Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Hidden Girl · Start (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
If you want to start Cycle I: The Hidden Girl, this is where to follow her.
You can have a whole argument with a message before the person who sent it knows anything is wrong.
You can spend an entire conversation trying to sound less interested than you are, then wonder why they believed you.
From across the room, you are just looking at your phone.
Nothing appears to be happening.
Almost everything is.
Shoegaze Dreams stays close to that private experience.
It follows an unnamed adult through twenty-six short pieces about attention, desire, uncertainty, and everything that can happen while somebody appears to be doing very little.
She is already in the middle of things when you meet her.
There are old conversations, new people, unfinished messages, and things she would rather leave where she can find them than decide what to do with them.
She wants different things depending on who is asking.
Sometimes she wants to be understood.
Sometimes she wants to have fun without having to explain herself afterward.
Sometimes she does not know what she wants until somebody answers.
These relationships begin where many do now.
On a screen.
Some conversations start to matter more than others. Desire becomes more specific. The questions change.
Eventually, curiosity leads her toward submission and BDSM.
The story stays close to what happens inside that movement: what attracts her, what she agrees to, what she refuses, what she hides, what she keeps, and what begins changing before she has decided what any of it means.
The psychology lives in those choices.
You do not need any particular vocabulary or experience to follow it.
You might recognize a habit before you recognize the feeling behind it.
You might understand her perfectly in one piece and disagree with her in the next.
You might decide you know exactly who she is.
Shoegaze Dreams is The Hidden Girl’s part of Cycle I: Coming on Strong, within The House of Zan.
You can read the complete sequence without reading the other pillars. Each piece can also be entered on its own, although reading in order lets the relationships, small decisions, contradictions, and unfinished business accumulate.
There is no need to catch every connection the first time.
Some things become noticeable only after they happen again.
Begin with Piece 01.
There’s someone, let’s say she for now.
She came there to say something.
Opening Arrangement: “Caligula” — Windows96