Subtle submissiveness test

[SimonDoom]

In addition. Ive been a Dom/ Master for over 2 decades now. I can promise you that a natural sub (at her core) is pretty easy to read and detect for me. I would be pretty easy for me to read her body language and responses during an interview or probation training to see if they had submissive tendencies. This in no way determines if she would submit to ME however . That takes more time (usually) If you are trying for more realism, I would suggest that he offer her a short term probation. Thirty or ninety days for him to really study her tendencies. Perhaps a

Possible other suggestions. Subtle questions to Personal and professional references she put on her application would help make a case. Granted you can be very assertive and still be a sub at heart... though they are rare. Few people in reality have high self esteem. The ones that make you think they have it often times have the worst. Submissives who have high self esteem are those that know what they are, and own it. I think in your story you are seeking someone relatively naive about their sub nature and develops and understanding of it as the story unfolds.

I hope this helps and have value for you.


Also.

These are useful thoughts. I have to balance the need to give the story an air of realism (as opposed to "make realistic", something I don't believe an author must do), perhaps by adopting the suggestion of a probation period, with the need to keep the story to a manageable length. It's food for thought.

 

[WannabeMontrealSlut]

This is not true for everyone, but for me, I am not at all submissive in the workplace, only in my intimate relationships, and would not take kindly to being led in an interview off of the job application at hand. Seems you would get a submissive person.... who may or may not be submissive sexually.

I agree 100 % with that statement. I am myself only submissive in a sexual context.

 

[Acktion]

I admit that I was another who thought, "oh, please don't do another 49 shadows of whatever."

But, the more I read, the more it forcibly called to mind The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey. Basically, a reinterpretation of Beauty and the Beast wherein a rail tycoon falls afoul of his own hubris with his Magick and scours the country for a girl who meets particular criteria.

While there is an element of slow-burn romance, there is nothing overtly sexual. (Although, her rather snippy response to just what she had read, "in the unexpurgated original rather than a translation thank you very much," still makes me chuckle just thinking about it.) And, of course, his search utilizes Magick. So the similarities might be only in my mind.

Having to take personality inventories during the interview process isn't really anything new in my experiences, although that is (or was) usually saved for further along in the process. Generally after the first interview and before the second, when the applicants are winnowed down to a select few.

This is apparently one of my "hazy" mornings, and I'm having trouble remembering for certain. But, I think it was the MMPI (an old, out of date version I'm sure) that I was thinking, at the time I had to take it, "is this really an appropriate question for the workplace?" on more than one question of that two hour "fill in the scantron bubble" monster.

Personally, I'm probably a lazy writer. At least when it comes to explaining such things. So, I would probably just skate past it with only a slight mention such as:

[She] paused for just a moment as she read question five hundred and twenty-seven. It had been well over two hours reading questions and filling in bubbles and her mind didn't feel as sharp as it had when she first sat down with the two other applicants to fill them out. Maybe she wasn't reading it right.

She glanced to her left, trying to gauge the reaction of the two other women. One about her age and one older, maybe in her thirties. They both looked about as wilted as she felt in the room that had seemed in turns too hot and then too cold and then too hot again with that God awful music that sounded like a cat in a kettle drum coming from somewhere else in the house that equal parts amazing and horrific.

Blinking, and focusing on the page in front of her, she carefully read the question again.

"How do you feel about being nude while those around you are fully clothed?"

What did that have to do with being a "personal assistant" for an esteemed novelist? She'd heard the stories. Both in general, even in 2020, and about him in specific. She knew he was... eccentric, to put it kindly. But, really?

Her thoughts turned to workers in drug houses, where she'd heard they had to work naked to prevent them from stealing... product. Would he make her work naked to prevent her from stealing pages of his new manuscript?

She couldn't quite keep herself from snorting at the image, and covered her mouth and nose, blushing furiously, as she glanced at the other two applicants. They didn't seem to notice, still staring at the pages in front of them with partially glazed eyes.

As she studied the answers, trying to choose the best one, she couldn't get the mental image out of her head. Her moving around naked while he was clothed. No, wait. While everyone else was clothed! Just how many others?

She squirmed a little in her chair, her face feeling hot, and focused on drawing a deeper breath against the sudden feeling of breathlessness...

***shrug***

I dunno. Having been a fan of...well, some of your stories (), I'm pretty sure you've got it covered by now. And better than I did with this little blurp (partway between a blurb and a belch).

But, good luck with it. And I, for one, look forward to reading your final draft when it's done.

