Mommy vs Rockstar

I was thinking more about service dynamics (following my last post) and then this Bluesky thread on the challenges of an FLR. That in turn reminded me of a description of FLR dynamics I read years ago and that stuck with me.

The theory was that you could categorize these relationships into two categories – Mommy/Child and Rockstar/PA. The Mommy dynamic is a micromanaging one, focused on giving the submissive detailed step by step actions to complete. The submissive is supposed to do exactly what he’s told and not take the initiative. In contrast, the Rockstar dynamic is focused on end results. The submissive is supposed to act like a personal assistant, smoothing out the bumps of life. The domme doesn’t want to be hassled with details. If they want French food for dinner, the submissive figures out the restaurant, the reservation, the transport, etc.

I liked this categorization. It’s obviously broad and not all FLR dynamics / relationships will fall strictly into one camp or the other, but I thought it had the ring of truth. It’s also interesting to note that they place the workload in two different places. For the first one, the workload is on the domme to micromanage the submissive. For the second, the workload is on the submissive to deliver solutions and remove obstacles in the dommes life.

Reading that Bluesky thread it made me wonder if part of the problem is a mismatch between these two dynamics. If the submissive is expecting a micromanaging mommy and the domme wants an intuitive personal assistant, things are bound to go awry.

This is an old captioned tumblr image. It’s obviously leaning into the micromanaging mommy dynamic.

Service

I’m digging back into the old tumblr archives for this shot. Not exactly sure what the original context for it was, but I like the vibe.

When I was younger most of my fantasies were achievable kinks that I wanted to do but lacked the opportunity. Now I’m older, and have had some of those opportunities open up, most of my remaining fantasies are probably best left that way. They’re either too extreme or too mundane. The idea of being in service as a butler probably falls into the latter category. It’s hot in theory but likely boring in practice.

Misdirection

I had one follow-up thought to my previous post on the cliche of wealthy men in high status jobs seeing pro-dommes to escape stress. I’m obviously skeptical about that and it struck me that there’s a kind of misdirection going on here.

People enjoy kink because it sexually excites them. They get off on restraints or leather or pain or piss or whatever floats their boat. To put it coarsely, in the case of our cliched male executive type, it makes his dick hard.

Positioning it as a way to unwind and relieve stress sanitizes that. It turns it into a kind of therapy or wellness treatment. It’s like a leather themed spa day for the C-series.

A story about a CEO who sees a domme to explore his relationship with control and how to let go is a wholesome one. He’s working on himself. It’s a slightly risque but basically feelgood article for a family newspaper.

A story about a CEO who sees a domme because he gets off on wearing fishnet stockings while getting fucked up the ass by a tall lady with a big strap-on? That’s the kind of pervert who should be ashamed of himself.

That’s not to say kink is all about pure pleasure. It can be therapeutic or  intellectually stimulating. But that’s a happy byproduct of something that comes from a more fundamental drive.

This image of executive types working on themselves is a fashion/art shoot by Chloe Chippendale featuring Nadia Lee Cohen for Re-edition magazine. I sourced it via Labstrakts tumblr

That Cliche Again

The Guardian has been running articles featuring photographers picking out their favorite photograph – My Best Shot. It’s a fun series that adds context to some striking imagery. The one that caught me eye for the purposes of this blog was by Giada Ripa and showed Shibari bondage performed by a Japanese domme. The accompanying story tells of a 150 year old photograph collection, the people behind it and Giada’s contemporary response to it.

While I enjoyed the article, it did annoy me with its recycling of an old cliche. That’s the claim that the domme’s clients are mostly men with high pressure, stressful jobs.

I guess that could mean they’re ER doctors, teachers in tough schools and people trying to hold down two minimum wage jobs while bringing up a family. Probably not though. More likely she means that they’re well off executive types who can afford to regularly visit a pro-domme.

My career in tech has been relatively successful. I rub shoulders with executive types a fair amount. I’ve even been in meetings with a tech billionaire or two. I’m very confident in saying that very few of them are stressed or under abnormal pressure. If anything the higher you go, the easier it is. They have assistants to smooth the way and HR departments to handle their dirty work. Everyone listens to what they say, their ideas are praised and teams of people leap into action when they give instructions. They’re paid a lot to do their job and a lot when they leave their job. They might work long hours, but that’s hardly a rare thing these days.

Human’s have an innate desire to see things as fair. We want rewards to align with effort and achievement. So we create this fiction about the pressure and stress of business leaders. They must be doing something to earn all that money. Otherwise, where’s the justice?

In reality, there’s there’s not much justice when it comes to the distribution of wealth and resources these days. And kinks are definitely not aligned to career choices or an ability with corporate politics.

You can see the Giada’s image in the linked article. For this post’s image I thought I’d go with another and more intense take on Shibarai bondage. This is by Alexandra Wildfire as featured on her website.

Alexandra Wildfire is a London based pro-domme. She has a wide variety of interests including Shibari. If you’re not in the London area then her clips store info is here.

A Gift

Here’s some visual loveliness for the weekend. A beautifully composed and sensual image.

Spit is another of those kinks that works in a multitude of ways. Being spat on can be humiliating and degrading. But do it this way and suddenly it’s a reward. A gift from the domme.

