FA+
Shop
Costumes, transformation, and permanence
14 years ago
One of the nicest and probably the most mundane aspects of costumes is that when you get tired of wearing them, you can just take 'em off. It's nice.
For anyone that's spent a long time in a costume, or worn makeup and a prosthetic for a while, as fun as it is it's a huge relief to remove the thing and feel the air on your skin and feel, I dunno, natural again. You get into the shower and wash off all the sweat and makeup and adhesive residue and you just feel clean and fresh. You're naked and your skin feels great, there are no clothes hanging off of you, no underwear elastic digging into your waist. Wearing a costume is a tradeoff: you feel emotionally free to do whatever's in character, and yet you're physically uncomfortable. Without a costume, I guess it's the other way around.
One aspect that I don't see reflected a lot in costume-triggered TF is that when a costume literally becomes your body, you automatically lose the physical discomforts of having something pressed against your body. Your new body feels normal in the way I described above, even though the form might be totally outrageous. Especially if the form is totally outrageous. And to me, the combo of feeling natural and un-costumed while being in the form of what you wanted to dress up as is a really attractive combo!
Even though you might have put on this mask or whatever in a fit of pique, curiosity, the indulgence of a sudden urge, or just for a laugh, now you can't remove it. When it really is your body, you have to do all these little biological things like washing your hands and face, sleeping, using the toilet, eating, without the precariousness inherent in wearing a mask or suit, where you might get spaghetti sauce all over your expensive face. When it's skin, you can just lick your lips and dab your chin with a paper towel.
For instance, if you were wearing bondage gear and it became "real", you would have shiny leather for skin, with metal studs sticking out of it, and straps and O rings a plenty for people to hook on to. You would have to shower looking like that, you would have to go grocery shopping, you'd have to ride the bus. It wouldn't feel physically weird at all. But it would definitely make people look!
Or even just clothes. I really like the idea of clothes that are just skin, like the folds and stuff are embossed into your body, and they have the squishiness and warmth of flesh. Even though you'd be dressed, you'd feel naked.
Permanence with TF is always an ambivalent thing, and I personally forget that I need to remind people how permanence can be a good thing when their first inclination is regret. Mask-induced TF is one of those instances where some little decision you made on a whim ends up altering your life completely, so moments of regret are a natural (and kind of attractive!) element of that. Ultimately there will always be that one person who actually kind of thinks you're more attractive like this than you were before, and just that is enough to remove it from nightmare fuel world, no matter how freaky you might look now. While you were just going to wear this mask for a few seconds to tease your friend because of her weird obsessions, you're now, perhaps permanently, a living breathing realization of her deepest and most embarrassing fantasy. Or the mask that you stole from the costume shop bonds itself to your head, and now you have no choice but to either go back and beg for forgiveness, or live forever as a freak of nature. If that's not the beginning of a really steamy story, I don't know what is. <3
Anyway, tl;dr—costumes are uncomfortable, making costumes "real" removes the discomfort without removing the form. As a side effect, removal is impossible without outside intervention, and that can be really attractive.
For anyone that's spent a long time in a costume, or worn makeup and a prosthetic for a while, as fun as it is it's a huge relief to remove the thing and feel the air on your skin and feel, I dunno, natural again. You get into the shower and wash off all the sweat and makeup and adhesive residue and you just feel clean and fresh. You're naked and your skin feels great, there are no clothes hanging off of you, no underwear elastic digging into your waist. Wearing a costume is a tradeoff: you feel emotionally free to do whatever's in character, and yet you're physically uncomfortable. Without a costume, I guess it's the other way around.
One aspect that I don't see reflected a lot in costume-triggered TF is that when a costume literally becomes your body, you automatically lose the physical discomforts of having something pressed against your body. Your new body feels normal in the way I described above, even though the form might be totally outrageous. Especially if the form is totally outrageous. And to me, the combo of feeling natural and un-costumed while being in the form of what you wanted to dress up as is a really attractive combo!