 

[SimonDoom]

I agree 100 % with that statement. I am myself only submissive in a sexual context.

I've been thinking about your comment and cascadiabound's comment, as well as comments I received on a parallel thread in Story Ideas where I posed this question, and they've convinced me that the right way to do the story is to take a completely different tactic, where the young female interviewee for the assistant position, rather than being completely unaware, actually suspects that the author/interviewer IS a dominant and is looking for a sub, and she is interested but also somewhat conflicted. So it becomes a cat and mouse between a Dom who wants to find out if she is a sub but has to be very careful because of his position and a potential but not total sub who is interested but isn't sure what she'd be getting into and how it would affect her position.

So in this scenario, the Dom/author would put her to some very, very subtle tests, but the sub/applicant would pick up on it and give answers and responses to lead him in the direction of believing she's a sub.

I'm relatively unconcerned with whether my story tracks what people usually think of as a D/s relationship in the real world or their own experience. For me what's interesting is the process of power exchange and how it plays out in a specific and unusual, and, I hope, erotic way. My only BDSM story to date is like that. It's about two people who are completely new to this type of relationship and are making up the rules as they go as they explore it. This would be somewhat different but I want to explore that same sort of dynamic.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I think there's a lot of difficulty built into your premise if you are married to the type of test I've seen discussed here and on the other thread. Some BDSM readers, regardless of their own D/s experience or lack thereof, don't really care if the setup is clumsy as long as the story provides the emotional triggers they are looking for. Others will balk at something that in their experience, would be unrealistic of a giant red flag to a submissive. I think that if you aim for the second group, you automatically bring the first group along as well.

I think it's reasonable to argue that since BDSM has such a high degree of psychological involvement, it's more important to blend realism and fantasy than it is in other genres. There are plenty of people who just want to read about BDSM-type things being done to someone, but that's really more of a turn-on than a kink, so maybe not the core readership of the category.

I think the reason a test in the usual sense of the term is problematic is that it's such an artificial construct to apply to such an individual interaction. It would be, in my opinion, terribly ill-suited for the purpose. I don't think it's ever wise to say "submissives do X" or "submissives are like X," so please take may comments with the understanding that I recognize they won't apply to all submissives, and of course are sure to be skewed by my personal experience and inclination

I think most submissives have a lot of defenses. As other posters have pointed out, in workplace settings, they can be quite assertive. That is, in my opinion, an adaptation, and it's not limited to the workplace. The adaptation manifests in all sorts of social interactions because it's an adaptation the submissive developed to improve their effectiveness. It's usually honed in the context of the social dynamic in the workplace, but once fully formed, is going to be weaponized everywhere the submissive doesn't want to at least entertain D/s interaction.

A submissive's defenses would be triggered by an obvious sort of test. The real test is in the conversation, including the body language that goes along with it. I think I'm pretty good at trying to fake away the tells, but if certain triggers are present, I know the discomfort of faking will eventually make me either overcompensate, show a tell-tale inconsistent response, or fade to a more natural reaction. No big deal, of course, unless the person is sexually dominant, in which case they're going to be all over it. (And once detected, we'd move to the next lines of defense. It ain't over til it's over.)

Eye contact is way-overplayed in these stories as an indicator, but it's because it works. If you become uncomfortable with the directness of eye contact in any situation, regardless of where you fall on the D/s spectrum, it is virtually impossible to return to normal, unconscious eye contact. You're either going to have to make an effort to artificially sustain the eye contact, or you're going to have to avoid it. You can't not think about it. Physical proximity is another one, although it needs to be done subtly. How someone reacts to a temporary invasion of personal space is telling. By temporary invasion of personal space, I don't mean getting handsy or a sustained invasion more typical of conditioning. I just mean one of those unspoken social challenges.

I think it's significant that the responses you've gotten on this thread offer far more subtle suggestions than the responses you've gotten in your other thread. Submissives filter wannabe doms. Wannabe doms may be very assertive, but they're painfully insecure in a way that pours a bucket of cold swamp water on a submissive's interest. Some of the suggestions on the other thread would scream wannabe dom, or just garden-variety workplace lecher. Those suggestions were really more a test of sexual availability in the workplace than they were tests of the applicant's submissive tendencies. (I sort of apologize to those offended by my lack of capitalization with "dom" and "dominant." For me, capitalization makes it an earned title, even for those who are not wannabes.)

