Comic Con

The latest San Diego Comic Con just wrapped up. I’ve never attended but I would like to at some point. Spending a few days wallowing in that density of pop culture seems like it could be an interesting experience.

One of the new films being featured there was Sin City : A Dame To Kill For. Frank Miller has become (or revealed himself to be) a deeply unpleasant person with some of his later work and comments. Yet I still have a soft spot for his early work. The new movie looks par for the course, with ridiculous hard boiled dialog, lots of violence, brooding men and femme fatales in slinky outfits. Watching it will doubtless be a guilty pleasure.

The Comic Con articles I always enjoy most are those feature Cosplay. I’ve no desire to dress up myself, but I do love the effort and imagination some people put into it, as well as the obvious fun they have. The io9 site has some good photographs from this years event: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 and final round-up.

The image below is actually from the 2011 Comic Con, but I liked it so much I just had to feature it. That’s Adrianne Curry as the evil commander holding Vader’s leash. If she’d been in charge those hippy Jedi wouldn’t have stood a chance. I’d certainly have signed up at the nearest Empire recruiting office.

Adrianne Curry — Comic-Con 2011

Well dressed pony play

While I’m on the theme of pet play, here’s an intense looking pony scene. They’re both particularly elegantly attired. I hope he’s been practicing in those boots, as they look pretty fearsome. It makes a nice change for the domme not to be the one risking her neck with challenging high heels.

PonyPlayI wish I could find a source for this, but I can only locate a bunch of unattributed tumblr reposts. If anyone knows the creator of the image then please let me know via the comments.

Kicks but no licks

I’m safely back from San Francisco after a very enjoyable weekend. Kinky fun was had, and potentially will be blogged about, but I did miss the major kinky event of the weekend – the Dore Alley Fair (AKA the Up Your Alley Fair). I hadn’t realized it was on until a friend who lives in the area mentioned it. He’s not kinky (as far as I know), and doesn’t know about my kinks, so I was amused to here the hushed tones he used to describe it. He made it sound like a cross between Caligula’s court and 120 Days of Sodom, and felt that I’d risk being traumatized should I inadvertently stumble into it.

I was less amused to read this guest post by Denali Winter on Kitty Stryker’s blog about some new rules in place for the fair.

Volunteers and cops alike informed Denali that “no touch that might provoke ejaculation” was allowed, but that they could kick or punch their submissive in the balls as much as they liked.

Even touching a penis in a chastity device was banned, which seems particularly odd given they’re specifically designed to prevent ejaculation. So anyone likely to be traumatized by sucking or fucking is now safe to attend Dore Alley, but those sensitive to people being kicked and beaten should continue to steer clear. It’s a strange set of rules, particularly for a San Francisco street fair, but sadly I’m not all that surprised.

DoreAlleyThe image above is from the fair itself. It features the post writer, Denali Winter (attempting to shoot material for her site Petplay Palace), along with Mistress Alice, Mistress Clair and her submissive Beau. If you’re at all into pet play you might want to check out the site.

Problems all left alone

A friend asked me over dinner how my day had been. I told him that I woke up late, then got beaten up by a talented and attractive lady, and finished by drinking a cappuccino in the sun. It wasn’t quite sangria in the park, but it was pretty good all the same.

I hope all my readers had an equally good end to their week. And for those that didn’t, maybe these beautiful bondage shots will provide a small boost. They certainly made me feel happy. They’re from a set of 5 images, all of which are well worth looking at in the full size versions. I believe the original source is the Two hours project tumblr.

Rope Bondage
Rope Bondage

Sometimes you get the bear…

I find this image deeply disturbing, although I’m not sure I can express exactly why. Given the attractive lady and amusingly bound bear it should be both hot and cute. Yet somehow it’s kind of freaky. Of course YMMV.

Bound Bear

The model is Lucy O Doll and the photographer is Charles Parks. I found it via the Alternative Femdom tumblr (always my go to choice when I’m traveling and need an interesting image to feature).

Cramped and crated

I’m flying down to San Francisco for a long weekend. Kinky fun is on the cards, along with some good food and drink. Hopefully I’ll have some interesting experiences to report back on. In the meantime I’ll try and keep the posts coming, but they may be more erratic than usual.

Flying on US domestic airlines is never a particularly pleasant experience, even for a short trip. However, I’ll hopefully end up with a bit more leg room than this poor guy. If Emirates First Class is at the top of the travel scale, and United Coach at the bottom, where does a dog crate rate?

Cramped in a crate

I believe this image is from the Riding Mistress site.

Can’t get no respect

Miss Pearl has written some wise words on when it’s appropriate to block and ignore a submissive. Her post is primarily targeted at dommes communicating online and the warning signs they should look out for. However, it strikes me that the underlying sentiment behind most of her points applies to all genders and kinky persuasions, and both lifestyle and professional.

For example, any pro-domme who immediately emphasizes her dominant role or my submissive one in our initial communication is a red flag for me. Similarly, if she can’t be bothered to pay attention to what I’ve written, doesn’t respect my time, or if she appears to be stereotyping me into some pre-defined submissive roles, then those are also troubling signs. I’ve never yet had a good experience where I got a bad initial feeling, but went ahead with it anyway.

I believe one of the key themes here is mutual respect. That’s respect for each other as a person and individual, not simply a D or an s or any other letter of the alphabet. It’s respect for each others time and energy. Respect for personal safety and the social situation. A lot of the issues I’ve seen have flowed from a lack of respect on one side or the other.

Of course showing someone respect doesn’t also mean you can’t do terribly evil things to them. Like make them sleep on the floor, naked, hooded and in chains and chastity. That’s cruel, but she’ll still respect him in the morning.

Sleeping on the floor at the English Mansion

This is of course from the English Mansion site, and I believe the sleeping beauty is Mistress Sidonia. I originally found the image on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Vanity’s Price

Continuing the vintage theme, here’s a movie poster from a 1924 Italian feature entitled Vanity’s Price. I couldn’t track down a detailed background for it, but I was amused to discover this original review in the New York Times. It was written by Mordaunt Hall, who was the first ever movie critic for that paper. Given he performed that role from October 1924 to September 1934, and that the review is dated to October 8th 1924, I have to assume this was one of the very first movies he and the NY Times ever reviewed. The review features mention of scoundrels, thrashing, startling gowns and charming of the opposite sex. So clearly nothing much has changed in films over the last 90 or so years.

Vanity's Price

 

The Institute of Sexology

My British readers may be interested to know there’s a major exhibition on sex due to launch in November from the Wellcome Collection. The exhibition title – The Institute of Sexology – is an excellent one. I’d love a laminated FBI style badge with that on it. There actually was an institute of sexology in Germany from 1919 to 1933. That end date should give you a pretty good hint which particular group of assholes put an end to it.

The postcard below is part of the new exhibition. It was originally sent from Paris to the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. He’s famous for his studies of sexual behavior, published in his book Psychopathia Sexualis. He didn’t coin the terms sadism and masochism, but it was his book which popularized them. Unfortunately he’s hardly a poster child for kink, as he considered any form of recreational sex to be a perversion. That’s kind of amusing to look back on, given that 99% of sex these days is recreational.

Presumably he didn’t approve of the behavior shown in the postcard. It’s hard to get pregnant while riding a man like a horse and beating him with a rod. At least I hope that’s the case, as I wasn’t wearing a condom the last time I tried it.

Woman seated upon a man like a horse