Commercial Break (Worm / Slut Life) (Borderline SFW)

You ever pay with credit and have to sign the receipt? Because that's a contract.

To be fair, genetically insenst between siblings isn't that bad (at least until you get to the point that it's a family pole, rather than a family tree), it's cousins that cause the real genetic problems and birth defects.

 

Sibling incest is not that bad because the fertility rate is so low due to too many homozygous lethal genes weeding themselves out really REALLY fast, so most pregnancies end very early in spontaneous abortion. It's bad enough to immediately be eliminated and thus doesn't cascade into truly horrifying abominations like the last Hapsburg of Spain...

Cousin incest is sustainable enough to not be noticed immediately, but builds crap up over time regardless.

 

Contracts don't even have to be written down at all, so no.

You don't have to sign anything to form a contract. The store made an offer, and you accepted that offer by carrying out your part of the purchase. That's sufficient.

 

I'm not quoting or replying to everything, in large part because I'm tired, overheated, and somewhat cranky. I apologize in advance for anything that comes out harsher than I meant it to.

Spoiler: Spoilered for replies

Well, the contract started as a plot device, not a plot point, so I didn't give it terribly much thought. None of my proofreaders thought it was enough of an issue to mention. From a meta, out of story perspective, it worked because it needed to work.

Why are you assuming contract law in the Slut Life multiverse cares about American contract law?

Why would a different legal system have the same contract requirements as the United States?

Yes, this was supposed to be Tricher being clever. Obviously, I, and my several proofreaders, underestimated how much people would care about what was supposed to be a throw-away plot device.

I don't know why everyone is insisting that Cindy is trying to fuck Taylor over or is trying to con her into making unwise choices. She really isn't.

Taylor is going to be reviewing everything before signing the contract, so she's going to sign herself up for what she decides on.

I'm fairly sure you have an unrealistic view of everyone's expected competency, and I have no idea where it's coming from. Everyone is telling her the contract is valid and she's in a different universe with different laws. For all she knows, all contracts are like that.

Spoiler: Future plot stuff

With all of that said, you all did bring up some fair points, and it will be taken into consideration. However, I don't see why a 15 year old who is used to having the system fail her would be expected to know how contracts are supposed to work.

The validity of the initial contract will be addressed later. Much later, but it will be addressed.

 

I went back and reread.

Taylor didn't read that initial contract in it's entirety, so it seems likely to me that somewhere around the two thirds point of the contract, tucked in the middle of a paragraph so that it's easy to miss, is a line that states something to the effect of:

If it's so difficult to accept the contract just on the basis of it being the necessay plot device to move forward with the story, can we at least accept that some kind of legal trickery like the above is what happened, and Taylor just didn't see it in time because she wasn't looking for it?

To hear some of you people talking, Bilbo should have just thrown Gandalf and the dwarves out the moment they showed up at his house, and where would the story be after that?

 

Until recently, it was legal in Louisiana.

A contract where you've got what you came for, and what you're giving away for it (money) is defined on the receipt. And there's a trade name on the receipt. It also doesn't require you to do anything other than have the money available in your account; there are no other things you need to worry about doing.

It's both a plot device and a plot point. How is it a plot point? Because without it, the plot doesn't work.

I write a great deal of fanfic. My beta, if I wrote something as lazily as this, would smack me around the head and tell me to go back and do it better. Just saying "Oh, we need to get to the actual plot so we're just gonna slide this one on by and it works because the author says it works" just does not fly.

It's like getting to the climactic fight between the (overmatched) hero and the villain, and then cutting to the aftermath where the hero's triumphant, and people asking, "So how did you win?" and he goes, "Oh, it wasn't easy. Drinks, anyone?" and you're left going "Whaaaaaa.....?"

If the villain's gonna trick the hero into doing something, I want to see how the trick worked.

Right now this trick goes:
1. Kidnap Taylor
2. Show her the contract with nothing on it
3. ?
4. Contract is somehow valid

Yes, but how was he being clever?