To have an actual test for submissives, you'd have to be able to create a test the submissive wouldn't detect. Good luck with that. I assume that's why you've arrived at your solution of having the submissive suspect what is going on. Owning the plot problem is a good alternative to overcoming it, but it may be worth trying to crack the nut rather than compensating for the un-cracked nut (to beat an analogy to death.)

That's where I go back to the conversation itself, along the lines of what Master Doctor suggested. It's not necessary, and perhaps not even advisable, for the conversation to be overtly sexual until you get to the point that the dom has decided that this is the candidate he wants and is ready to push the envelope. I think it's really the conversational dynamics that give it away more than it is the subject of conversation. The subject of conversation may be useful for the response it provokes, but I doubt it would frequently be helpful in terms of information disclosed.

The challenge, of course, is trying to compress what would realistically take multiple interactions into a single meeting, but I think you could help with that by making a follow-up to the interview part of the process. If the submissive has been led along during the initial conversation to topics she wasn't prepared to discuss, or feels that she has exposed herself, her reaction after she's had time to assimilate the experience will be telling. She might raise the defenses to the point she's manning the battlements (which can be more of a positive sign than it sounds), or she might, after having time to think about it, discover that she's interested and be more open to where she's being led. If she's exactly the same as she was during the meeting, she may not be the right candidate.

I think the biggest thing you could do to help your premise along is to make it reflect the fact that these things are never one-way tests. The submissive is testing the dom at least as much as the dom is testing the submissive. The confines of the job interview are probably even more difficult for evaluating a dom than they are evaluating a submissive. An interviewer is expected to be in control of and guiding the conversation. If you can loosen the contextual constraints a bit - maybe an interview over lunch - it would be more conducive to this. Part of her evaluation of the dom will be his interactions with other people. I'm not sure if that would be equally true for the dom, who I think might be more interested in the submissive's interactions with a dominant.

No matter how well you finesse the process, you'll get to a point where the submissive begins to suspect the dominant's motivation. That's a necessary precursor to the cards-on-the-table moment. If the dominant just surprised her with it, she would either go deer-in-the-headlights or be out of the door before he had a chance to blink. Deer in the headlights could work in the context of a story, but in reality, it would be fraught and probably not a good start to things. It's about trust, right?

I guess what I'm saying is that your solution to the challenge is something you can save until you reach the right point in the interaction. If it's employed to early, your sub character is likely to come across as inauthentic, unless you're able to set up a topping-from-the-bottom dynamic that gets overturned. For the story length you prefer, that might not be the preferable way to go.

Whatever you decide, I'm sure your story will be better for the thought you're putting into it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think there's a lot of difficulty built into your premise if you are married to the type of test I've seen discussed here and on the other thread. Some BDSM readers, regardless of their own D/s experience or lack thereof, don't really care if the setup is clumsy as long as the story provides the emotional triggers they are looking for. Others will balk at something that in their experience, would be unrealistic of a giant red flag to a submissive. I think that if you aim for the second group, you automatically bring the first group along as well.

I think it's reasonable to argue that since BDSM has such a high degree of psychological involvement, it's more important to blend realism and fantasy than it is in other genres. There are plenty of people who just want to read about BDSM-type things being done to someone, but that's really more of a turn-on than a kink, so maybe not the core readership of the category.

I think the reason a test in the usual sense of the term is problematic is that it's such an artificial construct to apply to such an individual interaction. It would be, in my opinion, terribly ill-suited for the purpose. I don't think it's ever wise to say "submissives do X" or "submissives are like X," so please take may comments with the understanding that I recognize they won't apply to all submissives, and of course are sure to be skewed by my personal experience and inclination

I think most submissives have a lot of defenses. As other posters have pointed out, in workplace settings, they can be quite assertive. That is, in my opinion, an adaptation, and it's not limited to the workplace. The adaptation manifests in all sorts of social interactions because it's an adaptation the submissive developed to improve their effectiveness. It's usually honed in the context of the social dynamic in the workplace, but once fully formed, is going to be weaponized everywhere the submissive doesn't want to at least entertain D/s interaction.

A submissive's defenses would be triggered by an obvious sort of test. The real test is in the conversation, including the body language that goes along with it. I think I'm pretty good at trying to fake away the tells, but if certain triggers are present, I know the discomfort of faking will eventually make me either overcompensate, show a tell-tale inconsistent response, or fade to a more natural reaction. No big deal, of course, unless the person is sexually dominant, in which case they're going to be all over it. (And once detected, we'd move to the next lines of defense. It ain't over til it's over.)

