Thwarted by technology

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last couple of days. My Comcast internet connection has been somewhat unreliable. I’ve been trying to think of a striking metaphor to express just how unreliable. Political promises, old British sportscars and Fox news all came and went as possible comparison points. However, it just struck me that a Comcast internet connection itself might be the definitive benchmark. It defines the standard. So I guess my internet connection is as unreliable as a Comcast internet connection.

I don’t think that they’re the worst company in the world, as they just got voted, but they’re certainly frustrating. In my fantasy world I’d be able to call on this strong armed woman to sort them out. Anytime my connection went down, she’d spring into action. Their engineers would have to be ready, pants around their ankles, from 8am to 2pm everyday I had a problem. Then she’d arrive at 1:59pm, tell them she didn’t have the right kind of paddle and disappear, only returning after several hours to wallop the hell out of them. With that kind of determined look I’m sure she’d get quick results.

Hard PaddlingI believe this is Audrey Knight from the site Clare Spanks Men. I found it on the Male Pet tumblr.

Check out my enormous package

I have no idea what’s going on here. His pose is an aggressive ‘look at this big boy’, more usually found when brandishing an appendage rather than a huge medieval chastity device. She’s also got a look of ‘oh my, that’s a big one’, something better suited to lustful appreciation than chastity key holding.

I’ve failed to track down a source or an artist. If I had to guess I’d say it’s a vintage comic or book cover done by an artist used to illustrating more traditional erotica. Often illustrators in the 60’s and 70’s were simply given the title of a new publication and told to use their imagination. Perhaps this title featured femdom and chastity, but the artist couldn’t imagine anything other than a thrusting male and a wide eyed female.

Medieval Male Chastity

I found this on the Old Erotic Art tumblr.

French maid, done right

Here’s another common femdom theme that I don’t cover too often – ‘forced’ feminization. I personally like the idea of transformation and playing with gender roles, but I’m less keen on frills, prancing and humiliation. However, this guy is rocking that French maid outfit. It actually looks really good on him. It’s helped by the appropriate old school mansion setting and the haughty and elegant lady of the house. She doesn’t look like she’d stand for any prancing or simpering.

French MaidThis is originally from the Subby Hubby site. I found it on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.

Rope & candles

I don’t feature a lot of posts with female submissive imagery. In fact, looking at my post tagging, there have been around 60 Ff images, out of over 1,200 total posts. That’s not because I don’t appreciate it. I enjoy its aesthetic and can relate to the submissive experience of any gender. The problem is that so many Femdom/Femsub images end up fixated on the submissive at the cost of the dominant and the dynamic between them. They end up being femsub rather than femdom, and I figure there are quite enough pictures of bound and gagged women floating around with a blog about female dominance adding to them.

This image is an example that strikes the right balance for me. The dominant is an integral part of the scene, and it nicely captures a moment of tension. It also continues the Shibari theme from yesterday’s post, which pleases the anal retentive blogger in me. It’s by the artist RedPandaDee and, according to his comment on it, the dominant is Saki Kamijoo and the submissive is Skinny Redhead. You can see a video of Saki Kamijoo at work here.

Saki Kamijoo by RedPandaDee

Rope & heels

I love the fact that this very intricate bondage is both beautiful and functional. Shibari is frequently aesthetically pleasing, but can sometimes look impractical for serious play or simply be ornate without restraining. This pulls off all the elements. I particularly like the detailing around his feet and legs. Those heels look painful, but I don’t think he’s going to be getting away.

Rope and heels by Mistress Juri

This is by Mistress Juri from Ginza Prezis, as featured previously in this post.

Experimenting with gargalesis

Sometimes I can be a little slow. For example, I spent ages starting at this image trying to figure it out. Why, I wondered, are two women tickling him, while the third is drawing a picture of a costumed superhero? How could those different things possibly be related? Only after an embarrassingly long time did I figure out that the third woman is actually drawing a color coded map of his ticklish zones. That’s both scientific and particularly evil.

In my defense I will say that I’m extremely ticklish, so a color coded map wouldn’t make much sense for me. All my body parts trigger a strong reaction, so it’d just be red all over. I can’t say I particularly kink on being tickled, but I have noticed that some dommes really get a kick out of the reaction they can provoke with it. So I do enjoy feeding off their reaction to my reaction. It’s a perversely entertaining feedback loop.

Incidentally, the title of the post features the scientific name for tickling. Femdom Resource – bringing you entirely accurate and completely useless information, one post at a time.

