Yambler

As regular readers might guess, I’m a big fan of tumblr. Most of my images for posts come via tumblers, and I love the way their reblogging and following mechanism makes it easy to walk a network of similar content. I also like the simplicity and uncluttered layout that tumblrs tend to promote. For a site like this one I want the control and security that comes with owning my own domain and running open source software. But if I had any spare time at all, I’d definitely be tempted to set up a tumblr to complement my posts here.

It was therefore disconcerting to read today that Yahoo is going to buy tumblr for $1.1B. That’s not a company with a great track record in acquisitions, as flickr and geocities users will tell you. Large corporations that rely heavily on advertising dollars also do not mesh well with sites heavy in pornographic content. On the positive side Marissa Mayer did promise “not to screw it up”, which at least suggests some self-awareness and understanding of history. However, to avoid the screwing, they have to understand what the ‘it’ actually is, and I wouldn’t bet a dollar on that.

Bacchus has been blogging heavily on this topic in the last few days. So if you have an adult tumblr I’d advise reading his posts on tumblr’s robots.txt behavior, searching your tumblr and backing up your tumblr. In the meantime I’ll leave you with an image from the 11% of adult material on tumblr. I found this on Alternative Femdom. I believe it’s originally by the photographer Valentin Casarsa.

Wrapped In Rope

Playing with a cliché

I like this image for the way it takes a standard fetish scenario and twists it. Leather boots and trampling are featured all over the place in femdom imagery. But substitute some hard wearing combat boots and some real pain into the situation, and suddenly it has a very different feel to it. It pushes masochistic buttons rather than fetishistic ones.

I also like the practicality of the boots. A domme should be comfortable in what she’s wearing. Over the top fetish footwear can be fun, but it shouldn’t be confused with dominance and submission.

Trampling with combat boots

I found this on the Work is Never Over tumblr. Based on the watermark I believe this is originally from Nero di Venere.

Something for the weekend

Specifically a few animated GIFs. I think it’s amusing how animated GIFs have gone in and out of fashion. They were initially and briefly wildly popular in the 90’s thanks to Netscape and the novelty factor. Then they were horribly passé and a sign of a web page amateur. Now, a decade or so later, have now made a mini comeback. As the Oatmeal says, it’s kind of cool. Plus, their looping style makes them ideal for porn!

The animations below have more of a sexual and sensual theme than the S&M slanted ones I usually feature. I hope you enjoy them. As usual I’m hosting only a still frame from the sequence. Click through on the image to go to the tumblr page with the animation on it.

On Top
Leg Over
Dining Out
Eye Contact
Choke Fuck
After

White Shirt, Armor bonus +1.

I was amused but slightly saddened to stumble across this post over at the Repair Her Armour tumblr. It provides some entertaining drawings of the typical outfits for female characters in on-line role playing games. As you’d expect practicality is not high on the requirement list. Obviously just the thing you want for protection when charging into a cave full of orcs is a metal bikini and stiletto heels.

Predictably enough there’s a dominatrix style outfit on the list. The tumblr artist also gets bonus points for noting that these games often can’t seem to decide if it’s supposed to be a dominatrix or a slave outfit. They just throw a bunch of leather, chains and spikes at it and call it good. Some kinky photographers do much the same thing.

I’m not opposed to some leather and chains now and again, but even in a BDSM setting they can get a bit old. So it made a nice change to find these two images, with nary a hint of cow hide in sight. Just a barefoot woman in a white shirt taking charge of her guy.

Binding his wrists
Resting on his chest
The images are from the Woman Worship site. I found them originally on the Geek Domme tumblr.

For anyone wandering about the slightly odd title – armor bonus is an old RPG term and reflects just how much protection an item of clothing gives. Oddly the strange metal bikinis and leather lingerie that female characters get stuck with often seems to offer the same protection as a full suit of armor. In this case her white shirt isn’t going to help much against a bunch of orcs, but this guy doesn’t look like he’s about to put up much of a fight.

Beware of guys with cameras

I often turn up for a session with a camera in my pocket. I like to document some of the more interesting activities I get to experience, even if the end results aren’t exactly studio quality. However, it turns out there’s another type of guy with a camera, and as Rain DeGrey entertainingly describes in this blog post, he’s someone to be avoided at all costs. It sounds like a horrible situation, but she turns it into a great anecdote.

I wrote about the cost of hiring a professional fetish model sometime ago. At the time I commented favorable on the comparison to hiring a pro-domme (for example), while at the same time making it clear these were not in anyway comparable activities. Obviously some other guys can do the same maths, but arrive at very different conclusions.

Of course the sign of a really talented photographer is when somebody will actually pay you to shoot them. One of the best in the BDSM world is Natasha Gornik. She’s the photographer of choice for a lot of the top pro-dommes. So after Rain’s tale of terrible photography, let’s finish with a couple of great shot’s from Natasha’s portfolio.

Photograph by Natasha Gornik
Photograph by Natasha Gornik

Antsy

It has been a couple of weeks since I last played and the absence of action is starting to make me grumpy. Some people get sub-drop after playing. I get lack-of-sub-drop.