It's not a throwaway plot device if throwing it away destroys the plot. It's a very important plot device. It's the basis for the entire plot.

Lying and evading the question is not the same as being clever.

Saying something that sounds believable and is kind of true but not in the way the hero believes - that's being clever.

OP already noted that she elided over how "siblings" will be trying to fuck her, and how that's one she deliberately set Taylor up for. Breaking trust just once results in broken trust.

Cindy isn't there for Taylor. She's there for Slut Life. She wants to make Taylor into a happy little slut like her, NOT rescue her from being kidnapped. The fact that she wants Taylor to be happy doesn't take away from the fact that she isn't making the slightest effort to get her out of the situation that she obviously doesn't want to be in.

... riiiiiight.

So it's a throw-away plot device that will be addressed much later.

Not giving me much confidence, here.

See, you only have to do one thing to fix this.

Or something like that.

Because people were yelling at Taylor for not reading the fine print, and the OP said she did.

And Trichter was being oh-so-cagey about not saying the company's name--even ignoring Taylor asking about it once--right up until she signed on the dotted line.

He may as well have handed the contract for her to read, and then told her that her thumbprint counted as a legitimate signature.

I'll say it again: it's not being clever if despite all the hero's caution, you just go ahead and do it anyway.

 

Sibling incest is only a genetic issue when both siblings have a recessive gene for some disease.

That's a debit transaction, which isn't a contract, and you don't sign for (you punch in your PIN).

A credit transaction is a legally binding agreement to pay for items you receive now at a later date. Usually at MASSIVE interest rates (seriously, I know loan sharks that charge less).

So Squirrel Girl?

That's... not me who made that post you're quoting...

 

I would like to say this about the contract then ask that people stop bringing it up. The discussion doesn't look to be going anywhere and having the same points rehashed is affecting my enjoyment.

Why are we arguing contract law, in a legal system we know nothing about beyond what has been shown in story? It feels like a large number of assumptions are being made, that then conflict with the setting as it is presented. With any given story the first assumption you should make is that the setting allows for it. Only start arguing when it stops being internally consistent. The world is what the author shows us. If the sky is green, then it is green. We may not know why it is green, but it still is green. As shown in the setting the contract Taylor signed is airtight and binding. Why do we need to know more? The exact wording of the contract would be incredibly boring and attract even more criticism from people who think they understand contract law nitpicking things the author missed because they are not a contract lawyer.

Besides, why is it being assumed that the legal business name is Slut Life? That could just be a trade name, what they are known as publicly. Even in the US, a company's actual name as it gets put on legal documents, isn't necessarily the same name they are doing business as. For example, I have seen a number of stores that have (owner's name) LLC as the legal name, it's even what they have on the tax return. But their receipts, signage, and marketing have something completely different. Even their logo has nothing to do with the legal business name. It's not unreasonable to assume that the initial page Taylor signed did list the name of the company, but not say Slut Life.

As for Trichter being "clever". Well, he probably thinks he is. To be fair, reading a person and situation well enough to distract them into signing a contract can take a bit of skill. That he is apparently good at it is implied in the beginning of chapter 2 when he explains the trick to Cindy. The clever bit also comes in that he is skirting the lines of unethical behavior, being a slimeball salesguy without doing anything he can quite be called out on officially. Rereading the beginning, he never outright lies, just misleads and distracts. This is not the same as the author being clever, and a 3rd party in universe might hesitate to call what Trichter does clever.

As far as Cindy knows, Taylor is locked in. She already asked her boss and was told so. At this point she is trying to get the best result for Taylor. For all we know, she didn't bring up the whole siblings wanting sex thing because it's not an issue. Maybe the new sibling winds up with the contestant's intentions towards the whole thing. How the whole thing goes is up to the author, and even in a CYOA they can make changes if it fits the story they want to tell better.

 

I don't own a credit card, so I don't have credit card problems.

Which is usually done for laughs, but yes.

Sorry. Fixed.

