The Insult

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Inconnu flounced into my parlor with Arfaen in his wake, and waved the note to me. “Furious! Incensed! Tricked!”

I slithered out of the fireplace, where I had been taking a nap. “Perplexed. Confused. Awake.”

“Someone played a rather mean trick on Inconnu. Or maybe a nice trick, depending on how you count such things,” said Arfaen. “Show Sythyry the note, would you?”

Dear Inconnu my lover,
This may come as a shock, but you and I made love. My friend and I were disguised as Rassimel sluts. I’m really an Orren in real life though. Welcome to the wonderful world of cisaffection!
Here’s hoping to do it again — without a disguise this time!
— Y^r Secret Orren Admirer “Plisciné”

I thought a moment. “So, the Rassimel prostitutes you were so proud of getting a free night from were actually Orren Strayway passengers, magically transformed into Rassimel girls, purely for the purpose of seducing you?”

“Not just seducing me! Of breaking my life-long record of pure transaffection! Up until Confisse I had never so much as kissed another Orren! Now — now I have slept with one! With two!” wailed Inconnu. “I have degenerated into the realm of the merely indiscriminate! I am destroyed!”

“You are not, Inconnu. Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped. I had been traff for far longer than Inconnu had, or even than he had been alive, until a worriesomely-pleasant night with my distant cousin Saza. I am still mostly traff — I am Arfaen’s tofyof, her legally-registered concubine in the laws of the city-state of Hanija — but I am forced to take a broader view of such matters. Well, a more standard view, saying little more than the truism that “people sometimes fornicate with — or love — each other, in a variety of combinations, some of which are socially acceptable and some are not.” Inconnu is one of the few holdouts on my prior and more radical philosophy.

“I am ruined!” wailed Inconnu. “The essence of my character has been shattered!”

“Only if the essence of your character is being the stereotypical traff brought to life,” I said. “And I know you enjoy playing that role, but there’s more to you than that.”

Inconnu threw his head back. “You are ignoring me, Sythyry! You cannot see the depths of my despair, my degradation, my doom!”

“Lots of us have slept with socially-appropriate people,” said Arfaen quietly. “I certainly did. Where do you think my son Quendry came from?” I’m pretty sure she was loyally defending me; Cani are like that.

Inconnu stamped a web-toed foot. “You do not understand! You were not tricked!”

“I was shoved into an arranged marriage over my objections, if that counts,” said Arfaen.

“It was years ago — you have forgotten! You are so used to your impurity and degradation that you cannot remember!” howled Inconnu.

“It was only a few years ago, and I remember perfectly well, and I am less degraded now that I am with my own kind than I ever was when I was married,” snapped Arfaen. She bared her teeth and growled warningly.

Inconnu growled back at her. “Well! If you care nothing for what has become of me — you who are both my lovers! — I shall seek someone aboard who cares to render assistance to a fellow traff in need!” He turned and stomped out of the parlor, his tail lashing back and forth, and knocking a hat-stand over.

Arfaen shrugged to me. “I was going to ask you to use some sort of magic to see who wrote the letter. Or maybe even see if you can figure out if someone borrowed your body-changing devices to switch from Orren to Rassimel.”

“Actually, I’d been leaving the transforming cloak in a parlor for anyone to use,” I said. “I got tired of people asking to borrow it. The students have been wanting to do all sorts of experiments — one married trio of Orren wanted to try their lovemaking as all seven other prime species. Anyways, I left it over there, where … it … is now. Maybe you could sniff it and see who has been using it?”

Arfaen smelled the cloak up and she smelled it down, she smelled it forwards and she smelled it backwards. “Lots of people have been using it, many of them Orren, like you said. I can’t pick out any one of them in particular, not this far after the fact. Not that I really want to do sleuthing on Inconnu’s behalf, not after he insulted both of us like that.”

“Well, as your loyal and obedient concubine, I will forbear from helping him either,” I said. I was a bit annoyed at him as well.

Comments

[rowyn]

Well, that note certainly makes it sound like Invincible Fire Demon was Plisciné. c.c Or someone is trying to frame IFD! Maybe they really were Rassimel prostitutes and the note was faked to aggravate Inconnu. n.n

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well... I've kinda noticed that, um, a large part of his identity and character *has* been the "stereotypical traff brought to life". He has invested a large amount of energy and focus into that, and his sense of self has been shattered. Of course it's understandable for him to react with aggression -- maybe you two should try and apologize as soon as you feel a little more calm about it? I presume this is a well-after-the-fact writing, are you calmer now?

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

It could be argued that Inconnu was just raped (not forcible rape, but still rape) by two of your passengers. In that light, his anger at your total lack of concern is rather understandable.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It could be so argued, but I think such an argument is overstating the case. I think that rape is sex which one does not want at the time. (It might be more specific than that, such as sex that one is coerced into having against one's wishes. (It might even be worse than that: e.g., a prostitute hired by an unpleasant john might feel coerced by economic circumstances to the act, but that is not rape.)) In any case, Inconnu did want the sex at the time and even afterwards -- he boasted about it the whole next day, in fact.

