Infinity Smashed: Untitled ASMR Thing

[lb_lee]

Untitled ASMR Thing
Series: Infinity Smashed
Summary: Bob has done weirder.
Word Count: 500
Notes: This was originally going to be part of a big sketch dump, but this one had a short plotless bit of writing with it so gets separated out.  Takes place after Bob and Grey have gotten together, obviously.

“So, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. “You watch a dead PBS guy paint happy little trees not because you have any interest in painting, not even because you think he’s hot, but because his voice gives you ‘tingles.’”

“Yes.”

“And it’s not a sexual thing.”

“No.” Grey looked rueful. “Women’s voices work better.”

“Huh.” I stroked my mustache. “Does anything else do it, or is it just the sound?”

Her rueful look deepened. She took one of my hands and brushed it over her hair. “This too.”

“Huh,” I repeated. So, not a voice kink then, or at least not just. “Well, I’ve got to say, I’m impressed, that’s a new one on me. Does my voice…?”

Now she looked awkward. “Sometimes. When you’re angry.”

I cracked up laughing.

“When you think they’re dumb, you…” she made the undulating gesture she’d made when first explaining it to me.

“No, no, I know the voice you mean.” One of the kids at my first job called it my babysitter voice. “You poor woman, and I was doing it all the time, back when I thought you were stupid…”

She only looked more embarrassed. “Wasn’t enjoying it…”

“I know, I know, just… hoo, no wonder you trolled me so hard.” I took off my glasses and wiped my eyes. “Want to try and do it on purpose for fun?”

I’d done goofier things for kink than talking like I was on Valium and petting what remained of Grey’s hair. The hard part was coming up with a topic to blather on about interminably without interruption or feedback. She told me I could pick whatever I wanted, since it’d all flow over her anyway. The tone was what mattered. It was hard to believe, but I decided to take her at her word and set on explaining in my most stultifying voice all my opinions on the Button Mash franchise.

Must’ve looked boring as hell from the outside, and I felt like a babbling fool, but it made Specialist Grey, human tension cable, melt into spacey, happy goo. Within five minutes, she was slouching over the table. After ten, it was the only thing holding her up. It was the damnedest thing. If she hadn’t had such a beatific expression on her face, I would’ve thought she’d fallen asleep.


She made a noise that approximated, “okay,” and fell asleep./>

Eventually, even I had run out of things to say, and my voice was starting to feel the strain. I wound down and tapped her on the shoulder.

“You still with me, Grace?”

“Mm.” She sat up, stretched luxuriously. “Thank you.”

I’d always wondered how the hell Grey maintained a bedtime of 8 PM—before sunset, in the summer. Turned out whatever fringe hypnokink she had put him right out. Made her cuddlier too.

When I said so, Grey mumbled, “not hypno,” into my side.

I patted her and booted up my laptop. “You better hope it is, or it’ll be damn difficult to research. I want to map this; this is fascinating. Can’t believe you laid a new one on me.”

She made a noise that approximated, “okay,” and fell asleep.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

As an ASMR fan, this feels very accurate in terms of how ASMR works and how people who don't get ASMR tend to react.

[lb_lee]

Yeah, every time I've told people about it, they mostly just make O_o faces. I guess it DOES sound kind of weird to seek out videos of women folding towels for thirty minutes.

[stealthsystem]

Ohhh man. Bob Ross! He was our ASMR, long long before we knew what ASMR even was. Little bitty us could watch him any time and doze off in happy contentment. Same for QVC weirdly enough. Something about watching people sell jewelry or whatever...
Also, people handwriting or typing. Ahhhh yessss.
-Michie

[polyfrazzlemented]

ASMR videos set off our sensory issues really badly (as do "Stimboards"). But this story is very amusing.

Robin

[lithophiles]

The sounds that we get those effects from, or similar ones, anyway, aren't usually the ones in ASMR videos either. Human voices have, like, these little imperfections where their breath or pronunciation get irregular and that sets off our auditory issues. But one that always works for some reason is the noise mother cats make when they're murring to their kittens.

-Lydia Rose

[lb_lee]

Purring cats are always good sounds!

And people have lots of different ASMR triggers. Sounds ones are the most well-known, but tactile ones exist too. (And I'd bet money on visual ones, at least in combo.)

[dreamwriteremmy]

Yup visual ones exist. Usually in the energywork/aurawork asmr subgenre there's a lot of visual energetic no touch "visual"/"tactile" triggers added on to voice/tapping triggers. Some of us love "energy plucking" as an asmr trigger though i think other people might find it tw because it feels weird at first and may resemble ra programming/hypnosis in some situations [that's one of Kevin's personal theories at least based on his personal feelings about it since he really doesn't like it] (it's this kinda smooth yanking gesture to clean/cordcut energy field it actually kinda looks like autistic flapping stims and If you're energy-sensitive like us it feels tactile even though it isn't really but it's a visual asmr stim for us too).- Carlos

[lb_lee]

Oh yeah, we've seen that! Yeah, that makes total sense, and it totally does blur the visual/tactile thing, it's neat.

[lb_lee]

What are stimboards?

And yeah, it's not for everybody!

[pantha]

Eeee, that's just awesome. <3

[lithophiles]

The more I read about ASMR, the more it seems to me like... it basically is like stimming? You have a sensory thing, and other people might not react to it or find it unpleasant, but it gives you a pleasant calming feeling and relaxes you. It's just that for us, most of ours are tactile and not auditory.

-Lydia Rose

[lb_lee]

I don't really stim, I think, and if I DO do repeated stereotyped movements, it's usually an attempt to COMPENSATE for something really unpleasant, not to cause a positive effect. Also, I've never heard of stimming causing intense lethargy or altering memory.

[lithophiles]

Stim doesn't have to be a movement. That's just the stereotype of it. You can stim while lying totally still. It can be a pattern, a kind of motion you watch, a noise or song you like to listen to, a smell, any sensory thing really. The effect also varies from person to person, or stim to stim. Some of them might make you really energetic, but some very sleepy.

-Lotte

[lb_lee]

Weird. So it's all sorts of things! I didn't know that.