Sadly I don’t have a source for this. Google’s reverse image search AI makes all sorts of dumb suggestions, none of which look right. If you can help me attribute then please leave a comment.

Back in the Archives

I’ve been browsing images from old tumblrs recently. Back before they shot themselves in the foot (and head) by shutting down adult sites I ripped a bunch of them to my local storage. There’s no comment or links obviously, but I do have a lot of the images.

Browsing them again, what’s really my caught my eye is the refreshing lack of AI content. Not all the content is great, but it’s at least created by artists and features real people.

My original reason for grabbing the images – other than my instinctive digital pack rat behavior – was the belief that tumblr was going to be PG-13 from then on.  That’s turned out to be only partially true. However, the unexpected benefit has been a big image cache taken before AI slopped everywhere. They’re my version of low background steel. That certainly wasn’t what I was expecting when I originally grabbed them.

As I’ve said before, I’m not religiously against AI. It can be used in interesting ways. But it’s way too easy to spam out endless images that are the visual equivalent of fast food. All gristle, fat and emulsifiers.

This is one of the images from the archive. Not sure of the original source. The hanging weights are a particularly eye catching part of the setup.

Honorifics

The UK is doing stupid authoritarian shit again.  However, it’s too annoying and depressing to post about that, so instead I’m going to talk about honorifics.

I recently read a social media post from a domme complaining about submissives not using her appropriate title. She was fed up with emails that skipped it entirely or used the more general ‘Mistress’. If you’ve built a very consistent personae around a particular title I can totally understand how that would be annoying. However, as someone who – via this blog – has cause to link to and mention a lot of dommes, let me add one or two words of defense.

I’m often surprised at the inconsistency of honorific use. Some dommes will have one title on their site, a different one on their social media banner and then post using yet another one. If someone describes themselves as Domina in one place, Mistress in another and the text on their website uses simply their name, what is the right form of address? I’ve spent way longer than I’d care to admit going back and forth between sites, trying to figure out the right way to title dommes in posts. If the URL to a website is ‘Domina’ but the banner is ‘Goddess’ then which is right?

There’s the added wrinkle that some dommes don’t like to use particular honorifics unless they’ve accepted you as a submissive. Others insist on them from the first point of contact.

I certainly don’t say this to criticize dommes. Or to defend lazy submissives who don’t do their research. Just to highlight that even for someone like myself, involved in the culture and community for many years, it can be sometimes be tricky to get right.

Here’s one answer to slaves who say the wrong thing. It’s tough to get ‘Mpmmphhh!’ wrong. Image is sourced via tumblr and I’m afraid I don’t have an original source.

Well Dressed

One follow-up thought to the sissy themed post from earlier this week. And when I say thought, I mean a series of highly unscientific anecdotal observations from yours truly.

I think if you go back ten or more years and look at material created on the sissy theme, it tended to lean heavily into the extreme. Big wigs, heavy makeup, lots and lots of frilly pink, etc. That in turn tended to lean more into the humiliation elements of the kink. Looking good ran somewhat counter to that primary goal.

I’d suggest that has shifted in recent years. I see a lot more imagery posted on social media where the emphasis is on being well dressed, elegant and with expertly done make-up. There’s obviously still a heavy emphasis on femininity and roles like maid, waitress, escort, etc. The roleplay hasn’t changed but often the approach and style has.

As I said at the top of the post, this is based on nothing more than my random observations. I haven’t been doing a sissy survey or anything. But assuming it’s true, it’s interesting to wonder why it might be. Perhaps more people wanting to explore cross-dressing without being interested in humiliation? Is that in turn triggered by more transgender people being out and visible in society? I’ve no clue, but it’d make for a great research subject.

This image is from the Bluesky feed of Lady Justice. She’s an Edinburgh based pro-domme.

Sissy

Interesting twitter thread here on the subject of sissies from Mistress Mercer and Lady Vi. It’s a pushback on the negative press that type of play can often get. For those who understandably choose not to frequent twitter, I’ll reproduce a couple of the relevant tweets here…

My very first long-term ‘sissy’ partner PROMISED Me they “weren’t trans”, and it was just a weird sex humiliation thing.

She ended up transitioning within 6 months of being in a safe and loving environment where her gender expression and exploration was honored and appreciated.

You absolutely *do not fucking know* what someone is going through, and it’s extremely harmful to judge the way that they are coping, processing, relieving, or coming to terms with their own desires.
Mistress Mercer

It’s true. I took on a sissy years ago who wanted an extended “sissy maid” training session to prepare them for a play date they had (or something along those lines).

We only had one session and then they decided to divorce their wife and transition. People discount how profound it can be to feel safe, seen and accepted.
Lady Vi

I don’t have much to add to the topic, but it seemed like a perspective worth sharing. There must also be a large number of people who have explored this kink and – in an ideal world – would consider transitioning, but can’t bring themselves to take that step. We’re sadly not living in an open minded and accepting time.

Here’s a theme appropriate image sourced from Mistress Mercer’s twitter feed.

Mistress Mercer is a ‘Suffering & Sissification Specialist’ based out of Myrtle Beach, SC. You can find all her relevant links here.