

Doesn’t that just FEEL skeezy? I mean, the nerve. You didn’t ask to be saved. Why do you owe him anything? You only offered something because that’s how you were raised. Someone does you a favor and you reciprocate the favor, but that doesn’t automatically mean you have to throw yourself at them.

A less extreme example is when two friends go out for lunch and one friend covers the other.

Does this mean that this is suddenly a date and sex should be the compensation for a meal?

No.

No it doesn’t.

I don’t understand this notion that dates are a transitional affair.

Meal ≠ Sex.

Dates are supposed to be a way to get to know the other person. Sometimes dates are the first time that two people meet, and dinner/lunch is a safe time to get to know someone new. Think about it, you are both sitting in one place and aren’t being distracted by anything (put your phone away!) except the person sitting across from you.

It’s a neutral place to decide if you want to continue spending time with someone. Unfortunately, most modern approaches to dates consider it a short cut through all that relationship nonsense to sex, placing more pressure on both parties. The person that gets told "no" thinks feels he’s entitled to sex and the person that says no is made to feel worthless.

I have had guys tell me that they don’t consider women that put out on the first date worthy of a relationship. They also hate it when a woman does not put out on the first date. I have also told them that they are idiots. This is the type of thing that makes people crazy.

So what does this have to do with roleplay? Everything.

These are things that happen in real life.

Writers will write what they know. If someone feels that dates = sex, then their character doesn’t have sex on that first date, it can lead to some angry out of character ranting. Then the other player who turned them down gets to be berated in and out of character for saying “no”, when they shouldn’t feel pressured to write something they don’t want to. Which will likely lead to them not wanting to write relationships with that person or anyone in the future if they constantly get this sort of reaction.

If people want to yield more in character relationships in roleplay, they need to communicate positively with the people around them. Being a decent human being will get you further than being an entitled douchenozzle.

The characters need to interact normally in character to get to know one another to figure out if they like each other. I have seen far too many people just try to force a relationship with the first person of the opposite gender that talks to theirs. It’s easier than people think.

Talk to people, interact and if you decide that you want to date them, you make your intentions known.

“Hey, I really like you, would you like to go out on a date?”

Rather than, “Let’s hang out some time.”

If the other person tells you no to the date but yes to the hanging out, it might just mean that they want to be friends. That doesn’t mean that “nice guys” finish last. It just means that the other person is not interested and it’s creepy to hang around at the edges with the desperate hope that the person will come running back to you.

You cannot get mad for someone not being able to read your mind that you want to be romantically involved with them. It is not enduring to make puppy dog eyes at your friend and hope that they will some day look at you with the same love as you.

(I’m looking at you Taylor Swift).

Fantasies

This week has been mentally exhausting for me. My hours have been shifting around so I haven't been sleeping well but it's made it harder to get my thoughts straight to settle down enough to properly write.  The comic gives me a chance to filter a specific narrative or concept into a visual form which is great but some of the memories that accompany certain scenes are hard to face again.

Tammy in this week's comic. Fantasy fulfillment?

http://kokoheartu.frillypink.com

I wrote last week about ending a relationship and on the comic blog I mentioned Dave and an abusive relationship. I haven't gotten the question about my decision to include it in the comic since it is an adult comic. It's porn, why include it at all if the business is presenting a sexual fantasy? It's storytelling but it's also a fragment of truth. It's a bit dark but I felt it was important to include, just like I felt it was important to describe the neglectful relationship preceding my marriage. I try to include an underlying truth in the narratives I create.

The stories I plan to tell in the comic have undercurrents of truth. You might have to truly know me to see what fragments of truth are glittering there under a patina of falsehood. It is a bit of fantasy fulfillment in the stories too. I want to present a narrative that is real. These people are real even if they aren't being fully presented as who they fully are.

It's why sexual fantasies are so powerful when executed correctly. You take a real thing and you take it a couple of steps too far and lose yourself in the untruth of it all. The things you wish had happened, that you want to be real. It can't be too far fetched, otherwise it's not a tangible fantasy.

