....er....
Apr. 21st, 2004 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaI was just thinking....
Why don't people (Death Eaters?) torture their victims with pleasure, anyway? I first had my little pleasure-torture epiphany in 9th grade, in High School, but then I forgot about it (and anyway, that was about pleasure ray-guns instead of lasers or whatever). But... it seems much more efficient and equally good at breaking down people's defenses, as well as being less taxing on the sanity of the torturer & also... isn't it also fun? Perversely, anyway; getting the person to helplessly spill information 'cause they feel emotionally defenseless rather than racked with pain. Plus, it's really hard to train resistance against pleasure (rather than pain), I'd think. Or, well, harder.
I guess the thing is, maybe most people don't truly have a capacity to give such overwhelming amounts of pleasure on purpose. Maybe it's a personal chemistry thing, too, that depends on how well two people "click". Or maybe it's hard(er) to force oneself to shower an uncooperative stranger with kisses than to knife them for those spy/assassin/secret agent/evildoer/etc type people?
I mean, that's the idea behind spies who infiltrate by marrying or seducing their targets or whatever, I guess, but the thing is.... My vision is much more simple, much less dependent on emotional manipulation, which is easier to guard against. Forming attachments and ensuring willingness is tricky. The human body responds to pleasure just as well as it does to pain, though, doesn't it? It's an unconscious reflex-- just nervous system stuff. Some people stay silent during torture; but who could control themselves during an orgasm? Unless... hmm. Unless one just doesn't -have- as powerful of a release of endorphins if it's forced. *sigh* Yeah, that's it, isn't it. There's no easy way to bypass one's consciousness (outside of drugs) while ensuring the person can -talk- sensibly.
I mean, it's just... there's such potential (er... in stories, I mean). Conventional seduction would involve appealing to higher brain functions (and is thus unreliable), but a pure assault of pleasure bypasses that entirely. Possibly a combination of pain and pleasure would work best-- pain to wear down higher-brain defenses and pleasure to heighten response and stave off numbness...? Maybe it'd need to be specifically tailored to each individual's thresholds, I'm not sure.
Maybe I'm missing some vital flaw in this method, though. Yeah, it's probably that a number of people wouldn't -feel- the same level of pleasure without emotional involvement. Would they? I mean... maybe it depends on how vulnerable you are to a certain sort of stimuli. Maybe some people are more susceptible than others; I do know some people prefer pain to pleasure, since they have such a high tolerance for pain. And maybe some people resist pleasure the way others resist pain, while there are of course also people who're highly sensitive to pleasurable stimulation while being able to suppress their pain pathways. Hmm... come to think of it, just how different -are- the pain and pleasure pathways? o_0
Now I'm thinking maybe they're not. Is being able to suppress one equivalent to being able to resist the other just as well? Or... what if the person has heavy-duty kinks the other doesn't know about, or their sexual orientation is incompatible, or they can't get off under stress, or they have a really low sensitivity to their skin in general and need specific, intense stimulation in one place which renders them useless for questioning? But no, anyone's susceptible to having their skin burnt or cut (that is to say, it hurts), so why couldn't you have the same predictability with pleasure?
Now I'm going around in circles. Meh. Truth is, no matter how I slice it, I'm not a neurobiologist. Dammit! :>
Why don't people (Death Eaters?) torture their victims with pleasure, anyway? I first had my little pleasure-torture epiphany in 9th grade, in High School, but then I forgot about it (and anyway, that was about pleasure ray-guns instead of lasers or whatever). But... it seems much more efficient and equally good at breaking down people's defenses, as well as being less taxing on the sanity of the torturer & also... isn't it also fun? Perversely, anyway; getting the person to helplessly spill information 'cause they feel emotionally defenseless rather than racked with pain. Plus, it's really hard to train resistance against pleasure (rather than pain), I'd think. Or, well, harder.
I guess the thing is, maybe most people don't truly have a capacity to give such overwhelming amounts of pleasure on purpose. Maybe it's a personal chemistry thing, too, that depends on how well two people "click". Or maybe it's hard(er) to force oneself to shower an uncooperative stranger with kisses than to knife them for those spy/assassin/secret agent/evildoer/etc type people?