Even though you might have put on this mask or whatever in a fit of pique, curiosity, the indulgence of a sudden urge, or just for a laugh, now you can't remove it. When it really is your body, you have to do all these little biological things like washing your hands and face, sleeping, using the toilet, eating, without the precariousness inherent in wearing a mask or suit, where you might get spaghetti sauce all over your expensive face. When it's skin, you can just lick your lips and dab your chin with a paper towel.
For instance, if you were wearing bondage gear and it became "real", you would have shiny leather for skin, with metal studs sticking out of it, and straps and O rings a plenty for people to hook on to. You would have to shower looking like that, you would have to go grocery shopping, you'd have to ride the bus. It wouldn't feel physically weird at all. But it would definitely make people look!
Or even just clothes. I really like the idea of clothes that are just skin, like the folds and stuff are embossed into your body, and they have the squishiness and warmth of flesh. Even though you'd be dressed, you'd feel naked.
Permanence with TF is always an ambivalent thing, and I personally forget that I need to remind people how permanence can be a good thing when their first inclination is regret. Mask-induced TF is one of those instances where some little decision you made on a whim ends up altering your life completely, so moments of regret are a natural (and kind of attractive!) element of that. Ultimately there will always be that one person who actually kind of thinks you're more attractive like this than you were before, and just that is enough to remove it from nightmare fuel world, no matter how freaky you might look now. While you were just going to wear this mask for a few seconds to tease your friend because of her weird obsessions, you're now, perhaps permanently, a living breathing realization of her deepest and most embarrassing fantasy. Or the mask that you stole from the costume shop bonds itself to your head, and now you have no choice but to either go back and beg for forgiveness, or live forever as a freak of nature. If that's not the beginning of a really steamy story, I don't know what is. <3
Anyway, tl;dr—costumes are uncomfortable, making costumes "real" removes the discomfort without removing the form. As a side effect, removal is impossible without outside intervention, and that can be really attractive.
And yeah, steamy right there.
To me the only drawback to being in a costume is that you know that you're just in a suit. I haven't read to many costume triggered stories, but I would think that's the best part of it. Shedding all of the inconvenience. You're still sorta in suit, but all of the awkwardness of being behind a mask with limited field of view, no feeling in your fingertips, and needing a spotter to get down stairs, etc, and all of that inconvenience would be gone. I'm surprised to hear that's not as common a theme as I thought it was.
It really can add an extra kick to all kinds of kinks, not just TF.
A life altering event is really out there. Without that kind of consequence, it becomes almost mundane and routine to perform the action.
Permanence also adds an element of taboo and anxiety that watchers up the emotional involvement oh so well.
Your journals make me realise why certain pics were successful. Non-directional critique?
But it also sounds so hot... leather bondage dog face. Mmmmm man you got me all excited there.
I wish I was online to chat with ya more :)
1) People refuse to believe that you're trapped in the costume, leading them to continue making such remarks. These take on a more sinister light since they would essentially be instructing you to defy your present identity.
2) Other people have to adapt to your costumed identity and its personality. They might reflect on appealing aspects of the new You or reminisce on the overlooked positives of your former self.
Obviously 2 leads to a more stable equilibrium than 1--indeed, 1 might lead into 2 as a means of resolving its instability--but both scenarios would cause a reader/role-player to explore the idea of identity and personality in the real world: how it alters the nature of social interaction, and how social interaction shapes identity in turn.
On a side note, you're really good at performing this type of introspection. I've always enjoyed the Kafkaesque side of TF and other "furry fetishes."
<3
This
Journal
That was... wow.
That was a good read. I think I'm blushing.
I was at a fund raiser where they had failed to provide any adequate break space, so didn't want to "runi the magic" and sorta suffered through it. The end result was that I nearly blacked out in a fursuit after 5 or 6 hours in the sun (stupid, I know!) but I was having a real blast right up until quitting time...and then all the fatigue and exhaustion showed up, "Hi! We've been on hold for 4 hours, how are YOU?!"