For instance, a popular fantasy from my reading of Nancy Friday's "My Secret Garden" and "Forbidden Flowers" is an attractive authority figure pulling the woman aside to talk to her or to punish her (a spanking usually) and then gets too into it. The authority figure is lost in his passion for her and they have powerfully liberating sex. Or you and a co-worker are alone in the office and you have sex on the conference table or over your desk. Things that are a) risky, 2) forbidden, and 3) are based on somewhat real encounters.

I'm sure there is more literature about power exchange and submission that could be had at another time. It's a mindset. It's just one set of fantasies out of a multitude of fantasies. Not every fantasy is realistic or feasible. Not every kink can be mutually shared by another. I for one, am not a fan of physical violence in sexual situations which means I am not a sadist or a masochist. But that's someone else's kink. Some people get off on verbal abuse, not this girl.

Engaging in something like that can be liberating for the fetishist. I have found in my own interactions that many of abuse survivors have these violent fantasies that help them take their power back from the indignities and horrors they suffered, because if it's too much, they can end the encounter. This isn't true for everyone but many people discount the therapeutic aspects of sex with someone you trust and love. But many people aren't comfortable with telling the person that they are in a sexual relationship in what they fantasize about.

There is a sense of shame that people feel when it comes to expressing their sexual fantasies. A tangible fear that they will be judged and rejected. So people turn outside of their loving relationships to get the validation and acceptance that they need. They cheat because they cannot be sexually fulfilled in their normal relationship. So how can you head this off? How do you get comfortable talking about these kinks?

Everything starts with a conversation. It can be small. "Hey, I would really like to try having sex in a new position." or "hey, can we have sex with me in a costume?" Little things to test the waters. Or "hey, I love having sex with you but I want to try something different how do you feel if we do X?"

If you never ask you will never know what your partner might be willing to do or the heights of awesome sex you might be missing out on. =)

The Beginning Part 4

Before I get into the conclusion of my Poly origin story I wanted to state that this week has been extremely chaotic. The threat of Hurricane Lane sent most of the people living here on Oahu into a state of panic since a hurricane hadn’t touched this particular island in years. People had visions of rolling blackouts, flooding, and evacuations in their minds as they descended on every store that possibly could sell food and bottled water. We did lose power for a short while but nothing worth calling my insurance provider over.

Chaos continues with Mace so this week's update will be a sketch page. Click the image above to go to the comic.

Picking up where I left off last week, Shep and I had been married for about seven years when the conversation about experimenting came up. We had talked fairly broadly about my bisexuality and vaguely about the notion pulling another girl into a tryst with us but I wasn't comfortable with sharing my husband.

To clear up any misconception about the nature of our marriage before it gets asked- Shep and I were (and are) happily married. No crazy fights, no ultimatums, just clear communication. We had no secrets and a healthy and active sex life. We share the same hobbies so there was really no real moment of boredom.

I was at my high school reunion and spending time with my old friends, Tammy and Dawn included. Shep was out of town for a business trip. I was having fun and reconnecting with one of my guy friends that I had a crush on. Kevin had vanished after high school to the Army and did a couple of tours in Iraq. After some drinks, he admitted to having a crush on me too. It was crazy and typical, I had spent 2 years of high school single and crushing on this guy! Years later and happily married, he confesses interest. Talk about a little too late.

I laughed about poor timing and texted Shep. Then.. like it was nothing, he told me to go ahead and sleep with Kevin. I was a little tipsy and floored by this suggestion. I didn't understand where it had come from. So, I called Shep to get clarification.

Shep explained that he wanted to give me the opportunity to explore the possibility of being intimate with Kevin because I never had the chance in high school. I had to consider it. Was I ready to be casual about having sex with other people now that I was married? I thought of the idea of losing Shep to another woman, as I had lost others in the past and doubt twisted like a knife in my chest. But I trusted and loved Shep. Would I feel differently about Shep if I slept with another man? Sometimes, the best way to figure something out is to confront it, right?