 

Isn't that literally every fight Squirrel Girl gets into?

It's death to go off-panel with her around, lol.

I kinda wanna see what the MCU would do with her, though no way it's happening (then again, they did bring in the Guardians... and actually made them awesome...)

 

All transactions are contracts. Sometimes they're contracts whose terms can be immediately fulfilled, but that's irrelevant. A signature on a receipt doesn't have any legal effect, lots of countries don't even do it any more.

 

Hmmm...

The legality of the original contract will be covered much later.... much later Taylor will be learning Contract Law via Education...

-----

(stealing the name for the AI from Eternal Threnody, because I'm lazy)

3 months into Taylor's 1 year stint on SL.

Taylor sat up.

She took the headset from her Education setup off her head, looked down at it, and burst out laughing hysterically, tears slowly leaking out of her eyes.

Barely above a whisper, Taylor murmured "A way out... I finally have a way out."

"Edi!" Taylor yelled out, "bring up the contestant registration form I signed for Slut Life."

"Certainly, Taylor." Edi responded. Within seconds a high-resolution scan of the contract appeared on the display monitor. Taylor studied it intently, reading every line multiple times to be sure she wasn't missing anything, or interpreting something wrong.

Taylor burst out in the widest smile she'd worn for years, not since before Emma... Suddenly her smile gained a malicious edge to it.

"Edi... Contact Slut Life's legal department," Taylor said.

"Certainly, may I enquire into the purpose of the call?"

Taylor just smiled wider.

"Tell them that I'm having Trichter arrested, and that I'm suing them for breach of contract, emotional distress, physical distress, abuse, human experimentation, and conspiracy to commit rape, and kidnapping. Sorry to say, but I'm not a contestant on this show anymore." Taylor smiled even wider, "I'll finally get to go home... I'll finally get away from this disgusting show... I'll finally... get to see dad again," and at that last point, the dam finally burst, and Taylor started crying, "Daddy... I miss you..."

----

Not going to even try and think of whatever way Trichter fucked himself by trying to be slick in the contract; but there was something in it made something in second contract Taylor was forced to sign breach the first one. And Richter was knowledgeable enough about contract law to have done it intentionally, thinking it wouldn't be noticed, to trap Taylor.

I'll also say Taylor is making such a long list of (perfectly valid) charges towards SL Corp not to actually go to court over them, but to force SL Corp to settle, by sending her home with a bunch of perks/bonuses/rewards for compensation.

 

All right, this is the last bit I'll say about the damn contract before it's a matter of "You can do what you want in your own damn story, so fucking drop it already." This has gone on long enough.

Also, it's irritating when the only way to adequately resolve complaints issues that aren't supposed to be resolved for an arc or two is to basically have a spoiler explaining the entire situation in exhaustive detail. My buffer is currently 38,000 words long. Issues being brought up can and are being resolved down the line, even if it doesn't look like they are because I'm not instantly fixing them.

Spoiler: More Replies

As mentioned in my last post, multiple betas did not see the contract as an issue. If they had, the issue would have been resolved before anything had been posted. I not going to go back and change it because some people don't like it when I can fix the issue later on just as easily and to a better conclusion.

The issue here is that I've been viewing the Slut Life portion of this fic as a prelude to the actual plot of Taylor working for Slut Life on Earth Bet. This may not have been the best way of thinking about it, but there you go. In that context, the contract is a minuscule portion of the plot, only necessary to initiate things.

As far as Cindy knows, the contract is binding. She didn't learn about general contract law, she specialized in Slut Life contract writing. Yes, I'm sure you're going to complain that one can't exist without the other. I honestly don't care. Maybe she was sick the day they covered that or wasn't the best student. It's not going to be explained anytime soon, so deal with it.

Yes, Cindy did trick Taylor into picking siblings. The questions here are "Are siblings automatically incestuous and to what degree?" and "Did Cindy want Taylor to pick siblings for the hot girl-on-sibling action or so that Taylor could have additional familial support in her life?" Neither of these questions have been addressed, and won't be addressed for some time, but they greatly change how this interaction should be viewed.

