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anotherghoul666 · 1 year

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Oh no :( sleep token seems to have awoken something else in me. What is it about watching masked, menacing figures appreciate each other on stage that’s so addictive? Gahhh

So I'm pretty sure this was a thirst ask which, so valid anon, my own thirst for Vessel has hit me like a truck, and I could leave it at that or answer with a joke, but! I am me, I over-analyze and over-intellectualize shit, and you asked what it was about him that's addictive, so here we are. On today's episode of "AnotherGhoul takes a simple asks and turns it into a whole damn essay": masks, monsterfucking and stage personas, or why Vessel from Sleep Token is hot (with a nod to Ghost). For me*. I'll add, why he captivates me*, because everyone's thought process and erotic sources are different, but maybe you'll recognize yourself in something I describe here! Under a read more because I went WAY OVERBOARD WITH THIS XD

Option 1: the mask kink So, I've had a mask kink for a long time. I've had a name for it for maybe a decade. I got to wear my first full masks in an arousal context maybe around 2014-2015. I acquired my first mask in 2019 for play. I jumped in the puddle with both feet within the past two years or so in terms of wearing masks and making people wear masks. But I can also remember early memories when I was a kid of being very very very drawn to masked characters in cartoons or video games, so I'd say my propensity for them has been there for the vast majority of my life.

Masks do it for me because I highly eroticize the removal of human features or aspects. I find the consensual removal, or giving up, of humanity extremely exciting. Think, removal of speech through a gag or a simple rule, so that one of the main things that make us human, language, cannot be used during play. Or objectification, where a human would be made into an object consensually, or treated like one, be it playing a chair, a foot rest, a table, a decoration, a sex toy, etc. I enjoy the idea of a human, with its dignity and morals, consenting to being used like a mere disposable piece of plastic. The removal, blurring or limitation of core human features turns me on.

So it's easy to see why masks in general do it for me. It erases the human facial features, or replaces them with artificial features, to different degrees depending on which mask is chosen. It makes someone look less human. It separates the human from the object. Inside a mask, any micro-expressions you make don't matter. You may make a face or try to signal an emotion but that's not gonna translate. You cannot appeal to anyone's empathy from within a mask. From the outside, all the other person sees is the flat planes of the mask that don't move or change or adjust with the wearer's emotions. There is no expectation of being able to "read" a face when it's masked. No pressure to figure out the right expression and meaning. Which is probably comforting for me in terms of my neurodivergence and my difficulty with reading facial expressions in the first place. The mask doesn't move. There's nothing to read.

Now, I also know, for neurotypical people specifically, apparently masks are super hot because of the accent on the eyes. Your typical mask will have lessened facial features but slits or openings for the eyes, so the person inside can see. Naturally your gaze will glide on the featureless face and find the eyes. For NTs, whose brains are made to read people's eyes, "the eyes are the window to the soul" and all that jazz, eyes are often a person's most attractive feature. A mask accentuates someone's strongest and most unique trait. I don't subscribe to that. I prefer masks to dehumanize, not draw attention to the humanity under. The masks I find the hottest will have very little sight possible inside (added sensory play aspect here) and from the outside, covered eyes or weird eyes, as long as I don't get to see much of the wearer's eyes, it gets bonus points.

Which leads me to Vessel's mask. Inhuman face shape, check. No mouth (assumed no speech), check. No nose, check. In this case there are eyes, but there are six, not two, which I find very hot because of the monster aspect I'll speak about later, but also, they're covered inside. There's a mesh inside that allows him to see out, but we can't see in. So, no eyes, check. There is nothing for me to grasp there, nothing for me to read. My eyes glide and slide over the smooth surface of the mask with nowhere to grab onto. It's an endless search, so my brain can stop searching for clues, and that's relaxing. He could smile, he could be furious, he could cry, he could be uninterested, I'd never know. All I see is a mysterious face, the erotic appeal of anonymity on full display, the lack of humanity, the removed features. It's a 10/10 mask for me. (I like his stage mask less because of the cut out mouth, but I understand 100% the need for his mouth to be uncovered and unrestrained because the man has PIPES and he couldn't sing to the full extend of his abilities while hindered.)

(All of this applies to the Ghost masks too. Imma dip into Ghost because this remains a Ghost-centric blog. But like, the masks are a huge part of why I write what I write, and why I find the ghouls so hot. The shiny, smooth surface of the masks. The replacement of all the musician's unique features for an ensemble of pre-determined uniform fake features. The lack of individuality. The lack of names. The dehumanization. Some masks show more eyes than others, some masks have more mouth space or show nose more than others, but all the eras still appeals to a degree.)

