January Seraph

I seem to be starting posts these days with an apology. Yesterday it was for a lack of blog activity. Today it’s for a topic that is probably not the kind of thing that most people come here to read, but that I feel is worth addressing. Luckily I’m English, so apologizing comes naturally.

Regular and longtime readers will have seen many past posts featuring January Seraph. For example, here, here, here, here and several others. She even had nice things to say about this blog. Sadly – and that seems a horribly inadequate word in the circumstances – she recently took her own life.

While I didn’t know her personally, I did want to write a post to commemorate her and all she achieved. She was highly talented and obviously contributed a great deal to the femdom community, working as a BDSM educator, artist, film producer, femdom model and pro-domme. She wrote intelligently on kink and it’s hard to browse the femdom tumblr’s without coming across examples of her work. The people who did work with her had many nice things to say. When a friend of hers was sick with cancer I remember her putting a lot of time and effort into raising money for her and helped to care for her.  By all accounts she was a very smart, creative and empathetic person who’ll be greatly missed. My heart goes out to her family and friends.

From  reports on social media she was suffering from the horribly destructive brain illness of depression. If anyone reading this is suffering in a similar way then please call a local hotline or a national one.

I’ll leave you with these shots of January (on the right) fooling around having fun with her friend Lady Bellatrix.

 

Problems

Apologies for the inactivity on the site recently. Over the weekend there was yet another technical issue with my web hosting company that took the site offline for many hours. That’s the third repeat of the issue in as many months, but like all modern technical companies, it’s almost impossible to get a human contact and a clear technical answer on what the problem was. Then, just as soon as I got that fixed, I screwed my back up and ended up horizontal on the floor. Being unable to bend or sit is not really conducive to blogging.

Anyway, hopefully the site is back and my back is good. Or, if good is too much to hope for, at least it’ll let me sit and type for short periods. By way of apology, here’s a hot and sexy image from the ever talented Yumine Guo. I’m not a CFNM fan per se, but there’s something lovely about his naked openess and her casual and clothed perch on the couch.

The head and other stuff

I love the construction and elegance of this drawing. There’s a striking contrast between the detail used for the head and the sparse but expressive lines used for the body and cock.

One of the oddities of BDSM is that there are endless tortuous and inventive things that can be done to all the different part of the body, yet it often ends up being about what’s happening in the head. I don’t mean in the slightly cliched sense of the brain being the biggest erogenous zone, but that intense sensations cause a turning inwards and a focus on a sense of self. When pushed hard I often feel I retreat to my head and inner-consciousness, with my body becoming abstract and somewhat distant. This drawing captures a little bit of that feeling for me.

The artist is Robert Richards. His work almost exclusively features men, but feel free to imagine a hot dominant woman in an exciting outfit of your choice just slightly out of frame in this picture.

Doctor Who?

The BBC has announced that the new Doctor Who will be Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to take the role. The reactions to this were entirely predictable: A lot of positive comments; a lot of whining about the PC police ruining the character; a lot of internet analysis of the significance of the decision and what the subsequent whining tells us about society and internet culture.

I used to watch the original series as a child, when Tom Baker and Peter Davidson took the role, but I’ve never really got into the recent revival of the series. As I’ve mentioned before, for someone with geeky tendencies, I’m not big on sci-fi and fantasy shows (with one exception). I’ll probably check out this new incarnation of the Doctor however. Jodie Whittaker was good in Broadchurch and, if the scripts are decent, I can see her creating an intriguing version of the character.

I was tempted to finish this post with some hot Doctor Who cosplay, but decided that the image below was more suited to this blog. It features the characters Amy Pond, Rory Williams and the eleventh Doctor. I’m afraid I don’t know the artist.

Learning from an expert

Last week I wrote in a post about BDSM and medical treatment that I figured medical professionals would have seen crazier things than any kink related injury I could turn up with. Apparently in Scotland they’re not leaving that kind of knowledge acquisition to chance. At Napier university in Edinburgh, healthcare professional on a graduate course are getting a lesson on sex work and kink from pro-domme Megara Furie.

It seems like an excellent idea. Sex workers and kinksters indulging in risky physical activity are exactly the kind of people who need to be able to talk openly to health professionals. As Megara says…

I’m definitely up for anything that helps to educate people and brings this out into the open. It takes away some stigma and makes everyone’s life easier.
Megara, 33, finds that her own forthright approach puts most nurses and doctors at ease.
She said: “I’m very open about what I do. I don’t explain my job and then look at my feet. I say, ‘Yeah, I’m a dominatrix, I love what I do.’ I’m very positive about it myself.

I’ve featured her in a previous post, and doing so again gives me the chance to use this image from Megara’s twitter feed. I’ve no idea what it’s about, but I do hope that teddy bear knows his safe word.

