Tag: F

Escalation

Ariel Anderessen has a new substack article up on the subject of pornographic escalation. That’s the highly dubious theory that consumers of porn get bored with their initial sexual interests and seek out harder and harder material. So you might start out with furtive glances at the Sear’s catalogue lingerie section but you’ll ultimately end up masturbating furiously to snuff videos from the dark web.

Ariel gives this theory a good kicking and she’s right to do so. It seems like  a bunch of nonsense from the anti-porn crowd. However, while I agree with everything she says, I think there’s an interesting angle she didn’t cover – evolution of fantasy.

Some people are pretty fixed in their kinks. They liked spanking as a teenager, they like spanking in their 60’s. That’s simply their thing. For others fantasy and interests can evolve over time. I think that’s particularly true when your fundamental kink is an underlying emotion or dynamic rather than a specific act or appearance.

For example, I think one of my main kinks is control. That manifests itself in different ways. The original kinky porn I saw featured bondage and corporal punishment, so that became a means of control that I looked for and fantasized about. Over time I encountered different ways you can play with control and that expanded my interests. Today I think that both cuckolding and toilet play are hot, but they weren’t even on my radar 20 years ago. A casual observer might see that as escalation due to porn. In reality my underlying interest hasn’t changed, it has just found new ways to surface.

I also think that fantasy and pornography tends to exist at the border between what you can do and what you can imagine. If you start exploring your kinks and playing out fantasies in real life, then the porn and erotica you desire tend to shift to the edge of that. For example, I still love bondage and still fantasize about it. But now I do regularly get tied up, the erotica I like tends to shift towards heavier and more extreme bondage (like this story). That might look like pornographic escalation, but it’s not porn that’s caused that. It’s the fact I want my fantasy world to exist slightly ahead of my real life world.

This is a shot of Ariel from her social media feeds. You can find more of her writing on her substack. She’s primarily a sub, but for those who like all types of kink you can find links to her work here.  She also has a memoir out.

Ada

As regular readers may know, I occasionally like to feature women who weren’t sexually dominant (as far as we know) but were amazing and impactful historical figures. For example, a couple of past examples include Julie d’Aubigny and Beryl Swain.

Today, inspired by this article on the Blue Stocking site, I’m featuring another – Ada Lovelace. Given I’ve spent a large part of my life writing software, she’s a figure near and dear to my heart. Her notes on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine are the first example of what we think of today as computer programming. They pre-date the work of the equally brilliant Alan Turing by 100 years. From this article…

She then summarises how a sequence of computations would work on the Analytical Engine; with “Operation Cards” to define the operations to be calculated, and “Variable Cards” to define the locations of values. Lovelace discusses “cycles” and “cycles of cycles, etc”, known to contemporary programmers as loops and nested loops. She gives a mathematical notation for them, which comprises the first instance of a recorded software loop.

She then moves on to Note A, wherein she portrays an extraordinary concept of a general-purpose computing machine– a simply unparalleled vision.

Sadly, she died young, aged just 36. Babbage’s analytical engine was never built and history had to wait until the 1940’s and 1950’s for computer programming to return. That historical gap presents an interesting ‘what if’ moment that fiction authors have enjoyed filling.

There is a programming language named after Ada , although it’s sadly not a widespread one these days. That’s a shame, as I’d much prefer writing in something called Ada rather than the unimaginatively named variations of ‘C’ that are now common.

Image of Ada Lovelace as featured in this article on her in the New Yorker.

Sleepytime

I’m always intrigued to discover new kinks I’ve not heard of before. After 20+ years on odd corners of the kinky internet this doesn’t happen too often, but occasionally I’m still surprised.

For example, today I discovered Anesthesia is a kink. I obviously knew of medical fetishism and breathplay, but hadn’t realized that the drugs and equipment for anesthesia was also a thing for people. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. As a process, it has all the kind of elements that get fetishized. Lots of control, ritual, uniforms and special materials/equipment.

Personally, while I do enjoy medical play and breathplay, anesthesia alone doesn’t do much for me sexually. However, I could get into fetishizing a really good nights sleep.

I found this image via tumblr. I believe it’s by Leela Lapin who specializes in these kind of heavy medical fantasies. You can find more from Leela via her links page.

A Last Sniff

Finishing up my series of scent themed posts with a bottom shot. Although I feel that part of the body is in a bit of a different category to the others featured.