Option 2: teratophilia Another thing I eroticize a lot is monsters / inhuman monstrous creatures. That would be known as teratophilia, the sexual attraction to monsters, or monsterfucking as it's been popularized online. It can also cross over with exophilia, the sexual attraction to alien or extraterrestrial creatures, for some people. Basically, non-human weird creatures are hot. This is not a new concept at all, look at any historical mythology, people were down to fuck monsters thousands of years ago. It exploded in popularity on the internet within the last decade or so (tho it's been around since the creation of the web), with big movies like The Shape of Water or Marvel's Venom that spawned basically a tsunami of terato online, and the internet was never the same, for the viewing pleasure of us monsterfuckers. (*important note to please Harkness Test all your monsters before moving forward with the monsterfucking. If that test is news to you, please research it first.)

Monstrous, inhuman creatures are hot to me, similarly to masks, because of the removal of the human experience and aspects. Monsters, weirdly enough, are safer than humans. Monsters tend to be direct and instinctual creatures. A monster's level of danger or threat is readily visible and apparant. They may have fangs or claws or be huge or more powerful than a human, that shit tends to be obvious. I can deal with obvious danger. I may even eroticize said obvious danger. A human's level of danger is very difficult to determine. Humans know how to lie, they can manipulate and deceit, they can hide, their form doesn't betray immediate threat like a monster's form does, and so, humans feel unsafe. I'll take a direct, transparent danger over a hidden threat I might never notice any day.

Monsters also tend to not understand or value human concepts. They exist outside of human constructs and that has immense appeal to me. I can't imagine a monster giving much of a fuck about social constructs like gender or the binary; a monster's not gonna assume things about you and force you into boxes based on how you look; a monster's most likely not gonna give a fuck about neurodivergences or about your mental health status, positive or negative; a monster's not gonna give a fuck about physical health or disability. That's the core appeal, for example, of The Shape Of Water and why it made such a big splash in the terato community and converted lots of people over: the human lead character is mute, and a core part of her romance with the amphibian monster in the film is that it loves her for her. It doesn't know she's even disabled, because how would he know that humans talk and "need" a voice to be socially accepted. We shouldn't need a voice, or any other "default" capability to fit in. Everyone should be valued equally, yet in human society we are not, abelism is an unfortunately reality, but in the eyes of a non-human creature, all these social standards are meaningless. Monsters are a door to radical acceptance.

Which, once again, leads me back to Vessel. So, in the lore of the band, and I quote, "Sleep Token are a masked, anonymous collective of musicians united by their worship of an ancient deity crudely dubbed 'Sleep', since no modern tongue can properly express its name. This being once held great power, bestowing ancient civilizations with the gift of dreams, and the curse of nightmares." Now, immediately that makes my brain jump to Lovecraftian horror, the Chtulu mythos, eldritch horror, etc. It conjures images of an immemorial creature with powers far beyond the human brain's conceptualization capabilities, a deity of a thousand eyes and mouths and pure darkness and tentacles, a creature that would corrupt the feeble human mind on first sight and break our psyche to fragments with a blink. This? This is the shit for me. That's my kryptonite. I adore eldritch horror (while being conscious of the extreme ethical and moral problems in the source material, yes I know Lovecraft was a racist piece of shit, I hate it too). Tentacles are deeply, deeply ingrained in my brain and DNA as pure arousal triggers (thank you, random hentai videos from the early 2000s). So like. What more do I need. I'm already in love. Vessel. He's a vessel. He channels this Sleep deity. He receives. He takes in this deity, its unconceivable power. A vessel, the term by itself, the concept by itself, is erotic. A vessel is useless unless filled. It's made to be filled. To receive. To carry. To hold. A vessel can only take. A vessel is always open and ready. A vessel may overflow and make a mess. A vessel is an object. A vessel is intrinsically feminine. So what can Sleep's Vessel do. What power would he hold within, what has he received. With his faceless face and his blackened body, remains of a human, overtaken by a cosmic monster of Sleep and dreams. Made to worship. He dedicates his life to worship. Active worship of ink and voice and energy on stage. Vessel receives and holds. What could be give. Of course I'm gonna think of tentacles and monstrous, unavoidable, mind corrupting sex. It's like, right there. It's in the name. It's in the deep marine biology theme of This Place Will Become Your Tomb. Fall For Me? Please, you give me this visual and this command? I'll fall.

(This also applies to Ghost. The entire "the ghouls are demons" vibe the fandom has given them is in huge part why I'm so attracted to them and write them in erotic scenarios. They are not human. They're demons. They're creatures from hell. I love to play with their lack of understanding of the human form and human social norms in my fics. They don't understand rejection, so they may not reject based on human constructs. They have powers tied to the elements and the void and hell mythology that makes them strong and scary. They have the fangs and claws and horns and devil tails; they can shift their shape and look more demonic with crazy tongues and wings and hands and feet. Nothing about the ghouls is human beyond the general shape of their flesh and that's pure seduction for me.)