Eye contact is way-overplayed in these stories as an indicator, but it's because it works. If you become uncomfortable with the directness of eye contact in any situation, regardless of where you fall on the D/s spectrum, it is virtually impossible to return to normal, unconscious eye contact. You're either going to have to make an effort to artificially sustain the eye contact, or you're going to have to avoid it. You can't not think about it. Physical proximity is another one, although it needs to be done subtly. How someone reacts to a temporary invasion of personal space is telling. By temporary invasion of personal space, I don't mean getting handsy or a sustained invasion more typical of conditioning. I just mean one of those unspoken social challenges.

I think it's significant that the responses you've gotten on this thread offer far more subtle suggestions than the responses you've gotten in your other thread. Submissives filter wannabe doms. Wannabe doms may be very assertive, but they're painfully insecure in a way that pours a bucket of cold swamp water on a submissive's interest. Some of the suggestions on the other thread would scream wannabe dom, or just garden-variety workplace lecher. Those suggestions were really more a test of sexual availability in the workplace than they were tests of the applicant's submissive tendencies. (I sort of apologize to those offended by my lack of capitalization with "dom" and "dominant." For me, capitalization makes it an earned title, even for those who are not wannabes.)

To have an actual test for submissives, you'd have to be able to create a test the submissive wouldn't detect. Good luck with that. I assume that's why you've arrived at your solution of having the submissive suspect what is going on. Owning the plot problem is a good alternative to overcoming it, but it may be worth trying to crack the nut rather than compensating for the un-cracked nut (to beat an analogy to death.)

That's where I go back to the conversation itself, along the lines of what Master Doctor suggested. It's not necessary, and perhaps not even advisable, for the conversation to be overtly sexual until you get to the point that the dom has decided that this is the candidate he wants and is ready to push the envelope. I think it's really the conversational dynamics that give it away more than it is the subject of conversation. The subject of conversation may be useful for the response it provokes, but I doubt it would frequently be helpful in terms of information disclosed.

The challenge, of course, is trying to compress what would realistically take multiple interactions into a single meeting, but I think you could help with that by making a follow-up to the interview part of the process. If the submissive has been led along during the initial conversation to topics she wasn't prepared to discuss, or feels that she has exposed herself, her reaction after she's had time to assimilate the experience will be telling. She might raise the defenses to the point she's manning the battlements (which can be more of a positive sign than it sounds), or she might, after having time to think about it, discover that she's interested and be more open to where she's being led. If she's exactly the same as she was during the meeting, she may not be the right candidate.

I think the biggest thing you could do to help your premise along is to make it reflect the fact that these things are never one-way tests. The submissive is testing the dom at least as much as the dom is testing the submissive. The confines of the job interview are probably even more difficult for evaluating a dom than they are evaluating a submissive. An interviewer is expected to be in control of and guiding the conversation. If you can loosen the contextual constraints a bit - maybe an interview over lunch - it would be more conducive to this. Part of her evaluation of the dom will be his interactions with other people. I'm not sure if that would be equally true for the dom, who I think might be more interested in the submissive's interactions with a dominant.

No matter how well you finesse the process, you'll get to a point where the submissive begins to suspect the dominant's motivation. That's a necessary precursor to the cards-on-the-table moment. If the dominant just surprised her with it, she would either go deer-in-the-headlights or be out of the door before he had a chance to blink. Deer in the headlights could work in the context of a story, but in reality, it would be fraught and probably not a good start to things. It's about trust, right?

I guess what I'm saying is that your solution to the challenge is something you can save until you reach the right point in the interaction. If it's employed to early, your sub character is likely to come across as inauthentic, unless you're able to set up a topping-from-the-bottom dynamic that gets overturned. For the story length you prefer, that might not be the preferable way to go.

Whatever you decide, I'm sure your story will be better for the thought you're putting into it.

Great thoughts, and I'm extremely appreciative of the time put into this.

Both threads have been very illuminating for me. They've persuaded me that the story can be something more interesting, subtle, and complex than I originally intended. But probably also more time consuming to write.

Thanks!

 

[EmilysJournal]

I’d probably look for any kind of information on social intelligence. Many behaviors or series of behaviors indicate particular thought processes especially when they are in response to environmental stimulus

 

[EmilysJournal]

I tend to think in terms of college internships and research groups. I’ve been fascinated by the Milgrim experiments from the 1970s. I would imagine some kind of selection process that would determine which group you went into. The MMPI would probably be a realistic method of screening but I’m not sure how that might fit into a story. Observations of physical reactions relating to external stimuli could be a possibility for something. Anyway, those are my thoughts for what they are worth.