Sex that one regrets after the fact is an entirely different matter. Anyone with a moderate amount of experience or adventurousness risks having such sex, and, however much one regrets it when one is sober or satiated, it is hard to consider it rape. Sex with someone who lies about themself seems to fall under this category to me. Inconnu would not have touched this "Plisciné" if he had known she was really Orren... but I would not have touched Thenel at first had I known he was engaged. While I certainly am full of regret and shame about various aspects of that encounter -- I do not think I behaved particularly well -- I don't think it was rape.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

[I don't know what the law is like in World Tree, but in many parts of the US, the use of deception to trick someone into sex they would not have otherwise agreed to is still legally considered rape]

Thenel is an important distinction--he never presented himself as single, especially not after being told you have an aversion to engaging with the act with married primes. This letter seems to suggest the writer knew Inconnu did not want to sleep with Orren, deliberately acted to fool him, and now is deriving perverse pleasure revealing to him that he has been tricked. There is a difference between being wrong about someone and them deliberately attempting to deceive you.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[I don't know the general World Tree law either, but it seems to place more responsibility on the individual. Or perhaps it doesn't consider sex as big a sin as US law might. But ... really? If I take off my wedding ring and pick up someone who ordinarily doesn't do married men, that's rape? And I could even be committing that act without knowing it, since it depends on the someone's opinion on a topic I didn't know?]

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

That sort of trickery is very nearly, if not actually, rape. I can entirely understand Inconnu's anger.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I understand it, though I think it is distinctly less than rape; I wrote more detail to Stormydragon.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I once saw a softcore movie in which a man dressed as a woman (during a time period where many layers of clothing and hoop skirts and whatnot were common) and seduced another woman who was known to only prefer female lovers. In the course of the seduction, instead of using the ivory sex toy the other woman generally utilized in her play, he used his own parts. Somehow, this was supposed to be sexy; instead, it has appalled me for 20+ years. Clearly, the woman wanted to have sex with the person she perceived her partner to be, but her partner used the opportunity to do something to her that she would never have consented to had she known the truth about him. I think the situations are parallel, and I think that very few people could say that the act carried out in the movie was not, in fact, rape. And it was portrayed as corrective rape, since the woman immediately became enamored of the male sex and was "turned into a proper heterosexual woman" by the act.

It would have been one thing if the person crushed on Inconnu had done it in secret and never told Inconnu or anyone else. But the taunting tone of the note informing Inconnu of the act smacks heavily of "now you've had the right species, you'll never want to go back to your immature and improper ways!" (I suspect that at least one of them was Alzagond (sp?) because it sound like her kind of hateful experimental solution.)

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Up until Confisse I had never so much as kissed another Orren!

Not even his mother?



And I'll buck the trend and say he's acting like a doofus. Being pissed off about being tricked, even being disgusted at who you had sex with is one thing, but he's contending that his entire identity is built around who he goes to bed with. He's a doofus.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

not even his mother?

I merely report his words!

I, too, think he is a doofus in this case. His entire identity is not built around being traff; he just likes to pretend it is.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

His self-identity most assuredly is, though, and that is rocked to the core.

Perhaps someone could explain to him that it doesn't count if you were tricked or coerced. Would that even work? He seems in a bit of a Wild Rush about it at the moment.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

I don't see the problem. From my understanding of such transformations, the subject really is the species transformed to for most intents and purposes. Why should this not count for transaffection purposes? After all, he was not attracted to an Orren girl (or two), but Rassimel.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I personally don't much care. Inconnu has not yet abandoned my former and unfortunate philosophical position on the matter.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Personally (and, admittedly, tangentially), I think transformative magic would be a quite intriguing way for two people who are fond of each other, but not sexually compatible, to overcome that incompatability - without it voiding their sexual preferences (as though such a thing would even be possible, but anyway). They can explore each other, have their moment together, and then get on with their separate lives.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I have a magic item hung over there that quite agrees with you.

[ragarth.livejournal.com]

Inconnu has always struck me as a bit immature. I expect much immature doom to ensue!

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

In other words, he seems like an Orren to you? ;>

[ragarth.livejournal.com]

No. Fl0000000sh was an orren, their captain's an orren. Just because someone's an orren doesn't make them immature. :-)

I miss floosh. :-(

[terrana.livejournal.com]

To me, Inconnu seems more like, if anything, the stereotypical obsessed Rassimel. He's certainly fastidious about his façade.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be easier to smell the note?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That was tried later, but between the perfume, Inconnu, the cheese, and all the people handling it by then, it was impossible to tell who was responsible. Oh, the cheese: it was written on cheese-paper, as if by a person who expected Cani to be involved.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Cheese-paper! What an interesting idea. If a spy were caught with an incriminating note, zie could simply eat the evidence. ^_^

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[ragarth.livejournal.com]

My injecture in the great rape debate.

Rape is at least partially culturally defined. It is, in the broadest sense a highly personal and traumatic intrusion by one person to another. Culture defines what constitutes this highly personal and traumatic intrusion since public labels declare public definition. Given this, Inconnu can only be considered 'raped' if the people of strayaway would relegate the deception carried out upon him as rape. This is a question best answered by Sythyry.