You can find Megara’s main site for arranging sessions here.

Putting the fun in

I’ve observed professional dommes offering all sorts of things for sale over the years. Their time and expertise is the traditional purchase, but some branch out into items of clothing, video clips, artwork, used toys, worn shoes, bodily fluids, etc. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen stickers before. Alice in Bondage Land has now put that right with these rather excellent ‘Putting the fun back in Femdom’ stickers. To be honest, I’m actually not sure if they’re for sale or just promotional freebies, but either way, I think they’re great. I’d certainly like one to slap onto a travel bag or computer case.

This image comes the Alice in Bondage Land twitter feed.

Desert Domination

I have several ideas for longer posts I want to write, but an unfortunate lack of time to do the actual writing. So I’m going to cheat again today, and simply feature some lovely content from another domme I’d love to renew my acquaintance with. This is from a recent gallery update from Mistress Iris and I spotted it via her twitter feed.

These kind of scenes might not be what you’d aim for in a typical play session, but I do appreciate the effort to do something both unusual and visual striking. I don’t really want to be whipped and abandoned in the desert, but I do want to play with the kind of domme who’ll use her time and imagination to put together something creative beyond the typical ‘sneering domme in fetish gear’ shots.

You can see more shots from this scene on her gallery pages. While Mistress Iris is undoubtedly beautiful, that car is pretty damn sexy as well. I love old school convertibles.

Relaxed Selfie

It has been a while since I played, and a while I traveled anywhere. I don’t have an immediate plan to fix that, but I’m beginning to feel the urge to put one together. Browsing the twitter feeds of some of my favorite dommes and seeing their session snaps is certainly adding fuel to that fire. For example, the shot is from Domina Yuki’s twitter, and looks like a very fun way to spend an afternoon.

Travelling with Toys

I’m going to continue yesterday’s theme of the kinky world intersecting with the professional world. Previously it was the doctors and kink, this time it’s airline staff and kink. Specifically, Rain DeGrey and the Southwest team at Portland.

As Rain describes in her recent post, she was travelling with a beautiful new metal cane, which unfortunately wouldn’t fit in her travelling bags. Most people (myself included) would have surreptitiously dumped it somewhere rather than try and explain it. Instead, Rain attempted to gift it to the airline staff and, after some confusion and an explanation featuring the dreaded fifty shades, managed to find a suitably out and kinky employee to take it.

So while some people are nervous about a private visit to a doctor with a BDSM injury, others are happy to distribute BDSM toys to confused airlines employees on a public concourse. Hopefully the cane is now being put to good kinky use somewhere in Portland. Or even better, Southwest are going to use it to beat passengers who insist on bringing too many carry on bags on board and hogging all the overhead bins.

This elegantly attired lady is Domina Louiza, a Berlin based pro-domme. If you wish to be on the receiving end of that stout cane, her contact info is here.

Do no harm

I’ve joked with dommes in the past that if I end up in an emergency room as a result of a scene, they’ll need to come along and explain what the hell was going on. It’s a fair division of responsibilities. I’m good at lying down and moaning in pain. They’re good at taking charge and giving instructions. That’ll be true both whether we’re mid-play scene or mid-medical emergency. Everyone should play to their strengths.

While I’ve fortunately not (yet) ended up in an ER, I don’t think I’d have any hesitation about using one if necessary. I figure anyone working there has probably seen far crazier things than anything I’m likely to turn up with. However, things aren’t always so simple, as this Daily Beast article on the Tokyo BDSM scene describes. It features an interview with a man who acts as an informal doctor to injured kinksters in Japan. Intense and physical activities will always carry the possibility of injury, and that’s heightened when sexual desires are screwing around with people’s risk analysis ability. Unfortunately, many participants in that scene find taking an injury to their regular doctor problematic.

“Some are not sure Japan’s national health insurance will cover their injuries. Things like damaged nipples are not easy to explain.

There are many reasons those who are in the fetish world as a business hesitate to go see a real doctor—shame and fear for their professional reputation,” the Doctor says. “They also worry that the police will treat the case as an assault rather than an accident between two consenting adults. Of course, the issue of losing face is huge too.”

He has therefore filled a niche treating injuries in an unofficial capacity, doing demonstrations and giving talks on safe kinky practices.

From an outsiders perspective, looking at the erotica they produce and the public face of kink in Japan, it’s tempting to think their culture is much more accepting of BDSM. Articles like this one (and past examples like this) show the true picture is considerably more complex.

The article also interviews Leigh Leh Lee who, among other things, works as a dominatrix and rigger. This cute couple is her work as featured on her instagram feed.