It was a throw-away plot device that you convinced me wasn't as unimportant as I thought it was. So I'm going to address it. Later. And thank you for removing the the spoiler tag there. I have a list of items to resolve later, when it makes sense to resolve them. This topic is on that list.

Again, I prefer fixing things in the future when possible over rewriting something I either consider minor or able to be used for more interesting development later on.

I'm also about half an arc ahead in my buffer, so I don't recall every detail perfectly and am being bombarded by complaints about something I didn't think was an issue. My comments about the story may not be entirely consistent or accurate in every detail. I apologize for not being perfect.

Basically all of the this. I'm also heavily modifying the original CYOA for future use, because parts of it were so badly written or could be improved upon... or just added to. It's too late for Taylor to get the new form, but that will be another thing that comes up later in the story.

The first contract being invalid or not

Spoiler: legal status of the contract

It's invalid as all hell, but neither Cindy or Taylor is aware of this.

has no bearing on the validity of the second contract. Once she signs the form detailing her stay on the show, it's final.

The charges against Tricher, on the other hand, could still be addressed, though it's unlikely to go very far in most courts because a lot of the judges are friends of Slut Life.

 

Teenagers are not in fact as infantile as modern media likes to portray them. When the "contract" is as stupid as "You took the paper, and the fingerprints count as signing" teens WILL go "well UP YOURS TOO!" and basically reject the reality you're trying to force on them and substitute their own.

Taylor COULD be talked into participating in the show with enough of a list of incentives, enough carrots. NOT the economic force majeur (e.g. gun to head) stick used in your story.

For all she knows at the time, she's signing her primitive life (if they can yoink her across realities...) away into becoming an organ farm (Merchants for example probably do organ harvesting and black market work and it might be something Taylor was told to keep her from going down suspicious alleyways or drinking anything others offer). And the daughter of a Head of Hiring should not be stupid enough for that just from "Dad talking at the dinner table" level of learning!

And on average a human has something like 5 recessive genes that would be lethal when homozygous. That's not counting genes that would cause gross reductions in offspring viability or fertility.
So the evolutionary penalty for incest is laughably huge.

Even a 1% fitness penalty would cause evolution of aversion mechanisms and instincts in the geological blink of an eye, long, LONG before sentience shows up. Yes, primitive organisms with smaller genomes would have fewer shared recessive lethal mutations on average, but that would still be far greater than 1% penalty.

The siblings (maybe incest, maybe "drag you to play video games" like what my idea of siblings would imbue them with) option exists for taboo show fun, and no more than that. There's a reason "significant other" is not directly combinable in the sense of "they ARE this other option here" with the others.

You have severe Sunk Cost Fallacy over the critical failure of portrayal of contract law, even in the SL universe (beyond the "due to accelerated education people are considered adults at 10" nonsense in the fluff of version 3.1.3 on 8chan, becuase you can learn all you want, but practical social experience says you need to be older than that to make binding contracts). What you have described is a contract system even mega-corporations would go berserk in shredding down almost instantly.

You should probably listen to Ack and just go retcon in that one line instead of ranting THIS MUCH about it. Just have Tricher say "Thank you for signing on with Sunshine Lifestyles, wholly owned subsidiary of Slut Life" or something. It's an extremely simple fix for what you said was "a throwaway plot point that turned out less expendable than I thought", and being this obstinate on a throwaway point this early on in a story's development reeks of railroading so extreme that you might as well start with dropping Taylor off at the start point of the show.

My best advice if you don't want to go back and retcon in a random name (say "Sunshine Lifestyles") in the initial contract as a fully-owned subsidiary of Slut Life?

1. ???
2. Because you seem to prefer posting two thousand-word replies and adding future tens of thousands of words of legal dispute to a minor retcon of adding less than 15 words, GOD HELP YOU.

