Hood – Page 7 – Femdom Resource

The proliferation of animated gifs

It used to be easy to find appropriate images to illustrate my posts. I’d jump onto tumblr with a theme in mind and typically find something suitable within a few minutes. Now I try that and I’m faced with wall to wall animated gifs. They’ve gone from old fashioned and annoying web page gimmick to what feels like 90% of tumblr contents in a couple of years.

Ironically, like the Oatmeal, I’m actually a fan of animated gifs. They work particularly well for sex and kink shots. I just wish tumblr had an option to filter them out. Sadly, given the number of sites only producing movies these days, and the shift away from commercial image sets, I suspect it’s a trend that’s not about to reverse itself. With movies as source material, animated clips is the natural way to feature them.

In the meantime I’ll have to look further afield for good image sources. For example, the shot below is from twitter, specifically Mistress Amiko’s feed. So far twitter does not seem to have succumbed to the animation craze in quite the same way as tumblr.

Behind the fantasy

Courtesy of linking from Mistress T I found this article on the rewards and challenges of being both a sex worker and a parent. I’ll admit it doesn’t really have a femdom angle to it. However, this blog relies heavily on the fantasies that sex workers help create. I feature beautiful photographs of sex workers, articles by them and descriptions of amazing scenes they help create. I therefore always appreciate the chance to acknowledge and humanize the people behind the fantasy.

I’ll add an entirely anecdotal observation of my own to the story. A lot of the pro-dommes I’ve interacted with have been very caring people and very pro-animal. They’ve kept animals, or fostered animals, or volunteered at shelters or contributed (and encouraged others to contribute) to animal charities. Obviously this is based on a very limited data set, but it does seem to me that pro-dommes at least, tend to care about animals and their welfare far more than the average person on the street does.

Of course there are always exceptions. There’s one type of animal they tend to do some really horrible things to.

This artwork is of course by the great Sardax.

Samir Abady’s Kink Series

The title of this BuzzFeed article is somewhat silly – 18 Kinky Pictures From The Gritty Underworld Of BDSM – but the photographs and the writing with them is both interesting and revealing. It’s only a ‘gritty underworld’ if your idea of BDSM consists of perfect models posing in polished fetish gear on a studio set. What these photographs show is how some kinky people explore BDSM in the real world. Ropes get knots in them, bodies aren’t perfect and you don’t need a dungeon space to get creatively kinky.

I particularly liked the story of Josh and Mistress Blunt. As a fan of mummification and breathplay myself, I can understand a little of the meditative effect it can have. The shots of them pre-session and in session (like the one below) are great.

The photographer is Samir Abady and you can the full series of 19 images in his set entitled ‘Kink’.

The places you’ll go

Writing about Kink’s Armory space last week got me thinking about all the different play spaces I’ve experienced over the years. If you’ve never visited a professional BDSM space, you might be surprised where they pop up. Old industrial buildings in the cheaper parts of town are certainly common, but they’re not the only option. For example, over the years I’ve experienced:

A big McMansion in a rich suburb. A large chunk of the second floor had been converted to the play space. It was odd to experience being bound and beaten while chinks in the window blinds gave me glimpses of people watering their lawns or kids playing in the street.
An ultra-modern loft style condo. I was late to arrive, as I spent the first 10 minutes convinced that the play space must be in the old brick warehouse across the street. That seemed so much more likely than the trendy and expensive condos.
The top floor of a downtown office block. It was an incredibly well equipped space, and it must have been a nightmare to get all the big heavy dungeon furniture up the lifts and stairs without arousing suspicion.
A townhouse in the heart of San Francisco. I was banned from visiting during the day, as it was thought my screams would disturb the dot com company next door.

Most spaces adopt the functional but cliched black / red color schemes for the walls and equipment, but there are a few happy exceptions. Troy Orleans in NYC has a beautiful establishment with natural light, clean white walls and a very well thought out use of space (see a shot here). Similarly, Lucy Khan in LA has a luxurious and well composed space that actually looks like an interior designer was involved (see a shot here). Personally, I always prefer to play somewhere that feels like a beautiful space to be in, rather than in a dungeon cliche.

This image is by Natasha Gornik and was featured on her tumblr. It doesn’t say so on the post, but I believe that’s Miss Troy Orleans again. I think it’s a nice example of an intense scene but with still a clean and beautiful aesthetic.