I mean, that's the idea behind spies who infiltrate by marrying or seducing their targets or whatever, I guess, but the thing is.... My vision is much more simple, much less dependent on emotional manipulation, which is easier to guard against. Forming attachments and ensuring willingness is tricky. The human body responds to pleasure just as well as it does to pain, though, doesn't it? It's an unconscious reflex-- just nervous system stuff. Some people stay silent during torture; but who could control themselves during an orgasm? Unless... hmm. Unless one just doesn't -have- as powerful of a release of endorphins if it's forced. *sigh* Yeah, that's it, isn't it. There's no easy way to bypass one's consciousness (outside of drugs) while ensuring the person can -talk- sensibly.
I mean, it's just... there's such potential (er... in stories, I mean). Conventional seduction would involve appealing to higher brain functions (and is thus unreliable), but a pure assault of pleasure bypasses that entirely. Possibly a combination of pain and pleasure would work best-- pain to wear down higher-brain defenses and pleasure to heighten response and stave off numbness...? Maybe it'd need to be specifically tailored to each individual's thresholds, I'm not sure.
Maybe I'm missing some vital flaw in this method, though. Yeah, it's probably that a number of people wouldn't -feel- the same level of pleasure without emotional involvement. Would they? I mean... maybe it depends on how vulnerable you are to a certain sort of stimuli. Maybe some people are more susceptible than others; I do know some people prefer pain to pleasure, since they have such a high tolerance for pain. And maybe some people resist pleasure the way others resist pain, while there are of course also people who're highly sensitive to pleasurable stimulation while being able to suppress their pain pathways. Hmm... come to think of it, just how different -are- the pain and pleasure pathways? o_0
Now I'm thinking maybe they're not. Is being able to suppress one equivalent to being able to resist the other just as well? Or... what if the person has heavy-duty kinks the other doesn't know about, or their sexual orientation is incompatible, or they can't get off under stress, or they have a really low sensitivity to their skin in general and need specific, intense stimulation in one place which renders them useless for questioning? But no, anyone's susceptible to having their skin burnt or cut (that is to say, it hurts), so why couldn't you have the same predictability with pleasure?
Now I'm going around in circles. Meh. Truth is, no matter how I slice it, I'm not a neurobiologist. Dammit! :>
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 05:27 pm (UTC)I kinda choked when you mentioned the family members, though, ahahahah.
I do think the victim would start talking after a lengthy enough inundation with a continuous, consistent level of pleasurable stimulation. Like... they'd be in a sort of haze, y'know. Especially if you gave them mild relaxation drugs, like you know, pot or something, so they wouldn't feel shame and just be like, "maaan... I feel goooooood". Heh :D
no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 01:31 am (UTC)Like, in my fevered imagination, one could be conditioned to like... er... go gibbering bad if pushed hard enough to give out some secret. Maybe... like a trigger, you know. Once the mind gets put into a position where it's about to do it, it freezes like a computer crashing, ahahahahah. Oh man.
Then I remembered that these days, no one -tortures- people, they just use drugs anyway, don't they; well, for information retrieval. So the whole point is kinda moot. Unless you have soldiers conditioned to metabolize or otherwise have resistance to the drugs, heheheh. Oh msn, I've -sooooo- been reading too much soldier-fic -.-
no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 04:31 am (UTC)As for the soldier brainwashing thing, I doubt it. I really doubt it. There's almost limitless agonies that can be inflicted on people. The fingernails thing alone would have most people spilling their guts within a matter of minutes.
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Date: 2004-04-22 02:06 pm (UTC)Hard to research this sort of thing, of course. I doubt there are records of exactly how highly trained counter-terrorists deal with pain suppression ^^;
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Date: 2004-04-22 02:12 pm (UTC)*stares*
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Date: 2004-04-22 02:40 pm (UTC)...He looks rather like Duncan.
That reminds me that I was just about to read Becca Abbott's HL stuff 'cause of me reading her Gundam Wing fics. Then I got... distracted.
But see, he's not my type. I'm more of a Methos girl, I think~:) Lithe & dark & mysterious & such :>
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Date: 2004-04-22 02:59 pm (UTC)Becca Abbott's Mythos trilogy is the best fic I've ever read in my life. When you have a free weekend, READ IT.
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Date: 2004-04-22 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-23 07:25 pm (UTC)The boy sure is pretty though :>
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Date: 2004-04-24 03:12 am (UTC)Wah! One of the pretty pictures I linked you to has gone. oh well, it's on my icon now.