Option 3: stage presence Anonymity is a weird beast that radically changes how a person acts and feels. Anonymity allows for a process called disinhibition, where a human's natural behavior inhibitors (eye contact, to read someone's expression, fear of being judged, fear of being seen, fear of getting caught, discomfort with pain, etc.) are diminished or nullified. We all knows disinhibition very well, because we experience it online every day. It's what allows us on tumblr to be thirsty motherfuckers this openly, while we likely wouldn't be as horny on main in person with other people. It's what allows trolls to thrive and cause harm; allows people to send mean asks or comments without feeling bad about it. Through anonymity online, we're allowed to post whatever we want, and not face the consequences of having someone's eyes directly on us, of being observed, of seeing the hurt we may cause on someone's face. If we make someone cry online, we likely will never know and we'll never see the tears, for example, and tears are an evolutionary tool to show emotion and discourage an attacker from causing further harm through a presumed level of empathy. When anonymous, you are invulnerable. Unreachable. You are the ether. You are the void. You are formless. You have no weakness. Nothing can get to you. Anonymity is power. You cannot be judged, for who can prove that it was you. To be anonymous is to be free.

History is chock full of the use of anonymity and masks to justify a change in behavior. Just think back to masquerades or carnivals. Events that often devolved into pure debauchery, because when masked, you could do anything you truly wanted. You could have sex and act wanton, you could drink and overindulge, you could party and be open about who you are inside, because nobody knows it's you, and nobody will know come morning. Masks were a key to freedom, a class eraser, a way for different classes to mingle without consequence. To wear a mask changes how you act. Once protected, once hidden, once safe, a person will act according to their true desires and whims. Masks allow us to be unhinged. And that's what happens on stage with masked performers.

In the mask, Vessel can act as unhinged and inhuman as he wants. He can let music consume him, make him move weirdly, erratically, dance around and contort himself like he does on stage, because it's not him doing it. Whoever is inside the mask (and no, I don't want to know. For now at least.), on stage it's not him. It's Vessel. And Vessel is a conduit for the music and the god. That's why he moves so strangely. Why he's so "creature". He doesn't have to be a human on stage, he's in the mask, in the paint, in the costume, nobody can ever hold anything he does up there against him, nobody knows who he is. The freedom he must feel. That's also why he can feel up on his band mates like he does. He touches them, encircles them, gyrates and grinds against them, appreciates them as you say, because he's not himself, and they're not themselves. This is all fine to do, because it's Vessel and the numbers, it's the characters. He feels his music, and his music is sex. It's so fucking sexy. His voice, the bass, the drones, Sleep Token is incredibly erotically charged music, like music with heavy themes of worship and power and surrender tends to be. Vessel sings lyrics of obsessive love and devotion, of violence, of consumming each other. He feels himself. His bandmates feel themselves. They feel each other. There's so much tension in their stage antics. They sing of sex: "Oh, and my love Did I mistake you for a sign from God Or are you really here to cut me off? Or maybe just to turn me on Cause these days I would be lying if I told you that I didn't wish that I could be your man Or maybe make a good girl bad" Why not act like it.

(I guarantee the anonymity disinhibition is what happens to the Ghost ghouls too. Not that they're anonymous anymore, and they know that, but on stage, in the moment, the disconnect between who they are as a person and who their stage personas are in Ghost is visible to the naked eye. Yes there are tells with how they move, but in Ghost it's like everything is turned up to 11 on the intensity dial. Because they're not *them*, they're the ghouls, so they can have more fun, be more free, more unhinged. They're more silly, they make more jokes, they fuck around with each other more than any of them does in their "real" unmasked bands. The ghoul personas allow them to be a magnified version of themselves, because it's not them, they're behind masks, they can sell the sex more, the tension, they can go theatrical with the jokes, it's characters doing it, not the musicians. I saw Per Eriksson live with Blootbath, I saw him with Ghost. Are there tells it's the same guy? Sure. Did I ever see Per lick his guitar picks and mime jacking off on his audience in Blootbath? No. Would the guy think of doing that shit in his "real" life? I'm sure. Dude's got "Sodomizer" tattooed across his stomach, I bet he goes ham on the sex jokes. But like. Unmasked in person, he's more soft spoken, he's more shy, even on stage, in the absolute blistering agfression of Blootbath's music, covered in fake blood, he still holds back the jokes and the sex. That's allowed for his Ghost character, but not for Per Eriksson the guitarist.)

Option 4: all of the above For me it's the combo. Inhuman masked face + monster undertones + anonymity disinhibition = arousal trigger / fascination for a character.

tl;dr: enjoy Vessel, enjoy the guys appreciating each other, thirst over them, it's all great, as long as you Worship and ideally support them (within your means) with streams or merch or concert tickets if they have earned it in your mind.

#asks #Did I legit just sit here and spit out a 3k words essay about why the masked anonymous promiscuous band member thing works? YOU BET I DID #this might be one of my favorite posts / analysis / desonstruction I've ever written #Ghost people and especially the ghoul fans this is for you too #cause it explains the ghoul masks as well #sleep token

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