I weighed these possibilities and insecurities in my mind. Together, we had the decision to try being open with the knowledge that we didn't love each other less. We just wanted to try something different. There was a lot to gain and, a lot to lose. I didn't know when the opportunity would come up again, it took a lot for me to trust someone. Shep had my permission to go hook up with someone on his business trip and I had his to sleep with Kevin or whomever else I wanted to at the reunion.

After my phone call, I pulled Kevin aside and propositioned him. I had my husband's permission and I wanted to explore the possibility with Kevin, if Kevin was game. He was surprised, a little apprehensive and skeptical until I showed him the text. No secrets, no lies, just honesty. Kevin didn't make any promises but we decided to allow the night to progress naturally with us flirting; the reunion had turned into our first date.

Kevin and I ended up in his hotel room. And from what I heard when Shep got home, he had some success as well. The conversation that we had following was interesting. Did we want this open thing to just be casual? Did we want to establish longer relationships? The answer at this point was that we just wanted the variety. We were just going to be open.

Over the time that followed, I realized that this wasn't realistic. For Shep, it's harder to find girls that just want to be casual and only have one night stands. He needed to establish relationships with people to do things with. But there was also the realization that you cannot control how you feel towards anyone. I knew it was possible to be in love with more than one person. The love for one would not diminish the love for another.

So we decided to open ourselves to the opportunity of love with other people. We became polyamorous. Then it was the question of how this was supposed to work. We didn't know anyone else that was poly or even swingers. We knew a bunch of bisexual women and homosexual men. It seemed like no one else wanted to deal with multiple legitimate relationships. We had to go to Google to get an idea of the terminology and literature on this whole poly thing. 

I started reading "Ethical Slut" and came to the conclusion that much of what they proposed in the book were common sense things that Shep and I had already figured out. Being clear and honest about what it is you want and expect from your partner is the key to making any relationship work. We formed plans and strategies for how we would manage our others, whenever we found them. The biggest thing while we were still being casual was using Google Calendar to manage our dates with other people and then making deliberate time for each other. 

There you have it. Shep and I being polyamorous was a logical and natural progression of our relationship. =) 

The Beginning Part 3

Before I continue, just a reminder that the newest page of the comic is up at http://kokoheartu.frillypink.com/

Entry 1, "Rain" sketch preview.

The Beginning Part 3 

I had the notion that because I was his little sister’s friend that Shep would not be interested in me. I was afraid that he would see me as immature the longer we spent time alone with him. I prepared for my first date with Shep full of apprehension. 

The serpent called doubt had thrown its coils around me and tightened as I wondered if Shep had only said “yes” because he felt sorry for me. It was a sob story, I had JUST gotten out of the hospital and my boyfriend had unceremoniously dumped me. Was this just a pity date?

I had dressed and undressed about six times before I finally settled on an outfit that was more me than cute or sexy. I wanted him to take me seriously and to you know, like me. It might have been too low key, just shorts and a fitted Slayer t- shirt, but it was genuinely me.

I paced and fidgeted when eventually sat down on my couch as I waited for Shep to arrive. I thought about driving to meet him at the restaurant but it wasn’t like it was some blind date, I knew the guy for about a year and he was my friend. The idea of driving with him wasn’t all that bad. But I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep a serious conversation with him.

Shep showed up a little bit early and we just started talking. I was foolish to have felt so worried. We lost track of time and got a good sense of each other. The conversation carried itself. I am not ashamed to say that we didn’t make it out of the house. It was a steamy beginning to the relationship.

Both of us had been badly hurt and we skirted around using the “love” word. People throw that word around too casually without meaning it to manipulate people into doing what they want. I’ve known guys to drop the “love bomb” to get girls to open their legs and girls to get guys to open their wallets. Or to excuse abusive behavior.

“I only get so upset because I love you so much.”

It’s a goddamn lie.

I swore I would never use that word again unless I meant it.