Armpits, genitals and (to a lesser extent) feet have an ongoing natural odor. Unless you’ve just got our the shower or have gone crazy with deodorant, there’s an underlying scent that’s typically there. Bottoms are a bit more binary. The either don’t smell or they smell in a very different kind of way. That kind of scent play has its fans, but it’s more of a niche kink I think.

I believe this is Cybil Troy. I’m sure her hygiene is impeccable and her bottom therefore scented like a summer breeze.

Sniffing the Pits

I’m continuing the scent theme from the last couple of posts. After previously featuring panties and shoes, we’ve moving up the body to that other great scent center – armpits. I think they’re more of a niche interested compared to the previous sources, but they definitely have their fans.

I couldn’t decide which image to pick, so this is a two for one deal. The first is LA based Daddy An Li, in a shot from one of her clips. The second is Tokyo based Mistress Youko (more links available here). I’m a fan of keeping armpit hair, so I particularly appreciate this shot. For scent play it’s a real plus.

Maid Service

I don’t feature a lot of the classic (or cliched, depending on your point of view) French Maid femdom genre. There are exceptions, but it’s generally not my thing. It often leans into a humiliation dynamic that doesn’t typically resonate for me. Plus, I hate dusting and polishing.

All that said, I have been really enjoying reading The Maidbot Protocol by Maidbot Sally.  You can find Part 1-6 here and Parts 7-10 here. There’s also follow-up stories here and here. They feature a young man being voluntarily controlled/manipulated by an AI system programmed by his sister and her friends.

I think I’m a fan because they lean so heavily into objectification rather than humiliation. Somehow being ignored and controlled is so much hotter to me than being the focus of attention. There’s also some gentle tease and denial as an added bonus.

If you like that story then you might also want to check out another of the author’s stories – Metalmaid Sally. That leans more heavily into the sci-fi elements and has a female sub, but dramatically ramps up the intensity of the objectification and tease+denial.

The captioned image is from Michael1970 who has a lot of captioned images along the metalmaid theme.

It won’t hurt a bit

Continuing the theme of AI imagery and kinky niches: Another group that has benefited is kinksters into medical fetish. Photographing those kind of scenes requires pretty specialized locations and equipment. AI might produce a fair number of wonky scalpels, but it makes creating fantasy backgrounds and furniture a lot easier.

I’ve mentioned Velvet Lash before, who has a nice line in heavy bondage medical play. Another example is hello22011, who has a lot of castration themed imagery. The shot featured below is from TheWriterThatsMad. His work tends to lean into the more sadistic side of things.

Home is where the Dungeon is

For anyone thinking about building their own home playspace, the NY Times has an article with some inspiration in it. It’s more of a lifestyle piece than a how to guide, but it’s always nice to see a positive mainstream BDSM article, even if it does include the obligatory 50 shades reference. For NYC based kinksters there’s also a shout out to Lucy Sweetkill and Nicholas Knight. The latter looks like an excellent option for anyone after custom built furniture on the east coast.

Shibari seems to be a common interest, almost to the point of cliche now. Personally, if I was going to build a custom space, I’d go high tech. Lots of rubber, straps, chrome and things that go slurp. Something like Mistress Miranda’s BDSM laboratory shown below. Less natural wood and meditative bondage, more rich sensation layering and mad scientists toys.

You can see more shots of Mistress Miranda’s amazing space on her site and from this post when I visited it back in 2023.

Old School Ashtray

Stumbling across this image on a tumblr was a trip down memory lane. This is the inimitable Miss Chambers (as featured in past posts) shooting for Cruella/Goddess magazines back in the mid-90’s. I don’t know exactly when or where this shot was taken, but I’m fairly certain that’s where it dates to.

I’ve written before about acquiring those magazines in the early 90’s. Later in the decade they had a website, which was the first adult site I ever brought a subscription for. That led to many happy nights of downloading image sets over the ubiquitous (for the time) 28.8K modem.  Those featuring Miss Chambers were always my favorites. Hard to believe that was 30 years ago.

That Holiday Again

Valentine’s Day has rolled around again. I can’t say I’m a fan. For single people it means being reminded that your single. For couples it’s pressure to deliver something special or overspend on a commercial romantic gestures. I know some people manage to make it work, but that seems the exception rather than the rule.

As a perennially single person, I didn’t celebrate it. However, if I was going to, a leather clad domme coming out of a big heart shaped box would have been a pretty neat way to do so. In this particular case it’s Adrienne Kay, a self described Erotic Dominatrix & (Kinky) Companion. I’m sure she’d be a fabulous person to celebrate the 14th with.

Adrienne is based out of Vancouver. You can find her professional site here and her Bluesky here.