What’s holding me back is an annoying minor injury. It turns out that scowling at a body part doesn’t make it heal any faster. Nor does prodding it every few minutes. Or concentrating really really hard on healing thoughts. I feel like evolution has let me down. Of course I want my body to get better so I can hurt it again. Perhaps it’s getting smart? Healthy equals that nasty lady in leather hitting it. Niggling injury just equals the odd prod from its disgruntled inhabitant.

I need to feel like this guy again. That controlling arm around the throat. The squeeze of the hand to the face. Slowly sinking back into her control. The warmth of her. So close but untouchable. Damn. That would be good.

Controlling his air

I found this image on the Isn’t he lovely when he cries tumblr. It’s originally from the Divine Bitches site.

Forcefully taken

This is one of those images that made my breath catch in my throat when I saw it. It was a real ‘oh…my…God’ moment. A particular position and situation that I’d never even thought about suddenly became a question of ‘When and how can I make this thing happen?’. The forceful screw up against a restroom wall is a common enough trope in movies (both pornographic and mainstream), but somehow I’d never pictured it in the femdom context.

A forceful pegging

I’m afraid I don’t have an original attribution for it. I found it via the Miss K tumblr.

Updated: Thanks to my observant and knowledgeable readers (in this case scottie), I have a proper attribution. This is Empress Cruel. I think it’s from this clip on the TD24 site. Empress Cruel herself has retired and has no main web site that I can find.

Bondage mouth puppet

I’m continuing the Japanese femdom theme, but coming forward a few decades. I’d guess this is from the 80’s or 90’s, although I don’t have an original attribution.

The mouth and nose are often neglected in BDSM play. Gags get stuffed in, hoods pulled over or faces fucked, but it’s rare to see people actively playing in a narrow focused way like this. Which is odd, because it’s such a sensitive and important area. It’s how we taste, smell and breath. It’s how we communicate. It’s packed with both nerve endings and symbology. It’s an opening into the body. A vulnerability.

Of course there are some practical considerations. It’s hard to hide marks on the face. I did some face rope bondage with Troy Orleans earlier this year, and didn’t pay too much attention to her warning about the marks that were left. I stopped at a tiny Italian cafe on my way home and wondered why the guy kept glancing up to stare at me as he fiddled with his espresso machine. It wasn’t until I looked in the mirror back at my hotel that I saw the unmistakable deep rope impressions that ran from the sides of my mouth up across my cheeks. I don’t think the barista could have been in any doubt what they were.

Bondage and face torture

As I mentioned I’m afraid I have no attribution for this. It looks like an image scanned from an old BDSM magazine. I do have a shot from another angle showing a close-up of the face.

Bondage as art

A Guardian article on Nobuyoshi Araki caught my eye recently and sent me on a trip down memory lane. If you haven’t heard the name before, he’s a prolific and famous Japanese photographer. He’s probably best known for his images of Kinbaku, aka women in bondage (for example this, this and this). The article itself is a fairly silly one on on the nonsensical topic of art versus pornography, but the man himself has a special place in my heart.

I originally came across his work in the 1990’s when I was still in college. One of the major British television networks showed a documentary about him, which was surprising given the explicit nature of his artwork. The program featured a lot of bondage and showed him working with riggers and models to create complex and beautiful shots. I found it amazing. At the time my exposure to BDSM imagery, and particularly bondage imagery, was very limited. The UK had strict rules on BDSM porn and most of it was either sloppy cheap vintage bondage or cheesy commercial rubbish. Yet here was a real artist taking the subject seriously, working with a skilled team, and showing how beautiful proper rope bondage could be. It opened my eyes to the potential of BDSM for being more than just a bit of kinky fun in the bedroom.

Unfortunately, for the purposes of this blog, I’m not aware of any femdom slanted pieces that he has done. So instead I’ll feature some alternative Japanese bondage, in this case it’s a vintage piece from 1954.

Vintage Japanese Femdom

You can see more from the same publication in this gallery. I believe (based on Google Translation) it’s from a magazine called Kitan Club.

I now pronounce you…

One of the things I’ve really come to appreciate about the West Coast of the US is the attitude to weddings here. They’re so much more relaxing and enjoyable than the formal English equivalent. There’s no interminable church service, followed by hours of formal photographs in the church grounds, followed by endless speeches over dinner. I’ve been to weddings here where I strolled from the bar to the ceremony, and the whole thing was done before I’d finished my drink. Hell, my ice didn’t even have time to melt.

In the unlikely event I ever did get hitched, a West Coast style wedding would definitely be my preference, and I’d hope for a few wedding photographs like this one. It’s the third and final one of my little wedding mini-series, and my personal favourite. I love their smiles. Plus, a few shots like this would definitely discourage parents from dragging out the wedding album every time they visited.

Wedding Smiles

I found this on the She wears the trousers tumblr. Annoyingly I’ve been unable (for the second post in a row) to track down the original source for it.