A year of dating Shep later, probably sooner, I felt it, I was certain that I loved him. I didn’t want to say it unless I was certain. Sam made me question the validity of my feelings, did I ever truly love Sam? I said that I did. I thought that I did. But was it really?

Some people say that you can only love one person, ever. That’s how monogamy is supposed to work. You pick one person to be your shiniest lunchbox, marry them, and that’s it. That’s your one true love, your soulmate. But how do you know when that person is “the one”?

I think determining when what you feel is real is one of the hardest things that you can do. Truth is easily the act of simply being. We know we are alive because we are. We can quantify the minutiae of each moment to validate it: we draw air into our lungs; we can close our eyes and listen to our heart beat, and feel its pulse beneath warm skin- we are alive without saying that we are. Is love truly different?

To quantify it, being in love is like having an addiction. You live for the moment you are with that person and it hurts to be apart. You wait for your next fix- another kiss, another brush of warm fingers against yours, or sometimes, just the sound of their voice over the phone is enough. You can’t imagine your life without them, you just need them, want them to be with you always.

I had never thought about marriage. I never planned my dream wedding. I think the closest I got was putting a Barbie into a wedding dress that my grandma had made for me. So when Shep proposed to me, I was dumbstruck. I said yes but I had absolutely no clue of what to do afterwards.

Luckily, I guess, my mother, Dawn and Tammy took charge and forced me through the whole process of being a bride. I just wanted to be married. My mom wanted this big ceremony, so she planned it and interjected my handful of demands. 

A few months later, we were married. I never imagined our marriage would be anything but monogamous. Things did not evolve until Shep and I had our seventh anniversary as husband and wife...

To be continued in part 4

Beginning Pt. 1

Today over at http://kokoheartu.frillypink.com/ is the cover for the First Entry of Koko <3s U!

To open the blog and the comic I wanted to start at the beginning, since this Entry starts before I entered polyamory.

Hello to everyone just joining me for the first time! I am Kokoro Castillo. I am a married, bisexual woman in a polyamorous relationship. I started this blog because people kept asking me relationship questions. They were curious about how I got into this lifestyle and how I am managing it. I will answer questions and share my misadventures in the world of polyamory. I have changed the names and some of the descriptions to protect the identities of those involved. The comic will cover some adventures while the blog will offer more depth into how my setup works.

I would like to caveat that everyone who practices polyamory has their own way of doing it. It varies with the people in the relationship and what everyone is comfortable with. I feel that the only wrong way is not communicating with your partners or forcing a relationship to continue when it should just end. So it’s just like managing a monogamous relationship, just with more people to consider when scheduling anything. But more to follow in another blog entry about my dependence on Google Calendar!

I’ll start with things rolling with how I came to be in a polyamorous relationship with my husband, Shep, but to truly explain it, I have to start at the beginning.

After college, I started dating, Sam, a guy who was more interested in playing World of Warcraft than interacting with or having sex with me. It was infuriating to take time out of my schedule to spend it with him to be ignored. I thought I loved Sam and I started to doubt myself. Maybe I was too damaged, too clingy after exiting a relationship with Dave. Maybe I was just still too stuck on what I thought was love with Dave.

I smiled and tried to engage with him. I caved and made a damn WoW account thinking that by getting involved with something he was interested in, we’d have more in common. I tried to enjoy the game that he loved so damn much and I just could not get into it. The colors were too garish, the story left me wanting, I hated everything about it because every minute we were in the game, the less we did in real life. The guild was more important, raids were definitely more important. I resented Blizzard; I resented Azeroth; I resented that he was more attracted to his buddy’s Blood Elf mage than to me.

Sam poured everything into that game. I had nothing. I suffered through it thinking that maybe I just wasn’t worth the effort. I fell into a deep depression and rarely left my house except to get groceries or to go to work. I had lost my spark. I started to stagnate. My photography lacked vision, I suffered through a job in a department store portrait studio and felt my soul die each day I spent in that cheesy vest and hat.

