Saintprudence I know you're a bit nervous after how some of the previous conversations went, but I'd encourage you to keep it up. Sometimes the only learning curve is experience, and I believe you're overthinking your way out of what could be good for you.
OK, I'll take a risk.
...remember a lot of these are just spitballing with my writing buddies. We chase rabbit holes to see where they lead and, sometimes, the most interesting question is why something doesn't drive us away when it checks all the right boxes. Ideas normally become tamer as we build them out and empathize with the characters more and more, but they can start in unpleasant places. Also, details I share might just be things that have been tossed in to rattle around and see if they stick or knock something else loose.
A bunch of these are fanfiction ideas because "start with fanfiction, then try to replace the borrowed bits" helps to get the creative juices flowing. I'll explain the important bits of the source materials in those cases, but you'll only see the ideas where we've already tried and failed to get the chastity out, because I don't want to connect my "respectable" penname to this forum.
(And that's a shame. It would be interesting to show how we preserved what made an idea attractive but remade it on a more respectable premise. Maybe I'll go through how one of the ideas with chastity grew from "this probably aroused someone in the group" to a character piece not meant to be arousing.)
Still, Everything is negotiable. Please call out anything you think could be made better or more realistic. We go with "Ideas are meant to be questioned." If someone challenges something, it shouldn't go into the final version until we've worked together to explain why it's the best way to make the story what we want it to be... or at least we can't find any better ways.
Also, all the ideas I'll share grew from the same seed of an idea and most did it in the same spitballing session. That's why I'm still finding ways to make each one unique and different and it also explains the direction my questions here leaned so far. If two ideas seem too much alike, that's an invitation to ask what makes each one special and suggest ways to make them more different.
Would "Tim's Story Ideas" be a good thread title or does anyone want to suggest something else?
Saintprudence As I said above, this story really required me to think about a lot of the worldbuilding of the environment it posited. I am endlessly of two minds about the belt -- I hate having to wear it, but I hate even more what would happen if I didn't. (As I often note, it's a bit similar to my old leg braces when I broke both -- I hated the braces for what they were, but I also recognized that they were what allowed be to actually get around.)
Deep down, I don't know what I think of the belt. I have deep objection to those who would place it on others unwillingly; it's a moral war crime, in my opinion.
It sounds like your views match the pattern I prefer to build ideas around.
Willing but unwanted, with the character causing their own problems. For example, a character who gets locked up on a bet, then realizes they underestimated the other character, and then the story is about them growing enough as a person to let go of their own ego and admit defeat.
Saintprudence But any situation of a society that posits the everyday existence of the use of chastity belts would involve a LOT of that.
It depends. One thing my writing circle gets up to is questioning things taken for granted. How do you define "everyday", "chastity belt", and "that"?
Several of the idea I'm going to share are built around doing just that by nudging the meanings of those words until they meet in more tolerable conditions.
Saintprudence Ekaterina (which I made up to give the bride a name)
I don't speak German, so I might be wrong, but I thought I heard the mother say "Isabelle" in the beginning of the video.
@Angelina Am I wrong?
Saintprudence and whether her mother liked it or not, she felt obliged to raise her in the manner of this life. (In my mind, she was reluctant to do so earlier, and so let years pass without the belt, but once she discovered her daughter's curiosity about the belt and herself, there was no turning back and she strictly supervised her belting until she was married.)
The pressure placed on men in such a world would be a potent thing as well; a man who did not keep his wife belted might be seen as weak by other men, and that matters a lot to some men.
That's definitely a way to cast the characters in a more favorable light.
I can read stories with that kind of social dynamic but I'm not big on writing them, because the more I build an ability to see through my characters' eyes, the more I empathize with them and the more depressing it is to write the story. I've had a happy life and don't like reading any form of suffering porn, so writing something like that's probably going to be an unpleasant experience without a sense of catharsis at the end.
Saintprudence Having her request the belt threaded that particular needle.
Threading narrative needles is something I can definitely respect. It comes up a lot when I'm planning out a story because I find myself wanting to have my cake and eat it too.
Saintprudence If Ekaterina and Raven ran off and eloped, Ekaterina would DEFINITELY end up belted permanently at Raven's hands.
A woman with submissive tendencies under the control of a caring, attentive wife who knows what it's like? I see that working well. Instead of the belt being the problem for her to overcome, it would be the poor prospects of staying with her husband.
Saintprudence Video Mama seems to genuinely care for the daughter she's protecting, and that would have made a world of difference for me.
Yes. It's the smaller details that make the big differences... especially in media that don't directly show you the characters thoughts and emotions like prose can.