Folsom Addendum

A final post on the Folsom Fair. Actually, more of an addendum to my first post than a new one. That post featured an image of Mistress Liliane Hunt and her posse. If you liked that shot, then you should check out her latest blog post. It gives a lot of background on her trip and the people with her, along with a lot more great photographs. She was even featured on this years poster, as an amazing looking fetishist Sarah Palin.

Rather than repeat another image of this year’s fair, here’s Mistress Hunt at the 2011 fair with her puppy. I love the look of joy on her face and his contented appearance. There’s a lovely energy to this.

Mistress Liliane Hunt with her puppy I found this image via this SFGate gallery.

Getting it all wrong

When a story about a dominatrix avoiding jail after a client died in a session originally surfaced in my inbox, I was pleased. Not for the dead guy obviously, but for the fact that she hadn’t been unreasonably punished. From just reading the article title I assumed he’d had a heart attack or aneurysm and gone out doing something he enjoyed. Intense kinky sex can certainly raise stress and blood pressure levels, and having a play partner die would be traumatizing enough without adding legal entanglements. Now, having read the story, I’m not so sure. Jail seems like a pretty reasonable place for her.

The client contacted her to do breathplay, which is a reasonable thing in itself. The badness starts with him wanting to be made unconscious. It gets worse with the fact she agreed to do it when clearly neither of them had a clue what they were doing. It culminates with her helping him use tape and a noose to cut off his breathing and then leaving him alone in a hotel room for 30 minutes. Leaving someone alone is a big red flag in most bondage situations, let alone when breathing restrictions are involved. Stupidity like that really deserves some prison time, even if he was equally idiotic in instigating the situation.

Personally, I love breathplay. I’ve had some of my most intense sessions while experiencing it. But it was always with people who knew what they were doing, who kept a very close watch on my physical responses and where we could escape it in a second or two.

This is the lovely Mistress Eleise – someone who definitely does know how to do breathplay properly. A gloved hand can be very effective all on its own. This is taken from her Femme Fatale Films.

Patreon

I noticed when writing my previous post that Yumine has set-up a Patreon account. For those that haven’t encountered this service before, it’s an easy way for fans (patrons) of artists to contribute a few bucks to them on a regular basis. It’s not designed to crowdfund a specific piece of work, but instead functions more as a virtual tip jar for ongoing work. Yumine is suggesting chipping in just a $1 or $5 per month.

I’ve not used Patreon before, but this seemed a worthwhile case to give it a go. Sign-up was very quick and easy, and it let me use either PayPal or a credit card. If like me, you appreciate Yumine’s work, then maybe give it a shot yourself?

calm Of course this gives me another excuse to feature her work in a post. I particularly like this piece as the D/s dynamic and activity reminds me a lot of my play. I love breathplay and nipple torture, while having a love/hate relationship with hoods. That often leads to a lot of nervous energy that has to be worked through.

Coffee and Kink

My fellow Pacific Northwest dwellers may be interested to learn that Portland is gaining a kinky coffee shop. It’ll be called the MoonFyre Cafe and is being organized by Mistress Pixie Fyre. As well as the cafe part, it’ll also boast a space for classes, a play space and an aftercare space.

While combining sex, kink and coffee seems very quintessentially Portland, it’s not the first on the West Coast. Wicked Grounds in San Francisco has been around for many years now. The shot below shows Mistress Alice and Mistress Leila enjoying a coffee in that space. Apparently the gentleman they’re with is drinking his coffee via a straw while having his balls electrically zapped. Perhaps he just wasn’t getting the kind of caffeine high he wanted, and felt he needed to step it up a notch or two? It’s probably still more pleasant than drinking at Starbucks.

Torment in the Wicked Grounds cafe

Stylish puppy and Mistress

Continuing the puppy theme with a particularly fashionable and posed pair. Typical BDSM dog hoods are heavy on the BDSM and less of the dog aspect. This is clearly shooting for a much more realistic look. Personally I find it drifts a little bit into uncanny valley territory, but I have to admire the attention to detail.

Puppy This is Mistress dollbaby with Puppy G.

Weirdly disturbing

This was meant to be a continuation of the dog theme from my previous post. I was looking for a fun puppy themed femdom shot. And while it does continue the dog theme, I find it more weirdly disturbing than fun.

Obviously punching and hitting are all fair game in a consensual BDSM scene. But punching or hitting dogs is horrible and evil. So maybe I’ve drunk too much wine tonight while cooking dinner, but this just seems kind of wrong. A rolled up newspaper might be OK, but a fist? No. Bad domme.

Dog This is Nikki Nefarious and Deviant Kade shooting for Inescapable Bondage.