My best friends from high school, Dawn and Tammy, did their damnedest to get me out of the house to do something, anything besides play that damn game. We did mostly low key things; dinner, movies and talked about anything that wasn’t WoW. A few of my other friends in our circle from high school, April and Holly, were less enthusiastic about getting me offline since they were feeding that Sam’s addiction by scolding ME for daring to miss a raid to go to a movie. I should have realized that they wanted Sam and me out of the picture.

I was lucky, I had friends that actually gave a damn. Another friend from my family’s church, Lisa, made it her mission to get me involved with the women’s group meetings and went out of her way to get me to go. I actually had one college class a semester earlier so we had something more than religion to talk about. I’m not religious, and my bisexuality put me in a strange place within our faith, so I figured that it couldn’t hurt. I needed the validation, so why not God?

I had almost forgotten that Lisa was an American Otaku. There is a difference, but that’s a topic for another day… but it made sense. She was another art major but our mutual class was Japanese. We talked about our favorite manga, anime, and ships before we went to the church to enjoy more… pious activities… like… scrapbooking… or… baking cookies BUT I actually enjoy those things. We started brainstorming ideas for our own manga and she even drew some incredible concept pages. There was even talk of forming our own artist group to go to conventions to tell our manga. Those days visiting with her were a lot of fun in my routine of work and hating WoW. Between Dawn, Tammy and Lisa, I might have been able to keep going in my relationship with Sam, they brought me back to reality.

One afternoon while visiting with Lisa, we were chatting about our favorite old anime series. I was looking through her anime when a male voice joined the conversation and started talking about Mahou Tsukai Tai. Since Lisa didn’t seem concerned, we had a conversation and when I turned around, there was some random guy sitting in the living room. Being polite, I introduced myself and found out that he was Lisa’s older brother, Shep. He had just moved to the area and was crashing with Lisa until he found his own place.

I was attracted to Shep and we had a lot in common but, I was dating Sam. I loved Sam. And he was my friend’s brother, I couldn’t do that to her. I was there to hang out with Lisa, not Shep. But he was there, and we all hung out together watching anime and just making conversation about everything. I figured that because I was his little sister’s friend that he wouldn’t be interested in someone like me. I had a mile long list of everything that was wrong with me. My self-esteem had been shredded, why else would my boyfriend have zero interest in me if there wasn’t something wrong with me?

I was in a bad place. It wasn’t really me, it was my depression controlling my life and destroying my identity. I was putting on a happy face for my friends who were trying to make me feel better. I was putting on a smile for my family, the people at work, I was smiling in Teamspeak for the damn guild. I felt my mask cracking under the pressure of it all. I wanted to scream. I wanted to take Sam’s computer, smash it to bits, and burn it to ash. I didn’t want to interact with him through a monitor. I didn’t want to carry a gaming laptop to his apartment and play way. I wanted him to actually touch me; notice me.

To be continued…

Return of Love.

It's been what feels like forever! Just a short update to get everyone back to speed. This project will be returning but slightly different. I'm partnering with a few friends to create Koko <3 U! In hentai comic format!

Check it out at http://kokoheartu.frillypink.com/ . Definitely Not Safe for work but click responsibly.

If you like to help fund the project to make comic pages materialize faster, then please follow the link and donate to the next issue.

Koko <3 U! Was originally a relationship blog talking about the trials and adventures of Kokoro and her others as they embarked on a journey to find polyamory love. As a comic, we'll still touch on that but some aspects will be more heavily altered.

In a sense, it'll be touch like Nancy Friday's "My Secret Garden" with fantasies but there will be some dramatizations of some real life events. Just how much is truth and how much is fiction will be up to you to decide.

Names, descriptions and such will be altered to protect the not so innocent but I'd rather not be sued. Much <3! I'm excited to be back. Shep and I have so many stories to share. ;) Many thanks to my artistic partners at Pink Panties Productions for wanting to help me get this rolling. Stay tuned!

~ Koko

<3 You!