 

The main problem in Cindy helping Taylor is the difference into their scales of normality between them since one went through the show and haven't yet. It can sum up as this, one had sex with a dragon and the other is a normal virgin.

 

Oh, right.

I have an important question related to Flexible Holes: do guro-type "holes" count?

Easy Fit gives you "accommodate anything with ease", so if guro holes count, something tells me the Hebert Glare will use the hammerspace that used to be occupied by an eye. A superlaser with some turbolasers around it, shifting to original size at a safe distance a la shipgirl methods, would be quite a Death Glare.

But of course that's for her second or third run-through of the game once she sheds her prudishness and starts gaming the system properly.

 

The main reason for putting the signature on the receipt is to prove that the signatory actually sighted it.

I agree with everything in this post.

Exactly. And it doesn't matter that Cindy had a blast. Pretty sure she doesn't recall how she felt on her first day, and I'm certain she wasn't railroaded into it like Taylor.

Essentially she's saying, "Hey, it's not that bad and if you let yourself enjoy it, you'll even have a good time." Creep factor max, right there.

Her problem? Her time with Slut Life fucked with her head so hard that she can't imagine someone not wanting to have sex.

 

Personally, I am perfectly willing to chalk it all up to "Slut life verse's legal science is weird and would be absolutely illegal in America or maybe even anywhere else on Earth, and there is literally nothing Cindy can do but make Taylor as comfortable as she can because getting her out would be illegal and there are probably cameras everywhere".

"Slut Life is somewhat of a crapsack world" is a perfectly valid way of seeing this after all.

 

I'd actually be fine with that ... if it was presented that way.

But it's being presented in a sympathetic way. Cindy is being shown as the good guy, instead of what she is (the 'good cop' facilitator).

You'd think that as one of the people set to help ease people into this, she'd have a solid grounding in the contracts they signed, and what each clause means (because people will argue if they think they have a chance of winning, and this wastes time). You know, just as a matter of self-defense.

But instead, she's someone that Taylor is extremely familiar with; the Useless Adult. Superficially helpful, but only in a way that screws Taylor over even more, while having zero power to help her in any meaningful fashion.

 

Alright, here's the final thing I'm going to say about the contract.

Concessions have been made, both in planning and in the buffer (though not in any retcons).
Plans have been made to address the issue. These plans will happen a long distance out.
I don't care about any arguments based around Earth laws. They are invalid, as they are not on this earth.
I'm sorry if you don't want to wait to see fallout from things happening now. If you fail to accept that fallout will happen, that is not my problem.

With that said, I am done discussing the initial contract unless someone offers new and useful thoughts. Please drop it. This is my story, and, while I'm willing to take feedback and advice (and am doing so here), I might not take that advice the way you want me to or accept it at all if I don't agree with your view.

Now, can we please stop discussing the initial contract? Your concerns have been received and further reiterations of the same point are not constructive.

 

I think we're seeing different things then, because I actually see it being presented as "There's basically nothing Cindy can do, and she's being forced into being the good cop due to no other alternative being present".

Edit:

Whoops, sorry, posted before your post loaded.

 

Okay, I'm not going to say anything more about the contract, as per your explicit request.

I will, however, address Cindy's characterisation,

Really? Check out some of her quotes from Chapter 1.1:

Let's start manipulating the traumatised teen straight away, shall we?

Translation: dangle temptation before your eyes so you sign up for more. And lie to you about siblings.

And I enjoyed it, so I'm certain you will, once you get past that pesky virginity thing.

Why is she even being reluctant to admit this here? Could it be that she cares more about Slut Life getting another Contestant than about Taylor's well-being? Say it ain't so!

No, you are not.

Guilt! Also, 'going to'. They have not made that investment yet. So there's no loss to them by voiding the contract and sending her home. And in fact, they'd probably be saving money if they went looking for another contestant immediately. One who, I don't know, understands up front with what Slut Life is about before signing the form.

Subtle threat!

Ignoring the fact that Cindy knows she's unhappy, as does everyone who knows about Taylor. She's exactly what they don't want. She's unprofitable.

