All Comments on 'Bound Friends Pt. 09'

Because they characters all seemed to be complete idiots. Even for fiction, this was just bad.

Can't wait for the next chapter. Great premise and nice drama. I like where this could be heading.

Thank you for writing it. The emotions and characters ring true- and I love you spending more time with the characters having to deal with their emotions to each other. I just hope that Leah recovers better.

The characters are being stupid? *That's* where you start asking questions, fellow anon?

The story is set in a world where the legal system's hands are tied when it comes to preventing slavery because a contract was signed under duress. The "International Contract Bureau" enforces said absurd contracts, which should really be moot point to begin with what with one party being forced to sign it against their will, by punishing violators of said contracts with cruel and unusual punishment. Because the various international bodies are totally just super fucking arbitrary and malicious like that so people can bust a nut to sexual fantasies. It is totally believable that the law is helpless against sexual slavery because contracts.

Yeah. Sounds totally legit.

You really need to ask if stupidity is a reality here? Because the *characters* behave as such? Really?

Damn man, if you are into this sort of shit but can't get into it if it's so obviously ridiculous, I'd have to suggest plugging your nose and ignoring the reek of bullshit running rampant.

I'm not saying it's totally believable, but to be fair to the author in part 8 they said really clearly why the contract would be enforced. To prove duress they would have to prove they didn't send those emails and to do that they'd have to charge Lea with blackmail and fraud for all the stuff Hannah did. They said everything Hannah did was Lea's legal responsibility, so all the blackmail and impersonation would get Lea in a lot of trouble if they tried to prove that Sophia was signing under duress.

How would anyone prove Sophia was signing it against her will without explaining the emails inviting them were fake?

I'm not saying this is a likely future, but I think you're not being very fair to the author who tried to address that exact problem.

So apparently I can't make multiple Anon posts.

This is true, I'll concede that point.

So, let's put duress aside. It is, after all, quite hard to prove. To keep this organized, I'll use point form.

A) You can't circumvent the law and carry out an illegal action because you have a contract.

A2) Sure you could have a "Consensual - I agree to this" contract, but I'm *guessing* just going out on a limb here, that the authorities would raise an eye-brow when one party is saying that they don't want to be in this state and the other party is saying they recognize that the other party doesn't want to be in this state and don't want to keep the other party in this state (See - Sexual slavery)

A3) The fact that a legal body is *enforcing* an illegal act against the will of both of the participants is pretty freaking ridiculous.

B) The arbitrary, malicious nature of the International Contract Bureau is completely unbelievable. I'm pretty sure there aren't many International Bodies that engage in cruel and unusual punishment, skimming a profit off the enforcement of said cruelty. If there are, I'm pretty damned sure most of the Western World (Where I presume this story is set) hasn't signed on and or acknowledged their authority.

This is, of course, fiction. Hypothetical discussion of moot arguments, yes?

C) Oh, the ending is pretty bizzaro too. For me, it's a big stretch of the imagination to have the *police* enforcing the transfer of a human being as chattel, because contracts.

I still think you aren't being fair.

You keep saying the contracts are enforcing an illegal action. What illegal action? The author said that in this future prostitution is legal, and that most workplace regulation had been repealed.

And the cops aren't enforcing the transfer of a human being. If you have a fixed three year employment agreement with a company, and the CEO dies, that doesn't void your agreement early. Sophia is an employee with a long term agreement, she's not actually property.

I mean, the author could have maybe spelled that out a little more clear but it is all explained this way.

My head has cooled a bit in my previous effort to write this response when I got to the "Why I don't view this as bad literature, I just find certain elements distasteful." point, so I'll try to expand and sound a bit less jerky.

I'll start by saying, you are right. I'm not being particularly fair. Yeah, I'll grant that.

I am just.... Really uncomfortable with certain elements of this story. That might be coloring my views.

It's *exclusively* the fact that she can't leave. I mean, putting my cards on the table, the International Contract Bureau is 100 shades of fucked up. Sorry, but I am not budging on that point.

I mean, okay, let's say it's a fixed term employment contract.

Shit, I'm in my early/mid-ish twenties, so who knows maybe this is just my inexperience, but the idea of a job you *cannot leave* sounds pretty fucking crazy to me. I can't imagine they are that common, and I'm *damned sure* they are legal landmines.

Because.... Now I'm no lawyer, but that sounds pretty demented to me.

You are forced to work here. If you don't like it, tough shit for you, you can't leave until your contract is up.

I mean, again, no lawyer or anything and I'm pretty young, but I am under the impression that most Western Legal systems are pretty big on people not being forced to ______ against their will.

I mean, I can see some sort of monetary charge being invoked for the cost of lost services. That's fine. *That's* believable. That isn't quite as ugly.

But -Any violation of the terms of the contract and the perpetrator is assigned to a penal labor contract, designed to be disproportionately worse and longer than the contract being violated as punishment and as an incentive to follow the rules.- sounds pretty damn fucked up to me.

Think I said this earlier, I'll admit I'm not being fair to the author. But I have a hard time treating a story where, I suspect, one of the characters is pushed into a situation where they are legally obliged to provide sexual services against their will, all that positively.

Sure, the person doing it may be treated as a villain, sure, the character may get out of it. But that doesn't make everything just dandy to me.