I was at a fur con, and didn't have a key to the room I was using to change/clean up, and my handler had wandered off. I spent the better part of two hours tracking him down and dragging him back to the room to let me change. Being exhausted and in a murderous rage sort of takes the fun out of being a giant dog. Also, I never used that guy as a handler again.
In either case, the idea of the costume being a living part of myself, without all the problems and inconvenience of dirt and heat...that's what makes the costume TFs awesome in my mind. The idea of being able to take care of those nagging biological things, like the bathroom and hydration, without all the fuss of finding all the help and privacy...that'd be awesome!
Now, I've asked a LOT of furries the question, "If you could become your fursona, would you?" I always get follow up questions: "Can I change back?" "Is everyone else changed?" "Is it permanent?" Everyone worries about getting stuck and being the odd one out, which I find funny from a group notorious for wandering around in full costumes, tails, ears, paws...but it seems like most folks are glad that at the end of the day, they can take it off. I think that makes the idea of getting stuck that way (or anyway that makes you truly "one of a kind" like your bondage example) really titillating. Being the attention grabbing thing is cool *for a period of time.* The idea of being like that ALL THE TIME is intimidating, exciting.
Me, I'm not sure what I would do if I woke up a giant husky. Part of me says I'd call in sick first off, and start watching the news to see if anyone else got the "surprise TF" treatment. Part of me thinks I'd want to just go big: off to work, damn the torpedoes! At least if anyone yells at me to take the costume off, I can say they're welcome to find the zipper!
And then there's size differences. When the costume is of a creature larger than the wearer, all that extra mass has to suddenly appear from the aether quite disorienting. A shrinking costume offers more options. The way I usually imagine it is the wearer "falling" into the openings like some sort of twisted portable hole, only filling it out when their whole limbs are covered. Those artists wanting a more visceral experience instead depict the shrinkage as sort of a squeezing or crushing, sometimes happening unevenly for that extra alien feel.
For those who consider the above to be too long and did not read, Swatcher is not the only person who's contemplated these sorts of things, he's just the smartest guy doing it, and certainly more lucid about than I.
By the way, Swatcher, I am glad I started reading your journals. These insights into your thoughts have made me think higher of you- before, I was only here for the spectacle, the carnival sideshow, "See the Guy who Draws Strange Things, only 25 Cents". It's far too easy to think of other internet users as unthinking machines, but now I can attach a human face to you. Or a white dog face, or whichever you prefer.
I am ambivalent in changing for good, if only because I wonder if that's who I would want to be in 5, 10, 20 years time. I'm fairly young and can carry it off now, but when I'm in my 50s and 60s, would it become a bad joke? Or would I and Dusky age together, not fighting time and age, but growing into it, trading in speed and grace for prowess and thoughtfulness. I wouldn't mind that, to age in character would be the greatest acheivement, the ultimate in acting as it has transcended acting and become real life.
Or something. Time for some TheraFlu! *sniffs*
-end-
(I don't know what to put after this)
And after wearing that for 26 hours and the nose's spirit gum has actually detached from my face and is only being held there by the liquid latex used to blend it and several layers of barrier sprayed paint, I'm so irritable I can either sit there tired and barely moving or I want in the shower already. It feels like the most fragile, greasy, melting blehhhh that you know is already starting to /look/ gross or poorly maintained but still need to keep on until you are out of everyone's sight and can clean off all at once. Partially wearing it feels even worse I think.
All this kept in mind, it's the /pleasant/ furry sort of tf, or a furry-monster one, and not the awkward kind you said you preferred in that other journal from a while back. If I stretch my mind a bit, and I may not be doing it right, I think I can begin to understand that being turned into something unpleasant would be liberating in that ... well now you are fucked, your whole previous life is out the window ... why not just start anew or do whatever or make a totally new identity to go with your new body?