Tarantino-esque

This popped up on my twitter feed the other day, courtesy of Mistress Kinako. Oddly enough, it put me in mind of Quentin Tarantino. He’s the master of taking an old and slightly disreputable film genre and giving it a post-modern makeover. In this case it’d be a schlocky 70’s zombie horror movie. In the Tarantino remake the only thing between civilization and the ravenous zombies are a group of highly trained Japanese schoolgirls, capable of slicing and dicing zombies in many inventive ways whilst also looking cute and keeping their uniforms clean. In this particular shot they’ve captured a zombie for study and experimentation. I’m sure that there’s absolutely no chance he’ll break free of those ropes and go marauding through the underground research lab in act two.

St. Vincent

The image below is promotional material from St. Vincent and her current tour for Masseducation. It popped up on my vanilla facebook feed (probably because she’s playing Seattle next month), but the kinky elements made me briefly wonder if I’d crossed the streams with my kinky social media life. She’d definitely sporting the kind of stare that features on many pro-domme gallery pages.

If you like this image then her video for Los Ageless has some similar themes. I only started listing to her music recently, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve found so far.

Femdom in the Twitterverse

Domina Victoria Rage has an interesting and thoughtful post up on the culture of twitter around kink and femdom. I’m somewhat of a twitter newbie – only having joined a couple of months back – but I’ve definitely observed the phenomena she comments on. Like her I follow a mix of kinksters of various persuasions and orientations and, as regular blog readers might guess, a fair number of pro-dommes. Most tweets from that group seem to fall into the following categories…

  1. Fun sexy stuff from playing or the planning that goes along with it.
  2. Issues and complaints related to sex work in general or specific client behavior.
  3. Comments and jokes about politics, life, food, etc.
  4. Plugging new photos, site updates, travel plans, etc.
  5. Aggressive marketing leaning on the specific D/s dynamic where submissives are all pathetic losers and worms not fit to be in the presence of the angelic domme. Oh, and send money you beta cuck.

The problems obviously comes from dommes who frequently or exclusively tweet in that final category. It’s also not a new problem. For more years than I’ve been writing this blog people have been complaining about that dynamic (often from femdom porn) polluting the more general femdom environment. However, it seems so much more front and center in twitter than anywhere else I’ve seen. Rather than negotiating and opting into a consensual dynamic, it’s like there’s a constant background hum of humiliation, abuse and fin-domme.

Obviously careful curation of who you follow can help limit it, but that’s not really the problem here. I might by mildly annoyed by marketing in the form of abuse, but it’s not going to warp my views on D/s or kink. I worry more about people new to it  and using twitter as a means of exploration. At least with a porn video it’s pretty clear exactly what is. A tweet from a domme seems so much more personal. I think it’d be very easy to form the opinion that humiliation and abuse are a standard way for dommes to interact with submissives, rather than a specific kink to be negotiated and explored within a defined scene. As Domina Victoria eloquently puts it.

…if you’ve encountered some of that negativity online and it’s left a bitter taste in your mouth or put you off of exploring kink – just know, those individuals do not represent the majority. I, and every other reputable Top I’m aware of, share the sentiment that it’s vital to love, cherish and adore your submissive partners and admirers. Domination doesn’t come from a place of indifference, anger or blatant disregard.

This image is of the lovely Victoria Rage herself. If you’re in the Seattle area and wish to schedule a session, her professional page is here.

A National Treasure

I’m always fascinated by stories that capture a unique aspect of a particular culture. For example, in the US articles arising from the gun control debate are both common and unique to its culture. Nowhere else is that kind of discussion happening. This story from Japan last year was another example of a story that could seemingly only be written in that country. Nowhere else allows hardcore pornography while simultaneously prosecuting someone distributing an abstract mathematical model of the female genitalia.

The latest example I have is from France – who just declared the Marquis de Sade’s manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom a National Treasure. I can’t think of many countries whose politicians would he happy to declare a snuff pornography book – featuring teenage girls being tortured to death and children raped – as a national treasure. I don’t state it in that way to necessarily say there were wrong to do it, just to emphasize the cultural dissonance. Even by modern standards, Sade’s work remains shocking and unpleasant. While I can imagine a lot of politicians owning and jerking off to a copy, I can’t imaging many outside of France speaking up to defend its cultural value.

Sade of course gave us the word sadism, which gives me an excuse to feature a nice sadistic image. I’m not exactly sure what’s just happened in the scene below to make him dance like that – I’m guessing that riding crop she’s holding was involved somehow – but it certainly looks like it hurts.

I believe this is originally from the Sado Ladies site.

The Big Boot

This is one for fans of boots and bondage – two things that aren’t normally combined in this way. I’ve heard of thigh highs, but never armpit highs. Now I come to think of it, I’m surprised no enterprising fetish manufacturer has produced a leather bondage sack that’s shaped like a boot. I can’t think it’d be to hard to modify a standard sleep sack to look like one. The intersection between bondage lover and boot lover is probably a decent size market.

I found this via Pitt Prickel’s twitter feed, where it’s attributed to Rudolf Schlichter.

Just a little off the sides

I’m endlessly fascinating by why unexpected things can  elicit strong emotional reactions in people – both in the good and bad sense. I very much include myself in the target category, as even in my 40’s I’m still discovering stuff that can push my buttons in ways I didn’t expect. Normally that’s a good thing – it means there’s a fun new experience to explore – but not always.

One thing I only just discovered I had a strong negative reaction to was head shaving as part of a kinky dynamic. Isabella Sinclaire recently did a sequence of posts with the female submissive Greyh0und who’d been shaved just a few days before. From the comments a lot of people liked the look, but I personally found it very disquieting. I think because it puts me in  mind of concentration camp prisoners, and once that thought enters my head there’s no getting rid of it. I don’t make that connection with shaved heads in daily life, but there’s something about the combination with a power dynamic that pushes my internal ‘nuh huh’ button.

For those that do enjoy it, the image below is from a fun video for Charly Calderon photography. Check it out if a woman on a mission with a razor is your kind of thing.

Sniffder

I’m used to flipping past some fairly crazy kinky outfits on my tumblr and twitter feeds. This one gave me a moment of pause however. Lots of kinky equipment focuses on controlling movement, breathing, eating, sight, etc. There’s not much that targets the sense of smell. If it’s considered at all, smell is usually a second order effect from materials like leather and latex. This cuts all those out and goes straight for the natural pheromones.

Amazingly, it’s not actually from a kinky source. It’s an art/science project by James Auger focused on blind dating and predicting compatibility. It was part of an exhibit at Moma and was featured in the NY Times.

It may not have started off with a kinky slant, but I can imagine a lot of people wanting to use it that way. Particularly if modified from a two  way to one way flow.

Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can

This image isn’t femdom, but I liked it too much to not feature it in a post. It’s normally hard enough to get a suspension scene with a single person right, let alone get a small crowd suspended successfully and simultaneously.

It puts me in mind of a scene from a Spiderman comic, where he’s just zipped past a bunch of dimwitted henchmen, sticking them to the walls and ceiling with webbing. In the best traditions of supervillain henchmen, they’ve even all got color coordinated outfits on.

I found this image via this tweet. Based on the translation, I’m guessing it’s from a bondage workshop in Paris.