I've never cared for that sort of story. I've always found them, for lack of a better word, ugly. Well, the whole forced to provide sexual services against will bit is ugly.

Though who knows, maybe the author will surprise me and what/whomever inherits the contract will have no interest in the sexual element.

That'd be sort of a jump-scare in my view, but whatever.

But I *really* don't get the impression that's where it's going.

I', *pretty* sure it's going into "You are now providing sexual services against your will and the law says you have no choice." territory.

I don't particularly enjoy that.

Non-Consent has always been a big turn-off for me.

So you could say my views on this are heavily colored to begin with, so I apologize if it seems like I'm being unfair to the author.

I mean, I suspect you might be thinking "Then don't read it." and that's fair enough.

Honestly, I actually quite enjoyed chapter one. Might be a bit hypocritical as there is sort of an element of non-consent there. But it isn't as... Uh... I guess I'd say malicious as some of the later chapters have been.

I dunno.

Sorry if I'm being too harsh or anything.

I love this series. Please keep posting the next chapters.

The best I like about this episode, is a young woman struggling with her sexuality. If someone supposes she is not straight, it is a process of denial, carefully probing ones mind, letting out feelers to trusted others and so on. It is all here and it is beautifully written.

I totally agree with AnAnonGuy I love all of the light hearted parts of this story but the cruel stuff just sucks for me it is well done i just don't enjoy it.

But on to my actual concern so we know contracts exists to allow job stability and are therefore own able not just by individuals but by corprite entities in fact we see this with the girls in this chapter and chapter 10 who are "owned" by the casino not by the casinos CEO. Further we know that the contract doesn't forbid non sexual service but that it is in fact optional and niter banned or required EX the plan to have Lea act as a programmer as well as a sex slave.

This means that if Sophia could in theory be put in charge of a corporation as a non mandated duty related to her contract. Then what you do is transfer her contract to the corporation she is the head of and with some careful bylaw sculpting she can be given near full autonomy of action as she can grant herself any permission the contract allows including freedom of movement and orgasm. She would still need to preform domestic or sexual services for her corporate owner daily but ash she is the corporations only employee she just dose it to/ for herself.

Now their is the issue that Carl would still own the corporation and thus him or his hears could pull the rug out from under this but their is a solution to this as well.

Carl would just sell or gift the corporation that now holds Sophia of which he is sole share holder to her.

She is contractually allowed to receive gifts and even payment but not to hold them but they are still hers as they are placed in trust for her to be delivered at her time of release. It is only reasonable that this trust is operated to maintain her assets but lets assume the worst case scenario that the ICB is the sole executor of the trust and neither Sophia nor Carl have any ability to influence its decisions then if the ICB is as evil as it seems they would try to sell off her corporation and thus her for all the money they could get (becalms lets assume they will skim the funds).

This is where the clever bylaw sculpting comes in if the corporate bylaws give the CEO absolute power and vest in the same individual the total BOD powers and further deny the ability of the shareholders to adjust these powers or appointee a new CEO or BOD then she is safe but lets say for just a moment that that is legally impossible we can still solve this problem. What we do is give the shares in this shell corporation to trustworthy individuals and have them sign contracts baring them from appointing a new CEO or altering the BOD status of the corporation or from holding more than a certain portion of the stock in the corporation. and look we have at least 4 such people Carl Lea Megan Andrea and that is if we don't give any shares so Sophia so that the ICB cant get their greasy mitts on them.

Then in each of there wills which the now all need the shares in the Sophia corporation can only be inherited by some one who signs the same limiting contract that the aforsigned did. Alternately this entire corporation could be placed in a separate trust that is bound to keep its ICB and CEO as Sophia and is only empowered to defend the trust the corporation and have some legal authority in case of catastrophic illness Probably with strong fiscal incentives to never invoke the catastrophic illness clause.

Now you may ask hoe will Sophia be able to live and work well that's the beauty of this the corporation could rent or buy any residence she lives in and then she assigned herself as an asset to the residence to service the CEO(herself) who is granted residence their as a corporate Perk. Now you ask about Car well her car is a company car owned by her corporation.

What about money? Corporate expense accounts that she has full discretion over. But what about getting a job? well as CEO she just subcontracts out her primary corporate asset (herself) to another company for an agreed time at an agreed rate to the corporate coffers who will pay the subcontracted employee as their corporate policy dictates (which is more or less however she wants).

Plus at the end of the contract she just receives the full corporate assets as her severance pay on top of any money she payed herself that was held in trust by the ICB.

TL:DR with a team of lawyers and some legal skulduggery Sophia can be almost free and Lea can stay out of jail even if the ICB is evil and wont let the contract dissolve and this is made simpler by the fact that the contract is transferable.

This story is one of the biggest turn offs I’ve ever read. It bears no relation to bdsm from the point where Hannah enters the story, because bdsm has the 3 overall strictures SAFE, SANE and CONSENSUAL. None of that is present I felt so nauseous that I skipped through this chapter to get to this point. After looking at the remaining chapter headings there’s no way I could read the rest of this. The story strikes me as psychologically disturbing, it reached that point of vomit worthy when Lea was put in the punishment box, up until that point it was a good concept. Too many plot holes. It’s easy to see where the story will go. In reality the girls would need to change their identities completely in order to try and have a life after this. So all that said, I’m out. Wish I’d stopped reading this much earlier although that last point is on me not the author.