Tickle torture

I found this image on the Lunar Black tumblr. It’s initialed with something that looks like DH??, but I can’t track down the artist. If anyone knows then please leave a comment.

Chilly willy

Last month I ranted on the topic of limits and avoiding them. I didn’t intend that rant to turn into a monthly occurrence but, as luck would have it, I do have a new topic to address – chilly dungeons. It’s not quite as serious an issue, but what use is a blog if you can’t have a good rant now and again?

Admittedly a cold dungeon is probably more realistic. I doubt that medieval castles had much in the way of underfloor heating or goose down duvets for their prisoners. Yet oddly enough, when I’m naked and being carefully tied to a spanking bench by an attractive lady dressed in leather and heels, historical accuracy isn’t high on my list of requirements.

You might also think that a masochist would enjoy the extra torment of a freezing space. Or that it might help distract from the actual pain being inflicted. Yet oddly enough, I find it makes it much harder to deal with intense play. Everything is more snappy and stingy when it’s cold. Skin is more sensitive, and it’s hard to get into the right head space when being distracted by shivering body parts. I want to relax and soak into the pain, not spend my time wondering how warm the straight jacket hanging in the corner would be.

In the handful of times I’ve encountered this problem, it has never been the fault of the domme I was playing with. They’ve always been renting a space that was badly set-up, too cold to start with, and they couldn’t fix it in the time we had available. So if you’re reading this and you own a play space, my ask to you is either…

  1. Design it as one or more small spaces that can be warmed up quickly and individually, or
  2. Get enormous and efficient space heaters that can quickly warm up your large space, or
  3. Have some way of dynamically partitioning up the space (e.g. heavy curtains) so that one area can be heated separately if necessary.

I think the perfect set-up is to have one large traditional playroom and then several smaller spaces that can be used if necessary. That’s what Lydia has and what I’ve seen in several other commercial spaces. Or I guess you could live in a hot region and play outside like these two. He might now have to worry about ants and spiders, but at least he’s warm.

Outside

This is Isis Love and Rok from a Men in Pain shoot. I found it on the Femdom Experience tumblr.

Fuzzy handcuffs

I really hope the next words out of her mouth are something like  – “What the hell are these? Do you think this is amateur hour? Go find my toy chest and bring back the heavy manacles, the ball gag and the largest of my strap-ons”. That should really give him something to grin about.

FuzzyHandcuffs

Grovelling as an art form

I typically shy away from Western articles on the less mainstream parts of Japanese culture. They’re often thinly concealed racism expressed as a veneer of humor around cultural differences. However, this article by Kotaku manages to avoid that trap while presenting some brilliant animated gifs. They’re all about assuming the supplicant or grovelling position, but in increasingly elaborate and acrobat ways. Fortunately, for readers of this blog, the grovelling is all happening before attractive and haughty women. I particularly like the final pyramid apology style, although it does suggest that if they’d spent less time practicing it and more time actually doing the original task, they might not have needed to grovel in the first place.

The image below is from the livedoor page the Kotaku article was derived from. I’m not sure that standing on your head counts as an apology, but it’s certainly eye catching.

Is this an apology?

Learning to scream

It’s important that a masochist learns to scream correctly. Not to mention moan, whimper, flinch and wince. Volume or pitch isn’t important, but consistency and honesty is. Anytime I play I’m trying to give good feedback about the intensity of the experience and what headspace I’m in. It’s not like I get hit and then think “Hmmm, that feels like a level 7 moan. And maybe a level 5 flinch.” Instead I aim for a natural transparent reaction, and to resist the urge to occasionally exaggerate my response in order to control the scene. When the intensity is ratcheting up it can sometimes be tempting to do that and get ahead of what I know might be coming.

Of course, an expert domme can normally accurately assess just how painful her actions are and how genuine the reaction to them is. For the less experienced then help maybe at hand. It turns out that computers can be amazingly good at judging how genuine a reaction to pain is. According to this article, when shown video of people experiencing or faking pain, humans were essentially hopeless at guessing which was which, while computer software got it right 85% of the time. I find that an astonishing number. It would be interesting to put a selection of dominants through the same test and see if they were any better at spotting the fakers. I also wonder if adding sound to the test would have significantly improved the score for the humans.

Apparently one of the best indicators is the dynamics of the mouth opening. I’d guess this scene would provide some useful training data for the software. I don’t think he’s faking it.

Man in pain

This is from the Men in Pain site. I found it on the Alternative Femdom tumblr.