Another subtle threat!

Yay, a lawyer trying to talk a fifteen year old girl into having sex on camera for money.

All of her language is aimed toward conditioning Taylor to accept the situation.

 

Well, here's the simple difference. I took most of those phrases directly, at face value without suspecting any underlying threats or anything. Mostly because, with how many friggin' fetishes are out there, well. Even "we can do miserable if you want to" is a legitimate thing a contestant might want.

There are people who fantasize about being raped, there are people who are into inflation, stuff going all the way through them, guro, popping... I saw it as Cindy slipping back on script and going over stuff that's usually went over, because there are a fuckton of fetishes that tend to be bewildering to other people.

I never looked at it from a lawyer's perspective and always looked at it from more of a porn perspective. I guess we're just stuck with different interpretations.

 

I think it's partly this, and partly that she legitimately has trouble interpreting how much Taylor isn't interested in random sex - because she grew up in a different society (possibly on one of Slut Life's planets), then had at least one contestant run, and probably processed several other contestants who were in it for the sex after that, so she doesn't really have a good mental model of "people who don't want lots of sex".

All of this. It certainly fits with all of Cindy's other mentions of "if you're into this... which you clearly aren't".
(It also fits with my idea that Cindy doesn't really have anything resembling a mental model of people who don't want sex, and/or aren't interested in at least some exotic fetishes, because such people were heavily underrepresented among those she had met previously.)

There's a reason why Tyrone is a possible owner, and it's not just because it gets so many points (actually, have we made it to Tyrone in the in-story list of owners yet? he should be somewhere near the end).

 

Actually... If one contract forces you to sign a second contract, but the first contract wasn't valid... The second contract becomes invalid because it was signed under duress / under false pretenses. (and with this last response to the last point you brought up before asking that the discussion to end, I'll end my participation is said discussion)

As far as the charges and the judges being friends of SL... If it happened the way I showed in my little omake, then Taylor would have been saying all that on-air to millions/billion of viewers. Even if Trichter was ultimately innocent, most companies would fire someone put in that situation for PR reasons. Given that he is guilty, they might even push the judges to give a guilty verdict.
Stuff like this happens all the time in real life; someone becomes a PR liability, and even if they're innocent they get thrown under the bus.

 

Are you sure that would work? After all, the SL society isn't exactly our society. There've been cases where Slut Life is used as a punishment for some crime, and the contestant lying about it to try and get out. Could also be a case of roleplaying, or a case of "I wanted to wipe my memories so now I have no idea what's going on"...

Are you sure the viewers won't simply take it as part of the show?

This is a society where sex is seemingly considered such a mundane, everyday part of life that even pregnancy and childbirth is considered just a side thing that happens to be a fetish, and even kids aren't considered too sacred for it. If anything, are you sure the viewers won't simply declare you a drama queen and that "it's not a big deal!"?

 

... hmmm.

I suspect people watching Slut Life do so with clear consciences because deep down they believe "they're all willing participants".

Having someone straight-up say they were coerced on to the show through false pretenses, after being kidnapped from her world ... okay, some might find it titillating, but most would be able to muster some kind of outrage. After all, if it could happen to her, it could happen to them!

 

How would they figure that they're unwilling participants if, for example, they got their memory wiped, or are specifically in it to roleplay being kidnapped to another world?

 

If someone's calling up legal, and bringing up contract abuse/violation, and having people arrested, it's very obvious they're not roleplaying... and that they remember signing their contract.

Not to mention the breakdown crying begging to see her dad.

 

I guess. Dunno. Depends on the state of society in SL. They could end up going all "then just take the All Just a Dream reward and wait a year, what're you crying about? You won't remember this anyway."

It's quite possible that the SL society had gotten desensitized to sex and time to such a degree that this wouldn't be an issue at all. They do have memory erasure/restoration, apparent easy time travel and medicine to the point of practical immortality. Still quite possible that they'll consider this drama queening and overblowing the situation.